Uncanny! Read online

‘Have you ever thought,’ says Tattooless, ‘what happens to tattoos when you die? They thought I was done for. They were getting out of it like rats deserting a sinking ship. They didn’t want to shrivel up with me when I died so they cleared out onto you. But now I want them back.’

  ‘How?’ I ask. A nasty thought comes into my mind. I saw a man skin a rabbit once.

  ‘They might come back to me,’ says Tattooless. ‘After all, it’s a bit crowded on you. You’re not as big as me and the tattoos are all bunched up.’

  I have to admit that he has a point there.

  ‘Hold out your hand,’ he orders. I hold out my hand and we shake like old friends. Nothing happens. We stand there clasping each other for quite a while. Suddenly, with a rush, the tattoos start to move. The whole lot swirl and twirl like slides shining on a moving curtain. They drain off down my arm and back to their owner.

  We all grin. I have no tattoos and Tattooless is not tattooless any more. He is covered all over in his drawings again. The tattoos have left me and returned home.

  He stands up and heads for the door. ‘Wait,’ says Dad. Don’t go yet. I want to make sure there are none left. You might have missed one.’ Dad orders me to take off my clothes. I strip down to my underpants and Dad checks me for tattoos. He does not find any.

  ‘Okay,’ says Dad to the tattooed man. ‘You can go now.’

  The tattooed man holds out his hand but I do not want to shake. Neither does Dad. We decide to give the shaking a miss and make do with a wave.

  7

  Well that is just about the end of the story. Dad does another check for tattoos but he doesn’t find any. I’m glad he doesn’t look down the back of my underpants though.

  Otherwise he might see my little bear behind.

  A Good Tip for Ghosts

  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 have said that 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 groans 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.

&nb
sp; ‘His grandchildren were twins. And Old Man Chompers had poor eyesight. He might mistake you boys for his lost children.’ 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 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 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.’

  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. Basically 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 over and sent us crashing onto the ground on the inside. Then 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.