1
See
Phredde and the Zombie Librarian.
Dad drove me to school and dropped me off at the gate.
‘You know, you don’t HAVE to stay in that house if you don’t want to,’ he said.
‘But I do want to! What could possibly go wrong?’
Dad looked at me as though wondering whether to give me a list of the 220 terrible things that could happen to a kid staying in an old mansion. But then he just leaned over, kissed my cheek and said,’Have a good day at school, Pru.’
‘Half day,’ I said happily. ‘It’s nearly lunch time.’
It was hard not to dance through the school gates, I felt so happy. A mansion of my own! No other kid at school had their own mansion! And whatever the mystery was, I’d be quite safe with Phredde and Bruce.
Phaeries can PING! up all kinds of things—like a magic carpet to escape from the cannibal pirates of Vort (I haven’t written anything about that one,
because if Mum finds out she’ll ground me for 50 years). If a phaery wants iced watermelon, a spaceship or a pet tyrannosaurus, all they have to do is PING!—as long as they haven’t used up their weekly magic allowance.
But sometimes, just sometimes…well, I suppose it’s a bit like having a friend who can run faster than you, jump higher and always beat you in every spelling test…I mean, just sometimes it would be nice to be able to PING! too.
Then I gave myself a shake. What was wrong with me? I wasn’t a phaery and there was no way I could be, and Phredde was the best friend in the world and so was Bruce, even if he was a frog. And even though we were different, we’d be friends for the whole of our lives.
I glanced at my watch. Only another half an hour till lunch time. And then I could tell them all about it!
…
‘You’ve got what?’ yelled Phredde, spraying her black-olive and tomato focaccia all over me.
‘A mansion, and a lake, and my own graveyard!’ I told her.
‘How cool is that?’ cried Phredde. Bruce nodded. His froggy eyes go all googly when he nods. I suppose that’s why real frogs don’t nod very often.
‘I wonder why the other girls wouldn’t stay in it,’ he said thoughtfully. His googly eyes lit up. ‘I know!’
‘What?’ I asked cautiously.
‘I bet an alien lives in the attic. It injects its young into human stomachs, just like in that movie, and then they hatch and eat the guts then burst out and—’
‘Bruce!’ I yelled. ‘Shut up!’
‘I was only trying to help,’ said Bruce, looking hurt. ‘And anyway, we could PING! an alien back to where it came from and—’
‘Shut up, Frog-face. I bet the place has got ghouls,’ said Phredde. ‘Those little critters can BITE.’
‘Nah,’ I said, swallowing a big piece of zucchini fritter with cucumber yoghurt. (Our butler, Gark,
2
makes them and they’re brilliant.) ‘It’ll be a ghost house. Deserted mansions are
always
ghost houses.’
Bruce snorted, sending bits of mosquito sandwich all over Phredde. ‘Ghosts! You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?’
I stared at him. ‘Of course I believe in ghosts. Don’t you?’
‘Nope,’ said Bruce. Phredde shook her head.
‘But you’re PHAERIES! And you believe in trolls, ogres, ghouls, vampires…’
‘Yeah, but those are real,’ said Bruce. ‘Ghosts are just make-believe.’
‘Huh,’ I said, unconvinced. ‘Well, anyway, all we have to do is spend two nights in it this weekend and it’s all mine. Well, ours,’ I added,’because of course I’ll share—’
‘Two nights?’ Phredde looked at Bruce in alarm. Then she looked back at me. ‘Two nights THIS weekend?’
I nodded.
‘That means if we go there Friday straight after school, we’d be finished Sunday morning?’ asked Bruce thoughtfully.
‘Sure,’ I said, puzzled.
‘That’ll be all right then,’ said Phredde. ‘Won’t it, Frog-face?’
Bruce nodded as Phredde took another bite of her foccacia.
‘What’s so special about Sunday?’ I demanded.
‘Oh, nothing,’ croaked Bruce airily. ‘Just that we’ve got a lot of homework so we’d still have time to do it.’
‘But Mrs Olsen hasn’t given us our homework yet,’ I protested.
Bruce and Phredde exchanged another glance. Then Phredde said carelessly, ‘Well, if it’s just TWO nights there’s no problem, is there?’
‘Then you’ll come?’
‘Of course,’ said Phredde, as though there hadn’t been any doubt at all. ‘Anyone want some iced watermelon?’
…
Phredde and I finished the watermelon, and Bruce zotted a few flies. His mum always packs him a nourishing lunch of mosquito sandwiches, but Bruce says flies are best fresh.
There’s one problem with watermelon though.
I stood up. ‘Back in a minute,’ I said. I didn’t ask if Phredde wanted to go to the toilet too. Phaeries do go to the toilet—I know because I asked Phredde. But they can sort of PING! it so that they’ve already been, if you know what I mean.
So I trudged over to the toilet next to the library by myself. The main toilet block is over by the science lab, but I like the library one, because there’s only one cubicle for girls and one for boys so you usually have it to yourself.
Not this time though. The cubicle door was shut. I waited till whoever it was had finished, trying not to listen. I did have a quick glance under the door to see what colour their underpants were—pink, and a
G-STRING. What girl at our school is allowed to wear a G-string?!
And then I found out. The toilet flushed, the door opened and Amelia came out.
‘Why, Pru!’ she cooed. ‘I didn’t think you’d EVER need to go to the toilet! Can’t you ask Phredde or Bruce to PING! it all away?’
Have you ever heard of hate at first sight? Well, that’s me and Amelia. Amelia thinks she’s too cool for school—AND she gets better marks than me, even in maths. And I could just see myself asking Bruce to PING! away my full bladder. Or even Phredde. There are some things you don’t ask even your best friends to do. I mean, EMBARRASSING.
I scowled and pushed past Amelia into the toilet cubicle. (It smelled of her—I hate it when that happens.) But Amelia didn’t let go of the door.
I glared at her. ‘Hey, have you gone kinky, Amelia? You want to watch or something?’
Amelia smiled at me, like a cat that’s worked out how to use a can opener. ‘Guess who’s got a secret?’ she cooed.
I shrugged. ‘Who cares?’
‘Phredde and Bruce went to Phaeryland yesterday after dinner,’ sang Amelia.
‘So what? How do you know anyway?’
‘Cause I heard them discussing it,’ said Amelia smugly. ‘And Phredde said, “Don’t let Pru know,” and Bruce said, “Of course not!” And I thought you were, like, really good friends!’
If she kept cooing at me like that I was going to ask Phredde to turn her into a pigeon. Or maybe just a pile of pigeon droppings.
‘It’s just phaery business,’ I told her coolly. ‘Nothing I’m interested in.’
‘Then why did Phredde say you weren’t to know?’ Amelia sighed as if she was in a TV soap drama, the sort I’m not allowed to watch if I’m home sick. ‘I suppose they just get tired of having a human trailing after them all the time.’
‘I do NOT trail! And now I want to have a pee!’
I grabbed the door from Amelia and slammed it in her face then pushed my trakkie daks down. But I was too upset to do much. So I just sat there, listening to Amelia wash her hands and dry them, then the footsteps that said she’d left.
Were
Phredde and Bruce sick of having a human around all the time?
Okay, I couldn’t fly. And I couldn’t PING! us into adventures or out of trouble. But I had good ideas, didn’t I? And I was their friend…
Of course I was.
Then why didn’t they tell me they’d gone to Phaeryland? Phredde HATES Phaeryland. She’d have complained to me for DAYS if she’d had to go there. Wouldn’t she?
My bladder finally decided to behave itself, so I did my business, washed my hands and trudged back over the asphalt. Phredde and Bruce were still on the seat under the big oak tree, giggling about something. Then they saw me and stopped.
‘What’s so funny?’ I demanded.
‘Oh, just a silly joke,’ croaked Bruce offhandedly.
‘I like silly jokes,’ I said.
‘Not this silly,’ said Phredde. ‘Hey, you want a choc-chip muffin?’
‘No, thanks.’ Suddenly I had an idea. ‘Gark made us choc-chip muffins after dinner last night,’ I said casually. ‘While we were watching that movie. Did you see it?
The Curse of the Zombie Potatoes.
’
‘What? Oh, yeah,’ croaked Bruce. ‘It was really good, wasn’t it?’
‘Mm, cool,’ said Phredde.
‘Oh,’ I said. Because there hadn’t been any movie called
The Curse of the Zombie Potatoes.
I’d made it up.
And they’d LIED to me!
And then the hippos roared and it was time to go back into class.
3
It rained on Friday. The sort of rain that makes you feel wet even if you’re only looking at it out the window. The sort of rain that you could really believe was once a bit of ocean that evaporated and can’t wait to turn into an ocean again, mostly in your backyard.
The car’s wipers pushed at the water on the windscreen as though they wished they’d gone to windscreen gym and built up their muscles a bit. Dad looked out at the wet world doubtfully. ‘Are you
sure
you want to do this today, kids?’
‘No worries, Dad,’ I said. ‘We have to spend the night indoors anyway. It’ll be dry inside the house.’
‘Unless the roof leaks,’ said Bruce happily. Frogs like the rain.
Thunder grumbled somewhere over the hills. Dad glanced nervously at the paddocks on either side of the road. ‘I hadn’t realised it would be quite so deserted!’ he said.
‘Mansions are always deserted,’ I said confidently.
‘What do you think the house’ll be like?’ asked Phredde. She sounded excited.
‘Big…and gloomy…and maybe with bats around the turrets,’ I said.
‘Yeah, and dungeons with skeletons and creaking doors and spiders’ webs,’ put in Bruce.
‘Shut up, Frog-face,’ hissed Phredde. ‘You’ll panic Pru’s dad.’
‘You really don’t
have
to do this, Prudence,’ Dad said.
‘Hey, Dad, no worries,’ I said again. Sometimes parents need a lot of reassuring. ‘Hey, is that it?’
A giant gate blocked the road in front of us. On either side a big stone wall stretched into the distance.
‘It must be,’ cried Phredde eagerly. ‘Hey, do you think the gate will open automatically? Or maybe there’ll be a gatekeeper!’
There wasn’t. Dad honked the horn a few times, but nothing happened.
‘I’ll open it,’ said Bruce. We watched him hop happily through the mud and wrestle with the latch. The big gates creaked open.
Bruce hopped back to the car. ‘It looks great in there!’ he announced enthusiastically.
‘Beautiful gardens?’ asked Dad.
‘A giant spooky graveyard,’ I suggested.
‘Nah,’ said Bruce. ‘Just wet!’
Dad started the car again and we drove through the gates. Bruce was right, it
did
look wet. And not just rain wet. On one side of the road an enormous lake stretched almost to the fence. On the other, trees dripped onto sodden ground. Slowly the woodland
changed to grassed lawns. The car topped a rise…and there it was.
‘Oh,’ I said.
It wasn’t what I’d expected at all. It didn’t even have any bats flying around! It was big all right—three storeys high, like a giant white wooden box someone had plonked down among the hills. But there were bright curtains hanging at the windows and flowers in all the garden beds, even if they did look like they needed raincoats.
‘I wonder where the graveyard is,’ said Phredde. She sounded a bit disappointed. Well, I was too. It all looked too, well, pretty to be a deserted mansion.
Dad breathed a sigh of relief. ‘It all looks…normal,’ he said. ‘Now, are you sure you’ll be all right?’
‘No dead bodies on the path,’ I said, doing up my raincoat buttons. (Phredde and Bruce didn’t need raincoats—no rain falls on a phaery if they don’t want it to, and Bruce likes anything wet.) ‘No headless zombies under the roses. We’ll be fine, Dad.’
‘Not even a strange tunnel leading to Ancient Egypt,’ said Bruce cheerfully. I nudged him in the ribs, or at least where I thought a frog’s ribs might be. Dad doesn’t know about our trip to Ancient Egypt.
4
He doesn’t need to know either!
Dad squinted at the garden through the rain, and then at the house, just in case a few zombies were peering out from under the doormat. But there weren’t any. Just puddles and the patter of the rain and the far-off toot of a train in the distance.
‘Well, all right,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Now you promise you’ll phone every night and morning?’
I patted Mum’s mobile in the pocket of my shorts. ‘No worries, Dad.’
Dad turned to Phredde and Bruce. ‘And you’ll PING! her to safety at the slightest hint of trouble?’
‘Of course,’ Phredde assured him. ‘As soon as any hungry crocodiles or skull-juggling trolls appear I’ll PING! straightaway. Not that we’re expecting any,’ she added quickly. ‘I mean, you hardly ever meet a skull-juggling troll these days, only that time we—’
‘You’d better be off, Dad,’ I broke in hurriedly. ‘You’ll be late!’
‘Late for what?’ asked Dad in confusion.
‘Well, late for something!’ I opened the garden gate—it was a pretty white one, made of wood with flowers painted on it—and waved him off. ‘Bye, Dad!’
‘Bye!’ chorused Phredde and Bruce.
We watched the car drive slowly down the empty road.
I turned back to the house. ‘Okay,’ I said.
…
The three of us stared at the house. The thunder boomed again, but further away now.
‘Why on earth would anyone be afraid to stay in a nice house like this for two nights?’ demanded Phredde. ‘Those other rellies of yours must be nuts.’
‘Maybe there’s a disgusting smell,’ suggested Bruce. ‘Hey, maybe an insane murderer left a body under the floorboards and it stank out the house and—’
‘Maybe they were just scaredy cats,’ I said quickly, trying not to think of a body under the floorboards. A Prudence-shaped body…
I was a bit nervous, to tell the truth. Two or three little butterflies were zooming around my tummy. Well,
a small horde of butterflies really, pterodactyl-sized. But I wasn’t going to show Phredde and Bruce I was scared. This was my house, after all. It was up to me to take charge.
I picked up my pack and the esky of food Mum had given us in case we starved. (Phredde and Bruce can PING! up any food we want, but you try telling that to Mum.) ‘Come on!’ I said.
I marched up the path, trying to avoid the puddles, then pulled the keys Mr Nahsti had given me out of my pocket. A cold wind blew around the corner, making me shiver. It was the coldest wind I’d ever felt, like ice had blown into my bones. I stopped, with the keys in my hand.
‘Tooooot-toot!’
‘There must be a train line nearby,’ I said, to cover up the sound of my heart thumping.
‘Why?’ asked Phredde.
‘Didn’t you hear the train whistle?’
Phredde shook her head.
‘But I’m sure I heard…’ I began. Then I stopped. The cold breeze buffeted me again and there was another sound, almost like the wind was muttering in my ear.
‘Well, did either of you hear THAT?’ I asked.
Phredde shook her head. ‘Nope.’
‘Me neither,’ said Bruce.
‘What was it?’ asked Phredde.
‘A…a sort of whispering,’ I said.
‘What was it saying?’
‘Knock, knock. I think. I don’t know. It was too soft to hear.’
The three of us concentrated. ‘I heard something!’ said Phredde at last.
‘What was it?’
‘Bruce’s tummy rumbling.’
‘I’m a growing frog,’ said Bruce defensively.
‘Yeah, growing fatter,’ said Phredde. ‘Hey, wait a sec, I DID hear something!’
‘I heard it too. Just a dog barking,’ I said, disappointed. I shrugged. ‘I must have imagined the whispering.’
‘Probably just the wind,’ agreed Phredde. ‘Knock, knock—it doesn’t make sense.’
‘Maybe it was a warning,’ said Bruce enthusiastically. ‘Maybe the murderer knocks his victims out, you know, knock knock, and he’s hiding behind the—’
‘Shut up Frog-face!’ yelled Phredde. ‘You’ll REALLY scare her soon!’
‘I’m not scared.’ I lied, hoping my hands weren’t shaking. I grabbed the doorknocker—it was shaped like a little girl with a watering can, I mean, yuck!—and rapped down.
No ghastly booming noise. No peal of hidden bells. It just went clink-clonk in a normal sort of way.
We waited, while the rain pelted down around us and the thunder growled in a normal muttering storm sort of way. Nothing happened, except I grew wetter. Raincoats never work all that well.’
‘Um, Pru,’ said Phredde after a while.
‘Yeah?’ I asked, hoping my voice wasn’t shivering.
‘Why are you knocking? There’s no one in there.’
‘We hope,’ said Bruce hollowly.
‘Shut up, Bruce!’ Phredde and I chorused.
‘I don’t know why I knocked,’ I said, putting the key back into the door and turning it. But I did. It was because someone…something…had whispered
‘Knock, knock.’ What sort of a warning whisper goes ‘Knock, knock’?
I pushed the door open. It didn’t even creak.
GRRANNNGGGG! A sudden peal of thunder boomed all around us, just as jagged lightning lit the garden behind us.
‘Wow!’ croaked Bruce. ‘Now THAT was a warning!’
‘Nonsense,’ I said feebly. ‘Just a perfectly ordinary storm.’ I stepped into the house.
Nothing happened.
Well, the rain stopped beating on my head, but that was all. Phredde fluttered in beside me and Bruce hopped up the steps. I took my raincoat off, hung it on the coat rack by the door and looked around.
We were in a hall. It had tiny tiles on the floor, all blue and white, with a great big puddle, but that was just where Bruce was standing and had dripped. A big staircase rose on one side of us, and on the other a corridor stretched into darkness.
I reached for the light switch and flicked it on. Nothing happened.
‘I’ll do it,’ offered Phredde.
PING!
Lights flared in the hall, down the corridor and up the stairs. Phredde grinned. ‘I just PING!ed the electricity back on,’ she said. ‘Easier than doing all the lights myself. Doesn’t use so much magic either.’
Phredde and Bruce get their magic allowance every Saturday.
‘You’ve got enough magic for tonight, haven’t you?’ I asked, a bit concerned.
‘Yeah, plenty,’ Phredde assured me. ‘I’ve hardly used any all week.’
‘Me too,’ agreed Bruce, his tongue zotting out to catch a spider lurking in a corner. ‘Mmm, delicious. Hey, what’s that?’ he added.
I looked down to where he was pointing. ‘It looks like a pair of underpants,’ I said, prodding them with my toe. I mean no
way
was I going to pick up someone else’s underpants, even if they were pink and frilly, which these were.
‘I bet some girl got so scared by a headless vampire that her underpants fell down,’ suggested Bruce, chuckling.
‘Shut up, Frog face! Well, what now?’ Phredde asked. ‘Do we choose our bedrooms or explore the house?’
‘Bedrooms,’ I said, kicking the underpants under the hall table. ‘
Then
explore.’ I glanced up the stairs. ‘I suppose they’re up there.’
I hoisted my pack over my shoulder more comfortably. Mum had insisted I bring my sleeping bag, even though I’d reminded her that Phredde could PING! me up a four-poster or a waterbed or even a free-fall-type hammock if I wanted one.
We started to climb the stairs. Well, I climbed, Bruce hopped and Phredde fluttered up, inspecting the light fittings on the way. I was sort of thinking we might all sleep in the same room, or at least Phredde and I in together and Bruce right next door. I wasn’t SCARED exactly. Just…cautious. That’s the word.
Something
had scared off the other 56 girls, and they couldn’t ALL have been wusses—even if one of them did wear pink frilly underpants.
The thunder boomed again outside. Phredde peered down the upstairs corridor. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘That’s a lot of bedrooms.’
‘If they are all bedrooms,’ said Bruce cheerfully. ‘And not torture chambers.’
‘Thanks, Bruce,’ I muttered. ‘You’re a great help.’
‘Hey, you’re not worried, are you?’ he asked, surprised. ‘There’s nothing to be scared of. I mean, if they’re torture chambers Phredde and I can PING! you to safety and—’
‘I don’t need anyone PING!ing me,’ I said crossly. ‘And I’m not scared. I’d just rather sleep in a bedroom than a torture chamber.’
I opened the first door as I spoke.
‘Wow,’ said Phredde. I stared at the room, then nodded slowly.
I’m not sure what I’d expected—a bare room with maybe a bed and mattress, maybe a rat’s nest (yuck), and a broken window pane. I should have remembered the bright curtains at the windows we’d seen from outside.
This room looked like the pictures you see in magazines at the hairdresser’s. Thick white carpet, so shaggy you’d need to use a lawn mower instead of a vacuum cleaner. Big wooden bed—I mean room-enough-for-half-the-class big—with a lacy pink bedspread. (I’d almost have rather had the rats’ nest. I DESPISE pink. Lacy pale pink like that, anyhow.) About six million pillows, all pink and lacy too. Pink armchairs with lace cushions, a dressing table (pink) with a big bowl of that stinky pot-something you get your mum for Mother’s Day if you can’t think what else to get her—like a blue-ringed octopus to put in the toilet. (It’s so everyone saves water, see? You save up going to the toilet till you REALLY need it and then you go FAST before the octopus can bite your bum.) You should have seen Mum’s face when I gave her that!
Except the octopus sort of got lost and ended up in the moat, but that’s okay, because piranhas don’t like blue-ringed octopi and Dad says as soon as he gets round to it he’ll fish it out, and where was I?
Oh right, the bedroom.
‘The bed’s made up and everything,’ said Phredde, gazing down on it from where she hovered in the doorway. I walked cautiously into the room, just in case it was booby-trapped, and pulled the bedspread down. The sheets were pink (surprise, surprise). They felt freshly washed, and crisp too, as though they had even been ironed.
‘Mr Nahsti must have got someone to get the house ready for us,’ I said slowly. Maybe I’d been wrong about Mr Nahsti. Maybe he was really a nice bloke who just wanted us to have a good weekend.
‘There’s an
en suite
and everything,’ Phredde called out to me, peering into the room beyond the bedroom.
‘What colour?’
‘Pink.’
‘Figures.’
I stepped back into the corridor while Bruce checked the corners to see if there were any more spiders. Phredde fluttered into the next room. It was just the same as the first, but with ruffles instead of lace and mostly yellow. ‘I’ll take this room,’ she decided. ‘And you can have the first one.’
‘Okay,’ I said reluctantly. It didn’t REALLY matter if Phredde wasn’t in the same room, I told myself. She’d hear if I yelled. And anyway, there was nothing I’d need to yell about. This place wasn’t a deserted mansion at all. Nothing spooky. Nothing weird. Just an ordinary house in the bush…