The Dentist of Darkness by David O'Connell

Author:David O'Connell [O’Connell, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408887073
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2018-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

At breakfast the next morning, Mum was in a bad mood. Oranges were mercilessly pulverised into juice, toast was buttered into submission, and tea was slurped with extreme prejudice.

‘Anything … the matter, madam?’ enquired Tablet, arming himself with a spatula, just in case Mum decided to use the sausages as missiles.

Archie thought he already knew what the problem was.

‘Is it Mr Preen again?’ he asked.

Mum slammed her knife down on her plate, the sudden clatter sending Sherbet diving for cover under Archie’s chair.

‘That man is a nightmare!’ she said. ‘The committee to organise the Unquiet Night Festival events is practically falling apart!’

‘Why? We’ve only got a couple of days to go.’

‘I’m beginning to think there won’t be an Unquiet Night Festival at all,’ said Mum. ‘When Preen first showed up, a few people agreed with him. Now, half the committee have resigned because they think Unquiet Night is unwholesome. And, even worse, the N.I.C.E. campaign is threatening to protest outside the factory! I thought there’d be more resistance, but it feels like half of Dundoodle is sleepwalking its way around to Edward Preen’s way of thinking.’

Preen’s evil influence was spreading like a disease.

After breakfast, Billy and Fliss arrived. It was a rainy Sunday, but that didn’t dampen their excitement. There was lots to talk about, so they hurried to the hideout. Billy and Fliss were flabbergasted when Archie told them what had happened at the party.

‘You were lucky to get out of there alive!’ said Billy, on hearing of Portia and her flamethrower. ‘I wouldn’t have wanted to be you, caught between the P-Ps and Preen and the cake apocalypse.’

‘Preen is some kind of … evil spirit?’ said Fliss. ‘I can’t believe it! He’s a dentist. He gave Gordon McPlankton two fillings and a scale and polish. That’s not exactly the kind of thing the Prince of Darkness would do.’

‘That’s why it’s the perfect disguise,’ argued Billy. ‘He’s respectable – whoever heard of a demon dentist?’

Archie nodded. It all made sense … or did it? A small doubt lurked annoyingly in his mind. Was it some wyrdworking instinct he had? He dismissed it.

‘If we didn’t already have a reason to avoid Preen,’ he said, ‘we’ve got one now. Keep away from him! We don’t know what he might do.’

Meanwhile, Billy had been reading through Belle’s journal.

‘It’s hard to understand some bits because of the old-fashioned way of writing,’ he said. ‘She talks a lot about her honey-dragon friend. She called him Corignis. She also mentions the Fjurge Brownies. I think she thought they were rather funny.’

‘Does she say anything about the Mirk?’ asked Fliss impatiently. ‘Or about the Treeheart?’

‘No. The entries stop a few days before Unquiet Night. There are just a few empty pages at the end.’

‘Why did she give her journal to the dragons to keep?’ said Archie. ‘It doesn’t make sense, if there’s nothing useful in there, nothing to tell us what she did with the Treeheart.’

‘Maybe she’s still got it,’ said Fliss. ‘Maybe they buried it with her in the graveyard.

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