- CHAPTER ONE -
Blue Lamingtons
‘I don’t want to eat that Brussels sprout,’ said Jinx, crossing her arms. ‘I’ve had two. There isn’t room for a third.’
‘You haven’t eaten them,’ said her brother. ‘You’ve got one in each cheek.’
Furious, Jinx ran to her secret spot in the backyard. She spat the two Brussels sprouts into the palm of her hand and tossed them into a hydrangea bush. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like three or four birds were congregating there, hoping for a snack.
Jinx Valentine was a good girl, but you couldn’t rely on her to be good like you can rely on the sun to rise each morning. She was, like all children, a work in progress.
It was true Jinx had once dressed her cat in a pair of long boots and a cavalier hat tied on with elastic, and it had run away wearing them. It was also true that a concerned neighbour had returned the animal hours later, with the hat now positioned under its chin, and both boots missing.
As well as roller skating and watching cartoons, Jinx loved to prank people. I don’t know how many of you are accomplished pranksters. I’ve been at it for years and I still find it difficult not to dissolve laughing moments before I pull off the prank.
Jinx faced the same dilemma. As soon as her target walked into the room, she had the urge to laugh out loud. Once, she tried to distract herself from laughing by thinking about something dull, like a science test. However, the memory of her science teacher, Mr Jonathan P. Bentley (aka ‘Bentz’), who lost both eyebrows and a silk necktie in a Bunsen burner accident, set her off laughing again.
Not everyone enjoyed Jinx’s pranks. One of those people was Henry, her younger brother. Jinx wondered if Henry appreciated her at all. Sometimes she made him appreciate her. This she achieved by putting a cushion on him, and sitting on it.
In turn, Henry enjoyed burying things in Jinx’s two untidy hair buns, which he called birds’ nests. The things included: pencils, icy-pole sticks, beetles, and bubble gum.
On this particular evening, Jinx and Henry were being babysat. There’s one thing I know about babysitters and it is this: not all of them know the rules. Therefore not all of them are strict.
Mrs Lindsay, whom Jinx thought was at least one hundred years old, was one such babysitter. With very little effort, Jinx had persuaded Mrs Lindsay, not only to let her bake lamingtons after dinner, but to colour them electric blue. Night baking was something Mrs Lindsay turned a blind eye to. Ditto the disposal of unwanted dinner vegetables.
Once the blue lamingtons were done, Jinx went straight to her upstairs bedroom. She wanted to mess around with her favourite possession, an eighty-millimetre telescope. It sat haughtily on its tripod as if the leafy Randwick landscape was unworthy of its penetrating eye.
Using her telescope, she had monitored a pair of currawongs that were nesting in a tree across the road. She had watched that nest on and off for a fortnight, eagerly waiting for the clutch of pinkish-brown eggs inside it to hatch. She wanted to know if the chicks would be born with or without feathers and if they would look weird.
At 8pm, Mrs Lindsay stuck her head around Jinx’s half-open bedroom door. ‘May I come in?’ she asked.
Jinx, who was reading cross-legged on her bed, waved her in. Mrs Lindsay strode into the room carrying a glass of chilled pineapple juice and some blue lamingtons on a plate.
‘In case you get hungry, dear, in the night.’
Jinx took them and thanked her. Suddenly, something caught Mrs Lindsay’s eye. She walked to a low bookcase. Sandwiched in the middle of a row of horse-riding novels stood a toy clown. It was threadbare and dirty. The name Fazzini Pom-Pom was embroidered on its jacket in blue cotton.
‘My dear, why is Fazzini Pom-Pom facing the wall?’
Jinx’s cheeks flushed. ‘He gives me the creeps, that’s why. His eyebrows are like whips and I don’t like the way he stares at me while I’m sleeping. His grin is…’
‘Deranged!’ said Mrs Lindsay, studying Fazzini Pom-Pom’s grotesque features.
‘Smell him,’ said Jinx.
Mrs Lindsay did so. ‘How unpleasant! He’s smoky, like he’s been up a chimney.’ She returned the clown to its position. ‘I don’t blame you for making him face the wall. I used to do the same thing to a doll I disliked when I was a little girl. It worked. For a while.’
‘For a while?’
Mrs Lindsay’s face became animated. ‘One night, I woke up to find the doll bent over and staring at me through her own legs, like this.’ She paused to demonstrate the position. ‘She looked terrible upside down. Gravity did not do kind things to her face. She did it every night for a month, just to frighten me.’
‘Really, Mrs Lindsay, surely she just fell forward? Dolls can’t move. Not on their own.’
‘Of course she did it on purpose!’ said Mrs Lindsay so shrilly that Jinx jumped and knocked the glass against the plate of lamingtons. ‘I never liked that doll. I liked her even less when she eloped with my Liberty of London Winston Churchill doll. Well, good-night.’
And there the conversation ended.
Before getting into her pyjamas, Jinx decided to do a final check on the currawongs. She had always liked currawongs. She thought they were like magpies, but nobler. The nest was partly lit by a street light. With the help of her telescope, it was easy to see the three eggs it held. Just then, one of them jiggled. Jinx felt anxious. If the eggs are hatching, she thought, shouldn’t a parent bird be present?
Suddenly, the apish form of Fazzini Pom-Pom appeared over the nest’s rim. With a lit cigar wedged in the corner of his mouth, he loomed over the eggs. Then he roughly shoved all three into his clown hat and tossed it over his shoulder like a sack. In one swift movement, as if he knew he was being observed, he glared at Jinx and pointed a grubby finger at her.
Jinx stood up so suddenly her telescope rocked on its tripod. She ran to her bookcase. The wicked toy clown was gone!
As she turned to go back, something jagged and made of metal hit her in the face. Reeling, she saw that it was a razor sharp fish hook, about the size of a dinner plate. The hook was attached to a thick rope which extended up towards the ceiling and then disappeared into some mist.
Jinx clutched her face with her hands, soothing the spot where the hook had struck. Luckily its point had not broken the skin. She felt her cheeks turn red. Then a man’s voice drifted down from the mist.
‘So, I told her Koaly is pronounced Ko-Lee. Ko-lee. The ‘a’ is silent.’
‘I bet that shut her up,’ said a boy’s voice.
‘You bet it did,’ said the man’s voice and then both of them laughed.
A wet lollipop fell from the mist and rolled across the floorboards in a sweeping arc. Jinx stopped it with the sole of her shoe. Her eyes shot back up again.
‘Who did that?’ said the man’s voice.
‘Sorry, sorry!’ came a second boy’s voice. ‘It fell out of my mouth.’
‘Well, don’t do it again! It makes ripples.’
From what Jinx could deduce, the three speakers were male. The first voice belonged to a man. His two companions were definitely boys.
‘Why are we fishing here?’ asked one of the boys.
The man’s voice said, ‘Because we’re desperate, that’s why. You want to eat, don’t you?’
Throughout the conversation, the fish hook continued to dangle from the ceiling. Poor Jinx faced a dilemma. What should she do about it?
Her gaze fell on the blue lamingtons. She got the plate and, for a moment, considered the situation. Then she selected one and gently guided it over the hook’s point. To this there was no response. The speared lamington just hung there, motionless. So she gave the rope a single hard yank.
‘Here we go!’ said the man’s voice.
The rope twitched and was hastily reeled up, after which nothing happened. The three voices fell silent. The mist remained, but no rope with a fish hook attached dropped down out of it.
Finally, the voices returned and Jinx could tell there were more of them. She could even make out girls’ voices. She waited to see what would happen, staring at the mist with her hands on her hips.
A girl’s voice said sarcastically, ‘Well, thanks so much for saving us some.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said a boy’s voice. It was one of the boys Jinx had heard earlier. ‘We’ll get more.’
Slowly, five thick ropes descended through the mist and at the end of each one was a fish hook.
Jinx’s eyes shone as she stepped forward and stood amongst the shiny hooks. Smiling crookedly, she grabbed the one nearest to her and wedged it through the fabric of her pink tartan dress. She did the same with the other four hooks, making sure they were evenly placed, front and back, at chest level. Out in the street, a car alarm wailed.
Jinx chewed her bottom lip. What am I doing? she thought.
With three in one hand and two in the other, she yanked hard on the five ropes.
Again, the man’s voice said, ‘Here we go!’
Jinx immediately felt herself being hauled upwards. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Fazzini Pom-Pom. He had returned to his place on the bookcase and was facing the wall, like nothing had happened.
However, it was too late for Jinx to do anything about it. Within seconds the mist had engulfed her head. Her body followed. Then her shoes. She was gone.