Nancy froze, suddenly realizing her lazy, automatic replies had painted her into a corner. “Mustard,” she answered, ever quick on her feet.
Satisfied, Cecilia Pinkblossom continued down the aisle, and Nancy breathed a sigh of relief. As her mother returned to her clueless shopping, Nancy’s mind returned once again to the dilemma of Dr. Fell. Though she had not spied him in some time, she was certain the man was up to no good. In fact, she was ready to go so far as to call him sinister.
The problem was figuring out just what he was being sinister about.
“Cantaloupe?” asked Mrs. Pinkblossom.
“Yes,” answered Nancy.
Dr. Fell seemed determined to be universally beloved, and that was never a good thing. Nancy didn’t trust anybody who wanted everyone to like them. It usually meant they were hiding something. Her father had wanted everyone to like him, and he’d certainly been hiding something.
“Scallions?”
“Yes.”
So what was Dr. Fell hiding? A secret identity? A dark and twisted past? An abomination living in his dark basement?
“Dr. Fell!”
“Yes. What? No!”
Nancy looked up to find the sinister man smiling at her mother. “A supremely pleasant good afternoon to you, my dear Mrs. Pinkblossom,” he purred.
In answer to this utterly predictable greeting, Nancy’s mother giggled and blushed, raising her hand in front of her face. Dr. Fell, in turn, smartly ducked his head and tipped his purple top hat. Nancy noticed he seemed much more at ease performing this action than when they had first met. He also seemed to be standing up straighter.
“Why, Dr. Fell, I…I didn’t expect…That is, it’s so wonderful to…I’ve never…” Mrs. Pinkblossom was at an obvious loss for words.
“Indeed,” continued Dr. Fell, as if Cecilia Pinkblossom had just finished a complete sentence. “My occasional agoraphobic tendencies and habitual solitude render a chance encounter within such confines as this sustenance purveyor a wholly unlikely circumstance.”
She stared at him, mouth open wide, eyes frozen in confusion.
“What I mean to say is,” he continued with a smile, “I do not get out much.”
There was a particularly bright twinkle in his eye as he said this, and Nancy got the strange feeling that Dr. Fell was having some fun at her mother’s expense.
“Oh! Well, of course I understand,” said Mrs. Pinkblossom. “A person is entitled to his privacy. You are such a public figure in our community as it is.”
“Quite,” agreed Dr. Fell, turning and finally letting his gaze fall on Nancy. “We meet again, my dear urchin.”
“You’ve met my daughter?”
“Of course,” replied Dr. Fell. “It was she, along with her two earnest young companions, who was my first introduction to the denizens of this magical hamlet in which I have chosen to live out my remaining days.”
“Oh, dear,” worried Mrs. Pinkblossom. “Did she insult you? I’m afraid she isn’t always the most polite child. I’m so sorry—”
“Not at all, sweet Cecilia,” Dr. Fell assured Cecilia without taking his eyes off Nancy. “Your daughter was the picture perfect of virtuous feminine youth.”
There was a moment of awkward silence, in which Nancy grew increasingly uneasy under the harsh glare of Dr. Fell’s bright white smile.
“That doesn’t sound like my Nancy,” mumbled Mrs. Pinkblossom. “Are you sure you’re thinking of the same girl?”
“You know, Miss Pinkblossom,” continued Dr. Fell, taking a leisurely step in Nancy’s direction while ignoring her mother completely, “I recently had the pleasure of receiving your dear friend Miss Bloom in my offices for her yearly physical examination.”
“Yeah?” Nancy had a nagging fear she knew where this was going.
“I would be most honored to offer my humble services to you and your family toward a similar end,” said Dr. Fell, confirming Nancy’s suspicions.
“What a wonderful idea!” exclaimed her mother. “You’re due for a physical anyway!”
“In two months.”
“The early bird catches the worm, Miss Pinkblossom,” reasoned Dr. Fell. “You’re in a delicate time of development. Your body is undergoing daily readjustments as it pushes forth toward young adulthood. It would be a shame to allow an unforeseen complication to go unobserved for any length of time.”
Nancy had so many problems with this, she didn’t know where to start. Unfortunately, her mother answered first.
“That is so true, Dr. Fell! Nancy is at such an awkward age. When do you think you could squeeze her in?”
Dr. Fell’s face lit up with an earnest, humble, innocent grin that set Nancy’s teeth on edge. “Why, I do believe I’ve an opening tomorrow morning at ten a.m. sharp,” he said.
“Perfect!” cheered Cecilia Pinkblossom.
“No!” objected Nancy, drawing the attention not only of her mother and Dr. Fell, but of the two or three nearest grocery shoppers.
“Is there a problem, young urchin?” asked Dr. Fell.
“I…can’t do it tomorrow,” stammered Nancy, her mind in overdrive. “There’s a…I’m planning on…We’re learning fractions tomorrow in school, and I’ve been looking forward to this for…a long time.”
It was a weak lie, but the best she could come up with under the pressure.
“Fractions?” asked Dr. Fell.
“Oh, yes,” replied Nancy, digging herself deeper. “I’ve always been interested in fractions.”
Whether Dr. Fell believed her or not, Nancy couldn’t tell, but luckily, her mother believed enough for both of them. “Well now,” she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say you were looking forward to something at school. That’s wonderful!”
Nancy nodded, not trusting herself to say anything more.
“Far be it for me to interfere with the unparalleled joy of education,” said Dr. Fell. “Consider your appointment rescheduled for Thursday. Ten a.m. sharp. Good day.”
And just like that, Nancy’s fate was sealed.
“SO YOU’RE GOING TO see Dr. Fell?” asked Gail the next morning as she and Nancy went through the motions of playing on Dr. Fell’s playground while waiting for the school bus. They had learned some time ago that neglecting to play on the playground first thing in the morning brought forth suspicious looks from the other children.
There were easily more children on the playground each morning than there were students at McKinley Grant Fillmore Elementary School. Bowing to the inevitable, every school within a twenty-mile radius had added the end of Hardscrabble Street to its bus routes. Southeast North Northwestern Academy had even begun holding classes in one of the playground’s turrets.
“Of course I’m not going,” assured Nancy. “I’ll come up with something tomorrow to get out of it. Knowing my mother, she’ll forget about the whole idea in a day or two. Where’s your brother?”
Nancy’s neck twisted back and forth as she searched for Jerry. Normally, of course, she didn’t give a flying flounder fin about the whereabouts of her archnemesis, but things were anything but normal these days. The nerdy third grader was the only one apart from Gail and herself not zombified by Dr. Fell, and she wanted to make sure he stayed that way.
Plus, though she was loath to admit it, a tiny glimmer of respect for him had begun to flicker to life somewhere inside Nancy after they’d rescued Gail together.
“Still at home,” answered Gail, who did not bother to twist her neck around. “He said he was working on something but he’d make the bus.”
“What is he working on?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of three school buses from far-off Ford Garfield Taft Elementary, which always arrived before buses from anywhere else, owing to the thirty-five-minute commute between the playground and the school.
As usual, the arrival of any of the buses was met with a general groan from the students expected to relin
quish their time on the playground. Inevitably, a few kids would slink away and hide—often in one of the playground’s dungeons or else up in the aviary—but by and large they would fall into line and reluctantly march into the buses, heads drooping in sadness.
On this particular morning, however, one of the students from far-off Ford Garfield Taft Elementary had decided that enough was enough. As his compatriots boarded the bus mindlessly like proverbial lemmings (actual lemmings, it should be noted, do not generally follow one another mindlessly to their doom, despite what you may have heard), the child—whom everyone would very soon know to be eleven-year-old Leonid Hazardfall—climbed to the top of one of the three giant masts of the pirate ship section in the center of the playground and waved a makeshift flag back and forth in the morning breeze.
“Brothers and sisters!” he cried. “We need not blindly obey our elders! Let us, instead, remove the chains of bondage tying us to our education and live out the remainder of our lives in this childhood Eden with which we have been blessed!” Adding to the impact of his words was the fact that he stood bare chested (the flag was his T-shirt) with a zigzag pattern of war paint on his hairless chest.
It was about as imposing a figure as an eleven-year-old could make, and some of his brothers and sisters from Ford Garfield Taft Elementary—as well as many of his cousins, aunts, and uncles from other schools—were ready to give his plan serious thought.
But then Leonid slipped and fell to the ground, landing with a truly sickening thud—but not before slamming into a dozen different levels and platforms and poles on the way down.
A hush fell over the entire playground. Even the school buses idled just a bit more quietly. The deck of the pirate ship on which Leonid had landed was out of sight of most of the children, yet rather than run forward to his aid, the crowd stood motionless.
Waiting to hear him scream in agony.
Silence.
More waiting.
More silence.
It began to dawn on many that Leonid Hazardfall was not screaming.
Which caused many in the crowd to scream themselves.
Not, however, the children of Hardscrabble Street, Vexington Avenue, Von Burden Lane, and Turnabout Road, who had grown used to sudden and heart-stoppingly violent injuries.
“Somebody should run and get his parents,” suggested Gabby Plaugestein.
“Somebody should run and get Dr. Fell,” suggested Zachary Fallowmold.
“Somebody should run and play on the playground,” suggested Albert Rottingsly. “It’s what he would have wanted.”
Suddenly everyone had a suggestion, everyone needed everyone else to hear their suggestion, and everyone was telling everyone else that their suggestion was better. What nobody was doing, however, was dealing with the fact that an eleven-year-old classmate had just fallen to what seemed to all to be his death right in front of them.
“This is crazy!” yelled Gail, trying to be heard over the rising cacophony. “We need to call an ambulance!”
“Does anybody have a phone?!” asked Nancy of a gaggle of frantic children. “Did anyone swipe their parents’ phone this morning?”
Nobody answered the two girls’ call of sanity and clear thinking (though there were, in fact, seven cell phones on-site at that particular moment, three of which had, indeed, been swiped by children from parents that very morning). In fact, the very idea of sanity and clear thinking had been tossed out one of the many stained-glass windows lining the walls of the cathedral section of the play structure. Faced with undeniable tragedy, the crowd of children and bus drivers was descending into absolute chaos.
“Come on!” Gail tugged Nancy’s arm, and the two girls raced into the play structure to find Leonid Hazardfall.
As neither of the two had memorized the layout of Dr. Fell’s extravagant wonderland (unlike most of the other children, including at least two who had maps of it tattooed onto their bodies), it took Nancy and Gail a few moments of ducking under platforms, climbing over walls, sliding down slides, doubling back upon reaching dead ends, and on one occasion swinging on a rope across a deep chasm. But soon enough they hauled themselves up onto the deck of the wooden ship and found poor Leonid Hazardfall crumpled in a heap at the foot of the ship’s wheel.
His body looked like that of a marionette whose puppeteer was attempting to pack it into a small box, with arms and legs bent and folded over on themselves in ways that ought to have had the poor child screaming in agony.
He was not screaming.
He was not moving.
He did not appear to be breathing.
“Oh, no,” whispered Gail.
Nancy stepped forward and knelt at the young boy’s side. Gingerly, gently, she reached out her hand and felt along his neck.
“What are you doing?” asked Gail.
“Feeling for a pulse,” answered Nancy.
There was a pause before Gail—unable to wait any longer—asked, “Well? Do you feel one?”
Gingerly, gently, Nancy withdrew her hand and shook her head. “Nothing,” she said.
Both girls choked up, tears silently flowing down their cheeks as they stared at the lifeless body in front of them.
“Dear me, dear me indeed. Has one of the charming munchkins availing themselves of my largesse suffered a frightening accident?”
Nancy and Gail lifted their heads to find Dr. Fell standing on the deck of the sailing ship play structure. He took a sip of yellow liquid from a navy-blue glass through a teal-colored straw, smiled his friendly smile, and reached up with a steady hand (and a bit of a flourish) to tip his purple top hat in greeting.
“Accident?” asked Nancy. “He’s dead!”
“Nonsense!” scoffed Dr. Fell, approaching the horrifyingly mangled Leonid Hazardfall. “It would be most impolite for the lad to shuffle off this mortal coil within the confines of my monument to youthful frivolity. Let’s have ourselves a look, shall we?”
Dr. Fell knelt down on one knee, setting his glass aside for the moment, and inspected the broken and battered body of Leonid Hazardfall.
“He doesn’t have a pulse!” said Nancy.
“Indeed,” mumbled Dr. Fell, remaining focused on the body before him. “How astute of you to notice.”
He grunted to himself once as he felt the boy’s forehead, grunted again as he felt the boy’s neck, and grunted a third time as he placed both hands on the boy’s chest.
“He’s dead! Dead!”
“Rubbish,” remarked Dr. Fell. “I do not mean to be rude, young lady, but I believe only one of us here has the medical training necessary to make that rather final declaration on the boy’s behalf.”
With a deep breath to steady himself, Dr. Fell slipped his arms beneath poor Leonid Hazardfall’s body and gently lifted him off the ground.
“My sincerest apologies to you, my good urchins, for your having to witness this unforeseen tragedy,” he said. “It is a shame that young and impressionable minds such as yours should view firsthand the result of such a devastating descent from atop the crow’s nest. However, while the young man does appear to be in unquestionably bad shape, I assure you that his injuries are not life threatening. Please do carry on frolicking within the friendly confines of my magnanimous gift until such a time as you are required to venture forth to school.”
He bowed his head to them once again.
“Are you kidding me?!” screamed Nancy.
“On the contrary,” replied Dr. Fell, warmth beaming from his face. “I am steadfastly serious. Now if you will excuse me, I need to shepherd this poor boy into the nurturing confines of my medical examination room and tend to his wounds. Be a good lass and hand me my beverage, would you?”
Nancy glared at Dr. Fell, who smiled right back at her. After a moment, Gail picked up the glass and handed it to Dr. Fell, who adjusted the unmoving body of Leonid Hazardfall in his arms until he had a free hand available to hold his drink.
Then he turned and carried the boy away.
> Gail and Nancy continued to stare after him in shock long after he had ducked under a platform and disappeared.
“The only reason that kid’s injuries aren’t life threatening is that he doesn’t have any life left to threaten,” said Nancy.
“Are you sure?” asked Gail. “I mean, you’re not a doctor. Maybe—”
Nancy turned and stopped her. “He had no pulse. He wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t moving. There isn’t a single doubt in my mind.”
She turned back to the platform under which Dr. Fell had carried Leonid Hazardfall, saying only, “That boy is dead.”
SCHOOL THAT FRIDAY WAS a somber affair. Though Leonid Hazardfall did not attend McKinley Grant Fillmore Elementary School, had no friends there, and had never even heard of it (schools were not discussed on the playground of Dr. Fell), the children at McKinley Grant Fillmore Elementary School nevertheless felt a strong kinship with the poor boy because of their shared love of all things Dr. Fell.
The teachers and administrators of McKinley Grant Fillmore Elementary School knew right away that something was wrong. When the truth came slithering out of hundreds of downturned mouths, a wave of relief spread across the staff due to the fact that the injured and possibly dead child was not one of theirs and also that Dr. Fell himself was unharmed and the play structure undamaged.
Jerry took the news of the boy’s fall particularly hard, and unfortunately, neither Gail nor Nancy was in a position to cheer him up, as they, too, were profoundly devastated.
“You really think he’s dead?” he asked yet again as the three sat in the corner of the lunchroom, having quarantined themselves away from the seemingly rabid pack of Dr. Fell cultists.
“Trust me,” answered Nancy yet again. “There’s no way that boy survived that fall. He probably broke every bone in his body on the way down.”
“So I’m too late,” Jerry mumbled once again.
“All right, that’s it,” said Gail. “Either tell us what you mean or quit saying that.”
“What?” objected Jerry. “I didn’t say any—”
“Stuff it, Dorknose,” interrupted Nancy, while she silently wondered how Dorknose—one of her weaker insults—had become her go-to taunt when she was stressed. “Start talking.”
Dr. Fell and the Playground of Doom Page 6