Sinister Substitute (9 page)

She hurried to the left but had to stop when she came upon a wide hole in the floor. Above the hole, a thick, knotted rope came out of the wall and looped over a paddle-wheeled pulley, then dangled into the hole and down, down down into a deep, dark abyss.

“How far down does this go?” she gasped, then did a rapid-fire munch-munch-munch-slurp-crunch of the apple and tossed the core into the abyss.

She quit chewing, cupped an ear, and waited.

And waited.

And
waited
.

No sound came up the shaft.

At last, she swallowed the apple in her mouth, shuddered, and backed away.

But after running in the opposite direction,
she soon found herself in a cramped corridor of Zulu masks.

Now, perhaps when you think of a Zulu mask, you imagine a large, crudely carved, semi-rectangular wooden mask with holes for eyes, warrior markings, and a menacing expression.

This would, after all, be a reasonable thing to imagine.

And these masks did, indeed, have those features, but they also had coarse bursts of long, angry hair.

And eyes.

Eyeballs
, actually.

Eyeballs that seemed to be tracking each and every one of Ms. Veronica Krockle’s moves.

The Zulu masks were on both sides of the corridor, and as Veronica Krockle tiptoed through this tunnel of mad-eyed masks, her head whipped from side to side, trying to follow all the eyes following her. “What madman is
behind this?” she gasped, for in her growly gut she knew that the Bandito Brothers could not possibly be the masterminds of this ghastly sight.

This was all much too bizarre for those simpletons.

Much too …
twisted
.

Then she heard footsteps approaching.

Hard-heeled,
angry
footsteps.

Immediately she knew it wasn’t one of the clowns who’d bound and gagged her. From the sound of his footsteps, she quickly sensed that whoever it was was dangerous.

Now, it’s a well-known fact that when panic strikes, the mind pulls in its welcome mat, drops the blinds, and hides. And pounding on the door and crying, “Help! Emergency!” has little effect. You’re out in the cold.

Left in the dark.

In a word, doomed.

So (feeling both panicked and doomed) Ms.
Veronica Krockle did the only thing she could think to do.

She slapped herself against the wall, held her breath, and widened her eyes, hoping (almost praying) that she’d be mistaken for a Zulu mask.

The simple (although admittedly unkind) truth is that Ms. Veronica Krockle’s fearsome face blended in quite nicely with the Zulu masks. And perhaps she would have gotten away with hiding among them had it not been for one inconvenient fact:

She had a body.

Which was, unfortunately for her, something none of the other Zulu masks had.

And so when Damien Black’s hard-heeled feet rounded the corner (followed by the breathless Angelo and Pablo), he immediately recognized that there was something not quite right in the Zulu corridor.

One of his masks had grown a body.

A very un-Zulu-like body.

One wearing a white lab coat.

And black high-heeled boots.

He slowed as he approached, until he was standing directly in front of Ms. Veronica Krockle.

He looked into her wide, dark eyes.

He looked some more.

Despite Damien’s quick, diabolical mind, it took some time for it to really register with him that this fierce and menacing face was
not
a Zulu, but his prisoner.

“Fools!” he hissed, throwing a withering look at Pablo and Angelo. “You let her escape!”

The two Brothers immediately pounced, grabbing Ms. Veronica Krockle by her wiry arms.

“We got her, boss! We got her!” Angelo cried. “She won’t get away!”

“It’s Tito’s fault!” Pablo said with a ratty nod of the nose. “He’s always messing up!”

“Shut up, you fools!” Damien hissed. “Don’t you see what you’ve done?”

“We didn’t do anything, boss! We
captured
her!” Angelo cried, tightening his grip on Veronica Krockle.

“That’s right, sir. See? We’ve secured the prisoner,” Pablo said (trying hard to sound both intelligent and in charge).

“Shut
up,”
Damien cried, pulling at his long, oily hair.

Now, he wasn’t pulling his hair because Pablo and Angelo were being bumbling, blundering idiots.

He was used to that.

And it wasn’t because it’s extremely annoying to have a moron try to sound smart.

He was used to that, too.

It was because of a problem much, much bigger than those small annoyances.

A problem much
graver
.

You see (unbeknownst to Dave), Damien had been planning to simply conk Ms. Veronica Krockle over the head and return her to the schoolyard.

Easy come, easy go.

But now his prisoner, his captive, his detainee had
seen
him.

Which meant she could ID him.

And if she could ID him, he couldn’t just conk her out again and return her to school.

Now he had to kill her.

You may well be wondering how Ms. Veronica Krockle could take the terror of being face to fearsome face with the deadly, diabolical Damien Black.

Perhaps you’re imagining her shaking in her high-heeled boots.

Or flashing through each moment of her science-teacher life.

But Ms. Veronica Krockle was neither shaking nor flashing.

She was, in fact, melting.

Now, by “melting,” I do not mean turning into a pool of icky-sticky goo. By “melting,” I mean that Ms. Veronica Krockle was softening
on the inside. Her hard-hearted view, her rigid dislikes, her fortified contempt of, well, people in general were suddenly … missing. And in their place was a strange and frightening softness.

A billowy, feathery
peace
.

Why?

Because Ms. Veronica Krockle had never seen eyes as deep or as dark as Damien’s.

They were like pools of ink.

Or orbs of onyx.

Or…

She couldn’t decide. Actually, she couldn’t (for perhaps the first time in her life)
think
.

It wasn’t fear that was keeping her from functioning.

Oh no.

It was a strange new emotion in her heart.

She had never in her life seen a man so breathtakingly handsome.

So dashing or commanding.

So, in a word,
hot
.

No, Ms. Veronica Krockle was most definitely
not
shaking in her high-heeled boots.

She was, instead, falling in love.

While Veronica Krockle was falling in love with Damien, and Damien was deciding how best to kill her, Dave and Sticky were watching this convergence of evil through a metal grating located (as chance would have it) directly behind a pair of shiny black high-heeled boots.

Why was Dave behind a metal grating and not peeking out of, say, a laundry chute door?

Quite simply, Damien never changed his stinky socks on his way to the prisoner tower, so why put in a door? (He changed his socks infrequently enough to begin with, so expecting him to consider toe jam while on his way to securing a prisoner would be, at best, unrealistic.)

So after exiting the laundry chute on the third floor, Sticky had directed Dave through a maze of doors (both solid-core and trap), then inside patchy ventilation ductwork that ran this way and that until they were finally behind the Zulu mask tunnel. (Sticky had, to Dave’s amazement, not taken one wrong turn.)

As speedy as they’d been, they hadn’t been fast enough. And although Ms. Krockle was technically within reach, Dave couldn’t very
well open the grating and yank her inside the ventilation space by her high-heeled boots. Besides the very real possibility that she would kick and scream and poke out his eye with those yiky-spiky heels, there really wasn’t room for her inside the ductwork. It was quite cramped to begin with, and even if he could manage to yank her inside without losing an eye, Damien Black would surely follow.

The duct would be plugged like it’d gotten a slug of demented cement.

Just thinking about it gave Dave a heart-hammering case of claustrophobia. So instead of making a move, he stayed crouched behind those high-heeled boots, taking deep, calming breaths as he tried to figure out what to do next.

Meanwhile, out in the Zulu corridor, Ms. Veronica Krockle couldn’t tear her eyes away from Damien. Likewise, Damien still didn’t know what to do with Veronica Krockle.

“The dragon pit!” Angelo whispered. “Take her there!”

“Shut up, you fool!” Damien hissed, his eyes locked on Veronica Krockle.

“I know, boss!” Pablo said with a sneer. “Take her to the dungeon of death!”

“Shut
up,”
Damien hissed again, his eyes still locked on his prisoner.

“I know! The barracuda tank!” Angelo cried.

Damien turned to face Angelo. “WHAT PART OF
‘SHUT UP’
DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?”

The sound was so fierce and raw with anger (and, I’m afraid, lunchtime sardine breath) that the walls rattled (causing Zulu eyes to dart back and forth, up and down, all around).

Angelo jumped back.

Pablo cowered.

But at the same time (as if at long last released from its cage), Ms. Veronica Krockle’s heart fluttered and stuttered, then soared.

Her eyelids drooped as she inhaled the treasure hunter’s musky intensity (and alluring sardine breath).

And then, for the first time in her hardhearted life, Ms. Veronica Krockle went wobbly in the knees.

“Help! Help!” came Tito’s muffled cry from the tower room (as even he had heard Damien’s wall-shaking shouting).

Damien threw his hands into the air. “I’m surrounded by idiots!” he seethed. “Imbeciles and idiots!”

And with those words, the magic was complete. Ms. Veronica Krockle had, at long last, found someone who could truly understand how she felt each and every day of her tortured teacher life. She was now wholly and totally under his spell.

“Get your brother,” Damien snarled at Pablo and Angelo, “then go back to your quarters and
stay
there!”

“But, boss—”

“Go!”

“But—”

“GO!”

Pablo and Angelo shuffled away, grumbling, “He’s
not
our brother.”

The instant the two Brothers (not to be confused with brothers) started up the steps to the windowless tower, Damien did what any cold-hearted captor would do:

He clonked his prisoner over her starry-eyed head (once again using his pygmy hippo club).

Then he flung her over his shoulder and hurried toward the Bottomless Shaft.

There was no need for Damien to have conked Veronica Krockle over her starry-eyed head.

She would have followed him anywhere.

But there she was, flung like a sack of potatoes over Damien’s shoulder, on her way to the Bottomless Shaft as Dave removed the metal grate and poked his nose into the Zulu corridor.

“There they go,
señor!”
Sticky whispered, pointing at the vanishing figures.

Now, it would have been logical for Damien Black to have simply flung the unconscious science teacher down the shaft. After all, the object was to kill her, right?

However, when it comes to the dastardly,
demented mind of Damien Black, logic is not always the linchpin of reasoning.

In other words, he sometimes does things that are puzzling.

Bamboozling.

Odd, illogical, and unnecessary.

One might almost suspect that the dastardly, demented Damien Black was a little trigger-shy when it came to actually
killing
someone.

But that would be a silly thing to suspect, given his track record of diabolical deeds, now wouldn’t it?

It would be wiser (and decidedly more logical) to suspect that the devilish Damien Black simply relished the experience and wanted to prolong the process.

Enjoy the agony.

Savor each and every torturous moment.

Ah, yes. Anyone would agree. This behavior was simply reflective of the villain’s mental state,
as opposed to, say, a soft spot in his devilishly diabolical heart.