Creeped Out Read online

  Creeped Out

  By Zana Fraillon

  Illustrations by Simon Swingler

  Monstrum House: Creeped Out

  published in 2010 by

  Hardie Grant Egmont

  85 High Street

  Prahran, Victoria 3181, Australia

  www.hardiegrantegmont.com.au

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

  A CiP record for this title is available from the National Library of Australia

  Text copyright © 2010 Zana Fraillon

  Illustration and design copyright © 2010 Hardie Grant Egmont

  Design and illustration by Simon Swingler

  Typeset by Ektavo

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Author dedication:

  To Jugs, because Trapper and Scout can't read

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  1

  Jasper McPhee looked at the door. It looked just like a normal classroom door. But he knew that on the other side of it was a room that was anything but normal.

  Jasper pushed open the door and stepped inside the pitch-black room, flinching slightly as the door swung shut behind him. He knew what was waiting for him in the dark. It took all his willpower not to run straight out of the room again.

  His eyes had adjusted to the gloom now.

  He could just make out the Quiddlesquawk slinking towards him. It crept low along the floor. It was close enough for him to see the glowing red slits of its eyes in the darkness. Jasper took a deep breath and shook the fear from his body.

  The trick was to stay still and not panic.

  Jasper could feel a buzz of excitement beginning to shoot through his body. The monster moved even closer. But Jasper wasn’t frightened anymore. He was ready.

  Jasper could feel the weight of the rope in his Hunt belt. He went into Hunt position. Legs slightly bent, arms spread, every muscle quivering in readiness. He clenched his teeth and then leapt, springing up and over the monster’s head.

  He landed squarely on the monster’s back, his head facing towards its tail. He wrapped his arms around its slimy scales, trying to move into a better position. But before he could get a proper grip, the monster rolled, pinning Jasper underneath it.

  Jasper had learnt enough about Quiddlesquawks in Species Studies to expect it to roll. But learning about a monster and actually catching one were two very different things.

  As the monster got ready to suffocate him under its blubbery bubblegum-like stomach, Jasper snaked his arm towards its eye socket. He didn’t want to think about its eyes. Monster eyes always freaked him out. And he knew that fear was exactly what the Quiddlesquawk wanted him to feel.

  Jasper poked his finger sharply into the monster’s eye. It squawked angrily, twisting its head around and snapping its razor-sharp beak at his hand. The shift in the monster’s weight was just enough for Jasper to slip out from under it.

  Within three seconds, Jasper had grabbed the rope from his Hunt belt and bound it around the monster’s beak. He strapped its beak to its body, then flipped the monster onto its back.

  He couldn’t help feeling just a little bit cool.

  A glowing exit sign appeared in the dark.

  ‘Your score is eighty-four per cent,’ Stenka’s severe voice announced over the intercom. ‘Proceed to the exit.’

  Stenka was Jasper’s homeroom teacher. Of all the teachers at Monstrum House, Jasper reckoned Stenka was probably the scariest. It was not a good idea to get on her wrong side.

  Eighty-four per cent, thought Jasper, wiping the slime from his hands. Not great – but not too bad.

  He already knew where he had gone wrong.

  He hadn’t thought about the slipperiness of the monster when he’d leapt.

  ‘Proceed to the exit,’ Stenka ordered again.

  Jasper bent down to inspect the monster. He almost felt sorry for the thing. After all, he knew the Quiddlesquawk had been trained by the teachers. And really, what kind of life was it, battling annoying kids all day long?

  Jasper forced himself to look it in the eyes. One eye looked sore and bloodshot.

  ‘Sorry, fella,’ he whispered. He loosened the rope he’d tied around its beak.

  The monster blinked and for a second its empty eyes took on a deeper glint of understanding. Then it opened its mouth and spat a long line of slime over Jasper’s face. Jasper gagged.

  ‘Next time you should do as you’re told,’ said Stenka smugly over the intercom.

  Jasper glared at the monster. There was a foul fishy taste in his mouth and his eyes stung like they were full of soap.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ he mumbled darkly, and left the room.

  Jasper had been at the Monstrum House School for Troubled Children for about six months.

  Monstrum House was not like any school Jasper had ever been to, and he’d been to a lot of schools. At this school, instead of learning how to read, write and do maths, the students were only taught one thing: how to hunt monsters.

  The school building was an old stone mansion with towering turrets and plate-glass windows, surrounded by a spooky dark forest. None of the kids knew exactly where the school was, or even which country it was in. They had all been flown to the school in some kind of hypnotised sleep, and had no idea how far from their homes they were. But wherever they were, it was cold. Not just cold – freezing. It snowed all the time. And the area was crawling with monsters. Jasper wondered if the monsters somehow created the chilly weather – whenever they were about the temperature seemed to drop.

  Jasper hadn’t yet worked out if he was more scared of the monsters or the teachers. He was pretty sure the teachers at Monstrum House could read his thoughts. They had a spooky way of knowing what you were thinking. And of course, if you did anything wrong, they could tell – and you’d be punished.

  Jasper had been expelled from every school he’d ever been to. He was used to school punishments. But at Monstrum House, being punished didn’t mean picking up rubbish or writing lines. It meant running through a forest in the middle of the night with dogs chasing you. Or being locked in a room with something terrifying, something bloodcurdling, something hideously ugly. And it wasn’t Stenka.

  But there was something else about Monstrum House that was different to other schools. It had something no other school had ever had.

  Excitement.

  Hunting monsters was exciting. And that is what gave Jasper a buzz.

  2

  Jasper was staring at a fly.

  He still couldn’t get the fishy taste out of his mouth. His friend Felix had suggested rubbing his mouth out with soap – but all that'd done was make him throw up. His friend Saffy told him never to feel sorry for a monster again.

  Some friends, thought Jasper.

  Mr Golag, the Mental Manipulations teacher, was lurching up and down between the desks. He was a hairy, thick-set man with a hunched back and a lumpy face.

  ‘Be the fly,’ he wheezed. ‘From understanding comes control.’

  Everyone sat silently at their desks, staring intently at the flies trapped under the glass jars in front of them.

  The classroom was gloomy. It was only lit by lamps, as Mr Golag didn�
�t like bright lights.

  At one time Jasper would have thought that spending a whole class sitting in a dimly lit room staring at flies was boring, but not now. After months of nothing but reading and theory, Mental Manipulations class looked as though it was finally about to get interesting.

  Jasper knew that of all his classes, Mental Manipulations could turn out to be the most important. Although they were only starting off with flies, by third year they would be learning how to mentally manipulate monsters, and that would be seriously cool.

  Mental manipulation was how the teachers trained the monsters that were used in student tests. It didn’t work on all monsters, and it didn’t always work as planned, but Jasper figured that being able to influence a monster into not eating him would be a definite advantage.

  ‘Watch,’ said Mr Golag. He pointed to a large sack hanging from the roof. ‘Inside that sack,’ he continued quietly, ‘is a Cranklesucker.’

  Mr Golag untied the sack and carried it gently to the front of the class. He smiled and lay the sack fondly by his feet.

  Cool, Jasper thought, as a forked claw silently reached out of the opening in the sack.

  ‘Cranklesuckers belong to the Muncher order of monsters,’ said Mr Golag.

  OK, maybe not quite so cool, thought Jasper. He wasn’t so sure he liked being in the same room as a Muncher. Even a trained one.

  A look of concentration came over Mr Golag’s face, and then he whistled a command. There was a moment of tense silence, and then the sack opened wide. The Cranklesucker scuttled out of the sack and skidded around the students before coming and sitting obediently at Mr Golag’s feet.

  Jasper didn’t think the Cranklesucker seemed too bad, for a monster. It looked like some sort of bat-dog. Well, a warped bat-dog, with venomous lumpy spines and big fangs.

  ‘A Cranklesucker is a bit like a leech in monster form,’ Mr Golag announced. ‘It may not look so dangerous, but in the wild, this little beauty will latch onto your nose and suck you dry of blood in four minutes and twenty-eight seconds.’

  Jasper felt himself move back in his chair. The monster had turned around and seemed to be eyeballing the students one by one.

  Probably working out which of us is the juiciest, Jasper thought.

  ‘But don’t Munchers eat people?’ asked Saffy, apparently not worried that there was a bloodsucking killer in the room. ‘Is it still a Muncher if it sucks your blood?’

  ‘Munchers don’t always eat whole people,’ said Mr Golag. ‘Many of them just eat parts of people. And your blood is a part of you.’

  ‘Oh, that’s much better,’ muttered Felix.

  ‘In fact, Cranklesuckers don’t even use their teeth to attack. They use their lips for suction. But don’t worry,’ Mr Golag continued. ‘I have this Cranklesucker so perfectly trained that he won’t even think about the delicious, saltysweet young blood in the room. At least, not while I keep focused on exactly what I want him to do.’

  Mr Golag went quiet again. Jasper got the feeling that his teacher knew just a bit too much about how young blood might taste. It wasn’t a comforting thought.

  Mr Golag must have noticed the way Jasper was looking at him. ‘Ahem. It’s all about getting into the right frame of mind,’ he explained. ‘You must think like the creature you are manipulating.’

  Then Mr Golag whistled once again, and this time the monster scurried up his leg and around his back, before perching happily on his head. Mr Golag smiled, and looked around the class as though expecting applause.

  ‘There. So simple. Just focus.’ Mr Golag gestured back at the flies in their glass jars. ‘Focus, and think like a fly.’

  Jasper was still trying to work out exactly how a fly might think, when he felt Mr Golag’s hairy, knobbly hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Good. First think, then do!’ he whispered in Jasper’s ear.

  Jasper looked at the fly. He imagined he was the fly, swooping towards the top of the glass. He thought about the sensation of taking off into the air.

  ‘Yes!’ Mr Golag cheered as Jasper’s fly took off inside the glass. Jasper was sure it had been a fluke, but he wasn’t about to say so.

  Mr Golag thumped Jasper’s shoulder in encouragement, before heaving his way back to the front of the classroom.

  Jasper tested his fly again, imagining how it would feel to circle around the glass, and then land on his head. Sure enough, the fly flew three perfect circles around the glass, then settled into a perfect fly headstand.

  Awesome, Jasper thought. He grinned and started fantasising about the pranks he’d play if he could control something – even a fly.

  Jasper glanced up at Mr Golag. The teacher was rummaging around in the sack, mumbling as he did so. The Cranklesucker had moved onto Mr Golag’s shoulder and was bobbing happily up and down, humming to itself.

  Jasper lifted the glass away from the fly. But rather than buzzing off, the fly stayed on the desk, looking at him.

  Jasper stared closely at the fly. He imagined his legs pushing off from the table top, zooming up into the air, his wings buzzing merrily as he made his way towards Saffy who was sitting three desks away.

  Watch out, Saffy, here I come, Jasper thought.

  Jasper couldn’t believe it. The fly did exactly as he had thought. It headed directly for Saffy, took a left turn at her desk, and shot straight up her nose.

  ‘Urgh!’ Saffy yelled.

  She jumped from her desk, knocking her own glass to the floor as she flung her arms around. She sneezed violently, sending Jasper’s fly spinning out of control across the room. She sneezed again and stumbled backwards, toppling more jars to the floor.

  Mr Golag was moving towards Saffy when he tripped over a power cord that had been covered by the Cranklesucker’s sack. The lamps in the room all went out and there was a sickening thud as Mr Golag’s head smashed against the corner of a chair. He wobbled to his feet again, but didn’t get far.

  ‘I ...’ he muttered, then collapsed in a crumpled heap on the floor.

  Uh-oh, thought Jasper.

  No-one moved. Except the Cranklesucker.

  It jumped from Mr Golag’s shoulder onto the desk. Jasper could just make out its black rubbery lips in the darkness.

  The Cranklesucker lifted its front feet off the desk, surveying the students. Jasper felt as though he was caught in a scene from some nature documentary – and he wasn’t the lion. Then the room went cold.

  ‘I guess Mr Golag’s not so focused now,’ Jasper whispered.

  ‘Someone get the lights!’ Jasper heard Felix call from the front of the room.

  The Cranklesucker tilted its head towards Felix. And then it pounced.

  Felix’s scream was instantly muffled as the Cranklesucker suctioned onto his nose. Jasper leapt from his seat and tried to grab the monster from behind, but its lumpy spines made it hard to get a hold of.

  Someone had managed to plug the cord for the lamps back in, but it didn’t help. The Cranklesucker was latched onto Felix and getting bigger, its body swelling with blood.

  Felix was out cold and his skin had turned blue. All that could be heard was the horrible sucking of the monster. There wasn’t much time left.

  ‘Wake up Mr Golag,’ cried Saffy, slapping the teacher in the face.

  He didn’t respond.

  ‘We need water,’ yelled Saffy, and ran out of the classroom.

  3

  Ten minutes later, Jasper was standing in front of Mr Golag’s desk. He was in shock. He still couldn’t believe that he had gotten Felix Monstered, again.

  It was lucky that Saffy had managed to get a jug of cold water and throw it over Mr Golag – the Cranklesucker only managed one minute and ten seconds worth of suction before Mr Golag was conscious enough to take back control.

  Felix had been rushed to the hospital wing for an emergency blood transfusion.

  Jasper was trying very hard not to think about the punishment Mr Golag was going to dish out. But he knew that whatever it was, he
deserved it. More than deserved it.

  Mr Golag sat silently. He hadn’t said anything for ten minutes. He kept tugging at the bandage wrapped around his head and sighing.

  ‘Do you think the fly enjoyed its journey up Ms Dominguez’s nose?’ Mr Golag asked finally.

  Jasper shook his head. He hadn’t exactly been thinking about the fly.

  ‘Exactly,’ Mr Golag replied. ‘You must always think about your subjects. If you are going to manipulate someone’s mind, you must always do it from the highest moral ground. Otherwise you are no better than the creatures we are training you to catch.’

  Jasper couldn’t bring himself to reply.

  I’m sorry didn’t seem to cover it. He wondered how he was going to make it up to Felix.

  ‘I am so very disappointed in you,’ Mr Golag said sadly, shaking his head. ‘Dismissed.’

  Jasper froze. He had been expecting some serious penalty points. But Mr Golag simply looked towards the door.

  Slowly, Jasper turned and left the classroom. It was weird – he hadn’t been punished, but he wished that he had. The guilt he was feeling was far worse than any punishment.

  ‘Oi!’ came a deep voice.

  Jasper stopped. Oh, great, he thought. The thug brigade.

  A prefect stood blocking the doorway, his black camouflage and slicked-back hair marking him out from the other students in their coloured hoodies and tracksuit pants.

  ‘You should be in class,’ the prefect snarled.

  ‘Thanks, Bruno. That’s where I’m trying to go,’ said Jasper.

  Jasper had already had a few run-ins with Bruno, the head prefect.

  Prefects at Monstrum House had the authority to dish out punishments, and they liked to make life as painful as possible for everyone.

  They were different from the other students. They didn’t go to monster-hunting classes or sleep in the sleep halls, or eat meals at the same time as everyone else. In fact, they didn’t even know monsters existed. But Jasper wasn’t sure whether this was because they were too old to see them or too dumb to realise what was really going on at Monstum House.