Demon Dentist

by David Walliams

  Raj came out from behind his counter to give the boy a closer inspection.

  “You’ve had a perm! No no no…” That thought was dismissed as soon as it had been thinked*.

  * * *

  *Made-up word ALERT

  * * *

  “Mmm, you’ve had one of those far too orangey spray-tans! No no no…”

  Raj lowered his head so he was staring the boy right in the face. Alfie opened his mouth, to reveal the full extent of his toothlessnessness*.

  * * *

  *Made-up word ALERT

  * * *

  The newsagent peered inside. “I’ve got it!” exclaimed Raj. “I’ve got it!”

  Alfie nodded his head in encouragement. It couldn’t be more obvious now.

  “You’ve had your teeth whitened!”

  The boy rolled his eyes.

  “Oh, no no no. That’s not right, is it?”

  Alfie shook his head.

  “You’ve had all your teeth removed!” Raj then repeated what he had just said a hundred times louder, double-checking if it could really be true.

  “YOU’VE HAD ALL YOUR TEETH REMOVED?!”

  The man was so flabbergasted he needed to sit down, and he sank on to a large box of crisps. Unfortunately he was far too heavy for it, and within seconds his weight had flattened the box completely and he was lying on the floor. The bags of crisps had all exploded and tiny flakes of crisp now showered the shop.

  “Oh dear,” said Raj, as he tried to heave his generously proportioned bum off the ground. “Remind me to knock a penny off the price of those crisps,” he added as he fumbled to his feet.

  “But why, boy? Why? Why have you had all your teeth removed?”

  Alfie had given up trying to talk for now, and mimed the international sign language for ‘pen and paper’ by pretending to write.

  “The bill? No! No! Pen and paper!” guessed Raj. “I’m good at charades!” The newsagent started rushing around his shop trying to find some paper and a pen. His shop was infamous in the town for being incredibly messy. It was never easy to find what you wanted, not even for the owner.

  “I think there are some Post-it Notes in the freezer cabinet, just under the choc-ices…”

  He slid open the glass roof, and reached inside.

  “I don’t remember why I put them in there,” he muttered. “At least they won’t have gone off…”

  Next Raj scurried over to the other side of his store. “A pen!” he exclaimed. “I think I put one in a sherbet Dip Dab a while back. I ate the liquorice stick, so I popped a black felt tip in. Not as tasty as the liquorice, I’ll grant you, but still an effective way of enjoying the sherbet.”

  After a short while Raj identified the correct Dip Dab and pulled out the pen. It was coated in the fizzy white powder.

  “Sherbet?” asked Raj, as he offered Alfie the pen. “No?”

  Alfie shook his head, so Raj licked it clean before handing it to him. “Slight taste of ink…” he mused, “…otherwise fine. So tell me, young sir. What on earth happened?”

  A hundred frozen Post-it Notes later, Raj had been told the whole story. By this time, Alfie was crying hard. What had happened to him had finally sunk in. Raj gave the boy a much-needed hug. The newsagent was big and fat and squishy. He was good at hugs.

  “You poor thing,” said Raj, as Alfie’s tears soaked the man’s bright orange shirt.

  “I am so angry with that Miss Root! First she goes into the local schools and gives out free sweets. Taking away all my customers. And now this…”

  Poor Alfie couldn’t stop crying. Raj patted him gently, and the boy sniffed.

  “You can blow your nose on that Hello! magazine. Now wait there, I have an idea…”

  20

  Joke-shop Gnashers

  “Well…?” asked Raj. “How do they fit?”

  Raj had gone upstairs to his flat above the shop, and brought down his late wife’s false teeth in a glass of water for the boy to try for size. They looked a bit like those joke-shop gnashers that you wind up and watch clatter across the table. To Alfie’s surprise though, they fitted rather well. They weren’t perfect. The dentures had been specially made for a middle-aged woman. They rubbed here and there, but they were infinitely better than having no teeth at all.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind me borrowing them?” asked Alfie, delighted to discover that he could at last talk again.

  “No, no, no. It’s what dear Mrs Raj would have wanted.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “Might you have any use for her glass eye, rubber hand or either of her wooden legs?”

  Alfie was quite taken aback. After all, he had never met the late Mrs Raj. Not that there seemed that much of her to meet.

  “Very kind of you,” he replied, “but no…”

  “Not kind at all. Just part of the service. That’s why people should always support the smaller local shops. You wouldn’t get that from a supermarket!”

  “True!” replied Alfie, though he wasn’t sure many customers at a supermarket would need a loan of some second-hand false teeth.

  “Though I would advise you not to go anywhere near a toffee,” warned the newsagent. “I remember these dentures came clean out of my late wife’s mouth when she bit into an out-of-date Toffo I gave her on our silver wedding anniversary.”

  “I will remember that…” said Alfie. “So, how can we stop Root? My teeth were bad, but not that bad. There was no way on earth she needed to take out ALL of them. She’s evil!”

  “Now I come to think of it,” pondered the newsagent, “there have been strange goings-on in this town ever since she arrived.”

  “Like children putting their teeth under their pillows and finding something nasty in the morning!”

  “Exactly!” exclaimed Raj. “How did you know?”

  “It happened to my girl friend Gabz…”

  “Your girlfriend?! Ooh…” cooed Raj.

  “No, no!” exclaimed Alfie. “She isn’t my girlfriend. Gabz is just a friend who’s a girl.”

  “Your friendgirl*?”

  * * *

  *Made-up word ALERT (Any letters of complaint to be addressed to Raj.)

  * * *

  Alfie thought it was easier to simply agree. “Yes, I suppose so. Gabz has drawn a map charting exactly where and when the teeth were snatched…”

  “The whole thing is sickening. When I was little, or at least smaller than I am now, and I lost a tooth, I would put it under my pillow, and when I woke up I would find a coin in its place. From the tooth fairy.”

  “Well, your mum or dad must have left it there,” replied Alfie.

  Raj looked mightily confused. “But they told me it was the tooth fairy…”

  Alfie sighed. He was very nearly a teenager. To still believe in tooth fairies was just plain silly. As far as he was concerned, the thought that a tiny winged figure in a tutu and holding a wand came into your room at night to leave money under your pillow was preposterous. However, he didn’t want to hurt the newsagent’s feelings.

  “Well, I think sometimes it might be the tooth fairies, but when they are busy, mums and dads help out,” replied Alfie. “Go on, Raj…”

  “Well, quite a few of my younger customers woke up this morning to find not a coin, but all sorts of nasties under their pillow.”

  “Like what?” asked Alfie.

  “Oh, there were… cockroaches…”

  “Anything else?”

  “Oh, let me think. Dead worms, a live rat, a toad that had been flattened by a mallet and dried out in the sun until it was crispy…”

  The boy brought his hand up to his mouth. He felt sick at the thought of all these horrors. Still, his ghoulish curiosity got the better of him, and he wanted to hear more.

  “Was that all?” he enquired.

  “No.” Raj took a deep breath. “Are you sure you want to know the most gruesomest* one?”

  * * *

  *Made-up word ALERT

&n
bsp; * * *

  “Yes and no,” replied Alfie. “But mainly yes…”

  Raj took a deep breath before telling him.

  “An old man’s toenail!”

  “No!” cried Alfie.

  “Yes. Nobody knows who it belonged to. All big and thick and dirty it was, with all this dried pus around the edge…”

  “STOP!” shouted Alfie.

  “You said you wanted me to tell you!” protested Raj.

  “Yes! But I didn’t know it was going to be that disgusting.”Alfie thought for a moment. “And none of these children saw a thing?”

  The newsagent shook his head. “Not one. Nobody saw a thing. It’s a mystery. And how could one person possibly get around to all those children in one night?”

  Alfie pulled himself up on to the shop’s counter and sat there next to the till. “But there must be some kind of connection with Miss Root. There must be! I swear she is evil,” he said. “We need to catch her red-handed! Lay some sort of trap…”

  Alfie fell silent and stared into space. Raj looked at him.

  “A trap?” asked the newsagent.

  “I am thinking, Raj…”

  “Oh, my apologies.” Raj mooched around awkwardly for a few moments. “Would a mint help focus your mind?”

  “I’ve got it!” exclaimed Alfie. His eyes were shining, and he leaped off the counter in excitement.

  “Got what?”

  “A plan! How we can catch the tooth snatcher!”

  “Great, my boy! That’s brilliant. How can I help?”

  Alfie looked right into Raj’s eyes for a moment. He knew what he was about to say was not going to go down at all well. “It’s just a very small thing…”

  “Yes…?” said the newsagent.

  “I need to borrow one of your teeth…”

  21

  Flying Tooth

  “One of MY teeth…?” protested Raj.

  “Yes,” replied Alfie firmly. “I would offer one of my mine, but I don’t have any left.”

  Raj was not convinced. “But why do you need one of my teeth?”

  Alfie paced up and down the penny chew aisle to compose his thoughts.

  “OK. This much we know… Someone or something is taking the children of the town’s teeth from under their pillows and leaving something despicable behind, right?”

  “Yes,” agreed the newsagent.

  “So tonight I am going to leave a tooth under my pillow when I go to bed, then pretend to be asleep.”

  “Coffee Revels will keep you awake! I can separate them out from the other more palatable flavours.”

  “Good plan. Then I will lay in bed with half an eye open, to catch sight of whoever or whatever…” the boy gulped in fear, “…is responsible for this evil…”

  Raj nodded, and then looked away so as not to catch Alfie’s eye. The newsagent pretended to straighten some packets of pastilles. “Well, best of luck, young man. I won’t keep you any longer. Good day!”

  Alfie watched the newsagent for a while. Eventually he said, “Raj…?”

  “Yes?”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something…?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” replied Raj a little too quickly. “I don’t want to keep you, so…”

  “Your tooth…”

  Raj looked more than a little panicked, and slowly approached Alfie.

  “I would love to lend you one of my teeth; well, I suppose it would be more of a gift,” said the shopkeeper. “But…”

  “But…?” prompted the boy.

  “I am scared taking it out is going to hurt.”

  Alfie’s brain had been processing different ways they could remove one of Raj’s teeth. There seemed to be a sliding scale of pain:

  Tying the tooth to a door and slamming it seemed by far the best option. Not least because it would be over in a second. What’s more, Raj sold string in his shop. It was of course kept just underneath the body-building magazines.

  Reluctantly, Raj went along with the plan.

  First, Alfie tied one end of the string to the newsagent’s tooth.

  Next, he carefully measured out the distance from Raj, who he had stand behind his counter, to the open door.

  Then, with just a tiny bit of slack, he tied the other end of the string to the open door’s handle.

  “All right, Raj, stay very still, and I will count down from three. On one I will slam the door…” pronounced Alfie. “OK?”

  Raj had screwed up his face in anticipation of the pain. “Yes…” he said, tears already forming in his eyes.

  Alfie slowly began the countdown.

  “Three… two…”

  Before he could say one, a little old lady came in through the open door, and pushed it shut behind her.

  screamed Raj, as his tooth shot across the shop hitting the poor old dear on her head.

  “You said one! You said you would slam the door on one!” the shopkeeper protested.

  Alfie rushed over to the old lady, who was rubbing her forehead and looking utterly dazed and confused.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes, I think so, dear. I only came in for a scratchcard and a bag of bonbons…”

  “Ah, Mrs Morrissey, my favourite customer…” Raj gathered himself, and approached the lady with the items. “Here we are! And don’t worry, madam, there is no extra charge for being hit in the head by my flying tooth…”

  The befuddled old lady reached into her purse and handed him the money, before the newsagent gently guided her out of his shop.

  Meanwhile, Alfie gathered up the string and smiled at discovering Raj’s tooth was still at the end of it. He briefly examined its chips and stains before popping it in his pocket. “Thanks, Raj. This will be the bait…”

  “Well, best of luck, young Alfred. And I expect you to come here to the shop first thing tomorrow morning to tell me if you saw anything in the night.”

  “I will.”

  Raj rushed back to his counter. Quickly he sorted through a dozen or so packs of Revels, putting all the coffee ones in one bag. Then he carefully resealed them all with a glue stick.

  “Nearly forgot! Here’s a bag of coffee-only Revels to keep you awake. There might be the odd raisin one in there as they are a very similar shape…”

  The newsagent placed the bag in the boy’s hand, and held it tight for a moment. He looked straight into Alfie’s eyes and whispered, “For goodness’ sake, boy, be careful…”

  “I will, Raj.”

  DING!

  The boy opened the door to leave.

  “One last thing…” whispered Raj.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t tell anyone I have tampered with these bags of Revels…”

  22

  A Gigantic Trifle

  “So how did it all go at the dentist, son?” rasped Dad, his breathing painfully shallow. “Did you have to have a filling?”

  Alfie’s father was sitting in his wheelchair in the living room as his son came in through the front door. It was around four o’clock, the normal time that Alfie returned home from school, so his dad didn’t yet have a reason to suspect anything.

  “Oh, it was fine thanks, Dad!” called Alfie, as cheerily as he could. The false teeth rattled a little in his mouth.

  Alfie could see his dad’s health was worsening by the day. The man was becoming weaker and weaker, like he was shrinking into his wheelchair. Alfie feared that if he told his dad the truth, he would get angry. Really angry. Dad would want to speed over to the surgery instantly, and have it out with this dentist. If the boy’s father started shouting or even raised his voice, his breathing would become shallower and shallower. He might even collapse again. Alfie couldn’t let it happen.

  Awkwardly the boy shuffled into the room. When Alfie came home from school he always gave his dad a big hug, but today he loitered by the door. He didn’t want his father to be able to inspect his teeth. Well, the late Mrs Raj’s teeth. Her false teeth, that is.

/>   “No hug today, pup?” Dad appealed to him. This break in the habit made Alfie’s father suspicious.

  “I was just going to put the tea on…”

  “The tea can wait. I’ve been sitting at home alone all day looking forward to our hug. And I want a big bear hug, please. The biggest, widest, huggiest* hug you can give!”

  * * *

  *Made-up word ALERT

  * * *

  Carefully Alfie closed his mouth and sucked the late Mrs Raj’s false teeth into place over his gums. Next, he paced across to his father’s side of the room. Leaning over the wheelchair, he put his arms around Dad, and the man held him tight.

  “Ah, that’s better. How I love my little pup…”

  Telling lies to his dad made Alfie feel distinctly uneasy. It was a horrible sensation, which found its way down to the pit of his tummy. In shame and embarrassment, Alfie was soon trying to disentangle himself from the hug.

  Now, parents always know when something is wrong with their child. They can sense it. Dad was no different.

  “Are you sure there is nothing the matter?” he asked, looking his son right in the eye.

  “No. I mean, yes…” spluttered Alfie, attempting to avoid his dad’s gaze. “Yes, I am sure. There is nothing the matter. The dentist went fine.”

  “Let me have a look at your teeth…”

  Reluctantly, Alfie opened his mouth, and flashed the briefest of smiles before closing it again. “See? Like new.”

  “Well, they do look better…” said Dad.

  “I’ll pop the kettle on.”