Krankenstein's Crazy House of Horror

by Jeremy Strong

  Dracolio grabbed Charlie’s wrist. ‘You like-a ice cream?’ demanded the vampire. Charlie didn’t know what to say. What would happen if he said ‘yes’? What would happen if he said ‘no’?

  ‘Sometimes,’ he ventured.

  ‘Of course! Everyone like-a ice cream, Italian ice cream. I make-a you ice cream. You know my favourite flavour? I tell-a you. Boy flavour, with extra chocolato! I make-a YOU into ice cream! Ha ha!’

  Dracolio let go of Charlie’s wrist and burst out laughing. Charlie gave a weak smile and joined in.

  ‘Ha ha ha,’ he said. He felt his blood sloshing into his feet again, along with the contents of his stomach, but Ben was there and pulled him away.

  ‘They’re amazing, aren’t they?’ he grinned.

  ‘Aren’t you ever scared?’ Charlie couldn’t help asking.

  Ben looked at his friend seriously. ‘Charlie, we are in Crumblebag’s class five days a week and we have survived. This lot don’t scare me, no way.’

  Somehow Charlie didn’t feel the least bit comforted. And things were about to get far more uncomfortable.

  The double doors to The Grubbery suddenly burst open and in came Headless Harry and his Headless Dog. They were, strange to say, instantly recognizable by the fact that neither of them had a head. Well, they did have heads, it’s just that their heads were not where you expected heads to be.

  Harry was holding his noddle by the hair, swinging it from his right hand. As for Harry’s dog, the poor creature’s bonce lay in a small basket that hung round the dog’s neck. Now the pair of them were standing by the door, glaring at everyone. Headless Harry held his head up high, like a lantern, so that he could see better, even though he had an eyepatch over one eye. (And so did his dog.)

  Obviously there was no point in them eating at the table with the others. Anything they ate would just fall out of the bottom of their heads and make a mess on the floor. So Double H and his HD spent all their time wandering the endless, dark corridors of the House of Horrors, mostly in the hope of being horrible to someone before someone could be horrible to them.

  Most of all, Headless Harry liked to announce the arrival of The Stitcher by scurrying just ahead of her, because The Stitcher always – ALWAYS – meant TROUBLE for someone. And Headless Harry liked that. It would have made him laugh his head off if his head had actually been on.

  Now a rasping voice and a strange squeaking could be heard coming down the passageway towards The Grubbery, getting nearer and nearer. ‘Where are they?’ A low growl came from the corridor beyond the door.

  ‘What is it?’ Charlie hissed urgently at Ben.

  ‘Wait and see what happens,’ Ben answered. ‘Stay calm and tell your knees to shut up. I can hear them knocking from here.’

  ‘Hmmm. Where are they? I want to see them,’ muttered The Stitcher, and she entered the room, rattling in, perched upon her wheelchair like an ancient grey and crusty cowpat.

  ‘Where are they? Hmmm?’ she demanded once more, staring round at the monster-filled room. Her bad eyesight wasn’t much use to her here and she turned to her faithful bodyguard. ‘Can you see them, Harry? One of them’s in pyjamas.’

  Harry lifted his head even higher and caught sight of Charlie and Ben, shifting nervously at the back of the room. He brought his head down and whispered into The Stitcher’s ear.

  She smiled and nodded. The tea-trolley whizzed forward, lurched round the end of the table and zoomed up to Charlie and Ben. Headless Harry was close behind and soon they were joined by Grumpfart, the walking stinkbomb.

  ‘Well, my dears,’ crooned The Stitcher. ‘Welcome to my humble home. Hmmm. I do hope you are being looked after.’

  HICCC! ‘’Scuse me,’ apologized Grumpfart.

  ‘This place is horrible,’ Ben declared stoutly, holding his nose. ‘There are children here working like slaves in your kitchen.’

  SSSPPLLURRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGH!! KRRRRK!

  ‘Oh dear,’ sighed The Stitcher. ‘How very awful. I must do something about it. What can I do to help? Let me think. I know. I could kill them. That would put them out of their misery!’

  ‘You’re a monster!’ Charlie blurted, holding his nose too.

  PIFF-PIFF-PIFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFPPP!!! ‘Oops, sowwy, that was a big one, mistwess. Must have been the soup. Goes through me something wotten, it does. Ooh, here we go again.’ FFFARRRRRRPPPPP!!!!

  ‘Oh my,’ sneered The Stitcher. ‘You are a feisty creature, and still in your pyjamas, what a little baby. Cootchy-cootchy-coo! I think baby needs something to play with, don’t you, Harry? And we have a lovely new toy, don’t we?’

  Both Harry and his canine companion growled their agreement, and Harry flashed a nasty grin at the two boys. ‘Krankenstein!’ he hissed.

  ‘Oh, wonderful, mistwess!’ cried Grumpfart. URRKKK! ‘Kwankenstein can play with them!’

  ‘See?’ said The Stitcher. ‘We all think it’s a wonderful idea.’

  Charlie and Ben had no idea who or what Krankenstein was, but they were both pretty sure that it was something bad, quite probably Very Bad indeed. The other monsters had risen from their dining table and gathered behind The Stitcher. They all stared straight at the two boys. Suddenly the whole room had become very menacing, not to mention smelly.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Charlie whispered.

  ‘I think we’d better scarper, pretty quick,’ Ben muttered through gritted teeth.

  ‘I can’t. My legs won’t move. They’ve turned to jelly,’ panicked his friend.

  ‘Listen, Charlie, if we don’t get out of here right now we shall either be minced by monsters or we’ll be fatally poisoned by Farting Flossie over there.’

  SSSSSSSSPOPP!

  The Stitcher rolled her chair towards the boys. ‘Come on, my little playthings. Krankenstein is waiting! Hmmm.’

  ‘Krankenstein can wait forever!’ shouted Ben. ‘We’re off! Byeee!’

  He made a brief dash for freedom, realized that Charlie was still rooted to the spot with fear, and whizzed straight back for his friend. The Stitcher was already beginning to claw at Charlie with her crabby hands. Ben yelled at him.

  ‘Come on, Charlie!’ Pulling Charlie with him, Ben raced to the hole in the wall and dived into the grub tub. Charlie practically fell on top and a moment later the two were plunging back down towards the kitchen, with the rope whizzing uselessly through the pulley as the basket went into freefall.

  The Stitcher’s screams echoed throughout the House of Horrors, calling every monster in the building to her aid, and her words came hissing down the shaft behind them like an avalanche of spears.

  ‘AFTER THEM! DON’T LET THEM ESCAPE! THERE’S A BAR OF CHOCOLATE FOR THE MONSTER WHO BRINGS ME THOSE CHILDREN! BRING THEM TO ME DEAD OR ALIVE! I MUST HAVE THOSE CHILDREN!!’

  7 Rescued?

  The grub tub went whizzing down the shaft. Charlie was sure they were about to be smashed to smithereens. Even Ben was worried.

  SPLAPPPPPPPPP!

  The tub hit the bottom of the shaft with an almighty bang and burst its sides. The two boys were winded but otherwise unhurt. Charlie thought it was a miracle. Ben, on the other hand, understood immediately what had saved them. When he had thrown himself into the basket, he’d landed on what was left of the food, which was mostly vegetables and fruit.

  The food pile had acted as an ultra-squashy safety-bag when they hit the stone fireplace. Ben, with the extra weight of Charlie on top of him, had been pressed very firmly into a squodgy pile of nosh.

  All Charlie had to do was climb off Ben and out of the fireplace. Ben was left to try and unstick himself from all the bits of tomato, bananas, lettuces, strawberries, mashed potato and so on that were firmly stuck to his clothes, along with the tomato soup from his previous landing.

  Charlie shook his head. ‘You always manage to get yourself into a mess, don’t you?’

  Ben ignored him. There were more important things to do. ‘The monsters will be here any second,’ he wa
rned. ‘We’d better hide somewhere.’

  BLARR-DE-BLAAAARRRRR! It was Pimples and his wretched trumpet on top of the stepladder. ‘You two! Get a move on! Washing up to be done!’ TA-TARAAAAH!!

  The doors burst open and monsters poured into the kitchen. Pans of food went flying up in the air as the monsters waded through the scurrying children, who ran squeaking and squawking in every direction like frightened chickens, trying to escape the fury of the monsters. The stepladder was knocked off its feet and toppled over, spilling Pimples into the seething bedlam, just as he was mid trumpet blast.

  Pah-Pa-RAAaaauuuurgle – sqwwwk!

  The monsters quickly spied Ben and Charlie. They roared and bellowed, kicking children out from beneath their feet as they closed in on their prey.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Charlie desperately.

  ‘Stay calm,’ muttered Ben through clenched teeth.

  ‘STAY CALM?’ yelled Charlie. ‘We’re about to get pizzarized!’

  ‘Get ready to run, and follow me,’ Ben answered.

  ‘Follow you where?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Ben. ‘I’m making it up as we go along.’

  Charlie didn’t find this very reassuring, but before he could say any more Ben had seized his wrist and was pulling him in his wake.

  ‘Run!’

  There may have been several monsters in their path but the two boys had a big advantage. They were small. They could dodge about so fast that half the monsters were soon overcome with dizziness and either smashed into each other or simply crashed to the ground.

  Also, it has to be said that Running was not the monsters’ best subject. It’s very difficult to run if your legs face in different directions, or they’ve been put on back to front. It’s even more difficult to run if your legs have a habit of falling right off, which is what happened to Weatherman. He went spinning off to one side until he collided with the wall.

  ‘Oh – dear, I – feel – a cold front moving across the country, bringing low temperatures and rain.’ Weatherman banged his head several times, and then began a hunt for his missing limb.

  Meanwhile the chase went on. Charlie and Ben were out through the door and hurtling down a passage. They were closely followed by what sounded like rhinos on the rampage. Charlie cast a frantic look back over his shoulder.

  ‘They’re gaining on us!’ he panted.

  ‘Run faster!’ cried Ben.

  ‘I can’t! I’ve got a stitch.’

  ‘They’ve got a lot more stitches than you,’ quipped Ben, leaving Charlie wondering how Ben could possibly make jokes at a time of such deadly peril. They whizzed round the far corner of the passageway only to come face to face with a wall.

  ‘Wrong turn!’ gasped Ben. ‘Back the other way. Quick!’

  ‘They’re even closer!’ cried Charlie. ‘We’re going to die, Ben. We’re going to be torn to bits by manic monsters. I don’t want to be torn to bits, Ben. I want to die in bed with a hot-water bottle and some choccy biscuits.’

  ‘Keep going, don’t give up!’ Ben yelled, but even he was having his doubts. He had no idea where they were going. They could be running straight into even more gruesome ghoulies for all he knew. They rounded another corner and almost sent Small-Tall flying.

  ‘In a spot of bother?’ she asked, quickly sizing up the situation. ‘Jump in here. I’ll sort them monsters out.’

  Small-Tall produced a set of keys and quickly unlocked a small door. It was a food store. ‘I’ll lock you in until they pass an’ I’ll tell you when it’s safe to come out.’

  ‘You’ve saved us!’ said Charlie, and he almost wanted to kiss Small-Tall, but the idea was still too disgusting to put into action so he kept his lips to himself. The boys piled inside the cupboard and Small-Tall locked the door behind them.

  A few moments later the gang of monsters came thundering up. Pizza-Face skidded to a halt and loomed over Small-Tall.

  ‘It’s the wrong kid!’ he bellowed. ‘There were two boys and now there’s one girly. What are you doing here, girly?’

  ‘Mindin’ my own business, that’s what,’ Small-Tall answered calmly, and Charlie decided she was very brave. He wished he could be brave too.

  The Headless Dog was sniffing curiously at the door and Headless Harry began to take an interest too. ‘Why are you standing beside that door?’ he demanded.

  ‘Cos it’s where I happened to be when you came chargin’ roun’ the corner like some horse race for elephants.’

  Inside the cupboard, Ben sniggered. Charlie clapped a hand over Ben’s mouth.

  ‘My dog thinks there’s someone in there,’ said Headless Harry, frowning.

  ‘Yeah? Well, that’s because your dog is stupid an’ can’t tell the difference between food, which is what is stored in there, an’ children, which ain’t what’s stored in there. An’ anyways, it’s locked. Try for yourself.’

  The door handle rattled as Dracolio tried to open it. ‘It’s-a no good. Come on, they must-a go that-a way.’

  Inside the cupboard the two boys listened to the sound of departing feet. They waited until the noise had completely died away before letting out their breath.

  ‘Phew!’ grinned Ben in the darkness. ‘That was a narrow escape.’ There was no answer from Charlie. ‘You haven’t fainted again, Charlie, have you?’ Ben asked.

  ‘No, but it’s very dark in here and I don’t like the dark.’

  ‘At least we’re safe,’ Ben pointed out. He put his face to the edge of the door and whispered, ‘Hey! Small-Tall? Can we come out yet?’

  There was no answer, so Ben whispered a bit louder. ‘Small-Tall? Are you there?’

  Silence. ‘Small-Tall! You can let us out now!’

  More silence. It was strange how silent silence could be sometimes, and how creepy. They both tried calling for their rescuer, but she had gone.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Search me.’

  Several minutes passed and still there was no sign of Small-Tall. ‘I guess she had to go off with the monsters,’ suggested Ben. ‘You know, to make it look like she was helping them search for us, or something.’

  ‘Yeah,’ murmured Charlie half-heartedly. ‘Or maybe they’ve simply eaten her.’

  Ben shook his head. ‘We would have heard her scream,’ he pointed out, although Charlie wished he hadn’t. ‘Tell you what,’ Ben continued, ‘I bet Charles Dickens never had to do stuff like this. I don’t imagine he got chased all over the place by farting zombies. At least, if he did, Crumblebag never said so in assembly.’

  At least that put a smile on Charlie’s face for a few seconds.

  Another ten minutes or so went by. They tried the door from the inside but they knew it wouldn’t be any use, and they were right. The only light was a faint glow from above. Ben wondered if it came from daylight.

  ‘Maybe it’s a way out,’ he said, reaching above his head to explore the area with his hands. He managed to knock down several tins and packets of food, including a large bag of flour. It burst over Charlie’s head, sending both boys into fits of coughing and spluttering. Ben looked at Charlie and grinned.

  ‘Oops,’ he murmured.

  ‘Idiot,’ muttered Charlie, brushing the flour from his clothes. ‘Mum’ll kill me when she sees this mess.’

  Ben chuckled. ‘Charlie, there are about a hundred monsters out there trying to kill us and here you are worrying about your mum!’ He gazed upward. ‘I can hardly see a thing. It feels like there’s an open space above and a shelf. See if you can get up there.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because it might be a bit of a squeeze and you’re thinner than me.’

  Charlie groaned. This was the sort of adventure that Big Brave Ben should be doing. He was the one who took the risks. Now Charlie would have to do it even though he didn’t want to, but he couldn’t think of any excuse except ‘I’m scared’, which sounded way too pathetic.

  ‘I’ll cup
my hands together and give you a leg-up,’ Ben offered, and a moment later Charlie was being heaved up into unknown territory. ‘What’s it like?’ Ben called after him.

  ‘Like you said, it’s a bit of a squeeze,’ Charlie answered. ‘I’m standing on a stone shelf and I think it goes up further.’

  ‘Can you get out anywhere?’ Ben asked eagerly.

  ‘Can’t tell. I’ll have to climb even higher.’

  Charlie scrambled upward and found another small ledge where he could crouch. He still couldn’t see any way out. He knelt there, panting a bit from the climb and wondering how they’d got themselves into such a mess. It was because of those wretched pyjamas his mum had given him. He wished he’d never set eyes on them.

  Charlie’s thoughts were disturbed by noises from down below. It sounded as if Small-Tall had returned at last. He could get back down. Hooray.

  Before he could move he heard the lock turn and the door was flung open. Looking down, Charlie could make out the top of Ben’s head. And then he saw another head. At least it was more of a skull, half covered with cobwebs and a few scrags of grey-white hair.

  The Stitcher gazed fondly at Ben. ‘What have we here? Would you like to come out, little boy? Hmm. Do come out. I have a little game to play with you. Do come out and play.’ The Stitcher rubbed her hands and spoke much more sharply. ‘Come on. Out! Out here! Both of you! You are mine now, my prisoners! Hmm!’

  8 I Spy, With My Little Eye, The Stitcher’s Spy

  Charlie froze. The Stitcher! His eyes were almost falling out of their sockets as he stared down at the old woman.

  The Stitcher grabbed Ben’s shoulder with a scrawny hand and dragged him into the passageway. She eyed him from top to toe with disgust.

  ‘What? Only one?’ She poked her bony head back inside and looked all around. ‘Where’s the other one? I thought you said there were two of them?’

  Charlie pressed himself back into the shadows, heart pounding. Inside his head he whispered to himself, Please don’t let her see me, don’t let her catch me! And he quickly added: And please don’t let me faint and fall at her feet.