Flame of the Dragon

by Tommy Donbavand

  “You can’t keep us away for long,” grinned Resus.

  “And you brought breakfast, too!” Doug drooled and his mouldy tongue ran over blistered lips as he eyed the dragon’s egg.

  “Sorry,” said Luke. “This egg isn’t for eating, I’m afraid. Resus, Cleo and I need it to make a—”

  “Cleo!” exclaimed Resus, suddenly remembering. The three of them peered back through the Hex Hatch to see Cleo still triumphantly riding the dragon. She’d now tied a length of bandage around the creature’s neck and was using it as reins.

  “Man,” whistled Doug appreciatively, “you dudes are awesome.”

  “Cleo!” yelled Luke, trying to make himself heard over the roar of the dragon. “Time to go!”

  “Not until I’ve stopped her pain!” Cleo shouted back, letting go of the bandage reins and turning herself round. She slid down the dragon’s scaly neck and across its back, and as she reached the tail, she stretched out and plucked the knife from the creature’s belly. This caused the tail to flick up involuntarily, catapulting the mummy into the air and directly towards the open Hex Hatch.

  “Look out!” cried Resus. “She’s going to—”

  Cleo flew straight through the Hex Hatch and landed squarely on top of all three of them, sending them crashing to the ground. One of the zombie’s eyeballs popped out of his head as he hit the floor and was squashed under Resus’s hand.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Doug!” exclaimed Cleo, climbing off Luke’s chest.

  “No worries, little lady,” the zombie assured her, poking a diseased finger into the empty socket and feeling around. “I’ve got a drawer full of the things in the kitchen.”

  “It’s me you should be apologizing to,” groaned Resus, hastily wiping the goo off his palm. “This is disgusting.”

  “It was an accident,” snapped Cleo. “I’m not going to apologize for—”

  “Er … guys,” interrupted Luke. “Can we argue about this later?” He gestured back towards the cavern, where the dragon, having spotted the Hex Hatch, was thundering towards them.

  Luke pulled the parchment back out of his pocket and found the place where he’d stopped reading. There was just one word left to say, and with any luck it would close the Hex Hatch. The dragon was almost upon them now, fire erupting from its gaping jaws…

  “Unumbo!” yelled Luke, and the window in the air disappeared just as the jet of flame burst into the living room. There was silence.

  “Well,” said Resus with a satisfied sigh. “That seems to have been a success!”

  “Er, not entirely,” said Cleo, tapping him on the shoulder.

  Luke and Resus turned back towards the room to see Doug the zombie still standing where they had left him, burnt to a crisp.

  Chapter Ten

  The Body

  Luke’s stomach churned for the third time as he watched Doug peel away the burnt skin from his face, revealing a decomposing mess of muscle and bone beneath. He looked away and continued to scrape the top layer of shell from the dragon’s egg, this time catching the dust in an old coffee jar.

  Resus, on the other hand, was far from squeamish. He sat on a stool made from a human ribcage and watched the proceedings with fascination. “Can I have that?” he asked as Doug looked for somewhere to deposit the flap of charred flesh.

  “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” beamed Doug, handing it over.

  “You’re disgusting,” groaned Cleo as Resus tucked the skin into his cape.

  “I’m not!” retorted Resus. “You never know when something like that might come in handy.”

  Cleo shuddered. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she moaned, turning away. But the view in the other direction wasn’t much better. Doug’s housemate, Berry, had her fingers pushed deep into a third zombie’s skull.

  “Duck snot!” cried the zombie.

  “Don’t worry about my man Turf.” Doug smiled as he tore a strip of flesh from the sofa cushion and laid it across his own exposed cheek. “He’s lost his mind.”

  “I wouldn’t say he was that bad,” said Cleo. “He’s just a little confused.”

  “Instant boots!” bellowed Turf.

  “No, I mean he’s really lost his mind – or some of it, at least,” Doug continued, producing a staple gun from his pocket and using it to attach the new skin to his face. “It fell out of his head yesterday somewhere round the back of Everwell’s Emporium. We’ll go and look for it later – if we have time before the curfew.”

  Luke stopped scraping. “Curfew?”

  “Yep – every night this week,” explained Doug. “No residents allowed out after dark. Anyone caught out of their house after nightfall will be escorted home by the Movers and placed under house arrest.”

  “Sir Otto Sneer’s finally gone too far!” exclaimed Resus.

  Doug shook his head, and as he did so his charred nose wobbled loosely. “Don’t blame this one on the big man, little vampire. It’s is all the work of that downer dude from G.H.O.U.L.”

  “Acrid Belcher,” breathed Cleo.

  “He’s a bad man,” said the zombie. “You should steer clear. I heard him tell the Movers to round up all the normals and take them to Sneer Hall.”

  The children exchanged concerned glances.

  “What are we going to do?” asked Resus.

  “I don’t know,” Luke admitted. “I wish I could ask Mr Skipstone for advice.”

  “He’s probably locked up in Sneer Hall as well,” Cleo pointed out.

  Doug ripped off his bottom lip and replaced it with another piece of skin torn from the sofa cushion. “They have the book man, too?”

  Resus nodded. “Acrid Belcher confiscated The G.H.O.U.L. Guide before we were banished to the Underlands.”

  Doug sighed in dismay. “Totally bogus.”

  “Rubber peanuts!” Turf blurted out as Berry rummaged deeper inside his skull.

  “What are you doing?” asked Cleo, a look of disgust on her face.

  “Trying to work out which bit of his brain is missing,” the female zombie replied. “He seems to have all his movement…” She gave another prod and Turf’s leg shot out, kicking Resus in the shin.

  “Ow!” cried the vampire.

  “Sorry!” said Berry. “I never was much good at brain surgery. Still, it’s a very tasty hobby.” She pulled her hand free and licked her fingers clean.

  “We need to get the normals away from Sneer Hall and out of Scream Street,” Cleo said to Luke and Resus. “I don’t know what Sir Otto and Acrid Belcher want with them, but it can’t be anything good.”

  “I agree,” said Luke. “Then we close the doorway once and for all.” He finished scraping the dragon’s egg. “We bring Mr Skipstone out of The G.H.O.U.L. Guide, make him transform into his werewolf, knock him out with the sleeping potion, then stitch his claw back in place.”

  Resus couldn’t help but smile. “You make it sound so easy.”

  “Is the sleeping potion ready?” asked Cleo, peering into the coffee jar.

  “Almost,” said Luke. “According to the recipe on the back of the map, I just have to mix this stuff with water.” He turned to Resus. “Do you have any?”

  The vampire produced a jug of water from under his cape and handed it over. “The potion isn’t the bit that’s worrying me,” he admitted.

  Luke carefully poured some water into the coffee jar. “Then what is?” he asked.

  “Saying goodbye to Mr Skipstone.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that too,” said Cleo. “Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street disintegrated as soon as we brought his spirit out of it. The G.H.O.U.L. Guide will do the same, won’t it?”

  “I’m pretty sure it will,” said Luke ruefully.

  “Plus, we haven’t got another book to transfer his spirit back into after we return the claw,” Cleo pointed out.

  “Mr Skipstone’s going to die, isn’t he,” said Resus.

  “Maybe,” replied Luke. “But maybe not…”

>   “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve got this,” he said, pulling what appeared to be a book from his pocket. It had a silver cover.

  Cleo gasped. “That looks like…” She took it from Luke, but it was much lighter than she expected. Her face fell when she opened it up. “There’s nothing in here. No pages at all.”

  “I took them out,” Luke explained. “That used to be my dad’s car manual. It’s about the same size as Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street, so I cut the pages out and painted the cover silver.”

  Resus took the empty cover and examined it. “I’m not sure it will work,” he said. “Even if it looks like Mr Skipstone’s book, I can’t see his spirit rattling round between two bits of silver cardboard for all eternity.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” Luke assured him. “We’re going to get pages, written by Mr Skipstone himself. He had tons of notes for his books in his house, remember? I reckon we can use his notes for Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street to make a new copy of the book – or something pretty close to it.”

  “That’s a great idea,” said Cleo, “or at least it would be if all the notes hadn’t got burnt in a fire while we were trying to get the claw from him in the first place.”

  A smile spread across Luke’s face. “Yes, but that’s what happened to the notes this year,” he said. “They’re all still in one piece back in nineteen sixty-one…”

  Resus paled. “Oh no,” he said. “We’re not going through my cape to nineteen sixty-one again. We almost killed Sir Otto last time.”

  “That wasn’t us, that was the yeti,” said Cleo. “Luke’s right. If we ever want to see Mr Skipstone’s face on this, we have to go back in time to collect his notes.”

  Reluctantly, Resus unclipped his cape and stood beside his friends in the middle of the room. “I suppose so. Look after the egg, Doug: we’ll be back soon…”

  A distant clock chimed midnight as Luke, Resus and Cleo hurried across Scream Street’s central square. Despite being in the year 1961, everything looked the same – although they knew the sky would remain dark once dawn broke in a few hours’ time.

  The trip back through time via the cape had been uneventful, although they’d had to creep out of Alston Negative’s wardrobe without waking the sleeping vampire.

  Resus produced a torch as they approached 1 Scream Street. “This shouldn’t take too long,” he said quietly, slipping one of his fake fingernails into the lock of the front door.

  “You two start collecting up the papers,” hissed Cleo. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Where are you going?” asked Luke.

  Cleo held the blue pendant up into the beam of the torch. “I want to return this to the emporium,” she said. “I’ll slip it under the door or something.”

  As she raced away, there was a soft click from the lock. “We’re in,” said Resus.

  The boys crept into the darkened house and found their way to the author’s study. There, sitting in his chair, was the body of Samuel Skipstone.

  “If only we could wake him up now and take him back with us,” said Resus.

  “It wouldn’t work,” Luke told him. “Then he wouldn’t have been here for us to discover when we came back to collect the werewolf’s claw in the future.”

  Resus frowned and rubbed his face. “Just thinking about this time travel stuff makes my head hurt,” he groaned.

  “Don’t think about it, then,” smiled Luke as he located the author’s filing cabinet and slid open the first drawer. “Now, let’s find the notes for Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street and get out of here…”

  “Dudes!” exclaimed Doug. “That looks just like the real thing!”

  Luke glued the final page into the silver cover and examined his work. “I just hope it’ll hold Mr Skipstone’s spirit after we’ve returned the final relic.”

  “I don’t see why not,” said Cleo. “That’s his writing after all.”

  The mummy had arrived back from the emporium to find her friends rifling through vast piles of papers. Once they had found the right ones, they had quickly made their way back to Alston Negative’s bedroom, and then home.

  “I still don’t know how we’re going to get a body,” said Resus. “But we’ll need one to bring him out of The G.H.O.U.L. Guide – when we finally get our hands on it. His own body crumbled to ashes, remember?”

  Luke thought back to the moment when he, Resus and Cleo had saved Samuel Skipstone’s life by transferring his spirit into the pages of The G.H.O.U.L. Guide. Seconds later, the author’s ancient body had crumbled away. “That’s something I still haven’t been able to figure out,” he admitted.

  “Can we dig up another body from somewhere?” asked Cleo.

  “I’m afraid there aren’t any corpses left in Scream Street,” said Berry. “Not since that big barbecue we had back in the summer, anyway.”

  Doug grinned. “That was a righteous feast!”

  Resus produced the bottle of reanimation gel and put it on the zombies’ coffee table. “So what are we supposed to use this on?” he asked, staring into the sparkling liquid.

  “Hang on,” said Luke, grabbing the gel. “If we can make a new copy of Mr Skipstone’s book, then maybe…”

  He opened the bottle, tipped a tiny amount onto his hand and rubbed it into the bones that made up the legs of the coffee table. They shimmered for a second then sprang into life, knocking Luke off his seat. The table then began to prance around the room like an excited puppy.

  “Brilliant!” cried Cleo.

  “I don’t get it,” said Resus.

  Luke reached up and lifted the hollowed-out skull from the top of the lamp. “We’re going to build ourselves an author!”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Normals

  The body was almost complete. The trio had used the leg bones and feet from the zombies’ sofa, the ribcage from the footstool and arms snapped from the sides of Doug’s bed to assemble something that looked human – almost.

  Resus finished stapling one of the fleshy curtains around the frame in an attempt to give the figure some skin. “It looks like something a toddler would make!”

  “What kind of toddler builds things out of body parts?” asked Cleo.

  “I used to,” replied Resus. “I even asked my mum and dad for a brain one Christmas. I didn’t get it, though – just a pair of lungs. I was gutted.”

  “I am so glad I didn’t know you then,” Cleo said with a shudder.

  “Speaking of brains, we’ll need one for this thing to work,” said Luke. He turned to Berry. “Are you sure Turf won’t mind us borrowing what’s left of his?”

  The zombie plunged her hand back into Turf’s skull to retrieve the lump of wobbly grey matter. “He won’t even notice it’s missing,” she assured them.

  Luke took it from her and dropped it into the empty head that had until recently housed nothing more than a light bulb. “And we’re finished!” he declared, clicking the skull into place at the top of the spine.

  The trio stepped back to admire their handiwork.

  “That,” commented Cleo, “looks hideous.”

  “It doesn’t matter what it looks like,” Luke said. “It just matters that it works.”

  “There’s only one way to find out…” said Resus, reopening the bottle of reanimation gel. He emptied the gel into his friends’ hands and the three of them began to rub it all over the makeshift body. After a moment, the figure began to sparkle, then it took a few tentative steps.

  “Monkey nuggets,” it announced.

  “Well,” said Cleo. “At least we know Turf’s bit of brain is working…”

  “Let’s hope it’s enough to hold Mr Skipstone for a while,” said Resus.

  Luke took the strange creature by the hand and led it towards the front door. “Are you sure you’re happy to look after the dragon’s egg while we’re gone?” he asked Doug.

  “No worries, little dude,” the zombie assured him. “We’ll keep this baby nic
e and cosy until you get back.”

  “OK,” grinned Luke. “Let’s go get Mr Skipstone and save the normals.”

  “Save the normals!” repeated Resus. “I never thought I’d hear anyone say that.”

  “Spam hammers!” screeched the home-made body.

  “Or that.”

  The body tottered comically down the garden path outside 28 Scream Street. “Stop!” commanded Luke.

  The figure came to a halt. “Spider wee!” it shouted.

  “What have you stopped it for?” asked Resus. “Aren’t we going to Sneer Hall?”

  “We are,” Luke replied, “but don’t forget that if we’re seen, we’ll be arrested again.”

  “Of course!” said Cleo. “We need to go in disguise. Who’s got the gutweed?”

  “Me,” replied Resus, pulling the handful of stinking green fronds from his trouser pocket and handing it out. The three children each popped their share into their mouth and began to chew. In no time at all their shapeshifting abilities kicked in and they were able to change their identities once again.

  “Gross!” exclaimed Cleo as Luke’s skin began to decompose.

  “You’re not,” laughed Luke as Cleo’s own transformation was completed. He found himself struggling not to stare at her under the enchantment charm.

  “It feels weird every time I do this,” said Resus, peering down through his ribcage. He unclipped his cape and tucked it under a nearby bush.

  “Candy feet!” barked the body.

  “OK,” said Luke, “so if anyone asks who we are, we’re from another G.H.O.U.L. community, here to visit our relatives in Scream Street.”

  “Gotcha!” said Resus.

  “Now, let’s try to find a way into Sneer Hall…”

  The trio stepped out into the central square, the corpse at their heels. The place was swarming with Movers, and residents scurried by quietly with their heads down. The whole street was shrouded in a nervous, uneasy atmosphere.

  “Acrid Belcher’s got his soldiers everywhere,” hissed Cleo.

  “But I can’t see the nasty piece of work himself,” Resus commented. “Or Sneer for that matter. Where do you think they are?”