In which we find out what the squeaky-clean stranger who doesn’t like anything has been doing in Pandrumdroochit. And what he has been building, hidden away behind the hills. I really hope that Uncle Shawn will be here soon. We’ll feel less worried then. I wonder where he is?
The shiny stranger was now in Pandrumdroochit village. As he had done every morning since he arrived, he walked along the High Street with neat steps, handing out leaflets. Today’s leaflets said:
Because that’s what the shiny stranger called himself – Dr P’Klawz.
(In fact his real name was Sylvester Pearlyclaws. But he was in hiding because he had done so many terrible things that every police force on Earth was looking for him.)
And if anyone said the doctor had an Unusual name, which sounded like trying to put a crow into a sleeping bag, he would stare very hard at them until they cried.
As he went around the village, P’Klawz made sure to worry everyone he met and make them scared of Unusualness.
P’Klawz asked the postman, “Have you been bitten by any Unusual cats?” The postman said that he had never been bitten by any cats, although he had started to worry about it. Dr P’Klawz warned him about cat bites every time they met. P’Klawz told him, “You should worry all the time. Unusual cats can hide in bread bins, or under your bed, or anywhere. BUT FEAR NOT!” He yelled this last bit, so that the postman – who was a nervous person – jumped and dropped his postbag. “I, Doctor P’Klawz, the Unusualness expert, will assist you! Take a leaflet.”
“I have a leaflet.”
“TAKE ANOTHER! YOU MIGHT LOSE IT!”
The postman ran home to his own ginger cat, who was called Jemima. “Oh, Jemima…” the postman whispered, “I hope you don’t get Unusual. I don’t think you’d fit in the bread bin.”
Jemima was a rather large cat. This was because her two hobbies were sleeping and eating the postman’s butter when he forgot to put the lid back on the butter dish. The postman had never noticed.
Next, P’Klawz gave Hughie’s mother a (very big) business card that listed various types of Unusualness for anyone silly enough to read it.
This made Hughie’s mum wonder if maybe Hughie saying that he was a spaceman was a sign of Unusualness.
After that, Dr P’Klawz made the Pandrumdroochit School headmaster worry that his wig might turn Unusual and start waving signals to the naughty boys at the back of the class. (This was almost true – the headmaster’s wig did wave a little bit in strong winds and this made the naughty boys giggle.)
Once he had made lots of people less happy, P’Klawz went back to the little office he was renting beside the Pandrumdroochit Fire Station and stepped inside. Then he went and stood in front of his big mirror.
He practised his smiling.
He never did seem to be able to make himself smile as if he was happy. This was because Dr P’Klawz hated even the idea of being happy. Happiness made his teeth grind against each other and make a skreee noise, which hurt his ears and made his brain wriggle.
Then he practised looking like a real doctor. (He wasn’t a real doctor.)
This made him look frightening.
Then he practised looking like Dr P’Klawz. (Which, of course, wasn’t his name.)
That made his face so scary we won’t even think about it.
Away behind the Droochit Hills, Dr P’Klawz had bought an old flour mill – which had once made lots of people happy, because you can make all kinds cakes and scones out of flour. P’Klawz had paid people (not very much) to build a long, high fence all around the mill and then fill the place with maximum-security dormitories holding rattly metal beds to give people bad dreams. And even worse than this, he paid guards to paint the walls of the mill with these words: THE P’KLAWZ INSTITUTION FOR MAXIMUM SECURITY AND UNUSUALNESS CURING.
And P’Klawz had filled the big, nasty building with inmates – that was what he called all the people he had persuaded to come and be cured of Unusualness, and the people who had been sent by their friends and relatives after P’Klawz had persuaded them. He was a horrible person.
P’Klawz also made the guards sweep every corner of every room in the Institution so that spiders could never build their webs there. He was afraid of spiders – he thought that having eight legs was Too Unusual. And he didn’t like their webs, because they were Unusually Beautiful.
And in his waistcoat pocket, P’Klawz kept a shiny broken pocket watch that he could twirl and twirl and make people do whatever he wanted.
He wanted them to be unhappy. 