Benjamin Franklinstein Meets the Fright Brothers

by Matthew McElligott

  By the time he reached his house, he was in a full panic. He fumbled frantically with the keys and unlocked the door to Ben’s downstairs apartment. Dashing to the back room, he pulled open the bookcase and clambered down the ladder into the secret basement laboratory.

  He hit the floor hard, and his bloody knee buckled beneath him. Pain shot up his leg, and Victor, to his own surprise, screamed a swearword—the same word that sent Denny Burkus to the principal’s office at least once a week.

  “Hello? Dr. Franklin? Is that you?”

  The electrophone—it was working!

  Victor stumbled across the lab, sidestepping Franklin’s Leyden jars on his way to the giant machine in the corner. He unrolled the electrophone’s speaking tube and held the copper cone to his mouth.

  “Hello!” Victor sputtered. “Who is this?”

  He waited but heard no response.

  “Hello?” Victor repeated. “Ben—I mean Dr. Franklin is on his way. Please don’t hang up!”

  “Who are you?” the voice cautiously inquired.

  Victor couldn’t tell whether the voice belonged to a man or a woman. The sound crackled and warbled, like an old record being played underwater.

  “My name is Victor Godwin. I live in the house upstairs. I’ve been helping Dr. Franklin repair the electrophone. I promise, he’ll be here any second.”

  “How do I know you’re not . . . one of them?”

  “One of them? One of who?”

  “Don’t even think of trying to trace this signal. I’ll send you halfway around the world before I let you find me.”

  “Look,” said Victor, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you can trust me. Ben told me all about the Modern Order of Prometheus. You’re the reason he woke up, aren’t you? So he could help you with a great emergency?”

  “What do you know about the Great Emergency?”

  So there really was one!

  “I only know that Ben was supposed to sleep until the Prometheans needed him to help with something really big. He thinks he was revived by accident, but I knew there was more to it.”

  “Are you acting as his Custodian?”

  “In a way. I’ve been helping him out.”

  “Where is he now? Is he in danger? Are you keeping him hidden?”

  “He’s, uh, on his way home from the bike parade.”

  “The parade! You let him be seen at the parade? Is he in disguise?”

  “Sort of. He’s dressed as Benjamin Franklin. It works better than you might think here in Philadelphia.”

  “You’ve put everything at risk! I dare not talk any longer. They may be listening.”

  “Wait!” said Victor. “Don’t hang up! What’s wrong with the parade? And what’s the Great Emergency?”

  “Study the news footage from the parade. I will make contact again when it is safe. And when I do, I expect to speak directly with Dr. Franklin.”

  The electrophone went dead.

  Ben arrived several minutes later, flushed and out of breath.

  “Victor, I am sorry, but that bicycle! I don’t think it likes me.” He stepped off the ladder and glanced across the room at the electrophone. “Were we too late?”

  “I made it just in time, but I’m afraid it’s bad news.” He filled Franklin in.

  For the first time since Victor met him, the old man seemed genuinely shaken.

  “I have been a fool, Victor. Worse, I have been derelict in my duties as a Promethean. I should have worked harder to contact the Order. Had it not been for your persistence—”

  “It was a one-in-a-million shot,” said Victor. “The important thing now is figuring out what to do about it. What do you think the voice meant when it asked if I was ‘one of them’?”

  “I do not know. But we must try to call back.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Victor said. “The voice seemed afraid, as if speaking on the electrophone for too long was dangerous. It mentioned that someone else might be listening in.”

  “Then perhaps we, too, should stop trying for now,” agreed Franklin. “The longer we broadcast, the more we may be putting ourselves in danger.”

  “That’s a good point,” said Victor. “I hope we haven’t already—”

  He stopped suddenly and tipped his head to the side. “Do you hear something?”

  Someone was upstairs in Franklin’s apartment.

  “Did you lock the door?” whispered Victor.

  Franklin winced. “I’m afraid I didn’t even close it.”

  “And the bookcase? Is it still open?”

  “Yes.”

  The footsteps grew louder.

  “How could they find us so fast?” whispered Victor.

  “Who?”

  “Them! The ones listening in.”

  “Quick, the lights!”

  Victor hit the switch, leaving only the dim blue glow of the Leyden jars to light the room. He and Franklin crouched behind the workbench, peering over the top. Across the room, a silhouette of one foot, then another, stepped down the ladder.

  Victor tensed as he tried to form a plan. Should he throw something? Create a distraction? His heart pounded in his chest.

  The shadowy form looked oddly familiar. It paused at the bottom rung.

  “Hey, guys, are you down here? I brought back your biopti-thing. Whooooah . . . this place is cool!”

  For the second time that day, Victor said a very bad word.

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  CHAPTER FIVE

  A Secret Revealed

  “Hold on a minute. Let’s go through this one more time,” Scott said. “You’re telling me that Mr. Benjamin isn’t really Frank Benjamin—he’s Benjamin Franklin? The Benjamin Franklin?”

  “Yes,” Victor explained. “And he was kept alive inside this Leyden casket for over two hundred years.”

  “My crowning achievement!” declared Franklin. “After the glass armonica, of course.”

  Scott peered at the Leyden casket, a long metal and glass coffin that sat on a pedestal in the center of the laboratory. The look of awe on his face transformed into a wide grin. Above the casket hung a giant copper orb, suspended from the ceiling by heavy chains. Scott reached up to touch it.

  THE GLASS ARMONICA

  “Stop!” Victor yelled. “If you make contact, you’ll fry your watch and your cell phone. The charging sphere works like a battery that collects and stores electrical energy. It will suck the power out of anything.”

  “Anything?” Scott asked.

  “Anything. You can’t just run around touching things, Scott. This laboratory is very dangerous.”

  “It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen!”

  “Splendid!” Franklin said, clapping his hands together. “I knew a true scientist such as yourself would appreciate this remarkable situation.”

  “But you can’t tell anyone,” Victor added. “There are still unanswered questions about why Ben was awakened.”

  “Victor is right,” Franklin said. “As much as I would like to proclaim to the world who I truly am, I dare not. Revealing my identity might compromise our ability to respond to the Great Emergency.”

  “What’s the Great Emergency?”

  Franklin sighed. “Unfortunately, we do not yet know.”

  “But the voice on the other end of the electrophone might,” Victor said. “It told us to check out news coverage of the bicycle parade.”

  “It’s probably online already,” Scott said. “My dad’s station, WURP, is usually pretty quick about getting their stuff up on the Web.”

  Franklin and Scott peered over Victor’s shoulders at the glowing computer screen.

  “There it is,” Scott said, pointing at the headline BICYCLE PARADE: RED, WHITE, AND AWESOME.

  Victor clicked on the link and waited for the page to load. “What could this possibly have to do with the Modern Order of Prometheus?”

  “That remains to be seen,” Franklin said. “Let us keep a sharp eye.”

&nb
sp; A new page popped onto the screen, and Victor scanned it for any pertinent information. “It’s just an article about the parade. Nothing too unusual.”

  WURP WEB SITE

  Scott excitedly pointed at the screen. “What about that? That stuff about giant monster bats?”

  “Monster bats?” Victor scoffed. “There’s no such thing. Look here: it says that both the Federal Aviation Administration and a prominent small-mammal zoologist have studied the issue. These so-called bats are just illusions caused by swamp gas. Case closed.”

  “Swamp gas?” Scott said. “Do we even have swamps in Philadelphia?”

  Victor rolled his eyes. “Please don’t ask silly questions.”

  “Excuse me, boys,” Franklin interrupted. “Can your computing machine allow us to see the lady mayor’s press conference?”

  Victor clicked on a picture of Mayor Milstead standing behind the microphone, and a video began to run. They watched the clip from beginning to end, listening carefully for clues.

  “It’s the same speech we heard when we were there,” Victor said. “Nothing different.”

  Franklin rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’ve noticed two unusual things. First, as you remember, they spoke unusually slowly and deliberately. Why?”

  “We already talked about that,” Victor said. “They were nervous. I’d have a hard time speaking in front of a big crowd.”

  “Very well,” Franklin said. “But I also found it peculiar that the gentleman from the Federal Aviation Administration said precisely the same thing as the man from the zoo. Word for word. You did notice this, didn’t you, Victor?”

  “Well, of—of course,” Victor stammered. “How could anyone miss that?”

  “Wouldn’t you say that is a bit unusual?”

  “You know what’s unusual?” Scott said. “My grandma.”

  “I don’t know if them using the same words is so strange,” Victor said, ignoring Scott’s comment. “They probably wrote the statement together.”

  “Hey,” Scott said, “I just remembered something I noticed at the parade. Play it again.”

  Victor clicked on the picture.

  “There!” Scott said. “I knew there was something weird about them. Zoom in on their eyes.”

  Victor moved the image of the mayor’s head to the center of the screen and zoomed in. “Okay, that is weird.”

  “Her eyes,” Franklin said. “Are they glowing?”

  “It does look like it. Just a bit.”

  “Check out the other guys up there,” Scott said.

  Victor shifted the image around from Dr. Kane the zoologist to Mr. Girard of the FAA. Everyone’s eyes had a faint red glow, except for the two men from the bike shop, who wore sunglasses.

  “It could be a problem with the video encoding,” Victor said.

  “There’s more,” Franklin said gravely. “Look at the mayor’s neck.”

  “Bite marks!” Scott gasped. “She was bitten. By the giant monster bats!”

  Victor shook his head. “They’re just moles, or birthmarks or—”

  “Dr. Kane and Mr. Girard have them as well,” Franklin said. “Does it seem likely that all three would have these marks in exactly the same places?”

  “But the two men from the bike shop don’t have anything on their necks.”

  “They wouldn’t,” Scott insisted.

  “What do you mean?” Victor said.

  “It all makes sense. Giant monster bats? People with bite marks on their necks talking all weird? Those guys from the bike shop made those bite marks. They aren’t really bicycle repairmen at all—they’re vampires! ”

  THAT NIGHT . . .

  WURP investigative reporter Katie Kaitlyn reviewed her notes as she crossed the park on her way back to the station. There was no question about it. These giant bats were the real deal, and someone was trying to cover it up. But why?

  She had seen one with her own eyes.

  Two weeks ago, while walking to her car, she had glanced up. The ominous winged creature had been blacker than the night sky and so big that for one brief second, it blotted out the moon.

  Swamp gas? Please. This story had conspiracy written all over it.

  The latest interview was the icing on the cake. A highranking source in the police department had confirmed her suspicions.

  Katie Kaitlyn wondered how far the cover-up went. The city council? The mayor?

  She sat down on a bench beneath a streetlamp and phoned her producer. His voice mail picked up. No matter—she’d fill him in as soon as she got back to the station. If she hurried, the story would make the eleven o’clock news. It might even win her an award.

  She stood up and put her phone and notes back into her purse.

  The streetlamp flickered and then went out. She heard footsteps approaching, clacking on the pavement. Clutching her purse close, she rushed toward the corner.

  As she hurried, the footsteps grew distant, but Katie Kaitlyn wasn’t one to let her guard down. She began running faster. At her car door, she fumbled with her keys.

  Fwoooooooooooooosh!

  Something swooped in and bit her neck.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Franklinstein Unleashed!

  Over the next few days, Franklin and Victor worked on improving the equipment in the basement laboratory. All the while, they monitored the electrophone for another message from the mysterious voice.

  “This waiting,” Franklin said, “it’s driving me mad!”

  “I understand,” Victor said, “but the voice said you need to be here if we get another call. How’s the temperature on the Hyperion coil?”

  Franklin examined a gauge. “It is still running a trifle hot. Perhaps we should add more cooling agent.”

  On the floor in the corner, Scott was tinkering with his grandfather’s broken radio. “What’s a Hyperion coil?”

  “My latest invention,” Franklin explained. “Whenever lightning strikes the house, the energy is stored inside the charging sphere.” He pointed to the large copper orb suspended from the ceiling.

  Scott walked over for a closer look.

  “That generates a tremendous amount of heat,” Victor continued. “When winter comes, we’ll use some of it to heat the house. For now, the Hyperion coil fires the heat deep into the ground, where it dissipates in the cool earth. It’s kind of like a super-powerful radiator.”

  “So that’s why it’s so hot in here,” Scott said. “But I thought it was bad for lightning to hit your house.”

  Scott had endless questions, and there was plenty to tell: Franklin’s invention of the life-sustaining harmonic fluid, his low-power zombie state, his overcharged rampaging monster state, the battery belt that kept him in balance, and the real story behind the volcanic disaster at last month’s Mandatory Science Fair.

  THE FRANKLIN HARMONIC COIL

  “So all that stuff at the fair was because of you, Ben?” Scott asked.

  “Well,” Franklin said, “me, combined with your delectable potato battery exhibit.”

  “Yeah, those were awesome,” Scott said, hefting his antique radio up on top of the Leyden casket. “Remember when you—”

  “You really shouldn’t put your radio there,” Victor interrupted. “The casket’s open.”

  “It’s just for a second. I can’t quite reach the thingamajig when it’s on the floor.” Scott turned, and bumped the radio with his elbow. It plunged into the harmonic fluid and sank to the bottom of the casket. The blue liquid bubbled and crackled.

  “Don’t worry,” Scott said. “I’ll get it.”

  “Young Master Weaver, perhaps you should step away from the casket,” Franklin urged him. “It is not safe.”

  “Don’t worry,” Scott said, plunging his hands into the harmonic fluid. “The radio wasn’t working anyway.”

  “Scott!” Victor yelled. “Don’t!”

  Scott fished around inside the casket. His hair stood straight up, and his eyes glowed turquoise. “It tingles!” He fla
shed an electric smile as he lifted out the soaking radio.

  “Are you okay?” Victor asked.

  “Sure,” Scott said. “Maybe it even fixed the radio.”

  He flicked on the power switch and a horrible grating static blared from the speaker. The lights in the basement surged briefly.

  “Nope, it’s still broken,” Scott said, over the static.

  “Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” Franklin growled.

  Victor and Scott looked up from the radio. Their faces went pale.

  “What’s going on?” Scott said, slowly backing up.

  “I don’t know. It’s like he’s supercharged.”

  “But isn’t that battery belt you invented supposed to keep him normal?”

  Franklin lurched forward, his arms outstretched. He collided with a table, spilling beakers of cobalt and liquid franklinogen all over the floor. Victor tried to race out of the way but slipped, fell, and struck his head on a Leyden jar.

  Scott clutched his radio and cowered behind the electrophone.

  “Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggghhhh!”

  With one hand, Franklin flipped the electrophone on its side, smashing gauges and crushing pipes. He charged at Scott, madness in his eyes.

  Victor blinked hard, trying to shake off the pain of his fall.

  Franklin staggered closer to Scott, his clawlike fingers trembling with rage.

  Wait a minute! Victor thought. “Scott! Turn off the radio!”

  “But it’s broken!”

  “TURN IT OFF!”

  Scott flicked the switch, and the radio fell silent. Franklin froze in place.

  The old man looked startled. He scanned the room. “Good heavens, such a mess! What happened? Gentlemen, are you all right?”

  The boys stared at Franklin.

  “You don’t remember, do you?” Victor asked.

  “Of course I remember,” Franklin said. “Young Master Weaver pulled his machine from the Leyden casket, he turned it on, and . . . and . . . what did happen?”