25 - Attack of the Mutant (6 page)

“I’ve got to get home,” she said. “My mom is going to have a cow!”

“Do you believe me about the drawings?” I asked breathlessly.

“No,” she replied. “Who would believe
that
?” She waved and made her
way across the street, heading for home.

I could see a bus approaching, a few blocks down. Searching in my jeans
pocket for a token, I turned to take one last look at the weird building.

It had vanished once again.

I needed time to think about everything that had happened. But Wilson was
waiting for me when I got home, and he followed me up to my room.

“I brought over some of my rubber stamps,” he said, raising a brown paper bag
up to my face. He turned it over and emptied it onto my desk. “I thought you
might like to see some of the better ones.”

“Wilson—” I started. “I really don’t—”

“This one is a ladybug,” he said, holding up a small wooden stamp. “It’s very
old. It’s the oldest one I own. Here. I’ll show it to you.” He opened a blue
inkpad, stamped the ladybug on it, and pressed it onto the top of a pad of paper
I had on the desk.

“How old is it?” I asked him.

“I don’t know,” he replied. He held up another one. “It’s a cow,” he said. As
if I couldn’t tell. He stamped it onto the pad. “I have several cows,” Wilson
said. “But I only brought one.”

I studied the cow, pretending to be interested.

“It’s another really old one,” Wilson said proudly.

“How old?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Beats me.” He reached for another stamp.

“Uh… Wilson… I just had a really weird thing happen,” I told him.
“And I need to think about it. Alone.”

He narrowed his blue eyes at me, confused. “What happened?”

“It’s kind of a long story,” I said. “I was in a building. On the north side
of town. I think it’s where they make the Collectable Comics.”

“Really? Here in Riverview Falls?” Wilson’s face filled with surprise. “And
they let you in?”

“There was no one there,” I told him. It felt good to share the story with
someone. “So we went in. This girl I met on the bus. Libby. And me. We tried to
go up in the elevator. But it took us down. Then Libby got lost. And I found a
stack of drawings of myself.”

“Whoa!” Wilson exclaimed, raising a hand for me to stop. “I’m not following
this too well, Skipper.”

I realized what I had said didn’t make any sense at all. How could I explain
it?

I told Wilson I’d talk to him later, after I calmed down. I helped him gather
up his rubber stamps. He’d brought about twenty of them. “Twenty of the best,”
he said.

I walked him downstairs and said I’d call him after dinner.

After he left, something caught my eye on the mail table in the hall. A brown
envelope.

My heart jumped. Was it—? Yes! An envelope from the Collectable Comics
company. The next special issue of
The Masked Mutant.

I was so excited, I nearly knocked the whole table over as I grabbed for the
envelope. I tucked it under my arm without opening it and ran up the stairs, two at a time.

I need total privacy. I have to study this! I told myself.

I closed the bedroom door behind me and dropped down onto the edge of the
bed. My hands trembled as I ripped open the envelope and pulled out the comic
book.

The cover showed a closeup of The Masked Mutant. His eyes glared angrily out
at the reader.
A NEW FOE FOR THE MUTANT!
proclaimed the title.

Huh? A new foe?

I took a deep breath and held it. Calm down, Skipper, I urged myself. It’s
only a comic book.

But would this new issue help to solve the mystery for me?

Would it tell me anything about the strange, pink-and-green headquarters
building? Would it help solve any of the puzzles from this afternoon?

I turned to the first page. It showed the headquarters building from above.
The next drawing showed the building at street level. In the deep shadows,
someone was approaching the glass doors.

Someone was sneaking into the headquarters building.

I turned the page.

And shrieked at the top of my lungs: “I don’t
believe
it!”

Yes. You probably guessed it. It was
ME
sneaking into The Masked
Mutant’s headquarters building.

I stared at the page so hard, I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my
head.

I was so excited—and so shocked—I couldn’t read the words. They became a
gray blur.

I turned the pages with shaking hands. I don’t think I took a breath. I
studied each picture, holding the comic book about an inch from my face.

The Galloping Gazelle sat in a tiny room. The room grew hotter and hotter. In
minutes, The Galloping Gazelle would become The
Boiled
Gazelle!

The Masked Mutant had trapped The Galloping Gazelle in his headquarters. And
now he planned to leave The Gazelle there to boil.

I turned the page. My hand shook so hard, I nearly tore the page off.

There I was, creeping through the dark hallway. In the comic, I wore the same T-shirt and baggy jeans I had on right
now.

The next drawing showed a closeup of my face. Big balls of sweat rolled down
my pink face. I guess that meant I was scared.

I’m a little too chubby in that drawing, I thought.

But it was me. It was definitely ME!

“Mom!” I screamed, closing the comic and jumping off the bed. “Mom! Dad! You
have to see this!”

I tore out of my room and hurtled down the stairs. I don’t think my feet
touched the floor!

“Mom! Dad! Where are you?”

I found them in the kitchen, preparing dinner. Dad was chopping onions by the
sink. His eyes were filled with tears. Mom was bent over the stove. As usual,
she was having trouble getting the oven lit.

“I’m in this comic book!” I cried, bursting into the room.

“Not now!” they both replied in unison.

“No. You have to see this!” I insisted, waving it in front of Dad.

Dad didn’t stop chopping. “You had a letter to the editor published?” he
asked through his tears.

“No! I’m
in
the comic!” I told him breathlessly. I waved it closer to
him.

“I can’t see a thing!” Dad exclaimed. “Get that away from me. Can’t you see
what this onion is doing to my eyes?”

“There’s a trick to chopping onions,” Mom said, bent over the stove. “But I
don’t know what it is.”

I ran over to Mom. “You
have
to check this out, Mom. I’m in here.
Look. It’s really me!”

Mom shook her head, frowning. “I can’t get it to light,” she said, sighing.
“I think the pilot is out again.”

“I’ll check it if I ever stop crying,” Dad told her.

“Will you look at this?!”
I screamed, totally losing it.

Mom gave a quick glance to the page I was holding in front of her. “Yes, yes.
That
does
look a little like you, Skipper,” she said, waving me away. She
turned back to the oven. “We really need a new stove, dear.”

“Dad—take a look,” I pleaded.

I ran back to him, but he had shoved a towel up to his face and was crying
into the towel. “I guess you can’t look now, huh?” I said softly.

He didn’t answer. He just cried into the towel.

I let out a long, exasperated moan. What was their problem, anyway?

This was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. And they
couldn’t be bothered to take one look.

Angrily, I closed the comic and stomped out of the room.

“Skipper, set the table,” Mom shouted after me.

Set the table? I’m starring in a famous comic book, and she’s asking me to
set the table?

“Why can’t Mitzi do it?” I asked.

“Set the table, Skipper,” Mom repeated sternly.

“Okay, okay. In a few minutes,” I called back. I dropped down onto the living
room couch and turned to the back of the comic. I had been too excited to read
it to the end. Now I wanted to read the part where it tells you what to expect
in the next comic book.

My eyes swept over the page. There was The Galloping Gazelle, still trapped
in the boiling hot room. And there stood The Masked Mutant outside the door,
about to declare his victory.

I squinted at the white thought balloon over The Galloping Gazelle’s head.
What was he saying?

“Only the boy can save me now,” The Galloping Gazelle was thinking. “Only the
boy can save the world from The Masked Mutant’s evil. But where is he?”

I read it again. And again.

Was it true? Was I the only one who could save The Galloping Gazelle?

Did I really have to go back there?

After school the next day, I hurried to the bus stop. It was a clear, cold
day. The ground beneath my sneakers was frozen hard. The sky above looked like a
broad sheet of cold, blue ice.

Leaning into the sharp wind, I wondered if Libby would be on the bus. I was
dying to tell her about the comic book. I wanted to tell her I was going back
into the strange building.

Would she go back with me?

No way, I decided. Libby had been frightened after our first visit, I could
never drag her back there.

I jogged past the playground, my eyes on the street, watching for a bus.

“Hey, Skipper!” a familiar voice called. I turned to see Wilson running after
me, his coat unzipped and flapping up behind him like wings. “Skipper—what’s
up? You going home?”

Two blocks up, the blue-and-white bus turned the corner.

“No. I’m going someplace,” I told Wilson. “I can’t look at your rubber stamp
collection now.”

His expression turned serious. “I’m not collecting rubber stamps anymore,” he
said. “I gave it up.”

I couldn’t hide my surprise. “Huh? How come?”

“They took up too much of my time,” he replied.

The bus pulled to the curb. The door opened. “See you later,” I told Wilson.

As I stepped on to the bus, I remembered where I was going. And I suddenly
wondered if I
would
see Wilson later. I wondered if I would ever see him
again!

Libby wasn’t on the bus. In a way, I was glad. It meant I wouldn’t have to
explain to her what I was doing.

She would have laughed at me for believing what I read in a comic book.

But the comic book had told the truth about the Invisibility Curtain. And now
it had said that I was the only one who could save The Galloping Gazelle and
stop The Masked Mutant’s evil.

“But it’s just a comic book!” Libby would have said. “How can you be such a
jerk to believe a comic book?”

That’s what she would have said. And I don’t know
how
I could have
answered.

So I was glad she wasn’t on the bus.

I climbed off the bus in front of the empty lot.

I gazed at it from across the street. I knew it wasn’t really an empty lot. I
knew the pink-and-green building was there, hidden behind the Invisibility
Curtain.

As I crossed the street, I felt a wave of fear sweep down over me. My mouth
suddenly got dry. I tried to swallow, but nearly choked. My throat felt as if
someone had tied a knot in it. My stomach felt kind of fluttery. And my knees
got sweaty and refused to bend.

I stopped on the sidewalk and struggled to calm myself down.

It’s just a comic book. Just a comic book.
That’s what I told myself,
repeating the words over and over.

Finally, staring straight ahead at the empty lot, I worked up my courage
enough to move forward. One step. Another. Another.

Suddenly, the building popped into view.

I gasped. Even though I had crossed through the Invisibility Curtain before,
it was still amazing to see a building suddenly appear before my eyes.

Swallowing hard, I pulled open one of the glass entrance doors and stepped
into the bright, pink-and-yellow lobby.

Staying near the door, I turned to the left, then the right.

Still empty. Not a person in sight.

I coughed. My cough sounded tiny in the huge lobby. My sneakers squeaked over
the marble floor as I started to the elevators on the far wall.

Where
is
everyone? I asked myself. It’s the middle of the afternoon.
How can I be the only one in this huge lobby?

I stopped in front of the elevators. I raised my finger to the elevator
button—but I didn’t push it.

I wish Libby
had
come along, I decided. If Libby were here, at least
I’d have someone to be terrified
with
!

I pushed the elevator button.

“Well… here goes,” I murmured, waiting for the door to open.

And then someone laughed. A cold, evil laugh.

Right behind me.

I let out a low cry and spun around.

No one there.

The laughter repeated. Soft, but cruel.

My eyes darted around the lobby. I couldn’t see anyone.

“Wh-who’s there?” I choked out.

The laughter stopped.

I continued to search. My eyes went up to the wall above the elevator. A
small, black loudspeaker poked out from the yellow wall.

The laughter must have come from there, I decided. I stared up at it as if I
expected to see someone in there.

Get out of here!
a voice inside me begged. My sensible voice.
Just
turn around, Skipper, and run out of this building as fast as your rubbery,
shaky legs will take you!

I ignored it and pressed the elevator button. The elevator door on the left
slid open silently, and I stepped inside.

The door closed. I stared at the control panel. Should I push up or down?

The last visit, I had pushed up, the top floor—and the elevator had taken
Libby and me down to the basement.

My finger hesitated in front of the buttons. What would happen if this time I
pushed
down
?