“What was that?” asked Cleo.

  Before anyone could reply, Tress sneezed again. “WACHOO!” This time the cauldron flashed briefly before transforming into a model sailing ship.

  Again and again, Tress sneezed. All around the shop, objects flashed into new shapes. “WACHOO!” Eefa’s cash register became a two-headed sheep. “WACHOO!” Luke’s watch changed into a glittering butterfly. And the jar of maggots on the counter was suddenly — “WACHOO!” — a crystal bowling ball.

  “What’s going on?” asked Luke, only just catching the goat as it fell from its perch above the door. He set the animal down and it ran into a corner, where it stood and trembled.

  “It’s the real reason witches don’t like cold water!” Eefa shouted above Tress’s sneezes. “Witch flu can have disastrous consequences!”

  “Can you change these things back?” asked Resus, jumping to one side as the goat scurried past, trying to escape a huge toad that was the result of another giant sneeze.

  “WACHOO!”

  Eefa nodded. “I should be able to put everything right,” she promised. “What’s important now is to get Tress to bed, where she can get better and stop sneezing out magic.” She grabbed her robes from the coat stand just before it transformed into a baby giraffe and wrapped them around her friend.

  “You freaks are all as bad as each other!” bellowed Sir Otto, yanking the shop door open and marching outside. “I’m going somewhere sane!”

  “Will Tress be OK?” asked Cleo as the door closed behind the landlord.

  “I’ll mix her up a potion,” said Eefa. “That will sort her out, although it might be a while before she starts to feel better. The good news, however, is that her sneezes will only affect the emporium, as this is the only place she’s been to today.”

  “Apart from Luke’s house, that is,” said Resus.

  “WACHOO!”

  “She’s been to Luke’s house?” asked Eefa. “Oh dear!”

  “I don’t like the sound of that ‘oh dear’…” said Luke.

  “If Tress flashed into your house before coming here, there’s a possibility that she’ll have left some of her magical residue there,” explained the witch.

  “Magical residue?” asked Cleo.

  “It’s like a witch’s fingerprint,” explained Eefa. “It follows her wherever she goes.”

  “What’s so bad about that?” asked Resus.

  “When a witch has flu, her sneezes can affect anything touched by her magical residue that day, including—”

  “WACHOO!”

  “My bedroom,” groaned Luke. “Why do these things always happen to my house?” With a heavy sigh, he pulled open the shop door and raced out across the square, Resus and Cleo at his heels.

  The bleating goat made to follow them, but as the result of another sneeze — “WACHOO!” — it changed into a giant cabbage and sat perfectly still.

  The trio ran through the front door to 13 Scream Street just as it—“WACHOO!”—flashed and began to turn into a ring of flowers. Inside, objects were transforming faster and faster. “WACHOO!” An oil painting became an owl and batted its wings against the wall for a moment before flapping to freedom through an open window.

  “Tress’s cold must be getting worse,” said Resus as — “WACHOO!” — a vase of flowers on the table in the hallway became a lump of lemon jelly and fell to the floor with a splat!

  “How come we can still hear her sneezes?” demanded Cleo.

  Resus shrugged. “I guess they’re tied in with the magic.”

  “Mum? Dad? Where are you?” shouted Luke.

  “WACHOO!” Above him, a burst of light erupted across the ceiling. Cleo dragged him to one side just as the chandelier transformed into an anvil and smashed to the floor.

  “We’re in here!”

  Luke raced towards the living room at the sound of his dad’s voice. Running in, he was temporarily blinded by an orange flash that “WACHOO!” — enveloped the sofa on which his parents were huddled. A split-second later they were both sitting on the back of a gymnastic vaulting horse. The coffee table beside it “WACHOO!” — zapped itself into a bottle of champagne.

  “Are you OK?” Luke asked.

  “We’re fine!” called Mr Watson, dragging his wife off the vaulting horse and kicking it to the other side of the room, just as — “WACHOO!” — it became a wild boar. “We’ve only just got back; the zombies needed some help with their plumbing.”

  Luke stared at his dad, stunned. “You’ve been round to the zombies’ house to fix the plumbing?”

  “WACHOO!” The bottle of champagne turned into a large rat.

  “Don’t be so surprised,” said his mum. “Your dad’s always been good with things like that.” The rat scuttled up her leg and she gripped it by the tail and hurled it through the open window. “Horrible creatures!”

  Luke was lost for words. Could these be the same parents who, just weeks ago, had been terrified by anything to do with Scream Street? “Resus,” he said, finally finding his voice, “take my mum and dad to your house.”

  “Why?” asked Mr Watson. “Is their plumbing playing up too?”

  “No, it’s just that—”

  Just then, the wallpaper — “WACHOO!” — flashed into millions of terrified cockroaches, which immediately scuttled for cover, causing the walls to look as though they were rippling.

  Resus screamed in terror.

  Luke shook his head. This was all the wrong way round! “Mum, Dad, take Resus home!” he called. “I’ll explain later, but this is only happening here. Cleo will go with you.”

  “What about you?” asked his dad as — “WACHOO!” — the armchair became a rather nervous sheep.

  “I need to check something upstairs, then I’ll join you.”

  Giving him a quick thumbs-up, Mr and Mrs Watson grabbed Resus and pulled him from the room. As Luke and Cleo made to follow, the screeching boar spotted the sheep and charged at it. The sheep leapt aside, causing the boar to smash into a wooden bookcase, which crashed to the floor, scattering books everywhere.

  “Look out!” called Luke, before jumping over the books and heading for the stairs to rescue Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street and the casket of relics before something happened to them. Then he stopped, realizing that Cleo was no longer with him. He turned to find her trapped beneath the bookcase.

  “Can’t … move…” she grunted. “Think my arm … might be … broken!”

  Luke dropped quickly to his knees and pushed frantically at the bookcase, trying to slide it off his friend. It moved slightly, but Cleo screamed as a lightning bolt of pain shot down her injured arm.

  “You have to … lift it,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Don’t … slide it again.”

  “I can’t!” cried Luke. “It’s too heavy!”

  “Please,” begged Cleo, blinking back tears of pain.

  Luke glared angrily at the bookcase, and a wave of darkness flushed through his body. This was the rage that would allow him to change into his werewolf form. Since he’d moved to Scream Street he had been learning how to direct the transformation to a particular area of his body. He needed that power more than ever now.

  Forcing the anger down through his arms, he watched as rapidly developing muscles pressed against the thin fabric of his shirt. Bones stretched as his fingers became long claws, and his entire upper body sprouted coarse, brown fur.

  Luke grabbed the heavy bookcase and lifted it a few inches off the floor. His whole body trembled with the effort, but the gap was wide enough for Cleo to slide through.

  As Luke dropped the bookcase back to the floor, the mummy climbed shakily to her feet, her broken arm hanging limply at her side.

  “That’s a weight off,” she quipped, before collapsing into a dead faint.

  Chapter Four

  The Body

  Cleo was surprised to wake up in her sarcophagus in her own room. “What happened?” she wondered aloud, trying to sit up. The pain in her right arm quickly reminded her and she lay down again.

  Luke appeared beside the bed. “Your arm’s broken in two places,” he said. “Your dad dipped some fresh bandages into a paste he made out of lotus flowers and set it for you.” Cleo lifted the heavy cast to examine it.

  “What happened to the wild boar?” she asked.

  “Getting used to life as a sofa again!” said Resus, entering the room.

  “Has everything been changed back?” asked Luke.

  “Eefa’s at your house now,” replied Resus, “busy sorting it all out. It looks like Tress’s flu is getting a little better, too: the only thing I saw change while I was there was the kitchen cooker — into a rather confused-looking badger.”

  “What about Mr Skipstone?”

  “He looks nothing like a confused badger,” grinned the vampire.

  “Idiot!” said Luke, giving him a fake punch in the arm. “I mean, did you get the book?”

  “Right here,” replied his friend, producing Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street from under his cloak. “You’ll be pleased to know that all the relics are safely tucked away in their casket and none of them has been zapped into a new identity.”

  “Good,” said Luke, relieved. “It looks like my mum and dad will be out of here soon.”

  “So will you,” Cleo reminded him as he took the silver book from Resus. “But is leaving Scream Street what you want?”

  Luke’s cheeks flushed as he struggled for an answer. “I … that is … I just want my mum and dad to get their old lives back!” he said eventually, turning away as Resus and Cleo exchanged a glance.

  “If you want to stay, you should say so,” said Cleo gently.

  “I don’t want to, OK?” snapped Luke. “I want things to be back the way they were — with my old house, my old school… and my old mum and dad back!” He flicked through Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street to the pantomime script. “Give us the clue to the final relic, please, Mr Skipstone.”

  “Luke, I think…” began Resus.

  “The final clue, please, Mr Skipstone!” Luke repeated more loudly.

  With a sigh, the author began to fade away the panto scene where Prince Luckless slips a paper bag over Sleeping Ugly’s head before kissing her. Hidden beneath was the clue to the last founding father’s relic:

  Luke took a deep breath. “A werewolf’s claw,” he whispered. “Other werewolves have lived in Scream Street!”

  “It can’t have been for ages,” said Resus. “When you first moved in, my mum and dad said they couldn’t remember ever having had a werewolf for a neighbour.”

  “Where’s the relic hidden, though?” asked Cleo. “I don’t understand the clue at all. The house you seek is at its prime. What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Luke, closing the book. “Maybe we have to go to whichever house in Scream Street is the smartest or best decorated. That’s what ‘at its prime’ means, isn’t it?”

  “It can’t be that,” said Resus. “How would the founding father know what the houses would look like when someone eventually found his clue?”

  “Do you know what it means, Mr Skipstone?” Cleo asked the silver book. The face on the cover remained silent, its eyes closed.

  “Mr Skipstone?” said Luke. The book didn’t reply.

  “Was it something I said?” asked Cleo.

  Luke shook his head. “I’m beginning to understand how it works. Mr Skipstone will only help us so far, then the rest is up to us.”

  “We haven’t done too badly until now,” Cleo reminded him with a smile.

  “That’s true,” said Luke, tucking Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street into the back pocket of his jeans and standing up, “but we won’t find out anything sitting here. Come on, Resus.”

  Cleo leapt out of her sarcophagus. “What do you mean, ‘Come on, Resus’?” she demanded. “What about me?”

  “You can’t come,” said Luke. “You’ve broken your arm!”

  “And how does that stop me?”

  “You need to rest,” he replied.

  Cleo squared up to him, her eyes flaring. “Luke Watson,” she said slowly, “I have helped you to find five out of the six founding fathers’ relics. If you try to leave me out of the hunt for the last one, I’ll show you just how hard these lotus-flower plaster casts can be…”

  Luke couldn’t help but smile. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving you out,” he protested, holding up his arms to defend himself. “After you!”

  Sticking her tongue out at him, Cleo led the way down the stairs. As she reached the bottom, she called into the kitchen, “Dad, I’m going out with Luke and Resus.”

  A tall Egyptian mummy, Niles Farr, appeared in the hallway, a tea towel in his hands. “But your arm needs—”

  “My arm feels fine,” insisted Cleo. “Besides, if I get into any trouble, I’ve got these two ugly mugs to look after me.”

  Niles Farr bowed solemnly to Luke and Resus. “Your friendship with my daughter humbles me,” he pronounced.

  Cleo blushed. “Dad!”

  “Allow me to finish,” insisted Niles. “When we left our pyramid, many moons ago, our prime reason was for Cleo to find such friendship as this.”

  “Dad, I mean it—”

  “What did you say?” interrupted Resus. “Your prime reason?”

  Cleo’s father nodded solemnly. “It was first and foremost in my mind. She would have been alone had we remained where we were.”

  “Come on,” said Cleo, practically dragging the boys towards the front door. “He’ll go on all day if you let him. Bye, Dad!”

  “Your dad’s prime reason,” Luke said thoughtfully as the trio stepped out into the street. “The reason that was first and foremost in his mind when you left Egypt…”

  “Which means,” finished Resus, “that prime can also mean first.”

  “So if we’re looking for a house that’s at its prime,” said Cleo, catching on, “we need the first house.”

  Luke grinned. “The final relic must be hidden at number one Scream Street!”

  The inside of 1 Scream Street was dark and dusty, and Luke opened the living-room curtains to provide a little light. The children had knocked but received no reply, so they’d decided to explore the house uninvited. The front door had been locked, but this had proved no obstacle for Resus’s fake vampire talons.

  “Whoever lives here obviously doesn’t believe in cleaning up,” said Cleo as she picked her way through piles of books and letters on the floor. Every surface, from the sofa to the window-sill, was stacked high with some sort of reading matter.

  “I don’t think anyone can live here any more,” said Resus, picking up an old copy of The Terror Times and blowing dust from it.

  “Maybe we’ve got it wrong,” said Cleo, puzzled. “I can’t imagine a werewolf living—”

  “Shh,” interrupted Luke, pointing. “There’s someone there!” Resus and Cleo followed his gaze across the hallway to the study, where they spotted a figure sitting in an ancient swivel chair at a long desk, its back to the trio.

  Resus cleared his throat. “Excuse me…” he called out. The figure didn’t respond, and the vampire gestured for his friends to follow him. As they got closer, the trio could see that the desk was covered in pages of handwritten manuscript and old-fashioned quills. A bottle of ink, a quill still dipped in it, sat beside the papers.

  “We’re sorry to burst in,” Cleo began politely. “We did knock.” The figure remained motionless and silent. “Why doesn’t he answer?” she hissed to the others.

  “I don’t think he can answer…” said Luke. “I think he might be dead.” Cleo’s eyes widened and she gave a whimper.

  “What’s wrong with you?” demanded Resus. “You live in a street surrounded by skeletons and zombies, and you’re worried about being in the same room as a corpse!” He tapped the figure on the shoulder. “See? Dead as a dodo.”

  “Stop it,” ordered Cleo.

  “Why?” grinned Resus. “He doesn’t mind — do you?” He grabbed one of the dead body’s hands and waved it at the mummy.

  “I said, stop it!” shouted Cleo, slapping the hand from Resus’s grasp.

  The momentum caused the chair to spin round so that the figure was facing the trio. They froze, looks of terror on their faces. Although the, skin was pulled paper thin across the bones, the face was easy to identify.

  Sitting in the chair was the decaying body of Samuel Skipstone.

  Chapter Five

  The Werewolf

  “I don’t get it,” said Luke, staring in amazement at the rotting figure. A jacket, shirt and tie hung limply from its shrunken frame. “This is supposed to be where the last founding father lives. What’s Mr Skipstone doing here?”

  “Not much, by the look of it,” said Resus, giving the corpse an experimental nudge. It swayed slightly in its chair.

  Cleo was unable to tear her eyes away. “It’s horrible!”

  Luke pulled Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street from his pocket. “What’s going on here?” he asked the silver face.

  “You have found my body exactly where I left it when my spirit merged with this book,” replied Samuel Skipstone. His eyes flickered around the room. “No one will have been inside this house since.”

  “Then how did the book get out?” said Resus. “And wouldn’t G.H.O.U.L. have needed the house for another family?”

  “A close friend was with me when I cast the spell,” explained Skipstone. “Femur Ribs.”

  “The skeleton who gave Luke her skull as a relic?” asked Cleo.

  “The same,” said Skipstone. “She took the book with her and spread a rumour that ownership of the house had passed on to my son.”

  “Your son?” asked Luke. “You had a family?”

  “I still do,” smiled the author.

  “But you did live here, with the last founding father?” said Luke.

  “Not exactly…” began Skipstone.

  “Then you must have allowed him to hide the final relic here.”