“What’s that smell?” demanded Mother as she entered the kitchen. She had been out all day campaigning and looked stiffly immaculate as ever in a royal blue twin-set—except for her nose, which was twitching uncontrollably in disgust.
“What smell?” said Chloe, with a short delay as she gulped.
“You must be able to smell it too, Chloe. That smell of…Well, I’m not going to say what it reminds me of, that would be impolite and unbecoming of a woman of my class and distinction, but it’s a bad smell.” She breathed in and the smell seemed to take her by surprise all over again. “My goodness, it’s a very bad smell.”
Like a malevolent cloud of darkest brown, the smell had seeped through the timber of the shed, no doubt peeling off the creosote as it travelled. Then it had crept its way across the lawn, before opening the cat flap and starting its aggressive occupation of the kitchen. Have you ever wondered what a bad smell looks like? It looks like this…
Oh, that’s a nasty one. If you put your nose right up against the page you can almost smell it.
“Maybe it’s the drains?” offered Chloe.
“Yes, it must be the drains leaking again. Even more reason why I need to be elected as an MP. Now, I have a journalist from The Times coming to interview me at breakfast tomorrow. So you must be on your best behaviour. I want him to see what a nice normal family we are.”
Normal?! thought Chloe.
“Voters like to see that one has a happy home life. I just pray that this foul stench will be gone by then.”
“Yes…” said Chloe. “I’m sure it will. Mother, was Dad—I mean, Father—ever in a rock band?”
Mother stared at her. “What on earth are you talking about, young lady? Where would you get such a ridiculous idea?”
Chloe swallowed. “It’s just I saw this picture of this band called The Serpents of Doom and one of them looked a lot like—”
Mother went a little pale. “Preposterous!” she said. “I don’t know what’s got into you!” She fiddled with her bouffant, almost as if she was nervous. “Your father, in a rock band of all things! First that exercise book full of outrageous stories, and now this!”
“But—”
“No buts, young lady. Honestly, I don’t know what to do with you any more.”
Mother looked really furious now. Chloe couldn’t understand what she’d done wrong. “Well, pardon me for asking,” she sulked.
“That’s it!” shouted Mother. “Go to bed, right now!”
“It’s twenty past six!” Chloe protested.
“I don’t care! Bed!”
Chloe found it hard to get to sleep. Not only because she had been sent to bed so ridiculously early, but also and more importantly because she had moved a tramp into the shed. She noticed the light of the torch bouncing off her bedroom window and looked at her alarm clock. It was 2:11am. What on earth could he want at this time of night?
Mr Stink had made the shed quite homely. He had fashioned a bed out of some piles of old newspapers. An old piece of tarpaulin was his duvet, with a grow bag for a pillow. It looked almost comfy. An old hosepipe had been arranged in the shape of a dog-basket for the Duchess. A plant-pot full of water sat beside for a bowl. In chalk he’d expertly drawn some old-fashioned portraits on the dark wooden creosoted walls, like the ones you see in museums or old country houses, depicting people from history. On one side he’d even drawn a window, complete with curtains and a sea view.
“You seem to be settling in then,” said Chloe.
“Oh, yes, I can’t thank you enough, child. I love it. I feel like I finally have a home again.”
“I’m so pleased.”
“Now,” said Mr Stink. “Miss Chloe, I called you down here because I can’t sleep. I would like you to read me a story.”
“A story? What kind of story?”
“You choose, my dear. But I implore you, nothing too girly please…”
Chloe tiptoed up the stairs back to her room. Sometimes she liked to move around the house without making a sound, and so could remember where all the creaks were on the stairs. If she put her foot right in the middle of this step, or the left side of this one, she knew she wouldn’t be heard. If she woke Annabelle up, she knew her little sister would relish the chance of getting her into deep deep trouble. And this wouldn’t be normal everyday trouble like not eating your cabbage or ‘forgetting’ to do your homework. This would be ‘inviting a tramp to live in the shed’ trouble. It would be off the scale. As this simple graph shows:
Alternatively, if you look at this simple Venn diagram you can see that if figure A is ‘trouble’ and figure B is ‘serious trouble’, then this shaded area here, representing inviting a tramp to live in the shed, is a sub-section of figure B.
I hope that makes things clear.
Chloe looked on her bookshelf, behind the little ornamental owls she collected even if she wasn’t sure why. (Did she even like owls? Some distant aunt buys you a porcelain owl one day, some other aunt assumes you’re collecting them, and by the end of your childhood you’ve got hundreds of the stupid things. Owls, not aunts.)
Chloe studied the spines of her books. They were quite girly. Lots of pinky-coloured books that matched her stupid pinky-coloured room that she hated. She hadn’t chosen the colour of her walls. Hadn’t even been asked. Why couldn’t her room be painted black? Now that would be cool. Her mother only bought her books about ponies, princesses, ballet schools and brainless bleach-blonde teenagers in America whose only worry was what to wear to the prom. Chloe wasn’t the least bit interested in any of them, and she was pretty sure Mr Stink wouldn’t be either. The one story she had written had been torn to shreds by her mother. This wasn’t going to be easy.
Chloe tiptoed back down the stairs and shut the kitchen door behind her incredibly slowly so it wouldn’t make a noise, and then knocked gently on the shed door.
“Who is it?” came a suspicious voice.
“It’s me, Chloe, of course.”
“I was fast asleep! What do you want?”
“You asked me to read you a story.”
“Oh well, now you’ve woken me up you better come in…”
Chloe took a last deep breath of the fresh night air and entered his den.
“Goody!” said Mr Stink. “I used to love a bed-time story.”
“Well, actually I’m sorry, but I couldn’t really find anything,” said Chloe. “All my books are horribly girly. Most of them are pink, in fact.”
“Oh dear,” said Mr Stink. He looked disappointed for a moment, then he smiled at a thought. “But what about one of your stories?”
“My stories?”
“Yes. You told me you like to make them up.”
“But I couldn’t just…I mean…what if you don’t like it?” Chloe’s stomach fizzed with a peculiar mix of excitement and fear. No one had ever asked to hear one of her stories before.
“I’m sure I’ll love it,” said Mr Stink. “And anyhow, you’ll never know until you try.”
“That’s true,” said Chloe, nodding. She hesitated for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Do you like vampires?” she asked.
“Well, I don’t know any socially.”
“No, I mean, would you like to hear a story about vampires? These are vampires who are teachers in a school. Who suck the blood out of their poor unsuspecting pupils…”
“Is this the story your mother tore up?”
“Erm…yes,” replied Chloe sadly. “But I think I can remember most of it.”
“Well, I would love to hear it!”
“Really?”
“Of course!”
“All right,” said Chloe. “Please can you pass me the torch?”
Mr Stink passed it to her and she turned it on and put it under her face to look scary.
“Once upon a time…” she began, before losing her nerve.
“Yes?”
“Once upon a time…no, I can’t do it! Sorry.”
Chloe hated reading out loud in class. She was so shy she would even try and hide under her desk to avoid it. This was even more terrifying. These were her words. It was much more private, more personal, and she suddenly felt like she wasn’t ready to share it with anyone.
“Please, Miss Chloe,” said Mr Stink encouragingly. “I really want to hear your story. It sounds top banana! Now you were saying, once upon a time…”
She took a deep breath. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Lily who hated going to school. It wasn’t because the lessons were hard, it was because all her teachers were vampires…”
“Wonderful opening!”
Chloe smiled, and continued. Soon she was really getting into it, and putting on voices for her heroine Lily, Lily’s best friend Justin who was bitten by the music teacher in a piano lesson and became a bloodsucker too, and Mrs Murk, the evil headmistress, who was in fact empress of vampires.
The tale unravelled all night. Chloe finished the story just before dawn as Lily finally drove her hockey stick through the headmistress’s heart.
“…Mrs Murk’s blood spurted out of her like newly struck oil, redecorating the sports hall a dark shade of crimson. The end.”
Chloe turned off the torch, her voice hoarse and her eyes barely still open.
“What an absolutely gripping yarn,” announced Mr Stink. “I can’t wait to find out what happens in book two.”
“Book two?”
“Yes,” said Mr Stink. “Surely after killing the headmistress Lily is moved to another school. And all the teachers there could be flesh-eating zombies!”
That, thought Chloe, is a very good idea.