Floods 5 (9 page)

‘Vot am I doing here? Thank you, good morning, please,' he said, spitting earth out of his mouth. ‘Burying for the dead persons is good, thank you, but I am not dead being, thank you, good afternoon.'

Two seconds later he was dead being.

The mound of sand where she had buried the original Klaus von Klaus was still there. Instead of digging into it, the Hearse Whisperer simply assumed the body had miraculously come back to life and escaped, leaving a pile of sand to make it look like he was still there.

She flew back to Quicklime's to find yet another Klaus von Klaus clone sitting at the table drinking a cup of tea. This time she was really confused but, remembering what had happened before, she did not take a step back. Instead she
took a step sideways and hit her head on the wall, which made her fall off the windowsill and back into the drain again.

‘Now I am REALLY ANGRY!' she screamed.

This time, there was no way turning a small child into a bucket of carrots would make her feel better. This time she turned two small boys into Welsh
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stamp collectors who only collected stamps
from countries beginning with W, none of whom actually produce any stamps.

Once more she made everyone fall asleep, took the second clone and buried it next to the other two, but she still didn't check the other graves until she had brought the third clone back to bury.

Then she realised what was going on and got double, triple, super REALLY, REALLY ANGRY.

Buckets of carrots and Welsh stamp collectors were not going to come anywhere near making her feel any better. Not even an enormous bar of chocolate would fix it, though it did help. She had to eat twenty-seven massive bars of chocolate before she calmed down completely. Unfortunately she only stayed calm for a couple of minutes before she was very sick, which, of course, made her angry again.

But,
she thought, philosophically,
angry is what I do best. It's my greatest talent. It's what I'm famous for.

That made her feel better. Except now she felt better, she wasn't angry any more and that made
her angry because being angry was what she was best at. She flew back to Quicklime's and beat her head against the same wall that Grusom had beaten his on earlier. She could sense that he had been there before her and that made her angry, but then she got distracted because she noticed that the grass was green and that made her angry too.

She then killed and buried the last clone, so that there were five dead Klaus von Klauses buried in a row on the beach of Inaccessible Island and
zero Klaus von Klauses at Quicklime College. The Hearse Whisperer was generally quite good at burying people, but this time she was so frustrated that she didn't bury them as deeply as she should have. There was an unusually high tide that night and the next morning there were ten Klaus von Klaus feet sticking up out of the sand, like a tiny model of the Easter Island statues.

‘I am not making any more clones,' said Doctor Mordant. ‘Have you any idea how tiring
it is? And I mean, if you can't manage to keep a single one of them, I don't see why I should bother. I just don't think you're valuing my work nearly enough and I'm really upset.'

‘I don't think you need to make any more,' said Grusom. ‘I think it is now very obvious that the Flood children are definitely behind the murder.'

‘How come?' said the headmaster. ‘I know there seems to be increasing evidence of their guilt, but I still find it hard to believe. I'm sure something or someone else is involved.'

‘Well,' said Grusom, ‘just add up the numbers. We have had one original and four clones of the dead professor stolen. Five. And how many Flood children are there at the school?'

‘Five,' said Avid.

‘EXACTLY!' said Grusom.

‘That doesn't prove anything,' said the headmaster, who had just realised that Grusom was more than a bit strange. He was a complete fruit-loop with as much scientific ability as a broccoli-and-rhubarb sandwich.

‘OK, OK,' Grusom persisted. ‘Do this then. Make one more clone and if that doesn't get stolen then that will prove it.'

‘No it won't,' said Doctor Mordant, ‘and I am not making any more. You don't deserve it.'

With that, he stormed off and cloned himself another six eyes so he could have a really good cry.

Grusom took Avid to one side and whispered that it was looking as if the headmaster and Doctor Mordant might be involved in the whole thing too and were trying to cover up for the evil, and therefore obviously guilty, Flood children.

‘I can't believe the headmaster's involved,' said Avid. ‘I mean, he runs the school. He'd hardly want dead bodies around the place. And don't forget, he was the one who sent for us in the first place.'

‘I think that was just a part of his incredibly cunning plan to throw us off the scent and shift the blame away from him and the Floods.'

‘Well, why would I bother to send for you in the first place?' said the headmaster from his desk a metre away. ‘And when you take someone aside
and whisper to them, I suggest you whisper a lot more quietly and go further away.'

‘Well, how come you're wearing red socks then?' said Grusom. ‘If not to hide the splashes of blood from the murder?'

‘I think,' said the headmaster in a slow and deliberate way, ‘that you are probably insane.'

‘Oh yes? Oh yes?' said Grusom. ‘Well, why are lobsters all left-handed then? Answer me that then.'

‘What on earth has that got to do with the case?' said the headmaster.

Or anything at all?
thought Avid.

She finally had to admit to herself that her boss was as crazy as a bucket of angry jellyfish playing with an electric drill, and that meant she now also had to struggle with the fact that she had been foolish enough to fall in love with him. She saw years stretching ahead of her visiting her beloved in his padded cell in the Blue Torch Retirement Home for Confused Forensic Scientists and feeding him porridge with a blunt spoon as he
dribbled down his bib all over his blue torch. She knew that if she had any sense she would get out while she could and find herself an nice ordinary safe bank manager called Nigel Davenport, but she was in love and sense had nothing to do with it. She patted Grusom on the arm and looked away so he wouldn't see the tears in her eyes.

How close and very similar being a genius is to being a loony,
she thought.

Grusom looked at Avid suspiciously.
Are those tears?
he thought.
If they are, that could mean she's in on the whole thing too. Unless she has been peeling onions while my back was turned
.

In a tree outside the window a sleek grey bird looked into the room and stared straight at Grusom.

‘Cuckoo,' it said.

‘How true,' said the Hearse Whisperer, who was sitting next to it disguised as another cuckoo.

Meanwhile, back in the Sahara Desert, the five Flood children were planning what to do next. They were sitting around the screen of Winchflat's I'll-Think-Of-A-Place-And-Then-We-Can-All-See-It invention – known as the Peeky Thing – watching what was going on back at Quicklime's. Most of the wanted posters had already had moustaches and thick black glasses drawn on the faces, which had completely confused Grusom. He had issued an arrest warrant for a second family of Flood children, all of whom had moustaches and wore thick glasses.

‘I don't think we need worry too much about the wanted posters and that stuff,' said Winchflat. ‘After all, Grusom is crazy and it won't take much magic to make everyone see that and realise we're innocent.'

‘But the Hearse Whisperer is another matter,' he added. ‘We are going to have to do something about her, something permanent, otherwise she will be after us forever.'

‘Why don't we trap her in a bottle?' said Satanella. ‘You know, like you do with a genie.'

‘That wouldn't work,' said Merlinmary. ‘She's much too powerful to keep in a bottle. She'd just shatter it.'

‘Not if it was a magic bottle,' said Morbid.

‘I think it's risky,' said Merlinmary. ‘I mean, supposing someone rubs the bottle like you do to make the genie come out.'

‘We could make the outside of the bottle really gross and disgusting so no one would want to touch it,' said Satanella. ‘And we could put it where no one could ever reach it.'

‘Yes, we could sink it to the bottom of the deepest ocean,' said Morbid, ‘and then Twinkletoes could guard it.'

Twinkletoes was Morbid and Silent's pet Vampire Octopus, one of the most terrifying creatures you could ever meet.
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Except that if you did meet one, you would already be dead because they live in the deepest, darkest oceans where no humans can go unless they are in a very special high-pressure submarine. Of course, if you are a wizard you can dive to those depths with no problems at all, which is what Morbid and Silent did to feed Twinkletoes and play fetch by dragging
a dead mermaid around on a bit of rope.

‘OK. Let's say we can keep the bottle safe once the Hearse Whisperer is inside it,' said Merlinmary. ‘How do we get her to go inside in the first place and how do we get the cork in before she shoots out again?'

‘No problem,' said Winchflat. ‘I will make a Super-Strong-So-Transparent-You-Can't-See-It-Bottle, then we will put it in a cave with an opening exactly the same size as the top of the bottle and we will be inside the cave behind the bottle and the Hearse Whisperer will see us, but not see the bottle, and come shooting in to get us.'

‘I don't want to seem to be the one who's, like, always down on everything,' said Merlinmary, ‘but how do we get the cork in the bottle if we're all in the back of the cave?'

‘We could use a bit of string,' said Morbid, ‘and we could tie it to the cork and then thread it over a branch and round a stick and under the bottle to where we're hiding and then we could pull the string and –'

‘She might see the string or a magpie might come and steal the string,' said Satanella. ‘They're famous for that. I saw it on David Attenborough. They steal corks too.'

‘We need something to ram the cork in really hard,' said Merlinmary.

‘Like a rampaging bull,' said Satanella.

‘Funny you should say that,' said Lord Clacton, who was doing his best to help his friends. ‘I actually happen to own a rampaging bull, Chloe of Clacton.'

‘Chloe?' said Merlinmary. ‘Isn't that a girl's name?'

‘Yes,' said Lord Clacton, ‘but it's an old Clacton tradition. There's been a bull called Chloe in our family for thirty-six generations.'

‘All called Chloe?' asked Morbid.

‘Absolutely, can't break with tradition.'

‘And did they all rampage?' said Satanella.

‘Well, or course they jolly well did,' said Lord Clacton. ‘After all, old thing, if you were a macho 400-pound bull and people kept calling you Chloe,
you'd feel like a bit of the old rampaging too.'

‘True.'

Making the bottle was easy. Winchflat and Lord Clacton were both geniuses so a Super-Strong-So-Transparent-You-Can't-See-It-Bottle was child's play. It was the sort of thing either of them could
make with one arm tied behind their back, and to prove it Winchflat took off one of his arms and tied it behind Lord Clacton's back while they made the bottle. Glass is basically made of silica with a few odds and ends added, and silica is what sand is made of and they were in the middle of the desert so the 12,700 tons of sand that it took to make their magic bottle was right outside the back door.

They decided the best place to put the bottle would be in the secret cave that Klaus von Klaus had been hiding in on Inaccessible Island before the Hearse Whisperer killed him. And they decided they would lure her there with someone she would not be expecting to see.

Their youngest sister, Betty.

Now you might be wondering how they could get in touch with Betty, since they had decided that under no circumstances would they make contact with home in case the Hearse Whisperer or the FSI people were tapping the phones and internet. The answer is yet another of Winchflat's special brilliant inventions.

You see, Betty had always felt a bit annoyed that she couldn't go to school with all the others. Compared to Quicklime College, her ordinary human school seemed really boring, but it wasn't only that. The truth was, she missed her brothers and sisters. So because Winchflat was very fond of his baby sister he had made her a special tiny TV. The TV had four different channels: one for Winchflat, one for the twins and one each for Satanella and Merlinmary. There was no danger of the Hearse Whisperer or anyone else hacking into this special TV because it was actually built inside Betty's brain. Whenever she wanted to see what her brothers and sisters were doing at Quicklime's, all she had to do was concentrate a bit and there they were in her mind's eye. Like a normal TV, she could see and hear them, but they couldn't see or hear her. They couldn't make direct contact with each other.

Whenever Betty got bored at school, which only happened once or twice every five minutes, she turned on her TV to see what the others were doing. The more she watched, the more she became
determined to persuade her parents to let her go to Quicklime's. Changing mushrooms into baby dragons, which was what the twins had been doing last time she'd looked, was about four trillion and fifty times more exciting than learning how to add 423 to 97, which was what she had been supposed to be doing at Sunnyview Primary School that day.

Winchflat, who had a little My-Sister-Has-Turned-On-Her-TV-Detector, knew that Betty tuned in to all four stations lots of times every day,
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so she would already have some idea of what had been happening.

‘All we have to do,' he explained to everyone, ‘is write a message on a piece of paper and hold it up and then the next time little sister tunes in she'll read it.'

‘You mean she can watch us whenever she wants to?' said Merlinmary when Winchflat told them more about Betty's TV.

‘Yes.'

‘Yeuuhhh. You mean even when we go to the toilet?' said Morbid.

‘No, I put a special filter in for that,' Winchflat explained. ‘No toilet or bathroom stuff.'

‘Thank goodness,' said Satanella, who had some secret and rather disgusting habits which involved swapping toilet paper for kittens, and no one would want to see what happened when Merlinmary, who could never switch off her massive electrical field, went to the bathroom. Mind you, even without the filter, Betty wouldn't have been able to see anything when Merlinmary went to the bathroom, because of the incredible amount of steam created by all the water boiling frantically away in the lavatory bowl and the clouds of smoke from the burning toilet paper.

The first time Betty had tuned in and found them all in the Sahara Desert, she thought they were on a school field trip.

‘That is so unfair,' she said. ‘They get to go to a massive desert in North Africa and all my class
gets is a tour round the local yoghurt factory.'

She was overlooking what had happened at the yoghurt factory. It had actually been quite a brilliant visit. Pretty dull at first, but when the manager – who was the sort of short, bald loser who could only make himself feel good by humiliating children, a bit like a PE teacher – made Betty's best friend, Ffiona, slip on her bottom in a raspberry yoghurt puddle, things had become a lot more fun. A few mind-controlled adjustments to some of the machines, combined with a couple of quick spells,
and the place had erupted in chaos. It would be months before they scraped all the banana puree off the roof and caught the last of the giant Madagascan Hissing Cockroaches that had suddenly appeared in the hazelnut dream pudding vats, and were keeping everyone away with their hissing. And how they would ever get the full-sized Russian submarine out of the low-fat strawberry yoghurt tank without the torpedoes exploding was anyone's guess.
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Betty soon worked out that her brothers and sisters were not on a school trip, but on the run from the Hearse Whisperer, her family's sworn enemy. Once she had read Winchflat's notes, she went to her mother.

‘Young lady, if you think I'm letting you go off to some desolate island off the coast of Tristan da Cunha to lure the most evil being in the world into a bottle,' said Mordonna, ‘you've got another think coming.'

‘But it's the only way we can save them,' Betty pleaded. ‘You have to let me go.'

‘Absolutely not.'

‘I could go,' said Nerlin. ‘In disguise.'

‘So you – a six-foot-six-tall middle-aged wizard with a big nose – are going to disguise yourself as a pretty, blonde ten-year-old girl?' said Mordonna.

‘Umm, err, well, if you helped me with some magic and a blonde wig and I got down on my knees I could,' said Nerlin.

‘My darling, there is no magic anywhere that could make you pretty,' said Mordonna. ‘Sure, I could turn you into a girl with a couple of spells and a pair of scissors, but pretty? No way.'

‘But, Mum …' Betty began.

‘No, there's only one thing to do,' said Mordonna. ‘I will go and lure the Hearse Whisperer into the bottle. After all, I'm the one she's trying to catch to take back to my father, so she won't dare try to harm me. And when I suddenly appear, she'll think I've come to save my children and be so
pleased with herself that her plan has worked, she'll let her guard down.'

So Betty detached Winchflat's My-Sister-Has-Turned-On-Her-TV-Detector from behind her left ear and gave it to her mother, so Winchflat would know she was on her way to Tristan da Cunha. Though, of course, he would think it was Betty, not his mother.

‘And don't either of you dare follow me,' said Mordonna to Betty and Nerlin. ‘I'll go via England to collect Chloe from Castle Clacton, and then I'll go on to the Sahara to join the children.'