The
Demon Dummy
This time an evil ventriloquists dummy forces Katie, Jess
and Cassie back into action as the 5S Protection Team battle against its
dastardly plot to ruin the school play and the lives of all involved.
6026 Words
Chapters
Chapter
1: Nobody likes puppets anyway
Chapter 2: The eyes that watch
Chapter 2: The eyes that watch
Chapter
3: Who’s the dummy now
Chapter
4: A close call
Chapter
5: This baby bites
Chapter
6: Bin it
Chapter
7: A spark of an idea
Chapter
8: Burn baby burn
Chapter
9: Fuming and fumigating
Synopsis
Katie
HATES puppets – they give her the creeps. So, when snooty Becca Moore brings in
an old spooky looking ventriloquists dummy to donate to the school’s play, she
is already suspicious.
Soon
her worries are confirmed as the they notice the dummy’s eyes following them
round the room, a theatre backdrop nearly squashes all of class 5S and the
puppet has moved around the assembly hall all by itself. Finally, they are
forced to take action when the Demon Dummy bites poor Shalika mid-scene – this
dummy is truly evil.
They
attempt to rid the school of it by capturing it and throwing it in the big
green rubbish bins behind the dining hall but the next morning its evil eyes
are watching them as they enter the class room.
Jess’s
brother’s book confirms that only fire can defeat a demon like this and the girls
hatch a plan to defeat it on stage at the school play when the Year 6’s sing
their Christmas songs by candle light.
Despite
awkward costume malfunctions the girls manage to rush on stage and torch the
evil doll which sends thousands of squirming bugs out of the doll and into the
screaming audience. Once again, they save the day, but will the grown-ups
believe the truth – the danger of the demon dummy?
Chapter 1: Nobody likes puppets anyway
When I was little, my sister Jill had an
old-looking puppet on strings that hung from a hook under her book shelf. I
never liked it and when she found out she used to chase me round the house
shouting ‘puppets gunna get ya’ super loud. It was FREAKY and ever since then
if I even LOOK at a puppet my legs go jelly. It makes going to the toy shop
down the road a nightmare – I’ve got to close my eyes past a whole aisle to get
to the Lego!
My mum says it’s given me a ‘phobia’ which
means that because I don’t like puppets, I don’t have to go near them or touch
them. I should have told her I was scared of broccoli instead.
But when you’re in the 5S Protection Team
you’ve sometimes got to ‘test you limits’ as my dad said once when he ate an
entire tin of shortbread at Christmas. My limits were TOTALLY tested the day
Becca Moore brought in her Grandma’s old ventriloquist’s dummy.
A ventriloquist
is a WEIRDO who changes their voice so that it seems like the voice is coming
straight from their puppet they sit on their knee. I’ve never liked Becca Moore
and I DEFINITELY didn’t like her ugly dummy.
With a scary puppet like that in school the 5S
Protection Team were bound to have our hands full.
Chapter 2: The eyes that watch
Becca Moore is so SPOILT and I’m not just saying that because I don’t like her. Every single week she brings in a BRAND-NEW thing her mum or her gran or her aunty or her uncle’s cousins sisters friend bought her. It’s ridiculous.
But on Monday morning she
finally brought in something I definitely wasn’t jealous of her for having; a
puppet. ‘It’s not a puppet you dummy, it’s a dummy’ she said showing everyone in the playground. ‘It’s REALLY
old and it’s REALLY expensive AND it comes all the way from America’
All of 5S and some of Year 4
who were hanging around close by ‘ooooooo’d loudly as she held up the little
wooden man that nearly stood as tall as her waist. She said that her great
grandmother brought it over on her last visit and her mum said the school
should have it for the next play because Becca’s room was already too full of
even better gifts.
‘That thing is FREAKY’
whispered Jess in my ear whilst Cassie stood behind us with her hands over her
eyes because couldn’t even look at it. ‘I hate puppets’ I said, and we headed
into the class room to get as far away from it as possible.
‘Hush hush class’ said Miss
Ellis our teacher, ‘before we start our History lesson this morning, I want to
update you all on the school play, Miss Short and I have been working very hard on’
Every year at Christmas we do
a school play but not a normal play like the Nativity or Rudolf the Red Nosed
Reindeer like my cousin gets to do at his school, we do a Miss Short play.
Shalika said that her mum and Miss Short go to the same Drama club on a
Wednesday and so Miss Short is ‘qualified’ to run the play which just means
that she’s a drama queen and no-one else wants to do it. Even Miss Ellis, who
is the SECOND-BEST teacher in the school never looks happy to be doing the
school play.
Miss Ellis explained that the
school play this Christmas was called ‘My Little Piggie’ about a princess and
her baby sister that have to swim across the sea and climb mountains to find
their father the King who’d been turned into a pig by an evil wizard.
I glanced over at Cassie who
looked very confused. Jess and Michael Fischer sniggered, and I had to put my
hand over my mouth to stop myself laughing out loud. ‘Apparently it has a lot
of symbolism in it and it reaches many different levels – it’s very theatrical’
said Miss Ellis but she didn’t sound convinced. All the same we were to meet in
the assembly hall at lunch break to find out our parts in the play.
As we walked into the assembly
hall, we could see Miss Short was extremely excited about this year’s play. She
was dancing around the room with bits of ribbon and fabric, twirling them in
the air and humming loudly. ‘Miss Short’s boyfriend is going to propose to her,
she found the engagement ring hidden in his pants draw’ Whispered Shalika ‘She
told my mum at Drama club last week. That’s why she’s EVEN MORE excited than
normal’.
‘Oh dear’ said Jess. Miss
Short was crazy enough already. Cassie wasn’t listening, she’d notice something
even worse than Miss Short’s love-dance.
In the corner of the hall, sat
on a chair, was the dummy. ‘What is that thing!?’ she whispered, ‘It’s watching
us’. She’d missed Becca Moore in the playground because her mum made her put
FIVE layers on that morning as the weather report said it would be cold and it
had made them late. Jess and I looked at the dummy and Cassie was right. As we
walked to the middle of the room its eyes followed us.
Everyone was quiet as
Miss Ellis and Miss Short handed out jobs and roles and plans. ‘I’m going to
walk over there and see if it follows me’ I whispered pointing to the other
side of the room. Its wide round eyes followed me with every step. ‘It’s
definitely watching us’ I whispered as I wondered back slowly. ‘I don’t like
this one bit’ whimpered Cassie.
‘Girls? Are you listening? I
see you’ve noticed our newest drama group member!’ called Miss Short prancing
over to the evil-eyed dummy and patting its wooden head. ‘Becca Moore has
kindly donated this gorgeous antique mannequin as a prop for our play. As I
dare say he will probably give a more realistic performance than most of you
here, I have decided to give him the role of the Princess’s baby sister.’
Chapter 3: Who’s the dummy now
‘She is BONKERS’ I said later that afternoon at break. Me, Jess and Cassie were sat underneath the playground slide; a place we like to use as our secret Protection-Team den. ‘Why would she give a role in the play to a piece of wood? It’s not like it can act!’ Jess said flicking her hair back over her shoulder. Jess never went to acting classes, but my mum says she is always ‘acting up’ which I guess is similar.
Then suddenly I had a
BRAINWAVE – a very scary brainwave. ‘What if it could act?’ I whispered. Cassie pulled her second jumper up over
her face. ‘It’d followed us around the room with its eyes, right? And even Miss
Short said that it would make a great actor and an actor can only BE great if
they actually ACT!”
Jess’s face went pale and her
eyes even wider than the time she let out that MASSIVE fart in class and
couldn’t say excuse me because it was quiet time.
Cassie was still hiding in her jumper, but we could just
make out her muffled voice - ‘Maybe it’s alive’ she said.
On the way back to class Jess, Cassie and me took the long
route past the assembly hall. ‘We just need to double check’ I said as we
peered into the dusty darkness. Well, jess and I peered through… Cassie had her
hands over her eyes.
Instantly I knew something was wrong. In the far corner of
the large hall, the chair was empty. ‘It’s gone’ whispered Jess. Cassie
squealed. I said we should take a closer look and we all crept into the hall
and started investigating. ‘Found it’ said Jess pulling back the sliding
cupboard door under the stage. There inside lay the dummy. Just looking at it
gave me the creeps. ‘Maybe somebody moved it?’ whispered Cassie. ‘It was left
on the chair – it doesn’t make sense, nobody would need to move it’ said jess.
On the walk back to class it was decided, the 5S Protection
Team needed to investigate puppets.
Even though it was a Monday AND a school night, my mum
agreed that I could go to Jess’s house with Cassie after school. I had to call
her three times on the walk home before she said yes though. Jess said that
‘three is the magic number’ and it’s always on the third time asking that her
mum lets her dad go watch football on TV rather than help with the housework. Cassie
didn’t think her mum would let her stay but she said she ‘needed to pop to the
shops anyway’ so would pick her up afterwards which meant she was going to buy
a magazine and sit in a coffee shop for two hours.
Jess’s bedroom walls are covered in 5S Protection Team
clues like photos of scary monsters and lots of lists. She loves writing lists.
Cassie went on Jess’s laptop while Jess and I started on our first list.
Cassie found out that people who work with puppets and
dummies are called puppeteers or ventriloquists. She also found a film that
looked extra SCARY about a ventriloquist’s dummy that was so evil it killed its
master. After that Cassie decided to come and sit with us, it was all too spooky
for her.
‘I’ll see if any of them look like the school’s dummy’ I
said getting out my phone and searching for pictures of puppets and dummies. I
found two that looked similar but not exactly the same. All of them looked
extra creepy.
‘Ok, lets write that down then’ said Jess, ‘They look
creepy’.
After a few Google searches we’d found most of the answers
we needed, and the list was ready.
How to
know if your dummy is evil…
|
Jess read out the list and Cassie started to shiver. We
knew why she was so scared, and I was starting to feel spooked too. ‘So, we’re
75% certain we’re dealing with an evil dummy’ I said. ‘It looks creepy, it
moved from it’s chair and it was watching us… yep we’ve definitely got 3 out of
4 of the evidence we need.’ Said Jess in her best investigator agent voice. ‘Nice
maths, Miss Ellis would be proud’ I teased. I’m no good at Maths but Jess is
the best in class at fractions because her mum loves all the shop sales and
they always have 50% off or 30% off and she has to work out how much they’d
saved.
‘We need to be on ‘high alert’ for any bag things happening
at school’ I said, ‘We might have an evil demon dummy to defeat’
Chapter 4: A close call
A letter was sent home to our
parents which told them what costume they had to make for our role in the play.
Mum said that she HATED these letters because the school always expected parents
to make something amazing in only 4 weeks. Miss Short also liked it if the
costumes were handmade but Jess’s mum says that’s the ‘stupidest things she’s
ever heard’ and always buys Jess her costume. The only problem is that they
don’t always match exactly with the role she’s supposed to be. Jess was SUPPOSED
to be a donkey in last years play but the fancy dress store only had unicorns
left in stock, so she had to wear that but with the unicorn horn cut off!
Everyone laughed a lot, except Miss Short and Jess.
In the assembly hall EVERYONE
looked embarrassed in their play costumes. Jess, me and Cassie were part of the
swim scene. I had to be a lobster and my mum had spent a whole weekend and
drunk A LOT of coffee to make me a Papier Mache bright orange lobster head.
Like me, my mum is really good at art so, even though I looked like a COMPLETE
lobster idiot at least I looked like a realistic one.
Cassie was supposed to be a
jelly fish, but her mum says ‘creativity isn’t her strong point’ which means
that the last time she tried to help Cassie out with some art homework she
ended up getting the worst mark in class. Cassie had a pink shower cap on her
head with lots of pink ribbons stuck to it and a pink leotard to match. Jess
was SUPPOSED to be a sting ray, but her mum had found a shark costume in the sale,
so she was in that instead.
‘At least we don’t have to
wear that’ said Jess pointing to Bradley Crown who was wearing a fat little
piggy costume and being teased by Paul Simmonds dressed as a whale. The
assembly hall had been ‘out of bounds’ for a few days which meant that no kids
were allowed in while the teachers put up and painted the background and props.
There were big wooden mountains and lots of blue netting for the sea.
‘Have you seen it yet?’ said
Cassie twiddling her ribbon tentacles. None of us had and we’d even checked all
the cupboards too. It was like the dummy had disappeared. ‘Hold on, there it
is!’ I said pointing over to the stage where Miss Ellis was measuring its arms
and legs ready to make its costume too. It lay there staring blankly up at Miss
Ellis which gave me CHILLS down my spine. ‘It’s not going to like that one bit’
said Jess looking just as spooked.
‘QUIET!’ barked Miss Short
‘Everyone up onto the stage – this is a costume check’. Having a costume check
a week before the play was new this year. Miss Short had said we needed one
because last year Peter Pike’s mum forgot to send him to the play with green
tights for his leaf costume and so he had to go on stage in his superman pants
and she said it ‘really impacted the mood of the play’ which meant all the
parents couldn’t stop laughing when it was supposed to be a sad story. This
year we had to keep our costumes at school.
Everyone lined up on stage as
Miss Short walked past us inspecting our costumes like they do to soldiers in
the army. ‘Stand up straight…. Tell your mum to bring in extra ribbons…. Stop
playing with your tail’ she ordered.
She’d nearly got to the end of
the row when all of a sudden, we heard a MASSIVE creak, and everyone looked up.
‘Children, come forward, come
forward!’ cried Miss Ellis who’d been watching from the assembly floor. We all
quickly jumped forward just in time to miss the wooden mountain background
crash to the floor with an almighty BANG. Everyone screamed, especially Shalika
who was so close to being squished that it had caught the back of her princess
dress and ripped it.
It took Miss Ellis a while to
calm us all down and even longer to calm down Miss Short who was stomping round
the hall panicking. When Mr Potter the caretaker came in, she was furious at
him. ‘YOU were supposed to safety check EVERY prop’ she cried but he just
ignored her like all the other teachers.
Mr Potter took a look and found
sawdust near the base where the background had broken off. ‘Looks like
someone’s been tampering with this’ he mumbled to himself but me and Jess
heard.
I looked over to the dummy and
he stared right back at me.
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