Bear in the Woods
ABOUT THE BOOK
No one believes April saw an enormous bear in the woods. No one thinks Fin didn’t break the Cat Lady’s foot. No one wants to know why Loretta bought Dad new underwear. And no one listens to Joe, because he never has much to say. The Peski Kids are up to their eyeballs in trouble, and it’s all their dog’s fault.
Now the Mayor is watching them like a hawk. She won’t let anyone ruin Currawong’s Daffodil Festival. That’s fine, the Peski Kids want to blend in, the only problem is … they are really terrible at it.
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1: WHERE WE LEFT OFF
Chapter 2: IN TOWN
Chapter 3: THE CAT LADY
Chapter 4: HARD DRIVE
Chapter 5: COMMUNITY SERVICE
Chapter 6: NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE
Chapter 7: ALL IN THE MIND
Chapter 8: HIDE-AND-SEEK
Chapter 9: THE OFFICE OF ANIMAL CONTROL
Chapter 10: THE LONG ARM OF THE LAW
Chapter 11: THE CAT LADY
Chapter 12: GOING ON A BEAR HUNT
Chapter 13: BACK IN HOSPITAL
Chapter 14: HEAD SHRINKING
Chapter 15: MORE THAN ONE WAY TO SKIN A CAT
Chapter 16: PRETTY PLEASE
Chapter 17: TENSION
Chapter 18: NEIL
Chapter 19: THE MAYORAL PROPOSITION
Chapter 20: VISIT WITH THE CAT WHISPERER
Chapter 21: LISTEN TO ME
Chapter 22: TRUST NO ONE
Chapter 23: THE BIG DAY
Chapter 24: THE AFTERMATH
Chapter 25: WESLEY
About the Author
Books by R. A. Spratt
Friday Barnes
Nanny Piggins
Imprint
Read more at Penguin Books Australia
To Angus
As Dr Banfield slowly woke up, she knew something was wrong even without opening her eyes. It was so quiet. The house was never quiet. If her children – Joe, Fin and April – were awake, they were always fighting. Or the dog was barking. Or both. Her brain was struggling to wake up enough to make sense of it. There was a reason her children were silent. A bad reason. It had something to do with why the mattress she was lying on was so uncomfortable, and why the room felt damp and cold. Then her brain remembered. She wasn’t at home. She was in a prison cell somewhere in Eastern Europe. Everything had gone terribly wrong. A sick, hollow feeling of unutterable sadness swept over her. She may never hear her children squabbling again.
Just then, there was an electronic buzz. The lock to her cell door clicked open and a guard entered. Dr Banfield didn’t even bother looking up. The guard brought in a tray of breakfast food as he had done every day of the weeks she had been there. Dr Banfield opened her eyes as the guard bent forward to lay the tray on the ground. He seemed like a nice young man really. He couldn’t have been much more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. He hadn’t been serving long enough to become jaded and cruel yet. It would be a shame to have to break his arm. But she was going to do it anyway.
Before the tray even touched the concrete, Dr Banfield’s hand shot out, grabbed the guard’s wrist and twisted it cruelly, tearing the ligaments in his elbow and snapping his ulna, while simultaneously hooking her leg around to kick him hard in the back of the head. He was knocked out cold in less than two seconds, and the door was still unlocked.
Dr Banfield took off running. She raced down the hallway to the guards’ office. There was no one in there. She used the pass she’d stolen from the guard’s belt to get through the double security doors, then rushed over to the control panel and hit override to unlock the doors to the corridor. Dr Banfield took off again, sprinting down three flights of stairs and towards the kitchens. Where there were kitchens, there was always access for delivery trucks. It was the weakest point of any prison. If she made it there, it was her best chance of getting out.
Dr Banfield pushed on, running faster. She was deceptively quick for a frumpy, middle-aged woman. She was going to make it. Only one hundred metres to go. Then suddenly, she was struck by lightning. At least, that was what it felt like. A surge of electricity shot through her and her legs buckled. She toppled forward and crumpled facedown on the ground. She lay there, gasping for breath. Heavy footsteps slowly approached. A steelcapped boot was roughly wedged under her shoulder and she was kicked over. Dr Banfield looked up into the cruel face of the prison governor.
‘You weren’t leaving us were you, Dr Banfield?’ said the governor, in a thick accent. ‘Not when we still have so much to talk about.’
As Ingrid drove them home, the Peski kids felt almost like a regular family. As regular as a family with a traumatised father and a mysteriously absent mother could feel. Even Dad had stopped manically fidgeting so much.
‘I’m just glad this cockroach craziness is over,’ said Fin. ‘Now things can go back to normal.’
‘They can’t go back to normal,’ snapped April, ‘because nothing here was ever normal to start with. Everything here is weird and all the people are bonkers.’
‘Yeah, but that is n-n-normal for Currawong,’ said Joe.
‘I’m going to have a cup of tea and spend the afternoon separating my daffodil bulbs,’ said Dad.
‘Vad är det?!’ cried Ingrid.
They didn’t have to speak Swedish to figure out what she was looking at. Up ahead, a huge cloud of black smoke billowed above the trees directly over their house.
Ingrid floored the accelerator and they flew up the driveway, skidding to a halt on the gravel as they came around the last bend.
‘Oh no, oh no, oh no!’ wailed Dad.
Their house was on fire. Flames licked out from an upstairs window.
The Peski kids were horror struck.
‘This is a nightmare,’ murmured Fin.
It was the second time they had seen their home in flames in one week.
‘Who would do this to us?’ asked Joe.
No one had a clever reply.
Ingrid leapt out of the car and sprinted up the front steps. The locked front door barely slowed her down. She kicked it open without breaking stride and disappeared into the house.
‘Ingrid!’ cried Dad. He turned back to his children. ‘I’m pretty sure that’s not safe. Someone should go after her.’
The kids just looked at him. Dad was the adult. Sure he was scruffy and permanently bewildered, but he was technically in charge. If anyone was going to do anything crazy-heroic, it was really up to him.
Then Joe had a brainwave, proving that he might be blond and brawny, but he could have good ideas too. ‘Your i-i-irrigation system,’ he stammered.
Dad glanced at his watch. ‘Yes, it is time to water the bulbs, but that can wait. I think we should deal with the burning house first.’
‘No, I mean we can use the irrigation system to put out the f-fire,’ said Joe.
‘Let’s do it!’ said April. She liked any idea that involved action.
April and Joe hurried over to different flowerbeds and pulled up the sprinkler heads. Fin rushed to the tap and turned the water on. April had her sprinkler head facing the wrong way and she was blasted in the face by the high-pressure water. It knocked her blue flat cap off her head and flattened her usually chaotic curly brown hair. Pumpkin barked excitedly. He wanted to be splashed too.
‘You did that on purpose!’ yelled April.
‘You’re the one holding it,’ said Fin pedantically. ‘It’s just an unexpected bonus for me that you’re silly enough to point it at your own face.’
You’d never have guessed that Fin was actually eleven months
older than April because he was shorter and the way his cap fell down to his ears made him look very young. But he could be as sarcastic and insulting as someone five times his age.
Joe trained his jet on the upstairs window.
‘Hold this,’ said April, handing her sprinkler to Dad. He pointed it at the flames above them as April scrambled up the verandah railing and onto the corrugated iron roof awning. ‘Pass it up,’ she urged. Dad handed April the sprinkler and she was able to douse the flames up close.
Suddenly, the window smashed open as a flaming computer came sailing through the air. It was quite spectacular. Almost beautiful. The electronic box glided in a parabolic arc over the garden beds, flame and smoke billowing behind it.
‘It’s going to hit Pumpkin!’ cried April.
But the small dog had the good sense to bound out of the way just before the flaming computer smashed into the middle of the lawn with a loud CRUNCH.
‘Wow!’ said Fin.
They looked up at the window. Ingrid leaned out through the blackened frame. The flames were doused, but smoke and steam continued to waft off the charred timber. Ingrid had soot on her face and arms, but she still looked like a Nordic goddess with her long blonde hair and lean, athletic physique.
‘Elden är slackt nu,’ said Ingrid.
April blasted her in the face with the sprinkler.
‘Men hall!’ exclaimed Ingrid.
‘Sorry,’ said April. ‘Just making sure there weren’t any embers on you.’
It turned out that the fire had not been that bad. When they went upstairs to look, they saw that the blaze had not spread beyond Joe’s bedroom. The only thing burnt was Joe’s desktop computer and the wall behind it.
With the computer lying out on the lawn and the curtains taken down, most of the remaining damage was done by the water from April’s and Joe’s over enthusiastic efforts to control the blaze.
‘How does a c-c-computer catch fire?’ asked Joe, looking around his wreck of a bedroom.
‘If you set fire to it yourself to hide what you’ve got on your hard drive,’ accused April as she glared at Joe.
‘I w-w-wouldn’t set fire to my own bedroom,’ said Joe. ‘That’s just s-s-stupid.’
‘Well, you’re not exactly Albert Einstein, are you?’ said April.
‘It could have been an electrical malfunction,’ said Fin, peering at the power socket. ‘An electricity surge, or dust in the mainframe.’
‘Where did you even get a computer from anyway?’ asked April.
‘I f-f-found it,’ said Joe. ‘It was with the j-junk under the bed. I th-thought it’d be handy.’
‘You wanted to play computer games, didn’t you?’ said Fin. He knew his brother well, and Joe enjoyed the mindless escapism into a digital virtual reality as much as any sixteen-year-old. To be fair, when your actual reality was as difficult as Joe’s it would be silly not to.
‘Well, there isn’t m-m-much else to do in Currawong,’ said Joe.
‘Jag kan inte forstå att dessa dumma barn kan tro att datorn spontant slog i brand,’ said Ingrid.
Everyone turned to look at her.
‘She does realise we don’t speak Swedish, right?’ said April.
‘Ingrid was very brave bursting into the house and throwing the computer out,’ said Dad. ‘The fire could have been much worse.’
Ingrid was their next-door neighbour’s au pair. Looking after the staggeringly beautiful and sociopathic Loretta Viswanathan was hard enough. Putting out fires at the neighbour’s house was definitely above and beyond an au pair’s normal duties.
‘Brave or stupid,’ said April, turning to glare at Ingrid. ‘Or dumma, as you say in Swedish.’
Ingrid looked uncomfortable.
‘When did you learn some Swedish?’ asked Fin.
‘On our first day here,’ said April. ‘She called us dumma, dumma barn. Don’t you remember?’
‘No,’ said Fin.
‘I paid attention,’ said April, still glowering at Ingrid.
Ingrid looked suspiciously back and forth.
‘Thank you for your help, Ingrid,’ said Dad politely.
Ingrid nodded. While everyone was looking at her she held up her finger to get their attention, then pointed at something on the floor. ‘Titta här, en ledtrad.’
‘What’s she saying?’ asked April.
Fin walked over and peered at the thing she was pointing at. It was a small empty tin. There was so much junk cluttering the bedrooms in Dad’s house it was hard to notice any one thing in particular. But Fin could see why this small tin had caught Ingrid’s interest.
‘It’s a can of lighter fluid for starting fires,’ said Fin as he picked it up and shook it. ‘It’s empty.’
‘Someone broke in and set fire to the c-c-computer?’ asked Joe.
‘Why else would this be on the floor?’ reasoned Fin.
‘But the front door was locked,’ said Dad. ‘How did they get in?’
‘I’ve got a better question,’ said April, turning to glare at Ingrid. ‘How did she know we should look at this tin, if she can’t read English?’
‘Det är en distinkt lukt,’ said Ingrid, miming sniffing and wafting a smell towards her nose.
‘I think she’s saying she could smell it,’ said Dad.
‘Do you think we could f-f-fix the computer?’ asked Joe, peering out the window at the blackened shell steaming in the middle of the lawn.
‘It depends,’ said Fin. ‘If you want to use it as a big paperweight, then yes, I can do that. But that computer is never playing Tetris again.’
‘It was too old for Tetris,’ said Joe. ‘It only had Pong.’
‘You’ve got to try and fix it,’ said April.
‘It was on fire, then got hurled out of a second- storey window and doused with water,’ said Fin. ‘I’m not a miracle worker.’
‘I can take a look,’ said Dad. ‘I know a bit about computers.’
‘Really?’ said Fin sceptically.
‘It’s just systems engineering,’ said Dad. ‘It’s all logical.’
‘Yeah, but you’re not,’ said April.
‘You should still try,’ said Fin. ‘There might be a clue on there about why some nutbar would want to break into our house and set fire to it.’
‘We don’t know any n-n-nutbars,’ said Joe.
‘We know Loretta,’ said April.
‘She does do odd things to entertain herself,’ agreed Dad.
‘She’s all right,’ said Joe.
April rolled her eyes. ‘You only say that because you’re in love with her.’
Joe blushed. He was terrified of Loretta, so he hoped he wasn’t in love with her. But she had kissed him on the cheek once, and that had made his lower intestines feel very peculiar.
‘Joe and Loretta sitting in a tree …’ taunted April in a sing-song voice. ‘K-I-S-S-I-N-G.’
‘That rhyme doesn’t make any sense,’ snapped Fin. ‘Why would anyone climb into a tree to kiss? It can’t be safe. What if you had an inner ear infection? When you closed your eyes to kiss you’d fall out of the tree!’ Now Fin was red in the face from delivering this impassioned speech. He was secretly in love with Loretta. But thankfully, due to his family’s total emotional insensitivity, no one had noticed yet.
‘We just left L-L-Loretta in town,’ said Joe. ‘It c-c-can’t have been her.’
‘Perhaps she has an identical twin sister we don’t know about,’ said April. ‘She’s weird enough to keep a sibling locked in the cellar.’
‘I n-n-need a computer for school,’ said Joe. ‘I’ve got an assignment on c-cumulus clouds.’
‘Yeah right,’ said April. ‘That’s code, isn’t it?’
‘Code?’ asked Dad. ‘Why is Joe using codes?’
‘He’s a teenage boy,’ said April. ‘He really wants a computer so he can look at ladies.’
‘I d-d-do not,’ said Joe. He found women and girls terrifying, both in real life and in two-dimensional ima
ges. ‘I have an assignment for g-g-geography.’
Dad reached into his pocket. ‘You can buy a new one.’ He opened his wallet and looked at the thick wad of notes inside. ‘Would $1000 cover it?’
Joe’s eyes gaped. April and Fin were stunned into silence.
‘Y-y-yeah, that ought to do it,’ said Joe.
Early the next morning Joe, Fin, April and Pumpkin walked into town. Joe had the money safely tucked in his pocket.
‘You can get a cheap computer for $300, then we can spend the rest on something really cool!’ urged April.
‘Like what?’ asked Fin. ‘The Currawong shops have a pretty limited range.’
In fact, the only place in Currawong where you could buy a computer was the post office. Their range consisted of two models, a cheap laptop and a slightly less cheap laptop.
‘We could get a drone,’ said April, ‘and attach a laser to it.’
‘What would we do with a laser-wielding drone?’ asked Fin.
‘Duh,’ said April scathingly. ‘Program it to shoot intruders, of course.’
‘This isn’t Star Wars,’ said Fin. ‘Lasers don’t really shoot blasts.’
‘I know they can cut into people. Doctors use lasers in eye surgery,’ said April.
‘So you want to perform eye surgery on intruders?’ said Fin.
‘That’s a good idea,’ said April. ‘It would give them a nasty shock, wouldn’t it? Having a microscopic hole burnt into their cornea. Make them think twice about bugging us.’
Pumpkin ran ahead into the town gardens to bite the bloom off a daffodil. The people of Currawong were very proud of the gardens. They were the location of many of the town’s eccentric festivals.