Seven Strange - Brian Jacques

Seven Strange & Ghostly Tales

by Brian Jacques

Attention Redwall fans: get ready for the ghostly side of Brian Jacques!

Filled with humor, adventure, and imagination, these seven short stories go from the lighthearted to the bizarre. Read about the cocky teenage liar whose sneakiness saves his soul from the devil, the graffiti artist who tries to escape being mummified, and the boy who’s midnight visit to the tomb of a vampire includes a run-in with a vampire mother who nags just like his own. The eerie characters and settings created by this masterful storyteller will tickle funny bones and send chills up spines.

“Well crafted and smoothly written … While suitable for reading aloud, the tales are even better under the covers with a flashlight.” —Booklist (starred review)

The green-bronze door of the tomb loomed cold and forbidding in the moonlight. Wind sighed mournfully through the rhododendron bushes and clouds blew across the night sky like the shrouds torn from long ago corpses. Seating himself on the vault steps he pulled out the crumpled paper bag, mentally counting to six hundred as he applied the makeup. Dampening his face slightly, Jamie dabbed white flour heavily across his features, even right up to his hairline. Rolling yellow clay into two small stubby cones he affixed them to the side of his neck. Carefully he ringed the cones with purple felt-tip pen and dripped some of his mother’s red food coloring beneath the two imitation vampire fang bites. Golly! Would they run when he came staggering and moaning at them.

The bronze door at his back began creaking and groaning as it started to open.

Hairs on the back of Jamie’s neck stood up rigid. The blood in his veins turned to ice water; his heart pounded madly like a trip hammer, trying to fight its way up into his mouth. A pale bluish light radiated from the tomb, illuminating his quaking form. The hand that grasped Jamie’s shoulder was neither big nor hairy, but it was as cold as iron in a blizzard, white and slim with a strength not of this earth.

Also By Brian Jacques

Redwall

Mossflower

Mattimeo

Mariel Of Redwall

Salamandastron

Martin The Warrior

The Bellmaker

Outcast Of Redwall

Pearls Of Lutra

The Long Patrol

Marlfox

1

This is a cautionary tale, young folk,

and must not be treated as a joke.

Let us then draw up a treaty

against all those who like graffiti.

Each pencil mark, each can of spray,

so difficult to wipe away;

each vandal going through “a phase”

that some poor cleaner must erase;

I beg you, shun the felt-tipped pen,

for when a wall’s defaced, what then?

Do you seriously think society will say,

“How wonderful! How marvelous! Joey Rools Okay.”

Why must the scribblers leave their marks for all to see,

thinking perhaps to gain themselves fame eternally?

Put aside that marker! Start a clean new slate—

and keep it clean, or you may share

the following scribbler’s fate!

The Fate of Thomas P. Kanne

It was a quiet, grey Tuesday toward the end of the Christmas holidays. Turkeys had been devoured, gifts exchanged, and the festive season had tailed away into mundane January. Parents swept the last of the Christmas tree pine needles out of the carpet, while vowing to start dieting. As for the children, they were complaining that the batteries in their new toys had run out. Everybody was disgruntled, disillusioned and disappointed with the whole process of Yuletide. The fun, laughter and fairy lights would not return for nearly a whole long year.

None of this ever bothered Mr. Bausin, going about the same daily ritual he performed in his timeless world of Middlechester Museum: unlocking the great doors, checking the central heating gauges, switching the automatic alarm system back and forth to test it, and tidying the rows of brightly colored pamphlets and folders on the information desk. Christmases came and went; they were none of his business—the museum was his world. He lived in the apartment alone and self contained on the second floor, trusted completely by the administrators and curators. Mr. Bausin was totally devoted to his job as caretaker attendant of Middlechester Museum. His dark, muddy eyes smoldered with anger as he took solvent and a nylon pan-scrubber to the graffiti message sprayed on an Italian marble portal column.

PHANTOM SNAKE RULES!

He had missed that one. His anger was directed not at the writer, but at himself for the oversight. Mr. Bausin smiled a dark, secret smile as he scrubbed to erase the black auto enamel. Some sixth sense told him that soon, maybe even today, on this lackluster, humdrum Tuesday, he would finally meet his archenemy.

The Phantom Snake, always the same name. It had begun about two years back; the name began appearing all over his beloved museum. Sometimes in felt-tip, other times in thick blue luggage marker, more often than not in hard-to-remove air-drying car spray paint.

Phantom Snake!

Scrawled on glass exhibit cases, pamphlets and exit signs, written on marble statues, daubed on floors, walls, doors and stairways. One time it had actually been found in the left-hand corner of a priceless Renaissance screen. The head curator was furious. Experts were called in at great cost to remove the offending signature and restore the ancient work to its former beauty. Mr. Bausin had been reprimanded by the administration for letting such a thing happen. That day he had sworn on oath to his secret and dark gods: one day he would put an end to the Phantom Snake forever.

Yet the graffiti continued to appear, Bausin keeping one step ahead of the angry administration by erasing it quickly wherever he found it. And now with the museum’s Egyptian Exhibition opening, Mr. Bausin feared greatly lest the holy relics of that high far-gone age would be a target for the depredations of the Phantom Snake. Not if he had anything to do with it! To be guardian over the priceless artifacts of Ancient Egypt was a sacred trust.

When he had removed the graffiti Mr. Bausin roamed through the Egyptian Exhibition, fondly checking each display: papyrus scrolls, reed model boats, vases and urns, sacred scarabs and decorated amulets. Treading softly, he followed the wall of bas relief hieroglyphics around to the sarcophagus of the boy king Ahminrahken. Without the protection of a glass case the figure lay in solitary splendor, its open casket decorated in now faded colors. The whole tableau represented an inner sanctum of some pyramid tomb in the Valley of the Kings, with models of the old gods standing on the sandy floor, Set, Anubis, Horus and Osiris, guarding the resting place. Mr. Bausin took it all in slowly, finally easing silently out to resume his duties. And to watch and wait for the Phantom Snake.

Thomas P. Kanne noisily sucked the last of his milkshake through a straw as he sat watching the citizens of Middlechester going about their daily business. Through the plate-glass cafe window he could see policemen, housewives, bus drivers and road sweepers, a fair cross section of the community, carrying out their allotted chores. Blissfully unaware that they were being watched by the Phantom Snake. He chuckled inwardly. Thomas P. Kanne, Phantom Snake. He was writing his own name rearranged into an anagram for them all to see, yet they could not solve it. Sheer brilliance on his part. He had known other graffiti writers, idiots, two of them from the same grade as he at school, who had gone about spraying their names all over town. It amazed him how they could reach the ripe old age of thirteen and still remain such fools. They had been caught easily, and now they were feeling the wrath of parents, teachers, social workers and even the police. But still nobody knew who the Phantom Snake was. None of them were clever enough to realize that it was an anagram of his own name.