The Midnight Gang Read online

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain by

  HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2016

  HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

  HarperCollins Publishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London

  SE1 9GF

  The HarperCollins website address is:

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  1

  Text copyright © David Walliams 2016

  David Walliams and Tony Ross assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work.

  Cover lettering of author’s name copyright © Quentin Blake 2010. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Illustrations copyright © Tony Ross 2016

  Source ISBN: 9780008164614

  Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008164638

  Version: 2016-10-27

  Cover illustration copyright © Tony Ross 2016

  Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublisher’s Ltd 2016

  Cover lettering of author’s name copyright © Quentin Blake 2010

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  For Wendy and Henry, two keen readers

  and future writers.

  David x

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Monster Man

  Chapter 2: Here or There

  Chapter 3: Bump

  Chapter 4: The Children’s Ward

  Chapter 5: Pink-Frilly-Nightdress Boy

  Chapter 6: Up to No Good

  Chapter 7: The Midnight Hour

  Chapter 8: A Promise

  Chapter 9: “B” For Basement

  Chapter 10: Rabbit-Dropping Roulette

  Chapter 11: Poop! Poop! and Double Poop!

  Chapter 12: Following the Leader

  Chapter 13: Thunk

  Chapter 14: Deep Freeze

  Chapter 15: The North Pole

  Chapter 16: Polar Bear

  Chapter 17: Telling Stories

  Chapter 18: Ba Ba Ba Bom

  Chapter 19: Positively Medieval

  Chapter 20: The Oath

  Chapter 21: A Voice in the Darkness

  Chapter 22: Snotted

  Chapter 23: Deep-Fried Otter

  Chapter 24: Goodest Morning

  Chapter 25: The Boy Protests too much

  Chapter 26: The Taste of Pond

  Chapter 27: Fly

  Chapter 28: The Impossible Dream

  Chapter 29: Balloons, Balloons and more Balloons

  Chapter 30: An Old Friend

  Chapter 31: The World’s Oldest Child

  Chapter 32: Balloon Burglars

  Chapter 33: Flying Old Lady

  Chapter 34: Bottom on Fire

  Chapter 35: Nee-Naw! Nee-Naw!

  Chapter 36: The Unwelcoming Committee

  Chapter 37: Not a Laughing Matter

  Chapter 38: Deep, Deep Trouble

  Chapter 39: The Saddest Story

  Chapter 40: Chocolate for Breakfast

  Chapter 41: One Last Adventure?

  Chapter 42: The Escape

  Chapter 43: A Wall of Black

  Chapter 44: Home

  Chapter 45: A One-Winged Pigeon

  Chapter 46: Prince Charming

  Chapter 47: Nothing is Impossible

  Chapter 48: An Awfully Big Adventure

  Chapter 49: Two Left Feet

  Chapter 50: Poppadoms

  Chapter 51: Suspicion

  Chapter 52: A Pain in the Bum

  Chapter 53: Bong!

  Chapter 54: Together

  Chapter 55: Nestled in the Pillows

  Chapter 56: None Shall Sleep

  Chapter 57: Make her Smile

  Chapter 58: Tonight is Forever

  Chapter 59: “My Bottom Hurts!”

  Chapter 60: Long-Forgotten Choc Ice

  Chapter 61: A Tender Kiss

  Epilogue

  More from the World of David Walliams

  Also by David Walliams

  About the Publisher

  Welcome to the world of the Midnight Gang.

  This is LORD FUNT HOSPITAL, in London, England. It was built many years ago and should have been demolished many years ago. The hospital was named in honour of its founder, the late Lord Funt.

  Have a look inside LORD FUNT HOSPITAL.

  Meet the patients in the children’s ward, high up on the forty-fourth floor of the hospital.

  This is Tom. He is twelve and goes to a posh boarding school. He has hurt his head.

  Amber is twelve. She has broken both of her arms and both of her legs, so has been in a wheelchair for some time.

  Robin is also twelve. He is recovering from an operation to save his eyesight, and for now can’t see a thing.

  George is eleven and from the East End of London, which makes him a cockney. He is recovering from having his tonsils taken out in an operation.

  Sally is just ten and the youngest of the group. Because she is so ill, Sally spends most of her time sleeping.

  Downstairs in one of the grown-ups’ wards is the oldest patient in the hospital – ninety-nine-year-old Nelly.

  Hundreds of people work at LORD FUNT HOSPITAL. Among them are:

  Porter. A lonely figure, whose real name is a mystery. His job is to move people and things around the hospital, which he never seems to leave.

  Matron. Despite running the children’s ward, she doesn’t like children at all.

  Doctor Luppers has just become a doctor, and is rather easy to fool.

  Tootsie is the hospital’s dinner lady. She brings meals round on a trolley to all the patients.

  Nurse Meese is the tired-looking nurse, who never ever seems to get a night off work.

  Dilly is one of the hospital’s cleaners. You can always tell where she has cleaned as there will be a long trail of fag ash.

  Mr Cod is the old chemist. He has a hearing aid and thick glasses. Mr Cod runs the pharmacy in the hospital.

  Sir Quentin Strillers is the upper-class hospital principal, and is in charge of everyone and everything.

  From outside the hospital there is Mr Thews, the headmaster of Tom’s school, St Willet’s Boarding School for Boys.

  “Aaarrrggghhh!” screamed the boy.

  The most monstrous face he had ever seen was peering down at him. It was the face of a man, but it was completely lopsided. One side was larger than it should have been, and the other was smaller. The face smiled as if to calm the boy down, only to reveal a set of broken and rotten teeth. This made t
he boy even more scared than before.

  “Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh!!!!!” he screamed again.

  “You will be all right, young sir. Please try and be calm,” slurred the man.

  His face was so misshapen, that so was his speech.

  Who was this man and where was he taking the boy?

  It was only then the boy realised he was lying on his back, staring straight up. It felt almost as if he was floating. But something was . He was . The boy realised he must be lying on a trolley. A trolley with wonky wheels.

  His head clouded with questions.

  Where was he?

  How did he get here?

  Why couldn’t he remember a thing?

  And, most importantly, who was this terrifying man-monster?

  The trolley travelled slowly down the long corridor. The boy could hear the sound of something being dragged along the floor. It sounded like the squeak of a shoe.

  He looked down. The man was limping. Just like his face, one side of his body was smaller than the other, so the man was dragging his withered leg along with him. It looked like every movement might be painful.

  A pair of tall doors swung open and the trolley trundled into a room and came to a stop. Then some curtains were drawn round the boy.

  “I hope that wasn’t too uncomfortable, young sir,” said the man. The boy thought it was curious that this man called him “sir”. He had never been called “sir” in his life. He was only twelve. “Sir” was a title reserved only for teachers at his boarding school. “Now you wait here. I’m just the porter. Let me get the nurse. Nurse!”

  As he lay there, the boy felt strangely disconnected from his own body. It felt limp. Lifeless.

  The pain, though, was in his head. It was throbbing. Hot. If the feeling could be a colour, it would be red. A bright, hot, raging red.

  The pain was so intense he closed his eyes.

  When he opened them, he realised he was staring straight up at a bright fluorescent light. This made his head ache even more than before.

  Then he heard the sound of footsteps approaching.

  The curtain was whisked back.

  A large older lady in a blue-and-white uniform with a hat leaned over and examined the boy’s head. Dark circles framed her bloodshot eyes. Grey wiry hair squatted on her head. Her face was red raw, as if she had scrubbed it with a cheese grater. In brief, she had the appearance of someone who had not slept for a week, and was angry about it.

  “Oh deary me! Oh deary, deary me. Oh deary, deary, deary me …” she muttered to nobody in particular.

  In his confused state the boy took a moment to realise this woman was in fact dressed as a nurse.

  At last the boy realised where he was. A hospital. He had never been in one before, except the day he was born. And he couldn’t remember that.

  The boy’s eyes drifted up to the lady’s name badge: NURSE MEESE, LORD FUNT HOSPITAL.

  “That is a bump. A big bump. A very big bump. Now, does this hurt?” she said as she poked the boy hard on his head with her finger.

  “Oooowwww!” he screamed, so loudly it echoed along the corridor.

  “Some slight pain,” muttered the nurse. “Now, just let me get the doctor. Doctor!”

  The curtain was whisked across, and then back again.

  As the boy lay there staring at the ceiling, he could hear the sound of footsteps departing.

  “Doctor!” she barked out again, now some way down the corridor.

  “Coming, Nurse!” came a voice from far off.

  “Quickly!” she shouted.

  “Sorry!” said the voice.

  Then there was the sound of footsteps approaching at speed.

  The curtain was whisked back.

  A young pointy-faced man breezed in, his long white coat trailing behind him.

  “Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear,” announced a posh voice. It was a doctor, and he was somewhat out of breath at having had to run. Looking up, the boy read the man’s name badge – DOCTOR LUPPERS.

  “That is a big bump. Does this hurt?” The man took out a pencil from his breast pocket. He then held one end and tapped the boy’s head with it.

  “Oooowwww!” the boy screamed again. It wasn’t as bad as being jabbed by a gnarly old finger, but it still hurt.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry! Please don’t report me. I’ve only just graduated as a doctor, you see.”

  “I won’t,” muttered the boy.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Quite sure!”

  “Thank you. Now I need to make sure I cross the ‘i’s and dot the ‘t’s. I just have this little admissions form to fill in.” The man then proceeded to roll out a form that looked as if it might take a week to complete.

  The boy sighed.

  “So, young man,” began the doctor in a singsong tone that he hoped might make this boring task fun, “what is your name?”

  The boy’s mind went blank.

  He had never forgotten his own name before.

  “Name?” asked the doctor again.

  But, try as he might, the boy couldn’t remember it.

  “I don’t know,” he spluttered.

  A look of panic swept across the doctor’s face. “Oh dear,” he said. “There are a hundred and ninety-two questions on this form and we are still stuck on question one.”

  “I’m sorry,” replied the boy. As he lay on the hospital trolley, a tear rolled down his cheek. He felt like such a failure, not even being able to remember his own name.

  “Oh no! You’re crying!” said the doctor. “Please don’t cry! The hospital principal could come by and think that I have upset you!”

  The boy did his best to stop. Doctor Luppers searched his pockets for a tissue. Unable to locate one, he dabbed the boy’s eyes with the form.

  “Oh no! Now the form’s wet!” he exclaimed. He then began blowing on the form to try and dry it. This made the boy laugh. “Oh good!” said the man. “You are smiling! Now, look, I am sure we can find out your name. Does it begin with an A?”

  The boy was pretty sure it didn’t. “I don’t think so.”

  “B?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “C?”

  He shook his head again.

  “This could take some time,” muttered the doctor under his breath.

  “T!” exclaimed the boy.

  “You would like a cup of tea?”

  “No! My name. It begins with a T!”

  Doctor Luppers smiled as he wrote the first letter on the top of the form. “Let’s see if I can guess. Tim? Ted? Terry? Tony? Theo? Taj? No, you don’t look like a Taj… I’ve got it! Tina?!”

  All these suggestions firing at the boy clouded his mind, making it more difficult for him to remember, but finally his own name came shining through.

  “Tom!” said Tom.

  “Tom!” exclaimed the doctor, as if he was about to have guessed it. He wrote down the next two letters. “So what do they call you? Thomas? Tommy? Big Tom? Little Tom? Tom Thumb?”

  “Tom,” replied Tom wearily. Tom had already said his name was Tom.

  “Do you have a surname?”

  “It begins with a C,” said the boy.

  “Well, at least we have the first letter. It’s like doing the crossword!”

  “Charper!”

  “Tom Charper!” said the man, scribbling it down on the form. “That’s question one done. Just a hundred and ninety-one to go. Now, who brought you to the hospital today? Are your mummy and daddy here?”

  “No,” said Tom. He could be sure of that. His parents weren’t here. They were never here; they were always there. For some years now, they had packed their only child off to a posh boarding school deep in the English countryside: St Willet’s Boarding School for Boys.

  Tom’s father earned a lot of money working in desert countries far away, extracting oil from the ground, and his mother was very good at spending that money. Tom would only see them on school holidays, usually in a different country each
time. Even though Tom had travelled alone for hours to see them, his father would often still have to work all day and his mother would leave him with a nanny while she went shopping for more shoes and handbags.

  The boy would be lavished with presents upon arrival – a new train set, a model plane or a knight’s suit of armour. But with nobody to play with Tom would get bored quickly. All he really wanted was to spend time with Mum and Dad, but time was the one thing they never ever gave him.

  “No. Mother and Father are abroad,” answered Tom. “I am not sure who brought me to the hospital today. It must have been a teacher.”

  “Oooh!” said Doctor Luppers excitedly. “Might it have been your games teacher? There was a man in the waiting area dressed as a cricket umpire with a straw hat and long white jacket, which I thought was unusual, as we tend not to have cricket matches in the waiting area.”

  “That must have been my games teacher, Mr Carsey, yes.”

  Doctor Luppers’s eyes flicked down to his form. They flashed with panic once again. “Oh dear, it only says ‘parent’, ‘guardian’, ‘friend’ or ‘other’ on the form. What am I going to do?”

  “Tick ‘other’,” instructed the boy, taking charge.

  “Thank you!” said the doctor, looking relieved. “Thank you so, so much. What is the nature of your injury?”

  “A bump on the head.”

  “Of course, yes!” replied Doctor Luppers as he scribbled that down on the form. “Now, next question, would you say the general appearance of LORD FUNT HOSPITAL has ‘been lower than your expectations’, ‘has met your expectations’, ‘has exceeded your expectations’ or ‘has greatly exceeded your expectations’?”

  “What was the first one again?” asked Tom. The pain in his head made it hard for him to think straight.

  “Ooh, that’s ‘been lower than your expectations’.”

  “What is?”

  “The general appearance of the hospital.”