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  I thought about all the plants and flowers that had vanished from this country for ever.

  ‘Well?’ said Dad.

  He was a good dad. But I knew that he would want to find the Wobby Gurgle.

  That’s when I looked at him and told a lie.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I never saw anyone.’

  Did I do the right thing? You be the judge.

  Inside the toilet five boys are peeing in the air to see how high they can get. They are having a competition before the athletics start. My big brother Sam is winning as usual. No one can pee as high as he can. I go red in the face when I see them. ‘Come on, Weesle,’ he says to me. ‘Have a go.’

  I don’t want to have a go really. It is embarrassing and I am not very good at it. He is asking me on purpose. He wants me to make a fool of myself again. ‘Yeah,’ say all the others. ‘Come on, Weesle. Don’t be a wimp.’

  Oh, it is awful. They are all jeering at me. I will have to be in it. I undo my fly and have a try. I am so nervous that only a little dribble comes out. They all laugh and mock. ‘Weak,’ they yell. My brother Sam is the worst of the lot. ‘Poor Weesle is a little squirt,’ he says. They all crack up and laugh like mad.

  We go out to athletics practice. I am in the hundred metres and so is Sam. Next week it will be the big run-off to see who is the fastest boy in the school. Today is just a try-out. How I wish I could win. I would do anything to beat my brother Sam.

  But my heart is heavy inside me. He is better than me at everything. He is smarter than me. He is better-looking than me. He is taller than me. He is tougher than me. He can beat me at anything you care to name.

  We crouch down at the starting line. ‘I’ll wait for you at the end, wimp,’ jeers Sam. ‘That is if you get there at all.’

  The other boys are looking on. Oh, how I would love to beat Sam. I don’t even care if I am not the winner. Just so long as I beat Sam. He is always showing off. He is always making me feel like a wimp.

  Mr Hendrix has the starter’s gun in his hand. My knees are starting to wobble I am so nervous. And this is not even the real race when the whole school will be watching. This is just a practice.

  ‘Bang.’ We are off. I get away to a good start. I am ahead by a couple of metres. Suddenly everything seems to go right. My legs whirr. I romp along easily. My breathing is steady. I look behind and Sam seems to be in trouble. I am in front and he is second. I am nearly up to the finishing line. For the first time in my life I am going to beat him at something.

  I grin as I approach the string. But I grin too soon. Sam flashes by me so quickly that I can’t believe it. He has beaten me again. I feel terrible. I try not to let tears show in my eyes.

  Sam is jumping around and showing off. He holds his hands over his head like a boxer. ‘I hung back on purpose,’ he jeers. ‘Thought you had me, didn’t you, wimp?’ he says. He gloats and shows off all the way home.

  The other boys join in and tease me too.

  I walk sadly along behind them. I try not to listen. Next Tuesday is the real race. I will never be able to beat Sam in that. I will be too nervous. I am just not good enough.

  Sam goes off with the others to explore the big forest. They won’t let me go with them. ‘You’d only get lost,’ says Sam.

  2

  Tears are in my eyes as I reach home. I try to dry them before Mum notices but once again I fail. ‘What’s the matter, Weesle?’ says Mum.

  ‘It’s Sam,’ I yell. ‘He always wins at everything. Every time he beats me. He can even tie his shoelaces faster than me. I would love to beat him at something – just once. Today it was running. He won the hundred metres again. He always wins. Next Tuesday is the grand final.’

  Mum bends down and puts her arm around me.

  ‘Listen, Weesle,’ she says. ‘There is one way you can win at anything. I used to be a champion runner and I know.’

  This is the first time that I hear about Mum being a champion runner. I look at her, waiting to learn the secret.

  ‘You train,’ she says. ‘You practise. Every minute. Every day. Sam never trains. He is lazy. If you train every day you can beat him. He just wins because he is bigger than you.’

  Mum could be right. I decide to give it a go.

  I get up early in the morning and I train. I train at recess. I train at lunchtime. I train after school. I train in the hot weather and I train when it is cold. I get better and better, especially on the cold days. It is hard work. It is not easy. But I am determined to beat Sam. No one has ever trained as hard as I do.

  Mum would be proud of me if she could see how hard I train. But I do it in secret. I am going to surprise Sam. No one is going to expect me to win. I can’t wait to see the look on his face.

  Tuesday comes at last. This is it. This is my big chance. All my training is going to pay off. It is cold so I wear my thick jumper to school.

  I walk into the toilet where Sam and the boys are having the grand final. They are seeing which boy in the school will be the Grand Champion at peeing in the air. ‘Give me a go,’ I say. They laugh and jeer and call me squirt. But I don’t care. I have been training for this all week.

  Boy, do I squirt. I pee higher than anyone in the world has ever done. Higher than my head. The kids’ eyes bug out with admiration. ‘Wow,’ they yell.

  Sam, however, does not admire me. He is as mad as a hatter. He blows his top. He hits the roof.

  But not in the same way that I do.

  Dad was scabbing around in the rubbish.

  ‘How embarrassing,’ said Pete. ‘It’s lucky there’s no one else here to see us.’

  I looked around the tip. He was right. No one was dumping rubbish except us. There was just Dad, me, and my twin brother Pete. The man driving the bulldozer didn’t count. He was probably used to people coming to the tip with junk and then taking a whole pile of stuff back home.

  It was a huge tip with a large, muddy pond in the middle. I noticed a steer’s skull on a post in the water. There were flies everywhere, buzzing and crawling over the disgusting piles. Thousands of seagulls were following the bulldozer looking for rotten bits of food.

  ‘These country tips are fantastic,’ yelled Dad. ‘Come and help me get this.’ He was trying to dig out an old pram. I looked around and groaned. Another car had just pulled up. It was a real flash one. A Mercedes.

  We had just arrived in Allansford the day before. It was a little country town where everybody would know what was going on. Pete and I had to start at a new school the next day. The last thing we wanted was someone to see us digging around in the tip.

  A man and a boy got out of the Mercedes. They had a neat little bag of rubbish which the man dropped onto the ground. A cloud of flies rose into the air. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ the man said to the boy. ‘This place stinks.’

  The boy was about my age but he was twice as big as me. He had red hair and he looked tough. I could see that he was grinning his head off and staring at our car. The back seat of our old bomb was full of Dad’s findings. There was a mangled typewriter, a baseball bat, two broken chairs, a torn picture of a green lady lying on a tree branch and a bike with no wheels. I blushed. Dad just could not go to the tip without taking half of it back home with him.

  I looked up at the kid with red hair again. He was pointing at Dad and laughing fit to bust. ‘Oh no,’ groaned Pete. ‘Look what he has got now.’

  Dad had run over to the bulldozer and held up his hand to stop the driver. He was digging around in front of its blade. He had found an arm sticking out of the junk. It looked like a human arm but it wasn’t. It was the arm of one of those shop dummies they put dresses on. Dad pulled and yelled and jiggled until he got the whole thing out. Then he stood there holding it up for all the world to see. A female shop dummy with no clothes on.

  It had a wig for hair but apart from that it was stark naked. Its left arm pointed up at the sky. It looked like Dad was standing there with a naked woman. The red-haired kid and his father
were both laughing by now. The boy bent down and picked up something from the ground. Then they got into their Mercedes and disappeared through the gate. Pete and I hung our heads with shame. We couldn’t bring ourselves to look as Dad dragged the dummy back to the car. I hoped like anything that the red-haired kid didn’t go to Allansford School.

  ‘Wonderful,’ hooted Dad as he examined the shop dummy. ‘Your mother will be pleased. She can use this for making dresses.’

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ yelled Pete. ‘You promised Mum that you wouldn’t bring anything back from the tip.’

  Dad looked a bit sheepish. ‘This is different, boys. This isn’t junk. This is valuable stuff. Now give me a hand to get this dummy into the car.’

  ‘Not me,’ I said.

  ‘Nor me,’ added Pete. ‘I’m not touching her. She hasn’t got any clothes on. It’s rude.’

  2

  There was no room in the back of the car so Dad sat her up in the front. He put the seatbelt on her to stop her falling over. Her lifted-up arm poked through a rust hole in the roof.

  ‘Where are we supposed to sit?’ I asked. ‘There’s no room in the back.’

  ‘One on each side of her,’ said Dad. ‘We’ll all sit in the front. There’s plenty of room.’

  So that’s how we went home. Shame. Oh terrible shame. Driving along the road with a naked dummy sitting between us. Every time we passed someone Pete and I ducked down so that they couldn’t see us. Dad just laughed. It was all right for him. He wasn’t starting at a new school in the morning.

  Then it happened. A blue flashing light. A siren. A loud voice saying, ‘Pull over driver.’

  It was the police.

  A policeman got off his motorbike and walked slowly to the car. He pulled off his gloves and adjusted his sunglasses. Then he leaned in the window. ‘What’s this naked lady . . .?’ he started off in a cross voice. But then he started laughing. He doubled up holding his side and pointing to the dummy. ‘We had a report that there was a naked woman,’ he managed to get out in between gasps. ‘But it’s only a shop dummy.’

  I thought he was never going to stop laughing but finally he said, ‘Where did you get all this stuff, sir?’

  ‘The Allansford tip,’ answered Dad.

  ‘The locals call it Haunted Tip,’ said the policeman with a grin. He seemed to want to stay and talk. He probably was trying to figure out if Dad was a nut case or not. Pete and I just sat there trying not to be seen. ‘No one will go there after dark,’ he told us. ‘They say the ghost of Old Man Chompers walks that tip at night.’

  ‘Old Man Chompers?’ said Dad.

  ‘Yes, he was the caretaker of the tip long ago. They say he was minding his two grandchildren there one day. The children disappeared and were never found. The ground collapsed and all the rubbish fell into a huge hole. People think the children were buried under piles of rubbish. Their bodies were never discovered because the hole filled up with water and formed a lake. Not long after that Old Man Chompers died. People say they have seen him walking the tip at night. He pokes at the rubbish, turning things over. He is looking for his lost grandchildren. He moans and calls out for his lost darlings.’

  I shivered and looked at Pete. ‘You won’t catch me going to that tip again,’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ said the policeman. ‘It’s a dangerous spot. No place for kids. Anyway – it is said that Old Man Chompers can’t leave the tip until he finds his darlings. He has to stay there until he finds them. That’s why he wanders the lonely tip at night. He might think that you two would do instead, if he caught you there.’ Then he said something that made my knees wobble. ‘His grandchildren were twins. And Old Man Chompers had poor eyesight. He might mistake you boys for his lost grandchildren.’ The policeman looked us straight in the eyes and then turned and walked off, chuckling as he went.

  3

  The next day Pete and I started at Allansford School. It was even worse than we thought it would be. The red-haired kid was waiting at the gate with his tough mates. ‘Here they are,’ he yelled with glee. ‘The twins from the tip.’ In a loud voice he started to tell everyone about Dad and the naked shop dummy. Pete and I looked at each other helplessly. We couldn’t deny the story. It was true. I could feel tears starting to form behind my eyes. I had to stop them escaping so I blinked real hard. I noticed that Pete was doing the same thing.

  It is bad enough starting a new school at the best of times. But when you have to live down something like this it is just terrible. Fortunately the bell went and we had to go inside.

  At recess time, though, it was even worse. ‘I’m the top dog here,’ said the red-haired boy. His name was James Gribble. He pushed Pete in the chest. ‘What’s your name, kid?’ he asked roughly.

  ‘Pete.’

  Gribble gave a twisted grin. ‘This twin is Pete, so this one,’ he said, pointing at me, ‘must be Repeat. Pete and Repeat, the scabby twins from the tip.’ All the kids started to laugh. Some of them weren’t laughing too loudly though. I could see that they didn’t like Gribble much but they were too scared of him to do anything.

  After the laughter died down Gribble went and fetched a shoebox with a small hole in the end. ‘I’m the boss here,’ he said. ‘Every new kid has to take my nerve test. If you pass the nerve test, you are okay. If you won’t do it, I thump you every day until you do.’ He held up a clenched fist. The kids all crowded around to see what would happen.

  The shoebox had a lid which was tied on with string. Gribble pushed the box into my hand. ‘Seeing you like the tip so much, Repeat,’ he leered. ‘I have brought something back from there for you. One of you two has to have enough nerve to put your hand in there and take out the mystery object that I found at the tip.’

  Pete and I looked at the hole in the box. There was just room enough to put a hand inside.

  ‘Go on,’ said Gribble. ‘Or you get your first thump now.’

  I don’t mind telling you that I was scared. There was something in the box from the tip. It could be anything. A dead rat. Or even worse: a live rat. Or maybe a loaded mouse trap. My mind thought of the most terrible things. I didn’t want to do it but then I noticed one of the kids was nodding to me. A little kid with a kind face. He seemed to be telling me that it was okay.

  I looked at Gribble. I have always heard that you should fight a bully when they first pick on you. Then if you fight hard and hurt them they will leave you alone. Even if you lose the fight everyone will respect you and it will be okay. I sighed. Gribble was twice as big as Pete and me put together. And he had tough mates. They would wipe the floor with both of us. Things like teaching the bully a lesson only happen on TV.

  Slowly I pushed my hand into the box. At first I couldn’t feel anything but then I touched something hard and slimy. It was sort of horseshoe shaped. I shivered. It was revolting. There were rows of little sharp pointed things. Then I felt another one the same. There were two of them. They reminded me of a broken rabbit trap. They felt like they were made of plastic covered in dry mould. I didn’t have the faintest idea what I was holding, but all sorts of horrible things came into my mind.

  Slowly I pulled out my hand and looked. It was a set of old, broken false teeth.

  They were chipped and cracked and stained brown. They felt yucky but I smiled at the circle of kids around me. Pete was grinning too. I had passed the nerve test. Or so I thought.

  ‘Okay, Repeat,’ said Gribble with a horrible leer. ‘You have passed the first bit of the test.’ My heart sank. So did Pete’s. I didn’t realise that there was going to be something else.

  Gribble pushed his face up against mine. He had bad breath. ‘Now boys,’ he growled, ‘you have to take the false teeth back where they came from. Back to the tip.’ He paused, and then he added, ‘At night.’

  Pete and I looked at each other. Goose bumps ran up and down our arms. Before we could say anything Gribble told us the next bit. ‘And just to make sure that you really go. That you don’t just pretend to
go. You have to bring something back with you. You have to bring back the steer’s skull in the middle of the tip pond. By tomorrow morning. You have to prove that you went to the tip at night by bringing back the skull.’

  Pete and I spent the rest of the day worrying. We couldn’t concentrate on our school work. I got two out of twenty for my Maths. Pete got four out of twenty. The teacher must have thought that the new kids were real dumb.

  That afternoon the boy who had nodded at me in the yard passed me a note. It said:

  You had better get the skull. Gribble is real

  mean. He punched me up every day for a month

  until I passed his rotten nerve test.

  Signed, your friend Troy

  I passed the note on to Pete. He didn’t say anything but he didn’t look too good.

  After school we walked sadly out of the gate. As we went Gribble yelled at us, ‘Have a nice night, my darlings.’

  Neither of us could eat any tea that night. Mum looked at us in a funny way but she didn’t say anything. She thought we were just suffering from nerves about the new school. She was right. But only partly. We were also thinking about the ghost of Old Man Chompers and his lonely search for his lost darlings. I looked at Pete and he looked at me. It was like staring in a mirror. It reminded me that Old Man Chompers’ lost grandchildren were twins too.

  ‘We could pretend to be sick tomorrow,’ I said to Pete after tea.

  ‘It wouldn’t work,’ he answered. ‘Mum never gets fooled by that one. Anyway, we would have to go back to school sooner or later.’

  ‘We could tell Dad and . . .’

  ‘Oh sure,’ put in Pete before I could finish. ‘And he will tell the teachers and everyone in the school will call us dobbers.’

  ‘What about throwing the false teeth in the bin and getting a steer’s skull from somewhere else?’ I yelled. ‘Gribble would never know that we hadn’t really been to the tip.’