Pencil of Doom! by Andy Griffiths Page A

was on bin duty and I found this pencil in one of the bins. It’s a pretty good one, and it has the name of one of your students on it: Henry McThrottle.’
    I was shocked to see the pencil again.
    Very
shocked.
    In fact, I was so shocked that my heart actually stopped beating.
    And then it started again, which was good, because if it hadn’t I wouldn’t have been able to write this sentence.
    Or this one.
    Or this one.
    Or, well . . . you get the idea.
    â€˜Thank you,’ said Mr Brainfright, taking the pencil from the monitor. ‘There you are, Henry,’ he said, handing it to me. ‘I believe this is yours.’
    â€˜Thank you,’ I said, although gratitude was the last thing I was feeling. I’d hoped never to see that pencil again.
    â€˜What was it doing in the bin?’ Jack whispered. ‘Did you throw it away?’
    â€˜I tried to,’ I said. ‘But it obviously has other ideas!’
    â€˜Just give it to me if you don’t want it!’ said Jack.
    â€˜I can’t,’ I told him. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
    Jack rolled his eyes.
    I looked at the pencil.
    It had my name on it, written along the side.
    The strange thing was that I didn’t remember writing my name on it.
    It’s possible that I
did
write it, of course, but I didn’t
remember
writing it. Which was weird.
    But then,
everything
about this pencil was weird.
    Including the fact that it was proving very difficult to get rid of.

38
Skull Island

    After eating lunch, I gave Jack the slip, and headed straight for the top of Skull Island, a small hill in our school grounds. It was where we had found Principal Greenbeard’s buried treasure.
    I figured that if I couldn’t throw the pencil away then I’d bury it right back in the place it had come from. It had lain there for at least thirty years without hurting anybody. It could lie there for another thirty years as far as I was concerned. Or, even better, thirty
thousand
years.
    What I hadn’t counted on, though, was how attached Jack had become to the pencil. I’d barely scratched the surface of the ground before I realised he was behind me. I turned and looked up at him.
    â€˜Give it to me!’ he hissed, his hand out.
    â€˜No,’ I said, ‘it’s too dangerous. I’m getting rid of it once and for all.’
    â€˜Over my dead body,’ said Jack.
    â€˜If that’s what it takes,’ I said. ‘Though I’m really hoping that won’t be necessary.’
    â€˜Give me one good reason why you have to get rid of it,’ said Jack.
    â€˜One?’ I said. ‘I can give you more than that! A lot of people have been hurt, Jack. And that’s not even counting Penny and Gina’s horses, which are both in the hospital in a very serious condition!’
    â€˜Have you gone completely mad?’ said Jack. ‘Those horses are imaginary! And everything else you’re talking about is pure coincidence! The pencil didn’t make Mr Brainfright fall out the window: he’s perfectly capable of doing that himself, and he’s proved it many times. Fred and Clive fell off that roof because of their own stupidity—it wasn’t the pencil’s fault. I was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and I got hit by a bag of money. You were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and you got hit by a giant cardboard cheque. Gretel’s too strong for her own good, and Jenny was attacked by a lion, not the kitten that she drew. You can’t blame the pencil for any of that!’
    â€˜But the lion’s name was Kitty!’ I said.
    â€˜Listen to yourself, Henry. You’re being ridiculous.’
    â€˜No I’m not. I’m being cautious,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m putting the pencil back in the ground where it came from. And where it can stay. Forever!’
    I turned back to continue digging.
    Suddenly