How to Curse in Hieroglyphics (2 page)

The next day, as promised, Pops hollered for the girls to rise and shine at the crack of dawn. They piled back into the truck and headed out to Bartleby's Gas & Gulp
Service Station and General Store. There they stocked up on provisions, and the girls hauled them out to the pickup in cardboard boxes while Pops got caught up on all the town gossip with Mrs. Bartleby. Cheryl and Tweed could never figure out why that part of the trip always took so long. It wasn't as if anything particularly interesting ever happened in Wiggins, after all. Still, waiting for Pops to wrap up the gab session gave the twins the opportunity to indulge in one of their favourite pastimes—something the girls called “ACTION!!”

ACTION!! was, essentially, an elaborate game of movie make-believe, where every word uttered was like dialogue straight from a film script, and every move made was like a scene lifted straight from a movie storyboard. Drawing on their vast stores of monster-movie lore and fuelled by their own gloriously hyperactive imaginations, Cheryl and Tweed could transform the most mundane settings into exotic locales, the ordinariest of activities into life-or-death situations, and themselves into action heroes extraordinaire.

Of course, like all good heroes, they needed good villains to pit their wits against, and excursions to the Gas & Gulp were ideal ACTION!! setups for that very reason. A shortish, fidgety, bespectacled, be-sneakered, overalls-wearing reason by the name of Artie Bartleby.

Artie was a year behind Cheryl and Tweed at school, and he'd been helping out around the family business since he was barely old enough to reach the nozzle on
the gas pump. But on the days when his mother started gathering a box of provisions for Pops Pendleton to pick up, Artie would start to circle the gas station lot, filled with a kind of nervous anticipation and looking for a place to hide where he wouldn't be instantly found.

With Pops occupied, Artie in their sights, plots and perils a-bubble in their brains, all it took for the game to start was one of the girls calling out: “Cameras rolling … aaaand …”

“… ACTION!!”

EXT. SMALL-TOWN GAS STATION/GENERAL STORE -- HIGH NOON

CAMERA ZOOMS RAPIDLY TOWARD a stand of trees
at the edge of a clearing.

Two FEMALE FIGURES peer through HIGH-TECH
BINOCULARS.

EXTREME CLOSE-UP ON: the binoculars lower to
reveal a pair of GREY EYES, narrowed in cold
rage.

VAMPIRE HUNTER TEE

It's him all right. The
Daywalker …

EXTREME CLOSE-UP ON: a second set of
binoculars, lowering to reveal a pair of BLUE
EYES, steely with determination.

VAMPIRE HUNTER CEE

Easy, partner. This is what we've
been training for. The Undead Ones --
the ones immune to sunlight -- are
the most dangerous of their kind.
Don't lose your cool…

VAMPIRE HUNTER TEE

Oh, I'm cool. I'm
Frigidaire. And I'm gonna ice this sucker like a frozen
bloodsicle.

A SHADOWY FIGURE IN A CLOAK lurks near the gas pumps, glancing around nervously.

CAMERA CLOSE-UP on the figure -- the
unnaturally GREY SKIN, the RED EYES, the
FANGS (which, clearly, have led to an
unfortunate DROOLING PROBLEM).

COUNT VON BARTLEBURG

They're out there somewhere …
(SLURP) Stupid vampire hunters …
They're coming for me. I can
always tell when they're coming for
me … (SLURP) With their stupid old
binoc-yoo-lars and their stupid old
pointy wooden stakes … Darn it all!
(SLURP) Double darn it! (SLURP SLURP)

CAMERA RISES ON: the two HUNTERS,who are now
perched on top of the GAS PUMPS.

They are EXTREMELY MENACING.

VAMPIRE HUNTER TEE

Creature of the Night -- er -- Day!

VAMPIRE HUNTER CEE

GET HIM!

COUNT VON BARTLEBURG

GLAACK!! (SLURP)

The HUNTERS LEAP!

The VAMPIRE SCREAMS!!

“Ouch! I said CUT!!” Cheryl yelled. She dropped the wooden ruler she was using for a stake and massaged her hand, wincing. “Ow …”

“What?”

“He bit me! That darned vampire
bit
me!”

“The fiend!” Tweed gasped. “Curse you, Count Arthur Von Bartleburg!”

She shook a fist in the direction their nemesis had scampered off to—after sinking his chompers into Cheryl's freckled flesh. Tweed shoved her “binoculars” (a pair of taped-together Coke cans) into a black army-surplus canvas bag she wore slung across her torso and inspected her companion's hand. There were half-moon teeth marks visible on the fleshy part of her thumb, but the skin wasn't broken.

“You got off lucky this time, partner,” Tweed said in a serious voice. “I would have hated to be the one to have to stake you, pal.”

“I know.” Cheryl smiled at her grimly. “But I wouldn't have it any other way. And I'd do the same for you, pal.”

They exchanged their C+T Secret Signal (patent pending), which consisted of one winky eye, a pointing index finger pressed firmly against the side of the nose and a firm nod, but Tweed noticed a faint frown shading Cheryl's brow.

“Don't worry,” she said. “I'm sure you're fine. You're not even pale. We just have to keep an eye out for symptoms for the next twenty-four hours.”

“Oh, it's not that .”

“Then what's wrong?”

“I was just thinkin' … I
really
gotta work on my action hero stock phrases.” She kicked at a pebble and glanced sideways at Tweed. “I mean, ‘Get him'? That's the best patter I could come up with?”

“Well …”

“And you, with the ‘ice this sucker like a frozen bloodsicle'—”

“What?” Tweed stopped in her tracks. “Not good?”

“No, no!
Really
good. Quality B-movie quip, partner.” Cheryl shook her head, her two pigtails bouncing furiously. “See,
that's
what I aspire to!”

“I dunno.” Tweed shrugged. “‘Get him' has a certain direct charm …”

The girls grinned and punched each other in the shoulder.

“Um …” Cheryl glanced around, her focus returning to the task at hand. “Now … just where d'you suppose our target objective got to?”

“YOU BACK OFF!” Artie shouted, giving the girls a pretty good idea of just where the “target objective” was hiding out: behind the Dumpster, next to a stack of blue plastic milk crates.

The twins knew that, even though he would never ever admit such a thing out loud—certainly not within earshot—Artie got a kind of secret kick out of trying to outwit them. Unfortunately, at the age of eleven, he also
wasn't yet exactly given to deep or innovative thinking. In fact, in nine out of ten monster hunts, he could eventually be found huddled in almost exactly the same spot behind the general store's garbage bins.

“Y'hear me?” he shouted again. “BACK OFF!”

“Oh
sure
, Von Bartleburg …” Cheryl issued a series of largely made-up militaryesque hand signals to Tweed. “… Spawn of Darkness, Left Hand of Dracula … We'll back off …”

The girls split up, circling around on either side of the Dumpster.

Artie crouched there like a gopher in a hole, with messy brown bed-head hair, buck teeth and wonky glasses. Three-foot-tall Scourge of Humanity. Knobby-kneed Creature of Evil. The second he realized that the girls had found him—
again
—he made another “Glaack!” sound and jumped like a Pop-Tart in a toaster. Tweed made a mad grab for him but he wriggled backwards in his hidey-hole, out between the trash bin and a towering stack of broken-down cardboard boxes bundled with twine. Then he spun on the heels of his ratty old red Keds and took off like a Bat out of Heck.

He got maybe seven whole steps before Cheryl leaped from the top of the Dumpster. Cheryl aspired to a career as a movie stunt double when she grew up, but her technique still needed a bit of work. She missed Artie on the first attempt and instead tumbled head over heels in an awkward shoulder roll. She sprang to
her feet in time to tackle him to the ground in front of the gas pumps.

“Wait!” Artie—or, in this case, Count Arthur Von Bartleburg—screeched, his eyes growing big behind his crooked specs. “This isn't right! You vampire-hunted me last week,” he said. “This week oughta be nuthin' but werewolves for you two. That means I'm off the hook! Go bug Gordon.”

Gordon was the overweight watchdog down at the town junkyard. The tubby old hound had been standing in, in lieu of any
real
werewolves, in much the same way that Mrs. Kraveling's laundry on the line often played the parts of Doomed Spirits wandering the Earth (alternating every third week of the month with the toads—er, Spawn of Swamp Monsters—down at the abandoned quarry pond). Artie had pulled vampire duty early on in life; ever since grade three—before he'd lost the majority of his baby teeth—he'd nurtured quite a reputation as a biter and had therefore been the obvious choice.

“Tweed?” Cheryl called.

Tweed got a serious look on her face, eyebrows knitting under the blunt fringe of her dark hair. “Hang on,” she muttered. “I'll check the calendar …” She jumped up into the back of the truck to retrieve a thick, leather-bound appointment journal covered with sticky-notes and neatly scribbled reminders. After paging through the dates, she sighed.

“Let him up, partner,” she said, disappointment heavy in her voice. “He's right. It's a full moon tomorrow night.”

Which—of
course
—meant that if there was any monster hunting to be done, it would have to be strictly of the werewolf variety, according to the rules. And rules were rules.

Gordon would be so pleased.

Reluctantly, Cheryl stood up and wandered back to the truck. It proved to be good timing because, just at that moment, Pops Pendleton came bustling out of the general store laden with more shopping bags. Pops did
not
approve of roughhousing.

“All righty there, girls—oh, why hello, Artie.” Pops glanced down as he walked past. “What're ya doin' on the ground?”

Artie clambered to his feet. “I—”

“Case of mistaken monstrosity, Pops,” Cheryl interjected, shooting a death-glare at Artie. “All sorted up.”

Pops just shrugged and continued toward the truck, and Cheryl jumped into the truck's cargo bed to join Tweed. Pops heaved the shopping bags into the truck and Cheryl plucked a four-pack of bathroom tissue out of one. She tossed the pack lightly in the air and caught it again, her stare back at Artie never wavering.

“Tell me, Tweed,” she said. “When, exactly, are we scheduled for mummy week?”

2

STRANGE INVADERS

T
he old blue pickup rumbled away from the gas pumps, kicking up a cloud of dust as Pops turned onto Rural Route #1, which would take them back home to the drive-in.

Crouched in the truck bed as they rumbled down the road, the girls kept an eye on the store-bought provisions, making sure nothing blew away on the hot, dry wind, and pored over their appointment book, making plans for the coming week. Besides monster hunting, the girls could mostly be found engaged in marketing schemes for their primary business endeavour: babysitting.

It was a competitive field; there were only so many tots available to sit in Wiggins and many a sitter to choose from. Cindy Tyson, for one. Hazel Polizzi, for
another. Rivals in the babysitting trade, Cindy and Hazel had already turned thirteen.

And, apparently, “thirteen” was some kind of magic number. As soon as the twins' sitter competition hit that mystical age, their number of gigs skyrocketed. Even though everyone in Wiggins (silently) acknowledged the (vast) superiority of the twins' sitting abilities over those of their (slightly) older competitors, all of a sudden, Cheryl and Tweed's regular sitting gigs had started to dry up. It
had
to be the age-bias thing. The girls could think of no other reason.

Nevertheless, they remained undaunted. Just that week past, Cheryl and Tweed had made a trip into town on their bikes and gone to Wiggins's only copy shop, where they had printed up glossy, four-colour mailbox flyers detailing their supersitter services. They had also had business cards done up that read: