The Spoon of Doom (8 page)

My mouth turned dry and I swallowed a scream. I wanted to run away, but my legs wouldn't work. And then his black eyes locked onto mine.

‘But you're dead!' I gasped.

The ghost grinned and gave a horrible cackle.

I shuddered. It had no teeth. (Mind you, dead men don't need a good set of gnashers.)

‘Get out of here!' shouted Ernie, from the other side of the floor. ‘Get out, while you still can.'

But my legs wouldn't work.

Mandy's did. But she didn't escape. Instead, she scrambled over to Ernie and started loading tins.

It wasn't enough. Hot porridge was pouring onto the floor; a steaming carpet of bubbling breakfast gunk. And still I couldn't take my eyes off the phantom porridger. Then suddenly I came to my senses. Dead men don't make porridge. This was no ghost. This was Percy Piddler himself.

A current of crossness crackled through my bones. ‘It was all a lie!' I shouted at him. (Extra loud in case he was hard of hearing.) ‘You tricked us all – just to get your hands on that stupid spoon.'

He didn't deny it. He just grinned back at me.

And then I was off. I hurled myself across the factory floor, slipping and skidding on the porridge, which was lapping against the walls, and still rising. I took the steps two at a time, and suddenly I was standing before him on the gantry. He didn't look scary any more. He was just a super-skinny old man. (With a spoon.)

Cross as I was, I couldn't help but peer into the porridge pot next to him. I gasped. I had to admit it was amazing. Not to look at, of course. Nope. It looked just like any other bog-standard wooden spoon you'd pick up for a pound in a bargain basement. But amazingly it was stirring the pot all by itself. I couldn't take my eyes off it. Round and round. Faster and faster. And the quicker it stirred, the more porridge it made.

‘You've got to stop it,' shouted Ernie from down below. ‘We've run out of tins and we haven't got any buckets big enough. Please, Percy – stop it.'

‘Never!' growled Percy. ‘It's my spoon. It's my factory. And if I want to fill it with porridge, I will.'

See – mad. Mad as cheese. I'm never sure how to treat mad people. Is it best to go along with them? Agree with them? Make helpful suggestions? Or tell them straight? I opted for the latter.

‘But you won't have a factory left if you don't stop that spoon.'

Percy Piddler scowled at me. ‘I don't care. I'm 98.' (As if that made it OK.)

‘Well, if
you
won't stop it,
I
will,' I said, trying to sound manly, though I didn't feel it.

I eyed the steaming pot nervously. I don't know how my dad found the courage to stick his hand inside, all those years ago. From where I was standing, the spoon was spinning so fast it looked like it would chop my hands off in an instant. (See. I'm no bug man – I'm not the slightest bit brave.)

And still the porridge flowed.

Ernie was now standing in a sea of the stuff, trying to stop himself from being swept away. Mandy had climbed on top of a pallet of
Piddler's Pride
and was yelling her head off. And then there was a crash, and I turned to see one of the large glass windows at the end of the factory shatter, and the porridge begin pushing outside.

‘You'll flood the town, Percy,' shouted Ernie. ‘Think of the people.'

‘I
am
thinking of them,' growled Percy. ‘They'll wake up with breakfast in bed!

Another window crashed, and
still
the pot kept pumping out porridge.

I looked at the spoon and felt my stomach twist. There was nothing else for it. Just as my dad had done, I'd have to stick my hand in that boiling pot and stop it myself.

But as I reached forward, another thought burst into my brain. I've no idea how. Or why. But I suddenly remembered Dad's worm. Perhaps bug men are telepathic and Dad was somehow helping me – or more likely the porridge pong was getting to me again – but suddenly a vision of that worm popped into my head. What was it Dad had called it – a
gobbler
worm. A worm with as good an appetite as him…

I felt in my coat pocket. Yep, it was still there where I'd stuffed it after I'd left Snoodle's office. I pulled out the box and peered at the worm. It was certainly big. And horrible looking. And then a tiny spark of an idea took shape. If this worm really had an appetite, could it eat porridge? Bucket-loads of porridge… A factory full of porridge? Not on its own, of course, but maybe with a little help from some friends?

I didn't stop to think things through. With a silent apology to the worm for its brave sacrifice, I tossed it into the porridge pot and closed my eyes.

‘What are you doing?' screamed Percy.

I hardly dared look.

There was a hiss. And a thump. And a loud bang. And the spoon suddenly stopped, like someone had stuck a stick in the spokes of a wheel. For a moment I actually thought that one worm (a wonder worm perhaps) had somehow stopped the spoon. But no. After missing a beat, the spoon slowly started stirring again. Round and round. Up and down. Faster and faster…

My heart sank. I'd murdered the worm for absolutely no reason. How would I face Dad? Then suddenly there was a high-pitched squeal from down below.

‘Worms!' screamed Mandy.

I peered over the edge of the gantry, and watched as the porridge pot started squirting out porridge again, but this porridge was different. It was still the same grey gunk, but each squirt also contained
a handful of big fat gobbler worms.

The spoon was still making porridge, but it was also making worms –
hundreds
of worms!

Percy's eyes were out on stalks. ‘What have you done?' he screamed. ‘My lovely porridge.'

We both stared down at the scene below.

Ernie was now standing in a writhing, wriggling mess of porridge and worms. And still more of them blobbed out.

‘They're gobbler worms, Ernie,' I yelled down. ‘We won't drown in porridge – they'll swallow the stuff.' (I was crossing my fingers behind my back at this point. Because to be perfectly honest, I hadn't really been paying attention to my dad's description of the qualities of the gobbler worm.)

‘But who'll eat the worms?' Ernie yelled back, ever so slightly cross sounding.

I hadn't thought of that.

The floor was now choked in slimy pink bodies. I'm pretty bug-hardened myself, but even
my
stomach heaved.

‘You've ruined everything,' moaned Old Percy next to me. ‘How could you…'

And without another word, he reached over and stuck his own hands into that menacing pot of boiling porridge. His screams reverberated around the room as he wrestled with the spoon, and then finally pulled the thing out and threw it to the gantry floor.

I expected it to writhe or wiggle like a thing possessed. But it didn't. It just lay there. Spoon-like.

After that things slowed down slightly. The porridge pot stopped, and so did the worm production. Ernie was able to wade over and rescue Mandy.

Meanwhile, Percy sank to his knees and clutched his chest. ‘I don't feel well,' he gasped.

I wasn't surprised – his arms were red and shiny and starting to blister. But that didn't stop him scowling at Ernie as he and Mandy clambered onto the gantry.

‘I tried to stop him…' panted Ernie, his clothes sodden with porridge and great globules of wriggling gobbler worms. ‘But he'd locked the generator room, so I couldn't turn it off. And by the time I got in here, he was already up to his ankles in porridge.'

Old Percy scowled. ‘You should have left me alone. Everything was working perfectly well without you.'

Mandy was peering at Percy's arms. ‘You need a doctor,' she said firmly, completely ignoring the worms hanging from her hair. ‘Grandad, can you give me a piggyback through to reception so we can call an ambulance?'

‘Will you be OK?' Ernie asked me.

What could I say? There I was sitting on a metal gantry surrounded by a sea of grey gunk, being slowly scoffed by super-sized worms (or so I hoped), with a mad 98-year-old despot and a satanic spoon. What possible harm could come to me?

‘Yep!' I squeaked. ‘I'll be fine.'

After they'd gone, I tried not to look at Uncle Percy. His eyes were closed and he was groaning softly to himself. Instead, I stared at the spoon. It looked so ordinary. So … well … wooden. And yet this was Meg Muldoon's spoon. A witch's
spoon. It had sunk a ship, smothered a village, and very nearly killed us all. I reached out to touch it.

‘Don't!' gasped Percy, suddenly grabbing my wrist. ‘That spoon has special powers. Once you've touched it, it takes you over.'

‘It didn't take my dad over,' I said, wriggling free of his grasp.

‘That's because the skin he touched it with was blistered and peeled.'

I shuddered. Then Percy groaned again. And I couldn't stop myself from asking, ‘Why did you do it?'

‘
Why
?' he snapped, as if it was me who was doo-lally for not knowing. ‘Because I'm a porridge man, of course.' (As if that explained everything.) ‘All my life I've been passionate about porridge,' he croaked. ‘I was the man who invented lump-free tinned porridge – did you know that?'

I shook my head.

‘I invented pilchard porridge – and pineapple-pickle porridge, too – did you know that?'

I didn't.

‘And sliced porridge – though that idea never quite took off…'

What could I say – I'd never owned the
Guiness Book of Interesting Facts About Porridge
. (Though I
suddenly thought I'd quite like to.)

Percy shook his head. ‘Then one day porridge went out of fashion, and everyone wanted cornflakes. Cornflakes? Can you believe it?'

I could.

‘And then, to make matters worse, the price of oats rocketed. Piddler's very nearly closed. Can you imagine it? A world without Piddler's…'

Actually, I couldn't. Not now.

‘Then I read that story about the magic porridge pot … and they all laughed at me,' Percy growled, looking quite mad again. ‘But I had the last laugh, because I found the spoon. The Spoon of Doom – the very spoon that had inspired a thousand stories.'

I looked at the spoon, lying there. And it really didn't look at all inspirational.

‘But your father stole it. He never let me see what it was capable of. All these years I've dreamed of seeing what it could do…'

‘But you could have flooded the town,' I said, looking around at the current disaster that we were sitting in the middle of.

‘Nonsense,' snapped Percy. ‘That spoon could have made me a fortune. I could have hired it out to all the other factories in town – dog biscuits, shoe polish, pork pies… Imagine!'

I imagined. I imagined being smothered to death by tins of shoe polish, or pulverised into pieces by a hail of pork pies…

‘I turned this place upside down looking for that spoon,' said Percy grimly. ‘But I never found it.'

‘So you decided to trick my dad into finding it for you,' I said, finally working it out. ‘You went on holiday, faked your own death and left everything to Dad, knowing he'd come and remove the spoon?'

Percy winced as the pain in his arms grew worse. ‘I knew your father would sell the place if he ever got his hands on it – he's never been interested in the business. But he wouldn't want anyone else to get the spoon. All I had to do was wait and watch…'

So it was Percy who had been boggling us this morning – not Smedley Snoodle. No wonder the noodle baron had thought I was mad, raving on about a spoon.

‘But how did you get back from the Alps without anyone spotting you?' I asked.

Percy rolled his eyes as if I was simple.

‘Because I didn't go to the Alps. I don't like holidays. I like porridge. I stayed in the factory – there are loads of empty rooms here. I actually slept in my office. No one noticed. And there was plenty of porridge to eat.'