Pencil of Doom! Read online

  Andy Griffiths is one of Australia’s funniest and most successful writers. His books have sold over 3 million copies worldwide, have featured on the New York Times bestseller lists, and have won over 30 Australian children’s choice awards.

  ALSO BY ANDY GRIFFITHS

  AND ILLUSTRATED BY TERRY DENTON

  Just Tricking!

  Just Annoying!

  Just Stupid!

  Just Crazy!

  Just Disgusting!

  Just Shocking!

  The Bad Book

  The Cat on the Mat is Flat

  The Big Fat Cow That Goes Kapow

  What Bumosaur is That?

  ALSO BY ANDY GRIFFITHS

  The Day My Bum Went Psycho

  Zombie Bums From Uranus

  Bumageddon: The Final Pongflict

  Schooling Around:

  Treasure Fever!

  Pencil of Doom!

  ANDY GRIFFITHS

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  First published 2008 in Pan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  1 Market Street, Sydney

  Copyright © Backyard Stories Pty Ltd 2008

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Griffiths, Andy, 1961–

  Pencil of Doom! / author, Andy Griffiths.

  Sydney : Pan Macmillan, 2008.

  978 0 330 42417 2 (pbk.)

  Schooling around ; no. 2

  Griffiths, Andy, 1961– Schooling around

  For children.

  Humorous stories, Australian.

  Children’s stories, Australian.

  A823.4

  Illustration by Nathan Jurevicius

  Typeset in 12/16 pt New Aster by Post Pre-press Group

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  These electronic editions published in 2008 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Pencil of Doom

  Andy Griffiths

  Adobe eReader format: 978-1-74198-237-4

  Online format: 978-1-74198-414-9

  EPUB format: 978-1-74262-210-1

  Macmillan Digital Australia

  www.macmillandigital.com.au

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com.au to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.

  Contents

  Cover

  About Andy Griffiths

  Also by Andy Griffiths

  Title page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1: Once upon a time

  2: The beginning

  3: Mr Brainfright’s important lesson no. 1

  4: Magic

  5: Here comes Fred!

  6: Yes Means No and No Means Yes

  7: Jack’s cartoon

  8: Flying with Fred and Clive

  9: An apology and a threat

  10: Bad news

  11: Nice things

  12: Jenny’s picture

  13: Gretel’s picture

  14: Henry’s picture

  15: Jack’s picture

  16: The finished pictures

  17: Chase!

  18: The Northwest Chronicle

  19: Northwest Central Hospital

  20: Back in class

  21: How to cut a student in half

  22: Mr Brainfright’s important lesson no. 2

  23: Jenny volunteers

  24: Some very bad news

  25: Newton’s top ten list of things he is scared of

  26: Escaped lion!

  27: Mr Brainfright’s important lesson no. 3

  28: It’s here!

  29: Kitty

  30: Mr Brainfright’s guide to protecting yourself against lions in the classroom

  31: My dream

  32: Waking up

  33: Rewind

  34: Escaped pencil

  35: Wishes

  36: The monkey’s paw

  37: Tap, tap, tap ...

  38: Skull Island

  39: Mr Grunt

  40: Mrs Rosethorn

  41: Hummer-time

  42: Grunt versus Cross

  43: Welcome back, Mr Spade

  44: Mighty Boy

  45: Mighty girl

  46: Killer pencil

  47: Mr Brainfright’s important lesson no. 4

  48: A bold idea

  49: Drawing the pencil’s doom

  50: The pencil’s doom

  51: Mr Grunt demonstrates

  52: Break in!

  53: Spying on Clive

  54: AVALANCHE! Starring Henry McThrottle, Jack Japes, Gretel Armstrong, Newton Hooton and Jenny Friendly

  55: Things get worse than they already were

  56: Avalanche!

  57: Buried alive

  58: Minutes ...

  59: Hours ...

  60: Days ...

  61: Weeks ...

  62: Months ...

  63: Years ...

  64: Rescue

  65: Lift off!

  66: Mr Brainfright’s magic hat

  67: Mr Brainfright’s important lesson no. 5

  68: The last chapter

  For Judi, Lindsay, Kim, Ajax and Mad Dog

  1

  Once upon a time

  Once upon a time there was—and still is—a school called Northwest Southeast Central School.

  Northwest Southeast Central School is located to the southeast of a town called Northwest, which is located to the northwest of a big city called Central City.

  You don’t need to know where Central City is, because it’s not important. What is important is the school. In this school there is a classroom. And in that classroom there is a fifth-grade class. Most important of all, in that fifth-grade class there is a student named Henry McThrottle who likes to tell stories.

  That’s where I come in.

  I’m Henry McThrottle . . . and this is my latest story.

  2

  The beginning

  It all began one morning when I walked through the front gate of Northwest Southeast Central School, across the yard, up the steps and through the door of the 5B classroom.

  I was slightly late, and class had already started.

  Not that you would have known it.

  Mr Brainfright, our teacher, was hanging by his toes from one of the ceiling rafters.

  His arms were crossed and his face was bright red.

  Now, normally, if you walked into a classroom and your teacher was hanging by their toes from the roof, you might be a little alarmed.
r />   You might ask them if they’re all right, or try to help them down, or at the very least report the situation to another teacher.

  But I didn’t do any of these things. You see, Mr Brainfright wasn’t a normal teacher. You only had to look at the way he was dressed to tell that. With his purple jacket, orange shirt and green pants, he looked—and acted—like no other teacher at Northwest Southeast Central School, for which we were very grateful. School had been a lot more interesting since he’d taken over from our old teacher, Mrs Chalkboard.

  Mr Brainfright greeted me with a big smile.

  ‘Good morning, Henry!’ he said. ‘I’m just demonstrating how bats sleep.’

  I nodded. ‘I’ve always wondered about that,’ I said.

  ‘Well, now you know,’ said Mr Brainfright, dismounting with a somersault and landing on his feet. ‘Any questions, class?’

  Fiona McBrain put up her hand.

  ‘Yes, Fiona?’ said Mr Brainfright.

  ‘Will we be tested on this?’ she asked.

  ‘Certainly not!’ said Mr Brainfright. ‘Any other questions?’

  ‘Don’t bats sleep in coffins?’ Clive Durkin asked.

  ‘That’s vampires, Clive!’ shouted my friend Jack Japes, laughing. ‘Don’t you know anything?’

  Clive narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m going to tell my brother you said that.’

  ‘What?’ said Jack. ‘That bats don’t sleep in coffins? He doesn’t know either?’

  ‘No,’ said Clive. ‘That you said I don’t know anything.’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ said Jack. ‘I just said that vampires, not bats, sleep in coffins.’

  ‘Can you stop talking about bats and vampires?’ said my friend Jenny Friendly. ‘Newton’s getting scared.’

  Jenny was right. Our friend Newton Hooton’s eyes were wide as he clutched his lucky rabbit’s foot and shook visibly.

  ‘You don’t have to be scared of bats, Newton,’ said Mr Brainfright. ‘Or vampires, for that matter.’

  ‘Yes, he does,’ said Jenny. ‘Newton’s scared of everything.’

  This was true. Newton was scared of everything. He was even scared of being scared. That’s how scared he was.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Brainfright. ‘Sorry, I forgot.’

  ‘Can we do maths now?’ said Fiona.

  The rest of the class groaned.

  ‘Certainly not!’ said Mr Brainfright.

  Everybody cheered. Everybody, that is, except Fiona.

  ‘But it’s Monday morning!’ said Fiona. ‘We always study maths on Monday morning!’

  ‘Correction,’ said Mr Brainfright. ‘You always used to study maths on Monday morning. But today I’ve got something much more important to teach you than maths.’

  ‘What could be more important than maths?’ said Fiona.

  ‘Magic tricks!’ said Mr Brainfright.

  The class cheered again.

  ‘I love magic tricks!’ said Jack.

  ‘Me too!’ boomed Gretel Armstrong. She had a very powerful voice. She also had very strong arms. In fact, she was the strongest girl in the school.

  ‘Me three!’ I said.

  ‘Excellent!’ said Mr Brainfright, beaming as he produced a long black magic wand from inside his purple jacket. ‘I thought we’d start with the vanishing pencil trick. Knowing how to make a pencil vanish is a very important life skill.’

  I didn’t know how true his words were then. But I do now.

  3

  Mr Brainfright’s important lesson no. 1

  Knowing how to make a pencil vanish is a very important life skill.

  4

  Magic

  We all leaned forward to watch Mr Brainfright make a pencil vanish.

  ‘The most important thing to know about making a pencil vanish,’ said Mr Brainfright, frowning and patting his coat pockets, ‘is to make sure you have a pencil to vanish. I seem to have vanished all of mine. Does anybody have a pencil that I could borrow?’

  ‘Will we get it back?’ asked David Worthy, our class captain.

  ‘I hope so,’ said Mr Brainfright. ‘But I can’t absolutely guarantee it, of course. I’m going to be using a very powerful spell.’

  ‘You can have mine!’ I said, opening my pencil case and pulling out the pencil that Mr Greenbeard, our school principal, had given me as a reward for finding his buried treasure. It was green with black stripes and had a little white eraser in the shape of a skull. The truth was, I didn’t like it very much, but I couldn’t say why. Maybe it had something to do with the way the eyes of the skull eraser seemed to stare at me.

  ‘Thank you, Henry,’ said Mr Brainfright, taking the pencil from my hand. ‘Everybody ready?’

  We all nodded.

  Fiona was scribbling notes.

  Newton was looking scared.

  Mr Brainfright tapped the pencil with his wand. ‘Abracadabra,’ he said, ‘make this pencil disappear!’ Then he tapped the pencil again and, I swear, it completely disappeared. ‘Voila!’ said Mr Brainfright, looking as surprised as everybody else.

  We all burst into applause.

  ‘That’s how you make a pencil vanish!’ he said proudly.

  ‘Can you make it come back again?’ said Clive.

  ‘But of course!’ said Mr Brainfright. ‘Well, I think I can. Stand back everyone.’ He raised his wand. ‘Abracadabra, make the pencil reappear!’

  He tapped the wand on the table. Once, twice, a third time, and then . . . KAPOW! Pencil shavings exploded out of the end of Mr Brainfright’s wand directly into his face!

  Pencil dust filled the air.

  Some of the students who sat in the front row were coughing and gasping for breath, but no one was coughing or gasping more than Mr Brainfright. His face was turning bright red again, only this time it was brighter and redder than when he’d been hanging upside down. He clutched his throat with both hands, staggered backwards across the classroom, and then . . . fell out the window.

  We all stared at each other in shock.

  Then, thinking that it was all part of the show, the class burst into applause again.

  But I didn’t. I knew something was wrong.

  I rushed to the window and looked down.

  Mr Brainfright was lying on his back. Still clutching his throat. Still choking.

  I didn’t hesitate.

  I jumped out the window and landed next to him in the flowerbed.

  Fortunately, the flowerbed was nice and soft, as it had recently been dug up.

  For once I didn’t have to worry about Mr Spade, the gardener, getting mad. Mr Spade was on stress leave after having to fill in all the holes that had been created a few weeks ago when the whole school had been looking for buried treasure.

  But even if I didn’t have to worry about Mr Spade, I did have to worry about Mr Brainfright.

  He was choking to death!

  He staggered to his feet and stared at me, his eyes pleading for help.

  Luckily, just the week before in class, he’d taught us the ‘Heimlich’ manoeuvre, guaranteed to dislodge foreign material from throats. Don’t ask me why he was teaching us that, but I was suddenly very glad that he had.

  Without thinking I jumped up, grabbed Mr Brainfright from behind and gave him a violent hug.

  He coughed loudly, and then, incredibly, my pencil—now whole again—flew out of his mouth!

  There was another round of applause.

  I looked up to see the whole of 5B hanging out the window, giving Mr Brainfright’s amazing trick a standing ovation.

  Mr Brainfright was frowning. ‘I think they think I did it on purpose,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t. That wasn’t supposed to happen.’

  5

  Here comes Fred!

  At lunchtime, Jack, Jenny, Gretel, Newton and I were sitting out in the yard underneath the trees next to the basketball court.

  Jack was picking gherkins out of his sandwich and flicking them onto the grass.

  Newton’s face was white. H
e was trembling.

  ‘Jack,’ said Jenny, ‘can you not do that? You’re scaring Newton.’

  ‘Huh?’ said Jack. ‘How?’

  ‘He’s scared of gherkins,’ Jenny reminded him.

  Newton nodded.

  ‘Sorry, Newton,’ said Jack, closing his sandwich. ‘I forgot. I’m not too keen on them either.’

  My sandwich was sitting beside me, but I didn’t feel much like eating. I was still a bit shaken by the incident with Mr Brainfright.

  I took the pencil out of my pocket and examined it carefully.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I don’t like,’ I said. ‘I don’t like this pencil. There’s something strange about it. Something . . . I don’t know . . . wrong. It scares me.’

  Jack laughed. ‘What a brave pair you are. Newton’s scared of gherkins and you’re scared of a pencil!’

  ‘You’re not so brave yourself, Jack,’ Gretel pointed out.

  ‘Yes I am,’ said Jack. ‘I’m not scared of anything.’

  Gretel laughed. ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Name one thing!’ said Jack.

  ‘Fred Durkin,’ Gretel replied, referring to Clive’s big bully of a brother.

  ‘Fred Durkin?’ snorted Jack. ‘Fred Durkin’s about as scary as a gherkin. Or a pencil, for that matter. I’m not scared of him.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Gretel.

  ‘Really,’ said Jack.

  ‘Well, you’re about to get your chance to prove it.’ Gretel pointed to the other side of the basketball courts. ‘Because here he comes!’

  6

  Yes Means No and No Means Yes

  Gretel was right. Fred Durkin was heading straight for us, followed by Clive, who was running to keep up with him.

  The blood drained from Jack’s face.

  ‘You want me to handle them?’ said Gretel, rolling up her sleeves.

  ‘No,’ said Jack, chewing his lip. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  Fred crossed the basketball court.

  As he did so, a ball hit him in the head.

  I expected him to turn around and kill the poor kid who threw it, but he didn’t. He didn’t even blink. He just kept walking until he was standing right in front of Jack.