The Knick Knack Nightmare

by C. M. Bacon

  “Don’t worry. I left a note in the last one.”

  “Really? What’d it say?”

  “I apologized for breaking all those doors and windows. And I signed it Perry Dobbs.”

  “You did what? How could you?”

  “Lighten up. I actually signed it Martin Wexler. Consider it a gift.”

  Kaila punched the car roof. “Arvin!”

  “Kid-ding.”

  The cruiser swerved to the right and jumped the curb, tearing two long trenches across a manicured lawn. My elbow hit the door handle. I screeched and rubbed my vibrating funny bone.

  “See,” Arvin said, “Perry thought it was funny.”

  “No, I didn’t.” I smiled and whispered in Emilia’s ear, “Maybe it was a little funny.”

  She looked away and watched the houses flying by.

  I leaned to the side. “Hey Pink, how about some music?” Pink troll pushed the power button. 104.7 FM appeared on the display, and dueling banjos blared out of the speakers. “Turn it off!”

  On the dashboard, an amber E pulsed in rhythm with a chime. The engine sputtered and died. Trolls hopped on the accelerator, but the cruiser slowed and stopped in the middle of 41st street.

  “We’re out of gas.” I reached out the window and lifted on the door handle. “We need to push the car to Flynn’s Fuel Stop on Hibner.”

  Emilia rubbed her stomach. “Can we get something to eat?”

  “Great idea.” Arvin, a few inches taller than when he climbed up, swung his legs over and hopped off of the roof. “Flynn’s has lots of good stuff, but they’re out of beef jerky and green melon soda.”

  The driver’s door opened, and a parade of trolls abandoned the cruiser and headed for a couple old cars parked on the curb, stopping to splash in a puddle and slick back their hair. They stood feet on shoulders at the driver side door of a black Cadillac convertible. Purple Troll climbed over the window and unlocked it from inside. Trolls piled in, the engine revved, and the Caddy sped off, dueling banjos blaring from the radio.

  I threw my arms up. “Well, there goes our ride.”

  Kaila stood next to the driver’s side door. “I can drive.”

  “You sure?”

  “If Kaila says she can do it, she can do it.” Arvin rubbed her shoulders.

  “Thank you, Arvie.”

  “It’s a straight line and two, maybe three turns.”

  “He’s right. It’s no problem.”

  “Yeah. Even Kaila can drive in a straight line. Mostly.”

  “Just push the car, Arvin.”

  Kaila steered while we pushed from the back. Emilia on the right, me on the left, and Arvin in the middle. As much as we tried, it was Arvin who pushed the cruiser four blocks to Flynn’s. His stride was a sprint for Emilia and me. Every time we touched the trunk, Arvin pushed it out of reach and giggled to himself.

  Officer Larkin thumped and screamed as we rolled over a pothole and pulled into the gas station.

  Kaila stuck her head out the window. “He sounds seriously peeved back there. Why can’t we let him out?”

  “We will,” I said. “Or we could just push the car into a parking lot and leave the keys in the trunk.”

  THUMP THUMP

  Emilia leaned against the trunk and plugged the bullet hole with her thumb. “We gotta let him out, Perr — I mean Percy. What if he’s hurt?”

  Arvin laughed. “Yeah, Percy. The poor guy’s having a fit in there.”

  “As soon as all this is over. We can’t help anyone if we’re locked in a cell.”

  “Ironic, but I agree with him.” Arvin slapped my back like a meat tenderizer.

  “Agreed.” Emilia knocked on the trunk. “Don’t worry Officer Larkin. We’ll let you out soon.”

  THUMP THUMP

  “Good news or bad news?” Kaila got out of the car.

  “Good first,” Arvin said.

  “There’s a credit card in the glove compartment. We could use it to buy gas.”

  “So what’s the bad news?”

  “Gas pumps and credit card machines don’t work without power.”

  I kicked the cruiser’s trunk. “Double hell!” THUMP “Shut up Larkin. Now, what are we going to do?”

  “I have an idea.” Arvin took a plastic gas can out of a smashed window display and hustled to the station’s air pump. He yanked on the hose. It snapped like a rubber band and tore off the machine. “This’ll do. I’ll be right back.” He lumbered across the street to a petite car painted with rain forest scenes and Earth Day slogans. He circled it three times, scratching his head.

  I huffed. “It’s electric.”

  “You mean it doesn’t need gas?” He raised an eyebrow. “Let’s take it.”

  “It’s electric, Arvin.”

  “Oh. Yeah, right.”

  “Try the next one.”

  He twisted off the next car’s fuel cap, stuck the air hose into the hole, and siphoned off the gasoline. He returned with a smile, “All set,” and shook the can. Gasoline sloshed inside.

  Mom’s tsk-tsk-tsk came out of my mouth. “Using the power of science for evil, ‘ey?”

  “I am.” He chuckled. “Don’t tell Mom.” THUMP “Be quiet, Larkin.”

  “You’re enjoying this way too much.”

  “You there!” A gangly man approached in the darkness from several blocks away. His stomping boots echoed closer. A radio mic bobbed on his lapel and numerous objects weighed down his wide, heavy belt. Moonlight glinted off the badge on his jacket. “Police! Stop!”

  “Get in.” Arvin tossed the empty can aside and climbed onto the roof.

  Emilia jumped in the front. “Go, go, go.”

  Kaila stomped on the gas pedal. The cruiser lurched and grazed the air pump on our way out of the station. The passenger side mirror ripped off and hung by its wires. We crossed 39th street, and both the station and the officer became small as fleas in the rear window.

  “So here’s my plan.” The 37th street stop sign flashed past the window. “You guys distract the knick-knacks. I’ll get the coin.”

  “You said you had a plan.” Emilia looked over her shoulder. “That’s not a plan.”

  “It’ll have to be. I only need a minute or two.”

  “Where’d you hide it?”

  “I buried next to Mom’s favorite oak. That’s the big one in the backyard.”

  “You buried it? So that’s why knick-knacks are digging holes everywhere.”

  Kaila turned right on 27th street. The cruiser clipped a mailbox, spilling a dozen envelopes into the street.

  Chicken and beans climbed into my throat. “Must be.” I swallowed. “But I don’t understand how the knight knew I buried it.”

  “Maybe…” Emilia pointed at a row of dead oaks and shrubs. Dry, brown grass lined the street on either side.

  “You think?”

  “If they’d been poisoned somehow, it’d explain a lot.”

  “That means all this is my fault, too.”

  She sighed. “You couldn’t have known.”

  I reached for Emilia’s hand over the center console. Kaila made a hard left on Vine, knocking me back into my seat. “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll take vine most of the way. Then turn left and go to Shelby Lane from there.”

  “Tell me when we’re close.” If we survive the Hawaiian express.

  “Hold on.” The gas pedal tapped the floorboard, and the speedometer ticked past 130 into a red, numberless rectangle.

  Arvin pounded on the cruiser’s roof. “Slow down. I’m eating bugs up here.”

  Kaila eased her foot off the gas, and the cruiser slowed to 88 MPH.

  “Thank,” COUGH, “you.”

  The cruiser sailed past 22nd, 18th, 15th, 12th, 9th, and 6th.

  Kaila stopped at 3rd and turned left. Shelby Lane was a few blocks away, my backyard visible on the corner. An army of bobbing, rolling, walking, and hopping knick-knacks filled the street and surrounded the cruiser. An ambush? “What s
hould I do?”

  “Five points for the big knick-knacks and two for the small ones?” Emilia grinned.

  I loved the idea. “And a hundred bonus points for Mr. Happy Face.”

  “Make it ten thousand for Mr. Happy Face.” Arvin tightened his grip. “And a million for the knight.”

  The engine revved and away we went, racing toward home, crushing knick-knacks by the thousands. Fragments of porcelain and plastic body parts bounced off the ground. They sprayed into the air as if plowing through snow after a blizzard. The left headlight blew out, followed by the right. Arrows and spears flew through the windows. Cupids and birds attacked Arvin on the roof. Tin blimps dropped barrel bombs, denting the hood, fracturing the windshield. I’d never seen so many gnomes, birds, elves and ogres, thimbles, spoons, buttons, crystal kangaroos, clay warriors, cowboys and horses, soldiers, porcelain ballerinas, plaster frogs, wind-up robots, and rubber ducks. We were door deep in a tide of rogue collectibles and getting deeper. The cruiser slowed. Mom’s oak loomed over the fence ahead. Too far ahead.

  Officer Larkin pounded the seat a dozen more times. I knew it was a bad idea to leave him tied and gagged. If we lost, he’d die with the rest of us, crushed under the knick-knacks. If we won, he’d shoot us for what happened next.

  Kaila screamed and stomped on the pedal. The cruiser climbed the mountain and landed on the other side. It busted through my chain-link fence and crashed into Mom’s favorite oak, splitting the trunk.

  Arvin rolled down the windshield, over the hood, hit the oak, and fell into the dead grass. Heavy branches snapped and fell on top of him. Knick-knacks swarmed. Arvin got to his feet and grabbed hold of a branch. “Get the coin!” He swung it at the ground.

  The car doors wouldn’t open so we climbed out the windows. Kaila and Emilia screamed and thrashed, fighting off an onslaught of little horses.

  I fell against the oak and plunged my hands into the dirt between the roots. Cold and hard. Knick-knacks climbed, biting, gnawing, and clawing their way up to my neck. I writhed and shook. They fell off my back. I grabbed a stick and dug 1 inch, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8 inches. The stick bounced off the rubber boot. The top unfolded. I removed the piece from my pocket and thrust my hand inside the boot. Painful shocks zapped my fingertips. I held them together, big piece in my left hand, small in my right. The pain was unbearable. Shocking, burning, stabbing pain. I screamed and let go. The two separate pieces pulled themselves together, fusing into one under a flash of blue light. The coin flipped in the air and landed in my palm.

  I pressed my blistered thumbs over the holes. “TT-Sequencer home. TT-Sequencer revert. TT-Sequencer normal. TT-Sequencer, I don’t care. Make it all stop.”

  Silence.

  A dozen half-inch gladiators fell off my head, and I pulled their tridents out of my scalp. I walked around the split tree. “Arvin! You’re you again.” My handsome, four-foot whatever friend laid on his back, legs pinned under the branch he had been swinging a second before. I heaved it off his legs. It was bigger than him. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine. Kaila? Emilia”

  “I’m okay.” Kaila grabbed Emilia’s arm and pulled her out from under a pile of lifeless rainbow ponies. “Emilia’s fine, too. Is it over?”

  “Seems that way. But no promises this time.”

  Emilia pulled a plastic kitten out of her hair and smiled at Arvin. “Where’d you learn to hit like that? You didn’t miss a single one.”

  “Yeah. I middled those knick-knacks. No yorkers in my block hole, I can assure you.”

  “What language are you speaking?” I asked.

  “Dublin Cricket Club Youth League.”

  “Cricket?”

  “Bats and wickets? Playing in a cabbage patch? Hand action? What? Stop staring at me.”

  “If you say so.”

  THUMP THUMP

  Emilia jumped. “We gotta let him out there.” She looked down the alley at a tall, slender man sprinting toward us, a radio mic bobbing on his lapel. “Uh-oh!”

  The man jumped the fence, and my heart skipped a beat. “Officer Larkin?”

  Sweat dripped from Officer Larkin’s forehead. “When,” HUFF, “will you,” HUFF, “learn you can’t,” HUFF, “escape the law?” He pointed to his cruiser, crashed and smoking against the old oak. “Grand theft auto. Destruction of public property. Failing to yield. Reckless,” HUFF, “endangerment.”

  “Don’t forget driving without a license.” Arvin grinned.

  Kaila smacked his head. “Do you want to be single?”

  I raised my hands and stepped forward. “I can explain.”

  THUMP THUMP

  Officer Larkin stepped back. “What’s that? What do you have in there?”

  “You?”

  “Open it. Slowly.”

  I reached through the window, pulled the keys out of the ignition, and waded through knick-knacks to the trunk. The first key didn’t work. The second was one of those tiny keys for handcuffs. I pushed in the third key and turned. The lock clicked, and the trunk squeaked open.

  “Now, go stand next to that tree with your accomplices. If you run, I’ll add felony escape to your charges, and the judge will add ten years to your sentence.”

  Arvin nudged my shoe. “Don’t worry,” he whispered, “we’re only fifteen. We won’t get more than three years in juvie. Kaila will only get two.”

  “Not. Helping.”

  Officer Larkin opened the trunk and gasped. “What’s this? Now you’re kidnapping?”

  “Who is it?” I craned my head around. “I can’t see the trunk from here.”

  Officer Larkin reached into the trunk. “Relax. I’m here to help. I’m going to take these off.” click-click click-click He hung two pairs of cuffs on his belt. “Now these.”

  He tossed a pink troll over his shoulder. It landed in a pile of Shelbyville settlers, their boots coated in fresh, white paint.

  COUGH “Thank you, Officer.”

  He tossed aside another pink troll. Saliva dripped from its hair.

  COUGH “Thank you.”

  “How awful!” Kaila said. “I hope they’re not hurt.”

  “I wonder how long they’ve been in there?” asked Emilia.

  “Who are they?”

  Arvin stood on the tips of his toes. “And how big is that trunk on the inside?”

  “I heard that, Mister,” a hoarse voice called out.

  Arvin froze. His eyes bulged out of his head.

  I laughed. “Oh, hell. You’re in trouble, now.”

  “Language,” another woman screeched.

  I tripped over three wise men, fell backwards, and hit my head on a root. “Mom?”

  Officer Larkin shut the trunk as Mom and Ms. Pewter limped out from behind the cruiser wearing the same clothes from two days before. Their hair was a mess, full of leaves and twigs, drenched in motor oil. Behind their eyes, fire-breathing dragons snapped and clawed. Venom flowed off razor sharp fangs protruding from their jaws. Perhaps that last part was in my head.

  Mom limped forward, gnashing her teeth. “You’re all in very. serious. trouble.” Perhaps not in my head.

  Ms. Pewter joined her. “What do you say, Debbie? Three years in juvenile hall? Or how about we lock them in a metal box and roll it down a hill?”

  “Great plan, Patty. Let’s put nails and motor oil in there, too.”

  “Ladies, Ladies.” Officer Larkin put a hand forward. “Do you know these hooligans?”

  “The redhead’s supposed to be mine.”

  “I’m not sure about the blonde one. My son wouldn’t leave helpless people locked in a trunk.”

  “Or break into stores or steal food.”

  Arvin tried to calm the ginger dragon. “But Mom. I left money and a no-.”

  “Not another word from you. We heard everything.”

  Officer Larkin’s investigative skills kicked in. “So, you’re their mothers.”

  “I think warden is the correct term. Debbie?”

  “I lik
e ‘warden’. It sounds about right. These perps won’t see the sun for years.”

  “Officer,” Kaila stepped forward, “was anyone seriously hurt?”

  “Seriously? Not that I know of, but my radio isn’t working.”

  “Are there any other officers who can help?”

  “The entire department is on strike. I’m the only one standing between us and them.”

  Mom pulled a nail out of her bra strap. “Them?”

  “The shadow government.”

  “The what?”

  I mumbled, “Don’t ask.”

  Kaila put an arm around Emilia’s shoulders. “Officer, these ladies are okay, but our parents are trapped in Garden Glen mall along with hundreds of other innocent people. They need your help. Worry about a few broken windows later. Right now, I need you to do your greatest duty. I need you to save lives.”

  Wow, she’s good. Arvin’s inspirational speeches rubbed off along with his sloppy kisses. “Yuck!”

  “Shhhh!” Emilia snapped.

  “Sorry. Swallowed a bug.”

  “My sister’s right, Officer. We’ll stay with you, and the boys will be here when we get back.”

  Officer Larkin tucked his thumbs behind his belt. “Ladies, I’ll release Percy and Albert into your custody. I have lives to save. What are your names?” He took out his notepad and nodded as he wrote. The way his pencil moved in big loops and lines, I was sure he scribbled our names under little stick figures. “The next few months won’t be pleasant for your children, but it would’ve been a lot worse if they hadn’t cooperated.” He swept aside the piles of knick-knacks blocking the doors and invited Kaila and Emilia to ride in the back.

  “Thank you, Officer.” Kaila got in and scooted across the back seat.

  Emilia whispered in my ear, “See you at the winter formal.”

  “Dance?”

  “Unless you prefer I go with Derek Dolan?”

  “No way.”

  “But, Perry. This is your last chance. No secrets, no lies, no broken promises. I mean it.”

  I nodded, and Emilia sat in the back and pulled the door closed.

  “You’ll be in my prayers.” Mom squeezed Emilia’s hand through the window.

  Officer Larkin turned the ignition several times. The engine started, pinging and squealing, and blowing little puffs of steam from the leaking radiator. The cruiser backed out of the yard and stopped in the street. He leaned out the window. “Don’t think I won’t return. I have all your names.” He read from his notepad. “Ms. Popper and Ms. Derby and your sons Percy and Albert.”