Macdonald Hall #3: Beware the Fish!

Room 13

The town of Chutney, population 3100, is located on Highway 48 seven miles north of Macdonald Hall. It has the usual doctor, dentist, police station, undertaker and combination motel-gas station. It also has, on the main street, television station CHUT, serving Chutney and surrounding territory.

It was early Tuesday morning. In room 13 of the Chutney Motel, Sergeant Harold P. Featherstone, Junior, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had already cut himself twice trying to shave with cold water. Finally, in disgust, he towelled the shaving cream off his face, left the bathroom and switched on the TV. He was just in time for the morning news.

The black and white picture was of poor quality—and he just might have to watch it all day, he reflected glumly. Deputy Chief Bullock had assigned him to investigate some reports about a strange fish that people in the area were seeing on their screens. Special Division thought it might be the work of a terrorist group. More likely someone playing a joke, Featherstone muttered to himself. But that was before he saw the Fish.

It happened at 8:45. Suddenly the newcaster's face was replaced by the large fuzzy image of a fish. A loud voice shouted, The Fish Revolution has begun! The Fish is everywhere! Beware the Fish!, followed by maniacal laughter. Then the newscaster returned.

Shocked, Featherstone reached quickly for a pad and pencil.

* * *

Bruno Walton flicked the switch, deactivating Elmer's machine. "Love it!" he exclaimed, dressing like a whirlwind. It was his custom not to get out of bed before 8:45, and being on time for nine o'clock classes was not easy.

"C'mon, hurry up," Boots prodded, waiting at the door. "We don't want to be on report. The Fish is probably mad enough at us for last night. When I think of what Sidney did to Miss Scrimmage..."

"He didn't do anything," objected Bruno. "It was just an accident. Cathy shouldn't have screamed like that."

"Cathy was just creating a diversion to help us get away. It was quick thinking."

"It was definitely quick," agreed Bruno, pulling a T-shirt over his head, "but I'm not sure it was thinking. Anyway, Miss Scrimmage doesn't know it was us. Let's go. What are you waiting for?" The two boys ran off to class.

* * *

"Men," said Bruno over the lunch table, "I now call upon your powers of ingenuity to save Macdonald Hall."

"Cut the drivel," snarled Wilbur Hackenschleimer. Ever since the school's austerity program had begun he had been in an indescribably foul mood. "What is it you want us to do this time?"

Bruno was undaunted. "We've decided that the best way to bring publicity to the Hall is to get ourselves into the Rankin Book of World Records." He slammed a thick paperback book onto his tray. "Here's the book. All we have to do is take a record and beat it. Do I have a volunteer?"

There was absolute silence.

"I'm very disappointed in you," said Bruno. "Okay, let the bulldozers come and flatten everything! Let them pave our lawn and put up a parking lot! I'm the only guy who cares, and I can't do it by myself!"

"Oh, Bruno, shut up!" sighed Boots. "We'd like to save the school, but world records are hard to break. I was going to go to the Chutney Fair and try to break the record for riding the ferris wheel. Then I looked it up and found out that the guys who hold it rode for more than four weeks! I can just see me asking The Fish for four weeks off school so I can go ride a ferris wheel!"

"Hey, I know," said Pete Anderson brightly. "Wilbur could set an eating record. Anything anybody else can eat he can eat more of."

"I'm out of training," Wilbur replied sadly. "I haven't had a square meal in so long that my stomach is probably shrunk down to nothing."