by Nigel Smith
“There aren’t,” said Dad, not really paying attention. He was looking at the duck whistle Darius was brandishing. “Can I have a go with that?”
He grabbed it and gave it a series of huge loud honks. Nothing happened for a few seconds and then a cloud of the Baron’s prize fat ducks came swooping and flapping into the garden.
Dad laughed and laughed, until the fountain stopped working. The water dribbled to a halt and the blue light went out.
“Loose connection,” said Dad, as the ducks landed around them. He went back into the house, and Nat and Darius watched as the fat birds waddled into the fountain, splashing happily as if they’d found a nice new duck pond.
There was some worry lurking at the back of Nat’s mind as she watched the happy ducks. Something was terribly wrong, she just couldn’t put her finger on it.
Whatever it was, it was quickly forgotten when she heard the Baron’s silky voice behind her.
“There you are, little girl,” he said. “I have lost something and I was wondering if you had seen it, by any chance?”
“Haven’t seen your whistle,” Nat said quickly. Too quickly.
“I didn’t say what it was I had lost,” he said, smiling thinly.
Eeek, thought Nat.
“Power’s coming back on,” shouted Dad from inside the house. “Tell me if anything happens.”
“And what are you doing with all my ducks?” said the Baron, suddenly noticing them all in the fountain.
“Three …” shouted Dad, counting down.
“Is that why you took my whistle? Are you duck thieves?” said the Baron.
“Two …”
“You know that video of the man in the bath with the toaster?” said Darius, who had just worked out what was about to happen.
“One …”
“NOOOO!” shouted Nat, having just figured it out too.
“ZERO!” shouted Dad, throwing the switch.
ZZZAP! went the electricity, sending ten thousand volts through the metal fountain and instantly frying the ducks.
QUAAAACK! went the shocked ducks, covered in bright blue sparks.
BANG! went the electrified mermaid, whose head shot off in the direction of the chateau.
“AAARRGH!” screamed Nat, running for cover.
“BRILLIANT!” laughed Darius.
There was a final explosion of mermaid and water and feathers. Bits of cooked duck showered the garden. The lawn looked like it was covered in brown snow.
“NOOOO!” shouted the Baron, as he was hit on the head by a smoking beak. “Talk to me, Cecil, talk to me.”
“Something smells nice,” said Dad, emerging from the house.
He looked at the ruined garden, destroyed fountain, cooked fowl and murderously furious Baron.
“Oh dear,” said Dad. “You don’t know any good electricians, do you?”
ater that evening, Dad, Nat and Darius were sitting miserably in a café in the village. No one had said much since the Baron had stomped off, threatening Dad with all sorts of dreadful revenge.
Nat had been especially quiet since the last of the unfortunate ducks had been shovelled into bin bags. She was beyond yelling. Even Dad must have realised that, in this horrible holiday, everything that could possibly have gone wrong had actually gone wrong.
(Obviously, THAT was wrong too; there were plenty more things to go wrong.)
A strange, weird calm had come over her; their fate was sealed – they would be a laughing stock, and there was nothing to be done.
She watched Dad toying with his plate of food. He looked glummer than she had ever seen him. She actually managed to try and cheer him up a bit.
“No one’s ever tried to strangle you with duck gizzards before, Dad,” she said, without emotion. “That’s a first for you.”
“I dunno,” said Dad with a sigh, “just for once I’d like to do something properly.”
“Be fair,” said Darius, shovelling down a mouthful of food, “you properly exploded twenty priceless ducks in an electric fountain. That’s real super-villain stuff, that is,” said Darius.
“That’s very kind of you,” said Dad, a bit more cheerfully, “but I doubt the villagers will see it the same way.”
Nat looked around the café, convinced the locals would be sharpening their pitchforks and lighting their torches.
But she was WRONG.
When Dad tried to pay the bill, the café owner just said: “Zere is no charge for ze Great Slaughterer.”
“The great what?” said Dad, who didn’t like the sound of that one bit.
“Oh, just ze name you ’ave round ’ere,” said the café owner, smiling.
Darius turned to Dad in awe. “The Great Slaughterer!” he said. “That’s an AWESOME name.”
Then the greengrocer came in with a bag of free spuds. Then the woman from the cake shop, with a free chocolate tart. The butcher gave them something squishy in a bag.
“I don’t think the villagers like the Baron very much,” said Dad, looking confused. Nat looked at Darius, who was sniggering.
“You should be a detective, Dad,” said Nat flatly.
They found it hard to get away from the café, as all the villagers wanted to meet the man who’d zapped the Baron’s ducks. They were just making their way to the door when an old lady approached them. She was bent and wrinkly and warty and wore a big black shawl.
“She looks like the witch from Hansel and Gretel,” Nat whispered to Darius. Even the Dog didn’t want to go near her.
“He doesn’t want to be a doggie doner,” said Darius.
The old lady starting muttering at them, a stream of French that none of them understood. She clearly didn’t speak English and Nat was relieved that at least Dad didn’t embarrass her any more by trying out his Dad French. He looked quite nervous of her too.
The café owner translated. “Madame Morte, she is ze oldest lady in ze village. She knows all ze ’istory of everysink. She wants to know if you ’ave seen ze ghost yet?” he said.
And then he translated for them the creepiest story they had ever heard, told by an old, old lady in a creepy, crackly voice … The story of:
THE GREY LADY OF PETIT POIS.
Who haunted the attic of Posh Barry’s house, seeking revenge for A GREAT WRONG that had been done to her.
Brilliant, thought Nat. Just brilliant.
In the van home, Nat was completely silent. Even by Dad’s standards, this really had been a disastrous day. She hoped it wouldn’t get any worse, shuddering as she remembered the ghost story.
Something tapped on the window and she shrieked in fright.
“What was that?” she said.
“Just a branch,” said Dad.
“Warning us not to go any further,” said Darius spookily. His face was deathly pale in the dim light of the van.
“Not funny, Bagley. None of this is funny. And nothing will ever be funny ever again. Is the electricity still off?” said Nat.
“’Fraid so,” said Dad, “but I do have candles.”
“How many?” asked Nat, praying he’d say a thousand.
“One each,” he replied, as they pulled up outside the dark house.
“Isn’t it funny how a house can look so nice in the daytime, but really ever so creepy at night?” said Dad as they opened the creaking front door and crept along the dark, silent hallway.
“Ever so hilarious, Dad,” said Nat sarcastically. Her voice had a sinister echo. “But I’m not scared of gho—”
“Mwah ha HAAAA,” said Dad very loudly behind her.
Nat screamed. Then she saw it was Dad. “Dad, what the HECK are you doing?”
“Lightening the mood,” said Dad.
“What’s that smell?” asked Nat, sniffing.
“Blood, probably,” said Darius, “or ghost farts.”
“It’s white emulsion paint,” said Dad. “Now stop it, the pair of you.” He was starting to get spooked too. The house WAS very old and it WAS very dark. “We must stay together. G
hosts only show up when you’re on your own. Everyone knows that.”
“True,” said Darius, blowing out his candle. “I’m going to catch it.”
“Stop it, Darius,” snapped Nat. “Darius?”
She looked round.
Darius was gone.
hey hunted high and low for Darius but he was definitely NOT THERE. They started downstairs because downstairs was less spooky than upstairs. Their calls echoed around the dark, silent house. But all they heard were their own voices and their own footsteps, creaking on the floorboards.
“He’ll be fine,” said Dad. “He’ll be watching us from somewhere, having a good laugh, the little … devil. We should ignore him; he’ll come back.”
“I know, Dad,” said Nat, “but this house is dangerous.”
“Come on, love, stop this ghost nonsense now,” said Dad.
“No, I mean it’s dangerous because you’ve been doing DIY in it,” she said.
“Oh, I see. We should probably find Darius in that case,” said Dad, now worried.
They braved the stairs and tiptoed along the dark passageway, listening to the rattling of loose window panes, and the drip of a tap and the thump thump thump of …
Thump thump thump?
“Aaarggh!” cried Nat. “Can you hear that thumping noise?” Then she immediately realised it was just her own heart beating and felt a bit daft.
Still scared, but daft as well.
They opened a bedroom door. Inside, the room was large and cluttered. There was stuff everywhere because the workmen had been using it to store all their tools and materials. There were boxes and paint tins, tools, ladders, pipes, bits of wood and metres of canvas cloth. Even in broad daylight you could have hidden a brass band in there.
“Bagley, you little monster, are you in here?” said Nat. “This isn’t funny, you know. Come out so I can hit you.”
“That’s not going to get him to come out,” said Dad. “I can see you don’t know much about dealing with children. Where’s his incentive?”
“I hadn’t finished,” said Nat. She addressed the room again. “But it won’t be as hard as I’ll hit you if you DON’T come out.”
“Your mum’s taught you pretty well,” said Dad.
Still nothing.
They shut the door and tried the room at the very end of the corridor. “I haven’t been in that room at all,” said Dad. “It’s been locked since we got here.”
Nat tried the doorknob, expecting to find it locked as usual.
But it turned. It was unlocked.
Nat turned to Dad and caught her breath in fright.
A horrible face!
It was only Dad. He was holding the candle close under his chin and it made him look weird and quite scary. Nat swallowed hard.
Downstairs, the Dog suddenly began barking. “I’ll see what that is,” said Dad. “You wait here.”
Dad walked quickly down the stairs … leaving Nat standing by the doorway. She told herself to stop being silly. She KNEW there was no such thing as ghosts. She also KNEW Darius was a little git.
She summoned up her courage and stepped inside the room. It was hard to see by the feeble candlelight, but it was clearly another bedroom. There was a huge old iron bed in the middle of the room and at first Nat thought it was another room being used as storage because there was something large dumped on the bed. But as she peered harder, she realised THERE WAS SOMETHING IN THE BED.
And that something was … ALIVE!
It was making strange snuffling noises, almost like someone snoring, but before Nat had time to wonder if ghosts snored, the light from her candle glinted off something terrifying.
There were teeth grinning at her from a bedside table! Two rows of sharp, white teeth, like from a skull!
And now something huge was rising from the bed. Something that was moaning and groaning horribly. And from out of the white sheets came a woman’s grey face.
It was THE GREY LADY OF PETIT POIS!
An old, wrinkled hag of doom!
Nat thought her heart was going to beat right out of her chest and hop off down the stairs in sheer terror.
And then, horror piling upon horror, the ghastly thing spoke.
It said: “Is that you, Nathalia? I wondered when you’d turn up. Oh, your father’s in for it, leaving me at the airport for two days. Hang on, I’ll just put my teeth in – I left them on the bedside table.”
It was Nan.
ad News Nan sat in the candlelit gloom of the kitchen. She was drinking tea and chomping biscuits and telling Dad off. Darius sat on her lap, sharing the biscuits. Darius had only recently reappeared, sulky he hadn’t found an evil demonic spirit.
It was unusual for Darius to sit very close to anyone, because he didn’t like it, and neither did anyone else. There were two exceptions: the Dog and Bad News Nan.
The Dog liked to sit near Darius because Darius was always covered in stuff that humans classed as disgusting but dogs saw as tasty treats. Everything from baked-bean juice to bogies. It was always doggie feeding time with Darius. And Darius liked to sit near Nan and her biscuits for basically the same reason.
They were all now being forced to listen to an unbelievably long story about HOW NAN GOT THERE. Bad News Nan liked to stretch a story out. She called it ‘filling in the details’. She could make a trip to the corner shop to buy a lottery ticket and a chocolate orange sound longer than Frodo’s quest in The Lord of the Rings.
Nat said that to Dad once. He just grunted and replied that Nan would have done better than Frodo. He said: “If the Dark Lord Sauron had got wind of your nan coming to visit, he’d have chucked himself into Mount Doom from the start and saved all that bother.”
After about an hour, Bad News Nan had still only got to the bit where she was at the airport back in England, having a row with the security people.
“They told me I had to take my shoes off to go through the scanner, but I said I’m not wearing shoes, am I? I’m wearing furry tartan slippers, because flying makes my feet swell up and if my corns burst there’ll be hell to pay, young man. I said Elsie Dunlop at number seven, her corns burst and she never walked again. Mind, she had just dropped a microwave oven on them. I said to her, don’t fetch those microwave ovens off the top shelf by yourself at your age with your pustulated discs, get an assistant, but she wouldn’t listen. It was like when she tried to—”
“What happened at the airport?” interrupted Dad, eager to get to bed before dawn. They still had a house to finish.
“I’m telling you, Impatient Harry,” said Bad News Nan. “I said, I am not trying to smuggle a nuclear warhead on to this plane in my slippers, I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous. They said if I carried on poking them with my umbrella they would arrest me, so I said why don’t you arrest that man with a beard? He looks suspicious. Then they said he’s an undercover policeman and by then I’d missed the plane.”
Bad News Nan chomped the last biscuit but carried on talking, showering Darius with spitty crumbs.
Bad News Nan said she didn’t know why Dad didn’t know all this because she’d left loads of messages on his mobile phone.
Dad looked at the floor, deciding not to say anything about his phone getting cut off.
To cut a long story short, Bad News Nan had caught the next plane and then waited hours at the airport for Dad to come and pick her up, but Dad didn’t show up. She had been talking to all the airport staff for ages and she said they must have really liked her because they all clubbed together to pay for a taxi so she could leave.
“But I couldn’t believe what a horrible wreck this house was when I got here,” she said, staring at Dad. “I said to the taxi driver, this can’t be the right place. My son’s working on this and I don’t care what sort of a joke everyone back home says they’re playing on him, he’s NOT a – now, what was it they are all calling you?”
“Is it ‘a really fun guy who’s surprisingly practical and can turn his hand to anything’?” as
ked Dad hopefully.
“A monkey with a hammer,” said Bad News Nan.
Hang on, thought Nat …
“What joke?” she asked. Dad looked worried; she had become as scarily quiet as Mum.
And then, Bad News Nan lived up to her name. She told them some really Bad News.
Posh Barry was telling everyone that he never, ever expected Dad to be able to do up his wreck of a house. He knew it was an impossible task. But he also knew Dad wouldn’t be able to say no if Barry said it was for free. So he thought he’d let him have a go so they could turn up and see what a total mess he’d made of it – for a laugh.
“He said that as you think you’re the funniest man in town, you’d appreciate the comedy,” said Nan.
Dad looked stunned.
Nat’s voice grew even scarier, because it grew even quieter. It was almost a whisper now. “So, this whole thing … was a practical joke??”
But Nan wasn’t done yet. She had one last punchline to deliver. “Oh yeah, and they’re coming out a few days earlier too, to surprise you, because they thought it would be even funnier. They’ll be here –” Nan looked at her watch – “day after tomorrow.”
As final straws go, this was a barnful of hay, landing smack on top of Nathalia.
“Ah well,” said Dad, smiling nervously at Nat, “it’s pretty cruel but I suppose there’s something a bit funny about it?”
Like the overheated engine on the Atomic Dustbin, Nat finally blew.
“Funny? FUNNY?? I’ve been chased, drowned, arrested, laughed at, pecked by birds, pelted with rotten fruit, haunted by ghosts, made to play with the most horrible kid in the world, nearly electrocuted to death, and it’s supposed to be FUNNY????”
Dad looked thoroughly defeated. But Nat didn’t stop there.
“We’ve got no time left to fix up this house before the Poshes arrive and make even more of a laughing stock of us than we already are, and even if we did have time, and this whole thing hadn’t been a completely impossible job, and a total setup by your own stupid friends, we would never have been able to do it anyway, because you can’t even change a lightbulb or a fuse, let alone do up an entire house, because you are a complete PEANUT! And I’m not staying here to look like one too.”