The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 5

by Roy MacGregor

  Nish’s collision gave Muck time to rest his top line and have them ready to take an extended shift. He dropped Andy back from his usual forward position, putting him on the point with Nish in order to use his big shot.

  Sarah took the faceoff, with Dmitri and Travis ready to go on the wings.

  This time Sarah beat Brody to the dropping puck, plucking it away and onto Dmitri’s stick. Dmitri sent it back to Andy, who immediately played it behind the net to Nish.

  They had the puck where they needed it: on Nish’s stick, with the rush about to begin. Nish stickhandled out slowly, weighing his options, watching for a breaking player.

  Travis decided to gamble. He cut fast across the centre red line, hammering his stick for a pass, and Nish hit him perfectly as Travis moved across centre, his checker moving with him.

  Travis dropped the puck, leaving it for Dmitri, coming up fast, and Dmitri did the same for Sarah.

  Sarah came in alone, one defender back. She faked the shot, the defence crouched to block it, and like a magician she slipped the puck between the defender’s skates and out the other side.

  Sarah flew in alone, deking with a shoulder and then rounding the goaltender to flick the puck over the outstretched glove and high into the netting.

  The Owls bench exploded, players flying over the boards. Muck stared up at the scoreboard as if daring the numbers to change. He seemed to have expected nothing less than this goal. No cheering, no fist-pumping. Just the usual Muck.

  The team pounded Sarah, and the referee had to threaten the Owls with a delay-of-game penalty to get them to return to the bench for the remaining twelve seconds of play.

  Soon the twelve seconds were gone. The horn blew and the referee signalled sudden-death overtime.

  Next goal would win the gold medal.

  23

  “This time.”

  Travis heard Nish speak but wasn’t sure he understood him.

  “You know what I mean,” Nish said, then looped away from Travis’s position on the wing. He skated over centre ice, right between Brody Prince and Sarah Cuthbertson, who were lining up for the faceoff, and as he went by he took off one glove, leaned over, and quickly touched the centre-ice dot.

  “What was that all about?” Brody asked.

  Sarah smiled. “Nothing – he’s just an eccentric nut.”

  “He’s a heck of a player,” Brody said, bowing down to ready himself. “And so are you.”

  Sarah was speechless. She crouched down, dropping one hand low on her stick and reversing it to help her sweep the puck back if she could.

  The ice had been cleaned again, a fresh sheet on which to write the final chapter of the Peewee Olympics. Sarah was glad it wasn’t a mirror – she already knew how red-faced she must be.

  The referee made sure Nish was back in position, looked towards both goaltenders to check that they were ready, and then dropped the puck.

  Neither side won the draw cleanly. Sarah dropped a shoulder into Brody, and Travis jumped in to sweep the puck back to Nish. Nish dumped it up the boards, playing cautiously. The Stars dumped it back, and immediately fell into their trap positions without even trying to forecheck.

  “We could play like this for a year and never score,” said Muck, when Travis’s line went off and Andy’s came on. “I’d rather lose playing hockey than win playing tennis.”

  Travis thought he understood. Muck hated the style of play the Stars were using, and he’d rather go down playing the game he loved than succeed playing a game he loathed.

  That was fine with Travis and Sarah and Dmitri – they didn’t know any game but one that celebrated speed and puck control and smart plays.

  The Stars’ coach was double- and triple-shifting Brody Prince, hoping the elegant centre could find a way to score, but the result was an exhausted player who could barely drag himself up off the ice after he went down again hard.

  When Brody smashed into the back boards, the groan Travis heard came not from the player but from the Owl sitting right next to him: Sarah.

  Brody was nothing if not courageous. He fought as hard as he could and twice came close to scoring, one backhander clipping off the outside of the post when Jeremy misjudged his blocker.

  “I don’t want to win by a shootout, either,” Muck said, barely loud enough for Sarah and Travis to hear. He was sending them a message.

  Next shift, Sarah picked up a loose puck and circled behind her own net, looking for Nish. Nish, however, was just coming on to replace Fahd, and was in no position to take a pass, so Sarah decided to carry it herself.

  She swung nicely around her first check and then came hard against Brody Prince, who tried to take her out with a shoulder, only to have Sarah duck under and away.

  She was heading into the Stars’ end, with Travis dropping back and Dmitri breaking. They knew to spread out. They knew to come in on a triangle rather than three across.

  Sarah circled back, letting Dmitri head behind the net and watching Travis glide across into the slot, waiting for the pass.

  “With you!” a voice shouted from behind Travis.

  It was Nish. He must have cut across ice to the far side – way out of position – going deep along the side of the Stars’ end, between Travis and the boards.

  Travis knew that if he blew his chance and the Stars were able to cause a turnover, the Owls were in trouble. Nish couldn’t have been more out of position if he’d been sitting in the stands.

  Sarah’s pass to Travis came quickly, sliding perfectly across, just out of reach of the last defender.

  Travis raised his stick to one-time the shot.

  The Hollywood goalie went down, anticipating, blocking all the angles.

  Travis swung, deliberately missing, and then let the puck continue between his legs.

  He heard groans from the crowd.

  Then he heard Nish’s stick strike hard against the puck, followed by the ping of hard rubber on metal.

  Followed by the biggest cheer of his life.

  Nish had scored on the Lemieux-Kariya play! It had worked!

  Owls 6, Stars 5.

  Gold medal to the Screech Owls of Tamarack.

  24

  Travis had tears in his eyes.

  He was wearing a gold medal around his neck. He was captain of the winning team and his flag was being raised to the ceiling of the E Center while “O Canada” played over the sound system – just as it had for Team Canada in 2002 in this very same hockey rink.

  The crowd had gone wild over Nish’s goal. The media – many of them still lingering to cover the Prince family’s reunion – had poured onto the ice and soon circled Nish and Brody, who had been named co-winners of the MVP award for the tournament.

  The Owls had cheered as loudly for Brody as the Stars had cheered for Nish.

  How things can change, Travis thought to himself. The one player the Screech Owls had hated was now one they admired the most. Sarah and Sam even had their pictures taken with him, and then the Hollywood captain skated over to Travis to ask if the two captains could have their pictures taken together.

  Travis was delighted. But he was also puzzled.

  There was still one unanswered mystery. And no one had made an effort to solve it.

  What had Nish buried at centre ice?

  The Canadian team did one victory lap of the E Center to a standing ovation by the crowd, and then, as they were gathering up their gloves, Travis found himself standing next to his old friend.

  “You didn’t dig it up!” Travis had to shout over the din.

  “Dig what up?”

  “The loonie – or whatever you buried at centre ice!”

  “There was nothing to dig up,” Nish answered.

  “Fahd said you put something there.”

  “I did, but there’s nothing to dig up.”

  Travis stood on his skates, blinking. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “I put ice at centre ice,” Nish said, his big face reddening. “I melted down
an icicle from the stables and I sprinkled it there for Ebenezer.”

  Nish shrugged and abruptly turned away, unable to say anything more.

  And for the second time that wonderful night, Travis had tears in his eyes.

  THE END

  Attack on the Tower of London

  1

  Travis Lindsay had no sense of passing out.

  Had it been presented to him as an option – “Look, kid, you can either keep staring at this grisly sight or you can be unconscious” – he would have happily volunteered to black out and crash to the floor in front of the rest of the Screech Owls.

  But he’d had no choice whatsoever in the matter.

  One moment Travis was staring at the naked, bloodied body swinging from the rope, its desperately clawing hands tied behind its back, and the next moment he was sinking into oblivion, darkness drawing over him like a welcome comforter.

  He could take no more of the Chamber of Horrors.

  Travis was not aware of Muck and Mr. Dillinger grabbing him and carting him off to the first-aid room. He did not see his so-called best friend, Nish, snickering so hard it seemed his big tomato of a face was going to explode. He did not know that Sarah Cuthbertson, too, had staggered, and would have gone down had Sam and Fahd not grabbed her.

  And he certainly did not hear the tall woman in the uniform say, “It happens all the time,” her red lipstick splash of a smile seeming horribly out of place in a room where a beaten and naked man was swinging from a rope, where bloodied heads were on display beside the terrible contraption that had lopped them off, and where, to the sounds of agonizing screams and creaking machinery, a heavy wheel was crushing the very life out of a nearly naked young man with long flowing hair.

  Travis had felt fine as the tour guide for Madame Tussaud’s waxworks museum took the team through the rooms filled with look-alike figures of movie and rock stars – he’d borrowed Data’s digital camera to take a shot of Nish with Nish’s great hero, Elvis Presley – and he’d been fine as Muck lingered over all those boring figures from history like Napoleon and Horatio Nelson and more kings and queens than you’d find in a pocketful of British change.

  And he had even been okay, if barely, when they first entered the Chamber of Horrors and heard the spine-tingling, gut-wrenching sound effects rising from the corner where the young man was being tortured on the wheel.

  He’d survived a look at Vlad the Impaler, the first figure on display as the Screech Owls had crowded into the eerily lit room. He’d listened patiently as the tour guide calmly explained how old Vlad used to get his kicks out of tossing women and children onto sharpened stakes and laughing as they slowly died. He’d looked, not once, but twice, at the longhaired, moustachioed ruler as he stood by a bloodied stake holding up a severed head like it was some trophy bass he’d just caught.

  He’d survived a peek at Joan of Arc, the pretty teenager burning at the stake, and all the various kindly-looking British murderers who used to do nasty things, such as drown their wives in acid baths or brick them into their kitchen walls.

  He had even coped with the realistic sight of Madame Tussaud herself as she stood in a Paris graveyard, a lantern raised in one hand as she searched for the severed head of Marie Antoinette so she could capture the French queen’s surprised look just as the guillotine fell.

  But Guy Fawkes he could not handle.

  In all his life, in all his many nightmares, Travis had never seen a sight so horrific. The body of Fawkes hung from a rope – his naked skin slashed by knives and whips, his hands tied behind his back – as his dark-bearded executioner regarded him with stern delight.

  The sight had been bad enough, but the tour guide’s description of Fawkes – spoken in a lovely English accent that might as well have been talking about floral arrangements – had been the final straw.

  “You come from Canada, where you celebrate something called Hallowe’en, I believe …”

  “Just had it!” shouted Fahd.

  “Yes, well, in this country we have Guy Fawkes Day, which will happen later this week. It’s sort of like your Hallowe’en. There will be bonfires all over Britain on the night of November 5, all in memory of this gentleman you see here swinging from the rope …”

  “No way!” said Derek.

  “Guy Fawkes was hanged in the year 1606 – that’s about four hundred years ago – after he and several other men were caught plotting to blow up the Houses of Parliament. He was, many say, the world’s first terrorist. And to set an example to anyone else who might be thinking of committing such an act, he was given the most awful punishment imaginable. The hanging you see here was the gentle part of it …”

  “Sick!” said Sam.

  “Very sick,” the guide said, her lipstick smiling. “Guy Fawkes was sentenced by the British courts to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. He would be hanged until almost dead – this is what we have on display here at Madame Tussaud’s – and then, while he was still barely alive, they would take a sword and disembowel him, burning his entrails before his face as he was forced to watch.

  “The last sensation he would ever feel would be the executioner’s broadaxe coming down upon his neck.”

  “I’M GONNA HURL!” Nish shouted out, laughing like a maniac.

  The tour guide held up a long finger, with a perfectly manicured nail at its tip.

  “That would not be the end of it,” she said, still smiling primly. “Even after his head was cut off, the punishment would continue. His body would be quartered by tying the arms and legs to four workhorses and driving them in four different directions until it split into pieces – that’s what they mean by ‘hanged, drawn, and quartered’ – and the quarters would be dragged through the streets of London and displayed on stakes in prominent places, most often London Bridge. The dignified public of London would stroll across the bridge to see the heads of the latest criminals that had been executed. Often they would be left there until the birds had picked the skulls clean.”

  “Gruesome,” said Simon.

  “Sweet,” said Nish.

  “Sickening,” said Sam.

  “Awesome,” said Nish.

  “I want outta here,” said Lars.

  “I wanna be here!” said Nish. “My very own display – ‘Wayne Nishikawa – the World’s Most Twisted and Evil Hockey Player’!”

  2

  The Screech Owls had come to London the morning after Hallowe’en. They had left their homes in Tamarack, where the trees were bare and a light snow had fallen during the afternoon, and had flown through the night to London to find themselves landing on an exquisitely sunny day in England, the rolling fields below them seemingly as brown and soft as rabbit fur as the plane approached Gatwick.

  It had been a quiet flight, apart from the initial ruckus caused by Nish as he tried to board with three carry-on bags: his pack-sack, holding mostly comic books and a portable CD player, and two bags of trick-or-treat loot. But after his Hallowe’en candy had been stashed with the rest of the luggage, much to his regret, the flight had been smooth and uneventful, the team members sound asleep along four rows and Muck quietly reading a massive history of London in a seat next to Mr. Dillinger.

  It was one of the farthest “road” trips the Owls had ever undertaken, but already the least expensive. It would probably cost more, Travis thought to himself, to drive the hour or so over to the next town and play a league match than it was to fly to London for a week of competition.

  The trip had been Data’s idea. He had read about a special promotion in The Hockey News. A new, British-based sports-equipment company, International In-Line, was seeking to break into the North American market with their in-line skates, and to gain some publicity they were holding a contest open to peewee-level teams. The winners would travel to London to play in an exhibition tournament against the Wembley Young Lions, a British team of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds that was said to be the best in-line team in all of Europe.

  Data said the Screech
Owls should enter.

  “We don’t even play in-line!” argued Dmitri Yakushev, Travis’s linemate.

  “What’s the difference?” said Simon Milliken. “We play hockey – it’s the same game whether you’re on blades or wheels, as far as I can see.

  “I’m on wheels,” Data joked, spinning his wheelchair, “and I still consider myself a hockey player.”

  Slowly, the Owls warmed to Data’s suggestion. Travis, Dmitri, and Sarah, the Owls’ first line, often used in-line skates in the summer, particularly when there was roadwork being done around Tamarack and they could find smooth new pavement to skate on. Dmitri had proved to be as fast on wheels as he was on skates. A few times, the Owls had even put together in-line shinny matches down at the tennis courts when no one else was using them. But they had never played as a team, and certainly never against a real in-line team.

  They had never even heard of such a thing.

  Fahd Noorizadeh agreed with Data. “We’re a hockey team. We all have in-line skates. So now we’re also an in-line team, okay?”

  To enter, each team had to state, in fifty words or less, why they should be chosen. The manufacturer would choose the best dozen entries, and the winner would then be selected by a draw.

  It had been Fahd’s idea to stuff the ballot box. There was no limit to the number of times you could enter, so the Owls, several of whom subscribed to the hockey magazine, cut out their entry forms and Derek got his father, Mr. Dillinger, to photocopy hundreds more down at his office for them to fill out.

  Travis never expected anything to come of it all. He had dutifully filled out several forms, always stumbling over the fifty-word reason. “The Screech Owls are a fun team of good athletes, and we would all enjoy a trip to London …,” he wrote, and “The Screech Owls are one of the best peewee hockey teams in North America, and we would like to prove ourselves internationally ….” It wasn’t great, but he’d done as asked and mailed them off.

  A month later the Owls were notified that the team was a finalist in the competition.