Class Six and the Nits of Doom (3 page)

Jack squawked and tried to pull the thing off, but it was no good because the X shape was sinking into his skin. It got fainter and fainter and then quite suddenly it vanished altogether.

Jack looked round and found that all the X shapes had disappeared.

Everyone was frozen, stiff with horror, either on the floor or under a table or hiding behind a chair. They were all afraid to move in case their hands fell off, or began to do things by
themselves.

Miss Broom smiled round at them all.

‘Well, that was exciting, wasn’t it,’ she said. ‘Now. Let’s just make sure it’s worked. Anil!’

Anil made a noise like a dying frog. He was clutching his wrist as if he was afraid it was going to fall to pieces.

‘What’s thirteen times twenty-one, please, Anil?’

‘Two hundred and seventy-three,’ said Anil, at once.

The others blinked a bit—but then Anil
was
a brain at maths, after all, as he kept telling them.

‘Quite right. Good boy. Winsome!’

Winsome’s mouth moved, but she didn’t seem to be able to make any noise at all.

‘What’s fifteen times seventeen, please?’

‘Two hundred and fifty-five,’ said Winsome—and then she clapped her hands to her mouth and looked nearly as horrified as if she’d just spat out a tarantula.

‘Excellent, dear. Jack! Twenty-seven times eighty-six?’

Class Six looked at each other with pale faces. Anil and Winsome were the cleverest people in the class, but Jack was much too fidgety to think. Even picking up his pen sometimes took too much
concentration for him. So there was no way...

Jack’s eyes bulged until he looked even more like a bald gerbil than usual. And then strange sounds began to come out of his mouth.

Incredible, extraordinary, amazing sounds.

‘
Two thousand three hundred and twenty-two!
’ he squawked.

Class Six gasped. Miss Broom smiled and stroked Algernon’s scaly back.

‘Marvellous, Algernon,’ she said. ‘You’ve done that beautifully, as always. And what a relief to have got our times tables out of the way. Class Six, I think we should
say thank you to Algernon, don’t you?’

Class Six exchanged glances. They’d never spoken to a snake before, but even so none of them felt the slightest wish to argue with Miss Broom.

‘Thank you, Algernon,’ they all said.

Algernon bowed his flat head politely, as if in reply, and then he slid back down over Miss Broom’s big bosom and back into her desk drawer.

‘Algernon’s
such
a wonderful creature,’ said Miss Broom proudly. ‘But I must warn you, dears. He would never hurt you on purpose, of course, but I shouldn’t
disturb him when he’s in his drawer. Because of course he
is
a poisonous snake. I expect you saw his fangs.’

Jack was poking his little finger into his ear and then taking it out and looking at it, as if in hope of finding some trace of his new cleverness. But Miss Broom’s words caught his
attention.

‘Poisonous?’ he echoed. ‘Really? Wow. Is he an adder, then, Miss Broom?’

Miss Broom gave a tinkly little icicle laugh and twenty-nine shudders juddered down twenty-nine spines.

‘An adder?’ she echoed. ‘Why, of course not, dear. No. Adders are rare and special, but Algernon is even rarer and more special than that.’

‘Really, Miss Broom?’ asked Anil, who was interested in everything to do with science.

‘Really,’ Miss Broom told them all, very seriously. ‘After all, Algernon helped you all with your times tables, didn’t he?’

Winsome jumped as if something had stung her.

‘You mean...’ she began, and then her voice faded away in amazement.

Miss Broom nodded.

‘That’s right, Winsome,’ she said. ‘Algernon is a poisonous snake, but he isn’t an adder at all. No. Dear Algernon’s a
multiplier
.’

‘Well, Class Six,’ said Miss Broom. ‘We’ve learned our times tables up to nine hundred and ninety-nine times, and that’s enough work for anyone in
one morning.’

She gave them all a picture of a vampire in a cobwebby castle to colour in. The only slight problem was that the vampire kept getting up and walking about, which made it hard to keep within the
lines.

Class Six worked quietly, occasionally whispering things like
what’s fifty-three times fourteen?
and
hey, I’m a genius!
to each other.

The back of Anil’s colouring sheet was covered in calculations:

and things like that. He was the only one who wasn’t very pleased.

‘Hey, you know those fourteen doughnuts I ate at playtime yesterday?’ whispered Slacker. ‘That was five thousand seven hundred and forty calories. That’s quite a lot,
isn’t it?’

‘Masses,’ hissed Serise. ‘No wonder you’re so—’

—but then there came a noise. It was an odd, unearthly sound, a little like someone sawing a piece of wood.

And it was coming from the cupboard with DANGER written on the door.

Class Six froze. In all the excitement they’d almost forgotten that Rodney was shut up in the cupboard.

‘What’s he
doing
?’ asked Serise, in the smallest possible whisper.

‘Perhaps he’s fallen into the cauldron and it’s turned him into a bear,’ squeaked Emily.

‘He sounds as if he’s in agony,’ whispered Jack.

But Winsome sat up in sudden understanding.

‘No!’ she said. ‘I know what it is. It’s so dark in there that Rodney’s decided it’s night time, and he’s gone to sleep. He’s snoring!’

Krgggggggggggghhhhhh
came from the cupboard.
Krggggghhhhhh

Slacker began coughing to try to cover up the sound.

Miss Broom looked up from where she was reading a huge ancient book with a star drawn on the front.

‘Are you all right, Slacker?’ she asked.

‘Yes, he’s fine, miss,’ said Winsome, hastily. ‘There must be a bit of dust about, I think.’

‘Really? How unusual.’

Miss Broom snapped her fingers, and immediately half a dozen pink and blue striped rats emerged from Miss Broom’s waste paper basket and began to run round the classroom, whisking any bits
of dust into their pouches with their long tufted tails.

‘I didn’t know rats in this country had pouches,’ said Jack, lifting up his feet for the rats to sweep underneath them.

‘They don’t,’ said Winsome.

Krgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh

The whole class burst out coughing this time.

‘I think the dust’s got right down my throat,’ gasped Anil.

‘Water, water!’ coughed Slacker, dramatically.

Miss Broom blinked her orange eyes, and in their reflection Class Six saw a rocky desert with three vultures perched on the ribcage of some large beast.

Krggggggghhhhhhhhhhh

Cough! Cough-cough choke cough. COUGH!

‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Broom, rather alarmed. ‘I’ve never come across this sort of reaction to a simple times table lesson before.’

‘Please, Miss Broom,’ said Anil hoarsely. ‘There are some big water jugs in the dining room. If we could have some water...’

Miss Broom got up in a hurry.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I won’t be long, Class Six. Do try to stay alive until I get back!’

And she hurried out of the room.

Class Six stopped coughing and looked at each other.

‘Right,’ said Winsome, getting up. ‘We’ve got about three minutes to get Rodney out of the cupboard.’

Serise went and banged on the door. ‘Rodney!’ she called. ‘Rodney, you idiot!’

Pause.

Then:

‘Mum?’ a voice said sleepily. ‘Is it daytime?’

Everyone groaned.

‘Rodney?’ called Winsome. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yes, Mum,’ said Rodney’s voice through the woodwork. ‘But I think my eyes have stopped working. And why is my bed standing up on end?’

Serise rolled her eyes.

‘It’s no good expecting Rodney to be any help,’ she muttered. She tugged sharply on the door handle. Nothing happened, so she tried again. And again.

‘I can’t shift it at all,’ she said. ‘It must have a really good lock.’

Behind them, Anil frowned.

‘Locked?’ he echoed. ‘But it can’t be locked. Look, there’s no keyhole.’

Everyone looked and saw that Anil was quite right.

‘But...’ said Winsome.

‘But...’ said Emily.

Anil began walking up and down, his fingers to his forehead in his best mad-professor way.

‘So how do you get the door open?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps you need a magic spell.’

‘Well, that old book Miss Broom was reading looked like a spell book,’ Jack said. ‘She put it back in her drawer.’

‘Yes, with Algernon,’ snapped Serise. ‘Do you feel like putting your hands into Miss Broom’s drawer to get it out, Jack?’

Jack didn’t.

‘Does anyone know any magic words?’ asked Emily timidly.

‘Abracadabra,’ suggested someone.

‘Hey presto?’

‘Sesame!’

‘Please,’ suggested Slacker thoughtfully. ‘Thank you. And pardon.’

There was a sudden clatter from inside the cupboard, and a voice said:
ouch! Ouch! OUCH!

‘Are you all right?’ called Winsome anxiously.

‘Yes,’ said Rodney.

Emily began jumping up and down as if she was about to wet herself. ‘Miss Broom will be back any minute. And then she’ll turn us into rats or something. We’ve got to get him
out! We’ve got to get him out!’

‘I don’t think she’d turn us
all
into rats,’ objected Anil. ‘I mean, she’d get into trouble if her
whole
class disappeared. I don’t think
she could really disappear more than one or two of us.’

Serise snorted.

‘Well, that’s all right, then, if only one or two of us disappear. Hey, do you remember Wayne Mitchell? Because he disappeared last year, didn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Winsome. ‘But only because he moved to Watford.’

Emily looked more frightened than ever.

Anil was still pacing up and down, scowling. ‘There must be some spell or word that opens it. Something special...’

‘Oh, I
wish
we had an ordinary teacher!’ wailed Emily. ‘I wish our teacher was just an ordinary human, and the most exciting thing that ever happened was getting a go on
the computer!’

Anil stopped dead.

‘
That’s it!
’ he said.

‘That’s what?’ asked everyone, but Anil was striding up to the door of the cupboard.

‘
That’s
the magic word,’ he said. ‘The one that gets you in to almost anything. The one people use all the time even though you’re never supposed to use
it.’

Jack made a puzzled face.

‘Do you mean...
bum
?’ he asked.

Anil tutted, and put his hand on the cupboard door. Then he said, in a loud commanding voice:

‘PASSWORD!’

And instantly the door swung open.

Rodney had been in the dark so long the daylight dazzled him. He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes.

‘Look at the state of him!’ said Serise, whisking the witch’s hat off his head. It must have fallen there off the coat hook. ‘He’s all over cobwebs!’

He was all over spiders, too—big juicy-looking ones with a skull-and-crossbones design on their backs—but luckily they seemed to like the light even less than Rodney did, and they
quickly wound all the bits of cobweb into balls, stuck their knitting needles under their arms, and scuttled back into the cupboard.