The Phredde Collection (16 page)

Mrs Olsen looked up from the textbook. Her mouth hung open so you could see her long vampire fangs. (Most of the time you hardly notice them at all.)

‘What’s that?’ she demanded.

Bruce, who sits just in front of me now, jumped up onto his desk and looked outside. ‘It’s this funny-looking giant and it’s headed this way!’ he croaked, sort of breathlessly. His eyes had gone all googly, but as he’s a frog this just meant they were a bit more googly than normal.

‘It’s what?’ cried Mrs Olsen.

‘Oh, it’s just Pru’s thingummy—I mean her ogre,’ said Phredde carelessly. She must have been pretty worried about it too, but she wasn’t going to show it in front of Bruce.

‘What ogre!’ demanded Mrs Olsen. I’d forgotten she’d come from Ruritania too. She’d know all about ogres.

‘One sort of followed me home yesterday,’ I explained, as the booming noise drew closer.

Mrs Olsen frowned. Normally she’s a pretty cool teacher, but she’s very strict about school rules.

‘You know you can’t bring pets to school, Prudence,’ she said. ‘You’ll just have to tell him to go home again.’

‘But he’s not my pet and I don’t know how to get him to go home!’ I wailed.

Well, that got Mrs Olsen all sympathetic. ‘There, there, Prudence dear. I’m sure it’ll be all right,’ she said.

‘It’s not all right!’ I hiccuped. ‘He’s big and he’s ugly and he smells and I don’t know how to get rid of him!’

‘Well, we’ll just have to send him on his way, won’t we?’ she said soothingly.

‘But how can you do that?’ I asked, blowing my nose.

Mrs Olsen grinned. ‘Well, I AM a vampire,’ she said. And then she snarled.

I’d never seen Mrs Olsen snarl before. It was pretty cool. I mean she looked just like a vampire in one of those old movies, but even worse, because after all, Mrs Olsen’s real.

So Mrs Olsen dashed out to her coffin in the storeroom and came back with her long black velvet cape. It’s got dark red velvet lining, so I suppose it doesn’t get stained if she drips blood on it.

And she put the cape on and snarled again, and we all cheered, even Amelia who sits in the front row and does everything perfectly, except for Bruce, who croaked by accident (he does that sometimes).

I mean how could an ogre not be scared of a vampire like that?

The
boom! boom! booming!
was getting pretty close by now.

The books were falling out of the bookcase and all the posters were shaking off the walls. I was a bit worried about how the library was faring—I’m a library monitor, and just the thought of having to put all those books back on the shelves in the right order was making me even more depressed.

‘Follow me!’ announced Mrs Olsen with a sweep of her cloak. She swept out of the classroom, and we all ran after her. Well, most of us ran. Phredde flew and Bruce jumped, because he was still being a frog.

And a few of the more timid kids were still hiding under the desks, but they were just the wimps (you get some in every class) so I forgot about them.

The ogre looked sort of bigger in the school grounds. I mean I’d only seen him at the ruined castle before, which was sort of giant-sized, and at our castle, which is pretty enormous too. But here at school he towered over the science lab and even the library, a bit like that gorilla in
King Kong,
except not quite as hairy. I don’t suppose the gorilla used deodorant either.

All the kids were piling out of the other classrooms too—all except those who were hiding under the desks—and most of the teachers, and I could see Mrs Allen peering out the window so she’d be here soon. And while I knew it wasn’t my fault—because it WASN’T—I couldn’t help feeling pretty nervous about her reaction.

Headmistresses can blow things out of all proportion.

And I was a bit nervous about the ogre too.

‘Halt!’ cried Mrs Olsen, waving her cloak around really dramatically and grinning to show her white fangs. ‘Halt or I’ll suck your blood!’

The ogre stopped. But it didn’t look particularly worried.

‘Nice girl?’ it squeaked enquiringly. ‘Where nice girl?’

I sort of hid behind Amelia.

The ogre sniffed, a bit like a vacuum cleaner snorting in the corners. ‘Nice girl!’ it demanded again. ‘I smell nice girl! Where nice girl?’

‘She’s over here,’ offered Amelia helpfully, getting out of the way.

‘Thanks heaps, Amelia,’ I muttered. ‘Er, hi ogre! Howya going? How about going back where you came from?’

‘Nice girl!’ squeaked the ogre triumphantly. He lumbered towards me.

‘Halt!’ cried Mrs Olsen again. ‘Halt or I’ll stick my fangs in your neck!’

The ogre paid no attention whatsoever.

‘Drat,’ said Mrs Olsen, lowering her cloak. ‘I don’t think he’s from Ruritania at all. He doesn’t recognise vampires. He just doesn’t realise he should be scared of us.’

‘Can’t you vampirise him anyway!’ I squeaked. My voice sounded just about as high as the ogre’s.

Mrs Olsen shook her head unhappily. ‘You know I don’t do that sort of thing, Prudence. Besides, I’m not sure my fangs are long enough to stick in his neck…’

‘But…heeeeeeeeeellllllllp!!!!!!!!’ I screamed as the ogre bent over me. I could smell his stinky breath and his even worse armpits. ‘Don’t you ever take a bath?’ I shrieked. (You’d have thought his trip under the sea would have cleaned him off a bit but it still smelt like the inside of our garbage bin the day after Dad’s been eating prawns.)

‘Bath?’ squeaked the ogre. ‘What’s bath? Nice girl,’ he added, as one great hairy paw scooped me up off the playground and up into the air.

The ogre didn’t clean his fingernails either.

‘Put her down you beast!’ cried Phredde, fluttering up beside me and trying to kick the ogre in the eye with her pink and silver jogger. ‘Let her go!’

‘Let her go?’ asked the ogre wonderingly. He looked like he was about to drop me so I yelled ‘No!’

‘Would it help if I vampirised his ankle?’ called up Mrs Olsen.

‘Croak!’ yelled Bruce as ferociously as he could, but as he’s a frog it wasn’t very ferocious at all.

‘Don’t panic! Don’t panic! I’ve called the fire brigade,’ yelled Mrs Allen, racing out of the office.

‘If you hurt my friend, I’ll kick you in the ear lobe!’ threatened Phredde.

And all the while I was holding onto the ogre’s finger for dear life in case I fell. I mean it’s hard to get a grip up there.

The ogre ignored everyone, except Phredde. He swatted her away like you’d swat a fly and she went tumbling through the air.

‘Phredde!’ I screamed, but a few seconds later she was back, yelling threats but keeping out of reach.

The giant bent down towards me.

I could see every pore in his skin, and let me tell you, I bet he didn’t use any of the soaps recommended in any of Mum’s magazines. His pimples looked like the volcano down in the playground, but not as clean. And his teeth…

Well, maybe I’d better not tell you about his teeth, just in case you plan on eating something today.

‘Nice girl,’ said the ogre happily. ‘Nice girl. Nice chocolate cake?’

And then it struck me. The ogre didn’t want me at all! It wanted more chocolate cake!

‘Phredde!’ I screamed. ‘A chocolate cake! Now!’

‘This is no time for morning tea!’yelled Phredde.

‘Not for me, you nincompoop!’ I shrieked. ‘It’s for the ogre!’

One thing about Phredde, she catches on quickly.

No sooner than you could say ‘super-economy-sized giant chocolate cake with butter icing’ there was one, big as a dining room table but much more chocolatey, sort of floating in the air, just in front of the ogre’s nose.

‘Chocolate cake!’ the ogre exclaimed delightedly, and promptly dropped me.

‘Phredde!’ I screamed again, but luckily Phredde had it all under control, because suddenly I was wearing a parachute, and I floated down and landed next to Mrs Olsen on the ground.

‘Prudence dear, are you all right!’ cried Mrs Olsen.

‘Sure, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘And I think the ogre’s happy too.’

Well, that’s the end of that story, more or less.

Phredde magicked up more chocolate cakes and we sort of led the ogre back to his island, keeping a chocolate cake in front of his nose all the time. I guess the sea at the bottom of our garden isn’t very deep, because his head was out of the water all the time he waded through it.

Then Phredde magicked up a chocolate cake dispenser in the foyer of the ruined castle. All the ogre has to do whenever he wants a snack is squeak ‘Chocolate cake!’ very loudly and one falls out.

He’s good at that.

I was worried he might be lonely, but as Phredde said, all ogres are really interested in is food. And if he’s really lonely, he just has to wade back to our school again.

Of course it was a bit disappointing that the ogre wasn’t in love with me. Not that I WANTED him to be, it’s just that…well, you understand.

And there wasn’t really all that much damage to the school, just the books off the shelves and a few computers sort of shaken out of their wits so all they say is ‘geeeek!’ now whenever you turn them on.

And the science lab got trodden on just a bit while we were trying to turn the ogre round. But it was hardly any damage really, considering, and I bet they’ll get the tuck shop roof back on in no time. Mrs Allen’s had lots of experience by now in organising things like that.

Mum forgot all about grounding me, which was lucky, because Phredde had just asked me to her sleepover, which REALLY got interesting.

But that’s another story.

The pumpkin coach arrived for me at seven o’clock.

I’ve always wanted to ride in a pumpkin coach, ever since I was a little kid and Mum read me that Cinderella story.

Actually, I thought it was a pretty dumb story, all in all. I mean what normal bloke would marry a chick just because she’s got the right shoe size?

But I really loved that pumpkin coach, with the mice who turned into horses and all the rest of it.

So when Phredde asked me to her sleepover I said, ‘Hey, can I come in a pumpkin coach?’ without even stopping to think.

Phredde said, ‘Sure.’

So here it was.

It looked great, the six white horses (I suppose they’d been white mice, not ordinary grey ones) galloping up the gleaming road to our castle, pulling this great gold coach behind them.

Well, it was more orange than gold—pumpkin colour, really—but it still looked wonderful.

I’d taken a lot of care getting dressed, because it’s not every day you get to ride in a magic pumpkin coach drawn by six white horses.

I’d put on my best jeans and my favourite T-shirt, the one that Phredde gave me last Christmas that says ‘A Souvenir of Phaeryland’.

I’d even wiped the grot off my joggers.

I was ready to go.

Gark, our butler, opened the castle door for me and bowed me out, just like I was royalty or something. (Gark really does the butler thing well, even if he is an enchanted magpie.)

Then the driver of the coach (who was really an enchanted rat, just like in the story) let the stairs down for me. (I didn’t like the look of the driver, to be honest, especially his teeth. There was something about the way he twitched his nose too…)

But anyway, the door shut behind me, and Mum yelled, ‘Have a good time and don’t forget to thank Splendifera for having you!’ from an upstairs window, and off we rolled.

It was cool.

The coach was all orange satin inside and only smelt faintly of pumpkin. I could hear the horses hooves going
callop callop callop
and the rumble of the carriage wheels and then we were down on the main road and people were yelling ‘What the #*@!’ as we rolled past.

It was really great.

I’d have liked the ride to go on forever, but then the sound under the wheels changed and I knew we’d turned up onto Phredde’s road, which is long and curved and made of moonbeams just like ours, and then
bump, we’d
stopped outside her castle.

The driver helped me down again. He looked even more ratlike now, and he’d grown whiskers too, so I hurried over the drawbridge before he could change back into a rat again—it’s not that I hate rats, it’s just that…well, you know.

Most of the time you have to knock on Phredde’s castle door, but not tonight.

The whole front of the castle was floodlit and the door was wide open and these great things full of flaming candles hung from the ceiling—chandeliers, that’s what they are.

It wasn’t all just to welcome me, of course.

It was a full moon, so the Phaery Splendifera and Jim (the Phaery Valiant) were having their usual phaery dance by moonlight in the backyard.

Phredde thinks traditional phaery dancing is totally boring, so she’d asked if she could have some friends over for the night instead, and her mum had said yes.

The full moon meant that my brother Mark had turned into a werewolf, like he always does now during a full moon. Mark had asked Mum if he could have some friends over too. They were going to spend the night howling on the battlements and sniffing tails and other stuff that teenage werewolves do, so it was a pretty good night to be away from home.

‘Hey, Pru!’ yelled Phredde, zooming down the stairs like a sparrow on steroids. ‘You’re late! Come on upstairs!’

So I followed her up to the sitting room next to her bedroom. Phredde’s got a new bedroom, bathroom and sitting room suite since her dragon torched the last one.

But the dragon’s been away a lot lately—Phredde’s hoping he’s a she and is looking for a termite mound
to nest in and we’ll have lots of baby dragons, but it’s hard to tell with dragons. Anyway, it means there hasn’t been any little flame-type accidents for ages.

In fact the only dragon around now was Phredde’s Uncle Mordred. He likes being a dragon, just like Bruce likes being a frog.

Which reminded me…

‘Is Uncle Mordred here?’ I asked.

‘Sure,’ said Phredde. She gestured out the window.

Sure enough, there was Uncle Mordred, along with Phredde’s parents and a whole heap of other phaeries, all dressed up in traditional phaery gear, which means lace and diamonds and stuff like that for the women and satin pants for the blokes.

The lawn out the back had grown a heap of red and white toadstools overnight, and there was this tiny elf orchestra sawing away, as though if they played hard enough they’d go into orbit or something, and all the phaeries were dancing these fluttering-type dances, including Uncle Mordred.

You’d have thought his tail would get in the way, but somehow it didn’t—I suppose things like tails just don’t matter when you’re a phaery.

‘Which one’s Aunt Petunia?’ I asked. I’d really been curious about Aunt Petunia since the Sleeping Beauty incident.

‘The one dressed in moonbeams,’ said Phredde carelessly.

I gazed down at the dancers. Some of the dresses seemed made out of crushed diamonds and some from spider lace and some from satin but much more satiny than you ever see if you’re not a phaery, if you know what I mean…

‘I can’t see anyone dressed in moonbeams,’ I commented.

‘No,’ said Phredde casually. ‘Aunt Petunia always muddles things up. She collected the moonbeams at new moon, so of course you can’t see them
or
her.’

Well, I suppose it made sense if you were a phaery.

‘What are we going to do?’ I asked Phredde.

Phredde grinned. ‘I got some horror movies.’

‘Hey, does your mum know?’ My mum won’t let me watch horror movies, though I reckon anyone who’s been chased by an ogre has nothing to worry about from some dumb old movie.

‘Of course not. Well, she knows what movies I got out, because I had to show them to her. But she thinks they’re educational documentaries.’

I looked at the movies on Phredde’s table.
The Vampire’s Curse. The Troll of Tweenie Bridge…

‘Your mum thinks THOSE are educational?’ I demanded.

‘Sure,’ said Phredde gleefully. ‘I said
The Vampire’s Curse
was all about the racial discrimination against vampires, and the Troll one’s about bridge construction in Finland…’

Sometimes I worry about Phredde.

Anyway, we’d just put
The Horror of the Haunted Fingers
into the video player, and Phredde had PING!ed up a pile of corn chips with tomato salsa and avocado dip, which I happen to love, and a few dozen phaery-size pizzas with extra cheese, just in case we really got peckish, when there was this knock on the sitting room door, and in hopped Bruce.

‘Bruce!’ I exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’

Which was really rude, but I wasn’t thinking. As far as I knew Phredde and Bruce were still avoiding each other like ice cream avoids an oven.

‘I didn’t WANT to come,’ protested Bruce, hopping over and snavelling a mini pizza with his long frog tongue—I’m not sure if it’s really cool or really disgusting how he does that.

‘Mum said I couldn’t go to the lily pond tomorrow unless I came with them tonight. They’re down there,’ he gestured out the window to the dancing, then shot his tongue out and hooked another pizza and swallowed it whole.

Phredde didn’t meet my eyes. ‘Mum said I had to ask him or I couldn’t ask you,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll start the movie, will I?’

I nodded. I didn’t have to be hammered with half a brick to see what was going on.

Phredde’s mum wanted Phredde to marry a handsome prince and the only handsome prince around here was Bruce. Not that he was handsome, of course, because he looked like a frog.

In fact at the moment he WAS a frog, and it didn’t look like he was going to change back anytime soon because Bruce LIKES being a frog. Bruce thinks frogs are more interesting than humans.

The only way Bruce was going to turn back into a prince was if a Phaery Princess kissed him, and the only Phaery Princess around here was Phredde.

You can see what their mums were getting at.

So Phredde sat on one end of the sofa, as far away from Bruce as possible, and Bruce sat on the other end, just in case Phredde forgot what she was doing and kissed him without thinking—which was NOT likely
to happen—and I sat in the middle and we watched the movie.

It was a really great movie.

It was all about this bloke who was tortured by this evil gang, and they plucked off his fingers one by one. There were really cool special effects, especially when the blood splurted all over the place.

Anyway, the guy died from blood loss due to finger loss, and then he turned into a ghost and haunted the gang till they all killed themselves in terror, and his fingers haunted people too, since as they weren’t attached to his body any more they ran up people’s arms and down their backs all by themselves, just these faint ghostly fingers doing faintly ghostly things across your skin…

Well, it got pretty scary, especially when Phredde decided to turn the light off to make it even scarier, and by the end I guess we could all feel ghostly fingers tickling the backs of our necks as though they were planning to squeeze our windpipes and choke us to death.

In the final scene, the chief villain was sitting alone at home and he heard these footsteps out in the corridor…
clunk, clunk clunk.

The bad guy opened the door, but there was nothing there, of course, because it had been the ghost.

So he sat down again, and tried to read the paper, but then he heard them again:
clunk, clunk clunk.

‘Who’s there?’ he shrieked.

But all he heard were the footsteps.

Clink clink clink.

Clink?

At first I thought the ghost in the movie had just changed shoes and was making a different noise. And then I realised the
clink clink clink
wasn’t coming from the video player at all.

It was coming from out in the corridor.

‘Phredde!’ I whispered.

‘I know,’ whispered Phredde. She turned the video off with the remote, and we sat in the darkness listening.

Clink, clink, clink.
It was just outside the door now.

‘What is it?’ croaked Bruce. Bruce always sounds a bit croaky, being a frog. But this was a different sort of croak altogether.

‘I don’t know!’ whispered Phredde.

Clink, clink, clink…

It sounded a bit further away now, so I hissed, ‘Maybe we should open the door and take a look.’

Phredde gulped. So did Bruce, but he was noisier, being a frog.

I stood up. Someone had to do something, and it looked like it was me.

Quietly—very quietly—I tiptoed to the door, and opened it. I blinked in the sudden light after the darkness of the sitting room.

I looked outside.

Nothing. Nothing at all. The clinking sound had stopped.

I peered right up the corridor—it’s a long one, being a castle—then down the other end. Still nothing.

By nothing, of course, I don’t mean NOTHING. There were the long colourful carpets on the wall that looked like they’d fly you to Persia, or whatever Persia is nowadays (I HATE geography), if you whistled them the right way.

There were these delicate little tables with ornaments on them, and this great big sturdy table with a giant plastic reindeer labelled ‘Souvenir of the South Pole’ on it (Uncle Mordred had brought it back for Phredde’s mum last time he visited Santa—he manages to get just about everywhere as a dragon).

And there was the suit of armour I suppose he’d brought back from England, and a miniature Eiffel Tower from Paris (but not VERY miniature, because it almost reached the ceiling).

And that was all.

‘No one there,’ I reported.

Phredde fluttered up to the light switch and turned it on, then perched on my shoulder and peered out the door too.

‘There has to be SOMEONE there,’ she whispered.

‘Well, there isn’t.’

‘But…but the footsteps…’

Bruce hopped over to join us. ‘Maybe it was one of the dancers,’ he commented.

‘They’d all fly,’ Phredde pointed out. ‘They wouldn’t go tromping down the corridor. There aren’t any humans here tonight, except for Pru of course.’

‘And it wasn’t me, because I was sitting next to you,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I don’t go
clink, clink, clink.’

I glanced out the door again, but there was still no one there—and no clinking sound either.

So I shut the door, and we sat down again. But this time we left the light on.

‘It was probably just a noise in the movie,’ Phredde said hopefully. ‘It just echoed or something, and we thought it came from outside.’

‘Yeah, that was probably what it was,’ I agreed dubiously.

‘Will I turn the movie on again?’ asked Phredde.

‘May as well see how it ends,’ croaked Bruce, just a bit nervously.

So Phredde turned the movie on again, and we’d reached the bit where the ghostly fingers had grabbed the bad guy’s leg as he tried to escape the fire the ghost had lit, and the bad guy was screaming ‘Heeeeellllppppp!’ and the ghost was chuckling in that evil chortling way that insane ghosts have, especially when their fingers have been torn off and they’re about to spook the guy that did it…

…when we heard the noise again.

Clink, clink, clink.

This time it definitely wasn’t coming from the movie.

Phredde was too scared to even turn the movie off this time. We just sat there trembling and clutching each other (well, Phredde and I clutched, there isn’t much to clutch when you’re a frog), as the villain got all his flesh melted away in the fire and the movie credits started rolling, while the clinking noise got nearer and nearer outside the door.

Clink, clink, clink…

‘Maybe we should yell out to one of the dancers,’ croaked Bruce. ‘Maybe my mum and dad or your mum and dad or Uncle Mordred…’