When the parents of nine-year-old child prodigy, Richie Fudge, tell him he ought to ‘make himself a new friend’ he takes them at their word. The consequences are quite … horrendous!
Chapter One
It was early morning in the en-suite conversation pit at Beelzebub Cottage. Professor Lynette Fudge and her husband, Dr Dwight Fudge, world-famous experts on the weird and unexplained, were just in the middle of a particularly stimulating argument about the paranormal.
‘Well, I think you’re supposed to say psychic phenomenons!’ shouted Professor Lynette.
‘Of course you aren’t!’ yelled Dr Dwight. ‘It’s psychic phenomenii! I should know, I’ve seen The Exorcist thirty eight times!’
Professor Lynette had just raised her hand to give her husband’s incredibly shiny, bald head a good slapping when Richie, their ten-year-old, child-prodigy son, burst into the room and began frantically tugging at Dr Dwight’s trendily tie-dyed goatee beard.
‘Mummy, mummy!’ cried the somewhat short-sighted, eccentric child genius. ‘It’s happened again!’
‘What dear, what’s happened again?’ enquired Dr Dwight.
‘It’s Rasputin. He’s died again, Mummy!’
‘Oh no,’ groaned Dr Dwight. ‘Not again, Richie. That’s the eleventh time this week!’
‘Yes, it’s true, Mummy. Can I have some money to buy him again please, Mummy?’ whined the child.
‘Well, I guess so, Richie,’ sighed Dr Dwight, handing his son ten dollars. ‘And by the way, I’m Daddy! Now listen here, young man. This is definitely the last time!’
‘That’s right!’ said Professor Lynette. ‘Your Daddy and I don’t spend our whole lives investigating psychic phenomenonii and giving television talks about the unexplained and the really weird and having possessed people to stay for the weekend just to supply you with an inexhaustible supply of pet mice. I don’t know, you get through pet mice like other people get through tissues. Anyone would think you were eating them!’
‘Why would I want to eat tissues?’ said Richie – rather too innocently.
At that moment Laura, the Fudge’s strikingly beautiful and remarkably gifted – though not quite as gifted as Richie – seventeen-year-old daughter drifted into the room. She was distractedly twiddling her long, blonde hair.
‘Oh, there you are, Laura!’ said Professor Lynette. Then, noticing her daughter’s anxiously knitted eyebrows, added, ‘You’re not still fretting about Kent Broadacre, are you? I’ve already told you, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. Lots of people wear two watches.’
‘No, they don’t, Mummy. It’s not normal.’ sobbed Laura. ‘I just know he’s two-timing me!’
‘Anyway, even if he is cheating on you, you’re not going to get much chance to think about it over the next few weeks,’ her mother added heartlessly. ‘Your father and I are up to here with diabolical infestations to investigate, including the newly-ordained Bishop of Kansas, who has taken to yelling, ‘Get your tabernacles out for the girls!’, every time she sees a holy father.
‘So,’ said Dr Dwight, ‘we’re going to be away for at least three weeks and we’re leaving you in charge. It’s a big responsibility Laura. Don’t forget that your brother is a child prodigy. So just make sure he doesn’t get up to any of his err … projects! We don’t want a repeat of that unpleasant business with the bird-eating spiders and the Jehovah’s Witness, do we?’
Professor Lynette coughed nervously and said to Dr Dwight, ‘I thought we weren’t going to mention that again. After all, the victim’s family were generously compensated.’
A few hours later, as Laura watched her parents’ Ford Pagan roar off in a cloud of garden birds, she had the uncanny feeling that life would never be the same again when Dwight and Lynette Fudge eventually returned to Beelzebub Cottage. How right she was!
Almost a week had passed since that awful business with Kent Broadacre and Tamsin Tempest at the end-of-term bonfire party, but Laura was still smouldering. She was now sure that she was the laughing stock of the entire sixth grade at Elvis Falls High. She was determined to get her revenge on all of them.
As she stood simmering and plotting, a vehicle drew up and an alluringly spotty youth of about sixteen got out and bounded over to Laura.
‘Hi, gorgeous!’ the youth said jauntily. ‘Might you be Richie Fudge and might this be Bill The Slob’s Cottage?’
Laura smiled coyly at the youth, admiring his trendy, multi-hued kaftan.
‘No, actually, Richie’s actually my little brother, actually, and its Beelzebub actually and … !’
Laura stopped mid sentence and screamed. Her stomach somersaulted uncontrollably and she collapsed at the feet of the youth. Without warning, she began to vomit copiously over his trainers. What she had originally thought to be a stylistic tribute to all-things-psychedelic, on closer examination, revealed itself to be a common or garden butcher’s apron, liberally smeared from top to toe with gore and other things to horrible to mention. To put it another way, the insanely grinning youth was covered from head to toe with fresh blood and stuff!