Paul Jenning's Weirdest Stories

by Paul Jennings

  ‘Yesterday,’ says Splodge, ‘when I gave you six of the best, I noticed that you had black hair. Am I correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I answer.

  ‘Then tell me, lad,’ he says. ‘How is it that your hair is white today?’ I notice that little purple veins are standing out on his bald head. This is a bad sign.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I tell him.

  ‘Tell me the long story,’ he says. ‘And it had better be good.’

  I look him straight in the eye and this is what I tell him.

  2

  I am a very nervous person. Very sensitive. I get scared easily. I am scared of the dark. I am scared of ghost stories. I am even scared of the Cookie Monster on Sesame Street. Yesterday I am going home on the train after getting the strap and I am in a carriage with some very strange people. There is an old lady with a walking stick, grey hair and gold wire-rim glasses. She is bent right over and can hardly walk. There is also a mean, skinny-looking guy sitting next to me. He looks like he would slit your throat for two bob. Next to him is a kid of about my age and he is smoking. You are not allowed to smoke when you are fourteen. This is why I am not smoking at the time.

  After about five minutes a ticket collector puts his head in the door. He looks straight at the kid who is smoking. ‘Put that cigarette out,’ he says. ‘You are too young to smoke.’

  The kid does not stop smoking. He picks up this thing that looks like a transistor and twiddles a knob. Then he starts to grow older in front of our eyes. He just slowly changes until he looks about twenty-five. ‘How’s that?’ he says to the ticket collector. ‘Am I old enough now?’

  The ticket collector gives an almighty scream and runs down the corridor as fast as his legs can take him. The rest of us just sit there looking at the kid (who is now a man) with our mouths hanging open.

  ‘How did you do that?’ trembles the old lady. She is very interested indeed.

  ‘Easy,’ says the kid-man as he stands up. The train is stopping at a station. ‘Here,’ he says throwing the transistor thing onto her lap. ‘You can have it if you want.’ He goes out of the compartment, down the corridor and gets off the train.

  We all stare at the box-looking thing. It has a sliding knob on it. Along the right-hand side it says OLDER and at the left end it says YOUNGER. On the top is a label saying AGE RAGER.

  The mean-looking bloke sitting next to me makes a sudden lunge forward and tries to grab the Age Rager but the old lady is too quick for him. ‘No you don’t,’ she says and shoves him off. Quick as a flash she pushes the knob a couple of centimetres down towards the YOUNGER end.

  Straight away she starts to grow younger. In about one minute she looks as if she is sixteen. She is sixteen. She looks kind of pretty in the old lady’s glasses and old-fashioned clobber. It makes her look like a hippy. ‘Whacko,’ she shouts, throwing off her shawl. She throws the Age Rager over to me, runs down the corridor and jumps off the train just as it is pulling out of the station.

  As the train speeds past I hear her say, ‘John McEnroe, look out!’

  ‘Give that to me,’ says the mean-looking guy. Like I told you before, I am no hero. I am scared of my own shadow. I do not like violence or scary things so I hand over the Age Rager to Mean Face.

  He grabs the Age Rager from me and pushes the knob nearly up to the end where it says YOUNGER. Straight away he starts to grow younger but he does not stop at sixteen. In no time at all there is a baby sitting next to me in a puddle of adult clothes. He is only about one year old. He looks at me with a wicked smile. He sure is a mean-looking baby. ‘Bad Dad Dad,’ he says.

  ‘I am not your Dad Dad,’ I say. ‘Give me that before you hurt yourself.’ The baby shakes his head and puts the Age Rager behind his back. I can see that he is not going to hand it over. He thinks it is a toy.

  Then, before I can move, he pushes the knob right up to the OLDER end. A terrible sight meets my eyes. He starts to get older and older. First he is about sixteen, then thirty, then sixty, then eighty, then one hundred and then he is dead. But it does not stop there. His body starts to rot away until all that is left is a skeleton.

  I give a terrible scream and run to the door but I cannot get out because it is jammed. I kick and shout but I cannot get out. I open the window but the train is going too fast for me to escape.

  And that is how my hair gets white. I have to sit in that carriage with a dead skeleton for fifteen minutes. I am terrified. I am shaking with fear. It is the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me. My hair goes white in just fifteen minutes. I am frightened into being a blonde. When the train stops I get out of the window and walk all the rest of the way home.

  ‘And that,’ I say to Splodge, ‘is the truth.’

  3

  Splodge is fiddling with his pink bow-tie. His face is turning the same colour. I can see that he is about to freak out. ‘What utter rubbish,’ he yells. ‘Do you take me for a fool? Do you expect me to believe that yarn?’

  ‘I can prove it,’ I say. I get the Age Rager out of my bag and put it on his desk.

  Splodge picks it up and looks at it carefully. ‘You can go now, lad,’ he says in a funny voice. ‘I will send a letter home to your parents telling them that you are suspended from school for telling lies.’

  I walk sadly back to class. My parents will kill me if I am suspended from school.

  For the next two weeks I worry about the letter showing up in the letter box. But nothing happens. I am saved.

  Well, it is not quite true that nothing happens. Two things happen: one good and one bad. The good thing is that Splodge disappears and is never seen again.

  The bad thing is that Miss Newham gets a boyfriend. He is about eighteen and is good-looking.

  It is funny, though. Why would she go out with a kid who wears pink bow-ties?

  Albert pulled up his socks and wiped his sweaty hands on the seat of his pants. He did up the top button of his shirt and adjusted his school tie. Then he trudged slowly up the stairs.

  He was going to get the strap.

  He knew it, he just knew it. He couldn’t think of one thing he had done wrong but he knew Mr Brown was going to give him the strap anyway. He would find some excuse to whack Albert – he always did.

  Albert’s stomach leapt up and down as if it was filled with jumping frogs. Something in his throat stopped him from swallowing properly. He didn’t want to go. He wished he could faint or be terribly sick so he would have to be rushed off to hospital in an ambulance. But nothing happened. He felt his own feet taking him up to his doom.

  He stood outside the big brown door and trembled. He was afraid but he made his usual resolution. He would not cry. He would not ask for mercy. He would not even wince. There was no way he was going to give Mr Brown that pleasure.

  He took a deep breath and knocked softly.

  Inside the room Brown heard the knock. He said nothing. Let the little beggar suffer. Let the little smart alec think he was in luck. Let him think no one was in.

  Brown heard Albert’s soft footsteps going away from the door. ‘Come in, Jenkins,’ he boomed.

  The small figure entered the room. He wore the school uniform of short pants, blue shirt and tie. His socks had fallen down again.

  Albert looked over to the cupboard where the long black strap hung on a nail.

  Brown towered over Albert. He wore a three-piece suit with a natty little vest. He frowned. The wretched child showed no fear. He didn’t beg, he didn’t cry. He just stood there.

  In the corner a grandfather clock loudly ticked away the time that lay between Albert and his painful fate. The soft ‘clicks’ of a cricket match filtered through the open window. Albert pretended he was out there playing with the others.

  Brown suddenly thrust his hand into his vest pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He pushed it into Albert’s face. Somehow Albert managed to focus his eyes on it and see the words:

  BALD HEAD BROWN WENT TO TOWN,

  RIDING
ON A PONY

  Underneath was a drawing of a bald-headed person riding a horse.

  ‘I didn’t do it, sir,’ said Albert truthfully.

  Brown looked at Albert’s thick black hair and wiped his hand over his own bald head. The room started to swirl, his forehead throbbed. Jenkins was lying. And he was unafraid. He should be whimpering and crawling like the others.

  Brown rushed over to the cupboard and grabbed the strap. ‘Hold out your hand,’ he shrieked.

  Then he rained blow after blow on the helpless, shaking child.

  2

  Brown sprawled in his leather chair. He was out of breath. He knew he had overdone it this time. He had lost his temper. He wondered if Jenkins would have any bruises. Some of the other teachers might kick up a fuss if Jenkins showed them bruises. Fortunately this was a boarding school and there were no parents around to complain. Brown suddenly wished he had hit Jenkins even harder. He looked out of the window at the sparkling sea nearby. It was the perfect day to be on the water. He decided to go out in his rowing boat. It might help him to forget Jenkins and all the other little horrors in the school.

  The sea was flat and mirrored the glassy clouds that beckoned from the horizon. Brown pushed out the small boat and it knifed a furrow through the inky water. He put his back to the oars and soon he was far out to sea with the shore only a thin line in the distance.

  Brown was glad to be out of reach of the children he hated, but something was wrong. The sea didn’t feel the same, or smell the same. He thought he heard voices – watery, giggling voices. He looked around but there was not another craft to be seen. He was alone on an enamelled ocean.

  The boat began to rock gently and Brown felt it gripped in a strong current. It was carrying him away from the land. He tried to turn the boat around and pull for the shore but the current was too strong. The boat sped faster and faster and then began to rock wildly. Brown felt the oars snatched from his hands by the speeding tide. He fell with a crash to the bottom of the boat and clung to the edges as it bucketed through the swirling water.

  Laughter filled the still air and echoed in his head. Brown plucked up his courage and peeped over the side of the boat. It was cutting a large circle through the foam, getting neither closer nor further away from the shore.

  Suddenly a piercing pain shot through Brown’s head. He just had time to notice that the sea had opened up into a large funnel. The water was twirling as if it was going down a plughole. Brown collapsed into blackness as the boat slipped over the rim of the abyss.

  3

  When he awoke the pain had gone. Brown found himself still in the boat. It was speeding around the inside of the funnel at an enormous rate. He looked up at the rim and beyond that to the clouds which spun like patterns on a drunken dinner plate.

  The boat maintained its position, neither falling lower in the funnel nor rising to the surface high above. Brown peered cautiously over the edge and looked down. He gasped as he saw the spiralling funnel twist down and end in jagged claws of rock which clutched hungrily upwards from the bed of the sea.

  Brown found his gaze drawn into the shining black wall of the vortex. With a shock he saw a scene unfold within the sea. Two enormous lobsters were holding a struggling, naked man over a pot of boiling water. As they dropped the figure to his death, Brown was sure he heard one of them say, ‘I’ve heard they scream as they hit the water. I don’t believe it myself.’

  This scene repeated itself every time the boat circled. It was like a record stuck in a groove. Brown saw it a hundred times, a thousand times. It was horrible. He didn’t want to watch but his eyes were held by an unseen force. Finally he grabbed the side of the boat, closed his eyes and rocked with all his strength.

  The boat slipped down a few notches. When he opened his eyes another scene unfolded. A fat man sat peering through a window at a table laden with food. Trifles, jellies, cakes, peaches and strawberries. Around the table thin, ghostly children sat stuffing themselves and laughing happily. The fat man banged on the window. He was hungry. He wanted to get in. But the children couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him and the man banged in vain. He was starving – never to be satisfied.

  Brown watched, horrified as the same drama played again and again. Where was this place? Was it hell? Were these people having done to them what they had done to others? For ever? Over and over again?

  Brown knew every groove would contain a similar horror. He could stand it no longer. He wanted to see no more. He decided to get it over and done with. He grabbed the sides of the boat and rocked and rocked and rocked. The boat plummeted to the waiting rocks below.

  There was a tearing, crushing, splintering as Brown’s last scream fled his tortured body.

  4

  Brown awoke and looked around. With relief he saw he was still in his study. The grandfather clock ticked away loudly in the corner and the soft ‘clicks’ of a game of cricket filtered through the open window. His leather chair rested in its usual place.

  He must have had a nightmare. For a second, but only a second, he wondered if there had been some message in his terrible dream. Then he dismissed the thought and tried to think of another excuse to give Jenkins a belting. He wasn’t the least bit sorry for what he had done.

  It was then he noticed the room seemed different. The grandfather clock looked taller than usual and the window appeared further from the floor. Everything was bigger. He looked down and saw he was wearing short pants. And his socks were hanging down around his shoes. He was dressed in the school uniform.

  And worse – oh – much worse. Albert Jenkins was in the room. A huge Jenkins. He wore a three-piece suit with a natty little vest.

  Jenkins shoved a piece of paper into Brown’s face. Then he rushed over to the cupboard and grabbed the strap.

  Look around you.

  What do you see?

  Maybe your bedroom with games and posters and socks on the floor?

  Come on – put down the book and have a look. Right now.

  Are you in the back seat of the car with your little brother next to you? Or maybe in school wishing it was home time? You might be outside reading under a tree. Wherever it is – have a good look.

  How real is it?

  What if it is a dream? Yes, really. What if you are going to wake up somewhere else and it is all gone? Mum, Dad, your pesky little brother. Teachers, school, friends. All gone and you are somewhere else.

  In the real world.

  What about that, eh?

  1

  They are picking teams for a football match. Oh no.

  It is not one of those games run by the teachers where everyone gets a fair go. Nothing like that. No, it is a match organised at lunchtime by the kids. There are twenty-one of us lined up.

  Out the front are the captains – Keeble and Fitzy. They are the best footballers in the school. They are big and tough and mean. If they crack a joke everyone laughs. Even when it is not funny.

  Now they are picking their teams.

  ‘Henderson,’ yells Fitzy. Henderson is a fantastic runner. His team will probably win. He walks out and stands next to Fitzy. He knew that he would be the first to be picked.

  ‘Black,’ calls out Keeble. Robert Black is also a good footballer. He is small but he is a great kick. He grins and walks over to Keeble.

  They keep calling out names.

  ‘Swan.’

  ‘Tootle.’

  ‘Rogers.’

  ‘Tang.’

  Each kid walks forward when his name is called and stands next to his captain.

  There are twenty-one kids. Ten per side not counting the captains. One boy will be left out. Some poor kid will not be picked. He will be left standing there and everyone will know that he is the worst footballer in the school.

  ‘Please, God, don’t let it be me. Please.’

  There is a horrible feeling in my stomach. It feels heavy.

  ‘Peters.’

  Alan Peters steps out and stands behind
Keeble. ‘What about Simon Duck? Please call Simon Duck,’ I think to myself. But no one calls me.

  There are only a few kids in line now. We all look at each other hoping we will not be left at the end.

  Now there are only two left. Me and John Hopkins.

  ‘Hopkins,’ yells Fitzy. Hopkins gives a big sigh of relief and runs out the front.

  Everyone looks at me standing there all alone.

  ‘You can have plucked Duck,’ says Fitzy.

  The kids all laugh.

  ‘No thanks,’ says Keeble. ‘We’re not that desperate.’

  I can feel a hot blush crawling over my face as the boys run off to start the match. I am left on my own with the little kids. Oh, the shame of it. I wish I was an ant so that I could crawl down a hole and never be seen again.

  But I am not an ant so I go into the toilets instead. I sit down in a cubicle where no one can see me. I stay there all lunchtime. The minutes drag by. No one knows where I am. No one cares. Finally the bell rings and I am saved. I can go into class.

  2

  After school I make my lonely way home. The other kids are in twos and threes but no one ever wants to walk home with me.

  I think about my little brother. The one I don’t have. But will soon. Mum is having a baby and I am sure it will be a boy. He will be my friend. My mate. I will look after him. Show him a thing or two. We will be the best friends in the world.

  What is it about me, I wonder? Why don’t I have any friends? I ask kids home but they don’t come. Is it because I am no good at football? I just don’t know.

  I would give anything to have a friend.

  I reach the front gate of our house. The grass is long and weedy. It is the worst garden in the street. I would cut the lawn for Mum but the lawn mower conked out and we can’t afford to get it fixed.