The Ghoulies (The Adventures of Biddy and Sam Book 1)

Book summary

When their creepy neighbors, the Ghoulies, become suspects in a mysterious disappearance, young sleuths Sam, Biddy, Louie, and Teddy embark on a perilous quest to uncover the truth. What secrets are buried in the Ghoulies' bone-covered yard, and will the friends uncover the truth before it's too late?

Excerpt from The Ghoulies (The Adventures of Biddy and Sam Book 1)

‘NOT THE GHOULIES!’

‘Samantha!’ I could tell by the look on my mother’s face that I would be in big trouble if I kept going. ‘Don’t use names like that.’

‘But they’re so weird!’ Of course, I had to have the last comment.

Mum was shaking her head. ‘Why is that, Samantha? Because they don’t fit with your idea of what’s normal?

Aik! Mum had used my full name twice, so she must be getting angry. I glanced at my sister, Biddy, who was looking pale and nervous. If she next said my whole name ‘Samantha Grace O’Neill’, I’d know I was in big trouble and wouldn’t be allowed to watch my TV show - Spy Kids.

***

A few months ago, Mum, Dad, Biddy, and I – and Teddy our dog – moved into a new house, not far from our old one. The ‘Ghoulies’ lived on the corner, just three houses away. There were four of them altogether. Well, two Ghoulies and two Normals.

The Ghoulies were a mother and son – Biddy and I had worked that out after watching them walk past our house many times with their three savage dogs. They were both short and very round and had hair like spikes. The son always wore shorts with braces, and grey socks and sandals – like an old-fashioned kid or something. But he wasn’t a kid like us though. He was sort of a man, but sort of a kid too. The mother Ghoulie always wore black jeans and black windcheater top. She was – a mother’s age – thirty, maybe sixty?

I don’t know why Biddy and I called them ‘Ghoulies’. We didn’t even know if there was such a word. But it seemed a scary word and they were scary. So were the Ghoulie dogs who were kept on long chains in the front yard. A few times Biddy and I rode our bikes past their house and peeped through the gate in the high fence that surrounded it. Those dogs must have been able to smell us because they growled and barked like demons. If that’s what demons do. One time, we saw red Ghoulie eyes staring right at us through the window.

And their garden! It was kind of spooky because when the Ghoulie mum and son weren’t walking their crazy dogs, they were on their hands and knees digging up the grass with a spoon and fork. Not that there was any grass, it was just a brown patch covered in bones, with no trees and dead looking bushes with long thorns.

One of the Normals was a girl-woman who was blonde and pretty. Biddy and I called her ‘Marilyn’ after a girl in a monster show called The Munsters that our Nana and Grandpa watched on repeat. They had seen every episode of that show when they were kids. Not together. I don’t think they knew each other then.

The other Normal was a skinny old man who always wore an old-fashioned hat and looked a bit like Mr Burns in The Simpsons.

The strange thing was, we hadn’t seen the Normals for a while. Biddy and I thought that the Ghoulies had killed them and chopped them up for dog food, probably boiling them alive first, then cutting them into dog mouth sized morsels!

We told Louie about the Ghoulies and how we thought they’d murdered the Normals. Louie is our friend from school and is in my class. He’s really smart and knows more stuff than some of our teachers. He doesn’t put his hand up to answer questions much now though because some idiot boys called him mean things. I told Louie not to worry about them, but he’s quieter now and looks sad sometimes. We try to make him laugh at lunchtime when we sit under the big peppercorn tree in the playground and tell jokes. Louie’s jokes are always a bit strange. Me and Biddy don’t understand them, but we laugh anyway. Biddy’s jokes are just … sad. Once, when she was telling us one, I saw a huge stick insect crawl onto her head. I couldn’t stop looking at it and started laughing before she got to the punchline. Strangely, this seemed to please her. I guess she thought she was doing a really good job. But then Louie saw it and … I’ve never seen anyone freak out like that. He jumped up and started hopping around pointing at Biddy’s head. She looked really confused and told him to ‘sit down, I haven’t finished yet.’ Louie obeyed. Biddy continued with the joke – it was so long and boring – but I was still laughing, and Louie’s eyes were just HUGE. Finally, I felt a bit sorry for my sister and reached out towards her head. The stick insect climbed on the back of my hand just as she knocked my arm away. When it fell into her lap she jumped up and screamed and screamed and screamed and…

One day, the Ghoulies knocked on our door. Biddy and I saw them from our room, and we got scared. Dad answered the door, and we peeped out of the crack of our bedroom door. Mother Ghoulie started jabbering to Dad in a strange Ghoulie language – a sort of hissing and shishing. Somehow, he seemed to understand her. The Ghoulie son just stood there and nodded.

Mother Ghoulie was talking about our dog, Teddy, because she kept pointing at him and laughing. Teddy has a superpower of being able to ‘talk’ to us. Not like literally, but he kind of talks with his face. When Mother Ghoulie reached out to pat him, I was sure that Teddy would growl at her and then look at us and nod or use his eyebrows to say ‘You’re right. Don’t trust them.’ But he didn’t. He actually let her pat him! Traitor! I had been sure he’d know the difference between a Ghoulie and a Normal, but they probably have power over dogs anyway.

A few weeks later, Mother Ghoulie was at our front door again! This time she was carrying a big plastic bag. Mum had trouble understanding her, but Dad came to the rescue. It seemed that the old Normal – who was mother Ghoulie’s father – had died and they were cleaning out his things. WE KNEW IT!

When she had gone, we followed Mum and Dad as they carried the plastic bag into the bedroom. They were both really quiet and just looked at each other in the way that grown-ups do when they’re thinking the same thoughts.

Mum opened the bag. Aik! THE OLD MAN’S SUITS AND HIS HAT! And they smelled awful. Like some people smell on really hot days. Like the taxi driver at the airport last summer. Phew! The smell was so bad we had to open all the car windows without looking too obvious. I think Dad told the driver that he suffered from claustrophobia or something. Mum and Dad gave each other ‘the look’ that day too.

‘I wonder what made her think we might want these,’ Mum said as she picked out a smelly jacket from the bags using the tips of her fingers. ‘It’s very nice of her, but it gives me the creeps a bit.’

Gave her the creeps? I was sure I could see a dried blood stain right in the middle of the back!

‘I don’t think they have any friends around here,’ Dad said as he stuffed the clothes back in the bag. ‘We might be the only neighbours who speak to them.’

Sometimes, I wish my dad wasn’t always so friendly, for his sake. One time, he got to talking to a person in the street selling raffle tickets for a charity. Dad didn’t want any, he just wanted to be friendly because the person looked a bit lonely and sad that nobody was buying any. Anyway, Dad gave in and bought $40 worth of raffle tickets. The first prize was a family trip to Hawaii, so when the date of the raffle draw came, he looked for the result to be published, like it said on the ticket, but he couldn’t find it. He rang the number, also on the ticket, but it was disconnected. It turns out that it was a scam – not a cyber one for a change, but a real, live one with actual people and tickets. Poor Dad. He was really disappointed and a bit embarrassed, I think.

***

Why does the last week of school before Christmas holidays seem to drag on and on? I’m sure it’s a cruel plot by teachers to keep us there to stop us from having the fun they know we’re going to have. Most of the time in that week, we do nothing in class. The teachers try to convince us that the game we’re going to play, or the word maze we must do is very educational. I don’t think they believe it any more than we do, and that they would rather be out of there too, doing what teachers do on holidays. What do teachers do on holidays? Pick on shopkeepers?

One day, Biddy and I saw Mr Robinson our math teacher, in the ice cream parlour. We didn’t recognise him at first. B and I argued ‘it is’ – that was me – me; ‘it isn’t’ – that was Biddy- for ages. Mr Robinson always wore a pink bow tie and a suit, but this man had on a singlet, so his arms were bare, and he had tattoos of plants and animals all the way down to his wrists. His hat was on backwards and I had to agree that he looked a lot younger than Mr R and not much like a teacher. He was on his own and kept looking at his phone with a worried or a bit of an angry look on his face. If he was a real teacher, he wouldn’t be looking at it all the time because that’s what he says in class, ‘You’ll get bad eyes and posture!’ But this man was hunched over his phone and his thumbs were going crazy writing a message. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You’re right.’ ‘As usual,’ Biddy said with an annoying hand on her hip and her head tilted like she was a movie star. ‘Hello, you two.’ We both nearly jumped with fright when the man came up behind us. ‘Fancy seeing you here. Are you enjoying the holidays?’ Up close I could tell that it really was Mr R as he has one yellow tooth in the front. ‘We are,’ I said as I shuffled my foot to give my sister a told-you-so kick. A soft one of course. ‘Well, enjoy your ice cream girls,’ Mr R said over his shoulder as he was going out of the shop with a double rum and raisin. He held the door with one foot as he tried to hold onto his phone, keys and ice cream and I saw that he had NO SHOES ON and his toes were really hairy. YUK! We wondered what Miss Bopeep would think of that. Her real name is Miss Pettison, but I’ll tell you why we call her Miss Bopeep later. Anyway, we’re pretty sure that Mr Robinson has a crush on Miss Bopeep because we’ve seen him waiting by her car in the school carpark sometimes. One time, we saw him surprise her. She was just about to get into her car when he came leaping out of the bushes with a long-stem red rose. He tripped and went wobbling towards her with the rose outstretched. Miss Bopeep looked shocked, but she grabbed the rose by the flower that was pointed towards her and reached for Mr R’s arm to steady him. He almost fell ON her, but she didn’t seem to mind too much. Hilarious.