Jack Slater, Monster Investigator Page 5

  I knew I was right. It all made sense. The stuff in Clyde’s office – the I-Zak 750 – the Ghost Burglaries – monsters stealing Cherry’s trainers . . . the only explanation was this:

  The monsters were stealing for Clyde.

  And in return, Clyde had planned the monster invasion for them.

  Yes, it definitely made sense.

  Try explaining that to a grown-up, though.

  “Look, Jack,” the PM went on, “we’re all upset about this. But, I mean, do you really think a human is going to betray us to the monsters under the bed?”

  “Yes, Slater,” Clyde agreed, suddenly back in pompous mode. “Do try to keep up. These are monsters. There’s no way any human being is going to help them, now is there?”

  “That ain’t what I heard,” a gruff voice said from under the bed.

  “Bernard!” Cherry exclaimed happily. “I was getting worried about you! Where’ve you been?”

  “Talking to people,” Bernard explained. “Monster people, that is. Tryin’ to get a handle on what’s happening. And I’m hearing some very interesting gossip.”

  “Hold on a moment,” the Prime Minister said. “Who’s this?”

  “Bernard’s on our side,” I answered, still glaring at Clyde. “He was the one who warned us about the invasion in the first place. If he says he’s got information, it’ll be worth hearing.”

  “Well, if he’s our friend,” the Prime Minister said, “I really think he ought to come out where we can see him.”

  “If you want to see Bernard,” I told him, “we’ll have to put the lights out. And you’ll need night vision goggles.”

  “I’ve got a spare pair,” Cherry offered, fishing them out of her backpack, Mr Piggy.

  “Fine,” the PM said, putting them on, “thank you.”

  Clyde very reluctantly put his on too, and the PM put the lights out.

  “OK, um, Bernard,” he said. “All the lights are off. If you want to talk to us, I’m afraid you’ll have to come out.”

  There was a pause. I felt sorry for Bernard – after all, when a monster comes out from under the bed, no one expects it to look like a feathery bunny. Out he came, glaring and daring us to laugh.

  But before he could speak, a piercing scream split the air.

  A scream of pure terror.

  “No!” shrieked Clyde. “NO! NOT . . . MR BUN! MR BUN!!!! AAAAAAAGH!!!!!!”

  Everyone turned to look.

  “Hey!” Bernard grinned hopefully. “You’re not, um . . . scared, are you? Of me?” He took a step towards Clyde, and then another.

  “NO! KEEP IT AWAY! KEEP IT AWAY!” Clyde screeched.

  Bernard’s grin widened. He bared his teeth.

  “Not now, Bernard!” I said, but Bernard was having too much fun.

  “Grrrr!” he growled, and when that produced a series of satisfying squeaks from Clyde, he tried, “RAARRRRRR!”

  “No!” Clyde squealed. “NO!” He turned to me, fear burning in his eyes.

  “Keep it away!” he howled in terror. “I’ll confess! I’ll tell you everything! JUST KEEP IT AWAY!”

  “Hold it, Bernard,” I said, and turned to Clyde. “Did you just say you’d confess?”

  “Everything!” Clyde moaned. “Just keep it away!”

  “I tell you what,” I told him. “Bernard’ll go back under the bed just as soon as you’ve finished telling us the truth. All of it!”

  Clyde looked at me. Then he looked at Bernard.

  Bernard grinned.

  “Boo!” he said.

  Clyde jumped backwards, squealing like a piglet.

  “It wasn’t supposed to go this far!” he howled. “I gave them the idea – but I didn’t think they could do it!”

  “What idea?” I asked. I was sure I already knew, but I wanted the PM to hear it.

  “For the invasion! I found the plans for the skatebed in my dad’s office and I realized how the monsters could use it!”

  So Clyde hadn’t designed the skatebed himself, I noted.

  “And what did you get out of it, Clyde?”

  It looked for a moment like he was going to zip his lips, but then Bernard growled softly and the zipper broke wide open.

  “All the stuff! All the cool stuff my dad wouldn’t buy me! New stuff that no one else at school had! The monsters could go anywhere that had a bed, and get me the things my dad wouldn’t! Computer games, designer clothes, DVDs, trainers . . .”

  “Not to mention things you can’t even buy in the shops yet,” I said, holding up the I-Zak. Clyde nodded dumbly. “So this whole invasion – the entire country put at risk – is all about you showing off. The monsters stole whatever you wanted, and you gave them what they wanted. That’s a fair swap, is it, Clyde? It doesn’t matter how many kids are put at risk, as long as they all think you’re just so great?”

  “But I didn’t think it would matter!” he sniffled. “I told them how to invade – but I thought they were too stupid to get it right!”

  And then he collapsed, and begged me to send Bernard – or “Mr Bun” as he kept calling him – away.

  Bernard didn’t want to go. Clyde, it turned out, was the kid whose fears – of a toy bunny rabbit and a fluffy duck – had brought Bernard into existence, and it had been years since he’d been able to scare him like that.

  “Look, Bernard,” I told him, “we’ve got an invasion to sort out. I can’t think with Clyde whimpering like that. Please – just get back under the bed.”

  Bernard rolled his eyes. “You don’t get it, Jack. It’s been five years since I last heard that sound. Monsters need it. I can’t stop now. When am I next going to get the chance? He keeps his room floodlit at night, you know! And who else is ever going to be scared of me?”

  “Um, Bernard,” the Prime Minister said, “I’m afraid Jack’s right. Sorry to spoil your fun, but I’m going to have to put the light on in a moment.”

  Bernard sighed. “Well, it was fun,” he said. “See you around, Jack. So long, Cherry. Nice to meet you, Prime Minister. ROARRRR!” This last was to Clyde, who screamed quite satisfactorily and tried to climb through the wallpaper.

  “Take care of yourself, Bernard,” I said. “I’ll see you if we ever get out of this.”

  He waved, slipped under the bed and was gone.

  Clyde was trembling in the corner, looking utterly wretched.

  “I thought they were too stupid!” he whined again.

  The Prime Minister looked at him scornfully, and then beckoned Cherry and me aside.

  “Um, listen, you two,” he said, “we’re still surrounded by monsters, and we’ve got no more than a few minutes till sunrise. You’re the only monster experts I have left. Any ideas how to stop them?”

  “Hmmm . . .” I said. A thought had just struck me. “You know, I just might.”

  I went to the window and heaved it open. Outside, the street below was covered with skatebeds, bumping and rattling impatiently against each other.

  “Hey! You monsters!” I called.

  “Who? Us?” came a voice from under one of the beds.

  “Well, yes,” I answered. “All of you. We’re just wondering up here – what do you want to get out of this invasion?”

  “Oh, that easy!” said another voice.

  “We want to eat children!”

  “Mmmm, yum yum!” came a chorus of monster voices. “Eat children! Yeah!”

  “But why?” I asked.

  “Duh!” the first voice said. “’Cos they taste nice, that why!”

  “Right,” I said, “so you’ve tasted children then, have you?”

  There was a pause, and a lot of muttering. Then the first voice said, “Well . . . no . . .”

  “But you know someone who has?” I asked.

  “Um . . . no . . .”

  “How do you know what children taste like, then?”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “Er . . . someone told me they taste like chicken,” a different voice volun
teered hesitantly.

  “And you’ve tasted chicken?”

  “Um . . . not exactly . . .”

  How can you “not exactly” taste something?

  “So how many of you have tasted chicken?” I enquired.

  The monsters muttered some more. “Um . . . less than one,” admitted a voice cautiously.

  “So that would be: none?” I asked. “None of you have ever tasted children; and you think they taste like chicken, but none of you have ever tasted that either?”

  “Er . . . yup.”

  “Why do you want to eat them, then?” Silence.

  One of them said hesitantly, “Uh . . . dunno, really.”

  “They just scream so nicely when they’re scared,” said another.

  “Yeah!” agreed the first. “Nothin’ in the world sound as good as itty-bitty childern going, ‘Eeeeeeeek! There a monster under my bed!’”

  “Yeah!” joined in the others enthusiastically. “Best sound in world – ickle kiddies screaming ’cos they afraid of us!”

  “And how, exactly,” I asked, “will they be able to scream when you’ve eaten them?”

  There was an absolutely horrified silence. It lasted maybe twenty or thirty seconds, as the idea began to percolate through the monsters’ tiny little brains.

  Then the beds began to rattle and jostle each other angrily.

  “Whose stupid idea was this?” shouted a voice.

  “I not playing no more,” yelled another. “I not eating the kids if they not screaming afterwards!”

  “Yeah!” shouted a third. “We not eating childers! Jus’ try an’ make us, that all!”

  The beds rattled angrily once more, a furious, monstrous sound. The noise swelled like a tidal wave until, for just a moment, it seemed to fill the sky. Then, like the end of a rainstorm, the rattling slowly died down to nothing at all and every bed at last stood absolutely still.

  The monsters had gone.

  And then the sun came up.

  As you might expect, the Prime Minister immediately offered to set me up as the new Minister for Monsters, in a brand new Ministry, with as much money as I needed to fully train and equip as many Monster Investigators as I wanted.

  I turned him down.

  Yeah, it could’ve been fun – but it would never have happened.

  You see, the Prime Minister’s a grown-up. By lunchtime, he’d have forgotten all about the monster invasion. He’d have been worrying about how to get all the skatebeds out of Downing Street, but he wouldn’t have remembered how they got there.

  Because grown-ups don’t believe in monsters under the bed. Not in the warm light of day.

  Unfortunately, that also meant that he forgot Clyde’s part in the whole thing. So Clyde’s still the Minister for Monsters, in the treehouse office, with his daddy paying for everything.

  That’s why Cherry handed in her badge, too. Besides, Clyde still owed her a new pair of trainers.

  I suggested something to the PM which he did remember, though.

  I suggested he tell his friend, Clyde’s dad, that Clyde’s too old to have a light on in his room at night. And Clyde’s dad agreed.

  Which means that Bernard’s evenings have been much more fun lately.

  Mine haven’t. You see, once they’d got all the skatebeds back in the shops, cleaned them up, and put them on sale, they turned out to be a pretty popular piece of furniture with both children and parents.

  And with monsters.

  So business is busier than ever.

  Which is why, a couple of nights later, I was just in the middle of a lovely dream when my bedroom door opened and the light from the landing woke me up.

  I groaned and opened my eyes. Two timid-looking pyjama-clad figures stood there, shuffling sheepishly.

  “Um . . . please can we sleep in your room tonight?” one of them said.

  I groaned again, and sat up. “What’s wrong?” I asked, even though I knew what the answer would be.

  “There’s a girl under our bed!”

  Sighing, I swung my feet out of bed and into my slippers.

  “All right,” I said. “You two snuggle up in here and go back to sleep. I’ll deal with the—”

  My mouth paused as my brain hit “replay”.

  “Mum . . . did you just say there was a girl under your bed?”

  And then Cherry burst in.

  “Eeek!” squeaked my parents, disappearing under the covers. I worry about them sometimes.

  “Hey, Jack,” Cherry said cheerfully. “Hi, Mr and Mrs Slater. Sorry if I scared you! Let’s move, partner, we’ve got work to do!”

  “What?” I complained. “Don’t we get a few days off after saving the world?”

  Cherry grinned. “Jack,” she said, “if we ever save the world, we can take the whole week off. This week we only saved the UK – we don’t get any kind of a break for that. Let’s get going! Bernard’s going to drop us off on his way to Clyde’s.”

  “Drop us off where?” I asked, but she was already heading towards my parents’ bedroom.

  “Come on!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Last one there’s only the world’s second greatest Monster Investigator! Do you feel lucky?”

  “Button it!” I yelled back, putting on a burst of speed. “Or you’ll get a mouthful of teddy!”

  And, neck and neck, we dived for the space under the big double bed.

  About the Author

  When John Dougherty was little he wanted to be a superhero, but somehow he became a primary school teacher instead – which isn’t quite the same thing. Then he became an author and now he has lots of fun visiting schools to talk about his work. He’s also a performing singer-songwriter and occasional poet. John’s first book for children, Zeus on the Loose!, was shortlisted for the Branford Boase Award in 2005. He lives in Stroud, Gloucestershire with his wife and two children.

  Also available by John Dougherty,

  and published by Young Corgi Books:

  ZEUS ON THE LOOSE!

  NITERACY HOUR

  For more information about John Dougherty:

  www.visitingauthor.com

  JACK SLATER, MONSTER INVESTIGATOR

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 446 43100 9

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK

  A Penguin Random House Company

  This ebook edition published 2011

  Copyright © John Dougherty, 2006

  Illustrations copyright © Georgien Overwater, 2006

  First Published in Great Britain

  Young Corgi 9780552553728 2006

  Cherry’s speeches here, here and here are based upon the screenplay by Harry Julian Fink, Rita M. Fink and Dean Riesner for the film Dirty Harry, directed by Don Siegel, 1971, certificate 18.

  The right of John Dougherty to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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    John Dougherty, Jack Slater, Monster Investigator