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Part Two – your
Part One: THE SLOBBERERS
Big Bad Dawn. Everything is big about her. Big muscles, big head, big mouth. Worst of all she's my sister. Well, step-sister to be exact. It's not the same. A real sister wouldn't have made a fuss in church over a Milo tin. A real sister wouldn't have nearly let my grubs escape. A real sister wouldn't have...
Oh, what the heck. I knew where she was hiding.
Everyone from the wedding was looking for her. Fancy standing up in church and objecting to the marriage. What a hoot. I have to give her full marks for that. I wished I'd thought of it myself. I didn't want Mum to marry Jack any more than she did.
The bus. That's where she would be. That was her hideout.
I tucked the Milo tin under one arm and walked along the side of the creek for a while. Then I took the short cut through Dead Cow Clearing. I reached the fence of the wrecker's yard and peered in. There it was. A rusting hulk right in the middle of the yard. Broken windows. Grass sprouting out of the petrol cap. Not a speck of paint left. A tree growing right through the bonnet. And the whole thing leaning drunkenly to one side.
The bus had carried its last passenger, that was one thing for sure.
Last passenger. What was I thinking about? I was the last passenger. I had my crook leg to remind me of that.
I climbed through Dawn's secret hole in the bent iron fence. 'I know you're in there, Dawn,' I said under my breath.
Inside the yard I crept past the remains of a '68 Ford and round a pile of dented hub caps. I didn't want Dawn to hear me so I picked my way forward carefully.
I reached the bus and hopped quietly onto the first step. I stopped. I didn't want to go in. I'd been on that bus when it crashed. That terrible crash that I still couldn't remember anything about. But there was no time for that now.
'Gotcha.' I jumped up the next two broken steps into the back of the bus.
Dawn was sitting in the driver's seat with tears in her eyes. 'You,' she spat out. 'Worm Boy. Where's your rotten apple-man?'
She shouldn't have said that. Like I was feeling a bit sorry for her sitting in the very seat where her mother had drowned. But when she rubbished my apple-man I could feel my face burning with anger.
'My Dad gave me that apple-man,' I yelled. 'Don't you – '
She wouldn't even let me finish. 'Your dad, your dad. Don't give me that. Where is he then? What sort of dad goes off and never writes? Never sends a present. Not even a Christmas card. My dad gives you stuff all the time. The only thing you've ever got from yours is a rotten apple.'
I ran down the aisle between the sagging seats and put my face up close to Dawn's. I shouldn't have said what I did. Not when she was sitting right where it happened. But I was really mad. 'What about your mum?' I yelled. 'She wanted to get away from you so bad that she drove the bus off the cliff into the river and drowned. And nearly killed me too.'
Dawn just about exploded. I had really pressed the right buttons. She jumped out of her seat and shoved me onto the floor. The Milo tin rolled down the aisle and the lid popped off. My little apple-man spilled out and lay there like a wizened corpse.
Dawn sat on my chest and pinned my arms to the ground with her knees. I couldn't move. I could hardly breathe. She was much stronger than me. And she knew it.
'I'm going to get your rotten apple-man,' she said. 'And flush it down the dunny.'
I squirmed and heaved but I just couldn't move her. If she wanted to, she could do whatever she liked. I knew that if she ran off with him, I'd never catch her. She was just too fast. It would be the last I'd see of my apple-man.
It's amazing how they make those little apple faces. They get an extra-big apple and let it slowly shrivel up so that it's all wrinkled and dry. Then they sew it so that it has little eyes and a mouth and a chin. They make a wooden body and, hey presto – a great little troll with an ugly face.
'Don't touch it,' I screamed. 'I'll kill you.' I bucked like a horse but she just pressed down harder with her knees.
'It's got worms,' she said. 'Horrible little slobberers.'
I knew that. I twisted my head sideways and looked at them. I was a bit worried when I first saw them. What if they ate the whole apple-head off the doll? Dad would be sad if his present got ruined. The funny thing is, though, the apple-man never changed. The slobberers must have eaten something, but what? They couldn't have been eating the apple or there'd be none left.
My arms were starting to tingle with pins and needles. Dawn's knees were knobbly. 'Give in, Worm Boy,' she said.
'Never,' I said.
So we just stayed there on the floor of the bus. I stared up into her ugly mug and she glared down into mine. I decided not to look at her so I fixed my eyes on a seat where the skeleton of a dead goat sat like a ghostly passenger from the past. How the heck did that get there? It must have wandered in and died.
The image of the skeleton sort of locked itself in my head.
Suddenly Dawn gave a scream and jumped up. She was looking down the aisle at the slobberers. Typical girl. Tough as an ox but scared of a few little grubs. Then I looked a bit more closely. Oh no. I scrambled up and backed off. The skin of the apple-man had begun to boil. A huge grub erupted from a wrinkled scar on the apple-man's face. It wormed itself out, wriggling, wriggling, wriggling. Tiny veins and purple blood. Little pinpricks of glowing green eyes. Wet fangs and three or four slobbering, sucking tongues coming out of its mouth.
I hadn't seen a slobberer like this before. Maybe they were changing. It crawled towards us, followed by another and another and another. Each one the same. It was weird. They slimed out of the apple-man's eyes and ears and hair. Soon there were twenty or thirty. They advanced towards us in lines like an army of little snakes.
'I'm out of here,' shrieked Dawn.
Suddenly the slobberers stopped. They reared up as one and seemed to look about. Then they turned and slithered in panic towards the door.
'Hey,' I yelled. 'Come back. She won't hurt you.'
It seems funny to say this but I didn't want to lose them. Since they had been living in the apple-man I had come to like them even though they were pretty yucky. They were a bit like tenants renting a house. They lived in the apple-man and they didn't really do any harm. And no one else had anything like them.
I grabbed the apple-man and ran outside the bus. The slobberers were lined up some distance away. They stared at the bus and seemed to be making frightened, slurping noises. Their little tongues flickered in and out. Weird. It wasn't Dawn they were frightened of. She had run out and was already climbing through the hole in the fence. Heading for home as quick as her legs could take her. What a chicken.
No, the slobberers weren't scared of Dawn. It was something to do with the bus. To be honest, I thought it was a bit spooky myself.
I walked up close to them and put the apple-man down on the ground. 'Come on, guys,' I said. 'Come home. Come home to Daddy.'
In a flash they streaked across the ground towards the apple-man. They wormed and wriggled and fought each other in their hurry to get back inside. There was a bit of a traffic jam at the nostrils. After a few seconds they were gone. Everything was back to normal. For now anyway.
I picked up my apple-man and headed back to the bus. I went inside and put him back in the Milo tin. No point taking risks. I couldn't take the chance that my little slobberers might escape again. Things were weird enough already.
I jumped out of the bus and walked towards the hole in the fence. I was glad to be leaving. The slobberers didn't like that bus.
And neither did I.
Continue to Chapter 3
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