Maud stopped on the landing, by the photograph of her great-aunt Ethel. She’d never known her great-aunt but, for some reason, Maud felt that Ethel was her kind of person. Perhaps it was her mischievous grin or the twinkle in her eye. Perhaps it was the fact that she was dressed all in black, holding a cat and standing in a graveyard. The cat was completely black apart from a single white paw.
Maud wished she could have met her while she was alive. Ethel would have probably been able to think of hundreds of ways to scare Mr Von Bat. As it was, Maud would just have to keep trying to work it out on her own.
She was going to scare her vampire teacher, if it was the last thing she did.
When she arrived at school the next morning, Maud dashed straight up the stairs to Mr Von Bat’s classroom, clutching a huge sports bag. Inside was everything she needed to scare Mr Von Bat.
There was no one in the room when Maud arrived. Perfect. She pulled out a vampire mask and cape that her mum had made for the Dracula musical. Then she crouched down behind her teacher’s desk and waited.
Two minutes later, Maud heard the door open. She leapt up, flinging her arms out wide and roaring at the top of her voice.
Mr Von Bat calmly took off his cape and hung it on a hook on the wall. “Vampires don’t roar,” he said. “We hiss. And if that was your attempt to scare me, I’m afraid you’ll have to try a teensy bit harder.”
“Oh,” said Maud. “Sorry.”
She took her seat for that morning’s Monsterography lesson about the effect of climate on werewolf populations. All through the class, Maud pretended to take notes on Mr Von Bat’s lengthy description of a werewolf pack in Alaska. But really, she was making a new list of scaring ideas.
When the bell tolled, Maud left the classroom with the rest of the pupils. But instead of following them down the spiral staircase and into the graveyard, she hid out of sight in a corner until everyone else was gone. Then she blew out all the candles in the corridor, leaving it in pitch blackness.
A moment later, Maud heard Mr Von Bat walk out of the room and shut the door behind him. She grabbed a sheet out of her bag and flung it over her head.
“Woooo!” shouted Maud in her best spooky voice. “WOOOO-OOOO!”
Mr Von Bat sighed. “I meet ghosts every day of the week,” he said. “And most of them are extremely boring. How could you possibly think that dressing up as one could frighten me? And who’s ever heard of a pink ghost?”
Maud realised it had been a mistake to use one of Milly’s sheets as a costume.
“Sorry, Sir,” she said.
“Now relight those candles at once or I’ll give you a detention,” said Mr Von Bat. “And then you’ll really have something to moan about.”
At lunchtime Maud didn’t go with the other kids to the crypt. Instead she went outside, found a grave covered in soft moss and sat down to eat her packed lunch. She liked most things about Rotwood, but she was happy to give the food a miss.
Nothing she’d tried so far had even made Mr Von Bat break into a sweat. How exactly did you scare a monster like him?
She was no closer to working it out when she looked up to see Paprika and Wilf approaching. The werewolf was clutching a net of marbles.
“Fancy a game?”
Maud stared at the marbles. They stared back, turning as one to look at her. They were eyeballs, she realised.
“Er ... I’ll just watch you,” she said.
“Suit yourself,” said Wilf. He opened the net and began to roll the eyeballs along a collapsed headstone.
In the distance she could see the boy with rotten grey skin from her class staring at them.
“Do you think he wants to come over and talk to us?” asked Maud. “He looks very lonely.”
“Who, Zombie Zak?” asked Wilf. “No, that’s just what he likes doing. Creeping up on people really slowly and then shouting, ‘Ug!’ Every monster enjoys different things, you know.”
“What do Tutus enjoy best?” asked Paprika. “If you don’t mind talking about it, that is.”
“Scaring people,” said Maud. She felt guilty about lying to her friends. She wanted to tell them she was just an ordinary human girl, but she didn’t know how they’d react. They were fine with zombies, werewolves, witches and every other type of spooky creature. But still, she was a human and this was supposed to be a school for monsters.
“It was monstrous when you scared Poisonous Penelope yesterday,” said Wilf. “The look on her face was classic.”
“Well, that’s what we Tutus do,” said Maud.
“Ug!” grunted Zombie Zak, who’d finally reached them.
After lunch, Maud, Wilf and Paprika made their way upstairs for afternoon Fright Class. But as they were walking along the murky corridor leading up to Mr Von Bat’s classroom, Poisonous Penelope and Warren stepped out of the shadows and blocked Maud’s path.
“Hey Tutu!” said Penelope. “If you’re so scary, I dare you to go in there.” She pointed to a heavy metal door with written on it in menacing red letters.
“Don’t listen to her,” said Paprika. “That’s Dad’s private blood store. The only people allowed inside are him and the Head.”
“But that’s nothing for a terrifying Tutu to worry about,” said Penelope.
“It’s not safe in there,” said Paprika. He was fiddling nervously with his cape now. “That’s why Dad makes sure it’s locked at all times, and he keeps the key in his inside cloak pocket. You’re not really thinking of going in, are you?”
Maud considered it for a minute. She wanted to show Penelope she wasn’t afraid, but Paprika seemed really worried, and she didn’t want to upset him.
“No,” said Maud, at last. “I don’t really feel like it.”
“Looks like the big bad Tutu is too scared to go into that room,” said Penelope.
She cackled nastily, and Warren leaned forward and barked in Maud’s face.
Maud pushed past the pair of them and continued to the classroom, with Wilf and Paprika in tow.
“Sorry about my brother,” said Wilf. “If Mum knew he’d barked in someone’s face like that, she’d ground him for the next three full moons. She always says, just because we’re beasts, it doesn’t mean we have to be beastly.”
“I don’t mind him,” said Maud. “He’s just copying Penelope. She’s the one who doesn’t like me.”
“I wouldn’t worry about her,” said Wilf. “She’s just jealous because she used to be the scariest girl in the school until you came along.”
“I suppose so,” said Maud, feeling guilty about her lie again.
Maud knew that Penelope had only dared her to go inside the blood storage room to get her in trouble, but still, it made her wonder. Why was Mr Von Bat so particular about keeping it locked all the time? Was he worried about pupils snacking on the blood?
Whatever the reason, it wasn’t important now. Maud had to concentrate on scaring her teacher. All the Rotwood students were getting their books out, ready for Fright Class. Quickly, Maud went over to her locker to fetch Quentin.
“Sorry, Quentin,” she said. “But I need your help for a few minutes.”
The rat leapt into Maud’s blazer pocket, quivering with fear.
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Maud. “It’s nothing dangerous.”
Maud crept to the front of the classroom, placed Quentin carefully in Mr Von Bat’s desk drawer and returned to her seat.
A couple of minutes later, Mr Von Bat strode into the room and began Fright Class. Today it was all about the practice of voodoo magic. He paced up and down the room, detailing complicated ancient rituals. Every time he walked past his desk drawer, Maud willed him to open it. She thought of the chaos at Primrose Towers, and imagined the whole class, including Mr Von Bat, screaming and panicking.
It seemed to take for ever, but at last Mr Von Bat paused next to the drawer. “Now, I have an example of a voodoo doll here.”
This is it, thought Maud, willing Quentin to leap out at Mr Vo
n Bat.
“It’s in here somewhere,” said Mr Von Bat, searching around in his drawer.
Quentin scuttled out of the drawer and on to the desk. Mr Von Bat glanced at him for a second, then went right back to rooting in his drawer. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem very shocked. Quentin, on the other hand, ran straight back to Maud. He leapt back into her blazer pocket and sat there, shaking.
“Sorry, Quentin,” Maud whispered. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I wanted you to give the teacher a fright, not the other way round. But I suppose he does look pretty fearsome with his fangs and his cape.”
Quentin stuck his head out of Maud’s pocket and looked around the room. Paprika, who was sitting next to Maud, spotted him.
“Oh, wow!” he said. “You’ve got a rat! What’s his name?”
“Quentin.”
“Can I hold him?”
“Um ... you can try. But he’s very nervous around new people.”
Paprika picked Quentin out of Maud’s pocket and stroked his fur. This caught the attention of the rest of the class, who gathered round to look. Quentin trembled with fear. He’s so scared he can’t move, thought Maud.
“He’s so cool,” said a voice next to her that must have been Invisible Isabel.
“I don’t see the big deal,” said Poisonous Penelope. “My uncle keeps rats twice that size. And they carry the plague.”
“Stop that at once,” shouted Mr Von Bat from the front of the room. “This is a classroom, not a petting zoo.”
Quentin darted back into Maud’s pocket.
Mr Von Bat held up a straw doll and a sharp pin. “The next person who decides to disrupt the class gets to be the volunteer in my voodoo demonstration.”
The pupils zoomed back to their seats and faced the front.
Mr Von Bat set them all extra homework as punishment for the disruption. Everyone groaned, but Maud thought the essay title he gave them, “The Scariest Thing in the World”, was quite exciting.
“Drat,” muttered Maud, as she stared out of the window at the dark forest on the bus home. Nothing she’d tried on Mr Von Bat had worked. Not the vampire costume, not the ghost costume, not even her pet rat. Maybe she should just accept that Mr Von Bat really was fright proof.
Quentin peered up from inside her blazer pocket.
“You mustn’t blame yourself, Quentin,” said Maud. “It’s all my fault.”
Clearly, the things that used to scare the girls at Primrose Towers wouldn’t work at Rotwood. So what would? The only thing that had frightened anyone so far was ... Of course! Why hadn’t she seen it sooner?
Maud had an idea. And by the time she stepped off the creaking bus, the idea had turned into a plan.
The next morning, Maud waited for Milly to go to the bathroom for her daily washing routine. Then she sneaked across to her sister’s lilac chest of drawers and rooted around inside.
If the pupils at Rotwood loved all the things that the pupils at Primrose Towers were scared of, did that mean the opposite was true? Maybe the doll she’d brought on her first day wasn’t the only soppy thing that would terrify the Rotwood monsters. For once, Maud was pleased her sister owned so much silly pink stuff.
A few minutes later, Maud raced out of the house with a bag full of Milly’s possessions and a cardboard box with breathing holes and something wriggling around inside. Luckily for her, the Rotwood bus arrived before her sister caught up with her.
When she got to school, Maud lurked in the corridor outside Mr Von Bat’s classroom as the other pupils went in. As soon as she heard him taking the morning register, she changed into Milly’s ballet costume, complete with pink frilly tutu, white tights, satin shoes and rosebud hair clips. Then she took a deep breath, and flounced into the classroom.
Remembering the moves she’d seen her sister practising, Maud stretched out her arms, lifted up one knee and whirled around on her other foot. It wasn’t a very graceful pirouette, but it did the trick.
All around the room, pupils jumped out of their seats and screamed at the tops of their voices. Oscar reached out to his detached head, on the desk in front of him, and covered his eyes. Poisonous Penelope screeched so hard her hat fell off, and then dived into the cupboard at the back of the classroom. Even Wilf let out a yelp of fright.
Maud looked across to Mr Von Bat. Surely, this must have got to him. He just stared at her with his arms folded.
“Change back into your uniform at once,” he said. “You look ridiculous.”
Maud sighed. Her pirouette had terrified everyone except the one person it was aimed at.
At lunchtime, Maud took the cardboard box down to the cafeteria and hid it under the table, keeping an eye on the door for Mr Von Bat.
As soon as he came in, she lifted the box up on to the table, pulled the sticky tape off the flaps and tipped it on its side.
Milly’s pet bunny, Lollipop, flopped out. She had white fur, floppy brown ears and a neat pink bow on the top of her head. She sniffed at the air with her tiny pink nose and began to hop along the table.
A shrill chorus of shrieks rose up in the cafeteria as the pupils spotted the bunny. Paprika was so frightened he turned into a bat and swooped around the room. Several other pupils ran to the back of the hall in panic, overturning the food cauldrons. Swamp soup spilled around the dinner ladies’ ankles.
Maud was staring at Mr Von Bat, desperate for him to scream. And ... Yes! His face was pale and he was fidgeting around uncomfortably. This is it, thought Maud. But then Lollipop shuffled right past him and he simply glanced down and tutted.
Maud looked around to work out what had made Mr Von Bat look so queasy. The floor was covered in gloopy puddles of bug stew, blood soup and worm Bolognese. But why would that make him uncomfortable?
Maud tempted Lollipop back into the box with a lettuce leaf and hid it under the table before anyone noticed who’d unleashed the beast.
She looked up just in time to see Paprika turn back into a vampire in a huge puff of smoke and tumble right down into a cauldron of slug surprise. One of the dinner ladies tugged him out and dumped him on the floor, his cape dripping and wriggling behind him.
“Look at you,” she said, picking a large slug off his shoulder.
In that afternoon’s Fright Class, everyone had to read out their essays about the scariest thing in the world. It was Maud’s last chance of the day to scare her teacher.
Poisonous Penelope wrote about a spell that turned people to stone and Invisible Isabel spoke about a candlelit séance. Zombie Zak talked about a time that he and his friends slowly surrounded a secluded house in a forest and shouted, “Ug!” Oscar had written about the time his body left him at home by mistake and he missed a family trip to the seaside.
When it came to Maud’s turn, she took Milly’s perfumed notebook out of her satchel and opened it. Around the classroom, several pupils winced as glitter and gold stars spilled out on to the floor.
Maud cleared her throat. “My essay is called ‘One hundred reasons why I love Mr Snuggly Boo’. Number one: I love my teddy because his fur is so soft and kissable. Number two: I love my teddy because he smells of sweet summer blossom ...”
As Maud read through the list, she saw that everyone was wide-eyed with fear. Poisonous Penelope was trembling and biting her nails. Invisible Isabel was so scared she tried to sneak out of the classroom, but Mr Von Bat noticed the door opening on its own and sent her back to her seat.
“... Number fifty: I love my teddy because he has a little red love heart sewn on his chest ...”
By the time Maud got to sixty, most pupils were sobbing with fear and begging her to stop. Paprika was even paler than normal, and Oscar took off his head and put it inside his desk so he wouldn’t have to hear any more.
“... Number one hundred: and most of all I love my teddy because he is so generous and kind to all the other bears in Snuggly Boo Woods!” Maud looked up at Mr Von Bat.
“Well,” he said, “I don’t see what’s so scary abo
ut that. I’m giving you an F minus. And you’re lucky to get that.”
“Drat,” muttered Maud, as she shoved the notebook back into her bag.
“I got an A for mine,” said Poisonous Penelope. “I’d have thought a terrifying Tutu like you would have got an A plus.”
“I thought it was frightening,” said Paprika. “And you looked pretty scared too. You were trembling so much you made your desk shake.”
“At least I didn’t turn into a bat and end up covered in slugs at lunchtime,” snapped Poisonous Penelope.
Paprika blushed with shame, but Maud smiled at him. It was good to see him standing up to Poisonous Penelope for once, even if she was right about the slugs.
When Maud got home that evening, she put Milly’s bunny back in her hutch, then sneaked upstairs to return Milly’s ballet clothes and notebook. Luckily, she’d just managed to put everything back when her sister burst in.
“I need this room tonight,” said Milly. “I’ll be practising my ballet in here, for the big show. You’ll have to find somewhere else to do whatever disgusting stuff you want to do.”
Maud didn’t have the energy to argue, so she went downstairs to the living room. But when she got there, she found that every chair was covered in patches of material and sewing patterns.
“Hello, dear,” said Maud’s mum, without looking up from the flouncy dress she was stitching.
Maud tried the dining room, but her dad had laid out all his tools in alphabetical order to check them.
“This is a lovely torque wrench,” he said, pointing to a tool with an adjustable handle. “You wouldn’t believe I’ve had that since 1997, would you?”
“No, Dad,” Maud said, and left before he started talking about cars.
She went to fetch Quentin and then settled down on the stairs for the evening. Milly was stomping hard on the floor above them, which made Quentin quiver with anxiety.
Monstrous Maud: Big Fright Page 4