by Matthew Ward
Ruby smiled slyly. “I think I might know just the thing.”
• • •
Arthur and Ruby scrambled across the earthen floor of the tunnel, each of them carrying one end of a nine-foot-tall giant clown mannequin.
“How did I get stuck with the head end, by the way?” Arthur grumbled. “I can already feel the nightmares forming.”
“Exposure therapy,” said Ruby. “It’s good for you. And you won’t think it’s so creepy when our wooden friend here singlehandedly saves our lives.”
“We’ll see about that.”
The children began to notice a bluish glow on the cavern walls ahead.
“We’re nearly there,” said Ruby. “Come on—let’s hurry!”
In five minutes’ time, the two found themselves peering up at the same gaping hole that had provided their unexpected entrance several hours earlier.
“Dear, sweet sunlight,” said Ruby, placing her right hand on her chest, “after facing the possibility of losing you forever, I now realize what an ungrateful recipient of your warmth and beauty I have been. It is my solemn promise never again to take you for granted as long as I live. This, I do swear.”
“Me too. Let’s get out of here,” said Arthur.
The pair planted the clown’s massive feet on the tunnel floor directly beneath the opening and hoisted the towering mannequin into position. When it was fully upright, the top of its head scraped against the ceiling, holding it shakily in place.
“You go first,” insisted Arthur. “I’ll hold its legs.”
“Hmm. I can’t quite tell whether you’re being chivalrous—or if you’re just trying to put off climbing up the clown for as long as possible.”
“I really don’t think a lady should question the motives of a gentleman,” Arthur replied. “But yeah, it’s probably a bit of both.”
“Your honesty is noble indeed, good sir. Now, if you would be so kind as to give me a leg up onto this evil clown here.”
Arthur smirked. “There’s a phrase you don’t hear every day.”
He steadied the makeshift ladder with one hand and cupped the other against his thigh. Ruby clutched the back of the clown’s stained, ruffled shirt, then planted her shoe in Arthur’s improvised foothold and pulled herself up.
“There you go,” said Arthur. “If I didn’t know otherwise, I might mistake you for a professional clown climber.”
Ruby scaled higher up the mannequin, while Arthur worked to counterbalance her weight and keep the whole thing from toppling sideways. Soon, Ruby had reached the clown’s shoulders and wrapped her arms securely around its neck. She was now only a few short moves away from the surface.
Just then, a strange shuffling sound caught Arthur’s attention.
“What was that?” he said.
“What was what?” said Ruby.
“I thought I heard something.”
Arthur looked around him but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Ruby climbed another foot higher.
There was another noise. Arthur looked down a second time. Scrunching up his eyes, he peered into the shadows on the far side of the sunlight—and started in terror.
There in the darkness, hundreds of gleaming eyes peered back at him.
It was not, of course, the eyes themselves that made Arthur’s hairs stand on end—but rather, the owners of those eyes. As his vision further adjusted to the darkness, he began to discern an army of scaly-skinned creatures creeping steadily toward him from the northern leg of the tunnel.
It took little time for Arthur to recognize the new invaders: a monitor lizard in a tattered cocktail dress, an iguana with a crooked bow tie, a Mexican beaded lizard in a mud-covered mariachi jacket. They were the remaining residents of the Lizard Lounge—and they had come for revenge.
“Ruby!” Arthur whispered frantically. “We’re not alone!”
“What?”
From Ruby’s elevated position, the chirping of birds overhead drowned out the growing chorus of hisses and grunts below.
“Just hold still!” insisted Arthur. “Whatever you do, don’t move!”
Ruby, however, was not one to follow an order without knowing the reason behind it. She shinnied her way down a bit and lowered her head, craning her neck to see whatever it was that had so agitated her partner.
The moment she ducked her head beneath the roof of the cave, she had her answer. A large lizard shot toward her face, skittering upside down across the cave ceiling.
The frilled dragon snarled and extruded the broad collar of skin and scales that encircled its neck, giving itself—in combination with its Elizabethan costume—the appearance of a demonic William Shakespeare: a startling sight, no doubt, in any situation.
Ruby screamed and jerked backward. The top-heavy mannequin teetered.
Arthur pushed against the clown’s legs with all his might, determined not to let his friend fall. But in his effort to force it upright, he overcompensated slightly.
The next thing he knew, Ruby was falling forward, past the one annoyed reptile on the ceiling toward the horde of furious lizards on the floor. Arthur grasped frantically at the clown’s trousers, but it was no use; he could not stop the momentum of the giant figure.
Clown and girl crashed to the ground, where Ruby found herself face-to-face with a massive crocodile monitor. For a moment, the creature’s broad, rounded face seemed simply to smile at her. That is, until it opened its mouth.
With a harsh hissing sound, the air around Ruby’s head rushed into the black hole created by the monster’s gaping gullet.
“Ruby!” Arthur cried. He stood terrified and helpless four yards behind her. He searched desperately for something heavy enough to throw at the creature—but found at his feet only loose clumps of earth.
He fumbled through his pockets as a last resort, and his fingers landed on a small rectangular object. It was his magical domino.
Arthur closed his hand around the tile and drew it from his pocket. If ever he needed its help, this was the time. He gave the domino one final rub for luck, then took aim and flung it with all his might.
As the tiny missile sped fast and true toward the enormous lizard, Arthur’s mind flashed with notions of a modern-day David and Goliath—he, the young and unlikely hero with deadly aim; it, the cruel and unconquerable giant with an uncommonly tender forehead.
Any biblical notions he may have had, however, were completely dashed a moment later, when the creature caught the domino in its mouth—and bit it in two.
“Ahh!” cried Arthur.
He hurled himself forward, as his best hope at helping Ruby crumbled before his eyes. He had no choice now but to take on the pack of lizards with his bare hands.
Luckily for him, his first plan had not failed half as badly as he’d imagined.
As the crocodile monitor continued chomping the small ebony block to bits, the other lizards quickly turned on the creature, each demanding a share of whatever delicious treat it was he’d been given.
By the time Arthur had reached Ruby, the creatures were so preoccupied fighting over the imaginary morsel, he was able to help her to her feet and shepherd her a safe distance away before any of them had even noticed.
The confusion, however, did not last long. Before the children could make a full retreat, the lizards managed to forgive their ungenerous brother—and shifted their anger to the two-legged intruders who had not bothered to bring enough treats for everyone.
Arthur stepped in front of Ruby as the creatures crept closer. “I suppose this is what your brothers meant by beefing up security.”
He reached down and grasped the arm of the fallen mannequin. The lizards hissed with indignation from its far side.
“Those two really take their jobs seriously, don’t they?” said Ruby. “So what do we do now?”
Using the mannequin as
an inhuman shield between himself and the lizards, Arthur began prying its arm away from its body. “You use the mannequin to climb out—then get to the garage and fetch a ladder. I’ll—” Arthur snapped the clown’s arm from the shoulder socket and began sliding it out through the end of its frilly sleeve. “I’ll try to fend them off for as long as I can.” He held up the newly severed arm like a blunt, five-fingered sword, then clenched his teeth and arched his brow.
Ruby looked concerned. “I don’t mean to doubt your skills with a wooden mannequin limb or anything, but don’t you think you’re a bit outnumbered?”
“It’s our only chance of getting out of here.”
Arthur jabbed the makeshift weapon at one of the bolder, larger lizards. The lizard snapped at him menacingly.
“But what if you get bitten?” asked Ruby.
“I’m pretty sure only one of them is poisonous—that one in the sombrero there; I’ll try to stay clear of him.”
“Well . . . all right,” Ruby sighed as she took hold of the mannequin. “But I’m not happy about it.”
Arthur brandished the severed wooden arm before him, forcing the lizards backward. “Back you beasts!” he commanded. He turned to Ruby with a grin and added, “I think I’ve got this.”
His grin faded a moment later.
As the front line of larger lizards retreated, a swarm of smaller lizards poured into the resultant gap.
Ruby gasped—and promptly dropped the mannequin.
The new reptiles were each roughly two feet in length with blunt snouts and lumpy black skin covered in sickening scarlet blotches. They looked like the unholy offspring of a black widow spider and a king cobra. On their heads, they wore tall, cylindrical caps, giving them the appearance of monstrous Mexican soldiers. They made the other lizards look almost cuddly by comparison.
“Arthur—we need a new strategy!” Ruby cried. “You can’t afford to be bitten by one of these.”
“What—what are they?”
“Rita’s newest pets. When the Komodo died, she decided to fill its spot with the World’s Largest Private Collection of Venomous Lizards. They’re Gila monsters.”
“Uahh. Exactly how venomous are they?”
“One bite is excruciating; a few bites are enough to cause respiratory failure—though no one’s ever really been bitten more than twice. Seeing as we’re surrounded by hundreds of them, though . . . well, you’ve always wanted to break a record, haven’t you?”
Arthur retreated with Ruby toward the cavern wall behind them, waving the wooden arm as the army of Gila monsters advanced.
“If dying was all I had to do,” he grumbled, “I might be up for it; it’s the excruciating part that gets me.”
“Would it comfort you to know that—according to The Big Book of Lizard Breeding—the Gila monster is a typically sluggish, idle creature, unlikely to attack without provocation?”
“I don’t think these ones have read that book. They look pretty energetic to me.”
Indeed, the creatures before him were lively and volatile—snapping at one another and clawing over each other’s backs. There was no doubt they were entirely capable of inflicting lethal harm. Of course, this is true of any mob; while one bad-tempered individual may prove largely innocuous, a mob of bad-tempered individuals is sure to turn savage every time.
Unfortunately, any such insights into the shared psychology of lizards and men did nothing to ease the children’s minds toward the gruesome end that awaited them.
Soon, the Gila monsters were climbing over the clown mannequin barricade that served as the children’s last line of defense.
“Stay behind me,” Arthur called to Ruby, holding out his arm-shaped saber.
He lunged at the first of the creatures to cross the barrier and flung it backward—only to watch two others take its place.
Arthur struck again and again, but the creatures continued to spill forward, pressing the children further and further against the wall.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” Ruby said gravely.
“No,” said Arthur. “Really, it’s the other way around. If I hadn’t betrayed your trust, you’d never have had to sneak onto the grounds this morning—and we’d never have fallen into this tunnel.”
“Oh, right,” said Ruby. “I guess it is your fault.”
“What?”
“Just joking.”
Ruby kicked a clump of earth in the face of an oncoming Gila monster and backed as closely as she could against the cavern wall. They were completely surrounded.
“Look, Arthur,” she said, “it doesn’t matter whose fault it is we’re here. The fact is, given the choice between never knowing you and dying a horrific death by Gila monsters, I’d choose the Gila monsters every time. Before you fell out of that tree on the Crosley estate, my life was hardly worth a pile of dragon droppings—and, well, now that we’re about to literally become a pile of dragon droppings—I think you should know how I feel. . . . Arthur, I—”
“Ruby, look out!”
Arthur dove across his partner. Lashing out with the mannequin limb, he struck the Gila monster that had crept up behind Ruby and was preparing to bite into her ankle.
The creature flew several feet backward and landed in the heart of the horde, where it was welcomed back into the ranks by the snapping and snarling of its nearby comrades.
Arthur, however, now lay prone and helpless in the dirt, gazing directly into the dead black eyes of his demon attackers.
The monsters rushed forward.
Arthur had no time to stand. The stench of toxic lizard breath seared into his senses.
“Arthur!” cried Ruby.
His vision filled with black scales and snapping snouts. It was hardly the image he would have chosen to be the last thing he ever saw in this world.
Then suddenly, the image changed.
From out of nowhere, a small mechanized contraption appeared before him. With its geared treads and pivoting turret, it somewhat resembled a miniature tank.
The Gila monsters shifted their attention away from Arthur and began hissing and snapping at the new metallic invader. One of the creatures climbed onto the machine’s front face and clamped its jaws around the red nozzle that protruded from the turret. No sooner had it done this, however, than the creature was blasted to the back wall by a jet of white foam.
Arthur watched in astonishment as the machine tilted its foam cannon downward and proceeded to blast the line of lizards directly in front of his face. As soon as this cluster had been flooded with foam and expelled backward, the machine’s turret pivoted left and continued its assault on the rest of the legion.
Seeing his chance, Arthur staggered to his feet. Just then, a tangle of rope struck him on the shoulder.
“Arthur—” a voice called overhead, “grab on!”
Arthur looked up in confusion—and saw three familiar figures peering down at him from the upper edge of the opening. While his mother stood panicked with her hands over her mouth, his brother Simon frantically manipulated the controls of a long-antennaed remote control device. Beside Simon, the Whipples’ butler, Wilhelm, stood grasping the top end of a rope ladder.
Arthur shot Ruby a look, and the two leapt at the ladder, clutching onto it with every limb.
A moment later, they had left the lizards behind and were ascending through the upper rim of the hole, out of the shadows into the warmth of the afternoon sun.
When they’d reached the surface, the pair collapsed to the ground with relief and exhaustion.
Wilhelm pulled Arthur up by the shoulders and said, “Are you hurt, Master Arthur?”
“No—I think I’m all right,” Arthur panted, checking himself for any undetected mortal wounds. “Thanks to you two.”
“I am sorry vee did not get here sooner; no boy should have to be nearly eaten by liza
rds so many times in so few days.”
“Yeah,” Simon agreed. “You’ve certainly had more than your fair share of life-threatening lizard attacks lately.” He pressed a button on his remote control and a tiny grappling hook shot up from the pit. He caught the hook, reeled in the attached cable, and hoisted up the tank-like contraption that had saved Arthur’s life. “It’s a good thing my DSX Machine was operational. After we discovered the pit and Wilhelm went to get the ladder, I ran to my workshop and grabbed it—just in case. I built it as a ‘Detached Salvager and Extinguisher’ to put out rocket-kart fires and retrieve parts from unstable wreckage—but apparently it works as a reptile repeller as well.”
“Whatever it is,” said Arthur, “it has just earned itself free cleaning and polishing for life. If it weren’t for you and your machine, we’d still be at the bottom of that pit.”
At this, Arthur’s mother ran forward and hugged him as he had never been hugged before.
“Oh, Arthur, thank God you’re safe!” she cried. “We were so worried. What an awful mother I was, not to notice you weren’t with us this morning. My dear, sweet boy, can you ever forgive me?”
Arthur closed his eyes and breathed a contented sigh.
“I forgive you.”
He could have remained in the warmth of his mother’s embrace many minutes longer—but he was soon struck by a puzzling thought.
“Hang on,” he blurted, “what are you all doing here? What about the championships?”
“When your father discovered you were missing,” explained Mrs. Whipple, “he walked off the tiltyard in the middle of his duel. We all split into search parties to look for you.”
“He did . . . ?” Arthur’s mind swirled with equal parts confusion, joy, and terror. “What about your events?”
“We’ve missed them.”
“Oh no! We’ve got to get back before you miss any more! Where are the others?”
“Ivy and the octuplets stayed with Mrs. Waite to search the championship grounds in case you somehow turned up there. Your father has gone with Henry and Cordelia to check the Goldwin estate. We can fetch them with the car on our way back to the city.”