The Extremely Weird Thing that Happened in Huggabie Falls Read online

  About the Book

  What’s the WEIRDEST thing you can imagine? Is that all? You call that weird?

  You should meet Kipp Kindle, Tobias Treachery and Cymphany Chan—they live in Huggabie Falls, the weirdest town on Earth, where you’ll find vegetarian piranhas, killer vampire bats, a Portuguese-speaking lab rat, a pirate who hates pirates, and jam, lots of jam.

  But that’s not all—things just got a whole lot weirder.

  Extremely weird is barely even weird enough to describe how much weirder.

  The Extremely Weird Thing that Happened in Huggabie Falls is the first book in the Huggabie Falls trilogy, the funniest, craziest, weirdest series ever written, so far.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  1 The Capital of New Zealand

  2 Definitely Not a Pirate

  3 The Business Card

  4 Digmont Drive

  5 Ralph the Rat

  5½ Spiritus Magnasomnigus

  6 Mrs Turgan Sobs

  7 Jam

  8 Two Little Sailboats and a School of Vegetarian Piranhas

  9 A Lesson in Genetics

  10 A Peach, an Italian Painter and Three Letters

  11 Three Minutes

  12 Another Chapter with Boats But This One Also Has Ropes and a Lot of Other Things

  13 A Couple of Strong Deckhands

  14 What Kipp Couldn’t See

  Ralph the Rat’s Portugese to English Translations

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  Copyright page

  For Emma and Thomas.

  Embrace uniqueness.

  Cherish nonsense.

  Stay wonderful.

  Kipp Kindle always knew his family wasn’t like other families. They were weird—in fact, they were probably the weirdest family on Earth. It was just as well they lived in the town of Huggabie Falls, because Huggabie Falls was the weirdest place on Earth.

  Take Mrs Turgan, for example, the teacher who was also a witch. Then there was the factory that existed in another dimension, the bottomless river, the topless hill, the train tunnel to nowhere, and the fact that every Sunday it got dark at four-thirty in the afternoon and every other day it got dark at eight—weird, weird, weird.

  On top of all the usual weird things that happened in Huggabie Falls, one day an extremely weird thing happened. It was by far the weirdest thing that had ever happened anywhere. It was so weird that someone should write a book about it. In fact, somebody has. You are reading it.

  Kipp Kindle didn’t read this book to find out about the extremely weird thing that happened in Huggabie Falls. He heard about it at school.

  His teacher, Mrs Turgan, was late again. She was supposed to be teaching mathematics that morning. Mathematics can be quite fun, but not if it’s being taught to you by an actual witch. Mrs Turgan wore a black pointy hat. She had a big hairy wart on the end of her crooked nose, and a bumper sticker on her broomstick that read: Honk if you want to get turned into a newt!

  Mrs Turgan’s classroom was more like a dungeon than a classroom. If you were a student in Mrs Turgan’s class, which unfortunately Kipp and his two best friends, Cymphany Chan and Tobias Treachery, were, then you were often too scared to lift the lid of your school desk. Inside you could find a thick book on geometry, but you were equally likely to encounter a deadly snake or a large, hungry tarantula.

  However, on the day the extremely weird thing happened in Huggabie Falls, there was one student who waited eagerly for the mathematics lesson to start, and who happily risked being attacked by a desk-dwelling tarantula if it meant getting his hands on a tantalising geometry book. And that student was Ug Ugg.

  Ug Ugg loved mathematics, which wasn’t that weird, except for the fact that Ug was an eleven-year-old troll, and trolls don’t usually like mathematics—trolls don’t usually like anything other than clubbing things. Ug didn’t even own a club, but he owned fourteen calculators, much to the shame of his entire troll family.

  Now, where was I? Oh, that’s right, Mrs Turgan was running late.

  Ug Ugg was sitting in front of Kipp and Tobias, who were sitting in front of Cymphany. He turned around and frowned.

  ‘I do hope Mrs Turgan isn’t away sick today. We’re supposed to be doing decimals. I could hardly sleep last night I was so excited.’

  Kipp stared at Ug for a moment. He wondered what sort of peculiar creature got excited about decimals. He raised his eyebrows at Tobias.

  If you saw Kipp Kindle and didn’t know he was from one of the weirdest families in all of Huggabie Falls, you would think he was just an ordinary school kid, with a cheeky, up-to-no-good grin on his face, sneakers that spent more time on desks and tables than on the ground, and hair that looked like a rolling wave surging off his forehead.

  ‘Let’s hope Mrs Turgan is away sick today,’ Kipp said. ‘Maybe we’ll get a nice friendly substitute teacher, who isn’t a master of the dark arts and who doesn’t have blood-sucking bats for pets.’

  Cymphany looked up from her book. ‘Terrible Turgan is here today,’ she said.

  Cymphany Chan always wore her hair in a tight ponytail, yet somehow strands of it always managed to break free and tangle themselves around her glasses. She permanently had an expression on her face like she was eager to correct people, which of course she always was. In preparation for correcting people, she had learnt every known fact in human history. If you wanted to know what the average wingspan of a Peruvian white-striped pelican was, then Cymphany was the person to ask.

  ‘I saw her,’ Cymphany continued, ‘up in the vulture’s nest before school.’

  Tobias gulped.

  The vulture’s nest was Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany’s nickname for Mrs Turgan’s office, because it was high up in the school’s old clock tower, where only Mrs Turgan, on her broom, could get to it.

  A wide smile spread across Ug’s face. ‘She’s here. Oh, good. That’s a relief.’

  ‘A relief?’ Tobias Treachery said. Tobias had black hair, black clothes and even his eye colour was black. But his face was pearl white, and that was probably because he was more scared of Mrs Turgan than anyone. ‘Ug, Mrs Turgan is a maniac,’ Tobias said. ‘No one would actually want her to come to class.’

  Now if Mrs Turgan had never shown up that day this would be the end of this story, after only a few pages, and no one is going to want a book they can finish reading in less than two minutes. So I am very relieved to inform you that Mrs Turgan was not sick, and that she did show up to teach Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany, and Ug, one second later.

  She came swooping in the doorway, her black cloak flowing behind her, and the terrified children scrambled back to their seats. She carried a big jar under her arm—a big jar containing a giant toad. And that giant toad looked rather dismayed.

  Mrs Turgan slammed the jar down on her desk. ‘This, children, is my husband,’ she announced. She said husband as if to say, the selfish man who has made my life a misery for the last twenty years. ‘Last night I cooked him his last roast dinner, and for the last time he said my cooking was ordinary. Now he is a toad, literally, which is funny, considering I’ve always thought of him as one anyway. Now, he no longer eats roast dinners—he eats only cockroaches and flies.’

  Mrs Turgan glared at the class with her beady, witchy eyes. ‘And any children who have not completed their homework will soon become those very cockroaches and flies.’

  To say the children rushed up to the front of the class to hand in their homework would be like saying it is only slightly warm in the middle of an erupting volcano. Man
y children were almost seriously injured in the frantic stampede to Mrs Turgan’s desk. And those who had not completed their homework—which was certainly not Ug or, as it happened, Kipp, Tobias or Cymphany—slipped out of the classroom via the back door as quickly as they could, hoping Mrs Turgan would not spot them and see to it that they ended up in her husband’s green belly.

  When everyone who hadn’t left sat back down, Mrs Turgan removed her black pointy witch’s hat and dropped it onto her desk. It landed next to a bubbling cauldron of marinated bats’ tongues, which smelled like old smelly socks that have been sprayed with old-smelly-sock odour enhancer. Mrs Turgan adjusted her robes and raised one bushy, disgusted eyebrow at the fidgeting children in front of her.

  After a long pause, Mrs Turgan said calmly, ‘Who knows something about the extremely weird thing that happened in Huggabie Falls?’

  Now, when a normal person in a normal town talks of something weird happening, it’s usually not all that weird and people say, ‘Oh, is that all?’ as if to say, weird things happen all the time, the world is full of weirdness, there is no need to get excited. But if a witch who is a teacher talks about something extremely weird happening then you know it must be something extremely, extremely weird.

  Kipp glanced at Tobias and Cymphany. They both looked back at him and shrugged their shoulders.

  ‘Kipp Kindle,’ snarled Mrs Turgan. ‘You always look suspicious, you obnoxious troublemaker, but you look particularly suspicious now.’

  Kipp jumped. His cheeky grin was gone and he was suddenly frozen with fear at the sight of the angry witch, who only last week had turned Benedict Bott into a pumpkin, and the poor boy had been sitting on the classroom windowsill rotting ever since.

  ‘Honestly, Mrs Turgan,’ Kipp said. ‘I don’t know anything about the extremely weird thing that has happened.’

  Mrs Turgan reached inside her robes, which is where, as everyone knew, she kept her wand. She had that look in her eye as if she was having the delicious thought of turning someone into a camel, when she noticed timid Henrietta Humpling’s raised hand.

  ‘What is it, Miss Humpling?’ Mrs Turgan sighed, in a way that indicated she was upset at having her malicious and wonderful thoughts of turning Kipp into a camel interrupted.

  Henrietta Humpling was eleven. She was one-third vampire, one-third werewolf and one-third Dutch. ‘Mrs Turgan, what is this extremely weird thing that has happened?’ she asked.

  An evil sneer spread across Terrible Turgan’s face. ‘You’ll find out soon enough, you unfortunate little girl. In fact, all you wretched children will soon find out what the extremely weird thing that has happened is. Now, I must continue with my broth. I can’t waste my time teaching mathematics at a time like this.’

  A large disappointed frown dropped across Ug’s face, but then Mrs Turgan added, ‘Ug will take the rest of the class.’

  Ug was overjoyed with this prospect, and with his size-eighteen feet and gargantuan grin he made his way clumsily to the front of the class.

  Ug pulled down the whiteboard, revealing a sentence that read:

  The capital of New Zealand is Wellington, not Auckland as most people think.

  Which was an unusual thing to find, as there was no geography lesson this morning. But so many things in Huggabie Falls were weird, so Ug wiped it off and proceeded to write on the whiteboard such advanced algebra that Albert Einstein would have had scratched his head in bewilderment.

  Ug’s algebra was so torturous, in fact, that the children were almost relieved when Mrs Turgan’s broth exploded and everyone had to evacuate the classroom as quickly as possible.

  If you ever want to find out about something that has happened in Huggabie Falls—say, if you were three inquisitive children who had just been told of an extremely weird occurrence by your teacher, who also happens to be a witch—then your first port of call should be the home of old Mr Harold Haurik, because no one knows more about the goings on in Huggabie Falls than gruff, unshaven Harold Haurik, with his wooden leg and his eye patch.

  You might be surprised to learn that Mr Haurik has no pirate ancestry, despite his pirate-like appearance. In fact, he will object strongly to any suggestion that he resembles those ‘murderous scavengers o’ th’ seas’, as he calls pirates. But, even though he wasn’t a pirate, Mr Haurik did possess treasure, not of the buried variety, but rather the treasure of knowledge.

  On the day that the extremely weird thing happened in Huggabie Falls, it was this treasure that Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany desperately needed. So, after they’d evacuated their classroom, they went to visit Mr Haurik, who lived in a caravan on the shore of the bottomless lake.

  Mr Haurik’s caravan had started out as a standard one, until he decided to increase the height of the interior ceiling to accommodate the parrot he had recently purchased to sit on his shoulder. Further minor renovations followed, and before long Mr Haurik’s tiny caravan had become a four-storey, eight-bedroom mansion, with a six-car garage, an undercover swimming pool and a rooftop tennis court, all of which could be towed behind an ordinary motor car.

  ‘Ahoy, me hearties,’ called Mr Haurik, who was sitting, fully clothed for some strange reason, in one of his caravan’s three hot-tub spas. ‘To what do I owe yer visit?’

  It would have looked quite weird to any passer-by—a man who looked like a pirate, with a parrot perched on his shoulder, sitting fully clothed in a spa out the front of a four-storey caravan, talking to three children wearing school uniforms that were covered in bits of marinated bats’ tongue from a recently exploded cauldron. Then again, any passer-by who lived in Huggabie Falls would think nothing of it—this was Huggabie Falls after all.

  ‘You shouldn’t put your wooden leg in the water, Mr Haurik,’ warned Cymphany, as she and Kipp and Tobias walked across the caravan’s gangplank. ‘The wood will rot, unless you’ve got some waterproof varnish on it or something.’

  Mr Haurik looked down at his submerged limb. ‘I can’t stand me wooden leg anyways. People keep mistakin’ me for one o’ those murderous scavengers o’ th’ seas!’

  ‘A pirate?’ said Cymphany. ‘I can’t imagine why people would mistake you for a pirate.’ She smiled, as if to say, perhaps it’s not just the leg but the eye patch, the parrot and the alarming amount of pirate talk you are always using.

  Mr Haurik moved his eye patch to his other eye. ‘Young Cymphany Chan, be that ye, lass? And bless me barnacles, if that isn’t scallywag Tobias Treachery. Ye have grown since I last saw ye. And Kipp Kindle, how be yer poor ol’ mum and dad?’

  Kipp looked uneasy when Mr Haurik mentioned his parents. ‘We’re here to find out about the extremely weird thing that has happened in Huggabie Falls, Mr Haurik. Can you tell us what it is?’ Kipp was often embarrassed by his family, because they were so weird, even by Huggabie Falls’ particularly weird standards.

  ‘No one at school could tell us, and Mrs Turgan won’t tell us,’ said Kipp, as if to say, nasty old witches like Mrs Turgan take great joy in keeping secrets from children they despise. ‘But everyone’s talking about what it could be.’

  With the mention of the extremely weird thing that had happened, Mr Haurik launched himself from the hot tub, sending bucket-loads of water into the air so they rained down over Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany. Now the three children were soaking wet with Mr Haurik’s grimy spa water and Mrs Turgan’s marinated bats’ tongues. All things considered, they would have preferred not to be soaked in either.

  ‘Ye mean ye don’t be knowin’ nothin’ about th’ extremely weird thing that’s happened?’ Mr Haurik hollered, shaking his fists in the air and making his dripping-wet jacket sleeves flap water everywhere. ‘This town and its wicked secrets.’

  ‘Secrets, secrets, wicked secrets,’ squawked Mr Haurik’s parrot.

  ‘I should get me cutlass and slay that barnacle-covered Turgan for not tellin’ ye kiddies th’ truth straightaway, especially ye, young Kindle, as it affects ye so.’

  ‘Affects me?�
�� Kipp blinked. ‘What is it, Mr Haurik?’ Kipp asked, as if to say, just tell us what’s going on, would you? We can’t handle the suspense any longer.

  Now Harold Haurik knew what the extremely weird thing that had happened was, and he would have told the children right then, if not for the loud ding of his oven timer sounding at that very moment.

  Mr Haurik’s ears pricked up, as did his parrot’s, if parrots even have ears, which I assume they must because they seem to hear things. ‘Arrr!’ Mr Haurik said. ‘That’ll be me muffins. I’ve got to make up me icin’ now and draw little skulls and crossbones on top o’ them. Then ye sprogs’ll be helping me eat th’ tasty morsels, I imagine.’

  Mr Haurik turned to go inside.

  ‘Mr Haurik?’ Kipp tugged at Mr Haurik’s jacket, as if to say, aren’t you forgetting something? ‘What about the extremely weird thing that has happened?’

  Mr Haurik turned back, blocking out the sun. His face was suddenly dark and eerie. He loomed over Kipp like someone, flyswatter in hand, might loom over a tiny fly.

  ‘Run home, Kipp Kindle. Ye may want to scamper in the other direction rather than face th’ great horror that awaits ye there, but ye must go. Ye and yer friends need to sort out this extremely weird thing that has happened. Huggabie Falls is dependin’ on ye. Could happen to me next. Could happen to all o’ us.’

  Then, as if someone switched a switch inside Mr Haurik from fearful back to cheerful, he returned to the topic of muffins. ‘Now me stomach be cryin’ out for a feast o’ banana and walnuts. Inside we go to me grand dinin’ room, me hearties.’

  But would you want to stick around and eat banana-and-walnut muffins cooked by a man who is not a pirate who has just told you about a great horror awaiting you at home that has something to do with an extremely weird thing that has happened? No, of course you wouldn’t. I was in exactly the same situation last week, except that the muffins were chocolate, not banana-and-walnut, and let me tell you I didn’t hang around to eat a single one. Neither did Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany. They were already halfway down the street before Mr Haurik had even finished his sentence about going inside.