Hunger of the Yeti Read online

  “Nothing,” sighed Luke as his ears shrank back to their normal size. “I could have sworn I’d heard the baby down this way.”

  “It must have gone somewhere,” said Cleo.

  “What about down there?” suggested Resus, pointing to where a shaft of light escaped under the cloth wall. He lifted the fabric. “Looks like a way out…”

  “If the yeti’s back in Scream Street, that’ll make things a lot easier,” Luke observed.

  The trio dropped to their knees and crawled through the gap in the material. As they emerged back out of the cape they found themselves in an unfamiliar bedroom.

  Resus studied their surroundings. “Er … where are we?” he asked.

  “Certainly not Everwell’s Emporium,” replied Cleo. “Someone must have moved the cape while we were in there.”

  Resus peered out of the bedroom window. “I think it’s gone further than that,” he said. “It doesn’t even look like Scream Street outside – there’s a load of market stalls, and the sky’s pitch black.”

  Luke picked up a copy of The Terror Times from the bedside table and peered at it. He paled.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Resus.

  “We’re still in Scream Street,” Luke replied. “Just not our Scream Street…”

  “What are you talking about?” said Cleo.

  Luke turned the newspaper round to show them the date at the top. “Somehow, we’ve ended up in the year nineteen sixty-one!”

  Chapter Seven

  The Brothers

  “Are you trying to tell me we’ve travelled back in time?” asked Cleo incredulously. She ran her fingers over the polished surface of the bedside table just to make sure it was real. It was.

  “I know it sounds impossible,” replied Luke, “but that’s how it looks.”

  Cautiously, Resus used his foot to lift up the edge of the vampire cape, now lying discarded on the floor. “No,” he said firmly. “We can’t be in nineteen sixty-one. This is just my cape – not a time machine…”

  “It does contain a lot of weird stuff,” Luke reminded him.

  “Yes, but a gateway to the past?”

  Cleo sat down on the bed, the frame creaking. “Then how do you explain all this?”

  “I don’t know!” cried Resus, flustered. “Maybe it’s a wind-up?”

  “A wind-up?” said Luke. “You think someone’s gone to all this trouble just to play a practical joke?”

  Resus shrugged. “It’s still a better explanation than travelling fifty years backwards through time!”

  Cleo suddenly leapt to her feet again. “Shh! Someone’s coming.”

  Footsteps could be heard in the hallway outside the room.

  “Quick!” hissed Luke. “Under the bed!”

  The trio dropped to the floor and slid under the bed just as the door swung open. They watched as two pairs of legs entered the room. Each wore dark, flared trousers and highly polished shoes.

  “There’s my cloak!” said a man’s voice. “I don’t know what it’s doing on the floor, though.” He picked it up and dropped it onto the bed.

  “Maybe someone’s been in here,” suggested a second voice, also a man’s. The trio looked at each other in panic, praying that they wouldn’t be discovered.

  “In my room?” came the first voice. “Who’d want to come up here?”

  “Well,” teased the other voice, “I have noticed that someone around here has been getting a lot of attention from a certain Miss Nurmi…”

  Luke felt Resus start at the name. “You’ve noticed too?” asked the first voice. “Thank Drac for that – I thought I was imagining it!”

  “What, the way she’s been fluttering those big, brown eyes at you from across the square? It’s obvious, little brother.”

  Quietly, Resus dragged himself forward so that he could peer out from the end of the bed.

  “So, what do you think I should do?” asked the owner of the bedroom.

  The second figure sat down on the bed. “You do what any self-respecting vamp would do – ask her out on a date.”

  “You think she’d say yes?” the first figure asked, turning to face his brother.

  Resus clamped his hand over his mouth to stifle a cry of surprise. Luke shuffled forward to see what he was looking at. He found he could just about see the face of the first man. He was young – maybe in his late teens or early twenties – and sported jet-black hair and sharp fangs. Straight away Luke knew who he was.

  “There’s only one way to find out.” The man on the bed tossed the cape to his companion and jumped to his feet. He too was a vampire, of around the same age, and he wore small, round spectacles.

  Grinning, the first vampire clipped Resus’s cape around his neck and the two men left the room, closing the door behind them.

  Neither Luke nor Resus said a word as they climbed out from under the bed. As Cleo joined them, she looked from one to the other. Both boys looked as though they’d seen a ghost.

  “What is it?” she demanded.

  “Didn’t you see who that was?”

  Cleo shook her head. “I tried to wriggle forward to join you, but my bandages caught on one of the springs when that bloke sat on the bed. I couldn’t move.”

  Still the boys said nothing.

  “Well?” cried Cleo. “Don’t keep me in suspense. Who was it?”

  “He was younger than I ever remember him,” said Resus quietly, “but that … was my dad.”

  “No way!”

  “It’s true,” said Luke. “It was a much younger version of Alston Negative.”

  “What?” exclaimed Cleo. “But that’s… It can’t have been your…” She took a deep breath. “Then who was the other man – the one who pinned me to the floor?”

  “My Uncle Insole,” replied Resus. “Neither of you have met him; he lives in a G.H.O.U.L. community in Switzerland with his family.”

  “There has to be another explanation,” said Cleo. “Surely it’s a trick…”

  Resus shook his head. “It was my dad,” he said firmly. “Somehow – I don’t know how – we’ve gone back in time. The Miss Nurmi they were talking about is my mum before she got married. Nineteen sixty-one is the year they first met.”

  Cleo opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, struggling to find something to say. “How old is your dad?” she asked finally. “Your dad now, I mean… How old was your dad this morning?”

  “He’s forty-seven.”

  “There!” she said. “If this is nineteen sixty-one, and we’ve travelled back fifty years – then he wouldn’t even be born for another three years.”

  Luke’s expression brightened. “She’s right! Maybe this is just a bad joke.”

  “I wish,” sighed Resus. “The thing is, vampires age differently from everyone else…”

  Cleo frowned. “Like dogs?”

  “What?”

  “You know,” the mummy continued. “One human year is the equivalent of seven dog years…”

  “I suppose,” said Resus. “Only with vampires, it’s slower. That could make my dad about the right age.”

  “Hang on,” said Luke. “If vampires age more slowly than everyone else … that should make you only two or three years old!”

  Cleo grinned. “Maybe we should have let the mother yeti potty-train you after all.”

  “Ha, ha,” retorted Resus. “But I’m not a real vampire, am I? I age just like everyone else.”

  “That’s a shame,” Cleo said thoughtfully. “I could have made you a nappy from my spare bandages.”

  Resus took a deep breath. “Can we all please just forget about the age thing, and figure out what we’re going to do?”

  “OK,” said Luke. “We’ve found out that your cape has powers we didn’t know it had. But surely all we need to do is go back inside and retrace our steps until we come back out in our own Scream Street again.”

  “Nice idea,” said Cleo. “But there’s one small problem. Didn’t Resus’s dad take the cape
with him when he left?” The boys spun round, scanning the room. The cape was nowhere to be seen.

  “Why would he do that?” asked Resus. “Why would he take my cape with him?”

  Luke thought for a second. “I heard your dad say that it was his cape. Did it belong to him before it was yours?”

  “Of course!” said Resus. My mum got him a new one for his birthday a couple of years ago and he passed his old one on to me.”

  “Then what if … what if the cape still belongs to your dad in the nineteen-sixties but belongs to you in our time?”

  “What?” demanded Cleo. “Are you trying to say that both Resus and his dad are using the same cape – fifty years apart?”

  “It’s the only solution I can think of that doesn’t make my brain melt,” said Luke.

  “You should keep it in the fridge, like me,” quipped Cleo.

  Resus sat down heavily on the bed. “We need to try to get the cape away from my dad so we can get back inside it.”

  “Without him seeing us,” added Luke. “Who knows what would happen if he met his own ten-year-old son forty years before he was due to be born.”

  “That’s not our only problem,” said Cleo, peering out of the window.

  “What?” asked Luke. He and Resus joined her to gaze down at the busy market in the gas-lit square below. Wooden tables and barrows with colourful awnings stood in neat rows and the place was filled with shoppers and stallholders. Among them, causing people to jump as it scurried by, was a small bundle of grey fur.

  It was the baby yeti.

  Chapter Eight

  The Boy

  “Come on!” hissed Luke, heading for the bedroom door. Checking the corridor was clear, the trio crept down the stairs and darted out of the front door. Once they were in the square they could hear the panicked yells of the residents as the yeti raced about, biting lumps out of table legs and any merchandise it could reach.

  “I’d forgotten what it was like living in permanent night,” said Resus, peering up at the dark cloudy sky above. The only light came from portable gas lamps attached to each market stall.

  Cleo nodded. “It’ll be years before we break the spell and bring daylight back.”

  The pair made to enter the market, but Luke stopped them. “We need to be careful we don’t get recognized,” he reminded them.

  “It’s nineteen sixty-one,” said Resus. “No one will recognize us here!”

  “No,” agreed Luke, “but someone could see us now and then recognize us in the future.”

  “Good point,” said Cleo. “So if, say, Dr Skully is here now, we can’t let him see us or he’ll remember us being here when we get back to our own time.”

  “Exactly!” said Luke. “We’ll need to keep a low profile so we don’t—”

  “Hello!” said a cheery voice.

  Luke turned to see a tubby boy, probably a couple of years older than them, munching his way through a bar of chocolate. “Hi,” he replied before turning back to Resus and Cleo. “In every time-travel film I’ve seen, it can be dangerous if—”

  “Who are you?”

  Luke turned back to the newcomer. “Sorry?”

  “I haven’t seen you before,” continued the boy. “Who are you?”

  “We’re … nobody,” said Resus. “Nobody at all. Forget you’ve even seen us.”

  The boy finished the chocolate bar and then produced a lollipop. “Will you be my friends?”

  “What?” demanded Resus.

  “I said, will you be my friends?”

  Cleo smiled politely. “Sorry,” she said. “We’re not here for long.”

  The boy’s face fell. “So you won’t be my friends?” he wailed. “That’s mean!” He began to sob loudly and several passers-by glanced in their direction.

  “Don’t cry!” hissed Cleo. “I didn’t mean we wouldn’t be your friends – it’s just that, er … we’re only visiting for a while.”

  The boy blinked, tears still running down his cheeks and a bubble of snot expanding from his left nostril. “So you will be my friends?”

  “Yes, all right,” promised Luke. “If it keeps you quiet, we’ll be your friends. I’m, er … Tom. This is Dick,” he said, pointing to Resus. “And the mummy is Harriet.”

  The boy wiped his nose with the back of his hand before offering it to his new friends to shake. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “My name is Otto! Otto Sneer!”

  Resus’s eyes widened. “You’re Otto Sneer?”

  The boy sucked on his lollipop and nodded.

  “This is brilliant!” grinned the vampire.

  “It’s not brilliant,” hissed Luke. “We’re supposed to be keeping away from anyone who might recognize us back in our own time.”

  “But it’s Sir Otto!” exclaimed Resus.

  The boy frowned. “Sir Otto? What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing,” Luke replied quickly. “Pay no attention to him. He’s crazy!”

  There came a loud smash from further along the row of stalls, accompanied by angry shouting.

  “I think the baby’s on the move again,” said Cleo. “How long have we got?”

  Luke checked the watch. “Forty-two minutes,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  He grabbed Resus by the arm and pulled him away. The vampire’s face was a picture of delight. “That was Otto Sneer!”

  “And that’s the baby yeti,” hissed Luke, pulling Resus down behind a stall selling rolls of silky fabric. “Now, get your head together or we’ll run out of time!”

  Cleo crouched down to join them and the trio peered around the edge of the stall. The yeti had overturned a tub of fruit and veg and now sat among the spoiled produce stuffing apples and oranges into its mouth. Whenever one of the market vendors or customers moved towards the creature, it snarled angrily and gnashed its teeth.

  “This is our chance,” whispered Luke. “We can catch it while it’s busy eating.”

  Glark! The yeti spat out a mouthful of sprouts.

  “Eurgh, that’s disgusting!” said Resus.

  “Why is it disgusting?” asked Cleo. “I’ve seen you do exactly the same thing at my house when you tried my dad’s tulip stew.”

  “Not the yeti,” replied Resus, pointing across the square. “That!” On the opposite side, the young Alston Negative was walking with a beautiful female vampire – Bella Nurmi. He had wrapped his cape around her shoulders, pretending to shield her from the cold, and when he thought no one was looking, he snatched a kiss.

  “I think I’m gonna be sick,” groaned Resus.

  “Will you concentrate on the matter at hand?” demanded Luke. “We have to try to catch the yeti!”

  “How?” asked Resus. “I don’t fancy grabbing him bare-handed: he’s nearly had that stallholder’s fingers off twice already.”

  “It’s a pity we don’t have your cloak,” said Cleo. “We could have thrown it over the yeti to pin it down.”

  Luke ran his fingers over a length of white satin that dangled over the edge of the stall they were crouching behind. “Maybe we don’t need the cape…”

  He quickly unrolled a few metres of the fabric while the stallholder was distracted by the ravenous baby yeti. Resus used one of his fake vampire nails to cut through the material, and soon the trio had a large square of cloth. They gripped the edges tightly.

  “We need to surprise it,” said Luke, pulling a length of cord from the stall and slinging it over his shoulder. “If we all dive at the same time, we should be able to capture it and tie it up.” Resus and Cleo nodded.

  “OK,” Luke whispered. “On three. One … two … th—”

  “I can help!” cried a voice, and a podgy hand appeared beside Luke’s, trying to grasp the material. As Otto Sneer pushed forward, he knocked the group over and all four of them crashed to the ground just centimetres from the startled baby yeti. The creature hissed in Resus’s face, then raced away across the market, growling noisily.

  “Well,” said Cleo, wiping
bits of squashed banana from her bandages. “We certainly surprised it.”

  “But we didn’t catch it,” growled Luke. He sat up among the vegetables and glared at Otto. “What did you do that for?”

  “I was helping,” he replied. “I wanted to do something nice for my new friends.”

  “But we didn’t need your help,” snapped Luke. “You let the yeti get away! We almost had it, and now it’s escaped!”

  Otto’s bottom lip trembled. “I’m s-s-sorry,” he sniffed.

  Luke climbed to his feet, his eyes frantically scanning the market for any sign of the creature.

  “He’s not my friend any more…” Otto wailed.

  Cleo put her arm around the large boy’s shoulders and tried to comfort him. “He’s still your friend,” she said kindly.

  “Then why did he shout at me?”

  “Because we’re running out of time!” Luke said impatiently over his shoulder.

  “I know how to cheer you up,” Resus grinned. He grabbed a carrot from the wreckage of the stall and pushed it into the teenager’s mouth, then he bundled up the piece of white satin and wrapped it around Otto’s neck like a scarf. “There you go,” he beamed. “That’s more like the Sneer we know.”

  “I don’t get it,” croaked Otto, rubbing at his eyes.

  Cleo snatched the carrot out of Otto’s mouth and glared at Resus. “That’s cruel!” she cried.

  “Why?” asked Resus. “I stopped him crying, didn’t I?”

  “There!” exclaimed Luke. “The yeti’s just gone into Everwell’s Emporium!”

  “Whose emporium?” asked Otto, struggling to keep up with the conversation.

  Luke ignored him. “Thirty-seven minutes left.” He raced off in the direction of Scream Street’s shop, Resus at his heels. Cleo offered the red-faced Otto a friendly smile. “We’ll see you later,” she promised before chasing after her friends.

  The bat perched over the door of the shop let out a screech as the trio burst in. “Wow,” breathed Resus. “This is different!”

  “You can say that again,” whispered Luke. This wasn’t the tidy, well-ordered store they were used to. Cardboard boxes and bags covered every inch of the floor, stuffed with everything from crystal balls to model dragons. Dusty shelves bulged with piles of spell parchments and tattered old books.