The Extincts Read online

  Standing up, I hopped about until the pain wasn’t so bad.

  “Come on,” I said to Sir Crispin. “You can walk the last bit. It can’t be far.”

  It wasn’t. Soon we came out of the shadow of the trees onto a narrow lane. We were away from the town, here. There were no houses or cars to be seen, just high banks full of wildflowers. A little way down the lane, a track twisted off to the right. Sir Crispin lifted his leg on a rickety wooden sign. In wobbly painted capitals, now running with yellow dog pee, it said:

  WORMESTALL FARM

  PRIVATE

  KEEP OUT

  On the other side of the track was another sign:

  BEWARE OF THE

  Beware of the … what? I couldn’t tell. The end had broken off.

  As we turned up the track, Sir Crispin started yapping at a field full of huge, hairy cows, with dangerous-looking horns and blond bangs. They stopped chewing and stared at us, blowing through their noses.

  “I’d shut up if I were you,” I told Sir Crispin. “I’m pretty sure that extra-large one in the middle is a bull.”

  On our other side, a lonely horse had his nose in the hedge at the far corner of his field, twitching at flies with his tail as he munched on brambles. At the end of the track stood an old stone farmhouse. From the front, it looked blind and dead, with blank windows and little toadstools growing out of the doorstep. I knocked, but there was no answer. The door didn’t look like it had been opened for years. I was tempted to turn around and go home. But we had walked a long way, Sir Crispin and I. The card in the Candy Shop window had told me to come here, and here I was. I wasn’t giving up that easily.

  I led Sir Crispin around to the back, into a cobbled stable yard. This side of the house was much more cheerful. White doves prou-proued in the branches of an old, gnarled tree, and flowers poured from hanging baskets and window boxes. There was a jumble of boots and a row of fire extinguishers on the porch. I could hear a television on in the stable: “Whisk the egg whites until light and fluffy.…” Somebody was watching a cooking show.

  The doorbell was an old-fashioned brass thing, with a clapper. I took a deep breath, tried hard to look like the Right Person for the job, and rang it.

  The door flew open.

  “Can’t talk now. The Depetrifaction Ointment’s boiling,” said the old lady in the doorway, peering at me through gold-rimmed spectacles. She was wearing rain boots and strings of beads, and an enormous hat covered in half-eaten fruit. The hallway behind her was full of pale green fog.

  “Hello. I’ve come about the…” I coughed. The fog had reached me. My eyes began to water.

  “It’s a bit strong, isn’t it? I’m not sure it’s meant to smell like that,” said the old lady doubtfully. “I followed the recipe. What do you think?”

  I thought it smelled like Next-Door Cat’s litter tray, but I did not want to be rude, so I stuck to what I’d practiced.

  “I’ve come about the—”

  “Ha! There you are!” said the old lady as something grayish brown and hairy streaked past our ankles, out of the house. “Catch him,” she told me, “and the job’s yours.”

  “How…?” I began, but it was too late.

  She had whisked back indoors, slamming the door shut behind her.

  Sir Crispin was barking and growling.

  “Shh! You’re not helping!” I looped his leash around one of the fire extinguishers to keep him out of the way. “I’m trying to think.”

  The Hairy Thing was about the same size as a guinea pig, only longer and thinner, with a pointier nose and a tail. He had squeezed himself into the gap between the house wall and a stone trough planted with flowers. I went down on my hands and knees. My hand just fit through the gap. “Ow!” I whipped it out again pretty quickly. My knuckles were grazed where they had scraped against the wall, but most of the blood—quite a lot of blood—was coming from my finger. Hairy Thing had teeth.

  Sucking my finger, I decided to creep up on him from behind. I was in luck. He had wriggled so far backward, away from my hand, that the tip of his tail was sticking out at the other end of the trough. I grabbed it and tugged.

  I tugged again.

  The tail went suddenly stiff in my hands. Hairy Thing aimed his bottom at me and … PSSSSSSHT!

  It was the worst smell in the world—a million times worse than the old lady’s green fog. Puke and dog doo and sweaty armpits and old socks and Mum’s cooking, all rolled into one. And it was in my eyes, in my hair, dripping off the end of my nose …

  “Not fair,” I spluttered. “That’s cheating!”

  Keeping well out of range of the Exploding Bottom, I sat on the cobblestones and did some thinking. If I couldn’t make the beastly, biting, stinking thing come out, I was going to have to persuade him to come out. But how?

  What persuades me to do things I don’t want to? Food, mostly.

  I was wearing my favorite jeans, with the rip and the bloodstain that won’t come out. I’d been wearing them for days. Which was good because when I dug around in the pockets, deep down where it’s sticky, I found some escaped chocolate-covered raisins.

  I laid a trail. It wasn’t a very long trail—I didn’t have very many raisins. I spaced them out carefully and waited. First, a nose came whiffling, then whiskers, licorice eyes, twitching ears, followed by the rest of him. Hairy Thing had broken cover. Now all I had to do was catch him.

  Outside the back door, there was an empty bucket. As Hairy Thing snuffled up the last chocolate raisin, I slammed the bucket down on top of him. He was stuck.

  And he wasn’t happy about it. He thrashed about, sending the bucket dancing over the cobblestones. There was only one thing to do.

  I sat on the bucket.

  Now we were both stuck.

  The sun beat down, warming the cobbles. I was hot and thirsty. To stop myself from thinking about it, I played the Million Game. It’s very easy—all you have to do is count. I do it when I’m bored or somewhere I don’t want to be—like a school assembly or the dentist or waiting for a bus. Something unboring always happens way before you get to a million. My record is 2,653 at Auntie Fi’s wedding. I’d have gotten further if I hadn’t lost count when the flower girl wet herself. Like I said, something always happens.

  I was up to 1,417 when the door opened and the old lady came out.

  I pointed at the bucket underneath me. “Got him,” I told her.

  The old lady looked pleased. Several grapes and an apple core fell off her hat as she stooped to peer at something on the cobblestones. “Blood,” she said. “Is it yours?”

  “My finger…” I inspected Hairy Thing’s teeth marks. “It’s still bleeding.”

  “Nothing wrong with bleeding,” said the old lady cheerfully. “It proves you’re alive. It’s when you don’t bleed you should worry. But it’s better not to smell of fresh blood. Not here. Come into the house. We’ll find you a Band-Aid.”

  As I stood up, the bucket rattled wildly. With the toe of her boot, the old lady tipped it over. Hairy Thing sat up on his haunches, chittering and furious, then shot straight up her body until he reached her hat, where he settled down and started eating cherries.

  “Silly Mingus,” said the old lady fondly. “It’s not like him to run away. I think it was because of the fog in the kitchen.”

  I took a quick look around. In shark-infested waters, it’s a bad idea to smell of blood. I knew that. But—in a farmyard? Was there a mutant ninja sheep somewhere, sniffing the air for my blood and getting ready to attack? I jumped as something grazed my cheek. Hairy Thing was spitting cherry pits at me.

  “What is Mingus, exactly?” I asked.

  “Early Mammal. Probably Triassic. He’s not used to strangers,” she added as I ducked to avoid another cherry pit.

  “What should I do with Sir Crispin?” I asked. He was lying stretched out, pop-eyed and wheezy. “I think he might need a drink of water.”

  “He can come in, too. All creatures are welcome at
Wormestall. Except people.” The old lady gave me a sharp look over the top of her spectacles. “Unless they come here for the Right Reasons.”

  Did needing money for a new bike count as one of the Right Reasons? I hoped so.

  * * *

  The smell in the house was not that bad anymore. The choking green fog had lifted. Sir Crispin’s claws click-clacked on the flagstones as we crossed the hallway. The kitchen was like a jungle, with plants winding and trailing everywhere. There was a cat flap in the outside wall, and in front of the old-fashioned stove was a dog bed, full of odd lumps under a rumpled tartan blanket. Sir Crispin lapped thirstily from a drinking bowl with the word DOG printed on it—except that somebody had crossed out the G and painted the letters D and O in its place.

  The old lady sat me down at the big wooden table. She poured me a glass of something cold and lemony, then took a box marked FIRST AID from the top of the dresser.

  “We go through a lot of Band-Aids here,” she told me. “And gauze. And there’s that.…” She pointed at something leaning against the wall that looked a bit like a baseball bat. “Emergency Wooden Leg,” she explained. “But nobody’s needed it since my great-aunt Hepzibah surprised a Dracunculus dentatus in the shrubbery in 1911.”

  I stared at the wooden leg, wondering what a Dracunculus dentatus looked like. I didn’t want to ask, in case she thought I was stupid. Frank always tells me I’m stupid when I don’t know things.

  “So you’re looking for a job,” said the old lady, mopping my finger with something that stung. The Early Mammal had gone to sleep, curled around her hat, with his paws over his nose. “What brought you to Wormestall, I wonder?”

  “The advertisement. In the Candy Shop window.”

  “Ah, so you saw it.” She screwed the top back on the stinging stuff and reached for a Band-Aid. “What color was it written in?”

  “Green. No—not green.” I frowned. “Purple. I’m not sure.…”

  “But you could read it, could you? Quite easily?”

  I didn’t know what she was getting at. Was she worried about my eyesight, or was she making sure I knew how to read?

  “I can remember what it said,” I told her. “‘Help wanted. Interest in wildlife necessary. Must be the Right Person. Apply to Mrs. Lind, Wormestall Farm. No squa … squam … squamophobes.’ Are you Mrs. Lind?”

  “I am. And do you know what a squamophobe is?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “A person with a fear of scales. You don’t have a problem with scales, do you?”

  Fish scales? Piano scales? Weighing scales? I tried to look as if I knew what she was talking about.

  “Scales are all right,” I said carefully. “And I’m quite interested in wildlife.”

  “What sort of wildlife?” Mrs. Lind wrapped the bandage around my finger. “The cuddly, fluffy kind? Or—the other sort?”

  I thought of the killer whale at Dolphin Park and Tyson the Rottweiler.

  “The other sort,” I said definitely.

  Mrs. Lind closed the first aid box and sat back, fingering her beads. “I suppose you have a name?”

  I nodded. “George.”

  Her brows snapped together. “Not after that tiresome saint, I hope?”

  “Saint George was okay.” I felt I had to stick up for him. “He must have been. He killed the dragon, didn’t he?”

  Saint George was the Good Guy. The dragon was bad. Everyone knows that.

  Mrs. Lind gave a snort. “I’ve never seen anything very saintly about riding around the country, killing off rare animals.”

  “But dragons ate people. Somebody had to kill them!”

  “You think so?” Mrs. Lind gave me another sharp look. “What did you have for lunch yesterday, George?”

  “Er—shepherd’s pie.” After Mum’s vegetable experiments, even school lunches came as a relief.

  “Shepherd’s pie is made of sheep. So you ate a sheep, George. I expect you were hungry, were you?”

  “Yes,” I said uneasily. “It wasn’t a whole sheep—”

  “I expect Saint George’s dragon was hungry,” Mrs. Lind interrupted me. “For all you know, she had hatchlings—hungry hatchlings—waiting to be fed.”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it again. I was getting confused. Dragons weren’t real. All that stuff about Saint George was only a story—right?

  “Actually,” I said, “I think I was named after my grandfather.”

  The fierce look died out of her eyes. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with that!” Fishing around on the brim of her hat, in between a nibbled plum and a banana skin, she found a packet of peppermints and offered me one. “Not everybody would have been able to read that advertisement, you know. The ink it was written in was … unusual. You must be the person I was looking for.” She smiled at me. “The Right Person.”

  Yes! I couldn’t wait to see Frank’s face when I told her.

  “I’ll work hard,” I promised. “When do I start?”

  “At the Right Time,” replied Mrs. Lind. “You’ll know when that is.”

  THREE

  IT DOESN’T HAPPEN in films or books, but it happens in real life: at exactly the Wrong Time, you need to go to the bathroom. Especially if you’ve been eating Leftover Broccoli and Baked Bean Thing.

  “Up the stairs. Turn right. Down the corridor,” said Mrs. Lind when I asked. “Second on the left. I have to go and feed the ducks. They don’t like being kept waiting.” Popping a peppermint in her mouth, she adjusted her hat and picked up a bucket. “Let yourself out.”

  Leaving Sir Crispin tied to the banister, I climbed the bare wooden staircase.

  Upstairs, there wasn’t much to see—the doors leading off the corridor were all closed. I found the bathroom and locked myself in with the heavy iron key. On the wall hung a painting of Noah’s Ark. Noah was ordinary enough, with a tall stick and a long white beard. Some of his animals looked a bit odd, though, as if they had gotten into the wrong picture by mistake. The bathtub was a big, heavy thing, standing on clawed feet, its enamel chipped and stained with age; it was full to the brim with murky green water. The toilet, too, looked like an antique: painted with blue flowers, it had a chain that you had to reach up and pull to flush. Next to the toilet, on a low table, was a glass tank with little fish darting in and out of what looked like a real human skull.

  I sat down with my jeans around my ankles. Noah was staring at me over the top of his beard, which put me off a bit. I twisted around to look at the little fish, black and silver and gold, whisking in and out of the skull’s eye sockets. I was just trying to imagine what it would be like to have fish flicking their tails where your eyeballs should be when I felt … what? Something cold and wet, crawling across my bare skin … something underneath me … I froze, heart thudding. What What WHAT was I sitting on?

  Slippery and damp, first one, then another long gray tentacle came snaking over the top of my leg, across my lap. They were heading for my …

  I came off that toilet like a cork out of champagne. There’s not much point yelling for help in a locked room when you’re the one with the key. Yanking my jeans up with one hand, I was fumbling at the lock with the other when there was a sudden loud thud right above my head. Something had crash-landed on the roof.

  I thought of all the things it could be. A meteorite from outer space? An alien spaceship? Or a pigeon? Dad always used to tell this story about how he was at a party when a dead pigeon fell out of the sky and landed slap-bang in the middle of the barbecue.

  Then somebody swore, loudly and rudely, the way dead pigeons definitely don’t. There was a rustling of branches outside the open window. Then there was a boy.

  He sat astride the windowsill. About Frank’s age, maybe—blue eyes; a thin, moody face; twigs in his black hair; and a winged skull on his T-shirt. The day was warm, but he was wearing a heavy, hooded jacket, several sizes too big. Under his arm he held a life-size statue of a cat with a label around its neck.

  He
did not look particularly surprised to see me, hanging on to the door handle and trying to zip up my fly at the same time.

  “Have you got a pen?” was all he said.

  Wordless, I shook my head. The boy frowned. Digging about in his pockets, he brought out a chewed stub of pencil and scribbled something on the label.

  “Thirty-two Rhododendron Road. At least, that’s where I found it. Who knows where it came from. Can’t tell with cats.”

  Swinging his legs over the sill, he put down the cat and looked at me. His blue eyes were strangely bright, and he didn’t seem to need to blink.

  “What’s up with you?” he asked.

  I’d managed to zip up my jeans at last, but my hands were still shaking.

  “In there!” I pointed at the toilet. “There’s a Thing! It’s got…” I stretched out my arms, waggling them up and down. As octopus impressions go, it wasn’t great, but he got it.

  “Oh, that,” he said. “That’s supposed to live in the bathtub. It keeps getting out. You have to be firm with it.” He grabbed the toilet brush. “Stop messing about,” he ordered. “You’ve had your fun. Now, get back where you belong.”

  Plunging the brush into the toilet bowl, he twisted and twirled it, winding tentacles around it like a forkful of spaghetti. He raised the brush, but the Thing refused to come. Suckering its free tentacles against the sides of the toilet bowl, it held on grimly, its eyes shut tight.

  “Stupid cephalopod!” muttered the boy.

  Toilet brush in one hand, he reached out the other hand toward the fish tank. Before I had time to blink, he had plucked out a fish and was dangling it, by its tail, above the toilet.

  He whistled, short and sharp. The Thing opened pale, hooded eyes and fixed them on the fish.

  “Come on, then.” The boy lifted the fish higher. “What are you waiting for?”

  The Thing gave in. Letting go of the toilet, it wrapped itself around the brush. The boy swung it from the toilet to the bathtub, where it plopped like a blob of gray jelly into the water. He threw it the fish, which it caught with one tentacle and popped into its beak of a mouth, before shuffling off to sulk under the taps.