Beasties, page 13
“MAYBE NOT ALL OF THE EFFECTS,” Sara piped up. “LIKE A SIEVE. LIKE, WHEN YOU’RE MAKING BROTH FROM VEGETABLE SCRAPS? THE SIEVE TRAPS THE SCRAPS BUT THE NUTRIENTS AND THE FLAVOR FLOW RIGHT THROUGH. MAYBE WE JUST NEED TO GET CLOSE ENOUGH TO FEEL IT!”
“Wait, what?” I said.
“It’s worth a try,” Kate said, unfurling her wings. “Let’s spread out and give the room a recon before Buttz comes back.”
As she flew upward, followed by Sara, I began to run.
Narrow paths snaked between the stacks like a giant maze. The walls of boxes and crates loomed upward, some of them nearly touching the ceiling. They would have seemed tall to me even as a normal kid, but now they were like skyscrapers. As I turned left and right, Sara’s and Kate’s shadows flitted above. Small eddies of dust swirled at the intersections. Mason skittered along beside me, softly chanting, “Come on, feeling, come on. . . .”
Every few seconds Kate would swoop down, grab a small box in her talons, and let it crash to the cement floor as if she were a seagull trying to crack open a clam. But all that did was spill out jewels and tiny figurines. “SHHH,” Sara warned. “THAT’S TOO LOUD!”
“Do you have any better ideas?” Kate asked. “I’m not ‘feeling the feeling.’ Are you?”
We wouldn’t have much time before someone heard the ruckus. Like Kate, my superpowers were feeling exactly nothing.
Not even the slightest tingle.
Sara sat on one of the metal shelves, next to an old cuckoo clock. “WHAT IF IT’S JUST NOT HERE?”
“It has to be here!” Mason piped up from underneath. “Gould bought it, so it has to be. What about those shelves way over by the wall?”
Sara turned her head. There were hundreds of smaller boxes crammed into those shelves. Some were battered and worn, like they’d been moved around for ages. People had tried to label them, but most of those labels were ripped or covered with dust.
I scanned them for clues:
By now Mason was appearing and disappearing around the boxes. “Still not feeling it.”
“NOPE,” Sara said.
I could hear voices from within the office. I was pretty sure someone else was in there besides Buttz and Ms. Twombley.
“OK, I can’t stand this anymore,” Kate declared. Perched atop a tall crate, she stiffened her legs, leaned forward, and dive-bombed a shelf.
An entire row of boxes clattered to the floor—along with Mason. “What are you trying to do, kill me?” he cried out.
“STOP!” Sara shrieked.
One of the boxes fell next to me with a thunk. At the same time, I heard Buttz exclaiming “Oh dear!” I stopped in my tracks. The hairs along my spine rose.
At first I thought he was in the storage room with us. Which would mean Ms. Twombly was, too. But their voices were muffled as they continued talking. I was pretty sure they hadn’t yet crossed the threshold into the room.
So why were hairs on my spine still prickling?
My eye caught the label on the toppled box.
It was ripped and corroded. The missing parts between the letters were there, but hanging in shreds.
I ran to the side of the box and pushed as hard as I could, until it was right side up. There was still a sticky substance behind the parts that had shredded off the label. Carefully I pressed the ripped parts back against the box itself. The shredded parts stuck. They started completing the words.
“Riley?” Kate called out.
“DID YOU FIND SOMETHING?” Sara asked.
They both landed on the floor. Mason peered out of the feathers on Kate’s back.
They saw the result before I did.
“Oh . . .” Kate said.
“MY . . .” Sara added.
“G—”
Before Mason could finish the word, the door to the office slammed against the inner wall.
“What on earth is going on here?” echoed the distant voice of Silas Gould.
27
“BEEEEEASTIEEEEEES! RUN!”
It was Dylan’s voice, shouting from somewhere back near the office. Back where he must have been with Gould.
Sara took off, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t run away with Proteus 2 sitting right there.
We were inches away from being us again.
No more being hated by everyone who saw me. Or skulking around with my nose to the dirt. Or being eye level to Dylan’s farts.
If a turtle and pigeon could open the box to Proteus 1, we could open this one.
“We have to do this—now!” I said to Kate.
As she landed next to me, I shoved the box right side up. Kate dug right in, pecking furiously at the latch. But the box was different from the one that contained Proteus 1. It was bigger, newer. And the lock mechanism was much, much stronger.
“That creep reboxed it!” Kate said.
“Or maybe the museum did it,” I said.
Sara reappeared, flying down over the cabinets. “IF YOU CAN’T OPEN IT, LET’S JUST GET THIS THING OUT OF HERE!”
“How?” I asked.
“I FOUND A DOOR IN THE BACK,” Sara replied. “IT LOOKS LIKE A FREIGHT ELEVATOR.”
Kate tried to lift the box with her talons, but she couldn’t get a grip.
Putting all my weight behind the effort, I pushed against the box. It scraped slowly along the floor. Way too slowly. I knew it would take too long to get it all the way to the back of the room.
I eyed a tall crate about ten feet away, which contained an ancient statue. The gap between the wood slats was pretty wide. There was enough space inside for the box and us. We could try to hide in there, wait for Silas Gould to leave, and then figure out the rest later. “Let’s squeeze it into that crate,” I said.
Footsteps echoed through the room. I could hear Ms. Twombley insisting, “We were in the office the entire time, Mr. Gould. I assure you no one entered this room under my watch.”
“Absolutely no one!” came Buttz’s nervous agreement.
Gould’s voice bellowed off the walls. “Hello? Who’s here? This room is off-limits!”
I pushed with all my strength. But the box would barely budge. That ten feet looked like a mile.
“HURRY!” Sara added.
“It’s too heavy,” Kate said. “We need Dylan! He’s big enough to push this thing.”
“HE’S WITH THEM!” Sara pointed out.
“Forget about the crate,” Kate shot back. “We have to get this thing out of here. I’ll hit the elevator button. Sara, you distract them. Make them go in another direction. Get Dylan to break free and help us move this box. I’ll wait.”
“SQUAWK!” Sara was off, loudly flapping her wings, rising toward the ceiling in full view of the whole room. She flew over the stacks of boxes. A moment later, her voice screeched from a distant corner. “SQUAWK! SQUAWK! I LOVE DESTROYING THINGS OVER HERE TO YOUR RIGHT! SQUAWK!”
I cringed. She sounded like a parrot trying to imitate a parrot.
“What on earth?” Gould’s voice murmured. “A parrot did all this damage?”
“Erm . . . there may be more accomplices!” Buttz blurted. “I suggest we split! You and Ms. Twombley go to the right, and I’ll go to the left.”
Bingo.
Buttz’s heavy footsteps clomped closer, but Dylan got to us first, barreling around a pile of plastic containers so fast he smashed right into the Proteus 2 box. His jaw dropped when he realized what it was. “Ohhhh . . . myyyy . . .”
“It’s locked tight,” I said. “Help me push it! Kate is waiting by a freight elevator.”
“SQUAWKITY SQUAWK!” squawked Sara from the other side of the room. “OH, FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE, MR. GOULD, I’M OVER HERE!”
With a rush of wings, Kate banked around the crate. “I’m holding the doo-oo-oo-r,” she sang impatiently. “What is taaaaaking you so long?”
As we started pushing, Buttz ran up behind us. He snatched the box, staring at it in awe. “Oh, Great Scott! They found it! The solution is at hand. The Holy Grail.”
“Sara!” I called out. “Buttz has the box!”
“BRING IT BACK TO THE ELEVATOR, MR. BUTTZ!” she called out.
“No! Open it!” Dylan screamed. “Don’t just stand there, make us human right now!”
“He doesn’t understand you!” I began.
“Then I’ll knock it out of his hands!” Dylan leaped onto Buttz’s shoes and tried to climb up his pants leg.
Buttz cried out in horror. As he danced around to shake Dylan loose, the box dropped to the floor.
Sadly, it did not crack open.
From behind us, Ms. Twombley’s voice called out, “Mr. Roosevelt?”
Silas Gould raced into view at the end of the corridor. In his right hand was something small and metallic. “Great Scott,” he said. “It’s an entire zoo!”
“He has a weapon and he’s going to kill us!” Dylan cried out, pushing me toward the elevator. “Just go!”
“But—Proteus Two—” I protested.
“Buttz will keep it for us! We’ll find him later!” Dylan picked me up in his teeth and sprinted down the corridor faster than I’d ever seen him move.
Kate had managed to drop a broken wood slat strategically into the elevator door’s electric eye, to keep it open. We raced in, as Kate and Sara flew in above us. “MASON, YOU STILL WITH US?” Sara called out.
“Present!” Mason called out.
“Elevator down!” Dylan commanded, kicking away the broken slat.
Kate had already managed to press the Lobby button. “Aye, aye, boss.”
As the door slowly shut, I could hear Silas Gould’s heavy footfalls getting closer.
And behind him, I saw Buttz dropping Proteus 2 into his shoulder bag.
28
IF YOU EVER WONDERED what it’s like to sink into mud, take an old New York City freight elevator. As we inched slooooowly down to the lobby, we could hear footsteps clattering down the nearby stairwell.
“Arrrrgh!” Kate said. “They’re going to get there before us!”
“Don’t panic,” Dylan said, pacing back and forth. “Buttz has the box. Even if they come after us, he’ll open it, and—BOOM! We’re kids again. The press arrives. The Lost Kids of Loeser . . . found! We’re overnight celebrities! We’ll need a manager—”
“WHAT IF HE’S NOT WITH THEM?” Sara asked. “SORRY, BUT WHAT IF HE WAS AFRAID THEY’D TAKE THE BOX BACK, SO HE ESCAPED ANOTHER WAY?”
“You think you’re so smart,” Dylan hissed.
“She is,” Mason replied.
“Awwww,” Kate cooed.
The door creaked open, into a wide and extremely long hallway on the first floor. To get out of the building, we’d have to get to the end of it and then turn down a whole other corridor.
Along the way we’d have to pass the stairwell. The problem was, we could hear Silas and Ms. Twombley clomping down the stairs, about to emerge from behind an old metal door.
“Um . . . fail. Any other ideas?” Dylan asked.
Kate was already pecking at the button labeled B. For Basement. “We’re going all the way down. Stay put!”
Our two open elevator doors slid shut, slooooowly. It was like watching a heavy stage curtain pulled shut by a ninety-year-old.
Just as the two doors finally closed with a metallic thoomp, I heard the stairwell door burst open from down the hallway.
“Did they see us?” Dylan asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
When we finally crept down to the basement, the elevator opened to a dark, dingy hallway lit by bare bulbs. It was jammed with boxes and cleaning supplies.
And rats. Lots of rats.
I scurried quickly toward them. “Um, hi! Excuse me . . .”
“Who’s the pretty boy?” one of them snarled.
“Not our family,” another one said.
“Get him,” said another.
From behind me, Dylan growled menacingly. And Kate shrieked, unfurling her huge wings.
The rats stiffened. “Holy @#&^$!”40 one of them said.
As they turned and disappeared into a hole, Dylan puffed out his chest. “Enemies scatter at the sight of the Dangerous D!”
“Kate scared them,” Mason said, “not you.”
“Here’s the scary thing—they looked tasty to me,” Kate grumbled, waddling out into the hallway.
“Please don’t say that,” I said.
“You, Riley, will never be tasty,” Kate replied. “Promise.”
Dylan ran ahead, until he reached an intersection of hallways. “How do we get out of here?”
From the rat hole, a voice called out, “Out, out, out! Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Big can strong hair yummy-tums uppy hole.”
“Huh?” Mason piped up.
“CAN YOU REPEAT THAT?” Sara called out.
A bunch of panicked rats began speaking at once, and I couldn’t understand any of it. But before I could ask again, Kate slapped me with a wing. “Look,” she said. “At the end of the tunnel.”
Down the dark passageway, past piles of litter, was an enormous metal barrel with a wet, dark ring along the bottom.
“THEY SAID ‘BIG CAN,’” Sara said. “YOU THINK THEY MEANT THE BARREL?”
“Whoa,” Mason piped up, “They were giving us the route. They want to get us out of their territory. And they don’t have words for left and right.”
Big can strong hair yummy-tums uppy hole.
We raced down the hallway, stopping at the barrel. The hallway extended to the right into some kind of room with machinery. To the left was a tidy-looking passage with a few dust balls and a big straw broom resting against the wall.
“What did they say next?” Kate asked.
“STRONG HAIR, I THINK,” Sara said.
“What does that mean?” Mason asked.
“Ucccch, just figure it out!” Dylan said, staring at something at the end of the hallway to the left. “I hate looking at that thing. It’s scaring me.”
“What is?” Mason asked.
“The broom!” Dylan replied. “It’s a raccoon thing. Like I’m imagining someone chasing me with it.”
Right. I felt that, too. Something about being tangled in the dirty, pinching strands of—
“It’s the straw!” I said. “Straw looks like—”
“Hair!” Kate cried out.
We ran to the broom. It wasn’t until we got there that we saw another intersection of tunnels. From the right I caught a strong whiff of rotting food. Down that corridor, about twenty feet away, was a ripped black plastic bag oozing garbage and surrounded by a haze of flies. In my head I knew it was gross. I mean, totally horrifying. But my taste buds were juicing up and I reeeeally wanted to join those flies. And that’s when I realized the next part of the message.
“Yummy-tums!” I blurted out. “Rats love this kind of stuff! They were describing that bag.”
Dylan nearly trampled me to get there first. He began clawing at the rip, releasing orange rinds, shrimp shells, vegetable peels, and half-eaten meat. “This is more like it! I am sooooo hungry.”
I stopped by his side. Next to the bag was a worn wooden staircase leading up to slatted metal double doors. At the top, a column of streetlight peeked in through a ragged hole. “Uppy hole . . .” I murmured. “It was the last thing they said.”
“Woo-hoo, uppy hole is the exit!” Kate shouted.
I ran up the steps first and fit through the opening easily.
The cool blast of outside air felt amazing. We were in some cobblestoned back alley, a couple of feet from Mercer Street, where the entrance to Silas Gould’s gallery was. I could see the movement of other rats farther on, lurking around trash cans.
Kate and Sara both managed to squeeze through the hole, losing a couple of feathers. I was worried they’d lose Mason, too, but he hung on. “Where’s Dylan?” Kate asked.
“Mwah! A chef’s kiss on the rotted rice pudding!” exclaimed Dylan from below.
I stuck my snout back through the hole. “Dude, get up here—now!”
With a loud belch, Dylan padded up the wooden steps. As he emerged from the hole, his snout was caked with food, dripping white and brown flecks.
“EWWWW,” Sara said.
“Dylan, that is so gross,” Kate added.
He shoved the rest of his bulk onto the sidewalk. In his rear paws was a dead mouse. “Dessert?” he said.
A motorcycle revved its engine as it raced down Mercer Street, its wheels rumbling on the cobblestones. A police car siren sounded a “Whoop! Whoop!” in pursuit. If there was a tiptoeing of human footsteps on the sidewalk, we didn’t hear it. But I knew something was wrong when Kate jerked backward.
“Run!” she shouted.
She and Sara were already lunging away, spreading their wings. Dylan dropped his dead mouse. But before he or I could react, a massive metal cage slammed down over both our heads, clanging onto the sidewalk.
When we looked up, Silas Gould’s eyes glowered at us like coals in a dying fire. Gloria Twombley and Bruno Stritch were behind him. And from around the corner, we could hear Vera Vlissing struggling to restrain Foofy.
“You have no idea,” Gould said, “how valuable you could be.”
“LET THEM GO!” Sara shouted.
As she dive-bombed Silas Gould, Kate went for Ms. Twombley.
Bruno held tight as the other two frantically swatted away our friends. He tilted the cage up a fraction of an inch, sliding a thin, flat metal “floor” under us. Dylan and I tried to dig our paws under the cage to try to sneak out, but Bruno was too fast and too strong.
“YOU’VE GOT THIS ALL WRONG!” Sara screamed, fluttering overhead. “WE’RE KIDS! WE’VE BEEN TRANSFORMED! MRS. VLISSING —”
While holding down our cage with one hand, Bruno pulled a vial from his jacket pocket and sprayed Sara and Kate.
“That’s pepper spray!” Dylan said.
“KECKK! KEECCCHHHH! ACKACK!” As they both dropped to the sidewalk, Gould draped a cloth cover over our cage.
Now Dylan and I could see nothing. But we could hear. Foofy barked frantically inches away from us. “Dylan Dylan Dylan but where but raccoon ATTACK IT no attack because Dylan Dylan Dylan . . .”
“Hey! Hey! Get back here!” Bruno bellowed. “The birds are getting away!”
