The Slapstyx

By Annabelle Franklin

Twin sisters Georgie and Gem care about the environment and are deeply ashamed of their stepfather Geoffrey, who sells detergents made of bad chemicals that fill the sea with toxic slime.
The twins try to convince Geoffrey to get another job, but he refuses. ‘ZOOM’ is the world’s best-selling cleaning product, and Geoffrey loves being a superstar salesman – even though his boss, Zachary Zigstack, only pays him peanuts.
Together with a tribe of grubby goblins called the Slapstyx, Zigstack has hatched an ingenious plan to make sure everyone buys his dastardly detergent. He has promised the Slapstyx a mountain of gold, which he has yet to deliver.
Georgie and Gem can leave their bodies at will and fly around in an astral vehicle they call their ‘dreambody’. This ‘dreamwalking’ enables them to travel to other dimensions and meet the creatures that live there. One night they dreamwalk to the goblin dimension and rumble Zigstack’s pact with the Slapstyx. The goblins threaten to kill them if they tell anyone about it.
The twins make friends with a mermaid called Eltra whose tribe – known as the Delphinae – look after the dolphins. The ZOOM overload in the sea has created toxic plankton-based monsters called Sloyds who are out to destroy all the other sea creatures. Eltra begs the twins for help.
Though they are terrified of the Slapstyx, Georgie and Gem promise Eltra they will try and stop them working for Zigstack. But can they do it before the world’s oceans are turned into toxic plankton soup?
More to the point, can they do it before the goblins put them out of action for good?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Annabelle Franklin
• Release date: May 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310559945

Annabelle Franklin

Annabelle Franklin is the author of two children's books, 'Gateway to Magic' and 'The Slapstyx'. Her short story 'Mercy Dog' has been published in award-winning anthology 'Unforgotten: The Great War 1914-1918' (Accent Press). She is a member of Swansea and District Writers' Circle, and her short story 'Haunted by the Future' appears in the Circle's 2016 horror anthology 'Dark Gathering'.Annabelle lives on South Wales's stunning and magical South Gower coast with two rescued sighthounds. She is currently working on a supernatural series for children.

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The Slapstyx

By Annabelle Franklin

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 Annabelle Franklin

Cover design Bethan Hellings

Published by Pearlswood Publishing

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favourite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

For Lily

Chapter 1: The Black Magician, The Star Salesman and The Rambunctious Red-Haired Twins

Zachary Zigstack zoomed around on a quad bike, shooting cowboys on his ranch in Texas. He would have ridden a bronco, but no horse could take his enormous weight.

The cowboys weren’t real, they were actors, but Zachary Zigstack was rich enough to pay them ten times what they could make in the movies. Their job was to sit on their horses while he fired a paintball pistol at them, pretending they were cattle rustlers.

‘Keep still, can’t you?’ he yelled, as one of the horses shied away from the noisy bike. ‘I’d have had you then if you hadn’t moved.’

‘Sorry, Mr Zigstack, sir,’ said the cowboy, struggling to control his mount.

As Zigstack drove on, an ill-judged paintball hit him upside the head, knocking off his oversized cowboy hat. The quad bike farted to a halt.

‘Who did that?’ he bawled.

Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.

‘I wanna know who just did that!’ Zigstack’s face turned purple (except for the bit that was covered in green paint). ‘If you don’t own up right now I’m gonna fire the whole dang lot of you!’

‘It was me, sir.’

Zigstack glared at the cowboy who’d spoken. ‘You’re the new guy, ain’t you?’

‘That’s right, sir. Started just this morning.’

‘Okay,’ said Zigstack, wiping his face with his big red bandana. ‘I’ll let you off this time... but you let it happen again and you’re outta here, understand?’

‘Yes, Mr Zigstack, sir.’ The cowboy shifted in his saddle.

‘What’s the matter? You got an itch?’

‘No, sir. It’s just that...’

‘Yeah? What?’

‘You did say we were supposed to shoot at you, sir.’

Zigstack rolled his piggy little eyes. ‘I know I did, but you ain’t supposed to hit me! You’re supposed to miss! Didn’t anyone explain that to you?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Sun’s going down,’ said another cowboy, looking west.

‘So?’ said Zigstack.

‘You’ll be even harder to miss in the dark.’

‘Then you’ll have to try harder, won’t you? I ain’t ready to stop playing yet.’

Zigstack had just started his bike up again when he heard an eerie, tinkling ringtone over the sound of the engine. Without another word, he zoomed off towards the house. The cowboys took off their hats and scratched their heads in confusion.

Only Zachary Zigstack could hear that ringtone. He always heard it, no matter how far away he was when it rang - and he always answered it.

Leaving the bike in the yard, he hurried indoors to his office. The ringtone was coming from a safe in the corner. Panting and sweating, he took a small black key from the inside pocket of his jacket, unlocked the safe and picked up a glowing electric-blue cellphone.

‘Yeah?’ he barked. ‘Whaddaya want? I’m busy.’

The voice that came out of the phone sounded like the buzzing of an insect. ‘Why do you talk in that fake accent?’ it said. ‘Everyone knows you’re as English as roast beef.’

‘That’s none of your business, Quagley.’

‘Anyone would think you were hiding from the Law,’ the voice buzzed on.

‘Well, I ain’t!’ blustered Zigstack. ‘I’ve always liked playing at cowboys - and thanks to my super-powerful cleaning products, I’m rich enough to do what I like!’

‘Yes, and that’s thanks to us,’ said Quagley. ‘If it wasn’t for us, people might buy better cleaning products.’

‘There’s no better cleaning product than Zigstack ZOOM!!!’ shouted Zigstack. (He put three exclamation marks after ‘ZOOM’ so everyone would know it was better than cleaning products with one or two exclamation marks after their name.) ‘It’s the only one that works!’

‘Again, thanks to us. Otherwise, people might worry about what it’s doing to the environment. There are still a few people buying more eco-friendly products.’

‘Crazy fools,’ growled Zigstack. ‘What good’s a clean conscience if you’ve got a dirty house?’

‘Some people don’t mind a bit of dirt.’

‘Are you kidding? People are terrified of dirt! I ain’t worried about a few crazies - I got my star Sales Manager to make sure that kinda craziness don’t spread. Geoffrey Penworth is the best cleaning product salesman in the world!’

‘He’s still only human.’

‘I know that,’ said Zigstack, bored with the conversation. ‘I also know you ain’t just called for a friendly chat. So, I’ll ask you again - whaddaya want?’

‘We want our payment,’ said Quagley. ‘You promised us a mountain of gold, remember?’

‘Alright already!’ Zigstack mopped his brow with his bandana, forgetting it had green paint on it. ‘You’ll get your gold!’

‘When?’

‘When I’m good and ready. Now, like I said, I’m busy - so if you don’t mind, I’ll say so long.’

Zigstack cut off the call and locked the phone back in the safe. ‘That’s the trouble with hiring goblins,’ he grumbled. ‘They just ain’t got no respect.’

***

Geoffrey Penworth had no idea his boss was an evil black magician who consorted with goblins. Geoffrey lived in the UK, so he didn’t see much of Zigstack at all; they mainly kept in touch by phone or email.

Apart from his extraordinary ability to sell cleaning stuff, Geoffrey Penworth was a very ordinary and very boring man. He even looked boring – average height, average build and average brown hair. He was so boring that his wife had left him and run off with a hippy.

One morning, Geoffrey and his son Miles were sharing a family-sized bag of Cruts in the kitchenette of their tiny flat. Cruts were savoury snacks made of chemicals pretending to be dried fried bread with an intense cheese flavouring – not the healthiest start to the day, but there was nothing else for breakfast.

‘We can’t go on like this,’ Geoffrey said. ‘There’s no one to do any proper shopping or make sure you get to school on time.’

‘Can’t you do it, Dad?’ said Miles, who looked just like Geoffrey, only a bit smaller.

‘Too busy,’ said Geoffrey, opening his laptop. ‘I’ll have to get married again, that’s all – find myself a nice, quiet lady who doesn’t like hippies.’

Two weeks later, Geoffrey Penworth married a nice quiet lady called Grace. She had liked hippies once – she’d lived with one for ten years – but he’d run off with a bunch of other hippies, leaving her with rambunctious red-haired twins to care for. Grace didn’t like hippies anymore.

Better still, she had just been made redundant from her job. This meant she was free to do the housework and look after all three children – leaving Geoffrey free to concentrate on his work.

***

There wasn’t room for Geoffrey’s new family in his tiny flat or in Grace’s tiny council house, so they all moved into a big house by the sea.

Right from the start, the twins didn’t like the house. ‘Ee-www!’ said Gem, looking round the large, draughty hallway. ‘This place is rank!’

It was, too. The walls were meant to be white but they looked grey, and the ceiling was festooned with cobwebs. As for the carpet, it was so filthy you couldn’t even see what colour it was meant to be.

‘It’s like something out of a horror story,’ said Georgie, with a shudder.

‘You’re like something out of a horror story,’ muttered Miles.

Georgie ignored him. ‘It even smells bad,’ she went on, screwing up her face. ‘Like an old rubbish bin.’

‘I can smell poo,’ said Gem.

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Miles.

‘It is a bit grubby,’ said the twins’ mother.

‘It was a bargain, wasn’t it, Dad?’ Miles said proudly.

‘That’s right,’ said Geoffrey, rubbing his hands. ‘It’s been empty for years – no one wanted to buy it. Can’t think why; all it needs is a spot of ZOOM.’

‘Why did you need to get a bargain?’ said Georgie. ‘You must make loads of money selling that stuff.’

‘Don’t be cheeky, Georgia,’ said Mum. ‘It’s a lovely house, and Geoffrey’s right – it just needs a bit of a clean.’

Georgie smiled sweetly. ‘And who’s going to do it?’

Mum smiled back even more sweetly. ‘We’ll all muck in, won’t we?’

‘Muck is the right word,’ muttered Gem.

Mum’s smile was stretching thin now. ‘Why don’t you kids go and explore while we unpack?’

The twins ran off down the hallway. Miles stayed with the grownups – he didn’t consider himself to be a ‘kid’.

The twins’ spirits sank even lower as they clattered through corridors and up and down stairs, peering into one filthy room after another. They ended up in an attic bedroom with a sloping ceiling and ancient wallpaper with a busy little pattern that made the walls look like they were crawling with small black insects. One strip of wallpaper had come off completely, revealing patchy plaster underneath.

Their beds were already in there, looking strangely naked without sheets or duvets. ‘This must be where we’re going to sleep,’ said Gem.

‘I want the bed by the window,’ said Georgie, sitting on it and bouncing up and down.

‘Whatever.’ Gem went and looked out of the dormer window, but she could only see the vague outline of pine branches through the dust on the glass.

Georgie gave a short, sharp shiver. ‘It feels sort of spooky in here.’

‘Not scared, are you?’ taunted her sister.

‘No! I’m just saying it feels spooky. Don’t you reckon?’

‘It’ll be better later, when all our stuff is in here.’

But somehow it didn’t feel better later. The twins’ bedside lamps showed up the dirt even more, and they couldn’t put all their things on the shelves until after the big clean-up tomorrow. They stuck some pictures of pop stars (for Georgie) and wild animals (for Gem) on the bare patch of wall, but they couldn’t reach high enough to cover all of it.

‘Let’s turn the light off,’ said Gem when they were in bed. ‘Then at least we won’t be able to see the cobwebs.’

‘Or what’s living in them,’ shuddered Georgie.

‘I don’t mind the spiders,’ said Gem, turning off the lamp. ‘It’s just that the cobwebs remind me how boring it’s going to be, helping with the clean-up. You know what Geoffrey’s like with his War on Dirt – he won’t let us stop till the whole place is spotless.’

‘I bet he won’t muck in, either. He’ll just stand around telling us what to do.’

Without the light on they couldn’t see anything at all, and they both felt spooked. They’d never slept in a completely dark bedroom before. In the town where they’d lived there’d been a streetlight right outside their window.

‘It’s totally black in here,’ said Georgie, holding her hand up in front of her face. ‘I can’t even see my fingers.’

They lay in the dark for a few minutes that felt like hours. ‘I can’t go to sleep,’ said Gem.

‘Nor me,’ said Georgie, shifting about restlessly in her bed. ‘I wish we hadn’t come! We don’t know any of the kids round here – only Mini-Me, and he doesn’t count.’

Mini-Me was what they called Miles because he was so like his Dad.

‘We’ll have to make new friends,’ yawned Gem.

‘No more Miss James,’ sighed Georgie. ‘She’s the only teacher I ever liked.’

‘I don’t even want to think about the new school,’ said Gem, turning over. ‘Thank God we don’t have to start till the autumn.’

With that comforting thought, their eyelids began to droop. Then the moon came out behind the pine branches, filling the room with ghostly light and shadows.

‘I can see faces on the walls,’ whispered Gem.

‘Where?’

‘There, look – where there’s no wallpaper.’

‘It’s just the posters,’ yawned Georgie.

‘Not there – higher up, where we couldn’t get the posters. Horrible little faces, like people mixed up with insects.’

Georgie looked. It did seem like there were faces on the bare plaster, little grinning faces with black bug eyes.

‘I think it’s just shadows from that tree outside,’ she said, shutting her eyes. ‘Come on, we’d better try and sleep – we don’t want to be tired tomorrow, with all that work to do.’

They both kept their eyes shut after that, but it was a long time before either of them got to sleep.

Chapter 2: Haunted!

Grace and the twins spent most of the next day cleaning. Geoffrey and Miles followed them around, giving instructions and pointing it out if they missed a bit.

By bedtime, the house was as spotless as Geoffrey could have wanted. The twins were too exhausted to notice if there were faces on their bedroom wall. As they drifted off to sleep, they were only aware of the overpowering stink of ZOOM in the room.

That might have explained the weird dream Gem had.

She dreamed she was swimming in a great big ocean of Zigstack ZOOM. It rippled and curdled around her in all its ghastly colours. There was:

Odious orange ZOOM for the kitchen

Pustulent pink ZOOM for the bath

Putrid purple ZOOM for the floor

Gruesome green ZOOM for the toilet

Yucky yellow ZOOM for stubborn dirt

Toxic turquoise ZOOM for the laundry

Wicked white ZOOM for the dishes

Worse still, she could smell it. The various hideous ‘fragrances’ invaded her nose, choked up her throat and turned her stomach. They were:

Pukey peach for the kitchen

Rotten rose for the bathroom

Violent violet for the floor

Pungent pine for the toilet

Beastly banana for stubborn dirt

Horrid hyacinth for the laundry

Loathsome lemon for the dishes

Somewhere in the distance, Gem could hear a chorus of miserable, terrified wails. She couldn’t see who or what was wailing, but it sounded like a lot of who’s or what’s, and she could feel their misery and fear like it was her own.

It really was a terrible dream, and in the morning she woke Georgie up to tell her about it.

‘I dreamed the house was full of people,’ Georgie said sleepily.

‘Is that all?’ said Gem. ‘When I have a nightmare, you usually have one as well.’

‘It was a nightmare. They were horrible people, loads of them, taking over the house.’

Georgie got up and looked out of the window again. This time she could see a lot more, partly because the window was now sparkling clean, and partly because the sun was out for the first time since they’d arrived. She saw a wild garden full of rambling old pine trees, and beyond it a sea of waving bracken and a dirt track leading down a hill, and beyond the shoulder of the hill, a glittering line of blue.

She opened the window and took a big breath of salty air to clear the lingering smell of ZOOM. ‘You know, this place might not be so bad after all,’ she said.

Gem came and leaned out of the window. Below her on the second floor, she could see a balcony with the branches of the nearest pine tree growing right over it.

‘If we ever needed to escape,’ she said, ‘it would be quite easy to climb down to that balcony. Then we could climb down the pine tree into the garden.’

‘Why would we need to escape?’ said Georgie.

‘We might do, if Geoffrey turns out to be totally and utterly evil.’

‘Ye-e-es… but that escape route won’t be any good. That room with the balcony is the one Geoffrey chose for his office.’

‘He won’t be in his office at night, will he?’

‘He might be – he so-o-o loves his job. He’s even fixed a bolt on the inside of the door so no one can disturb him while he’s working on his precious graphs and spreadsheets.’

Breakfast was early so Geoffrey could start work as soon as possible. The twins got dressed and ran down to the big, sparkling, superclean kitchen. Mum had pushed hers and Geoffrey’s kitchen tables together to make one big table, but it