Contents
* * *
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
The Gang!
Frontispiece
How to Read This Book
Midnight Chimes
Dad’s Smelly Surprise
The Boy with Cheese and Onion Hair
The Haunted Collection
Ghost Fever
The Mysterious Window
The Bell and the Bipper Sloots
Mrs. Twelvetrees Has a Brilliant Idea
The Door in the Ceiling
The Dark Auditorium
The THING in Motley’s Office
Nosy Rosie Gets a Helping Hand
The Little Shortie Chapter
The Last DONG!
Motley’s Magic Bucket Trick
Coming Soon
Middle Grade Mania!
About the Author
About the Illustrator
Clarion Books
3 Park Avenue
New York, New York 10016
Copyright © 2014 by Kjartan Poskitt
Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Wes Hargis
Text originally published in the United Kingdom by Egmont UK Ltd.
All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.
Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
www.hmhco.com
Cover design by Lisa Vega
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-0-544-50672-5
eISBN 978-0-544-50675-6
v1.0616
This book is dedicated to Tony, who’s my hero, because without him this story would have had a really rotten ending. xxx
How to Read This Book
Hiya!
Have you ever been woken up by a ghost? I have!
Actually, it wasn’t the ghost that woke me up; it was the bell in our school clock, but this story does have a ghost in it, so be prepared to be scared—WOOO!—fear, fear, tremble!
If you want to see where the bell is, look at the pages in the front of this book. You’ll see a picture of Odd Street School, which is at the end of the street where I live with my friends. Our street is called Odd Street because the houses just have odd numbers like 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 . . . and so on. If there were any houses on the other side of the street, then they would be the even numbers, but there aren’t any.
My name is Agatha Jane Parrot and I live in house number 5, which has a red front door if you want to color it in.
Our school has an old clock tower, and the bell lives inside it, along with some smelly pigeons. The bell is supposed to go DONG! at one o’clock and DONG! DONG! at two o’clock and DONG! DONG! DONG! at three o’clock and so on. But one DARK and STORMY night, things got very strange, so get ready for some spooky goings-on!
Here are some tips on how to read a ghost book:
1) Make sure you’re sitting with your back to the wall. That way, nobody can creep up behind you and make you jump, which is what my evil brother, James, always tries to do. He’s just SO predictable.
2) Don’t read this book in the dark, because that would be REALLY scary! Er . . . no, it wouldn’t, because if it was dark, you wouldn’t be able to read it. Forget this one.
3) Make sure you’ve got a tennis racket handy, so if a person in a white sheet comes past going Wooo (i.e., James again), you can give them a good WHACK! The best thing about this is that if it turns out to be a real ghost, the tennis racket will go right through it and slice it into ghost fries—ha ha! Actually, I’m not sure if that would work, but it has to be worth a try.
All right, good luck! Off we go . . .
Midnight Chimes
It was a DARK AND STORMY NIGHT on Odd Street.
Woo woo woo went the wind. Whoosh whoosh whoosh went the rain on the windows.
Up in the tiny back bedroom of house number 5, a very charming and lovely girl* with crazy hair and awesome freckles was trying to get to sleep.
*(That’s me, if you hadn’t guessed.)
Actually, I wasn’t trying very hard to get to sleep, because I LOVE stormy nights, but I could hardly hear any of it because of all the other noises in our house.
To start with, I had my little sister, Tilly, sleeping on the bottom bunk underneath me, going Snore snore snore. As well as that, Dad was sitting downstairs watching the TV—blah-dee blah blah—the washing machine was going rum-shloppa rum-shloppa, and Mom was on the phone to her friend Alice going Yabber yabber yabber oh, really? Yabber yabber I told you so yabber yabber HA HA HA serves him right! Yabber yabber.
I still managed to get to sleep, because the only noise that ever kept me awake was when James used to practice with his soccer ball against his bedroom wall. BUDDUNK BUDDUNK BUDDUNK CRASH! Luckily Mom told him that if he ever did it again, she’d burn his soccer shoes and make him take piano lessons, so that was the end of that, THANK GOODNESS.
So a little wind and rain was never going to keep me awake for long. Off I went to sleepy-peeps, but then what DID wake me up was when it got all quiet. The wind and rain had stopped, Mom and Dad had gone to bed, and Tilly had rolled over and stopped making noises. All of a sudden I was wide awake again, staring at the ceiling. Everything was deadly silent, and that’s when I find it really spooky! You know the feeling: all you can do is lie there listening for tiny sounds, like a skeleton tapping on the window or a snake hissing under the bed. EEEEK!
I was just getting to sleep again when suddenly . . .
DONG!
It was the bell in the school clock.
DONG!
It was the bell again.
DONG!
That’s the trouble with clocks. You can’t help . . .
DONG!
. . . but count how many times the . . .
DONG!
. . . bell chimes. And another thing . . .
DONG!
. . . our old bell doesn’t always chime at the same speed. Just when you think it’s finished, it chimes again . . .
. . . but sometimes it doesn’t. So anyway, I had counted six DONGs, which meant it was probably six o’—
DONG! DONG!
. . . eight o’clock . . .
DONG!
. . . and this book would get very boring if we wrote all the DONGs out, but altogether I counted twenty-seven of them. If every DONG counted for one hour going past, then by my calculations, the clock had DONGed right around until it was three o’clock the next afternoon. That meant it was time to go home from school and I’d missed the spelling test we were going to have. WAHOO!
Good old clock. No wonder I went straight back to sleep with a smile on my face. (Although I couldn’t see the smile, of course, because I was asleep.) (And it was dark.) (And it was my own face and I didn’t have a mirror, so I couldn’t have seen it anyway.) (This is getting silly—ha ha!) (Sausage pie.) (Just thought I’d put that in for no reason!) (I bet the printers take it out.) (The meanies.)
Dad’s Smelly Surprise
The next morning I was woken by the soft rays of golden sunlight shining in through the window, the gentle twittering of birds, the smell of bacon, and a giant plasma TV on the wall showing my favorite cartoons.
That would have been nice, wouldn’t it? Actually that’s a little dream I was having. What really happened was Mom shouting from the kitchen: “AGATHA COME ON GET UP YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE YOU SHOULD BE
GETTING YOUR SHOES ON AND YOU HAVEN’T EVEN EATEN BREAKFAST AND WHAT ABOUT THOSE SPELLING WORDS YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE LEARNED COME ON AGATHA NOW AGATHA COME ON!”
Ho-hum. So much for the smell of giant birds and the twittering bacon or whatever it was that I’d been dreaming about.
When I got to the kitchen, everybody was sitting around the table. Tilly and James were already eating toast, and Mom was eating some sort of healthy nutty yogurt gunk. I plonked myself into a chair and then saw Dad grinning at me.
“What’s up with you?” he asked. “You look awful.”
“The school bell kept ringing last night,” I said. “Didn’t you hear it?”
“No, but never mind,” said Dad. “This’ll get you going!”
He went to the cabinet and pulled out a big box. It was dark blue with a picture of a bright green fish on it. Mom gave it a funny look.
“What’s that?” I asked her.
“I have no idea,” she said. “I sent him out to get some breakfast cereal yesterday, and this is what he brought back.”
“Looks good, doesn’t it?” said Dad proudly.
“NO!” we all said.
“But it was on special sale at Spendless,” said Dad.
URGH! That explained it.
Spendless is the shop where my friend Martha’s mom works, and it’s full of weird stuff you’ve never heard of. Mom’s always telling Dad not to buy their special sale items, but he never listens.
“Are you sure it’s cereal?” I asked him.
“Of course,” Dad said, passing the box over to me. “It’s called Fishpopz! The new healthy way to start your day.”
I opened it up and sniffed inside. Sure enough, it smelled fishy, but with a bit of wet dog in there too.
“Help yourself,” said Dad, getting the bowls out. “Fish is very good for you.”
“I can smell it from here,” said Mom, wrinkling her nose. “What else did you get?”
“You DID get something else, didn’t you, Dad?” we said.
“Er . . .” said Dad sheepishly.
“He’s only teasing,” said Mom. “I saw him coming in with lots of bags. Look in the cabinet, Agatha.”
So I looked. OH, NO! There were more dark blue boxes.
“Like I said,” explained Dad, “it was on special sale. Buy one, get four free. Come on, let’s try it!”
Dad poured some Fishpopz into a bowl. They were little gray fishy shapes, and when he poured the milk in, the milk turned a little gray too.
“Would you rather have toast, Agatha?” asked Mom.
“Yes, please,” I said. “But go ahead, Dad, eat your breakfast!”
Dad stared at the gray fish floating around inside his bowl while we had LOVELY toast—ha ha!
Eventually he stuck a spoon in and took a mouthful.
We were all staring at him chewing, so he put a big smile on his face. “You should try some,” he said. “Really, it’s nice!”
He stuck his spoon into the bowl again, but he was still chewing, so he wasn’t ready for the next load yet.
“Let’s see you swallow it, Dad,” said James.
“Mmm . . . mm,” said Dad, who was still chewing, and chewing, and making faces, and chewing. Suddenly he got up and left the kitchen.
“What’s silly Daddy doing?” demanded Tilly.
“I’m just getting something,” said Dad from the hallway with his mouth still full.
“Liar!” said James, jumping to his feet. “He’s going to spit it out in the bathroom.”
We all charged out and caught Dad sneaking upstairs.
“You don’t all need to come along too,” said Dad, still chewing.
“Oh, yes, we do!” we shouted.
HA HA HA!
Sure enough, Dad ended up with his head over the toilet, and it served him RIGHT.
“We’ll have to throw the rest away,” said James.
“That’s a waste of money,” moaned Mom.
“Maybe we could put it out for the birds?” I suggested.
“We could NOT,” said Mom. “I don’t want them dropping dead all over the yard.”
“So what can we do with it?” asked Tilly.
It was a very good question.
Hmmmm.
The Boy with Cheese and Onion Hair
The next important thing happened in school at lunchtime.
At this point, my lovely reader, allow me to introduce my friends and their lunches with points out of ten for interestingness.
1) Ivy Malting = cheese sandwich and plain chips (1/10). A boring lunch, but Ivy isn’t boring at all—it’s just that she can’t have anything with bright colors on it. One sniff of pink icing and she starts jumping on the tables. WAHOO! GO, IVY! We love Ivy.
2) Bianca Bayuss = nutty brown bread thing with olives (9/10). If you think her lunch is weird, that’s nothing. Her mom and dad light candles and read gloomy poetry to each other AND . . . they don’t have a TV! No wonder Bianca spends all her evenings playing her trombone like this: BWARB WAB BARP.
3) Ellie Slippin = some grapes and two cookies (4/10). Ellie can’t eat sandwiches because she feels sorry for the bread that gets sliced up by a big machine full of horrible knives. In Ellie’s magic world, bread would have little legs and eyes and be allowed to play outside. I have to say, I agree with her. Good one, Ellie.
4) Martha Swan = lots and lots of sandwiches (6/10). Martha is big and hearty, and she DOES like her sandwiches! They help her fill the time between meals.
We have lunch in the school cafeteria, but when we arrived, there were only three chairs left for the five of us. I had to share with Ivy, Bianca shared with Ellie, and Martha got a chair to herself. Martha can’t really share a chair because (how can I put this politely?) if we were all grapes, then she’d be a melon.
It turned out that I wasn’t the only one who had heard the school bell ringing the night before.
“I counted twenty-seven rings,” I said.
“I counted twenty-eight,” said Ellie.
“Did you count them, Bianca?” I asked.
“No,” said Bianca, shaking her head. “It went on loo tong.”
“Loo tong?” we said.
“I know what she means,” said Ellie. “It went on TOO LONG!”
Ha ha! We love Bianca. We don’t always understand her, but we do always love her.
“Bianca’s right,” said Martha. “I counted sixteen, but then I got bored.”
“I counted thirty,” said Ivy. “So I win!”
“No, you don’t,” we all said. “It’s not a competition.”
“Let’s try to stay awake tonight and count the rings,” I said. “I hope it does it again.”
“Oh, no!” said Ellie, shaking. “I hope it doesn’t! The bell ringing gave me a bad dream.”
“A bad dream?” I asked. “Why was it bad?”
“Because it was a ghost ringing the bell, and the ghost was making all the hours and days and years fly past at once, and when we woke up, we had all turned into little old ladies.”
HA HA HA . . . oh!
We were all laughing, but then Miss Barking came by, and suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore.
She’s the vice principal. She’s got glasses like TV screens, and she wears hairy clothes, and she thinks everything in the world is unsafe. None of us wanted to turn into HER.
Miss B. stared at us all squashed onto our three chairs. Then she pulled some leaflets out of the big fat folder she always carries.
“That is not how we sit on chairs,” she said crossly, and plonked the leaflets down in front of us. The leaflets said HOW TO SIT ON A CHAIR in great big letters, and underneath them was an emergency phone number in case you fell off.
“School chairs should have seat belts,” she said. “I keep asking for them, but does anyone ever listen?”
Honestly! Whoever heard of seat belts on chairs? We all looked at one another, thinking the same thing. We definitely didn’t want to turn into Miss Barking.
When she left, I quickly changed the subject to something a little happier. “Has anyone heard of Fishpopz?” I said.
“I have,” said Martha. “They’re in Mom’s shop. They’re so horrible, they had to put them on special sale. What kind of fool would buy a breakfast cereal that tastes of fish?”
I must have made a face, because they all looked at me, then burst out laughing.
“Your dad did, didn’t he!” said Martha. “So did you try them?”
“I did not!” I said. “But Dad did. Then he had to go and spit them out in the toilet.”
Just then Motley, the school custodian, came past. He had a black trash bag and was putting all the old cookie wrappers and drink cartons in it. He picked up a piece of squashed sandwich and stared at it.
“Waste of good food,” he muttered to himself. “It’s still got a bit of ham in there. Honestly, kids today!”
He dropped it in his bag, then moved on. But suddenly there was a deafening BLAPP!
On the other side of the cafeteria, Danny Frost was looking very cross. He’d been eating a bag of potato chips when his brother, Jake, had come up behind him. Jake had blown up an empty chip bag and then smashed it right by Danny’s ear. Danny had jumped out of his skin and spilled his chips all over himself. HA HA! Actually, you shouldn’t laugh at boys—it only encourages them.
Danny came stomping over to Motley, dropping chips everywhere. He threw his bag in Motley’s bigger trash bag, but he didn’t realize he still had a big chip stuck in his hair! We all got the giggles.
“What are you laughing at?” asked Danny.
“Nothing,” we said.
That’s when Motley reached over and pulled the chip out of Danny’s hair.
“Is that the new fashion?” asked Ivy. “Cheese and onion hair?”
“Yum!” said Martha, and we all laughed.
Agatha Parrot and the Odd Street School Ghost Page 1