Falcon Quinn and the Crimson Vapor

by Jennifer Finney Boylan

  “Out of the world, Falcon,” said Mr. Sweeny. “We stole ourselves out of the world, and have kept ourselves safe and happy, here. On the fringe.”

  The bird in the cage twittered and flapped its wings. “Awe,” it said.

  “What kind of bird is that?” said Falcon.

  “Oh, that’s no bird,” said Mr. Grubb. “It’s some sort of creature put under an enchantment. It was spying on us.”

  “Awe,” said the bird, looking at Falcon.

  “It hates being in this cage,” said the Squonk sadly. “I should let it go! Seriously! I should just let it go!”

  “Who would spy on you?” said Falcon.

  Mr. Sweeny smoked his pipe thoughtfully. “The Watcher, I think,” he said. “He’s trying to find us.”

  Falcon seemed to remember something about the Watcher from his Monster Ed class back at the Academy. The Watcher was a kind of shepherd of the monstrous world, supposedly, although no one at the Academy, so far as he knew, had ever actually seen him. He lived on something called the Island of Nightmares, where he tended the dreams of living things. “Why would the—”

  But at this moment Willa glowed again, more brightly this time.

  A twig snapped in the woods, and Falcon looked down the path that led from the clearing. Something groaned. Then there was the sound of footsteps, and a moment later Sparkbolt appeared.

  “Falcon Quinn—,” said Sparkbolt, surprised.

  Falcon turned to the Filchers, to let them know that Sparkbolt presented no danger to them.

  But except for Lumpp, the Filchers had vanished completely. There was no sign of them. The table full of food, and the fire, even Destynee’s sandals—all were gone. The octopus retriever whimpered softly, then looked at Falcon and wagged his tentacles. In his mouth, once again, was Sparkbolt’s poetry book.

  Sparkbolt stepped toward the place where Falcon was standing. “Falcon Quinn—,” said Sparkbolt. “With squiggle-dog!”

  “Yeah,” said Falcon. “This is—uh—Lumpp.” Sparkbolt tried to remove the book of poems from the creature’s mouth, but Lumpp thought it would be fun to play tug-of-war with it. His tail wagged happily as the Frankenstein pulled on the book.

  “Rrrr,” shouted Sparkbolt. “Poems—bitten!”

  “Drop,” said Falcon commandingly, and Lumpp let go. The book fell onto the ground. Sparkbolt picked up the journal, which was now covered with saliva and had four deep bite marks in it.

  “Bad dog,” Sparkbolt muttered darkly. “Dog bad.”

  Chapter 3

  The Crimson Madstone

  Max was sitting on a beach chair watching the vampire girls play volleyball in their bikinis. The sun was setting over the sea behind them, bathing the girls in golden light. Around the bonfire to his right, a zombie named Mortia was playing her guitar.

  Well, the Sasquatch girls are hip,

  I love their fur all splotched with crud;

  And the vampire girls, with the way they bite,

  They knock me out when they suck my blood.

  Egyptian pharaoh’s daughters really make you lose your head,

  And the Frankenstein girls, with the bolts in their neck,

  They bring their boys back from the dead.

  I wish they all could be zombie mutants

  I wish they all could be zombie mutants

  I wish they all could be zombie mutant girls.

  Transylvania’s got the castles

  And the girls all get so pale

  When the sun goes down and all the banshees come out,

  They knock me out when I hear ’em wail!

  The leprechaun chicks in Ireland,

  When they drink they get so smart,

  And the Chupakabras on the coast of Peru

  They put a stake right through my heart!

  I wish they all could be zombie mutants

  I wish they all could be zombie mutants

  I wish they all could be zombie mutant girls.

  Weems, the ghoul, came over and sat down next to Max and Pearl.

  “Love Mortia’s tunes, man,” said Max. “You love this song? I do.”

  “Is someone singing?” said Weems. “I hadn’t noticed.” He looked discouraged.

  “Señor Weems,” said Pearl. “Your spirits seem diminished!”

  “I have misplaced the paddleball,” said Weems. “I am angered by its absence.”

  “Hey, what’s the deal with you and the paddleball, anyhow?” said Max. “It’s kooky.”

  “I find it soothing when my nerves are frayed,” said Weems. “When I find myself trying to make peace with the constant tide of deceit, and cruelty, and betrayal.”

  “You should have one of those foot-long hot dogs, dude,” said Max. “Beats paddleball.”

  A gorgeous young vampire named Vonda came over and sat near Mortia. She was yanking a hunchback girl along on a chain. Twisty, the hunchback, had hair the consistency of tangled spaghetti.

  “Hey, Vonda,” said Max. “What up!”

  “Tell him not to talk to me,” said Vonda.

  “She says not to talk to her,” said Twisty.

  “And yet we send you our greetings notwithstanding,” said Pearl.

  Weems dug down into a bucket of eyeballs, put one on a stick, and started roasting it.

  “Hey, Vonda,” said Max. “You want Weems to make you a s’nasty?”

  Weems picked up a pair of graham crackers. “They are so squishy and sweet,” said Weems.

  “Twisty,” said Vonda, “tell them not to talk to me!”

  “She says—”

  “I know what she says,” hissed Weems.

  “Hey,” said Falcon, walking up to his friends. At his side was Sparkbolt, carrying his book of poems. Just behind them was Lumpp, who now had a large sea sponge in his mouth.

  “It is Falcon Quinn,” said Pearl. “And Señor Sparkbolt, the well-regarded Frankenstein author of sonnets and verse! We welcome you to our celebration!”

  “Rrrr,” said Sparkbolt.

  “Hey, Pearl,” said Falcon.

  “And they got some kind a squishy dog with ’em too!” said Max excitedly. “Whoa! He’s excellent! Where’d the dog come from, Falcon?”

  “His name is Lumpp,” said Falcon. “I—uh—found him in the forest.”

  Lumpp dropped his sea sponge at Max’s feet. Max picked it up and threw it. Lumpp tore off across the sand to retrieve it. The octopus retriever came back in a flash, dropped the sea sponge at Vonda’s foot this time. He looked hopefully at the young vampire.

  Vonda kicked the retriever and laughed. He looked unharmed, although his eyes looked as if his feelings had been hurt.

  “Hey!” said Max. “That’s not cool! All he wants is a little love and affection!”

  “I hate animals,” said Vonda. She turned to Twisty. “Tell them.”

  Twisty hitched forward and looked at them with her goggle eye. “She says she hates animals.”

  “All Sparkbolt want!” said Sparkbolt. “Is love! And affection!”

  “Dear god, here we go,” said Vonda.

  “Can I have it?” said Twisty, looking at the sea sponge at her mistress’s feet. “Please, just one time? Can I be the one who has it?”

  “Here,” said Vonda, and threw the sponge in Twisty’s face. “Ha! Ha! You’re stupid!”

  “Thank you for throwing the sponge at me!” said Twisty. “I’m so grateful!”

  “Why are you grateful to her, Twisty?” said Mortia. “She’s so awful to you!”

  “She’s so pretty,” said Twisty. “And that’s the most important thing in the world! Being pretty!”

  “Hey, man!” said Max to Falcon. “Weems is makin’ s’nasties! You want one?”

  “Maybe later,” said Falcon. “I have to work at the Bludd Club in just a few minutes.”

  “How come you have to work at the Bludd Club?” said Max. “Snort was the one who stampeded you, man.”

  “Señor Max,” said Pearl. “Our friend Falcon ha
s done this deed out of the nobility of his own heart! To save even his own enemy from expulsion!”

  “I know, I know,” said Max. “It’s just kinda—wonky, that’s all.”

  “‘Wonky,’” said Pearl. “I do not understand this ‘wonky’!”

  “I didn’t think about it that much,” said Falcon. “It was just something I could do for him. So I did it.”

  “Hey, I got another question, about vampires,” said Max to Vonda. “How come you guys can just walk around in the middle of the day? Isn’t the sunlight supposed to turn you into—dust?”

  Vonda turned to Twisty. “Tell him not to talk to me!”

  Twisty hunched forward. “She says—”

  “But it is an intriguing question!” said Pearl. “I too have wondered about this!”

  Twisty’s bulbous eye twitched. “It’s because they wear sunscreen,” she said. “It protects them.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Falcon.

  “It’s, like, SPF ten thousand!” said Twisty. “That’s how Vonda stays so pale! And pretty!”

  “Señor Falcon,” said Pearl. “Where have you been in the hours since the altercation? I have been concerned, in the time intervening, by your mysterious absence!”

  Falcon thought about his afternoon with the Filchers and considered telling his friends about it. But then he thought better of it. “I just went for a walk,” said Falcon. “There’s nothing mysterious about it.”

  “Falcon Quinn,” said Sparkbolt. “Find poetry book of poems. Lost! In forest!”

  “Curses,” said Weems. His eyeball on a stick burst into flames. He pulled the eyeball out of the fire and blew on it.

  Something wet and squishy bounced off of Falcon’s face. He looked down to see a moist sea sponge at his feet.

  “Hey, Lumpp,” said Falcon. He leaned down to pat the octopus retriever on the head. “You’re a good boy!” Lumpp looked at Falcon with an expression that looked very much like love.

  “What’s so good about him?” said Vonda. “He’s boring! I hate being bored!” She looked at Twisty. “Don’t I?”

  “She does,” said Twisty.

  “Here you go, Lumpp,” said Falcon, throwing the sponge. In an instant, the octopus retriever cantered enthusiastically after it. Max and Pearl and Falcon watched as the creature swam out into the waves, grabbed the sponge with one tentacle, and then returned to the shore. He shook off the water that clung to his fur, then trotted back to the monsters, dropped the sponge, and pointed once again.

  “Dude,” said Max. “Now you have an animal friend!”

  Lumpp started to dig down in the sand with his foretentacles. He seemed to be sniffing around with his big, furry head, plunging it into the hole that he was digging. After a moment, Lumpp’s head disappeared entirely into the earth. Dirt flew over the creature’s shoulders as the hole got bigger.

  “He’s going way down,” noted Max. “Look at him! I mean, he’s goin’ waaaaayyy down!”

  A moment later the retriever pulled something out of the sand with his tentacles.

  “What is it that this creature has unearthed?” asked Pearl.

  “I don’t know,” said Falcon, going over to Lumpp. “Hey, fella. What you got there?”

  Lumpp held a sand-covered pendant on a long chain up in the air. It dangled from his tentacle. Falcon took it from him.

  “It is an amulet,” said Pearl, “of most mysterious design!”

  “An amulet?” said Max. Falcon was rubbing the sand off of it. It was a golden disk with a ruby-red jewel in its center.

  “There’s writing on it,” said Falcon. He rubbed the flat disk some more.

  “What is this writing?” asked Pearl.

  Falcon squinted. “I can’t read it. It’s a bunch of strange runes.”

  “Let me see,” said Max, taking it from him. “I’m good at Sudoku and junk!”

  The bigfoot squinted at the strange lettering, but, like Falcon, he could not make sense of the symbols. “Kooky,” Max said, then put the amulet around his neck.

  “Señor Max,” said Pearl. “I would not be placing an amulet of unknown properties upon my person without first researching its nature.”

  “C’mon,” said Max. “It looks all hippy-dippy, doesn’t it? Anyway, what could hap—”

  Max’s sentence was left unfinished, however, for at this moment he vanished into a glowing crimson vapor and the amulet fell into the sand. The red mist hung in space for a moment, a shadow-version of the giant Sasquatch, before drifting toward Sparkbolt.

  “Dude,” said Sparkbolt, looking at himself in astonishment. It was Sparkbolt’s body, but Max’s voice was coming out of it.

  “Check it out! I’m a Frankenstein!” said Sparkbolt’s body with Max’s voice.

  “¿Señor?” said Pearl.

  “Sasquatch!” shouted Sparkbolt in his own voice. He raised his green hands to his head. “IN BRAIN.”

  “Hey, man, how do I get out of here?” shouted Max with Sparkbolt’s mouth. “It’s nasty!”

  “SASQUATCH DESTROY!” yelled Sparkbolt. “RRRRR! RRRRR!”

  “Señor Falcon,” said Pearl. “We must free our friend from his Frankenstein prison!”

  “SASQUATCH DESTROY!” shouted Sparkbolt. “DESTROY! DESTROY!”

  “Dude,” said Max from inside Sparkbolt.

  “Wait,” said Falcon, slipping the amulet around Sparkbolt’s neck. There was, once more, a cloud of crimson mist as the Frankenstein dissolved. A moment later, Max fell onto the sand, out of the bottom of the cloud, and the amulet dropped onto the beach next to him.

  “¿Señor?” said Pearl.

  Max dusted himself off. “Okay,” he said. “I’m not doing that again.”

  “It is a relief to have you in your original form once more,” said Pearl.

  “I tell you what,” said Max. “Being stuck inside of Sparkbolt kind of opened my eyes, man.”

  “In what way,” said Pearl, “have your eyes been opened?”

  “About what Frankensteins are up against. I mean, while I was inside his skull I could feel all—you know, dark and lurchy. What’s that old saying, about how you can never really understand somebody until you’ve walked a mile inside their brain? Turns out—that is so totally true!”

  “Where is Sparkbolt, anyway?” said Falcon. “That mist must have gone somewhere.”

  They looked around the beach. There was no sign of him. Over at the fire pit, Mortia was still singing her folk songs. Lumpp wagged his tail, hoping someone would throw the sponge. Vonda lay on a beach towel as Twisty rubbed sunscreen onto her back. Ankh-hoptet, wearing a strange bikini made entirely out of mummy bandages, sat in a folding chair next to Lincoln Pugh.

  “Dude,” said Max. “The smoke. Maybe it blew out to sea.”

  “Oh no,” said Falcon, picking up the “Poetry Book of Rhyming Poems,” which had fallen into the sand. “We’ve lost him!”

  “Dude,” said Max. “This is bad.”

  Vonda got up from her seat and walked toward them. Twisty followed behind her. Vonda looked at Max and Pearl and Falcon with her usual disdain.

  “Hey, Twisty,” said Falcon.

  Twisty looked thoughtful for a moment. Then Sparkbolt’s voice came out of her mouth. “Rrrrr! Twisty bad!”

  “Oh no,” said Max.

  “What did you do to her, Falcon Quinn?” said Vonda.

  “Me?” said Falcon.

  “Yes, of course you. Everyone knows what you’re trying to do, Falcon Quinn.”

  “Rrrr!” said Sparkbolt’s voice. “Twisty destroy! DESTROY!”

  “It’s not Falcon, man,” said Max. “It’s this creepy amulet. It turns people into this nasty red mist, and then the mist drifts into people’s brains.”

  “I was not speaking to you!” said Vonda, wrinkling her nose.

  “Help me, Falcon,” said Twisty in her own voice. “Please! Don’t let the Frankenstein take over my brain!”

  “You should be ashamed of yourself,” said Von
da.

  “Me?” said Falcon. “I didn’t put Sparkbolt in her brain.”

  “Destroy!” shouted Twisty with Sparkbolt’s voice. She picked up a rock. “Must destroy!”

  “Get the Frankenstein out of her brain!” said Vonda. “I demand it! This instant!”

  “Hey, man,” said Max. “You can’t just order people around!”

  “Ow!” said Twisty as she crushed a rock against her skull. “That hurt!”

  “Must destroy!” shouted Sparkbolt’s voice, and Twisty bent down to pick up another rock to smash against her head.

  “This cycle of violence cannot continue!” said Pearl.

  “Falcon,” said the hunchback, her eyes wide and sad. “He’s going to make me smash my head with a rock again.”

  “Destroy! Destroy!” shouted Sparkbolt’s voice.

  “Help her,” said Vonda. “I demand it! Undo this damage you have done!”

  Falcon sighed, then put the amulet around Twisty’s neck. The hunchback vanished, and a moment later, Sparkbolt, wholly restored, fell onto the sand. The red vapor drifted through the air once more.

  “Ah! Ah! Ah!” said Sparkbolt. “Sparkbolt Sparkbolt!”

  “Dude,” said Max.

  Vonda looked angrily at all of them. “I am totally upset!” she said. “I need a massage! Twisty, tell them I want a massage!”

  But Twisty wasn’t there anymore.

  “Twisty?” said Vonda. “Where are you?”

  Then Vonda’s beautiful face took on a distinctly odd expression, one eye larger than the other, and for a moment she seemed to hunch forward. The girl looked at her own body with shock and amazement, as if seeing it for the first time. “I’m—Vonda,” she said, but she said this with Twisty’s voice. “I’m—pretty—!”

  “Twisty?” said Falcon. “Are you in there?”

  “I am,” she said with amazement.

  “Put on the amulet,” said Vonda’s voice. “Hurry.” Falcon picked up the necklace and held it out toward her.

  But Twisty’s expression spread once more over the lovely girl’s face. “No,” she said. “I don’t think I will.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Vonda’s voice.

  “I think I’m going to stay here,” said Twisty’s voice. “I—like it here! I like being—pretty.”