Sinister Substitute Read online

  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.

  Chapter 12

  STALKED

  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.”
r />   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?”

  “It’s not guacamole, that’s for sure,” Dave grumbled, still looking at his shoe.

  “No,” Sticky said, pointing straight ahead, “that.”

  Sticky was pointing to one of the mansion’s jutting walls.

  It was expanding.

  Pushing outward.

  Growing, like a great black balloon.

  And inside the balloon something was moving.

  Something alive.

  Chapter 13

  ICKY-STICKY SYRUP

  What came through the wall was not some agent of evil, or heat-seeking sleep darts, or boy-hunting hounds.

  It was a burro.

  A fuzzy-wuzzy bucktoothed burro.

  One that immediately became preoccupied with the flittery-fluttering of a little yellow butterfly and did not notice Dave and Sticky standing a mere fifteen yards away.

  “That’s Rosie,” Sticky whispered. “Which means those bobos banditos are still living here!”

  “Wait,” Dave said. “He let them put in a donkey door?”

  Sticky shook his little gecko head. “It’s loco-berry burritos, man.”

  They stared at the donkey door a moment longer, then looked at each other.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Dave asked.

  “Sí, señor,” Sticky said with a grin. “No alarm, no creaky hinges, no catapults or bloody fangs. …” He nodded. “Even if those beany-brained boys are in there, it should be easy-sneezy to sneak inside.”

  Now, at this point, Tito was already on his way up to the prisoner tower. So when Dave and Sticky sneaky-toed up to the donkey door and peeked inside, the only Brothers left were Angelo and Pablo.

  Dave and Sticky couldn’t see them (as the donkey door had been installed in an old servants’ entry off the side of the kitchen), but they could certainly hear them bickering. And after eavesdropping for a few minutes, Dave whispered, “They’re fighting about weeds?”

  “You name it, señor, they will find some way to fight about it. Now ándale! That evil Mr. Black will be home soon!”

  This was, in fact, an accurate (and appropriately ominous) statement, as at that very moment Damien Black was roaring up the winding road to Raven Ridge at hazardous speed, holding the wheel of his 1959 Cadillac Eldorado with one hand while ripping off the latex face of Ms. Dede Bartholomew with the other.

  He was, to put it mildly, in a ferociously foul mood. He’d spent the day wearing a sweaty latex face, an itchy wig, a cheery pin, and nylons.

  Nylons!

  Itchy, pinchy, hair-pulling nylons!

  And he’d gotten nowhere.

  Nowhere!

  Those sneaky-eyed, cagey kids were a nightmare!

  A headache-inducing, stomach-churning, gut-gurgling nightmare!

  Ah, poor Damien. He could handle thugs and thieves and devious businessmen.

  Backstabbers and double-crossers (and even politicians!).

  But children?

  They were simply too much for him.

  And so it was that Damien had made a mad, belly-jiggling dash for the exit when the dismissal bell rang at Geronimo Middle School. “Out of my way! Out of my way!” he’d shouted (in a curiously masculine voice), shoving through the teeming crowds of teens. And after continuing his mad dash over to his car (which was parked a cautious four blocks from school), he’d fired up his trio of ultra-bad Rochester carburetors and put the pedal to the Eldorado’s metal (which, in this case, meant just that).

  So, as you can see, Sticky’s order to “Ándale!” was a wise one, indeed. Dave had, after all, stopped at the thrift store, pedaled up to Raven Ridge (which, even for an experienced biker like Dave, was quite a trek), and been harassed and waylaid by bwaa-ha-cawing ravens.

  Can you say tick-tock?

  So without further delay, Dave eeeeeased through the donkey door, tiiiiippy-toed across the worn black-and-white flooring tiles, and sneeeeeaky-peeked a look around the pantry shelving into the kitchen.

  There was no sign of Ms. Veronica Krockle.

  Only Pablo and Angelo dousing each other with maple syrup.

  “Stop that!” Pablo cried.

  “You stop first!” Angelo shouted back.

  “What are they doing?” Dave whispered, for even in his most heated fights with Evie, he had never, not ever, poured syrup on her head.

  Pablo doused Angelo with another glug of syrup as he yelled, “I’m not taking her food up, you hairy dog!”

  “Yes, you are, you chintzy cheater!” Angelo shouted, glugging back.

  “I think they’re fighting about that scary señorita!” Sticky whispered.

  Pablo suddenly lowered his syrup jug and looked around. “Hey … where’s Tito?”

  Angelo looked around, too. “I don’t know, but the tray’s gone.”

  Pablo snorted through his little ratty nose. “Well, good. He needs the exercise.”

  Angelo laughed. “Yeah. Ninety-nine steps. It’ll take him all day.”

  Pablo plopped down in a tattered vinyl kitchen-table chair. “I hate those creepy masks in that tunnel. The eyes.” He shuddered. “Do you think they’re really alive?”

  Angelo plopped down across from him and started wiping the syrup off his face and arms. “Don’t be stupid. How could they be alive, huh?”

  “Hey!” Pablo said, sitting up straighter. “I’m not stupid, you’re stupid!”

  “Shut up! You’re stupider than the stupidest stupid ever!”

  And so they were off again, outdoing each other’s insult, oblivious to the fact that they’d just given away Ms. Veronica Krockle’s location.

  “She’s in the tower!” Sticky whispered into Dave’s ear.

  “How do we get there?” Dave whispered back.

  “Up ninety-nine rickety steps and through a creepy tunnel of masks. Oooor”—he tapped his little gecko chin thoughtfully—“we could use the stinky socks chute.”

  “The stinky socks chute?” Dave pulled a face.
“I’ll take the ninety-nine steps.”

  Sticky arched a hairless eyebrow. “I don’t think so, señor.”

  “Why?”

  Sticky peeked around the corner at Pablo and Angelo (whose argument had ramped up to “Well, you’re stupider than the stupidest stupid sauce inside the dumbest dumb bomb ever, and every time you explode, stupid sauce splats all over the wall!”). He eyed Dave. “Because to get to the ninety-nine steps, you first have to get past those two. And what if Tito is on his way down?”

  “Can’t we just go up the outside of the house?”

  Sticky shook his head. “No windows in the tower.”

  “So where’s the laundry chute?” Dave whispered (for he’d figured out that’s what the stinky socks chute must be).

  Sticky pointed to an open room located across a wide common area. “In there.”

  It was clear that crossing over this wide common area would put them in full view of Pablo and Angelo. Even in the heat of their argument, the two Brothers would surely spot a boy in a yellow sweatshirt sneaking by.

  But then Dave noticed that spanning the ceiling above the wide common area was a large wooden beam. One that would (at least partially) conceal them if they walked across the ceiling.

  Sticky and Dave exchanged glances, and without a word, Dave (who still had the Wall-Walker ingot in the powerband) scampered up the wall and started across the ceiling.

  Now, it’s frightening enough to be trespassing in a madman’s mansion, walking across the ceiling like a giant yellow gecko while two angry men sporting bandoliers and bad attitudes (not to mention jugs of syrup) are within striking distance. But nothing, I promise you, nothing will make you lose your grip quicker than Damien Black’s voice booming through the room.

  “Where are you buffoons?” the angry treasure hunter shouted from a distant chamber.

  Pablo and Angelo frantically began wiping up syrup.

  “Answer me!” bellowed Damien’s approaching voice.

  “Ándale!” Sticky whispered, because Dave had, quite simply, frozen in place.

  “H-h-here, boss!” Angelo called, and with that Dave kicked into gear, geckoing across the rest of the ceiling to the safety of the adjacent service room.