Unreal!

by Paul Jennings

  Puffin Books

  The flies were up to my armpits

  and they were still falling.

  I was scared out of my wits.

  I didn’t want to drown in a sea of flies.

  It’s a bit much really.

  A reunion of bones.

  The irresistible kisser.

  Wonder underpants.

  Cow-dung custard.

  FROM THE ONE AND ONLY PAUL JENNINGS

  also by paul jennings

  Unreal!

  Unbelievable!

  Quirky Tails

  Uncanny!

  Unbearable!

  Unmentionable!

  Undone!

  Uncovered!

  Unseen!

  Tongue-Tied!

  The Cabbage Patch series

  (illustrated by Craig Smith)

  The Gizmo series

  (illustrated by Keith McEwan)

  The Singenpoo

  series (illustrated by Keith McEwan)

  Wicked! (series) and Deadly! (series)

  (with Morris Gleitzman)

  Duck for Cover

  Freeze a Crowd

  Spooner or Later

  Spit It Out

  (with Terry Denton and Ted Greenwood)

  Round the Twist

  Sucked In …

  (illustrated by Terry Denton)

  Paul Jennings’ Funniest Stories

  Paul Jennings’ Weirdest Stories

  Paul Jennings’ Spookiest Stories

  How Hedley Hopkins Did a Dare…

  FOR ADULTS

  The Reading Bug… and how you can help your child to catch it

  FOR BEGINNERS

  The Rascal series

  More information about Paul and his books can be found at

  www.pauljennings.com.au and puffin.com.au

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Australia)

  250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Group (Canada)

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  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd

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  Penguin Ireland

  25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd

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  Penguin Group (NZ)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd

  24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Penguin Books Australia, 1985

  First published as Unreal! Eight surprising stories This edition published 2002

  Text copyright © Lockley Lodge Pty Ltd, 1985

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Text designed by George Dale, Penguin Design Studio

  puffin.com.au

  ISBN: 978-1-74-228686-0

  To Claire

  Contents

  Without a Shirt

  The Strap-Box Flyer

  Skeleton on the Dunny

  Lucky Lips

  Cow-Dung Custard

  Lighthouse Blues

  Smart Ice-Cream

  Wunderpants

  Without a Shirt

  Mr Bush looked at the class. ‘Brian Bell,’ he said. ‘You can be the first one to give your History talk.’

  My heart sank. I felt sick inside. I didn’t want to do it; I hated talking in front of the class. ‘Yes, Mr Bush without a shirt,’ I said. Sue Featherstone (daughter of the mayor) giggled. Slowly I walked out to the front of the class. I felt like death warmed up. My mouth was dry. ‘I am going to talk about my great great grandfather.’ I said, ‘He was a sailor. He brought supplies to Warrnambool in his boat without a shirt.’

  Thirty pairs of eyes were looking at me. Sue Featherstone was grinning. ‘Why didn’t he wear a shirt?’ she asked. She knew the answer. She knew all right. She just wanted to hear me say it.

  ‘His name was Byron. People called him Old Ben Byron without a shirt.’

  ‘Why did they call him Old Ben Byron without a shirt?’ Sue asked with a smirk. ‘That’s a funny name.’

  ‘Don’t tease him,’ said Mr Bush. ‘He is doing his best.’

  She was a mean girl, that Sue Featherstone. Real mean. She knew I couldn’t help saying ‘without a shirt’. After I had finished saying something I always said ‘without a shirt’. All my life I had done it – I just couldn’t help it. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know why; I just couldn’t stop myself. I had been to dozens of doctors. None of them knew what caused it and none of them could cure me. I hated doing it. Everyone laughed. They thought I was a bit weird.

  I looked at Sue Featherstone. ‘Don’t be mean,’ I said. ‘Stop stirring. You know I can’t stop saying “without a shirt” without a shirt.’

  The whole grade cracked up. A lot of the kids tried not to laugh, but they just couldn’t stop. They thought it was very funny. I went red in the face. I wished I was dead – and I wished that Sue Featherstone was dead too. She was the worst one in the form. She was always picking on me.

  ‘Okay, Brian,’ said Mr Bush. ‘You can do your talk on Wednesday. You might be feeling a bit better by then.’ I went and sat down. Mr Bush felt sorry for me. They all felt sorry for me. Everyone except Sue Featherstone, that is. She never thought about anyone except herself.

  2

  I walked home from school with Shovel. Shovel is my dog. He is called Shovel because he loves to dig holes. Nothing can stop him digging holes. He digs up old rubbish and brings it home and leaves it on the doorstep.

  Once the man next door went fishing. He had a sack of mussels which he used for bait. When he got home he left them in the boot of his car and forgot about them. Two weeks later he found them – or I should say they found him. What a stink. Boy, were they on the nose! He had to bury them in his back yard. The next day Shovel dug them up and brought them home for me. He was always giving me presents like that. I didn’t have the heart to punish him; he meant well. I just patted him on the head and said, ‘Good boy without a shirt.’

  Shovel was a great dog – terrific in fact. I am the first to admit that he wasn’t much to look at. He only had one eye, and half of one ear was gone. And he was always scratching. That wasn’t his fault. It was the fleas. I just couldn’t get rid of the fleas. I bought flea collars but they didn’t work. I think that was because Shovel loved to roll in cow manure so much.

  Apart from those few little things you wouldn’t find a better dog than Shovel. He was always friendly and loved to jump up on you and give you a lick on the face. Mum and I would never give him up. He was all that we had left to remember Dad by. Shovel used to belong to Dad once. But Dad was killed in a car accident. So now there was just me, Shovel and Mum.

  When I reached home I locked Shovel in the back yard. It didn’t look much
like a back yard, more like a battle field with bomb holes all over it. Shovel had dug holes everywhere. It was no good filling them in; he would just dig them out again. I went into the kitchen to get a drink. I could hear Mum talking to someone in the lounge. It was Mrs Featherstone (wife of the mayor). She owned our house. We rented it from her. She was tall and skinny and had blue hair. She always wore a long string of pearls (real) and spoke in a posh voice.

  ‘Mrs Bell,’ she was saying. ‘I’m afraid you will have to find another place to live. It just won’t do. That dog has dug holes everywhere. The back yard looks like the surface of the moon. Either you get rid of the dog or you leave this house.’

  ‘We couldn’t do that,’ said Mum. ‘Brian loves that dog. And it used to belong to his father. No, we couldn’t give Shovel away.’

  Just then Shovel appeared at the window. He had something in his mouth. ‘There is the dreadful creature now,’ said Mrs Featherstone. ‘And what’s that in its mouth?’

  I rushed into the room. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It’s only Tibbles without a shirt.’

  ‘Tibbles?’ squeaked Mrs Featherstone. ‘What is Tibbles?’

  ‘Our cat,’ I told her. ‘It died six months ago and I buried it at the bottom of the yard without a shirt.’

  Mrs Featherstone screamed and then she fainted. I don’t know what all the fuss was about. It was only a dead cat. I know that Tibbles didn’t look quite the same as when she was alive, but was that any reason to go and faint?

  Anyhow, that is why we got kicked out of our house. And that is why we had to go and live in the cemetery.

  3

  When I say that we had to live in a cemetery I don’t mean that we lived in a grave or anything like that. No, we lived in a house in the middle of the cemetery. It was a big, dark old house. Once the caretaker lived there, but he was gone now and no one else wanted to live in it. That’s why the rent was cheap. It was all that we could afford. Mum was on the pension and we didn’t have much money.

  ‘You’ll be happy here,’ said the estate agent to Mum. ‘It’s very quiet. And it’s the cheapest house in town.’

  ‘I don’t think that anyone can be happy in a graveyard,’ said Mum. ‘But it will have to do for now. It’s all we can afford.’

  The agent walked off to his car. He was smiling about something. Then he looked at Shovel. ‘I hope your dog doesn’t dig holes,’ he said. ‘It’s not a good idea for dogs that live in cemeteries to dig holes.’ He thought he had said something really funny. He was still laughing as he drove out of the gate.

  ‘Big joke without a shirt,’ I called out after him.

  The next day we moved in. I had a little room at the top of the house. I looked out over the graves. I could see the sea close by. The cemetery was next to the beach – we just had to walk over the sand dunes and there we were at Lady Bay Beach.

  I went up to my room and started to work on my talk for school. I decided to write the whole thing. That way I could make sure that I didn’t have any ‘without a shirt’s in it. I didn’t want to give Sue Featherstone the chance to laugh at me again. The only trouble was that the last time I tried this it didn’t work. I still said the ‘without a shirt’s anyway. Still, it was worth a try – it might work this time. This is what I wrote.

  OLD BEN BYRON

  Old Ben Byron was my great great grandfather. He was the captain of a sailing ship. He sailed in with all sorts of goods for the town. He was one of the early settlers. This town is only here because of men like Ben Byron.

  One day a man fell overboard. My great great grandfather jumped over to help him. The man was saved. But Old Ben Byron was swept away. He drowned. His body was never found.

  I know this might seem a bit short for a talk at school. It is. But something happened that stopped me writing any more.

  Shovel had been gone for some time; I was starting to worry about him. I hoped he wasn’t scratching around near any of the graves. I looked out the window and saw him coming. I ran downstairs and let him in. He ran straight up to my room and dropped something on the floor. It was a bone.

  4

  I picked up the bone and looked at it. It was very small and pointed – just one little white bone. I could tell it was old. I knew I had seen a bone like that somewhere before, but I just couldn’t think where. A funny feeling started to come over me. I felt lonely and lost, all alone. I felt as if I was dead and under the sea, rolling over and over.

  My hand started to shake and I dropped the bone. I stared down at the bone on the floor. I was in bare feet and the bone had fallen right next to my little toe. Then I knew what sort of bone it was – it was a bone from someone’s toe. It was a human toe bone.

  ‘Oh no,’ I said to Shovel. ‘What have you done? Where have you been digging? You bad dog. You have dug up a grave. Now we are in trouble. Big trouble. If anyone finds out we will be thrown out of this house. We will have nowhere to live without a shirt.’

  I put on my shoes and ran outside. The strange feeling left me as soon as I closed the bedroom door. I only felt sad when I was near the bone. Outside it was cold and windy. I could hear the high seas crashing on the other side of the sand dunes. ‘Show me where you got it,’ I yelled at Shovel. ‘Show me which grave it was without a shirt.’ Shovel didn’t seem to listen; he ran off over the sand dunes to the beach and left me on my own. I looked at all the graves. There were thousands and thousands of them. It was a very old cemetery and most of the graves were overgrown.

  I started walking from one grave to the other trying to find signs of digging. I searched all afternoon. But I found nothing. I couldn’t find the place where Shovel had dug up the bone.

  In the end I walked sadly back to the house. I didn’t know what to do with the bone. If anyone found it there would be a terrible fuss. We would be forced to leave the cemetery and would have nowhere to live.

  When I reached the house Shovel was waiting for me. He was wagging his tail. He looked pleased with himself. He was covered in sand, and in his mouth he had another tiny bone. ‘The beach,’ I shouted. ‘You found it at the beach without a shirt.’ I snatched the bone from Shovel. As soon as I touched the bone the same sad feeling came over me. I felt lost and alone. I wanted something but I didn’t know what it was.

  It was another toe bone. I carried it up to my room and put it next to the other one. The feeling of sadness grew less. ‘That’s strange without a shirt,’ I said to Shovel. I picked up the second bone and put it outside the door. The feeling came back. It was very strong. I opened the door and put the two bones together again. I didn’t feel quite so sad. ‘These bones are not happy unless they are together,’ I said. ‘They want to be together without a shirt.’

  5

  I decided to have a serious talk to Shovel. I took his head between my hands. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘You have to show me where you found these bones. I will have to fill in the hole. You can’t go digging up dead bodies all over the place. You just can’t without a shirt.’ Shovel looked at me with that big brown eye. I had the feeling that Shovel knew more about this than I did. He ran over to the door and started scratching at it. ‘Okay,’ I told him. ‘I’ll come with you. But first I will hide these bones without a shirt.’ I put the two toe bones in a drawer with my socks. They still felt sad. So did I. As soon as I closed the drawer the feeling went.

  We headed off to the beach. It was blowing a gale. The sand blew into my eyes and ears. I didn’t know what to expect – maybe a big hole that Shovel had dug, with a skeleton in the bottom. Maybe a body washed up on the beach.

  We climbed over the sand dunes and down to the shore. There was no one else on the beach. It was too cold. ‘Well,’ I said to Shovel, ‘show me where you got the bones without a shirt.’ He ran off into the sand dunes to a small hole. It was only as deep as my hand. There was no grave, just this small hole. I dug around with my hand but there were no other bones. ‘That’s good,’ I told Shovel. ‘There is no grave, and there is no body. Just two
toe bones. Tomorrow I will bury them and that will be the end of it without a shirt.’

  Shovel didn’t listen. He ran off to the other end of the beach. It was a long way but I decided to follow him. When I reached him he was digging another hole. He found two more toe bones. I picked them up and straight away the sad, sad feeling came over me. ‘They want to be with the others,’ I said. ‘See if you can find any more without a shirt.’

  Shovel ran from one end of the beach to the other. He dug about thirty holes. In each hole he found one or two bones; some of them were quite big. I found an old plastic bag on the beach and put the bones in it. By the time it was dark the bag was full of unhappy bones. I felt like crying and I didn’t know why. Even Shovel was sad. His tail was drooping. There wasn’t one wag left in it.

  I started to walk up the sand dunes towards home. Shovel didn’t want to go; he started digging one more hole. It was a deep hole. He disappeared right inside it. At last he came out with something in his mouth, but it wasn’t a bone. It was a shoe – a very old shoe. It wasn’t anything like the shoes that you buy in the shops. It had a gold buckle on the top. I couldn’t see it properly in the dark. I wanted to take it home and have a good look at it.

  ‘Come on, Shovel,’ I said. ‘Let’s go home. Mum will be wondering where we are without a shirt.’ I picked up the bag and we walked slowly back to the house.

  6

  I put the two toe bones in the bag with the rest of them. Then I put the bag in my cupboard and shut the door. I felt much happier when the bones were locked away. They were unhappy and they made me unhappy. I knew what the trouble was: they wanted to be with all the other bones. I guessed that they were all buried in different places along the beach.

  I looked at the shoe; it was all twisted and old. It had been buried in the sand dunes for a long time. I wondered whose it was. Then I noticed something – two initials were carved into the bottom. I could just read them. They were ‘B.B.’