The Extremely Weird Thing that Happened in Huggabie Falls Read online

  But the bat was only momentarily stunned. To Tobias’s horror it shrieked again, decided it wasn’t going to get Kipp now, and streaked towards Tobias instead.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Kipp.

  ‘Oh, não,’ said Ralph.

  ‘Bum,’ said Tobias.

  Cymphany didn’t say anything. She hid her eyes behind her hooves.

  Tobias squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the sharp bat talons and fangs to pierce his skin.

  But nothing happened.

  Tobias opened his eyes a peek, and to his surprise he saw the bat on the ground, fast asleep. It must have dropped mid-flight, just millimetres before it reached Tobias’s face.

  ‘It worked,’ Kipp screamed.

  Tobias smiled. ‘Thank you, Mr Dungolly.’

  No one else knew why Tobias was thanking Mr Dungolly, and they had no time to ask, because no sooner had the first bat fallen than twenty more ravenous bats had squeezed through the gap in the cupboard door, and now these bats were streaking towards Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany.

  Strangely enough, Kipp and Tobias had been preparing for this moment all their lives, without even knowing it. They had both spent countless hours playing the video game Super Outlaw Gunmen at the Huggabie Falls Tenpin Bowling Alley. In this Wild West video game you used blue plastic guns to fire at hundreds of electronic outlaws on a video screen. The electronic outlaws charged towards you, getting faster and faster, and on the harder levels they ducked and weaved and tried to avoid your shots, and if you let too many reach the front of the screen the game was over.

  Both Kipp and Tobias had spent so much money and time playing Super Outlaw Gunmen that they had managed to get right up to, and defeat, the final outlaw, Big Bad MacGruff, and his posse more than fifty times.

  Ironically, Kipp’s mother had often said that Kipp and Tobias were wasting their time playing that ‘silly game’ and should be spending their time doing something useful, like homework. But little did Kipp’s mother know that the skills required to shoot electronic outlaws with plastic guns were remarkably similar to the skills required to shoot killer vampire bats with back-mounted, pump-action poison sprayers full of Spiritus Magnasomnigus. Skills which could now save their lives. If they had spent less time playing Super Outlaw Gunmen, like Kipp’s mother wanted, and more time doing homework, then they would surely have been dead meat.

  So next time your parents accuse you of spending too much time playing video games, you can refer them to this book and politely point out that there might be a time when you too are attacked by killer vampire bats, and the skills you learnt playing video games, which require you to shoot outlaws or fight an evil black knight or control a friendly, well-animated dragon, might just save your life.

  Anyway, back to the story.

  Feeling as though he was back in the video arcade, Tobias quickly blasted off three more pumps of his pump-action sprayer—pump, pump, pump—and felled three more bats—thud, thud, thud.

  A quick commando roll under the other seventeen bats flying at him and—pump, pump, pump, pump. Thud, thud, thud, thud. Four more bats fell.

  By now, Kipp had also got a pump-action sprayer full of Spiritus Magnasomnigus onto his back.

  ‘I think there are more bats here than we’ve ever had outlaws in Super Outlaw Gunmen,’ said Kipp, above the shrieking. ‘But I think we’ve had enough practice at that game to make it out of this cupboard alive.’

  Tobias grinned. ‘Ready for stage two?’

  Kipp nodded, and with five quick pumps of his sprayer he dropped five more bats.

  Tobias raised his eyebrows. ‘Not bad.’

  Kipp shrugged cheekily. ‘A bit rusty, but I’ll get the hang of it.’

  And so it continued: Kipp and Tobias pumped shots of Spiritus Magnasomnigus until the ground was littered with unconscious bat bodies. Cymphany stood between them, waving her hooves and trying to pull off some karate moves to ward off any bats that might be thinking of attacking her. But if you’ve ever seen a baby hippopotamus try to do karate, you’ll understand why a baby hippopotamus has never become karate world champion, or even made into the top 7000.

  Soon, with a combination of rolls, jumps, cartwheels and dives, and absolutely no help from Cymphany’s hippo-karate, Kipp and Tobias fought their way out of the cupboard and down the hall. They were dropping about fifty bats a minute each, and those hundreds of dollars spent on Super Outlaw Gunmen were definitely proving a wise investment.

  Cymphany’s karate wasn’t warding off the bats as much as she had hoped. When they swooped at her, she tried to scamper between the legs of Kipp or Tobias, and she roared when bats nipped at her tail.

  As Kipp and Tobias felled more and more bats, some of the smarter killer bats, who didn’t want to take an impromptu nap, began to flee.

  ‘I think we’re frightening them away,’ Kipp cheered.

  ‘Stage three,’ said Tobias, pointing. ‘The stairs.’

  Kipp and Tobias ran down the corridor, trying not to trip over Cymphany as she clomped through their legs, dispatching bats with ease—pump, thud, pump, thud—until they reached the building’s central stairwell, which led up to the third, fourth and fifth floors and down to the first and ground floors.

  The whole building was suspiciously quiet. The only sounds were the squeaking of Kipp and Tobias’s sneakers on the polished floors and the clomping of Cymphany’s baby hippopotamus hooves.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ said Tobias as he wheeled his pump-action nozzle around. ‘Surely those bats haven’t given up this easily.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Kipp. ‘We have to get out of here. Who knows what else Mrs Turgan will send in when she discovers we’ve found a way to defeat her killer vampire bats.’

  So the two children and the one baby hippopotamus made their way down the stairs, Kipp leading, Tobias at the back, and Cymphany in the middle, where it was nice and safe for an unarmed hippopotamus.

  ‘Now that those bats are gone, I could really do with a lemonade,’ Tobias said. ‘We usually have a lemonade when we’re playing Super Outlaw Gunmen.’

  ‘Yeah, I’d love a lemonade too, said Kipp, smacking his lips together. ‘I’m parched.’

  They didn’t notice that a certain baby hippopotamus at their feet was gawking at them incredulously, as if to say, oh, I’m soooooo sorry. You guys are a little thirsty. Boo hoo. Poor you. It could be worse. You could be a BABY HIPPOPOTAMUS!

  They got past the first floor and were almost to the ground when there was a fluttering of wings from directly above.

  Kipp looked up and gasped. The air was black with the flapping wings of a swarm of at least fifty killer vampire bats.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Kipp. ‘Ambush.’

  ‘That’s not good,’ screamed Tobias.

  ‘Urrrrggggaaa,’ said Cymphany.

  Chaos errupted. Bats swooped down like a hailstorm—shrieking, flapping and clawing. A bat lashed across Kipp’s face, knocking him over and sending his pump-action sprayer sprawling. Tobias dodged an attack, rolled onto his back and started firing wildly. He hit a few bats with Spiritus Magnasomnigus, but the rest swamped his sprayer, trying to yank it out of his hands.

  It’s interesting to note, at this point, that if you are ever stuck in a building with thousands of killer vampire bats hunting you that a stairwell is the perfect place for a swarm of bats to launch a surprise attack. Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany could be forgiven for not knowing this, as this was their first experience of a bat ambush. But if you’re ever in this same situation, consider that a much safer option than stairs is a lift, as bats don’t have fingers, so they can’t push the button to open the door, and also bats never use lifts, as they absolutely despise elevator music.

  Whoops, sorry. We are in the middle of quite an action-packed scene here, and I’m rambling on about lifts. My apologies. Where was I?

  Oh, that’s right.

  Cymphany ducked swooping bats and tried to hide her head in her hooves. She roared as a bat sa
nk its fangs into her tail.

  ‘Hurh, hurh,’ she said frantically, which meant something like, help, help, a bat has got me by the tail.

  When Cymphany felt herself slowly hovering off the ground she thought, that’s weird, I weigh too much for this to be happening. Surely a small bat can’t lift a baby hippo?

  Cymphany wheeled her hippo head around and what she saw made her hippo eyes open wide. It wasn’t one bat lifting her, it was twenty. They’d grouped themselves together into a black, flapping mass, and were all lifting at once.

  ‘Huygh, huygh,’ Cymphany wailed, which, translated from hippo, meant, help, help, twenty bats are carrying me away by the tail. Hippos weren’t meant to fly or we’d have been given wings. Help me, help me!

  Tobias, who was in the middle of a tug-o-war with a swarm of bats over his pump-action sprayer, was the first to notice Cymphany was in trouble. He let the bats have his sprayer and he lunged, hurdling three steps and leaping with outstretched fingers. He just managed to catch Cymphany’s front hooves.

  Now that the twenty bats had to carry both a baby hippo and an almost-teenage boy, they started to struggle with the load.

  ‘Hold on, Cymphany,’ Tobias said. ‘The bats can’t carry both of us.’

  ‘Hurrug,’ Cymphany said, which was hippo for, great work Tobias. I’ll be very happy to get my feet—I mean hooves—back on the ground.’

  A group of nearby bats must have seen what was happening, because they stopped attacking Kipp and joined the bats trying to fly off with Cymphany and Tobias.

  Just when Tobias, who was still hanging from Cymphany’s front hooves, almost got his feet on the ground he noticed they were rising again. He looked up and saw that there were now more than forty bats clumping together to grip Cymphany’s tail and they were lifting the two of them higher and higher.

  ‘Man,’ said Tobias. ‘These killer vampire bats sure are smart.’

  ‘Hurrug,’ said Cymphany, which meant something like, now is not the time to be praising the bats’ IQ, Tobias.

  Meanwhile, Kipp, who had been retrieving his back-mounted, pump-action sprayer only to find out it had run out of Spiritus Magnasomnigus, scrambled over to try to help his friends. He was breathless and covered in bat scratches, but that didn’t stop him from seeing the group of forty killer bats carrying Tobias and Cymphany up the middle of the big stairwell. He raced up the flights of stairs trying to catch up with them. They were up to the third level already, way too high for either Tobias or Cymphany to jump down without hurting themselves. Kipp could see what the bats’ plan was: to lift Tobias and Cymphany up really high, drop them and—Kipp gulped—splat.

  Kipp had one chance to save his friends. He quickly thought of a plan. It was a very dangerous plan, but it was the only plan he had.

  The group of killer bats carried Cymphany and Tobias higher and higher, all the way up to the fifth level of the big stairwell. As they were going up, Tobias remembered there was a large window at the top of the stairwell, which he really hoped wasn’t open.

  As a wise person once said to me, hope can a very dangerous thing. True, he was trying to sell me life insurance at the time, but, still, he makes a good point. Tobias’s desperate hope that the window wasn’t open, made it even more crushingly devastating for him when he saw the window was open—and not just open a little bit but open so wide a hot air balloon could fit through it.

  The bats carried Tobias and Cymphany, who were becoming more and more terrified by the second, out of the window, and before he knew it Tobias saw Huggabie Falls Primary School shrinking away beneath his dangling feet. Soon he could see the whole town of Huggabie Falls.

  The only thing between Tobias and a very big fall—one that he probably wouldn’t survive—were his hands clutching Cymphany’s hooves, and the only thing keeping Cymphany up was the forty or so bats gripping her tail and flapping their wings madly.

  Tobias tried to think of a way to escape this dangerous situation, but even if he still had his pump-action sprayer he couldn’t use it on the bats now. The last thing he wanted was to put them to sleep—they were the only things preventing him and Cymphany falling from this alarming height.

  Considering their current predicament, Tobias sort of wished they were back in the cupboard and he’d never remembered anything about Spiritus Magnasomnigus.

  He looked up at Cymphany, who, as I might have already mentioned, was afraid of heights, and he saw she had her baby-hippo eyes clenched tightly shut.

  ‘Don’t worry, Cym, we’ll be okay,’ Tobias said, sure that he was lying.

  ‘Hurg,’ Cymphany squealed, which meant, I strongly suspect you are lying, Treachery.

  Tobias was actually surprised at how brave he was being. He just hoped that Kipp was thinking of a way to save them right now, even though he was pretty sure that if Kipp was the one up here and it was him, Tobias, down there, he wouldn’t have the first idea what to do.

  A long way below him, Tobias could just make out an ant-sized Mrs Turgan, wearing a teeny ant-sized witch’s hat, standing on the lawn in front of a matchbox-sized science building.

  Even from this height, Tobias could hear Mrs Turgan screeching, ‘Drop them, drop them.’

  Unfortunately, the bats could hear her too, and Tobias and Cymphany found themselves experiencing the very unsettling sensation of falling towards the earth as fast as gravity could propel them.

  The bats had let go.

  So much for that ignorant bat keeper’s claims that bats would never intentionally harm a human being. I hope he’s reading this, and I hope he’s feeling pretty darn silly right now, and taking note that not only will bats intentionally harm a human being, but they will also intentionally harm a baby hippopotamus. Although, even if he is, I bet Tobias and Cymphany are feeling worse.

  Tobias saw the black swarm of bats getting smaller against the blue sky. He spun around and he saw the ground getting closer—much faster than he would have liked.

  Oh dear, Tobias thought, we’ve been dropped.

  Cymphany kept her hippo eyes tightly clenched shut. She knew they were falling, she knew they were high, and she didn’t want to make things worse by seeing any of it.

  Far below, Mrs Turgan rubbed her hands together with glee, as she watched the boy and the baby hippopotamus plummet. She wasn’t sure where the other brat child was, but she knew he wouldn’t be able to help his friends now, not unless he could get his hands on a ridiculously large trampoline.

  And if you have any idea where Kipp might get his hands on such a thing, in the next ten seconds, then I really wish you would speak up right now, because things are getting pretty hairy for Tobias and Cymphany.

  ‘I’m quite looking forward to my breakfast of child and hippopotamus pancake tomorrow,’ Mrs Turgan cackled.

  The child and the hippopotamus continued to plummet, getting closer and closer to the ground—spinning, flailing, helpless—and Mrs Turgan waited for that wonderful sound: a satisfying thud, signalling the child and the hippopotamus were history.

  The thud came, but, strangely, it came from behind Mrs Turgan. She wheeled around, confused. She frowned. A minute ago, one of her key possessions had been lying on the ground. Now it was gone, replaced by an abandoned back-mounted, pump-action poison sprayer. But before she could wonder where it had come from an unexpected scream caught her attention.

  ‘Good catch,’ Tobias screamed.

  ‘Thanks,’ Kipp grinned, the wind rushing through his hair.

  Tobias held on to Kipp with one arm and with his other arm he held on tight to Cymphany, because with her hooves she wasn’t able to hold on tight herself. And they all needed to hold on very tight because they were travelling at a colossal speed, about one metre off the ground.

  ‘I thought we were done for,’ said Tobias.

  ‘Hurh,’ said Cymphany, which meant, thank you for saving us Kipp, but I think I’ll just keep my eyes tightly closed if you don’t mind, at least until I have got my hooves back on the grou
nd.

  ‘Our troubles aren’t over yet,’ said Kipp. ‘I don’t really know how to fly this thing.’

  This thing Kipp didn’t really know how to fly was Mrs Turgan’s broomstick. He’d managed to manoeuvre it to catch Tobias and Cymphany, which was the important bit, and he’d quickly figured out the basic controls: you twisted the broom the way you wanted it to go and kicked its bristles to make it go faster. But now the broom was refusing directional twists, and it was bucking like a wild stallion, as if it had just realised it wasn’t being flown by its master. But the worst part was that Kipp still hadn’t worked the most important control.

  ‘We’re going very fast,’ Tobias commented as a tree whistled past within millimetres of his face. ‘I’m almost afraid to ask—’

  ‘No,’ Kipp screamed in panic. ‘The answer is no. I’ve got no idea how to stop this thing.’

  Now, if you are ever caught on a runaway broomstick, and you’re not able to brake, and you only have the choice of crashing into a shed full of farm animals or a shed full of fluffy pillows, then I would recommend the shed full of fluffy pillows every time. Unfortunately, Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany didn’t have the option of a shed full of fluffy pillows, as they only had the shed full of farm animals in front of them.

  This shed happened to be in the grounds of the Huggabie Falls Primary School, and was used for agriculture activities. Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany crashed through the wooden wall of the shed, cannoned through a yard containing some chickens, smashed through a pen, alarmed some pigs who were halfway through lunch, scared a goat so much it fainted and, finally, ended up face-first in the water trough of some rather startled horses.

  But, thankfully, they had stopped, and, even more importantly, they were still alive.

  Mrs Turgan’s broomstick picked itself up, brushed itself off, spat bristles and flew off in a huff.

  Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany pulled themselves out of the trough, gasping for breath and spluttering water, just as you would expect two children and a baby hippo who had come to an abrupt stop face-first into a horse trough would.