Here Comes Mr. Trouble

by Battles, Brett

  Uncle Carl nodded, then moved to the middle top drawer.

  “My brother is attempting to open drawer number two,” Uncle Colin said.

  But drawer number two didn’t budge. Neither did the last one in the row, drawer number three.

  They moved down to the middle row, drawers number four through six. This time Uncle Colin tried again.

  “The handle of drawer number four feels similar to previous handles,” he said.

  Uncle Carl groaned. “Just pull it.”

  Uncle Colin tensed, ready to fight with the handle again, but this time the drawer slid out easily.

  Everyone seemed to breathe in and lean forward at the same moment, but Uncle Carl was able to get his face over the drawer before anyone else could.

  “I can’t see,” Uncle Colin complained, trying unsuccessfully to shove his brother to the side.

  “Carl!” Mother Trouble said.

  But her brother didn’t move. He simply stared down into the open drawer.

  “Well?” Mr. Trouble asked after several seconds. “Is it empty like the ones in the other boxes?”

  Uncle Carl turned his face so he was looking back at the group.

  “No. It’s not.”

  25

  This time Uncle Carl didn’t resist as his brother pushed him aside and looked into the drawer.

  “He’s right,” Uncle Colin said. He looked at his brother. “The tongs.”

  As Uncle Carl scrambled over to the other workbench, Mother Trouble took a look at the open drawer herself.

  “Well, that is odd, isn’t it?” she said.

  Eric got off the box, and both he and Mr. Trouble tried to squeeze in so they could get a turn. But while Mr. Trouble was able to take a look, Eric couldn’t get anyone to make room for him.

  “Hey, what about me?” he said.

  No one even turned to look at him. It was as if they had forgotten he was even there.

  “It must be some kind of joke,” Mr. Trouble said. “They must have known we were going to get the box and just wanted to throw us off.”

  Eric tapped Mr. Trouble on the arm. “I want to see, too.”

  “I don’t know, Ronan,” Uncle Colin said. “You may end up being right, but I think it’s safer if we don’t make any guesses until we’ve had time to examine everything.”

  Eric groaned. “Come on. This is so unfair.”

  Uncle Carl rushed over with a foot-long pair of tweezers in his hand, which he reluctantly gave to his brother.

  “Give me some room,” Uncle Colin said.

  As soon as Mr. Trouble was out of the way, he inserted the open end of the tongs into the drawer. After moving it around for a moment, he said, “Got you.”

  Slowly, he raised the tongs. As they cleared the top, everyone crowded around again and once more Eric couldn’t see.

  “What is it?” he asked, unable to hide his frustration.

  Mr. Trouble said, “Give me that.”

  “No, no, no, no, no,” Uncle Colin protested.

  “It’ll be fine,” Mr. Trouble told him.

  “Well, uh, wait, wait. Careful!”

  Mr. Trouble turned away from the workbench, the tongs in his hands now. He lowered them so Eric could see what was between the two pincers.

  A key. A dirty, old house key with a short piece of red string tied through the loop on top.

  Eric stared at it, thinking for a moment he must be seeing things. “That’s…mine.”

  Mr. Trouble cocked his head to the side, his eyebrows scrunching together in a hairy V.

  “I’m sorry. What did you say?” Uncle Colin asked.

  “He said it was his,” Mr. Trouble answered for Eric.

  Uncle Carl shook his head. “He must be mistaken.”

  “No, I’m not,” Eric said. “That’s my house key. I lost it over a week ago.”

  He grabbed the key from the tongs before anyone could stop him.

  There were shouts of surprise, and Uncle Colin even took a step back and covered his head with his arm as if he expected the key to explode.

  When nothing happened everyone relaxed a little.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Uncle Carl warned. “It could just be a fake and not yours at all. Maybe even a trap.”

  Eric examined the key. There was the scratch it had gotten his first week back at school, and the double knot in the cord he’d tied himself a couple of days before the key had gone missing.

  “How did they get this?”

  “You’re sure it’s yours?” Mr. Trouble asked.

  “One hundred percent.”

  The four adults exchanged looks, then Mother Trouble said, “Perhaps we should look in the other drawers.”

  In drawer five was the old Swedish coin Eric’s uncle had given him two years ago. Drawer six contained the medal Eric had won a year earlier when he was still on swim team. Drawer seven: a five-dollar bill. It could have been Eric’s. He was missing some money. Drawer eight: a big white eraser identical to the one that, until a week or so ago, had been in Eric’s backpack.

  And in drawer nine was a piece of paper.

  As soon as Uncle Colin unfolded it, there could no longer be any doubts about Eric’s claims to the other items. Wrapped inside was a copy of Eric’s latest school photo. And the paper itself was the actual citation Eric had been given the previous summer when he’d helped the unconscious camper to shore.

  “This certainly puts a new spin on things, doesn’t it?” Mother Trouble said.

  Eric listened with only half an ear as Mr. Trouble, Mother Trouble and Uncle Colin tossed out and rejected several possibilities. His attention, instead, was on the pile of his personal items sitting on the bench.

  He hadn’t actually lost anything.

  He’d been robbed.

  Until that point, all the talk about the Maker had kind of spooked him, but his fear now disappeared and he was mad.

  “Excuse me,” Uncle Carl said.

  Eric looked up. “Huh?”

  “I need to get by.”

  Eric moved to the side so Uncle Carl could slide past.

  “Excuse me, again,” Uncle Carl said only seconds later as he came back.

  Moving out of the way once more, Eric noticed that Uncle Carl was carrying several tools. Curious, Eric climbed back onto the box so he could see.

  Uncle Carl set most of the tools on the workbench, but held onto a thick, foot-long screwdriver. He positioned the blade directly in front of the space between drawer number one and the frame.

  Uncle Colin, who had been speaking, stopped in mid-sentence. “What are you doing?” he asked his brother.

  “If we can’t pull it open, maybe we can pry it,” Uncle Carl explained. “After finding Eric’s stuff in the other drawers, I think it might be important.”

  Though Uncle Colin looked unconvinced, Mr. Trouble nodded immediately. “Excellent idea.”

  Not waiting for further approval, Uncle Carl carefully slipped the screwdriver into the tiny gap. The blade went in about a quarter of an inch then stopped. He started moving it up and down.

  “You’re going to damage it,” Uncle Colin warned.

  Uncle Carl stopped for a second and glared at his brother.

  “Right, right,” Uncle Colin said, backing down. “Opening is more important.”

  Still, Uncle Colin cringed each time Uncle Carl moved the screwdriver.

  Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. And then–

  Creak.

  The front of the drawer moved a fraction of an inch.

  Up and down. Up and down.

  Crack!

  While the drawer itself remained in the box, the front fell onto the workbench.

  “Watch out! Watch out!” Uncle Carl yelled.

  Both he and Uncle Colin dove and ducked like they were going to be hit by some invisible object. They looked up, then left, then right, then up again. Over. Down. Up. Around. It was like they were watching two separate, out-of-control roller coasters. Then
all of a sudden both swiveled their heads in the same direction and stopped, staring at Eric.

  “Don’t move,” Uncle Colin ordered.

  Eric froze. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “They’re hovering right in front of you.”

  “What’s hovering right in front of me? I don’t see anything.”

  “Me, neither,” said Mr. Trouble.

  The uncles’ attention was firmly fixed on Eric, or, more specifically, the area directly in front of Eric.

  Uncle Colin reached over to the bench, picked up the tongs, then took a step forward. “Don’t…do…anything…to…scare…them.”

  “Scare what?” Eric asked, completely confused and not just a little scared. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Colin,” Mother Trouble said. “You’re making him nervous. Now what in the world is going on?”

  Uncle Colin ignored her as he slowly extended the tongs, stopping them at a point a foot in front of Eric’s face. He relaxed his grip so that the two ends opened wide, then eased it another inch forward.

  “Am I over him enough?” he asked.

  “Over what?” Eric said.

  “Yes. You’re perfect,” Uncle Carl told him. “Grab it!”

  Uncle Colin slammed closed the ends of the tongs. They hit each other with a dull clang, catching nothing but air.

  “Wait a minute.” Uncle Colin looked at the tongs, surprised. “I had him.”

  Whatever it was Uncle Colin thought he’d had, Eric was too freaked out to stand still any longer. He threw his arms out and started waving them wildly.

  “Get away from me!” he yelled. “Get away! Get away!”

  “Careful!” Uncle Carl and Uncle Colin shouted in unison.

  Both of the uncles started looking all over the place again. Suddenly they stopped, their gazes falling to the floor in one quick movement.

  After only a couple of seconds, Uncle Colin said in a near whisper, “They’re gone.”

  Mr. Trouble grabbed his uncles by the back of their lab coats and turned them so they faced him. “What’s wrong with you two? There was nothing there.”

  Uncle Carl looked at his nephew as if he were insane. “Nothing there? There were hundreds of them.”

  “They were everywhere,” Uncle Colin agreed.

  “What ‘they’? We didn’t see anything.”

  Shaking his head, Uncle Colin said, “That doesn’t make any…” Then he paused and raised a hand to his face. “Carl, the goggles.”

  His brother reached up and touched his own goggles. Uncle Colin removed his first, and then Uncle Carl did the same.

  “They worked,” Uncle Carl said, astonished.

  “Yes. They did, they did!” Uncle Colin replied.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Mr. Trouble asked.

  Uncle Colin gave him an excited pat on the arm. “The goggles!” He held his out to his nephew. “These are the ones we designed so we’d be able to see the Makers. Remember, your father, he said they worked before he died. He was right. He was right.”

  “Are you saying there were Makers in that box?” Mr. Trouble asked.

  “Well, I can’t say for sure,” Uncle Colin said, “but we saw something. Like hundreds of bright little discs. They flew all around, and when they started to slow down, they headed toward Eric, hovering all around him. When he moved his arms around, they went all crazy for a moment, then fell to the ground together and disappeared.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s a hundred percent correct,” Uncle Carl said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yes, they dropped to the ground after the boy swung his arms through the air, but didn’t you see? They were already starting to wobble before that. And a few weren’t hovering as high.”

  Uncle Colin looked like he was thinking for a moment. “I believe you’re right. They did seem to have lost some energy by then. We should write this down.”

  “Yes. Yes, we should,” Uncle Carl agreed.

  The both started to turn away.

  Mr. Trouble grabbed them again. “Hold on. We’ve got more important things to deal with than writing down your observations.”

  “But we don’t want to forget,” Uncle Colin said.

  “You won’t.” Mr. Trouble pointed at the video camera. “You’ve got everything recorded, including this conversation.”

  “Oh, right.” Uncle Colin smiled. “We do, don’t we?”

  “That was a good idea, the camera,” Uncle Carl said.

  “It was, indeed,” his brother agreed.

  “Focus!” Mr. Trouble yelled. He waited until everyone was looking at him before he went on. “I think we should probably assume there are more of those…things in the other two unopened drawers. I suggest we bag up the box and wait until we can open them in a more controlled environment back at home base.”

  “I agree,” his mother said.

  “Brilliant, Ronan,” Uncle Colin said. “That would definitely be for the best.” He turned to his brother. “Plastic wrap?”

  Uncle Carl nodded, then moved to a storage cabinet a few feet away while Uncle Colin started removing the clamp that was holding the Maker’s box in place.

  Just then, the door to the outside opened and Maggie and the Trouble sisters entered.

  “What are you guys doing?” Keira asked.

  “We got the box open,” Uncle Colin said, pausing momentarily in his work. “You should have seen it. Amazing!”

  “You…you opened it without us?” Fiona was not pleased. “Why didn’t you wait?”

  Maggie, who was looking much better than she had, asked, “What’s he talking about?”

  “The box we found this afternoon,” Eric said. “Remember? The Maker’s box?”

  Maggie stared at him, stepped around Fiona, and looked over at the workbench.

  When she saw the box, she said, “You opened it?” Though her voice was probably the calmest Eric had ever heard it, he got the sense that she was nearly as upset as Fiona.

  “I’m sorry,” Uncle Colin said, “but science waits for no one.”

  Maggie led the other girls over to the workbench. She reached out, her fingers hovering over the frame of the box, but she didn’t touch it.

  “You wouldn’t believe what was in there,” Eric said. “Remember the key I lost last week?” He held up the key. “It was in one of the drawers. One of my swim medals was there, too. And a coin my uncle gave me. And an eraser.”

  Maggie moved her hand over the opening for drawer number one. “You shouldn’t have opened it,” she said, still calm. “It wasn’t yours.”

  “It is now,” Uncle Carl told her as he set a large roll of plastic wrap next to the box. “Now step back.”

  Everyone but Uncle Carl and Uncle Colin moved away from the Maker’s box. The two uncles then started wrapping it in plastic.

  “They shouldn’t do that,” Maggie whispered.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Eric asked. “Your headache?”

  She looked at him. “I feel fine. They just shouldn’t have taken that. It’s not theirs.”

  Eric shrugged, and figured Maggie must still be upset about waking up in the car and not in her bed.

  Bwamp. Bwamp-bwamp. Bwamp. Bwamp-bwamp.

  Eric looked over his shoulder. “What’s that?”

  “An alarm,” Mr. Trouble said.

  He and Uncle Colin rushed to a monitor at the far end of the workbench where the noise seemed to be coming from. Eric and the others followed.

  “Well?” Mr. Trouble asked.

  Uncle Colin pushed a couple of buttons on an instrument mounted to the wall, then looked up at the big monitor. There was some distortion and Eric got the distinct impression the image was rewinding. When it started playing forward again, the picture looked the same as before: a quiet field turned green by the night-vision camera.

  Suddenly, the shape of a man entered the frame from the right and walked quickly across the monitor, disappearing
four seconds later on the left.