Sucked Under (2 page)

And then Jasper knew exactly was happening.

They had been Monstered.

Felix and Jasper lay panting on the floor of the room.

Felix flicked the torchlight onto the large jar in his hand. ‘Skankbamboozlers,' Felix muttered in disgust.

Two hairy, purple, worm-like monsters with horribly human faces peered out at them. They wagged their tails back and forth and laughed madly at the two boys.

‘Those!
Inside
our brains – ugh!' Felix shivered.

‘We should have known,' Jasper replied.

‘Sore eyes, fuzzy head, confusion. Do you think we failed?'

Felix shrugged. ‘We were Scrambled good.'

He gave the jar a vicious shake.

‘
They must have got in through the headphones,' Jasper added. He knew his class teacher Stenka wouldn't let them live this down in a hurry. ‘We didn't even wear our earplugs or nosepegs to block the inlets to the brain.' Jasper pulled the unused plugs and pegs from his hunt belt with a hopeless expression.

‘But Sir Tavish said it was a test on Morphers!'

Felix glared at the Skankbamboozlers again. ‘And what's with the lights?' he murmured as he made a shadow bunny jump across the beam of the torch.

Usually, as soon as the test was finished, the lights would come on, the door would unlock, and a voice would come over the intercom telling you to ‘
proceed to the exit'.
But so far … nothing.

Felix froze, his shadow bunny caught in mid-hop. ‘Unless of course, the monsters have teamed up. Like Sir Tavish was going on about.'

Felix was staring at something directly behind Jasper.

Suddenly the lights not coming on made sense. The test wasn't over.

‘The Morpher – it's behind me, isn't it?' Jasper whispered.

Felix gulped.

Jasper turned around very slowly.

Four dark blue slits had appeared on the wall and were looking right at them.

‘Eyes!' whispered Felix.

The walls of the room began to
breathe
. The paint turned from grey to a dark, moist red.

Jasper felt the torch fall from his fingertips and hit the ground – which had turned into a soft mound of muscle.

There wasn't a monster
in
the room.

The monster
was
the room.

Jasper's body suddenly buzzed with excitement. He gritted his teeth and charged. A long rope of muscle shot towards him. It whipped around his body and snatched him up into the air. The muscle tightened around his chest. He could hardly breathe.

Felix pulled hard on Jasper's legs, trying to free him. ‘What's its weakness?' he screamed desperately.

Every single monster, no matter how nasty and horrible, had a weakness. And knowing it was a monster-hunter's best weapon.

‘I was hoping you'd tell me!' gasped Jasper. He racked his brain, desperately trying to think which monster could morph into a room.

The monster tightened its grip around Jasper's chest. His ribcage was being crushed. It hurt so much that his eyes welled up with tears. He hoped Felix couldn't see the fat tear he felt rolling down his cheek.

The tear splatted softly onto the floor. Suddenly, the monster-room began to shake, as if an earthquake had hit. The walls and floor of the monster-room quickly hardened, and bits of the roof began to rain down on top of Jasper and Felix.

A strange wail came from deep inside the monster-room. The shaking stopped. There was complete silence.

Jasper's torch lay on the floor nearby, its beam shining on the Skankbamboozlers, which were cackling in their jar on the cracked floor.

The muscle binding Jasper shook once more, then broke and crumbled to dust. Jasper crashed down to the ground.

Felix and Jasper looked at each other.

Tears,
Jasper thought to himself. That was one weakness he wouldn't forget in a hurry.

The lights came on, and an exit sign lit up over the door. ‘Please proceed to the exit,' a voice ordered.

They didn't need to be told twice.

3

The hall was buzzing with excited chatter. That had
not
been a normal test. It was much harder than usual.

Jasper and Felix sat with a group of dejected-looking kids from their class.

‘Stupid piece-of-rubbish Skankbamboozlers,' Felix muttered.

Rumour had it that the test was actually the pre-Hunt exam. Jasper really hoped the rumour was wrong – it was more luck than skill that had got them through the test.

The students who scored the highest on the pre-Hunt exam would be picked to go on a Hunt. A
real
Hunt, on the trail of
wild
monsters. And, of course, going on a Hunt meant going to the outside world. No teachers, no prefects – it would be just them and the monsters. Jasper was excited just thinking about it.

A bunch of surly looking prefects dressed in camouflage gear patrolled up and down the hall, handing out penalty points to anyone who gave them even the slightest excuse. The head prefect, Bruno, was keeping particularly close to Jasper's table. Bruno took great pleasure in punishing anyone he could lay his hands on, and for some reason he especially liked tormenting Jasper and his friends.

All the kids in Jasper's class wanted to go on a Hunt. But Saffy was
desperate
to go on one. She was convinced that once she was back in the outside world, she'd be able to escape Monstrum House for good.

Not that she had anywhere she wanted to escape
to
. Jasper knew that Saffy wasn't interested in going home. She didn't get on very well with her parents and had been shipped around to heaps of different schools before landing at Monstrum House. But it was a matter of pride. She wanted to escape, just to prove that she
could.
Saffy had been nicknamed Houdini for being able to break out of any school. Monstrum House was the only school so far to beat her, and Saffy did
not
like being beaten.

But if the test had really been the pre-Hunt exam, then Saffy was in trouble too. It looked as though she had done just as badly as Felix and Jasper. Her test partner, Callum, had ended up in the school hospital because his foot had morphed into an apple tree. Having a partner hospitalised really didn't look good on your score sheet.

‘At least he likes apples,' Saffy kept saying, almost to herself.

‘QUIET!' Bruno bellowed.

The chatter in the hall dropped to a soft muttering as Stenka marched into the hall, followed by the other first-year teachers.

Stenka glared at the students until absolute silence had fallen. Jasper fought the urge to do something funny to break the silence. He knew from experience that Stenka wasn't amused by his jokes. And nothing ever seemed quite so funny after being sent to a monster-infested punishment room, or made to run the penalty course every night for a week.

‘For months we have been preparing you for the pre-Hunt exam,' said Stenka slowly.

Jasper squirmed lower in his seat and dropped his gaze.

‘So who can explain why all your results are so POOR?' Stenka exploded. Every student in the room jumped.

‘Why didn't anyone tell us it was the exam?' one boy muttered.

Stenka turned to him, her eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. She snapped her fingers and two grinning prefects dragged the boy out of the hall. Jasper didn't want to know what the poor guy's punishment would be.

Stenka turned back to the rest of the students. ‘Any other questions?' she asked sweetly, before continuing. ‘We expected at least half of you to be going on your first Hunt in the coming weeks. Instead, based on your results, only two pairs demonstrated the bare minimum required.'

Felix looked sheepishly at Jasper. ‘Guess we didn't make it then,' he whispered.

‘SILENCE!' Stenka hissed, taking a menacing step towards Felix. Felix yelped and clamped his lips together.

Stenka's icy gaze fell on Jasper. ‘Jasper McPhee, Felix Brown and Saffron Dominguez – report to my office immediately. As for the rest of you …' She nodded to Bruno, then turned on her heel and clipped out of the hall.

Before Jasper, Felix and Saffy even had a chance to stand, Stenka's mohawk swung back around the doorway. ‘I SAID IMMEDIATELY!'

Jasper, Felix and Saffy jumped to their feet and followed Stenka out of the hall. Jasper noticed the prefects smirking at them as they made their way through the doors, and Bruno wore the nastiest smirk of all.

4

Stenka led the way through the maze of corridors. Jasper had a pretty good sense of direction, but he had already decided that it was
impossible
to keep track of where the Monstrum House offices were.

‘Last time I was sent to Stenka's office I left a trail of breadcrumbs behind me,' Saffy whispered as they trailed behind Stenka. ‘When I tried to follow the crumbs back, they only led around in circles, and I ended up back at her office. She was waiting for me with a dust pan and brush.'

Stenka stopped at the door to her office. Jasper shuddered. He
hated
going into Stenka's office. Terrifying, shadowy pictures were painted on the wall, accentuated by glistening, dark red curtains. Her desk had framed pictures of half-eaten body parts on it, and a bright light was perfectly positioned so that it blinded you as you stepped inside the room.

But what really got to Jasper today was the fact that there was something that looked like a computer in the room. It had been ages since Jasper had seen a computer – and here one was, right in front of him.

Jasper, Saffy and Felix all craned their necks to try to get a better look at the screen. Jasper saw it had a map on it, with dots that moved.

It's some kind of GPS!
thought Jasper.

In response, Stenka quickly tapped a key and the screen went blank.