“I said, are you ready?”
The mouth shook back and forth.
Wally patted her mucus-covered cheek. “I don’t blame you.”
If the tentacle monster died, Breeth’s spirit could possess some nearby organic matter. But she would still feel every second of its death.
Breeth’s tentacles gave a sudden jerk, and Wally grabbed hold to steady himself. The Merry Skeletons were hauling back the sling, stretching the underwear bands tight to wrap around a stake in the ground.
Wally’s heart started to pound. “Do you remember what you need to do up there?” he asked Breeth. “Grab on to the hospital, squeeze through the portcullis, and then pretend to attack Moore. Garnett will come in and defeat you in battle. Gently, of course.”
The mouth nodded.
“After you get back,” Wally continued, “we’ll have Pyra mix up some food that will make the tentacle monster go to sleep and never wake up again. It’ll be peaceful. Then we’ll demand that Moore tell us who gave him that Quill and we can find your killer. Okay?”
A curt nod.
“Vun minute!” Ludwig called.
Bat-winged Greyridge had nearly reached the center of the moon’s light. The skeletons strained, pulling the sling as taut as possible.
Garnett stepped to the base of Breeth’s tentacles, then turned to salute the Merry Skeletons. “Wish me luck, my boneheaded companions!”
“Good luck!”
“Glued duck!”
“Lewd guck!”
The sling stretched as far as it would go, Tuck began securing it to the stake.
Wally gave Breeth’s side one last pat. “You’ve got this. I believe in you.”
Breeth gurgled miserably.
“That’s not how you tie a knot!” Gus said, trying to wrench the sling from Tuck’s bony fingers.
“It’s not not how you tie a knot!” Tuck said, pulling it back.
Gus huffed. “That is not the knot that will not fail us. Now stop being naughty and give it here!”
The skeletons played tug-of-war with the rope, yanking it back and forth until … it slipped out of their bony fingers.
A scream tore out of Wally’s lungs as he and Breeth were launched into the atmosphere.
“Sorry about that!” Tuck cried.
“Hold on, Cooper!” Garnett screamed.
Wally clung tight to Breeth’s tentacles, trying desperately not to fall as they soared into the sky. The wind flattened his ears and sent his tears streaming. Two panicked breaths later, Wally and Breeth reached the height of their ascent. Then they started to fall back toward the ground, hundreds of feet below. Wally tried to scream again, but his breath was stolen by the fall. He closed his eyes, his stomach lifting and pressing into his throat.
But then a new gust of wind relieved the falling sensation. Ludwig’s paper cranes flapped below, carrying him and Breeth in dips and rises toward the flapping hospital.
“Get ready to grab on!” Wally called to Breeth.
Her tentacles hit the stones with a slimy SMACK! and Wally fell hurtling toward the ground. But then he jerked to a stop, his hat sailing off his head. Breeth lifted him by his ankle and set him in a nook between two of her tentacles.
Wally hugged the hospital’s side, trying to catch his breath. “We’re alive. I can’t believe it. We’re alive.”
It was only then that Wally felt the weight of the situation. He was supposed to stay on the ground while Garnett, the hero was launched into the sky. But the Gentleman Thief was a thousand feet below while Wally and Breeth were all alone atop the monster Greyridge.
They needed to get indoors before they were blown right off the hospital. He studied Greyridge’s outer wall, trying to avoid looking at the ground, a thousand feet below.
“There’s the entrance!” he called over the screaming wind and the giant, flapping wings. “Breeth, can you get me over there?”
Breeth clung to the building like an octopus to the side of a boat. One of her tentacles hesitantly inched like a caterpillar across the wall. Wally sidestepped across it, cheek pressed tight to the stone.
The portcullis was locked. And he still didn’t have his lock-pick set.
Flustered, he searched his surroundings. The dizzying height made his vision blur. Where could he find a lock pick this high up in the sky? And then he saw it, flapping and glistening in the moonlight.
“Breeth,” he said. “Can you snap off one of those thinner bat claws for me?”
Breeth slowly peeled one of her tentacles off the tower. The moment the wing flapped downward, she lashed out and caught hold of its claw. But the claw didn’t come loose. The wing struggled to flap upward, and the building careened to the side, bringing them parallel with the ground. Wally squeezed tight to Breeth’s tentacle, feet dangling, eyes shut, trying not to lose his stomach.
As the hospital started to fall, Breeth’s tentacle gave a twist and a jerk, and the tip of the claw snapped off. Monster Greyridge shrieked in pain, but then its wing unfurled, flapping again, and the building righted itself.
Wally opened his eyes, took the claw, and picked the lock. Breeth hauled open the portcullis, and they both slipped inside. The Mirror hospital was cold and howling. Black flames flickered in the marble hallways, which echoed with giggles and murmurs from the cells.
Someone clapped in the darkness. “I see you’ve managed to make it all the way up here.” Alfred Moore stepped into the light, grinning. “But let’s see how long you survive.” The color drained from his face when he saw Breeth and her tentacles. He started to back away. “You stay away from me! Stay away!”
Trembling, he scribbled something on his notepad with the Quill, and the rug beneath Wally’s feet started to bend and contort, like a giant tongue. The portcullis began chomping up and down like rusted teeth as the tongue rug tilted Wally toward it.
“Whoa, whoa!” Wally said, trying to keep his balance.
The second before the portcullis teeth chewed him to bits, Breeth lashed out and pulled him to safety. Wally stared, wide-eyed, at the entrance. Monster Greyridge had tried to chew him up and spit him out.
“Very well,” Moore mumbled. He sounded calm, but he kept darting fearful glances at Breeth. “I have more tricks up my sleeve. This hospital is filled with terrible things that have ignited my imagination!”
He ran down the hallway, writing as he went. The corridors lengthened and twisted like bamboo shoots, turning into a tangled mass of catacombs.
Wally hesitated. He considered waiting in the lobby for an hour until the skeletons could launch Garnett up there. But with the hospital twisting itself into mazes, they might lose the Mirror author forever. Kingsport would fall into Daymare and Breeth would never find her killer.
Wally cracked his knuckles. “Let’s go get him.”
Breeth picked Wally up and chased after the author, using her many tentacles to suction the wide walls and propel them forward at great speed. The deeper they ventured, the more impossible the mental hospital became. Staircases flipped. Passageways steepened. Halls split in half, then fourths, then eighths, then sixteenths.
But they managed to catch up with Moore, who was winded. Breeth set Wally down.
“We just need that Quill,” he told the author. “And for you to tell me who gave it to you. Then I’ll call off the tentacle monster.”
Moore’s face twisted into a scowl. “I refuse to be beaten by my own creation.”
He scribbled something new, and one of the cells filled with a sound like fluttering moths.
“What is that?” Wally whispered, not really wanting to know.
The cell burst open, and a flock of straitjackets flooded the hallway. Wally was able to dodge the first few, but then one of the jackets wrapped around his chest, binding his arms and squeezing so tight he couldn’t breathe. The rest of the jackets wrapped around several of Breeth’s tentacles.
Fortunately, the moment Wally’s jacket had squeezed, he had instinctively flexed his mus
cles—just as he had with Graham’s binds. Wally loosened his muscles now, making the jacket momentarily fall slack, and Breeth used her free tentacles to tear it off him. Wally regained his breath and then checked on Breeth. The straitjackets were designed for human arms and so looked like mere boxing tape on the ends of her tentacles.
“They’re not squeezing too hard, are they?” he asked her.
Breeth shook her mouth no.
“That’s goo—”
He was interrupted by the scratch of Moore’s Quill. The sound quickly faded under what sounded like electric wasps. Another cell burst open, and a swarm of drills flew out toward Wally and Breeth, threatening to fill them with holes.
“Breeth!” Wally shouted. “Use the jackets!”
Breeth’s jacket-wrapped tentacles seized the drills by their business ends. The drills smoked and jittered, until they shorted out, falling in dead thunks to the floor.
Wally rested his forehead against Breeth’s side. “Boy, it feels good to have a tentacle monster on your team.”
“Yes, I imagine it does,” Moore said, backing down the hallway. He glanced left and right at the cells, thinking. Then he saw something and wickedness crept back across his face. “Ah well. Nothing good lasts.”
He wrote again, and the hallway filled with a blinding, frantic light.
Wally knew what this new terror was before it formed. Moore was bringing to life the experimental treatments the doctor had threatened against Graham: the straitjackets, the drills. There was only one experimental treatment left … shock treatment.
The crackling thing formed in the center of the hallway. It was a goblin. Made of electricity.
Moore cackled. “Good luck stopping this one!” He disappeared down the hallway.
The moment the electric goblin spotted them with its wild, bending eyes, it struck like lightning. Breeth shrieked in pain. Her tentacles jerked and flopped as she started to sizzle. The hallway filled with the stench of cooked fish.
Wally watched, helpless. If he touched her, he’d be electrocuted too.
“Breeth! I don’t know what to do!”
Just when he thought the tentacle monster was done for, an explosive splintering sound echoed from somewhere far down the corridor.
“Ha ha!” a heroic voice cried.
“Garnett?” Wally screamed, his voice echoing.
“Cooper?” the Gentleman Thief’s voice echoed back.
“Garnett, help!”
How would Arthur find them? The halls had divided more times than Wally could count.
But somehow, moments later …
“Oho!” Garnett cried. “Hello there, massive tentacle butt! How do I get around you?”
“Don’t touch her!” Wally cried. “She’s being electrocuted!”
“Got it!” Garnett said.
Through the jittering tentacles, Wally watched as Garnett used a board from a busted cell door to pry Breeth off the floor. Wally found another board and did the same on his side, lifting tentacles. The moment Breeth was off the ground, the flow of electricity ceased, and the electric goblin snuffed out.
Breeth stopped sizzling, and Wally threw his arms around her. Garnett squeezed himself between the tentacles and the wall.
“Arthur!” Wally said. “I mean, Garnett! How did you know to do that?”
“From one of Garnett’s—I mean my past adventures!” the Gentleman Thief said. “The Merry Rogues saved my life from the Lightning Queen by making sure the electricity couldn’t be grounded!”
Wally smiled, then gave the tangled hallway a quizzical look. “How did you get here so fast? And how did you find us? We must’ve made a hundred turns down these halls!”
“Gus, Tuck, and Mim reversed the sling!” Garnett said. “The moment the hospital circled to the opposite side of the horizon, they shot me up here! As for how I traversed this impossible hospital”—he patted Breeth’s side—“this beautiful creature left a perfectly legible slime trail!”
Wally was so relieved he almost forgave Gus and Tuck for launching him preemptively. Breeth stroked Garnett’s shoulder, thanking him for saving her.
Garnett smiled at the dead drills and straitjackets. “It seems you’ve managed to defeat the hospital’s monsters! Without weapons nonetheless!” He bowed, and then drew his sword. “Onward!”
They traveled deeper into the hospital and arrived at a marble staircase.
“The doctor’s office is up there,” Wally said. “That must be where Moore is hiding.”
They started to climb. And climb. And climb. The staircase wouldn’t end. A draft turned Wally around. Behind them, the stairs were unmaking themselves, stone by stone, floating around the outside of the hospital and building more stairs ahead. If they went back, they would fall a thousand feet. If they kept climbing, they would continue into the sky forever.
“How are we supposed to defeat Moore if we can’t even reach him?” Wally asked.
Before Garnett could respond, something came wheezing and rattling down the stairs.
“Pardon me a moment,” Garnett said, lifting his sword.
Graham’s zombie doctor came loping toward them, holding bottles of smoking pills. Garnett stifled a yawn and then slew the doctor with a single stroke.
“Back to the problem at hand,” he said, holstering his sword. “Breeth? Can you prevent these stones from flying to the top?”
She tried, but the stones nearly dragged her out into the sky with them.
“Curse it!” Garnett said. “I was certain that would work!”
Wally squeezed his temples. They couldn’t think the way they did back in Kingsport. The buildings here had rules all their own. A giant wing whooshed past a barred window, and Wally had an idea.
“What if we were to tickle the building?”
“You’re mad!” Garnett said.
“I’m not,” Wally said. “You—er, Arthur personifies buildings all the time back home. He says Manors think and dresses weep with jealousy.” He pointed out the window. “If this hospital has wings, then it has to have, y’know armpits or something. My idea isn’t any weirder than—”
“You misunderstand,” Garnett said, laying a hand on Wally’s shoulder. “Mad was meant to be a compliment.”
“Oh,” Wally said, blushing.
“Madam?” Garnett said to Breeth, gesturing out the window. “Could you lend us one of your long appendages and tickle this flapping monstrosity?”
Breeth slipped one of her tentacles through the bars and wiggled it under the bat wing. The entire hospital began to jitter with uncontrollable shrieking giggles.
“Its defenses are down!” Garnett said.
They sprinted the rest of the way up the staircase, finally arriving at the doctor’s office. They paused and stared at the door. The floor swayed with the beat of bat wings.
For once, Garnett seemed at a loss for words.
“What happened to your humorous quips?” Wally asked Garnett.
“I’m scared, Wally,” Garnett said, instinctively flexing the hand that had been stabbed on Arthur.
Wally nodded. “Glad I’m not the only one.”
Garnett drew his sword. “You should stay here.”
“No,” Wally said. “I don’t want you to have to go alone. Besides,” he said, patting Breeth, “we’ve got a tentacle monster on our side.”
Garnett smiled. “And each other.” He grabbed the door handle and looked back at Breeth. “Ready, tentacled madam?”
Breeth nodded.
Garnett threw open the door.
* * *
Breeth squeezed through the doorway with a great squelch, flinging out her tentacles to seize the author. Moore didn’t so much as flinch. He scribbled a giant shaker of cayenne pepper into the air. It sprinkled over Breeth, and she shrieked in pain, retreating into the corner.
Moore chuckled from behind the doctor’s desk. “I was briefly put out by seeing my own nightmare. But then I realized … I know its every weakness!”
If Moore could defeat Breeth that easily, then their plan to rescue him wouldn’t work. Arthur peeked through the doorway as the Mirror author continued to scribble. Terrors shimmered to life in the doctor’s office. Snails made of sewage. Hulking were-gators. Floating eyes with tears of flame. Impossible monsters Garnett had faced in his adventures … only much more horrifying.
“You fend off the monsters with your sword,” Wally whispered to Garnett. “While he’s distracted, I’m going to grab the Quill.”
“Wally, no, you’ll die.”
“It’s better than losing Kingsport,” Wally said. “Besides, Graham is the one who compromised the Manor. I’m responsible for his actions.” He gazed deep into Garnett’s eyes, as if seeing Arthur beneath the surface. “And I don’t have a family to return to.”
Arthur stared back. “What’s it like? Always taking the fall for everyone else’s mistakes?”
Before Wally could answer, Arthur drew Garnett’s dagger and brought it plunging down, pinning Wally’s pant cuff to the floor.
“Arthur, no!” Wally said, trying to pull the dagger free. “What are you doing?”
“The right thing for once,” Arthur said.
Before Wally could argue, Arthur stepped with Garnett’s feet into the doctor’s office. Moore looked up from his writing.
“Do you know me, sir?” Garnett asked.
Moore squinted. Then he shook his head.
“The Great Bicycle Heist?” Garnett said, stepping into the candlelight. “The Night of the Swamp Singers? The Man-Eating Daisies of Doom?”
The madness in the author’s face melted, giving way to shock. He drew a line through his writing and the forming monsters snuffed out like extinguished flames.
Moore stared at the Gentleman Thief, jaw trembling. “G-Garnett? I thought you were gone. I—I couldn’t think of any more stories. That witch stole them from me.”
“On the contrary, sir,” Garnett said, doffing his hat. “Here I am. In the flesh.”
Moore remained skittish, Quill hovering over the page.
Thieves of Weirdwood Page 24