Free Chew Bee or Not Chew Bee by Martin Chatterton Page B

him the bee. He hoped that all the trouble he had caused his friends hadn’t been for nothing.
    Ten minutes later, the Skulls were ready to rock and roll. Walden was crouched in the prompt box with his script. Charlie, puttinghis worries about Willy on hold for the time being, was scampering around, checking the souvenir stand and food stalls. The Skulls waited in the wings for the curtain to go up.
    Yorick dimmed the lights.
    A great cheer went up from the packed audience. There was an excited buzz.
    Willy heaved on the rope that lifted the curtain, keeping well to the side of the stage, so no one saw him. As the curtain rose, Yorick lit one of his flashpots. It exploded with a blinding flash of white light. A thick plume of smoke followed, and through it stepped Olly Thesp, dressed entirely in black, and with perfect make-up. He swaggered towards the amplifier cone, crashed out a couple of chords on his shining black lute and began to sing.
    The crowd went crazy.
    The Skulls were back in town.
    Willy peeked through a gap in the curtain and felt, as he always did at the start of aBlack Skulls show, a thrill run up his spine. The trouble was, this time he didn’t know if the thrill was caused by the Skulls performance, or by pure fear. If Skellington or Sir Victor caught him, his life would be over, and this would be the last show the Black Skulls ever played.
    Where was The Ghost?

15
A Sea of Troubles

    The performance was one of the best ever.
    Everything went right. The songs had the crowd rocking. The play was exciting, funny and sad, all at the same time. Elbows played his fiddle as though his life depended upon it. Yorick’s fog machine worked perfectly. Minty and Minimac even avoided being pelted with rotten vegetables.
    But it was Olly who was the star. The Utter Nutters went completely bonkers.
    From his position in the wings, Willy had the best view in the house. It was all just perfect.
    Apart, that was, from the tricky problem of the bee, The Ghost, Skellington, and—last but not least—Sir Victor Vile, who was probably going to kill him.
    Willy scanned the audience, and spotted Sir Anstruther Skellington all by himself in the theatre box nearest the stage.
    Willy nearly choked on his own tonsils. Skellington was sitting in the very seat where Willy had hidden the spare bee!
    Willy had to get it back.
    Right now.
    â€˜You want to do wot?’ Yorick put down the fog machine hose and looked at Willy.
    â€˜Smoke Skellington out with the fog machine,’ said Willy. ‘I need my spare bee back.’
    â€˜Exackly wot spare bee would that be, Waggledagger?’ said Yorick.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ said Willy. ‘I’m waiting for The Ghost to turn up again and tell me.’
    Yorick leaned forward and rapped Willy on the head. ‘Wot ’appened to you in Richmond? ’Ave you gone doolally bonkers nuts berserko?’ he asked. ‘Enough of this ghost stuff! We got a show to do.’
    Willy threw up his hands. ‘Forget it, I’ll find another way.’
    He scuttled to the edge of the stage and hopped down into the audience. Keeping to the shadows, he made his way to the exit at the back of the theatre. Then he ran up the stairs, along the corridor, and peeked through the door at the back of Skellington’s box.
    Skellington was sitting directly in front of him. Willy couldn’t see the honey pot anywhere.
    Suddenly, there was a loud crash from the back of the theatre. Some people screamed.
    Three men burst through the theatre doors and pushed their way through the audience. They bounded onstage. It was Sir Victor Vile and his Codpieces.

    If Sir Victor had looked scary before, he now looked completely terrifying. His face was smudged with ink and his magnificent moustache was coated in dried horse dung. Willy doubted that Sir Victor would settle for anything less than Willy’s head on a platter.
    The crowd thought it was part of the act. They