Howard Mallory Vayle and Maggoty Skull in... The Beast from Beneath

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80513-472-5
Verlag: Nosy Crow Ltd
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 304 Seiten

Reihe: Mallory Vayle and Maggoty Skull

The second in a spooky and hilarious new series about a talkative skull and a necromancer-in-training. Full of brilliant illustrations! Perfect for fans of Lemony Snicket and Wednesday. Mallory Vayle and her talkative skull, Maggoty, star in another fabulous adventure! Mallory is getting to grips with her new powers and her new talkative friend, Maggoty. But when Maggoty sees a wig in Les Wigs shop, he just won't shut up about it! It's expensive, and no one seems able to pay Mallory properly for her cosmic services. So her Aunt Lilith takes matters into her own hands, but in her quest to increase her own supernatural skills, she accidentally summons a Nightmare. It, inevitably, goes HORRIBLY wrong and Mallory must take a perilous journey into the bowels of Carrion Castle in search of the solution to Aunt Lillith's problem... But it's only when a bony fella with a scythe turns up (that's Death - himself! - by the way) that she knows she and Maggoty are in for some terrifying fun and games! With proper laughs and proper scares, this series is not only the perfect Halloween treat but a side-splitting and spine-tingling year-round read. Have you read the spooktastic... Mallory Vayle and the Curse of Maggoty Skull (Waterstones Children's Book of the Month, October 2024) Praise for Mallory Vayle and Maggoty Skull: 'Effortlessly blends outrageous humour and genuine creepiness' - The Guardian 'Skullduggery pleasant meets A Series of Unfortunate Events. Do not miss! Spooky AND funny, a killer combo!' - Louie Stowell

Martin Howard writes absurdly funny books for children. His last was a Sunday Times Book of the Week and he has been compared to Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and the Monty Pythons. Mallory Vayle and the Curse of Maggoty Skull is his favourite so far.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Howard, Martin

Weitere Mitwirkende

Williamson, Pete

Leseproben

Mallory Vayle – a young and not-especially-happy-about-it necromancer – sighed as she spotted the sign above a shop door. The shop was called Les Wigs and its window display was filled with featureless wooden heads wearing a variety of wigs in all the latest styles. The skull under her arm was going to make a thing of it. She just knew it. Mallory quickened her pace.

“Wheee!” squealed the skull. “Mallory! Mallsy! Look! Check. It. Out! Look!”

Pretending not to hear, Mallory hurried on.

“Oi, Bumface. Do not even,” screeched the skull. “Stop. If you do not stop, the huff that Maggoty will throw down will be a mind-bendingly monumental huff from which you – Mallory so-called Vayle – will never recover. Years from now, people will ask ‘What happened to old Buttcrack Vayle? Why is she dribbling like that?’ and the answer will be it was Maggoty’s stupendous huff what done it.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Mallory stopped, her boots crunching on snow and her breath frosting in the air. As if she didn’t already know the answer, she asked, under her breath, “What is it, Maggoty?”

An elderly couple passed her, arm in arm, the man’s top hat and woman’s bonnet collecting snow. Glancing down at the human skull wearing a mouse-eaten wreck of a wig beneath Mallory’s arm they hurried on, giving her odd looks over their shoulders.

Mallory winced. Lately, a lot of people gave her odd looks.

“Oh pur-leeease,” Maggoty replied. “Like you don’t know there’s a fancy-schmancy ooh-la-la wig shop across the street.”

Looking around to see if anyone was listening, Mallory said quietly, “You mean Les Wigs?”

“Is it called Les Wigs? That means it’s French,” Maggoty squealed, excited. “Everyone knows the French make the best wigs. It’s because French people are all bald.”

Mallory thought about that for a moment. “No, I don’t think they are,” she said eventually.

“Pff, shows what you know, spotty,” the skull snorted. “It’s true. They’re all completely smooth. Like baby dolphins. Les Wigs! Look at it. A wig shop. No, it’s posher than a shop. A wig emporium. A wig palace.”

Mallory gazed at the shop window. It was very expensive-looking – all soft pinks, velvet and ribbons. Above the door, “Les Wigs” was written in curly writing. “We’re late,” she said. “There’s no time for your wig nonsense.”

As soon as the word left her lips, she knew it had been a mistake.

“Nonsense?” squealed the skull. “NONSENSE? Oh. Oh. Maggoty is feeling woozy. Everything is going dark.”

“The drama,” said Mallory, rolling her eyes. “All right, you can do some window shopping. One minute.”

“Want want want,” squealed Maggoty half an hour later. “Want want want want want want want want WANT.”

Mallory glanced down at the mess of filthy curls under her arm. The wig in the shop window, she had to admit, was much nicer than the one Maggoty was wearing. Which wasn’t saying much. If she tied the rotting corpse of a dead rat to Maggoty with string, it would be an improvement. Less smelly too, Mallory told herself as she looked up at the window display again. The wig took centre stage. Pale silvery blue, it had been styled with the hair whirled up on top like whipped cream. Curls hung where the wearer’s ears would be. Gems sparkled here and there. Ostrich feathers sprouted from the back. In a little stand next to it, a beautifully handwritten card said “The Eleganza”.

“What does it say? What does it say?” asked Maggoty for the fifty-eighth time.

“It says ‘The Eleganza’,” sighed Mallory. “Remind me to teach you to read.”

“The Eleganza,” sighed Maggoty, his voice dreamy. “Maggoty wants it. And since you haven’t lifted Maggoty’s curse like you promised the least you could do is buy cute wickle Maggoty, who wuvs ’oo vewy much, a new wig. A-hoo-hoo-hoo. Get down.”

Mallory winced again. Maggoty was right. She had promised to find a way to lift the curse that had trapped his spirit inside his own skull. “I’m working on it,” she murmured, knowing that she hadn’t been working on it very hard. The truth was, deep down she didn’t really want to free Maggoty from his curse. Annoying as the skull could be, Maggoty was her friend – her only friend. She wasn’t ready to lose him. “Really, Maggoty, we’d better go. It’s cold. We’re going to be late and—”

“Wig,” Maggoty’s voice wheedled. “Wiggy wig wig wig. If ’oo wuvved widdle Maggoty, you’d buy him a wig.”

“It has a price as well as a name,” said Mallory. Pressing her nose to the cold glass, she peered at the little card, adding, “And it’s far too high.”

“Ask yourself this, Boo: can anyone put a price on a wig like that?”

“Yes,” said Mallory. “Someone already has. I just said, didn’t I?”

“All righty then. Ask yourself this: how much is the love of a spotty-face bum-trumpet for her favourite skull worth?”

“A lot less than seventy-nine pounds, six shillings and sixpence,” said Mallory, looking around. She had been talking too loudly. And she had forgotten that no one else could hear Maggoty. City folk – always keen on a free show – were stopping to watch her argue with an empty skull in a shabby wig. “We have to go,” she muttered, walking away.

“But wiiiiiiiiig,” Maggoty wailed. “WIIIIIIIIIIIG.”

“Shhh,” Mallory hissed, keeping her head down as she approached a woman who was stuffing her face with pie. She recognised her. A few weeks earlier Mallory had seen her waiting outside a shop, hoping to gawp at the dead body of its owner.

“Oh, huwwo, it’ff ’oo. The ffkull girl,” said the woman, spraying crumbs on to the fresh snow at her feet. She swallowed, then added hopefully, “Seen any good corpses, love?”

“No,” Mallory answered, wincing again. The Skull Girl. That was what people called her now.

Disappointment crossed the woman’s face. She glanced at the city’s clock tower. “Oh well, it’s only nine o’clock. Still early, eh?” she said, refilling her mouth.

Head down, Mallory hurried onwards, her feet crunching a trail in the snow as she passed beneath hissing yellow street lamps, ignoring the eyes on her back and the still-complaining skull. People hurried home around her, most discovering they really, really needed to be walking on the other side of the street when they saw her coming with Maggoty tucked under her arm.

For every person who dodged out of her path, Mallory’s heart sank a little further.

People were talking, she knew. The city loved to gossip and she had given them plenty to gossip about. Weeks earlier, she and her aunt had put on a Grand Séance. During the show, spirits had shown themselves at Mallory’s command and she had used a powerful blaze of darkest magic to defeat the wicked shadow of Hellysh Spatzl. Mallory’s Aunt Lilith had advertised it as an evening to remember, and the audience had remembered. Too well. They had told other people too. Rumours had spread around the city.

They said that the Skull Girl could raise the dead. Gossipers whispered to each other that she was a … what was the word? Sounds like knicker-romancer. Oh yes, that was it: Mallory was a necromancer. A death wizard. A child of mwah-ha-ha-HA darkness.

Mallory was not happy about this, but it wasn’t as if the rumour wasn’t true, even though it left out important bits. Yes, she could see dead people and had some other strange powers she didn’t fully understand or even want to understand. She had been born that way and there wasn’t a lot she could do about it. But the gossips never said anything like “Yes, she’s a bit spooky, but what Mallory Vayle really likes is laying on her bed with her chin in her hands reading books about ponies” or “She’s actually a neat, sensible young person who keeps her room tidy”. No. It was all stuff about dark magic and how the skull she carried around contained an evil spirit.

Even Mallory had to admit that that part of the rumour was especially true, but again it left out important information. Maggoty’s spirit had been trapped inside the skull by Hellysh...