Let’s Discuss The Stories ~ Ideas for Talking With Kids

Creativity

1. Dia and Tara come up with a great plan for scaring away the shadow monster. Can you think of any other ideas they might have used?

2. Can you create some new shadow monsters with your hands?

Bedtime Story written by Sanjana Kapur

Bedtime Story illustrated by Kaveri Gopalakrishnan

Other Credits:

Music Video by Danse Macabre Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Danse Macabre – Light Dance Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Danse Macabre – Finale Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ 

Shh! What’s That? (English), written by Sanjana Kapur, illustrated by Kaveri Gopalakrishnan, supported by Oracle, published by Pratham Books (© Pratham Books,2019) under a CC BY 4.0 license, first released on StoryWeaver. Read, create and translate stories for free on www.storyweaver.org.in

* THE STORY ‘SHH! WHAT’S THAT?’ WAS CREATED BY PRATHAM BOOKS AND IS LICENSED UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS -BY-4.0 LICENSE. FORMATTING CHANGES HAVE BEEN MADE TO THE ORIGINAL WORK FOR EASE OF READING ON OUR WEBSITE.

The post Shh What’s That? first appeared on Bedtime Stories.

The following story contains references and descriptions of zombies, as well as situations that may scare some young readers. Adult readers may wish to review the story prior to reading it to their child, if they know them to be sensitive to this kind of violence.

ZOMBIE TOWN

I wasn’t always like this. Like what, you ask? I guess, so… brave. It was this crazy thing that happened, that changed everything for me.

I’m a little different now. Let me tell you about it.

But I’ll have to start from the beginning.

I used to be scared of a lot of things. If there was a scary movie on TV, I’d cover my eyes and ask Mum to change the channel. If it was Halloween, I used to pretend that I’d hurt my leg so I wouldn’t have to walk around the neighbourhood and dress up with all the other kids. The sight of seeing all those crazy dress-up outfits as the sun went down and the sky grew dark… it gave me the heebie jeebies. It’s not that I thought they were real monsters. It’s more that sometimes my mind played tricks on me, and I thought, what if there were monsters out that night, and I just thought they were some dressed-up kids? What would happen then?

Sometimes it felt like I just couldn’t stop thinking. I was scared of putting the bins out at night, and bad diseases, and sometimes in bed I was even scared of the shadow my cupboard made against the wall. I knew there was probably nothing there, or nothing in real life that should make me feel like that. But my heart would beat fast and I would imagine things. I just couldn’t help it.

Mum and Dad knew all about it, but they were pretty good to me. They thought they could make me feel better by saying ‘Don’t worry Elroy, your imagination is worse than real life ever is!’ I knew it was, but it didn’t help. Anyway, Mum and Dad knew how I felt, and didn’t push me into doing anything I didn’t want to do.

But one day, that all changed.

It changed when my school sent me home with a note that our class was going away on a school camping trip.

I wasn’t ecstatic about it. I guess because I was going to be sleeping outside, in the dark, in tents. Plus, it was in the bush. Here’s something I haven’t told you yet: I live in Australia. Have you ever been to Australia? It has a reputation for being kind of one of the scariest places in the world.

There are all sorts of things in the bush in Australia. All sorts of things that can kill you. Spiders, for one thing. Snakes, for another. I even heard of kangaroos and possums breaking into people’s beds in the evening looking for food. That was one thing I didn’t want to imagine – waking up to see a big whiskery face staring at me in the middle of the night, with no one to hear me scream. Or worse still, everyone in my school class. No thanks.

So I said to my Mum and Dad that I didn’t want to go camping; I’d rather stay at home and clean my room.

It was telling them I’d clean my room that did it. I think I went too far than was healthy for any kid. Dad looked concerned and put the note down, then sat on the edge of my bed.

“Sometimes the scariest things aren’t so bad once you’re doing them,” said Dad. “Your imagination can conjure up all sorts of things that are far worse than the reality.”

“Nah,” I said. “I’m alright, thanks.”

But Mum and Dad didn’t take my response as I’d hoped. They exchanged glances with each other, and then Dad looked back at my face, examining it, as though he could see something else in it than what I’d said. I felt my face go red, and then I looked away. After a big pause he finally said,

“I think it’s better if you go.”

“But Dad..!” I said. I was shocked. They’d never forced me to do anything I didn’t want to before.

“It will be good for you,” Mum said from the doorway. “We don’t want you to live your life being scared of things. You’ll be supervised. Camping is fun. You’ll make lots of friends.”

“I’m not scared of anything,” I replied. But I could hear my voice trembling. I was just so shocked that they would force me. “I just think it would be boring,” I added.

But as Mum and Dad looked at me their eyes grew soft, and even before Dad had reached out to bring me into a hug, I just knew that nothing I could say then would make them change their mind. Great, I thought, as he pulled me into his armpit. I’d made them sorry for me. There was no getting out of it now.

***

On the day of the camping trip, it was kind of grey and heavy. I could feel my backpack cutting into my shoulder blades. I kissed my little twin brothers on the tops of their head before I left. For some stupid reason, I felt like I might never see them again. Mum would have said I was being dramatic. But I couldn’t help it. The wet look of the rooftops that morning; the sharp smell of asphalt on the road; the call of a passing crow… it all felt ominous.

But my brothers didn’t notice a thing. They’re only three years old. Too young to be scared. They grinned and waved at me, then one of them picked up the cat by its neck and made it wave to me too. Poor Goldie. She yowled but she was used to their rough kind of love, and I thought, at least I’m not a cat stuck with my two little brothers. Maybe Mum and Dad were wrong. Maybe reality was worse than our imaginations. I straightened my back and left them then, ready to take on my fate like an adult would do.

But my bravado faded quickly once our bus had pulled away from the school. On the bus I didn’t feel very good, so I didn’t talk much to my friend Jake, but only let him laugh and make jokes with the other kids on the bus. Alone with my worries, I pressed my head to the window and felt the vehicle rattle over every pothole in the road. I could still see the heavy clouds piling one on top of the other in the corners of the sky.

The camping ground was on the edge of a national park. All that nature should have been relaxing. But everything here now looked dark and foreign. When we pulled into the camping ground, Jake turned around and offered me a raisin from the packet his parents had packed in his lunchbox.

“No thanks,” I said, trying to smile.

“More for me,” he shrugged, and hit me on the arm, smiling. Jake was small and his dark eyes twinkled. He didn’t understand being scared of things, because he was always so happy.

I gazed around me as we stepped off the bus, and tried to see the area with normal eyes, like Jake would. When I looked at the camping ground like that, I could almost convince myself that it was all perfectly ordinary. I could see there was a big barbeque area where everyone could eat together. Next to it was some toilet cubicles. Investigating, I saw there were tall lockers lining the walls, with some showers at the end. Coming back out again, all I could see was a line of trees rising gently over a smooth hill, and a river we could swim in. Everything was very quiet. All the birds must have been sleeping or flown elsewhere.

I set up my tent next to Jake’s, and started to put my sleeping things out. The day remained heavy; I felt kind of sweaty. It was as though the whole place was holding its breath for something. Even the kids in my class, usually boisterous, were murmuring and quiet as they set everything up. After we were finished, I smelled sausages, and saw that the teachers had made up a lunch for us. We ate them with bread and ketchup, hot and delicious. It settled me a bit, and I started to feel a bit better.

Then the teachers told us that we could spend the afternoon swimming, or going for a bushwalk. Most of the kids wanted to go swimming, so I went on the bushwalk instead. The murky brown water of the river hid all sorts of creatures I didn’t want to think about. Besides, I secretly wanted to see what animals were living in this area, so I could identify them when they made sounds in the night.

Mr Masters, the music teacher, was pretty happy to be on a bushwalk. He hummed as he pointed out the different kinds of eucalyptus trees; the genus of rocks. He wore sandals I’d never seen him in before, with socks pulled up to his knees, and a broad, floppy hat. He smelled of sunscreen, like he’d rolled in a whole pool of it.

“For the snakes,” he winked when he saw me looking at his socks, as if snakes would balk at the sight of a bit of material.

There were only a few other kids with us. Two boys I didn’t know very well. They were pretty quiet. Jake was also there. He loved Mr Masters. He asked so many questions, and Mr Masters was so delighted to have such a curious student, that he answered them all.

“What kind of rock is that?” Jake kept saying. “Is this plant poisonous? What do you do if you get stung by a hornet?”

Jake talked so much, and Mr Masters responded so enthusiastically, that I realized with a sinking feeling after only a few moments, that between the two of them they’d scared all the animals away. Apart from the rocks and plants, we didn’t see a thing. In fact, the clouds came over heavier, and there was a moment that I looked at the sky and wondered if we were going to get caught in a downpour.

Mr Masters must have thought so too. He’d been looking at his mobile phone to see which paths to take, but suddenly he looked up at the sky, and stopped short. He made a few taps on his phone. Then he frowned.

Finally he said,

“My phone’s not working.”

He tapped his screen.

“No reception,” he confirmed. He sniffed the air, then returned to his phone. “I know the way back, but I can’t check if the rain is coming.”

He could have just looked at the sky, I thought. Rain was a certainty. The sky was pitch black now. The wind had completely died down. It was dead quiet.

Suddenly, I heard a low moan from somewhere far away. All the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. It was the weirdest sound. Even Jake looked surprised, and for once said nothing. Mr Masters stopped looking at his telephone then, and looked instead up at the sky. All of us stopped and listened.

All was quiet. Not even a cicada chirped. And then, just when we thought it was all over, it happened again. But there were more moans, this time. It was like a call, then a chorus.

“Must be the kids doing some activity back at the camping ground,” said Mr Masters.

“They’ve all got a bellyache from lunch,” Jake said. The other boys with us laughed. But I didn’t laugh. The sausage from lunch sat heavy in my belly. I could taste it in the back of my teeth.

“Well, let’s go back anyway,” he said briskly. “We’ve been gone for more than an hour.”

When I look back upon it now, I know that something in me wanted to say no. It was something different to the usual fears I felt. But – and I don’t know if this has ever happened to you – I was a bit scared to say anything. At that moment I said to myself:

Toughen up, Elroy. Now’s your chance to show how brave you are. Or how normal you are, anyway.

And so I obediently followed Mr Masters, Jake and the two other boys, lagging only a little behind.

But as we drew closer to the camp we began to hear all sorts of other sounds too. There were moans, but also cracking sounds, like things being broken, and quite a few of the kids were screaming.

“Aren’t they having a great time?” Mr Masters smiled at us.

Then, suddenly there was a great splashing sound, like a hundred people running headlong into the river at once. Mr Masters’ brow, which until now had been quite wrinkled with confusion, became all smooth when that happened. He made an ah! sound, as though he’d finally worked it all out.

“They’re doing water activities,” he said triumphantly.

They were the strangest water activities I’d ever heard, though. I felt my feet dragging behind me, but still I walked, ever slower, ever more reluctantly, back towards the camp.

Jake, on the other hand, was worried about missing out on anything exciting. He began to walk ahead of us, more and more quickly. He strode off before even Mr Masters. Then, when the clearing came into sight, he began running towards it, his spindly legs flying as he ran. I saw him turn the corner and disappear around it.

Then it seemed that he made a shouting sound, but I couldn’t make out his words. I thought he sounded panicked. As scared as I was, I couldn’t help myself. I felt my friend was in trouble. I began running too, in the direction of the barbeque area. But I stopped and slowed just before I turned the corner.

What I saw at our camping ground was enough to make the blood drain from my face. It was terrible. It was horrific. It was the kids of my class, blank-faced, drooling, assembled around the barbeque area. At least, they looked like the kids in my class. But their faces were blue, and spit hung down from their cheeks slackly. Their arms were loose by their sides. When they saw me, it was as though they all saw me in unison. Then they made that horrible moaning sound our little group had heard from afar, and began shuffling towards me.

My heart stopped in my throat. They had turned into zombies. All of them were zombies. And as they advanced towards me, I realized that I was slap bang in the middle of my own personal school zombie apocalypse.

I didn’t have time to think. I couldn’t see where Jake had gone, but there was a gang of zombie kids shuffling up against a big eucalyptus tree and I guessed he must be at the top of it. Glancing around, I saw a tree not far away that had a branch I just might jump onto. I calculated my distance, then ran towards it.

The zombies all changed direction and listed towards me. But I was faster. I reached the tree, lifted my two hands, grabbed the lowest branch and swung myself onto it. Not feeling high enough, I managed to clamber another two branches, before the boughs became too thin and I could go no higher. There I hovered, clutching the tree, my palms sweaty and the day still weirdly quiet.

Here they came now, groaning and shuffling, about fifteen of them. Their clothes were sopping wet from swimming in the river, and dripped on the dry earth as they shuffled towards my tree. When they got to the tree they reached up but couldn’t get past the first branch.

Seeing them up close, my heart was beating so hard that I thought I might faint and fall off the tree, landing on top of the lot of them. I noticed that their skin was falling off in patches, and they were salivating – actually salivating – I suppose to get a good bite into my leg. I tried uselessly to get further up the tree but the bark was too smooth; I could get no higher.

But neither could they. They clambered around the base of the tree. Then one of them realized that they could stand on the cupped hands of the other, to give each other a boost up. That was when I really started to get worried.

I looked around in a panic for something that could help me. Nothing but a thin twig of a branch by my head. I snapped it off and brandished it like a metre ruler. The zombies didn’t react to my weapon; I don’t think they were all too bright. But when the first struggled onto the shoulders of the second, I poked the zombie’s chest with it and it sank into the soft, decaying flesh like modeling clay. He made a weird sound, and fell off the other zombie’s shoulders. Victory one for me. I kept my instrument firm in my hand and commenced poking the flesh of all the zombies that ventured too close to the lowest branch.

All this time I’d barely thought about Mr Masters, but I suddenly heard a high scream. I saw him flat on his back by the toilet cubicle, pinned down by about six kids, who all seemed to be chewing him. Oh no. Poor Mr Masters. At first I felt sorry, but my feelings turned to panic when after a few minutes the zombies all fell back, and Mr Masters shook himself and stood up again. It was his shuffling gait that made me realise the terrible, horrible truth. He was now a zombie himself.

The more horrible truth was that he was twice the height of the other kids in my class, and would have no trouble reaching the first branch that I’d swung up upon.

As if hearing my thoughts, his now-dull eyes rotated towards me, and he spotted me up the tree. Slowly, slowly, he began shuffling towards me, while my pulse thudded panicked in my ears. What would I do when he got here? What could just one boy do against an attack of zombies?

His sandals dragged in the dust. Like a fly caught in a window, I panicked and tried to scrabble higher up the tree, but it was no good. I just couldn’t get further away.

Then I heard another scream and realized that Jake had seen me. He was still ok. He was still human. He hadn’t been turned into a zombie yet. But I could see now that a different teacher zombie was pulling on the branch he was sitting on, shaking it determinedly, like a monkey trying to shake down a coconut.

Eventually the inevitable happened. Jake lost his balance and fell from the tree. I saw him running at breakneck speed towards the toilet cubicles. I saw Mr Masters continue shuffling slowly towards me, just as I remembered what was in the toilet cubicles. The high locker cupboards. There were no branches on the locker cupboards. I could sit on top of one and just kick every zombie who approached me.

I wasn’t going to let Mr Masters reach me and put his horrible teeth around my leg. With a heroic leap, I sprang down from the tree, over the top of the kid zombie heads, and went pelting towards the toilets myself. My advantage was my human speed. The zombies moved very slowly, and that was my only saving grace.

The fear put quicksilver in my feet. I streaked towards the toilet block and made it inside with no immediate pursuers. Sure enough, Jake was at the top of one of the lockers; he’d climbed up the shoe shelves to get there.

I picked one a few metres away and leapt up onto it.

“Kick away the shelves!” he cried. I kicked them away. None of them were fixed to the wall. They made a horrible clatter in the still-dull silence of the afternoon. And there Jake and I sat, pale-faced, on top of our cupboards, breathing heavily while we waited for the zombies to come.

It didn’t take long. They started to amass at the entry to the toilets. Making their horrible groans and wet sounds, they pushed their way into the room. They smelled extraordinary. Like wet dog and old sausages. I felt my lunch rise in my throat.

In waves, they came upon our lockers and rattled them. But we were too high for them, and our furniture was fixed to the wall. Occasionally one creepy hand would come exploring up around my ankle, and I would give it a swift kick and then it was gone. This must have gone on for an hour. The human body is amazing in what it can do in great moments of stress. Wave after wave of zombies attacked Jake and I on the cupboards, and wave after wave we dodged them, kicking them away with our shoe when we could, every muscle straining with the effort of not being bitten. For I knew now what would happen if we got bitten.

Of course some of the zombie teachers shuffled into the room and tried their hand at us as well. They were taller than the kid zombies. But they could never get their mouths near us, and their putrefied flesh was lacking the strength to pull us down. So we just kept on like this for hour after hour, until I realized that the sun was going down.

Soon it would be night time. And how could we keep on like this? How could we keep fighting them off when evening fell, and we couldn’t see their advances in the dark? Besides, I was becoming so tired, so strained from the stress of trying to stay alive. Jake, too, looked like he felt the same. What would we do when the night fell?

I could feel my muscles trembling from the strain of holding myself back against the wall. From kicking out at the slobbering zombies who wanted to eat us. As the corners of the toilet cubicle darkened and spread across the room, I saw what I first though was a hallucination. My father, standing in the doorway of the toilet block.

“Dad!” I wanted to cry. But at first I genuinely thought he was a figment of my tired mind. What I wouldn’t give to have my Dad here now. To have him lift me from the top of this locker and carry me away from all these zombies, safe, home, with my Mum and little brothers and my safe, soft bed.

But the more I looked, the more I realized that it was my Dad in the corner. He had come to save me.

Then I noticed that he had begun to walk towards me. Only, he was shuffling. My Dad was a zombie too.

I couldn’t help it. Tears began streaming down my face. What would I do now that my Dad was a zombie?

But through my tears I noticed something odd. Dad’s movements, although slow and shuffling, were accompanied by a glance that was not as dull as the others. He swayed through the kid zombies, who, after hours of trying, were admittedly starting to get a little tired of pursuing two boys high atop the lockers. The kid zombies dropped back when he walked through the group, probably expecting that he might get us down after all. My Dad is taller than all of the teachers; he’s pretty sizeable. When he got to my locker, he made an authoritative BOO-AH ! sound that shocked the kid zombies, who stood in dumb silence for a few moments, before they slowly shuffled out of the room.

Zombie Dad looked up at me. Very slowly, he winked.

“Dad!” I said under my breath, almost crying with relief.

“Shh,” he said. “Just pretend to be a zombie. I’ve got a car waiting outside, with three others in it. We’ve all escaped like this. Follow my lead.”

“And Jake!” I whispered. “He’s my friend. He’s over there.”

Dad looked over at an exhausted and terrified Jake, then nodded. He pulled me down and placed me gently on the ground. Then he went and got Jake too. Jake looked stunned. It was not too hard to get him to walk like a zombie after all the things he’d been through.

We made a few short screams so they’d think Dad had gotten us. Then the three of us shuffled out of the door. By now, the other zombies seemed to have forgotten about us. Perhaps the effort of trying to eat us had tired them out. Some were sitting under trees playing chess, and some were floating on lilos on the river. They were talking inarticulately; to be fair, I saw some of their teeth and lips were falling apart, so it mustn’t have been easy to keep a conversation. I felt sorry for all the kids who, this morning, had been just like me. Just coming on a school camping trip. Now they were all zombies.

Dad had driven a little four-wheeled drive I didn’t recognize to come pick me up. There was Mrs Purdy, my English teacher, in the back. She looked sweaty; one piece of grey hair was stuck wetly to her face. Beside her were one or two kids I didn’t recognize. They all looked stunned.

Jake sat beside me on the passenger’s seat. I could hardly believe it when Dad started the engine and changed gears, and then we were slowly driving away from this hell-hole; this terror camp that had destroyed my whole class. The zombies barely looked at us as we pulled out of the camping area and merged back onto the highway, going faster, faster, as the night leaked onto the road’s edges.

“Is everyone ok at home?” I asked Dad. “How did you know what happened?”

But Dad just said in a low voice, “Everyone’s ok, Elroy,” and kept driving. Everyone else in the car was utterly silent.

Eventually, as we continued driving, I began to see that our problem had not just been confined to the camping ground. There were general scenes of destitution as we approached my school. Lots of trees and rubbish bins appeared to have been torn up from the ground. But before I could work out what this meant, I heard a strange sound in the back. My English teacher, Mrs Purdy, made a barking sound under her breath, almost exactly like a dog. She tried to disguise it as a cough, but we all knew what we’d heard. I looked at Dad and he looked so steadfastly at the road that I knew he’d heard it too. Very calmly, he slowed then stopped the car.

“Angela,” he said to Mrs Purdy. “I believe this is the best place to leave you.”

Mrs Purdy looked confused.

“No, I want to go home,” she said.

“Your home is not safe,” said my Dad gently. “It’s safe here. Look, there isn’t a zombie in sight.”

It was then that I saw it, from where I was watching her in the rear-vision mirror. A big, green bite on her forearm. She must have been bitten by a zombie before Dad picked her up, and for some reason the magic that turns a human victim into a fellow zombie had been slower to work on her than it had been with Mr Masters. But after all, I reminded myself, Mr Masters had six kids feeding on him. That was surely why it had been fast for him.

Zombies are not the brightest monsters in the bunch. Mrs Purdy still looked confused, but she allowed herself to take my Dad’s arm as he got out, came around and helped her out of the car. It was only when she was standing back on the side of the road that she seemed to realise, in some slow corner of her mind, that it was not all as it seemed. Perhaps some slow stirring was alerting her to the fact that she was letting a delicious car-load of humans disappear. Whatever it was, as Dad returned to the drivers’ seat and started to rev the engine, she began running, trippingly, after the car. Her red dress now appeared tattered; her skin had turned bluish.

“Don’t leave me!” she cried. “Come back!”

She still ran faster than a complete zombie, and Dad’s car wasn’t very fast in first gear. She caught up to the passenger’s door and tugged on it; Jake and I had forgotten to put on our seatbelts. He fell right out as she opened the door. Dad slammed his foot on the brakes. But Jake looked up and cried, with tears in his eyes,

“Just go, be safe!”

“No!” I cried for my friend. But it was too late. Mrs Purdy closed her eyes and took a big bite of Jake’s arm, just below the elbow. It was too late for him. I sobbed into my car seat as I felt Dad hesitate, realise the same conclusion as I had, and then think about the other occupants of our car. He reached over, slammed the passenger door, and put his foot to the floor.

We sped away then, away from my friend Jake, now a zombie, away from the highway, down the smaller lanes until finally we got to my school. There was no-one about. Dad dropped the other boys who had been with us safely in the library, and then it was just me and Dad, steering back towards our house.

I was still thinking about my poor friend Jake. Tears blurred my eyes as we drove on.

“What happened?” I said again. I just couldn’t understand it.

“I don’t know exactly,” said Dad. “A hundred zombies started coming through the town. I left Mum and your brothers back at the house. Don’t worry,” he said, seeing my face. “The doors and windows are safely locked.”

After a few moments more in which we drove in silence, he added,

“When you get home and we’re all together, we’ll think about what we do now. Where we should go.”

I saw as we drove that many of the power lines had been gnawed and brought down. Night had almost fallen, and everything was very dark. I could smell something unusual and old in the air.

When we turned into the village where we lived, I saw groups of people clustered under trees and my letter boxes. It was the people of the town. Every single one of them was a zombie. I was astonished to see that they seemed to be doing fine. Absent the hunger for human flesh – for there were certainly no humans around anymore – some of them had lit candles, and they were slowly talking with each other, even laughing amongst themselves, and playing ball games in the shadowy darkness. In the unlit windows, I could see the contours of some of them moving through their houses. We didn’t see a single other human. Just zombies. Our town had become a zombie town.

When we pulled into our driveway, Dad told us to walk slowly again, shufflingly, as a zombie would, just in case any of them got wind of us. We got to the front door, and Dad said softly at the keyhole,

“Matilda? Matilda, it’s me.”

And then there was a laughing sound from inside that I knew was the twins, and it wasn’t my Mum but my little brothers who opened the door. That should have been odd in itself. But then, seeing their sweet, joyful faces, I realized that they were not the little brothers I had known and loved. They, too, were turned into zombies.

Sweetly, they pulled on my hand and led me into the lounge room. Our cat Goldie was laying on the floor, and with a chortling laugh, they made me pet her. Her hair was falling off in chunks, and strewn across the carpet. They crooned over her; their little arms and legs were bluish, and they moved more slowly than before. But they were still my little brothers. I wanted to cry.

“Where’s Mummy?” Dad asked them in a strained voice. Coyly, they pointed into the bathroom. We followed their guidance and stumbled to the bathroom.

Mum was sitting in the bath, her eyes closed. There was a lot of steam in the room. She raised her eyes to us when she heard us enter; there were two little gnaw marks on her cheek. She was sweating like my English teacher Mrs Purdy had.

“Matilda?” my Dad said, his voice cracking.

“The cat escaped,” she said quietly. “When he came back, I thought he was alright. But he bit the twins…”

“And the twins bit you…”

Dad’s eyes filled with tears.

“It’s not so bad,” said Mum. “They seem very happy. And from what I can see, everyone else doesn’t seem too sad either.”

Dad and I looked out the window. I heard the twins giggle in the loungeroom, and Goldie yowl contentedly. On the street, our neighbours were dancing in the moonlight. In the pale light I could see their jagged zombie edges wobbling. Occasionally, bits of them fell off.

Dad looked at me. I looked at Dad. Then we agreed between ourselves, without having to say a word.

Each of us held out our arm to Mum. And peacefully she smiled, kissed our skin, then gently bit down on it.

Short story for kids written by Jade Maitre

© Storyberries 2018

Let’s Chat About The Stories ~ Ideas for Talking With Kids

Family

1. What would you have done if you were in Elroy’s situation? Do you think it would be better to be the last human in a world of zombies, or surrounded by the family you love? What are the benefits and drawbacks of each?

Courage

1. Elroy admits that he’s scared of most things. Do you think this means that he is not courageous? Why or why not?

2. What events in the story can you identify where Elroy showed courage despite his fears?

The post Zombie Town first appeared on Bedtime Stories.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

1

My little brother was whining again.

“Pleeeease!” he wailed at Mum and Dad. “Just one more go at Minecraft!”

But Mum and Dad weren’t having any of it. Their arms were folded. They were always unmovable when our screen time alarm went off and our time for the week was finished.

Max didn’t realise it yet because he was only six. But I was ten, and knew the ways of the world. Believe me, there was no hope arguing when our time to play was up. That’s why I already had my zombie book out, and was reading it with half a glance, while eying off Max with the other.

“I didn’t get to finish the Great Pyramid!” he cried. He had collapsed on the floor, because not having the X-Box in his hands had presumably made him unable to walk. What anguish. He looked up at our parents with tear-stained cheeks. But they weren’t buying it.

“You’ve been playing…” Mum checked her smart watch, “one hour. Any more than that and you’ll be impossible.”

“Addicted,” added my Dad.

I saw my Mum’s eyes flicker back down to her smart watch, and at the same time, heard a gentle little buzz.

“Work…” Mum murmured. She looked at Dad. “Can you watch the dinner? I’ve got to answer this email.”

Dad looked at his phone. He pressed some buttons.

“Reminder in twenty minutes,” he said.

Mum went to her study and Dad started reading the news on his phone. The two of them had already forgotten Max and his breakdown.

Max, realising that the conversation was over, decided to forget about his complaining and wandered off to his room. I went back to my zombie book.

That was the last time everything was normal for us. None of us realised what was about to happen to our ordinary family, and how everything would soon be destroyed.

 2

I first realised something was wrong when I woke up the next morning by myself. Usually Mum came and woke me every morning. Then, when I didn’t get up, she’d nag me for a while. Finally she’d dump me out of bed and I’d have no choice but to put my clothes on.

I’d come to the kitchen then, and I’d have toast ready on the table, and my sandwiches already packed in my lunch box, wrapped and ready to go. I just had to swallow my breakfast, go brush my teeth, get my shoes on, and I was done. Ready for school.

But this morning, Mum didn’t wake me. So I woke at the time she’d normally be kicking me out of bed, only to find an ominous silence.

Curious, I got up. The house was silent. There was nobody in any of the rooms. No breakfast on the table; no lunch packed by the door.

I went to Max’s bedroom door and saw a light coming from under the sheets. I went to his bed and pulled the covers back.
There was Max on a tablet, playing Minecraft like crazy.

“What are you doing?” I whispered. “Mum and Dad are going to crack it!”

But Max didn’t answer me. He didn’t even look up. He was so obsessed with his game that all I could hear was his heavy, focused breathing, and the little clicks of his fingers as they pressed the Home screen button. His face was about two inches from the screen.

“Max!” I hissed at him. “Stop! I’ll tell Mum and Dad!”

Max totally ignored me. His eyes were glazed. His finger was moving back and forth.

“That’s it,” I muttered. “You’re in so much trouble…”

I stalked to Mum and Dad’s bedroom. The door was closed. It was only then that I hesitated. Might they be sick? Would I be disturbing them? But it was after eight, and I knew they’d want to know about Max playing the tablet on a Monday morning. Last time he’d played for two hours without them knowing, our parents had cancelled our tablet access for two whole weeks.

I tapped quietly. Then, when nobody responded, I turned the handle and pushed the door slowly open.

What I saw made me gasp out loud. I couldn’t believe my eyes!

3

Mum and Dad were sitting bolt-upright in bed, playing a game on their phones. Believe me when I say I’d never seen them play games before. I knew some people’s parents played games, but mine said that games ruined your mind.

They didn’t seem to mind using their phones for everything else, mind you – finding good restaurants and reading the newspaper and sharing photos with their friends – but playing a game? In bed in their pyjamas at 8am before school started? Never.

The second shocking thing was that they weren’t just playing the games like you’d think a parent would play. Most parents I’d seen playing Candy Crush on their phone at the playground usually sort of pretended they were doing something else. You know, like with one eye on the screen and another on little Timmy who was about to kill himself hanging upside down from the giant rope spider.

But no, my parents wouldn’t have noticed if I’d come running into the room crying that there was an axe murderer in the house. They were totally enthralled. Like Max, their eyes were wide and round. The blue light from the screen made their faces seem drawn and alien.

They didn’t react when I walked into the room, and still less when I came up close and stood beside them. I reached out and put my hand on Dad’s wrist – they get me to do that when I want to interrupt about something – but still I stood there, my hand on Dad’s wrist, and he didn’t even flinch.

I craned to have a look at the phone screen, but it was just dark with a whole lot of numbers flicking across the screen. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

“Dad?” I said.

No response.

“Mum?”

There was no reply from either of them. Just the soft tap of their fingers on the screen, and the quiet, almost slumberous breathing of someone who is intensely trying to make it to Level Eleven.

“You know, Mum and Dad, too much playing on your phones will turn you into zombies?”

They didn’t even register. I went to take Dad’s phone, but expertly, he whipped it out of my reach, still playing that weird numbers game.

Well I wasn’t going to climb all over him. I still had my dignity.

I went and made myself breakfast. And as I sat there, chewing, I tried to work it out. Was it something in our air conditioning unit? Had I missed something? The release of some really cool game that I didn’t know about.
I just couldn’t understand it. Something was seriously wrong.

And as I finished my breakfast, I knew. There was only one place I could go to find out what was going on.

4

School. The kids at school knew all about the games that were just hitting the app stores. It must be some kind of new game. I needed to find out what.

I pulled on my clothes and grabbed my school bag. School was at the end of my street, so I didn’t have to rely on Mum and Dad driving me like some kids did. I could just walk there, in less than seven minutes.

And that’s what I did. I left my family to their gaming, and closed the door behind me.

A few minutes later, I was walking the same old route and starting to feel a bit better. The leaves were starting to change colour, and the air was getting cooler. It felt good on my face.

I got nearly all the way to school when I realised that I hadn’t seen many people on the way there. That was strange.
Then I realised, I’d been running late this morning. My Mum hadn’t woken me up like she usually did. I must have missed the bell.

I picked up my pace a bit.

When I got to the school, I made my way to my classroom. I felt a strange sensation to see that there were hardly any kids in the playground.

Those that were hanging around the handball courts were all playing on their phones. Not taking photos of each other and texting like they usually did. No – they were all in their own little bubbles, eyes wide, faces tinged the same shade of blue I’d seen with Max and my parents.

Well, it wasn’t some kind of school holiday that had stopped my parents from waking me up; I could cross that off the list. There were too many kids here for that.

Before I could wonder any more, I saw my best friend Abhishek hanging out the front of my classroom and walked over.

“Hey,” I said.

As you have probably guessed, Abhishek completely ignored me. I thought that was impossible, at first, because Abhishek doesn’t have a phone. But then I remembered that he had some kind of fancy step tracking watch he got for his birthday, and he was staring into it as though it was a portal to another dimension.

“Hey!” I said again. “Abhishek! It’s Roman!”

That was a big fat Nope. He didn’t turn. He didn’t even blink. Not even slightly. He was just tap-tap-tapping with his finger. Then my heart stopped in my chest. I could see his heart rate and blood pressure were flashing up on the screen. No joke, his heart rate was more than two hundred. TWO HUNDRED! And he wasn’t even moving.

“Hey, Abhishek. C’mon. Stop playing that thing,” I said to him urgently. “We’ve got to get you to the Principle’s office.”

His face was tinged blue. I wondered if he was dying. I had to do something fast.

5

I’ve never been the type who paid too much attention when the teachers were giving first aid classes at school. So I didn’t know the first thing about what to do with Abhishek, whose face now seemed so blue that it was almost alien-like.

Still his face was still as a statue, his eyes frozen wide. Still his finger was tap-tap-tapping on his step-tracker. Tap-tap-tap. It was creepy. It was wrong.

Then the breeze seemed to die down all of a sudden and I realised that all of the kids in the playground were tapping in unison. Tap-tap-tap. The hollow sounds rang out across the concrete expanse and bounced off the buildings.

Tap-tap-tap. Imagine that. The almost-imperceptible thwock! of hundreds of fingers all tapping their watches and mobile phones at once. The sound rose to a crescendo. It took over the school. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I had to do it quickly. I grabbed Abhishek under the arms and started to drag him towards the Principal’s office. He felt really heavy and I couldn’t do it easily, not in the least because his body was relaxed like he was slouching in a beanbag, and his arm remained stretched out at an angle in front of him so he could see the screen on his wrist, and he didn’t seem to realise that someone was dragging him at all.

Still, I managed to get him off the bench. I got him off the bench and had just dragged him up the steps started heading towards the middle of the playground when, all of a sudden, everybody’s fingers stopped moving. I knew, because all that tapping suddenly stopped.

The air went silent. Utter silence. Completely silent. Not a bird twittered; not a cricket sang. Not a device buzzed or beeped into the air. It was quiet as though a television screen had just been switched off. As though we were all little robots that had suddenly been unplugged.

Then, in a very freaky fashion, everyone took a breath, at exactly the same time. A big sigh filled the air; the sigh of a hundred kids in unison.

Next thing I knew, a slow whine began from somewhere outside the school, past the school gates and the entrance to the bus stop and the road. It sounded like a whistle – no, a wind tunnel – maybe even the drone of a motor over mountains.
The sound rose and rose. It got louder and louder. It started hurting my ears. I placed Abhishek gently on the ground and put my hands over my ears as the sound got even louder still, and turned into a screech, like a car braking suddenly before it hits a brick wall; like an engine when something has gone very, very wrong.

Then all of a sudden, a bright light appeared in the sky, brighter than I’d ever seen before, and I realised it was coming from the biggest, silver spider I’d ever seen, reaching its mechanical legs across the corners of the sky, looming over the school buildings, whistling and screeching and making a noise like I’d only ever heard in the movies. It was real-life surround-sound. And before it had even sank to the ground, right in the middle of our playground, I realised what it was.

It was a terrifying spaceship.

6

All the kids in the playground who had been so immobile only moments before, suddenly stood up straight. Then their heads snapped up in unison as they stared at the bright disc that was lowering over their school yard. There they stood, frozen, looking upwards, their faced bathed in a green and purple light.

I was freaking out. There was no way I wanted to be in the way of that great silver shining thing, wailing and shooting out strange bluish sparks.

I tried to drag my friend Abhishek away, towards our classroom, but he surprised me. He suddenly shook me off with a strength I didn’t realise he had. He didn’t even look at me; his face was still craned upwards, staring at the sky.

I tried once more. But he seemed to be possessed with a weird kind of superhuman strength I knew he didn’t have before today. Both of us were usually what you would call weaklings, that no amount of football or wrestling could save us from. But not today. Today Abhishek was as strong as some kind of chubby Hercules.

He pushed me away with a bone-thumping lurch. I fell to the ground. And I could only watch as he began to shuffle towards that great shining machine.

“Stop!” I croaked, because I was terrified, and my voice had dried right up in my throat. But my voice was drowned out by a slow rising murmur as all the kids in the playground started walking towards the spaceship in that same strange, shuffling gait.

Next thing, I saw all the teachers also emerging from their classrooms and joining the zombie throng. I saw my teacher Mrs Rana walking with the rest of them. Only unlike the others who wore a dulled, dumb expression, she had a little smile on her face.

Though it was stunned and kind of absorbed, for a moment I forgot my fear, and in my excitement I called out to her. I thought she must be aware of all this like I was, and there was someone experiencing this shocking event who was awake like me.

But she walked right past me, her hand at a strange angle. It was only then that I realised she was taking a selfie, and that’s why she had that weird look on her face.

She was taking a selfie with the spaceship. Intently, like it was no danger to her at all.

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

As the humming intensified once more, I heard a rumble and realised that people were no longer just emerging from classrooms. They were also coming from the neighbouring houses, which were located on the street beside the entrance to our school. Fifty people or more. Nearly everyone in the immediate radius.

That’s when I realised the problem was way bigger than I could ever have imagined. Here were old grandmas and grandpas, people you’d never imagine harbouring a secret desire to play FIFA19 or wear an Apple watch, shuffling out of their houses and making their way slowly towards the school, their faces upturned to the sky, joining the throng of school kids and teachers and neighbours to collect in a weird, intense zombie huddle beneath the great spidery spaceship.

Then, just as suddenly as this whole thing had started, the screeching finally stopped. Once again, that unearthly silence fell over everyone.

I could feel my heart in my ears. A strong sense of dread gripped me. I couldn’t explain it.

And now, in that stillness, there was a brief and horrible moment that everyone actually realised where they were.

It was the quickest of moments. The most split of seconds. Their gait changed; they looked at each other in surprise to find themselves in the playground.

Then they looked up, and saw the giant spaceship, crouched over them like a predatory insect.

Abhishek saw me across the heads of people. His eyes met mine. For a split second, he woke up from everything that was going on and he saw me. His eyes were full of fear.

“Help me, Roman,” I saw his mouth move.

That’s all there was time for.

The bright light flared.

Then everyone disappeared.

7

My courage left me at that moment. I hardly knew what I was doing. I was alone in the playground. The giant spaceship still squatted above me, humming in a satisfied way. I realised with a heart-dropping certainty that I was now the only person left in the school.

I felt exposed and vulnerable. I wanted to run, but I was afraid that doing so would draw attention to me; that it would make that great metallic monster – or whoever was controlling it – realise that they’d missed someone. That there was someone still alive on the ground.

Should I make a run for it anyway? Was there even a possibility of escaping that thing ? I couldn’t have decided for myself. But something decided it for me. The spaceship seemed to train its great spindly legs in a new direction; my direction.

I scrambled to my feet. Blindly, barely knowing what I was doing then, I ran. Away. Away from the giant spaceship, as fast as my legs would take me, down the steps to the playground and past the library, past the gym equipment and down the hill. And as I made my way helter-skelter towards our sports oval, I heard the spaceship’s humming intensify, and felt it brighten behind me.

Oh no. Not again.

My legs went into overdrive and I pelted for the line of trees on the far side of the oval. I dove behind the biggest one and sat with my back to the trunk, panting, trying to make myself the smallest and most inconspicuous human you’d ever see.

And it seemed to work. The spaceship’s humming died down once more, and as I peered around the tree I saw that the lights had switched off.

Relief flooded my senses. But I didn’t have much time. I knew I needed to help Abhishek. He’d asked me to. It’s what a good mate would do.

But what could I do? Had he completely disappeared? Or was he up in that great big shining thing still crouching over our school playground?

And what about my teachers? All the kids at our school? Were they all up there?

Did they know what was happening? Were they feeling scared?

I wished I had a phone to call my Mum and Dad, but then I remembered that it was lucky that I didn’t.

Then I had that thought again. Mum and Dad. And Max. Oh no!

Mum, Dad and Max. Still at home, still playing their computer games, at least so far as I knew. Were they equally at risk from this great, deadly spaceship?

I felt a flash of guilt that I hadn’t tried harder to get them off their devices before I left for school. Sure, I had tried to grab their phones. But when I couldn’t get a sensible answer out of them, shouldn’t I have just turned off the wifi?

Why hadn’t I thought of something so simple?

I jumped to my feet and began walking as fast and quietly as I could, looping back around to the street using the trees as a camouflage. Luckily they went all the way to the fence line.

But the whole time I was weaving behind the trees, walking quickly and quietly towards the road, I watched the spaceship from the corner of my eye. And it didn’t move. It was like had decided to make my school its new airbase. It did, however, keep flaring up periodically with those strange coloured lights. White and purple and green and blue, like a giant disco ball.

I stopped, just briefly, to have a good look at it. To see if I could see any way of entering the thing, once I’d got Mum and Dad and Max into safety, and had to work out what to do about Abhishek and all the other kids and teachers from our school. Its surface was smooth as an egg, just with these weird projections that looked like a spider’s legs. I couldn’t see any doors or windows. It was now pulsing gently like a luminous flower. It was really pretty, in a freaky kind of way.

Pretty and dangerous, I reminded myself.

And once again, if I could regret anything, it would be that all these thoughts tend to come to me always a bit too late. Like – ten seconds too late. Because as I watched that strange, beautiful machine, there was a hot pink flare, so bright it made my eyes hurt…

And everything went black.

8

“Hey,” a voice was saying in the darkness. My head was hurting.

It was a girl’s voice. Thin and worried. A voice I’d never heard before.

I tried to open my eyes but they felt melted together.

“Wake up!” the voice said, more urgently now. I could feel something hard beneath my body, and her hands on me, shaking my elbow with some energy.

I tried again. With a monumental effort, I managed to pry my eyes open.

Oh, everything was so bright! I shut my eyes again, and rubbed them with my hands. My head was spinning.

“Are you okay?” she asked now. She could see I was alive, after all. I just nodded.

“Who are you?” I said.

“Who are you?” returned the girl.

“Roman,” I said. “I’m from the school.”

“Me too,” said the girl. “My name is Namor.”

“I haven’t heard of you,” I said.

Maybe that was rude, because Namor said coldly, “Well I haven’t heard of you.”

“It’s a big school,” I said. Then I remembered what had happened just a few minutes before. “Was,” I added.

I realised I was lying straight out on the ground under a tree – the same tree I’d been standing under when I saw that blinding pink flash only moments before. So I hadn’t been taken. That was something, at least. I wasn’t on that giant spaceship twenty metres in the air. Yet.

With some effort, I sat up. Namor just looked at me. I don’t think she liked me very much since I told her I hadn’t heard of her. Come to think of it, I had been kind of rude. But my head was still hurting, and I guess I just came out with it without thinking.

Namor was the palest girl I’d ever seen. Her hair was so light it was almost white, and she had these massive eyes that were green like the bottom of a swimming pool. She was chewing her nails and looking at me, waiting for me to say something. I obliged her.

“So how come you’re awake?”

“Awake?”

“You know, like… don’t you have a phone or something?”

“Nah,” said Namor. She blinked once. Her eyes were unsettlingly large.“I’ve never had one,” she said.

“Me neither,” I replied. “My parents reckon that technology fries your brain.”

“That’s a funny idea,” she said. “Why would it fry your brain?”

“Oh, I don’t know. My Mum just says ‘microwaves’…”

Mum was very vague when it came to her explanations. I could picture her now, telling me to turn the wifi off before we all went to bed. “Those microwaves,” she used to say, waving her hand in the air towards some invisible force…

“Microwaves have nothing to do with telephones or computers,” Namor said. “They’re like a radio. They don’t fry anything.”

“Well why aren’t you allowed to have a mobile phone?” I asked. “What reason did your parents give?”

“I just don’t think they’re very interesting,” Namor said. All of a sudden, she became more animated. She almost smiled. “Not when there’s all this other interesting stuff to look at. I mean – look at it. That sky, it’s the craziest blue. And look at your legs. Did you know there’s a eusocial insect climbing on you at the moment?”

“A eusocial … what?” I looked at her and then down at my leg. “Oh, you mean an ant?” I brushed it off. What a freak. Who calls ants a ‘eusocial insect’?’

But Namor kept watching the ant with large and excited eyes. She put her finger out and let the ant climb on it, then gave me the widest, unsettling grin. All this, mind you, while a giant spaceship was pulsing and humming only a few hundred metres away.

“Look,” I said. “You can stay with the ant all you want. But I’ve got to get back to my house. My Mum and Dad and brother are there. They’re in danger.”

“Are they?” Namor said. She suddenly seemed very interested. She put the ant down. “I’ll come with you.”

I suddenly felt oddly protective of my family. I didn’t want her seeing them like that, with those glowing, intent faces, and that weird, absorbed smile, and their fingers tapping frantically on their screens.

And didn’t she have a home to go to?

“What about your house? Are your parents alright?”

Namor just blinked at me. Her face was blank.

“My parents are where I left them,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“I saw them just before,” she said.

“Well I wouldn’t be so sure,” I said. And then I realised the uselessness of discussing this with her. I didn’t care. I just needed to make sure my family were safe.

I rose to my feet. I was still a bit unsteady.

“Ok, I’ve got to go,” I said. “Good luck.”

I started walking away from her. But she was still staring at me. I could feel her eyes on me. And something about her seemed kind of sad.

I took a few more steps, and then, maybe because I regretted my previous rudeness, something stuck in me. I turned around.

“You can come with me if you like,” I told her.

She nodded happily, and just like that, she was standing by my side. I started walking and she followed my pace. We strode away from the playground, as quickly and carefully as we could, to avoid the spaceship seeing us, in the direction of my home.

And as we walked, I thought about this strange new friend of mine. About something that had been unsettling me since a few moments before. After a few minutes more, I realised what it was.

I had a feeling Namor was lying about her parents.

But I had no idea why.

9

But for the meantime, at least as we quickly walked away from the school, the spaceship didn’t move, and stayed hovering right where it was. It gave me some comfort.It hadn’t started going up and down the street or anything, like some giant vacuum cleaner. I was still nervous though. I picked up my pace. Namor, who had long skinny arms and legs, kept up pretty well.

But as we walked away from the playground and looped onto my street, I didn’t hear police sirens, as you might expect at seeing a huge silver disc lower on a public school and suck up all its inhabitants.

Then I thought, maybe I was the only one who saw it. Me and Namor, that is.

I stole a look at the girl walking beside me. I couldn’t work her out. There was something wrong about her attitude, but I didn’t know what it was. She wasn’t at all looking at the spaceship; it didn’t seem to worry her in the slightest.

Maybe she hadn’t seen what I saw. I hadn’t asked her yet, after all. I decided to ask her.

“Did you see what happened with the spaceship before?” I said. “Did you see all those people disappear?”

“Yep,” she said.

“Anyone you knew?”

“Nah,” she said.

“What do you mean? None of your friends were at school today?”

But Namor’s face went cold. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it. That was weird.

Maybe she didn’t have friends. It wouldn’t be so unusual. Anyone that calls ants eusocial insects probably doesn’t have much experience talking to people.

“My best friend was sucked up into that thing,” I told her.

“Nobody was sucked up,” replied Namor. “They were teleported.”

“I don’t think there’s much of a difference…”

“Yes there is.”

I just looked at her. I didn’t want to argue over the way my best friend had just disappeared into a spaceship. But Namor did.

“If they’d been sucked up, it would have hurt their organs,” Namor said. “Much better this way,” she added.

I had to give her one thing: she’d made me feel a tiny bit better.

“So they might be alright up there, you think…?”

“Oh, they’re alright,” Namor said breezily.

But I wasn’t so sure. I started walking even faster.

As we walked, I practiced in my head what I needed to do once I got home. I just needed to see Mum, Dad and Max, I told myself. Turn off the wifi, tell them what had happened, and get them to drive to the police station. If the spaceship was still there, the police could surround it with their helicopters. I had no idea how they’d get in, but that’s why they were the police and I was just a clueless boy. Let the experts take care of it.

I saw with relief that we’d now crossed two streets and were almost at a big curve in the road where my street went around behind a large pine tree. I knew that once we passed it, we’d see my house.

“We’re almost here,” I told Namor.

She didn’t nod or say anything, just kept walking beside me – right beside me – as though she’d been glued to my side. She was so close I could smell her shampoo, which was a weird smell, like strong plastics.

“You wait outside when we get there,” I added. “I just need to talk to my Mum and Dad for a second before you come in.”

Namor nodded.

“There’s a swing under the front tree you can hang out on,” I added belatedly, feeling a bit rude all over again.

It’s just that I didn’t want anyone seeing my parents and brother as zombies. I didn’t want Namor looking at my family with her cool eyes, thinking they were weird or something.

My Mum was the greatest – she was so funny, and was always inventing jokes around the dinner table. My Dad was really good at kicking a soccer ball with me. My brother Max was awesome at baking cakes. You wouldn’t know it by seeing them addicted to their devices.

It was stupid, I realised, but I just wanted Namor to think my family were as good as they were. Even if she was just some strange kid who didn’t really know how to talk to people properly.

We turned the corner and then I breathed a giant sigh of relief. Everything was as it should be. There was no giant spaceship parked out the front, or anywhere on the street that I could see. There was nobody around, granted, but it was a school morning, and everybody would be at school or work, and that was normal.

One hundred percent normal. Right. It was time to move into my plan.

“Here’s the swing,” I told Namor.

She sat down on it. I left her and walked up to the front door.

I took my key out and went to put it in the lock.

That’s when I saw the lock had completely melted. It was a hard, molten mass.

Then I looked down.

And my heart froze.

10

There was a puddle of something lime-green and gooey, sitting on the doorstep. It was glowing like nothing I’d ever seen on earth, and humming in the same pitch that the giant spaceship had been humming at back in the playground.

I jumped when I saw it, and took an automatic step backwards. But the goo just stayed where it was, shimmering in a luminous, dangerous way.

It didn’t seem alive. But I didn’t want to touch it.

But I could just lean over it…

I leaned over and pushed hard on the door, but it was sealed shut. I tried jiggling it but it wouldn’t budge. I knew I had no hope of getting in with the key, because there wasn’t even a keyhole anymore.

I needed to know if my parents and brother were in there.

“Mum! Dad!” I started yelling at the top of my voice. I tried this a few times, and jabbed over and over at the doorbell. But no-one came. The house was deadly silent. Like the rest of the street, and the neighbourhood. And Namor, who was just swinging on the swing, blank-faced, studying the sky.

“They’ve been here!” I shouted towards her.

Namor seemed to wake up.

“Who?”

“Who? The aliens!”

Namor shrugged and went back to her swinging.

I couldn’t believe it. What a friend. I didn’t even know why I’d brought her along. As far as I was concerned, she could fend for herself now. I had more immediate things to worry about.

Think, I told myself. Think.

There was a door out the back, but it was glass and had an automatic lock. All our bedroom windows would be closed because it was Mum who usually opened them in the mornings, after we’d left for school, and she wouldn’t have done that today.

How could I get in the house? There must be a way.

Then I remembered. There was an old disused dog-door that the previous owners had put at the side of the house, leading into the laundry. Dad had been worried about it for ages, and had asked the landlord to seal it shut. But as far as I knew, it hadn’t happened yet.

I ran to the side of the house, plunging through the camellias and spiderwebs, past the water tank and around to the laundry entrance. Sure enough, there was the dog door, and it only took a second to confirm that it hadn’t been sealed shut yet. My heart leapt with relief.

Crouching down on hands and knees, I knew I could make it through. My head made it through no problems; my shoulders took a bit of wiggling but eventually, clumsily, I made it in and found myself akimbo on the floor. It was strange. Here I was now, in my perfectly ordinary house, lying on the laundry floor amongst the wet socks and dirty shorts. I stood carefully and listened. Still not a sound emanated from the house; not even the sounds of computer games anymore.

But while I was pretty certain I already knew what I would find, I hesitated before I turned the handle to let myself out of the laundry. I didn’t want to meet any aliens. If they had my Mum, Dad and Max, I wanted to at least have the advantage of surprise.

C’mon Roman, I told myself. Just do it.

My heart beating thick in my ears, I slowly – slowly – turned the handle. It made a slow, long squeak, but that was inevitable. I paused, hardly daring to breathe, but when nothing else happened, I gave the laundry door the gentlest push, and let myself into the hallway.

Everything was neat and quiet. There were no puddles of glowing green, or blood spatters, or signs of a struggle. I went to Max’s room first.

No-one.

I passed the kitchen. Nobody had eaten any breakfast. There were no bowls or cups in the sink.

I went to the lounge room. The TV was turned off. The curtains were still drawn.

Feeling a greater-than-ever sense of dread by now, I went into my parents room.

Nobody.

What was even weirder was that the beds were made, like they’d never even been there.

Like they’d never existed.

I could hear my breath very loud in my ears. My hear was making a drum-beat that I thought the neighbours would know about. But they probably weren’t there. There was just me and Namor, so far as I knew.

I went to the bedroom window, to see if she was still on the swing, and perhaps by now even wondering enough about me to have been even a little worried.

But when I looked outside, Namor was gone.

11

I left Mum and Dad’s bedroom then. I ran to the front door and unlocked it. Outside, I realised that the air felt cold, colder than it had before, and there was an odd smell in the air that I hadn’t noticed until now. A kind of pervasive rubbery smell.

I stayed in the doorway so I wouldn’t touch that weird green stuff, which was still glowing and humming. Only the hum had since grown more off-pitch, like a tune that leaned into the silence rather than cut into it.

“Namor!” I yelled over the sound, into the front yard. But out there, only silence greeted me. The empty swing was motionless.

I turned back into the house. I shut and locked the front door once more. What was out there? What had taken Namor?

I felt a sudden chill pass over me. What if the spaceship had come back to life, and was now working its way up the street, sucking up everyone it could find?

A panic gripped me then, and I went from room to room, checking all the doors and windows were closed and locked. Finding them all tightly sealed, I shut all the curtains then, and sat in the corner of the loungeroom, knees pulled up to my chest, feeling my heart pound my knees as I wondered what to do.

I was alone in the house. For all I knew, I was alone in the whole world. I didn’t want to go back outside. But how long could I stay in the house? My parents usually did the groceries on Tuesdays, which was tomorrow, so I knew we didn’t have all that much stuff in the pantry.

And I didn’t know how to cook – not really. I could bake a cake if it was a cake mix. I could make a sandwich. But that was about it. And what would happen when the food ran out?

As I sat there thinking about all my options, which were not many, I realised that I could now hear the humming of the green goo on the front doorstep from inside the house. It had gotten so loud that I could hear it even though the door was closed.

It was freaking me out. I got up and ran to the toilet at the back of the house, because it was the furthest room away from the front door and the street and that weird green goo.

I sat down on the toilet seat. My head was starting to feel tight and my temples thudded. I started to imagine my epitaph. Dead on the toilet. Sucked up into space from the sewer.

Then I heard it. A strange, wheezy sound. Rhythmic. Persistent.

And then a slow tapping, almost hesitant at first. A tapping that grew louder in increments. Tap-tap-tap. It was on the door to the toilet.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-TAP. And the crazy heavy breathing kind of sound grew closer, and I knew there must be some kind of giant beast behind the door, because it breathed like something living, something large and hungry, something large and hungry and laborious, something that was hungry and knew I was in here and was tapping its nails on the wood of the door, finding the flimsiest part, preparing to tear into it…

Tap-tap-tap-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAPTAPTAPTAPTAP!

I was rigid on the toilet seat. I couldn’t move a muscle. I was terrified. There was that rubbery smell again, and I realised it had permeated the tiny bathroom, and was probably some kind of poisonous gas and I was either going to be eaten by this wheezing monster or choke on whatever that green goo was shooting out through my house, and both options were not what I would have chosen. I would have chosen to die from overeating chocolate. Definitely overeating chocolate.

Tap-tap-tap-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAPTAPTAPTAPTAP!

I started to wonder if there was any way I could escape from my ill-thought-out prison. Who wants to die on a toilet? I wondered if I could just jump up and push the door open as fast and suddenly as I could, and catch the creature by surprise, and send it spinning down the hall with the force of the door. It seemed like an okay plan. Not the best. But I grabbed the toilet brush, which was a good hard metal one, and planned how I would stab it towards the creature.

Tap-tap-tap-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAPTAPTAPTAPTAP!

Oh man, though, I was just a boy, and I was coming up against some kind of crazed space creature that wanted to kill me with… a toilet brush?

I didn’t have time to think much more, because all of a sudden the creature must have gotten sick of tapping, and it started to make long scratching sounds up and down the length of the door. There was a sudden judder, and the whole door rattled in its hinges.

I couldn’t help it. A voice tore out from my throat.

“GO AWAY!” I shouted.

There was a silence. Then the door started rattling again, more forcefully this time, because the creature now knew I was in the toilet, and was prepared to meet me head on.

The humming sound from the green goo on the doorstep was now audible in the toilet, which meant that its volume was rising. And I could still hear that horrible heavy breathing, animal-like, and the scratches and thumps and the door shuddered once more in its hinges.

That’s it, I thought. I wasn’t going to die like this. I was going to try and face the monster.

I would unlock the door and shove it open in one swift motion.

I would try and stun whatever it was with my toilet brush.

If that failed, I would just make a break for it out the back door and run for my life.

I crouched before the door, one hand on the lock, the other on my weapon.

I was ready, I told myself.

The creature groaned and thudded into the door once more, rattling it in its sockets.

I turned the handle, and pushed open the door.

12

There was a strong feeling of force. I pushed through the resistance.

And then something let go. Whatever it was was sent spinning through the air and down the hallway. It landed on the floorboards with a heavy bang. I rushed out and faced it.

It was a boy. A boy I’d never seen before.

The boy had long hair that fell into his eyes, and glasses. He was wearing a green windcheater and shiny nylon pants that was long out of fashion. He was flat on his back, rubbing his eyes, as if he didn’t know how he had gotten there.

He looked a touch younger than me. All my fear disappeared as quickly as it had come. I noticed he had a wheezy kind of breathing, and right as I noticed, he fished around in his jacket pocket and brought out a puffer.

He took three quick sucks.

I folded my arms and glared at him.

“Who are you?” I demanded. “What are you doing in my house?”

“I- I don’t know,” he said. He looked sideways at me, as if worried that I would do something else to him. I guess that was normal when I’d just sent him flying into the hallway.

“You don’t know who you are?” I pressed him incredulously.

“Ahh..” he said, confused. He sat up and shook his head. “Let me think a bit.”

I stayed where I was as I saw him stare at the walls for a few moments. Then something seemed to pass his features, and he perked right up. He looked at me, beaming.

“I think I know who I am,” he finally said.

“And…?”

“Jason,” he said.

“Okay…”

“That’s all I’ve got.” He shrugged apologetically.

“Jason, how did you get into my house. All the doors and windows are locked.”

“I don’t – really know…” he said. “I was out the front of my house, and then suddenly I was here.”

“Well why were you trying to get into the bathroom?”

“The bathroom? I wasn’t!”

“Yes you were! You were scratching at the door!”

“That wasn’t me!”

“Who was it then?”

But Jason’s face fell.

“I don’t remember anything,” he said. “Like I said, I was just playing my phone out the front of my house, and next thing I knew I was here.”

I almost jumped on him.

“Your phone? You were on your phone?”

“Yeah. At least, I think so,” he said sheepishly. Then he added, “I usually am.”

“Aren’t you kind of young to be on your phone all the time?”

“Mum says it’s alright,” he replied. “I develop apps. She says it’s kind of like a job.”

I’d never heard of a kid developing apps before. He must have been pretty smart. I looked at him appraisingly, and as I did, I realised he was about the luckiest person I could have met right now. All those games you play around the campfire where people say if the last two people on earth were you and someone else, who would you choose….?

Well in the circumstances, when the whole world had gone mad for their digital devices, I reckoned being stuck with a computer programmer was not my last choice, not by a long shot.

Even if he couldn’t exactly remember much right now.

“Jason,” I said suddenly. “You must be hungry. Do you want some biscuits?”

Because I knew it would be important now to get his memory back up to scratch. Glucose could do it. Food for the brain.

“Sure,” he said.

And then I thought, if he was on his phone and he wasn’t taken, then maybe there was something different about his phone, from the phones of everyone else. I needed to have a look at it. It might contain a clue as to how everyone disappeared and he didn’t; yet how inexplicably he landed up in my hallway when all the doors and windows were shut.

I helped him up and he followed me, still looking a little dazed, into the kitchen.

“And where’s your phone?” I casually asked, when we sitting at the table and Jason was crunching into some chocolate-chip cookies

“Right here,” he said. And he put it on the table.

It was the weirdest phone I’d seen in my life.

That’s when I knew we were really in trouble.

13

Comparing Jason’s phone with those of everybody I’d ever seen in my life was like comparing apples and oranges. I couldn’t see how Jason’s device had anything to do with a normal phone. It was backlit with a screen that kind of bubbled like hard lava, and there were hundreds of zeroes and ones racing over the screen in what seemed like random patterns.

“What kind of phone is this?” I asked him.

“It’s a new kind of beta model,” he replied, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I don’t know much about it. It came in the mail last week. I was still learning to use it.”

“But how do you use it? It doesn’t look like any phone I’ve ever seen before…”

“Oh, it’s connected to the internet; you can surf the web like with any smart phone.”

And he tapped the screen a few times and Google did come up, only noticed it was on a glowing blue background, and it was spelt a little wrong. Gogol instead of Google.

“It’s not real Google,” I said, pointing it out.

“It works just the same,” he said, a bit defensively. “Anyway.”

“Check the news,” I said. “I want to see if they have anything about the spaceship. We need to start gathering information.”

But Jason just looked at me, surprised. I’d forgotten that he didn’t know anything about the spaceship. As far as he was concerned, he’d just teleported from wherever his front yard was, all the way to my hallway. It must have been a bit confusing for him, actually. So I realised I needed to fill him in.

“I know this is going to sound unbelievable,” I said. “But a giant spaceship just landed in my school yard and sucked up all the school kids and teachers. Every one of them except for me.”

I didn’t think it was worth mentioning Namor, now that she’d disappeared.

“Whoa,” said Jason. “Why not you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But why are you here too? That’s what I want to know.”

A strange look passed over Jason’s face.

“I already told you I don’t know…”

“I know you don’t know,” I reassured him quickly. I didn’t want to alienate him like I had Namor. “I just think you need to tell me everything you know that might help me understand how you got here,” I continued. “Because I think you must have been teleported here by those aliens. I can’t work out any other way to explain how you got into my house – can you?”

“Not really,” Jason admitted.

“And if we could pool our information,” I said. “We might be able to get somewhere. I need to find a way to get into that spaceship. My best friend and family are on it.”

“There’s nobody you know left here?” Jason asked.

“Well all the kids and teachers I know have disappeared…” I said. “And the weird thing is, that they were all playing on their mobile phones and devices right before it happened. They were totally addicted to their screens. I’d never seen that happen before.”

“In my opinion,” Jason said. “If you want it…”

I nodded.

“I doubt they were all playing the same thing,” he said.

“I agree,” I told him. “My best friend Abhishek was playing on his step tracker. There’s not the same apps on a tablet and a step tracker…”

But a look passed over Jason’s face then that was strange. It almost seemed like he was bored of the conversation.

“Anyway,” he said suddenly. “You want to see if there’s anything on the news about the spaceship?”

I nodded. He indicated that I should come sit next to him at the table, so I did. Once I was beside him and gazing at that weird mobile phone once more, he tapped at the screen.

I leaned over a little more so I could see the screen better. A whole lot of numbers started flashing up on the screen. They were hypnotic… I felt a slight pull towards them, as though they were feeding my eyes. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I had started to realise the flaw in my plan.

What if we started looking at his phone and became zombies too? Shouldn’t I have taken steps to protect myself?

I wrenched my eyes away. And saw then that Jason wasn’t looking at his phone. He was watching my face. That was weird.

“The internet’s down,” he said. He tapped some buttons and the screen switched off. He seemed annoyed.

“Well what can we do?” I asked. My head was hurting a little now. “Can you make it go back on? What if I switch the server off then on again? I know where it is…”

“I’m not hooked in to your wireless,” he said. “This is 4G. The whole network is down here. I can’t even make a phone call.”

Frowning, he placed his phone back on the table between us. Back on its screensaver, it was still glowing and making those bubbling shapes. It was the weirdest design I’d ever seen.

“Well, what if we go back to your house?” I said. “Might it work better closer to your house?”

I knew it wasn’t a perfect plan. I just couldn’t think what else to do. How would we find out what was going on if we couldn’t read the news and work out what was happening?

“Sure, we could go back to my house,” said Jason. “But what if the internet’s down there too? Don’t you think it’s better if we try and find some other people? I mean, if you think there’s anyone still down here…”

I didn’t know how to start doing something like that. Would I knock on everyone’s door? When that big spaceship was just looming up at the end of the street?

Jason seemed to sense my hesitation, because he added:

“Because the big question is, are there any other people like you?” Then he blinked. “I mean, like us.”

“Awake, you mean?”

“Yeah,” he said. “People who aren’t in the spaceship.”

“I don’t know,” I said. I was remembering Namor now. “There was one girl…”

Jason looked intently, almost eagerly, at me.

“She was with me before, but she’s gone now.”

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

Jason sat back in his chair with an exasperated sigh.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to go out and look for them.”

But there was something wrong with his plan.

“How do we know there’s anyone else?” I asked him.

Jason looked up at me and smiled.
 “I don’t think the spaceship would have had the capacity to get everyone at once,” he said. “Not everyone in the whole town.”

“That’s just the thing. What if it did?”

Jason shrugged. A silence fell over the two of us. Outside, not a bird twittered. The air was starting to feel heavy and late, as though it were almost dusk and not the middle of the day.

I shifted in my seat, because my bones had started to hurt in a dull ache. I thought I must have injured myself when I fell in the playground.

“I just think we should get together – all humans together – so we can work out what resources we have,” said Jason finally. “Whether we can fight, or whether we should just embrace these visitors and go quietly with them…”

“Quietly with them? Are you kidding!” I replied.

“I don’t know,” Jason said. “It’s not logical if you’d rather die. I’m presuming you only have food for two weeks maximum. The electricity and the shops and the buses and the police… none of it’s going to continue for long if everyone’s gone. Do you know how to live by yourself? What would you eat?”

That was true. I had no idea what I would eat. I mean, I guess if I walked around the city I’d find a handful of shops with food in them, cans and everything, and that would last me a while. Maybe a few years. But eventually I’d have to do something for myself.

But I’d be older then. Maybe I’d have worked it out…

But hang on, what was I doing? I was totally getting ahead of myself. I didn’t believe the whole human race had been sucked up into that one spaceship…

“And what if the beings up there aren’t so bad?” Jason’s voice continued reasonably. “What if they offered you a warm bed and food on tap, and you were having the best dreams ever, and you never missed being back on Earth a bit?”

“Look, let’s discuss that when we get to it,” I said. “For now, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying I think we should go out and find some other humans,” said Jason.

“Hmm,” I said. I went back to the window and looked at the street.

And I couldn’t believe what I saw out there this time. It was incredible.

It was Mum and Abhishek, standing under a tree.

14

I dropped everything and ran for it. Out of the kitchen and down the hall, I flung open the front door and leapt over the green goo in a single bound. Mum was pushing Abhishek on the swing, and he was loving it, and she was laughing and Abhishek was laughing too.

They both looked up as I ran outside and, without saying a word, threw my arms around my mother and hugged her as tight as I could.

Mum laughed a bit in protest as I pressed my face to her shoulder, but I couldn’t help it; I felt like crying.

“Oh Mum,” was all I could say. “Mum, you’re here… and you’re ok…”

Mum just patted my back.

“Of course I’m here,” she said.

“But where were you? Where’s Dad? And Max?”

“We went shopping.”

“You went shopping? Argh Mum, you scared me!”

Abhishek turned his smiling face to me and I noticed something weird. He usually has this little mole on one side of his mouth. I could have sworn it was the left side. But today it was on the right side.

“And Abhishek, what are you doing here with my Mum?”’

“I came here looking for you,” he said. “Why weren’t you at school? We had sport today.”

I felt a bit confused, but what could I say? Mum and Abhishek were here. That was the best news ever.

“Umm….” I said. “I… I just had to come home.”

I was starting to doubt everything that had happened. Have you ever had a situation where everything you thought was true wasn’t true at all, or at least nobody seemed to see things in the same way? Standing here, with Mum and Abhishek in front of me, normal and smiling, Mum with her hand comfortably on Abhishek’s shoulder, I felt decidedly strange.

Had I even seen the giant spaceship? Was something going wrong with my mind?

“But where’s Dad and Max?” I asked.

“Dad?” Mum asked vaguely.

“Yeah. He was here when I left this morning…”

“Oh! Dad. He’s… gone. Gone out.”

“Gone out where? Our car’s still here?”

As it was. Our van hadn’t moved since this morning.

An expression seemed to pass Mum’s face. It was almost as though she was listening to something. Then her face changed, and she nodded.

“He’s gone for a walk,” she said. “He took Max with him.”

“But shouldn’t Max be at school?” I asked.

Again that strange, absorbed look passed over my Mum’s face. She paused, as though listening to a little voice in her head. Then she nodded again.

“He should be. That’s where Dad’s walked him to. To school.”

I felt an old panic rise. Late! I must be late for school! But Abhishek was here, and I was still jittery, and I just couldn’t face going back to school right now.

“Are you okay Romal?” asked Mum, her face a picture of concern.

“Sorry?” I asked.

Mum reached out and brought me in for a hug. She had a strange plastic smell.

“I said, are you okay Romal?”

Romal. She said Romal.

I pulled back from her embrace and looked at her carefully.

“Roman, Mum.”

“Yes, Roman…”

“You called me Romal.”

Mum gave a twittering kind of laugh.

“Oh I’m so silly!” she said. “Come on. Let’s invite your friend Abhishek inside for a drink. And your other friend too, who is she…?”

“Namor?”

“Namor,” Mum said lightly. “That’s who it was. I remember now. Where is she? She should come in and join us.”

I stood on the lawn, watching my Mum. She looked like my Mum. Exactly like her. Only I hadn’t told her about Namor. I’d never met the girl before today. How did Mum know about her?

I looked over at Abhishek, and I realised then that he had the strangest expression on his face. Like he’d gone into a sleep mode. But at the instant that I looked over, the moment passed, and he jerked into life again and smiled at me. He poked out his tongue.

“Yeah, where’s Namor?” he asked.

There was a strong smell of plastic starting to surround us. I took one cautious step backwards, back towards the road.

“Who’s Namor?” I asked.

“You know Namor!” Abhishek replied.

“Yes, but how do you know her?” I asked suspiciously.

Abhishek smiled.

“We’re friends, aren’t we?”

That was enough for me. I knew there was something wrong. It might have been me, or it might have been them, but I wasn’t going to wait around to find out.

I sprang to life. I broke into a run. I pelted to the front door and leapt inside, shutting the door behind me.

“Jason!” I cried out, hoping he’d hear me in the house. The lock wouldn’t work anymore, being all melted, and I didn’t know where I should go. I just acted on instinct. But I knew Mum and Abhishek would be coming up behind me, and I only had moments to decide what to do.

I ran to the kitchen so he could join me, I wanted him to be safe too. But he was no longer in the kitchen, and I had no time to waste in looking for him.

“Jason, hide or run!” I shouted to the empty house. “There’s dangerous beings on our front lawn. Don’t trust them? Just run!”

And I sprinted down the hallway, burst through the back door and ran two steps at a time down into our garden. I weaved through the trees and made my way towards the back fence. I would jump the fence, I decided. I would jump it and then change direction and backtrack towards the main road and find another place to hide. A place where they’d never expect me to be.

But I never got that far. Because as I reached the edge of the garden, the back fence rising before me, something crashed into me so hard it winded me.

I landed flat on my back on the grass. And as I wheezed and tried to get my breath back, three faces appeared above me.
 Jason, Mum and Abhishek.

“There’s no need to run,” Jason said calmly. “We won’t hurt you.”

“Yet…” said Abhishek.

15

Well, one thing was for sure. Jason, Mum and Abhishek were not feeling themselves.

If they even were Jason, Mum and Abhishek.

That’s not to even mention where Dad and Max might be.

I started to realise that I was in pretty big trouble when they reached out and hauled me up. Abhishek was still as strong as a horse. Meanwhile, Jason had completely recovered from our earlier crash in the hall, because you wouldn’t have thought it was the same kid. I could feel his steely fingers gripping into me like a metal trap, and they weren’t even flexible.

Mum, too, was hard as a rock. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before.

My first thought was androids, because it really was like they were human-robot combinations. They seemed to be made with some tough kind of metal, underneath the warm and human stuff, and you could feel the unnatural tension underneath.

Together, the three of them dragged me to the nearest tree.

Jason pulled a weird, pink rope out of his satiny jacket. It was all shining and warm, like metal. They clipped it in place. I tugged at it with my wrists, but it was like it had been locked. It wasn’t going anywhere. It attached my wrists together, and I was stuck to the tree.

I could now hear the green goo at the front of the house just about going crazy, whistling and humming, so that the sound filled the backyard. The air had a strange, clear quality, like a photo where the light has gotten in, and it made everything look too-white, as though I was staring permanently into a flash. I wondered if I had hit my head on the way down.

“So Roman,” said Jason, smiling. “You’re onto us.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “I’m not onto anything. I just don’t know what’s happening. Where’s my Mum? And Dad, and my brother? And Abhishek?”

“I’m here,” said Mum pleasantly. Abhishek didn’t say anything, just smoothed the hair out of his eyes and grinned at me.

“You’re not my Mum,” I said. I was sounding braver than I felt. “And you’re not Abhishek,” I told the other one.

“An approximation,” the Not-My-Mum said. “Monkeys will hug a wire frame surrounded by a blanket. Ducks will follow a moving robot. Why are humans so complicated? I went to so much trouble to match… not many would!”

And as she did a little twirl I realised that she had copied a photo we had in our study. It was a photo of Mum at a wedding, because here was this – this thing, I was going to take stab and say alien – wearing the same outfit as my Mum had in that photo, right down to the shoes.

“You might look like her, but anyone could see you’re not,” I told her.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter,” she said. “I only did it not to scare you.”

“We won’t change back into our normal forms,” added Jason, smirking. “You’d die of shock!”

My heart was beating thick in my chest. I still didn’t know why they had tied me up. But I knew they could teleport me in a flash. Why hadn’t they done that yet?

“Why are you here?” I asked. “What have you done with the people at my school? And my parents?”

“We’ve taken them,” said Jason. “They’ve come to no harm. We don’t intend to kill them…”

“Only use their brains,” said Abhishek.

“What! No!” I couldn’t help crying out. They were taking my parents brains? And my brother’s? And everyone else’s? What kinds of monsters would do that?

“You make us sound like zombies!” Mum laughed. “Jason, be serious. Ha, don’t you like the sound of that? Jason. So funny. They have the cutest names on this planet…”

“We’re using the storage space,” said Abhishek. “We’ve run out of our own.”

“What storage space?” I said. “I don’t understand!”

“The human brain,” said Jason, interjecting. “It’s an impressive thing. We have our own brains, of course, but nothing like your kind’s. We’ve been watching you for a long while, and waiting for the point in time when your knowledge has expanded, and your brains along with it. The kind of capacity we get from organic brain growth is exponentially greater than any kind of artificial hard drives we have developed…”

“We treat the humans well,” said Mum. “They’ve just been hooked up to a great big server. We’re going to use them all like a giant supercomputer. And once we get into space and back onto our planet, we’ll wipe everything that’s on everyone’s minds and use the space for ourselves. A nice large planet like yours should give our civilisation enough memory to last us a few decades at least. Maybe more.”

“And when the memory runs out?” I couldn’t help but exclaim.

“Well. It costs money to keep all those humans alive. We’re not in the business of – how do you say on Earth? – throwing money down the drain…”

I suddenly understood Jason’s words a little while before. They were basically planning to hook everyone up, wipe them clean, use their brains, and just keep them alive while they were useful. And then..? They’d just get rid of them. In space somewhere. Maybe millions of light years from home. Would they dump them on a hostile planet? Or just let them die?

And what if they woke up before that happened? I couldn’t forget the look on Abhishek’s face in that instant before he’d been teleported. It was like he knew what was in store for him. I couldn’t bear the thought that they were scared up there. Or cold, or hungry, or confused.

I tugged again at the ropes that were binding my wrists. They felt like they had stretched a little. I pulled again. But still they stayed locked.

“Well what do you want me for?” I said, more boldly than I felt. If I could distract them and keep pulling at the ropes, I thought, perhaps they’d loosen even more.

But I noticed something weird after I asked this question. The three of them all paused a moment. Their bodies went still, their heads sitting on an angle as though they were listening to something. It was only for a fraction of a second. Then they looked normal once again.

Mum murmured something to Jason. Then they remembered me, and looked at me for such a long time that I worried they had noticed me still working away at my wrist-tie, stretching it more and more… I knew I needed to project some confidence.

“You might catch me, but there will be others,” I said suddenly. “My friend Namor is out there. I’m just one human of many. Are you really going to waste your time with all the ones that got away?”

The three of them looked stunned for a moment. Then they all laughed at me. All of their laughing faces, so familiar and yet so alien.

“Not exactly,” Mum said.

“Don’t get us wrong,” added Jason. “We like your brains. But we’ve got most of them. We can’t waste time, you know, gathering the last of them up.”

“It’s much more efficient for us to just scoop in, grab as many humans as we can, and go,” added Abhishek.

I decided to be bold. I had nothing to lose.

“Well what then?” I said. “Why are you here, and not up in that spaceship, carrying out your plans?”

Abhishek went to reply, but I saw Jason give a very slight shake of his head. So it was Mum who said it.

“One of our kind has escaped,” she told me.

“And you’d better help us,” added Jason.”Or you won’t like what we do to you.”

16

The missing alien was a girl called Tial – who’s heard of a girl called Tial? – and she was the daughter of the spaceship’s captain.

“If one of our own kind are left on this planet,” said Mum. “You don’t want to know what it’s going to do.”

“What do you mean?” I asked him. “What can it do? You’ve taken nearly everyone.”

They all paused again. Then Jason said suddenly, as though coming back to life,

“Bacteria,” he said. “We’re teeming with interstellar bacteria. Get that into your ecosystem, and you can say goodbye to plant and animal life on this planet.”

That sounded terrible! But I was still suspicious.

“Why do YOU care…?”

Again that strange pause. There was no doubt in my mind now. They were listening to someone.

“For the future,” all three of them said.

In unison. The exact same words.

I knew then that I needed to know who was talking to them on the other end.

“Who are you talking to?” I accused them boldly.

“Talking? Oh, nobody. We’re listening,” said Mum.

“Listening to who?”

“To our captain. The reception is terrible on this planet,” she replied.

“And he’s instructing you what to say…?”

“She,” said Mum. “And none of us speak English, Romal. We have an app that translates those strange sounds made by your mouth, but the captain is telling us how to talk to you.”

“To the three of you?”

“To everyone, all at the same time. She’s not linearly restricted like you are.”

Linearly restricted? What was that supposed to mean?

“She can talk to lots of beings at once,” said Jason. “Just because we need more brain space, don’t make the mistake of thinking that your brains are superior to ours. We are using you as an external hard drive, that’s all…”

But Jason became almost dreamy then, and an utterly alien expression drifted across his features.

“Tial,” Mum said, as if reminding him about something.

I was still working away at my wrist bindings. They were feeling distinctly looser. Meanwhile the three aliens seemed to have lost their sense of purpose. It was like they were wilting.

And almost at the instant I thought it, they dropped their heads a little, as though they were tired, and their limbs seemed floppy too. Abhishek even sat down on the grass.

I noticed that the wail from the green goo out the front was quietening too. Everything was growing quieter, becoming hushed. I didn’t know what was happening but I knew I had to take advantage of it. I kept pulling and tugging at the cord binding my wrists, and I felt it starting to slide in directions it hadn’t slid before.

“How many people can your captain talk with at once?” I asked them, to keep them busy than anything else.

“People,” Mum eventually offered, half-heartedly. “Well that’s a funny thing to call us…”

“There are currently five thousand, two hundred and seventy eight aliens here on the ground,” Jason murmured. “And in exactly three minutes, we’ll release ten thousand of our humans. Programmed to find anyone who doesn’t have the software installed. If that doesn’t find Tial…”

Then his voice stopped completely. All three of their faces went completely blank.

They fell face-first into the grass.

I wasn’t going to wait to find out why. I tugged and tugged. Then I gave a giant YANK and something clicked from around my wrists. The cord came sliding off. I was free.

There were humans around. The aliens had confirmed it. I was going to the place where I was surest that humans would congregate that was close to my house.

The shopping mall.

I ran for my life to the shopping mall.

17

I didn’t even worry about hiding. I ran as fast as my legs would take me, down to the end of my street, through the set of lights, which were blinking purple…. purple? It must have been the light. It was still really bleached and weird. Then I ran past the bus stop, down another street, and at the end of that one, I turned into the entrance of the shopping mall.

The whole time I was running, I felt like I was on a movie set, and not on my own planet at all. For a start, there was barely anyone on the street. Jason might have told me there were aliens and zombie humans being put back on Earth to find this Tial, but if that was so, they clearly didn’t think she’d be hanging out beside the parked cars and zebra crossings, because there wasn’t a soul around.

I darted across the street and didn’t slow down even a bit as I approached the entrance. It was lucky too. I was just about to push open the glass doors to the shopping mall when everything behind me exploded.

An enormous shattering sound rang out, like thunder and something smashed. It was like the air was made of crystal and someone dropped it. I didn’t even need to look behind me to feel a blast of hot air melt my neck. I didn’t know what it was, but I wasn’t about to look. All I knew was that I needed to run, run as fast as I could, and put as much space between me and the aliens who knew me. Get inside and away from the spaceship and whatever that huge explosion was.

If there were other aliens or zombie parents in the shopping mall, I would just need to find a way to fit in.

So that was the plan, but I didn’t mean to make such a fancy entrance. I was pushed by the force of the explosion into the doors. They swung open when I hit them. I skidded on my butt into the cool, slippery floor of the shopping mall.

As I did so, I saw about three human-looking beings (which I had decided they all were now, until proven otherwise) who were sitting on one of those recreational areas in the middle of the mall look up at me in interest. It must have looked weird to anyone to see a kid slide into the mall at high speed, legs and arms flying all over the place. I landed with a grunt, jumped up and sprinted away before they could say anything or ask any questions. When I rounded the corner, I slowed to a fast walk.

I was dismayed to realise that those three weren’t the end of it. There were a lot of people in the shopping mall. Human-looking beings, I reminded myself. Because any of them could have been aliens like the ones who’d just tied me up, zombies sent down with their brains reprogrammed to find Tial, or humans like myself, totally freaking out. How would I know the difference?

It was going to be like trying to find whether a species of shark was friendly or dangerous by counting its teeth. You wouldn’t know what kind it was until its mouth was already open.

I saw old people, young people, kids. People in work clothes and yoga clothes. People in school clothes. I even saw someone in my school uniform. I knew enough to steer well away from that one. That would almost definitely be a zombie.

Mostly everyone was walking around like people usually did in shopping malls. Just walking around casually. But I had the horrible sensation that they were all looking at me.

And when I got to the food court, lots of the people were just staring at the tables, as though they didn’t know how to eat anything.

I sucked in my breath. Where could I go to think a bit? Somewhere where I could be away from all these – human-looking beings? I passed a big department store and then I knew the answer. I’d go to the change rooms. The chances of aliens or zombies trying on clothes was very, very slim.

At least that’s what I thought, anyway.

So I went to the men’s department – where I knew practically no-one ever went to try on clothes, even on a good day – and found the row of cubicles.

Every one of them was empty. That was good. I went into one, closed and locked the door, and sat down.

What would I do?

I needed to find humans. The aliens must have some kind of weakness. They’d said it themselves that our brains were impressive. So we must be able to match them.

And I had the feeling there was something they weren’t telling me about this Tial girl they were looking for either. The fact they hadn’t teleported me straight up to the spaceship when they saw me – as well as the fact that they had seemed to want my help – made me think that they weren’t as strong as they seemed.

All I needed was a few more humans to talk to, I told myself. Together we could pool our information and work out what to do.

But there was the matter of time as well. Suppose they couldn’t find Tial? They had every intention of flying back to their home planet with a spaceship full of the human race. My Mum, Dad, brother and best friend along with them. How could I solve this problem before they gave up on the idea of looking for Tial? What if they’d found her already?

I remembered my watch, for probably the first time that day. I looked at it, having no idea what the time must be. But it had stopped outright just after 9am. It must have been around the time I heard that first explosion in the playground, and then I met Namor.

Namor. What was she doing? Where had she gone?

My thoughts were interrupted by a sound outside the cubicle. Instantly, I held my breath and pulled my feet up in the air so they wouldn’t be visible from the outside.

The footsteps kept making their way towards me. Slowly, somebody’s feet walked down the row of cubicles. When they came into sight, all I could see was that they were a pair of woman’s feet, in red shiny shoes.

There was also a strong smell of plastic, like Namor’s shampoo had smelt like. Like the Mum-alien, and the Abhishek-alien, and the Jason-alien too.

I held my breath, hoping the feet would walk straight past me. But they didn’t. They paused right outside my cubicle.

And then I knew.

Namor had been an alien.

And now there was an alien outside, too.

And it was waiting for me.

18

“Can I help you?” said the alien sweetly.

I didn’t answer.

“Can I get you any sizes?” said the alien again.

I tried to make my voice gruff and man-sounding.

“No,” I told her. It was all I dared say.

But the feet did not go away. The smell of plastic was overpowering now. I didn’t know what to do. Could I try and slide under the neighbouring cubicle, and then the next, like this all the way to the door? And then run out of the department store and find somewhere else to go?

It wasn’t ideal but it was all I could think of. The only problem was that I didn’t know which way the alien would look when I stopped replying to her questions.

I had a better idea. I took off my watch. It wasn’t working anyway.

I leaned down, and as hard as I could, I threw it in the opposite direction to where I wanted to go, under the rows of cubicles. Luckily I had a good arm, and it went the whole four cubicles under, and hit a wall at the end with a satisfying thwack!

The alien hesitated. Then I saw the footsteps continue towards where my watch had made the sound.

That was my key. I hopped down and rolled under the first cubicle, then the next, then the next. I was like a human tumbleweed. Rolling like I’d never rolled before.

When I got to the third cubicle and my head was spinning like a disco ball, I broke out and escaped through the door.

Crashing right into the alien.

She was a dark-haired woman, smiling sweetly at me. Her teeth a little luminously green.

I wanted to scream with shock. But my voice dried up in my throat. I wasn’t capable of making a single sound. I only choked.

I instead went to run, but she reached out an iron hand, like it was nothing, and held me by the forearm. Her skin was warm and moist, like a snake in a bath. I got goosebumps all up and down my arm just feeling it. And smelling her, all plasticky.

“Hey there,” said the alien woman. “Now where are you going so fast?”

I couldn’t reply even if I’d wanted to. But when I didn’t reply, the alien woman tipped her head to one side, and I could see that she was listening to the spaceship captain, and he was telling her something.

When she listened, her attention went off me. Just for a fraction of a second. I remembered then, that I could use this to my advantage. This was a weakness. Their reception was like 3G. The transmission speed was just really, really slow.

I could say something to confuse her. And then maybe I could make a run for it.

I thought in a flash. What was the most complicated thing I could ask her?

And then it hit me.

“You have a 3 and a 5 litre water container. None of the containers have any writing on them. You have to use the containers to make exactly 4 litres of water. How do you do it?”

That was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do in maths class. Even my parents couldn’t work it out when I took the question home.

The alien hesitated, and I saw her starting to listen to the reply.

I knew it was going to be long and complicated.

And that was my chance.

I jerked my arm out of her grasp and it worked.

I slid right out of her fingers. I hit the ground fast and was already running by the time her eyes lost that glazed expression and she realised what I was doing.

And it seemed she couldn’t run all that fast in those shiny red shoes, or maybe she was just dazed by the complicated answer, because she took one ginger step towards me, and then just shook her head.

“Fill the 5 litre container…” she began, I think because she didn’t know what else to say.

I didn’t care to listen. I knew the answer.

I pelted out of there like I was made of wind.

Through the racks of clothes and past the perfumes, I burst out of the men’s bags and into the socks department.

And also burst slap-bang into another human-looking being.

“Ow!” she said, rubbing her elbow where I’d banged her into a wall.

“Wait…” she said then, before I could sprint away again.

Our eyes met.

She didn’t smell like plastic.

She didn’t act like a zombie.

“Are you… a human?” she asked me.

What did I say?

Well what would you say?

19

I had to trust my gut. If I was going to find humans, I needed to believe there were some, somewhere.

“Yes I’m a human,” I told her. “Are you?”

The girl nodded. Then without saying anything else, she grabbed my hand. Just like that, we were running.

We escaped the men’s socks department. The alien lady in red shoes was long behind us, and I hoped we’d never see her again. But there were so many more all around us. I didn’t know how we’d keep away from them for long.

We weaved through the racks of clothes and luxury products until we escaped the department store entirely. We burst out into the main section of the shopping mall where everyone was still standing around in a kind of dumb, scary way.

The human girl kept running and dragged me behind her. Nobody really looked at us, but that kind of felt worse. It was almost like they weren’t watching us because they had other ways of seeing us, and that was a seriously creepy thought.

Meanwhile, I didn’t know where the girl was taking me, but she seemed to know what she was doing. That was good. We went down a side section and then she was pushing open a door that said STAFF ONLY.

“It goes to the car park,” she said. We were now in a dimly-lit stairwell and we ran down them two at a time. “You alright?” she added over her shoulder as we ran.

It was true that I was starting to puff. I’d run all the way from my house to the mall, and had barely had time to catch my breath.

“I’m fine,” I said. “But do we have to keep running?”

“Zombies are slow,” said the girl. “But aliens are fast. We want to put as much space between you and them as possible.”

“Are there none where we’re going?”

“None,” said the girl. “For now.”

I noticed her hand wasn’t sweating at all. That was strange. Usually people’s hands became clammy when you held them as long as she’d been holding mine. But maybe she just wasn’t the sweaty type.

We went down about three levels and finally hit the basement. She opened the door at the bottom and then we were in the car park. All the lights had gone out, and there were only the emergency ones still lit. They made everything seem smoky. The shapes of parked cars looked like sleeping monsters.

But the girl didn’t seem to mind. She dragged me past them all. Then at last I saw there was a dingy car wash at the end of the parking area. Still underground, it was a kind of room built into the wall, with a few smeary windows, some chairs, magazines, and a drink dispenser, where I guess customers usually waited until their car was clean.

Through the dim windows I could see the shadows of about six or eight people – human-looking beings, I still had to remind myself – although judging by the girl’s reaction, they must have been humans.

“Is that where we’re going?” I said, still breathing heavily.

“Yep,” said the girl. “Headquarters.”

Finally, she slowed down and released my hand.

“What’s your name?” I asked her, because she still hadn’t told me anything about herself.

“Ruby,” she said. “And yours?”

“Roman,” I told her.

“Well Roman,” said Ruby. “You’re going to have a lot of names to remember in a second, because there’s a few of us here. My brother Emerson, for a start. He’s going to be really happy to meet you. He was starting to think the rest of the humans were all gone…”

“Why would he think that?” I asked.

“We heard a big explosion about half an hour ago.”

“I heard it too,” I told her. “I felt it.”

“You felt it?”

“Like hot air. It blasted the back of my neck.”

“Show me,” Ruby said suddenly. She spun me around. Then she made a weird sound through her teeth.

“Your skin is totally blue.”

“Blue?”

“Like it’s been burnt blue.”

I put my hand up to feel it, but it wasn’t painful. Still, I worried a bit. What did it mean to my body? Was it permanent?

We had now reached the doors to the car wash. Before I could ask, Ruby told me.

“Zombies can’t stand water,” Ruby told me. “It turns them into green goo…”

“So we’ve barricaded ourselves in the car wash,” said a boy’s voice suddenly. He was standing in the doorway, watching me. He was smiling. “Another human. Welcome to our humble abode.”

He shook my hand in a very grown-up way. This must be Ruby’s brother Emerson. I shook his hand too, but I was still thinking about his water comment. Green goo? Well what had been on my front step then? The remains of… a zombie? A poor, human zombie?

And that started me down a whole other path of thinking. Had Mum or Dad or Max tried to fight off the aliens? Is that why there was a puddle of green goo sitting on our front doorstep?

And if so, who was the zombie that had turned into green goo?

Every inch of my soul hoped that it wasn’t Max or my parents…

20

But for now, Emerson was still smiling in the doorway.

I tried to put the dreadful thought from my mind. I had no evidence that my parents were the goo. I just needed to work out how to save them, now more than ever.

I saw Emerson was still waiting for me to respond. And I knew I needed to be friendly to these humans. I would need them.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Roman.”

“Well come in Roman,” said Emerson. He ushered me inside and introduced me to everyone else. There were eight other humans in all: three women, two men, and a handful of babies.

The babies surprised me. Seeing my reaction, Emerson said,

“There are a whole lot of babies on the surface we need to rescue. We’re doing it one by one.”

“Why so many babies? Because their brains aren’t as big? Are they not as useful to the aliens?”

“No,” said Ruby. “It’s just because they don’t generally use electronic devices.”

Of course, I thought. And I guessed it wasn’t for lack of trying. I knew some parents gave their phones to their babies as soon as they possibly could. But human babies seemed to have a natural protection against aliens. They just weren’t interested in watching stuff, as a rule. The human world was much more interesting to them than watching a cartoon or playing on an app.

It reminded me suddenly of Namor, and how interested she’d been in the blue sky and the ants. No wonder. Being new to the planet, she had been almost exactly like a baby.

“Lucky babies,” I said wryly.

“Lucky all of us,” said Emerson. “I don’t think there’s anyone here who uses electronic devices. That’s what’s saved us.”

“So why didn’t you use electronic devices…?”

“Our parents don’t let us,” said Ruby.

“Huh. Me too,” I said regretfully, through force of habit. Then I realised I should be proud. I’d sometimes felt annoyed that I couldn’t just use a tablet or a phone whenever I’d felt like it, but now I still had a brain that could think for itself. That was such a precious opportunity. And I needed every bit of my brain to save my family.

“I was speaking to an alien right after this all happened,” said one of the women whose name was Joanna. She was a youngish kind of woman with purple hair. She was sitting by the far side of the waiting room, near a window, eating a chocolate bar.

“It had locked me in my car,” she continued. “And it wanted me to come out. It told me that I’d be able to have the life that every person loved, if I just came out.”

There was an odd thump somewhere out in the car park. But nobody seemed to notice.

“It told me that it was painless to harvest our memory space,” Joanna continued, oblivious. “And it said that we’d be entertained by some pretty cool games, and they’d feed us up there too. And then it said that they had been responsible for developing computer games in the first place.”

Apparently the alien told Joanna that they first came to Earth in the mid eighties to prepare our brains for ultimate entertainment. They gave the plans for computer games to some of the big companies at the time. Humans started playing Atari and Commodore-64. Then the aliens went further than that: they began designing the games themselves… Alex Kid in Miracle World, Mario Brothers, Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego… Each game was specifically designed to stretch the brains of humans in one very important way: they wanted us to be addicted. They wanted us to gradually pull away from the real world so that by the time they came to collect us, we’d go without a peep. We’d be really happy to hand over our brain power in return for some Tetris… for eternity.

There was another dull thud outside. This time everyone heard it.

Emerson’s head snapped up. He looked out the window and then leapt into action.

“The zombies,” he said. “They’ve found us.”

The humans in the room instantly stood up. Ruby ran to the front counter and produced a jar of coins. She shook them in the glass.

“These babies should keep them back for a bit.”

“Right,” said Emerson. He put his hand out. “Open it! And give a handful to everyone.”

Ruby expertly unscrewed the jar and started handing out coins.

“What are these for?” I asked, confused. I could hear a moaning sound growing louder now.

“Why do you think we’re in the car wash?” Ruby replied. “With these coins, we can make the water jets start. When they get close enough, we’ll turn on the spray. It’ll keep us safe in here.”

Right. I took a handful of coins. I saw now that there were heaps of different coin-operated machines arranged around the room, and they seemed to align with various car-washing equipment outside.

I took a post by a coin machine located next to the far window.

And then, peering through the dark glass, I saw them. They were shadowy and purple in the gloom of the car park. They were advancing slowly – so slowly! – with a shuffling walk, just like the pedestrians you sometimes see reading the newspaper on their phones as they go about their business. The zombies were advancing on our little human headquarters.

But unlike the telephone zombies you sometimes see down the street, these zombies advanced with a clear sense of purpose. And what was most terrifying was the number of them. It was going to be a zombie war, there was no doubt in my mind. They were lined up like soldiers. I don’t even think they cared about looking for Tial. It was as though some base trigger in their brain had been lit. The possibility for a real-life computer game. Them against us. It was senseless. And terrifying.

There must have been more than a thousand of them. All shuffling towards us. They had the power of numbers. But we had the coins and the water…

21

There was a dreadful moaning in the air as the first of them struck. Emerson had everyone hold off until they got close enough for our jets to squirt them.

Then – GO! With a big rattle, we all put in our coins, all at once. The water jets spurted and then rose into action. It was beautiful. With no-one to hold them, the hoses stiffened and then whipped around as they shot a spray of pure water in every which direction. The giant soapy bristles started turning, and churned out a thick deluge of water as wild as a waterfall. The fine spray designed to moisten windows filled the air with tiny droplets. I saw the first of the zombies fall. The ones closest to us folded over and then slopped into the concrete, quickly turning into glowing green puddles that ran all over the outside area of the car wash. Another row of zombies came up behind.

I knew we had to protect ourselves, but as I went on, slipping one coin after the other into the coin dispenser before me, I realised that I didn’t feel good about liquefying the zombies. After all, the zombies were just humans like us. Humans like my Mum and Dad and Max, and Abhishek and Mrs Rana.

I saw some of their faces as they advanced, and they just looked exactly like anybody. They looked like teenagers and kids and teachers and mums and dads, and grandparents and aunties and uncles. Normal people who this morning, like my family, had just been looking at their phones or watches when all this happened. It was horrible. I was beginning to feel sick to my stomach.

“Go on!” urged Joanna, sensing that I was losing my will to do it. And so I did. What was the alternative? Let the zombies swarm us, and do… who knew what?

And so I kept slipping the coins in, and the green goo kept getting higher and higher, and was making that high-pitched whistling sound which I now hoped wasn’t a sign of something terrible, like a communication with the aliens, or that we were hurting them…

Joanna saw that something serious was wrong. She stopped putting the coins into her machine and ran over.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“The zombies!” I sputtered. “We’re killing them all! And they’re just humans like you and me…”

Joanna looked concerned, and put her arm around my shoulder.

“They’re not humans,” she said. “They’re avatars. The real humans are still up in the spaceship, safe as can be. That’s why they’re so slow. They’re being controlled by the brains of the trapped humans, but the reception isn’t very good…”

“Like the aliens,” I said.

“Yes,” said Joanna. “But the aliens are made of a type of neoprene – you know, like a wetsuit material, that enables them to shapeshift. That’s why they have that funny smell. And the aliens have their own brains, they just communicate back to the spaceship to talk. These avatars, on the other hand, can’t get anywhere without being controlled, every single step, every movement. The avatars are made of – well, I guess it’s like an interstellar wax. They look like their human controllers but they’re not. Don’t worry,” said Joanna. “It’s really like they’re playing a computer game up there. They have no idea that what they’re doing is real. And nothing you can do can hurt the real humans.”

“But can they hurt us?”

“Absolutely,” said Joanna. “If they touch us, they can take over our body. They’ll use us as an avatar. And with all the benefits of a real body – fast movement, immunity to water…”

“But all they have been sent down to do is find that Tial girl!” I cried, confused.

“Who?” said Ruby over her shoulder, still loading her coins into her dispenser.

“The alien who escaped. They’ve lost one of their own. They told me that’s why they were sending down the zombies. To try and find this missing alien.”

“I think the aliens underestimated how much they’ve primed humans to play computer games,” said Emerson. “Maybe they came here to find the alien, but once they got here, they thought if they took over the last human bodies, they could do it so much better. We’ve just become another computer game for them. Another level to complete.”

I had no worries now about using the rest of my coins. I slipped the last of them into my machine and watched as the zombie avatars melted into green humming puddles by my window. But there were still so many more coming up behind. I couldn’t see an end to them. The car park was dark with human shapes, all shuffling slowly towards us, in grim, organised lines.

“Give me some more coins!” I called to Ruby.

“There’s not many left!” she said worriedly. “Emerson, I think we’ve already used about half of the coins!”

Emerson frowned.

“Are there any more jars?”

“None,” she said. “I just had one big jar.”

Emerson paused. All around us, the zombies were moaning, the green goo was puddling and humming, and the sound of coins was clinking steadily into our dispensers while the wild waters raged.

“Someone is going to have to go out there,” he said. “We need to find more coins. Without them, we’re lost.”

Ruby looked over at me.

“I will,” I said, barely believing my own words.

22

“I’ll come with you,” said Emerson. “It will be safer with two.”

Looking out into the gloom, the glowing green puddles and the advancing zombie shapes shuffling out of the darkness, I found it hard to believe that we could be safe at all.

“But we won’t go out the front,” Emerson said. “There’s a door at the back. It leads out to a staff area and to the back of the Woolworths. We can let ourselves into the grocery store through the goods lift. There will be coins in the registers.”

“Have you got any bags?” I asked. Then I remembered. There would be hundreds of bags there. We didn’t need to bring our own during a zombie apocalypse.

We left our fellow humans still fighting the zombie hordes, and slipped out the back door without a moment to lose.

On this side, the air was dank and still, as though no living person had passed this way for decades. Emerson led the way. Like his sister, we climbed the stairs two at a time and just as he said, we found ourselves at the goods lift. We took it. When the doors opened we were in a storage room at the back of Woolworths. We raced straight through it and into the shop. We couldn’t waste an instant.

Thankfully there was no-one at all in the Woolworths. I couldn’t imagine why, until I thought that perhaps all the zombies had congregated on the car park. And maybe the aliens had worked out the zombies had gone rogue, and were down there too, trying to stop them from wasting all their avatars in the carwash when there was still Tial to find.

So we ran really fast through the empty aisles and got to the cash registers. I had no idea how to open them but we banged on a few buttons and eventually they slid open. We left the notes and scooped all the coins into the plastic bags we found at the counter. One-by-one, we went from register to register, collecting as many coins as we could.

We had just got to the end of the row of registers when Emerson looked over at me.

“Have you got enough?” he asked. I nodded.

Then something terrible happened.

There was a click, and all the lights went out.

Pitch black.

It was pitch black in the Woolworths and we were stuck here. I had no idea how to find the milk aisle at the best of times. Let alone now, when there were still zombies and aliens out there somewhere, and we needed to find our way back to the storage area and the goods lift, and I hadn’t even thought to count how many steps we’d taken in getting from there to here.

“What’s happened?” I groaned. “Not the lights!”

Emerson didn’t say anything for some moments. He sounded like he was thinking. But then he said,

“I think the electricity’s gone down. I was waiting for something like this to happen. There’s no one to maintain the grid. All the humans are out of action. Who keeps on the services when everyone’s been taken by aliens?”

“No-one,” I said grimly. But then I realised what that meant. “But… the car wash…!”

“Battery operated,” said Emerson. “But I don’t know how long the batteries will last without a generator.”

“We’ve still got to get back fast then,” I said. I was thinking of Ruby, and Joanna, and all the others. I wanted to make sure they were safe.

“Grab my hand,” said Emerson. And when I felt his fingers, we gripped on tight and walked slowly, gingerly, through the empty space, waiting to collide into anything at any time, not knowing where we were going, not really, but trying anyway. Trying to retrace our steps and find the storage room and the goods lift. I was beginning to hear a dull kind of roaring sound coming from underground. I hoped it wasn’t the zombies, finally getting into the car wash. I hoped they still had enough coins, and batteries, to last until we got there and could help them.

Somehow, by some kind of miracle, we made it back to the storage area. I could hardly believe it.

“Good,” said Emerson under his breath. I got the impression he was better at finding his way around than I was. That was a relief. We were stronger when we could benefit from everyone’s different skills, together.

Emerson released my hand.

“Have you still got the coins?” he asked.

But before I could reply, there was a strange sound, and suddenly a blue glow lit up the room.

There in the storage room standing before us was Namor. She blinked those spooky alien eyes, just once.

“Roman,” she said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

23

With everything that had happened, I was pretty much on edge. I screamed!

The sound of my screech startled Emerson, who must have suddenly realised that Namor was not just some human friend I’d just come across.

He jumped into action. He threw one of his bags of coins at Namor’s head.

She blinked and caught it with one pale hand.

“Don’t freak out,” she said calmly. “I don’t want to hurt you guys.”

“Don’t freak out!” I shouted. “You’re an ALIEN!”

“Yeah, so what?” Namor said.

“Well you’re trying to capture us all!”

Namor looked annoyed.

“Not all of us.”

“Not all of us?”

“No,” Namor said again. “Not all of us aliens are trying to capture you. I, for one, don’t care a bit about you. I just came here for a holiday.”

She’d obviously been thinking about this for a while, because she suddenly burst out,

“You have no idea how boring it is on my planet! There are tall buildings everywhere, and the sun is like billions of kilometres further away from our planet than yours is, and it’s so cold all the time. And dark! And there are no birds or animals or anything because we destroyed them all. And all we have to do all day is collect information about other ecosystems and file it and categorise it and all the while we never actually see what’s going on because all we have is the information, not the reality…”

Something was beginning to dawn on me.

“Your name’s not Namor, is it?” I said.

Namor shrugged.

“I just invented it in the moment. It’s ‘Roman’ backwards… I don’t know much about human girl names,” she said.

“Your name’s Tial.”

“Yes. Tial.”

“Well your parents and everyone are looking for you.”

“I know,” she said. “I can hear them all talking about trying to find me…”

“Hear them all?”

She tapped the side of her head. Of course. She was hooked up to the same system as the other aliens had been.

“But I’ve turned my speakers to mute,” she said. Only her eyes smiled. She was still a weird girl – alien – whatever.

“Well they’re all turning everything upside down looking for you,” I said.

“I’m not going back,” she said.

“You can’t stay here!”

“Why ever not? I don’t eat much.”

Again that smile that only reached her blue, liquid eyes.

“Interstellar bacteria, for one thing,” I told her.

That did it. She scrunched up her eyes and gave a big hearty laugh.

“Is that what they told you?!”

I didn’t know what to do with her laughter. I folded my arms over my chest and glared at her. Emerson was looking confused. I remembered that he didn’t know anything about Tial.

Well, he was getting a quick lesson.

“Here’s the truth,” Tial said. “I don’t want to go home. I don’t have any interstellar bacteria – or whatever they told you. And I should know – we’re like the interstellar librarians of the universe. We know everything! Except real things, like how people react to different things in the environment, and why someone like me wouldn’t want to go back to their own planet.”

“So no interstellar bacteria?”

“Absolutely none,” said Tial firmly. “They just said that to get me back.” She folded her arms, unselfconsciously copying my action.

“And here’s some real knowledge for you – I’m not going back,” she added. “I just want to be left alone. I love the blue sky here, and the clean air, and the animals and the sun. They just exploded a giant dust bomb in the atmosphere – did you hear it? A giant dust bomb! They hoped to jam up my navigation device. And they didn’t care what they wrecked. I’m tired of my parents ruining everything. They just want to be powerful at all costs. They’ve ruined their planet. Now they are ruining yours too.”

“My neck went blue from the dust bomb…” I told her.

“It will fade,” she said. “Everything will recover.”

“But it won’t,” I said. “Your people can’t take all my friends and family. I’ll never recover from that,” I told her. “I love them.”

“Love,” Tial said. Her mouth quirked at the corner. “That’s something I need to learn about.”

Emerson looked agitated. He was clearly still thinking about his sister and the other humans we’d left down below, fighting the zombies. He was worried that they might be getting hurt.

“Please,” he said to Tial. “My sister is down in the car park being attacked by the zombies. We haven’t got time…”

Tial turned her gaze to him. She blinked her large eyes once more.

“They’ve caught them,” she said calmly.

“The zombies!”

“The – us. The aliens. The aliens got them before the zombies did.”

Emerson cried out.

“Where have they taken my sister?”

“Up to the spaceship with the rest. Don’t worry, we’re librarians, not warriors… she won’t be hurt.”

“That’s what you always say!” I cried. “Look, Tial. Maybe you don’t want to fix what’s wrong with your planet and your people. But if you don’t, who will? They’ll just keep on destroying everything for their own purposes and will never do any better. Do you really want to stay on this planet knowing that your kind have ruined everything for us? And for any other planet they happen to come across?”

Tial made no reaction. In that infuriating alien way she had, I couldn’t tell if she was listening or if she even cared.

“Tial, if there’s anyone who can make a difference, it’s you,” I continued. “Please. Only those who can see a better way have the ability to change it. You’re young. You could be a leader one day! You could make your planet better, and everyone else’s too.”

Tial blinked. She looked at me. She looked at Emerson. Then she looked at me again, and sighed.

“I just like it here! So much!”

“You could still visit,” I told her. “When it’s better, and back to normal. It would be more fun for you then, anyway…”

Tial shook her head as though clearing away her thoughts.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go back. But on one condition.”

“What?”

“You go back with me,” she said.

24

I didn’t have to think twice. Stay on an empty planet with none of the people I loved? Or go onto the spaceship with Tial, and hopefully free them, and the rest of humankind to boot.

For me, there was no question.

“Sure I’ll come,” I said. “And you’ll free the humans?”

“If I can,” she said. “I’m just a kid, you know.”

But didn’t kids hold the keys to the future? The power to change things for the better? I knew they did.

“You don’t have to come,” I told Emerson. “Just wait here. I’ll get your sister back.”

Emerson nodded.

“You can eat all the ice-cream you want while you’re waiting,” Tial said, as if reading his thoughts. “They’re only going to melt anyway.”

I stood forward and Tial took my hands. Her palms were chill, and kind of firm now that I noticed it, a bit like a robot; a bit like the other aliens had been. But I guess that wasn’t what they looked or felt like when they were on their own home planet.

Tial said softly, “Shut your eyes.”

I shut them. Through the lids I saw a very bright flash. Then all of a sudden, everything changed.

We were in the shining hull of a great big dome-shaped room, with silver walls and transparent screens lighting up like smooth Christmas lights. I breathed out in amazement. There was all of human knowledge, skitting across the screens, as though the programs were flicking through the pages of a huge encyclopaedia, but for topics that I had never ever dreamed existed – calculations for the length of time that someone will taste a biscuit, and the classification of space dust.

I could feel Tial beside me, but when I turned to look at her she was no longer in the human girl shape that she had been. Instead she was a glowing, ghostly creature with luminous arms and legs, like a sweet-faced octopus.

As I looked at her, she wafted up to one of the screens and began operating it with her many arms. She switched and moved and slid the screens around, until I could see a room as long as earth itself, filled with comfortable beds, and in every bed, a human her kind had stolen. They were surrounded by stars and dreaming. I knew they weren’t unhappy, but I knew they’d be happier on Earth, tasting food and breathing clean air, dancing and running and thinking the thoughts that they decided they wanted to think.

“See,” Tial’s voice floated up to my ears. “They’re fine.”

“Good,” I said. “Can you show me my Mum and Dad? And Max? And Abhishek?”

I was still worried about the green goo I’d seen. Tial moved her misty limbs once again, and then the screen was zoomed up on my family. They were sleeping deeply and their cheeks were pink. Then Tial tapped the screen again and Abhishek appeared. He was fine. They were all fine.

“Oh thank goodness,” I said. “Please, Tial, please let them come home.”

“Just wait a moment,” she said now. “I need to tell my parents. But…” and here she hesitated, wafting up and down in front of me as though uncertain.

“What is it, Tial?”

“I want them to see inside your mind, too,” she eventually said.

My mind! They would plunder my mind?

I was silent, thinking it all over. She added,

“Would you let them? I know they’ve been frustrated because there were some humans they couldn’t understand. I wonder if you’d let them see inside your brain, they might understand you better. And they’d see why you would prefer to live your own life on your own planet, than hooked up to their computers…”

I had gone through all stages of trusting Tial, and everything told me I shouldn’t trust her, because she was an alien, and I was basically giving her the keys to my mind. My own thoughts and feelings, that I owned, and I didn’t want to ever give away.

But I knew what she was saying. It would help if her parents could see my perspective. And I wanted to help.

I nodded. And Tial settled her great smoky octopus-like body over my brain as though it was a cap, and I fell into a dreamy state for I don’t know how long. I saw alien planets and cold suns, strange trees and creatures. And eventually I found myself stirring again, and I was back in the shining dome room, and Tial fluttering gently beside me.

“It’s okay,” she said. “They’re going to release them all.”

I felt a sense of relief flood over me.

“Oh that’s wonderful Thank you. Thank you so much…”

“They’ve had some other ideas for making more storage anyway…” she added. “Ideas that don’t involve using organic brain memory. So they didn’t need to do all this. I guess my Dad just got an idea in his head and thought he had to see it though. Sometimes people are like that.”

I thought it was funny that Tial called herself a person. I guess that the word alien was always used by others; a person never thought that they themselves were an alien to somebody.

“Thank you,” I said again.

I moved in for a hug. Tial hugged me back. She had so many arms and legs it was like being wrapped in a bunch of smoky rope.

“Take care, Roman,” she said. “I’ll see you again some day, when I’m older.”

There was a gradual brightening of the room until it turned so bright that I shut my eyes. And then I felt a falling sensation, and I found myself back in my front yard. Sitting cross-legged on the grass. Everything was very still and quiet.

Then – gradually – as though the sound were slowly being turned back up, I heard a bird twittering. I blinked again as my eyes adjusted. The sun was behind me, which meant that it was late afternoon. I jumped to my feet and ran to the front door.

No green goo. The lock wasn’t melted in any way. I pushed on the door and it easily clicked open. I walked quickly through the hallway, then found myself on the back deck.

Mum, Dad and Max were sitting around our outdoor table, eating afternoon tea. They all looked up at me.

“You’re home!” said Dad. “We wondered where you were!”

I opened my mouth to start to explain. But before I could start talking, I heard a beeping sound.

Mum’s mobile phone. She had received a message.

But she didn’t read it. She switched her phone off with her free hand, and smiled at me.

“Now,” she said. “How about you have a nice cool drink and tell me about your day…?”

THE END

Bedtime Story / Middle Grade Serial written by Jade Maitre

© Jade Maitre 2018

Let’s Chat About The Stories ~ Ideas for Talking With Kids

Courage

1. Roman does a lot of courageous things in this story. Can you think of some? Why do you think they were courageous?

Self-Confidence

1. Roman and Tial both wonder if they can change things because they’re only kids. But Roman knows “kids have the power to change things for the better”. Do you agree? How do you think kids have the power to do this?

Environment, Empathy

1. When Tial’s parents first come to Earth, they see humans just as components of a giant supercomputer that they can use for their own benefit. But when Roman lets the aliens see his mind, they understand how this feels for the humans who love each other. How do you think understanding the minds of others can help us treat each other better?

The post Zombie Parents From Outer Space first appeared on Bedtime Stories.

This story is about a girl called Angel, who receives a creepy doll for her birthday. It has scary themes, so is best for ages 7 and up.

You can read the story through, or click on the links below to go straight to…

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 1

“I CAN’T WAAAAIIIITTTT!” Angel screamed, knocking her mum back with the force of her scream.

“Angel, I KNOW your birthday is in 2 days, but chill out, please!” Angel’s mum laughed and picked herself off the floor.

“Sorrymumit’sjustthatit’sgoingtobemytwelvethI’mturningTWELVEAndAUNTSYLVIAISCOMING!! and … and …”

“OK, OK, I get it, I get it!!” Her mum laughed.

“Sorry, mum, are you OK?” Angel hugged her mum. “I’m just so excited! I wonder what Aunty Sylvia will bring me this year? She always brings me cool stuff.”

“Creepy stuff, you mean,” teased her mum, tucking back into her dinner.

“I like creepy stuff! It’s awesome!!” exclaimed Angel.

It was true. Angel was fascinated by creepy stuff, so it was a good thing that she had a penpal, Jasmine, who lived in Malaysia. Asia was full of super creepy stuff like jumping ghosts and demons that sat on your chest when you were sleeping and stole your breath. Angel loved it all!

“Yes, well, just don’t crawl into my bed at night when you’re scared about something or the other,” Angel’s mum smiled at her.

“Mum! I’m too old for that now! Sheesh!” Angel clucked her tongue in mock disgust. They laughed together and finished their dinner.

After dinner Angel went upstairs to figure out more party decorations. It was going to be … a Halloween theme, of course! Angel’s birthday was right smack on October 31st – Halloween – so it was no wonder she was so into the spooky, creepy and freaky.

“OK, so I’ve got the severed arms dangling by spiderwebs from the ceiling … oh! I’ve got to make sure my spiderwebs are still OK! Wait … what do I care? They’re spiderwebs! The more torn-up the better! Now, the ghosts … I’ve got to make them scarier than last year’s … I wasn’t so into them then!”

Her thoughts drifted to her Aunt Sylvia. Aunt Sylvia was her mum’s older sister, but she was, Angel had to admit, way cooler than her mum, who was already pretty cool. She was into all the same things that Angel was – namely the spooky and macabre – a word that her aunt had taught her. Aunt Sylvia lived and worked all over the world, but she always made it a point to come visit Angel on her birthday – and this year was a big one – the last year before she was officially a teen.

Angel loved the gifts her aunt brought her – last year it had been a shrunken head from South America where she had gone on a holiday. That had caused a huge row between her aunt and her mum, who wanted her to be interested in more ‘normal girl stuff’ as she put it. In the end, she had allowed Angel to keep it on the condition that she not have any nightmares about it. So far she hadn’t. Then the previous year’s gift had been a real, stuffed rabbit’s foot.

“For good luck,” Aunt Sylvia had said.

Aunt Sylvia also told interesting, creepy, stories. Angel loved creepy stories that made her shiver a little at night, and her aunt was a master storyteller. Angel’s favourite story so far was the one about the beautiful long-haired woman who drivers sometimes saw on the road in the middle of the night. She wouldn’t talk, but would hitch a ride from you – only to turn out to be a ghost. This story was from Malaysia, and Jasmine had confirmed that it had happened to lots of her mum’s friends.

Angel drifted off to sleep with creepy stories on her mind.

Little did she know that soon she’d be wrapped up in a terrifying story of her own …

Chapter 2

“GOOOODDD MOOOORRRNINGGGG!!!!” Angel shrieked and pounced on her mum’s bed. “WISH ME HAPPY BIRTHDAYYYYY!!!!”

Angel’s mum rolled over and hugged her. “Happy birthday, darling. Now go organise your birthday stuff and leave me alone.”

Angel bounced downstairs to the fridge to check on the ‘blood’ punch. The floating eyes, fingers and toes bobbed around in the red punch as she scooped a cup for herself.

“Don’t drink that stuff in the morning!” her mum said, coming down the stairs.

“Aw mum, it’s my birthday, give me a break!”

By noon, Angel was bouncing around the house. “When is Aunt Sylvia coming!?!??

“Right now, my little ghoul!” said a voice from behind her. She jumped and squealed.

“AUNT SYLLLIIVVVIIIAAAAA!!” She ran and squeezed her aunt so tight that she forced out a little ‘oof’.

“OK, relax, Angel, my angel, you don’t want to kill me before I give you your gift!” laughed Aunt Sylvia.

“Ooh, what is it?!?!” exclaimed Angel, spinning around like a top in her excitement.

“Here you go. Be careful, it’s porcelain.”

Angel peeked inside the bag.

“A … doll?” she said, puzzled, “But … Aunt Sylvia … you know I’m not into girly stuff. Sheesh, has my mum been talking to you?” She put the bag down, disappointed.

“Girl, you know I wouldn’t get you just any old doll! Take her out and have a good look at her. She’s got a story that you’ll want to hear.”

Angel took the doll out of the bag and held it up. Then she saw that as pretty as it was, with its brown curls, big black eyes and long eyelashes, it actually was uber-creepy too. Its blank eyes stared at her, sending a little shiver down her spine. Did they flash a little just then?

“O-kay … I get it, Aunt Sylvia. Dolls are creepy and, yup, this gal is pretty creepy. She’s staring at me like I’m supposed to talk to her or something…”

“This isn’t just any old doll, Angel. Sit down and listen to her story.” Aunt Sylvia patted the couch next to her. Angel sat down and put the doll on the floor next to her. It didn’t seem like the type of doll you cuddled. Aunty Sylvia looked down at it.

“I bought this doll at an old shop at the edge of town. It’s one of those shops that sells things nobody wants, until the right person comes along and wants it – you know what I mean? I like to pop in there every once in a while to see what could be waiting for me to find it. When I walked in a few months ago … she was waiting for me.”

Angel shifted uncomfortably. Was she seeing things or did an annoyed frown just flash on the doll’s face?

“The moment I saw her, I knew I had to get her for you. And when the shopkeeper told me how it came to be there, it was perfect.

“Tell me, Aunt Sylvia! TELL me!!” Angel started to bounce again in anticipation.She tried to avoid looking at the doll, but couldn’t stop sneaking glances at it.

“Well, the shopkeeper said that she arrived at the shop one morning and there it was, in a little basket, as if it was a baby. There was a note attached to it. Hang on, it should still be attached. The shopkeeper said she didn’t take the note off. She didn’t like to touch the doll too much – she even left it in the basket all these years, she said.”

“Where’s the basket now?” Angel asked, leaning down and sweeping her hands across the floor, feeling for the note.

“I took it out of the basket. I knew if I left it in there, you’d really not appreciate it!” Aunt Sylvia chuckled. Angel nodded.

“For sure … a little baby-doll … seriously! Ah!” She jumped up with a little scrap of paper in her hands. “I think this is the note.”

“Read it out loud. I’ve not read it, I wanted to leave that honour to you,” Aunt Sylvia said.

Angel unfolded the note and read it out loud to her aunt.

“She is a naughty girl and naughty girls get punished. May she learn her lesson or forever hold her peace.” Angel felt a weird wave pass over her. “What does that mean!?”

“I have no idea. But … It’s the perfect gift for you, do you see? Your mum will think I finally got you a normal, girly thing, but we’ll know better, won’t we?”

“Yes … we’ll know better …” Angel was in deep thought.

There was something about the doll, something she felt she should have been noticing, but she just couldn’t put her finger on it yet…

Chapter 3

That afternoon, Angel’s friends started to come. They were all dressed up. There were vampires, witches, two Frankensteins and a couple of devils. Her BFF Tessa was Carrie from their favourite author Stephen King’s book, and Bryana and Dominique, her other close friends, were the twins from ‘The Shining’.

Angel always dressed up as horror story character, and this year she was the creature from The Ring. Angel always had a ball creeping her friends out with her super-creepy decorations, food and games. But today she found it was a little different to usual. She just couldn’t shake her weirded out feelings about the doll. When Tessa had arrived, she had quickly put the doll on the shelf of dolls in her bedroom and vowed to forget about it until later. But she couldn’t quite forget that little glint she thought she had seen in its eyes.

When night fell, Angel’s mum gathered everyone together to go trick or treating. Angel went into her room to grab her socks. But as she turned, she found herself staring at the doll. Was it staring pleadingly at her?

She really didn’t want to get into anything right now, just as she was about to go do one of her favourite things. But she knew she had to have a closer look. Angel went up to the shelf. She could swear it was asking her for something with its eyes. She wanted to pick it up to give it a cuddle, but … it was just so creepy! She shook her head and went back downstairs.

Trick or treat was as awesome as it was every year. Her next door neighbour had decorated his house up to the max and invited them in for the annual ‘Terrible Tour’. It was better than any lame amusement park haunted house. But all Angel could think about was the doll. It made her skin crawl but she felt kind of sorry for it at the same time. She decided to talk to her girls about it later when they were settled in for the sleepover.

“Guys, guys, huddle up…” Angel pulled her friends’ arms as they were sitting together on her bedroom floor later that night.

“What’s up, Angel? You’re actually looking kind of white … were you seriously scared by the ‘Terrible Tour’?!” Dominique teased.

“No, no, it’s not that. Look, my Aunt Sylvia gave me this really creepy doll for my birthday and normally you know I love stuff like this, but there’s something really weird about this doll.”

Angel blushed to see their surprised faces, but she went on. “I really feel like it’s trying to tell me something,” she admitted.

“Like what, ‘Take me to your leader?’ Bryana snorted. Dominique and Bryana, though into the creepy stuff, didn’t take it so seriously. Tessa, on the other hand, GOT Angel.

“Bring it down, let’s check it out. If it came from your Aunt Sylvia, it’s gotta be something interesting, but I don’t think she’d have given you anything … like … bad.”

“That’s the thing. It’s creeping me out but I’m not feeling …. bad. Just … weird.”

Angel didn’t know how to explain it. She took the doll down from the shelf.

“She’s so pretty!” said Dominique. Bryana went to take the doll from Angel, but Angel stopped.

“I’m not sure you should touch her. I feel … this weird connection to her … like she’d only like it if I touched her.”

“Wow … OK. You’re really affected by her, I can see that,” said Bryana.

Tessa, who’d been quiet the whole time, spoke up.

“OK, I take it back. There is something uber-creepy about that thing. Could it not be in here when we sleep?” Then she added, as if it was an afterthought:

“In fact, if I were you, I’d get rid of it, Aunt Sylvia or no.”

Angel had a gut feeling that, much as it creeped her out, she couldn’t just chuck it in the bin. Tessa was right, thought, they’d never get any sleep with it in her room. She took it out to the garage and put it on her dad’s workbench. She almost said sorry to it, but shook her head and chuckled nervously.

“It’s only a DOLL, Angel, get it together,” she whispered to herself.

Then she went back in to her friends.

Something she should never have done.

Chapter 4

The girls had a great time and fell asleep at 4am, but Angel jerked awake at 6am, shaking. She looked around … her friends seemed OK. She must have had a nightmare, which was not normal for her.

She wished she could call Aunt Sylvia. She could have spoken to her about it, but Aunt Sylvia had already gone off on another trip to a new faraway destination. So instead she shook her head as though trying to shake away the scary thoughts, rubbed her eyes and went back to sleep.

When everyone woke up, Angel and her friends decided to go to the mall to distract themselves. They were still pretty disturbed by the doll and nobody had had a great sleep.

Then Angel suddenly remembered – they would have to go through the garage to get to her mum’s car! She stopped short, Tessa banging into her.

“What’s up, Angel!?” Tessa squealed.

“The garage … the doll … I put the doll in the garage!” Angel stammered.

“Angel!” her mum called, “What’s this doing in the garage??”

Angel knew she meant the doll. “Sorry, mum, sorry! Erm, just a little joke. I’ll come get it – her!”

“I don’t want to see that thing!” jumped Bryana.

“OK OK, you guys, I have to get it back. You guys go wait in the living room, OK?”

Angel pounded down the stairs and ran into the garage. Her mum watched her all the while, arms folded. Was the doll staring accusingly at her? She gulped and gingerly crept towards it.

“Angel, you’re being extra weird today. I’ll chalk it up to not enough sleep. Get going, girl, if you guys want a lift to the mall!” Mum said.

Angel grabbed the doll, ran upstairs, plonked it down on the shelf and ran all the way back down.

“Let’s go,” she panted.

When Angel got home that afternoon, she was nervous. She didn’t know what to expect. She had meant it when she’d told her friends that she didn’t feel it was evil, but it did seem like it had feelings, and her chucking it in the garage the night before might not have been very nice. What if the doll was angry at her? What might it do? What could a doll do, in the middle of the night?

Angel was so worked up by all her thoughts that when she got back to her room, she gave a little scream to notice that

The doll wasn’t there!

She was sure she’d left it on the shelf before going to the mall.

It wasn’t on the floor under the shelf either.

She ran around her room looking for it, just in case she’d remembered wrongly.

Her mind whirled … had it come alive and run away? Had it come alive and hidden somewhere to pounce on her that night??

She freaked out and ran out of the room. She would sleep on the couch tonight. No way she was going back into her room.

Then she heard April’s voice talking to someone. Who was April talking to?

OMG was the doll in there!?

She rushed into her sister’s room, ready to fight a demented, demonic doll.

The doll was there, but it wasn’t demented, or demonic … it was … normal. She was already in freak-out mode, though, and she shrieked and grabbed the doll from her sister. April started to cry.

“What on earth is going on in here??” Angel’s mum stormed into April’s room, “I was trying to write!! Angel, you KNOW I’ve got something due! I was counting on you to play nicely with April so I could finish it!”

“Mum, I’m sorry, I … I freaked out. I … thought …” She looked down at the doll. Was she imagining a smirk on its face?

“You didn’t think, that’s what! Go to your room until dinnertime. I want some peace in this house. Got it?”

“But … Mum …”

“NO BUTS, YOUNG LADY! GO!!!”

There was no point arguing. Angel went to her room and put the doll back on the shelf.

When she had calmed down, she figured that since she was stuck in her room until dinner, she’d better get going on her homework. Today was maths – she hated the stuff. Two frustrating hours later, Angel hadn’t figured anything out. She stomped down to help her mum with dinner. They ate mainly in silence until April coughed and snorted peas out of her nose and Angel and her mum burst out laughing. After that they chilled and Angel wanted to talk to her mum about the doll. Then she felt weird and didn’t.

And so it was that after dinner, Angel plodded back upstairs to try to tackle her maths again. She opened her notebook. And couldn’t believe her eyes!

Chapter 5

The sums were all neatly done in her handwriting!!

She shook her head, rubbed her eyes and stared at the book again. Had she actually done them, but forgotten because she was so tired? What was going on!? Then she looked up at the doll on the shelf. What…!

The next morning Angel didn’t wait to tell her best friend.

“Tessa! Tessa!” Angel shrieked, running towards her. “You’re never going to guess what happened last night!!! You know that homework Mr. Buo gave us?”

“Yeah … It took me ages to figure it out. I don’t even know if I got it right!” Tessa rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, me too … but get this. I gave up on my maths homework after only halfway because I had to have dinner. But when I went back up to try to finish it, it’d been done! See?” Angel pulled out her maths book and showed it to Tessa.

“Uh … dude … that’s your handwriting.” Tessa stared at Angel. Angel could tell her best friend didn’t believe her.

“That’s the thing…” she tried to continue. “I’m 99% sure I didn’t! I mean … I was trying like mad to figure it out before dinner … I threw out pages and pages of calculations … but then … after dinner … there they were! Finished!”

“Hmmmm…” said Tessa. She appeared to be thinking. Eventually, she said,

“OK fine. If the doll did do it, how are you sure she’s not doing it to make you think she’s on your side?” Her eyes grew round. “And then, when you’ve relaxed … WHACK!” Tessa whacked her hand into her other fist and then laughed. It made Angel jump.

Get a grip, Angel! she whispered firmly to herself.

“Angel! Tessa! Hey!” Angel and Tessa turned around and saw Whitney, a friend from their home room. “Hey, guys, I’m having a party this Saturday, just a small thing to introduce an exchange student who’ll be staying with us for a month. Can you come? Please say you’ll come!”

“Cool! Thanks, Whitney, we’ll be there!”

Angel was happy to have a distraction from the doll. She was so confused. Was Tessa right? Had it done her homework just to get on her good side?

“Cool! Great! See you guys at home room!”

After that, Angel had a terrible week. She couldn’t concentrate on her schoolwork, she couldn’t sleep, and she couldn’t eat. All that was running through her mind were questions like Was the doll bad? Was the doll good? Was it helping her or plotting against her?

Her head was spinning. Bad stuff started happening, too. She dropped her homework folder into a puddle and got in trouble with her teacher, who didn’t believe her excuse. Her sister got the measles (luckily Angel herself had already had it, so she couldn’t catch it again.) She got stung by a bee and her hand swelled up to twice its size. She hoped it would get back to normal by Saturday.

But by Saturday, she was starting to think that maybe Tessa was right. The doll was doing bad stuff to her. Her swollen hand hadn’t gone back to normal. She hadn’t slept well the night before and she had panda eyes. She couldn’t find her favourite dress and her mum was in a really bad mood and had threatened to not take her to the party if she didn’t keep her sister quiet for a couple of hours.

Finally, Angel got to Whitney’s house. She crossed her fingers and went inside. Tessa was already there. Tessa did a double take when she saw Angel.

“Are you OK, girlfriend? You look like you’ve been trampled by bison.”

Angel sighed, “I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just try to have fun, OK?”

“Angel! Tessa!” Whitney called them over to where she was standing with a nice-looking boy. “This is Sam. He’s from England and he’s staying with us for the month.” Sam smiled at them.

“Hi, Sam, how are you liking the States so far?” Angel asked Sam.

“It’s cool. So many things are different here, but then so many things are the same,” Sam said.

“Like what?”

Angel was curious. She was always curious about other cultures.

“Like the music you guys like here. I’m so happy to hear Imagine Dragons on the radio everywhere here too.”

“You like Imagine Dragons? Get out! They’re one of our favourite bands too!” Tessa exclaimed.

The three of them settled down to talk and Angel started to feel normal for the first time since she’d gotten the doll.

But things weren’t normal, as she’d soon discover. Even out of sight, the doll was still watching her, waiting for something, that strange little smile on its face…

Chapter 6

On Monday morning, Angel was in a much better mood. Saturday night was the most awesome fun she’d had, maybe even better than her birthday. She really liked Sam, he seemed cool, and he seemed to like so many of the same things that she did, even books and… weird stuff. They had talked all night and said they’d catch up in school.

The next day Angel bounced into school looking for Tessa and Sam. She found Tessa, but Sam didn’t show up before home room.

The two girls chatted about how the interesting stuff he’d said. “Remember all that stuff he was telling us about the Tower of London? The beheadings and stuff? Cool! I’m going to research more into English history … so many crazy things went on there!” Angel enthused.

But they didn’t see Sam in class either. Whitney was also not there.

“Class, class, I need your attention please. Whoever attended Whitney’s party on Saturday, please report to the matron,” Angel’s teacher announced to the class.

Something started niggling at Angel again. “Tessa … it’s something bad, I know it. The doll …”

“Angel … Angel…” her friend whispered in reply. “Don’t start with that doll stuff again. I told you… if it’s freaking you out this bad, get rid of it. Your Aunt Sylvia will understand. Seriously, she wouldn’t want you to be going nuts.”

But that didn’t sit well with Angel. She shook her head. As they walked to the matron’s office, she decided to try talking to the doll when she got home later. She knew it sounded silly, but no-one would know, would they?

When they got to the office, the matron told them that Whitney and Sam were down with some kind of weird virus that even she’d never heard of. Alarm bells clanged in Angel’s head.

“Tess …”

“I don’t wanna hear, it, Ang.”

They were sent home, just in case.

When she got home, Angel went straight to the doll.

“Look, I know I haven’t been very nice to you, but… it’s because you’re creeping me out! I’ve got the heebie jeebies! I”m not sleeping, I’m not eating … I don’t know if it’s real or not, but I feel like there’s something going on with you. I don’t think you’re evil like Tessa says, but… but I wish I knew what’s the deal.”

She stopped. What was she doing – talking to a doll?! She was really losing it. She shook her head.

“Anyway, I want to be friends. I’ll try to be nicer to you… but can you quit creeping me out? And… and… if there’s other stuff… please…” She stopped. She was sure the doll’s eyes had flashed again. Suddenly her mood shifted.

“OK! Deal? Deal!”

She relaxed. Something had changed… she was sure of it.

After her strange conversation with the doll, Angel had a great dinner. She found herself laughing with her mum about lots of little things. She even seemed more relaxed than usual, which was weird because of the virus alert.

“Mum, aren’t you worried about the virus? I mean, I was at the party too.”

“I’m worried, sure, but I’m pretty sure you’re protected from a lot of things. We eat right, use essential oils, your immunity is strong. I’m not stressing out.”

Well, according to both Angel and her mum then, things were looking good.

After dinner, Angel went up to her room to do her homework. She joked with the doll,

“Hi! Could you help me with my maths again? I hate maths SO much! Nah, just kidding…”

But did she see the doll’s mouth turn up a little bit? She smiled back and got down to her homework. It was surprisingly easy… was the doll actually helping her??

Later when she was snuggling into bed, she turned to look at the doll.

“Can I ask one thing?” she said to the doll. “If you’re really making things happen, can you please help my friends Whitney and Sam? They’re sick with some weird virus and I’m scared for them.”

Then she turned over and went to sleep.

The doll’s mouth turned up even more.

Chapter 7

A few days passed and Angel’s plan seemed to be working. Maybe the doll was working with her now. Things didn’t seem to be going so badly as they were before. Sam and Whitney were still in hospital with the virus, but Angel knew these things took time to get better and luckily nobody else seemed to have caught it. Then, on Thursday, Whitney’s mum called her mum and told her that Sam had been asking to see her! The doctor had cleared it, so, on Friday, Angel and Tessa went straight to the hospital from school.

“Hi Whitney! Hi Sam! OMG how are you guys??” Angel and Tessa came into the hospital room with a whole bunch of balloons and cards from friends in school.

“We’re contagious! Stay away! Who said you could come here!” shrieked Sam, waving them away in alarm.” But on seeing their shocked faces, he laughed, “Just kidding guys, thanks for coming to see us.”

“Yeah guys, thanks for coming!” Whitney rolled her eyes and tilted her head towards Sam. “I’ve been going stir crazy cooped up in here with this joker. Who knew English people could be so hilarious,” she drawled in a mock-English accent.

“You, my dear little buttercup, appreciate me, I just know it deep down inside,” joked Sam. He turned to Angel. “Fill me in on creepy stories, Angel, I’ve been deprived of my daily dose of creepiness!”

“Ha ha… well uh…” Angel had the perfect creepy story to tell him, but since it involved him and Whitney, she wasn’t sure she should tell them. “Actually it’s been a boring few weeks, guys.” She crossed her fingers behind her back. “I’m also waiting for something to happen.”

“Wait, what about …” Tessa began

“… the weird noises that old lady Hinkley has been hearing in her garden!” Angel cut Tessa off. “You’re right, Tessa! How could I forget! She’s called the police, like, 3-4 times now to investigate, but they’ve always told her to not bother them about this stuff.”

“Yeah…” Tessa side-eyed Angel. “Very weird.”

“Ooooh… what do you think it is? Bigfoot?” Sam sat up, very interested.

“No idea… I don’t think Bigfoot hangs out in our neck of the woods, though,” Angel said. “Anyway, tell us more about creepy stories from England…”

Angel’s mum drove the two girls back home. Tessa was going to stay over because her parents had to attend an event.

“Ang, I hope that creepy doll isn’t going to be sitting on the shelf in your room staring at us the whole time,” Tessa said. “You know how I feel about it.”

Angel sighed, “Tess, I already told you… it’s on our side now. It won’t hurt us, I swear!”

Tessa shrugged, “That’s what you believe, you don’t know that for a fact.”

Angel took Tessa’s arm, “Tess, babe, trust me. I’ve been sleeping with it in the room every night. I feel safe and… even protected. Give it a chance, OK?”

Tessa shrugged again. “Let’s see.”

When they walked into Angel’s room, Tessa tensed up, but quickly relaxed. “Hey, you’re right! It doesn’t feel weird anymore!” She walked up to the doll, “Wow, it DOES look like it’s smiling more. Just a trick of the light, I’m sure, but … cool!

The girls settled down to watch TV after dinner. Paranormal Activities, their favourite show, was on that night.

“Oh… I’m supposed to message my mum to check in with her,” Tessa jumped up during an ad. “Give me a shout if it comes back on.”

Tessa ran upstairs. But shortly after, Angel heard her scream, and run back down the stairs.

“It MOVED! Angel, it moved!! I swear that thing is possessed get it OUT of the house NOW before anything bad happens!!!!”

Angel was shocked when Tessa actually burst into tears. She pounded up the stairs and into her room and, sure enough, the doll was facing the other way. She shrieked, grabbed it and threw it out of the window as hard as she could.

The doll landed on a hedge outside.

Its mouth turned down into a frown.

Chapter 8

Angel was back to being a nervous wreck – not eating, not sleeping, not concentrating on anything. Her mum had been so worried she’d caught the weird virus from Sam and Whitney that she had actually brought her to the doctor’s for the first time in years.

Angel had obviously not told her mum what was up with the doll. Her mum didn’t believe in all this stuff and would really be angry at Aunt Sylvia for filling her head with ‘all this nonsense’, as she’d said many times before.

Floating through school like a zombie, Angel got a lot of weird stares from everyone. Mrs. Karmalita, her favourite teacher who taught English Literature, asked if she needed to go to Matron. She started wearing hoodies pulled up over her face.

The one good thing about it all was that the doll was gone. She’d finally plucked up enough courage to go check the hedge where the doll had landed. It had vanished. She hoped that the cleaners had picked it up and sent it to the incinerator, and not that it had run away by itself.

But then, a few days later, Angel opened her closet and… the doll was there!

She was really scared now, and pretty convinced it was evil. Rushing to school and freaking out, so she just decided to leave it in the closet until she got home and figured out what to do.

She ran into school to look for Tessa, but Tessa wasn’t at their usual meeting spot in front of the lockers.

She was really freaking out now … Tessa had always been against the doll and she was pretty sure the doll knew it. It had been Tessa who had blown the final alarm bell, too.

Sick with worry, she tried to text Tessa.

No answer.

The bell rang for class and she kept texting throughout homeroom even though she knew phones weren’t allowed in class. Sure enough, Mr. Dobson caught her.

“Angel, you know you shouldn’t be using phones in class. Please report to detention after school today.”

“But, Mr. Dobson, Tessa might be in trouble!” Angel blurted out, panicked.

“What do you mean?” Mr. Dobson gave her a funny look. She knew she couldn’t say anything.

“Sorry, Mr. Dobson, I mean, Tessa’s not in school today and I’m worried she might have caught that weird virus Whitney and Sam had.”

She was going nuts. After detention and being screamed at by her mum, Angel grabbed her phone and frantically tried to reach Tessa again.

She tried her cell, her home, her mum … nothing. She sent her dozens of texts but Tessa didn’t see or reply to any of them.

She couldn’t sleep that night. She had refused to go back into her room and she’d gotten April to bring all her sleeping stuff out to the couch, which had made her mum mad again, but she didn’t care. She tossed and turned, stressing about what had happened to Tessa. Shifting and tugging on her blanket, she tried to figure out what had happened to her BFF. She was also freaking out about what the doll would to to HER.

The next day, Angel ran into school hoping to see Tessa, but there was still no sign of her. Sweating, she ran around the school searching everywhere for Tessa. The kitchen, the science lab, the English/creative writing class, everywhere. Tessa was nowhere to be seen.

At home, freaking out, she tried calling her BFF again, and this time Tessa replied!

“Tessa! Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick about you!!!” Angel screamed into her phone.

“Sorry, Angel, my grandma fell and broke her leg and we had to follow mum over to help her cos dad’s out of town. I forgot my phone. Did you think the doll had gotten me??”

“YES! Sheesh … don’t EVER do that to me again!”

That night she finally screwed up the courage to look into her closet again. Sure enough, the doll was still there, a small frown on its face.

“I’m sorry about what I did. I just… wish you weren’t so creepy. Did you really move??? Are you evil???? You know what? I kinda wish you could move and talk so that you could tell me what in the world is going on!!!”

And then she gave a little scream and dropped it.

It had blinked and smiled at her!

Chapter 9

Angel slammed the closet door shut.

“I take that back! I take that back! I don’t want you to come alive! Don’t!”

She slammed the door and ran down the stairs.

“That’s it! I’m getting rid of it! I’m gonna burn it! I don’t care if bad luck comes… I’ve had enough!”

She calmed down a while later, though. This was a creepy adventure and she always wanted creepy adventures, right? Now she knew what she had to do. Figure the whole thing out. She would lay low with the doll, pretend to be on its side and talk to it and stuff. She would research and try to find out more about the doll. There was definitely some history behind it… was it a magic cursed doll brought to life? Was it a cursed person’s soul put inside the doll by a witch? This was the stuff she was made for.

She got Tessa on the phone, “Tessa, Tessa, I know what to do now! It’s a creepy mystery!! It’s totally something we read about every time… and we’re in the middle of it!! We’ve got to solve it!!”

Tessa was quiet for a long while. “I guess you’re right, Angel. All this time I’ve been freaked out by it, but… yeah… it’s something we love freaking ourselves out with… okay, let’s do it!”

“Awesome! Wish you were here tonight, but it’s OK, I’ll start researching on my own. Come over tomorrow, OK?”

“I’ll try … I might have to help with my grandma.”

“Cool!” Angel felt a whole lot better now that she had decided what to do. She got online and started reading up on cursed dolls, witches, souls trapped in objects… it was uber creepy but the more she read into souls being trapped, the more it made sense. Maybe that’s why she never really felt the doll was evil… maybe it was just a trapped soul trying to get out and back to its own life?

She went to the closet and took a deep breath. She opened it and… All her clothes were neatly folded and arranged: shirts on the shirts pile, shorts on the shorts pile, dresses, skirts and jeans hung up. She smiled down at the doll.

“Hey, thanks for helping! First my homework, now my clothes… I could get used to having a friend do all this for me!”

She took the doll out of the cupboard and propped it against her pillow on her bed.

“So what’s the deal with you? Are you like Slappy in Goosebumps or… are you an actual person stuck in the doll?”

She saw a gleam in the doll’s eye. Was that a tear running down the doll’s cheek?!

“Oh… hey… don’t… don’t cry!! Omigosh… here…” Angel grabbed a tissue and dabbed at the doll’s face. She picked it up and gave it a cuddle – it didn’t feel weird anymore. “It’s OK. I’m your friend. I’ll try my best to help you, and my BFF too. We’ll get to the bottom of this. I wish you could talk… that would really help us along. I know! Maybe I can ask you questions and you can give me a sign for yes and a sign for no. Hmm … Can you blink once for yes, twice for no?” She nearly dropped the doll when it blinked once.

She shook her head and held on.

“OK! Great! We can talk! Kind of. Soooo… are you a doll curse to come to life or are you a soul trapped in a doll?”

The doll didn’t respond.

“Oh, ya sorry. Ummm… are you a doll cursed to come to life?”

The doll blinked twice.

“So you are a soul trapped inside a doll?”

The doll blinked once.

“But, whose soul? How am I going to find that out?” She mulled it over. “I know! I’ll research into people who have disappeared! But… there must be millions! Where am I supposed to start? Can you help me?”

The doll did nothing.

“I guess I will have to figure it out in the morning. Can you wait?”

The doll blinked once.

Chapter 10

Angel could barely sleep that night from the excitement of it all. She knew she was on the right track. The problem was… how on Earth was she going to find out exactly whose soul was trapped inside the doll?! She figured she could ask the doll about each and every missing person she could find out about… but that would take ages! She didn’t want to go to school the next day; she needed to get cracking on the case! But she knew her mum wouldn’t have any of it.

“Heya,” Angel greeted the doll before leaving for school. “I have to go to school. I’ll try to do some research during my free period, OK? Hopefully I’ll find something!” The doll didn’t reply.

In school, Angel rushed to Tessa.

“Tessa! Tessa! You’ll never guess what happened last night!”

“Hey Angel! You look a whole lot better today. Awesome!” Tessa hugged Angel.

“That’s because I’ve finally figured out something and I think I can really do something about the doll! Listen. After we talked, I did a ton of research about cursed dolls and souls being trapped inside objects and I found a way to talk to the doll!” Angel was breathless with excitement.

“It spoke to you?!” Tessa’s eyes were wide.

“Well, no, but I told it to blink once for yes, twice for no. I asked it if it had been cursed to come to life and it blinked twice for no! Then I asked if it was a soul trapped inside the doll… it blinked once! It’s a soul trapped inside the doll! So now all I have to do is find out whose…” Angel sighed, “That’s the toughie.”

“Yeah … there could be millions of possibilities. Where are we gonna start?” Tessa mused.

“You’re gonna help me?” Angel grabbed Tessa, excited.

“Of course! You didn’t think I’d let you have all the excitement, did you?” Tessa laughed.

“Cool! OK, I was planning on using my free period to hit the computers. I figured I’d write down all the names of missing people that I can find then read them to the doll when I get home,” Angel said.

“Good plan,” Tessa nodded. The bell rang for assembly.

“Oh … and she helped me fold my clothes!” Angel giggled. She nudged her friend. “I told her I could get used to all the help she was giving.”

The girls linked arms then and went to assembly. Mrs. Weston, the principal, looked very serious up on the podium.

“Girls and boys, today is the 60th anniversary of the disappearance of Meghan Montgomery,” Mrs. Weston told everyone. “As you may recall, Meghan was a student here from 1954 until her mysterious disappearance in 1959. Nobody knew where she had gone, not even her parents, and the police never found any leads, Nothing is known of her disappearance until today.”

Angel’s ears pricked up and she grabbed Tessa’s hand. Something was niggling at her.

“Let us have a moment of silence as we look through the pictures of Meghan and remember her in our hearts,” called Mrs. Weston.

Angel squeaked as pictures of Meghan started flashing onto the projector screen. They looked like the doll! Even Tessa did a double take.

At free time, the girls rushed to the library to research further into Meghan’s story. Angel was all but convinced that it was Meghan’s soul in the doll… but how? What was the story behind it?

“Get this, Tessa, Meghan was 12 just like us when she disappeared.” Angel showed Tessa the newspaper article about the disappearance.

“Yah and she was also into all the creepy stuff that we like too,” Tessa read from another article she was reading about Meghan.

“I think we’ve got it, Tessa!” Angel jumped up. A few people turned around and looked at her and she quieted down, “I can’t wait to get home to ask her!”

Chapter 11

Angel ran into the house and up the stairs. She ripped the closet door open… but Meghan (she’d started to think of the doll as Meghan) wasn’t there!! Panicked, she ripped around the room looking for it – throwing the covers on her bed back, pulling all her drawers open, even scrambling under the bed. Meghan was nowhere to be found.

“April if you’ve taken the doll again I’ll kill you!!!” she screamed, as she pounded into her sister’s room. Her sister started to cry.

“April no take!” she sobbed and Angel’s mum ran into the room too.

“Angel! You’re grounded! Calm your sister down, I don’t have time for this.” Her mum stormed out of the room.

“April, I’m sorry.” Angel hugged her sister, her brain still whirling. Where WAS Meghan? “But … are you sure you didn’t take it? Just to play? I won’t get mad if you did, just tell me where it is.”

“April no take,” April sniffed and hiccuped.

“OKOK, I’m sorry. Look, I’ll play with you later. I just need to find my doll, OK?” Angel hugged her sister again.

“OK!” April’s face brightened up.

Angel tore around the house looking for Meghan, but she was nowhere to be found. She collapsed onto her bed. She had no idea what to do. How was she going to help Meghan if she had vanished?

Later that evening, as she was helping her mum with dinner, Angel asked, “Mum, did you see the doll that Aunt Sylvia gave me for my birthday? It’s gone missing.”

“Ohhhh… That’s why you were tearing around the house and screaming at your sister. I saw it on the closet floor along with a bunch of your old clothes and toys so I thought you wanted to donate it away… remember the school charity drive asking for old clothes and toys? I gathered everything to send in today.”

“MUM! Aunt Sylvia gave it to me! How could you think I’d give it away?!”

“Well honestly, honey, I figured that you didn’t want it anymore. You’ve been acting very weird since you got it and, to be honest, I was glad you decided to give it away.”

“Mum!!!” Angel didn’t know what to do. “Call them NOW and ask for it back!!!! I NEED it!!!!”

“You’ll just have to ask them tomorrow when you go to school honey.”

Angel’s head started to pound. Would Meghan think she’d abandoned here again?? Would she be sad or angry? Would bad stuff start happening again?

She was back to not being able to concentrate and that night, she couldn’t fall asleep. Just as she was finally falling off to sleep, Angel heard a tapping sound. She jerked out of a half-dream and stared around wildly. Where was that sound coming from?

She suddenly realised it was coming from the window.

“What the … !?!?”

She ran to the window and pulled the curtains open. Meghan was standing right there on the ledge!! She ripped the window open and Meghan climbed in. Climbed! With her own little doll legs and arms, like an agile plastic spider.

“Meghan! You came back! Wow… you can move all on your own now???”

“Hi Angel. Yes, I finally got enough energy to move and talk on my own. Thanks to you! You believed in me!”

Angel was a bit freaked out, watching the doll move and talk.

“Wow… this is awesome! Now you can finally tell me what is going on!!” Angel hugged Meghan.

“First of all, thank you for not giving up on me,” said the Meghan-doll as she hugged Angel back. “I’m so glad I came to you rather than someone else who would definitely have thrown me out.”

“Yah, you’re lucky I’m into creepy stuff! Even then, I was ready to get rid of you… I was getting really creeped out and bad stuff started happening all around me,” Angel admitted.

“I don’t think I did that,” Meghan said. “I don’t think the curse makes me give bad luck to anyone.”

“Well then what’s been happening?? Anyway, tell me your story!! How did you end up like this???”

And the little doll settled itself down on her bedspread and began to tell her story…

Chapter 12

Meghan was silent for a while.

“I’m still not clear on everything that happened. One minute I was standing outside her house, the next minute I was… I was…”

“Meghan… Meghan… can you start from the beginning? Whose house?”

The little doll turned its eyes to Angel and her face, though fixed, seemed sorrowful.

“I was always fascinated by things that made my skin crawl.”

“Creepy stuff, just like me!”

“Yes, I think we have a lot in common. I heard about a woman who lived on the outskirts of town. She was rumoured to be… to have… powers.”

“A witch!? Cool!”

“Well, it wasn’t done to say that word in those days,” said the little doll, still looking with that curious, sober face. “People said it would bring bad luck. But yes, it was said that anyone who got on her bad side would end up with bad luck… or worse. Being curious, I had to investigate.”

The little doll paused as though to collect her thoughts. Angel waited.

“I went out to the woman’s house on a Sunday. I just wanted to see what she looked like, maybe see her doing something… out of the ordinary. I didn’t want to disturb her or cause any trouble, though, I promise. I just approached the house and peeped in through the window. The lady was cooking something… I couldn’t see what. I could smell rosemary. She stirred and stirred. I would have done anything to see what was in that pot. It was just a normal pot… just like my mother used at home to make spaghetti sauce… but who knew what she was cooking? Then she turned off the stove and sat down. She just sat there for a long time, not doing anything. At least I thought she was doing nothing, I wasn’t sure. Suddenly, she turned and looked straight at me. I froze. I could feel her eyes boring into me. I felt something strange happening inside of me and, suddenly, I unfroze and I ran. I ran all the way home and hid under my covers. I was shaking like a leaf – so frightened that I refused to come out. I spent the next few days in bed and everyone assumed I was sick.”

“You mean you didn’t turn into a doll straight away?” Angel felt like a doll herself. She was rooted to the spot, fascinated.

“No, I was just scared. I didn’t feel anything happen to me at all.”

Angel felt relieved, though she knew the story was bound to turn out badly. She was surprised to feel how much she was investing in the story. How vividly she could picture Meghan’s story. She felt like she was the one who had seen the old woman, stirring that pot and then gazing at her so strangely…

“But then, on the third day after she had seen me,” said the doll. “I woke up in a strange place I had never seen before. I went to bed as usual the night before, and I have no idea how it happened. But I was in some kind of shop! I worked out soon enough that it was an antique shop. I looked around and everything seemed bigger to me. I thought the strange lady had made me sick after all and that I was hallucinating. But after a while of walking around the shop, I realised it was real and something awful had happened… I finally looked into a mirror and was shocked… a doll was staring back at me. The doll looked like me.” Her pretty face was so shiny and fixed that it seemed to glisten with tears. “I guess I’ve been in that antique shop ever since…” she rounded off sadly.

“That’s terrible! You never saw your family again?” Angel felt so bad for Meghan, she could feel tears pricking her eyelids.

“No, never again.” Meghan put her head down and started to sob. Her stiff little body shook. Angel held her until she calmed down.

“I saw in the articles about you that your family never stopped looking for you,” she told the doll. “Your sister, especially, never gave up.” Angel tried to remember more from the articles. “I’ll bring you to the library to read them all again, if you want.”

“I’d like that,” Meghan said. She seemed to compose herself. She gave a sad smile to Angel. Then Angel had a sudden flash of inspiration.

“Hey! That woman who did this to you… maybe we should try to find her and get her to change you back!”

“That’s a great idea, but…” Meghan was quiet for a while. “It’s been a long time…”

“60 years…” said Angel, realising.

“Yes.” Meghan put her head down, “She may not be alive anymore. She seemed old to me even at that time.”

“Oh man…” Angel hugged Meghan.

Was it possible they could find the woman who did this? And even if she was still alive, was there a chance that she would she change poor Meghan back?

Chapter 13

Angel smuggled Meghan to school in her backpack. Meghan wasn’t sure she wanted to do it – she didn’t want the memories to make her even more sad than she already was – but Angel thought it might actually make her feel better to share her stories of the good times she’d had in school.

“Everything looks … the same!” Meghan exclaimed quietly, as she sat half-in, half-out of Angel’s backpack. “Well, nearly everything. The wallpaper is different and… Oh! That whole wing wasn’t there when I was here!”

“Yep, I think the West Wing was added 10 years ago. It’s our performing arts centre where we do drama, music and film stuff.” Angel realised she was actually quite proud of the school.

“Film!” Meghan exclaimed. “You make films here? It doesn’t look like a large enough space!”

“Well, anything and everything can be filmed, you don’t need a big space, really…”

“Things have really changed,” Meghan said sadly. Angel wanted to cheer her new friend up.

“Oh! Hey! Tell me about your friends… what did you guys like to do together? What sports did you play?”

“Friends … well I didn’t have many friends, to be honest, because not many people understood why I was interested in… creepy stuff, you called it? I had just one very close friend who had the same interests as me. Her name was Jilly. We did everything together. She was supposed to come with me that day to the old lady’s house, but she was sick. Lucky for her,” she said regretfully.

“So you guys investigated creepy stuff together? Just like me and Tessa! Tessa’s my BFF. She’s not here today, she had to go to help her grandma out. She was one of the reasons I was so worried about you being evil… last week she vanished and I couldn’t get her on the phone, she wasn’t replying to my texts… I thought you’d done something to her!”

As soon as the words were out of Angel’s mouth, she regretted them. Angel thought that she felt the doll stiffen. But then Meghan said gently,

“Don’t worry, Angel. I understand why you thought that.”

Angel breathed a sigh of relief.

“BFF means Best Friends Forever,” Angel added, realising she might not have used that phrase so many years ago. Then she decided to change the subject altogether. “What was your favourite subject in school?”

“My favourite subject? I loved English Literature. Aside from being fascinated by strange things, I loved to read and write strange stories.”

Angel clapped. “Me too! Wow… we’re so alike, it’s…. creepy!” She laughed.

The bell rang and Angel went to homeroom. She kept getting weird looks from everyone, even the teachers, but she figured that was because she was carrying a really realistic-looking doll, and she supposed at her age, it was a little strange.

During lunchtime, Angel was walking down the corridor to the cafeteria when Mrs. Karmelita walked by and did a double take.

“Angel! Who… I mean… what is that in your backpack?!” the teacher blurted out.

“It’s just a doll, Mrs. K. It seems to be bothering everyone… should I put it into my locker?” Angel definitely didn’t want it taken away.

“No, there’s no need… it’s just that…” Mrs. Karmelita seemed flustered, which Angel had never seen happen. “Angel, did you know that your doll resembles Meghan? The girl who we held a vigil for at assembly?”

“I know! That’s why I brought her… I mean, it, to school… to show my friends. It was weird when I saw the slideshow of Meghan. I thought to myself ‘Oh wow! She looks exactly like my doll!’

Angel knew she was babbling and forced herself to stop. Mrs. Karmelita looked at Angel and then at the doll for an uncomfortably long time.

“My dear, why did you say ‘her’? What I mean is, obviously it’s a female doll, but a doll nonetheless, and you know we use the pronoun ‘it’ for inanimate objects.”

“Yes, sorry Mrs. K., I’m just kinda hungry and can’t concentrate right now. Can I go to lunch, please?” Angel kicked herself for that mistake. She knew Mrs. Karmelita, old as she was, was still as sharp as a pin, especially when it came to grammar and spelling.

“Yes, yes, of course, my apologies for keeping you from your lunch.” Mrs. Karmelita waved Angel off, then called to her. “Angel? Could I trouble you to come see me after school today, please? I have something I’d like to discuss with you.”

Angel really wanted to get home to discuss things properly with Meghan, but there was something strange in Mrs. K’s voice…

Chapter 14

As soon as Mrs Karmelita walked away, Meghan tugged at Angel’s hair and whispered urgently, “That’s Jilly!!!!”

Angel spun around, forgetting that a) she was in the middle of the school hall and b) she was talking to someone in her backpack.

“What?!?! What do you mean that’s Jilly??”

“That teacher you were talking to… Mrs. K., you called her… that’s my best friend when we were in school together! K. stands for Karmelita, right? Jilly Karmelita!”

Meghan sounded so happy Angel didn’t want to say anything to upset her, but she knew how weird this was going to be.

“I can’t believe Jilly’s right here!” Meghan sounded over the moon. “She became a teacher… just like she wanted! And of course she’s teaching English Literature… she loved reading and writing!”

“What did you want to become?” Angel was curious.

“I wanted to become a writer. To put all the strange stories I had in my mind down on paper,” said Meghan dreamily, “After investigating the old lady, I had planned to build a story around it. I guess I became the story instead.”

Angel couldn’t help but smile at that. “Well, this is cool! You’re going to see you BFF for the first time in a long time!”

Angel knocked on Mrs. Karmelita’s classroom door after school. She was bursting with curiosity about how it would play out. Would she tell Mrs. K? Reveal Meghan? She actually wanted to, but was worried Mrs. K. would think she was going crazy. Mrs. K. was cool most of the time, and Meghan did say she was into creepy stuff when she was young, but she was old now and that could have changed.

“Come in, Angel,” Mrs. Karmelita called from her desk. “Sit down, my dear.”

Noticing Angel’s worried face, she smiled, “Don’t worry, Angel, you’re not in any trouble. I just wanted to find out more about your doll. It really gave me a shock when I saw it this morning. You know, it really does look like Meghan.”

Angel decided to take a chance. “Mrs. K., did you… did you know Meghan? I think she was the same age as you when were you in school together or something?”

Mrs. Karmelita sighed.

“Yes, we were schoolmates here. As a matter of fact, we were the best of friends.”

“Wow! Tell me more!” Angel felt Meghan twitch in her backpack.

“May I request something, dear. Could you put the doll on the table please? I would very much like to look at it.” Mrs. K almost sounded awkward.

“Sure!” Angel took her backpack off, put it on the table and gently took Meghan out.

“My, the resemblance is uncanny!” Mrs. Karmelita whispered, staring at Meghan. “Meghan was… she was such a sweet girl. She was my best friend – we did everything together. We loved to read and write… well, that’s why I’m an English Literature teacher now.” Mrs. Karmelita smiled wistfully.

“Just like me and Tessa!” exclaimed Angel. She was trying really hard to pretend she didn’t know this already.

“Yes, we’re more similar than you know, Angel.” Mrs. Karmelita smiled at Angel. “We were both fascinated with the unusual too, again like yourself and Tessa. Our dream was to investigate the paranormal and write about it.” Mrs. Karmelita suddenly drew closer to Meghan. “Did I just see a gleam in the doll’s eye? Meghan’s eyes used to gleam like that when she got excited about something…”

“Hi, Jilly! It’s me! Meghan!” Meghan winked at Mrs. Karmelita.

Mrs. Karmelita jumped back and screamed. “What ! How…?”

She staggered back and Angel rushed to help her.

Chapter 15

“Calm down, Mrs. K., here, sit down. Let me explain everything.”

Angel beckoned Mrs Karmelita went into the hallway. She closed the door behind them, leaving Meghan in the room. Mrs Kermelita looked so overwhelmed that Angel thought it was better to prepare her before she came face-to-face with her transformed friend again.

“Mrs. K., I know this is going to be hard to believe, but… you know how Meghan disappeared?”

Mrs Karmelita, breathing heavily, nodded. She sat down on one of the chairs in the hallway. Angel sat down next to her.

“Well, she didn’t go anywhere,” Angel told her.  “You remember that old lady you were going to investigate with her? The one everyone thought was a witch?” Mrs Karmelita winced but said nothing. “Well, she went to the house, but the old lady caught her snooping around. So she cursed her and put her soul in a doll.”

“That doll?” Mrs Karmelita looked back at the room where they had left Meghan.

“Yes,” Angel confirmed. “When Meghan’s soul was sent into the doll, it started to look more and more like her as time passed, but nobody noticed because she was stuck in an antique shop.”

“How did she come to be with you?” Mrs. Karmelita said, still sounding stunned.

“My Aunt happened to walk into the antique shop and saw her. She bought her for my birthday. She’s the one who kind of got me into creepy things, so every year I can’t wait to see what gift she’ll find for me.” Angel looked down. “I wish Aunt Sylvia was here… she’d know what to do.”

“I was supposed to go with Meghan to that woman’s house,” Mrs. Karmelita thought out loud. “Imagine what would have happened if I had? You would have an entirely different English Literature teacher and I… I would have ended up a doll, just like Meghan.” She shuddered. “Poor Meghan. She must have been terrified, and all alone. I should have been there for her.” She put her head down and wiped her eyes. Meghan sniffled too.

“Mrs. K., I know it’s freaky… believe me, it took me a long time to relax into the idea. But I think Meghan wants to talk to you like you guys used to. Would you be OK doing that?”

Mrs. Karmelita’s eyes teared up even more. “Yes. Yes, I’d like that. Please give me a moment to compose myself.” She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief andthen finally stood up. They went back in the room together. Mrs Karmelita took Meghan in her hands and hugged her.

“Meghan, my best friend!” she cried.

“Jilly!” Meghan’s eyes lit up. “I’ve been waiting for so long to talk to you again! I wasn’t even sure I would ever have the chance again.”

It was funny, but as Mrs Karmelita spoke with Meghan, she lost all traces of the teacher in her voice, and sounded only like a young girl again, animated, talking with her friend.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, Meghan. I should have been there… you should have waited for me,” Mrs. Karmelita’s eyes teared up again.

“Jilly, you know me, I wouldn’t have waited for the world once I got wind of something! I’m just happy to see you again.”

“Meghan, you know your sister never gave up looking for you?” Mrs. Karmelita told her.

“Yes, I know. Angel showed me the articles. Thank goodness for Angel!”

Meghan turned to Angel. “Thank you for keeping me, and for looking a little deeper below the surface. I am so lucky to have your help!”

Angel blushed, “Awww… I wasn’t always very nice to you, Meghan. Sending you to the garage, then the charity bin!”

“How could you have known? I don’t hold it against you!” Meghan laughed.

Angel blushed deeper, “I’m glad to hear that! But what do we do now? I mean… you don’t want to be stuck in a doll anymore, do you?”

Meghan shook her head violently. Mrs. Karmelita suddenly sat up.

“Meghan! I’ve read something on this before. Cursed dolls. The only way to break the curse is for the original person who placed it to lift it.”

Angel shook her head. “Mrs. K., I’ve already thought of that but, surely the old lady who did this to Meghan is already… has already…”

“Passed away,” Mrs. Karmelita sighed. “That is most likely the case. Oh dear, what can we do?”

“I’ll research into it,” Angel said resolutely. “Don’t worry, Meghan, I’ll try my best!”

“As will I,” chimed in Mrs. K.

Angel left the two old friends to catch up. She meant what she had said. But where would she start?

Chapter 16

Meghan tried to remember where the old lady’s house was, but it was difficult. They ended up narrowing the possibilities down to five old ladies who were rumoured to dabble into supernatural practices.

“What should we do now? Go check out each of these old ladies?” Angel asked.

“I think that’s the only thing we can do. Angel, call your mother to let her know you’re with me,” Mrs. Karmelita advised.

“OK, good idea,” Angel agreed. She went to call her mother, then got into Mrs. Karmelita’s car. As they drove out to the outskirts of town, the three of them discussed their plan.

“I don’t think we should show Meghan to her straight away,” Angel said. “She might get angry and zap us all into dolls, then we’d be in big trouble. Omigod, maybe we should have written a note and left it on your table, Mrs. K., in case something happens to us.”

“That sounds rather melodramatic, but given the circumstances, you might be right, Angel,” Mrs. Karmelita agreed.

Angel gasped, “I know! I’ll text Tessa and tell her where we’re going. She’ll definitely keep an eye out for me.” She pulled her phone out, but then noticing something, she stopped.

“Hey, are you OK Meghan?” She felt Meghan trembling in her arms.

“I… I’m terrified. I never wanted to see that woman again, and here we are looking for her,” Meghan stammered.

Mrs. Karmelita assured her, “Don’t worry, Meghan, we’re here to help you.”

Angel wasn’t so sure about that, but she didn’t say anything.

“I know you mean well, Jilly,” said Meghan. “But you didn’t see the look in her eyes.” The little doll shuddered. “It was as if she was looking right into my soul! I’ve never forgotten it!”

“We have to try, Meghan. I promise we’ll be as careful as possible,” Mrs. Karmelita reassured her.

They reached the outskirts of town and started looking around for the closest address on their list. After a while of driving around, they finally found it. “It definitely looks like the house of a witch!” Angel excitedly exclaimed. Mrs. Karmelita and Meghan winced.

Mrs. Karmelita parked the car and they looked at each other, not sure what to do.

“I think we should try to observe the house first, before talking to anyone,” Mrs. Karmelita suggested.

“That makes sense,” Angel agreed. “Meghan, does this house look familiar to you at all?”

“No, it doesn’t. But it was so long ago. I’ll never forget her, though, so the easiest way to find her is if I see her… which I definitely do NOT want to do,” Meghan repeated again. “I’m not sure I want to be peeking into anyone’s window anymore!”

“Right now we’re just observing, Meghan. We can decide what to do when and if we find her,” Mrs. Karmelita said gently. Her little friend was trembling more than ever.

They waited and waited and finally the postman rang the doorbell. Everyone in the car tensed when the door was opened by an old woman, but Meghan said, “That’s not her.”

They went to the next house. And then next one. And soon they had visited all of the houses on the list. But Meghan said that none of the old ladies who lived in the houses were the same one as the woman who had enchanted her.

It was getting late and they didn’t want to be there in the evening.

“Don’t worry, Angel, we’ll come back tomorrow. I’m free the whole summer and I want to help my friend out,” Mrs. Karmelita said, patting Meghan on the arm. But everyone was disappointed. Angel could feel it in the air.

They rode home in silence. “I”ll pick you girls up at 9am tomorrow and we’ll get a fresh, early start,” Mrs. Karmelita promised as she dropped them off.

But 9am the next morning, she didn’t come.

Chapter 17

Angel and Meghan waited until ten in the morning for Mrs. Karmelita to come, but still she didn’t come.

“Where could she be??” Angel paced the living room. “I hope nothing bad happened to her! Omigod omigod! What if the witch knew we were coming to look for her and zapped Mrs. K. first?!”

“Poor Jilly! Let’s give up, Angel. Thank you for all your help, but maybe I should just be contented as a doll for the remainder of my days.” Even Meghan’s eyes, which were glass, seemed overshadowed with worry.

“No! Mrs. K. was right,” Angel suddenly exclaimed. “We have to at least try to see if this works. I’m not going to give up! If Mrs. K.’s in trouble, I’m going to try to help her too!”

“That’s one of the things I most admire about you, Angel, your courage in the face of all odds. You’re right, if Jilly is in trouble, we’d better help. And we should see this thing through.” The little doll took a breath. “OK, I’m ready to face the witch!”

Meghan’s about-turn surprised Angel, but she was glad.

“Let’s go! I’m going to take the bus out there… hmmm, what should I tell my mum?”

“Well, much as I hate to tell fibs, you could tell her the same thing you did yesterday… that you are with Jilly, to work on a special writing project,” Meghan suggested.

“Cool!”

Angel went to look for her mum and tell her, with Meghan accompanying her inside her backpack. After Angel had told her mum the excuse they’d invented (and thankfully her mum believed every word…), they headed for the bus station.

As they rode the bus, they whispered their plans – in case somebody who shouldn’t hear happened to be around.

“Where do we start now? We’ve checked out the ladies we thought could be the ones. Now we’re at zero.”

“Perhaps we could ask around?”

Meghan still seemed hopeful. Perhaps it was her bravery that was making her so positive and determined.

“Hmmmm…. it’s gonna be so random,” Angel frowned.

“We don’t have another option, I think,” the doll reminded Angel.

The bus pulled up to their stop then.

“Here we go,” said Angel, moving off the bus. When the bus had pulled away from the kerb, she looked around. “But where do we go now?”

“Your guess is as good as mine!” Meghan would have shrugged if she’d been able to.

“OK… let’s go… right.”

Angel turned and walked down the street. She screwed up the courage and asked anybody she could find if they knew of any ‘strange ladies’ she could interview for her school project. She got a lot of stares and evil eye signs, but no help. By mid-afternoon, they were losing steam.

“Nobody knows anything!” Angel exclaimed, annoyed. She sat down on the pavement and put her chin in her hands. Suddenly a shadow fell over them.

“Are you looking for Mistress Selina? Heard you’re looking for her,” a small voice enquired. Angel jumped up and in the backpack, felt Meghan shiver against her spine.

“W-what? How did you know that? Who’s Mistress Selina??” she stammered.

“Follow me,” the boy said, not answering.

They walked for what seemed like miles and miles. Angel looked down at her watch but it had stopped so she couldn’t tell the time. Meghan seemed tense in her backpack. “Do you think this is it?” she heard the small doll’s voice whisper at one moment. Angel turned a little and whispered back,

“I feel all tingly … I don’t know if it’s a sign.”

They finally arrived at a tiny shack way out near the swamps. The mysterious boy turned to them, “Mistress Selina is waiting for you.” He pointed at the door then walked off.

Angel stared at the door of the shack. Then she remembered Meghan, and took the doll out of her backpack. Poor Meghan was shaking.

“I feel her! I feel her! Oh no! Please get me away from here! This was a bad idea!”

Angel tried to calm Meghan as much as she could but she was shaking just as much as the doll was. There was a creepy feeling in the air and they couldn’t stop jumping at every sound. Then the door opened. —-

Chapter 18

Angel stepped in, trembling like a leaf. Meghan was vibrating in her arms and she had to hold on tight so she wouldn’t drop her.

“O-OK, you’re right, Meghan, m-maybe t-this wasn’t such a g-good idea,” Angel whispered.

They looked around the room they had just entered. It was dark and smelled like incense.

“The air feels like it’s watching me,” Angel whispered.

“Me too,” whispered Meghan.

“So… you have come back to disturb Mistress Selina again,” a quavering voice floated out of the gloom.

Angel spun around, trying to see where the voice was coming from.

“Come closer, child, so that Mistress Selina can see you with her old, failing eyes,” the voice crooned. Exactly like a witch, Angel thought.

“I remember you, child, you were snooping around my house,” the voice continued, and Meghan let out a little squeak of fear. Angel jumped again. Her eyes darted around the dark room. Where was Mistress Selina??

Suddenly a light clicked on and they were staring at two sunken eyes in a very wrinkled, thin face. Long straggly hair surrounded the face and a toothless grin made Angel’s skin crawl.

“Ah, child, it wasn’t enough that you came to disturb me all those years ago, but now you have brought another curious thrill-seeker to gawp and stare at me?” The witch pointed accusingly at Meghan. Angel quickly hid the doll behind her back, took a deep breath and let it all out in one long desperate sentence.

“Wait… Mistress Selina we are sorry but we really didn’t come here to disturb you. Meghan is really sorry she disturbed you all those years ago but she’s learned her lesson. Mistress Selina, she really has, and she’ll never bother anyone again if you change her back to her human self. And me? I’m just trying to help her…”

The witch’s eyes stared long and hard at Angel until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She was about to try to turn and run when Mistress Selina beckoned to her with her finger. She couldn’t resist walking towards the old crone even though she felt like she was walking on an earthquake. She nearly dropped Meghan twice and had to fumble to keep holding her.

When Angel was standing too near to Mistress Selina to run away, the witch suddenly stuck her long nose closer to her and took a long sniff.

“I’m checking if you’re telling the truth, child. My eyes tell me you are, but my nose must tell me the same story too, or you’ll meet the same fate as your friend.”

The witch sniffed longer until she was satisfied.

“As for you, my snooping child…” the witch held out her hand for Meghan, who screamed and pressed herself so hard against Angel that it was Angel’s turn to squeak. “Out with you, my little snooper, unless you want to be turned into a croaking toad instead!” Mistress Selina’s voice was so angry when she spoke to Meghan.

“I’m sorry, Meghan, I hope it’s going to be alright” Angel whispered. She handed the doll to Mistress Selina. Mistress Selina peered hard at Meghan, then sniffed her for a long time too.

“Lucky for you, snooping one, your brave friend was telling the truth,” Mistress Selina said to the doll. She set Meghan on the table. Angel quickly took Meghan back and hugged her.

“So why are you here, if not to snoop on me again? I am an old woman now, why can’t I be left alone?” Mistress Selina sat down on a very old armchair.

“Mistress Selina,” Angel tried to sound calm. “Meghan has been a doll for many many years. She’s very sorry for what she did.  She’d like to go back to being human. Please, could you change her back? She promises to never disturb anyone again.”

“Hmmm… I guess it’s been long enough. I’ll do it, but you’d better keep your word, now, do you hear?”

Angel and Meghan hugged excitedly. “We promise!!” they said together.

“You’ll need to get three things for me from the swamp,” Mistress Selina said slowly, “Now, let me see…”

Angel and Meghan looked at each other, worried again.

“…I’ll need a cup full of crocodile tears, two pinching princes and ten lump raisers,” the witch said.

“But we…” started Angel. To no avail.

Mistress Selina waved them away and walked back into the gloom.

What could they do !

Chapter 19

Angel stood outside Mistress Selina’s shack, not sure where to turn.

“What on Earth are crocodile’s tears, pinching princes and lump raisers?!” She scratched her head. “Well, I guess they sound like things from the swamp, so I’ll head there, what do you think, Meghan?”

“Yes, you’re right, they do sound like swamp things, especially as Mistress Selina said so. But… how on Earth are we going to figure it out?” Meghan was puzzled too.

“No idea,” sighed Angel, “But we’ve come this far, I guess we have to try.”

They walked for a while and finally got to the edge of the swamp.

“Ergh! I’m NOT going in THERE!!” Angel stepped back. The swamp stank of mud, stale water and green.

“But it’s the only option we have,” Meghan reminded her.

“Okay for you,” said Angel. “You’re plastic!” Despite the seriousness of the situation, the two girls almost smiled at each other.

“I will help you,” a voice suddenly said, startling them from behind. Angel jumped and spun around. It was the mysterious boy once more.

“How… how did you get there?!?!” Angel stammered.

The boy didn’t say anything but turned around and walked into the swamp.

“Ergh! I guess we have no choice,” Angel sighed and followed him in.

They walked for what seemed like a long time but Angel couldn’t see anything that could be crocodile tears, pinching princes or lump raisers.

“Hey! Hey boy, where are we going? Do you actually have a plan?” she called after the boy. The boy just waved them on and kept walking. After a while, he stopped and turned to them.

“Now what?” Angel asked, confused. There was nothing around them but swamp and more swamp. The boy sat down and started fiddling with a weed. Angel looked around. “Stinky swamp, stinky swamp, stinky swamp. Hmmmm …”

Suddenly the water splashed up in a huge wave and an alligator snapped at Angel! She jumped back and screamed, managing to avoid the snapping jaws. She tried to run, but her legs had turned to jelly and the mud was sticky. She avoided the snapping jaws but the alligator turned for another lunge. Meghan screamed from inside the backpack, “Watch out, Angel!!!”

Suddenly the alligator fell. Angel looked around, confused but grateful. The boy was holding a catapult and had shot a big stone at the alligator.

“But… but… how could a stone stop an alligator???” Angel puzzled.

Meghan screamed, her voice loud and muffled from inside the backpack,

“NEVERMIND, RUN!!!”

Angel didn’t need to be told twice. She sprinted out of there. She ran for a long time. She plunged through sticks and swampy mud until she finally had to stop when she couldn’t run anymore.

Panting, she looked around. She was surrounded by… swamp, swamp and more swamp. The boy was nowhere to be seen.

“Meghan, we’re in big trouble now!” Angel said slowly. The sounds of the swamp were getting louder now and Angel figured it was coming to evening. She did NOT want to get stuck here when night came, but she had no idea how to get out.

It was all a bit much, even if she was now eleven years old. She sat down and started to cry, really scared now. But after a few minutes she felt better, as crying often makes people feel better. She sat in tired silence for a few moments, thinking. Meghan was silent in her backpack. Then all of a sudden, clear thoughts ran back into her mind. She jumped up.

“I’ve got it!! I think I know what ‘crocodile tears’ means! I think it’s just salty swamp water!!”

Meghan’s little voice piped up from the backpack, “You might be right, Angel, now it rings a bell in my head… I think I’ve heard that expression before! I’m sorry I didn’t think of it before.”

Angel took Meghan from the backpack and hugged her. It was amazing how hugging a doll can always make you feel better.

“No worries, Meghan, we’ve been through a lot of scary stuff today!”

She took the vial that Mistress Selina had given her out of the backpack. “Ergh, I don’t even want to be touching this yucky stuff and now I have to scoop it up?!”

She scooped the water until the vial was full, then capped it.

“OK, hopefully we’re right about this first thing, but… how am I going to get it back to Mistress Selina?”

Angel looked around the swamp again, and realised with dread that she was lost. Hopelessly lost.

Chapter 20

Angel turned around and around, a sinking feeling in her stomach. Her voice came out shaky.

“Meghan… I think… I think we’re really lost now.” Angel’s voice broke and she started to cry again. The sky above was getting dark and the animal sounds were getting louder all around them.

“Oh no… oh no,” Meghan panicked. Angel took a deep breath and pulled herself together.

“I’m going to keep walking in this direction. Hopefully I’ll get to the other side of the swamp or something.”

“It’s… it’s getting darker, Angel!” Meghan’s voice was filled with fear. “Maybe we should find a shelter to hide in for the night.”

As soon as Meghan said that, a loud clap of thunder shook the trees around them, followed by a bright flash of lightning. A heavy rain began to crash down. Soaking wet, Angel started to run blindly. Crashing into fallen branches and scraping her legs, she eventually found an old abandoned hut. She ran inside and tried her best to avoid getting any more wet.

Meghan started to cry, “This is the hut I tried to hide in when Mistress Selina saw me! Her magic still found me, nevertheless!”

“But wait… If Mistress Selina’s magic found you then, then she can find us here now!” Angel realised.

“Yes but how do we get the message to her?” Meghan pointed out.

Suddenly, Meghan’s little mouth opened and Mistress Selina’s voice came out!

“Follow me. I am in her now.” Mistress Selina said through Meghan. The doll jumped out of the backpack and started to walk.

Angel gave a little squeak of shock, then realised it was probably because Mistress Selina’s magic was strong enough to reach them in the swamp. She followed Meghan out into the rain… but they weren’t getting wet!

“What … how is it happening??” Angel looked around in wonder. Then she realised that Mistress Selina was actually helping her along the way! “Way to go, Mistress Selina!”

Angel cheered up and kept following Meghan. They walked and walked, not turning left or right for a long time. Angel was enjoying the weird sensation of seeing rain all around her but not feeling it touch her and soak her. “I could get used to this!” She jauntily strutted. A stream of rain poured down onto her head. “Oh! Oh … OK, OK, I won’t expect VIP treatment. Sorry!” Mistress Selina was actually watching them! Angel wondered if it was through a crystal ball… but she hadn’t see one at the witch’s house…

They finally found their way back to the shack and went in.

“Will she get angry if we wet her floor?” Angel wondered, but couldn’t do anything about it.

“So, my child, you figured out the first puzzle.”

Mistress Selina’s voice made Angel jump. “Y-yes, Mistress Selina, at least I think I did,” stammered Angel.

“Come here and give them to me, then, child!” The witch’s voice suddenly sharpened and Angel ran over to give her the vial of crocodile tears.

Mistress Selina took the vial, opened it and poured it into a giant black pot that Angel hadn’t seen in the room before. Puffs of stinky green smoke puffed out.

“Ergh, I hope you don’t have to drink that,” whispered Angel to Meghan who shushed her fearfully. Muttering, the witch stirred the concoction in the pot. Foul smelling steam rose up and choked Angel. Even Meghan gagged a little.

“Good, good, this will do. Now, off to find the other ingredients! It doesn’t matter what order you bring them to me in, they all go in the pot, just the same!” said Mistress Selina.

“Erm… does it have to be tonight, Mistress Selina? It’s getting late and I need to be home before my Mum freaks…”

For Angel had suddenly remembered her Mum.

“Off with you, then!” Mistress Selina cried. “But if you want your friend to ‘get better’ soon, you’d better work fast!”

Angel got out of the witch’s house as fast as she could, and made her way back to the bus stand. As she was half-running down the street, a page from a newspaper got caught on her foot. She glanced at it and saw… a picture of Mistress Selina!

She grabbed the page and read it frantically. Mistress Selina was wanted for questioning in a few disappearance cases! So she was still at it! Or… was she being wrongly accused?

Chapter 21

Angel’s head started to pound… maybe this was the way to help Meghan: to turn Mistress Selina in to the police and ask them to force her to change Meghan back. On the other hand, Mistress Selina was already helping Meghan and this might take longer. Who knew what the authorities would do? Would they even be able to force Mistress Selina to change all those people back into human form, or would they just throw her in jail? Either way, Meghan would be stuck waiting and Mistress Selina might also be so angry she might refuse to help.

“What do we do?” Angel asked Meghan.

“I don’t want to turn Mistress Selina in to the authorities,” Meghan replied. “I know why she did what she did to me… I don’t think she was evil, she just didn’t want people snooping around on her. Maybe she just doesn’t think much about how her action affects others. But she’s helping us now… I think we shouldn’t say anything.”

Angel nodded. “I agree. I just hope she doesn’t get caught before we can turn you back into a human!”

The next day, Angel planned to tell her mum that she was spending the day with Tessa.

“Mum, I’m off with Tess now! See you!” Angel said to her mum, as casually as possible. But her Mum had other plans.

“No, Angel, I don’t think you and Tessa should go out what with these disappearances. I’m sorry to ruin your summer fun, honey, but you’d better play it safe.”

“But… but…” Angel was desperate. “We’re just going to Mrs. Karmelita’s house! We’re working on a summer project.”

“Hmmmm… how about Mrs. Karmelita bringing Tessa here? I’m sure she’ll understand.”

Angel knew her Mum was trying to compromise.

“Nooooooo Mum. Look, how about I call you when I’m there? Just so you’ll know I’m OK?” Angel felt horrible lying to her Mum, but she had no choice – she HAD to get out there.

“Hmmmm… OK, I could live with that. Make sure you do!” Angel’s mum said at last.

“OK!” Angel felt worse and worse, but there was nothing she could do. She ran off towards Tessa’s house, but then turned the corner to the bus stop.

“I really hope we can figure this out today!” Angel whispered to Meghan on the bus. “Mistress Selina could get nabbed anytime and then our chances of turning you back into a human will be zilch!”

“Zilch?” Meghan asked, “What’s that?”

“Oh … I mean zero,” Angel explained.

“Yes, if I could cross my fingers, I would!” Meghan gave a small laugh.

“Hey! We still cross our fingers, for good luck!” Angel exclaimed.

They sat in silence for a while, enjoying their first ‘happy together’ moment ever since the whole adventure started.

The bus finally arrived at their stop and they got out.

“Back to the swamp it is, then!”

For some reason, Angel was feeling upbeat. She walked into the swamp and started looking around.

“Pinching pincers… pinching pincers… hmmm…”

But by mid-morning Angel wasn’t feeling so positive anymore.

“If Mistress Selina could help us yesterday with the rain, why can’t she help us find all this stuff she needs?” she muttered, stirring the mud with the tip of her sneaker. “The rain was an act of nature that had nothing to do with our quest to find the potion ingredients. I think the quest was set to work off my bad deed…”

Meghan looked abashed.

“Sorry, Angel, to put you through all this for me. I wish I could do it myself.”

Angel patted Meghan.

“Hey, don’t get down on yourself. I offered to help, right?” Then Angel’s stomach started to growl. “Aw, man, I didn’t eat any breakfast! I’m starving! That’s probably why I’m so grouchy,” she sighed. “Wish I’d remembered to bring some snacks!”

By noon, Angel felt dizzy. “I didn’t even bring water!! I’m gonna die in this swamp,” she cried and sat down again.

Chapter 22

Angel sat crying for a long while. Nothing Meghan said helped. Suddenly, Angel jumped up. “Hey! Something pinched me!”

She hopped around, her toe bleeding a little and saw… crabs!

“Hey I didn’t know there were crabs here!! Wait… crabs! Pinching pincers… crabs! Wow, I figured it out!!!”

“Good job, Angel, I think you’re right!” Meghan cheered Angel on.

“How many did Mistress Selina say she needed? Three? Zoiks… how am I gonna catch them?” Angel wondered.

“Well, normally there are cages for them to crawl into and then they snap shut, but we don’t have cages. I’m afraid you might just have to use your hands!” Meghan volunteered. Angel thought she could certainly only say this because her own hands were dolls’ hands, and made of wood.

“Zoiks! I wish I had gloves,” said Angel. “OK, here goes!”

Angel ran around grabbing crabs, which wasn’t too hard, but she got pinched so much that it hurt! The crabs she had caught kept crawling away from the rock she had put them on, too.

“Man … this is NOT working!” Angel exclaimed, furious. Her hands were covered in red marks from being nipped by the crabs and she hadn’t managed to keep one crab still.

“Here’s some string from your backpack,” Meghan offered, “Maybe you can try tying them to something? I also found some handkerchiefs to wrap around your hands… ugh… this one might be dirty.”

“Hey, thanks!” Angel tied the handkerchiefs around her hands and went after another crab. “Got it!” She quickly tied it to a big root and kept on going after crabs.

Pretty soon, she had three all tied up.

“Whew! I should have thought of that from the start! Thanks Meghan!”

They brought the crabs back to Mistress Selina, who threw the shells into the potion pot and made a crab salad with the meat. It wasn’t until they had eaten every last thing in the bowl that Angel realised it was getting late.

“Thanks for the yummy food, Mistress Selina, but I’d better get going home! I’ll come back tomorrow to figure out the last thing in the puzzle.”

On the bus, Angel’s tummy started to squeeze.

“OMG! OW! What’s happening!? Did Mistress Selina poison me?? Was it bad crab?? I can’t be sick now, I’ve got to finish this!!” Angel was freaking out. When she got home, Angel’s stomach was churning but as soon as her key hit the door her mum came flying out.

“YOUNG LADY WHERE ON EARTH HAVE YOU BEEN?! You promised to call me but you didn’t! It’s so late now and I’ve been worried sick! You’re grounded until further notice. Go to your room!”

Angel had never seen her mum so mad. She started to say she was sorry but then something crazy happened. A giant burp escaped instead! She looked at her mum, stunned, then they both burst out laughing.

When they stopped, her mum looked at her.

“Angel, you look sick! Well, I’m still mad at you for freaking me out, but come on to bed, I’ll get you something for your tummy.”

Angel didn’t feel well at all, so she accepted the offer gratefully and fell into bed. When she finally woke up, it was the next morning! Luckily her tummy felt fine.

She sniffed, smelled icky swamp and went to bathe.

“Yuck, I was so tired I didn’t even bathe!”

She ran downstairs to tell her mum she was off with Tessa, then she remembered what had happened when she got home yesterday.

“Uhm, Mum, erm… I’m so sorry for not calling you yesterday when I promised I would. I got so into the project I… I forgot! I know I freaked you out… I’m so sorry… I promise I will today…”

“Today?” Mum said brightly.

Angel was on high alert – her mum’s voice sounded too cheery.

“Oh no, Angel you’re not going anywhere today… or for the rest of the summer break. You’re grounded, young lady because you freaked me out and also for your own safety. When I’m in the mood, I’ll let you invite people over, but until then, you can spend your time helping me around the house.

“BUT MUMMMMMMMM” Angel wailed, but she knew she was fighting a losing battle. Her mum was too calm to be OK. After breakfast, Angel packed her bag and climbed out the window.

“I’m a dead duck with mum, but I have to finish this thing!” she thought to herself, as she shimmied down the drainpipe, against all sense and reason…

Chapter 23

On the bus, Angel was quiet. She sensed that Meghan wanted to say something, but didn’t know what to say. So when they arrived, Angel walked to the swamp without a word.

Suddenly she jumped! The boy was right in front of her!

“Where did you come from?!?!” Angel blurted out, but she was glad to have him around, though he didn’t say much. She hoped he would stay around longer than he did last time. “Guess what! I found out what ‘crocodile tears’ and ‘pinching pinchers’ were! Now all I need to find are the ‘lump raisers’. Any ideas?”

As usual, there was no reply from the boy. They walked quietly for a while, then the boy stopped. Angel looked around. There wasn’t much around except more swamp. Suddenly she felt her foot being nipped.

“Hey! Ouch! Oh man, not again!” she hopped around. “Dude,” she said to the boy, “I’ve FOUND the pinching pincers already!! Or, they found me, or whatever, but that’s done! I’m looking for lump raisers now!”

But right then Meghan screamed, and Angel whipped around to see… another crocodile! Its giant mouth was wide open, coming straight at her!! Angel screamed and jumped backwards.

“I’VE FIGURED OUT WHAT CROCODILE TEARS WERE!! GET THAT THING AWAY FROM ME!!”

She turned to run, but then remembered what had happened the first time.

“SHOOT IT, OR SOMETHING!!!!” Angel screamed at the boy. Finally the boy whipped out his catapult and shot at the crocodile who fell to the water and crawled off.

Angel glared at the boy.

“Are you bringing all these things to me? I told you, I’ve already figured out those two things. If you really are bringing stuff to me, help me with those lump raisers!”

She immediately realised she should be extra nice to the boy if he was actually doing all this because a) he was helping her, in a way, and b) he also had some kind of weird ability.

“OKOK, I’m sorry I yelled at you. Can you please help me figure out what lump raisers are? I really need to help my friend turn back into a human and then get home… I’m in a gallon of hot soup with my mum.”

The boy didn’t say anything. Angel walked around the swamp until she felt like she was wandering around in a circle.

“Argh!!! What are lump raisers! Come on!! Ouch!” She slapped at her leg. Then her arm. Then her face, “Yeow!!! Get OFF me, silly mosquitoes!!!”

“Mosquitoes?” Meghan suddenly piped up. “Angel, look down at your arms and legs!”

“Oh! Ohhhhhhh! LUMP RAISERS!!! Mosquitoes!!!!” Angel shouted, “But… how do we catch ten of them?!”

“Well, they’re attracted to you…” Meghan guessed.

“Zoiks… you mean… I’m supposed to be bait??” Angel squeaked. “Gosh, when you put it like that, I don’t feel very good,”

Meghan regretted what she’d said. “

No… no… it’s brilliant! I’m just gonna need a whole lot of ointment after this!” Angel felt surprisingly good. “It’s bizarre, but it might work! OKOK… erm… boy … I’ll stand with my arms out and, when the mosquitoes land on me, smack ‘em! Not too hard, though, don’t forget!!”

The boy came over and nodded. Angel steeled herself and stretched her arms out. Almost immediately a mosquito landed on her!

“Whack it! Whack it!” Angel shouted. The boy smacked it and it fell into the swamp. “Oh dang! I forgot to tell you, you gotta catch them in something to keep!” Angel smacked her forehead. “What can we catch them in?”

“How about the sweet tin you have in here?” Meghan asked from Angel’s bag.

“Perfect!” Angel emptied the sweets out and gave the tin to the boy. “We need ten! Go go go!”

They actually had a lot of fun catching mosquitoes, but by the end of it, Angel was covered in big red welts.

“Mum’s gonna be even more furious! But… I think we’re finally done! And you’re gonna be OK, Meghan!”

Angel was really happy for the first time since all this had begun.

“Let’s get this back to Mistress Selina. Which way do we go?” Angel asked the boy.

They got back to Mistress Selina’s house and handed her the tin of mosquitoes which she emptied into the pot. A ghostly green light flared up.

Chapter 24

A flickering scene’ started up in the green smoke coming out of the pot. As they watched, they saw Meghan creeping up to the window of Mistress Selina’s house and peeping in. The witch was stirring something in the same pot that they saw in front of them right now, just as Meghan had described to Angel. The green smoke of the scene spread all around and seemed to waft out of the pot in the scene too, which made Angel feel woozy and disoriented. Then, as they watched the images in the green smoke, Mistress Selina put her spatula down and turned off the stove. She moved slowly to a chair that was facing the window and sat down.

Angel jumped as the perspective of the scene suddenly changed from the view of someone looking in, to… the view from the witch’s eyes! She gave a little shriek and jumped back. Through the witch’s eyes, she stared at a swirling purple vortex in front of her. Then, suddenly, the view swooped to the window where Meghan was peeping in! Angel/the witch saw Meghan! At that instant, the swirling purple vortex shot out and swirled around Meghan. Then the whole scene dissolved and Angel was left shaking like a leaf.

“You did send a curse to Meghan that day, Mistress Selina. I saw it… it was purple… swirling… “ Angel said, dazed.

“Yes, I did,” said Mistress Selina. “As I said, I was sick of busybodies poking about my business and laughing and staring at me. All I wanted was to be left alone. I taught her a lesson she wouldn’t soon forget.”

“I… I didn’t want to cause you any trouble, Mistress Selina, and I wasn’t going to gossip,” Meghan spoke up timidly. “I was just curious and very interested in all the good things that ladies like yourself can do, like healing without medicine, helping people who feel bad feel better, connecting people with a loved one who has passed…”

Mistress Selina looked at Meghan, thoughtful.

“You know, nobody has ever talked about the good that we do… they only ever focus on the ‘bad’ things we do… curses, revenge spells… You’re the first to be interested in how we can actually help people. I do believe I was wrong about you, Meghan.”

The smoke rose. The scene swirled up from the pot again and all eyes turned back to watch it. This time, it showed…

“My house! My home sweet home!” Meghan cried, delighted. “I never thought I’d see it again!” Then her voice became sad. The front door of the cute little semi-D opened and…

“MUMMY!” Meghan cried. A tear started from her eye. In the scene, Meghan’s mum had her head down and was sobbing. A man walked out to cover her shoulders with a cardigan and put his arm around her. He led her to the porch swing and they sobbed together for a long time.

“Daddy…” Meghan whispered in tears, “I’ve never seen Daddy cry!”

The smoke swirled and now a new scene showed up. Angel and Meghan watched search parties combing the swamp and surrounding areas.

“They’re searching for you, Meghan,” Angel whispered, choking up herself.

“Sissy…” Meghan sobbed as a pretty girl who looked like Meghan, but older, led a search party. The next scene was especially hard to watch – a church service dedicated to Meghan. A pretty picture of her smiling at the camera – the same picture Angel first saw at the memorial assembly in school was standing on an easel next to the pulpit. The minister spoke for a while, then invited Meghan’s father to say something but he was crying too hard, so her sister went up instead. Meghan wailed as she watched her sister cry on the pulpit. A loud sob came from Mistress Selina too.

“Enough! I see now that no harm was intended, Meghan, but that I caused so much harm by reacting angrily. I give you my apologies, although I know they don’t mean much to you now.”

“No, Mistress Selina, thank you. I don’t blame you, I know how you must have felt that day,” Meghan was gracious to the end.

“Come, I will undo what was done, late as it is,” said Mistress Selina. “Come, child.”

She took Meghan in her arms and started to chant…

Chapter 25

Angel stepped back and watched as Mistress Selina waved her hands around Meghan, who was shaking so much she nearly fell off the table. Mistress Selina muttered some words under her breath and Meghan quietened down. Mistress Selina continued to mutter under her breath and green smoke started to swirl around Meghan.

“Dude…” Angel whispered, staring at Meghan.

Meghan started to get taller and… bigger.

She started to look… real.

After a few moments, Meghan looked exactly like the girl in the photo that Angel had first seen in school. She looked at herself in a mirror with a big smile on her face. She shook her hands and jumped up and down, happy to be human again.

“I feel exactly like I remember!” Meghan beamed. She grabbed Angel’s hands and they jumped and danced around. A smile played around Mistress Selina’s lips. Then Angel gasped.

“Dude… look…” She pointed at the mirror. Meghan turned to look and gasped out loud!

She was getting older by the minute… now she was a teenager… now she was a young adult… now she was in her 30s… now her 40s… she got wrinkles on her face and her hair got whiter and whiter… Finally Meghan stopped transforming. She was in her 60s… the age she would actually be if she’d stayed human all these years. She stared at herself in the mirror and a tear rolled down her cheek.

“I’m old now. I look like my grandmother,” Meghan said.

“I’m sorry, Meghan, I can’t imagine what that must feel like.” said Angel with feeling.

Meghan looked herself over once more, turning her wrinkled arms in the light.

“Well, at least I’m human again,” she finally said. She turned to Mistress Selina. “Thank you Mistress Selina.”

“Go now, and live your life. Once again, I apologise for having stolen so much of it. Take this to help you live the rest of your days in happiness and peace. Hang it in your room on your bed.” Mistress Selina gave Meghan a small drawstring bag which smelled a bit funny.

“Thank you Mistress Selina!” Meghan said as she took the bag.

“And you, young lady,” Mistress Selina said, turning to Angel, “I commend you again for your bravery and persistence in helping someone you barely even know, even in the face of danger and fear!” Angel stared down at the floor, embarrassed. “Take this as a reminder of your good deeds and may it keep you happy and well in your years to come.”

Mistress Selina also gave Angel a small drawstring bag, but it smelled slightly different from the one she had given Meghan.

“What’s in the bags, Mistress Selina?” Angel couldn’t help but ask.

“Enough questions, young lady!” Mistress Selina said shortly. But… was she actually smiling a little?

“I do have one more question, Mistress Selina, a serious one,” Angel suddenly remembered.

“Oh all right, what is it?” Mistress Selina grumbled.

“Did you… I mean… erm… OK… a boy I just met, my BFF and my favourite teacher all had something weird happen to them and I thought it had something to do with the doll… I mean, the curse that Meghan was under. I thought the person who put the curse… er, you…was cursing them too, for some reason.”

Mistress Selina stared at Angel for a long time, until the younger girl nearly just turned and ran out of the door.

“Sometimes things just happen that we have no control over,” she said quietly.

“What do you think that means, though?!” Angel asked Meghan when they were on the bus on the way home.

“I have NO idea!” Meghan lifted her hands up. She couldn’t stop moving some part of her body, enjoying her long-awaited freedom.

“But… but… so… what happened to Tessa and Mrs. K.??? I mean, I hope Tess is at her grandma’s house… but how about Mrs. K.? And what happened to Whitney and Sam? Why did they get sick???”

There were no answers.

Chapter 26

“I can’t believe I’m back to being human again!!” Meghan squirmed in her seat, shaking her arms and legs and touching her hair. “It feels so freeing!” She blinked her eyes at Angel who laughed, then got serious.

“I’m in big trouble back at home. I bet my mum’s already called for a search party. She was pretty freaked out by the disappearances that were blamed on Mistress Selina,” Angel said. “I don’t blame her. I mean, I guess she’s just worried for me cos she loves me.”

“Yes, mothers do seem to be the bad guys… always scolding us and nagging us. But they’re just trying to protect us from ‘the big bad world’.” Meghan reflected. “I wish I’d listened to my mother that day. I’m sorry, Mummy…” Meghan started to tear up again. Then suddenly she perked up. “But… what an adventure!” Angel saw a flash of the curious young girl she’d met so briefly at Mistress Selina’s house before Meghan had aged to her actual age. She kind of felt sad that she’d ‘lost’ a new friend.

“Gosh, I hope Mistress Selina doesn’t get in trouble. I mean, yeah, she made you disappear, so I guess she could have done it to those others too, but she did listen to us and change you back and… hey… wait a minute!” Angel nearly jumped up, she was so excited. “We can tell people your story and convince them that, if she DID make those other people disappear, she’ll reverse the spells! Then we can tell them about all the good stuff she can do for people that you mentioned… the healing potions and that stuff…”

Meghan grabbed Angel’s hand. “That’s a GREAT idea, Angel! We can use my story to help her! Who do we go to? Who do we tell? Oh, I’m so excited! But first… can we go back to my home to see if anybody is still there? I would love to see my sisters and brothers if I could and tell them what happened.”

Angel squeezed Meghan’s hand. “Sure! Of course! I guess you should tell them your story before the whole world knows and they get a shock.”

They got off the bus at Meghan’s street. Meghan looked around sadly.

“Everything has changed. That used to be my favourite sweet shop where I bought lemon sherberts. There used to be a small park there where we’d play all through summertime. I carved the initials of my first crush on a tree there, but it’s gone now. I wonder what would have happened if I’d stayed human,” she said quietly. “Would I have stayed in the old house? Gotten married? Had children there?” A tear slipped from her eye and Angel patted her hand.

As they got nearer Meghan’s house, Meghan held tighter to Angel’s hand. “I’m not so sure about this anymore, Angel. What if they tell me to go away? They might be frightened… Oh maybe I should just leave. It’s been so long… perhaps they’ve forgotten about me…”

Angel squeezed Meghan’s hand. “Hey, listen… they haven’t forgotten about you. Remember I told you that your sister’s still asking the police about you? She’ll still looking for you!”

They got to the front door of Meghan’s house; a cute little cottage with lots of flower pots everywhere.

“Here I go!” Meghan rang the brass bell hanging at the side of the door.

“Who is it?” An old lady’s voice asked from behind the door.

“That’s sissy!!” Meghan whispered to Angel, excitedly squeezing her hand. “You answer first, I don’t want to scare her!”

“Hi! I’m Angel! I’m selling cookies to raise money for my school!” Angel blurted out the first thing that came to her head.

“Oh… how nice!” the voice said, and the door opened. Angel saw a sweet little old lady smiling at her. “I love chocolate chip – do you have any chocolate chi …” The little old lady looked up at Meghan. “Who?” Her jaw dropped. “Meghan?!?!?!?”

Chapter 27

“Sissy!!! Yes, it’s me!” Meghan cried and hugged her sister. Both of them were crying. Even Angel got a tear in her eye, which she quickly wiped away.

“What… where… how… why…?” Meghan’s sister turned from Meghan to Angel, looking for answers. Confused, she blurted out, “My, you’re pretty. Are you my niece?”

“What? No! I’m, erm…” Angel turned to Meghan to fill the story in for her sister.

“Sissy… I think you’d better sit down so I can tell you the whole story.”

Meghan didn’t let go of her sister. Meghan and Angel spent a whole hour telling Meghan’s sister the story. Her eyes grew wider and wider and she kept grabbing Meghan’s hand.

“Oh my! You’ve been… a doll for all these years?? Meghan’s sister stared at her.

“Yes,” said Meghan. “I know it’s hard to believe, but if not for this brave girl,” Meghan patted Angel’s hand, “I would still be a doll in an antique shop – alone, scared and… eventually… forgotten.”

“No, Meghan, I wouldn’t forget you! I kept looking for you!” Meghan’s sister turned to Angel. “Thank you, dear girl, you really saved the day!”

“Awww… like I told Meghan, I very nearly chucked her out of the window, I was so creeped out!” Angel was embarrassed again.

“We should celebrate your homecoming, Meghan! Throw a big party! Tell the whole town who were so kind to help look for you!” Meghan’s sister was excited.

“Oh goodness, no need to make a thing of it!” It was Meghan’s turn to blush.

“Yes! We HAVE to!” Angel jumped up. “So many people are still thinking of you, Meghan. Let’s do it! Also, this is a good way to help Mistress Selina!”

Angel sighed, “Well, I guess I’d better get home and face Mum. I’m in a deep bucket of trouble as it is. If I don’t get home before evening I’ll never be allowed out again for the rest of my life!”

Angel got home and opened the front door, and, as expected, got a huge blast from her mum straight away.

“Young lady, you are in the biggest trouble of your life!”

“Hi, mum… sorry mum… I know I’m in deep doodoo…”

“You bet you are! You snuck our when I specifically told you to stay in! You stayed out all day without even letting me know you’re safe! Do you know how worried I was? I called the police! I thought you’d been kidnapped!”

“I know, I’m sorry, mum, I’ll never do it again. It’s just cos… Meghan… Mistress Selina…” Angel tried to explain.

“Exactly! You’ll never do it again because you’re never going out of this house again! You’re grounded for the rest of your life, Missy! Go to your room right now!”

It was no use. She couldn’t talk to her Mum. Angel went to her room. She was so tired, she fell asleep. A few hours later, she woke up, thirsty.

“Gosh, I wonder if mum’s still mad at me? I really need to get a drink.”

Angel decided to try going downstairs, but when she got to the top of the stairs, she heard voices downstairs.

“Ma’am, you sent us a missing person’s report?” Angel heard a man’s voice ask. The police! Her mum had really called the police!

“Yes, my daughter went missing for a couple of hours and I was very worried, what with the disappearances and all, but she’s back now, thank goodness. She’d just snuck out and gone ‘adventuring’ without telling me. It’s weird, it’s not like her at all. She’s normally very responsible… But I called you to cancel the report, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did ma’am, thank you. That’s good news that she’s back now, we’ll cancel the report. But we’re also here because you mentioned that your daughter mentioned a ‘Mistress Selina’? Do you know she’s actually a person of interest in our ongoing disappearance cases?” the officer told her Mum.

Mistress Selina!!! Angel clapped her hand over her mouth. She’d said the name to her Mum! She had to act, and act fast, to clear Mistress Selina’s name.

Chapter 28

Angel ran down the stairs.

“Hi! Oh! Hi! Officer! Sorry to interrupt, sorry I was listening, but I need to talk to you about… about…” She saw her mum’s thunderous face and knew she was still in trouble, but she had to talk to the officer. “Mistress Selina,” she blurted out.

“What! How do you know anything about that?” Then Angel’s mum realised something. “Wait, Angel, is that where you’ve been going these past few days? When you’ve said you’ve been going to Mrs. Karmelita’s? Angel, do you know what you’ve been getting yourself into?!!”

Ma’am,” the officer put his hand up. “Wait. Please calm down. Can I talk to your daughter please? If she has any information about this individual, we need to find out.”

“Ok, ok, but I have to be here too,” Angel’s mum stood firm.

“Yes, ma’am, we need a parent to be present when we’re talking to minors. Ok. Angel, is it? I’m Officer Gomez. Tell me everything you know about Mistress Selina.”

But Angel was worried about her mother, who already looked wide-eyed with fear.

“You’d better sit down, Mum, it’s a long and weird story. Remember that doll that Aunt Sylvia got me for my birthday?” Angel was relieved that the whole story was finally going to come out.

“Yes… that thing was bad for you. You were freaking out so much about it. I’m going to have another serious talk with your Aunt Sylvia when she gets back from her trip. No more freaky stuff for you!” Angel’s mum was getting riled up again and Angel quickly cut her off.

“Listen, mum, please listen,” Angel begged. “Well, yeah, at first I was totally freaked out by it… it seemed alive! I couldn’t sleep or eat or focus on anything. Then weird stuff started happening. Tessa vanished…”

“What?! Tessa vanished?? Is she ok?” Angel’s mum started freaking out again.

“Mum, please let me finish!” Angel said, a little too loudly. But her mum didn’t look mad anymore, just worried. “Anyway, yeah… I thought the DOLL made her vanish because she’d said bad stuff about it. Turns out she just went to help out her sick grandma. But Sam and Whitney got sick… and Mrs. K. disappeared… she’s still not back… well, I’m not sure, but I think she would have tried to get a hold of me if she’d come back because… oh man, I’m getting the story all mixed up.” Angel stopped, flustered.

“It’s ok, just carry on, Angel,” Officer Gomez prompted her.

“Yeah… anyways, I thought the doll was making bad stuff happen. All that was happening and I was getting into accidents and stuff – though now that I think about it, that was probably cos I wasn’t getting enough sleep and I was totally distracted by the doll.” Angel was now talking more to herself than Officer Gomez.

“And…?” Officer Gomez prompted.

“Huh? Oh! Sorry. So finally one day at assembly we had a memorial service for Meghan – a girl who had disappeared 60 years ago with no trace. Search parties, some even with those sniffer dogs, checked everywhere but they couldn’t find her.” Angel continued, “When I saw the picture of Meghan that they put up, I freaked! It looked just like my doll!!”

“Angel, what are you saying?” Her Mum had stopped being angry and was staring at her.

“The doll was Meghan!” Angel blurted out.

“Now, hold on, wait a minute… are you telling me that this little girl who had disappeared 60 years ago had been turned into a… doll??!!” Officer Gomez stared at Angel.

“Ye-es…” Angel trailed off, not liking all the staring at her.

“Angel, are you telling the truth?” her Mum asked.

“Mum! I don’t lie… I mean… erm… well I’m not lying about this!” Angel spluttered.

“Ok, let me go talk to Meghan,” the officer got up. “Can I get her address?”

“I’ll take you there!” Angel jumped up.

“You’re grounded, remember, Angel?” her Mum interjected.

“Aw Mum!” But Angel knew she was. And so she had to go home with her Mum.

But once she was back in her bedroom, she spent the rest of the night wondering if Meghan would be able to convince the officer that Mistress Selina was going to reverse whatever bad spells she’d done. The only way Angel could possibly help was if she could find some way to find out what was going on…

Chapter 29

“Argh! I can’t STAND it!! Why hasn’t Officer Gomez called? I should have told him to call me straight after he’d talked to Meghan! I’m dying here!!” Angel was bursting at the seams for some news.

“Be that as it may, it’s bedtime, young lady,” Angel’s Mum said firmly. “You’ve had waaaaay too much stimulation for the past few days… maybe that’s why you’ve completely forgotten that I care about you and your safety.”

“OK, OK, mum, I’ll try.” Angel didn’t want to get her Mum mad again. “But I just woke up and… I’m too…” Angel saw her Mum’s face go dark. “OK, OK, I’m off to bed!”

But she couldn’t sleep for hours and hours. The next morning was no better. Angel just couldn’t stop pacing around.

“Angel, stop it. You’re giving me a headache! Come eat your breakfast.” Her mother put a plate of pancakes on the table.

“Sorry, Mum, I just …” The doorbell rang and Angel ran for the door. “I’ll get it!”

“Meghan!” Angel practically screamed. “Thank goodness you’re here! Did Officer Gomez talk to you? Did you tell him everything? Is Mistress Selina still in trouble?”

Meghan hugged Angel. “Yes, I spoke to Officer Gomez and told him everything. He’s agreed to let me speak to Mistress Selina first to try to convince her to change anyone she’s cursed back to their original human selves. If I can also convince her to only use her magic for good from now on, then the police will leave her alone.”

“Oh good!!” Angel relaxed, then sprang up again. “Wait… I just had a thought. How about the other people who were affected by the curse… like Sam and Whitney… and Mrs. K.! She’s vanished without a trace! Did the curse spread to them too? Will she help them?”

“Well, we don’t really know if Sam and Whitney were affected by the curse… people get sick all the time,” Meghan thought out loud. “But Jilly vanishing just when we were about to start looking for Mistress Selina… that’s strange. I’ll ask Mistress Selina about it.”

“We’ll ask… OK, let’s go!”

Angel went to grab her backpack but her mum stopped her.

“And where are you going, young lady??”

Angel didn’t like the sound of her Mum’s voice.

“I’m… we’re going to talk to Mistress Selina about lifting the curses.”

“And did you forget again that you’re grounded until further notice?” Angel’s Mum reminded her.

Angel’s shoulders slumped and she whined “Awwww, Mum, PLEASE let me go, just this once, please, please, please, please!!””

“No, Angel. Grounded is grounded. You weren’t responsible the other day when you scared me half to death because you didn’t call me.” Her Mum was firm. “And now things are dangerous. What if Mistress Selina gets angry and turns YOU into a doll? Then what??” Angel gulped.

“It’s OK, Angel,” Meghan reassured her. “I’ll go and talk to Mistress Selina and come straight back here, OK?”

“OK, I guess…” Angel wasn’t happy but knew she couldn’t argue with her Mum. Angel spent the rest of the day pacing and tapping nervously. “Where IS she?! Where IS she?! Did she convince Mistress Selina??? What’s going ON?!”

The doorbell rang and Angel sprinted to the door and pulled it open for Meghan. “Did you do it? Did you do it?”

Meghan didn’t answer, but only held out a crystal ball. “Mistress Selina wants to talk to you.”

Angel stared. “Through that?! Er… OK?”

Meghan put the crystal ball down and muttered, “Mistress Selina, Angel is here.”

They stared as green smoke filled the ball and started swirling around the room. Then, Mistress Selina’s face appeared in the ball. Angel jumped and gave a little scream.

“Greetings, Angel, brave one that you are,” Mistress Selina’s old crackly voice floated out of the ball. “I suppose you’re wondering what I have to say…”

Chapter 30

“M-m-mistress Selina!” Angel stuttered, feeling like she was in a movie. “A-are you OK? Did you get into trouble? We’re trying to figure it all out with the authorities…”

“Yes, yes, my child,” Mistress Selina’s voice was calm. “Meghan has told me everything you both are doing to help me and I am very grateful. I now realise the error of my actions over the years and I have agreed to reverse any damage that I can. From now on, I will only use my powers for good to help those who need me.Now, Meghan mentioned that you had a few questions for me?”

“Yes, Mistress Selina, I was just wondering… after you curse someone, can the curse also affect people who helped the cursed person? Because me and a couple of my friends had bad luck after I got Meghan. Two got sick, two went missing… but my BFF Tessa came back… that was a false alarm because her grandma was sick… Then again, she’s kind of vanished again so I hope she’s gone to visit her grandma again…” Angel realised she was rambling and stopped.

Mistress Selina didn’t say anything for a long time and Angel started to worry that she’d made her mad. Finally she nodded slowly.

“Yes, it could happen that the curse could reach out beyond the originally cursed and affect those that come into proximity. You were very blessed to not have been affected by it. I do apologise for the inconvenience caused and that’s why I hope to set things right.”

But how could Mistress Selina set things right? She didn’t say. The ball grew dim, and went dark.

The next two weeks were very weird for Angel. She had been caught up in the whole doll thing and now things were supposed to go back to normal. Being grounded didn’t help her restlessness. Her mind kept drifting to what had happened over the last month.

One night her Mum rushed into her room and shook her awake.

“What’s up Mum? I was sleeping!” Angel was very grouchy when she got woken up.

“I heard you scream ‘Get away from me you crazy crocodile!’ and you sounded so panicked I thought I’d better wake you up!” Her Mum hugged her. “I hope you start forgetting about whatever’s happened this past month soon, Angel, you’re really not having a good time of it.”

“I don’t think I”ll EVER forget, Mum! And I don’t think I WANT to forget! It’s been the most amazing month of my life! Scary, yeah, but amazing!” Then Angel’s eyes lit up. “I know! I’ll write a story about it!”

“That’s a GREAT idea, Angel! That will be a great way to get all the thoughts and feelings out. I’ll help you to get it published!” Angel hadn’t seen her Mum so excited about something in a long time and felt a whole lot better.

About a month later, the authorities finally went to all of the people that Mistress Selina had remembered cursing. Meghan stayed with her sister in their old house and was helping Mistress Selina by talking to the families of those who had been affected by her actions’. She was so happy to reconnect with her old friends, but she missed Jilly.

“I really wish I knew where she’d vanished to,” Meghan told Angel sadly one day when she was at Angel’s house, “Mistress Selina hasn’t been able to help with that.”

Angel was still grounded except for school and Meghan came to fill her in on what was going on when she could.

Angel was super busy with her book, but she was really worried about Tessa. Where had she got to? She hadn’t been answering her phone again, and Angel had no idea what was going on. She was all ready to talk to Mistress Selina again.

One day before the big celebration that the town was going to hold to celebrate Meghan and all the other cursed people’s return, Angel’s doorbell rang.

“Meghan! What are you going to…” Angel stopped. It wasn’t Meghan… it was Tessa!!

“TESSA GIRRRRRRRL!!!! Angel grabbed her friend and hugged her tight. “Where have you been?!?! You missed the whole adventure! Were you at your grandmother’s? Is she OK?”

Tessa hugged Angel back. “I missed you too, girl. Well, it’s weird. I WAS at my grandma’s… after I last talked to you she got bad again. But then… I can’t remember after that at all! I just woke up one morning and I was in my bed again. My Mum and everyone was being normal… I don’t know WHAT happened!!”

Angel and Tessa never figured out what had happened to Tessa. They asked Mistress Selina, but even she had no idea.

Eventually, things settled back to normal, but every once in a while, Tessa would get a weird look in her eyes and mutter, “Pigeons …”

The End

The post Is She For Real? first appeared on Bedtime Stories.

Visit Storyberries Bookstore

Short story for kids written by Jade Maitre

Illustrated by Mihailo Tatic

© Storyberries 2020

Let’s Chat About The Stories ~ Ideas for Talking With Kids

Fearfulness, Feelings, Conversation

1. Have you ever been scared of something silly? Why were you scared of it?

2. What is the worst thing you can imagine happening with the thing you are scared of? Do you think this would ever happen?

3. Can you think of some ways that you could feel less scared?

The post PLUGHOLE! first appeared on Bedtime Stories.

I decorate with cobwebs, sweep the spiders under the rug, Yet no one ever offers me a kind word or a hug.

I don’t know what the reason is. I don’t know what could cause it, ‘Cause I always, yes I always keep my skeletons in the closet.

Sure, I may look scary but if someone really knew me, they wouldn’t be afraid ’cause they could see right through me.

Copyright Arden Davidson, 2019

POEM FOR KIDS WRITTEN BY ARDEN DAVIDSON

Illustration by Kseniya Shagieva

LET’S CHAT ABOUT THE POEM ~ IDEAS FOR TALKING WITH KIDS

Empathy

1. The little ghost in this Halloween poem thinks they’re making their house nice for visitors when they decorate with cobwebs. Do you think the little ghost is making their house nice? Why do you think visitors are still scared of the little ghost ?

2. This poem is about how people can see things differently. Can you think of some other times when people see the same thing differently? Is one perspective more “right” than the other?

WOULD YOU LIKE TO READ MORE POEMS FROM THE SAME AUTHOR?

What’s Weird About A Mirror: 101 Curious Poems

written by Arden Davidson and published by Storyberries.

It’s a long-awaited, hilarious collection of children’s poems by poet Arden Davidson, and includes topics ranging from a snoring grandma to a six-footed camel to reflections on the weirdness of mirrors.

The post The Ghost With The Most first appeared on Bedtime Stories.