Phredde and the Temple of Gloom by Jackie French

Author:Jackie French [Jackie French]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780730444695
Publisher: HarperCollins

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5 Our vampire school teacher.

Chapter 10

Down the Slimy Tunnel

Something squeaked near my feet. A big squeak. Not a mouse-like squeak. Not a bat-like squeak. This was a…a…a rat sort of squeak. A giant rat with long rat teeth and slimy fur and…

Stop it! I told myself. There are no rats here. And even if there are, aren’t rats better than becoming Prudence pate? Prudence patty cakes? Prudence with pears and custard?

Squeak!!

I gulped. ‘You be careful, rat!’ I announced a bit shakily. ‘I…I’m bigger than you!’

Squeak!

‘If my big brother was here, he’d eat you!’ I yelled. ‘My big brother is a werewolf and he loves chasing rats!’

Actually Mark has a pet rat called Ginger. Mark would never eat a rat. He prefers corgis and Persian kittens. But I hoped the rat didn’t know that.

SQUEAK!!

‘And if my friends Phredde and Bruce were here they’d change you into a flea! So there!’

Squeak, squeak, SQUEAK!

I gulped again. Maybe if I sang, I thought. I wouldn’t hear the rat then.

‘This old man, he played one, he played…’

My voice boomed and echoed in the tunnel. Then it suddenly occurred to me that if you are trying to escape quietly out a secret tunnel from a Prudence-eating evil phaery, loud singing might not be such a brilliant idea.

I stopped singing and kept on wading. Slosh, slosh, slosh…

At least my singing seemed to have frightened the rat away. If it had been a rat. If it hadn’t been a…a…a vampire slug, about to suck my life blood out my ankles. Or a strand of sentient slime that had mutated in the ooze and was going to slime up my legs and strangle me and then digest me till I was slime as well…

Be quiet, Prudence! I told myself. Stop imagining things! Just because you’ve been imprisoned in a dark, dismal dungeon by an evil phaery who wants to turn you into deep-fried Prudence, and now you’re sloshing down a slimy secret tunnel with rats and ooze and…and…and things, there’s no reason to get all panicky. Just calm down. Calm down and keep wading.

Slosh, slosh, slosh…

My feet were getting cold. My nose was even colder.

Slosh, slosh, slosh…

I was hungry, too. If only I’d had time for even a quick nibble of the lamington walls before they’d been PING!ed away! Even a crumb of gingerbread windowsill…

And I was scared! Who knew where this silly secret tunnel led! Maybe I was just heading down into the evil phaery’s kitchen. The cauldron would be simmering away, just waiting for her to add a cup of chicken stock, three onions, a clove of garlic and a Prudence!

Should I head back the other way? But that might be even worse! Actually it was hard to think of anything worse. But there was still nothing else I could really do.

So I kept on wading. Slosh, slosh, slish, slosh, slish, slosh…

I stopped. Except the sloshing didn’t stop. Even with my feet totally, absolutely still there was something sloshing up the tunnel.

Slosh, slosh, slish, slish,

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