Hamish and the WorldStoppers Read online

  Us? thought Hamish.

  ‘And one more thing,’ she said. ‘You said your mum works in the Complaints Office. You said she had a graph. One that showed all the complaints.’

  Hamish nodded, confused.

  ‘Bring it next time. Okay?’

  ‘Um . . . okay?’ he replied.

  ‘Maybe we were meant to meet, Hamish Ellerby,’ she said, as she began to walk away.

  ‘Wait – what’s your name?’ he said. ‘Please?’

  ‘Alice,’ said the girl, without turning around. ‘My name is Alice Shepherd.’

  Grevenge!

  Several hours later, Hamish crouched outside number nine Knotweed Lane with a determined look on his face and a piece of paper in his hand.

  On the paper were the words:

  Plan 1, Part 2(b): Get that watch.

  He was hiding in a bush outside Grenville’s house and had been hiding there since half past five.

  It was starting to get rather uncomfortable.

  He hoped that Alice Shepherd had been right and that the next Pause was coming, and soon because – honestly – his bottom was so numb you could use it for bongos and he’d never notice.

  While he waited, Hamish looked up at the house.

  Even though it was the same as all the other houses on the street, the Biles had somehow managed to make theirs look rather more fearsome. Apart from the single, spiky bush that Hamish was currently crouched inside, the garden had been concreted over and there was a jagged metal fence at around kid-height. The roof tiles were wonky and covered in black moss. The sun never seemed to shine on this house.

  Tubitha ‘Postmaster’ Bile had put up thick, dusty black curtains in every room and she never, ever opened them. Grenville said it was so they could protect their many treasures. He didn’t want any old person peeking through his windows and checking out his Super Action Rascals. And the black curtains stopped harmful UV rays from fading his priceless collection of original movie posters too, which was handy.

  Alice had been right.

  Cautiously, Hamish tiptoed from the bush and tapped the doorknob gently.

  He’d heard that the Postmaster had wired up all the electricity in the house so that if someone turned up unexpectedly and tried the handle, they’d get a nasty shock and their hair would catch fire. It seemed safe enough today. So he tried turning it.

  He was in!

  Grenville’s hallway was packed with dozens of old, faded oil paintings of Biles from history.

  There was Lord Heronimus Bile, with a huge great beard the size of a stoat.

  Oh, hang on, no – that was a stoat! A stoat the size of a beard!

  Heronimus Bile and his ‘associates’ had been the terror of olde London, training stoats to pretend to be beards so they could pickpocket people’s top pockets.

  And there was Dame Violet Bile, inventor of Wartaway Wart Juice. She’d claimed her wart juice warded away warts, when actually all it did was herd them all together to form one big giant wart.

  There was Billy Bile, the Billericay Bicycle Burglar. There was Bernie Bile, the Big Badger Baiter of Bow. And there was Bunty Bile, the part-time estate agent from just outside Stockport.

  Men, women, short, tall, long hair, short hair, bearded or with stoats – it didn’t matter – they all seemed to have the exact same mean face as Grenville.

  Hamish shuddered and looked around. There was a green door at the top of the stairs with loads of grubby handprints all over it and a big sign that said:

  KEEP OUT!

  I MEAN YOU!

  YES, YOU!

  YES, YOU’RE THE ONE

  I’M TALKING TO!

  THIS IS GRENVILLE’S ROOM!

  AND YES, I MEAN YOU!

  For a second, Hamish was stung by a tiny iota of jealousy. How come Grenville had it all? All those toys to have all that fun with. How come he deserved cool things and Hamish didn’t?

  He pushed open the door to what he was sure would be an Aladdin’s cave of wondrousness, only to be rather surprised.

  Grey walls.

  Grey floor.

  A grey ceiling.

  A plain bed with one lumpy pillow and a rather limp grey duvet.

  And no toys.

  No complete set of Super Action Rascals. No big-screen TV. No computer. No books, no chairs, no posters, no colour and no fun.

  There was a dirty-looking desk that just had one book called The World’s Funniest Tractors lying open and a half-filled jam jar marked ‘Fruits of My Nose’. Grenville’s prized El Gamba wrestling mask was hung up rather proudly on a bent brass nail in the wall.

  Where was all the stuff he was always banging on about? The stuff he always said made him better and cooler than everyone else?

  Wait – do you smell that?

  There was the worst, most awful smell in the air.

  It was putrid. It was gaseous. It was stomach-churning. And it was just hanging there, frozen in time. It was almost wet in the air, like it was coating Hamish’s face with a thin gel of awful. Imagine how an aeroplane leaves a vapour trail in the sky long after it’s flown by. Well, it turns out that’s how a smell was when it became trapped in the Pause. Hamish found he was able to actually step in and out of it (and he preferred stepping out of it).

  Hamish didn’t want to follow that stink, but bitter experience told him he’d find Grenville at the end of it.

  Down the dark and rancid hallway he walked, peanut shells cracking underfoot like they were bones in a forest, until he came to another door.

  He pushed it open, but realised immediately that this wasn’t the one he was looking for.

  Inside the dimly-lit room, under a brown chandelier, between a brown set of walls, and on a bright green carpet, was the Postmaster herself.

  She sat at a dark wooden table and looked as if she had probably been mid-grunt when the Pause struck. She was so close that Hamish could see the tufts of black, wiry hair sprouting from the moles on her arms, like spiders hatching from a bumpy, thick egg. Six or seven flies hung still in the air around her, stuck in the smoke from her nasty fat cigar. She had a bowl of peanuts and a spoon. And she was surrounded – absolutely surrounded – by brightly-coloured parcels.

  Christmas presents, birthday presents, wedding presents. All of them piled up high. They were stacked up on top of one another, crammed into cubbyholes and spread out all over the floor like a present-puddle.

  Hamish could see some of the labels . . .

  TO ASTRID, LOVE GRANNY

  TO ROBIN, FROM WEE UNCLE TONY

  So many of them! This must be every present that had been ‘lost in the post’ for months.

  Oh, the Biles were awful!

  Above the Postmaster’s head was some kind of giant map of Starkley. It had dozens of thick red arrows pointing up and down and left and right, from the old grey bridge in the woods right the way to the clock in the middle of town.

  ROUTES was scrawled at the top of the map in big red letters.

  Must be for the postmen, Hamish thought,. But why would they need to cross the old grey bridge? The only thing beyond that is the cliffs . . .

  Hamish took a step back to get a better look at the map, but as he did so caught a whiff of that smell again. It seemed to lead to the room next door.

  Curious, he followed the whiff and pushed open the door.

  What he saw inside was something he would sadly never be able to unsee.

  Eeeeeurgh!

  Grenville Bile’s face was bright red as he sat with his pants around his ankles on a grubby beige toilet. He was straining and sweating and making a dreadful face. His fists were clenched and one hand reached out for a scrappy roll of toilet tissue. His teeth were bared and his belly spilled out, resting across the tops of his legs.

  Oh, no. No one needed that in their life.

  Hamish looked away out of instinct, but then looked back. Grenville had clearly been in the middle of some unfortunate toilet business when the Pause occurred, and looked
like he was still only halfway through. What a way to spend the Pause! On the bog!

  Hamish decided the right thing to do was simply close the door and leave this boy to his very private goings-on. That would be the right thing to poo.

  I mean, do.

  But, as he began to respectfully back away, Hamish saw the very thing he’d come here for: The Explorer, on Grenville’s chubby wrist. And something inside him sparked and burnt for a second. It was a little bit of fury.

  Steal my dad’s watch, will you? he thought, getting angrier. Chase me through town? Bop me on the nose? Chuck Colin Robinson in a bush? Throw pencils at everybody? Well . . . who’s in charge now, you big red prawn?

  Hamish realised that for the first time he was in complete control of Grenville. He could do anything he wanted.

  So he grabbed the roll of toilet paper Grenville was reaching for and he threw it into the hallway. It bounced and rolled away.

  ‘Ha! Try reaching it now!’ he said, out loud, and with excitement and confidence rising in his tummy.

  Now to get his watch back!

  Very carefully, Hamish trod around Grenville and unfastened The Explorer – taking care not to touch anything else at all in that grim and gruesome place. Then he suddenly had another thought.

  Quite a cheeky one, in fact.

  No, he couldn’t do that.

  Could he?

  No way! That would be a terrible thing to do.

  If he did the thing he was thinking of, he’d be no better than Grenville Bile himself . . .

  No. He simply could not.

  . . .

  Might be fun, though.

  So, very quickly, Hamish kneeled down, grabbed both sides of Grenville’s horrible lime-green underpants and heaved them upwards as hard as he could. He managed to get them to Grenville’s knees, then did his best to slide them across those two sweaty thighs. And then – with great effort and huge skill – Hamish whipped them towards Grenville’s bottom as hard and fast as he could.

  He’d done it! Grenville was wearing his underpants again!

  Wearing them on the toilet!

  Wearing them on the toilet while not yet finished!

  Ooh, Hamish did not want to be here when Grenville made his final push.

  Talking of which . . . he’d better go.

  Hamish was still giggling when he pulled the front door of the Bile residence shut again.

  He had his watch back. And he’d taken his sweet Grevenge.

  ‘So?’ came a voice, breaking the absolute silence and causing Hamish to jump out of his skin.

  It was Alice Shepherd.

  She was leaning on the lamp post opposite with a fishburger in one hand and a lollipop in the other.

  ‘You came to get me?’ he said, delighted.

  ‘I came to see if you’d get the watch,’ she said. ‘To see if you were the kind of boy who’d stand up to his enemies.’

  ‘Well, the Pause made it a bit easier and—’

  ‘And I needed to speak to you. I have some news, Hamish. And a secret. A very big secret. A very big, very horrible secret.’

  ‘What kind of news? What kind of secret?’

  ‘I just said it was a very big, very horrible one,’ she said, impatiently. ‘Did you get your watch back?’

  Hamish showed it to her, proudly.

  ‘Amazing,’ she said. ‘What time does it say?’

  ‘6.15.’

  ‘So any second now—’

  Flies in the air started to move again. A bird whizzed by. Somewhere a car horn tooted. This girl was good!

  And suddenly, from inside number nine Knotweed Lane, there was the biggest, most deafening, most confused cry of horror you’ve ever heard.

  ‘OOH­HHN­NNN­NOO­OOO­OOO­OOO­OOO­OOO­OOO­!’ it went. ‘MYYY­PAAA­AAA­AAANN­NNNN­TTTS!’

  Hamish put his hands across his mouth. I guess Grenville had realised he suddenly had his pants on again.

  Alice frowned and cocked her head.

  ‘What did you do?’ she said with a smirk.

  And as they began to jog away, all they could now hear was a furious Postmaster.

  ‘Oh, GRENVILLE!’ she yelled. ‘NOT AGAIN, BOY! NOT AGAIN!’

  Vantastic

  Alice led Hamish to a clearing in the woods before stopping. Hamish looked around. Why had Alice brought him here?

  ‘What’s the secret?’ he asked, flustered. ‘Can you tell me yet?’

  ‘Shh,’ said Alice, listening for something.

  There was a large old metal shed to one side of the clearing that had been painted green to blend in with the trees around it. Branches hung low over its roof and a big brass lock stopped intruders from getting inside too easily.

  ‘What is this place?’ asked Hamish.

  ‘It was my grandad’s secret allotment,’ whispered Alice, still with one hand cupped around her ear to listen better. ‘This was his tool shed.’

  ‘Why are we here?’

  ‘Because I need you to meet some people,’ said Alice, importantly.

  And as Hamish was forming his next question . . . he heard music in the distance.

  A kind of tinkly-plinkity music.

  A sort of plonkety-plunkety music.

  Like a very large music box.

  What’s more, it was getting louder.

  Hamish knew that music. Though he’d never heard it played quite like this.

  It was the National Anthem.

  ‘Where’s that music coming from?’ he asked Alice, but as it got louder still, the low purr of an approaching vehicle meant that she didn’t need to answer his question.

  Through a dark canopy of trees Hamish could make out two bright, square headlights and the engine squeal of an old van. A flashing blue light on its roof lit the trees as it spun.

  It couldn’t be . . . could it? Yes it was . . . an ice-cream van?

  Hamish flashed a look of concern at Alice. She nodded her reassurance.

  The van slowed to a stop by Hamish’s feet and he could see it was being driven by a bespectacled boy no older than he was, who stared at Hamish through the windscreen with a very serious look on his face.

  The kid turned the engine off and the music stopped immediately. The back doors burst open and out jumped another boy, a girl and then another boy.

  The group saluted Alice. Hamish vaguely recognised a couple of them. One of them was in the year above him at Winterbourne, he thought.

  Hamish checked out the ice-cream van. Underneath all the pictures of Knobbly Bobblies and Fabs and 99s was a big round logo: a clenched fist holding an ice-cream cone under the flash of some powerful lightning.

  And, under all that, the letters:

  PDF

  ‘Hamish Ellerby,’ said Alice. ‘Meet the PDF.’

  ‘The PDF?’ said Hamish, as all eyes turned to him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alice. ‘This, Hamish . . . is The Pause Defence Force.’

  PDF MEMBER #: 1

  CODENAME: Control.

  MOPED: Blue Streak.

  DEPARTMENT: Head Office.

  SPECIAL SKILLS: A cool head in the face of danger.

  SIGNATURE MOVES: The Brow Furrow, The Withering Glance, The Elbow Chop.

  SECRET FACT: Scared of the dark. But will never, ever admit it.

  PDF MEMBER #: 2

  CODENAME: Muscles.

  DEPARTMENT: Innovations and Weapons of Mass Distraction.

  MOPED: Thunderbum.

  SPECIAL SKILLS: Super soup-ups. Buster’s first tricycle could do forty-eight miles per hour by the time he’d finished with it. He fell off it one day and it just kept going. It was last spotted trundling past John O’Groats and into the sea.

  SIGNATURE MOVE: The Guilty Lizard (no one really knows what this is).

  SECRET FACT: Buster can’t keep a secret. Don’t tell anyone. He’ll do that himself.

  PDF MEMBER #: 3

  CODENAME: Brainbox.

  DEPARTMENT: Strategies and Operations. And Dance.

>   MOPED: The Professor.

  SPECIAL SKILLS: Maps, graphs and knowing a lot more about things than you do.

  SIGNATURE MOVE: The Furious Flying Foot Stamp.

  SECRET FACT: One day, Elliot will go on to become Prime Minister. Of Sweden.

  PDF MEMBER #: 4

  CODENAME: Doesn’t need one.

  DEPARTMENT: Whatevs.

  MOPED: Unnamed

  SPECIAL SKILLS: Just being himself, yo.

  SIGNATURE MOVE: The Casual Smirk, The Wry Comment, The Slick Quiff.

  SECRET FACT: He reeeally wishes he was in a boyband. He wants to call it M’agickalGoldenBoyz and dress all in denim. Please don’t tell his friends (especially Buster).

  PDF MEMBER #: 5

  CODENAME: The Phantom.

  DEPARTMENT: Covert Missions and Black Ops.

  MOPED: The Glitter Donkey.

  SPECIAL SKILLS: Master of Disguise. Stamp collecting.

  SIGNATURE MOVE: The Now You See Me, Now I’m Right Behind You Holding a Frying Pan!

  SECRET FACT: Can say ‘Hello, I need the toilet’ in nine languages. Has never fallen over. For years she thought her uncle worked for the KGB. It turned out he worked in a KFC.

  Pausewalkers Unite!

  ‘You said it was just us!’ hissed Hamish, taking Alice to one side once she’d introduced them all. ‘You said it was me and you and no one else.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Alice, leaning against a tree. ‘I wanted to ease you in gently, see if you could handle the truth and hold your own. This is some pretty big stuff we’re talking about.’

  ‘So who are this lot?’ asked Hamish, pointing at the others.

  ‘They’re like you and me. Some of them have parents who vanished. Some of them have parents at home they don’t want to vanish. But all of them are Pausewalkers.’

  Hamish took a breath.

  ‘The more grown-ups that disappear,’ he said, quietly, ‘the more certain I am that my dad is out there somewhere.’

  ‘Maybe he is,’ said Alice. ‘But you have to protect yourself too. You have to remember that maybe he isn’t.’