Unreal!

by Paul Jennings

  I started stuffing towels and rags under the door. Dad covered up the fireplace with a piece of cardboard. When we had all the cracks blocked up he found some fly spray. We had plenty of fly spray in the house – it was something we used a lot of. It took three cans to kill them all.

  We ran upstairs to look out of the top windows. They were all black too. We couldn’t see outside at all. We were trapped in our own house by millions and millions of flies.

  7

  Dad was upset. ‘This is bad, Greg,’ he said. ‘Very bad. Batch One Hundred is much too strong. Every fly in the country must be here, and it’s all my fault. We’ve got to get rid of those flies.’

  Just then the phone rang. Dad picked it up. It was Mr Jackson. He was shouting. I could hear every word even though the flies were making such a loud noise outside. ‘You’ve done it this time, Moffit,’ he yelled. ‘The whole town is blacked out with flies. Nobody can get out of their house. It’s pitch black in the middle of the day. It’s all your fault, you and your manure. You’d better do something, and quick. You brought the flies here. Now you get rid of them.’ The phone went dead. He had hung up.

  ‘What can we do?’ said Dad. ‘How can we get rid of them?’ He hung his head in his hands. The poor bloke – I really felt sorry for him. We both sat there thinking. Outside the flies were getting thicker and thicker.

  ‘Fly spray,’ I said.

  ‘No good,’ he told me. ‘There isn’t enough fly spray in the world to kill this lot. We need something stronger. Something really powerful.’

  We sat there looking at each other. We both thought of the answer at the same time. ‘Cow Dung Custard,’ we shouted together.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Dad. ‘The smell is so strong that it kills flies. I’ll mix up a special batch.’

  ‘But what about the smell, Dad?’ I asked.

  ‘We can’t help the smell. This is an emergency. The whole town is blacked out with flies. We have to do something.’

  ‘But how can we make it?’ I asked him. ‘You can’t see a thing out there. You can hardly breathe. The flies get into your nose and mouth. You wouldn’t be able to make the Cow Dung Custard. It’s as black as pitch.’

  We both fell silent again. We just sat and looked at each other. Then Dad had an idea. ‘The bee-keeper’s outfit,’ he yelled. ‘I can wear the bee-keeper’s outfit.’ Once Dad used to keep bees. He still had the outfit for smoking out the bees. It had a hat and net to stop the bees from stinging him.

  ‘What about me? You can’t do it on your own. You’ll have to make a heck of a lot. I’ll have to come too.’

  ‘Your wet suit. You can wear your wet suit. And put on the goggles. You can wear the snorkel to stop the flies getting into your mouth.’

  We dressed up in our outfits. Dad had his hat and bee net. I had my wet suit, goggles and snorkel. I felt silly. But, as Dad said, this was an emergency. We tied a rope to each other so that we didn’t become lost. Then we walked over to the door and opened it.

  8

  A million flies poured into the room. Everything went black. The light was on but we couldn’t even see it. I felt a pull on the rope. Dad was moving out into the back yard. I couldn’t see him so I just followed the rope. The flies swirled around us in one huge, black cloud.

  We walked slowly. We didn’t want to fall over. At last we reached the back fence. I felt Dad’s hand on my arm. He was shouting at me. It was difficult to hear him because of the loud buzzing of the flies. ‘Help me tip over Batch One Hundred,’ he yelled. ‘Then we will empty another fifteen bins. We will need at least sixteen bins of Cow Dung Custard to kill all these flies. They must be covering the whole town.’

  We struggled over to Batch One Hundred. The flies were all trying to get to it. They were so thick that it was like walking through a river. I plunged my arm through the sea of flies and pushed over the bin. A billion flies rose into the air as it tipped over. The buzz was so loud that it hurt my ears, and the wind from their wings blew me over.

  We stood up and felt our way to the other bins. It took a long time to push them all over and empty out the manure. In the end we had sixteen empty bins. I felt Dad’s hand on my arm again. ‘We will have to untie the rope,’ he shouted. ‘It will take a long time to mix up sixteen bins of Cow Dung Custard. We have to hurry. The flies are getting thicker. Every fly in Australia will be here soon.’

  ‘I’m scared, Dad,’ I told him. ‘I might get lost if you untie the rope.’

  ‘Feel your way along the fence,’ he said. ‘When you get to the manure heap try to fill up the wheelbarrow with cow dung. Put ten shovelsful into each bin. I’ll put in the rest of the mixture.’ His voice was shaking; I knew that he was scared too. So I undid the rope and followed the fence to the manure heap.

  It took a long time, but at last I managed to put cow dung in every bin. The flies kept bumping into my goggles – it felt as if someone was throwing rice at me. Every now and then I bumped into Dad. He was tipping all sorts of things into the bins. Once he dropped a rotten pumpkin onto my foot.

  Then something wonderful happened. A shocking stink filled the air. It was the first batch of Cow Dung Custard. ‘Hooray,’ I shouted. I was really happy even though the smell was so bad. I didn’t know whether it was working. I couldn’t tell if it was killing the flies. There seemed to be just as many as ever.

  Dad came over to me. ‘Go back to the house,’ he yelled. ‘If this works there are going to be dead flies everywhere. You might get buried if you stay here.’

  ‘No way,’ I told him. ‘I’m staying with you.’

  9

  After a while we had two bins of Cow Dung Custard mixed up. The stink grew stronger and stronger. I felt ill, but I had to keep going. We made one bit at a time. By the time we had made ten bins the smell was so strong we had to stop.

  ‘We can’t go on,’ said Dad. ‘I’m going to faint, if I don’t get away from this smell.’

  ‘Hey!’ I suddenly shouted. ‘I can see you.’ I could just make out the shape of Dad in his bee net. There were not so many flies in the air. The Cow Dung Custard was working – it was killing some of the flies.

  I looked at the ground. It was covered in flies. Some of them were dead, but some were lying on their backs kicking their legs in the air. There was a thick carpet of flies all over the lawn. Then I felt my head. My hair was full of dead flies. They were starting to fall down out of the sky. It was raining flies.

  ‘Quick,’ said Dad. ‘Back to the house. We will be buried alive if we don’t hurry.’

  We ran back to the house. Flies were pouring down all around us. The dead bodies were so deep that we couldn’t move properly. They came up to my ankles and then up to my knees. Dad reached the door first. He pushed it open and fell inside.

  ‘Help!’ I screamed. ‘I’m stuck.’ 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. I couldn’t move backwards or forwards.

  Dad still had the rope wrapped around his waist. He started to undo it. ‘Quick, I’m going under,’ I yelled. The flies were getting deeper and deeper – they were nearly up to my mouth. He threw the rope over and I grabbed the end of it. But it was too late. The dead flies were right over my head. I was buried under the bodies of the flies.

  It was lucky that I had the goggles and snorkel on. The snorkel poked above the pile of flies. It enabled me to breathe, but I couldn’t see a thing. Everything was black. Then I felt strong hands pulling me up. It was Dad. He had followed the rope and dug down to me. He dragged me across the top of the flies and into the house. Then he slammed the door.

  10

  It was much better in the house. The flies were only knee deep. At least we could walk around. We went upstairs as quickly as we could and looked out of the window. It was still raining flies, but it was starting to ease off. At last it stopped. Every fly was dead. The Cow Dung Custard had killed the lot. The smell of it was terrible.


  Our place was on the top of a hill. We could see the whole town. Every house was covered in dead flies. They covered the road and the cars, the trees and the gardens. It looked just like a snow-covered village, but with black snow. There was not a person in sight. Everyone was trapped inside their houses. The whole town was silent. And over it all hung the terrible smell of Cow Dung Custard.

  Dad looked at me. ‘Good grief, Greg,’ he said. ‘All of your hair has gone.’

  I felt the top of my head. It was smooth. I was as bald as a badger. I rushed to the mirror. ‘Oh no,’ I groaned. ‘Not that. Not bald.’ Then I looked at Dad. He was bald again too. All of his new hair had fallen out.

  ‘It’s the Cow Dung Custard,’ I said. ‘It’s so strong that it makes hair fall out.’

  I looked out of the window again. It was still very quiet, but four or five people were out. They were trying to clear the flies away from their front doors. It was hard work – they were up to their armpits in flies. I looked at them more closely. There was something strange about them but I couldn’t work out what it was. Then I got a shock. They were all bald. I knew there was going to be big trouble over this.

  A bit later we heard the sound of a motor. It sounded like a tractor, but it wasn’t. It was a bulldozer. It was clearing the streets. It pushed the flies to the side of the road in huge banks. Behind the bulldozer was a police car. They came slowly up our street. People were following them, lots of bald people. Men, women and children. They were angry. They were mad. They were yelling and screaming at us.

  The bulldozer stopped at our house. It turned around and came through our garden. It cleared a path up to the front door; then it stopped. A bald policeman stepped down from it. He had a handkerchief tied around his nose to stop the smell. He came into the house without knocking. ‘Quick,’ he said. ‘Get into the police car. I’ll have to get you out of here before the mob gets you. I don’t know what they will do if they get their hands on you. They might tear you to pieces.’ He was worried – very worried. So was I.

  He pushed us into the car and started driving down the street. Crowds of bald people surrounded the car. They threw things at the car and tried to open the doors. They wanted to pull us out. Some even threw handfuls of flies at the car.

  I could see why they were mad. Everyone was bald, even the dogs and cats. Not one person in the town had a hair left anywhere on their body.

  In the end the police got us safely through the town. They took us down to Melbourne, which was a long way away. Then they let us go. Dad and I were both upset. We knew one thing for sure – we could never go back to Lakes Entrance again.

  11

  There was a big fuss about the whole thing. It was in all the papers and on the TV. Dad and I changed our names so that nobody could find us. Then it all died down and people started to forget about it. There was a shortage of wigs in Australia for a while. But after a couple of months everybody’s hair grew back. As time passed people started to think it was funny.

  I’m writing this next to the swimming pool on our farm. Dad is out the front cleaning our Rolls Royce. Things worked out quite well for us in the end. Dad made a lot of money out of an invention. It’s yellow stuff for getting rid of hair. People buy it in tubes. They put it on their legs. It works really well and it smells lovely.

  It’s called CDC Hair Remover. Everybody likes it. They think it’s wonderful. But nobody knows what CDC stands for.

  Lighthouse Blues

  Someone was playing music in the middle of the night. It sounded like a saxophone, or maybe a clarinet. I could only hear it when the wind dropped. But there was no mistake about it.

  I shivered even though I was snug in bed. I wasn’t cold. I was scared. Stan and I were the only people on the island, and he was in bed in the next room. I could hear him snoring. So who was playing the music?

  It was cold outside and a storm was brewing up. I could hear the sea pounding against the cliffs. I got out of bed and looked out of the window. All I could see were the black clouds racing across the moon, and the light from the lighthouse stabbing into the night. The music seemed to be coming from the lighthouse.

  I thought about waking Stan up, but I decided not to. He was the lighthouse keeper. He was a nice old boy but I didn’t want him to think I was scared. I was hoping to get a job as a lighthouse keeper myself one day. This was my first night on the island and I wanted to make a good impression.

  I climbed back into bed and tried to get to sleep. I tried not to listen to the music. It was soft and far away, but it crept into my brain. It was like a soft voice calling to me. It was saying something; it was speaking without words. I knew I had heard the tune before, but I couldn’t think what it was. It was a slow and haunting tune. Then it came to me. I remembered. It was called ‘Stranger On The Shore’.

  Somehow I knew that the music was meant for me. I was the stranger. I had just arrived on the island. The supply boat had dropped me on the shore that very day. But who was playing the music? And why did it make me feel so sad?

  I listened more carefully. It was a clarinet. It was definitely a clarinet. And man, I will tell you this. Whoever was blowing it knew how to play. It was the saddest and most beautiful music I have ever heard.

  Then the music changed. There was something different about it. Finally I realised what it was – another instrument had joined in. It was a saxophone. They were both playing ‘Stranger On The Shore’. It was so sad that I felt like crying, but I didn’t know why.

  After a long time I fell asleep with the music still sounding in my ears.

  2

  The next morning at breakfast I asked Stan if he had heard anything. ‘No, Anton,’ he said. ‘I didn’t hear anything. I never do. But I know there is something there. Visitors to the island always hear it. Most people can’t stand it. They get scared and leave. You are the third helper that I have had here this year. The other two left because of the music. They said it kept them awake at night. But the real reason was because they were scared – scared out of their wits.’

  He looked straight at me when he said this. He was wondering if I was going to run off too. He glared at me with his one eye. He had a patch over the other one. He looked like a fierce pirate, but he was really a friendly bloke. He loved that island more than anything in the world.

  ‘Well, who could be playing the music?’ I asked him. ‘And why can’t you hear it?’

  He looked at me for a long time. He looked straight into my eyes, as if he was trying to see what I was thinking. Then he said, ‘The last boy went up to the lighthouse one Friday night. The music always plays on Friday night. He took a torch and went off to see who was playing. He was gone for two hours. When he came back he wouldn’t say anything about it. He just said that he was leaving. He wouldn’t speak to me. He wouldn’t answer any questions at all. He just sat in here and looked at the wall. A week later the supply boat came and he left.’

  ‘He must have seen something terrible,’ I said. ‘Don’t you have any idea who could be playing?’

  ‘Put on your coat, boy,’ Stan said, ‘and come with me. I’ll show you something.’

  A strong wind was blowing. It was coming from the south-west. Stan took me along a track which ran along the top of the rocky cliffs. There were no trees; the wind was too strong for trees to grow on the island. At last we came to a small fence in the shape of a square. Inside were two graves. The headstones faced out to sea. It was a lonely, windswept spot, high on the cliff.

  We opened a small gate and went inside the cemetery. I looked at the headstones. The first one was engraved like this:

  CAPTAIN RICKARD

  1895–1950

  LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER FROM

  1915–1950

  R.I.P.

  The second gravestone was not much different, but it had another name on it. It said:

  ALAN RICKARD

  1915–1960

  LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER FROM

  1950–1960

  R.I
.P.

  Stan pointed to the grave of Captain Rickard. ‘He was my grandfather,’ he said. ‘And Alan Rickard was my father.’

  Both gravestones had a small drawing in the corner. The one of Captain Rickard had a clarinet. Alan Rickard’s grave had a saxophone.

  ‘All the lighthouse keepers have been musical,’ said Stan. ‘The Captain played the clarinet. And my father played the saxophone. I play the violin. Do you play anything, boy?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I play the flute.’

  3

  Stan and I walked slowly back to the house. The wind was blowing strongly. It flattened the grass and made my hair whip into my eyes. Stan had to shout so that I could hear.

  ‘I can’t play the violin any more,’ he told me. ‘My fingers won’t work properly. I have arthritis. The violin is in the music room at the top of the lighthouse. My grandfather and father used to play up there when they were alive. It was something to do when they were on duty. I don’t go in there any more; I can’t bear to look at my violin.’

  Stan’s eye was wet. Perhaps the wind was doing it. Or was he crying?

  We walked back to the house without speaking. I didn’t know what to think. Did the two graves have anything to do with that sad music? The dead captain had played the clarinet. And his son had played the saxophone. But they were dead, and dead men play no tunes. Or that’s what I thought.

  One day I decided that I would go up to the top of the lighthouse. I might find some clues. But I was not going to go in the night time. Nor was I going to go on a Friday.

  The next day was Thursday. I told Stan I was going for a walk to look around the island, but I went to the lighthouse. I had been there before. Stan had taken me up on the first day. I had been in and seen the huge light that went around and around at night. But I had not been in the music room, and I had not been up there on my own.