The Phredde Collection

by Jackie French

  Anyway, I was halfway through seeing if Melissa would burp up Anna, and if Anna would still be able to swim away if she did, when Mark yelled down from the castle tower, ‘Hey, Prune Face, phone call for you!’ (I hate big brothers sometimes.)

  ‘Coming Dog’s Breath!’ I yelled back. I raced over the drawbridge, through the forecourt and up the stairs; then through the Great Hall, along the corridor, up another flight of stairs; down THAT corridor (you get really fit living in a castle) and into the Ballroom, where we keep the phone, the TV and video, and other necessities.

  ‘Hello?’ I said, wondering who it could be. It wouldn’t be Phredde, because she’d just have PING!ed herself over to our castle if she wanted to talk about something. Even Bruce would probably give me a PING! instead of a call.

  ‘Prudence dear? It’s Miss Snagglethorpe,’ said the voice on the other end of the phone.

  ‘Oh, hi Miss Snagglethorpe,’ I said, surprised. ‘What’s up?’

  The voice on the other end of the phone seemed to hesitate. ‘I wonder if you could do me a tiny favour, dear?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘Would you mind just popping down to the library for a few minutes? There’s a little job I need a hand with. It really won’t take long.’

  I wrinkled my nose. Actually, I wasn’t too keen on heading back to school until I had to, even if it was to the library. But, after all, we library monitors have our responsibilities.

  ‘Okay,’ I said agreeably. ‘I’ll just check with Mum if it’s okay. I’m supposed to be grounded today, but she’s probably forgiven me by now.’

  ‘Oh, no dear, don’t tell your mother,’ Miss Snagglethorpe said hurriedly.

  ‘Why not?’

  There was another pause at the end of the phone. ‘Um…er…because I’ve got a present for you to give your mother,’ said Miss Snagglethorpe at last. ‘As a reward for all your hard work in the library.’

  ‘Hey, cool!’ I said. ‘It’s not a book of crossword puzzles is it? Mum loves crossword puzzles.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Snagglethorpe. ‘How did you guess? It’s a book of crossword puzzles.’

  ‘Cool,’ I said again. ‘Okay, I’ll tell her I’m going over to Phredde’s to check on some homework. Hey, are you sure you wouldn’t like Phredde to come, too?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary,’ said Miss Snagglethorpe. She gave a little giggle. ‘We certainly don’t need magic powers for this little operation! See you in half an hour then?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ I said.

  School is weird without any kids around. Just empty buildings and the pigeons pecking at the…

  I stared. The pigeons weren’t pecking at all. They were just standing there, like they couldn’t remember what pecking was all about.

  Weird.

  Miss Snagglethorpe was waiting for me at the library door, in her grey dress and cardigan, and clumpy, rainy sky-coloured shoes. She smiled her yellow, toothy smile and opened the door wide. ‘Come in, my dear. Come in!’

  I followed her into the library, trying not to stare.

  ‘Er…Miss Snagglethorpe?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘I hope you don’t think I’m rude, but I couldn’t help noticing…’

  ‘Noticing what, dear?’ Miss Snagglethorpe’s grey lips smiled down at me.

  ‘Er…your arm,’ I said.

  ‘Yes? What about my arm?’

  ‘Well, er…it isn’t there.’ I was absolutely sure Miss Snagglethorpe’d had two arms on Friday.

  ‘Oh, you mean this?’ Miss Snagglethorpe looked down at the empty sleeve of her cardigan. ‘I must have dropped it accidentally,’ she said casually. ‘So careless of me.’

  ‘Oh…er, right,’ I said. Maybe Miss Snagglethorpe had a false arm, I thought to myself. Maybe she’d had a really bad accident and had lost an arm, so now she wore a false one and she’d taken it off to…er, to…well, for some reason or other, and had forgotten to put it back on.

  ‘Is that why you need a hand…er…sorry…I mean, is that why you need my help this afternoon? Because you’ve only got one arm?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Miss Snagglethorpe gently. ‘Now if you’d just sit down here Prudence dear, next to my bookshelf.’

  ‘Well, okay,’ I said dubiously. I sat down, then sniffed.

  ‘Er, Miss Snagglethorpe?’

  ‘Yes, dear?’ said Miss Snagglethorpe as she rummaged in the drawer of her desk with her remaining arm.

  ‘Can you smell something?’

  ‘Ah, yes, the wonderful scent of books. Old books, new books…it’s a lovely smell, isn’t it, dear? Just hold this will you?’ Miss Snagglethorpe said as she pulled a piece of rope out of the drawer.

  ‘Well, actually, it smells like rotting meat,’ I replied, taking one end of the rope Miss Snagglethorpe was holding.

  ‘What a silly idea,’ said Miss Snagglethorpe, with a little giggle. ‘You don’t find rotting meat in a library.’

  ‘You don’t?’ I asked. For some reason, I was starting to feel a bit nervous.

  ‘Of course not. What a silly idea. No, that smell is just my little friends, I’m afraid. A slight problem with bad breath. Sometimes, they don’t clean their teeth after eating. I remind them and remind them, too,’ said Miss Snagglethorpe sadly.

  I frowned at the rope in my hand. Something wasn’t right here. In fact, I had this feeling that something was really wrong.

  Suddenly Miss Snagglethorpe lunged.

  ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ I yelled, as Miss Snagglethorpe twisted the rope round and round me, tying me to the chair. ‘Help! HELLLLPPPPPP!’

  ‘You see, that’s why I needed your help this afternoon, Prudence,’ said Miss Snagglethorpe, smiling down at me gently and she pulled the rope tight with her remaining arm. ‘I need you to help me feed my books.’

  That’s when her other ear fell off.

  Bruce was right, I thought, watching Miss Snagglethorpe carefully sweep her ear up with a dustpan. There really was something very odd about Miss Snagglethorpe.

  Well, this wasn’t what you’d call my favourite way of spending the afternoon of a long-weekend Monday. Here I was, trapped next to a shelf of girl-eating vampire books, with bits of librarian scattered all over the place.

  ‘Miss Snagglethorpe?’ I asked politely. (It was possible, I thought hopefully, if I was really really polite, she just might let me go.)

  ‘Yes, dear?’ said Miss Snagglethorpe gently.

  ‘Why do bits of you keep falling off?’

  ‘Well, it’s only natural, dear,’ said Miss Snagglethorpe kindly. ‘You see, I’m a zombie.’

  ‘You mean…you mean you’re really just a dead body someone’s called up out of a grave?’ My voice choked on that last bit.

  ‘Not just someone,’ said Miss Snagglethorpe, reproachfully. ‘My dear little books called me up.’

  ‘But…but books can’t do something like that…’ I protested.

  ‘These ones can,’ said Miss Snagglethorpe proudly. ‘They’re special books.’

  ‘You mean magical books?’ I asked hopefully. I mean, what with Phredde and Bruce for friends, magic and I got along like a house on fire. I mean, surely, magic books wouldn’t eat me.

  ‘No, dear. They’re reverse books. You know when you read a book it gives you a whole new world? How you feel really satisfied when you’ve read a good book?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, these books suck new worlds in. They take your world instead of giving you new ones. They’re hungry books.’ Miss Snagglethorpe gave the bookshelf a tiny pat. ‘Poor little bookies,’ she crooned. ‘Were you all hungry-wungry over the long weekend? We’ll soon fix that, won’t we?’

  ‘That’s why we’ve all been losing our memories!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘How very clever of you to work it out,’ said Miss Snagglethorpe admiringly. ‘That’s what my books do, don’t you little bookies? They suck out your memory. And other bits of you too, of cou
rse.’

  ‘And now you’re going to chop me up and…’

  ‘Oh, no, I wouldn’t do that,’ said Miss Snagglethorpe.

  ‘You wouldn’t?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘Of course not, dear—I wouldn’t want to make a mess in the library. All I have to do is leave you tied up in front of the bookshelf and they’ll feed themselves. They’re quite grown-up little bookies, you know. They’ve been feeding themselves for years.’

  ‘But…but what will happen to me?’ My voice was a bit wobbly by now.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid you won’t be you anymore,’ said Miss Snagglethorpe regretfully. ‘You’ll just be an empty shell. In fact, by tomorrow morning you’ll have totally faded away. It really is a pity. You were the best library monitor I’ve ever had.’

  ‘You won’t get away with this,’ I threatened. ‘Someone will come and investigate.’

  ‘On a long weekend? I don’t think so, dear.’

  Well, there was only one thing to do. ‘Heeelllpppp!’ I screamed. ‘Helpp! Hellllpp! Hellppppp!’

  Miss Snagglethorpe sighed. ‘I wish you hadn’t done that, dear,’ she said. ‘Now I’m going to have to gag you.’

  Her remaining arm rummaged in the drawer again. I kept on screaming. And then I stopped, because it’s hard to scream and think too, especially when, behind you, there’s a shelf of books trying to suck away your essence.

  I had to think. I had to plan. There had to be something I could do.

  Maybe I could bite her when she put on my gag. I shuddered. As Mum is always telling me and Mark, you should never ever eat meat that isn’t absolutely fresh. I suspected Miss Snagglethorpe wasn’t fresh at all.

  ‘Ah, I knew I had one somewhere.’ Miss Snagglethorpe held up a long silk scarf the colour of overdone roast lamb. Thomp, thomp, thomp, went her big grey shoes as she trudged over to me. A fly buzzed, fascinated, around her ear.

  Why hadn’t I listened to Bruce? I thought desperately. Just because he’s a boy—and a frog—it doesn’t mean he’s always wrong…

  ‘Just sit still, if you will, dear,’ said Miss Snagglethorpe politely. ‘It’s just a little difficult to do this with one arm…’

  Suddenly, deep in my brain, I heard the whisper of a plan. Maybe…maybe…

  ‘Yes, Miss Snagglethorpe,’ I said obediently.

  Miss Snagglethorpe beamed at me. ‘Such a good girl,’ she crooned. ‘If only all library monitors were like you.’ She reached over me with the scarf and…

  Whamp! I kicked with both legs as hard as I could.

  ‘Ahhhhhkkkk!’ screamed Miss Snagglethorpe, as one of her legs shot out from under her. And when I say shot out from under her, I mean, it shot right across the library, about three metres away from Miss Snagglethorpe. She tried frantically to balance on one leg, then went down, whump!, in front of me.

  Miss Snagglethorpe gazed up at me from the floor. ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ she said crossly.

  ‘You come near me and I’ll go for your other leg!’ I threatened. ‘Helllppp!’ I shrieked, as loudly as I could.

  Miss Snagglethorpe dragged herself over to a bookshelf, and levered herself up onto one leg (the other one was jammed under ‘Non-fiction E-G’).

  ‘A missing leg will be a little difficult to explain tomorrow morning,’ said Miss Snagglethorpe. ‘But I’ll manage. All I need is a pot of good, strong glue. I’m sure I can manage you too, dear.’ She hopped towards me purposefully.

  Suddenly, I had another idea. I rolled my chair over, then pushed myself up to my knees. With a bit of struggle, I could just stand up, sort of bent over, with the chair poking out behind me.

  ‘Arrrrrrrrr—Hi!’ I screamed, just like that bloke does in those kung fu movies (TV can be really educational). I turned around so that the chair was facing Miss Snagglethorpe, then I belted it into her as hard as I could.

  Then I reversed and rammed it into the bookshelf—just for good measure.

  Well, the books fell on one side and I fell on the other, and Miss Snagglethorpe was screaming behind me and I was yelling ‘HELLLLPPP!’ at the top of my voice…

  …and that’s when Phredde and Bruce arrived.

  PING! There was Phredde in turquoise shorts and a purple boob-tube. Another PING! and there was Bruce, in his normal brown and yellow frogskin.

  ‘Don’t panic Pru! We’ve come to save you!’ croaked Bruce.

  ‘Huh!’ I panted. ‘I don’t need saving! I’ve saved myself!’

  Phredde blinked, then settled herself on the top shelf of ‘Computer Science W-Z’. She gazed around the room.

  ‘If you’ve already saved yourself, how come you’re tied up to a chair in a locked library with a librarian spread-eagled on the floor?’ She looked at Miss Snagglethorpe critically. ‘Well, most of a librarian anyway. Where’s her leg?’

  ‘It’s by “Non-fiction E-G”, where I kicked it,’ I said. ‘And she’s not a librarian at all. She’s a zombie.’

  ‘I’ve never met a zombie before,’ said Bruce interestedly. ‘Where’s her arm?’

  ‘I don’t know. Her arm isn’t anything to do with me. She lost that before I got here. Phredde, okay, I admit I could do with a little help. Just untie me, okay? How did you know I was here anyway?’

  ‘I came over to ask you to my birthday party,’ explained Bruce. ‘And your mum said you were over at Phredde’s.’

  ‘But when he came over to our place I said I hadn’t seen you,’ added Phredde. ‘So we got worried.’

  ‘And I thought: what’s the most suspicious place around? And then I thought; the library and Miss Snagglethorpe! So we PING!ed over here first,’ concluded Bruce.

  Well, that was about the end of that. One PING! and I was free. Another PING! and Miss Snagglethorpe was tied up instead of me—most of her anyway. (We didn’t bother with her leg. It didn’t look like it would be going anywhere by itself.) A third PING! and a couple of police arrived between ‘Hobbies A-L’ and ‘Natural History M-Q’. A fourth PING! and Mrs Allen was there, looking just a little stressed, plus a bottle of lemonade, a plate of lamingtons, a few slices of watermelon and some frozen bananas dipped in melted chocolate, peanuts and a bowl of frozen grapes—because, as Mrs Olsen told us last term, it’s good to have something sweet when you’ve had a shock and I reckon being attacked by a zombie librarian qualifies as a shock.

  So, that was the end of Miss Snagglethorpe. Well, not quite the end. As soon as she was separated from the vampire books she became quite normal—well, normal for a zombie, anyway—and really ashamed of what she’d done.

  It turns out that she really was a librarian. She’s quite happy now, looking after the library in the Centre for Delinquent Zombies.

  I did wonder how long zombies live—well, sort of live (you know what I mean) but when I thought about it, I decided I didn’t really want to know.

  And as for Miss Snagglethorpe’s ‘pet’ books…well, Bruce suggested we burn them. But when Miss Richards arrived back, she said, ‘What? Burn books? Never!’

  But anyway, it turned out alright, because it seems that if you feed the books a few bones every lunchtime, they’re quite satisfied. In fact, I think they like bones even better than human minds. (The books haven’t let anyone read them yet, but Miss Richards says they just need a little time.)

  Actually, it is a bit disturbing if you’re in the library at lunchtime and trying to concentrate, and the books are going, crunch, crunch, crunch, burp! behind you all the time. Now that Miss Richards has finished her ancient Tongan martial arts course, she’s quite capable of keeping the books in line if they get a bit stroppy.

  Of course, Bruce said it all just goes to show that you can’t trust books…unless they happen to be about slugs, caterpillars or rare breeds of frog. But, as I told him, he doesn’t know what he’s missing.

  Anyway, as library monitor, it’s my job to feed the books every Monday and Friday. I suppose I’ve forgiven them. Almost. And it’s just coincidence that the books seem to get indige
stion on Monday and Friday afternoons. Me, squirt chilli and detergent, with just a touch of kitty litter, into the book food? Me?

  And that’s about all that happened for absolutely ages (except for the incident with the giant squid and the pair of polar bears during Zoology) until Bruce’s birthday party.

  Saturday Night Werewolf

  It was an ordinary day at our castle.

  Mum was working on her latest crossword, muttering ‘Smelly, stinky, begins with “f”, second letter “e”…’ and absently taking gulps of coffee to help her along. I was finishing up my breakfast (watermelon and ginger icecream, the magic kind that’s just as good for you as cereal).

  Dad had just finished grooming his giant sloth.

  Dad loves anything South American. Well, he used to anyway. Now that I’ve given him a jaguar, the piranhas and the giant sloth (I called her Dribbles, because that’s what she mostly does) he doesn’t seem as fascinated any more. I suppose when you’ve got the real thing, seeing it on TV isn’t the same.

  ‘Turn that thing off at once!’ he shrieked the last time The Wonders of the South American Rainforest flashed up on the screen.

  ‘But Dad!’ I protested. ‘You love anything South American!’

  ‘Me? No! I’ve gone right off it,’ Dad assured me earnestly.

  ‘You’re sure?’ I asked, dubiously.

  ‘Trust me,’ said Dad.

  I looked at him speculatively. ‘How do you feel about Antarctica?’ I asked him.

  Dad looked at me suspiciously. ‘There aren’t any jaguars in Antarctica are there?’

  ‘No, Dad.’ I said.

  ‘Or piranhas or giant sloths?’

  ‘No, Dad,’ I promised him. ‘Just penguins and krill and stuff like that.’

  Dad looked relieved. ‘Well, now you mention it Prudence, I really am very interested in Antarctica. A few small fluffy penguins sound like a lovely idea. Or some nice little krill. Just what our moat needs.’

  ‘Sure thing, Dad,’ I said. You don’t have to hit me on the knee with a baseball bat for me to take a hint.