Doofus, Dog of Doom

  Chapter Nine

  Spring was sprouting from every tree and bush, bejewelling them with gold and purple blossom like lavish scatterings of treasure. Holly watched this decorative progress jealously from her classroom, where she was stuck doing exams. She did not really mind exams, since she was quick if not entirely accurate; but to Clive they were a form of torture.

  However, the exams finished, and the cricket season started, in two senses of the word. Clive went off hunting for grasshoppers and crickets: while Holly’s teacher told her that she had the makings of a good fast bowler, so she draped an old curtain over the washing line and spent every evening bowling into it until Dad protested that her run-up was ruining the lawn.

  Doofus lay on the grass and watched her practise, occasionally yawning with his strange half-howl. He never tried to retrieve the cricket ball as Pancake used to do so avidly. On the other hand, he didn’t try to bury it in the compost heap either.

  At last the half-term holiday arrived, which meant two weeks off school. As well as bowling, Holly began to keep a diary. It was not a holiday diary, nor a bowling diary. It was a howling diary, with howls listed on a scale of one to ten.

  One was barely a sigh; ten signified the full-blown, blood-curdling, nose-to-moon affair. She had yet to record a ten.

  Her diary read:

  Friday, 5.30pm. 3/10. Number 7’s tortoise drowned in pond.

  Saturday, 7.20 am. 2/10. ?? Unknown.

  Saturday, 11.15am. 5/10. Mrs Wragg’s cat put down by vet.

  Sunday, 9.35 am. 3/10. Dead sparrow in Clive’s garden.

  Sunday. 1.40 pm. 1/10. ??

  And so on. It was a gruesome diary, but she had to keep it. Only in this way could she confirm the truth: that whenever Doofus howled, something died.

  The closer and the bigger the dying creature was, the louder his howls. Mrs Devlin’s mousetrap three doors down caused several howls at level 2 or 3. But Jamie Garrow’s guinea pig, half a mile away, had no effect. Nor did flies, unless they were swatted practically underneath his nose.

  Clive was deeply interested in her diary, and had reported the cat and Jamie’s guinea pig to her. He claimed to have made friends with the vet. Holly suspected that he just bombarded the poor woman with questions until she broke down and talked.

  “I’d like to know how much Doofus howls at night,” he said. “But he’s too far away to tell.”

  “Too far away? What do you mean? You only live next door.”

  “On Sunday I got up at two in the morning,” said Clive, “to observe Mr Finney. He keeps trying to eat his little wheel. Anyway, I heard a noise outside the shed and when I looked out, there was Doofus.”

  “Where was Doofus?”

  “Galloping off up the street, towards the hill.”

  “To Barges Bridge,” said Holly, her heart sinking.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t feel like following at two in the morning. But he did the same thing on Monday at the same time.”

  “At two o’clock in the morning? Were you up every night?”

  “I’m trying to be nocturnal over half-term,” explained Clive.

  “So is Doofus,” she said glumly, looking down at her dog. He was sprawled hugely across the entrance to Clive’s shed, one ear pricked, one eye half open, as if watching and listening for something far away. “I’ve told Dad to tie him up at night. But Dad thinks Doofus is a big softie who’d never dream of jumping gates.”

  “So what’s he doing on the moor?” asked Clive. “He won’t be going all the way up there for no reason. He’s a clever dog. Why don’t you take him up there and find out what it is? I’ll come with you.”

  Holly surveyed the clever dog. As she watched, he stretched his long legs, opened his mouth wide, yawned and sort-of-howled.

  “One and a half,” she said without thinking.

  “Mr Finney!” Clive dashed inside the shed. He emerged a moment later cradling something in his hand.

  “Not Mr Finney?” cried Holly anxiously.

  “No. It’s Tiger. The last tadpole. He ate all the others.” Clive unfolded his hand to show her a small, brown, semi-froggy corpse. “Bother.”

  “What a shame,” said Holly.

  Clive sighed. “The trouble with Tiger was he wouldn’t eat anything but tadpole. It was Stupid all over again.” He slipped the remains of Tiger into a plastic bag. “I’ll put him back in the stream he came from.”

  “How will that help?”

  “Recycling,” said Clive. “Fish’ll eat him. Well, let’s go to Barges Bridge, shall we? We could take Doofus, and see if we can find out what’s so attractive to him up there.”

  “What, now?”

  “Before Tiger begins to smell,” said Clive. “It’s hot, and Mum won’t let me keep dead animals in the fridge. Not since the rat.”

  It was hot. As they plodded up the road to Barges Bridge, the sky was a whitish haze: the fields were parched. Holly realised that it hadn’t rained properly for weeks; not since the gloomy Easter. Immediately she felt thirsty, and drained her water-bottle. Clive hadn’t brought one. He had his binoculars instead.

  They passed a flock of newly-shorn sheep that looked thin and frail. Their flanks were pulsing in and out as they panted to keep cool. There was no shade in their field.

  “It used to be forest, this, until five thousand years ago,” puffed Clive.

  “What?”

  “The first farmers cleared it in the late Stone Age, the Neolithic. That was after the last Ice Age about ten thousand years ago, though the glaciers didn’t actually get this far down the country. But there were people here way before that. They’ve found fossils in some of the caves.”

  “How do you know all this, Clive?”

  “I read,” said Clive. “Slowly.”

  Holly wondered how much had changed since those first farmers had chopped down the trees with stone axes. Not a lot, she thought: even the dry-stone walls looked ancient. It felt like another, timeless world up here, dry and still and silent under a pitiless sun. Doofus pulled at the lead, anxious to move on.

  Suddenly, as Holly watched, the sheep jerked up their heads in unison. They began to move. Together they ran to and fro across the field, skittering to one side and then the other, unable to decide which way to go.

  “What’s upset them?” she said, and then she heard it: a thin, high, distant howling.

  Doofus heard it too. He stopped tugging at the lead and stood alert, quivering with eagerness.

  “That’s more than one dog,” said Clive.

  “I don’t like it,” said Holly under her breath.

  Neither did the sheep. They were panicking. Deciding on one direction, they all charged at the metal gate beside the road. They jammed up against the rails, bodies pressed together, their brown eyes staring out at Holly.

  More howls wafted across the moor. This time they were closer. Clive got his over-sized binoculars out and climbed up on the wall to look.

  “I can see them!” he exclaimed. “There are eight or ten of them. Big dogs, greyish. They all look pretty similar from here. They’re coming this way. Hey. Wow.” His voice changed.

  Holly screwed up her eyes to stare across the land. A grey blur shifted on a distant slope, moving steadily through clumps of heather. Although she couldn’t pick out individual dogs, she could hear the howls distinctly, carrying through the still, warm air. The sheep began to baa in panic.

  As she gazed, the lead whipped through her hand.

  “Doofus!” Holly tried to grab at it: too late. Doofus had got away. He raced a short way up the road and then leapt gracefully over the wall where it was lowest. He sprinted across the dry grass with his lead trailing behind him.

  “Doofus!” cried Holly. “Oh, help! We’ll have to go after him!”

  Clive, his binoculars pressed to his eyes, didn’t even stir. “No point. We’ll never catch him up.”

  Holly climbed up on top of the wall to whistle loudly, but without much hope. If Doofus
wanted to go, it would take more than a whistle to stop him. He was already little more than a black smudge hurtling away over the moor to meet the other dogs.

  She watched, wondering what to do, as the smudge met the blur. They merged and circled before running off again.

  “They must be his friends,” she said miserably. “We’ve got to go and get him!”

  “They’re not coming this way any more,” said Clive, peering through his binoculars. “They’re going north. I can see Doofus: he’s at their head. Oh boy. Oh wow.”

  “What? He’s their leader!” Holly was frantic. “I bet he’s been out with those dogs every night when they were worrying the sheep! You saw how terrified they were. We’ve got to catch him, Clive!”

  “They’ve gone down in a dip now, out of sight,” said Clive. He lowered his binoculars.

  “But we know which way they’re headed. Barges Bridge!” She jumped down off the wall.

  Clive hung back. “Those were a lot of big dogs,” he said. “Something really weird about them.”

  “I don’t care. We’ve got to get Doofus! Come on!”

  Holly set off running up the road. She thought she might be able to catch up with the dogs where the road curved round towards Barges Bridge. Although Clive followed her, he was soon left behind. Her legs had outgrown his lately; and she found herself practically flying along the path. It was exhilarating being so much faster than Clive.

  However, she had no time to feel exhilarated. Glancing to her left, for an instant she glimpsed a long grey figure running swiftly, before it was hidden again by the swell of the moor. The dogs were definitely closer.

  She suddenly didn’t want to be that close to them. As Clive had said, they were big dogs. She stopped for a moment to pant and listen. More howls swirled through the air.

  Next second, the howls were drowned out by a new, louder noise: a huge and throaty roar charging up behind her. She spun round, startled.

  It was a tractor, and it was tomato red. On top of it perched Jarvis Turnpike in equally bright overalls. He looked like the jolly presenter of some kids’ TV programme; except that his face was not jolly at all. Far from it.

  As the tractor overtook her, he shouted furiously over the engine’s racket:

  “That ruddy dog of yours is after my sheep! Him and a load of others! I warned you!”

  He stopped the tractor at the next gate, wrenched it open and chugged the tractor through into the field.

  “Close the gate!” he bellowed, before the tractor bounced and coughed across the grass towards the pack.

  Holly went through the gate and pulled it closed, just as Clive came panting up and collapsed over its top rail.

  “Wait,” he gasped.

  Holly could not afford to wait. She raced across the field after the tractor, leaping and bounding over tussocks.

  A little further on, the tractor growled to a halt. Here the stream cut across the field. Although it was almost dry, its steep banks blocked the tractor’s way.

  Jasper Turnpike leapt down from his seat and jumped across the stream, a bright red flash of colour on the dull moorland. He was shouting and waving something. Holly caught another glimpse of a grey dog, heading upstream, before it disappeared from sight again.

  Reaching the tractor, she clambered up on it to look out from its higher viewpoint. There was a big water-bottle tucked underneath the seat; Holly was just about to steal a swig when the farmer turned and saw her.

  “Get down off my tractor!” he bellowed. “Leave my water alone! You ruddy children, you’ve got no respect. Letting that ruddy dog of yours run wild!” He jumped back over the stream towards them.

  “My dog doesn’t chase sheep,” protested Holly, desperately hoping it was true.

  Clive came staggering up. “Where are they?” he panted.

  “They’ve gone up to the bridge, heading north,” shouted Jarvis Turnpike. “But I’ve shot them!”

  “You’ve what?”

  “I’ve shot them!” The farmer held his hand aloft triumphantly. “I’ve filmed them with my phone! Would have been my ruddy shotgun if I had it with me.” He strode back to the tractor.

  “Let me see,” said Clive. The farmer held out his phone and he squinted at it. “I can’t see Doofus.”

  Jarvis magnified the screen with a flick of his fingers. “There! That’s his back end! And those are all the others right behind him, clear as day! Your dog’s a menace. You can’t keep it under control. I’ll be sending these pictures to all the farmers in the area – and to the paper too. Then something might get done!”

  “Yes,” said Clive, still gazing at the phone. “I think it might.”

  “Where have the dogs gone now?” asked Holly, scanning the moor. “I can’t see them at all.”

  Jarvis turned and scowled northward over the empty moorland. “Probably gone to ground somewhere. They’ll have a den: maybe in some of the old mine-workings. But we’ll hunt them, and we’ll find them. I’ll make sure I have my shotgun with me next time. And if I find that blasted dog of yours, I’ll take great pleasure in shooting it – and not just with a phone!”

  Holly bit her lip as she stared into the distance. The pack of dogs was nowhere to be seen, or heard. She could hear nothing but the whining of the wind; and a glug from Clive. He was just replacing the lid of the farmer’s water-bottle.

  Jarvis whirled round. “Get out of there!” he roared, and the two children fled. As she ran, Holly heard the tractor start up again behind them. It began to chug towards the farm.

  “Lovely character, isn’t he?” panted Clive as they tramped back across the field. “But I’ll give him one thing: he’s brave.”

  “Brave? What’s so brave about shooting dogs?”

  “He’s brave to be hunting down that pack.”

  Holly wasn’t paying attention. “Hurry up,” she said. “We’ve got to find Doofus and get him out of here!”

  “But we don’t know where he’s gone,” objected Clive.

  “Want to bet? Barges Bridge. Come on!”

  She clambered over the wall, dropped back on to the road, and hurried towards the bridge.

  “There he is! I told you! I knew it.” Doofus was lying down, panting, in the middle of the old stone bridge. He was below its parapet, and therefore invisible from the farm.

  She looked round for Jarvis Turnpike; but the tractor was hidden somewhere behind the buildings. Its faint growl was still audible, along with the frantic barking of the sheepdogs in the farmyard. Somehow they would have to sneak Doofus past the farm.

  Clive had stopped. “What about the other dogs? Where are they?”

  Holly peered up the road. “I can’t see any of them. They’ve gone.”

  “Good,” said Clive emphatically. “Because they’re not dogs at all. They’re wolves.”

  Holly’s mouth dropped open as she stared at him.

  “They’re what?”

  “They must have escaped from somewhere,” Clive said, his voice low but tense with excitement. “I know they’ve been talking about bringing wolves back to Scotland. Maybe somebody’s already done it here. Because those were definitely wolves.”

  Holly whirled round. “Doofus!”

  The black head lifted. Doofus stood up and began to stroll casually towards her.

  “Where are they?” she demanded. “Where are all your friends, Doofus? Where are they hiding?”

  Doofus’s only response was a faint twitch of his ears. He was breathing heavily and streaked with sweat and dust.

  “We’re going home,” said Holly fiercely. “Heel!” She grabbed his trailing lead and he followed obediently as she headed back the way they had come.

  But as they approached the farm, the tractor appeared around the side of the farmhouse with a roar like sudden thunder.

  “Get down!” commanded Clive. Ducking behind the wall, they ran alongside it in a slow, awkward crouch, so that Jarvis Turnpike would not spot them.

  They had to stop at th
e farm gate, listening to the tractor’s angry chug close by, just on the other side of the wall. There was no way to get across the drive unnoticed.

  “We’re stuck,” breathed Holly. Through a gap in the wall’s loosely-fitting stones, she glimpsed a flash of red as Jarvis Turnpike jumped down from the tractor. As soon as they tried to run across his driveway, he would see them – and Doofus.

  “Wait a bit, till he goes inside,” mouthed Clive.

  But Jarvis was in no hurry to go inside. He paused to curse his noisy sheepdogs, and to swig his water.

  And then, to Holly’s astonishment, he howled. He yowled as loud as any dog. He shrieked and yelled and swore.

  “Now!” said Clive. While Jarvis Turnpike was dancing a strange jig on his drive, they scuttled across the gateway and then raced pell-mell down the road.

  Not until they were round the bend did Holly pause. She felt a little safer now that she could see the village emerging down below her.

  “What happened?” she said. “Is Jarvis Turnpike after us?”

  Clive raised his head cautiously over the top of the wall. “No. He’s throwing his big water bottle around.”

  “His water bottle? Why? He must be mad!”

  “He certainly is,” said Clive with satisfaction. “Mad as a hopping hornet. Because I put Tiger the dead tadpole inside there.”