TV is really educational—which is why it’s crazy that Phredde’s mum won’t let them have one. As any kid who’s watched lots of movies knows, whenever you are kidnapped you have to pay attention to what you can hear (and smell).
Rumble, rumble, rumble means a gravel road, right? And a garbage-type pong that you’ve passed the town dump. And lots of seagulls squawking means a fish and chip shop by the beach. You count the number of turns left and right and then…
Actually I couldn’t remember WHY you were supposed to count all the turns, because you knew where you were already—kidnapped—and until you were rescued you couldn’t tell anyone else where you were, and by then there was no need. But I counted all the turns anyway.
Gravel road. Bitumen. Turn to the left. Turn to the right. Stop, car noises all around, must be a set of traffic lights…
‘Mffwwff, mffww, mgggth!!!’ I yelled, which is what ‘Help me! I’m tied up in this car!’ sounds like when you have a gag in your mouth.
At least working out where we were gave me something to do. Apart from suffocate, that is.
In the movies, the kidnapped person always finds some way to throw out a bit of jewellery or their hanky for the detective to pick up and say, ‘Aha! She passed this way and they’re heading to the old abandoned lighthouse on the cliffs.’
But I didn’t have anything to throw, except my shorts, underpants and T-shirt. (I could just imagine a detective picking up my underpants and saying, ‘Aha! Prudence’s dirty underpants, she must be in a white car heading south…’ But then I realised that Annie had put so much extra lace and ruffles on my underpants that:
And even if I had been prepared to throw out my underpants, I was too tied up to get them off. Plus how are you supposed to throw stuff out of a locked car boot?
So I just lay there and counted turns and tried to wriggle my hands out of the handcuffs (impossible) or slip my ankles out of the chains (also impossible) or bite through the gag which tasted DISGUSTING. I bet that horrible man had USED it as a hanky before he
stuffed it in my mouth, and if I got SARS or leprosy or something it would be all his fault.
Which wasn’t an enormous comfort.
It was getting stuffy in the boot too. Well, stuffier, because there hadn’t exactly been a breeze to start with. And hot. I stopped counting turns and wondered how long it took to suffocate and how did you know you were suffocating and…
…and then things REALLY got bad. Because I was feeling car sick.
Do you get car sick? Then you’ll know what it’s like. You feel
terrible
and no one is sympathetic because they’re just worried about you up-chucking on their new car seats or flying carpet or wherever it is you’re feeling sick. But this was the worst time ever to be car sick, because you just can’t BE sick with a gag in your mouth. Well, you can, but there’s nowhere for the sick to go, except down again or maybe into your lungs so you choke.
So I just lay REALLY still and tried to think of anything except sick. And cars. And turns. And food. Not even sausage and pineapple pizza, all yellow and pink just like a pool of sick, or scrambled eggs with tomato like a big plate of vomit or…
The car stopped.
I was so relieved I could have cried. But you can’t cry either, not properly, with a gag in your mouth. And there was no time because the boot opened…
…
In books or movies, kidnapped kids are always taken to a dungeon, or at least a cellar. Okay, we don’t have many cellars in Australia—or dungeons. But Mr Nahsti could at least have tried to do things properly.
Instead we were in a garage. The door was shut, so it was dark, but there was enough light to see a bit.
It looked like an ordinary garage, if you didn’t count the kid tied up in the boot of the car and the evil maniac smiling nicely. I could see a rolled-up hose and benches with tools—were they torture tools, I wondered. A plastic bag stuffed with more plastic bags hung on one wall, there was a lawn mower in one corner and two paint pots in the other with gummed-up paint brushes on top.
‘Out you get, my dear,’ said Mr Nahsti.
‘Mffwmp,’ I muttered, then ‘Ohhfffww!’ which was the sound of agony as I tried to straighten up after being scrunched in the boot. It HURT!
‘Now, if I take the gag off will you scream?’ asked Mr Nahsti.
I shook my head eagerly.
Mr Nahsti smiled. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said. ‘You’re a bad-mannered little girl and bad girls lie, don’t they? But it doesn’t make any difference. You can scream and yell as much as you like. No one will hear you.’
He untied the hanky around my face, then fished out the one in my mouth. ‘Now, come on like a good girl and we’ll have some lessons in good manners.’
‘Grrppt flopt,’ I said, which is the noise you make when you’re being sick all over your kidnapper’s feet.
‘What the…?’ yelled Mr Nahsti, stepping back out of the puddle. He stared at his messy shoes. I was sure I hadn’t eaten any carrot. Have you noticed that vomit always has bits of carrot in it? Then Mr Nahsti stared at me. He was so angry his face was white, with two red spots on his cheeks.
‘Just for that,’ he hissed,’you can stay here and rot!’
He marched across the garage, leaving tiny splots of sick as he went, opened the door a crack and slipped out. I heard the click of a lock and then his footsteps grew fainter.
I was alone.
I sat down with my back against the wall—it’s hard standing up when your ankles are cuffed together—and looked around the garage again. It hadn’t been improved by my vomit, but at least your own sick doesn’t pong as badly as other people’s. Other than the vomit, I could smell old car and old carpets—which is what garages always smell of, even if there isn’t any carpet there, and that damp garagey-type smell that isn’t like anything else in the world.
And…and…
I sniffed again, then a third time to be sure. It was hard to pick up over the garage and vomit smell, but it was definitely there…
Ghost wee!
‘Willie!’ I yelled.
‘Wuff!’ said Willie happily from somewhere near the benches.
I gazed around, then realised it was useless—even if it was dim here in the garage, it was still daytime. But I could smell him and, as a cold draught brushed my ankles, I could feel him too, a bit.
‘Am I glad to see you!’ I yelled, then lowered my voice in case Mr Nahsti was nearby and wondered why I sounded so happy. ‘Willie, go get help!’
‘Wuff?’ asked Willie.
‘It’s like on TV,’ I whispered patiently. ‘The faithful dog goes and gets help!’
‘Wuff, wuff?’ A small ghostly pool of wee spread against one car tyre, then slowly vanished.
I sighed. ‘Forget about your weak bladder, Willie. This is serious. Go get Uncle Carbuncle!’
Not that there was anything Uncle Carbuncle could actually do to help, I thought. He wouldn’t be able to unchain me or even karate-kick Mr Nahsti. But he was better than nothing, and he might just have an idea. And at least he could keep me company while I spent the night here and lost the house to Mr Nahsti.
‘Wuff!’ A small ghostly presence landed on my lap. ‘Wfffgzz,’ snored Willie. He’d gone to sleep.
…
It was a really long afternoon. It got hotter and hotter, which was how I knew it was still daytime, and I felt TERRIBLE. Not just because my tummy was still a bit car sick. I felt heartsick too, thinking about the poor homeless ghosts.
Maybe Mum wouldn’t mind
too
much if they haunted our castle, even if it wasn’t like having a home of their own. Or maybe they could haunt our school. But the thought that Mr Nahsti and his horrible society would have the house made me feel sick all over again.
The garage smell didn’t improve. Nor did Willie. I tried waking him up a few times to see if he’d go for help. But he just licked my face—which feels WEIRD when it’s a ghost, but sort of nice too—then went back to sleep.
Despite the stink and my upset tum, I was hungry. I was thirsty too. After a while I was so thirsty I stopped being hungry.
Every now and then I tried yelling, ‘Help, help, I’ve been kidnapped by a nasty solicitor!’ But nothing
happened, so I supposed Mr Nahsti was right when he’d said no one would hear me. I couldn’t hear anything outside either, except sometimes a plane really far off, or the distant hoot of a car horn.
I wondered where we were.
I wondered what was going to happen.
I wondered how prisoners went to the toilet, or if I’d have to do a Willie on the car tyre and make a mess of my newly decorated underpants.
‘Hey, Mr Nahsti!’ I yelled at last. ‘I’m thirsty!’
No answer.
‘Hey! I really need a drink in here!’
Still no answer.
‘If you don’t give me a drink in twenty seconds my phaery friends will turn your car into a slug!’
Nothing happened.
Then I heard footsteps again and the click of the lock. I saw a crack of sunlight and Mr Nahsti appeared. ‘If your so-called friends could turn my car into a slug, they’d have rescued you by now,’ said Mr Nahsti, shutting the door behind him. ‘But I’ve brought you some water. I’m not an unreasonable villain.’
He held a bottle of water to my lips. I gulped it down, then realised I should have sniffed and sipped to make sure it WAS water and not a deadly poison, though to be honest I didn’t know what a deadly poison tasted like. I mean, if you’ve tasted it you’re dead, aren’t you? So maybe no one knows what a deadly poison tastes like, which is why you don’t get recognising-deadly-poison lessons at school.
But it was just water. I know because I didn’t drop dead or anything. I drank about half of it so fast I nearly choked, then I drank the rest more slowly. Mr Nahsti
kept the bottle to my lips till I’d finished. When he lowered it again I said,’Look, this isn’t going to work.’
‘Isn’t it?’ asked Mr Nahsti calmly.
‘As soon as you let me go I’m going to tell Mum and Dad and the police that you kidnapped me. And then you’ll go to prison.’
‘Really?’ Mr Nahsti sounded uninterested. ‘But you’ll still have lost the house, won’t you? And who do you think the police will believe? A solicitor and respected President of the Society for the Improvement of Children’s Manners or a kid who smells of car sick and spends her time with phaeries? They’ll just think that you were too scared to stay in the house a second night—like the other girls—so you’ve made up a story about an evil solicitor kidnapping you. And no one will believe a silly story like that, will they?’
‘My mum and dad will,’ I said.
‘Well, yes,’ said Mr Nahsti. ‘Mums and dads do tend to believe their kids, even when they say they have no homework and no notes to send back to school. But no one else will.’
‘I’ll describe your garage!’ I shouted. ‘How would I know what your garage looks like if I hadn’t been here?’
Mr Nahsti laughed. ‘Yes, there’s a car here…and, oh yes, two paint pots and a lawn mower. What else would you expect to see in a garage?’
‘Wuff,’ said Willie suddenly. ‘Wuff, wuff, wuff!’
Mr Nahsti looked puzzled. ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked.
I was about to say,’That’s Willie’, then I decided not to. I couldn’t see how a ghost dog could be any real help. But just maybe it was better that Mr Nahsti didn’t know about him.
‘No,’ I said. Then I added,’I’m hungry.’
‘Then say please,’ said Mr Nahsti. ‘Nicely now.’
I hesitated. Then I gave in. ‘Please, Mr Nahsti, I’m very hungry. May I have some food?’
‘See how nice it is when you use good manners?’ said Mr Nahsti approvingly. ‘It’s much more pleasant for everyone!’
‘Then may I have some food?’ I asked again. ‘Please?’
‘No,’ said Mr Nahsti.
‘But I asked nicely!’
‘I know you did. But if I give you some food you’ll just bring it all up again.’
‘No, I won’t!’ I yelled. ‘I was car sick last time because I was locked in the boot!’
‘And you’re going to be locked in the boot again,’ said Mr Nahsti.
‘Why?’ I asked desperately. I really hated the idea of going back in that boot.
‘So I can drive you to…let’s see…a shopping mall, I think,’ said Mr Nahsti. ‘Down in one of those underground car parks, when it’s so late that there’s no one around. I’ll let you out where no one can see you and then, dear me, everyone will know the horrid little girl spent all night in the mall instead of the deserted mansion.’
‘How will they know?’ I demanded.
‘Because there are security cameras in the mall, of course,’ said Mr Nahsti. ‘Don’t you pay any attention to TV shows, you silly child? The cameras will show you’re at the mall, instead of in the mansion. I’ve thought of everything, you see.’
I said nothing. What was there to say?
And then he left me again.
I wondered what Phredde and Bruce were doing, and if maybe they were thinking about me too.
I wondered what Mum and Dad were doing.
I even wondered what Amelia was doing, because I had a lot of wondering time going spare. I’d been looking forward to strolling into school on Monday casually saying,’Oh, by the way, I’ve spent the weekend in a haunted mansion and now it’s mine and I also escaped from an evil kidnapper.’ That would REALLY be Show and Tell!
But it looked like I wouldn’t be able to.
Time went by.
Willie had a few more wees, against another tyre, the paint pot and me, but as it was ghost wee it didn’t matter. To be honest, it helped pass the time counting the seconds before the puddles vanished.
I tried yelling again, but still no one answered.
I tried staggering over to the door and bashing it with my head. But that just gave me a headache.
I slithered and wriggled under the bench, hoping there might be a Prudence-sized hole in the wall I could squeeze out of. But there wasn’t.
I even tried wriggling through the car window so I could turn on the ignition with my teeth, but I didn’t fit. Which was probably a good thing, I realised, as I couldn’t drive a car even when I had two hands and two feet free.
The rest of the time I just sat there.
The afternoon got hotter, and hotter still. Then slowly the heat seeped away and the faint line of light under the garage door grew dimmer. Night was coming. And I was here, not in the mansion. Soon it would be too late.
Suddenly the garage door creaked open. Mr Nahsti smiled at me, then shut the door behind him.
‘How are we then?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘All nice and uncomfortable?’
I didn’t say anything, just watched as a small puddle grew around his shoe. ‘Thanks, Willie,’ I whispered. Not that it really helped, but it made me feel better.
‘Now,’ said Mr Nahsti, ‘let’s start things rolling, shall we?’ He opened the car boot, then hesitated. ‘Can you feel a cold draught?’ he asked.
I shook my head.
‘No? I must have just imagined…’ Mr Nahsti stopped again, then slipped a hand down his trousers. For a moment I thought he was thinking about doing something REALLY nasty. Then he gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘Oh dear, I seem to have forgotten to put on any underpants. How silly of me!’
Underpants? My heart went thump, thump, thump! I peered through the dimness. But there was nothing to see, because you can’t see ghosts in daytime.
But they can still do things.
‘Hi, Annie!’ I whispered as quietly as I could. Of course, a kidnapper losing his underpants wasn’t going to help me any. But it was nice to have a friend nearby.
‘Now are you going to hop in the boot yourself or do I have to force you?’ asked Mr Nahsti.
‘You’ll have to—’ I began. Then I stopped. A chill breeze washed across my face.
‘Knock, knock,’ whispered a voice in my ear.
‘Who’s there?’ I breathed.
‘Earwig.’
‘Earwig who?’ I muttered hopefully.
‘Earwig come!’
Suddenly the dead rat was gone from Mr Nahsti’s head. Instead, long blonde curls waved down over his shoulders, with a bright pink streak in the middle.
Someone giggled, almost too softly to hear. The faint sound of clippers clicked through the garage.
Mr Nahsti had the boot open. He lifted a hand to his head. ‘What the—?’ he swore, as one of his new blonde curls snaked slowly down his face.
Maybe ghosts CAN stop villains, I thought suddenly.
Mr Nahsti stared at the curl. He pulled it gently, as though he couldn’t quite believe it was attached to him. It looked heaps better than his dead rat.
The curl grew longer. It was down to his neck, then his waist, then his knees.
‘What’s happening?’ cried Mr Nahsti.
‘Oh, nothing,’ I said airily.
‘This is all your friends’ work, isn’t it?’ shrieked Mr Nahsti. ‘Your phaeries!’ He spat out the word.
‘There aren’t any phaeries around here,’ I said. ‘Promise.’
Mr Nahsti looked around frantically. He grabbed the pruning shears and chopped the curl off at the roots.
‘There!’ he said. ‘Cold steel beats magic!’
‘They’re aluminium,’ I said. (I’d bought a pair of shears exactly the same for Mum’s birthday so she could prune the roses, so I knew what they were made of.)
‘Cold aluminium then,’ he sneered. ‘Now into the boot—’
He broke off suddenly, looking scared.
The curl was growing again. Faster now, winding round his neck like a rally car in a race, swirling round his arms, then his legs…
‘Help!’ shrieked Mr Nahsti.
‘Don’t look at me!’ I said. ‘I’m the one chained up on the garage floor, remember? I couldn’t help you even if I wanted to. Which I don’t,’ I added. ‘Hey, Jack, is that you?’
A vague ghostly presence hovered in front of me. I couldn’t really see him, not till it grew dark. But now I knew what to look, er, feel, er…sense, I knew that he was there.
‘Yes, sweetie,’ said Jack the Clipper. ‘It’s me in person! The little dog came yapping and we guessed that there was something wrong.’
‘Willie? But he’s been here all the—’
I stopped. How could you tell with a ghost? For all I knew, Willie could have been off exploring the Arctic while I thought he was still on my lap.
‘I’m here too,’ said Annie’s voice.
I grinned. ‘I guessed.’
‘Knock, knock,’ began Knock-knock.
‘Shut up!’ yelled a host of ghostly voices.
‘This is no time for jokes,’ said Uncle Carbuncle’s voice. ‘Are you all right, niece?’
‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘Just a bit tied up right now. Hey, do you think one of you could get these handcuffs off me?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Uncle Carbuncle,’but none of us is a locksmith. Ghosts can only touch—’
‘What they loved when they were alive,’ I finished. ‘Yeah, I know.’ I sighed.
‘I can give you a slice of orange and pineapple meringue pie?’ offered Cookie’s voice.
‘I’d rather have a drink,’ I said honestly.
‘No worries.’
A ghostly straw hovered under my nose. I managed to get my mouth over it (which isn’t easy without hands—you try it). ‘Mmm,’ I said. It was strawberry milkshake with lots of ice-cream and real mashed-up strawberries—my favourite. I sucked till it began to slurp.
‘You won’t get away with this!’ muttered Mr Nahsti. He began to roll towards the open door, hair and all.
‘Hey, stop him!’ I yelled. ‘Er, you can’t, can you?’
‘I could throw a cream pie in his face,’ offered Cookie.
‘I could cover him in a pile of underpants,’ suggested Annie. ‘But he’d just crawl out.’
‘Wuff,’ barked Willie. A small yellow stain appeared on Mr Nahsti’s back. But it didn’t slow him down.
‘Time to call in the troops,’ said Uncle Carbuncle thoughtfully.
I stared. Not that there was much to stare at, just a slight thickening in the air. ‘You don’t have an army, do you?’ I demanded. ‘An army of ghosts?’
‘Not as such,’ said Uncle Carbuncle. ‘But there is someone I can call.’ He gave a ghostly chuckle. ‘Or something…’
He let out a whistle.
Nothing happened.
Mr Nahsti was almost at the door now. And then I heard it.
A sort of humming…or slithering…No, more like a giant mud slide squelching closer, and closer still…
I began to feel a bit nervous. I mean, there are ghosts and there are ghosts. And this sounded like…
The squelching grew louder. The garage floor began to gently vibrate. The door crashed open and there was…
Nothing! Nothing that I could see anyway. Just a thick line of ooze that glistened across the floor.
‘What is it?’ I yelled.
‘Just a snail,’ said Uncle Carbuncle’s voice comfortingly.
I stared at the slime freeway crossing the garage.
‘But snails are tiny!’
‘Yeah, but this is a ghost snail, mate,’ said Cookie. ‘And a ghost can be any size it likes. Slimy here always wanted to be big. When you’ve been tiny all your life, always scared of the giant foot coming down from the sky—’
‘You feel like being big for a change,’ I finished with a gulp. I was REALLY glad I hadn’t met Slimy last night.
‘Ahhhhhhkkk!’ shrieked Mr Nahsti.
To be honest, I felt a bit like yelling ‘Ahhh!’ myself. But I didn’t, because so far Slimy seemed to be on my side, and also because I was biting my lips really hard to stop them shouting ‘Help, help! It’s all oozy and it’d better not touch me! GET ME OUT OF HERE!’
The shiny trail oozed closer and closer to Mr Nahsti, who was slithering frantically on his tummy back towards the car, hoping to hide underneath. But a villainous solicitor can’t slither as fast as a giant snail.
The snail was on him now. I still couldn’t see it, but I could see its path. The ooze spread over the back of Mr Nahsti’s legs, then over his body and over his head. It glistened in the light from the door.
The ooze spread to one side for a minute, then something large and ghostly rolled Mr Nahsti over. His legs and arms were oozed to his body, but his face was still free. ‘Help!’ he begged me. ‘Help!!!’
‘How?’ I asked, and held up my cuffed hands.
‘The keys are on the kitchen bench!’ choked out Mr Nahsti, as the snail began to slide up his legs again, top side this time. ‘Please! It’s going to suffocate me! I’m going to be smothered in ooze!’
‘Any of you ghosts able to lift a set of keys?’ I asked.
‘Sorry,’ said Uncle Carbuncle. He didn’t sound sorry at all. Just faintly I caught a flash of a ghostly grin.
Mr Nahsti’s legs were in a cocoon of slime now. Then his waist, his chest…
Mr Nahsti was the sort of maggot even a leftover meat pie would reject. But I didn’t want him to be suffocated in ghostly slime. ‘Um…’ I said. I wasn’t sure how you stopped a giant ghostly snail.
Suddenly the snail trail stopped all by itself. I could faintly see the outline of a gigantic snail. Its antennae twitched towards me, as though to say,’Did I do a good job?’
‘Er, good snail,’ I said. ‘Nice snail. You did a wonderful job.’
Slimy’s antennae twitched happily. Then the faint image vanished and a new trail spread across the garage floor as Slimy oozed out the door again. I wondered briefly if ghost snails could eat your garden, and if so, would there be any of Mr Nahsti’s garden left by tomorrow?
But I didn’t care much. I had more urgent worries now.
‘Help!’ whispered Mr Nahsti, as though he was afraid that if he yelled something even worse might happen to him. We all ignored him.
‘Uncle Carbuncle, I have to get out of here!’ I cried. ‘It’ll be night-time soon, and if I’m not back in the mansion by then I’ll lose the house! And you’ll all be homeless!’
I struggled to my feet and began to jump across the garage. It wasn’t easy—you try jumping with your ankles cuffed together
and
your hands. But it was all I could think to do.
‘Stop!’ ordered Uncle Carbuncle. ‘There’s no way you can jump all the way back to the mansion.’
‘But I have to try! Maybe a car will pick me up if I can get to the road—’
‘Even a car couldn’t get you there in time,’ said Uncle Carbuncle.
‘Then Mr Nahsti’s won!’ I wailed. ‘He’ll get the house and all the money and—’
I stopped.
Something was coming.