RARE BEASTS Read online

  Heimertz sat back on his haunches as the animals, lost in the darkness of the burlap bags, shivered and whined. It seemed an eternity before Heimertz stood, wiping his hands on his stained overalls.

  Edgar felt a chill as Heimertz turned and stared at the giant sack in the boy’s arms. He inhaled deeply as if to draw the scent off of Edgar and his parcel from across the garden.

  Edgar gulped. Without Ellen, he felt particularly vulnerable.

  The caretaker’s habitual smile twitched; his nostrils flared wide. He stood still for several tense moments, giving no clue as to his next move.

  Maybe it heard Edgar’s heart pounding furiously, or maybe it felt Heimertz’s eerie presence, or possibly it was just having a bad dream, but the snake stirred against the boy’s chest. Edgar, already unnerved by the caretaker, let out a jumpy “Eeee-ah!” as he let the sack drop to the ground.

  Heimertz briefly surveyed the rest of the grounds before pivoting his short bulk on his left foot and stumping off toward the shed.

  Edgar fled the garden.

  The snake shifted in the burlap and settled back into deep sleep, resuming its whistling snore.

  Edgar caught up with his sister on the far side of the neighborhood, huddled in the shadows of a tall hedge.

  “It’s Heimertz, Ellen! He caught me with our stockpile!” Edgar gasped. “He just walked away, but I didn’t know what to do!”

  “Hush, Edgar! Hush! I’m trying to be discreet!”

  Ellen nodded her head toward the yard beyond the hedge, and Edgar peeked around it.

  Leanne Casey and her friend Bruno were chasing his miniature dachshund around the grass, laughing as the wiener dog ran in bigger and bigger circles. With a playful yelp, the dachshund circled the edge of the yard, and as he darted behind the hedge, Ellen lowered her open sack, and the dog ran right into it.

  By the time Leanne and Bruno rounded the bushes, there was nothing to see. They stood dumbfounded in the quiet street, listening for a telltale bark, hearing nothing but silence.

  And so it went, the twins skulking through the neighborhood, emerging from the shadows just long enough to snatch a pet before disappearing again. Soon they had amassed a sizable collection of furry, scaly, and feathered creatures, each in its own gunnysack.

  Before most of the neighborhood kids realized that their beloved animals were missing, Edgar and Ellen had dragged the valuable prizes home.

  12. Down in the Basement

  Pet huddled in a dark corner among the dust balls and cobwebs, safely out of Edgar and Ellen’s way, as it watched them haul their spoils through the dusty front hall and pile the sacks by the basement door.

  Ellen held the door open with her footie. As Edgar passed by, she slipped a nervous hamster down the back of his pajamas.

  “Tsk, tsk.” Ellen smirked. “Ladies first, Brother.”

  “GAA!” Edgar hopped the entire flight of stone

  steps in three bounds, propelled by the hamster racing up and down his spine.

  Ellen squealed with delight, then with horror when the baby ferret Edgar had balanced on her shoulder dove headlong into her pajamas. She reached the cold cement floor in only two leaps, breaking what might have been a rather ugly fall on a squirming Edgar.

  “Very graceful, Sister.”

  “Oh, you’re one to talk.”

  One by one, the twins shuttled the sacks down from the hall, keeping a wary eye on each other as they passed on the stairs.

  When they were finished, Edgar and Ellen huddled in the dank basement over the writhing sacks at their feet. Ellen spread out grubby white sheets stolen from Mrs. Haggardly’s yard to cover long worktables. Edgar removed the decorations from the battered carton, and, like a surgeon laying out his implements in an operating room, he delicately set all the ribbons and ornaments in a neat row.

  “Who might be in here?” Edgar selected a sack and shook out the contents. A kitten tumbled onto the table.

  “Oh, you’re just a plain little kitty now,” he said, removing its muzzle, “but cheer up! Soon you’ll be the talk of the town!”

  Edgar used paint to change the feline’s fur from brown to several shades of blue and purple. He took his time affixing two small twigs to the creature’s head and attached a round red ornament to its nose. What was a cat, now looked like a glitzy miniature reindeer.

  “Hello, little Hamble!” Edgar exclaimed, holding it up so he could look into its mismatched eyes. “Not another one like you in all the world. Definitely exotic! Definitely worth a lot of money!” The Hamble mewed and clawed at its twig antlers.

  “Your Hamble isn’t nearly as exotic as my Uggpron or these Snifflepops,” said Ellen. Edgar turned to see that in the time he’d spent transforming one animal, his sister had placed a grass wreath around a poodle’s neck and dyed the whole animal red, turning it into a little crimson lion, and two once-white bunnies were now decked in glitter and feathers.

  “We’re going to make a fortune!” cheered the twins as they removed the rest of the animals from their sacks. They leashed the creatures to a crusty water pipe so the bewildered menagerie couldn’t run away from the fun.

  Paint and glue and glitter flew about the basement. The twins gleefully decorated the pets as if they were Easter eggs, singing a little song while they worked.

  “We’ve got rare pets, so place your bets

  On how much each little critter nets.

  People will come on private jets,

  Phone their accountants, hire new vets.

  So dump more glitter, squirt more glue,

  Color them purple, orange, blue.

  Soon they’ll be ready for their debut

  And we’ll rake in the revenue!”

  Puppies and kitties. Bunnies and birds. Hamsters, gerbils, lizards, and a chicken. Dozens of pets separated from their loving owners, trapped in the dank basement, each undergoing its own unique and terrible transformation.

  Oh, the horror!

  13. A Little Night Music

  It had grown very late by the time Edgar and Ellen completed their exotic collection. The twins would have danced and pranced to celebrate had they not been so tired from a long day of scheming and pilfering and disguising.

  They secured the leashes and spread pages of the Nod’s Limbs Gazette on the floor so things wouldn’t get too messy during the night. Then they turned out the basement lights, leaving the animals alone at last, and wearily climbed the many flights of stairs to the attic bedroom.

  “Please, no snoring and snorting tonight, Brother,” said Ellen as she shuffled across the room.

  “Sweet dreams to you, too, Sister,” sneered Edgar, as he headed toward his stained pillow and mattress.

  As they were about to crawl into their ironframed beds, they noticed a steady, groaning noise rising up from the world outside. The twins climbed up the ladder to their observatory in the attic-above-the-attic and peered out through the telescope at the neighborhood below.

  It was chaos. Gathered in sad little groups under the streetlights, children cried and screamed and moaned, lamenting the loss of their precious pets. Their parents, unable to enjoy their usual quiet evenings at home with nightcaps and news programs, were out searching for the missing animals, shouting their names and screaming curses, adding to the din of the children’s wails. This tuneless chorus of misery and despair, this sad song of pain and heartache, lasted well into the night.

  The echoing lament lulled Edgar and Ellen to sleep, and they slumbered peacefully.

  They had a big day ahead of them.

  14. The Exotic Animal Emporium

  While the rest of the neighborhood woke to hopelessness and mourning, the likes of which Nod’s Limbs had never known, Edgar and Ellen leapt out of bed. Today they were going to get rich!

  They abandoned their morning routine of tracking down Pet and roughly scouring its matted hair with their toothbrushes, and instead slid down flight after flight of banisters, cackling all the way to the back door and out
into the garden. Strains of accordion music drifted from Heimertz’s shed, and they were thankful that the caretaker was occupied.

  The twins needed something to transport their magnificent menagerie around town. Edgar led his sister to the center of the garden, where they cleared away the tangles of witchgrass and knotweed that hid an old, rusted cart. The dry brown stalks and stems poking through the wheels and twisting around the axles made it clear that Heimertz hadn’t used it in a long time, if ever, and it took some effort to free the long cart and roll it to a flat patch of dirt.

  Edgar and Ellen returned to the attic and grabbed a few large pieces of cardboard and some paint. They also dragged down an old puppet theater they had stolen the previous year from Mrs. Pringle’s kindergarten class during nap time. The cloth puppets had long since been chewed apart by rats and moths, leaving nothing but a giant wooden box with a burgundy velvet curtain closed across its stage.

  Outside, they hoisted the theater onto the cart. Edgar took some cardboard and painted a sign that read EXOTIC ANIMAL EMPORIUM, and beneath that RARE BEASTS FOR SALE, and Ellen nailed it to the top of the little theater.

  They found the animals exactly where they had left them in the cold basement, and they carried the wriggling creatures out to the cart. Leashed inside the puppet theater, smaller animals in front and larger ones in back, they formed an impressive display.

  Edgar and Ellen made a sign for each animal listing its species, habitat, price, and a description of its particular origin:

  CRACKERMACKER

  From the mountains of Dronkle

  Only $1,000!

  Rescued from the Dronkle City Animal Pound

  FREEPLEWINK

  From the desert region of Brifftevo

  A steal at $2,500!

  Traded from an exotic animal dealer for a Splunx

  MONDOPILLAR

  Terra-aquatic, Uwentic Ocean region

  $5,000! Cheap at twice the price!

  Captured on a Mondopillar hunt last year

  Ellen even gave the animals a little pep talk: “All of you look so much better than you did yesterday. You are incredible creatures now, worth thousands of dollars. And while you may feel a little uncomfortable at the moment, at what price beauty and fame? Anyway, none of this is as bad as that humiliating sweater they made you wear last winter, or all those times they forced you to attend their tea parties.”

  “Sister, I don’t know why you bother.”

  “Well, you’ve always been a little slow. When the perky, happy-looking ones sell for more than the asking price, you’ll see.”

  When the animals were hidden behind the closed theater curtains, their shop-on-wheels had the look of an old-time traveling medicine show.

  “Ready to strike it rich, Brother?” Ellen took hold of the front wagon handle.

  “Nod’s Limbs will be amazed, Sister,” replied Edgar as he took up position behind the cart.

  With Edgar pushing and Ellen pulling and steering, the cart lurched forward and lumbered unsteadily down the nameless lane and out onto Ricketts Road.

  15. Missing!

  As Edgar and Ellen rolled their wagon west, they passed colored pieces of paper taped and tacked to every telephone pole and light post. If the twins had paid any attention to the tear-stained, handwritten fliers, they would have seen:

  MISSING!

  Bain Bean

  My German shepherd puppy

  Contact Ritchie ASAP!

  555-8328

  HELP!

  I can’t find Hodgekiss!

  Have you seen my brown bunny rabbit?

  –Kyle, 555-9896

  LOST!

  MY CAT

  Answers to the name Blumpers

  Mostly black with white feet and a pink nose

  Please call Annie at Annie’s house, 555-1722

  There were dozens of posters in a rainbow of colors, each one crying out for a different missing pet and featuring a crayon drawing or blotchy photograph. Edgar and Ellen rumbled past flier after flier, oblivious to all of them, including the one which warned:

  16. Open for Business

  Edgar and Ellen stopped the cart about a hundred yards down Ricketts Road, where the street intersected with Cairo Avenue, one of several streets in the small town named after much more impressive cities.

  Cairo Avenue led north into Nod’s Limbs’ business district and people on their way to work drove right past the intersection.

  “How does this spot look to you, Sister?” Edgar asked.

  “Fantastic, Brother,” she answered. “Business-people make oodles of money! I can’t wait to get a great big pile of it!”

  They pulled back the theater curtain, revealing the animals. The display looked a bit like a summertime lemonade stand, except instead of pitchers of refreshing lemonade, the twins had expensive and gruesome beasts. The two stood in front of their stand, bellowing like carnival barkers and waving their arms madly.

  “Roll up!” yelled Edgar, “Roll right up and witness the marvels of the animal kingdom!”

  “Come see for yourselves!” called Ellen, “See what has never been seen before!”

  Cars cruised through the intersection, but not one came close to stopping. When too many vehicles passed by for Ellen’s liking, she told Edgar to stand on his head, flap his legs, and squawk like a parrot.

  “Why not you, Sister?”

  “Because, Brother, my pigtails get in the way and you have a flat head to help you stay balanced.”

  A line of cars screeched to a halt in front of the squawking, pajama-clad, upside-down boy. Once they had established that Edgar was not, in fact, a member of some strange circus come to town, the drivers noticed the cart on the side of the road.

  Several men and women got out of each car, all of them dressed neatly in business suits. They walked up to the wagon and began looking over the merchandise. A small black poodle shrouded in silver tinsel recognized a family member in the crowd and began to whimper and scratch, but the swarm of people paid it no mind.

  The driver of the first car, a short balding man wearing a pinstriped suit and sunglasses, stepped to the front.

  “Hey, are you two the owners of these bizarre things, or merely the owners’ agents?”

  When the twins didn’t answer right away, he stamped his foot impatiently.

  “Well, which is it? Speak up, I haven’t got all day,” he said.

  “Owners, sir!” Ellen quickly said. “Each one of these magnificent creatures is from our own personal collection!”

  “Well then, good! Good, good, good!” the balding man said. “Excellent! No need to dicker with a representative when you can do business with the owner face-to-face! Allow me to introduce myself.”

  The man reached inside his jacket and with one smooth, practiced move, snapped out a small white card and presented it to Ellen. Edgar looked over her shoulder and they both read what was engraved on it in bold black type:

  MR. MARVIN MATTERHORN

  Executive Business Executive

  When they looked up, every adult had pulled out his or her business card and was offering it to the twins impatiently. Edgar and Ellen collected them all, each one printed with the person’s name and the title “Business Executive” or “Assistant Business Executive” or “Junior Business Executive.”

  “Well, we haven’t got all day. We’re carpooling to work,” said Mr. Matterhorn. “Very efficient, carpooling!”

  The businesspeople behind him murmured, “Very efficient, indeed!”

  Mr. Matterhorn removed his sunglasses and whipped a monogrammed MM handkerchief out of his pocket. As he cleaned the lenses, he continued:

  “What we need are animals, pets for our kids who can’t seem to stop their blasted crying. We were all up half the night searching high and low, trying to find the cats and dogs that ran away yesterday. And each and every one of us had a miserable night’s sleep. Do you have any idea how lack of sleep affects our on-the-job performance?”

&
nbsp; “Our performance, indeed!” agreed the others, nodding solemnly.

  “Well, as I said, we need pets, and it certainly looks like the two of you have got them,” Mr. Matterhorn observed. “Although these creatures look rather peculiar.”

  “That’s because they’re exotic animals, sir,” said Ellen. “Not anything like them in all the world!”

  “Exotic? Is that right?” Mr. Matterhorn replied. “Well, I know it’s popular to have something that’s ‘one-of-a-kind,’ but I prefer things to be as similar as possible. Easier to manage. Good management is everything. If something goes wrong, replace it with a duplicate and everything continues to run smoothly! Very efficient!”

  “Very efficient, indeed!” chimed in his colleagues, who were now poking and prodding the strange little creatures.

  Mr. Matterhorn nodded. “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we, and make a deal? This odd little critter would make my daughter Mandy forget all about her missing bunny rabbit,” he said, examining a Boingabonga. “After all, bunnies don’t have long yellow snouts and antennae like this thing. What is your asking price?”

  “It’s right there on the sign,”Ellen pointed out. “Our price for a Boingabonga is fifteeen hundred dollars.”

  “Fifteen hundred dollars! Isn’t that a bit steep?” exclaimed Mr. Matterhorn.

  “Fifteen hundred dollars is a steal! Our animals are exotic animals, and according to all the experts, exotic animals are valuable animals,” Ellen responded.

  “Besides, these animals are from our own personal collection,” she said, trying to drum up sympathy. “We hate to part with our treasures, but we must, now that our poor family has fallen on such hard times.”