The Everything Box (25 page)

In his head, Phil yelled “Geronimo!” each time a curse hit. Another one of his less charming nervous tics. Coop was about to tell him to pipe down when Phil said, “Trip wire on the third step.”

Coop knelt until he could see light reflecting off the monofilament, then stepped over it.

“Don't stand up yet,” said Phil. “There's another at throat level on the next step to get you if you spotted the first wire.”

“I see it,” said Coop, ducking.

“The rest of the stairs look clear. Just be ready for more curses. There are plenty more ahead.”

“Got it,” said Coop. “You're not your usual chatty self, Phil. Anything wrong?”

“I'm just hurt is all. I try to give you advice on your life choices, your fear of intimacy, your fear of death, and here they come all wrapped together in one nice package and you don't even mention it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Giselle. I always liked her name. She's like someone Poe should have written a poem about. Something long and gloomy about a jilted lover spending his last miserable days eating sandwiches on her tomb.”

A curse hit Coop square in the stomach, bounced off, and melted a nearby Ming vase. Phil giggled. “Nice shot, cowboy.”

“That one burned a little,” said Coop.

“Just like love, if you get my drift.”

“A triceratops with a learning disability would get your drift.”

“Watch out for the peacock chair on your left. There's a blowgun in the back,” said Phil.

Coop stopped and pulled a small graphite glider from a side panel on his backpack. He sailed it past the chair and a dozen spikes, like kitchen knives, shot from the back, embedding themselves in the wall.

“Ouch-a-rama. That would have been a good one, huh?” said Phil.

“Good call,” said Coop.

“How much farther to Goldfinger's vault?”

“One more floor.”

“Uggghhh,” said Phil, like a six-year-old asked to do the nineteen-times multiplication table. “Doesn't the DOPS have teleportation or something? Why can't we fly past Babylon's party tricks?”

“I forgot my jetpack.”

“If I believed that, I'd strangle you in your sleep.”

“You've been at the DOPS longer than I have. Why don't you talk to management?”

“They don't listen to ghosts. It's complete ectoplasmic oppression over there.”

Coop stopped for a second. “Were you part of the bunch that possessed management a few weeks back? People are still talking about it.”

“Nope. It didn't happen. I don't know about it. I was haunting the squid tank at SeaWorld at the time.”

“You're a lousy liar,” said Coop.

“Enough about me. Let's talk about you and Giselle. How soon before you need heart surgery again?”

“Nope. We are not going to do this.”

“Come on. Throw me a bone. You in an emotional wood chipper is one of the few things I get to look forward to.”

“Sorry. It's not going to happen this time.” Beams crisscrossed his vision, trying to cut him in half. Like the others, they passed through him, but one scorched his right boot, leaving him doing a clumsy Riverdance down the hall.

“Duck,” said Phil as a sword swung out from the back of a picture of ducks on a pond. “Duck. Did you get it? I said duck.”

“I got it, Phil. Can you spin plates? You'd have wowed them in vaudeville.”

“My guess is your heart goes back in the Cuisinart just about the time you finish this box job and hit the bricks.”

“You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think you're jealous. When's the last time a lady ghost gave you the time of day?”

Phil didn't say anything for a minute. “We're almost there.”

The curses came harder and faster as they neared the study that held the safe. Two of the curses met at the edge of Coop's waist sack and started to melt the nylon. Coop dove out of the way before he caught fire.

“Okay, that was scary,” said Phil. “It might be time for a song.”

“Don't bother. We're here,” said Coop. They stood before heavy wooden sliding doors, like something leading to a Victorian drawing room. “Do you see any traps?”

“Give me a minute,” said Phil. Then, “Nothing out here, but I bet there are oodles inside.”

“Here we go,” said Coop. He pushed the doors open and jumped back behind the hallway wall. Nothing came out of the room. No dragon fire. No spikes. No flying badgers with knives for feet. Coop peeked around the corner and looked into an entirely ordinary room. Ordinary except for one feature. A gray metal safe about three feet tall, like something you'd see in any business office, was floating several inches off the floor.

“Why haven't you kissed her yet?” said Phil.

“Not now,” said Coop. “Because I didn't want to and because I don't think she wanted to kiss me. I mean, she might have at one point. But the moment passed.”

“Story of your life, huh?”

“Just do your job.”

“I have been,” said Phil. “Let's be reasonable. From what we've both seen, most of the big curses are outside to keep people from getting in. We've made it all the way here with no casualties, so I think I'm going back to the Stink Missile and play Crazy Eights with Morty.”

“You're not getting out of my brain until we're out of this house. Now look around for traps.”

They both gazed around the room looking for trip wires and electronic sensors.

“See anything?” said Coop.

“Wait. Have you got a pencil or something? Toss it inside.”

Coop took a pen from his waist pack and threw it end over end through the door. Twin swords swung down from overhead, snapping the pen in half. They landed with a clatter on the floor.

“Okay. Is there anything else?”

“Nada,” said Phil. “Bupkis.”

Coop took a deep breath, trying not to think about the bisected pen in front of him. “I'm going in.”

“Relax, Pacino. It's just me here. You don't need to chew the scenery.”

Coop took a step. The floor squeaked.

“Stop!” screamed Phil. But it was too late. Coop's body weight carried him forward onto the rigged board. There was a brief sound of gears winding in the walls, then a crack . . .

And then the whole floor fell away beneath them, dropping desks, tables, chairs, and potted plants down into what looked like a bottomless void. The only reason Coop hadn't followed the mess down into the abyss was that he twisted and grabbed a wall sconce at just the last minute. He hung there now, too far from the hall to swing back, and there was nothing to jump onto but the safe, which was too far away.

“Get us out. Get us out. Get us out,” screamed Phil.

“You're the one who got us into this. Where are we supposed to go?”

“Get us out. Get us out. Get us—”

“Pipe down. Why don't you try helping?”

“You're the one with all the Batman gear. You think of something.”

Coop reached into his backpack and took a small water pistol. He held it high and shot a stream toward the floating safe. The water evaporated before it got halfway there.

“Okay. If I follow that line, it looks like there's just a heat curse. I can handle that. Do you see anything else?”

“I'm having a moment here, Coop. Can I catch my breath?”

“You don't breathe, and this sconce isn't going to hold forever. Are there any more traps?”

“I can't see anything, but I get the feeling there are. Try something else.”

Coop pulled a paper airplane from his backpack and tossed it toward the safe. Metal scraped above them, and a steel pendulum with a razor-sharp blade that flared out at the bottom swung down from the ceiling, cutting across the width of the room.

Coop threw three more gliders, triggering three more pendulums. He could feel the breeze of their movement on his cheeks.

“Consider this my resignation,” said Phil. “It's been swell working with you, but there's this kitten puzzle I've been meaning to finish back home. I have all the corners done.”

“Shut up. You got me into this. Let me think. And don't even dream about singing. I need to count these pendulums.”

“Why?”

“Because this wall sconce is loose and we're going to fall in the next couple of minutes, unless I can . . .”

Coop leapt into the air as the first pendulum swung past. He just managed to grab the bottom and hold on as it moved in slow arcs, slicing through the air. Phil didn't say a word. He just screamed.

Coop grabbed onto the shaft of the pendulum and pulled himself to the ceiling. There was a sort of axle there, running from the door straight across the room. From the top of the pendulum, he swung
out onto the axle and climbed hand over hand across it, timing each handhold with the swinging of the pendulums.

It took several sweaty, painful, nerve-racking minutes to get there, but at the far end of the axle, he was finally able to swing down and drop onto the top of the safe.

Phil stopped screaming. “How did you know it would hold your weight?”

“I didn't. But Babylon doesn't want his safe falling to Shanghai, so whatever hocus-pocus he's using on it must be strong.”

“That's very reassuring,” said Phil. “Don't mind me if I go back to screaming.”

“You can scream all the way home in the Missile. Right now, keep an eye out for more traps.”

“How are you going to open it?”

“I was cracking safes before I could microwave pizza. Besides, the DOPS smart guys gave me something to help.”

“Be careful.”

“What? Do you see something?”

“No, but I wouldn't make getting in there as easy as guessing a combination.”

“Right.” Coop took out his collapsible grip and tapped it gently on the safe's keypad. Something hissed.

“Gas!” screamed Phil.

“Thanks. I have ears,” said Coop as he took out a respirator and goggles from his backpack.

“You want me to scream it again? 'Cause I can do it louder.”

Coop touched the grip around the rest of the safe door, but nothing happened.

“We should have brought Morty with us,” said Phil. “He could get this thing open lickety-split.”

“Do you really think all three of us could have made it this far?”

“I think he and I could have made it. You would have lived on in our memory.”

Coop took a small black box just a little bigger than a cell phone and attached it with magnets over the safe's keypad. “Okay,” he said. “Time to see if Peculiar Science lives up to its name.”

“What is that?” said Phil.

“Living numbers. Sort of like ants, ghosts, and binary code all rolled into one weird organism. If they can't open the safe I'll have to do it by hand.”

“Ten seconds ago you said you were a wiz at that.”

“I am, but not if the Missile's going to blow up in two hours. We need it to work fast.”

“Yes. No blowing up. Good plan.”

Lights played across the outside of the box for several minutes. At first, they were all red. Then slowly, one by one, each light turned green. When the last one flashed, the box beeped and Coop pulled it off, stuffing it back in his pack.

“Come on, Tom Swift. Grab the goods and let's blow this place,” said Phil.

“We're almost there,” said Coop. When he pulled open the safe door, Phil began to scream again. Even Coop made a few funny noises he was glad no one else could hear.

Hundreds of spiders, large and small, hairy and sleek, poured from the open safe door, moving out in every direction—including up Coop's arm.

“Abort! Abort!” screamed Phil. Coop tried brushing the spiders off, but they just kept coming. It wasn't that Coop was particularly arachnophobic, but what he discovered at that moment was that he wasn't
not
arachnophobic when covered by a whole army of multilegged, too-many-eyed, alien organisms, some of which he was pretty sure were viewing him as lunch. The only reason he didn't jump off the safe, besides the dive to the bottomless pit and his inevitable, horrible death, was the tiny fraction of his brain that was still capable of rational thought reminding him that he was still in his protective suit, with both eye and face protection. This was just barely reassuring enough to push suicide to second place on his option list.

“What do we do now?” screamed Phil.

“You know the answer to that question.”

“Please. I'm asking you as a friend and colleague and complete and utter coward, don't do it.”

“No choice,” said Cooper. He lay down on top of the safe and stuck
his hand deep inside, pushing through the webbed opening and feeling around the writhing mass of legs for the box. A moment later, his hand fell on something hard and he pulled it out. At first it was so covered in spiders, he wasn't sure what he'd found. He held it over the bottomless pit and shook it until enough of the creepy crawlers fell off that he recognized the box he'd stolen from the Blackmoore building. When he managed to clear away the last of the spiders, he stuffed the box into his backpack and zipped it closed. From his waist utility sack, he pulled out a small plastic spray bottle and spritzed himself all over. Spiders jumped off him by the dozens. Others fell off and scrambled back inside the safe.

“What is that stuff?” said Phil.

“Holy water, wolf piss, cayenne pepper, and garlic. Kind of my all-in-one bastard repellent.”

“Keep spraying it. It's working.”

Coop couldn't argue with that, so he spent a few more minutes coating himself in the stuff, until every spider he could see was gone.

“Please, Inspector Gadget, can we go home before someone drops rabid Easter bunnies on us?”

“Don't worry—I'm already on the way,” said Coop. He jumped and grabbed the pendulum axle at the ceiling and began working his way hand over hand to the door. He was feeling particularly good about that maneuver . . . until something hissed and brushed his hand. Coop looked up and saw a tarantula that looked to be the size of a Cadillac hubcap rearing up on its hind legs and waving its front four legs in the air like it was going to pounce. Phil grunted like he'd been punched in his ectoplasmic gut. Coop remained silent, because he had lost not only the ability to speak but also his grip on the axle.