Moran The Doomsday Club

Detention can wait. Saving the world comes first!
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-78849-587-5
Verlag: The O'Brien Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 266 Seiten

Reihe: The Doomsday Club

Conan swallowed hard. The creature stood taller than the archway, a silhouette of darkness against the spiral of light behind it ... And it looked directly at him. Jack and Conan's friendship is officially dead. Stuck in detention with Yash and Jerry after an all-out brawl in the toilet, it's a terrible start to sixth class. And that's before they witness a monstrous beast step out of a portal outside their school. When it wanders into the crumbling mansion across the road, where the sinister Mr Kilroe lives, the boys follow. They have to investigate, right? Unlocking Mr Kilroe's secrets is only the beginning. Because there's more than one otherworldly horror hiding in that house and confronting it will put Jack and Conan in mortal danger - that's if they don't kill each other first!

Kevin Moran is a children's author and primary school teacher from Castlebar, County Mayo. He was runner-up in the Staróg Prize for children's fiction in 2023. He wrote his first book, 'Ghost Invaders', when he was six. It remains buried in an attic, unpublished. When not writing, he can often be found on the beach near his home in Dublin, being walked by his surprisingly strong golden retriever.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Moran, Kevin

Leseproben

Chapter 1

Firestarter

Jack

‘I only lit a small fire.’

As he said the words, Jack winced. In the school’s long history of terrible excuses, it was surely in the top five. Conan, Yash and Jerry – his fellow inmates at lunchtime detention, sitting with him in a circle of chairs in their empty classroom – glared at him. He tried again.

‘Look, how was I supposed to know a few balled-up pieces of paper in the toilet bin would cause that much smoke?’

Yash rubbed his split lip and rolled his eyes. ‘You didn’t know fire causes smoke?’

A sudden rage bubbled beneath Jack’s skin and a hundred nasty comments fought to be first from his mouth. But the look on Yash’s face – part smug, part disgusted – left Jack speechless with fury and he clamped his mouth shut. Besides, Jack was in enough trouble. The fire was one thing, but the punches thrown as they all scrambled to escape the smoke-filled toilet were worse. Even if some of them were accidental.

‘A fire, Jack,’ said Conan, pressing an ice pack to the back of his head. His doe eyes were wide with shock. ‘Even for you, that’s bad.’

‘Relax,’ said Jack, dabbing at blood on his lip. ‘No one died.’

‘I could ask the caretaker if I can build a fire escape beside the urinals,’ murmured Jerry. His broad shoulders were hunched over as he focused on a watch he had balanced on his knee, taking it apart with a tiny screwdriver. ‘In case it happens again.’

Yash stared at him like he was unwell. ‘Or Jack could stop lighting fires.’

Jerry shrugged and pulled open the watch face. ‘Or that.’

Jack huffed and slid from his seat. A vast grey sky was framed by windows that stretched to the classroom’s ceiling. He rested his chin on the windowsill, watching as rain pelted the brittle panes, a thousand tiny fingers hammering to be let in. A stone’s throw from the classroom window, across a pathway of rain-slicked cobbles, a row of red-brick Georgian houses were nestled together, shielded by a high stone wall and the claw-like branches of bare trees. In the wall, a Gothic stone arch led to a tiny, now-waterlogged park. It was a quiet spot in the middle of a bustling city, like their school existed in its own little time warp.

Behind him, Conan and Yash began to panic and tried to place blame. This was all new to them, he supposed: the sweaty palms, the knots in your stomach as you waited for your teacher to storm in and bite your head off. For Jack, the drama was all a bit much. The barely-a-fire he’d lit was just a distraction. A very, very good distraction. Not that he could admit that now. He was about to whip around and tell them to shut it when a flash of movement caught his eye.

A tall, gangly figure made its way across the cobbles outside the classroom window: Mr Kilroe was less a man and more like a gnarled tree draped in a dark suit. Wrinkles like crevices ran across his face and square black sunglasses concealed his eyes. Grey wisps of hair billowed across his head like rolling fog.

‘Jack, I think you should sit down,’ came Conan’s trembling voice. ‘We need to get our story straight.’

Jack kept his eyes on the old man. ‘You were caught fighting in the bathroom, Conan, not burying a body in the woods.’

Mr Kilroe had lived across from the school for as long as Jack could remember. He’d never seen him speak to anyone or crack a smile. He watched now as the old man stopped in front of the stone archway. He rested on his cane, as oblivious to the rain as a corpse is to the sun. His thin lips moved quickly, as though he was speaking into the empty space inside the archway, and Jack wondered if he should call someone to help – Mr Kilroe had clearly lost his mind. Then the old man lifted his right arm, fist clenched, and traced the line of the archway. His long, wrinkled neck craned back and he gazed up at the arch as if waiting for something. Suddenly, Mr Kilroe gave a roar of pain and unclenched his fist. Jack glimpsed what seemed to be tiny shards of yellow stone fall from the old man’s hand and a trail of blood from where they had pierced his skin.

‘Jack, please sit down,’ said Conan again. ‘Ms Murphy and Mrs Lynch are just in the corridor …’

But before Jack could turn, a gash of lightning lit up the grey October sky and Ms Murphy’s reflection appeared in the window.

She stood in the doorway, arms folded across a black tracksuit top and lips pursed. She meant business.

‘Nice entrance, Miss,’ said Jack, turning from the window.

Ms Murphy frowned. ‘I didn’t plan the lightning, Jack.’ She crossed to her desk and jabbed a finger at where the other boys sat in a circle. ‘Sit.’

Jack threw his head back and groaned before slouching in a chair next to his fellow inmates in their bottle-green uniforms. Conan shuffled nervously on his chair, his legs bobbing up and down as he chewed on a thumbnail, saliva glinting off his braces. He stared at Jack with dopey eyes from behind a shock of wild, blond hair, as though pleading with him to tell the truth, as if he could send the message telepathically.

Which, knowing Conan, he probably thought was possible.

Ms Murphy leaned against her desk and shook her head. ‘I don’t even know where to begin with the four of you.’

‘We all know who started it, Miss,’ said Yash, rolling his split lip between his fingers. Jack’s rage boiled up at the sound of that voice. ‘I’m not sure why we have to waste our lunch break just because Jack is a perennial screw-up.’

There it was. Jack shot to his feet and the chair skittered back. Jerry reached out a shovel-like hand and planted him down again.

‘Don’t make it worse,’ said Jerry. Although he was big enough to pass as a teacher, his voice came out as soft as silk.

‘Jack, that’s enough,’ intoned Ms Murphy, raising her hand. ‘And need I remind you that the fire isn’t the only reason you’re all in here?’

She blew a strand of blonde hair from her eyes and glared at each of them in turn, Jerry with his slowly swelling eye, Conan with an ice pack to his head and Jack and Yash with their split lips.

‘Now I’ve no way of knowing exactly who decided to start the world’s worst barbecue in the school toilets,’ continued Ms Murphy, and her eyes lingered on Jack, much to his offence. (He’d done it, of course, but still.) ‘Nor do I know why Jericho, who’s only ever been in trouble for leaving school to rescue a bird, has got a panda eye. Or why four boys who never so much as glance at one another in class were thrashing around on the ground like a bunch of wild dogs. So let me ask you: have you got anything to say?’

Her words echoed around the classroom.

It was Conan who broke the silence.

‘“Like a bunch of wild dogs”,’ he said, with a nervous machine-gun giggle. ‘You love a good metaphor, Miss.’

‘Actually,’ said Yash in his annoyingly prim teacher voice, ‘that last one was a simile.’

Jack let out an exaggerated groan. ‘Oh my God, if you don’t shut up, I’ll set myself on fire.’

Conan’s face lit up with that same goofy smile Jack had known all his life. It occurred to him that Conan thought Jack was defending him. He could smile back, of course. Even a slight grin would be a bit of a peace offering. The edges of his lips even began to twitch. But in the end, he went with an always-reliable eyeroll.

Besides, he’d lit the fire for Conan. What more could he do for him in one day? The whole point of the fire had been to get people out of the toilets. But in the scramble to escape, elbows hit jaws, shirts were pulled, legs were buckled. By that point, it didn’t really matter who’d started the actual fight. Jack bit his split lip and winced. One of the few good deeds he’d ever done and he couldn’t tell anyone. Still, it had worked. Everyone was fine. Well, apart from the odd bruise or cut.

‘Are we going to be expelled, Miss?’ asked Jerry in the mildly curious tone of someone asking what time dinner would be. He didn’t even look up from where he was resealing the back of the watch with his miniature screwdriver.

Ms Murphy exhaled and glanced at the clock. ‘That’s not my call, Jericho. But I wish I could make you understand that this is not how friends are supposed to act.’

Jack clicked his tongue. ‘We’re not friends, though, are we?’

He ignored Conan’s hurt-puppy look. It was true. They didn’t speak to each other in class or outside school. As far as Jack was concerned, Yash was a nerdy rich boy, Jerry was a large suitcase...