Chapter 5

The Sleep-Over Ghost

The sleep-over at school was fun.

Much later that night, Mario jogged across the oval. They’d had their sausage sizzle. They’d played indoor ball games. And then they told ghost stories.

Mrs .Tasker insisted on lights-out at 11 o’clock.

Mars Bar had drunk all the lemonade that was left.

So, about midnight, Mario got up to go to the toilet.

Now he was taking a short cut back to the school hall.

‘Hey!’ Across the oval, something was bounding!

Something gold was coming towards him.

It glowed.

‘Help!’ Mario started to run. He dropped his torch.

The gold thing followed him. It was catching up.

‘Help! Art! It’s a ghost!’

By the time Mario had reached the open door of the school hall, he was really scared, panting hard and running fast.

A blanket of light came from the open door.

Inside, most of the children were already curled in their sleeping- bags. A few were snoring.This was one time Mario didn’t stop to complain.

‘Art, I saw a ghost.’ Mario shook the sleeping boy. Yawning, Art pushed aside the hood of his sleeping-bag. He sat up. ‘There’s a ghost out there!” Mario was scared. ‘I saw it. And I heard it.’

Art rubbed his eyes. ‘You’re made Mars Bar. There’s no such thing.’ But Mario was determined to show them. ‘Look!’

Their noise woke some of the sleepers. Children sat up. Others rolled over. But Mrs. Tasker and the parents sleeping in the kitchen didn’t come out.

India stared into the darkness. A round glow was moving out on the oval. A circle came away from it.

‘There’s a mouth, glowing on the oval.’

‘What?’

‘Come and see for yourself,’ Mario dragged Art by his tracksuit sleeve.

In the dark, a mouth shaped like a smile but without a body was bounding around.

Art struggled to his feet. Getting out of the sleeping bag in a hurry was hard. He stared into the night. Pinpoints of light from the highway could be seen. But from the direction of the oval came a moving glow. A luminous mouth!

‘Oh,no!’

Art opened his arms.

The thing came closer.

Art grabbed at the ghost.

It barked. Art couldn’t stop laughing.

‘Got a torch? Look. This is your ghost.’ Art shone his torch on the panting, gold mouth of Tiny who was not Tiny. He was a very big dog. And he has a big, gold, luminous mouth and nose.

‘Tiny! You dumb dog!’ shouted India. ‘What have you stuck your nose into now?’

‘It’s not his fault,’ admitted Art.’I painted his green tennis ball. The one I found on the oval.’

‘But he glows!’

‘Luminous paint,’ explained Art. ‘Dad had some left over when he painted his golf balls. Mum wouldn’t let him use that paint on the house. She said it would invite burglars.’

‘Ace,’ muttered Mario. ‘Tiny chewed the ball. And he played ball. Now he’s got a mouth that glows.’

‘It’s not poison, is it?’ asked India anxiously.

‘No. Dad said it was okay to use,’said Art. ‘So Tiny doesn’t need glasses. He can find the ball, even in the dark.’

‘Tiny is brilliant,’ said india. ‘Then she laughed. ‘He’s so bright, even his mouth glows.’

She pulled out her camera. She took a shot of Tiny’s mouth.

‘What d’you mean?’ Mario didn’t understand.

‘Bright. Like clever. Brilliant. Get it?’ explained Art. Sometimes his mind worked like India’s .But not when she wrote things down. Then it was too hard working out the words.

‘D’you think birds have brains?’ Art was thinking of the dove. ‘Could they be brilliant?’

‘Just birdbrains,’ Mario laughed. ‘Hey. I said something clever. Get it?’

India clapped ,slowly, watching Tiny sniffing around the barbecue where the sausages had been cooked. He didn’t seem to hear the clapping.

‘Perhaps he’s going deaf.’ India looked worried again. ‘D’you think he needs a hearing aid?’

Mario and Art looked at each other. ‘No!’ they said together.

‘What’s all this about?’ said Mrs. Tasker’s firm voice behind them. ’With noisy children like you, nobody can sleep.

Art wondered if Mrs. Tasker just pretended not to hear at times.

Next morning it was so hot the sunlight hurt like needles in their eyes. Art crammed his cap on. This cap was one of the 365 caps he’d won in the Suncream Dream competitions. One for every day of the year. And that was only the third prize. Last week, he’d filled in an entry form for the pet food contest. He wrote Tiny’s name. Then he wrote ‘guard’ as Tiny’s job.

A thought struck him. Was getting sunburnt a problem for dogs?

‘Hey India. Got something in my bag for Tiny. Here.’

‘Sunnies?’ India was puzzled. ‘Do dogs wear sunnies?’

Mario laughed. ‘Why not? Maybe Tiny should wear left and right indicators. Then we’d know which way he was going.’

‘You can say that again,’ nodded India.

So Mars Bar did.