Arnold Read online
ARNOLD
THE ADVENTURES OF A RASCAL
by
Ray Jones
Copyright 2014 Gerry Humphries
ARNOLD GOES SHOPPING
Ten year old Arnold Tibbs was drawing a picture on the back yard of his house with a piece of chalk. It was a picture of a dragon, a huge dragon that stretched from the back door, right across the yard to the next door neighbour’s fence. Its great mouth was open and smoke billowed from its nostrils.
The dragon was based on a real dragon. Arnold knew it was real because he had seen it in a programme on the telly the previous night and he believed that everything on the telly was real.
His dragon was a people-eating dragon - he liked animals that ate people, they were his favourites - and he had drawn four people inside the dragon’s belly. There was his dad, who had refused to take him for a ride in his lorry; his brother Baz, who had eaten a whole bar of chocolate without offering him a single piece; his sister Fiona, who had taken his mouth-organ off him, just because he had been accompanying the pop record she’d been listening to; and his teacher Miss Warren, who had been cross with him because he had only written five words in his essay, ‘My favourite animal is the...’, when everyone else in the class had written two pages.
“A-r-r-nold! Arn-o-l-l-d!” Mrs Tibbs was calling him. She opened the back door. “Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” She stepped out onto the back yard.
“You’re standing in the dragon’s mouth,” said Arnold.
Alarmed, she stepped back into the house. But she was too late, Arnold was already drawing her inside the dragon’s belly alongside the others.
“I want you to do some shopping for me, Arnold, said Mrs Tibbs from the safety of the doorstep, unaware that her fate was already sealed. “I want you to go to the supermarket and get me a tin of corned beef; a large tin.”
Arnold held out his hand for the money.
“You know what you’re going for don’t you?”
“A large tin of corned beef.”
Arnold lumbered heavily along the street, lurching from one side of the pavement to the other. He was a dragon. Whenever anyone approached he opened his mouth and made a loud gargling sound. It was his idea of a dragon roaring and belching out fire.
“He’s crackers,” said an old man, not knowing that, in Arnold’s imagination, he had just been burnt to a crisp. “He’s round the flipping bend.”
“Poor soul, he must be simple,” said an old lady.
Arnold ignored them and went on his way.
After a while the roaring began to hurt Arnold’s throat so he decided to stop being a dragon. He became a robot instead. He liked robots. In fact he liked them even better than dragons. He began to advance in small, jerky steps, now moving forwards, now sideways; he was a robot out of control. Then he stopped and spun round several times before moving blindly forward again. He almost ran into a man carrying two bags of shopping.
“Watch where you’re going!” he said “You cheeky young….”
But Arnold wasn’t listening, he had gone jerking on his way. He stopped suddenly. A woman pushing a buggy had to swerve in order to avoid him. She opened her mouth to curse him, but then shook her head in disbelief as Arnold spun round four times, his arms stiffly at his side, before dashing forward, his head turning rapidly on his neck, and his eyes spinning round in their sockets. This was how robots behaved when they were out of control. He knew because he had seen one once on the telly. If people didn’t want him to run into them they must move out of his way; there was nothing he could do to avoid them.
He was approaching the supermarket; he could see it out of the corner of his eye; would his guidance system correct itself in time, or would he go right past? You could never tell with robots. He made a whirring sound in his throat and then stopped. The guidance system was correcting itself. He whirred again, then jerked into motion, moving himself towards the doors of the supermarket. They opened automatically as he drew near. He went inside, wondering how they did that. They must be worked by a robot of their own, he decided.
He moved across the entrance to where a sour-faced woman was straightening up a row of trolleys. He was out of control again. His arms and legs were stiff, his head jerked from side to side and his eyes went round and round.
The woman turned to watch him. She didn’t like boys, particularly boys who played silly games; they usually came into the store to make mischief.
“Stop that nonsense!” she said, glaring at him.
Arnold would have explained that he was a robot out of control, but he couldn’t because he was a non-speaking robot.
“You’ve not come here to steal sweets, have you?” she said, giving him a painful poke with her finger.
Arnold stopped. “No, I haven’t,” he said indignantly. “I’ve come to buy a tin of corned beef.” He picked up a wire basket and walked into the store. He didn’t like being called a thief, and he didn’t like being poked. He didn’t like the woman either. But as he walked round he forgot all about her. He liked supermarkets. He liked all the brightly coloured packets, boxes, cans and jars. He’d work in a supermarket when he grew up, he decided.
He picked up a tin of tomatoes and placed it on a shelf full of tin peas. The bright red picture of the tomatoes gleamed like a jewel against the green of the peas. ‘That looks much better,’ he said to himself. When he worked in a supermarket he’d mix the different coloured tins and boxes together to make exciting patterns, and not have them on separate shelves. He picked up a tin of oranges and placed it with the tins of blackcurrants and smiled at the way the bright oranges shone against the deep purple blackcurrants.
He turned the corner into the next gangway. At the far end was the woman who had been straightening the trolleys. She had an odd-looking object in her hand; it was like a clumsy-shaped gun. She fiddled with it before placing it against different items on the shelves - plates and dishes and jugs - and then pressed the trigger. Arnold watched from the end of the gangway. What was she doing? He was intrigued. She put the strange object down on a shelf and then walked away towards the back of the store.
Arnold waited a few moments to make sure the woman didn’t come straight back and then walked down the gangway to see what the object was. It was black, with a handle and a trigger, and a keyboard on top with numbered keys like those on a telephone. He picked it up, placed it against a plastic bucket and pressed the trigger. A small white label appeared stating that the bucket was priced at seventy five pence. Arnold was delighted. He punched some of the keys with his finger and shot another label onto the bucket showing that it was now priced at two pounds fifteen pence.
He shot a label on the palm of his hand and further labels on his knees, his forehead and his cheeks. He placed the object on the floor and pressed the trigger again and again. White labels appeared on the dark floor like a flurry of snowflakes.
He walked up and down the gangways, shooting labels at random on to different items: packets of biscuits, boxes of cakes, jars of jam, tins of fish, bags of dried fruit. He punched the keys on top of the strange object, continually changing the prices on the labels. At last the object in his hand ran out of labels. Sadly he put it back on the shelf where he had found it and picked up his wire basket which he had placed on the floor.
What was it he had come to the supermarket for? In the excitement of discovering the labelling machine he had forgotten. Then he remembered. Of course, it was a tin of corned beef.
It was a quiet time of the day in the supermarket; Arnold had had the place practically to himself. But now women began to appear, pushing their trolleys along the gangways.
“Look at this,” said one woman, holding up a tin of salmon to show the label put on it by Arnold, “only fiftee
n pence.”
“And this stewed steak,” said another, “only twenty pence.”
Other voices came from behind the shelves. “Chocolate biscuits, only twelve pence!” “Lemon sponge cakes, only eighteen pence!” “Strawberry jam, fifteen pence!”
More women appeared from nowhere, picking up goods from the shelves and placing them in their trolleys. Arnold stood at the end of a gangway, watching as the women grabbed goods from the shelves, triumphantly reading the labels before putting the tins, jars and packets into their trolleys. He wondered what was causing the excitement.
The sour-faced woman, who had left the labelling machine on the shelf, now returned from her tea break. She looked down the gangway at the women, their trolleys bursting with groceries and their faces animated with greed. As one woman discovered the last bargain tin of meat, or jar of marmalade, so another would snatch it from her and put it in her own trolley. Everywhere there was noise and confusion as trolleys clanged and jostled one another.
Women were running up and down the gangways, taking tins, jars, packets and boxes from the shelves, examining them and then putting them back again before moving to the next and repeating the process, anxious to discover fresh bargains before someone else found them.
A packet of biscuits had burst in one of the gangways and the contents had been trodden into the floor. A woman tried to take a large jar of pickled onions from the trolley of another woman who tried to take it back again. A struggle ensued. The top came off the jar. The onions fell out, rolled across the floor and pools of vinegar spread under the feet of the women. Voices were raised in anger and blows were struck.
The assistant watching this held on to one of the shelves to prevent herself from fainting. After a few moments she recovered her wits, but she couldn’t decide how to sort out the confusion. The store manager would have to do it. She turned and walked towards his office.
As she went past the checkout she found herself looking into the large brown eyes of a small boy. He carried a wire basket containing a large tin of corned beef. Stuck to his face and legs were small white labels. He stuck out his tongue, but whether it was at her, or whether merely to lick off a label that was stuck to his upper lip, she couldn’t be sure because his face was completely without expression.
She watched him as he went through the checkout and paid for the corned beef. Suddenly, he changed from a ten year old schoolboy and once more became a robot out of control. He spun round three times, made a strange rattling sound in his throat as his cog-wheels revolved, and then hobbled with stiff-legged steps through the automatic doors.
The assistant gazed after him in astonishment. She didn’t understand young boys at all. All she knew was that she didn’t like them much; and she didn’t like this boy at all. She shook her head and walked, reluctantly, towards the manager’s office.
ARNOLD AND THE SCHOOL TRIP
Arnold Tibbs was ten years old. His main interest in life was watching television and he watched it every spare moment he had. He watched so much that the real world and the fantasy world of the television programmes merged together in his mind and he often didn’t know the difference between one and the other.
Arnold was in Miss Warren’s class at his primary school. The class was referred to by some of the other teachers as ‘the backward class’, but never within Miss Warren’s hearing. Her pupils were not at all backward. They were merely slow learners, late developers, who would eventually catch up with the quicker children and even pass them by: Miss Warren was a born optimist.
In a class of slow learners Arnold was very slow indeed. Occasionally, Miss Warren thought she saw behind his large brown eyes a dormant intelligence waiting to be aroused, but this was quickly dispelled when she found, after she had spent ten minutes explaining something to him, that he hadn’t listened to a single word she had said.
Today Miss Warren was taking her class on a trip to the City Museum and she wasn’t looking forward to it. She had woken up this morning with a splitting headache and it was getting worse every moment. Any other teacher would have telephoned the school, saying that they were ill and the school trip would have been cancelled, but Miss Warren was made of sterner stuff. She had promised her pupils that she would take them to the museum and she was determined to keep her promise.
After calling the register, she instructed her class to make their way quietly outside where they would find a coach waiting to take them to the museum. The scraping of chairs, the excited chatter and the scurrying feet as the children rushed for the door resounded inside Miss Warren’s head like the sound of machine-gun fire. The last to leave was Arnold. He stopped by her desk.
“Do you like vultures, Miss?” he asked.
“Vultures?” said Miss Warren, puzzled.
“I seen these vultures on the telly last night,” he said. “They fly round and round in the sky. Then they come down and eat people. Do you like them, Miss? `Cos I like them.”
Miss Warren shuddered. She did not like vultures, but there were some people whom, in her present fragile state, she decided she wouldn’t mind being eaten, and Arnold was near the top of her list.
‘This headache would occur today of all days,’ thought Miss Warren as she took her seat on the coach, ‘on the day of the visit to the museum.’ But then she was struck by an awful thought. Perhaps it was the idea of the school trip that had caused the headache.
The museum was as quiet as a graveyard. The children were overawed by the large rooms, the high ceilings and the glass cases, and they looked around them with wonder, whispering quietly among themselves.
As they went into the ancient history room, Mr Willis, the fat attendant in charge, scowled at them,. He didn’t like kids, especially those in school parties. They were noisy, dropped sweet papers on the floor and left sticky finger marks on the glass cases. This lot looked docile enough though, they shouldn’t give much trouble. But he didn’t think much of the teacher in charge. She looked harassed and tense. Weak, he decided, probably had no idea how to control a class.
Mr Willis sometimes thought he would like to have been a teacher. How satisfying it must be to have children looking up to you, hanging onto every word you said. Giving them orders: ‘stand up, sit down; you, give out the pencils; you, clean the blackboard.’ Yes, he was sure he would have been good at it.
He watched Miss Warren lead her class over to a glass case containing flint tools. The children were sniggering and jostling one another and she was doing nothing to control them. Her face looked drawn, as though she was frightened. If he couldn’t deal with children better than that he’d eat his cap. He decided to offer his help.
“Pardon me; would you like me to tell the children about...?”
He didn’t have time to finish his sentence. Miss Warren gave him a smile of relief, such as an innocent maiden might have given to a brave knight who had just saved her from the jaws of a hungry dragon.
“That’s awfully kind of you,” she said. “I’ll go and have a cup of tea and some aspirins in the cafe and, before he could explain that he hadn’t meant she should leave him alone with the wretched kids, she had gone, with a tap-tapping of her high-heel shoes on the marble floor.
Mr Willis now discovered that he wasn’t as good a teacher as he thought he would be. As soon as Miss Warren had gone the children began talking, pushing one another and sniggering. Only one child, the boy with large brown eyes who stared up at him, appeared to be listening to what he said.
Mr Willis took the children from one glass case to another, all the time talking, explaining the purpose of the objects inside hoping to find something that would hold their interest. But nothing seemed to interest them. They were laughing and talking among themselves. None were listening to what he was saying. He found himself praying for Miss Warren’s return.
They came to a case filled with heads, each no bigger than a tennis ball. He tapped on the glass with his knuckles to get the children’s attention.
“These,�
�� he said, “are human heads, real human heads. They’re not dolls; they’re not models; they’re real human heads.” His voice dropped to a whisper as he attempted to extract the maximum drama from the situation. “These people were killed by a warlike tribe who cut off their heads. Then they took out the bones and put red hot stones inside till the heads shrunk. Then they sewed them up with thread, like sewing up the heads of teddy bears.” He was gratified by the oohs and aahs of fear from the children as they stared silently into the glass case at the shrunken heads on which every wrinkle and blemish could clearly be seen. Mr Willis was once again thinking that he had missed his true calling and should have been a teacher, when once again the children began sniggering and pushing one another. Only the boy with the large brown eyes remained quietly looking up at him. ‘Thank goodness there is at least one intelligent child,’ thought Mr Willis. He was not to know that Arnold was wondering what the attendant’s head would look like if it was shrunk to the size of a tennis ball.
They came to the last case in the room. Miss Warren still hadn’t returned. Luckily this was Mr Willis’s favourite exhibit, his piece de resistance. The children should find this really interesting. They stared through the glass. The exhibit was a representation of a cave with the skulls and bones of several skeletons scattered about the sandy floor.
“This,” explained Mr Willis, “is a tomb and these bones are the skeletons of dead people who were placed in the tomb by their friends and relatives for their journey to the next world.”
He paused dramatically. The children were looking up at him open-mouthed. He had really got them interested. He was about to continue when he felt a tugging at his sleeve. He looked down into Arnold’s cocker-spaniel eyes.
“Was it a spaceship?” asked Arnold.
“What?” said Mr Willis nonplussed.
“That thing with the people going to another world,” said Arnold, pointing to the tomb. “Was it a spaceship?”
“No, of course it wasn’t a spaceship. It’s a tomb. It’s ten thousand years old.”
Arnold frowned. “I’ll bet it was really a spaceship. I seen this programme on the telly once about a spaceship going to another world and it met another spaceship and the spacemen went on board and there was skeletons inside and they was just like them skeletons. They’d been people and they’d lost control of their ship and they’d gone round and round in space for hundreds of years and they’d starved to death and they’d turned into skeletons.”
“Well it wasn’t a spaceship,” said Mr Willis irritably. “It was an ancient tomb and the people inside were going to the land of the dead.” He’d been wrong about this kid, he wasn’t intelligent at all.
“It could have been a spaceship,” insisted Arnold. “It could’ve been bringing the people here from another planet. I’ll bet they killed all the people who was here and took over the earth. “Now an awesome thought struck him and his voice went quiet. “I’ll bet we’re descended from them. I’ll bet we are. I’ll bet we’ve all come from space.”
“Nonsense!” said Mr Willis. The children were now chattering and fooling about and he had to shout to make himself heard. “Absolute nonsense! This is a tomb and these people were put in it because they were dead.”
“I like films about spaceships,” said Arnold, not at all put out by the attendant’s rudeness. “But I like films about monsters best. Do you like films about monsters? I made up this story once about a monster who lived on a planet and it ate all the other monsters and….”
But he got no further with his story. Mr Willis had taken hold of his ear and given it a painful tweak. He was talking louder now, trying to get the children’s attention.
“Dead people were placed in the tomb ready for their journey to another planet - I mean another world - the world of the dead, and meat and wine was put in with them so that they had something to eat and drink.” He must keep talking, he decided. He mustn’t stop. Where was that blasted teacher? Why didn’t she come back?
Arnold rubbed his ear and moved away from Mr Willis. He couldn’t understand why he’d hurt him. He’d done nothing wrong. He’d been telling him a most interesting story. As he went round the corner of the glass case containing the tomb he noticed that there was a small door in the corner. He bent down and tried the handle. The door wasn’t locked. He pulled it open and crawled inside.
`Mr Willis was still droning on. “These people,” he said, pointing to the skeletons, “were once alive just like us.”
The children were now laughing. He couldn’t think what he had said that was funny, but he decided to laugh as well. He didn’t see Arnold’s face just below him, his nose flattened against the glass.
“Those pots,” he continued, pointing to some vases leaning against the wall of the tomb, “are really wine jars. They were filled with wine so that the dead people could have a drink on their journey to the next world.”
Arnold wondered what the wine looked like. He picked up one of the pots and held it upside down. All that came out was a cloud of dust and a dead beetle.
“And those,” continued Mr Willis, pointing to some brown objects in the sand, “were pieces of meat, placed in the tomb so that the dead people could have something to eat.”
Arnold picked up one of the objects. It didn’t look like meat, it was dried up and shrivelled, but that he decided, was because it was ten thousand years old. He tried to bend it but it fell apart in his hands. It wasn’t meat at all, it was just plaster painted to look like meat. He dropped it in the sand with disgust. It was a cheat. The whole thing was a cheat.
He picked up a skull. It probably wasn’t real. It was probably plastic. He decided to make it talk. He’d seen a ventriloquist do that on television once and he’d done it without moving his lips.
“Abba dabba doo,” he said, through clenched teeth, waggling the skull up and down. “Abba dabba doo.” That’s how Stone Age people spoke. He’d seen that on the telly as well.
Other boys decided to join Arnold. They detached themselves from the group and crawled through the door into the tomb.
Mr Willis gabbled on. He was talking gibberish but he couldn’t stop. He mustn’t stop. He looked into the tomb. There were several boys inside, all holding skulls which were waggling up and down on their hands and they were all talking through clenched teeth. “Abba dabba doo, abba dabba doo, abba dabba doo.”
He was going mad. He must be going mad. Sweat broke out on his face. He took out a handkerchief and wiped it away. He clenched his eyes shut, hoping the boys would be gone when he opened them, but they were still there, staring at him, muttering those strange words: Abba dabba doo, abba dabba doo, abba dabba doo. The children watching were doubled up with laughter at the antics of Arnold and the other boys, and there was nothing Mr Willis could do to stop them.
“This is a spaceship,” he said, pointing to the tomb. “No, not a spaceship, a tomb going to another planet with boys inside. No, monsters. No, not monsters…skeletons.”
He was having a nightmare. Yes, that was it, a nightmare. He’d wake up in a moment, sitting quietly on his chair and everything would be normal.
Arnold, who had grown tired of the game in the tomb, now crawled out through the small door, followed by the other boys.
Just then there came the tap-tapping sound of high-heel shoes on the marble floor. Mr Willis, now holding on to the glass case for support, gave a sigh of relief.
The aspirins Miss Warren had taken and the cup of tea she had drunk had transformed her. The harassed look had gone; she was now bright and animated. She briskly took charge of her class.
“Ah, the pre-historic tomb,” she said. “How interesting. And you’ve lent the children some skulls to examine,” she said to Mr Willis. “How very kind.” She took the skulls, which the boys were still holding, and handed them to Mr Willis. Then, gathering the children together, she led them away.
In the entrance hall she lined them up and counted them to make sure that none had got lost.
Mr Willis was still standing by the pre-historic tomb, clutching several skulls to his chest. Miss Warren spoke to him but he didn’t reply. He was staring straight in front of him, as though in a trance, neither hearing her nor seeing her. She placed the skull on the floor beside him and quietly tip-toed away. As she left the room she was sure she heard him muttering “It’s a spaceship… no, it’s a tomb. It’s going to another planet… no, to the land of the dead. The dead, the dead, the dead…,” and she could have sworn she then heard him weeping.
ARNOLD AND THE VAMPIRE
The Tibbs’ living-room was in darkness, except for the flickering light of an old black and white film on television. The Tibbs family was asleep in bed, except for ten year old Arnold, the youngest member, who was watching Dracula, the late-night film. The sound on the television set was turned right down so that it was barely audible. Arnold, wearing his pyjamas, sat on the floor, his nose barely two feet from the screen. He watched the film with the concentration a brain surgeon might have given to a particularly tricky operation.
The film was approaching its climax. Count Dracula, the vampire, lay in his coffin and a sharpened stake was being driven into his heart. The film finished. Arnold gave a sigh of satisfaction, turned off the set and tip-toed silently up to bed.
Arnold sat at the kitchen table, a black felt-tipped pen clutched in his hand. Before him was a pile of glossy magazines. He picked up the top one and turned the pages. When he came to a picture of a handsome man holding hands with a beautiful woman he went to work with his pen. The man grew fangs from his upper lip as big as the tusks of a walrus, and whiskers which hung down onto his chest. His front teeth were blackened and his blond hair turned into barbed wire. With a few strokes of the pen he was given a long black cloak which covered his pale blue shirt.
Arnold now turned his attention to the woman. Within two minutes her beauty disappeared and she became an ugly old crone with black eyes, monstrous fangs and long matted hair.
Like a true artist Arnold wasn’t easily satisfied. He now set to work on the background. First he drew in a crescent moon, then he filled the sky with giant-sized bats with ears like donkey’s, and wings like umbrellas.
The picture was finished and, to show that it met with his satisfaction, Arnold now howled like a werewolf, ow-oo-ow-oo-ow-oow, and picked up a second magazine.
Mrs Tibbs came into the kitchen. She sat down opposite her son and began to cut bread and butter. Arnold was absorbed in his work and didn’t notice her. He worked his way steadily through the magazines. There were women’s journals belonging to his sister Fiona, rock music journals belonging to his brother Baz, pigeon journals belonging to his dad, knitting patterns belonging to his mum, and brochures belonging to no one in particular. Arnold had collected them from different parts of the house.
The felt-tipped pen glided, zigzagged and squiggled across the pages, leaving black destruction in its wake.
“What are you doing, Arnold?” asked his mother.
Arnold didn’t answer.
“What are you drawing?” she asked again.
Arnold said nothing, but howled quietly to himself.
“Arnold, what are you drawing?”
Arnold looked up as though waking from a trance. He was surprised to find himself at home in the kitchen with his mother and not in Transylvania with Count Dracula.
“What are you drawing?” asked Mrs Tibbs for the fourth time.
“Vampires,” said Arnold.
“Vampires? They are like bats?”
“They’re people,” said Arnold, scornfully. “The undead. I’ve seen them on the telly. They only change into bats when the fly into the bedrooms of people at night and suck their blood. Women mostly,” he added. “They usually feed on women.”
Mrs Tibbs winced and looked fearfully at her son, as though afraid that Arnold might at any moment leap across the table and sink his teeth into her neck.
“When the vampires have sucked all their blood the women go into a coma,” continued Arnold, “and when they wake up they become vampires themselves.”
He picked up other magazines from the pile and worked on the pictures with his felt-tipped pen. All the men, women, children and even babies were turned into vampires. And the pigeons in Mr Tibbs’s journals were turned into bats.
“Do vampires always live in castles?” said Arnold. “They could live in vaults couldn’t they, like the vaults in the churchyard?”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs Tibbs. “I suppose they could.”
“If the people bitten by vampires became vampires themselves,” mused Arnold, “and they bit people, and they became vampires, and they bit people, and they became vampires…well,” he said, pausing to collect his jumbled thoughts, “then they’d all be vampires, wouldn’t they?”
“I suppose they would,” said Mrs Tibbs, doubtfully.
“That means,” said Arnold, warming to his subject, “that there’d be more and more vampires. Millions of them. One day we could all be vampires.” His voice fell to an awe-struck whisper. “We could even be vampires already.”
Just then Fiona came into the kitchen to see if the tea was ready.
“I’m so hungry I could eat an elephant,” she said. “I’ve had nothing to eat since….” But suddenly her hunger was forgotten. She snatched up one of the magazines from the table and flicked through the pages. “You’ve ruined it,” she said feebly as she saw the havoc wreaked by Arnold’s felt-tipped pen. “I hadn’t even looked at it.”
“I didn’t know,” said Arnold, appealing to his mother. “It was on her bedroom floor. I thought it was an old one.”
Fiona went through the magazines, scattering them over the table and taking out the ones that belonged to her. Anxiously she thumbed through them. Her worst fears were realised. Arnold had drawn on every one.
“He’s ruined them all,” she whined to her mother.
Mr Tibbs and Baz, attracted by the noise, came into the kitchen.
“My pigeon journals!” said Mr Tibbs.
“My rock mags!” said Baz.
“My knitting patterns!” said Mrs Tibbs, noticing for the first time that they had also received attention from Arnold’s felt-tipped pen.
They all put down their magazines and were about to vent their anger on the perpetrator of the damage when they found that Arnold was no longer there.
Arnold pushed his way through the tall grass of the churchyard. He wasn’t afraid because he knew that vampires didn’t come out on bright sunny afternoons like today, but he didn’t take any chances, just in case they did. He crept along slowly and quietly. ‘If there was a castle here I’d find some vampires,’ he thought to himself. ‘They’d be down in the dungeons, asleep in their coffins.’
In the far corner of the churchyard, huddled together in their neglect, ivy clinging to them and brambles wound round their iron railings, stood the old vaults. Their stones were crumbling, their inscriptions were worn away and they were almost buried by weeds.
‘There could be vampires here,’ reasoned Arnold, ‘but how would they get in? It’d need a crane to lift the tops off. And how would they get out again?’
There was a fluttering sound as a crow flew from the top of a tree. Arnold turned round, startled. ‘A bat!’ he thought. ‘It could’ve been a bat.’
A low moaning sound came from behind one of the vaults. Arnold stood perfectly still, his heart beating with fright. But as he listened he realised that it was the sound of someone singing in a tuneless voice.
“Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide...”
Arnold wasn’t afraid now. That was a man singing. It wasn’t a vampi
re. Vampires didn’t sing. He crept nearer to the vault. Something grabbed at his leg, something sharp that went through his sock and pierced his skin. He cried out, convinced that a vampire had him in his talons. “Help!” But the sound that came out was a strangled “Argghhh!”
The singing stopped.
“Wh-who’s that?” said a voice from behind the old vault. “You wouldn’t hurt a p-poor old man would you? I only come here for a kip. I’m doing no harm.”
Arnold saw an old man peering over the top of the vault. He was pop-eyed with fright.
“D-d-don’t hurt me Mister Ghost. P-p-please don’t hurt me.”
“It’s only me,” said Arnold.
“What you doing here?” said the man, seeing Arnold for the first time. “You nearly give me a heart attack. It isn’t right, frightening a body like that. I thought you was a ghost.”
Arnold disentangled the bramble that had caught in his sock and went round the other side of the vault where the old man was sitting on the grass in a patch of sunlight.
“I thought I’d got the place to myself,” the man grumbled. “Folks don’t like churchyards see. They keeps away from them. That’s why they’re so peaceful.”
Arnold had never seen anyone like the old man before. He was small and old with grey whiskers and pale bleary eyes. His clothes were a strange assortment. His coat was ginger coloured and tied at the waist with string. He wore khaki trousers and dirty tennis shoes with no socks. But the thing that intrigued Arnold was the man’s cape. It was attached to the coat and hung down to his waist.
‘A cloak!’ thought Arnold. ‘It’s a vampire’s cloak!’
“There’s only one thing wrong with these places,” said the old man, “and that’s the ghosts.”
“You’ve seen ghosts?” asked Arnold.
“No, not myself I haven’t. No. But there’s them as has. They’re all round us you know, ghosts. One of these days I shall see one and I shall die of fright.”
He fumbled in the pocket of his coat and produced a bottle. He screwed off the cork and took a swig of the crimson liquid inside.
“Is that blood?” said Arnold.
“It is to me,” said the man. “My life’s blood. I couldn’t live without it and that’s a fact.” He took another swig, and seeing Arnold’s blank, unsmiling face, he laughed, a wheezing, spluttering laugh. “Blood!” he said. “Hee-hee-hee. Blood!”
When he laughed Arnold could see that the man had no teeth, except for two large pointed canines.
‘Fangs!’ said Arnold to himself. ‘Vampire fangs!’ The man was a vampire after all. He must be. He wore a cloak, he had fangs and he fed on blood. He drank it from a bottle, but perhaps that’s what vampires did these days. It was more hygienic than biting people.
“Are you one of the undead?” Arnold asked.
“The undead!” said the old man. “Well I’m not dead and that’s a fact. At least I don’t think I am.” He felt himself all over to make sure. “No, I’m not dead, so I suppose I must be undead.” and he began to laugh again.
“Do you sleep here?” Arnold asked, looking meaningfully at the vault.
The old man stopped laughing and glared at Arnold. “A body’s got to sleep somewhere. Where do you expect me to sleep? Eh? In a ditch? Are you from the police? he asked suspiciously. “Did they send you to spy on me? Eh?”
Arnold shook his head. “No, I just wondered how you got in,” he said, looking once more at the vault. “Could you show me?”
“Got in?” said the old man. “Can’t show you now. Got an appointment see. Urgent,” and before Arnold could say anything else, he skipped round the vault and disappeared in the high grass growing between the gravestones.
Arnold went back to the churchyard several times during the next few days but the old man was never there. It wasn’t until four weeks later, when he was taking some books back to the library for his sister Fiona, that he saw him again. He heard the sound of snoring from behind some bookshelves and was surprised to see the old man asleep in an easy chair. But then a library assistant appeared and shook him awake. “You can’t sleep here,” she said. “This is a library not a doss-house. You’ll have to go.”
Arnold followed the old man out. He saw him go into a shop and buy something in a bottle. ‘It’s wine,’ he said to himself. ‘It isn’t blood he drinks, it’s wine.’
When the old man came out of the shop Arnold followed him. He was excited to see him go into the churchyard. But he didn’t go to the vaults. Instead he went through a gate at the far side. Just outside was a cottage where the verger had once lived, but which was now derelict with its doors and windows boarded up. Arnold watched the old man lift up one of the boards across the door and crawl inside. He crept quietly up to the cottage and looked through a chink in the boarded up window. He saw the old man take something from his pocket and put it in his mouth. ‘False teeth,’ said Arnold to himself. ‘He’s got false teeth.’ and the truth dawned on him. ‘He isn’t a vampire at all. He’s just an old tramp. He doesn’t live in one of the vaults; he lives in this house.’ Sadly he walked back through the churchyard and went home.
Arnold sat at the kitchen table, a pile of magazines in front of him, old ones he had begged from members of his family. He went through them, drawing on the pictures with his felt-tipped pen. But he didn’t change the people into vampires - he no longer believed in vampires. He changed them into clowns with painted mouths, and thick eyebrows, and round noses, and big boots, and all kinds of fancy clothes. He’d been watching a film on the telly about a circus. He liked the horses and the elephants and the acrobats. But he’d liked the clowns best. They were his favourites. He decided that he’d be a clown himself when he grew up.
“I’d make a good clown,” he said, although there was no one in the kitchen to hear him. “I know I would.” He picked up the magazines, one after another, and drew on them with his felt-tipped pen, working his way through them with the efficiency and ferocity of an exploding missile. Men, women, boys and girls were changed into clowns so ugly that they would never have found their way even into the grimmest of circuses.
Arnold