Angie Sage - Araminta Spookie 3 Read online

  Araminta Spookie 3

  Frognapped

  As told to

  Angie Sage

  Illustrated by

  Jimmy Pickering

  For Katy, Lizzy,

  and Laura, with love

  Contents

  1

  Barry’s Frogs

  2

  The Spookie Detective Agency

  3

  Boil In The Bag

  4

  Frog Van

  5

  Frog Bucket

  6

  Shark!

  7

  Water Wonderland

  8

  Old Ruins

  9

  In Charge

  10

  The Dungeon

  11

  Haunted Shark

  12

  The Spookie Shark Show

  13

  Treasure

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  Other Books by Angie Sage

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  BARRY’S FROGS

  “Araminta, where have you put my frogs?”

  What kind of question is that? But last week that is exactly what Barry Wizzard asked me.

  I did not answer.

  I did not answer because when someone in Spookie House has lost something they always say, “Araminta, where have you put my…?” You can fill in the blank with anything you like and chances are, someone will have thought that I put it somewhere. I do not know why.

  Take yesterday, for instance. Wanda Wizzard, who lives with me in Spookie House—along with her parents, Barry and Brenda, and my aunt Tabitha and uncle Drac—asked me where I had put her green socks. Wanda is supposed to be my best friend, although you’d never believe it from the way she talks to me. So I asked Wanda why she thought I would want to even touch her smelly old green socks, let alone put them somewhere, and she just smiled the irritating smile that she has learned from my aunt Tabby and said, “How do I know, Araminta?” So I told her they were in the compost heap at the bottom of the garden. She came back hours later with eggshells and moldy carrot tops in her hair and she didn’t ask again.

  But Barry did ask again. “Araminta,” he said, sounding snappy.

  “Yes, Barry?” I replied politely, even though I just knew what he was going to say. Which he did.

  “Where have you put my frogs?”

  It was very trying. Wanda and I were busy, we had things to do. Wanda was building a house to put some small spiders in so they did not get eaten by the big spiders. And because that was unfair to the big spiders, I was building a house for them. Building a spider house is not easy, but Barry did not care because Barry thinks only about his frogs. They are acrobatic frogs, which means they do lots of tricks, like jumping over each other and turning cartwheels. And, they can do a frog pyramid, which I guess is all right if you like that sort of thing. Barry has—or rather Barry had—five frogs, and he had names for them all, but I can’t remember them as they were silly frog names like Ermintrude and Gonzilla.

  Barry stood right in front of me, tapping his pointy blue shoes like he was waiting for someone who was late. “It’s not funny anymore, Araminta,” he said.

  I finished gluing the roof onto the spider house and then I made sure that I looked like I was thinking very carefully about what Barry had said. “I did not think it was funny in the first place actually, Barry,” I said. “I have better things to do than put a bunch of stupid frogs anywhere.”

  “You haven’t put them in the bath again and let the water out, have you, Araminta?” he asked.

  “No, I haven’t. Anyway, it wasn’t I who took the plug out. It was Aunt Tabby. I was just giving them a nice swim.”

  “The water was hot, Araminta.”

  “I was only trying to warm them up. They looked cold.”

  “They looked even colder when I fished them out of the drain, Araminta.”

  Have you noticed that when someone is annoyed with you they keep on saying your whole name? It is a real giveaway. Aunt Tabby can say as many times as she likes, “No, I am not annoyed with you, Araminta, I am just disappointed, that is all.” But I know she is annoyed because of the “Araminta” part. My uncle Drac always calls me Minty and he is never annoyed with me, so that proves it.

  I could see that Barry was not going to believe me about the frogs, so when Wanda said, “We’ll go and look for them if you like, Dad. Won’t we, Araminta?” I thought I had better say “Yes, Wanda” and smile like I was very keen to do it.

  Barry and Wanda both looked at me in a suspicious way, but there is no pleasing some people.

  Spookie House is a huge house. I do not know how many rooms there are because whenever I start counting I am sure that some of them move around, just to annoy me, so that I either count them twice or not at all. Then there are the secret rooms, and I only know one of those, because obviously the rest of them are secret. The secret room that I do know is in the middle of the house at the end of a secret tunnel and it belongs to Sir Horace, who is one of our ghosts.

  So you can see that it was not easy to look for frogs in such a big place. Plus lots of the rooms are full of what Uncle Drac calls junk, but what Aunt Tabby calls “finds”—which means she has found a bunch of old furniture, I do not know where. Then you can add the piles of spiderwebs that are stuffed full of enormous spiders, which could probably eat all Barry’s frogs for breakfast and still be hungry, and you can see that I did not expect to find any of Barry’s frogs in Spookie House.

  I was right. We didn’t.

  But we did find:

  one Wellington boot with a family of mice living in it

  one elephant’s-foot doorstop (I do not know where the rest of the elephant was)

  six pairs of Aunt Tabby’s spectacles huddling together in a dark corner behind some moldy curtains on the landing, hoping not to be found

  one crate of odd knitting needles

  five bolts from Sir Horace’s helmet

  And then Aunt Tabby found us.

  My aunt Tabby is always creeping around the house trying to catch me and Wanda doing something that she thinks we shouldn’t. But she didn’t have to creep around to find us this time, because Wanda was yelling so loudly that it was a bit of a giveaway.

  We were right at the top of the house in a little turret opposite Uncle Drac’s bat turret. Wanda had a telescope that Brenda and Barry had given her for her birthday, and I thought it would be a good place to go to look for the frogs because you can see for miles out the window. But it is hard it see frogs, even through a telescope. So I told Wanda that she might see more if she climbed on top of one of Aunt Tabby’s finds—a horrible old wardrobe right by the window. Wanda is not very good at climbing, but I helped her up, and I was just about to pass her the telescope when there was a loud crack and she disappeared. Well, most of her did. I could still see her head sticking out, which looked quite funny, although Wanda didn’t seem to think so.

  Then she started yelling. When Wanda yells you have to put your fingers in your ears or your eardrums will explode.

  “Be quiet, Wanda,” I told her. “You’ll frighten the frogs if they’re here. Then they’ll all hop off and we’ll never find them.”

  “I don’t care about the stupid frogs,” Wanda yelled. “Get me out of here!”

  I was shocked. “Wanda,” I said, “Barry would be very upset to hear you call his frogs stupid.”

  “Well, you do all the time. Get me out! Help, help!” Suddenly there was a thump and Wanda’s head disappeared. Now she was right inside the wardrobe.

  “Help!” ye
lled Wanda. “Heeelp!”

  I tried to open the door, but it was locked and there was no key. I pulled on the door handle and it came right off in my hand.

  In between Wanda’s yells I could hear Aunt Tabby’s footsteps clattering up the stairs from the hall and then thumping up the winding backstairs to the little room in the turret roof. She threw open the door and a hat stand fell over and landed on her foot. Aunt Tabby did not look pleased. Her hair was sticking up like it does when she is mad and her spectacles were about to make a break for freedom and join their friends by the moldy curtains on the landing.

  “What are you doing in here, Araminta?” she said.

  “Wanda’s in here too,” I told her, because I am tired of always getting the blame.

  “Where?” asked Aunt Tabby suspiciously.

  “In the wardrobe.”

  “Help!” shouted Wanda, sounding kind of muffled.

  Aunt Tabby sighed. “Brenda!” she yelled out the door. “Brendaaaa. Wanda’s stuck again.”

  It took forever to get Wanda out. In the end Aunt Tabby had to get her crowbar to open the wardrobe door. She was not happy because the door split in two. Brenda was not pleased either, because when Wanda fell out of the wardrobe she was covered in dust and had scraped her knees. And they both blamed me.

  We had to promise never, ever to climb on wardrobes again, even though I pointed out that I never had, so if I did, it would not be again, it would be for the first time. Aunt Tabby was just about to say something when the doorbell rang downstairs and Brenda and Aunt Tabby both rushed off to get it. Aunt Tabby always likes to be the first one to answer the door because she is so nosy, but Brenda, who is just as nosy, is a surprisingly fast runner and can beat Aunt Tabby down the stairs any day.

  Wanda and I listened to their footsteps disappearing. I waited for Wanda to start moaning at me, but she didn’t. “While I was in the wardrobe I was thinking,” she said.

  “No you weren’t, you were yelling,” I pointed out.

  “Actually, Araminta, it is perfectly possible to yell and think at the same time,” Wanda said sniffily. “I was thinking about the frogs. Now I know what’s happened to them.”

  I didn’t get it. “How? Have they written a note and left it in the wardrobe?”

  Wanda sighed like she was pretending to be patient. “Frogs can’t write, Araminta. But they do leave clues. Little sticky frog footprints. And have we seen any?”

  I shook my head.

  “Exactly,” said Wanda, sounding like she was some kind of detective. “Which can mean only one thing.”

  “Can it?” I asked.

  Wanda glanced around as if she was expecting Aunt Tabby to jump out from one of the other horrible wardrobes. Then she whispered, “Dad’s frogs have been frognapped.”

  2

  THE SPOOKIE DETECTIVE AGENCY

  “‘Frognapping’ is not a proper word,” I told Wanda.

  “It should be,” said Wanda, “because that’s what’s happened to Dad’s frogs.”

  We were sitting on the back steps, keeping out of the way of Aunt Tabby, who was still annoyed, and also out of the way of Uncle Drac, who was being taken for a walk around the hall by the nurse. Uncle Drac broke both his legs not long ago. They are all right now, but he has to learn to walk properly again, which he does not like, as he would rather sit and knit. But Aunt Tabby does not believe that anyone should sit down for long, especially if they are doing something they like, so she found a nurse to come and make him walk.

  I was thinking hard. “If something has been frognapped,” I said, “then there has to be a frognapper. And we will have to find him…or her.”

  “But how?” asked Wanda.

  “Easy,” I told her. “We shall have to become detectives.”

  “Wow,” said Wanda, sounding excited. “How do we do that?”

  “I shall start up the Spookie Detective Agency. I shall be chief detective and you can be my sidekick. That is how it usually works.”

  Wanda did not look as pleased as she should have been. “But I want to be chief detective,” she said. “Of the Wizzard Detective Agency.”

  “You can’t have two detective agencies working on the same case,” I told her. “It just leads to trouble. Oh look, here’s Uncle Drac. Hello, Uncle Drac!”

  I could see the sunlight shining on Uncle Drac’s round, pale face as he slowly came toward us along the passageway that led out of the hall. I was really happy to see him. Of course I always am, but this time I was especially happy because I could tell that Wanda was not finished talking about detective agencies. But as Uncle Drac shuffled nearer I could see that he did not look happy to see me. In fact, he did not look happy at all.

  “Oh. Hello, Minty,” he mumbled. He tried to smile, but it didn’t really work. Usually Uncle Drac has a really big smile and you can see his lovely long, pointy teeth at the far corners of his mouth, but this was a no-teeth smile with his mouth turned down. But I did not take it personally because following right behind him I could see the reason for his no-teeth smile: Nurse Watkins.

  Nurse Watkins was big. It is not that I am not used to big—Brenda, who is Wanda’s mom, is also big but in a soft and squashy kind of way. If you hug Brenda it feels like you have dived into a great big feather pillow smelling of lavender, which is nice. It is in fact a lot nicer than hugging Aunt Tabby, who is okay and tries her best, but her elbows always get in the way and she smells of soap. You would not want to hug Nurse Watkins though. It would be dangerous because of all those muscles. Nurse Watkins has big muscled arms and legs, which Uncle Drac says is because she is really a wrestler. The previous morning when Nurse Watkins had arrived and Brenda was trying to find Uncle Drac, I had to sit and talk to her forever. I asked her all kinds of questions about wrestling, like what were the best headlocks she had ever made and did she have to train every day and stuff like that, and she just stared at me in a really weird way. Uncle Drac was pleased though, because by the time Brenda had found him (in his hedge hideaway) Nurse Watkins had gone.

  But today Nurse Watkins had not gone. She was there, muscles and all, right behind Uncle Drac. “Left foot up and lift and step. Right foot up and lift and step. Don’t shuffle. Keep those knees straight. Knees, Drac, knees!” Nurse Watkins’s voice boomed down the passage, bounced off the step, and hurt my ears. “Put a bit of effort in. Left foot up and lift and step. Right foot up and lift and step. One-two, one-two. One-two-one. Oh come on, Drac, anyone would think you were on your way to a funeral.”

  “It’ll be my own funeral at this rate,” I heard Uncle Drac growl, although I don’t think Nurse Watkins did, as she just kept right on going. “Left foot up and lift and step. Right foot up and lift and step. Knees!”

  I decided Uncle Drac needed rescuing.

  What I find works really well as a general diversion is the help-me-I’m-choking face. Well, it’s more than just a face really; for maximum effect it is best to do the sound effects and the actions too. I will pass on the tip, as you never know when it might come in handy:

  STEP 1:

  Grab your throat with one hand. I used to use two hands but have recently found that waving the other hand frantically in the air and making clawing shapes with your fingers is much more effective.

  STEP 2:

  Stare hard at your eyebrows so that your eyes roll up to the top of your head as far as they will go. Wanda says mine go a long way and you can see a lot of white. The more white of your eyes people can see, the better. I do not know why, but it bothers them.

  STEP 3:

  Stagger. The easiest way is to lean over to one side—the opposite side to the arm-waving one is best—and then run in zigzags. It is best to vary your speed, and you can also put in a couple of sudden stops to spice it up. If you do stop, try leaning forward and really going for the choking noises at the same time. It’s probably best to leave this toward the end, though, for the best result.

  STEP 4:

  Sound effects. Choking nois
es (see above) are easy to do. I am quite good at doing them in the back of my throat now, although it can make your throat a bit sore afterward if you really go for it. Coughing is good too, and wheezing if you can manage it. The most successful method is to really get going on the sound effects and then, when you have got everyone’s attention, you suddenly stop and continue with just the actions.

  STEP 5:

  The silent gasping stage (see above). Wait until you have acquired your full available audience, as this is very effective. For best effect do the silent gasping while running around in small circles.

  STEP 6:

  Now exit before people get bored and/or suspicious. Stop dead and give a small, polite cough. Smile, say, “Ooh, that’s better,” and walk away. It is best not to bow. I did that once and it gave the game away.

  So now you know how I rescued Uncle Drac—or tried to, as it didn’t quite work out that way. You see, I forgot that I was doing the choking act in front of a nurse.

  Anyway, I put Step 1 into action right away and headed for Uncle Drac. He looked a bit surprised as I ran toward him, but I rushed past (as I did not want to worry him), and as I squeezed by Nurse Watkins I got going on Steps 2 and 3 big-time. Then I headed off toward the hall. I was really getting into it now, and I could hear Nurse Watkins’s heavy boots thumping down the passageway after me. Good, I thought, it’s worked—now Uncle Drac can escape.

  I was well into Step 4 and about to embark on Step 5 when I was grabbed from behind by Nurse Watkins. She wrapped her wrestler’s forearms around my waist and gave a great heave. I thought I was going to explode.