Selby Screams (6 page)

“I’ve got a perfect view!” Selby thought as he felt his feet go into a slow slide, bringing him straight down the runway towards Head-Plant. “Yiiiiiiikes!”

“Yiiiiikes! What’s that sliding towards me? It looks like two midgets in a spacesuit!” Head-Plant
yelled as he shot off down the ski-jump with Selby sliding after him. “I’d better get out of here before it knocks me over.”

“Heeeeeeeeeeelp!” Selby screamed as he skidded on all fours, gaining on Head-Plant and looking around for something to grab hold of. “I’m going off a ski-jump without any skis! Somebody stop me! I’m sure it’s against the law!”

Just at the lip of the ski-jump Head-Plant crouched down and was about to give an extra big jump when Selby grabbed the seat of the skier’s pants in his teeth — banging his nose in the process — and the two of them went flying head-over-skis through the air.

“Not a bad take-off,” said Head-Plant, who always went head-over-skis through the air when he went off a ski-jump, “but I wish this thing would let go of my trousers!”

“Oh, noooooo!” Selby thought. “The silly man doesn’t even know he’s supposed to keep his head up and his skis down! Even I know that, and I don’t know how to ski! I’ve got to do something fast or we’ll both land in hospital! I’ll just have to tell him what to do!”

“All right, Head-Plant,” Selby said through his teeth “just do exactly as I say and everything will be okay!”

“Wait a minute! Who are you and who do you think is doing the skiing here?” Head-Plant cried.

“Certainly not you!” Selby yelled as they tumbled over again and again. “Now straighten
yourself up and put your arms down at your sides the way the other ski-jumpers do!”

“Hmmmm,” Head-Plant said, straightening up and putting his arms down. “What an interesting idea. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Never mind about that! Now put your skis together!” Selby shouted, pushing the skis together. “And point them up at a forty-five degree angle.”

“I don’t know anything about angles,” Head-Plant said, pointing his skis in the air, “but how’s this?”

“It’ll have to do!” Selby yelled, wiping the snow from his eyes.

Dr and Mrs Trifle watched as a big blue blur with a smaller blur, that looked like two midgets in a spacesuit sailed past them towards the bottom of the slope.

“That can’t be Head-Plant,” Dr Trifle said, peeping through his fingers at the beautiful landing. “He’s actually landed on his feet.”

“I did it! I did it!” Head-Plant yelled. “Now how do you stop these things?”

“I’m afraid it is Head-Plant,” Mrs Trifle said to Dr Trifle as Head-Plant skied straight
through the crowd and crashed into the window of his own chalet. “I’d recognise that technique anywhere.”

The Trifles and the ambulance attendants raced forward, dragged the injured skier from the wreckage and put him on a stretcher.

“Head-Plant!” Mrs Trifle cried. “Are you alive? Can you hear me?”

“Of course I can hear you,” Head-Plant said, as they carried him off towards the ambulance. “Have I won the Golden Twisted Skis?”

“Just barely,” Dr Trifle answered. “I just heard the announcer. It seems you won it by a nose.”

“What they’ll never know,” Selby thought as he whipped off the ski gear and crawled out of the wreckage rubbing his sore nose, “is that it was
my
nose he won it by.”

“Earthquake!” Mrs Trifle screamed as she jumped straight over Selby and out the window, landing in some bushes next to where Dr Trifle was clearing away some sticks and rocks.

“Good heavens!” Dr Trifle said. “Are you quite all right?”

“Didn’t you feel that earthquake?” Mrs Trifle cried. “It was just as Professor Rumblecrumble said on TV last night. It felt like a huge truck rumbling along a bumpy street.”

“The only thing I felt,” Dr Trifle said as he helped his wife out of the bushes, “was the council garbage truck rumbling along our street.”

“So it
was
a truck. How embarrassing,” Mrs Trifle said, turning quite pink. “I wish I
hadn’t watched
Great Earthquakes of the World.
It’s got me so nervous. I just can’t stop thinking about the earth cracking and houses falling down and all that awful business.”

“An earthquake could never happen here in Bogusville,” Dr Trifle (who hadn’t watched
Great Earthquakes of the World)
said. “Stop worrying.”

“I wish there was something to take my mind off earthquakes,” Mrs Trifle said with a sigh."Something soothing.”

“I’ve got just what you need. Tonight
The Screaming Mimis
are making a recording at the Bijou Theatre,” Dr Trifle said, referring to the famous pop supergroup. “Apparently they need an audience to help make some noises.”

Inside the house, Selby (who
had
seen
Great Earthquakes of the World)
and who would have jumped out the window too if he hadn’t been too busy searching for a pesky flea to notice the rumbling, pricked up his ears.

“Noises is right,” Mrs Trifle said. “They make more noise than a jumbo jet. I’m sure I wouldn’t enjoy it.”

“She has a point,” Selby thought as he remembered the time he got stuck in the
Mimis’
Computerised High-Pitched Ear-Piercing Brain-Scrambling Blaster during one of their rock concerts.

“They’re not using their Computerised High-Pitched Brain-Scrambling Blaster,” Dr Trifle said. “They’re only making soothing noises now.”

“Are you quite sure?” Mrs Trifle asked.

“Apparently they’re making a whole record with songs about nature. It’s going to be called
Earthsongs.
They need people to babble like brooks and whistle like the wind apparently. It should be quite soothing music.”

“What sort of people do they need?”

“Clever people like us, I should imagine.”

“I can’t believe it!” Selby thought. “My favourite pop supergroup,
The Screaming Mimis,
making a record! That Mimi is so great! I just must see her perform, even if I have to sneak in.

When Dr and Mrs Trifle arrived at the theatre that night they saw half of Bogusville seated in the audience. What they didn’t see as they took their seats was Selby creeping in behind them and hiding under Mrs Trifle’s seat.

“That’s her! That’s Mimi!” Selby thought as he peered out through a forest of legs towards the stage. “I can’t wait to hear these nature songs.” He nibbled the fur of his leg, searching for the flea that had been biting him all day.

“You’re probably wondering what all this is about,” Mimi said into the microphone. “Well we’re making a concept album called
Earthsongs
and we needed some very ordinary people like yourselves to help out. Each song on the record is about a natural disaster like a cyclone or a rockslide or a tidal wave or a volcano exploding. What we want you to do is whistle, break sticks, bang rocks together and stuff like that. We’ll pass around all the necessary materials when the time comes. Got the picture?”

“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” Selby thought. “She’s so terrific! Even the way she holds the microphone is exciting.”

“While I sing and play the Scream-o-phone,” Mimi continued, “Slam-Bam Benson here will play the Wobble-board and the Explosion-simulator. Okay?”

“Scream-o-phone? Wobble-board? Explosion-simulator?
It doesn’t sound very soothing,” Mrs Trifle whispered to Dr Trifle.

“At least it should take your mind off earthquakes,” Dr Trifle answered.

For three hours,
The Screaming Mimis
recorded each song over and over to get the sounds just the way they wanted them. The audience whistled till their lips were cracked, roared till their throats were sore, banged rocks together till their fingers tingled and screamed themselves silly.

“I’m exhausted,” Dr Trifle said to Mrs Trifle. “All this rock and stick business is more tiring than gardening. What sort of music do you think they call this?”

“I’m really not sure that it’s music at all,” Mrs Trifle said in a raspy voice. “Doesn’t music have to have notes in it?”

“I don’t know if it’s music either,” Selby thought as he lay back on one elbow, “but I haven’t had such a good time for years.”

“Please sit down!” Mimi yelled as some of the audience started to leave. “We’ve got one more song to do. If we don’t finish this one, we don’t have a record. Okay, now which one are we going to do, Slam?” she asked Slam-Bam.

“This one’s called ‘Earthpeace',” Slam Bam said."It’s a quiet one.”

“Oh, Slam,” Mimi said. “Not a quiet one. That’s no fun. Can’t we do another disaster track?”

“No we can’t!” Slam-Bam boomed. “This one’s supposed to sound like the calm after the storm. You agreed.”

“Okay, okay, keep your shirt on,” Mimi said, then turned to the audience. “Now listen carefully. We only have enough tape for one take so we’ve got to make this one count. No mistakes. It’s simple. All you have to do is some gentle blowing, like a breeze in the trees, and the whistling of birds. Okay, ready, set, go!”

Selby was just puckering up to add to the breeze noise when he felt the flea he’d been after all day on the back of his front leg and began scratching furiously with his hind paw. All of which would have been okay if his leg hadn’t pounded the floor making a thumping noise that sounded sort of like a truck rumbling along a bumpy street.

“Hey! Who’s doing that?” Mimi screamed. “Stop it right now! It’s ruining the song!”

Just then something in Mrs Trifle’s brain snapped. “It’s an earthquake!” she cried. “Earthquake!”

All through the audience (all of whom had seen
Great Earthquakes of the World
the night before), brains snapped like breaking sticks. Suddenly there were screams of “Earthquake!” and “Help!” and “Save us!” and other things that you can’t write in a book like this, and they thundered out of the theatre leaving the stunned Mimi standing on stage.

“It’s all my fault!” Selby thought as he crept along an empty aisle towards a side window. “I started a stampede! I ruined the record! Mimi will never come back to Bogusville again. This is a
real
disaster!”

“That was great!” Mimi suddenly yelled to Slam-Bam. “It sounded just like a mob of simple villagers fleeing an earthquake.”

“That’s just what it was: the simple villagers of Bogusville fleeing an earthquake,” Slam-Bam said. “We can call it, ‘Villagers Fleeing'. Now let’s get out of this dump and back to civilisation before there’s another earthquake.”

“A better title would be,” Selby thought as he headed for home,"'Selby De-Fleaing'.”

“I just bought this mummy and I’m very excited about it,” said Professor Krakpott when Dr Trifle and Selby visited him at the Department of Old and Crusty Things at the Federal University, “but I can’t quite figure out the writing on the ancient mummy case. I thought you could give me a hand.”

Dr Trifle put on his glasses to see the writing that was painted on the lid of the mummy case which lay on the floor of the room.

“I’d be happy to help,” he said, “but I’ve forgotten all the ancient mummy writing I ever knew.”

“That’s a pity,” Professor Krakpott said, “but I’m sure, between the two of us, we’ll work out what it says.”

“Who sold it to you?”

“One of those mummy dealers who goes crawling around in ancient tombs wearing a sheet around him and a turban on his head. Trevor’s his name.”

“Trevor?” Dr Trifle said.

Selby looked around the dusty old storeroom.

“Sheeeesh!” he thought as a shiver went up his spine. “How can Professor Krakpott work here surrounded by mummies? I’d be looking over my shoulder every two seconds just to make sure that none of them was creeping up behind me. Ralpho’s robot mummy was bad enough.”

“Trevor brought it in about an hour ago. I paid him $50,000,” Professor Krakpott said. “I think it was well worth it, the writing’s so clear it could have been painted this morning. He said he’d give me a hundred dollars back as a special Mummy’s Day discount.”

“He has a sense of humour, this Trevor,” Dr Trifle said.

“Yes, but I do believe he forgot to give me the hundred dollars back because after I handed him the $50,000 I turned to do something and when I turned back — he was gone. It was all very odd.”