How Hedley Hopkins Did a Dare... Read online

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Paul Jennings

  How

  Hedley Hopkins

  Did a Dare,

  robbed a grave,

  made a new friend who might not have really been there at all,

  and while he was at it

  committed a terrible sin

  which everyone was doing even though he didn’t know it

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Australia)

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Group (Canada)

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  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  Penguin Group (NZ)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Penguin Group (Australia) a division of Pearson Australia Group, 2005

  Text copyright © Lockley Lodge Pty Ltd, 2005

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Title page photograph Paul Edmondson/Getty Images

  www.puffin.com.au

  ISBN: 978-1-74-228492-7

  contents

  1 half-moon murderers

  2 the coffin

  3 madness at midnight

  4 signing the pledge

  5 the dare

  6 the facts of life

  7 a silent scream

  8 R.I.P.

  9 worth your weight in sawdust

  10 the first sign of madness

  11 the drum cupboard

  12 big and vicious

  13 inside the loony bin

  14 a gap in the fence

  15 dog, dog, dog

  16 chinese burns

  17 a fiendish plan

  18 terrible magic stirring

  19 out of the sack

  20 running away

  21 a wild man

  22 wagging it

  23 a grave situation

  24 beneath a bone

  25 dead man talking

  26 angels

  27 who did it?

  28 blue heaven

  29 the nougat tin

  to

  JULIE WATTS

  CATHERINE McCREDIE

  KATIE EVANS

  My wonderful publisher and editors.

  Thank you so much for the ideas,

  the encouragement, the research and the

  many, many careful and loving edits.

  I can never thank you enough for

  helping me tell this story.

  1

  half-moon murderers

  THEY SAY THERE is something awful in the sand dunes.

  Kate and I walk along the beach kicking seaweed and looking at stuff that has been washed up. There is not a single footprint in the sand, which means that no one has been along this way since high tide. There might be something good amongst the seaweed. So far we have only found a broken lobster pot and a dead penguin with no eyes.

  It is a lonely beach with a lonely sky.

  The sand dunes are covered in marram grass. Huge waves thunder up the beach and then run out of puff. The waves are powerful but they can’t hurt you unless you get too close. Of course you never know when an extra big one is going to rush up and grab you. Life is like that. Just when you feel safe – bang – something awful happens. A wave of fate knocks you over.

  ‘The grave’s behind the Loony Bin,’ says Kate.

  The Loony Bin is where the mad people live. I have never seen them because there is a big wire fence around the whole place and thick bushes grow on the other side. But there are stories.

  One night Ian Douglas told me about the loonies when I was walking home from Cubs. He kept walking behind me and I couldn’t get rid of him.

  ‘One of the loonies is a full-moon murderer,’ he said in a fake scary voice. ‘And he often gets out at night.’

  ‘I’m not frightened of lunatics,’ I said.

  But that was a lie. As I walked along trying not to listen I looked up into the cold sky where the full moon was so bright that any murderer could see us just as if it was midday. Ian Douglas is a big tough kid and his house is close to the Church Hall where the Cubs meet. He turned into his front garden and laughed at something that I didn’t know about. He didn’t have to walk on his own after Cubs. But I did.

  I was alone in the glare of the moon and it was a long way back to my house. Each driveway could have hidden a full-moon murderer. I walked down the centre of the road to give myself a chance if one jumped out. A few weeks later Ian Douglas told me that there are also half-moon murderers in the Loony Bin. The night he told me that, there just happened to be a half-moon and I was so scared I thought I was going to faint. When I finally got home, Mum and Dad and Kate were out. Probably gone for a walk around the block with Kate tagging along behind.

  I wanted to jump into bed but a thought kept coming into my mind that a half-moon murderer might be hiding underneath. Once this thought comes into your mind you have to take a look. Otherwise you will lie there all night imagining a hand coming out and grabbing you. But if you look under the bed and see a face staring back, you will die of fright just from the terror of the experience. So I do my usual trick and roll a ball underneath. If it comes out the other side of the bed I am safe.

  The ball did not come out the other side. It took me ages and ages to get up the courage to take a peek. There was no one under the bed. The ball had been stopped by a pair of underpants that I had kicked under there the week before. That’s what I mean – bang – you are never safe from an unexpected wave of fate.

  My parents make me sleep with the light out. I’m scared of the dark and I don’t want it to be turned off.

  ‘We’re not wasting electricity when you’re asleep,’ says Mum.

  Mum and Dad don’t give a tinker’s cuss about dark streets or shadows in your bedroom.

  ‘In the Blitz we had total blackout,’ said Dad. ‘With Gerry bombers roaring over London.’

  He is always talking about the War. He says that because food was short back in England when the War was on, they used to eat cats but I don’t believe him.

  ‘What did they taste like?’ I asked him once.

  ‘Rabbit,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t tell the difference. Wasn’t a cat to be seen in our neighbourhood, I can tell you that.’ He gave a short laugh at this.

  Parents don’t seem to know what it is like to be a kid. They live in a different world. They are not scared of the dark and they laugh at strange things. Eating cats is not
funny. Nor are half-moon murderers who might escape from the Loony Bin.

  Kate and I keep walking along the beach. The morning wind is cold and strong and our hair lashes our eyes and cheeks. Our feet sink into the wet sand, which makes it hard going.

  She is a good girl is our Kate but she is two years younger than me. I wish she was a boy and older but she isn’t. If she was a boy I could play with her and no one would say anything. It is all right to play with a brother but not with a sister. At school you are a sissy if you play with your sister and it is not allowed by the other boys who will tease you if they see. But today it doesn’t matter because we are alone on the beach as we walk towards the grave.

  I have been going to school in Warrongbool for six months and still I do not have a bunch of kids to play with. It is hard to make friends. Everybody already has a friend. They are worried that their best friend will like you better than them and then they will be alone and not you. So I wander around at lunchtime with no one to talk to. I have to look as if I don’t care. But I do.

  Ian Douglas has a group of friends and they might let me join. You have to do a dare if you want to be in their group. If you don’t do the dare then you are a chicken and there will be no hope for you ever. I’m worried about this. The dare could be something scary like doing a burglary or climbing inside the Loony Bin. I think I will have to do the dare, though. Then I’ll have friends. Even if they are tough kids.

  ‘It’s up there,’ says Kate pointing to a little track that winds up through the windswept grasses on the sand dunes.

  ‘I know,’ I say in an annoyed voice. Kate has to realise that she is younger than me and I am the one who knows the way. But she doesn’t seem to realise this. Kate is brave for her age.

  The grave is not in a cemetery. It’s all on its own in the sand dunes. No one seems to know who is buried there. It could have been someone who drowned when a convict ship sank off the reef many years ago. Probably a sailor. Maybe a soldier. Or the captain. It is a big grave with a concrete slab lying flat on top of it. All the letters have faded away except for part of a word – MANN.

  We make our way to the top of the sand dune and look down on the grave. I gasp. So does Kate.

  ‘It’s true,’ I say.

  2

  the coffin

  THINGS HAVE CHANGED. The top of the grave is no longer covered. The slab of concrete has been moved to one side leaving a gaping black hole in the sand. For some reason it reminds me of the bloody space that is left after a tooth has been pulled out.

  ‘Look at that,’ whispers Kate.

  I don’t like this. Not one little bit. It’s as if I have suddenly fallen into a dangerous world that I have only heard about on the wireless. In other countries there are wars and floods and gangsters and dead bodies. But in my world there are just school bullies and grazed knees and having your one-shilling pocket money stopped. An open grave only happens in the pictures and I am shaking because this isn’t the pictures. But I am Kate’s big brother and I have to be tough.

  ‘Come on,’ I say as I roll up my sleeves. ‘I’m going to have a look.’

  My feet take me forward. I have had this feeling before. My brain doesn’t want me to go. My heart is pounding with fear. But somehow my legs seem to have a life of their own. They just keep taking one step after another until I’m almost at the side of the grave.

  It was the same the first time I jumped off the high diving board. I am scared of heights and I didn’t want to do it. But all the kids who wanted to jump formed a line at the bottom of the ladder and I had to join them. Once I was in the line there was no way out. Up, up, up the ladder – one step after another to the platform. Then walking along the springboard to the edge. Oh, how I wanted to turn and go back. But I couldn’t. Every boy in the school was watching. I closed my eyes and jumped. For a few long seconds I was in the air. Terror, nothing but terror. Then, kersplash. It was over.

  Now I am at the edge of the grave. I can see the shape of the coffin at the bottom. It is not like the sort of coffins you see at funerals. This one is made of lead and has the body shape of the person who is inside. Like an Egyptian mummy coffin but grey with no paintings or decoration.

  Then I see something else.

  A cold tingle of terror runs over my skin. What I see is not what I expect to see.

  ‘What is it?’ says Kate. She has crept up next to me but is staring up at the sky. She is sort of like the first person to reach a car crash. She wants to look but can’t.

  I just manage to scratch the words out with my dry tongue. ‘A skull.’

  Oh, horror. Oh, strike a light. Someone has been down into the grave and punched a hole through the lead coffin right above the place where the dead person’s head would be. Next to the coffin, staring up at us with empty eyes, is a skull.

  Kate half closes her eyes and finds the courage to peer over the edge. She screams in terror. I have never seen her scared like this before. Boy, does she run. She pelts over the dunes sending the sand shooting up from her heels like the spray from machine-gun bullets.

  Suddenly I’m not the tough big brother. I give a scream of my own and scramble after Kate. We run like the Devil is on our tails. We belt along the wet sand close to the edge of the water where it’s soggy but firmer than the dry sand further up. We send the seagulls screeching into the empty sky.

  We don’t notice the vast lonely sea. Or the lonely beach. The eye sockets of that terrible skull hold more loneliness than any heart can bear.

  3

  madness at midnight

  KATE AND I thunder along the beach until we reach the pier. There are people fishing and others just taking a walk. Normal people. We are safe. But we still keep running along the streets. We don’t stop until we reach our front garden.

  We stagger inside and Kate and I fall into my bedroom and lie panting on the floor. Our chests hurt with icy pains from all the running. At first we just gulp in raw air and cannot talk from a shortage of breath.

  Finally Kate manages to say, ‘I’m telling Mum.’

  ‘No,’ I gasp. ‘You mustn’t. We’re not allowed to go near the Loony Bin. She’ll go on and on about it and we’ll be in big trouble. And people might think we moved the slab from the grave.’

  ‘No they wouldn’t,’ says Kate. ‘It’s too heavy. It would need men.’

  ‘Or a gang of boys,’ I say.

  Somewhere at the back of my mind a black thought is gathering. This often happens to me. A thought is trying to escape. But something pushes it down and I become worried without knowing why. It’s like putting the lid down on a … coffin.

  ‘It was terrible,’ gasps Kate. ‘When I close my eyes I can still see it. It was real. A real, dead person’s head.’

  Most girls of Kate’s age would start to cry. But she doesn’t.

  ‘Don’t tell Mum,’ I say.

  ‘You’re not the boss,’ she says.

  I have to be nice to her or she will tell everything. ‘I know,’ I say. ‘But the skull can’t hurt you. It can’t move. It can’t come here. Just forget about it. Someone will tell the Police and they’ll put the slab back on top.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ says Kate.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘We won’t ever go there again.’

  ‘Promise?’ she says.

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ I say.

  She needn’t worry. There is nothing in the world that will make me go back to that grave.

  Kate gets up and goes to her own room. I am alone with my thoughts. I start to talk to myself inside my head about what has happened.

  The whole thing is hard to believe. It’s the sort of story that you read about in comics like Inner Sanctum or Tales of the Living Dead. You don’t find this sort of thing in Blondie and Dagwood comics which do not feature open graves.

  Every boy at school collects comics to swap. You aren’t allowed to take them to school so you have to smuggle them inside under your jumper. The most popular
are Superman, The Phantom and Donald Duck. One coloured comic is worth three black-and-white ones. English comics like Beano and Dandy, which I like, are not worth much at all. American comics are the most popular. Dagwood and Blondie which are about the Bumstead family are funny. But I like them for another reason.

  I take out a Blondie comic from where I have hidden it in the space under the bottom drawer of my desk. This will help me stop thinking about skulls. I start to trace over a picture of Blondie. I put my exercise book under the page and then I press hard over her outline in the comic with a roofing nail. I trace around her hair and face and her whole body including her breasts. But I don’t trace around her blouse or slacks.

  I go over the outline in my exercise book with a pencil and make a copy. Not an exact copy because my drawing of Blondie has no clothes on. She is stark naked. All I have to do is draw a little circle on each breast. These are the nipples which I colour in pink. I don’t know what to draw where her legs join at the top so I just add a little bent line. If my mother ever found this exercise book the world would come to an end. My head would explode and blow all over the walls and there would be bits of brain and blood everywhere. And I would go to Hell and be tormented forever because I am drawing Blondie in the nude.

  My mother does not like anything rude at all. I once got into terrible trouble at the table when we were eating cocktail sausages. ‘Pass the frankfarts,’ I said to Kate. Well, Mum went on and on and on about it. She kept looking at me as if I had stood up there and peed all over the table. Her looks can kill.

  It’s just as well that no one is listening to my thoughts. Staring at drawings of naked flesh is wicked. It makes me feel good in a bad way. Every time I do it, I say I will never do it again. But I always do. It is like being starving hungry and walking past a baker’s shop. I can’t think about anything else. I try and try and try but the thoughts about naked ladies just keep coming like the smell of fresh cakes.

  Once when Mum and Dad and I were walking down the street at night I saw a book in the window of a shop. It was called Madness at Midnight. On the cover was a picture of a group of men in top hats standing around a dark and smoky stage. They were all staring up at a lady with no clothes on. I couldn’t believe it. A real picture of a real lady with nothing on. Surely it was against the law. Even in 1956 you are not allowed to show such a thing in a shop. I couldn’t stop looking at the picture. What was going on? What were those men doing there? They were in some dark and evil place like the inside of my mind. I longed to be there with them. I wanted to see what they could see. One of the top hats was in the way though, so I still couldn’t see the bit at the top of the lady’s legs. Mum and Dad didn’t know what I was staring at. They were walking on ahead.