The Toilet Rat of Terror
and Other Naughty Stories for Good Boys and Girls
published in 2011 by
Hardie Grant Egmont
Ground Floor, Building 1, 658 Church Street
Richmond, Victoria 3121, Australia
www.hardiegrantegmont.com.au
EISBN 978 1 742736 12 9
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior permission of the publishers and copyright owner.
A CiP record for this title is available from the National Library of Australia
Text copyright © 2011 Christopher Milne
Illustration and design copyright © 2011 Hardie Grant Egmont
Illustration and design by Simon Swingler
Typesetting by Ektavo
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
The Toilet Rat of Terror
The Girl who was left Behind
The Girl who Wrtoe Rude Poems
Night Boo! Ghost
Dreamy Drake
Wheelchair Wally Watson
Damien Kelly had heard the rumours. He’d even heard some of the screams. But it didn’t worry him.
‘Giant rats biting people on the bottom!’ said Damien to anyone who would listen, shaking his head. ‘Some kids will believe anything. It’s time they stopped acting like cry-babies and got a life.’
Unfortunately, it was a rumour he should have listened to. Damien fancied himself as the toughest, no-nonsense kid in school, and believing scary stories was for wussies. But people who try to act tough are often big cowards underneath, and it’s usually just a matter of time before it all comes crashing down. Damien was about to find out what a nasty fall it could be.
It all began with Joseph Jabour, another kid from school. He was sitting on the toilet at home, minding his own business, when he heard a really strange noise. A low, swishing noise. Although he couldn’t explain it, he started to get a weird feeling that something bad was about to happen.
Grrrrrrrrrr!
Joseph jumped! Was that a growling sound he had just heard?
I know, thought Joseph, starting to sweat. It’s probably just that stray cat trying to steal Thumper’s bone.
GRRRRRRR!
Of course, thought Joseph, grinning nervously to himself. The baked beans I had for lunch.
But if Joseph had looked down, he wouldn’t have grinned for much longer. Crouching beneath him, in the middle of the toilet bowl, was a rat the size of a dog! A dripping wet rat with greasy fur, narrow eyes and teeth bared — dirty, yellow teeth smeared with blood and filth and disease.
Its eyes were fixed on poor Joseph’s bare bottom and you could tell from the shivering muscles in its legs that it was only seconds away from pouncing.
Three, two, one…
‘ARGH!’
The bite was so big and painful that Joseph shot forward onto the bathroom floor with the door left swinging behind him. He had a huge chunk missing from his bottom and his head was spinning. What could possibly have happened? Some sort of terrible trick played by his brother?
Later, as the doctor gave him a tetanus injection and stitched up the massive bite, he said that his tests showed Joseph had been bitten by a rat.
‘A rat?’ said Joseph’s mum. ‘How could that be? Our house is always spotless.’
‘Could it have come up through the bowl?’ asked Joseph, trembling. ‘Through the pipes?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said the doctor. ‘Unless there’s a rat that’s able to hold its breath under water, it has to have jumped in.’
‘But I would have seen it,’ said Joseph. ‘I always check the bowl first for floaters.’
‘Too much information,’ said the doctor.
Joseph’s mum had gone quiet, deep in thought. ‘Unless…’ she said.
‘Unless what?’ asked the doctor.
‘My husband works for the government making radio-active isotopes for medical research,’ said Joseph’s mum. ‘I don’t have to tell you how dangerous they can be.’
‘Like what Homer Simpson does,’ chipped in Joseph.
‘This mustn’t go any further,’ added Joseph’s mum, ‘but he told me there have been leaks over the years that might have found their way into drains. And there were rumours of something weird near one of the drain openings — a sort of mutant rat but with scales and fins like a fish. And it’s supposed to be huge!’
The three of them just stood there staring at each other. Surely it couldn’t be true?
‘Right,’ said the doctor. ‘You must keep this totally to yourselves until we can prove it. People have a right to know, but not until we’re sure. Panic is the last thing we need. Don’t want people getting all nervous and running to the toilet, do we?’
The doctor’s little joke fell flat.
Of course, Joseph did say something at school. How could you not? The rumours began. And then more stories of bites and screams. One girl said the rat that bit her had wolf-sized jaws. Most people said they heard a swishing sound of a rat coming up through the pipes and then that same terrible growling sound that Joseph had heard.
Finally, Damien Kelly decided it was time to act. He reckoned he’d never heard such a load of rubbish in his life! What a bunch of nervous nellies. Believing in fish-rats! It was time to prove how wrong everyone was.
‘I know all the drains around here like the back of my hand,’ said Damien. ‘Been up every one of them a thousand times. So, I’m going in and I’m going to show you pack of sooky babies that there are no giant rats coming up through the dunny! And guess who’s coming with me to see that I’m right? The baby who started it all in the first place. Joseph!’
Joseph felt sick. Not the drains! They were creepy and scary and his parents had told him a million times how dangerous they were. There were holes and drops at every turn, and he’d even heard about kids who went in and never came out. But how could you say no to Damien?
You should have seen the crowd around the entrance to the drain as they went in. Probably a hundred kids had turned up. Joseph was white with fear, but Damien was loving it. He’d worn his army-type camouflage pants, a black T-shirt and big steel-capped boots. He had a torch and, just in case, a huge cricket bat.
Damien had been waiting all his life for a moment like this. To be the fearless hero in front of a huge crowd. And he’d also been waiting to say these words — just like army guys on TV…
‘I’m going in!’ yelled Damien, as the kids all cheered.
The first bit of drain was sort of OK, because Joseph could still look back to see the entrance, and plenty of light shone in. But then it got really dark and, although Damien’s torch lit the way ahead, the drain walls turned to black. Joseph thought he heard something and he jumped.
‘What was that?’ asked Joseph, shaking.
‘Probably a rat,’ replied Damien, tapping the cricket bat against the drain wall a few times. ‘There’s thousands of them down here. Seen a few snakes, too.’
Further and further they went in. It felt to Joseph as though they must have travelled at least a couple of kilometres. That sick feeling was getting really strong, and he thought he might faint.
‘Looks like I was wrong,’ said Joseph weakly. ‘There’s nothing here, is there?’
‘Oh, there’s something here all right,’ said Damien. ‘You can’t see them but there are rats all around us. Look!’
Damien swung his
torch up and there, sitting on a concrete shelf, were a hundred pairs of gleaming eyes. Joseph felt himself go wobbly at the knees. And then they heard it. That low, growling sound.
Damien froze. ‘Is that the noise you reckon you heard?’
Joseph’s mouth was dry with fear. ‘Ye-es.’
‘Don’t move,’ whispered Damien, suddenly sounding a bit strange. ‘There is something and it’s close.’
He slowly ran the torch light along the walls, and what they saw next took their breath away. Poking out from a huge hole in the wall was a giant rat’s tail. With scales!
All Damien’s toughness left him in a flash. Without realising it, he grabbed hold of Joseph’s arm in fear. ‘Can you see that?’ he asked, trembling.
Damien really had believed that they’d find nothing. Now that he’d seen this terrible half-fish, half-rat monster, he felt himself turning to jelly.
Damien’s shaking meant the torch was bouncing about, but not enough for them to miss seeing the tail move. The giant fish-rat was starting to crawl towards them.
The boys stood there, frozen with fear. The creature’s body was covered with stinking, greasy fur and patches of sharp, nasty-looking scales. Slowly, the fish-rat began to lower itself into a pouncing position. Its lip curled back to reveal foul blood-stained teeth and the growling began again.
We all do things differently when something scary comes along. Some of us run, some of us freeze and some of us choose to fight. Joseph would definitely have put fighting the rat last on his list, but to his great surprise, he suddenly found himself getting braver. One of them had to do something, or they’d both be attacked!
The growling was getting louder, so Joseph knew he only had seconds to act before the rat pounced. He reached over to take the cricket bat from Damien’s limp hand, and just as he did, the fish-rat jumped. Straight at him like a dog in a terrible fight. Joseph grabbed the bat and swung it wildly!
As the giant fish-rat flew straight at Joseph’s throat, the cricket bat whooshed through the air, straight at the fish-rat’s open, snarling mouth.
In cricket terms it would have been a six over the grandstand but, when you added the speed of the fish-rat, its impact with the cricket bat was explosive. Like a watermelon being hit by a speeding truck. Teeth and scales and face and guts went everywhere. Some of it even flew into Damien’s open mouth.
With one almighty whack, Joseph had killed the thing stone-dead!
‘That’ll teach you to bite me on the bum,’ he said.
Well, the fish-rat problem went away after that, and Joseph and Damien became heroes.
‘Why Damien as well?’ you might ask.
Well, Joseph’s such a nice bloke he said they had killed the fish-rat together. The two of them are mates now, and Joseph opens the batting for the school cricket team.
There is one small problem, though. The huge amount of water people are using to flush their toilets — sometimes six or seven times at a go. It’s the centimetre-thick steel mesh everyone has screwed in at the bottom of the bowl — just in case.
Kathy Crawford hated Christmas. Sure, she liked the presents and stuff from her foster family, but Christmas reminded her most of what she didn’t have. A real mum and dad.
Well, that’s not quite true. Kathy did still have a mum. Somewhere. But her mum didn’t want to see her anymore.
That might sound terrible, but sometimes mums and dads feel it’s better for someone else to look after their kids, even though they love them very much. The new mum and dad are called ‘foster parents’.
Usually it happens because the real mum and dad are poor. Or because they can’t find somewhere to live. Whatever it is, it had always got something to do with awful sadness.
Sometimes, the real parents will visit their kids, or even have them home for weekends. Other times, however, the mums and dads feel so guilty about what they’ve done, they don’t even ring. And so it was with Kathy’s mum. Poor Kathy, she hadn’t heard a word for six years. Not since the day she was left sitting on a seat at West Park Shopping Centre.
On that terrible day, Kathy’s mum put her in the lovely coat she’d bought from the op-shop and then took her shopping. Kathy knew something was wrong because her mum kept crying all the time. More than usual. And why would they be going shopping? Sure, it was only a week before Christmas, but Kathy knew they didn’t have any money!
Her dad, who Kathy had never even met, was supposed to send some money every week, but he never did. Kathy’s mum got some from the government, but by the time she’d paid the rent and bought food, there was never much left.
So, Kathy and her mum caught a bus that day to West Park Shopping Centre and just hung around for a while. They looked in the shop windows but they never went in. All the time Kathy’s mum held her hand really tight.
‘What’s wrong, Mummy?’ asked Kathy.
‘Nothing, darling,’ said her mum. But Kathy knew there was.
Her mum blew her nose, took a deep breath, looked around and sat Kathy down on a seat outside the toy shop.
‘Listen to me,’ said her mum. ‘I want you to wait here while I go to the supermarket. Don’t move, OK?’
‘Yes, Mummy,’ said Kathy.
‘Kathy, I want you to be a very good girl. Always,’ said her mum. ‘And remember that I love you very, very, very much. And one day…’
But that was as far as she got, because she started crying again. She squeezed Kathy’s hand once more, turned, and was gone.
So, Kathy waited. And waited. What could Mum be doing? she wondered. She’s been gone for ages.
Finally, a policeman came up to her and said, ‘Kathy Crawford?’
‘Yes,’ said Kathy.
‘Sweetheart,’ said the policeman, ‘we’ve had a phone call from your mum and she’s asked us to look after you for a little while.’
So far, ‘a little while’ had been six long years.
Kathy went to a special house for kids without mums and dads. The people were very nice and explained to Kathy that her mum still loved her, but she had to sort her life out a bit. Her mum was sick and needed time to get better.
In the pocket of the coat she had worn on that last day, Kathy found a locket with a picture of her mum inside. Poor Kathy, day after day, night after night, she just stared at the picture and wished she was back with her mum.
Kathy had only been in the house for a month when it was time to move in with her foster family. Her foster mum and dad were very nice people, but they could never replace her real mum.
For a while, Kathy was a good little girl, just as her mum had asked. But soon she became naughty. You see, Kathy was getting tired of waiting for her mum to get better. Maybe she’d never get well. And why didn’t she ring? Had Kathy been tricked?
Maybe her mum didn’t love her after all. Poor Kathy, it made her angry. And nasty.
Her foster brother and sister were lots of fun, but that didn’t stop Kathy from being terrible to them. She set fire to her foster brother’s cubby house and stuck her foster sister’s dolls down the toilet. She played frisbee with her foster dad’s CDs and broke her foster mum’s best dinner set with an axe. One day, on a Sunday drive, Kathy deliberately threw up in the back seat. All over the picnic basket.
Her foster family never got angry with her, though. They just said they loved her very much and understood exactly how she felt.
When people are nice to you for long enough, it makes you nice too. Kathy stopped being so naughty. But she never forgot her mum. Until Kathy found her again, there would always be something missing.
Finally, Kathy couldn’t stand it. She just had to find out the truth. Did her mum just stop loving her? Was her mum OK? Was she still alive?
So, one Saturday morning, about a week before Christmas, Kathy started looking. She knew her foster parents couldn’t tell her anything — they weren’t allowed to — so it was up to her. Where she would go or who she would ask, she wasn’t quite sure, but she had to try.
In the beginning, poor Kathy had no luck at all. She had looked in the phone book, but couldn’t find a thing. Then she walked around and around trying to find something, anything, that would lead her back to their old house. But without knowing the address, it was impossible. All she could really remember was a broken window and a white door with a funny old knob.
And then she saw something that gave her an idea.
In the street, straight ahead of her, was a crowd of people gathered around a caravan. Inside the caravan was a man speaking into a microphone. It was one of those things where radio stations do a show from somewhere special — usually to advertise the opening of something. This time it was a new supermarket.
Kathy walked over and watched for a while. She noticed that every time the man spoke, he pushed a button. And when he played a song, he pushed another button.
Right, thought Kathy, I know this is very, very naughty, but I’m going to do it.
Kathy sneaked around the back of the caravan and quietly opened the door. Then, just as the man had a sip of coffee while a song was playing, Kathy jumped inside and bumped the man so he spilled hot coffee all over his lap.
She pushed the button and grabbed the microphone. ‘Mummy!’ she yelled. ‘It’s me. Kathy. Kathy Crawford. Remember? Mummy, if you’re there somewhere, I still love you…’
Before Kathy could say any more, the man switched the button back and grabbed her wrist. So she bit his hand and ran as fast as she’d ever run in her life. Down a side street and then another street to a crowded park. To safety.
What would she do now? If her mum did happen to hear her on the radio, there was no use waiting near the caravan because the police would be waiting for her. And then her mum might arrive and Kathy wouldn’t be there!
Poor Kathy cried. What to do now? Maybe she should go back to where it all started. Back to West Park Shopping Centre. Maybe the people in the toy shop would remember something. Maybe her mum would do the same thing. Maybe not. Maybe her mum didn’t ever want to see her again.
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