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  Pete looked at me as if I was a bit crazy. ‘Great,’ he answered in a cross voice. ‘And where are you going to get a steer’s skull at this time of night? It can’t be any old steer’s skull you know. It has to have white horns and horrible teeth. No – we will have to do it. We will take the false teeth back to the tip and bring the steer’s skull back with us. There’s nothing to be scared of really. Ghosts aren’t true. There aren’t any ghosts. People just think they see them when they are scared.’

  I nodded my head without saying anything. I was scared already. And I didn’t even want to think that I saw a ghost. But I knew Pete was right. We would have to go. It was the only way.

  4

  That night after Mum and Dad had gone to bed we snuck out of the window and headed off for the tip. We walked slowly along the dusty road which wound through the moonlit paddocks. Pete carried a rope with a hook on the end for getting the skull out of the middle of the pond. I carried a torch in one hand and the false teeth in the other. They felt all slimy and horrible. I sure was looking forward to getting rid of them.

  There was not a soul to be seen. The crickets were chirping their heads off and now and then an owl would hoot. Cows sat silently in the dry grass on the other side of the barbed-wire fences. I was really scared but for some reason the cows made me feel a little better. I don’t know why this was, because if anything happened the cows weren’t going to help. A cow is just a cow.

  The further we got from home the more my knees started to wobble. I kept thinking that every shadow hid something evil and terrible. The inside of my stomach wall felt like a frog was scribbling on it with four pencils.

  Our first problem started when we reached the tip. It had a high wire fence around it with barbed wire on the top. And the gates were locked. A gentle wind was blowing and the papers stuck to the fence flapped and sighed.

  ‘How are we going to get in?’ I asked Pete. Secretly I was hoping we would have to go home.

  ‘Climb over,’ he said.

  We threw over the rope with the hook on it and clambered up the high wire fence. The wire was saggy and it started to sway from side to side with our weight. We ended up perched on the top trying to get our legs over the barbed wire. Suddenly the whole fence lurched, sending us crashing onto the ground on the inside. The fence sprang back up again with the rope on the other side.

  ‘Ouch, ow, ooh . . . that hurt,’ I yelled. I rubbed my aching head.

  ‘Quiet,’ whispered Pete fiercely. ‘You’re making enough noise to wake the dead.’

  His words sent a chill up my spine. ‘I wish you hadn’t said that,’ I whispered back.

  Pete looked up at the fence. We were trapped inside. ‘We will never get back over that,’ he said. I could tell that he was thinking the same thing as me. What fools we were. What were we doing in a lonely tip in the middle of the night? There was no one to help us. There was not another soul there. Or was there?

  A little way off, behind some old rusting car bodies, I thought I heard a noise. Pete was looking in the same direction. I was too terrified to move. I wanted to run but my legs just wouldn’t work. I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out. Pete stood staring as if he was bolted to the ground.

  It was a rustling, tapping noise. It sounded like someone digging around in the junk, turning things over. It was coming in our direction. I just stood there pretending to be a dead tree or a post. I wished the moon would go in and stop shining on my white face. The tapping grew louder. It was coming closer.

  And then we saw it. Or him. Or whatever it was. An old man, with a battered hat. He was poking the ground with a bent stick. He was rustling in the rubbish. He came on slowly. He was limping. He was bent and seemed to be holding his old, dirty trousers up with one hand. He came towards us. With a terrible shuffle.

  Pete and I both noticed it at the same time. His feet weren’t touching the ground. He was moving across the rubbish about thirty centimetres above the surface.

  It was the ghost of Old Man Chompers.

  We both screeched the same word at exactly the same moment. ‘Run.’

  And did we run. We tore through the waist-high rubbish. Scrambling. Screaming. Scrabbling. Not noticing the waves of silent rats slithering out of our way. Not feeling the scratches of dumped junk. Not daring to turn and snatch a stare at the horrible spectre who hobbled behind us.

  Finally, with bursting lungs, we crawled into the back of an old car. It had no doors or windows so we crouched low, not breathing, not looking, not even hoping.

  Why had we come to this awful place? Fools, fools, fools. Suddenly the thought of Gribble and the steer’s skull and the false teeth seemed stupid. I would have fought a thousand Gribbles rather than be here. Trapped in a tip with a ghost.

  I could feel Pete trembling beside me. And I could hear the voice of someone else. A creaking, croaking cry. ‘My darlings . . . my darlings . . . my darlings . . . my darlings.’

  5

  I knew it. I just knew it. The ghost of Old Man Chompers had seen us. He thought we were his lost darlings. His dead grandchildren. He was coming to get us. Then he would be able to leave this place. And take us with him. To that great ghost tip in the sky.

  I thought of Mum and Dad. I thought of my nice warm bed. I would never see them again. Our parents would never know what had happened to us. Never know that we had come to our end in the bowels of the Allansford tip.

  ‘At last, at last . . . my darlings . . . at last.’ The wailing voice was nearby. He knew where we were. Without a word we bolted out of the car. We fled blindly across the festering tip until we reached the pond. The deep black pond, filled with floating foulness.

  And behind, slowly hobbling above the bile, came the searching figure of Old Chompers. We were trapped against the edge of the pond.

  In panic we looked around for escape. Mountains of junk loomed over us on either side. To the back was the pond and to the front . . . we dared not look.

  ‘Quick,’ yelled Pete. ‘Help me with this.’ He was pulling at an old rusty bath. Dragging it towards the water.

  ‘It won’t float,’ I gasped. ‘Look at the plughole. The water will get in. It’ll sink.’

  Pete bent down and scratched up a dollop of wet clay from the edge of the water. He jammed it into the plughole. ‘Come on,’ he panted. ‘Hurry.’

  The bath was heavy but terror made us strong. We launched it out into the murky water. Then we scrambled in. Just in time. The bath rocked dangerously from side to side but slowly it floated away from the approaching horror.

  We paddled frantically with our hands until the bath reached the middle of the pond. Then we stopped and stared at Old Chompers. He hobbled to the edge of the water, he staggered towards us. He was walking on the water, his hands outstretched. ‘My darlings,’ he groaned. ‘My long-lost darlings.’ Pete and I clung to the sides of the bath with frozen fingers.

  The moon went in and everything was black.

  Suddenly there was a pop. The clay plug shot into the air followed by a spout of water. Brown wetness swirled in the bath. We were sinking. In a flash we found ourselves swimming in the filthy water. We both headed for the shore, splashing and shouting and struggling. Pete was a better swimmer than me. He disappeared into the gloom.

  My jumper soaked up water and dragged me down. I went under. I came up again and spat out the lumpy brown liquid. I knew I would drown unless I could find something to grab onto. The bath was gone.

  Then my hand touched something. It was a post with something on the end. I grabbed onto it and kicked towards the shore. As my feet touched the bottom I realised that the post had horns. Then I saw that it had a face. A staring dead face with sharp teeth. It was the horrible leering steer’s skull.

  I screamed and crawled over to where Pete lay on the shore.

  We were both soaked to the skin. We were cold and exhausted. We were too tired to move.

  The ghost of Old Man Chompers crept across the water with outstretched
hands. His face was wrinkled like a bowl of hard, cold custard. His mouth was as a black hole, formed in the custard by a vanished golf ball. He chuckled as he looked at me.

  In my left hand I still had the false teeth. All the time I had been running I had held onto them. I had no other weapon so I held them out in front of me. My fingers were shaking so much that it made them chatter.

  As the ghost of Old Man Chompers jumped at me I screamed and screamed and tried to push him off with the teeth.

  He grabbed the false teeth from my quivering fingers and shoved them into his mouth. ‘At last,’ he said. ‘I’ve found them. My darlings. My darlings.’ He opened and closed his mouth with joy, making sucking noises as he did it.

  After a bit of this he pulled out a ghostly apple from his pocket and started to chomp on it. ‘Wonderful,’ he cackled. ‘Wonderful. You don’t know what it was like without my darlings . . . I owe you boys a big favour for bringing these back.’

  We both lay there looking at the grinning ghost. Suddenly he didn’t seem so scary. Pete found his voice first. ‘You mean,’ he said, ‘that your darlings are your false teeth? Not your long-lost grandchildren?’

  The ghost started to cackle even more. ‘Them,’ he said. ‘Them brats. What would I want them for? I told ’em not to play around here. Told ’em it was dangerous. No, I was lookin’ for these.’ He smacked his lips again and showed the cracked brown teeth. ‘Couldn’t leave without these. Been lookin’ for ’em for years. Now I can go. Now I can leave this rotten dump and join all the others.’ As he said this he started to fade away. I knew that we would never see him again.

  ‘Wait,’ yelled Pete. ‘Don’t go. Come back.’

  Chompers stopped fading and looked at Pete. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What do yer want?’ I could see that he was in a hurry. He didn’t want to hang around the tip for any longer than he had to.

  Pete looked the ghost straight in the eye. ‘You said that you owe us a big favour for bringing your teeth back. Well we want to be paid back. We want one favour before you go.’

  ‘Well,’ said Old Chompers with a chipped smile, ‘what is it?’

  6

  Old Chompers wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to hang around that tip. He showed us a hole in the fence and we ran back down that road as fast as we could go. When we got back to Allansford we climbed up a certain tree and looked in a certain window.

  Gribble was fast asleep in bed. He had a big smile on his face. He had fallen asleep thinking about how smart he was making those dumb twins go to the tip in the middle of the night.

  Suddenly he was awakened by a noise. It sounded like a person tapping with a stick. It was coming towards his window. Then he heard a croaky voice. ‘My darling,’ it said. ‘At last I’ve found my darling.’

  Gribble was terrified. He wanted to scream but nothing would come out.

  A terrible figure floated through the wall. He had a face which was wrinkled like a bowl of hard, cold custard. His mouth was as a black hole, formed in the custard by a vanished golf ball. And in that black hole was a pair of cracked old false teeth.

  The ghost chuckled as he held the horrible skull over Gribble’s head. ‘I think you wanted this,’ he said as he dropped his load on Gribble’s face.

  ‘That was from Pete,’ he screeched. ‘And this,’ he yelled picking it up again, ‘is a Repeat.’

  Gribble didn’t feel the steer’s skull the second time. Nor did he see the ghost fade away. He had fainted.

  The next day at school, though, James Gribble was very nice to me and Pete. I had never met a more polite boy. And there is one thing I can tell you for a fact – he never mentioned anything about being the top dog ever again.

  I’m undone.

  Yes, I know. I’m a fink. A rat. A creep. Nobody likes Eric Mud and it’s all my own fault.

  But I don’t deserve this.

  I look in the mirror and see a face that is not a face.

  I peel back my gloves and see a hand that is not a hand.

  I pull off my socks and see feet that are not feet.

  I look down my pants and see . . . No, I’m not going to describe that sight.

  Oh, merciful heavens. Please, please. I don’t deserve this.

  Do I?

  1

  It all began with Osborn. The nerd.

  See, he was a brain box. He always did his homework. He played the piano. He collected insects. The teachers liked him. You know the type.

  I spotted him on his first day at school. A new kid. All alone on the end of the bench. Trying not to look worried. Pretending to be interested in what was inside his bright yellow lunch box. Making out that he wasn’t worried about sitting by himself.

  ‘Look at it,’ I jeered. ‘The poor little thing. It’s got a lovely lunch box. With a bandaid on it. Has it hurt itself?’

  The silly creep looked around the schoolyard. He saw everyone eating out of brown paper bags. No one in this school ever ate out of a lunch box. Especially one with the owner’s name written on a bandaid.

  Osborn went red. ‘G’day,’ he said. ‘I’m Nigel Osborn. I’m new here.’

  He even held out his hand. What a wimp. I just turned around and walked off. I would have given him a few other things to think about but my mate Simmons had seen something else interesting.

  ‘Look,’ yelled Simmons. ‘A parka. There’s a dag down on the oval wearing a parka.’

  We hurried off to stir up the wimp in the parka. And after that we had a bit of fun with a kid covered in pimples.

  A few days went by and still Osborn had no friends. Simmons and I made sure of that. One day after school we grabbed him and made him miss his bus. Another time we pinched his glasses and flushed them down the loo.

  I never missed a chance to make Osborn’s life miserable. He wandered around the schoolyard like a bee in a garden of dead flowers. Completely alone.

  Until the day he found the beetle.

  2

  ‘A credit to the whole school,’ said old Kempy, the school Principal. ‘Nigel Osborn has brought honour to us, to the town. In fact to the whole nation.’

  I couldn’t understand what he was raving about. It was only a beetle. And here was the school Principal going on as if Osborn had invented ice cream.

  Kempy droned on. ‘This is not just a beetle,’ he said. ‘This is a new beetle. A new species. It has never before been recorded.’ He waved the jar at the kids. What a bore.

  Everyone except me peered into the jar.

  ‘It is an ant-eating beetle,’ said Kempy.‘It eats live ants.’ He looked over at me.‘Eric Mud, pay attention,’ he said.

  I just yawned loudly and picked my teeth.

  At that very moment the beetle grabbed one of the ants that was crawling on the inside wall of the jar. The beetle pushed the ant into its small mouth. It disappeared – legs twitching as it went.

  Osborn stood there staring at his shoes, pretending to be modest. What a nerve. He needed to be put back in his box.

  But that would have to wait. Old Kempy was still droning on. He stopped and took a deep breath. ‘This species will probably be named after Nigel Osborn,’ he said. ‘Necrophorus Osborn.’

  ‘Necrophorus Nerd Head,’ I whispered loudly. A few kids laughed.

  Kempy when on with his speech. ‘This is the only beetle of its type ever seen. An expert from the museum is coming to fetch it tomorrow. Until then it will be locked in the science room. No one is to enter that room without permission. It would be a tragedy if this beetle were to be lost.’

  My mind started to tick over.

  A tragedy, eh?

  Well, well, well.

  3

  It was midnight. Dark clouds killed the moon. I wrapped my fist in a towel and smashed it through the window. The sound of broken glass tinkled across the science room floor.

  Once inside I flashed a beam of light along the shelves. ‘Where are you, beetle? Where are you, little Nerd Head?’ I whispered. ‘Come to Daddy.’ />
  It was harder than I thought. The science room was crammed with animals in bottles. Snakes, lizards, spiders. There were so many dead creatures that it was hard to find the live one I wanted.

  But then I saw it. On the top shelf. A large jar containing a beetle and some ants.

  I reached up and then froze. Somewhere in the distance a key turned in a lock. The security guard. Strike. I couldn’t get caught. Old Kempy had already warned me. One more bit of trouble and he would kick me out of the school.

  I scrambled out of the window. A jagged piece of glass cut my leg. It hurt like crazy but I didn’t care. Pain never worries me. I’m not a wimp like Osborn. I ran across the oval and into the dark shadows of the night.

  I held the beetle jar above my head. I had done it.

  Back home in the safety of my bedroom I examined my prize. The beetle sat still. Watching. Waiting. It was covered in crazy colours – red, green and gold – with black legs. It was about the size of a coat button.

  I looked at the ants. They didn’t know what was in store for them. Beetle food.

  They were queer-looking ants too. I had never seen any like them before. They were sort of clear. You could see right through them. The beetle suddenly grabbed one and ate it. Right in front of my eyes.

  It was funny really. This was the only one of these beetles that had ever been found. This could be the last specimen. There might be no more in the world. And in the morning I was going to flush it down the loo. What a joke.

  But the next day I changed my mind. There was no hurry. I shoved the jar in the cupboard and went to school.

  I played it real cool. I didn’t tell anybody what I had done. You never know who you can trust these days.

  Old Kempy was not too pleased. In fact he was as mad as a hornet. He gathered the whole school together in the assembly hall.