The Genius Files #4 (7 page)

“Welcome to the Quapaw!” said the smiling lady behind the counter.

Dr. and Mrs. McDonald looked over the menu of services, which included everything from whirlpools and sitz baths to facials, foot scrubs, needle showers, aromatherapy, and hot towel wraps.

“Ooh, look, Bridge,” Dr. McDonald said excitedly,
“they have Swedish massage. Your birthday is the day after tomorrow. How about a massage for a present?”

“I think I'm going to get the Invigorating Body Polish and a Moisturizing Hand Paraffin Wax Dip instead,” Mrs. McDonald replied.

Quapaw Baths & Spa is sort of like an amusement park for middle-aged parents.

“Hey, how about we get a couples massage?” suggested Dr. McDonald, pulling out his credit card.

“Ewww, gross,” the twins said simultaneously.

The whole idea of sitting in mineral water gave Coke and Pep the creeps, and they made no effort to pretend otherwise.

“I wish you kids would get into the spirit,” their mother told them. “This is going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

“Let's hope so,” Coke muttered.

“That aluminum museum was a once-in-a-lifetime experience too,” said Pep. “I never want to go back there again.”

“Just so you know,” said the lady behind the desk, “children under the age of fourteen are not allowed in the vapor cabinets.”

“Vapor cabinets?” Pep said, wrinkling up her nose. She didn't want to know what a vapor cabinet was. It sounded gross.

The lady gave out robes, slippers, and locker keys, and the McDonalds went to change into their bathing suits.

Four large European-style soaking pools, each of them a different temperature, were located on the first floor. Dr. McDonald picked the hottest one and the rest of the family followed him to the edge of the pool.

“Ahhhhhh,” he said as he eased himself into the water. “Oh yeah . . .”

Mrs. McDonald was the next one in. Once submerged, she closed her eyes and leaned her head back.

“Oooh, I feel my stress just melting away,” she said.

Coke and Pep looked at each other.
Stress?
What stress did their mother have to deal with?
She
didn't have to jump off a cliff wearing a wingsuit.
She
wasn't thrown into a vat of Spam.
She
wasn't attacked by a remote-controlled car.
She
wasn't tied to a chair and left to die in a Mister Softee truck.
She
didn't have a band of lunatics chasing her across the country. If anybody needed to have their stress melt away, it was Coke and Pep.

And they did. As soon as they lowered themselves into the hot mineral water, they felt like they had stepped into a calmer, more peaceful world.

“Ooooooh!”

“Ahhhhhh!”

A gentle waterfall flowed on one side of the pool, and after a good long soak, Coke went over to stand under it and let the spray tumble all over his head and shoulders.

For the others, the soothing sound of the waterfall combined with the quiet music and the outdoorsy smell of the tropical plants scattered around was enough. For a few minutes, nobody wanted to speak and risk spoiling the mood.

Pep felt her anxiety slipping away. Temporarily, she was able to forget all the bad things that had happened to her since the start of summer vacation.

“This is so relaxing,” Dr. McDonald finally said, breaking the silence. “I don't even remember what day of the week it is.”

“I don't even remember what
month
it is,” said Pep.

“Who even cares what
year
it is?” Coke said. “Just lie back and enjoy it.”

After about ten minutes of this euphoria, a heavyset woman came over to the pool with towels and ice water.

“Mr. and Mrs. McDonald?” she said. “It's time for your couples massage.”

“Ewww,” said the twins.

“You kids enjoy yourselves,” Dr. McDonald said as he stepped out of the pool and sipped from a cup of ice water. “We'll see you in about an hour.”

The parents went off for their massage, while Coke and Pep continued to soak in the good vibes of the pool. But soon, when their fingertips were getting pruny, the twins decided it would be wise to get out of the water and walk around the place.

The Quapaw has several floors and lots of rooms. With no grown-ups around to tell them “You can't go in there,” Coke and Pep went on a mission of exploration.

When they were little, the twins had mastered the art of “sneaking around” the hallways of a hotel late at night. This consisted of slinking around while pretending to be secret agents on a dangerous mission to find the imaginary microfilm that had been locked in one of the rooms. You had to be very quiet and hug the walls to make sure that evil ninjas—or at least the hotel security guards—would not see you with their hidden surveillance cameras and night-vision goggles.

After a few minutes of sneaking around, Coke turned a doorknob and entered a room that had two large metal boxes in it. The boxes looked a little bit like washing machines, but clearly weren't. There
was a basketball-sized hole in the top of each box.

“Look at those things,” Pep said. “What do you think they are?”

“They're probably those vapor cabinets the lady was telling us about,” Coke guessed. “They're like personal steam baths. They look cool. Let's try 'em!”

“We're not allowed, remember?” Pep replied. “You have to be fourteen.”

“Oh, come on,” Coke urged his sister. “These things must be pretty great if they won't let kids use them. What are we gonna do, melt?”

“I don't want to get in trouble,” Pep argued.

“You won't get in trouble!” Coke said as he opened the door of the vapor cabinet on the left. “Look, we'll be fourteen in less than a year. Mom and Dad paid a lot of money to get us in here. Have a little fun for once in your life.”

Coke climbed into one of the vapor cabinets, pulling the stainless steel door down and popping his head through the hole on the top.

Hesitantly, Pep did the same, climbing into the other vapor cabinet and sitting on a little bench inside it. The twins looked a little bit like a pair of turtles in their shells.

Below, hot water created steam, which rose up through the vapor cabinet and was trapped inside.

“This is awesome,” Coke said. “Do you feel it?”

“I think I feel my pores opening—”

At that moment the lights flickered and went out.

“Oh, great,” Coke said. “A power failure.”

As they sat in total darkness, the twins heard rustling sounds, and then the clicking of locks. Someone was just a few feet away, moving around the room.

“Who's that?”

“I don't know.”

“Coke, I have a bad feeling about this.”

When the lights went back on, the twins were confronted by the most evil, the most hated, the most horrifying sight imaginable.

Dr. Herman Warsaw.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!”

The twins shrank back in terror at the sight of his face. Despite the heat, he was wearing a suit and tie.

“Well, well, well,” Dr. Warsaw said, a thin sneer on his lips. “If it isn't the McDonald twins!”

Coke struggled to push open the door of the vapor cabinet, but Dr. Warsaw had obviously locked it securely shut when the lights were out. Pep let out a shriek.

“Go ahead and yell all you want, Miss Pepsi,” Dr. Warsaw told her. “Nobody will hear you, but it's a great way to . . . let off a little steam.”

He took a moment to laugh at his little joke.

“What are
you
doing here?” Coke demanded.

“Me?” said Dr. Warsaw. “I came here for two reasons. After our little altercation back at The Infinity Room, most of my large bones and internal organs were quite damaged, to say the least. The doctors told me I might never walk again. But they suggested I come here for my rehabilitation. The mineral waters have worked wonders to heal me. I'm almost a hundred percent now.”

“So, what's the
other
reason you came here?” asked Pep.

“Oh, to kill you, of course,” Dr. Warsaw said matter-of-factly. “The healing waters may have saved
my
life, but I'm sorry to say that they will have the opposite effect on yours.”

“You're insane!”

“Let us out!”

“I never expected you two to make it this far,” Dr. Warsaw said quietly as he paced around the twins. “I thought I had gotten rid of you back in Cleveland at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I'll say one thing about you brats. You are quite resourceful.”

Coke fumbled around desperately inside the vapor cabinet, trying to find a latch or switch that would open it up. He knew that some cars had such things in
the trunk, in case people get trapped inside. No such luck this time.

“Let me tell you a little story,” Dr. Warsaw said soothingly. “It's sort of a . . . bedtime story, you might say.”

“We don't want to hear your stupid stories!” Coke spat. “Let us out of here and if you're lucky we won't press charges.”

“Oh, you'll be able to relate to this story,” Dr. Warsaw said. “It's the story of the boiling frog. You see, if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will frantically try to jump out to save its own life. That makes sense, right? But if you put that same frog in a pot of
cold
water and put a high flame under it, the frog won't notice that anything is wrong. It won't be frightened. And as the temperature slowly rises, degree by degree, the frog will just sit there and allow itself to slowly
boil to death
!”

“What's your point?” Pep shouted.

“Oh,” Dr. Warsaw said, “you might say it's a metaphor for our inability to react to changes that occur gradually.”

“You're crazy!” Coke shouted. “And that story is terrible!”

“Let us out of here!” shouted Pep.

“Oh, I'll let you out,” Dr. Warsaw said, his mood darkening. “But first tell me something. Where's my
wife? Where's your aunt Judy? You must know where she is. I haven't heard from her in three days. What did you do to her?”

“We didn't do
anything
to her!” Coke said defiantly.

Dr. Warsaw went over to a control panel on the wall, about ten feet from the vapor cabinets.

“I think I'll just turn the heat up a little,” he said. “Maybe that will help you remember. They say the healing vapors are also good for the memory.”

He turned a dial, causing a spray of hot vapor to shoot up inside the cabinets. Sweat was starting to bead up on the twins' faces. A few salty drops fell into Coke's eyes. They stung.

“It's hot!” Pep yelled. “It's so hot!”

“
Now
are you ready to tell me what you did to my wife?” asked Dr. Warsaw.

“It wasn't our fault!” Pep yelled at him. “We were at Graceland—”

“No, Pep!” Coke shouted. “Don't tell him!”

“Shut up, Coke!” Pep said. “Aunt Judy was dressed up as an Elvis impersonator, and she pulled a gun on us, for no reason. I knocked the gun out of her hand with a Frisbee and she chased us. She found us in our RV, and she started waving lighted matches around like a crazy person. One of them set my brother's backpack on fire. But she didn't know that
the backpack was full of fireworks. We jumped out just before the fireworks ignited, and the whole RV exploded. We never saw Aunt Judy again.”

Silence. Coke and Pep looked at Dr. Warsaw, expecting him to lash out at them in anger. Instead, his shoulders heaved and he began to weep.

“So that's it,” he blubbered. “Judy was the love of my life. We were going to be together forever. And now she's gone.”

It was hard to feel sorry for him, and the twins didn't. Locked inside the steaming vapor cabinets, they just stared at the pathetic man.

After a few minutes of sobbing, Dr. Warsaw pulled himself together. Once again, he looked like the face of indescribable evil.

“I see,” he said, nodding his head. “I get the picture. At The House on the Rock you kids destroyed my iJolt, which was my life's work. And you almost killed me in the process. Then you killed Archie Clone, my young apprentice, in Washington. And now, you tell me you killed my wife! What is wrong with you two? Do you think it's normal for children to go around killing people?”

“It was self-defense!” Pep shouted.

“You killed your own aunt!” Dr. Warsaw shouted back.

“She was trying to kill us!” Coke shouted.

“Why don't you drop the little charade?” said Dr. Warsaw wearily. “You've done enough. You're not innocent little kids.”

“B-but . . .”

“I'm through playing childish games,” Dr. Warsaw said, going back to the control panel. “Now it's time to finish you off once and for all.”

“Noooooooooo!”

“The part of the brain that controls thirst and hunger is called the hypothalamus,” Dr. Warsaw said as he fiddled with the knobs. “It also controls the body's core temperature. Normal body temperature is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. I think I'll just turn this up a little more.”

“We don't want to hear your biology lesson!” Coke shouted as he struggled desperately to open the vapor cabinet.

“The body cools itself by sweating, and allowing that sweat to evaporate,” Dr. Warsaw continued. “This requires enough fluid in the body to make sweat, air circulating across the skin, and low air humidity to allow that sweat to evaporate.”

“Shut up!” Pep yelled.

“You're probably getting a little thirsty by now,” Dr. Warsaw said, waving a water bottle in front of her
face. “I bet you'd like a drink of this.”

“Turn it down!” Coke said, his face bathed in sweat. “Turn the thing down!”

“Did you say turn it
up
?” asked Dr. Warsaw. “Sure! I'd be happy to turn it up.”