RARE BEASTS Read online

  “Tick tock,” Ellen said with a yawn. “Tick tock.”

  “Oh, tick tock, pish posh,” grumbled Edgar as he started working the knots.

  Ellen patiently lowered the crescent, and it whistled through the air above her brother. Edgar continued to probe the ropes without a hint of panic.

  “Tick tock, Brother…,” said Ellen as she let her attention wander. Her wrist was getting a bit sore from swinging.

  “Yeah, yeah, drip drop,” replied Edgar.

  Soon Edgar had loosened his bonds enough to wiggle his fingers, but his focus was also drifting. How many times before had he wriggled out of these ropes?

  As the crescent swept so close to Edgar’s chest that he could feel a breeze on his face, so close that the ropes that held him frayed and snapped as the metal cut into them, the twins looked each other in the eye.

  Ellen looked down at Edgar, and Edgar glared back up at Ellen, and after a long summer hiding, seeking, subduing, wrestling, and booby-trapping, both of them said:

  “I’m bored.”

  6. Possibilities

  “We could clog the sewer tunnels with giant pillows,” suggested Edgar, when he’d finally freed himself from his bonds. “When it rains, the streets will flood and we can sail around town in a boat. ‘Welcome, Friend, to Nod’s Lakes, Swim Awhile!’ ”

  “That’s too complicated,” Ellen replied. “How would we make the pillows? We don’t have any money to buy mountains of feathers and fabric, and neither of us knows how to sew, you dolt.”

  Ellen tugged at her pigtails as she thought. “Hmmm, how about something simple? Let’s get big sacks of white pepper and dump them into the batter at Buffy’s Muffins!”

  Edgar rolled his eyes. “As much as I’d like those goody-goody townspeople to suffer endless sneezing fits, where would we get the pepper, monkey brains?”

  He scratched the tip of his pointy, pale chin.

  “Hmmm…we could swipe the wash off old Mrs. Haggardly’s clothesline and take it to the Laundromat. Run those clothes through the industrial dryer a few times, and they’ll shrink to half their size! We’ll hang them back up on her line, and when she finds them, she won’t know what to do!”

  “Oh Edgar,” chided Ellen. “Do you have all the quarters to run the dryer over and over? No, you don’t, and neither do I. Besides, we pulled that trick on Mrs. Haggardly before, and she didn’t even notice. What fun is that?”

  The twins stood in the middle of the library, their shoulders hunched as they strained to come up with another idea.

  “We need money, Sister,” said Edgar. “What can we possibly do for fun without money?”

  After a moment of concentration, a grin spread across Ellen’s face, and she uttered one word in reply:

  “Pet!”

  7. Pet

  Whenever the two children grew tired of annoying and harassing each other and were at a loss for some new nefarious scheme or unsuspecting victim, there was always something else in the house to poke and prod. That something else was Pet.

  Pet usually stayed as far out of Edgar and Ellen’s way as it could, preferring long, lonely days of cowering in the dark to long, disturbing days at the mercy of its merciless masters. However, it was now almost noon on Tuesday, and that meant it was time for Around the World with Professor Paul, Pet’s favorite nature program.

  Knowing Pet’s fondness for the Professor, the twins found it in the den, perched upon the back of a dark leather wingback chair, illuminated by the flickering light of the large black-and-white television.

  Pet didn’t look like any other kind of animal you’ve ever seen. It wasn’t very large. It didn’t have scales or feathers. It was a matted ball of long, dark hair, similar in appearance to an old, dirty wig. Pet had no ears, nose, or mouth that could be seen, nor had it visible arms or legs, and the small heap sat so still on the chair that it would be easy to mistake it for an oversized ball of lint. Well, except for the single milky yellow eye that sat atop the tangled pile of hair.

  Pet had lived in the house with Edgar and Ellen for as long as they could remember. The twins had first noticed Pet behind a large wooden wine cask in the cellar. Since Pet didn’t seem to eat much or make much noise—in fact, they never witnessed Pet doing much of anything—they decided to keep it.

  How lucky for Pet.

  8. Today’s Program

  And so it happened that just as Edgar had finished binding Pet’s shaggy body to a long wooden pole, and just as Ellen was about to collect the spiderwebs from the ceiling of the den with their new Petbroom, Professor Paul announced something on TV that grabbed the siblings’ attention:

  “Today, we’re going to explore the amazing world of exotic animals. The rarest of the rare, the most unique of the unique, the cream of the crop, these magnificent creatures are worth their weight in gold. These are the most valuable animals on Earth!

  “Join me, Professor Paul, as we meet wealthy collectors from all over the world who covet these amazing beasts and are willing to pay thousands to own one. For the richest of the idle rich, money is no object, and exotic animals make much more fashionable pets than dogs and cats….”

  Edgar and Ellen stopped listening. A scheme was forming.

  “If we had our own exotic animals to sell,” said Edgar, “we’d make enough money to construct giant pillows and buy white pepper. We’d have enough to carry out all of our plans!”

  “Think big, Edgar! If we were rich, rich, rich, just imagine what we could do,” said Ellen. “We wouldn’t have to stop with the small ideas we’ve had before.

  “If we bought a hang glider and a giant tank of fizzy cola, we could take off from the top of our house and spray all the soccer fields from above. Turn them into sudsy, sticky messes!” she said, twisting her pigtails.

  “We could erect a giant windmill, buy tons of manure, and blow the stink all over town.” Edgar was bursting with enthusiasm. “P-U, nobody would go outside for days because of the smell! We’d have the toy stores and candy shops and ice cream parlors all to ourselves!”

  “We could buy a whole carnival and put the tents right in the middle of town,” Ellen said.

  “And we could keep the bright colored lights and music on all night and day, and never let anyone else in to enjoy the games and rides!” added Edgar.

  They grinned at each other as they mulled over all these new ideas for mischief and mayhem.

  9. Aha!

  Edgar and Ellen climbed the steep staircase to the ninth floor. The whole floor was one big open room, and the twins used it as their ballroom when they were in a festive mood. Two large arched windows in the front wall (the ones that looked like watchful eyes from the outside) let in a fair amount of light during the day, making it the least dismal room in the house.

  Edgar and Ellen danced and pranced their way across the room, cackling as they went:

  “A plan, a scam, is what we need

  To fund our games and revelries.

  Our clever minds are guaranteed

  To conjure up some brilliant deeds.

  There is no plot we can’t concoct,

  Our brains, with schemes, are overstocked,

  And kids from all around the block

  Fear our genius ’round the clock.

  Look out, look out! For here we come

  To hatch our plans for pranks and fun!”

  Edgar and Ellen stopped in the center of the ballroom. Hanging from the ceiling was a rusty iron ring anchored to a trap door. Ellen climbed up onto Edgar’s shoulders and pulled it. The trap door swung down with a loud creak and a worn set of wooden steps unfolded. The two scampered up to the attic.

  The twins masterminded their most impressive plots in the attic, and it was easy to see why. Crates and tools and dusty birdcages, moldy steamer trunks and broken chandeliers, headless mannequins, dented suits of armor, a couple of rusty wrought-iron beds—the attic was piled high with treasures. Picking through the debris usually helped Edgar and Ellen concoct something
wicked.

  They plunged into the stacks of junk, flinging objects about as they searched for inspiration.

  “Aha!” said Ellen, holding up a dented bedpan.

  “Oh, come on, Sister, what could we use that for?” scoffed Edgar. He emerged from under a ratty tarp, cradling a collection of dirty test tubes and beakers. “Look what I found! Maybe we could run some experiments.”

  Before Ellen could point out that they had nothing to experiment on, she happened to look out the attic’s single round window.

  “Brother! Do you see what I see?” she squealed, dropping the bedpan.

  Edgar came over to look out the window. “Sister, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” said Edgar. “Come on, let’s take a closer look!”

  They clambered up one last ladder, tucked away in the back corner. Leading the way, Ellen pushed against the ceiling with her shoulder until another trap door creaked open, and the twins entered the highest room in the house.

  Since the attic-above-the-attic provided a remarkable view of the entire neighborhood, Edgar and Ellen used it as an observatory, and it was barren save for a powerful telescope angled through a slot in the roof. Focusing the lens on the neat, tidy houses and lawns below, they saw a wide variety of dogs lounging in front of doghouses, napping or chewing on bones. They saw cats walking on fences and climbing trees. They saw bunnies inside their cages sipping from water bottles, and birds basking in the sun on their perches.

  “Look at all of those animals,” whispered Ellen.

  “Right outside our door,” answered Edgar.

  Deep in thought, the two descended to the attic and paced the floor, leaving tracks in the dust.

  They eventually came to a stop by the grimiest corner of the room. Edgar and Ellen contemplated the big moldy cardboard box that held the hundreds of holiday decorations they’d collected over the years, usually nabbed from an unsuspecting neighbor’s front door or the holiday display in the center of town.

  “Glitter and garlands, Brother,” Ellen remarked.

  “Shiny bulbs and colorful dyes, Sister,” added Edgar.

  “Very exotic!” they marveled, arching their eyebrows.

  And just like that, a plan fell into place.

  10. Heimertz

  Edgar and Ellen chuckled and chortled and whooped. Their new scheme was simple yet ingenious.

  “Brother, I’ve found something wonderful,” Ellen said as she pried open a crate near the box of decorations. Edgar helped wrench off the wooden slats and whispered “Oh!” as he pulled out buckled strips of leather and little wire baskets. The twins put the leashes and muzzles in the box of holiday decorations and dragged it all down to the basement, along with an assortment of dyes, glues, markers, and paints.

  Ellen coiled lengths of rope over her left shoulder, and over her right she draped a large gunnysack that held a number of smaller, empty sacks. Edgar grabbed his special dark canvas satchel, which always held a variety of objects. Spoons, saltshakers, bonnets, twine—the items in Edgar’s bottomless satchel would seem ordinary to most people, but in his hands they were something, well…not. He added the muzzles to the contents. Outfitted with the necessary equipment, brother and sister left their house and skulked across the drab garden, anxiously scanning the gnarled overgrowth for any sign of Heimertz.

  Heimertz was the caretaker, tending to the maintenance of the house and grounds, and had worked there for as long as the twins could remember. He always moved slowly, barely flexing his knees as he went, but he had the uncanny ability to appear without warning, emerging silently from the gloom of the house. It disturbed the twins that in one moment they could be playing alone, and in the next find Heimertz and his vacant smile looming over them. Very few things unsettled Edgar and Ellen, but Heimertz was one of them.

  Whether or not the caretaker actually took any care was debatable, since the house was always dark and sooty and musty, and the garden dense with weeds and roots and dead bushes. But while he made them uneasy, Edgar and Ellen approved of his work—or lack of it.

  Heimertz inhabited a bleak shed in a low, swampy corner of the yard. Marshy mud and reeds rose up high along its ramshackle walls, making the shed look like it was sinking slowly into the earth. There was only one window, and it was cracked and missing a pane of glass. The twins had once peered through it, out of curiosity, and inside was but a bare room, simply furnished with a cot, a few candles, an old accordion, and a collection of tools, with no other personal effects that might hint at the caretaker’s history.

  He was rarely seen outside the grounds of the twins’ home. Older residents of Nod’s Limbs sometimes whispered that, long ago, Heimertz had been a Bavarian circus performer who escaped his family of clowns and acrobats. Edgar and Ellen could never confirm or dismiss the story. The twins found the caretaker too creepy to ask, and even if they could muster up the gumption to speak to him, it was doubtful he would answer. In all these years, Heimertz had never uttered a single word to them.

  11. Lurking and Slinking

  To their relief on this hot afternoon, the twins could make out Heimertz far off on the other side of the grounds. He was busy ripping large chunks of bark off of some decaying trees, so Edgar and Ellen silently crept through their backyard and slipped out into the neighborhood.

  They had to be very sneaky, because Edgar and Ellen had a reputation around town. At one time or another, most children in Nod’s Limbs had fallen victim to one of the twins’ insidious plots, whether they were aware of it or not. It was not so long ago that the twins had stranded nine-year-old Artie Anderson atop the tallest tree on the block, promising him access to a most amazing tree house. Shortly thereafter they had enticed little Sara Bergstaff to dig for gold in her yard, rupturing her family’s septic tank.

  So, carefully, very carefully, Edgar and Ellen slid through the shadows. One by one, they visited each house in the neighborhood. And one by one, they snatched up all the pets.

  Some animals were easy to get, since no one was around to keep an eye on them. Their owners were off doing other things, such as buying comic books or playing kickball. Edgar plucked Ronnie Wringwood’s dog from in front of its doghouse, and Ellen reached through an open window to nab Heather Redder’s parakeet from its cage, leaving nothing but a few fallen feathers.

  Other pets required more stealth, and the twins found they needed to create distractions. Edgar pulled popcorn from the depths of his satchel and laid a trail down the driveway of the Bogginer home. While young, peckish Donald Bogginer was lured away by this surprise afternoon snack, Ellen made off with his kitten, Chauncey. Two houses down the street, Ellen rang Franny Finkle’s doorbell and then hid behind the family car. When Franny came running to answer the front door (“Coming, Mr. Crapple! You better have mail for me! Mail for ME! ” she shrieked), Edgar ran around to the back door and grabbed her hamster.

  Up one street and down another, the twins added to their collection. They muzzled the surprised pets to keep them from barking or meowing or making any loud noises, and then stuffed them into the burlap bags. Soon, their collection grew large enough that Edgar and Ellen found it hard to carry, so they set everything down to rest.

  “These animals are heavy, Edgar. All their squirming doesn’t help, either.”

  “My arms are starting to get sore, too. But don’t worry, Ellen, I’ve got a plan for transporting our cargo tomorrow. Just you wait!”

  “Well, I won’t—hey you! Pipe down!” Ellen whispered as a steady low wail came from one of the sacks. Some of the pets began to growl and whine, so the twins poked and prodded the sacks with their toes, trying to keep the animals quiet.

  “Noisy things,” muttered Edgar. “If we don’t watch out, they’re going to give us away. We’d better carry these home where no one will hear them, and then we can come back for more!”

  The twins lugged the sacks back to their garden, where they piled them in the overgrowth. Returning to their task, they continued down the block, Ellen filching p
ets and Edgar running the new finds back to their stash.

  They came upon a bright yellow house on the corner, its pretty painted mailbox decorated with bees, butterflies, and the family name Pickens. There was an enormous cage in the middle of the backyard, and coiled in the center of it, fast asleep, was the largest snake the twins had ever seen. Edgar and Ellen had to take a moment to admire the sheer size of the thing, wrapped around and around itself, forming a snoring pyramid.

  It didn’t wake up as Ellen opened the cage door and maneuvered behind it. Edgar held open the biggest sack they had, and his sister grunted as she pushed the massive reptile through the gate of its cage and into the bag. The snake stirred and half opened one eye, but Edgar lifted its tail in his arms and rocked it gently until the snake let out a low whistling snore and returned to its nap.

  “That’s a full load by itself,” Ellen said. “You take it home while I go look for more animals.” Edgar shuffled back to their house, huffing and puffing from the weight of the snake. He pushed open the back gate with his foot and staggered into the yard. As the gate swung closed behind him, Edgar stopped suddenly, his breath catching in his throat.

  All of the restless sacks were still thrashing about, small sounds emanating from within. And standing above the many bags, leaning over for a closer look, was Heimertz. The stocky caretaker lowered himself to his hands and knees and took great big sniffs of air around the sacks.

  Edgar didn’t know what to do. The caretaker was inches away from uncovering their ill-gotten booty. A simple tug on one sack’s cord was all that was needed. Edgar tried to stand very still but the heavy snake was making his arms ache.