Sinister Substitute (7 page)

Which didn’t always keep out biting bugs.

Or skittery squirrels.

Or… But no matter. After being guided through the donkey door a few times by Tito, Rosie got the hang of it and the donkey door served its purpose beautifully. The moment Damien was out of sight, Tito removed the cover (a sheet of plywood, painted to match the door), thereby giving Rosie full access to the house.

Or, at least, access to the part of the house that the Bandito Brothers had access to, which (in the scheme of the entire mansion) wasn’t much.
Damien couldn’t very well have them nosing through his gizmos and gadgets and priceless possessions! So he’d locked the Brothers out (with multi-linked, chunky-clunky, skeleton-keyed locks), or booby-trapped them out (with trapdoors and
boinging
knives and slipknotted ropes), or scared them out (with pre-recorded groaning, whoooing, whooshing noises that no ghost-fearing mariachi band would dare investigate). These fellas were, undeniably,
thieves
, and if he couldn’t get
rid
of them, he at least needed to
contain
them.

But let’s get back to the drawing of straws, shall we?

The Brothers are, after all, about to determine whose job it will be to face the fierce and frightening Veronica Krockle.

“Over here, boys,” Angelo called, holding three long (but pathetically limp) blades of grass. “We’ve got to get this done before Mr. Black gets home.”

Pablo’s mouth pulled down in a ratty-faced frown. “How stupid do you think I am?”

“Wadda ya mean?” Angelo asked.

“You’re cheating.”

“How am I cheating?” Angelo cried. “You’re the one who always cheats!”

“How can I be cheating? I’m not even holding the grass.”

“Well, why aren’t you, huh? You never do anything around here!”

“Oh, and you do? You spend the whole day picking your nose.”

“Shut up!”

“You shut up!”

Well! As you can see, these two Brothers found it hard to get much of anything done. Each task (no matter how small) had to be handled fairly and squarely, and Pablo and Angelo were always suspicious of one doing something crooked to the other.

By the end of each day, they were completely and utterly exhausted.

(After all, it takes considerable energy to argue over nothing.)

But although Angelo and Pablo were greatly concerned that they themselves not be shafted, they were more than happy to shaft Tito (which is how he wound up with all the jobs, dirty or otherwise). And since Angelo and Pablo had been arguing about who would deliver lunch to the ferocious Ms. Krockle since noon, Tito at last said, “I’ll hold the straws.”

“It’s grass, stupid,” Pablo snapped. “And you’ll cheat!”

“I won’t cheat.”

“You always cheat!”

“No, I don’t!”

“Yes, you do!”

And so it was that, in the end, the Brothers agreed that Rosie would be the one to hold the weeds.

Now, it’s a well-known fact that burros (bucktoothed or otherwise) don’t hold weeds (or straws, for that matter).

They
chew
them.

Still. This was the only solution the Bandito Brothers could come up with, so as soon as Rosie had a good bunch of fresh weeds in her mouth (with strands sticking out this way and that), Pablo said, “Ready … steady … go!”

The Brothers shot forward, each snatching what they hoped was the longest strand.

Rosie didn’t miss a munch.

“I win!” Pablo exclaimed, holding up a long stem with a mangled, dangly end.

“That part doesn’t count!” Angelo said, pointing to the dangly part. “It’s not sticking out!”

“So?”

“So it’s hanging on by a thread!”

“But it
is
hanging on, isn’t it?” Pablo said.

Angelo reached forward and snatched off the dangly end. “No!”

“Hey! Don’t be stupid!”

“You don’t be stupid, stupid!”

Meanwhile, Tito was looking at his little stumpy sprig, wondering how he always got the shortest weed. And while Pablo and Angelo battled it out (eventually ramping up their insults to “You’re even stupider than a stupid torpedo filled with the stupidest stupidos ever!”), Tito fetched Veronica Krockle’s tray of (by now cold and certainly stale) lunch and made his way up a wickedly winding staircase, down a dark and dank corridor, through a revolving door of palm fronds, past a chilling collection of Zulu masks, and up a final flight of very steep steps to the windowless tower where the feisty science teacher was waiting.

And oh my, was she ever waiting.

And not for lunch.

Oh no.

Ms. Veronica Krockle was waiting to pounce.

The doors of Damien’s mansion ranged from standard issue (thirty-six-inch solid-core six-paneled jobbies) to completely customized (clonking, catapulting, whooshing, or air-locked units) to simply knobless or hingeless, or oddly shaped.

Additionally, there were doors that are best described as… alarming.

Now, by “alarming,” I do not mean that the doors set off alarms. (Although almost every door that led inside the main part of the mansion did, in fact, do just that.)

No, this sort of alarming has nothing whatsoever to do with bells or buzzers or whistles (or snake rattles, for that matter). This sort of
alarming has to do with the heebie-jeebie creepies you feel when coming face to face with, say, shrunken skulls dangling from a blood-red door.

Or tightly meshed blood-crusted tusks surrounding an ivory doorknob.

Or (as with the mansion’s front door) a solid oak, heavily whitewashed monstrosity carved in the shape of a great, ghastly skull.

Ah, yes. Damien Black had a thing for devilish doors.

Doors that made you think twice about entering.

Doors that said, unmistakably, Keep out!

Go away!

Beat it, buster!

Dave Sanchez, however, had developed a knack for getting past Damien’s devilish doors. Yes, they’d made him shudder or yelp or rub his poor, pummeled head, but (to Damien’s complete
exasperation) they had not stopped Dave from getting inside the mansion.

And so, while Veronica Krockle was plotting her way out (past the prisoner tower’s six-inch-thick ironwood door), Sticky and Dave were sneaky-toeing through the forest toward the mansion discussing how to get
in
.

“You want to try the skull door?” Sticky asked.

Dave frowned. “I don’t want to waste the time. It’s bound to be locked.”

“Through the bat cave, then?”

“You hate bats!” Dave said, then shook his head. “And he’s probably put in new booby traps, don’t you think? He knows we came in that way before.”

Sticky snapped his little gecko fingers. “Say! The drawbridge may be down!”

“The drawbridge? What drawbridge?”

“Ay-ay,” Sticky said with a twinkle in his little gecko eye. “The drawbridge that leads to another cave where he keeps his fishy-tailed car.”

“Fishy-tailed car? What’s a fishy-tailed car? And how many caves does he have?”

“Oh, lots of caves,
señor
. Lots.” Sticky gave a little shrug. “And a fishy-tailed car is just a fishy-tailed car. It has long, pointy fins.”

Now, as Dave and Sticky had been sneaky-toeing through the forest discussing doors (and fishy-tailed cars), they had been followed.

Silently.

Stealthily.

But now suddenly the stalker screamed, “Bwaa-ha-ha-caw! Bwaa-ha-ha-caw!”

“Ahhhh!” Dave squawked (in a very un-superhero-like manner), then cowered behind the wide, rough trunk of a gnarled pine tree. “Where is he?” he gasped, his heart pounding as he looked around madly for Damien Black.

“It wasn’t him,” Sticky called, but he had dived for cover inside Dave’s sweatshirt and his little gecko heart was pounding.

“Then who was it? Or
what
was it?” Dave began searching the branches of the surrounding trees for speakers. They’d fallen for Damien’s pre-recorded voice before. Perhaps some of the large pinecones dangling from the branches above them were actually speakers. Speakers that were activated by movement in the forest. Speakers that—

“Bwaa-ha-ha-caw!”

“Ahhhh!” Dave cried again, only this time he noticed a large, black, oily-feathered raven staring at them from the gnarled branch of an adjacent pine.

He blinked at the bird.

The bird stared back.

“No …,” Dave whispered.

“What,
señor
?” Sticky asked, peeking out of the sweatshirt.

“Can birds—?”

“Bwaa-ha-ha-caw!” the bird shouted (in the
über-aggressive way that only ravens and crows can). “Bwaa-ha-ha-caw!”

“Ay-
ay
!” Sticky cried, diving for cover.

“Damien must have trained him,” Dave whispered, staring at the bird with both fear and wonder.

“Keep him away!” Sticky cried. “Keep him away!”

Now, in most situations Sticky was fearless (or, it could be argued, cavalier and careless). But when it came to flapping beasts (like, say, bats or birds or oversized bugs), he became one sticky-toed scaredycat.

“Don’t worry,” Dave assured him, sidestepping away from the tree. “It’s just a bird.”

But as Dave hurried to put distance between him and the bird, the raven followed, calling, “Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-caw! Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-caw!” and soon another raven appeared.

And another.

And
another
.

“Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-caw!!” they all shouted, swooping around Dave as he hurried away from them. “Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-caw!!”

“Freaky
frijoles!”
Sticky cried. “Run!”

“What do you think I’m doing?” Dave cried.

“Well, run faster!” Sticky shouted, as there were now
eight
bwaa-ha-cawing birds swooping and swarming above them.

So Dave put the pedal to the metal (or, in this case, his sneakers to the dirt) and charged along the edge of the forest, keeping a shield of trees between him and the house in case Damien had installed surveillance cameras or motion-activated sleep darts or some other wicked doohickey to thwart people from approaching the mansion.

And so it was that Dave zigzagged through the outskirts of the forest, not really paying attention to where he was going as he attempted to escape
the unkindness of ravens. (Which is, quite appropriately, what it’s called when ravens decide to gang up and chase after you, whether they bwaa-ha-ha or simply caw.)

“Get away from the trees!” Sticky cried from inside the sweatshirt. “I think they want you out of the forest.”

And so Dave took the risk.

He stepped out of the forest.

Out of the shadows.

Into a bright, broad spotlight of sunshine.

He also, unfortunately, stepped smack-dab into a large, fresh pile of kneady-weedy donkey doo.

“Ewww!” Dave said, doing a little doo-doo dance away from the pile. “What’s
that
doing here?”

Sticky, however, didn’t give a sniff about a little donkey dung. The ravens were no
longer chasing them (or bwaa-ha-cawing), but ahead of them was something odd.

Completely unexpected.

In a word, bizarre.

“Holy guacamole,” Sticky gasped. “What is
that
?”