Strange Happenings at No. 4
by Nikolaj Vigrim
by Nikolaj Vigrim
Published by Nikolaj Vigrim
Copyright 2008-2013 Nikolaj Vigrim
Illustrations by Nikolaj and Louise
Based on a drawing by Sofie
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[email protected] Chapter 1 - Lizzy and Louise find a Nest
Lizzy and me are like twins - we've painted L&L on our wetsuits. Beneath the mud we have the same blond hair and sparkling blue eyes, and are more or less the same height; me being short for 9 and a half and Lizzy tall for 8. We wash ourselves clean in the icy stream, then lie on our backs in long grass and squint up into the brightness, trying to spot the skylarks singing high overhead. We've come down to Granny and Grandad Wig's farm for a week during the summer holidays, a week of ducklings and chickens, of juicy, freshly picked strawberries, pony rides and mud, flies and squishy cow-pats.
The first few days are hot, stinking hot. By day we help around the farm and play on the mud slide. We camp out under the walnut trees and sizzle sausages and toast marshmallows on the fire. I play my guitar while Lizzy strums on a ukulele she found in the old house. My wetsuit catches fire in a cloud of blue, rubbery smoke and we have a nasty moment with an exploding can of baked beans. Next time I'll open the can before putting it on the fire! In the morning we take a brisk swim with the eels to wake themselves up and wash off the beans.
After the hot days come the cold ones. We fry up pikelets on the coal range and eat them with lashings of butter and jam, then draw pictures on the steamed up windows and peer through at the rain outside. We roast pumpkin seeds and eat them sizzling hot.
'Lulu, what'll happen if we stick them in the ground?' asks Lizzy.
'Oh, stupid,' I reply. 'Bananas will come up.' Sometimes she tries my patience.
'Really?' says Lizzy, looking surprised.
'Let’s plant some and see.'
Next morning we put our gumboots on and, much to the delight of the ducklings and hens, start clearing the tall grass and silver beet from an overgrown corner of the garden. Lizzy is more into playing than working and makes a house in the long grass.
'Come out and help,' I call. 'You wanted to see what would grow.'
Out comes Lizzy, and we cut the long grass and weeds leaving Lizzy's wee house under the apple tree. At morning teatime, Granny Wigs brings out lemonade and bikkies. She's wrinkly like an old tortoise but bounces around like a jack rabbit. Me and Lizzy squeeze into her grass house to have our drink and eat the freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.
Lizzy spots it first, hidden in the flattened grass at our feet is a nest full of brightly patterned eggs. They look like someone has carefully painted them, like Easter eggs, and are odd shapes, not oval like the ones Granny’s hens lay. They're stone cold, nothing's been sitting on them.
'Let's take them home with us,' I say to Lizzy, carefully picking up the nest and wrapping it in my jersey. 'I'll hide them in my guitar.'
Chapter 2 - Lovely and Luscious
Me and Lizzy share a room. Everything we do in there is top secret. Sometimes it's even too top secret for Lizzy. After all, she's my kid sister and can be a little, a lot, annoying at times. What we get up to is top secret from our eleven year old brother, Sam; super top secret from our big sister Sofie who's just turned 16, unless of course, we want to know big girl stuff, and super super, top top secret from Mum and Dad. Mum always knows our secrets anyway, because mums do. But Mum doesn't know about the eggs.
Once back home, we shut themselves in our room with the chair wedged against the door. We open my guitar case, take the guitar out and, after loosening off the strings, Lizzy, who has the smallest hands, reaches inside and pulls out the nest and my socks and knickers. Wrapped up in them are the eggs. I pick one up. The door rattles and bashes against the chair. It gives me such a surprise that I drop the egg.
'Oh, no!' I whisper, but luckily the egg bounces.
Boing!
'Let me in,' shouts Sam. 'What are you girls up to in there? Fruju, Zozo, let me in!'
Calling us by our old nicknames normally gets us mad enough to open the door. Not this time.
'I'll give you a Pokémon card if you let me in.'
'No,' we reply. 'No, no and triple no.'
'Have you smuggled tadpoles back?' calls Sam's muffled voice. 'I bet you have. Let me see them.'
I carefully place the brightly coloured eggs back in the nest, hide it in a shoe box behind the junk in the wardrobe and soon forget about it.
The sign on our door says, L & L, Lovely and Luscious. Sam has changed it to Ludicrous and Lecherous by the time we come out, but it doesn't stay that way for long.
Chapter 3 - Odd Happenings
The holidays pass. Much, much too quickly they pass. We mess and we play.
There’s a nasty moment when Mum rents and raves and bans everything with buttons or a screen until the end of the holidays. That's forever, like. Square eyes Sam has a nasty turn, acting like a two year old. He stomps his feet and sulks in the corner, then builds a fort in the twisted old plum tree out the back and hangs out there with his mates. Mum buys big tubs of the brightest paint she can find and puts a sign up in the garage that reads, Mum’s Studio. Make as much mess as possible. So we do!
We go fishing with Dad. Sam hooks something huge, a shark or a stingray, that pulls him off the wharf and drags him along under water until he runs out of breath. I catch two juicy little snapper which Sofie cooks up with the most delicious sauce.
When we finish, Sofie says, 'It's made from snails!'
'Get off!' I say.
'No, really,' says Sofie, looking deadly serious.
We don't know whether to believe her or not. There's a whole lot less snails in the garden than normal. They might have gone into hibernation as it hasn’t rained all summer up here. I hope so; I don't like the idea of eating snails. They're almost as yucky as slugs.
We go sledging down Mt Vic on cardboard boxes. The grass is really dry and super slippery. Lizzy starts at the top and smashes through some bushes into the fence by the school. It's so funny, with her screaming and Dad tumbling down trying to stop her. When I get down, she's in tears and covered with grasshoppers and spiders. She hates spiders. I think that's why she's crying until I see that her arm is all bent at a funny angle. We spend hours waiting at the hospital while she gets x-rayed and set in plaster.
Dad takes us across to the Piha to go swimming, then won't let us in the water because he says the rips will get us. He freaks if we go in past our knees, so we play in the dunes and burn our feet on the black sand instead.
The holidays pass and soon it's back at school for everyone. Except Sofie, that is. She decides she’s had enough of school and that it's time to get on with life. She spends a week doing research on the internet down at the library then heads off to seek her fortune, arriving back just in time for a Sunday roast two weeks later. Then she goes back to school again.
Odd things start happening. Odd things always happen, so no one really notices at first.
Sam gets the blame when I find my shoes full of smelly purple jelly, with the laces tied to
gether. It has Sam written all over it.
Lizzy gets the blame when Sam’s Pokémon cards are stuck to the ceiling in the morning. How he thinks she put them up there, I don’t know, but she is the obvious suspect.
I get the blame when Sofie’s school bag is full of rotten potatoes. The funny thing is that she doesn't find out until she gets to school, then comes puffing back, smelly potatoes and all to get her lunch box. Sofie gets the blame when Lizzy wakes up in the third draw down in the chest of drawers.
'Not me. Not me. Not me. Not me,' we say.
The carpet starts growing in our room. First it's like shag pile then it gets really long. We cut paths through the bits where we walk and play, but let it grow long under the beds. We have so much wool that I teach Lizzy to knit and we knit scarves for giraffes. Lizzy points out that although they have very long necks; giraffes don't have very cold necks as they live in hot places. We stop for a minute, then I say, 'What about the ones in Auckland Zoo?' and start knitting again.
We have to do something with all wool!
Dad’s hair starts growing. Now that's a surprise. His bald patch is no more. He has a full head of hair and has to go to the barbers twice a week to keep it in check. Mum is sure he’s having one of those mid-life crisis things and has bought a bottle of something weird off the internet. He'll probably sprout boobs or an extra head next.
'Not me,' he says.
Everyone gets the blame when the words in Mum’s book get all jumbled up.
'Not me. Not me. Not me. Not me. Not me,' we say.
'Well someone's to blame,' says Mum. 'This book was quite readable yesterday. Now look at it, it's all gobbledygook!'
Chapter 4 - Mr Meaners
'Well if no one’s owning up to these mistermeaners, you can all tidy the house, clean the car, and weed the garden, dig it and plant some potatoes,' says Mum. We attack our room. We chop the carpet back with garden shears and find things that have been missing for ages: dolls, hair clips, marbles and a half eaten curried chicken sandwich, which Lizzy eats.
'Gross and double gross!' I say. She's disgusting sometimes.
We sort out all the junk in the wardrobe and unearth the shoe box with the nest inside.
'Our nest!' says Lizzy, opening the lid.
Our mouths drop open in surprise as we look inside. The eggs have hatched!
There's no sign of what hatched out, but the eggs have definitely hatched.
'Let’s keep this a secret,' I say.
'Let’s!' says Lizzy
Chapter 5 - The Plan
'Are you thinking what I’m thinking?' says Lizzy.
'Yes,' I say. 'These odd goings on, mistermeaners as Mum would say, are something to do with those eggs.'
'What shall we do?'
'Catch one,' I suggest.
'Catch one, what?'
'One of them, the things that have hatched out of the eggs,' I say. 'Whatever they are.'
'How?'
'With a trap. No, no, we’ll use Caticus!'
So we make a plan.
In the evening, we lure the neighbour’s cat in, giving him loads of attention and bits of fish finger that we sneakily stashed during dinner.
Our plan is simple. First, lure the cat into our room, then shut the door, and, go to sleep.
In the wee hours, like at two of the morning, a mighty screech from the cat wakes us up. As I jump up there's a flash and another screech from the cat. Then silence. In the flash I see something. It's so quick I can't quite tell if it's real or not, but I think I see a little green thing with orange spots and a funny hat scurry across the desk and jump into a copy of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, which slams shut. There’s a stamp of feet and Sam, Sofie, Mum and Dad all arrive at the door at the same moment and the light flickers on.
The neighbour’s cat, a rather singed and surprised looking neighbour’s cat is frozen in midair, aiming at the desk as if pouncing on a mouse.
Chapter 6 - Caticus comes Unstuck
Everyone stares in amazement.
Sofie breaks the silence, 'What have you girls been up to?'
'Nothing!’ we say together. It doesn’t sound very convincing.
'That’s all right then,' says Mum. 'But what are we going to do about the neighbour’s cat?'
What are we going to do about the neighbour’s cat?
Sam grabs Caticus and hands him to me. He's all funny, like still soft and cat like but his legs and tail are stiff like he's dead. I freak and drop him. Sam dives and catches him before he hits the floor. When he puts Caticus back in exactly the same position he hovers there. The wrong spot and, splat! Caticus falls to the floor.
'Be careful!' says Mum.
Caticus’ eyes are very much alive and aware of what is going on. They follow us around the room, glaring at us angrily.
'What shall we do with him?' asks Sofie.
'Let’s leave him where he is and see what happens,' says Mum.
The next day the neighbour comes around looking for his cat, 'Hi Lizzy. Have you seen Caticus?'
Lizzy starts to explain, 'He...he...'
I give her a kick before she can finish her sentence.
'He,' I say, 'was here yesterday morning, but we haven’t seen him since.'
'Well do let us know if you see him,' says the neighbour.
Caticus just hovers there in midair, held there by some mysterious force. Sam gets thrown out of our room after wrapping him up in toilet paper like a mummy. It does look funny. Once Caticus is unwrapped and his fur brushed, me and Lizzy cover him with a little blanket to keep him warm.
Chapter 7 - Marmitey Footprints
Lizzy falls off the trampoline and bumps her head.
'Not again,' says Mum, once she’s wiped Lizzie’s tears away. 'Go have a chocolate chip cookie.'
Lizzie calls from the kitchen, 'Who's stolen the chocolate chips?'
I run to look. There are cookies, but no choky chips!
'The packet was sealed,' says Lizzie. 'Maybe they forgot to put the chips in.'
'I don’t think so,' says Sofie, pointing to a trail of footprints.
Little black, Marmitey foot prints wind around the jars and tins in the larder then go up the wall before vanishing through the vent into the roof. Scattered around the footprints are chocolate chips.
'There are things in this house!' says Sam.
'There certainly are things in this house,' says Mum.
'Let’s catch one,' says Sam.
'Let’s,' says Mum.
'We need a plan,' says Dad.
'I know,' says Sam. 'Let’s use the neighbour’s cat….Oh!'
'We already tried that,' says Lizzie.
'So that’s what happened to the cat,' says Mum.
'We could follow the footprints,' says Sam.
'But..,' says Mum. 'But look at what happened to the cat!'
That makes us stop and think.
After some thought, Sam says, 'Let’s send Lizzy.'
'Yes, let’s,' says Sofie, thinking along the same lines.
'No,' says Dad. 'Much as I would like to see her zapped, I'll do it.'
Up into the loft goes Dad. He looks daft with two torches taped to his head, one above each ear, a butterfly net in one hand and a bag in the other.
'A spear gun and a flame thrower might be more use,' says Sam as Dad climbs up through the little trap door in the top of the linen cupboard.
Up into the loft he goes, followed by the rest of us. Even Mum pokes her head up and says, 'Say cheeeese.'
Flash!
She takes a photo before heading out on the terrace with her Sudoku.
Dad makes a big fuss about everyone standing on the beams, then promptly puts his foot in the wrong spot and vanishes up to his waist. Once the dust has settled, he pulls himself out. 'Lucky it’s above the hot water cylinder,' he says, then mutters, 'Do as I say, not as I do,' and falls down the hole again.
W
hen we reach the corner of the ceiling above the larder, we search about with our torches and find the funny little footprints coming up through the vent and follow them along the beams to the front of the house.
'Hang on,' says Sofie. 'There’s something wrong about these footprints. If you stood in Marmite and walked about, your footprints would fade after a couple of steps, then there’d be none, just the odd Marmitey splodge. But these footprints stay Marmitey each step, like whatever it is, just stood in the marmite; very odd!'
'Maybe it’s Marmite Man,' says Sam, rubbing his finger in a footprint and tasting it. 'Definitely Marmite.'
Snow starts falling, not outside, but in the loft. Big flakes drift down and settle on the beams. After a few minutes it starts to build up. Dad falls back down his hole. Sam, Sofie, Lizzy and me run around in the snow and don't fall down any holes. Lizzy has never seen snow before and is so excited she runs around in circles. I make a snowball and throw it at Sam, then get cold hands.
We all clamber down, put on our winter woollies and mitts and come back up and make snowmen.
'Who needs to go to the North Pole,' shouts Sam, as he starts to building a snow house in the corner. 'I’m going to sleep in my igloo tonight.'
Flash!
Mum takes another photo. After bringing up hot chocolate and muffins she reminds us that anything that happens in our house that isn't one hundred percent normal is top, top secret.
'Nothing normal ever happens in our house,' points out Sofie, dryly.
'Top Secret!' reminds Mum.
Chapter 8 - Fire
'Fire! Fire! Fire! shouts Sam.
Me and Lizzy run to the living room to see what's going on. It's full of smoke. We cough and splutter and our eyes hurt.
Sam is running round in circles shouting, 'Fire, fire, fire.'
Sofie appears around the corner with the garden hose on full power. Lizzy screams as we're drenched with cold water. Sofie squirts us, she squirts Sam and she squirts the curtains which are on fire.
We spend the next two weekends repainting the ceiling.
Mum threatens, 'No pocket money forever!'
Sam whispers, 'She'll relent in a week or two.'