Attack of the Trolls

by Tommy Donbavand

  SCREAM STREET

  ATTACK OF THE TROLLS

  TOMMY DNBAVAND

  Previously on Scream Street…

  Mr and Mrs Watson were terrified when their son, Luke, first transformed into a werewolf. But that was nothing compared to their terror at being forcibly moved to Scream Street – and discovering there was no going back.

  Determined to take his parents home, Luke enlisted the help of his new friends, Resus Negative, a wannabe vampire, and Cleo Farr, an Egyptian mummy, to find six relics left behind by the community’s founding fathers. Only by collecting these magical artefacts would he be able to open a doorway back to his own world.

  Just as Luke and his friends finally succeeded in their quest, Mr and Mrs Watson realized how happy Luke had become in his new home and decided to stay on in Scream Street. But the newly opened doorway was becoming a problem – Sir Otto Sneer, the street’s wicked landlord, was charging “normals” from Luke’s world to visit what he called “the world’s greatest freak show”.

  To protect Scream Street, Luke, Resus and Cleo must try to close the doorway by returning the relics to their original owners – beginning with the fang of an ancient vampire…

  Chapter One

  The Coffin

  Three ghostly black figures scurried silently across Scream Street’s central square as the moon glimmered behind a scattering of thin clouds. Inside a nearby house, a clock chimed midnight.

  Keeping to the shadows as much as possible, the figures crept past a thin, ginger-haired man sitting beside a doorway of shimmering light. The man clutched a cloth money bag tightly in his fist and struggled to fight off sleep. Once they were safely past him, the trio hurried down one of the eight streets that led off the main square.

  As they approached a large house halfway along the street, one of the figures removed a black glove. Then he slipped a long fingernail into the crack above a ground-floor window and slid his hand from left to right. The lock clicked and the window was raised.

  The figures climbed inside, and another of them pulled off a balaclava and gasped for air. “I can’t breathe in that thing!” hissed Cleo Farr.

  “How can you say that?” whispered Resus Negative, appearing from under his own balaclava and quickly pulling in his vampire’s cape before it got trapped in the closing window. “You’re a mummy. You’re wrapped from head to toe in bandages!”

  “Yes,” retorted Cleo, “but my bandages don’t cover my nose and mouth!”

  The third figure, Luke Watson, tore off his own head-covering. “Will you two keep quiet?” he snapped. “We need to do this without waking anyone, remember?”

  “I still don’t see why we can’t wait until morning and simply ask permission to go down to the Crudleys’ cellar,” admitted Resus. “They let us last time.”

  “We’ve been through this,” said Luke. “The fewer people who know what we’re planning to do, the better.” He pulled a long vampire’s fang from his pocket and held it up to the shaft of moonlight that streamed through the window.

  Resus sighed. “We really have to give it back?” The fang had belonged to one of his ancestors, Count Negatov, and was one of six relics the trio had collected in order to open a doorway out of Scream Street so Luke could take his parents back to their own world.

  Luke nodded. “Yep – and as soon as possible. Come on…” He led the way along the dark hallway towards the bog monsters’ living room.

  After the three friends had finally opened the magical doorway out of Scream Street, Luke’s parents had decided to stay in their new home – much to the delight of their son and his friends.

  The doorway, however, had remained open and Scream Street’s landlord – Sir Otto Sneer – had begun charging people from Luke’s world to visit “the world’s greatest freak show”. These normals were gradually making life unbearable for the community’s unusual residents, and Luke and his friends had tried desperately to discover how to close the doorway once and for all. Now they thought they might have worked it out – they just needed to return all the relics to their respective founding fathers, thus reversing the magic. Or so they hoped.

  “Do you really think that if Mr and Mrs Crudley found out, they’d tell Sir Otto we were giving back the relics?” asked Cleo as they entered the dimly lit living room.

  “I’d like to think not,” replied Luke, “but we can’t be sure. And Sneer won’t be happy once he discovers we’re trying to close the doorway, so the longer—”

  Snorble!

  All three children froze. It sounded like someone blowing bubbles in a vat of lumpy custard.

  “What,” said Cleo, “was that?”

  “There!” whispered Luke. Resus and Cleo followed his pointing finger. Lying back in a vast, plush armchair was the massive, gooey bulk of Mr Crudley – one of Scream Street’s bog monsters. A book entitled Great Expectorations lay open on his slime-coated stomach.

  Snorble!

  “He’s asleep!” said Cleo, relieved. “At least, I think that’s snoring…”

  “Let’s just get to the cellar,” hissed Luke, beginning to creep as silently as he could across the thick carpet. The Crudleys were incredibly house-proud, and a large amount of designer furniture littered the over-decorated room. “We just have to be careful that we don’t— OW!” Luke yelled as he cracked his shin on a marble coffee table.

  “Wha’? Wassat?” gurgled Mr Crudley, jolting awake. Luke, Resus and Cleo hurled themselves behind the chair just as two eyes appeared near the top of the hideous mound of gloop. Mr Crudley yawned widely, picked up his book and began to read.

  “What do we do now?” mouthed Resus. Luke shrugged.

  Cleo gestured for her friends to be silent, then in a soft, gentle voice she began to sing: “Hush, Mr Crudley, don’t say a word, Daddy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird…”

  “What are you doing?” whispered Resus. “He’ll hear you, and—”

  He stopped as Mr Crudley yawned again and allowed his eyes to droop.

  “He’s dropping off,” Luke whispered back. “Keep going!”

  “And if that mockingbird don’t sing, Daddy’s gonna buy you a diamond ring,” Cleo continued, her voice low and soothing. The bog monster grunted and began to breathe more deeply.

  Resus signalled that he wanted to take over. “And if that diamond ring won’t do, Daddy’s gonna buy you … a pile of poo!”

  Snorb— “Wha’?” Mr Crudley sat bolt upright and Resus clamped his hand over his mouth to try to stifle his giggles. Luke shot him a look, then waved to Cleo to take over again.

  “And if that, er … pile of poo smells gross, Daddy’s gonna buy you a billy goat.” Mr Crudley settled back in his chair and closed his eyes again. “And if that billy goat’s too tough—”

  “Daddy’s gonna let off a rasping guff,” interjected Resus.

  “Quiet!” hissed Cleo, a little too loudly. Mr Crudley turned in his chair, the book sinking into the folds of his stomach, and gurgled. The children held their breath, until… Snorble!

  The trio crept out from their hiding place and Luke punched Resus in the arm. “You idiot,” he scolded. “You could have got us all caught!”

  “Funny, though, wasn’t it?” grinned Resus.

  Luke crossed the room and opened the door to the Crudleys’ cellar. In their basement was a manhole that led directly to the sewers – and the resting place of Count Negatov.

  When the door was safely closed behind them, Resus pulled a flaming torch from his cloak and illuminated the way down the steep, wooden stairs. The trio quickly located the manhole and, with a little effort, slid the cover to one side.

  “Who’s going first?” asked Cleo.

  “I reckon it should be Resus for near
ly waking Mr Crudley,” said Luke, nudging the vampire with his elbow.

  “All right,” groaned Resus, handing Luke the torch. “I’ll be the brave one!” He found the rungs of a ladder with his feet and climbed down into the darkness of the tunnel below.

  Cleo followed, and then Luke. “We need to head further into the sewers, don’t we?” he asked.

  “Yep,” said Resus, taking the torch again. “That way…”

  The trio walked deeper and deeper into the damp sewers until eventually they came to a large underground cavern, its walls coated with glowing green gutweed.

  As they no longer needed its light, Resus pushed the torch back into his cloak. “Last time we were down here, there were thousands of goblins waiting for us.”

  Cleo shuddered at the memory. “I can’t hear them now,” she said.

  “No one’s seen a goblin in Scream Street for weeks,” Luke assured her. “Mr Skipstone reckons they’ve found a new home in another G.H.O.U.L. community.”

  “Well I’m glad we won’t have to fight our way to the coffin this time,” said Resus, heading over to a stone casket that stood in the centre of the cavern. “Hey, wait a minute. The lid’s not on properly!”

  “Then it won’t be as hard to open as it was last time,” smiled Luke. “Come on.”

  The trio pressed their hands against the lid and pushed, sliding it off the stone coffin. They waved dust from the air as it crashed to the ground.

  “Count Negatov,” declared Luke, taking the fang from his pocket a second time. “You honoured me with your gift as founding father, but now I must return it to you for—”

  “Keep going, my dear – hic!” announced a voice. “Your words are very – hic – soothing!”

  Luke stared down at where he had expected to see the ancient vampire. Instead, grinning up at him from the coffin, was a zombie.

  Chapter Two

  The Meeting

  Luke yawned as he set off for school the next morning: it had been a long night.

  After finding Berry, one of Scream Street’s three resident zombies, lying in the coffin instead of Count Negatov, the trio had set about escorting her home. From her slurred explanation, they gathered she had been playing hide-and-seek with her undead friends. In her intoxicated state, however, the creature had insisted on dancing with each of the children in turn before they left the sewers. By the time Luke’s head hit the pillow, his trainers were coated in mud and he had almost mastered the foxtrot.

  Resus and Cleo were now waiting for him in the central square, which was already filled with tourists. The normals were exploring the gardens, shooting footage of the oddly shaped houses and trying to persuade the residents to have their pictures taken alongside them.

  Sitting by the shimmering, rainbow-coloured doorway to Luke’s world was Scream Street’s landlord, Sir Otto Sneer. He glared at the trio as they passed, then returned to stuffing fistfuls of cash into his pockets as more normals streamed through the arch.

  “Come in and see the freaks!” he bellowed, sucking hard on a noxious cigar. “Horrible, stinking vampires, mummies and werewolves – right here!”

  “He’s the horrible one,” grumbled Cleo under her breath. “Scream Street is our home and we should be able to come and go without people gawping at us.”

  Luke sighed as he remembered the day the normals had arrived. At first the residents had tried to hide their unusual qualities with disguises and make-up and had made sure that their more bizarre-looking neighbours stayed indoors. The deception had looked like it might work – until Luke’s mum had unexpectedly transformed into a werewolf, confirming for the visitors once and for all the true nature of the street’s inhabitants. Now everyone simply tried to ignore the tourists and get on with their lives as best they could, although it was proving increasingly difficult.

  “I hate this!” snapped Resus. “How would Sneer like it if he had normals trampling all over his—”

  The vampire stopped mid-sentence as he was suddenly jerked backwards.

  “Give us a go with your cloak!”

  Resus spun round to find a teenage boy pulling hard on his cape. The boy’s friend swigged from a can of Coke and laughed at his mate’s antics.

  “Let go,” Resus warned.

  The teenager stepped up to him and glared. “Or what?” he growled. “You gonna bite my neck and drink my blood?”

  “For your information,” Cleo announced haughtily, “vampires in Scream Street don’t bite people. Their kitchens have three taps and—”

  “Cleo!” hissed Resus. “This isn’t exactly the time…”

  The teenager wrapped the end of the cape around his wrist and pulled harder. “What’s the matter, fang-face?” he snorted. “Need your girlfriend to stick up for you?”

  “She is not my girlfriend,” declared Resus.

  “I’m not surprised!” exclaimed the second boy, draining the last of his drink and tossing the can over a nearby hedge. “Who’d go out with someone as ugly as that? She looks like she’s been in an accident!”

  “Let go of the cape and walk away now!” Luke commanded angrily.

  The two boys shared a glance, then burst out laughing. “How about you make us, shorty?”

  Luke was beginning to feel the first stage of his werewolf transformation coming on. “Keep talking and I might just do that,” he warned.

  Cleo grabbed his arm. “Luke, don’t!” she hissed. “You could really hurt them.”

  “Him?” laughed the boy still clutching Resus’s cape. “The only thing he could possibly hurt is my knuckles!” He clenched his other fist and pulled his arm back.

  Luke felt his bones begin to crack and reshape, but his transformation wasn’t happening quickly enough. The teenager was likely to break his jaw before his fur had even begun to sprout.

  The boy grinned and swung his fist towards Luke – only to have it stopped in mid-air by a larger hand. A larger, green-skinned hand covered in scabs and weeping sores…

  “Dudes!” cried a voice. “This isn’t in the spirit of peace and harmony!”

  The teenager spun round to find himself face to face with Doug, another of Scream Street’s zombies. Insects crawled through the creature’s greasy, matted hair and stinking pus oozed from cracks in his rotting skin.

  “You kids should learn to play nice,” smiled Doug, revealing a family of cockroaches scuttling around his few remaining teeth.

  The teenager screamed and finally released his grip on Resus’s cape. Then he ran away across the square, his friend struggling to keep up.

  “Hey, where are those two dudes going?” asked Doug, producing the empty Coke can. “I was going to ask if they had any more of this stuff. The roaches dig it, man!” He stuck out his diseased tongue and allowed the last few drops of fizzy drink to splash onto it. The cockroaches clicked happily and began to drink.

  “Thanks for your help, Doug,” said Luke as the anger began to ebb away. His werewolf transformation had only got as far as a few reshaped bones, and they were already returning to normal.

  “No problemo, little dude,” beamed Doug. “You guys were there for Berry last night when she fell asleep in that coffin.” He rubbed his forehead, peeling away a large flap of skin as he did so. “Man, that fermented spinal fluid really went to my head. I totally forgot to go look for her and Turf! It’s good to know you cats were on the case.”

  “Our pleasure,” said Resus. “Although we weren’t actually looking for Berry. We were hoping to find…” Luke threw his friend a warning look. “…someone else,” the vampire quickly finished. “But we can’t say who,” he added.

  The zombie tapped the side of his nose. “It’s OK, dudes – I’m up to speed on the secrecy deal. In fact, the head honcho himself sent me out here to track you down. He wants to rap with you in private.”

  “Who is it?” asked Luke. “Who wants to talk to us?”

  A figure stepped out of the shadows at the edge of the square. “I do.”

  “I
hear you’ve worked out how to close the doorway to the normals’ world,” said Zeal Chillchase, unlocking the door to one of the few empty houses in Scream Street and quickly ushering the trio inside.

  “Who told you that?” asked Luke, amazed. “I haven’t discussed it with anyone, except…” He turned to Resus and Cleo. “I told you not to talk about it!”

  “Don’t look at us,” snapped Cleo. “We haven’t said a word!”

  “I am the most successful Tracker G.H.O.U.L. has ever employed,” interjected Chillchase. “There is very little I don’t know. Now, tell me what you plan to do.”

  Luke flopped down onto a dusty sofa. He’d wanted to keep his idea between himself and his friends, but he should have known that Zeal Chillchase would find out about it. The Tracker’s job was to locate unusual life-forms and arrange for them to be re-housed by the Government Housing of Unusual Life-forms; he was the one who’d found Luke and relocated him and his family to Scream Street. Zeal was bound to discover sooner or later what Luke had in mind.

  “We have to give the relics we collected back to the founding fathers,” said Luke.

  “And you think this will cause the doorway to close?” asked Chillchase. “What evidence do you have that it will work?”

  “None,” admitted Luke. “It’s just a hunch, really.”

  “A hunch?”

  Luke went red. “I know it sounds crazy,” he said defensively. “I just have a feeling that giving back the fang might cause the doorway to close – or at least begin to disappear. Maybe one of the colours will vanish or something?”

  “But there are six colours in the doorway,” the Tracker reminded him.

  “And six relics to give back!” grinned Cleo. “Once we’ve returned all of them, the idea is that the doorway will close permanently.”

  Zeal mulled over the idea for a moment. “OK,” he said eventually. “I agree – you should return the relics and see what happens.”

  “We tried to make a start last night,” said Resus. “It just didn’t work out.”