‘What the bats?!’ Tangine bellowed when he entered the unliving room.
The caticorns were rolling around on the floor in a frenzy. They were making an awful racket and flailing their paws around so that nobody could pick them up.
Pumpy bounced into the room with a PA-DOOF, but when he heard the screaming caticorns he swiftly PA-DOOFED right back out again.
Gerrard spun across the room and accidentally bumped into a large wooden cabinet full of Count Drake’s Crossword Critters trophies, causing the whole thing to wobble precariously. Florence just managed to stop the cabinet from tumbling over and squishing the little caticorn.
‘THEY WON’T STOP MAKING THE NOISES!’ said Florence with wide eyes. ‘THEY’VE NOT TAKEN ONE BREF !’
Grimaldi was hiding under a cushion. ‘What do we dooooo?!’ he squeaked.
Squashy squidged himself as far under the sofa as he could.
‘I told Gerrard off,’ Amelia explained to a bewildered-looking Tangine. ‘But not very much! Then he started crying, and then all THREE of them starting crying, and now they’re having a full-on tantrum.’
‘Why did you tell them off ?’ asked Tangine, dodging the hysterical caticorn’s kicks.
‘They threw their brand-new SIGNED Unicornelius Pine on to the floor, and look –’ said Amelia, picking up the dented toy and passing it to Tangine – ‘they chipped his wing!’
Tangine gasped. ‘WELL! Then you deserve to be told off !’ he called over to the caticorns, who clearly weren’t listening. He shook his head disapprovingly. ‘One should NEVER disrespect Unicornelius Pine!’
‘EXACTLY,’ Florence agreed.
Amelia paced back and forth. ‘I think we . . . I . . . was maybe a bit too harsh?’ Her mind was in a twizzle. ‘But then, surely I have to tell them what’s wrong and what’s right?! I am responsible for them, after all.’
Amelia slumped on to the sofa, feeling very confused. Was having a baby brother or sister going to be this hard? She hadn’t meant to upset the caticorns. She really hoped Wooo would hurry up and arrive soon to help her out.
‘Amelia?’ said Tangine. ‘Are you okay?’
She stood up quickly. ‘Yes!’ she said, not entirely sure if this was the truth. ‘Maybe the caticorns are hungry,’ Amelia wondered out loud. ‘Everyone gets a bit cranky when they’re hungry, right?!’
‘Oh yes, my Mummy Maids HAVE to meet my demands when I need food,’ Tangine declared.
‘ONLY WHEN YOU NEED FOOD?’ Florence said with a smirk.
Tangine put a hand to his chest and gasped. ‘I don’t know WHAT you’re suggesting, Florence, but it offends my delicate soul.’
Amelia ran to the kitchen as fast as she could and rummaged around in the deep, dark cupboards. Since Wooo had been away, and her parents had been so busy with baby preparations, keeping the place clean and tidy hadn’t been top priority. There was now a rather unwieldy amount of creepy crawlies amongst the various food packages and even the odd cupboard troll lurking in the shadows.
Amelia eventually tracked down a few packets of assorted chilli scabs, cheese and bunion crisps and fried warts.
‘That should do it!’ she said to herself.
But then the sound of a faint moan stopped her in her tracks.
‘Heeeeeeeeeeeelp . . .’
At first, Amelia thought it might be another pesky cupboard troll, but the voice sounded like it was coming from the freezer. The Fang Mansion had some weird quirks, but a talking freezer wasn’t one of them.
Amelia waited in silence.
‘Heeeeeeeeeeeelp . . .’ came the voice again.
Unsure what else to do, Amelia replied, ‘Hello? Who’s there?’
‘OoooooOOOOooooooooooo.’
‘Who?’
‘OoooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooo!’
Amelia edged towards the freezer slowly and leaned in. Feeling a bit silly, she said, ‘I don’t quite understand. Can you please repeat –’
‘W O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O !’
‘Woooooooooooooo?’Amelia muttered, scratching her head. Then she gasped.
‘WOOO!’
Amelia pulled open the freezer door as fast as she could and there, inside a glass jam jar, were two eyes and a mouth complete with a cracked monocle and a squished top hat.
It was Wooo. And he was frozen solid!
‘Pottering pumpkins! Wooo, you poor thing!’ Amelia shrieked, pulling the jar out of the freezer.
She unscrewed the lid and held the jar upside down above the kitchen table, but the solid block of ice-cold Wooo was very, very stuck.
‘Y-y-young Amelia-a-a,’ stuttered Wooo. His voice was muffled because of the glass and the fact he was frozen solid.
‘What happened? I thought you were still travelling back,’ said Amelia, placing the jar of Wooo on the kitchen table.
Wooo blinked a few times, then stuttered. ‘I used a sh-sh-short cut to get here as f-f-f-fast as I could after your dad called me so that you w-w-wouldn’t be left alone for t-t-t-too long.’ Wooo’s words created a small cloud of mist. ‘I c-c-c-came in via a door on the t-t-t-top floor, and that’s when I saw three c-c-caticorns riding around on the v-v-vacuum cleaner.’
Amelia felt her tummy twist. ‘Oh no,’ she said.
‘I was v-v-vacuumed up before I had a chance to d-d-do anything, and then I w-w-woke up inside this j-j-j-j-j-j-jar in the freezer unable to m-m-move.’
When temperatures fell, a ghost lost their ability to pass through solid objects and would eventually turn into a block of paranormal ice. Which is exactly what had happened to Wooo.
Wooo looked like he was trying to smile. ‘I m-m-must look very s-s-strange.’
‘Oh, Wooo, how do we make you normal again?’ asked Amelia.
‘I j-j-just need to d-d-defrost, so b-b-best to leave me here in the warm and d-d-dry for a while,’ said Wooo. ‘I’m s-s-sorry I can’t help you l-l-look after the c-c-caticorns.’
‘I’m sorry you’ve been frozen!’ said Amelia. ‘I can’t believe the caticorns did this to you! Aunt Lavitora told me they wouldn’t be a problem. But they’ve been quite the opposite.’ Amelia suddenly felt worried. ‘Unless . . . unless they’re only being naughty because of me. Maybe they don’t like me?’
Just then Squashy and Pumpy appeared in the kitchen doorway. They were covered from stalk to bottom in multi-coloured paint. Squashy now had fat black eyelashes and a painted-on glittery beard. Pumpy looked very silly indeed, with a big red tomato stuck to the middle of his face and a LOT of lipstick around his mouth.
Squashy did NOT seem impressed by his new look. Pumpy, on the other hand, seemed to be embracing it, pouting at every opportunity. Squashy pa-doinged up and down and squeaked at Amelia frantically.
‘What the bats has happened to you two?!’ gasped Amelia. Although she knew exactly who was responsible for this. She turned to Wooo. ‘I’d better go and see what’s going on,’ she said.
‘G-g-g-go!’ urged Wooo, who had begun to melt a little inside the jar.
Amelia’s feet pounded along the corridor as she followed the freshly painted pumpkins back to the unliving room. What she saw next stopped her in her tracks.
Florence, Grimaldi and Tangine were bound together by a pink and black stripy rope, unable to move, and their faces were also covered in paint.
