Neighbours (4 page)

Mr Dent unclipped Rambo's lead. The crazy dog was so desperate to get at Nerlin that he knocked Mr Dent flying, covering him in drool and dog breath, but before he could reach Nerlin, Merlinmary clicked her fingers and the giant rottweiler turned into a tiny poodle. As Mr Dent struggled to get up, Rambo the poodle shot up the inside of his trouser leg and bit him on a part of his body that should never see daylight.

‘You freaks …' Mr Dent began, but the pain was so excruciating he couldn't finish his sentence. Rambo took another bite, shot down his other trouser and raced inside the house. Mr Dent, his eyes streaming
with tears of pain, staggered to his feet and walked straight into the back bumper of Rambo's car. His pain then became serious agony as he fell over again, this time cutting his hand on a broken bottle.

‘You, you, you,' he spluttered and crawled indoors, where Rambo was waiting to pay him back some more for all the kicks and swearing Mr Dent had given him over the years. As Rambo raced through every room in the Dents' house getting his revenge, it became clear why the first half of the word ‘poodle' is ‘poo'.

Small dogs can run a lot faster than big clumsy dogs or people. So the big clumsy Dents never managed to catch Rambo, no matter how hard they tried. They set traps baited with food, but Rambo was about three times
more intelligent than they were – actually, so was the average pigeon – so they were useless.

‘Nice one, sweetheart,' Nerlin said to his daughter as they left. ‘First round to us, I think.'

The next day, when the Dent children were at school and Mrs Dent was in her usual place in front of the TV watching
Dr Clint's Trailer Trash Special
and Mr Dent was still asleep in bed, Rambo the poodle went to sleep in Dickie's bed. Rambo fell asleep and dreamt of the days when he'd been a puppy with all his brothers and sisters. Life had been good then, those first three months. Then he had gone to live with the Dents and it had all been downhill after that. After all those years of being chained up in a wrecked car, it was so warm and cosy in Dickie's bed – much too comfortable to get out of bed and go outside when he needed to go to the toilet.

So it doesn't take much imagination to guess
what Dickie Dent stuck his bare feet in when he got into bed that night. He didn't realise what it was straightaway. He wriggled his feet around so it went between his toes, and then the smell drifted out of the covers and hit him. At first he thought it was his mother's cooking – it wouldn't have been the first time his sister had played that trick on him – but then he realised.

‘Mummmm,' he cried, but Mrs Dent had just switched channels to watch
Big Brother Special Shock Edition
, where some brain cells had been discovered in one of the contestants, and the viewers had to guess who they belonged to.

‘It's them Floods' fault,' Dickie muttered. ‘If they hadn't done that to Rambo …'

Dickie had always been scared out of his wits by Rambo when the dog had been a rottweiler. When he had been a baby, his dad had held him up inches away from the ferocious dog's drooling fangs, but Rambo had still been their dog and turning him into a girlie-pink poodle and making him wet Dickie's bed made him want revenge. He decided he would
wait until the Floods went out, and then go into their house and get his own back.

But as well as being a mean and nasty little boy, Dickie Dent was also very, very stupid. He was too stupid to realise that the last place on Earth you should break into was a house that belonged to a family of witches and wizards. So he waited until he saw the family leave the house for their evening walk in the local graveyard, then he kicked a hole in the fence and crawled through it and squeezed under the hedge into the Floods' back yard. The back door was unlocked so he slipped inside.

Part of Dickie's being very, very stupid was the fact that he couldn't count. When he had seen the Floods go out he hadn't made sure all nine of them were there. What made him very, very,
very
stupid was that the Flood who wasn't there was the one he actually went to school with.

The house felt creepy. The air was cold and damp, even though outside it was a warm summer's day. There weren't any chip wrappers or half-eaten burgers with mould on them like in his own kitchen.
The whole place smelled horrible.

It smelled clean.

Right
, Dickie thought,
time for revenge
.

He walked over to the kitchen drawers, pulled the bottom one open and dropped his trousers.

But he was not alone. As he began to concentrate and grit his teeth, Betty tiptoed downstairs. Dickie
closed his eyes tight and began to strain. Betty had been up in her room doing her homework and had heard Dickie kicking the fence. Now, just as he was about to poo in the kitchen drawer, she made his feet give way beneath him. As Dickie fell, he grabbed hold of the nearest thing – his trousers – and pulled them up. At the last moment he realised what had happened, but he had gone too far to stop and sat down with a terrible squelch.

‘Hello, Dickie,' said Betty. ‘Looks like the icky bubba has pooed his pants.'

The lid flew off a jar of frogs' eyes in fish oil on the draining board and it tipped itself over Dickie's head.

‘You are a clumsy little boy, aren't you?' laughed Betty as the breakfast creatures that had been hiding under the stove slithered up the boy's legs.

‘I'm, I'm, I'm not scared of you,' he cried.

‘Well, you should be.'

‘You're just a stupid witch,' Dickie snivelled.

‘Witch, yes,' said Betty. ‘Stupid, no.'

The frogs' eyes slithered down his face onto his
T-shirt and looked up at him. Dickie tried to get up, but the floor was wet with fish oil and he kept slipping.

‘You wait till I tell my dad,' he cried.

‘Surely you don't imagine you're ever going to see your dad again, do you?' laughed Betty.

She was really enjoying herself now. A tiny bit of her brain felt a tiny little bit guilty, but she was a witch and Dickie was vile, so most of her brain said to itself:
Is this great or what?

‘Remember when your hair caught fire in class?' she said.

‘That was just an accident,' said Dickie, but he knew it hadn't been. He knew Betty had made it happen.

‘I don't think so,' said Betty.

Dickie's hair began to smoke and he tried to crawl towards the door, but he fell flat on his face. Betty stood over him with a sweet innocent smile on her face.

‘Are you scared now?' she said.

‘N-n-n-n-no,' Dickie lied.

The frogs' eyes slid up onto his face again and stared into his eyes. He began to whimper.

‘You should be,' said Betty.

Dickie tried to crawl towards the door. Betty clicked her fingers and the slimy stuff Dickie was lying in began to get hotter and hotter. Two of the frogs' eyes slid up his nose and then two more. He couldn't pretend any longer. He was terrified and began to cry.

‘You can say sorry now,' said Betty.

‘Sorry,' he whimpered.

‘I can't hear you,' said Betty.

‘Sorry.'

‘Louder.'

‘I'm sorry. I'm sorry,' Dickie cried out. Now the tears were pouring down his face and he wet himself.

‘You are a nasty evil little boy, aren't you?' said Betty.

‘Yes. I'm sorry,' Dickie whimpered.

‘Breaking into people's houses and doing nasty things and being vile to everyone.'

‘Yes.'

‘And pulling people's hair and setting fire to things and scratching people's cars.'

‘Yes.'

‘You're a horrible worthless piece of pig poo, aren't you?' said Betty.

‘Yes … sorry,' cried Dickie.

‘And you're a nasty fat little liar too, aren't you?'

‘Yes.'

‘And that's the main problem, really,' said Betty, ‘You keep saying sorry, but you're probably lying.'

‘No, I'm not, really,' pleaded Dickie.

‘Really?'

‘Really.'

The fish oil stopped getting hot and Dickie grabbed hold of a chair and pulled himself up.

‘Can I go now?' he said.

‘Promise you won't be evil any more?' said Betty.

‘Yes,' said Dickie with his fingers crossed behind his back.

But he was still just as stupid as before and when he turned towards the door, he still had them crossed, so Betty could see them. It didn't matter, because there was no way Betty was letting him go.

‘Stop,' she snapped and Dickie's feet stuck to the floor. ‘I've changed my mind.'

‘What?'

‘Be afridge,' said Betty. ‘Be very afridge.'

Dickie laughed that nasty little snigger that mean, evil little boys all over the world do so well.

‘Don't you mean “be
afraid
”, stupid?' he sneered.

‘I know what I mean,' said Betty. She
had
actually meant to say, ‘Be afraid,' but as often happens when people get excited, she got her words a bit muddled up. Though there was no way she was going to let Dickie know
that.

Very slowly Dickie felt himself getting squarer. It didn't hurt at all. Betty was a witch, but she could also be
quite kind and gentle. It was something she hoped to grow out of as she got older.

Dickie stood up but he couldn't run away because his legs had sort of vanished. He still had feet – in fact he now had four of them and they were self-levelling hydraulic feet. As he looked down for what would be the last time, he thought that he actually looked nicer made of stainless steel than he had made of skin and fat. He had a gorgeous ice-cube maker in his left-hand door and a plasma TV in the right.

So, of course, Dickie died – which he definitely deserved to do, to save the world from himself – but he died happy and very shiny. His last thought was:
Wow, I am, like, the handsomest, most expensive fridge in the shop. If only Mum could see me now.

The last thing he said was:
‘Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmm.' Which he hummed in a very soft, expensive sort of way several times a day.

‘All that magic has made me really hungry,' Betty said to herself. ‘I wonder what sort of stuff you get inside a fridge you've just turned someone into.'

She'd decided that Dickie would probably be empty and have to charge up overnight to get cold, until she remembered that Dickie was a magic fridge. And when Betty peered inside, he was lovely and cold and full of her favourite food. In the freezer, there were seventeen kinds of ice-cream. In the fridge, there was a huge plate of cold roast lamb with a two-litre jug of mint sauce. There were barbecued chicken wings, a sticky date pudding and a very large box of chocolates with no hard toffees at all.

Betty took out a tub of delicious strawberry ice-cream.

‘Excellent,' she said, as Vlad licked the last of the fish oil off the floor.