Selby's Secret (2 page)

If ever Selby almost let his secret out it was on the night of the BBBB&BC (the Bogusville Bushwalkers, Bushwhackers, Bodybuilders and Bridge Club) autumn fete. That was the night that the members got together at Bogusville Central School to raise money for the poor people of Bogusville — who were fortunately so few that, as Postie Paterson the Bogusville postman and amateur actor had once said, “They could be counted on the left hand of a right-handed butcher.” It was also the last night of the Bogusville Doorknock Against Winding Roads and Potholes, only there was no one at home to collect from because
everyone was out at the autumn fete — almost everyone, that is.

Selby was happy to be left at home alone that night so he could watch his favourite TV quiz show,
The Lucky Millions Quiz Quest.
Little did he know that Mrs Trifle's dreaded sister, Aunt Jetty, was tearing around the streets of Bogusville trying to collect five more dollars in her plastic collection bucket for the Doorknock so she could win the golden wishbone pin for the most money collected. Aunt Jetty's problem was there was no one to collect from.

“Drat!” Aunt Jetty said as she pounded on the door of one empty house after another. “I'll never win the pin if I can't get a fiver from someone. But who?”

Selby lay on the carpet in front of the TV answering the
Lucky Millions
questions so quickly that the contestants hadn't even buzzed their buzzers when the words were out of his mouth.

“Either these questions are getting easier,” Selby said with a yawn, “or I'm getting smarter. Maybe a little of both.”

“And now,” screamed Larry Limelight, the compere of
Lucky Millions,
“we pause for a few
messages. We'll be back with the Giant Killer Question in a moment. So don't go away.”

“I'm with you, Larry,” Selby said as he started to take a little cat-nap during the commercial.

Aunt Jetty was just then driving full-bore around Bunya-Bunya Crescent when she slammed on her brakes, sending her truck skidding over the kerb and into the roses in front of the Trifles' house.

“The Trifles' cardboard possum!” she screamed, starting for the front door and then remembering that her sister and Dr Trifle were out at the BBBB&BC fete along with everyone else. “They collected all that money for the Doorknock and left it in the cardboard possum piggy bank on the sideboard. If I can only get it and dash back to Doorknock headquarters before it closes I'll have the golden wishbone! Yahoo!”

Aunt Jetty tore around to the back of the house, narrowly missing a rake that was just waiting to be stepped on to pop up and hit someone on the head knocking them senseless. She quickly went to work prising open the TV
room window with her Girl Guides twenty-four-in-one pocket knife and window priser.

Selby had hated Aunt Jetty since the day she told the Trifles the story of how she'd fought off a pack of African wild dogs by wading into the thick of them and thumping them on the head one by one with her walking stick. So he wasn't any happier about her when she jumped through the window where he lay napping and landed her size sixteen track-shoe on his ear.

“Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!” Selby yelled as he dashed about the room till the pain in his ear died down.

“Ouch? Ouch?” Aunt Jetty said with a grin that spread slowly across her face like hot Vegemite. “Shouldn't you be saying ‘Arf arf' or ‘Bow wow' or some such doggy-talk?”

“You stepped on my ear, you great galumph,” Selby said, then suddenly realised his mistake.

“Well, well, well. How do you like that, a talking dog,” Aunt Jetty said, grabbing the cardboard possum and emptying it into her collection bucket. “You could be very useful indeed — very, very useful. If you don't make
Aunt Jetty filthy rich, then I don't know anything”

“Grrrrrrrr! Bow wow!” Selby snarled. “Don't grrrrrrrr me. You can talk as well as the next fellow and don't try to hide it,” Aunt Jetty said. “Now tell me in the Queen's good English how you came to talk.”

“Grrrrrrrr!” Selby said again as he thought of the terrible fate that was in store for him.

“None of that now. Out with it!” Aunt Jetty said, raising her famous walking stick in the air. “Or I'll have your guts for garters”

Suddenly Selby lunged for Aunt Jetty's collection bucket and came out with a mouthful of dollars.

“You touch me,” he warned her (though it came out “oo-utch-ee” because of the money in his mouth), “and I'll swallow the dough.”

“Wait a minute. Be reasonable,” Aunt Jetty said as she thought of the golden wishbone pin that she was about to lose if Selby gulped.

“Reasonable schmeasonable. One step closer and I gobble the lolly,” Selby said with a slight growl.

“Okay, okay,” Aunt Jetty said, dropping the walking stick, “you win.”

“And,” Selby added, “not a word to anyone about you-know-what.”

“Okay, dog, it's a deal. Just give me back the swag. I have other fish to fry.”

“Scout's honour?” Selby said, holding up his right paw and remembering that Aunt Jetty had been a Girl Guide till she was twenty-six, when they found out she was lying about her age.

“All right,” Aunt Jetty said. “Scout's honour.”

Selby dropped the money and watched as Aunt Jetty snapped it into the bucket. She then
leaped through the window, yelling back over her shoulder as she went, “Too bad, dog, but I had my fingers crossed and it's no deal. I'll be back tomorrow and then we tell the world all about your talents,” only to land squarely on the waiting rake which popped up and knocked her senseless.

“Wow,” Aunt Jetty said, staggering around in circles trying to remember who she was and what she was doing wandering around in someone's backyard. “What happened? Who am I.”

Selby watched from the window as she bent down and put the money back in the bucket and then turned and looked at him.

“There was something about you,” she said, still seeing more stars than anything else. “Something … hmmmmmm … I've got it! You can talk, can't you?”

Selby looked straight at her and gave her his most convincing “grrrrrrrr".

“Oh, sorry,” Aunt Jetty said, suddenly remembering that she was due at Doorknock headquarters in five minutes and dashing away to collect the golden wishbone pin. “Isn't that
funny, for a minute I thought he was a talking dog. What a riot!”

Just then Selby spun around in time to hear the Giant Killer Question and before it was fully out of Larry Limelight's mouth he had the answer: “Queen Victoria,” he said calmly, “1819 to 1901. Ask us something hard for a change will you, Larry?”

It was just after sunset when Selby went to the bookcase and picked up the book he'd been reading called
Creepy Tales for Late-Night Enjoyment.
He knew it would be safe to do some reading without anyone seeing because Mrs Trifle had just gone out to a meeting of the council and Dr Trifle had gone to bed early.

“She'll be gone for hours,” Selby said as he started to read the last story in the book,
The Case of the Headless Cat,
“and nothing short of a major explosion would wake Dr Trifle.”

Selby curled up on the carpet and read the story and then put the book back on the bookshelf.

“Headless cat,” he said with disgust. “That was no headless cat. It was just a white cat with a black head and everybody thought it was headless because they couldn't see its head at night. What a rip-off! Every story in the book was like that. There was a haunted house that wasn't haunted after all and there was a ghost that wasn't a ghost. Scary stories just aren't scary any more. I know what I'll do, I'll write my own scary story, something really creepy.”

With this Selby went to the Trifles' desk and put a piece of paper in the typewriter and typed
The Screaming Skull with Eyes that Glowed with Terror
at the top.

“So much for the title,” he said. “Now all I have to do is write the story. Let's see now, how will I start it?
Once upon a time there was a screaming skull
… No. Too much like a fairy tale.
How about:
It was a dark and stormy night
… No, I think it's been done before. I've got it!
Suddenly the sundial struck midnight.
That's great!” he said, not really knowing what it meant but knowing that it sounded good.

Suddenly the sundial struck midnight
, Selby wrote,
and a fierce wind pelted Scrunchminster Castle with rain. Lord Scrunch sat at the great oak table sipping his soup and looking at the hideous statue that his great-grandfather had stolen from a temple in Feeblestan three hundred years before.

“Great stuff'!” Selby said as a fierce wind came up and started pelting the Trifles' house with rain. “I'm a natural writer. This is going to be easy.”

All at once Lord Scrunch heard a tap tap tapping at the window
, Selby continued.
And when he peered out through the old shutters there was nothing there.

“Wow,” Selby said, looking around nervously and then getting up and turning on every light he could find. “Now that's creepy the way creepy should be.”

Suddenly Lord Scrunch remembered that it was his one hundredth birthday. He remembered that his
father and his grandfather and his great-grandfather had all died mysteriously on their one hundredth birthdays right there at the dining table at Scrunchminster Castle.

“Sheeeesh!” Selby said, looking around again. “This is almost too good.”

Suddenly Lord Scrunch heard a knock knock knocking at the
… Selby was in the middle of the sentence when he heard a tapping at the window.

“Gulp,” he said, going into the lounge room and listening. “I wonder what that could be?”

The tapping came again and Selby followed its sound to the back bedroom where Dr Trifle lay sleeping. He waited for a moment and then pulled up the shade and peered into the darkness. There was nothing there.

“Probably j-just a b-branch hitting the window,” he said, going back to the lounge room and turning on the TV. “I'll just put this on and then I won't feel quite so alone.”

The picture on TV was of a foggy night in a graveyard. A dog barked in the background and a man with a long cape came out of the mist and gave an evil laugh. He pulled out a
knife and Selby's hair stood on end from head to tail.

“I j-just changed my mind about TV,” Selby said, turning off the TV and turning on the radio. “Maybe a little m-m-music would be better.”

“Sit back in your chairs,” the voice on the radio said, “and I will tell you the story of
The Ghost's Revenge.”

“Oh no, you won't,” Selby said, turning off the radio and returning to his story.

Suddenly Lord Scrunch heard a knock knock knocking at the back door and he sat in silence knowing that it was the screaming skull with eyes that glowed with terror. Lord Scrunch waited and soon the knocking was at the front door and a voice cried out: “Let me in. You have something of mine and I've come back to get it!”

Just then Selby heard a knock at the back door.

“It c-can't be,” he said, ripping the page out of the typewriter and tearing it to shreds. “The story is coming true! Next thing you know it'll be a knocking at the front door! I can't stand it! I've got to tell Dr Trifle.”

Selby dashed into the bedroom where Dr Trifle was sleeping and started barking. But the doctor was sleeping so soundly that even Selby's loudest barking couldn't wake him.

“Help!” Selby screamed in plain English. “The screaming skull with eyes that glow with terror is at the back door! Wake up!”

Selby grabbed the doctor's pillow in his teeth and shook it. For a minute the knocking stopped but then it came again — this time from the front door.

“Dr Trifle!” Selby said, shaking the sleeping man. “It's me, your faithful dog, Selby! I can talk! I don't care who knows it now! Just wake up and take care of the screaming skull and I'll be your servant for life!”

Dr Trifle stopped snoring for a second and then rolled over and started snoring again.

“This is hopeless,” Selby said, tearing out of the bedroom with the pillowcase in his teeth. “You can't depend on humans. I'll have to take matters into my own paws. And the only way
to deal with this monster is to fight fire with fire.”

“Let me in! You have something of mine and
I've come back to get it!” the voice outside yelled in the wind.

Selby pulled a high stool to the front door and then climbed on top of it and put the pillowcase over his head.

“Good,” he thought. “I can see through the pillowcase. I'll just open the door and when I see the skull I'll leap at it and scare it to death — or scare it anyway.”

“Let me in!” the voice outside the door said again; and the knocking got louder and louder.

“I'll let you in,” Selby thought as his heart pounded like a bass drum. “I'll let you in all right!”

With this Selby flung open the door and with a mighty
“Aaaaaaaaaaggggggggghhhhhhh!”
jumped into the darkness, clearing Mrs Trifle's head by centimetres, and ran across the front lawn and into the bushes.

“That's odd,” Dr Trifle said as he stepped into the lounge 0.0room rubbing his eyes. “I wonder what's got into Selby. He seems to have got stuck in a pillowcase or something, poor old thing.”

“I don't know,” Mrs Trifle said. “I just came back to get the bag you took from the car this
afternoon. It has all the papers I need for the meeting and my house keys as well. You certainly are a sound sleeper. I've knocked on every door and window in the place”