Jake and the Nefarious Glub

---

Jake and the Nefarious Glub - book excerpt

Prologue

(That’s the fancy name for the bit at the start of the book before the actual story gets going!)

Jake Starling is eleven years old and sees the world a little differently to most people. He sees it in Jake’s way, and that’s the way he likes it. He lives with his mum Daphne Starling, his big sister Lucy Starling and their pet dog Sprat Starling. (Sprat is a miniature schnauzer who enjoys doing doggy things like sniffing other dogs’ bums and getting covered in mud and then running into the house and shaking it off all over the carpet!) The Starling family all live together in a big house in a place called Bisby by the Sea. Which, as the name suggests, is a town called Bisby and it’s by the sea.

Bisby by the Sea is a very interesting and beautiful place to live. All the houses are painted in wild and wonderful colours and the harbour is always full of fishing boats with names like ‘Evergreen’ that bob up and down and bump into each other with a hollow clonking sound that keeps you awake at night, but in a nice way. Everywhere in Bisby smells of seaside and fish and chips, and the narrow, cobbled streets are like a maze, only with lots of hills and tunnels and hidden places to explore. Bisby by the Sea is even an interesting place to live in the winter, when the tourists have all gone home. That’s when ice-cold waves smash into the rocky coast and mysterious fog rolls in from the sea, blanketing the whole of Bisby bay in a thick soupy mist. A small island called Clod sits just off the coast of Bisby, you can take a boat trip there if the sea is calm. Clod has many secrets of its own, and there is a ruined castle and some smugglers caves to explore. So, as you can see, Bisby by the Sea really is the perfect place to live. But — and this is a very big but — it is also a very, very strange place indeed. A strange place filled with some very interesting people, and where all sorts of unusual things happen!

Chapter One – The Best Teatime of the Year

It was around teatime when things started to go wrong for Jake. He had just finished his last day of school before the summer holidays, so it should have been the best teatime of the whole year. (Except for maybe Christmas Eve — but not Christmas Day. Christmas Day teatime isn’t actually that good, because all the presents are already opened and Nana always wants to watch the Queen, but the Queen is really boring and teatime means that Christmas day is nearly over, which is rubbish because then its ages till Christmas again.)

But Jake had decided that this was definitely a great teatime because he had the whole of the summer holidays stretching out in front of him — six whole weeks with no school! That was one thousand and eight hours without having to listen to Miss Pillsbury bang on about boring school stuff! (He knew it was one thousand and eight hours, because he had checked.) Six weeks was ages, it might as well have been forever. Every playtime for the last month had been spent with his best friend Ajay, planning trips to the beach, or to the park by the lighthouse, or into the fairy woods in the chine at the top of the hill. They had even planned a boat trip over to the Isle of Clod.

As was his way, Jake gleefully tore off his school tie and tucked into the worst bits of tea first, to get them out of the way quickly. The celery was swiftly dealt with, but he hadn’t even got as far as the pork and pickle pie, let alone the crisps, when the best teatime of the year suddenly turned into a complete disaster.

‘I’ve signed you up for a summer holiday reading competition at the town library,’ breezed mum, in that special tone of voice that mums use sometimes that sounds cheerful but actually has a dangerous edge to it. ‘All you have to do is read three books during the holidays and you win a bag full of fantastic goodies,’ she beamed, enthusiastically waving a leaflet around. ‘Look, if you take part you get stickers and bookmarks and even a video game…you love video games!’

Jake’s heart sank. Deep down he knew she meant well, but — considering they are supposed to be so clever — it’s no secret that sometimes grown-ups can be really stupid! ‘Mum,’ he whined, eyeing the leaflet suspiciously. ‘It won’t be a proper game; it’ll just be some rubbish old computer program thing. It’s probably called something really dumb like ‘Super fun reading adventures’ or something!’

Before he had even finished speaking, Jake knew he was in trouble, but he couldn’t stop himself. Sometimes he got what he called ‘the urges.’ They would build up inside him and he was powerless to stop them. Mum and Miss Pillsbury both said he should try to ignore them and to think calming thoughts, but when he tried, the urge wouldn’t go away. It would just build and build, making him feel all twitchy and irritated until he let it out. Sometimes the urge might be to do something, or touch something, or — like this time — say something. Before Jake could stop himself, the urge won, and angry words started to just sort of…fall out of his mouth. Even as he was speaking, he imagined a tiny version of himself standing on his tongue, desperately trying to catch the words in a net before they could escape. But the ‘Mini-Jake’ was too slow and all the words got out and Mum got cross and tea was ruined.

‘Well I’ve signed you up now and you’re doing it,’ she snapped. ‘You can’t spend all summer not doing any reading, what would Miss Pillsbury say?’ Jake considered this for a moment. He wasn’t actually sure what Miss Pillsbury would say. He knew she wanted him to read when he was at school, because she was his teacher and he was her pupil and it was her job to make sure he kept up with his reading. But for the life of him, he couldn’t decide what she would say about him taking part in a library reading competition during the school holidays. If anything, he was fairly sure that Miss Pillsbury would probably just tell him to go away so that she could get on with enjoying her own holiday away from teaching him. (Jake knew full well that sometimes Miss Pillsbury found him a bit difficult at school, because he would ask the wrong questions…or too many questions…or no questions at all if he didn’t feel like talking because the other pupils were being too noisy and one more voice would just make things worse.)

In the time it had taken him to consider this, mum had already started banging coleslaw onto her plate in a really noisy way so that everybody knew she was upset. Even though she knew that he hated loud noises, and that it was already obvious that she was upset, and that neither the plate nor the spoon of coleslaw was in anyway at fault. ‘I do read,’ said Jake after the banging had stopped. ‘I’ll read my graphic novels like I always do. There’s a new ‘Claws of the Dragon’ book I want to read and…’ Mum cut him off with one of her ‘tutsighs’. A tutsigh is a special ‘mums only’ sound that starts out as a disapproving ‘tut’ before turning into a long and melodramatic sigh. Jake was sure it was her favourite sound, because she did it so often.

‘Jake!’ she said in her ‘firm’ voice — he already knew what was coming. ‘I’ve told you a thousand times,’ (Which wasn’t true, he hadn’t been counting, but it was definitely NOT a thousand times, that would just be silly and statistically unlikely!) ‘comics are not proper reading!’

Jake could feel another angry urge growing inside. He just couldn’t understand why she kept saying this. It was obvious that comics were reading because they had words in them that you read! And anyway, graphic novels aren’t comics, they’re bigger and more complicated and better. She just refused to see it because they weren’t about boring ‘mum stuff’, so she wouldn’t even take the time to look at them.

Jake thought about not saying all this for a moment — he really did. But the urge got the better of him and, once again, angry words came spewing out of his mouth and everything turned into an argument and all he could think was that somehow his nice teatime had gone wrong and how it felt like the summer holidays were ruined before they had even begun.

‘The bottom line is this Jake,’ said Mum finally, after all the shouting had stopped and Sprat had run out of the open patio door into the garden to do a poo behind one of the gnomes. ‘I’m taking you to the library tomorrow and we are going to choose some proper books for you to read this holiday and that’s that.’

‘Why doesn’t Lucy have to do it?’ Jake shot a sidelong glance at his sister, who so far, had done a good job of hiding behind the mayonnaise bottle.

‘DON’T BRING ME INTO THIS YOU WORM!!’

Lucy went straight into screaming mode. Jake hated it when she did that, the sound made his brain hurt and it made her eyes bulge out of her head, which just looked ridiculous, ‘JUST BECAUSE YOU ONLY EVER WANT TO READ THOSE STUPID COMICS! MUUUM! TELL HIM!’

As usual, Lucy had gone from zero to full nuclear in no time at all. It wasn’t something she had always done, but ever since starting secondary school it was her new way of dealing with things. She would spend most of her time sullenly staring into her phone and grunting if anyone spoke to her. But the very instant that anything went wrong, she would explode into a white-hot rage that Jake had noticed was nearly always his fault somehow. It made him feel sad, like his lovely and kind big sister had gone away and been replaced by an evil robot sister from another dimension.

‘STOP SHOUTING LUCY!’ Mum shouted, which Jake found deeply ironic. ‘Jake, Lucy doesn’t have to do it because she’s older than you and she has summer coursework to do and she actually reads proper books anyway. Now stop arguing and eat your beetroot instead of trying to hide it under the corned beef.’

And with that, Jake knew that all hope was lost and there was no escaping a boring trip to the library in his very near future.

Chapter Two – The Boring Trip to the Library

‘Five minutes! We’re going in five minutes, make sure you brush your teeth!’ Mum’s voice echoed down the stairs. Jake, who had already brushed his teeth, because he always liked to brush his teeth before he ate breakfast, was busily shoving spoonful’s of ‘Captain Choco-Crunch’ cereal into his mouth as fast as possible. It was the only cereal he would eat. Actually, it was the only breakfast he would eat, despite his mother’s many attempts to bribe him with alternatives. Some of which were okay, but none of them had the perfect blend of chocolatey crunchiness and pleasant texture that the ‘Captains’ did. So, the back of the brightly coloured ‘Captain Choco-Crunch’ box had been Jake’s breakfast table reading material for as long as he could remember. Sometimes there were awesome giveaways on the box, where you send away tokens for cool prizes, like a baseball cap, or a bowl that changed colour when you put the milk in, or best of all…the ‘Captain Choco-Crunch Walkie Watches’. A pair of watches that were also walkie talkies (as long as they weren’t too far apart!)

Before he could finish reading the comic strip on the back of the box for the twentieth time, Lucy burst into the room, snatched it off the table and waved it around above her head. Straight away Jake could feel an angry urge rising within him, he knew that if he didn’t finish reading the strip, he would stay angry for the rest of the day. ‘Hey!’ he yelled through a mouthful of Choco-crunch, ‘I’m reading that!’ Lucy’s face screwed up, making her look like a brussels sprout and Jake could tell that she was just about to say something mean about comics, when her phone suddenly beeped, and he was instantly forgotten. She dumped the box back on the table and stomped off with her thumbs frantically pummelling away at the tiny screen.

After breakfast, mum strapped Jake into the back of the family’s trusty old blue camper van, which she insisted on calling the ‘Dubster’, and they set off through the winding streets of Bisby on their way to the library. It wasn’t a long journey, there aren’t really any long journeys in Bisby by the Sea, everywhere in Bisby is pretty close together.