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- Herausgeber: Little Tiger Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Serie: Skeleton Keys
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
The third tall-but-true tale in the darkly comic new series SKELETON KEYS from the award-winning duo behind STITCH HEAD.Greetings! My name is Skeleton Keys and these fantabulant fingers of mine can open doors to hidden worlds… Join me for the curious tale of Gap-tooth Jack – thief, adventurer and champion of imagining!When Skeleton Keys banishes Wordy Gerdy from the present using his Key to Time, he thinks he's seen the last of the troublesome unimaginary. But Gerdy uses her ghostly pen to wreak her revenge, and before Skeleton Keys knows it she's written his precious keys out of existence.Skeleton Keys and his partner Daisy must follow Gerdy into the past to retrieve her pen and make her restore his keys. But Skeleton Keys has unknowingly sent Gerdy back to his own past and her pen is now in the hands of notorious thief Gap-tooth Jack. As they set off to find Jack, Skeleton Keys can't help noticing that everything looks strangely familiar. Then he comes face to face with the thief – could it be that the two have met before?Perfect for fans of David Walliams, AMELIA FANG and THE NOTHING TO SEE HERE HOTEL.Praise for THE UNIMAGINARY FRIEND:"Guy has mixed cleverly created characters with his trademark humour and wit to give us his best book yet. This is one spooky series I'm going to devour!" – Authorfy
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To the real Emily ~ Guy Bass
To Mackenzie G – sorry about the wait
~ Pete Williamson
Contents
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Introduction
Greetings! To tick-tockers, swiss-cheesers and hurlypots! To the imaginary and the unimaginary! To the living, the dead and everyone in between, my name is Keys … Skeleton Keys.
Ages or so ago, long before you were even thinking about being born, I was an IF – an imaginary friend. Then, before I knew what was happening, I was suddenly as real as a dog’s tail! I had become unimaginary.
But that was a lifetime or three ago. Nowadailies, I concern myself with those IFs who have been recently unimagined. Wherever they may appear, so does Ol’ Mr Keys! For these fantabulant fingers of mine open doors to anywhere and elsewhere … hidden worlds … secret places … doors to the limitless realm of all imagination.
O, glorious burden! These keys have opened more doors than you have had biscuits – and 2each door has led to an adventure that would make a head spin from its neck! The stories I could tell you…
But of course you would not be here if you did not want a story! Well, never fear, dallywanglers – today I have a hum-dum-dinger of a tale to make even the soundest mind loop-de-loop! Brace your breeches for the truly unbelievable, unbelievably true tale I have called The Legend of Gap-tooth Jack.
Ah, Gap-tooth Jack – thief! Adventurer! Champion of imagining! Jack was a friend to some, hero to others, and a right pain in the rumplings for everyfolk else. The flabbergasting fable of Gap-tooth Jack is even older than I, but to find our way to the past we must begin in the present, with a second story, and a boy named Kasper.
Kasper has what we in the business of imagining call a wild imagination. On the seventh day of his seventh year, Kasper imagined himself a friend. He did not need to, perhaps, for he had friends enough. But imaginations are not trussed ’n’ tethered by 3need … imaginations run free! Kasper named his IF Wordy Gerdy. Gerdy was a ghost of a girl with a most remarkable ability – with pen in hand she could rewrite the story of life itself. Let us suppose you have a pet dog – if Wordy Gerdy rewrote your story, you might suddenly have a cat instead. And, what is more, you would not even know that anything had changed – you would be as sure as shampoo that you had always had a cat!
4Now imagine if Wordy Gerdy became unimaginary – if her power to rewrite stories became real. What then is to stop chaos, confusion or even calamity? For strange things can happen when imaginations run wild…
Join me as I begin to unravel the mystery of the myth of the legend of Gap-tooth Jack, by first paying a much needed visit to Kasper and his family. Their house, dwarfed by the sprawling city that surrounds it, shuddles ’n’ shakes as a thunderstorm rages outside. The story has just begun, and yet it has already been rewritten…
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KNOCK.
KNOCK.KNOCK.
Kasper was lying on the living-room floor, watching his third-favourite episode of Howie Howzer’s Haunted Trousers, when the knock came.
“Mu-um,” he called, not taking his eyes off the television. The sound of the thunderstorm outside swallowed his call. “Da-ad, someone’s at the dooooooor…”8
There was no answer from the kitchen. Kasper wasn’t about to move – not with the episode reaching its haunting highpoint. He turned up the volume as thunder clapped outside.
Then:
CLICK CLUNK.
A key turned in the lock.
Kasper sat up. Everyone was in the kitchen – Mum, Dad, Jakob, the twins.
So, who was unlocking the front door?
A cold shiver ran down Kasper’s back. He got to his feet and turned to see the door creak slowly open. Rain lashed in as lightning forked in the night sky, illuminating a tall, lean figure standing in the doorway.
“Forgive my intrudings,” the figure said. “I fear that if I do not come in, I might drown in this thundersome weather.”
The figure took off a wide, three-peaked hat to reveal a grinning, bone-white skull.9
10Kasper gasped and stumbled backwards until he was pressed against the television.
“Fret not, I am not so spine-chillering as I look,” the skeleton said as he stepped inside. “I am afraid skinless is how I came into this world, so skinless is how I remain.”
Kasper tried to call out but fear caught the cry in his throat.
“My name is Keys … Skeleton Keys,” the skeleton continued, placing his hat on the nearby sofa and shaking the raindrops from his coat. “And you need not be afeared. After all, you brought me here.”
“I-I did?” Kasper blurted.
“Well, someone did,” replied Skeleton Keys, glancing around. “For although I was far that-a-way in the comfort of my Doorminion, I felt the twitch, that most soul-clattering rattle of the bones that alerts me to a new unimagining.”11
“I-I don’t understand,” Kasper replied.
“Somewhere in this house is an IF – an imaginary friend – that has been brought to life!” the skeleton declared. “Have you not noticed anything oddish or outlandish of late? Unimaginary friends do tend to be accompanied by the most flabbergasting freakery…”
“I don’t know what you—Wait.” Kasper scratched the back of his head, the fog of fear clearing a little. “Like what happened to Wordy Gerdy?” he asked.
“Who?”
“M-my friend – I mean, not my real friend,” Kasper replied. “Except now she is.”
“Now she is your real friend, or now she is real?” Skeleton Keys asked, leaning towards him.
“Really real,” Kasper explained.
“How real? As real as a vivid dream? As real as a stubbed toe? As real as rock cakes?”12
“I was thinking about her and all of a sudden she wasn’t in my head any more – she was right there in front of me. She was—”
“Unimaginary,” Skeleton Keys interrupted. “I knew it, my twitch was right on the money! Now tell me, Kasper, where is this Wordy Gerdy?”
Kasper pointed to a door at the far end of the room. “In the kitchen, with everyone else.”
“Then fret not – Ol’ Mr Keys is on the case,” declared Skeleton Keys, taking long, deliberate strides towards the kitchen. He pushed open the door and strode inside to find Kasper’s family sitting around a small, white table. “Dogs ’n’ cats!” the skeleton gasped.
“Mum, Dad, this, uh, this is Mr Keys,” said Kasper, following in behind.
“How do you do, Mr Keys?” said Kasper’s mum. “May I offer you a cup of tea?”
“I am afraid it would have nowhere to go,” 13replied Skeleton Keys. “Thank you all the same.”
“Then something to eat?” added Kasper’s mum.
“CARROTS!” cried Kasper’s dad.
“It’s always carrots with you,” sighed Kasper’s mum.
Skeleton Keys scratched his skull with a key-tipped finger, before ushering Kasper to a corner of the kitchen.
“Forgive me for asking,” he whispered. “But are you sure this is your family?”
“What? Yeah,” replied Kasper. “What do you mean?”
“It is just that I could not help but notice that your father is a very large rabbit.”
Kasper looked at his dad. Sure enough, he was a brown-grey rabbit the size of a bear
Kasper shrugged. “What else would he be?” he said.14
“CARROTS! CARROTS!” shouted the enormous rabbit, thumping his great foot against the floor.
“I also note,” Skeleton Keys continued, “that your mother is, well, is—”
“Is what?” Kasper’s mother interrupted. She stood on the kitchen table, her hands on her hips. She was no taller than a teacup. “These are modern times, Mr Keys. Families come in all shapes and sizes.”
“Quite so, but…” uttered the skeleton, gazing in bafflement at a pair of hamster-sized, sky-blue elephants, huddled together in a high chair on the other side of the table.
15“That’s Sofie and Ingrid – they’re twins,” Kasper explained as both elephants let out an identical trumpeting sound. Then he pointed to a sock puppet with buttons for eyes, draped lifelessly on the kitchen table. “And that’s my big brother, Jakob.”
“Don’t mind him, you’ll be lucky to get two words out of him all year,” Kasper’s tiny mother tutted as Skeleton Keys leaned in to inspect the sock puppet. “You know what teenagers are like.”
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“Crumcrinkles…” said Skeleton Keys, gazing around the room at Kasper’s decidedly unconventional family. “Who did all this?”
“Did all what?” Kasper asked.
“CARROTS!” boomed Kasper’s dad.
“Why, this! And this and this, and, by my buckles, this,” Skeleton Keys cried, pointing at each of Kasper’s family members in turn. “Who transformed, transmogrified and transfigured these poor dallywanglers? You are not trying to tell me that your father has 19always been a rabbit?”
“Always…?” replied Kasper as if the word had suddenly illuminated a hidden memory. “I mean, I-I don’t remember him being anything else. But I guess I don’t really remember him being a rabbit either.”
“I do believe you are as confuddled as your family is converted … and that this is the work of an unimaginary,” declared Skeleton Keys, craning low to eyeball Kasper. “Where is your IF, Kasper? Where is—”
“Didn’t do it!”
The cry came from inside a low cupboard at the far end of the kitchen. Skeleton Keys tilted his head with a dry creak, his milk-white eyeballs fixing upon a rattling cupboard door. He reached the cupboard in two long strides. It rattled again as he wrapped his key-tipped fingers around the door handle.
“Wordy Gerdy? Is that—”20
“DIDN’T DO IT!”
The cupboard doors were suddenly flung open from the inside, sending Skeleton Keys flying. A strange, ghostly girl burst from within and hovered, impossibly, in the air. She flitted around the room in panic before finally settling in the far corner of the kitchen, like a bee exhausted from buzzing around a window. Though she was solid enough, the girl was faintly see-through and emitted a greenish-white glow.
21“Wordy Gerdy, I presume,” said Skeleton Keys, dusting himself off.
“Gerdy didn’t do it! Gerdy didn’t change a thing! Everything like this already!” The ghoulish girl hovered in the air again, her hair floating above her head as if she was underwater. In her right hand, she held a large, brush-tipped pen.
“Cheese ’n’ biscuits! She is a ghost writer?” Skeleton Keys gasped, a peel of thunder echoing outside. “Well, that explains everything.”
“What explains everything?” asked Kasper as his unimaginary friend hid her pen behind her back.
