The Gorgle Read online

  To my mother and father, Anita and John, with thanks for the dressing-up box, the piano, and much much more.

  Contents

  Chapter One: Gulliver House

  Chapter Two: The Thing in the Wardrobe

  Chapter Three: The Piggy Princesses

  Chapter Four: Twin Club

  Chapter Five: Bunnies

  Chapter Six: Feeding Time

  Chapter Seven: The Bristling Thing

  Chapter Eight: Big Trouble

  Chapter Nine: Big Bunny is Back

  Chapter Ten: The Trap

  Chapter Eleven: Cornered

  Chapter Twelve: The Plan

  Chapter Thirteen: The Gorgle

  Chapter One

  Gulliver House

  Gulliver House. A big ugly lump of a house – and my new home.

  I got out of the car and glared up at it.

  ‘Here?’ I said, giving Mum a scowling sort of look. ‘You actually want me to live here?’

  ‘Isn’t it magnificent?’ Mum beamed at me.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It is NOT magnificent.’

  Because it wasn’t. It was even worse than the pictures Mum had showed me. Grey and gloomy. With pointy bits, and turrety bits, and skinny windows – lots and lots of them, all dark and arched and glinting.

  I heaved a big sigh so Mum knew exactly how I felt.

  ‘For the billionth time,’ I said, grinding my teeth at her. ‘I’m a city kid. Dragging me here is child cruelty. Where are the other houses? Where are the shops? Where are the streetlights? Where are all the other kids?’

  ‘Finn!’ screeched one of the sisters – because I’ve got sisters, two of them. ‘You absolutely totally have to give it a chance! It’s a gigantic big enormous adventure!’

  I gaped at her. ‘This?’ I said. ‘An adventure? Watching flowers grow… Listening to birdies tweeting… What am I going to do here?’

  ‘Treasure trails,’ said the other sister, eyes gleaming. ‘Ghost hunts!’

  Then the pair of them went skipping across the gravel and up some stone steps – built for a smallish giant – to the front door.

  I trudged after them.

  ‘There’ll be spiders,’ I said, giving them the glare I keep specially for the sisters. ‘Great big hairy ones. Spiders grow extra big in the country. Fat legs, three inches long. And all covered in hairs like eyelashes, only seven times as thick. And they’re all poisonous. Every single spider in the country is poisonous.’

  ‘Finn,’ said Mum, brandishing the key to Gulliver House like it was an Olympic gold medal. ‘Stop exaggerating.’

  Which is what Mum says about five hundred times a day. And I do not.

  ‘You know what?’ I warned Mum as she turned the key in the lock. ‘I may be the first kid ever to actually die of boredom. And I’ll probably die in a teeny tiny room up in one of those turrets, and you won’t find me for months and months and when you do, I’ll just be a skeleton – and then you’ll be totally sorry you ruined my life.’

  But Mum – instead of changing her mind and driving us straight back to the city, which is what she should have done – just ignored me.

  ‘Our new life begins,’ she beamed, pushing the big old door wide open.

  * * *

  Inside, I stood and gaped. How could one hallway be this big?

  A vast square dark thing, stretching right up to the top of the house. With a stone staircase sweeping up one side, and a whole load of paintings on the walls. Olden days paintings – people with weird clothes, and bad hair, and staring eyes.

  I shivered.

  It was freezing cold in here. Full of dark doorways and shadowy corners.

  I could see upstairs too, through big black railings. More dark doorways. More shadowy corners.

  Mum and the sisters were already clattering around, throwing doors open, tapping walls, shrieking about hidden tunnels and secret rooms, and yelling at each other to check for loose floorboards and hidden treasure…

  Which was why they didn’t see it.

  A slithering thing.

  Something that shot across the floor. Slithered out from under a big old chest, slithered straight across the hallway and through a dark archway. So fast I just got a glimpse of it. A flash of something furry and long.

  What was it? A mouse? No. Mice weren’t that big. Or that shape.

  Well, whatever it was, it was gone.

  At least, I hoped it was.

  Mum and the sisters went rushing off through a dark archway, shrieking about exploring the east wing – which I think meant one of the sticking-out end bits. The shrieking got quieter and quieter, until it was gone.

  I stood in the hallway and starting counting.

  There were five doors off the hallway.

  Five.

  I poked my head round the first door.

  The room was the size of a basketball court. And depressing. Full of dark heavy furniture, the sort only old people like. With a set of grubby glass doors leading out to the garden – and a big black piano gathering dust in one corner.

  The second room had the longest table in the world, and chairs round it. Twenty-two of them. Twenty-two chairs with high backs and dark arms, all draped in dust sheets, all covered in cobwebs.

  The third, the fourth – more of the same. More huge rooms. More cobwebs. More dust sheets…

  And it was in the fifth room that I saw the slithering thing again.

  The fifth room had bookshelves, lots of them. Big heavy books rammed tightly in, floor to ceiling. And a creepy stuffed pet in a case. A glum-looking dog with long floppy ears, and a label…

  WOLFGANG

  Beloved companion of Darwin Gulliver

  It also had a desk with lots of drawers – and the slithering thing shot out from underneath it.

  It slithered out, whipped across the room, then disappeared under a bookshelf… somehow.

  I rubbed my eyes.

  What was it? A snake? No. Because – just for a second – I thought it had tusky sort of things and red popping eyes.

  That couldn’t be right.

  All the same, I felt a shiver – a teeny tiny shiver – crawl up and down my spine.

  * * *

  Later, up on the landing, the shiver grew bigger.

  I was lugging a box of my stuff up the stairs. The stairs were long, the box was heavy, so at the top, I stopped and put the box down. Right by the landing window.

  Outside, the sun was almost gone. Bulging and red, sinking slowly behind lots of spiky black trees. Sending big dark shadows like giants’ fingers creeping across the landing.

  Then I heard a sound. A faint faraway sound. A booming sound. Coming from somewhere out there in the twilight. Somewhere far down the garden.

  And I saw something.

  Something scuttling fast across the garden, almost a blur. Just a glimpse – of paws and bristles and teeth.

  Then…

  No. I blinked. That was wrong. I must have imagined it.

  Because as it scuttled I thought I saw sparks. Sparks and tiny flames. As if, well – as if the bristling thing was breathing fire.

  And even though I told myself I was wrong, that it was a trick of the light, the sun setting, flaming red and sinking down behind the trees… even though I told myself all that, still the shiver got bigger.

  Just a bit.

  Chapter Two

  The Thing in the Wardrobe

  One in six million. That’s how much chance we had of moving into Gulliver House.

  Because, you know why we’re here?

  Mum won it in a raffle.

  Whoever it was who owned Gulliver House decided a raffle was the best way to sell it. So he set up a website – winacountrypile.com – stuck a photo of Gulliver House on it, and sold raffle t
ickets for a tenner each.

  Six million grown-ups bought one.

  Six million grown-ups – probably enough grown-ups to stretch right round the entire globe, holding hands – actually wanted to win Gulliver House…

  Including Mum. Who did.

  Mum also won all the horrible old furniture. And I was sitting in my bedroom, glaring at some of it right now.

  It had to go. The whole lot.

  The bed – which I was sitting on – was too big, too wide, too lumpy. The chest of drawers was ugly and dark and taller than me. The mirror was all scratched, and it glinted. The rocking chair had a hard bony back, and it creaked every time the wind rattled at the skinny windows. Which it did quite a lot.

  Then there was the wardrobe.

  Towering up in the corner like a gloomy black shadow. Huge. Big enough to walk inside, and full of fur coats.

  The sisters took one look at it and – of course – grabbed hold of the doors, pulled them wide open and barged their way through all the fur coats, going, ooh, maybe we’ll find a gateway to a faraway land and meet a friendly faun…

  They didn’t.

  * * *

  I started unpacking. Right now I just wanted one thing. My most precious possession.

  My photo of Dad.

  I can’t remember Dad. Not one thing.

  I was a toddler when it happened. When Dad went off on his motorbike one day, and had a big skid, and never came back.

  Mum says he was a good dad, and he looks it. He’s grinning in the photo, but scruffy – like he thinks grinning’s important, but looking neat isn’t.

  Dad was an actor, Mum says. But he didn’t get enough jobs. So he changed to being a stunt man, then he did get jobs. Dad leapt off tall buildings and through fire. He jumped off trees on to bolting horses. He wrestled with lions…

  But he was going to the cake shop when he had his skid.

  ‘I wish you were still here,’ I grumbled at the photo, because I often have a chat and a grumble with Dad. ‘There’s not enough boys in this family.’

  Then I gave his photo a quick hug, and put it on the table by the bed, so I could see him grinning at me.

  I got under the duvet, and tried to find a bit of bed without lumps to lie in.

  The light by my bed didn’t do much. Just made a small pool of light – which left a lot of dark. Much too much dark.

  Not like my old room. My tiny cosy room, where my bedside light lit up every corner. Where I could hear the sisters through the wall, and Mum clattering round the kitchen.

  I felt my eyes go all round the room. Past the chest of drawers, looming… The mirror, glinting... The rocking chair, creaking… The windows, rattling… The wardrobe –

  Oh no.

  The wardrobe door was open. Again.

  It just wouldn’t shut. Not properly. It kept swinging open, just far enough open for me to see a small dark sliver of its insides.

  I tried not to think about The Hand. That’s a book I once read with a boy just like me – new house, new bedroom. A boy who woke up to see a huge scaly hand with seven bony fingers hanging out of his wardrobe.

  And just as I was trying not to think about The Hand – and failing – I heard a small rustling, ripping sort of noise.

  Coming from inside the wardrobe.

  I could NOT lie there and listen to something rustling. Not now I was thinking about The Hand.

  I jumped out of bed, pounded right across the floorboards and flung the wardrobe doors wide open.

  I pushed my way through the coats until I found it.

  A chrysalis. A really big one – big as a fat sausage. Cracking right down its middle.

  Brilliant!

  I crouched down. This I had to watch.

  Because it’s like magic, what happens in a chrysalis. It’s like shapeshifting. A caterpillar goes in as a wriggling wormy thing, stays in there a bit and – hey presto – when it comes out it’s a butterfly.

  And something was hatching right now.

  I crouched closer.

  This was going to be some butterfly.

  I saw antlery bits first. Two waggling antler things poking out. Then a furry head – mainly bulging eyes, shining and black.

  Then it crawled out.

  Woah. I backed off.

  It smelt bad, like rotting things. It was sludgy green and covered in slime. It was stretching out two sets of scaly wings, and flapping them, trying to dry off. Then it looked straight at me.

  And it hissed.

  I knew then, it was NOT a butterfly. And whatever it was – a moth, perhaps? – it was horrible.

  So I turned and hurtled out of the wardrobe so fast I shot across the room, and fell straight over the box I had been unpacking.

  Which meant I tried to grab hold of something to stop myself falling, only I grabbed hold of a curtain and the whole thing – pole, curtains, everything – came tumbling down.

  Then the moth thing came flapping out of the wardrobe. And it wasn’t much of a flier, not yet, so it flapped around the room, dripping slime, and bumping into things, and flapping between me and the windows.

  So I grabbed hold of my skateboard and started waving it around in front of me, trying to stop the moth thing flying towards me, while I tried to get a window open.

  Except…

  Clang.

  My skateboard smashed straight into the mirror and a great jagged line split the glass, then the whole mirror clattered off the wall and shattered into bits on the floor.

  And then I did get a window open, but as the moth thing flapped through, one of its horrible slimy wings brushed across my face.

  I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t help it. As I slammed my window shut behind it, I let out a screech – a big piercing girly screech.

  Mum heard it, and so did the sisters. They all came running.

  Mum took one look at my bedroom – at the smashed mirror, the curtains in a heap, everything – and started glaring.

  ‘It was a moth thing,’ I said. ‘I had to chase it out.’ Which sounded feeble, even to me.

  And after Mum went, I checked the window. Made sure it was tight shut. Because I didn’t want to see that moth thing again.

  Not ever.

  Chapter Three

  The Piggy Princesses

  My sisters are called Lily and Mo – but I don’t call them that. I call them the PPs, the Piggy Princesses.

  It started the day – years ago – they said I had to be a frog in their princess game, and I said I was only playing if I could be a pig. So they sat on me, both of them. For a long time.

  And you know what?

  If I could swap the PPs for a pair of real-life pigs – well, I probably would.

  Because Mum gave us all a choice about moving to Gulliver House. Sat us all down. Said moving to the country, leaving our friends, starting a new life, would be a big change. Said we’d vote on it. Said if it was only her who voted yes to going, we wouldn’t go.

  And all the PPs had to do was vote against it.

  But did they?

  No.

  Because the PPs thought moving to Gulliver House was a brilliant idea.

  But it wasn’t. And I had a plan to show them it wasn’t. Oh yes indeedy.

  * * *

  I woke early next morning – too early – because the garden was twittering and rustling and making a lot of noise.

  I started my plan straight away. Got dressed, crept along the landing, stopped outside the PPs’ bedrooms – and tied their door handles together.

  That way they’d wake up, go to open their doors, and fail. And the more they tried, the more they rattled, the more they pulled, the tighter the knots would get…

  Simple, yet effective.

  Then I shot off downstairs, through the hallway, along the corridor, into the kitchen, and unbolted the back door.

  My first proper look at the Gulliver House garden…

  And my heart sank.

  A huge great garden, sweeping all ro
und the house. Sprawling and wild and neglected. With things – dark green things, thorny things – creeping and climbing wherever they could.

  A fence all around it, caging it in. And beyond it, fields. A cold grey lake. More fields. Hills. And sky. And clouds.

  That was it.

  Nothing and no one around.

  Mum says the garden just needs someone to love it – well, not me. Because I would never ever love this garden. NEVER.

  And far down on the left, dark spiky trees. Lots and lots of them. Stretching away from the garden right into the hills. The sort of forest evil woodcutters lurk in. The sort of forest where wolves dressed as grannies wait to gobble up soppy little girls.

  And, poking up between two of the trees on the edge, a chimney pot.

  There was a house. An actual house.

  I started running. There might be a boy there. A boy who liked things I like. A boy who’d talk about interesting things – like how many marbles can fit inside a guitar, or which would be worse, to have your fingers eaten off by a rat or a badger.

  But really, I thought, as I squelched through the grass, all squishy and soggy under my trainers, I didn’t care if he was a boy who liked playing the violin and reading poetry. Any boy would do. Any boy at all.

  And there was a boy.

  Not in the garden, but in the grassy fenced-in bit next to it. Which had a sign on it, drawn in very wobbly writing. MY PADDOCK. With a picture of a scary monster on it.

  That’s where the boy was.

  A short boy. Very short. With bobbing curls, and dimples. A boy who was about four years old.

  Now, I know about four-year-olds, because Karim – my best friend, who lives downstairs from me in my real home back in the city – has one.

  And Karim’s four-year-old is boring and annoying, and always getting in our way. Always wanting to join in. And he spends every single day dressed as a superhero and all he talks about is his imaginary superpowers. Nothing else. Except sweets.

  In fact, there is only one thing in the whole world more boring and annoying than four-year-olds, and that’s babies.

  This four-year-old had seen me and he was running across the paddock thing. Only he wasn’t quite running. He was more like… well, cantering. And he was tossing his head and growling.