The Extremely Weird Thing that Happened in Huggabie Falls Page 4

  ‘Kipp Kindle, Tobias Treachery and Cymphany Chan,’ she said, as if to say, the three children soon to be known as toilet seat number one, toilet seat number two and toilet seat number three. ‘Aren’t you three supposed to be in school?’

  ‘We’re out on an excursion,’ Cymphany squeaked.

  ‘Funny,’ said Mrs Turgan, and she put her finger to her chin in a pensive fashion. ‘I was not aware of any excursions scheduled for today.’ She said this with a sneer, as if to say, you’ll have to do better than that you three little soon-to-be toilet seats.

  ‘We’re investigating the extremely weird thing that’s happened,’ said Cymphany, deciding that perhaps it would be best if they were honest.

  A venomous smirk unfurled across Mrs Turgan’s warty face. ‘You should have stuck with your first story, Ms Chan. It was much more believable.’

  She removed her wand from the pocket of her flowing black robes. The children were petrified at the sight of this magical instrument and considering the fact they were already petrified at the sight of Mrs Turgan, they now found themselves doubly petrified.

  ‘I am going to enjoy this,’ said Mrs Turgan. ‘But you children most certainly will not. I haven’t had the chance to punish any naughty children today. I was going to transform that irritating Bentley Booger boy into a slug of some description, but my wand got jammed.’

  Mrs Turgan eyed her wand up and down with one wide, curious eye. ‘It seems fine now. I’ll test it, shall I?’

  With that, Mrs Turgan raised her wand above her head, swished it downwards and screeched, ‘Incantium Hippurum.’

  A blinding streak of purple flame erupted from the end of Mrs Turgan’s wand and engulfed poor, shrieking Cymphany.

  As people often do when confronted by searing flashes of magic purple flame, Kipp and Tobias shielded their faces. A second later they lowered their arms to see Mrs Turgan looking quite pleased with herself. And, in the space between them where Cymphany had stood only moments before, the purple smoke cleared to reveal a baby hippopotamus—a baby hippopotamus wearing Cymphany’s glasses and satchel—with a rather surprised look on its plump little face.

  ‘What have you done?’ Kipp screamed at Mrs Turgan. ‘You’ve turned Cymphany into’—he hesitated, as it was quite an unexpected development —‘a baby hippopotamus!’

  Mrs Turgan laughed. ‘I certainly have, and it was exactly what she deserved, firstly, for skipping school and, secondly, for trying to deceive me with ridiculous excuses.’

  She glared at Kipp, who looked furious. ‘I would think at this point you would be less worried about your friend’s hapless fate and more worried about your own. My wand can bring about many more punishments for wicked children.’

  Kipp looked at Tobias, in a what-are-we-going-to-do-now-we’re-so-done-for-it’s-not-funny? way.

  Tobias looked back at Kipp in an I-know-it’s-not-overly-helpful-right-now-but-I-told-you-we-shouldn’t-have-skipped-school way.

  Mrs Turgan began to raise her wand again. Tobias’s eyes were clenched shut, but Kipp’s eyes were darting.

  Meanwhile, Cymphany was sitting with a rather perplexed look on her podgy grey face, staring at the two hoof-like feet that used to be her hands.

  As Terrible Turgan’s wand came down, thoughts were racing through Kipp’s brain. He needed to think of something that would distract Mrs Turgan, something that would be more important to her than transforming vile children. The problem was that, as far as Kipp knew, transforming vile children was Mrs Turgan’s absolute favourite thing to do.

  Then, at the very last micro-second, Kipp thought of something.

  ‘Mrs Turgan,’ he said. ‘Is that your husband over there?’ He pointed. ‘Why isn’t he a toad anymore?’

  ‘My husband,’ screeched Mrs Turgan, as if to say, how did that despicable spouse of mine escape my toad transformation? She whipped her head around violently, following the line of Kipp’s outstretched finger.

  Mrs Turgan furiously surveyed the empty alley behind her. ‘Where is he? I don’t see that loathsome man anywhere.’

  Once she realised she had been duped, she turned back to see that this temporary distraction had given Kipp enough time to hoist his best friend, Cymphany, who was now a baby hippopotamus, onto his shoulders and start running for his life. She also saw that Kipp’s other best friend, Tobias, was following closely behind.

  Now, if you have ever tried to run from a witch while carrying a baby hippopotamus, as I myself have had to do on a number of occasions, you will appreciate how difficult it is. This is largely due to the fact that baby hippopotamuses, while being only babies, still weigh much the same as a full-grown anything else. Furthermore, a hippopotamus’s weight is not evenly distributed throughout its body—it is focused in its sizeable belly region.

  This sizeable belly region now sat atop Kipp’s shoulders, which had never had to support much more than a school bag, and were not too happy about now being asked to transport a heavy aquatic mammal.

  Tobias helped as best he could by holding some of Cymphany’s weight from behind, but their progress was still quite slow, or to be more accurate it was painfully slow, and far from the quick getaway they were hoping for.

  It didn’t help that Mrs Turgan had the distinct advantage of being able to fly, via her broomstick. Within seconds, she hovered above the children, cackling at their futile attempt to flee.

  Cymphany took matters into her own hooves. She leapt off Kipp’s shoulders and began to run by herself. But she was not accustomed to running on four legs, never mind four hooves, and she ended up tumbling and somersaulting every few steps, whacking her snout painfully into the ground every time she did so. So Kipp hoisted her onto his shoulders again.

  Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany made their way, inefficiently like this, out of Digmont Drive, where Dark’s Weirdness Investigation and Eradication Agency was. They took a left onto Digmont Drive, past the Huggabie Falls Public Library, and then took a right at Digmont Drive, near Ms Suddlehoney’s Wish Shop. At the end of this Digmont Drive they turned right again into Digmont Drive, past the Huggabie Falls Imaginary Creatures Zoo. And all the time, brilliant flashes of purple flame crashed into the ground around them like fireworks as Mrs Turgan blasted viciously from above.

  ‘You’ll never escape, you wicked school-skipping children,’ Mrs Turgan cackled, clearly enjoying the pursuit.

  ‘We need to get indoors,’ screamed Tobias as they ran. ‘We need cover. If we get hit by one of those transforming bolts we’re done for, and we’ll never out run Mrs Turgan while she’s on that broomstick.’

  ‘Especially not while we have to lug a baby hippopotamus,’ moaned Kipp.

  Cymphany frowned. She was not at all happy about the fact that she had been turned into a baby hippopotamus, and the thought that Mrs Turgan’s transformation spell might be permanent was starting to concern her a great deal.

  The only place the two children and one baby hippopotamus could seek refuge was, ironically, the place they should have been at to begin with: the Huggabie Falls Primary School. I wonder if there is some sort of message here about why children should not skip school, especially children who happen to have witches for teachers, but I wonder a lot of things, like, for instance, if Kipp, Cymphany and Tobias should have thought to turn left at Digmont Drive instead of right, because left was the way to the Huggabie Falls Sanctuary for People Fleeing from Witches and other Dangerous Flying Creatures.

  Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany would wonder this themselves later on, but for now they wondered something else. They wondered why, in the middle of a school day, Huggabie Falls Primary School—with its twenty-one classrooms, five corridors, one science lab, one canteen, one sweaty-sock-smelling gymnasium and one oval with asteroid-proof grass—was completely deserted. They wondered this, but not for too long, as wondering about things for too long is a luxury afforded only to those not being pursued by flying witches.

  So Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany darted into the first building
they came to, which was the science building. Here, they hid in the cupboard under the stairs on the second floor, crammed in with brooms, old half-full paint cans and various pieces of scientific apparatus, including test tubes and Bunsen burners.

  The cupboard was also home to Ralph, a laboratory rat, who, thanks to a bungled science experiment, could now speak Portuguese.

  ‘Bem, bem, bem, duas crianças e um hipopótamo, isso é muito estranho,’ exclaimed Ralph as Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany entered the cupboard.

  Now, I, as storyteller, do not speak Portuguese, nor am I in possession of a Portuguese-to-English dictionary, so I can’t even begin to guess what Ralph was saying. I gather it was something to do with a hippopotamus, as the word hippopotamus is obviously almost the same in Portuguese as it is in English, and maybe once I’ve finished writing this story I shall translate what Ralph said into English and include it in an additional section at the end of the book, but for now I really think I should get on with this climactic scene.

  ‘Quiet, Ralph,’ whispered Kipp. ‘We’re hiding from Mrs Turgan.’

  ‘Senhora Turgan,’ exclaimed Ralph. ‘Eu tenho medo dela, eu ficarei quieto.’

  Again, I have no idea what Ralph was saying, and neither did Kipp, Tobias nor Cymphany, but they all assumed the word quieto meant Ralph was going to be quiet, so that was good enough for them.

  Mrs Turgan did a few laps above the school, then set her broomstick down on top of grade-four teacher Mr Pottlebrush’s award-winning rosebushes.

  Once Mrs Turgan had made sure she’d completely trampled and flattened the rosebushes, she jumped off her broomstick and proceeded to patrol the lawns outside the science building like a lion stalking prey.

  ‘I do not fancy the notion,’ she shouted, ‘of having to spend large amounts of time exploring all the hiding spots in the science building, looking for three troublesome children.’

  A grin crept across her face. ‘But what a silly duffer I am. I’m a witch, so I’ve got at my disposal many other less time-consuming ways to explore buildings.’

  With that, Mrs Turgan scooped up a pile of small pebbles and tossed them high into the air. While the pebbles were still mid-flight she whipped out her wand, swished it and screamed, ‘Incantium Nocturum.’

  A bolt of purple flame shot out of Mrs Turgan’s wand and engulfed the airborne pebbles, only this time she did not transform them into baby hippopotamuses, but rather thousands of hungry vampire bats.

  Mrs Turgan screeched with joy. ‘A plethora of blood-sucking bats should do the trick. They’ll find those awful children soon enough,’ she cackled.

  On Mrs Turgan’s command, the bats, like a swarm of demonic bees, flew across the lawns and burst through the doors of the science building. They flew in and out of classrooms, up stairs and along corridors, swooping and diving into every nook, frantically searching for tasty children to feast on.

  None of the children or the baby hippopotamus, or the Portuguese-speaking rat, could see these bats from inside the cupboard, but they all soon heard the clawing and shrieking at the cupboard door. The children knew it wouldn’t be long before the flying rodents would claw their way in.

  ‘Oh no, they’ve found us,’ Tobias sobbed. ‘We’re done for.’

  Kipp glared at him. ‘Not helpful, Tobias.’

  ‘Morcegos, morcegos, morcegos, morcegos horríveis!’ hollered Ralph and he scampered away into a nearby rat hole.

  ‘If only we had a rat hole we could use to get away,’ said Tobias, above the growing roar of even more bats now thrashing against the door.

  Now you, as readers, might be very scared for Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany right now, as well you should be, for their lives are in mortal danger. I attended a nocturnal animals theme park with my parents when I was extremely young and naive, where a rather ignorant bat keeper, who claimed to be a bat expert, told me that bats were not dangerous creatures and that they would never intentionally harm human beings. I would very much like to see how long that dim-witted man would maintain his point of view if he were in that science building surrounded by thousands of Mrs Turgan’s killer vampire bats.

  Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany, unlike the misinformed bat keeper I once met, were under no illusion that the bats were harmless, and they knew they needed to find a way out of the second-floor science-building cupboard that didn’t involve going out past thousands of pairs of merciless, sharp fangs.

  Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any other way out of the cupboard, unless you were rat-sized.

  Tobias and Kipp looked at Cymphany, who stared back at them with her big baby-hippopotamus eyes. Maybe she would have been smart enough to come up with an escape plan, or maybe she had something in her satchel that could help them, but she wouldn’t have been able to tell Kipp or Tobias about it, as neither of them were able to speak hippopotamus.

  So all they could do was sit there and wait for the bats to scratch their way in.

  The human mind is, much like bendy spaghetti, an amazing thing. I have often read fascinating stories about people who, in times of great stress, recalled helpful information they never even realised they knew.

  Take Tobias Treachery, for example, who found himself in a very stressful situation, if you call being stuck inside a cupboard with thousands of killer vampire bats feverishly trying to get in a stressful situation, which most people would. In this highly stressful situation, Tobias recalled something he had once learnt from Mr Dungolly, a local scientist who was often invited to Huggabie Falls Primary School to give the children specialist science classes.

  This was a great surprise to Tobias, because after years of attending the dreary specialist science classes of tubby old visiting scientist, Mr Dungolly, Tobias was pretty sure he hadn’t learnt one single thing about science. He’d spent most classes daydreaming, sleeping, doodling drawings of penguins or passing secret notes to Cymphany and Kipp about which one of them could see the furthest up Mr Dungolly’s expansive nostrils.

  But as Tobias stared at some test tubes lying on the ground of the cupboard, he read a label: Spiritus Magnasomnigus. His mind raced back to a specialist science class from two years ago. He remembered Mr Dungolly standing in front of the class, reading from page 4017 of The Bumper Book of Sciencey Stuff, which he always lugged around with him: ‘Spiritus Magnasomnigus is an experimental chemical that scientists developed at the Huggabie Falls Centre for Extraordinary Chemicals and Substances.’

  Two-thirds of the class were asleep at this point, and the other third was busy doing their English homework, but Mr Dungolly forged on. ‘Derived from simple base elements, Spiritus Magnasomnigus’s uses are varied, however its primary purpose is as a powerful sedative. Contact with the epidermal layer—in other words, the skin—of experimental subjects has been known to render these subjects unconscious for up to twenty-four hours.’

  Then Mr Dungolly had frowned at the dozing students. He was quite aware that he was considered to be the most boring expert to ever teach a specialist class at the school, even more boring that Ms Skeditt, the visiting watching-paint-dry expert. ‘Although,’ Mr Dungolly said, bitterly, ‘I don’t know why anyone bothers using Spiritus Magnasomnigus. Their experimental subjects could just attend my class. I’m sure it would be cheaper.’

  It’s amazing what the human mind can remember when it has to, and as Tobias stared at the test tubes he was amazed to remember Mr Dungolly’s exact words about Spiritus Magnasomnigus.

  Tobias knew that if any creature touched Spiritus Magnasomnigus, it would instantly fall asleep. Tobias’s eyes continued to search the cupboard until his gaze fell on something equally useful. In the corner of the cupboard, leaning against the wall, were some back-mounted, pump-action poison sprayers. Tobias had seen the school gardener using these to kill weeds in the flowerbeds alongside the oval.

  And then Tobias devised a plan.

  ‘Quick,’ he said, and he lunged for the test tubes and pulled out the stoppers on four of them, while Kipp and Cymphan
y looked on, confused. Tobias began to tip the fluid from the test tubes into the top of one of the back-mounted, pump-action poison sprayers. ‘When the bats get in here, we need to spray them with this chemical,’ Tobias explained. ‘But whatever you do, don’t let the chemicals touch your skin, or you’ll fall asleep instantly.’

  Kipp wanted to ask Tobias how he could possibly know that, because every time Mr Dungolly had talked about science, Tobias had been either asleep, doodling or passing notes to Cymphany. But this didn’t seem like an appropriate time for asking questions—the bats were already clawing hundreds of tiny pinholes in the cupboard doors. So Kipp started helping Tobias pour the chemical into the sprayers. He trusted that his friend had a plan. Also, Kipp hadn’t come up with a plan at all, other than just waiting and hoping that the bats would get bored after a while and go away.

  As Cymphany was a baby hippopotamus, with hooves for hands and feet, she couldn’t really help. ‘Guurg,’ she said, which in hippopotamus language probably meant something like, whatever you are going to do, do it quickly because those killer bats are almost in here.

  The holes in the doors were rapidly getting ripped wider and wider, and now hungry-vampire-bat noses were poking through. They sniffed their prey and their clawing got even more frantic. Their shrieking became so loud Tobias’s ears started to ring.

  ‘Guurg, guurg, guurg,’ Cymphany screamed.

  A bat finally squeezed its way into the cupboard and shot directly at Kipp, just as Tobias hoisted the first pump-action sprayer full of Spiritus Magnasomnigus onto his back.

  Tobias jerked the nozzle of the sprayer up and pumped a shot of Spiritus Magnasomnigus straight into the bat’s face.

  The bat was momentarily stunned.

  ‘Good shot,’ yelled Kipp.

  ‘Eu concordo, que tiro preciso,’ yelled Ralph, watching from the safety of his rat hole.

  ‘Burrg,’ yelled Cymphany.