Beasties, page 8
Tong, tong, tong, tong, tong . . .
“Don’t do that!” Mason shouted.
“DON’T DO WHA—?” Startled, Sara lost her balance. She disappeared down the black chute, leaving just a small yellow feather that floated lazily upward. “AAAAAAAAAGHHH . . .”
I heard a thump and held my breath. “Sara?” I called down. “Are you OK?”
“FINE!” she said, her voice echoing “FINE . . . FINE . . . FINE . . . FINE . . .”
“Sorry!” Mason replied. “Sorry . . . sorry . . . sorry . . . sorry . . .”
“ECHO!” Sara said. “ECHO . . . ECHO . . . ECHO . . . ECHO . . .”
As Sara burst out laughing, Kate sighed with relief. “You ready, Mase?”
“Holding tight,” Mason replied.
“Cowabunga,” she said, sliding into the blackness.
A couple of moments later I heard Kate thump against the bottom. She and Sara were cackling. I knew I could roll on my back and slide fast, but I was scared. My claws scraped the smooth surface, making a REEEEEE sound as I slid all the way down.
I crashed softly into Kate. She and Sara were standing on a place where the chute leveled out. Like a landing between floors. We could see a dull amber light at the base of the right pathway.
This time we slid together. We reached another landing, but this one was positioned near a metal grate. Its grid was all caked with grime, but it looked out onto a hallway. In the distance, a large elephant was eyeing us.
“North American mammals,” Sara said. “That means we made it to the main floor. Or wait . . . maybe those are Indian elephants?”
“North American,” Kate said. “They have the big Dumbo ears. Indian elephants have droopy, wrinkled ears—”
“Shhhh!” I whispered. I spotted a woman in a uniform, listening to something with earbuds. She was sort of pushing a broom and dancing with it at the same time.
“We need to get to the basement,” Kate said softly. “Where the cafeteria and the subway entrance are.”
We slid one more level down through the vents and landed in a thick carpet of dust. As it billowed up around us, we all coughed and sneezed. It felt like my allergies were back. “Must be . . . a construction project,” I said between coughs.
When the dust settled, we could see the chute stretching flat on both sides. No more downward slopes. Which meant basement! We walked cautiously toward a harsh white light pouring in through another grate. The grate revealed a hallway that had plain beige walls. “Now what?” Mason said.
It was a good question. The grate was screwed tight. “YOU COULD GET THROUGH, MASON,” Sara said.
“I think I could, too,” I said.
“YOU’RE WAY TOO BIG!” Sara said.
“He’s a rat,” Kate said. “Trust me, I’m a super’s kid. Rats can squeeze their bodies to fit through tight spaces. They can come up through your toilet.”
“Cool!” Mason said. “Even when you’re sitting on it?”
“CAN WE STOP THIS CONVERSATION RIGHT NOW?” Sara squawked. “YOU GUYS GO AND TRY TO FIND ROOM TWENTY-SIX. KATE AND I CAN’T POSSIBLY FIT THROUGH THIS GRATE, SO WE’LL GO TO WHEREVER THAT CONSTRUCTION IS. I SEE A LOT OF LIGHT AHEAD, WHICH PROBABLY MEANS HOLES IN THE WALL. WE’LL FIND ONE BIG ENOUGH TO CLIMB THROUGH AND MEET YOU.”
“Smart idea,” Mason said. “So smart.”29
Kate angled herself toward the grating. “Go for it, Mase.”
Mason skittered across Kate’s back, jumped through the grating, and then disappeared into the hallway.
As Kate and Sara rushed away, they wished me luck.
I stuck my head through. It barely fit. I pushed myself a little harder until my shoulders squeezed through. Then I pushed again.
And again.
“I’m stuck,” I said.
I could see Mason now. He was staring up at me from the floor. “Use the think system!”
“What does that even mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I saw it in a musical.”
“I can’t think my way through!”
From down the hallway another voice shouted: “Halt! Breaking and entering! You two are under arrest!”
“Aaaaagh!” I don’t know how it happened, but I popped right through and fell to a hard cement floor. The shock of the voice, I guess.
And when I came to, I was in the hallway, staring up into the furry black mask of Dylan Vlissing. “Hurrrr-hur-hur! Fooled ya!”
“You,” Mason drawled, “are sick.”
I struggled to my feet. My head was a little woozy. “I’m sorry I ever felt bad for you.”
“Happy to see you, too,” Dylan said. “Where are Red Tail and Screechy?”
“We heard that!” came a distant reply.
“AND IF YOU’RE NICE, WE’LL SHOW YOU ROOM TWENTY-SIX!” came Sara’s voice. “IT’S DOWN HERE!”
Dylan stood on his hind legs and threw his head back. “Beasties united . . . cannot be divided!”
All three of us headed toward the sound of Sara’s and Kate’s voices. They were both pacing the floor, just outside a shut wooden door. Farther on, at the end of the hallway, a wall had been demolished. The two birds were covered with dust and coughing.
Dylan trotted up behind us. “Anybody know what they’re building? It would be so cool if it’s like a trendy new gourmet café—?”
“WE’RE FINE,” Sara said. “THANKS FOR ASKING.”
“Look what we found,” Kate said, gesturing toward the nearest doorway.
It was closed tight. At the top was the number 26.
“See, this is going to be easier than we thought!” Kate let out a squawk of joy. “OK, where’s the key?”
“Raccoon to the rescue!” Dylan sat back on his haunches and reached his tiny raccoon arms up toward his neck. “The key is right here in this handy pouch around my—”
But his little claws opened and then closed on nothing but fur.
“Dylan?” Kate said. “Dylan, you didn’t . . . ?”
Dylan swallowed hard. “It was here a minute ago.”
I felt myself melting to the floor.
The pouch, and the key, were gone.
29Honestly, he should just kiss her.
16
“HE TOOK THE KEY!” Dylan shouted, pointing at me.
“I did?” I replied.
“Aha! See? He said ‘I did’!” Dylan insisted.
“Dude,” Mason drawled. “He didn’t.”
“He could’ve,” Dylan replied, shrugging.
“Dylan, were you wearing it when you got bit in the butt in the dog run?” Kate asked.
“Or when you were climbing the tree?” I asked.
“OR WHEN YOU FELL INTO THE DUMPSTER?” Sara asked.
“Or when you hid in it and then rolled into the building and then climbed out and then ran down the hallway?” Mason put in.
“I’m thinking. . . . I’m thinking. . . .” Dylan murmured.
“That explains the burning smell,” I said.
“Look,” Kate cut in, “it could be any of those places. Let’s be calm and retrace Dylan’s steps. Can you identify the dumpster you came in on?”
Dylan scratched his belly. “There’s about ten of them, all the same! It’s not like one’s a Porsche and the other’s a Jaguar. . . .”
Everybody was yelling at Dylan, but it wasn’t really his fault. How much sense did it make to hang a valuable pouch like that around a raccoon’s neck anyway? Besides, Dylan’s own words were coming back to me: Who uses keys like this anymore?
I stared up at the door. None of us had really looked closely at it. We’d all been so blown away by seeing the number 26. But there were details we’d missed.
Like, for instance, the design of the knob.
“Um, time-out?” I called. “Do you see what I see?”
Everyone stopped arguing, gathered around, and gazed where I was looking. The knob was new and shiny, surrounded by a gold plate. In the plate’s center was a black plastic rectangle.
“There’s no keyhole,” Kate muttered.
“The key was super old,” I said. “They must have changed the lock years ago.”
“Ahem,” Dylan said. “And who predicted this? Why, Dylan Vlissing!”
“You must need, like, one of those plastic cards,” Mason suggested.
“Or maybe a fingerprint,” Kate added. “Or a retinal scan or facial recognition or vocal sound wave or some other biometric measure.”
“SO BASICALLY WE’RE DOOMED!” Sara squawked. “WE DON’T HAVE ANY OF THOSE THINGS. AND NEITHER DOES UNCLE CHESTER.”
Dylan was sniffing at the bottom of the door. “Somebody’s been here recently. I smell Cheetos.”
He began scratching at the doorframe. His claws gouged the wood, loosening little sprays of sawdust. I joined him, adding my claws to the effort. I nearly smacked Mason, who appeared beside me, trying to bite his way through.
And you know what? It felt soooo good. Seriously, it is awesome to chew and claw through things. Soon Dylan’s hole widened enough to connect with my hole. Together we made a shape that looked roughly like a camel.
When our holes finally made a tiny opening to the other side, Dylan called out, “Come on, Beasties, dig in!”
We all joined the destruction. Even Sara was clawing out pieces of door. Finally, when the hole was big enough for all of us to slip through, we had to stop and catch our breaths. The hallway echoed with the panting of a rat, raccoon, hawk, parrot, and water bug.
Dylan peered into the hole. “Dark room. Very dangerous. You go first.”
“Me?” I said. “And then what? Politely ask the light to switch on all by itself?”
“I’M NOT DOING IT,” Sara said.
Kate let out an impatient sigh. “Clear, please! This is a job for a brave Beastie.”
She squeezed herself through the splintery hole. It tore off a few feathers, but she didn’t complain much. For a few seconds we could hear her flapping around inside the room. Then a high-pitched grunt. A thud. A bad word I won’t mention. And finally, a snap—and the room was bathed in harsh white light.
Mason skittered inside first. His tiny voice came back to us: “Whoa. Just whoa.”
“Are you already human again? No fair!” Dylan pushed Sara and me aside and dived into the hole. “Clear, please—yeoww!”
Dylan was stuck in the hole, a twerking mass of striped fur.
“GET HIM OUT!” Sara urged.
“No—push me in!” Dylan demanded.
I looked at Sara, and she nodded. We paced off a few steps and prepared to run at his backside. “Whatever you do,” I said, “don’t fart.”
She and I ran hard and slammed into him.
“That’s worse!” Dylan cried, still stuck. “If you disfigure me, I’ll—”
“SUE,” Sara shot back. “WE KNOW, WE KNOW!”
“I think I can make the hole bigger.” I climbed on his back and began chewing at the wood as fast as I could.
“That tickles,” Dylan complained. “Huuur . . . hur-hur-hur-hur!”
After a few moments, when the hole was wider. Sara and I prepared for another assault on Dylan’s butt. “OK, ONE . . . TWO . . . THREE!”
We charged again. The hole let out a crrrrack. Or maybe that was Dylan. But this time all three of us tumbled through to the other side.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. The first thing I noticed was that I was lying next to my sister’s talons.
“Chester said the room was full of boxes,” she murmured. “He said they’d be piled all around. Because the museum was so swamped, they just shoved things into corners. That’s what he said.”
“Well, he lied,” Mason replied.
I stood up and looked around. The floor was spotless. A small desk with a desktop computer sat in the middle of the room. Against the opposite wall was another door. Aside from that, all four walls were covered with shiny steel filing cabinets, floor to ceiling.
“WHAT DO WE DO NOW?” Sara’s voice boomed.
“Thank me for the sacrifices I’ve made,” Dylan said, “and then let’s start opening these things.”
He paused beneath one of the cabinets. None of the drawers had handles. Just shiny black rectangular plates.
“Uh-oh, looks like they’re locked,” Mason said. “Plus, there’s about a billion of them.”
But I was thinking back to the collection of stuff in Dylan’s pouch. “‘Sesame’!” I blurted. “It was written on that fragment Uncle Chester gave us, in Dylan’s pouch. It must be the code we need!”
“FOR WHAT?” Sara said in a softer voice.
“The card catalog!” Kate said. “The locked catalog that has the card giving the location of Proteus Two!”
“What’s a card catalog?” Mason asked.
“It’s a tall cabinet, with small drawers that contain index cards,” Kate explained. “Libraries used them. Before computers, that’s how you looked up books. Mom has one in her office. She stores screws and nails and tools in it. Like, Daddy asks for, you know, half-inch screws. And Mom just says, ‘The drawer marked J though L!’ Or maybe—”
“I get it,” Mason said. “But there’s one problem. . . .”
We all looked around the room desperately. No one wanted to say the obvious.
The room was neat. The room was organized. The room had lots to explore.
But the room contained absolutely nothing that looked like a card catalog.
17
“DID SOMEONE TELL YOU this would happen, huh?” Dylan shouted. “Who said there would be no card catalog? Me! But no, you trusted Uncle Chester the coyote!”
“EASY, IT’S NOT HIS FAULT,” Sara said. “THE MUSEUM CHANGED SINCE HE LAST SAW IT.”
“Knock the cabinets over,” Mason said. “The drawers will crack open and spill out everything on the floor.”
Dylan let out a high-pitched raccoony laugh. “Oh, sure, that won’t attract any attention at all. Any other ideas?”
I scrambled over to the lowest drawer on one of the cabinets. Standing on my hind legs, I could peer into the shiny black rectangular plate in front of the drawer. I nearly screamed at my own reflection. I still wasn’t used to seeing a rat staring back. But I also noticed the plate had this thin gap all the way around it. A gap about as wide as a pen point. “This plate is different than the security thing on the door,” I said.
Sara strutted up next to me. “RIGHT. IT’S MORE LIKE A BUTTON. LIKE YOU COULD PUSH IT IN.”
She tapped it with her wing, but nothing happened.
“It needs more force,” Dylan declared. “Out of my way! This is a job for Raccoon Racer!”
Barreling straight for the cabinet, Dylan threw his weight into the black plate. He collided with a hard thump and then bounced back onto the floor, rolling head over paws. “OWWWW!”
Click.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I said, ‘OWWWW’!” Dylan repeated.
“No, not that,” I said. “I heard a click.”
Mason was already skittering toward the cabinet. I peered closer. The drawer had popped out just a fraction of an inch. “Whoa . . . Dylan opened it!” Mason said.
“I did?” Dylan said. “I mean, I did!”
“IT’S A PRESSURE THING,” Sara said. “INSTEAD OF PULLING A HANDLE, YOU APPLY PRESSURE TO THE BLACK PLATE, AND THE DRAWER SWINGS OPEN.”
Mason turned toward her. “You are so brilliant.”30
“Yes, I am,” Dylan said.
“I wasn’t talking about you,” Mason said.
“Well, being a raccoon will prevent me from getting into Harvard. So let’s find this thing!” With his front paws, Dylan grabbed the top of the drawer that was sticking out from the cabinet.
He didn’t really have the angle to yank it out any farther. Instead, he leaped onto the metal lip. He managed to balance there, then leaned his upper body into the cabinet.
The drawer shot out, rolling on little wheel thingies along the side. With a helpless squeak, Dylan dropped inside. For a moment we saw and heard nothing. Then a skull flew out. Its jaw hinged open, revealing a set of razor-sharp teeth.
“Eek!” Kate screamed.
“BA-HA-HA!” Dylan shouted. “SORRY I LOST MY HEAD!”
“So funny I forgot to laugh,” I said.
“Let’s find what else is in there, Beasties!” Kate cried. She hopped into the drawer and began poking around with her beak. Sara joined her. Out flew pieces of paper, envelopes, small bones, carefully folded hunks of fur, trinkets, a plastic model of a dinosaur, and two other little skulls. All overflow stuff from the museum collection. Plus a Tootsie Roll that looked like it fell out of someone’s pocket fifty years ago.
We all joined in, emptying the drawer in a few seconds. Then we jumped out onto the floor to examine all the contents closely.
“Fiff n-fing?” Dylan asked.31
“Nope,” Kate said. “No Proteus Two.”
She unfurled her wings, flew upward, and then dived headfirst into the next drawer up. Dylan barged into the bottom drawer of the next cabinet over. We found the skin of an entire rodent, which is a zillion times more disgusting to see when you are a rodent.32 We also found about a gazillion billion more bones and trinkets and necklaces and tiny wood sculptures.
Proteus 2 wasn’t in those drawers either. Or the next two we opened. Or the next twenty.
We were at it forever, throwing stuff all over the place. Dylan managed to drop a meteor fragment that was so heavy it cracked the tiles. Weirdly, nobody seemed to hear us. When we were done, the room looked almost as bad as my bedroom floor. We could barely move in all the debris.
“There must be a mistake!” Dylan said, pushing aside piles of stuff. “We missed it somehow.”
“I feel sick,” said Mason, who had flown back into Kate’s feathers.
“WHY? WHAT DID YOU EAT?” Sara asked.
“It’s not about what I ate,” Mason said. “It’s about realizing I’ll be spending the rest of my life as something the world wants to step on.”
I could barely think straight. I could barely see straight.
A rat. I was going to be. A. Rat. Forever.
Dylan was the only one still rooting through the stuff. That Tootsie Roll had tanked him up. He was throwing artifacts left and right.
