The Extincts Read online

  She paddled her chair to the edge of the pool. “Die,” she said.

  I blinked at her. Was that an order?

  “Di. Short for Diamond. Diamond Pye.” She stretched out her right hand. I didn’t want to shake it, but I didn’t have much choice. It was quite difficult getting close enough without falling in the water. Her nails were long, painted glittery blue.

  “I brought Prudence’s homework,” I said. “Is she sick?”

  Diamond licked her lollipop. She had a very pointy tongue. Right now, it was bright blue.

  “Are you Prue’s friend? I didn’t know she had any. She’s a very unfriendly girl.”

  Only to you, I thought. Then I wondered why I was sticking up for Prudence, even if it wasn’t out loud.

  “She must have been telling him things,” said Mintzer. “He knows too much.”

  Diamond gave her tinkly wind-chime laugh. “I’m sure he’s too sensible to believe silly stories. Do you have sisters?” she asked me. I nodded. “Then you know what girls can be like.” She sighed. “I’m afraid that Prudence is not a truthful person. Tell me—what do you think of people who tell lies?”

  I could feel my face getting hot, which was silly because I hadn’t told any lies. Letting her think Prudence and I were friends wasn’t exactly lying. She was looking at me, waiting.

  “Well?”

  “Lying’s bad,” I muttered.

  “Very bad,” agreed Diamond. “If you lie you get found out, and then you have to take the consequences. Which is why, I’m afraid, you can’t see Prudence today. She is being punished.”

  “Punished!”

  “She only has herself to blame,” said Diamond. “Her parents are dead, you know. I am all she has. It is my duty to teach her a lesson. Until she admits that she was lying, she must stay where she is.”

  Wherever that was. I glanced back at the house, wondering what Prue had said.

  Diamond read my mind.

  “Silly stories. About fabulous animals. Dragons—that sort of thing.”

  “What?” I couldn’t help it. It burst out of me.

  “All nonsense, of course.” Diamond had taken her sunglasses off and was watching me. “Are you a truthful boy?”

  “Mmm.” Why did I get the feeling that I was about to fall into a trap?

  “You said you saw the Wyrm. Have you seen anything else? Like … a dragon?”

  I shook my head so hard, it made me dizzy. “No!” Sometimes—extra-specially important times—you have to lie. “Dragons don’t exist—everyone knows that!”

  “There are other things.” Diamond leaned back in her armchair, her eyes on my face. “Things that might—or might not—be extinct. You haven’t seen any of those, either?”

  “He was hanging about at that farm.” Mintzer scowled at me. “There was something not right about that place—something not right about that cow!”

  I glared at him. “Mrs. Wednesday’s a rare breed of cow, that’s all. It’s just a farm.”

  “I’m very interested in rare breeds.” Diamond stretched out her legs, admiring her blue toenails. “I would like to come and look around, when I get the time. I am very busy with my magnum opus—my greatest work. It is not yet complete. There is one thing missing. When I find it, I shall win the Golden Brain Spoon and be Taxidermist of the Year—you’ll see!”

  You could tell she was excited: she was gripping the arm of her rubber chair so hard her fingernails had dug a hole in it. I could see the little stream of bubbles rising as the air came out.

  “Are you interested in taxidermy, boy? Don’t you think it’s a wonderful thing to be able to cheat Time and Death, and preserve the living form forever, as a work of art?”

  “Mmm,” I said again. She hadn’t noticed, but the blow-up chair was definitely beginning to wilt.

  “A taxidermist can create things that Mother Nature never dreamed of. Look at my baby.” The lollipop was pointing at the stroller. “Go on—look. She doesn’t bite!”

  I didn’t like being within range of Mintzer’s hook, but I did what I was told and peered under the hood of the stroller.

  “Oh!” I said. My step backward nearly sent me into the pool.

  “Show him, Mintzer!” ordered Diamond.

  I didn’t want to see any more. The wrinkled, leathery little monkey face under the stroller’s hood, with its empty eye sockets and stretched skin and yellow teeth, had been shocking enough. When Mintzer pulled back the blanket, I couldn’t help gaping. Diamond’s mummified baby had a tail like a fish.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” cooed Diamond.

  No. She’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life.

  I just managed not to say it.

  “She’s a Feejee mermaid,” said Diamond. “Half monkey, half fish. She is very old. I found her in an antique shop. I never had a baby of my own. I don’t count Prudence. She is too big and too sulky. So I have my little mermaid. Have you never wanted to be a mermaid, boy?”

  “No,” I said honestly. “Never.”

  “I have,” said Diamond, dreamily splashing her feet in the water. “A mermaid with a beautiful silvery tail.” The chair was shrinking quite fast now. “I shall make one, someday. But I won’t use a monkey. I can’t help thinking it would work better with a real person. A girl … or a boy. A mer-boy.”

  She sucked her lollipop, looking thoughtfully at me, as if she might be measuring me. I could feel the goose bumps rising on my arms.

  “I … um … I think I’d better go home now,” I said.

  “Oh, there’s no need to hurry,” said Diamond, taking her lollipop out of her mouth. “Wait—”

  But at that moment, with a last pffff of escaping air, the inflatable chair deflated and Diamond disappeared underwater. The last thing I saw, as I took to my heels and ran, was a froth of bubbles and her blue hair streaming out around her like seaweed.

  * * *

  Nobody came after me. Mintzer and Mump had both rushed to the side of the pool to rescue the sinking, spluttering Diamond. I raced across the lawn and through the house.

  “Sorry.” I apologized to a sheep’s head as I tripped over it. “And I’m sorry she turned you into a rug. I’m sorry for you all.”

  Whatever it took, I wasn’t going to let Diamond Pye get her hands on the animals of Wormestall. She’d have Dido turned into a lamp and Mingus into a candlestick in no time. I didn’t want to think about what she might do to the others.

  The cat was cleaning her whiskers on the hood of the pink car. She didn’t seem to have noticed the furry paw hanging from the driver’s mirror.

  “I’d be careful, if I were you,” I warned her. “This isn’t a nice house!”

  As I was leaving, something made me look up:

  PLEH

  There it was, written in what looked like toothpaste on an upstairs window. I knew what it said. Prudence wasn’t very good at mirror writing. She had remembered to turn the letters around, but not the whole word. PLEH = HELP.

  Behind all the toothpaste, I could see the pale blur of a face. She pressed her hands against the glass, mouthing something at me. I turned away. If Prudence had been blabbing about Wormestall, betraying its secrets, then she deserved everything she got. I didn’t care if Diamond turned her into a mermaid. She wasn’t getting any PLEH from me.

  TEN

  THE NEXT MORNING, as Miss Thripps shut the register with her usual snap, Prudence limped into class. She wasn’t wearing her school uniform and her hair was all over the place. There was blood trickling down from her knee into her sock.

  “Prudence Pye, you’re late. And you look like you’ve just crawled through a hedge backward. Where’s your school uniform? And where’s your doctor’s note?”

  Prudence pretended to look in her pockets. I knew she didn’t have a doctor’s note.

  Miss Thripps rolled her eyes to the ceiling and told her to go and sit down.

  I could feel Prudence’s eyes on me. She was trying to get me to look at her. I
kept my head bent over my drawing of the Squermington Wyrm.

  Halfway through English, she passed me a note:

  Diamond knows.

  Miss Thripps had her back turned, writing on the whiteboard. I passed the note back:

  I know she knows. You told her.

  “I did not!”

  She said it out loud. Miss Thripps spun around.

  “Who was that?”

  Everybody looked at Prudence.

  “Prudence Pye, was that you?”

  “I didn’t!” Prudence was looking at me, not at Miss Thripps.

  Miss Thripps’s lips tightened. “I’m writing your name on the board. Twice. Once for shouting out, once for lying.”

  At recess, Miss Thripps made Prue stay behind and sharpen all the pencils—which at least meant she couldn’t follow me around the playground, wanting to talk.

  When the bell rang for the end of recess, I had to go to the bathroom. I’d be late back to class, but I was desperate. I was in there, trying to be quick, when somebody on the other side of the door said, “George, I know that’s you.”

  “What are you doing? This is the boys’ bathroom,” I hissed. “Get out! You’re not allowed!”

  “You’ve got to listen,” said Prudence. “This was the only way I could think of. Don’t try and get past me. You can’t. I’m leaning against the door and I’m heavier than you. George, I didn’t tell about Wormestall. I swear I didn’t. They found the tooth. They asked me all sorts of questions. Then they searched my bedroom, and they found … other stuff.”

  “What?”

  “This,” said Prudence unhappily.

  She passed a ball of paper under the door. I smoothed out the crumpled sheets and my heart sank.

  She was much better at drawing than I am. When I draw things, you can’t always tell what they’re meant to be. Prudence’s sketches were very lifelike. Too lifelike. Grissel, Big Nigel, the kraken in the toilet, Mingus on Mrs. Lind’s hat, Dido on her eggs: they were all there, as clear as day.

  “But they can’t have thought they were real. Diamond said you’d been making stuff up. She said you’d been telling lies.”

  “I did lie. I had to. I told them I’d made it all up—that the animals were my imaginary friends. They didn’t believe me, so they locked me in the Trophy Room until I told the truth.”

  “They locked you where?”

  “In the—Oh, it doesn’t matter. But, George, you do believe me, don’t you? I didn’t tell. Why would I tell Diamond anything? I wish that hippopotamus had fallen on her, not on Dad.”

  “It fell on him? What was a hippopotamus doing up in the air?”

  “It was being moved by a crane. It was for a display in the museum where he worked. That’s how he met Diamond. Next to the stuffed elephant. She told him how she’d always wanted to stuff something really big. He told her he had a giraffe that was falling to pieces—she said she’d fix it for him. Next thing, they were getting married.

  “George, you have to get to Wormestall and warn Mrs. Lind. I can’t go, in case I’m followed. They still don’t know for sure there’s anything there, but they’re suspicious. I heard Mintzer telling Diamond that Mrs. Wednesday’s head would look good hanging on the wall in the Trophy Room. She said she’d go and have a look, and if she sees…” I heard her swallow a sob. “Oh, George, you don’t know what she’s like! She really wants to win the Golden Brain Spoon this year. And when she wants something, she’ll do anything—anything—to get it.”

  “All right,” I said. “I believe you. Now will you let me out?

  “You know something?” I added as the door swung open. “Miss Thripps was right. You do look as if you’ve been dragged through a hedge backward.”

  “More downward,” said Prudence, “than backward. I escaped. I had to get to school, to warn you, so I climbed out the window.”

  I looked at her with respect. “An upstairs window?”

  “There’s a ledge. And a creeping plant thing growing up the wall, but it wasn’t as strong as I hoped. I fell the last bit. Flower beds aren’t as soft as you’d think.”

  “You’re brave.” I meant it.

  Prudence shook her head. “No, I’m not. Diamond scares me. Diamond’s a lot more dangerous than climbing out windows.”

  * * *

  Miss Thripps wrote both our names up on the board for being late to class.

  At lunch, I told Josh and Matt that I couldn’t play soccer: I had something to do. Prudence and I had an Emergency What-to-Do-Next Meeting. It wasn’t a very useful meeting. By the time the bell rang, we still didn’t know what to do next.

  At the end of the day, our names were still on the board. Somebody had drawn a heart in between them, but I had more important stuff than that to worry about.

  “Where will you go?” I asked Prudence as we zipped up our schoolbags. “You can’t go home. They’ll shut you up again. You can come to my house, if you like.”

  She shook her head. “You have to go to Wormestall and tell them what’s happened. Say it’s all my fault, and I’m really, really sorry and…” She gave a sudden gasp. Clutching her bag to her chest, she pointed to the window.

  Our classroom is upstairs. It looks out over the school gates. Parked on the road outside was a pink sports car. Leaning against it was Diamond Pye. Her hair was lime green, rolled up in a complicated knot, and skewered into place with what looked like chopsticks. As the flood of children poured out through the gates, she sucked on a green lollipop, watching and waiting.

  “Quick!” I decided. “We’ll go out the other way. Through the preschool door.”

  Older kids aren’t really allowed on the preschool playground. Luckily for us, a little girl had just fallen off the monkey bars. She was screaming her head off and bleeding everywhere, so it was easy to creep past unnoticed and out into the narrow side road, where we couldn’t be seen from the main school gates.

  “Come on.” I grabbed Prudence’s arm. “We’ll go to my mum’s shop. You’ll be safe there. We can hide you in the back.”

  Prudence hung back. “Your mum doesn’t even know me. Won’t she mind?”

  “Why should she? Anyway, she knew your dad. They used to stand on their heads together. Come on—it’s not far, if we cut through the park.”

  It was raining, for the first time in days. What with the weather and people being afraid of the Wyrm, there was nobody around. Nobody except Crazy Daisy, who was standing on her bench, as usual, one arm up in the air like a traffic policeman, with Doom yapping at her feet.

  “Any minute now, she’ll start shouting at us,” I warned Prudence.

  But she didn’t. We walked right up to her and she still didn’t. It was pretty obvious why.

  “Stone.” Prudence reached out to touch her. “She’s made of stone.”

  Mortifer.

  Prudence and I looked at each other, then at the bushes.

  “How long do you think she’s been like this?” asked Prudence.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Not long, or someone would have seen and there’d be a fuss.”

  Mortifer could not be far away. My heart was beating rather hard. Better not to look too hard at the bushes, in case something looked back at me. What did it feel like, being turned into stone? I wasn’t in a hurry to find out.

  Prudence was on her knees, burrowing in her schoolbag.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We had better put these on, just in case.” She handed me a pair of sunglasses with mirrored lenses. “They’re Diamond’s. She’s got so many, she’ll never notice.”

  The glasses were much too big. Prudence looked like a cross between a movie star and a mutant frog. It felt stupid wearing sunglasses in the rain, but safer.

  “We need to move her,” I said, nodding at Daisy. “Before anyone comes.”

  “Poor Doom,” said Prudence, watching him jump on and off the bench, whimpering and whining. “Why didn’t he get turned to stone?”

  “He was
probably off after a squirrel; he’s always chasing things. How are we going to do this?” I gave Daisy a push, but she didn’t even wobble. “I can’t shift her. She’s too heavy.”

  “Look.” Prudence pointed at the fountain. “Over there.”

  In the middle of the fountain was a statue of a fat little boy riding a large fish. The water was supposed to come out of the fish’s mouth, but that hadn’t happened for years. Both boy and fish were covered in pigeon droppings, and the water in the pool was green and murky. Sometimes people threw in a coin. More often they threw in trash. But today, someone had thrown in a supermarket cart. They probably weren’t meaning to be helpful when they did it, but it was just what we needed.

  Prudence wheeled the cart up to the bench and held it steady. I climbed up behind Daisy and pushed as hard as I could.

  Daisy teetered but stayed where she was.

  “Try again,” instructed Prudence. “Harder.”

  I shoved and shoved, and finally … chwannng! Daisy toppled headfirst into the cart.

  “Goal!” I punched the air.

  “I feel a bit bad about her being upside down,” said Prudence.

  “It’s good for her,” I said. “It’s yoga.”

  “Where are we going to put her?” asked Prudence. “We need to be quick. Listen—there are people coming!”

  “We’ll tip her into the bushes.”

  “We can’t just dump her! And she’ll stick out. Someone’s bound to notice.”

  “All right, then—we’ll take her to Wormestall. We can push her there in the cart.”

  “People will see,” objected Prudence.

  “We’ll cover her up. There’ll be something in Mum’s shop we can use. Come on!”

  * * *

  There’s a mermaid in the window of The Mermaid’s Cave. Not a real one, obviously. It’s a shop dummy, wearing a long wig and a cloth tail that Harry once wore to a costume party. She sits on this fake polystyrene rock, sad and dusty, with shells and plastic weed and bits of fishing net all around her, and puts off the customers. But Mum likes her.

  As soon as you open the shop door, all these wind chimes start tinkling, and then you’re swallowed up in this cloud of smelly incense and weird whale song. Mum wasn’t there. Harry was behind the counter, reading the paper and wearing earbuds so she didn’t have to listen to the whales.