Curse of the Werebottom

Chapter 2

Larry Davidson hit the bottom of the stairs with a thump. "Yes! - A perfect two footed landing" he congratulated himself, after his record beating six step leap. He span on his heels and strode into the kitchen to eat his breakfast before deciding how best to spend the very first Monday of the summer school holidays.

Larry lived with his mum and dad in the very boring town of Diddlesbury, just large enough to have its own football team, and just small enough to feel like the hustle and bustle and excitement of city life was miles and miles away. He also lived with his sister, Harriet, who at fourteen years old was two years older than he was.

Harriet was busy eating toast, reading a magazine, advising their dad on the best way to fry an egg and pouring herself a glass of milk when Larry entered the kitchen. She stopped and wished him firstly, a good morning and secondly, a warning. "She's just finished the night shift and she's tired. Don't make too much noise because she's going to go to bed after she's had breakfast with us." Larry's mum worked as a nurse in their local hospital and although she was the kindest women you could ever hope to meet, she could have quite a temper – especially when she was in need of sleep!

She stumbled in the kitchen and kissed both Larry and Harriet on the cheeks before sloping over to their dad and slipping her arms around his waist while he was frying eggs. "How do you like your eggs in the morning?" She sang to him in an out of tune voice. "I like mine with a kiss!" he sang back in a voice that was as equally as painful to listen to. She gave him a kiss on the back of his neck as he shouted, "Hoop La" and flipped the eggs over in the pan. For some strange reason, they both found this funny and giggled like school children. Harriet rolled her eyes and said, "Honestly, sometimes I think that I'm the responsible adult in this house."

Larry smiled, "How was work mum?" As she sat, she let out a long sigh. She was obviously tired from her shift at the hospital, but she still radiated energy as she spoke. She was a beautiful woman who despite working very long and anti-social hours still looked much younger than her actual years. She brushed her short blonde hair away from her eyes with her fingers before replying.

"Well, it's the strangest thing, but last night two patients were admitted to the ward in the strangest circumstances. They were both frozen solid, with looks of pure terror on their faces. And, oh my stars, their faces! They both nearly glowed, they were that green! It took all night for them to fade and return to their normal colour, and as for the smell! Well, that's something that we won't be discussing at the breakfast table!"

Larry was very curious. "They were both really bright green?"

"Yes love," she replied. "No one knows why or how it happened, only that when they finally came to this morning, all they would say was that a monster tried to break into their tent to gas them! They even tried to have us all believe that this so called monster was just like a human bottom! I think that they might have watched one too many scary films to start talking such nonsense."

Dad started to laugh in agreement with mum, as he placed eggs and toast in front of both her and Larry. Harriet gulped down the rest of her drink and went into the lounge to read her magazine in peace, lost in the latest article about the latest pop sensation.

Larry wolfed down his eggs and toast in record time and asked his parents if he was allowed to go and call for Eddie, his best friend in the whole world. After agreeing to be back before it got too late, he ran to the garage to get his bike and pedalled as fast as he could to Eddie's house.

With Eddie's help, he had two very important things he had to do this morning. The first was to get to the local campsite to look for clues and the second was to discuss these strange events with an expert, and Larry had just the person in mind.

All that Larry could focus on from that moment was the very real possibility that there was a monster on the loose and on the prowl in his home town. If this turned out to be true, he was determined that he was going to be the one to find it!