Sinister Substitute (10 page)

But let’s get back to the pointy point, shall we? Which is that Damien did not simply chuck Veronica Krockle into the shaft and let her splat to her death. Instead, like a fiendish Tarzan in a flapping black coat, he leapt onto the knotted rope, swinging himself and his spiky-heeled Jane aboard. Then,
thump-wump-BUMP, thump-wump-BUMP
, he rode the rope down, down, down into the darkness below.

The instant Damien was gone, Dave crawled out of the ductwork and hurried toward the shaft. Unfortunately, the Bandito Brothers were descending the tower steps as Dave and Sticky went by.

“Hey!” Pablo cried. “It’s the boy!”

“Get him!” Angelo shouted, waddling down the steps.

“Ándale, hombre!”
Sticky cried, whipping the
fabric of Dave’s sweatshirt like the reins of a horse.

Now, Sticky’s command (and the whipping) was quite unnecessary, as Dave had already
ándaled
. It was also quite unfortunate, as there’s only one voice like Sticky’s, and that is (you guessed it) Sticky’s.

“Sticky!” Tito squealed. “Wait up, little buddy!”

Dave wasn’t about to wait up. Oh no. He raced full speed ahead. But when he reached the hole in the floor, he instantly reeled back. “How far down does that go?” he gasped.

“You have no choice,
señor!
Get on the rope!”

“Where
does it go?”

“I have no idea,
señor!
Just go!”

Dave glanced over his shoulder. The Bandito Brothers were closing in fast. He could see the hairs sticking out of Angelo’s arms. He could see a drip glistening on the edge of Pablo’s pointy nose. And there was the frightening twinkle in Tito’s eyes (not to mention the alarmingly goofy grin spread from cheek to stubbly cheek).

“Now!” Sticky cried.

And so Dave jumped onto the knotted rope and went…

Nowhere.

“Ah!” he warbled. “How do I make this thing go?”

The Bandito Brothers were upon them now, and rather than waste any more time on the rope, Dave took a leap of faith (as he was never entirely sure the wristband’s powers would actually work) and dived for the far wall of the shaft.

“Gecko Power is
asombrrrrroso!”
Sticky cried as they scurried down the wall of the shaft.

Above them, the Bandito Brothers were beside themselves with wonder.

They were blinking and bug-eyeing and sputtering at the mouth.

Their eyebrows were knitting and crossing and flying around all over their foreheads.

They were, in short, freaking out.

“Did you see that?” they all asked each other. “How did he
do
that?”

Now, they had, in fact, seen Dave scale walls before, but it had always been in an upward direction. In an it-could-have-been-a-rock-climber fashion. Mere mortals have, after all, scaled tall buildings armed with nothing more than their fingers and toes (and, okay, a hearty dose of insanity).

But going headfirst
down
a wall?

Even Tito recognized that this was an impossible feat.

“Maybe the lizard and the boy are switched!” Angelo said, his eyes growing wide. “Maybe the boy’s in the lizard’s body and the lizard’s in the boy’s body.”

This seemed to snap Pablo out of his trance.
His squinty eyes pinched down as he looked at Angelo. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s probably just suction cups.”

“Suction cups?” Angelo shot back. “Did
you
see suction cups? No? Well, see? That makes
you
the stupidest thing ever!”

“Oh yeah? Well, you’re even stupider than—”

“Uh … they’re getting away?” Tito said, scratching the side of his big, round head as he looked down the shaft.

Angelo and Pablo locked eyes and the exact same thought double-crossed both their minds:

Whoever caught the boy would surely become Damien’s right-hand man!

Not thinking beyond that, they both lunged for (and wrapped themselves around) the rope (and each other).

Of course, the rope didn’t thump-wump-BUMP for them either. And after going nowhere for a full minute, they began screeching at Tito
(who was preoccupied with two little chunks of grassy dirt that he’d found near the edge). “What are you doing, you idiot!” they cried. “Quit playing with dirt and help us!”

So Tito dropped the dirt and squatted at the edge of the Bottomless Shaft. “Why’d you get on the rope?” he asked, stretching out to reel them in. “Sticky’s friend couldn’t make it work.”

Pablo stared at him for a moment, then snapped, “We thought he wasn’t heavy enough, okay, stupid? Now stretch! Help us off of here!”

So Tito (simple soul that he was) leaned out farther.

And farther.

And
farther
.

Until he simply tumbled over the edge and fell headlong into the vast darkness below.

There was, of course, a bottom to the Bottomless Shaft. And it wasn’t a hard cement pad or a plot of bone-crushing dirt.

It was feathers.

Floufy, poufy, soft and woufy feathers.

The kind that float forever in the air if you blow on them.

The kind that you can smash way down, then watch flouf way up.

The kind that feel like a cloud when you fall into them.

Now, these floufy, poufy, soft and woufy feathers were in an enormous chicken-wire container (which was either filled to the poufy-woufy top or
only about half full, depending on whether something like, say, a large boulder-brained Bandito Brother had just landed).

But why the feathers?

Or, more curiously (considering the skyrocketing price of down on the international market), how had Damien managed to obtain such an enormous supply?

The answer is quite simple:

Damien owned geese.

Lots and lots of honking, squonking, angry-beaked geese.

And why did Damien own these honking, squonking, angry-beaked geese?

Because they were what Damien fed his dragon.

His sharp-clawed, hinged-jawed, ravenous Komodo dragon.

(Picture, if you will, a ten-foot, two-hundred-pound carnivorous lizard with deadly claws,
serrated teeth, a monstrous appetite, and hot, beastly breath. That picture is as close as you should ever get to Damien’s prized and pampered pet. The real thing could tear you to shreds in three-point-four seconds flat.)

But let’s get back to the geese, shall we?

Geese eat things like weeds and snails, and they molt every six weeks when they’re growing.

Every six weeks!

Can you imagine all the shedding feathers? Can you just see feathers floufing around all over the place?

And since Damien had lots and lots of geese, and the geese were always growing (as they rarely made it to full size before being fed to the dragon), the goose cave had been a constant blizzard of feathers.

Until, that is, Damien built the feather cage and got busy with a leaf blower.

Not only did it tidy things up dramatically, but
Damien also found that wielding the blower was amazingly therapeutic. The rev of the motor, the blast of air, the power to drive things in a direction
he
determined … it made him feel happy.

In control.

Satisfied.

(It was, perhaps, as close to gardening as he would ever come.)

Now, although the ten-foot cage of feathers was not a safety necessity when riding the knotted rope down the shaft, it was a billowy bonus, and Damien would often let go of the rope and land with an arm-flung “Aaaaaaah!” simply for the soul-soothing softness of it all.

This time, however, Damien’s trip down the shaft was entirely business. Toward the end of the knotty rope ride, Damien shoved down a long lever on the wall, which lowered a landing platform that had an attached slide. Once he’d landed, he secured the rope (as he was aware that the Brothers might, once again, try to defy his orders), then slid with his conked-out prisoner to the ground below, bypassing the feather pit altogether.

At the bottom of the slide, Damien pressed another lever to retract the landing platform. Then he whooshed through his gaggle of geese (which is what a group of honking, squonking geese is called, whether they’re molting or not) and began muttering to himself as he ascended the five steep stone steps that led up to a cobblestone walkway. “It’ll be over in no time,” he hissed, but his normally quick and determined steps seemed to be dragging. “She’s out cold,” he muttered. “She’ll never know what bit her.”

Meanwhile, Dave and Sticky were nearing the bottom of the shaft when Tito came hurtling past them like a bandoliered boulder, crying, “Wheeeeeeeeee-hee-hee-hee-hee! Wheeeeeeeeee-hee-hee-hee-hee!”

(Obviously he didn’t understand the severity of the situation, and that he might very well have ended his days with a wicked, boulder-cracking splat.)

But (as you already know) Tito did not land with a wicked splat. He landed with a WOOOOUF, POOOOOOOOOOOOOUF! as the feathers beneath him compressed and those to the sides went billowing into the air.

Dave and Sticky had just reached the bottom of the shaft when Tito landed. “Puffy-huffy
plumas!”
Sticky cried, swatting feathers from the air in front of his face. “What will that
loco lobo
think of next?”

“What’s with all the geese?” Dave said, as he could now clearly see (and hear) the molting birds.

“Dragon dinner,” Sticky said with a shudder.

Dave shuddered, too, as he had once witnessed the feeding of the Komodo dragon, but his shudder
was cut short by an echoing “AAAAAAA-AAHHHHHHHHH!” hurtling down the shaft along with the hair-raised body of Angelo.

Angelo landed with a (somewhat smaller) WOOOOUF, POOOOOOOOOOOOOUF next to Tito and immediately began flailing in the feathers. “Am I dead? What is this?”

“It’s a pillow!” came Tito’s muffled voice. “Let’s have a pillow fight!”

“You idiot!” Angelo screamed, feathers tickling his nose. “How do we get—AAAAAAAAH-CHOOOOOOOO! AAAAAH-CHOO OOOO! AAAAAAH-CHOOOOOOOO!—out of here?”

“Ándale, hombre,”
Sticky whispered in Dave’s ear. “Before they see us.”

So Dave skirted around the feather cage and soon found himself in an enormous cave, being honked at by the gaggle of geese. Through the geese was a rickety wooden bridge leading across a marshy area to an island. And on the other side of the island, shining through the bars of a large wrought-iron gate, was a warm, welcoming pool of sunshine.

Dave realized this was an exit.

An escape hatch.

A way out of the mansion’s madness.

Yet he also knew he had a job to finish. So he moved on, trying to determine which way Damien might have taken Ms. Krockle.

Ahead of them was the open mouth of a three-foot tube that stuck out of the cave wall by a few feet like a gigantic, compressed, foil-covered Slinky.

“What is
that
?” Dave asked.

“Beats me,
señor,”
Sticky replied. “I’ve never been here before.” He cocked an eye at Dave. “But I don’t like the looks of it.”

Dave nodded. The tube gave him the heebie-jeebies, too, although he couldn’t say why. “So that way, you think?” Dave said, pointing to some steep steps and a cobblestone pathway.