Steve Cole Middle Fiction 4 Read online

  To Ruben – go, Mango!

  Steve Cole

  For Tony

  Jim Field

  OTHER STORIES BY STEVE COLE:

  STOP THOSE MONSTERS MAGIC INK ALIENS STINK ASTROSAURS COWS IN ACTION SLIME SQUAD TRIPWIRE YOUNG BOND

  A MAGIC INK PRODUCTION FIRST PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN IN 2016 BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER UK LTD A CBS COMPANY TEXT COPYRIGHT © STEVE COLE 2016 ILLUSTRATIONS COPYRIGHT © JIM FIELD 2016 THIS BOOK IS COPYRIGHT UNDER THE BERNE CONVENTION NO REPRODUCTION WITHOUT PERMISSION ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE RIGHT OF STEVE COLE AND JIM FIELD TO BE IDENTIFIED AS THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR OF THIS WORK RESPECTIVELY HAS BEEN ASSERTED BY THEM IN ACCORDANCE WITH SECTIONS 77 AND 78 OF THE COPYRIGHT, DESIGNS AND PATENTS ACT, 1988. SIMON & SCHUSTER UK LTD 1ST FLOOR, 222 GRAY’S INN ROAD, LONDON WC1X 8HB WWW.SIMONANDSCHUSTER.CO.OK SIMON & SCHUSTER AUSTRALIA, SYDNEY

  SIMON & SCHUSTER INDIA, NEW DELHI

  WWW.MAGICINKPRODUCTIONS.COM

  A CIP CATALOGUE RECORD FOR THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE FROM THE BRITISH LIBRARY.

  PB ISBN: 978-0-85707-876-6 EBOOK ISBN: 978-0-85707-877-3

  THIS BOOK IS A WORK OF FICTION. NAMES, CHARACTERS, PLACES AND INCIDENTS ARE EITHER THE PRODUCT OF THE AUTHOR’S IMAGINATION OR ARE USED FICTITIOUSLY. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL PEOPLE LIVING OR DEAD, EVENTS OR LOCALES IS ENTIRELY COINCIDENTAL.

  PRINTED AND BOUND BY CPI GROUP (UK) LTD, CROYDON, CRO 4YY

  CONTENTS

  Have you noticed

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  EPILOGUE

  Have you noticed

  ...how no one ever goes to the toilet in action stories?

  Secret agents never arrive at a glamorous hotel busting for a wee.

  Batman’s never got diarrhoea when the bat signal goes up.

  And in spooky tales no one ever gets so scared that they stop the action for a loo break. You’d think the characters would be wetting themselves throughout – but no!

  Why is that?

  No idea.

  Or to put it in a picture:

  That’s me. Noah Deer. Sounds like ‘No Idea’ – get it? My parents’ attempt at a brilliant joke. Perfect for so many occasions, such as:

  Ahh, how Mum and Dad must have laughed about my name, before they grew to hate each other and break up when I was small!

  Anyway, I always thought that if I ever wrote an action story, I would keep it real and mention how many times the hero went to the toilet when it wasn’t necessary to the plot (or to set up a comedy death).

  Then one day my life became an action story.

  And it’s been tough. In all kinds of ways. Although, weirdly, remembering when I went to the toilet wasn’t one of them – as you’ll find out.

  Can’t wait, eh?

  Come on, turn the page already!

  – and so it begins...

  CHAPTER ONE

  Haunted by a Tin of Beans

  I was just washing my hands after my morning wake-up wee (see? Nothing glossed over) when I heard something downstairs.

  It sounded like someone was throwing stuff around the living room.

  “Mum?” I called. She was the only one in – it was just me and her living in that creepy old house – but I didn’t expect her to answer. Mum kind of lives in her lab in the basement. She doesn’t hear a thing down there with her music on.

  Mum is an inventor and, when she gets on the scent of a discovery, that’s it. She seems to forget I’m even here – just leaves a supply of baked beans on the kitchen worktop so I can feed myself while she’s working.

  Anyway, I could still hear weird stuff downstairs. Glass breaking. Things banging against the wall.

  We’ve got burglars! I thought. Or . . . more likely . . .

  Ghosts!

  I was glad that I’d just emptied my bladder.

  It may sound crazy, but, since we’d moved into our latest house at the start of the summer holidays, I had the weirdest feeling that I was being watched. The fact that our new house was an old, dark, creepy Victorian lodge – in the overgrown grounds of an old, even darker and creepier abandoned stately home – made things worse, as you can imagine. I was just glad the place had a toilet upstairs and downstairs, so a ‘wee of fear’ was always an option.

  But yes. Invisible things, watching me. That was the feeling I got from this place.

  I crept slowly down the stairs, hoping I’d meet Mum on her way up from her lab to investigate who – or what – was wrecking the living room. But, as I peeped through the open doorway, I realised that would be difficult.

  Because Mum was wrecking the living room.

  “Yeahhhhh!” Dressed in her usual skinny blue jeans and white leather lab coat, she was dancing about with a bulging bin bag over her shoulder. There was rubbish all over the floor, and she wasn’t stopping there: “Taste my slop, sofa cushions!” She reached into the bag, pulled out a half-empty Pot Noodle and chucked it onto the sofa. “Oh, okay, armchair, you wanna piece of this action?”

  I wish I could say I was shocked and dismayed by my mother’s behaviour but, to be honest, she’s often like this. She calls it ‘not pandering to society’s expectations of a woman in her forties’. I call it ‘totally embarrassing’.

  I watched her empty a tin of paint over the log basket. “Ha, now how about you, TV?”

  “STEP AWAY FROM THE TELEVISION!” I threw myself in front of it. With Mum working late every night, the telly was all I had for company; I wasn’t about to let it get coated in something gunky. “Mum, please, calm down. I know you’ve been working hard—”

  “Hard?” she cried. “You have no idea!”

  “No, YOU have Noah Deer,” I corrected her (punning cunningly). “I’m your son, remember? You have a son, Mum, and you’re freaking him out.”

  “Don’t be afraid, darling. I have to make the mess so that I can get rid of it!” She grinned at me, brown eyes wide and staring. “And I will, just you wait. I’m going to get rid of ALL the rubbish!”

  Sometimes I have to remind myself who’s the parent and who’s the child. “Mum,” I said patiently, “throwing it round the house is not getting rid of it. Now why don’t I get you some water?”

  “Water’s no good!” Mum cried. “Get me something that will stain!”

  “What?”

  “Bring some red wine!”

  “Mum, maybe you’ve had too much red wine already?”

  “I haven’t touched a drop!” Mum was skipping round the room, dancing with her smelly bin bag. “But if this thing works, I’m going to crack open the champagne!”

  Man, she’d really flipped this time. Since the TV no longer seemed in imminent danger, I figured it was best to fetch that glass of water after all and hope it might calm Mum down a little.

  So I headed through the draughty hall towards the kitchen. How I hated that old, cold kitchen with its freezing slate floor and big, black-leaded oven thing and the wooden worktops crowded with bean tins and . . .

&n
bsp; I froze.

  Stared.

  Felt hairs stand up on the back of my neck and chills prickle my spine.

  On the worktop, before my startled eyes, a tin of beans was shaking in a sinister fashion.

  Suddenly it floated into the air and bobbed towards me . . .

  CHAPTER TWO

  This House is Haunted

  (not necessarily by beans, but I’m not ruling them out)

  Unless you’ve ever gone up close and personal with a floating tin of beans, it probably doesn’t sound that scary. Beans aren’t famed for their spine-tingling nature.

  But it wasn’t the tin that was worrying me. It was the unknown THING waving the tin in my face.

  I couldn’t see anything, but I knew it had to be A GHOST!

  I just knew it! I thought (in between thinking ARRRRRRRRGH and NOOO­OO­OOO­OO­OO­OO­OOO and OMG, OMG, OMGeeeeeeeeeee!). I KNEW a ghost would show up in this creepy house sooner or later!

  Suddenly the tin dropped to the floor and burst open. Beans went splattering over the kitchen floor to their doom.

  I stared at the mess, still frozen in shock.

  That feeling I told you about – the feeling I was being watched? Well, I felt it right then. A sense that we weren’t alone, Mum and me. I’d had it for ages.

  It was nothing I could really pin down: a creaky floorboard at night (okay, I suppose I could pin down the floorboard, in theory) . . . ornaments vanishing from one room and turning up in another (yes, all right, I suppose I could pin down some of the ornaments as well) . . . things going missing without explanation (including the drawing pins I used to put up posters in my room; I couldn’t pin pins down, could I? Clever-pants!).

  Then there was that freaky feeling I told you about: the feeling that I was being watched.

  Why did Mum choose such a spooky place for us to live, you might ask?

  Well, after she broke up with Dad, she was going to buy a modern house with loads of cool kit for her work.

  Then she found that this place was for rent, and that the stately home in the grounds was once owned by her all-time idol – a posh Victorian scientist who broke all the rules, Baroness Jemima Smyth. We have her picture on the wall.

  Anyway, let’s get back to things in the kitchen. I was still staring at the bean can of big-time spookiness when I caught a movement behind me.

  ARRRRRRRRRGH!!!

  But it was only Mum.

  “Noah!” she cried. “Ooooh. You’ve made a mess!”

  Next thing I knew, she was pointing a gun at me!

  It wasn’t your typical gun – the sort that a gangster or space alien might use. This thing looked part vacuum cleaner, part supermarket checkout scanner and part laser gun with a small hourglass wired into the middle.

  “Mum, don’t shoot!” I squeaked. “I know you’re kind of stressed and I’m sorry there’s a mess, but—”

  “You did great, Noah!” Mum jumped over the beans spill and grabbed one of the tins. “Now, prepare to be shocked.”

  “I already am shocked!” I told her. “I didn’t do this. The beans sort of lifted into the air and—”

  “Anti-gravity beans, huh? Wow! Great idea, Noah. I’ll make a note.” She nodded distractedly, aiming her weird gadget at the mess on the floor. “Now! First, I scan your low-sugar baked haricot beans in tomato sauce and their tinplate container . . .”

  “Mum, listen—!”

  “It’s all right, Noah, I’m not cross with you.” Mum’s gadget beeped and flashed red. “You’re giving me another chance to demonstrate the scientific mega-breakthrough that is the Scan-and-Zapper!”

  “What?”

  “You’re giving me another chance to demonstrate the scientific mega-breakthrough that is the Scan-and-Zapper!” She nodded solemnly. “I cherish that gift.”

  “Please, Mum,” I said through gritted teeth, “I’ve just seen a tin of beans—”

  ZAPPPPPP! I flinched and closed my eyes as Mum’s gizmo fired a burst of bright red light.

  “Tin of beans?” She grinned. “What tin of beans?”

  I frowned. “Er, that tin of beans.” I pointed to the mess, still on the floor. “The tin just rose up into the—”

  “Ohhh, I’m such a div!” Mum groaned. “I forgot to switch on the Scan-and-Zapper’s power source – to make short work of the tomato sauce, aha ha!” She pressed some buttons and held her gizmo like a guitar. “C’mon!”

  ZAPPPPPP! The bright red light fired again. This time I was prepared and kept my eyes wide open.

  And . . . whoa!

  I stared, so amazed that even thoughts of the sinister bean poltergeist took a back seat for now.

  The dented can and its saucy splatter had disappeared!

  “Where did it go?” My world was rocked. “Things can’t just vanish into nothing!”

  “That’s exactly what I thought,” said Mum. “Things can’t just vanish into nothing. It makes a mockery of the laws of physics.”

  “So what happened to the beans, then?”

  “I think they just vanished into nothing.” Mum shrugged. “Unless maybe they were sent to another dimension . . .”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “Not exactly! Not yet.” Mum laughed and walked back to the living room. “But I know that those beans no longer exist in our world. And neither does that gunky trash I threw all over the place . . .”

  Still stunned, I followed her to find the paint and gunk and Pot Noodle had all gone. The room was rubbish-free.

  “How were you able to do this?” I asked.

  “Being a genius helps! And knowing a genius helps, too. Or sort of knowing one.”

  “Mum, are you trying to be mysterious?”

  “I don’t know, Noah.” Mum raised an eyebrow. “AM I???” Then she headed for the hall and the doorway to her basement lab. “I must get back to work. Can you make your own tea tonight? There are plenty more tins of beans on the kitchen worktop.”

  I grabbed her lab coat. “Mum, like I said before – those beans you zapped on the floor. Before they got there, they were floating in the air all by themselves!”

  “Ahhhh, yes, the anti-gravity beans!” Mum kissed my head. “I love your imagination.”

  “I mean it! It was like a ghost was waving them in my face!”

  “Right. Of course. Well, tell the ghost to push off – those beans are yours.” Mum winked at me. “Oh, and Scan-and-Zapper sucks as a name, don’t you think? See if you can think of a better one.” She waved and crossed to the door of her lab. “Now I really must find out more about this zapping process.”

  “Find out?” I frowned. “You invented it, didn’t you?”

  “Er . . . yes. Obviously.” Mum looked shiftily from side to side. “And it’s a good job someone as lovely as me did invent it. In the wrong hands, the Scan-and-Zapper could be the most massively dangerous weapon in history . . .”

  As she spoke, the door handle turned by itself. And then the door creaked open. I gasped, pointed and whimpered at this sudden super-spookiness – but Mum had already walked through and gone downstairs, lost in thought.

  Once she’d gone, the door swung shut firmly behind her.

  At least, it sounded like it did. I didn’t actually see it.

  I was already racing off to the toilet.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In which, Stuff that’s a Bit Freaky Happens

  After my toilet trip (another wee was performed), I shivered in my room under a duvet for quite a while. My mind was trying to come to terms with all I’d seen.

  Had that tin of beans really floated by itself?

  Had Mum really made it disappear with her ‘Scan-and-Zapper’ (better name to be confirmed)?

  Had Mum’s door really opened and closed by itself?

  (Clue: Yes. Duh! Weren’t you reading any of the last chapter?)

  My mind had become a whirlwind of weird. Curse my mum! Why did she have to be inspired by some dead Victorian scientist? Why couldn’t someone
like Tony Stark/Iron Man have fired her up instead? Then maybe she’d have rented a flashy tower block in New York and invented a cool robot suit instead of building a high-tech bean-mop in a haunted house.

  Straight away, of course, I felt bad for resenting Mum’s work. It hadn’t been easy for her, following her scientific dreams while looking after me. Since Dad had emigrated to the other side of the world, he hadn’t been much help with the babysitting. I didn’t want to add to her stress levels. Especially as this invention of hers a) actually worked and b) might make her RICH! Which meant no more baked beans and no more spooky little house. She’d realise at last how she’d neglected me, and to make her feel better I would allow her to shower me with fantastically expensive gifts for several years. What can I say? I’m big-hearted like that.

  Meantime, she’d asked me to come up with a better name for her new invention, hadn’t she? What should it be called? I wondered. How about . . .

  The Scan-o-Zap™

  The Zapper-Scanno-Matic™

  The Whoops-Where-Did-That-Thing-Go-Ray™ (or WWDTTG-Ray for short. Or, er, long. Why does ‘W’ take so long to say? Curse you, letter ‘W’!)

  The Beam Extreme™ (simple but effective)

  Beam Removing Intricate Atoms in Nanoseconds™ (or BRIAN™ for short)

  The WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT? HOW-THE-WHAT-DID-THAT-DID-YOU-SEE-HUH???™

  In fact, the more I thought about Mum’s amazing invention (you know, to try and take my mind off GHOSTS), the more my mind went, WHOA there, soldier!

  Think of the possibilities! You could do amazing, incredible, impossible things with a BRIAN™. I mean, for starters you could:

  • Scan nasty, horrible viruses and diseases and zap them out of a patient’s body!

  • Scan atomic bombs and zap them out of existence!

  • Scan the smoke pouring out of factory chimneys and zap it to stop the pollution!

  • Scan your wee and poo and then zap yourself every morning so you don’t need to waste time going to the toilet any more! (Note: This would also make action stories more believable.)