Hamish and the Monster Patrol Read online

Yetis? Spider-whales? Sea serpents? Just legends, surely!

  Well, that’s because Monster Patrol convinced you of that, you big simpleton.

  But don’t worry. It’s for the best. Because there are SO MANY others you should count yourself lucky you don’t know about . . .

  TYPE: SNALLYGASTER

  DESCRIPTION: All wings and claws and a big eye in the middle of its forehead! Makes a sound like a passing highspeed train! Half-reptile, half-bird, all monster!

  LEVEL OF MONSTERING: Ghastly. Though mainly woodland-based, so if you see a tree – run!

  TYPE: THE GLAWACKUS

  DESCRIPTION: The terror of lumberjacks! Pounds through the forests. Blind, but uses smell and soundwaves – so make sure you use deodorant and keep quiet!

  LEVEL OF MONSTERING: Total. Though probably a bit more dangerous if you’re a lumberjack. (Are you?)

  TYPE: WENDIGOS

  DESCRIPTION: Thin, bony and grey, like an angry teacher near retirement! The more it eats, the hungrier it becomes. Furious, unsatisfied and hangry! Pelts through the fields, faster than a puma! Faster than a puma with its bum on fire!

  LEVEL OF MONSTERING: Huge. Famed for its gluttony and greed. Make sure you don’t see one at lunchtime! And that you’re not dressed up as a sandwich or wearing your kebab trousers again!

  And there were so many others. Moth-men. Stinkles. Thorpeness Crabbers. The Lala Boo. Kevin Webster.

  And these were monsters that represented one word, said Kit as he explained it all to Hamish and Alice, their eyes full of wonder and fear. ‘That one word is chaos! And you can’t have all this chaos everywhere. It’s waaay too chaotic!’

  Lydia and Luciana had written a proposal to the local council in order to try and receive a small business loan to set up Monster Patrol.

  Thankfully, the bank was owned by Belasko .

  ‘So Monster Patrol was funded by Belasko?’ asked Hamish. ‘Then why aren’t they still a part of it?’

  ‘There were a few . . . disagreements on our approach,’ said Kit. ‘The things we believe.’

  ‘Tell me more about Lydia!’ said Alice.

  ‘Once they got themselves stuck in,’ said Kit, ‘our grandmammas would convince the monsters that their only chance of survival was to hide away, deep in forests and jungles and, and never come out once more. This did two things. It protected people from monsters, and it protected monsters from people. Because, as I’m sure you know, not all monsters are bad.’

  Hamish did not look convinced and was starting to see why Belasko might have had a few problems with Monster Patrol. I mean, sure, he’d met a friendly Venus SpyTrap once, but generally his experiences with monsters had been anything but good. In fact they’d been monstrous! One of them had even once stuck its finger up his nose!

  Alice on the other hand thought back to a moment in her own life, not too long ago. She had met a monster on Christmas Eve – a young Terrible – and the two of them had found some common ground.

  ‘I can believe they’re not all bad,’ she said, smiling at Kit.

  Hamish stared at her, feeling a tinge of jealousy at how interested she seemed in Kit’s words. Had she totally forgotten about all the problems monsters had caused them in the past? All the badness they brought to the world? Alice was a little too keen on this whole Monster Patrol thing for his liking.

  ‘The fact is, we need some monsters,’ said Kit.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s true,’ began Hamish.

  ‘No! Hamish – they are a hidden part of our ecosystem. One MegaWorm can fertilise fifteen fields in a minute. And, did you know the Ultra-bee can pollinate an entire orchard without even trying? Sure, it’s got a temper. And one heck of a stinger. But it’s important and helpful, too.’

  ‘But what if the monsters wouldn’t hide like our grandmas told them to?’ said Alice, impressed. ‘What if they weren’t useful, they were just bad?’

  ‘If the time came to fight,’ said Kit, ‘Monster Patrol knew exactly how to dispose of any huge and unwilling baddies. Because can you imagine the panic it would cause if they suddenly started attacking towns?’

  Hamish raised his eyebrows. Yes, he could imagine that very well. Because in just four days it was literally about to happen once again in Starkley!

  ‘Monster Patrol knew all the best ways of capturing them, and then they would take them to Belasko, who’d fly them to some other planet somewhere and let them roam free.

  ‘We set up many offices and Lydia used her cover as a travel writer to interview the best and the brightest monster hunters, wherever they might live.’

  ‘Cool!’ said Alice.

  ‘Monster Patrol offices were often hidden in plain sight,’ Kit continued. ‘An old post office here. An abandoned cinema there.’

  ‘A hotel in the Amazon?’ said Alice, and Kit smiled a si.

  ‘If rumours of a Cactus Cat in Caracas came up, Monster Patrol was on it. If someone saw an Amorak Wolf pounding heavily through the Arctic Tundra, Monster Patrol would have fired up their Snowgo! snowmobiles and chased it through the ice.’

  Alice’s eyes widened even further at Kit’s words. She couldn’t believe that her grandma had led such an exciting life!

  ‘Then Lydia had disappeared,’ Kit said, sadly. ‘My grandmamma Luciana couldn’t do all the work by herself. They had been such a team, a dúo. And with one half totally vanished, Monster Patrol started to close its offices.

  ‘Even then the bad monsters mostly stayed hidden because they feared my grandmamma still, but, as she grew older, she realised that if Monster Patrol was to have any chance of survival and keep the world safe, then she would have to find the next generation to carry on the work, that Monster Patrol needed to strengthen itself again,’ said Kit. ‘My grandmamma knew she was . . . not long for this world and became more and more worried that the truly evil monsters would feel safer with her gone and start to reappear again.’

  A moment of sadness flashed across Kit’s eyes. He dismissed it immediately.

  ‘She taught me from the age of four what to do. And by the time I was ten . . . well, I was alone. But she had planned for that. One of her last decisions was the most important thing about the all-new Monster Patrol,’ he said. ‘She hatched a plan, to bring in Familiars. Each MP team would be a kid and a pretty nice and cool monster who wanted to help make sure that the truth about monsters remained a secret too.’

  ‘Kids and monsters?!’ said Hamish in shock. ‘That’s usually a dreadful combination!’

  Hamish was right. Kids and monsters? Madness! But Luciana was smart. She knew that it was a risk, but she also knew that there was something that made kids special. She’d studied Kit when he was just a toddler. The way he’d solve a puzzle or do a jigsaw. The questions he’d ask. Kids, she decided, just think differently.

  ‘Grown-ups suddenly get much more scared of things when they become the grown-ups,’ said Kit, with great certainty. ‘They see danger everywhere. “Argh! A bike! Eek! A fly! Ooh! A loud noise!” Especially when they become parents.’

  Hamish thought of his mum. It was definitely true of her. But then he felt bad because, after all, his mum was one of the brave parents, staying in Starkley for as long as possible, despite the imminent monster attack. Because she thought it was the right thing to do and she trusted they’d find a way out of danger . . . somehow.

  ‘When you’re a kid,’ said Kit, ‘you take more risks now, and imagine the consequences later. And you think differently, so can find solutions to problems that grown-ups can’t see. Kids are fearless and smart. That’s a winning combination when it comes to fighting monsters!’

  Alice smiled. That was exactly what the PDF was all about too, and had been since day one. Even Hamish had to grudgingly agree and put his jealousy to one side.

  ‘So, we can hook up with the rest of Monster Patrol, right?’ said Hamish. ‘All these kids and their Familiars? Get a whole gang together! An army! Find Alice’s nan and then all of us race back to Starkley and stop th
e sea monster!’

  Smasha glanced at Kit knowingly.

  ‘Er, well, I wouldn’t say we’re an army exactly . . .’ said Kit.

  ‘How many of you are there?’ said Hamish.

  Hamish could see that Kit was wondering how to put it.

  ‘There are,’ said Kit, slowly . . . ‘two.’

  ‘Two?’ said Hamish. ‘Two teams?’

  ‘Uh, no,’ said Kit. ‘Just two. Just me and Smasha.’

  ‘What do you mean? What happened to all the Monster Patrol teams?!’ said Alice.

  ‘I said my grandmamma hatched a plan for Monster Patrol. I did not say she lived long enough to see it through. But I will. My grandmamma left me Smasha. Together we are Monster Patrol, and one day we will be many!’

  Hamish nodded. He had to respect Kit’s determination, even if he had found him a little cocky to start with.

  ‘Well, we’re here now too,’ said Alice. ‘So what’s the plan?’

  ‘Smasha,’ said Kit, smiling coolly, and strapping himself in. ‘Hit it.’

  Smasha hit accelerate and the Astral Plane BOOOOMED through the sky.

  9

  DAYS UNTIL ARRIVAL: 5-1

  (So . . . 4)

  ‘Fantastico!’ shouted Kit, when the ship had been cruising high, high above the clouds for almost an hour. ‘Take the wheel, Smasha!’

  Kit turned to Alice, who was fixing an ALWAYS BE PREPARED badge to her top, almost as a way of reminding herself.

  ‘Will you show me Lydia’s travel diary?’

  Alice fished it from her bag and handed it to him. Kit held it as if he was holding the most precious object imaginable. Alice turned, and stopped in her tracks. There were photos of her grandma on the wall, living a life she’d never imagined. Darting through jungles, laughing onboard ships, driving big jeeps. They were incredible to her, and she gasped. But she also felt a weight on her shoulders. Could she live up to her grandma’s legacy? Maybe by rescuing her, she would.

  Hamish looked around, just as stunned. He’d spent most of the journey taking in the walls of the ship. Right down one whole side was a wunderkammer – that’s a German word that sort of means ‘cabinet of wonders’ – and inside were all manner of rare souvenirs and important historical objects. Hamish stood up and trailed his finger across the words that had been chiselled on to the various wooden drawers.

  He paused on one of the drawers. ‘What’s a “yokai”?’ he asked Kit.

  ‘Japanese pond-dweller,’ said Kit, slowly turning the pages of the diary as he searched for something. ‘It looks like some old tadpole. Great manners, but attacks UNEXPECTEDLY!’

  He made a face which would have been frightening, if it hadn’t looked like some old tadpole.

  Hamish opened a drawer at random. Inside was a giant tooth.

  ‘A Chinese Dragon tooth?’ read Hamish, as Alice joined him and opened a drawer of her own.

  ‘That’s a Unicorn tusk, Alice,’ said Kit. ‘Sharpest tusk that exists. It can cut through diamantes.’

  This was incredible. I mean, Hamish and Alice had seen some strange things over the last year, but even so, they’d never really considered that maybe dragons and unicorns were real and that their tusks could cut through diamonds!

  ‘Wait – unicorns don’t have tusks,’ said Alice, who’d never considered a unicorn to be a monster.

  ‘Oh, don’t they? And I suppose they don’t breathe fire either?’ said Kit, who was not used to being questioned on his knowledge of monsters.

  ‘What about this one?’ said Hamish, holding up a strange-looking green object.

  ‘Gremlin claw,’ said Kit, and Hamish dropped it immediately. ‘Of course, those drawers are very much a grandmamma system. All handwritten notes and filing in alphabeticals. I’m working on modernising things. Got my own BDNA system.’

  ‘BDNA?’ said Hamish.

  ‘Beast DNA . . . I take samples from any monster I find and add them to a big database I’m creating. Eventually we’ll know what kind of monster almost anything is.’

  ‘That’s smart!’ said Hamish. ‘Our friend Elliot would freak! How do you do it?’

  ‘Well, I have to get close enough to shove a cotton stick in the monster’s cheek and then swipe. You try doing that with a Giant HellToad that’s gone crazy on terrorberries!’

  Hamish and Alice glanced at each other. That was not a job either of them fancied.

  ‘Got any sea monsters on that database?’ asked Hamish. ‘We could do with some ideas on how to get rid of those!’

  ‘It does not surprise me that you’re facing a sea monster,’ said Kit. ‘Most monsters are aquatic nowadays. The oceans cover two thirds of Earth. It’s funny, humans always think this is “our” planet, but we forget that most of it is water and none of us have gills!’

  Everyone looked at Smasha.

  ‘No offence, camarada,’ said Kit, and Smasha made a noise that sounded like ‘Harrumph’.

  Kit stopped as he found the newspaper cutting of Lydia at the Hotel Empanada.

  ‘Oh!’ said Hamish, remembering. ‘Elliot thought the map Lydia’s holding here might be a clue. Do you recognise it?’

  Kit’s eyes widened. He grabbed a bottle of water and held it in front of the map like a magnifying glass. ‘Interesting!’

  ‘Why?’ said Alice.

  ‘We did not search the area on the map,’ said Kit. ‘We found Lydia’s boot about a mile away from the hotel. That was the way she seemed to be heading. But maybe something knocked her off course as she searched for the BÜÜÜÜG?’

  ‘Uh, what’s a BÜÜÜÜG?’ said Hamish, and this was a question he really did not want to know the answer to.

  ‘I know about the BÜÜÜÜG,’ said Alice, happy she could show off some monster knowledge in front of Kit. ‘It’s a sort of giant fly-worm-beetle-bug that’s all horned and taloned and toothed! And the worst thing about it is how patient it is! It’ll grab its prey and wait for years until it becomes just tasty enough to eat! Grandma Lydia came up against it once before and it nearly made her give up monster hunting! She was so frightened she got an instant white stripe in her hair!’

  ‘Oh, it is a fearsome beast,’ agreed Kit. ‘Let me attempt to piece this together using only my mind . . .’

  ‘How do you know all that?’ said Alice, impressed yet mildly disturbed.

  ‘I do not know all that,’ said Kit. ‘But I will know more when I’ve studied this diary and map properly. Lydia must have sent your mother the travel diary the day she set off to find the BÜÜÜÜG. Something must have made her think she needed to post the diary somewhere safe. She published the article when she knew where she was going, stuck it in the diary, and sent it off to your mother.’

  ‘But why would she send it?’ said Alice.

  ‘Perhaps she realised she was being followed and she panicked,’ said Kit. ‘Maybe she only suspected it. But we think she was followed.’

  ‘By who?’ said Hamish.

  ‘The Superiors,’ said Kit. ‘When they first had their eyes on Earth, they did not think the idea of fewer monsters was in their interests. And they certainly didn’t want people around who were good at battling them. Of course, since then other enemies have come. Enemies every bit as powerful, who have learnt from the Superiors and also want to make Earth theirs.’

  Hamish knew who that sounded like. But didn’t want to say anything or even think about it. He told himself he couldn’t tell Kit anyway, because then Kit might not trust him. He might think Hamish was a spy.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Alice, looking at the diary. ‘It’s just been in our attic for years.’

  ‘You found it for a reason,’ Hamish told her. ‘But what about your grandma, Kit? Tell us about her.’

  Kit picked up a photo from the cabinet of wonders. In it, Lydia was wearing a snowsuit, and Luciana wore a long tweed dress and boots.

  ‘My grandmamma was a little different from Lydia. Different skills. A little more . . . experimental.’


  Hamish could tell from the pictures on the wall of the plane that, despite their differences, Lydia and Luciana must have been a crack team.

  There was Lydia, all action, charging into situations and taking control. Barking orders at monsters and leaping around.

  And there was Luciana Lopez – calmer, studying the creatures, understanding them, and using whatever tricks she had up her to sleeve to solve the problem.

  ‘She was quite an . . . unusual . . . woman,’ said Kit. ‘She started off as a science teacher. But the more she studied voodoo and hoodoo, the more she thought it could be useful. She thought maybe they would respond to . . . well, to magic.’

  Hamish frowned. Magic?

  Hmmm. Hamish suspected this might be why Monster Patrol and Belasko had gone their separate ways. Belasko tended not to put its faith in the unknown.

  But Luciana had studied it all. Mayan magic. Far Eastern magic. Latin American magic. Close-up magic. Coin tricks. That one where you pretend your thumb is someone’s nose. Any and all the magic she could.

  ‘Uh, one thing I’d like to say,’ said Alice. ‘I mean, I love Monster Patrol and everything, but magic isn’t real.’

  ‘People have different opinions,’ said Kit, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Anyway, they started Monster Patrol as a way to help the world. And sometimes helping the world is the best way to make an enemy—’

  And then Smasha started to get excited. Because he could see that far down below, they were running out of ocean, and about to whizz over land.

  They were getting closer to Hotel Empanada.

  10

  DAYS UNTIL ARRIVAL: 4, THOUGH REMEMBER TO ALLOW FOR A SLIGHT TIME DIFFERENCE ON ACCOUNT OF FOREIGN TRAVEL

  ‘Okay, I’m ready,’ said Alice, leaping from the machine. ‘Let’s get deep into the jungle and kick some BÜÜÜÜG butt!’

  She struck a karate pose and jumped about, getting to know her environment. It was mainly trees and a small frog. But the sounds of the jungle were everywhere.