The Greatest Power (5 page)

Opening the cage was, of course, not easy. There were nine locks dangling from each other, linked together such that one could not be opened without the previous one being sprung.

And nine locks meant nine keys. “The keys are here someplace,
señor”
Sticky whispered.

Which was quite logical. After all, if Damien Black carried around every key to every lock of every room in his nightmarish mansion (or its subterranean maze), he would
be covered in skeleton keys (as they, of course, were the sort of key Damien Black preferred).

So Dave set about looking for the hiding place.

He checked the pathway for a trapdoor.

(Damien Black adores trapdoors.)

He checked the ridge above the doorframe.

(A foolish waste of time, as Damien Black would never hide keys in a place so clichéd.)

At last, he checked the wall. The bars, you see, were set back about three feet from the pathway. (Damien felt the recessed look helped give the café a more upscale feel. It was not, after all, supposed to look like a cage in a zoo.)

And although the wall seemed completely solid, Dave had learned from previous experience in Damien’s maniacal mansion that he should expect the unexpected.

Keep his eyes peeled.

Be on the loony-eyed lookout.

Thinking like a madman helped.

And where would a madman hide a ring of skeleton keys?

(Think. Think like a madman.)

Dave began pressing the stones of the wall. They were cold and damp and rough, but he continued pressing them one by one until he discovered a stone that moved inward about an inch.

He held his breath and waited for something to happen.

Nothing did.

“Let go,” Sticky whispered.

So Dave let go, and by doing so, he released the spring mechanism behind the stone.

A drawer shot forward.

A drawer that was decorated in great detail like an open coffin.

“Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Damien’s recorded voice laughed (for being the truly demented villain that he is, Damien found great humor in placing anything skeleton-related in a coffin). Immediately a doll-sized version of Damien himself
boinged
into a sitting position in the satinlined coffin and held out a ring of keys.

Dave had, of course, jumped back, and as he stared at the mini-villain in the mini-coffin, he whispered, “That guy is
wacko!”

Sticky nodded. “One
loco caballero.”
Then he added, “But
ándale
, okay? That doll is giving me the heebie-jeebies!”

So Dave grabbed the keys from the doll’s outstretched hand and started unlatching the nine locks.

The monkey was, at first, simply confused. He smelled something, heard something, but did not see something. But when the coffin drawer sprang open, his little over-caffeinated monkey heart started
really
racing.

Somebody (who did not smell at all like Damien Black) was opening his cage!

The monkey bounded up and down the barred wall, swinging and screeching ecstatically as the locks popped open one by one. And when, at last, the final lock was off and the door was open, the monkey flew out of the café with a profound squeal of joy (one that only those who have known freedom and then lost it could truly understand).

“Good luck, little guy,” Dave laughed as the monkey scrambled down the path in the direction that they’d come.

Then suddenly the monkey was back, charging past them in the opposite direction.

“No, no,” Dave said, pointing an invisible arm in the direction of the twisty, rusty ladder. “Thataway!”

But the monkey kept right on going.

So Dave began refastening the padlocks (something he thought wise, as it would keep Damien
Black in the dark about how this espresso-café jailbreak had occurred). And he’d just finished clicking the ninth lock in place and was moving toward the mini-coffin when the monkey came scampering back.

This time, he slammed smack-dab into Dave’s invisible (but very solid) leg.

“Wr-reeeeeeek!” the monkey cried, rubbing his forehead as he fell back onto the ground, dazed. But when he recovered, his nose sprang into action and a mischievous light came to his eyes. And while Dave put the keys back in the coffin and laid the Damien doll to rest, the monkey started slapping the air as he sniffed around.

“He’s looking for you,” Sticky whispered ever so quietly in Dave’s ear (as he’d been keeping a watchful eye on the little rascal since the monkey had landed with a thump on his fuzzy orange rump).

“Huh?” Dave said, looking over his shoulder.

But he was already too late. That rascally rhesus was upon him now and made a solid slap against Dave’s leg. Lickety-split, the monkey climbed his leg, then his back, and then perched on top of Dave’s head, bending over to look him right in the eye.

“Wr-reeek!” the monkey cried, for he was now also invisible and could see quite clearly that the force that had freed him was, to his surprise, human. “Wr-reeek!” he cried again, this time bouncing with joy on top of Dave’s head.

“Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky grumbled, shoving the monkey’s tail out of his face. “This is trouble,
señor.”

Ah, trouble indeed. For there is nothing, I promise you,
nothing
more persistent than a playful monkey revved up on coffee.

Dave took the monkey off his head and placed him on the ground.

The monkey climbed back on.

Dave took the monkey off.

The monkey climbed back on.

Dave took the monkey off.

The monkey climbed back on.

Dave took the … Well, you get the idea, I’m sure.

At last, Dave
tossed
the monkey (in an ever-so-gentle, be-kind-to-primates way, of course).

The monkey scampered back (in an oh-no-you-don’t!-playful-primate way, as this had now become a very entertaining game of cat and mouse).

(Or, in this case, boy and monkey.)

“Switch to Gecko Power!” Sticky said at last. “Climb the walls!
Ándale, hombre
. This is crazy!”

And so Dave did.

Which caused the monkey to do a great deal of blinking and
eee-eeek
ing, but as Dave proceeded along the dimly lit corridor, the monkey simply followed on the path below.

“Eeee-eeek?” he asked. “Eeeee-eeeek?”

“Ay-ay,” Sticky grumbled (which, in this case, meant How annoying does he want to be?).

“I feel sorry for him,” Dave whispered.

“I think we should have left him caged,” Sticky grumbled.

“What? How can you say that?”

“Not this again,” Sticky groaned.

It soon became clear to Dave that the Wall-Walker ingot wasn’t doing them an iota of good. They weren’t escaping the monkey, and they were now visible (and, therefore, completely vulnerable should Damien happen back down the pathway). And to make matters worse, the monkey was terribly noisy with all his eeeking and squeaking.

“Can you just shush? Please, shhhh,” he whispered, putting a finger to his lips.

The monkey pushed his lips forward, put a finger up, and whispered, “Whoooh” (which was as close to
shhh
as he could come).

“Whoa, dude, you’re smart!” Dave whispered as he came down off the wall.

The monkey bobbed his head. “Eee-eeee-eeeeeeee!”

“Shhhh!”

“Whoooh!” the monkey replied with a finger at his lips.

“You’re thinking dangerous thoughts,
señor,”
Sticky said, for he could tell exactly what Dave was thinking. “That monkey is trouble. Big, big trouble.”

But Dave, being an all-knowing thirteen-year-old boy (and having within reach something all thirteen-year-old boys want), did not heed the warning. “If you come with us,” he whispered to the monkey, “you have to be completely quiet.”

“Eeeek-schweeek!” the monkey replied.

Dave turned to Sticky. “I think he understands me!”

Sticky shook his head. “You’re
loco
-berry burritos, man. I tell you—that monkey is trouble.”

Dave grinned at the gecko. “So are you.”

“Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky groaned, slapping his little gecko forehead. But no amount of ay-aying, or ay-ay-aying, or ay-ay-ay-
ay
ing would talk Dave out of it. His mind was made up. So with a simple click-twist, twist-click, Dave switched from Wall-Walker to Invisibility, all under the watchful eye of one rascally rhesus monkey.

Moments later, the three of them were proceeding along the pathway, the monkey on Dave’s left shoulder, the gecko on Dave’s right.

All invisible.

All heading, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, straight for trouble.

By straight, I do not mean in a straight line.

By straight, I mean directly.

Without sidetracking.

Or stopping to indulge in, say, after-school snacks.

The path itself, however, had nothing in common with a straight line.

It was twisty.

Jagged.

Complicated.

In long (as opposed to “in short,” which clearly this is not), the path went up, down, in, out, this way, that way, pell-mell, roundabout, helter-skelter, and every which way but straight.
But it did, as you know, take them straight to danger.

“The footprints just stop,” Dave said when they found themselves at a wide place in the pathway where Damien’s hard-heeled footprints had, in fact, just stopped. “Where did he go?”

Ah, where indeed.

Cautiously, Dave stepped into Damien Black’s final footprints.

Nothing happened.

He reached out to the wall on the right, stretching mightily to touch it (thinking that perhaps it would open some hidden passage-way).

Nothing happened.

He reached out to the wall on the left, again stretching mightily to touch it (as Damien’s lanky frame provided a much greater reach than young Dave’s).

Nothing happened.

“Look up,” Sticky whispered, pointing over-head.

Sure enough, there was a dangling pull chain. It was rather delicate-looking—like something you might see hanging from a ceiling fan.

Only it was longer.

And there was no ceiling fan.

Or any other mechanism, for that matter.

Just the dangling chain.