Devils in Danger, page 2
‘No silly business, okay?’ I reminded Josh. ‘Or else.’
The Hills Hoist rattled in the wind as I told him to lean against the rainwater tank and close his eyes while he counted. ‘To twenty,’ I instructed, my pocket bulging with eggs. ‘Slowly.’
I hurried around the yard, hiding an egg behind Dad’s ‘Gone Fishing’ gnome with its nose chipped off, one in the peg basket hanging from the clothesline and a few on the trampoline.
‘Thirteen, fourteen …’ Josh murmured.
I still had three eggs left. I glanced at the back fence. What had ducked under there earlier? A cat, a fairy penguin, an echidna?
‘Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen …’
With a quick flick of my wrist, I chucked the last three eggs between Mum’s potted plants, which stood lined up in front of the verandah. With a bit of luck, Josh would spend ages looking for the chocolates, leaving me – and my soft toys – in peace.
‘Coming, ready or not!’ Josh cried.
I stood back as he tore around the yard. The eggs on the trampoline went first, then the one behind the gnome.
‘Three more,’ I encouraged, but no matter where he looked, Josh couldn’t find them.
‘Tell me where they are!’ he demanded, peeling the foil from an egg he’d already found and shoving it into his mouth. ‘Or … I’ll dob.’
I slid my eyes past the pots of petunias. Darn it. The eggs must have rolled into the dark space beneath our house.
Josh saw me looking. ‘Under there?’ he whimpered, clutching his hands to his sailing boat vest. ‘What about copperheads?’
‘It’s too cold for snakes now,’ I said. Winter always set in fast after Easter at Dodges.
‘Funnel-webs?’
‘Nope.’ I didn’t know for sure but it seemed unlikely there’d be a funnel-web spider under our house. I’d never seen one.
‘What about …?’
‘You want the eggs or not?’
Josh stood his ground, his chocolatey mouth turned stubbornly upside down.
‘Okay, okay, wait here,’ I relented, kneeling and squinting past the flowers into the gloom. The eggs couldn’t be that far. The glint of their colourful foil would soon give them away.
I stuck my arm in between the pots, all the way up to my shoulder, and felt around in the dirt. My heart began to thump. Something smelt weird. Like a grotty dog’s bed or the damp feathery smell of a chook house.
‘Hurry up,’ whined Josh.
I took a breath. It was only the underneath of our house. A house I’d lived in since I was born. Nothing to see, except three Easter eggs. I kept moving my fingers through the dust, but then, without warning, I had a feeling. A tingling feeling. I wrenched back my arm, my heart thrashing as I stood and brushed the dirt from my elbows.
‘What kind of snake was it?’ whispered Josh. His eyes were wide, his face pale.
‘It wasn’t a snake …’ How could I explain?
‘Josh?’ Mrs Dwyer’s hair was all shiny and blow-dried as she frowned down at us from the side steps.
‘Killarney got bit by a snake,’ Josh announced.
Mrs Dwyer’s mouth fell open. ‘Killarney?’
‘Yeah, I mean, no. There’s no snake. I just got a fright, that’s all.’
‘Right, well …’ Mrs Dwyer held out her hand towards her son. ‘Say thank you to Killarney, please.’
Josh chorused an obedient ‘thank you’ while I peered into the darkness again. I took a deep, calming breath. How ridiculous. What had come over me? There was nothing spooky under the house.
Was there?
Chapter 3
The following afternoon, I ducked over to Noah’s to fill him in about the new clues. I found him on the couch, dressed in grey baggy trackpants and a hoodie, while the TV blared with the Sunday footy game. Bones slept on one side of him while a half-eaten packet of Tim Tams lay crumpled on the other.
‘You winning?’ I asked, bending to sneak a handful of the chocolate biscuits.
‘Nah. Eighty to sixty-six down. The umpire sucks.’
‘Where’s your jersey?’
Noah’s eyes didn’t leave the screen. ‘Huh?’
‘Your Hawks footy jersey? Isn’t it bad luck for your team or something if you don’t wear it when they’re playing?’
Noah grunted.
‘What?’
‘Shhh, I’m trying to watch.’
‘You’ve lost it, haven’t you?’ Grannie Annie had won the jersey in the footy club’s grand final raffle last year. It was signed by all the players and was Noah’s favourite thing in the world – after his gaming stuff, of course.
Noah didn’t answer, so I flopped onto the couch next to him. ‘Guess what?’
Noah groaned. ‘More poo?’
‘No.’ I explained how I had found paw prints and seen a mysterious creature scurrying under the fence. I was just about to add in the creepy under-the-house feeling when finding eggs for Josh, but the football game ended and Noah slid in front of his computer. I fully expected him to start up his latest game, but then he waved me over.
‘What were they like?’ he asked, typing mysterious paw prints into the search engine. ‘Round, large, small?’
So he was interested. I snorted as pictures of the Yeti, the Yowie and the Tasmanian tiger came up. ‘Tasmanian tigers are extinct,’ I scoffed.
Noah kept scrolling until he found a page with black outlines of various paw prints, including quolls, potoroos and wombats.
I gasped. ‘That’s it!’
‘Killarney, your detective skills are fundamentally flawed,’ Noah said. ‘We don’t have dingoes in Tasmania.’
I sighed.
‘A cat?’ asked Noah, pointing to a print with four small toe prints and one triangular pad.
I shook my head. The print I’d seen didn’t look like any of the ones on the computer. What could the mystery creature be?
I woke extra early the next morning. I needed to talk to Missy. My best friend, Missy, was a nature lover like me and might know the answer to our mysterious clues.
I quickly dressed and ate breakfast, then searched for Mum to say goodbye. I found her peering into the bathroom mirror, concentrating on making long strokes with her mascara wand. It always made me laugh the way she pulled her lips to one side as she dabbed her bottom lashes. ‘Morning. You’re up early. How’d you sleep?’ she asked.
I opened my mouth to explain I’d been worrying about the visitor in our yard, but Mum turned so quickly from the mirror I didn’t have a chance. ‘Oh no!’ she exclaimed. ‘Of course. Your book report! Isn’t it due in today?’
I gulped. How come she always remembered? ‘All good,’ I lied. ‘I just need to fix a couple of spelling mistakes and it’s done.’ More like, I needed to read the book. The whole book, from start to finish.
I hated doing schoolwork. I planned to be a hairdresser like Mum, so I really didn’t see the point in it. I’d long mastered braiding hair, washing towels and making coffee, so pretty much the first year of my traineeship was already nailed. Not that Mum agreed. She was obsessed with my grades at school.
‘You finished it?’ Mum eyed me suspiciously. ‘Really?’
I nodded, but crossed my fingers behind my back. ‘Yup.’
Mum’s face relaxed. ‘That’s the spirit, Killarney. Well done, you.’
I didn’t linger after that. I couldn’t give Mum any more chances to ask about my homework. I gave her a quick kiss, grabbed my bag and laced my shoes, and scurried off to school.
‘Hey!’ Missy arrived at the bag racks just as I did, dumping her backpack next to mine. ‘Here.’ She passed me her brush and ribbons before shoving someone’s black trumpet case away so I could sit beside her on the bench. I always braided my friends’ hair before school, and Missy liked to get in first.
‘You’ll never guess what,’ she began as I started combing. Missy had straight black hair, which smelt of vanilla and coconut shampoo.
‘No, you’ll never guess what,’ I said. Missy would die when she heard about our mystery creature. She’d be over in a shot, hoping we could spot it. If anyone knew anything about animals in our grade, it had to be me or Missy.
There was silence for a second until Missy said, ‘You go first,’ right at the exact same moment I said, ‘You go first!’
We laughed. Missy’s laugh was sort of tinkly and made you feel special. Unlike her younger brother, Mario. He and his horrible Grade Three friends had this knack for making you feel stupid. Today was no exception. He sidled up to Missy and I while we were talking and started doing exaggerated eye rolls at our laughter, as if we were the most pathetic people on earth.
‘Mario!’ Missy scolded. ‘Go play with your friends.’
Mario shrugged towards the empty handball courts. ‘Nobody’s here yet,’ he complained.
‘Go practice on your own, then,’ she instructed, which made Mario stick out his tongue and blow a giant raspberry.
‘Ugh. Just ignore him. I’ve got something to show you.’ Missy rummaged through her bag until she found what she wanted. ‘Ta da!’ she gushed, flourishing a gold column trophy with a shiny gold pony and rider on top.
‘You won?’ I squealed. Missy and another girl, Alise, had been to their first gymkhana on the holidays. I’d plaited the ponies’ manes and tails and even done the girls’ hair to match. ‘Which event did you win?’ Missy’s fat pony, Trevor, seemed like the least likely horse to win anything, except maybe a carrot-eating competition.
‘Der! First place for presentation, obviously!’
‘Presentation? Awesome!’
‘The judge said we had just the right number of plaits and they were so neat she could hardly believe it. Thanks to you.’
The morning bell was about to go, and heaps of kids were now streaming into the undercover area. Including our friends, Katie and Urasha, who dumped their bags with ours.
‘OMG! A TROPHY?’ Katie squealed when she saw what Missy was holding.
‘YOU WON?’ trilled Urasha.
We pulled into a tight group hug, chanting, ‘SHE WON! SHE WON! SHE WON!’ before Missy tucked her trophy away. ‘Killarney’s got some big news too,’ she announced, grinning excitedly at me.
Katie and Urasha leant forwards, their eyes wide with anticipation.
‘It was a dark and foggy night,’ I began, making my voice sound deep and mysterious. I described the terrifying screams, enjoying the way Missy’s jaw fell open and Urasha grabbed Katie’s hand. I was really whipping the story into a frenzy by the time I got to the part about the paw prints, hushing my voice dramatically to add, ‘And then there was a weird dropping, a poo, full of hair and bones, so I got a stick and—’
Missy reeled away from me, her nose crinkling in disbelief. ‘What? You seriously didn’t, did you? Oh my god. You did? You stuck a stick in some—?’
‘Ewww!’ shrieked Ursaha and Katie. ‘That’s disgusting.’
‘Killarney plays with poo!’ chanted Mario. ‘Killarney plays with poo!’
I gulped. I hadn’t noticed him still hanging around.
‘Go away, Mario!’ Missy snapped. ‘As if Killarney would …’ She hesitated, turning to look at me. ‘Killarney? You wouldn’t seriously, like, play …’
‘As if!’ I tried to laugh. But my face burnt. What was I thinking, telling them about the poo? I quickly gathered up the ribbons and hairbrush. ‘I didn’t actually—’
‘Killarney plays with poo! Killarney plays with poo!’ clamoured Mario.
‘Shush!’ I hissed, thankful for the bell signalling the start of class. ‘Don’t tell everyone.’
But he was. He was telling everyone. Instead of heading to their classrooms, he and his Grade Three friends stood around us, laughing and shooting me horrified but fascinated looks.
‘Seriously, Killarney!’ Missy said. ‘What’s got into you?’
For once, I was relieved when our teacher, Miss Bredlow, ducked her head through our classroom door. ‘Sorry to break up the party,’ she said, ‘but I gather you’re not just here for decoration? Can I possibly tempt anyone inside this morning?’
We trooped in to class, leaving Mario and his groupies to go to theirs. I wished I could talk to Missy on her own. Explain and make her understand. But Missy and I sat at different tables, so I didn’t get the chance. Then, at first break, she and Urasha had band practice and, at second break, the jazz troupe wanted their hair braided for their photos. And later, since it was Monday, Missy, Katie and Urasha had to race off to netball practice, so that was the end of that.
Perhaps it was just a busy day, but I had a sinking feeling that Missy was trying to avoid me.
Chapter 4
‘Killarney!’ cried Mum as I grabbed a drink in the kitchen after school. ‘You have to take Bones for a walk. She’s been barking non-stop all day!’ Despite the cool weather, Mum’s face was flushed and her brow was beaded with sweat. She seemed at her wit’s end with Bones’s behaviour. ‘Mr Snibbler’s coming in for his moustache trim shortly,’ she added, ‘and you know how he feels about dogs.’
A complete car fanatic, Mr Snibbler lived at the end of our street. His ancient but prized limousine was too big for his garage and made quite a statement parked out the front of his house. He’d apparently once been a chauffeur to the rich and famous and was very particular about keeping his limousine – and his highly pampered moustache – in pristine condition. He was Mum’s most frequent customer.
Unfortunately.
‘Mr Snibbler won’t stand for all this barking,’ continued Mum. ‘Quick, before he comes—’
But it was too late. The side door swung open.
‘Oh hello, Mr Snibbler. Come on in,’ Mum gushed, her face turning even pinker.
‘Afternoon.’ Mr Snibbler’s signature chauffeur’s cap sat firmly perched on his head, while his long thin legs stuck out like sticks below the too-short hem of his suit pants. ‘What a racket!’ he complained. ‘All that barking.’ He brushed a finger and thumb through his grey handlebar moustache before sitting in Mum’s salon chair. ‘Not a jolly thing one can do about it, I suppose?’ he said while Mum caped him up. ‘Always dogs, dogs and more dogs, wherever you go. City, country, seaside. Never a peaceful minute.’
‘Sorry, Mr Snibbler,’ said Mum. ‘How about Killarney makes you a nice coffee?’ Mum quickly turned up her music while I loaded a biodegradable capsule into the coffee machine, filled milk up to the line in the frother and slid a cup under the spout. As Mum hoped, the music and the whirring of the machine soon drowned out the barking.
‘Here you go, Mr Snibbler,’ I said, ‘one extra-hot skinny cappuccino, in a mug, no cocoa on top. Just how you like it.’ I handed Mr Snibbler the coffee, acknowledged his polite thank you, then made my way towards the door, planning to go and collect Bones.
But I froze as a startled cry rang out behind me.
I turned, my gaze falling to Mr Snibbler’s cup, which he held out as if it contained a spitting cobra. His eyes were squeezed tight and his bushy eyebrows nearly clashed with his nose.
‘Is something wrong?’ I asked, my mind racing. I’d used fresh water, a clean cup, low-fat milk. Perhaps the milk was off?
Mr Snibbler’s eyes flew open. ‘Something wrong? Something wrong, she asks?’ He thrust the cup towards me. ‘Honestly! A simple cup of coffee, is that too much to hope for?’
I took the cup from Mr Snibbler’s outstretched hand and brought it gingerly to my nose. Mum stood frozen, a tub of moustache wax half opened in her grasp, while I sniffed the coffee. It smelt normal. Maybe I should taste it?
‘Killarney,’ Mum breathed as I touched the porcelain to my lips. ‘No!’
I tried not to screw up my nose, and three, two, one … I took a tiny sip. The coffee was hot. And bitter. And revolting.
I couldn’t help but scrunch my face, making Mr Snibbler snort. ‘Well?’ he demanded.
‘Sorry, Mr Snibbler,’ I muttered. ‘I forgot to add in your sugars.’ Three teaspoons plus two artificial sweeteners. Thoroughly stirred.
‘Honestly,’ he groaned while I made up a fresh cup, ‘what are we to do with this world?’
Bones was still barking when I dropped by next door to fetch her lead. My legs hadn’t stopped shaking after the kerfuffle with Mr Snibbler and I was looking forward to a walk and some fresh air.
‘Fancy some beetroot?’ Grannie Annie was sorting through a cardboard box of vegetables, wearing a baby-blue scarf around her hair.
Not more beetroot! We’d been eating it all Easter. ‘Can I check with Mum?’ I asked. ‘Hi, Noah.’
‘Hey, squirt.’ Noah sat at his computer with his gaming headphones slung around his neck and a can of soft drink at his side. He wasn’t playing a game, though. The screen was filled with hashtags and equal signs and a whole lot of other weird symbols.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
Noah scrolled to another page. ‘Coding. Due tomorrow. I’d nearly finished it, then lost it and had to start all over again. What about you? Don’t you have any homework?’
I told him about Mr Snibbler and his coffee. ‘Mum wants me to walk Bones, to keep her away from the house.’
Noah took a swig of his drink, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘Yeah, she’s been going nuts these past few days. Must be the thing hanging out in your yard. Are you sure it isn’t a wombat?’ he added. ‘There was one at the bus stop this morning.’
I frowned. The dropping I’d seen was thin and longish, and full of bones and hair. Wombats didn’t eat bones. ‘It’s not a wombat,’ I assured him. Plus, there were loads of bare-nosed wombats around Dodges, and Bones had never been this fascinated by one before.
Noah shrugged. ‘Just saying.’
‘Kill-ar-ney!’
Oh no! Mum sounded really furious now. ‘Sorry. Gotta go,’ I said. ‘Going to walk your dog.’
