Uncanny!

by Paul Jennings

  Pete and I both noticed it at the same time. His feet weren’t touching the ground. He was moving across the rubbish about thirty centimetres above the surface.

  It was the ghost of Old Man Chompers.

  We both screeched the same word at exactly the same moment. ‘Run.’

  And did we run. We tore through the waist-high rubbish. Scrambling. Screaming. Scrabbling. Not noticing the waves of silent rats slithering out of our way. Not feeling the scratches of dumped junk. Not daring to turn and snatch a stare at the horrible spectre who hobbled behind us.

  Finally, with bursting lungs, we crawled into the back of an old car. It had no doors or windows so we crouched low, not breathing, not looking, not even hoping.

  Why had we come to this awful place? Fools, fools, fools. Suddenly the thought of Gribble and the steer’s skull and the false teeth seemed stupid. I would have fought a thousand Gribbles rather than be here. Trapped in a tip with a ghost.

  I could feel Pete trembling beside me. And I could hear the voice of someone else. A creaking, croaking cry. ‘My darlings … my darlings … my darlings … my darlings.’

  5

  I knew it. I just knew it. The ghost of Old Man Chompers had seen us. He thought we were his lost darlings. His dead grandchildren. He was coming to get us. Then he would be able to leave this place. And take us with him. To that great ghost tip in the sky.

  I thought of Mum and Dad. I thought of my nice warm bed. I would never see them again. Our parents would never know what had happened to us. Never know that we had come to our end in the bowels of the Allansford tip.

  ‘At last, at last … my darlings … at last.’ The wailing voice was nearby. He knew where we were. Without a word we bolted out of the car. We fled blindly across the festering tip until we reached the pond. The deep black pond, filled with floating foulness.

  And behind, slowly hobbling above the bile, came the searching figure of Old Chompers. We were trapped against the edge of the pond.

  In panic we looked around for escape. Mountains of junk loomed over us on either side. To the back was the pond and to the front … we dared not look.

  ‘Quick,’ yelled Pete. ‘Help me with this.’ He was pulling at an old rusty bath. Dragging it towards the water.

  ‘It won’t float,’ I gasped. ‘Look at the plughole. The water will get in. It’ll sink.’

  Pete bent down and scratched up a dollop of wet clay from the edge of the water. He jammed it into the plughole. ‘Come on,’ he panted. ‘Hurry.’

  The bath was heavy but terror made us strong. We launched it out into the murky water. Then we scrambled in. Just in time. The bath rocked dangerously from side to side but slowly it floated away from the approaching horror.

  We paddled frantically with our hands until the bath reached the middle of the pond. Then we stopped and stared at Old Chompers. He hobbled to the edge of the water. He staggered towards us. He was walking on the water. His hands outstretched. ‘My darlings,’ he groaned. ‘My long-lost darlings.’ Pete and I clung to the sides of the bath with frozen fingers.

  The moon went in and everything was black.

  Suddenly there was a pop. The clay plug shot into the air followed by a spout of water. Brown wetness swirled in the bath. We were sinking. In a flash we found ourselves swimming in the filthy water. We both headed for the shore, splashing and shouting and struggling. Pete was a better swimmer than me. He disappeared into the gloom.

  My jumper soaked up water and dragged me down. I went under. I came up again and spat out the lumpy brown liquid. I knew I would drown unless I could find something to grab onto. The bath was gone.

  Then my hand touched something. It was a post with something on the end. I grabbed onto it and kicked towards the shore. As my feet touched the bottom I realised that the post had horns. Then I saw that it had a face. A staring dead face with sharp teeth. It was the horrible leering steer’s skull.

  I screamed and crawled over to where Pete lay on the shore.

  We were both soaked to the skin. We were cold and exhausted. We were too tired to move.

  The ghost of Old Man Chompers crept across the water with outstretched hands. His face was wrinkled like a bowl of hard, cold custard. His mouth was as a black hole formed in the custard by a vanished golf ball. He chuckled as he looked at me.

  In my left hand I still had the false teeth. All the time I had been running I had held onto them. I had no other weapon so I held them out in front of me. My fingers were shaking so much that it made them chatter.

  As the ghost of Old Man Chompers jumped at me I screamed and screamed and tried to push him off with the teeth.

  He grabbed the false teeth from my quivering fingers and shoved them into his mouth. ‘At last,’ he said. ‘I’ve found them. My darlings. My darlings.’ He opened and closed his mouth with joy, making sucking noises as he did it.

  After a bit of this he pulled out a ghostly apple from his pocket and started to chomp on it. ‘Wonderful,’ he cackled. ‘Wonderful. You don’t know what it was like without my darlings … I owe you boys a big favour for bringing these back.’

  We both lay there looking at the grinning ghost. Suddenly he didn’t seem so scary. Pete found his voice first. ‘You mean,’ he said, ‘that your darlings are your false teeth? Not your long-lost grandchildren?’

  The ghost started to cackle even more. ‘Them,’ he said. ‘Them brats. What would I want them for? I told ’em not to play around here. Told ’em it was dangerous. No, I was lookin’ for these.’ He smacked his lips again and showed the cracked brown teeth. ‘Couldn’t leave without these. Been lookin’ for ’em for years. Now I can go. Now I can leave this rotten dump and join all the others.’ As he said this he started to fade away. I knew that we would never see him again.

  ‘Wait,’ yelled Pete. ‘Don’t go. Come back.’

  Chompers stopped fading and looked at Pete. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What do yer want?’ I could see that he was in a hurry. He didn’t want to hang around the tip for any longer than he had to.

  Pete looked the ghost straight in the eye. ‘You said that you owe us a big favour for bringing your teeth back. Well we want to be paid back. We want one favour before you go.’

  ‘Well,’ said Old Chompers with a chipped smile. ‘What is it?’

  6

  Old Chompers wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to hang around that tip. He showed us a hole in the fence and we ran back down that road as fast as we could go. When we got back to Allansford we climbed up a certain tree and looked in a certain window.

  Gribble was fast asleep in bed. He had a big smile on his face. He had fallen asleep thinking about how smart he was making those dumb twins go to the tip in the middle of the night.

  Suddenly he was awakened by a noise. It sounded like a person tapping with a stick. It was coming towards his window. Then he heard a croaky voice. ‘My darling,’ it said. ‘At last I’ve found my darling.’

  Gribble was terrified. He wanted to scream but nothing would come out.

  A terrible figure floated through the wall. He had a face which was wrinkled like a bowl of hard, cold custard. His mouth was as a black hole formed in the custard by a vanished golf ball. And in that black hole was a pair of cracked old false teeth.

  The ghost chuckled as he held the horrible skull over Gribble’s head. ‘I think you wanted this,’ he said as he dropped his load on Gribble’s face.

  ‘That was from Pete,’ he screeched. ‘And this,’ he yelled picking it up again, ‘is a Repeat.’

  Gribble didn’t feel the steer’s skull the second time. Nor did he see the ghost fade away. He had fainted.

  The next day at school, though, James Gribble was very nice to me and Pete. I had never met a more polite boy. And there is one thing I can tell you for a fact – he never mentioned anything about being the top dog ever again.

  Frozen Stiff

  ‘Where will I put it?’ asked Old Jack Thaw in a creaky voice.

  I looke
d at the mouse. Its frozen tail stuck out straight behind it like an arrow. It was poised with one frozen leg raised as if it was sniffing the air. Its frozen eyes stared ahead without blinking.

  Jack Thaw had never been to school and he couldn’t read or write too well. That’s why he needed me. I always stopped off at Jack’s place on the way home from school.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘mouse starts with “M”. That comes between “L” and “N”. So you have the lizard on one side and the numbat on the other.’ I pointed at a space between the little ice blocks.

  Jack Thaw gave a wrinkly grin. His bare gums showed because he had forgotten to put in his false teeth. He picked up the lizard’s ice block and moved it a little bit to the left. Then he placed the frozen mouse in its place on the shelf. It seemed to glare at us from inside its icy prison.

  We both stood and stared at the collection of tiny animals. Birds, spiders. Bats, rats. Grasshoppers, goannas. Fleas, flies. You name it, if it was small and dead it was there. The walls of the freezing room were lined with shelves. On the shelves were thousands of small ice blocks – each one with a tiny creature frozen inside.

  Long ago, this had been an ice factory. And Jack Thaw had been an ice man. He used to take blocks of ice around to people’s houses on the back of an old truck. But gradually people stopped needing the ice. They sold their ice chests and bought fridges instead. In the end no one wanted ice at all.

  So Jack stopped working and started up his collection. Whenever he found a small, dead creature he brought it back to the ice works and froze it inside an ice block. Then he put it on a shelf inside his huge freezer room. This room was so big that you could drive a truck inside it if you wanted to.

  A shiver ran up my spine. ‘Let’s go outside,’ I said. ‘I’m cold.’

  We walked out of the freezer room into the factory. Jack swung the massive doors closed. Then he pointed to the bandage on my finger. ‘Have you hurt yourself?’ he asked.

  I nodded and took off the stained bandage. My finger was bleeding from a deep cut. ‘Barbed wire,’ I said. ‘I cut it on the barbed wire on Gravel’s fence.’

  Jack took me over to a huge steel bin on wheels. It was full of salty water. Jack would never usually let me near this bin of water. It was special. He used tap water to freeze the animals. Once I had seen Jack drink a bit of the salty water when he didn’t know I was there.

  Jack climbed up the side of the bin and dipped in a glass. He held the glass out to me. ‘Put your finger in there,’ he said.

  Without a word I dipped in my bleeding finger.

  When I pulled it out my finger had stopped bleeding.

  Jack smiled. ‘Wonderful stuff, salt water,’ he said. Then he shook a gnarled old hand at me. ‘Don’t you tell anyone about this,’ he croaked. ‘Or my collection.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I’ve told you a million times. I can keep a secret. No one knows about your frozen zoo. Not even Mum.’

  Some of the kids at school said that Jack was 200 years old. They were scared of him. I was the only person he ever let in the ice factory.

  I walked towards the outside door.

  ‘Come back tomorrow,’ said Jack. ‘I’m going to the beach. I might find a dead fish. You will have to show me where to put it.’ He sure was a funny bloke. All he ever thought about was his precious collection. But he had a heart of gold. He was a good mate.

  I waved goodbye. ‘See you,’ I said. ‘I’d better be going. I haven’t said goodbye to Jingle Bells yet. I rushed off without saying goodbye to her when I cut my finger.’

  2

  Jingle Bells was a cow. You might wonder what a cow was doing in the middle of the city. Well, it was the saddest thing. Poor old Jingle Bells was locked in a shed. In the shadow of the high-rise flats. In between the factories and the freeways. Stuck in the polluted, smelly city. Surrounded by smog. Like us.

  Only it was worse for a cow.

  Jingle Bells had never grazed in the grass. Never stepped on a flower. Never snatched a glimpse of the sky. She was a prisoner in Gravel’s shed. He sure was a mean bloke.

  Every day for the last two weeks she had been mooing. Long sad moos. They went on and on without stopping.

  Jack had told me it was because it was Springtime. ‘It’s the smell of the country,’ he had said. ‘In between the fumes and the foul air, a tiny bit of pollen from the country is carried on the wind. It gets through a crack in the dark shed. It creeps across the concrete floor. It snakes into Jingle Bells’ nostrils. And then she smells the pollen – the little messenger from the bush. It tells her that far away there are other cows. It speaks of soft winds – and blossoms that bend the branches of trees until they touch the cool clover. She moos for the moon and the stars and the dew of the still, cold nights.’

  Jack Thaw might not be able to read. But he sure had a way with words. Every time I thought of Jingle Bells after that a tear would come into my eye.

  Something had to be done. It was wrong to keep a cow locked up in a dingy shed.

  Jingle Bells was my best friend after Jack Thaw. Not that she had ever seen me. She had only heard my voice. And looked into my eye.

  Every night after school I would creep along the alley behind Gravel’s house and climb over his back fence. Then I would sneak up to his cow shed and peep through a crack in the palings. Jingle Bells would stare at me through the crack and I would stare back at her. We would stand there for ages – eye to eye. Not moving. Just looking.

  You can tell a lot from staring at a cow’s eye. I could tell that Jingle Bells wanted to get out. Wanted to escape. I knew that she longed for the sunshine. I knew that she hated Gravel, who kept her in this black hole.

  Before I left her each night I would poke a little bit of fresh grass through the crack. All Gravel ever gave her was dry old chaff and hay. When Jingle Bells saw the grass she would give six, short, happy moos. They sounded a bit like the first bars of the song ‘Jingle Bells’. That’s why I named her after the Christmas carol.

  Gravel just called her ‘the cow’. Whenever he was around, Jingle Bells’ long, sad moos could be heard filtering through the sounds of car horns and screeching brakes.

  3

  Anyway, on the day that it all started I saw something especially sad. I looked through the crack and saw Jingle Bells straining at her rope. She was pulling and pulling. Trying to reach a tiny little patch of sunshine that had leaked in through a hole in the roof. It was only about the size of a twenty-cent coin but Jingle Bells wanted to stand in it. Imagine that. The poor thing wanted to stand in a tiny little splot of sunshine.

  I put back my head and gave a scream of rage. Then I fumed and ran. I clambered over Gravel’s back fence. I sped down the alley. I tore across the road to the high-rise flats where we lived. My lungs felt like fire but nothing could stop me.

  The lift seemed to take ages but at last I reached the fifteenth floor. Our flat was number twenty. I banged on the door until Mum finally opened it. ‘What’s the rush?’ she asked.

  ‘The hammer,’ I panted. ‘Where’s the hammer?’

  ‘Under the sink,’ answered Mum.

  Without another word I went into the kitchen and grabbed our claw-hammer. ‘Be back soon,’ I yelled. I headed back towards the cow shed as fast as I could go.

  There was no sign of Gravel back at the shed. Inside, Jingle Bells was still mooing with long, sad moos and straining to reach the little shaft of sunshine. ‘Don’t worry old girl,’ I said. ‘You’re in for a big treat.’

  I clambered up onto the top of the shed and started pulling out nails with the claw-hammer. It was hard work but after about half an hour I had most of the nails out of one sheet of roofing iron.

  There was still no sign of Gravel.

  At last it was done. I had freed one large sheet of corrugated iron. I ripped it off the roof and threw it into the small garden. Sunshine poured into the shed. Buckets of it. Bathloads of it. A huge waterfall of light. Pouring, streaming,
warming. Flooding down into the shed. It smothered Jingle Bells in its glorious flow. She raised her head and gave six, short happy moos. And then another six, and another and another. For the first time in her life she felt the life-giving gift of a warm sun.

  I lay there on the roof for maybe an hour. Maybe two. I couldn’t say how long for sure. I gazed down at Jingle Bells as she sunned herself. She settled onto the floor in the sun, chewing her cud. She was probably pretending that she was grazing in a grassy glen. I could see that she was happy.

  And then, just as Jingle Bells’ patch of sunlight started to climb the walls, I felt an iron grip on my ankle. I felt myself being yanked backwards. My stomach scratched on the hot roof. My nose bumped along the corrugations. ‘Help,’ I screamed. ‘Stop. Stop.’ Someone was pulling me off the roof from below. I tried to hang on with my fingers but there was nothing to grab onto.

  Suddenly I found myself in mid-air. I seemed to hang there for a second or two and then I plunged downwards. I crashed painfully onto the gravel beneath. The wind was knocked from my lungs and I couldn’t breathe.

  But I could see. And I didn’t like what I saw. Gravel was staring down at me with a wild look on his face. His big red nose was lumpy. His false teeth seemed to have a life of their own. They clacked and jumped out of time as he shouted at me. ‘You vandal. You, you, brat. What do you mean by wrecking my shed?’

  ‘It’s Jingle Bells,’ I managed to gasp. ‘I’m letting in the sun.’

  He just stood there for a second or two with his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. ‘You’ve pulled the roof off my shed for a cow? For a rotten old cow that doesn’t even give any milk?’

  ‘It’s cruel,’ I yelled. ‘It’s cruel keeping Jingle Bells in the dark.’

  ‘I’ll show you what’s cruel,’ he shrieked. He picked up a piece of old rope and started lashing at my legs with it. I wriggled out of his way and climbed up over the fence before he could grab me again. I started to run down the lane. Behind me I heard Gravel’s last mean words. ‘The cow won’t want sunshine for much longer. Tomorrow it goes to the knackery.’ His voice was raised in a high-pitched laugh.