Authors: Annie Graves
Guinea Pig Killer
GUINEA PIG KILLER
Other books in the Nightmare Club series
A Dog's Breakfast
Help! My Brother's a Zombie!
Mirrored
THE NIGHTMARE CLUB
GUINEA PIG KILLER
BY
ANNIE GRAVES
Guinea Pig Killer
Published 2011
by Little Island
128 Lower Baggot Street
Dublin 2
Ireland
Copyright © Little Island 2011
Illustrations copyright © Glenn McElhinney
except house on front cover by Jacktoon
ISBN 978-1-908195-13-5
All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.
British Library Cataloguing Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Book design by Someday
Printed in Poland by Drukarnia Skleniarz
Little Island received financial assistance from
The Arts Council (An Chomhairle EalaÃon), Dublin, Ireland.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Much Misunderstood,
the most beautiful toad in the world
A
nnie Graves is twelve years old, and she has no intention of ever growing up. She is, conveniently, an orphan, and lives at an undisclosed address in the Glasnevin area of Dublin with her pet toad, Much Misunderstood, and a small black kitten, Hugh Shalby Nameless. You needn't think she goes to school â pah! â or has anything as dull as brothers and sisters or hobbies, but let's just say she keeps a large cauldron on the stove.
This is not her first book. She has written four, so far, none of which is her first.
Publisher's note: We did try to take a picture of Annie, but her face just kept fading away. We have sent our camera for investigation, but suspect the worst.
THANK YOU!
I'd better thank Deirdre Sullivan for her help with this book or she might unleash her ungrateful guinea pig on me while she smiles evilly and eats cake.
T
his is me, Annie Graves, author extraordinaire. (That's French, not a spelling mistake.)
Look, just so you know, this whole Nightmare Club thing was my idea. Because having a nightmare by yourself is kinda scary. But kids sharing their nightmares at a sleepover on Hallowe'en night, when the grown-ups are not around and that spooky knocking from the basement ⦠just ⦠WON'T ⦠stop. That's really DEAD scary.
Which is why I call it the Nightmare Club.
Everyone has to tell a story. That's how the Nightmare Club works. And it better be a scary one, or you're out. Home you go. One year we made Harold ring his uncle, Mr Crosse, to come and get him.
That was because he told a stupid story. It was about a bat that couldn't find its belfry or some rubbish like that. Everyone knows bats don't really live in belfries. They live right in your own attic. And they swoop down in the night and scrabble about in your hair with their pinchy little claws â¦
So anyway, we sent Harold packing. Because only the scariest stories are good enough for the Nightmare Club. That's my rule.
This is Kate's story.
She's a strange girl, Kate. But I suppose if your neighbour was being haunted by a guinea pig, you might turn a little bit odd yourself.
T
his isn't really my story, Kate said.
It happened over the summer to a neighbour of mine called Sandy. But I'm going to tell it anyway.
Sandy had a sister called Dolly.
She was a teenager.
She didn't really want to be hanging out with us kids.
She was boring anyway.
All she cared about was school and people she knew from school and what they said and what they did and who they were annoyed at and why.
Though I suppose that wasn't completely all.
You see, she had this guinea pig.
Princess Snowflake was the guinea pig's name, and Dolly loved her more than anything else in the world.
When Dolly was sad, she would take the little princess out of her cage and tell her all about her problems.
She would scratch the guinea pig's soft white fur until Princess Snowflake made deep, happy noises.
Sandy was jealous of Her Royal Highness.
That is not how he would see it, of course.
He would just say the guinea pig was gross and boring.
Well, I suppose if I had a sister and she preferred an animal that sometimes ate its own poo, then I would be a little put out as well.
Anyway, time came and went, and during the school holidays Sandy's family all went away.
Mr and Mrs Mount went on holiday. They did that every year, without Sandy, and he said it was very unfair.
He had to stay with us, and it rained and rained all the time and we never got to the beach, even for one day.
Sandy's sister wasn't on holiday with their parents, though. She was at Irish college.
And she had left very strict instructions for Sandy about how he was supposed to look after her beloved guinea pig while she was away.
He was supposed to go home every day and feed Princess Snowflake and make sure she was all right.
We didn't know this.
We'd forgotten all about the wretched guinea pig. She wasn't in our house, so we never gave her a thought.
Now, Sandy was pretty bitter about being abandoned by his family.
The way he thought about it, it was all Princess Snowflake's fault.
If she wasn't around, he reasoned, he wouldn't have to stay home and mind her and feed her and change her hay and all that stuff.
He would be able to go on holiday with his parents and not have to stay with a silly girl (me) in a house that smelled funny.
(My house doesn't smell funny at all, but it does smell different to Sandy's house because Sandy's house has a weird, mustardy smell that I don't like very much.)
Anyway, he was wrong to blame Princess Snowflake, because she was only a guinea pig.
What could she do about it?
Make Sandy's parents take him with them on holiday? I don't think so.
I mean, her favourite treat was cabbage leaves and she hid under her bedding whenever the television was turned up too loud.
How much more harmless can you get?
I still don't know if Sandy did what he did to that poor animal on purpose or not.
But this is what he did.
He stayed with us all that time, and he never said he was supposed to go home every day and feed her.
Not until the day before his parents came back from their cruise.
And by then, of course, Her Highness was already dead.
He called me over to the house to show me the body.
He wasn't sad at all, just worried that he would get into trouble.
The cage door was all nibbled, as if she'd tried to escape.
Her bowl was empty and dry as bones.
