Billy Hooten (9 page)

The journey to the mausoleum went off without a hitch. With not a moment's hesitation, Billy pushed the heavy metal door of the burial chamber open and went inside the crypt. He looked around the room through the goggles’ special lenses, searching for any signs of the unusual, but found nothing.

He walked to the back of the room, to the stone coffin with the heavy lid still slightly ajar. Unzipping the front of his jumpsuit, he reached inside the costume, searching for something important he had hidden there before leaving his bedroom.

“There you are,” he said, producing the owl-shaped whistle. He approached the stone coffin again, but not too close, remembering the last time he had been there.
He hoped to enter Monstros City a little less spectacularly this time.

He put the whistle to his mouth and gave it a forceful blow. The chamber was filled with the sound of hundreds of hooting owls, and Billy felt a wave of goose bumps—
they probably should be owl bumps
—spread across his arms, neck and back.

Just like before, Billy listened to the wind outside the mausoleum pick up, rattling what was left of the leaves in the trees and moaning like a restless spirit.

He looked toward the open coffin, waiting for Archebold to arrive … and waited and waited and waited. The goblin didn't come. Billy was starting to get a bit worried, wondering whether he had taken too long to make his decision to be Owlboy.
Maybe he's already found somebody else?
he thought, his brain in a tizzy. He started to panic.
Maybe Archebold saw me in the costume and thought I looked stupid.

Maybe he had blown his chance to be a real live superhero.

Billy felt himself on the way to being completely depressed, and thought about blowing the whistle again … but what was the use?

Not feeling much like a superhero at that moment, more like a superloser, Billy considered his options. He
could
jump down into the coffin and go to
Monstros on his own, but that didn't seem to be the smartest idea. Something told him that Monstros could be a very dangerous place, superhero or not. Or he could just go home, take the costume off, throw it into the back of the closet and never think of this crazy business again.

He knew the safest answer, but he wasn't sure that
safe
was what he wanted.

Looking at the coffin again, he hoped for something to change his mind, but it didn't appear. Knowing then without a doubt that he had been replaced, Billy wished whoever had been chosen for the Owlboy job over him good luck and slowly turned away from the entrance to Monstros City, ready to head home.

At first it sounded like the wind, leaves whipping around, rustling on the ground, carrying over from when he'd first blown the whistle, but then he realized that the sound was coming from behind him.

Almost at the door to leave, Billy turned toward the stone coffin, watching as two tiny hands appeared and Archebold hauled himself up over the edge.

“You came!” Billy cried, barely able to contain his excitement. “It's about stinkin’ time!”

“Sorry I'm late,” the goblin said, brushing dirt and dust from the front of his tuxedo suit. “Looks like you're in for a busy night.”

Archebold then looked at Billy, his small, animallike yellow eyes glowing in the darkness of the chamber.

“Are you ready for this, Billy Hooten?” the goblin asked.

Billy felt his legs begin to wobble and thought they might just start acting on their own, running with the rest of his body in tow out the door, but he made them obey.

“Yes,” he said, nodding eagerly, the dream where he'd been turned into a sandwich suddenly replaying like a summer rerun inside his head before he wished it away.

“Then what are we waiting for?” Archebold asked, motioning with his hand for Billy to follow him as he dove back into the darkness of the coffin.

Billy followed, keeping his fingers crossed that Monstros City wasn't one of those places where dreams really did come true.

CHAPTER 8

“W
atch your step,” Archebold said from in front of Billy on the curving, shadow steps.

“Believe me, I know,” Billy said, on the verge of activating the night-vision goggles covering his glasses. He didn't want a replay of the last time he'd visited Monstros.

Archebold stopped short, turning toward him on the step below. “You know?” the goblin asked him. “How would you know unless…”

Billy started to explain, not wanting to get into trouble with the little guy.

“Well, I was going to give your costume back, and I blew the whistle, and along came this wind, which made me lose my balance and …”

“So it was you that stopped that robbery that the Monstros newspapers are all buzzing about?”

“The newspapers are buzzing?” Billy asked excitedly. “About me?”

Archebold stroked his chin, a smile on his homely face. “They certainly are,” he answered. “That was a great piece of publicity—good thinking.”

“But I didn't do it on purpose,” Billy tried to explain as the goblin continued to descend. “I was just—”

“We're getting to the really dark part here,” Archebold said, coming to a stop. “Give me a second and I'll find us a little light so we don't fall and break our heads.” He started to rummage through the inside pockets of his jacket. “I thought I brought him with me …. Ah! There you are.”

Archebold pulled something large from inside his coat, giving it a good shake.

“Wake up!” the goblin yelled, and suddenly the stairway was illuminated by a bright yellow light.

“What the heck is that?” Billy asked, shielding his eyes from the glow.

“It's just Walter,” Archebold said.

Walter was the biggest firefly Billy had ever seen in his life.

“Just Walter,” the bug mimicked, wings fluttering as he hovered in the air before them. “Perhaps if I should
turn off my glowing posterior, I could perhaps receive a little more respect, hmmm?”

“Oh my gosh, it talks!” Billy said, shocked.

The bug glared at him, and Billy saw multiple representations of himself in his full superhero attire reflected in the bug's bulbous compound eyes.

“Are you sure about this one, Archebold?” the bug asked. “He doesn't seem all that bright.”

“Nothing to concern yourself with there, Walter,” Archebold told the bug. “You just worry about lighting the stairs so we don't fall and kill ourselves.”

“You're the boss,” Walter said, flying ahead a bit to light their descent.

“I didn't mean to insult him,” Billy said to Archebold as he followed. “It's just that I've never seen a giant talking firefly before.”

The goblin smiled widely, showing off a double row of crazy picket-fence-type teeth. “Just you wait and see, yes, sir,” he said. “You ain't seen nothing yet.”

They finally arrived at the bottom of the steps and stood within an open area of tunnel that seemed very familiar to Billy.

“This is where I ended up before I went to the grocery and stopped the skeletons,” Billy said, following the glowing bug and the goblin.

“Think so?” Archebold asked.

“Well, it looks the same,” Billy said.

Archebold chuckled, shaking his large head from side to side. “We're nowhere near there.”

“But it looks…”

“Where you ended up was way back there.” Archebold pointed to a darkened area of the tunnel that looked just like the tunnel they were standing in.

“Oh, I get it,” Billy said, humoring the goblin.

“I know you can't see it now, but a few more visits and you'll see the difference,” the goblin explained. “These shadow tunnels can be sort of tricky. C'mon, where we're going is right up here.”

They came to a stop in front of a door that didn't look much different from the door that had taken him into the back room of the monster grocery store, but this time Billy kept the observation to himself.

“Are we done?” Walter the firefly asked as he hovered in front of the door.

“Yeah, that just about does it,” Archebold told him. The goblin then opened his jacket, plucking the large bug from the air.

“Good luck with
that
one,” the bug said before going into the goblin's coat pocket, its large eyes looking at Billy and then back at Archebold. “Did I mention that I don't think he's all that bright?”

“Don't you worry about it, Walt,” Archebold told
him, shoving the bug deep inside the pocket. “I've got everything under control.”

The goblin looked back at Billy, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “Are you ready?” he asked.

“I-I-I think so,” Billy stammered, the firefly's words damaging his confidence just a little.

“Aw, don't listen to him,” Archebold said, reaching into another pocket of his tuxedo and searching for something. “He didn't think the last Owlboy was any good either.”

Archebold pulled a large gold key from the pocket and presented it to Billy.

“Here ya go,” he said. “I'll let you do the honors.”

It was an old-fashioned key like some that Billy had seen at his grandfather's house, only this one was much larger, with the head of an owl at the end.

Billy put the key inside the keyhole and gave it a turn. There was a loud clicking sound as it went in, and then a clacking as he turned it sharply to the right.

The door creaked slowly open, and Billy stepped inside the room, holding his breath, wondering what strange sight could be waiting for him on the other side.

And strange it was.

The room was big, its ceiling rounded, and everywhere he looked there were televisions in all shapes and sizes, old as well as new, stacked up against the
curved walls. Each one seemed to be tuned to a different channel, and as Billy looked closer, he guessed that these were views from all over Monstros City. There was also a reclining chair, just like the one his dad had, in the center of the room.

“Where are we?” Billy asked in awe.

“This is the monitoring room,” Archebold explained, taking the key from the door and returning it to his pocket. “The part of the Roost where he keeps a watchful eye on Monstros.”

Billy quickly looked away from the screens and the varying images of what was going on all over the amazing city to look at the goblin.

“Did you say the Roost?” he asked.

Archebold nodded. “I certainly did.”

“As in Owlboy's secret hideout?”

The goblin nodded again. “Yep, a place you can come and hang out and invent stuff to help with your crime-fighting—when you're not out righting wrongs and thwarting evil, that is.”

Billy had always wanted a secret hideout but knew there was zero chance of keeping it secret from his parents, or from Victoria next door. This was just too awesome for words.

“My very own secret hideout,” he said, barely able to contain his excitement.

“Well, not quite yours yet,” Archebold said, shaking a chubby clawed finger at him.

Billy looked at him with dismay. “What do you mean? I thought—?”

“First we have to see if you're ready,” the goblin explained, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

“First you've got to complete Owlboy training.”

Again Billy found himself someplace dark.

After leaving the monitoring room, Archebold had escorted him down a long, winding hallway, past a multitude of doors, each of them with a little sign telling what was inside: SCIENCE ROOM, COSTUME ROOM, MUSIC ROOM, VEHICLE ROOM, there was even a SNACK ROOM, and Billy couldn't wait to check out each and every one of them.

But first there was training.
Whatever the heck that means.

The goblin shoved him through a door which said TRAINING ROOM on it. Left standing in the dark, Billy was starting to get a little anxious, when he heard Archebold's voice.

“All righty then,” the goblin said. It sounded as if he were talking through an old loudspeaker. “Let's get this show on the road, shall we?”

Billy looked around, trying to pinpoint where in the room the voice was coming from.

“Where are you?” he asked the darkness, just as the lights came on.

“Holy crap!” Billy exclaimed, using a word his mother despised. She would much rather he use
poop
in his exclamations, but that just sounded stupid.

Billy was standing in a giant room made up to look like a city street. It pretty much looked like any street he'd seen before, with its buildings and shops, but he knew otherwise. This wasn't just your average city street—this was a
Monstros City
street.

“I'm up here, Billy,” he heard Archebold say through the crackling speaker, and he looked up to see the goblin waving to him from a booth high up near the ceiling. He was sitting behind what looked like a large panel of controls.
Controls for what?
Billy wondered.

“This is where I'll be conducting your exam,” Archebold said, speaking into a large microphone.

“An exam?” Billy nervously yelled up to the goblin. “But I didn't bring a pencil.”

“Don't worry,” Archebold said, cracking the knuckles of his tiny hands before they started to move around the control panel, pushing buttons and turning cranks. “It's not a written exam.”

Billy sighed with relief. He hated written exams, especially ones he hadn't studied for.

“This exam has a much more physical nature.”

“Physical?” Billy asked, his apprehension on the rise.

“This test will show me how ready you are to take on the title of Owlboy.” The goblin appeared very busy up in the booth, moving around in a flurry of activity.

“It's called Save the Citizens, and it'll show me everything I need to know,” Archebold said.

Billy looked around at the fake city streets. “But there aren't any,” he said, feeling confused. “Citizens, I mean.”

Suddenly, the air was filled with the sounds of whirring machinery. Hatches opened up in the floor, ejecting dummies.

“Here they are,” the goblin said.

If Billy hadn't known before, he certainly knew then. After looking at the dummies, there was no way he could've been any place other than Monstros City. These weren't the average dummies that you'd see in department stores of men, women and kids; these were dummies of creatures—
monsters
—of all shapes and sizes. Billy saw wolf-men, giant bugs and a fat old lady with snakes for hair who was pushing a shopping cart.

“So I'm supposed to save them?” he called to Archebold in the control booth.

“That would be a yes,” the goblin said, flicking some more switches and causing the lights inside the chamber to momentarily flicker.

“And I'm supposed to be saving them from … ?”
Billy asked, looking around the artificial street for any signs of danger. “Doesn't look like there's anything too dangerous around here.”

That was when Archebold started to laugh, a creepy sound that didn't make Billy feel all that comfortable.

“I'll show you dangerous,” the goblin said, chuckling. He reached inside his coat pocket and removed a hat, slipping it onto his large head. Billy adjusted the mechanisms on his goggles to find the telephoto lens and read what it said on the front of the black ball cap.

#1 Villain!
was stitched in red across the front of the cap. Billy found himself growing increasingly nervous.

The goblin flipped more switches, and the large room was filled with the sound of machinery.

Billy turned toward the noise and saw that a brick wall directly across from him had fallen away to reveal what looked like some kind of weapon.

“What the heck?” he exclaimed, watching as the weapon's long silver barrel emerged from its hiding place.

“It's a cannon,” he said with growing horror, watching as it took aim at the gathered dummies.

“Save 'em, Owlboy!” Archebold cried, his voice echoing in the training chamber. “If you can.”

The cannon fired with a thunderous explosion of compressed air, and Billy was shocked to see a gigantic red ball, instead of some explosive projectile, erupt
from the barrel of the huge gun. The ball missed the dummies, bouncing off a building wall and coming at him at incredible speed. He dove out of its path just in time for the ball to rebound off the front of a fake apartment building behind him, ricochet around the room and finally come to a rolling stop nearby.

And then it hit him like an ice cream brain freeze.
The gun is firing dodgeballs,
he realized.
Bigger and faster than the ones thrown by Killer Kulkowski.

Even here in Monstros he couldn't avoid the stupid game.

The cannon took aim again. Billy jumped toward the weapon, surprised again by the distance he was able to cover in just one leap. The rules were different in Monstros City, he reminded himself, landing in a crouch in front of the gathering of dummies just as the cannon shot another ball.

F'THOOM!

He used the memory of how he'd been the last guy standing in the dodgeball game the other day, and how he had stood up against Killer Kulkowski, to psych himself up as he sprang into the path of the hurtling ball, catching it against his chest.

Or at least that was what he attempted to do.

The ball hit him like a giant fist, lifting him off his feet, almost knocking one of his rubber boots off, and
sending him hurtling backward into the dummies. The fake citizens went flying.