The man behind the camera sighed a weary, ancient breath.
“Ever since the Non-Interventionist Act of AD 33, the Powers That Be hath not overtly interfered with the day-to-day affairs of the humans, something I could never understandeth myself,” the man explained bitterly. “Why go through all the bother of creating imperfect creatures only to leave them to their own destructive devices? If the Big Guy Upstairs was so ‘rah rah uppeth with humans,’ why not provide their maddening species with basic survival skills, such as—oh, I don’t know—the ability to not drive themselves to extinction?! They are but children, only their toys have outgrown them.”
Goemon delicately thrummed his fingers on a specific patch of air.
“Konnichiwa … the interdimensional seam,” he murmured as he carefully squatted down, his outstretched finger never leaving the spot, while scooping up a cloth satchel with his other hand.
“So I am hurrying the inevitable while doing the humans a favor by merely relocating them,” the man behind the camera continued while Goemon removed a tiny crystal pick and hammer from the satchel. “The Powers That Be should have seeneth the writing upon the wall—or the writing in sacred books left in hotels—for ages now. It is as if humanity wrote a suicide note thousands of years ago and the Big Guy Upstairs has ignored the classic warning signs: emotional detachment, irrationality, not respecting your home, etc.”
Inga yawned loudly into Milton’s ear.
“As much as I hate to agree with my costar—”
“Star,” Van interrupted. “Just … star.”
“This show is terrible,” Inga continued.
She reached to turn the VCR off. Milton batted her hand away.
“I, um, Mr. Welles needed me to preview the show,” Milton replied as Inga glared at him. “Besides, it’s almost over.”
Inga crossed her arms and fumed silently to herself.
On the screen, the samurai-demon drew back his small crystal hammer. “Now it’s just a matter of creating the split,” he muttered, “and allowing the sacred geometry laced beneath Creation to unfold.”
The elegant creature tapped the pick. A rainbow-hued spark materialized out of nowhere.
“So I am sending the humans far beyond His influence, beyond his loving, coddling embrace,” the man behind the camera concluded, “so they experience something far worse than death: life in exile. And after they hath suffered sufficiently, I will emergeth as their Lord, and get all Old Testament upon them, just like in the Good Old Days: inaugurating the first—unauthorized—heavenly franchise!”
Gossamer cracks of energy sprouted from the tapping point, spreading out across the sky until they formed a shimmering latticework. Goemon put his tools back in his satchel.
“It is done,” he stated matter-of-factly. “The humans need to congregate at the specific entry points located at various religious hot spots all over the world. At the exact point of eviction, another tap right here,” he said, pointing to the dull sparkle throbbing weakly in the air, “should open up the gates to the Sirius Lelayme system. All you need to do is motivate them to pass through at just the right time.…”
The camera rose as the man behind the camera got to his feet.
“ ’Tis simply a magic trick,” the man stated in his faultless, resonant voice as he dusted sand off his immaculate white robes. “And, liketh a magic trick, the spectator so wanteth to be fooled that it’s just a matter of giving them something that seems inevitable and turning that inevitable something into something spectacular. But the spectacle that the humans will be watching—in slack-jawed monkey amazement—will be … themselves. Their own demise.”
The screen went dark.
Van and Inga snored on either side of Milton, like bookends with sleep apnea. He gazed out the window at the Distressway Tunnel whizzing past, feeling completely alone.
If I were Marlo, really Marlo, Milton thought as he chewed on his sister’s thumbnail, I’d know what to do, even if it was incredibly reckless and stupid.
He sighed as a dispiriting, motionless parade of stalled cars and brake lights streaked by beneath the speeding Badillac.
I only hope she really did mean for me to meet her in the Furafter. Whatever’s going on is too big for one Fauster to handle alone.
“Fascinating,” the duck doctor whispered as he, Marlo, and Zane gathered around one of the wooden support beams bolstering the spacious Big Top, now darkened in the simulated night. “And you’re sure you weren’t just imagining the effect?”
Marlo shook her head.
“My imagination isn’t nearly that vivid,” she replied in a hush amidst the gentle wheeze of slumbering shrimp demons and sideshow freaks. “When the Truthador sang, the beam totally contracted. And when Vice Principal Barnum started blathering on about how he valued our opinions, the beam started to stretch out. Then I saw the Geppetto Lumber Company mark and thought—”
“The wooden bones of Pinocchio people,” Dr. Brinkley whispered with awe as he touched his webbed finger to the miserable facelike knothole.
“What’s up, Doc?” Marlo asked.
“Carlo Collodi, the author of Pinocchio, was said to have been inspired by Bavarian folktales of creatures made from enchanted wood that—when exposed to truths and lies—would contract or expand, depending. Like Pinocchio’s famous nose—”
A sharp snort from Tom Thumb stopped Dr. Brinkley’s story in its tracks.
“We’d better scarper,” Zane whispered. They crept down the grandstand aisle as softly as a roving herd of cotton balls pushed along by whispers. Marlo caught a glimpse of the unvarnished Box of Bitter Truth, forgotten beneath the bleachers during the Truthador’s last unwelcome broadcast. The sight of it made her dry-heave and shiver, but it also shook loose an idea.
“Help me with this,” she whispered to Zane.
“What are you doing?” Dr. Brinkley said as he entered the sawdusted ring.
“A way to amplify your truth bombs,” Marlo grunted as she and Zane heaved the box to the edge of the paper-covered bull’s-eye floor, “while simultaneously busting up this horrible box.”
Dr. Brinkley rubbed sawdust off his spectacles and looked at the box.
“Undiluted honesty … bitter, volatile, and nearly impossible to swallow …”
Marlo and Zane crawled on their bellies to the center of the ring. Marlo peered through the punctured holes she’d made during her last midnight raid and saw the two ever-vigilant demon guards, seated hundreds of feet below at the center of the Falla Sea, dimly illuminated by the eerie silver glow radiating from beneath the ice.
Zane wriggled next to Marlo and peeked through the perforations.
“Blimey,” he gasped. “That’s a whopping great drop! And we couldn’t just climb down with ropes? We have to take the whole galumphing circus down to get out?”
Dr. Brinkley fiddled with the handle of a truth bomb, scrutinized the gauge, and placed it delicately inside the crate.
“To begin with, I couldn’t find a rope anywhere near that length,” he explained. “Next, those guards would catch sight of us well before we made it to freedom, unless we plummeted down and escaped by splattering ourselves across the ice. Plus, I had hoped that if we sent Fibble smashing to the ground, Barnum’s Humbugger machine—wherever he has it hidden—might at least be damaged, thwarting his plan.”
Marlo drew a deep, nerve-settling breath and worked her finger into the smallest of the target’s concentric circles. She poked a hole every inch until the entire circle was perforated. Marlo rose carefully and, motioning to Zane, grabbed one side of the box. Zane nodded and grabbed the other.
“One … two … three,” Marlo muttered as they threw the box onto the perforated circle. The Box of Bitter Truth tore cleanly through the paper. A gust of cold wind blasted from the hole.
The shrimp demons atop the bleachers on the far side of the Big Top stirred. Scampi scratched his rainbow wig and blinked his black eyes awake.
Marlo looked out over t
he hole, the wind whistling up her nose. The box tumbled toward the brightly colored rings painted on the ice below. Time itself seemed to telescope—stretching long and smooth like taffy—as the Box of Bitter Truth bombs drifted down as slow as a feather.
Finally, the box smashed against the ice. A small silver “poof” spread out over the target, followed shortly by an audible pop. The demon guards scurried briefly before freezing in their tracks. Marlo turned to the doctor.
“It didn’t work!” she yell-whispered. “Now what—”
Fibble lurched violently to one side. Zane skidded across the paper bull’s-eye and through the torn hole.
“No!” Marlo screamed as she seized his calf, failing, in that heroic instant, to take into account that Zane was much larger than Milton. Marlo was pulled into the shredded hole, yet, before she could tumble into the abyss, kicked two toeholds in the thick paper and slowed her plunge. The paper began to tear.
“Hold … on,” Marlo called to Zane through gritted teeth as the wind roared in her face.
“To what?!” Zane yelled as he hung upside down.
Upside-down tears spilled out of Marlo’s borrowed eyes, rolling over Milton’s forehead into his windswept mop of hair. Marlo saw that the truth bomb had damaged only one of the six support beams, which had made Fibble list to one side. Her feet tore closer to the lip of the hole.
I can’t let go, Marlo thought as her ears buzzed with her own pulse. I got Zane into this. I’ll fall down with him, our guts splattered all over the ice, but I can’t let go.
Then—just as Marlo was about to pass out from the throb of blood filling her head—Fibble convulsed, its weird wooden beams trembling, buckling, and then contracting. The frozen Falla Sea whizzed toward Marlo’s head, faster and faster, as the support beams of Pinocchio wood sent Fibble free-falling to the ice like a three-ring elevator with a severed cable.
21 • BAD BREAKS AND BREAKOUTS
THE FIVE COLOSSAL Scarecrows interlaced their sturdy ebony wings in an impenetrable wall of feathers. Their gleaming black heads bobbed as they scrutinized their captives with darting, sideways glances. Annubis, his family, and Virginia Woof backed away slowly from the blocked passage, trapped inside the Kennels.
Cerberus lunged at Lucky, who—though bristling with fury—was too weakened to rip into the three-headed hound with all the ferretish ferocity he would have liked. He managed a wet hiss, like a punctured bicycle tire filled with anger, as Cerberus stepped back through the prickling, energetic portal. One of his heads licked its chops, another snarled, and the other sniffed the air with ravenous abandon, as if the Furafter were an “all-you-can-smell” buffet.
Annubis took a whiff of the pet-pourri of scents: the stench of the Kennels, like a sharp and acidic slap, and the intoxicating aroma of the Really Big Farm, a sweet mixture of hay, alfalfa, and pine. Underneath it all the pervasive reek of crow droppings, a thick pungent paste that coated the inside of the courtyard, fortifying it like cement. Cerberus growled at Kebauet, angered by her unique blend of human and canine odors. The pointy-eared girl wrapped her arms tight around her father’s leg.
“If you so much as bare your nasty teeth at my daughter,” Annubis snarled, “I’ll roll up the biggest newspaper I can find and smack you so hard that you’ll win an Oscar for playing dead! Do you hear me, you loathsome cur?!”
Annubis could see, through the convex blur of the portal, two monstrous Scarecrows in the courtyard flapping, strutting, and pecking at the other dogs, herding them into the center of the courtyard.
“Is there another way out?” Annubis asked Virginia Woof.
The white-and-tan terrier tapped out her reply.
“Not that I know.”
Cats spilled into the courtyard outside, brushing themselves against the fence, laying claim to it in their casual, dismissive feline way. The two Scarecrows perched atop the parapets anxiously paced sideways, back and forth, as they eyed the herd of cats with unease.
“Let’s see if there’s a back door,” Annubis said as he put his arms around his shaken family. “Maybe we can find Mr. Noah and put a stop to this.”
The dogs turned and trotted through the labyrinth of whimpering crates. Claws scratching concrete and tongues lolling out of mouths, the four canines scurried along the winding path, its bleak scenery of rusted, reeking cages never seeming to change, only recycle.
The dogs rounded a bend at the center of the maze, arriving at a clearing. They skidded to a stop with horror.
Three hulking, monstrous demons trudged about a spacious vat. Each of the heavily muscled creatures was nearly eight feet tall. But the most disturbing aspect of these dark red beasts was that they were headless, and sported gaping holes in their chests. They turned—swiftly, considering their bulk—and regarded the intruding dogs without need of eyes.
Tied up with twine alongside the wooden vat was an old man with a pillowy white beard, wearing sandals and a light brown robe. A look of fierce determination crinkled his otherwise kindly face.
Virginia Woof yapped and leapt in the air. Annubis gave the gagged and bound man a sniff.
Ancient … redolent of the sea and every flavor of beast …
“Noah?” Annubis muttered. “The Noah?”
The old man struggled futilely against his bonds.
Behind the vat Annubis noted another old man, un-tethered, dressed flamboyantly in a white ascot, navy blue cloak, and dazzling chunky pewter necklace. He stood before a shimmering, blobbish hologram that he delicately sculpted with two laser pens. The man turned and arched his bushy eyebrows at Annubis, assessing him with his gleaming eyes.
“Vell, vhat have we here?” the man asked as the demons swarmed around the dogs. The man set his laser pens down on a small table by the levitating hologram. “Vhy, are you a … half-man, half-dog?”
“I’m technically half jackal,” Annubis replied.
The man’s pupils dilated until his eyes were black with dark, self-consumed merriment.
“So prayers can be answered, even down here,” he laughed in his halting yet refined accent. “Jes, you’ll do nicely. And, eef at first I don’t succeed—”
His beady, glittering eyes settled on Anput and Kebauet.
“—I can jest try and try again!”
Zane and Marlo screamed, yet the gush of wind stoppered up their gaping mouths. Dr. Brinkley inched toward the rim and peered downward.
“It’s working!” he gasped, amazed. “You were right, Mr. Fauster! The truth is bringing Fibble down!”
Vice Principal Barnum staggered into the quaking Big Top.
“What in blazes is going on?!” he roared, his flaming pants leaving a sooty contrail of smoke in his wake.
Dr. Brinkley hurriedly reached for the canister of liedocane tucked into his satchel.
“Time to put on the brakes,” he said as he tossed the canister to the ice below, now only twenty feet away. “The sudden influx of highly concentrated lies should stop the wood from contracting.”
The demon guards ran past the Gates of Fibble in fear as the can of liedocane exploded, spraying its distorting rainbow fog in all directions. The support beams screamed as the collapsing Pinocchio wood froze.
“Let go of me, Milton!” Zane yelled as the ice rushed to meet his head. Marlo, her brother’s hands cramping, couldn’t help but comply. Zane fell onto the ice, landing on his shoulder and rolling out of the target zone through the abandoned gates.
“No!” screamed Marlo as the mass media circus screeched to a halt just two feet from the ice floor.
“I’m fine,” Zane called out. “The demon guards … not so much.”
“Run!” quacked Dr. Brinkley as he jumped through the hole, lugging the remaining truth bombs.
“Run?” Marlo replied as she hopped onto the ice. “There isn’t enough room.”
“Then crawl! Here, take one of the bombs in case we’re separated!”
Marlo grabbed the truth bomb, tucked it beneath her arm, and crawled on h
er knees toward Zane, sandwiched between Fibble and the Falla Sea.
Dr. Brinkley saw to his right, twenty yards beyond the rim of Fibble, eight hooves tromping nervously in place.
“Shuck and Jive!” he clucked with excitement as he wriggled toward his Night Mares.
Marlo’s knees and palms burned with scrapes yet at the same time were frozen numb by the cold. She grunted yard by yard alongside Zane and Dr. Brinkley. Every labored breath felt like she was inhaling crushed ice. Above her head was the foundation of Fibble, a lattice of wooden joists and brass plumbing.
As Marlo wiggled onward, her body—Milton’s body—was freaking out. She could feel his chest tighten, his throat constrict, and his whole body break into a sweat.
Vice Principal Barnum vaulted down upon the ice and crouched low. Marlo could hear Barnum’s sizzling pants hiss and crackle beneath Fibble as if through an echo chamber.
“Tom Thumb! Louie! Kung Pao!” he bellowed. “Get your small, freakish selves here this instant and capture the runaways! Annette! Have the teachers contain the other students! Scampi! Man the Humbugger and be the biggest, baddest clown you can!”
Marlo heard a clatter of tiny feet. And those tiny feet were getting closer, unencumbered by the need to crawl, crouch, and/or wriggle.
Pushing herself harder than she ever had before, Marlo reached the edge of Fibble’s foundation, just behind Zane. The skittish black Night Mares stomped and snorted, backing away in fear. Marlo straightened her aching back, then helped Dr. Brinkley to his feet. A mixture of stale smoke and salty brine filled her nostrils. Still panting, Marlo stooped down and saw a scowling midget smoking a cigar charge toward her, with four scurrying shrimp demons—tiny horns piercing their filthy rainbow wigs—at his itty-bitty heels.
Marlo cradled her truth bomb in her hand.
“Don’t come any closer or I’ll blow you up!” she yelled.
Tom Thumb and the shrimp demons skidded to a stop. The midget squinted and considered Marlo with his dark, jaded eyes. He took his cigar out of his mouth.
Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck Page 15