Stephanie Bloom looked down at her daughter, and for half a second, Gail wasn’t even sure her own mother recognized her. But then the dazed woman blinked her eyes, smiled, and addressed her daughter. “Dr. Fell is in trouble,” she said without stopping. “We need to rally around him. You and your brother need to run in and grab one of the heavier skillets or rolling pins and join us.”
“I…but—but…,” stammered Gail, her need to obey her parents fighting her need to stop Dr. Fell.
“Go on,” said her dazed father. “Be a good girl.”
Gail took a step back, and Jerry could see his sister start to give in. But then she clenched her fists and jumped directly in front of her parents.
“No! We have to stop Dr. Fell. He’s evil!”
“Evil?” asked Stephanie Bloom curiously. “No, I don’t think so. Not at all. What a nice man is Dr. Fell.”
Gail was shocked into silence at this reply. She stood rooted to the spot as her mother and father calmly continued down the street with their kitchen tools.
“Is that a whisk?” asked Nancy.
“Dr. Fell has sent out some weird telepathic call,” said Gail. “They’re all running to his defense.”
“Walking,” corrected Jerry.
“Old Lady Witherton!” cried Gail. “We have to warn her!”
“How?” asked Nancy.
“We could…I mean…we…” Gail struggled for an idea. “What if we…well, how about—”
She was suddenly interrupted by a deafening explosion that knocked all three children—as well as everyone walking toward Dr. Fell’s—to the ground. A deep boom reverberated from the far end of the street, and a ball of eerie green fire rolled up out of the large brick house at the end of Hardscrabble Street and into the sky.
“Nancy? Jerry? Are you all right?” called Gail as she forced herself up onto her wobbly feet.
“I’ve got a bruised butt, if that matters,” said Nancy. “But otherwise I’m fine.”
“It’s happening, guys,” said Jerry, eyes wide with panic. “It’s actually happening!”
“What’s happening?” asked Nancy.
“The end! This is the end! If we don’t do something now, Dr. Fell will finish what he’s doing here and disappear, and our school, our street, our friends, our family—they’ll all be ruined!”
Gail and Nancy wiped dust and debris out of their eyes and looked hopelessly at each other.
“We can’t just stand here and do nothing!” pleaded Jerry.
“Jerry’s right, Nancy,” said Gail. “Whatever is going on at the end of the street, it can’t be good. Old Lady Witherton is only one woman—she can’t defeat Dr. Fell all by herself.”
“We’re just kids!” argued Nancy. “He’s five hundred years old and has a creepy monster of darkness working for him. What can we do?”
“It doesn’t matter, because we’re the only ones who can do it,” said Gail. “Everybody else is under his spell. If our community is going to be saved, it’s up to us.”
She thrust out her hand toward Nancy and Jerry. Jerry immediately placed his atop his sister’s. The Bloom children stared at Nancy Pinkblossom, waiting.
Finally, Nancy thrust her hand out to meet the other two in solidarity. “I can’t let you and Dorknose look brave while I run away like a coward,” she said.
The three children gave one another a confident nod, then turned and ran as fast as they could toward the chaos that was quickly encompassing the world of Dr. Fell.
AT FIRST, THE CHILDREN felt weird as they ran past neighbor after neighbor walking calmly toward Dr. Fell’s house armed with an assortment of kitchen implements. None of those they passed took any notice of them, focused as they were on answering the freaky telepathic call that was luring them down the street. Stephanie and Jonathan Bloom were oblivious to their children’s passing, and Cecilia Pinkblossom barely gave her daughter a glance as Nancy rushed by. Nancy paused only long enough to identify the turkey baster her mother held in her hands.
After quickly weaving their way through the mesmerized residents of Hardscrabble Street, the children came suddenly in sight of the home of Dr. Fell and discovered a very serious problem with their off-the-cuff plan to run into the house, find Old Lady Witherton, and help her defeat Dr. Fell.
The house was no longer there.
The eerie green ball of flame that had lit up the night sky moments before had left nothing but rubble in its wake, and the three children stood momentarily confused by the lack of a building into which they could dash.
“Maybe she won?” asked Gail.
“Don’t you think if she’d won, we wouldn’t still be dealing with the march of the living brainless?” responded Nancy, thumbing behind her at the wide circle of neighborhood residents slowly but surely advancing on the site of the explosion.
“Well, she can’t have lost yet either,” said Gail. “Or else Dr. Fell would’ve called everybody off.”
“They’re underground,” said Jerry. “In the chamber of that…thing.”
“So how do we get down there?” asked Nancy.
But just as she said it, she realized the answer. As did Gail and Jerry. All three turned to look at the massive, untouched, impossible play structure standing ominously in the darkness. Slight shivers shimmied down each of their spines as they all independently got the odd sensation that as much as they were looking at the play structure, it was looking right back at them.
“I think Christian Gloomfellow said there was a dungeon section over there behind the scale model of Notre Dame,” said Jerry as they entered the labyrinthine play structure.
“No,” corrected Nancy, climbing up a rope ladder. “That’s a World War One trench. I remember Gabby Plaugestein saying the dungeon was right in front of the alien spaceship.”
“Wait,” called out Gail. “I remember Albert Rottingsly saying there was a pixie bog in front of the spaceship, not a dungeon.”
Jerry wormed his way through the window of a mad scientist’s laboratory. “Gore Oozewuld once told me there were big sewer tunnels in the Roman section,” he said. “That might be a way in.”
“What about Atlantis?” asked Nancy, sliding down a fire pole into the cockpit of a stealth bomber. “Didn’t Hannah Festerworth mention an Atlantis section once?”
“The tombs!” exclaimed Jerry. “I remember Bud Fetidsky talking about a series of tombs, like from Indiana Jones. I think he said they were just past the pirate ship.”
Though they hated to admit it, all three children quickly realized that since they’d never spent all that much time actually playing on the play structure, they had no idea where to go or how to get there.
“Guys, this isn’t working,” said Gail, swinging over to a square platform that had most recently seen use as a dance stage, a kickboxing arena, and a floor for gymnastic routines. “We can’t just run off in different directions. We need to stick together.”
Nancy climbed across the wings of the stealth bomber, jumped over to a swaying bridge, then hopped over the back of a wooden dragon to join Gail on the platform. “You’re right,” she said. “If we go up against Dr. Fell one by one, we don’t stand a chance.”
Jerry popped his head up from beneath the platform. “So we need a plan of attack,” he said as the two girls reached down and hauled him up onto the platform. “A way to get through this labyrinth and find him.”
“And Old Lady Witherton,” added Gail quietly.
“All right.” Nancy paced along the edge of the platform. “We’ve obviously all heard different things about this place, so we can’t trust anything we’ve been told. Where does that leave us?”
“We have to just search,” said Gail. “Together.”
A muffled roar suddenly reverberated from somewhere deep within the playground, causing all three to jump.
“What was that?” asked Nancy.
“You know very well what that was,” answered Gail.
Nancy nodded, trying not to shake from fe
ar.
“I don’t think we have time to do a complete search,” warned Jerry. “All our zombie-like friends and family will be here any minute, and once that happens, it’s game over. We need to be smart.”
“So be smart,” snapped Nancy. “That’s your thing, isn’t it?”
Jerry opened his mouth to shoot off a retort but then realized that in her own way, Nancy had just complimented him. “OK, OK. True or false. The playground seems bigger almost every day.”
“True,” answered Gail.
“True or false. Some things in here actually seem to move around so they’re never in the same place.”
“True,” answered Nancy.
“True or false. Wherever that cavern of his is, it was here from the very beginning. He needed a place to keep his…creature.”
“True,” answered Gail and Nancy together.
“So what does that tell us?” asked Jerry.
The girls just looked at him, so he answered his own question. “It tells us that it isn’t moving around. That it’s probably under the middle of the playground. And that the middle of the playground probably hasn’t been moving around. So all we have to do is figure out what part of this thing has stayed the same the whole time it’s been here.”
It took maybe half a second, but then all three of them turned and peered out and up into the mass of towers and spires and skyscrapers that dotted the roof of the play structure. And in the midst of these—higher than anything else—stood the mast of the pirate ship.
After wading through the swamp bog, running through the circus tent, swinging across the lava pit, and climbing over the ruins of Pompeii, Gail, Nancy, and Jerry finally arrived on the deck of the pirate ship. Jerry and Nancy quickly fanned out, searching for a trapdoor or other secret entrance, while Gail found herself drawn to a spot on the deck beneath the mighty mast, which dominated the landscape.
“Gail! Come on!” shouted Nancy. “Help us find the way in!”
“This is where that boy fell,” said Gail, stopping her companions in their tracks. Silently, Nancy and Jerry walked over to join Gail in staring down at the deck.
“Leo something, wasn’t it?” asked Nancy.
“Leonid Hazardfall,” corrected Jerry. “That’s where he died.”
“That’s where Dr. Fell killed him,” corrected Nancy.
“Before bringing him back to life by stealing years of his life away,” finished Gail. “Just like he did to Old Lady Witherton. Back when she was Young Girl Witherton. Can you even imagine?”
“Losing my childhood?” asked Nancy. “No.”
“Old Lady Witherton says he’s been doing this for over five hundred years,” said Jerry. “Think how many childhoods he’s stolen. How many lives he destroyed.”
“That’s why we’re stopping him,” announced Gail. “Not for us. It’s too late for Leonid Hazardfall and Bud Fetidsky and everyone else in our neighborhood who’s had years ripped away from them. But this is where it ends.”
“This is where it ends,” agreed Nancy.
“This is where it ends,” agreed Jerry.
The three of them quietly spread out and got to work. They searched every nook and cranny of the pirate ship, climbed up every pole and mast, opened up every empty barrel. Finally, Nancy hauled aside a massive coil of rope, and there it was—a deep, dark hole leading down into an even deeper, darker nothing. The three stood around the rim of the hole, squinting and peering and trying to make out anything down there. But it was no good. It was as if light itself refused to shine into the depths of Dr. Fell’s lair.
There was no need to speak. The three children nodded to one another, clasped hands, and dropped into the void.
THEIR FEET LANDED ON a hard dirt surface far sooner than they expected, and the children found themselves standing in a circle of pitch blackness. They remained together, holding hands and gazing all around them. The seemingly impossible fact that they could make out the walls and glow of the cavern in the distance, yet could not see the hands in front of their faces, caused their hearts to skip a beat.
“It’s like we’re in a spotlight of darkness,” said Jerry.
“A spotdark,” agreed Nancy.
“Let’s get out of this,” said Gail.
The three tentatively took a step, each pulling in a different direction. After a moment of blind negotiations during which time none dared release the hands they held, the others agreed to let Gail lead the way. She slowly pulled them forward, step by step, out of the darkness. After a few steps, she was able to make out the boundary of the black spot. Quickening their pace, she finally yanked herself and the others out of the oppressive circle of darkness and into the much larger cavern of mostly darkness.
“We made it,” said Jerry. “We’re here.”
“Again,” mumbled Nancy.
At first glance, the cavern seemed little changed from their adventure only a couple of hours before. The walls gave off the same eerie green glow, the horrific pile of childhood trauma was still sprawled against the wall, the door through which Dr. Fell had come and gone was again just barely visible at the far end of the room.
At second glance, however, the children all noticed something very, very different.
“Where’s all the darkness?” asked Gail.
Before, more than half of the cavern had been hidden by the same physical darkness the three had just leaped into. But now, aside from the small circle of black beneath the pirate ship, the cavern was merely poorly lit. The children could even see the bottom of the impossibly long Stairway of Death sitting quietly against the wall behind them.
“Do you think maybe Old Lady Witherton won after all?” asked Jerry.
“No,” said Nancy. “She didn’t win.”
“How do you know?” asked Jerry.
“Because she’s wrapped up in the same sort of junk you were trapped in when we found you.” Nancy pointed to the far end of the cavern. The children could just make out someone in the corner, body bound tight by the odd white strands and feet dangling inches off the ground. All around the prisoner lay the various swords and axes and crossbows Old Lady Witherton had armed herself with before heading off to face Dr. Fell.
“No!” squeaked Gail, breaking into a run.
That it was Old Lady Witherton became undeniable before Gail had crossed half the distance. The old woman hung suspended in the air by the awkward webbing, her eyes and mouth open in a frozen, silent scream.
“She doesn’t look any older,” noticed Jerry as he arrived at his sister’s side.
He was right. Trapped though she was, it was evident that Dr. Fell had not loosed his nightmare creature on her just yet. Nancy immediately began ripping the individual strands away from their neighbor. “Come on—let’s get her out of there.”
As Jerry joined her, Gail slowly turned in a circle, gazing all about the room. Something was wrong.
“Something is wrong,” she said.
“This is Dr. Fell we’re dealing with,” grunted Nancy. “Lots of things are wrong.”
“Where’s the darkness?” asked Gail. “I don’t mean the darkness. I mean…you know…the Darkness.”
“Who cares? Hurry!” Nancy’s attempt to clear Old Lady Witherton of the flimsy, thin wisps grew frantic, as more and more seemed to just stick right back together around the old woman the instant they’d been removed.
“No.” Gail shook her head, every nerve in her body screaming out in warning. “This is wrong. This is all wrong. We have to get out of here! It’s a trap!”
“I would venture to state unequivocally that our young prognosticator has shown a wisdom beyond her years in her ability to pierce the veil of my subterfuge,” said a chuckling, high-pitched voice, which caused all three children to break into a sweat. “What I mean to say is…young Gail is right.”
The children watched as a cloud of perfect darkness floated down the Stairway of Death. At the very edge of the darkness—leading it down into the cavern, as it were—marche
d a youthful and energetic Dr. Fell, his smile chilling the very air it touched. He approached the children and spread his arms wide in greeting.
“You cannot know how satisfying I find it to finally have the illustrious trio of do-gooders by my side as I complete the latest of my periodic episodes of rebirth,” he said. “Not being greedy, I would have been content to ingest but a few more weeks of youth from young Jerry earlier today before making my departure. But now. Now I have other plans.”
He came right up to the three children and tilted his abnormally long neck to peer down on them from above. Behind him, the entire cavern had been blacked out—consumed by the darkness.
“Why?” asked Gail, looking helplessly up into Dr. Fell’s eyes.
The evil man cocked his head to the side, amused by the question. “Why? Not generally what one expects to hear from the condemned. Very well. Why?” His smile grew so large, it seemed to encompass his ears. “Because I can. And because you three insignificant little urchins are unable to stop me.”
“Don’t be so sure,” said Nancy, finding an unexpected well of courage somewhere inside her. “You don’t control us. We’re not under your spell.”
“Well now, that is quite the astute pair of observations, my temperamental lass.” Dr. Fell lifted up his black bag with the white bone handle with one hand and lovingly rubbed the soft leather with the other. “It is certainly true that due entirely to my own negligence, the three of you have proven immune to my many charms. I made the unfortunate mistake of allowing you to craft a first impression of me before I had woken my servant from its cocoon. You see, my…friend…is not from here. Once awoken, it resonates, if you will, an energy of absolute love and obedience toward me. Over the years—or I suppose I should say centuries—I’ve learned that this energy has the odd yet fortunate effect of causing others who meet me to feel the same. Unless they have already met me. In which case, they do not generally share the communal affection for me. Luckily, I have more direct methods of control at my disposal. Allow me to demonstrate.”
Dr. Fell and the Playground of Doom Page 14