“He’s playing Hide-and-Go-Seek!” Theo decided. “I bet he went down to the basement!”
“Without his cane?”
It was on the bed. Max went over to have a look, but nothing about it seemed to provide any clues. Underneath it was a stack of tabloid newspapers, the kind announcing in gigantic letters that aliens walked among us. In fact, the headline on the top newspaper said exactly that. It was about the supposed escape outside of Las Vegas. The one under that said Sasquatch walked among us.
“His research?” Max guessed.
“Maybe,” Maddie said. “Where’s his camera?”
The kids looked around the room. There was no sign of it.
No one knew what to think.
They searched all the places where Grandpa Joe might have left them a note: on their bedroom doors, on the puffy couch by the coffee table in the living room, on the front door — but there was nothing.
“Olly, olly, oxen free!” Theo called down the basement steps.
But no one came out of hiding.
“Let’s eat breakfast and talk about this,” Maddie suggested. She always thought best on a full stomach.
In the kitchen, Max and Maddie poured themselves cereal, while Theo made a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich.
The three kids ate while staring at one another, confused and concerned.
“Maybe he went out to get some more footage,” Max finally suggested. “Sasquatches get up early.”
“That would explain not leaving a note,” said Maddie.
“But not the cane.”
“Right,” Maddie agreed. “Good point, Theo.”
“Maybe he took the video to be authenticated,” Max tried.
“But it was our footage,” said Maggie.
“But it was his camera,” said Max.
“Still.”
“The cane?”
“Theo’s right,” Maddie admitted. “Maybe we should call Dad and tell him what’s going on. I mean, what if something’s happened to him? It’s Dad’s father we’re talking about here. And now we have no babysitter! Shall we vote?”
Max put up his foot.
Maddie put up her fist.
Theo put up his finger.
“It’s decided, then,” Maddie said. She’d left her cell phone in her room, so she went and got the landline phone on the counter. It’s voicemail light was blinking, which surprised her. “There’s a message from Dad,” she said, alarmed at the numbers blinking on the readout. “From yesterday, at two in the morning!” She clicked “play,” and put the phone to her ear.
Both Max and Theo, who’d gone back to eating, stopped mid-chew when they saw her face turn white.
Maddie put the phone down and said, “Get the laptop. We’re in big-time trouble.”
Max got the laptop.
“Search ‘Mattigan Sasquatch,’” Maddie said. Her voice was shaking.
“What’s going on?” Max asked.
“I sense a Teachable Moment coming on,” Theo moaned. “A bad one.”
“No, really,” Max pressed. “What’s going on?”
“We are idiots,” Maddie groaned. “That’s what’s going on. Dad’s on his way home.”
Links popped up to videos. Max clicked the first one.
A window opened and a video started playing. Grandpa Joe was on it, smiling in a shockingly evil way. He didn’t look the least bit sick, either. In fact, he looked much younger and full of energy. Next to him was a woman they all recognized at once.
All three Mattigans felt like throwing up.
“My name is Madam Blavatsky,” said the disgraced psychic. “I once had big career helping many thousands of people to feel better about their miserable lives by predicting better futures for them. Only until Marcus Mattigan ruined my life by telling whole world I am fraud! Well, my husband Ivan and I are here to tell you: Marcus Mattigan is fraud! While he goes on the TV claiming monsters are fake, he has his own children searching for Sasquatch! Look at this!”
On came the kids’ footage. First were shots of the giant footprints, then Maddie’s voice was heard, saying, “We seem to have discovered a whole bunch of Sasquatch footprints. They’re enormous!”
“That’s not all I said!” Maddie protested. “I said I couldn’t believe — !”
The Blavastkys came back on. “I made enormous footprints!” Ivan cackled, showing off a pole with a giant fake foot attached to it. He laughed like a madman.
“Humph on yumpf!” Theo shouted.
Then there was the shaky footage Maddie shot running through the woods. The screen froze on a good look at the back of the furry head.
“Fake Bigfoot head on stick!” Madam Blavatsky roared, coming back on and showing the other end of her husband’s pole, which had the head on it. “Revenge is tasting sweet!”
Max and Maddie groaned. The head didn’t look real at all.
The kids’ footage played again, and then Max was saying, “Dad is going to be so happy! We’re gonna catch a Sasquatch for him, and that’s gonna disprove the biggest lie in his life — !”
“They took a part out!” Max raged. “THAT’S NOT FAIR!”
The video ended with both of the Blavatskys laughing like lunatics.
The kids saw that it had over one hundred thousand hits already.
Max closed the laptop.
The Mattigan children went silent, painfully, sickly silent — until Maddie finally said, “Dad’s producer cancelled the investigation he was doing in West Virginia.”
She was on the verge of tears.
“They’re temporarily suspending his show,” she continued, barely holding it together. “Dad’s entire career is based on people trusting him — and now there are thousands of angry comments on that video, calling him a phony! Because of us! He said he was taking the first flight home. He could be here any time now. He’s very upset.”
Then she lost it.
When Max and Theo saw their sister crying, they lost it, too. Maddie Mattigan never cried.
And then the front door slammed open.
CHAPTER NINE
ANOTHER UNEXPECTED GUEST
The kids rushed out of the kitchen — afraid, but anxious to explain everything to their father. But they stopped dead the moment they reached the front door. Once again, it wasn’t their father who’d come to see them.
Standing in the doorway, holding a heap of peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwich bits, was an eight-foot-tall, 500-pound Sasquatch.
“Crikey,” Maddie gulped.
Bigfoot stuffed a handful of sandwich bits in his mouth and watched the Mattigans.
“I don’t know what to do,” Maddie whispered out of the side of her mouth.
The Mattigans couldn’t move.
Max and Theo were too scared even to talk. Chasing a Sasquatch that was running away from you was one thing — especially when it was only a head on a stick. Standing face-to-face with a real one in your house: well, that was quite another.
The Sasquatch kept stuffing sandwich bits into his mouth until they were gone. Then he held out two massive, hairy paws.
No one knew what to do.
“Uh, Maddie?” Max said. “Look.”
Maddie saw. Through the open door, a taxi could be seen coming up the road toward their house.
“Double crikey,” Maddie gulped. “This is not good. This is very much not good.”
The Sasquatch sniffed the air. Then he lumbered right past the petrified kids into the living room.
Bigfoot approached the window bench that Theo had been hiding in before their lives were turned upside down. He sniffed it. Then he put his paws on it. After a brief investigation, he figured out how to lift it open.
Then he grunted, with something that had to be pleasure.
“You left some wedges in there,” Max whispered to Theo.
The Sasquatch was leaning deep into the seat now, trying to fish the wedges out.
“Maddie,” Theo hissed. Their father was walking up to the hous
e.
That’s when Maddie did the craziest thing she’d ever done in her life. She rushed over and shoved Big-foot as hard as she could. He gave out a grunt of surprise, and then fell into the seat. Maddie slammed the lid down over him.
There then came the sound of more grunting — grunting and growling — but it did not come from the Sasquatch. It came from another creature, the one who at that moment stormed through the front door: Marcus Mattigan.
CHAPTER TEN
THE DEAL
“I am so disappointed in you kids!” Marcus snarled. “We need to talk. Right now.” He looked completely wiped out. His clothes were a mess, and his crazy hair was a total disaster.
“We have something to tell you!” Maddie said, rushing to her dad.
“Everyone sit down, right now.”
“But — !”
“I don’t want to hear it. I will do the talking. Now. Everyone, hit the puffy couch.”
The Mattigan kids sat in a row.
Marcus sat across from them. He took a deep breath, but before he could get a word out, Theo blurted: “He lied to us! He told us he was your dad! You never showed us pictures of what he looks like! Not even one!”
Marcus’s mouth opened, but he seemed unable to say whatever he was planning to say. His shoulders sagged.
No one said anything for a while.
Finally, Max went and got the monster journal from his room and handed it to his father. Marcus flipped through it, looking teary.
“He said that if you could see that one of the monsters was real — just one,” Maddie explained, “then you’d understand why he left you.”
“And you’d forgive him,” Max added.
“Because everyone needs their parents,” Theo put in.
Marcus didn’t look mad anymore. He looked sad, though — very, very sad.
“Did the real Grandpa Joe really leave you to search for monsters?” Maddie asked.
Marcus nodded.
“How did Ivan Blavatsky know?”
“That’s what he does,” Marcus explained. “He researches his victims, so he has information that makes them trust him. It’s an old, but very effective trick. I talked about my father once in an interview. It’s on the Internet for anyone to find.”
“Teachable Moment,” the kids said for him.
Marcus smiled, but it was the kind of smile that made them all want to cry.
“We have something to tell you, Dad,” Maddie tried again. She looked over at the bench. She was pretty sure she heard the sounds of chewing coming from inside it.
Marcus didn’t seem to hear it, though. He didn’t seem to have heard her, either. “The truth is,” he said softly, almost as if he was talking to himself, “I don’t think I’d want to know if any of these monsters were real.”
“Dad,” Maddie tried a third time, “we have something to — wait, what?”
“And not just because I’m Marcus Mattigan, professional skeptic. Truth is: I’d rather believe my father was crazy than that these monsters were more important to him than I was. I’m sorry, kids — my dad took me aside when I was ten years old and told me that there were rare and mysterious creatures in the universe — universe, he said, which shows you just how crazy he was. He said if he didn’t find them and look after them, nobody would. He said he was sorry to leave me, but it was his calling in life, and he knew I would be well cared for. And I certainly was, by my mother. But I couldn’t understand why she never seemed angry about his leaving us. She always told me he was a good man, and that he’d come back to us, if it were at all possible. But neither of us ever saw him again.” Marcus seemed to snap out of a daze just then. “Anyway,” he said, looking at Maddie, “what did you want to tell me?”
The kids looked at each other.
“Nothing,” all three of them said.
No one knew what to do now.
A loud grunt sounded from the direction of the benches. All three kids cleared their throats to cover it up. Marcus looked at them curiously for a moment, but made no comment. He flipped through the monster journal some more. “People really do think these ridiculous things are real,” he said, shaking his head and sounding suddenly much more like himself. “And not just basket cases like my father. They spend hard-earned money on T-shirts and souvenirs and fake evidence. Millions of dollars.”
“People,” the Mattigan kids sighed.
There was another grunt, and then another triple throat clearing.
“Are you guys getting sick?” Marcus asked. Then he said, mostly to himself, “I think my show will be off the air for a while, or longer. Maybe I need a vacation, anyway.” But then he focused on his kids again. “I’ve been meaning to spend more time with you,” he told them. “The last thing I want to do is end up like my father, never seeing my own children.”
“It’s our fault,” Max said, feeling about as bad as he’d ever felt. “I just wish there was something we could to do to fix the problem.”
Maddie’s eyes lit up. “Maybe we can!” she realized. “Maybe we could travel around this summer together, on vacation, but also help you with some cases! Why don’t we go to Las Vegas and prove that alien escape thing that you told us about is a fake! If it works out, your producer will have to let you make a show out of it, and if not, we’ll have a fun trip!”
“Innnteresting,” Marcus said, which was a great sign. Max, Maddie and Theo exchanged hopeful looks. Then their father said, “You know what? I think that’s a great idea!”
Just then distinct bangs came from the benches.
“Did you hear that?” Marcus said, getting up. He walked toward the giant windows.
“Dad, no!” the kids all cried.
Marcus stopped and looked back at his kids with surprise and worry in his eyes. But then the banging came again.
Marcus reached down and lifted one of the lids.
“NOOOOO!”
“What in the world!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
REMARKABLY UNDERSTANDING
Marcus had opened the left-side bench — and found Betsy, the kids’ sitter, tied up and struggling inside. There was tape over her mouth. The Mattigans helped her out and freed her. Naturally, she was very upset about having been attacked and forced to spend the night in a dark hole — though grateful it was full of pillows.
Once all was explained, she was remarkably understanding, especially after Marcus offered to pay her triple and mention her in his next show, if he ever had one. Even so, and not surprisingly, she wanted to leave as soon as possible. She’d arrived by cab, but Marcus offered to drive her home, and she accepted.
“You Mattigans really are an interesting family,” she said.
“If that’s our real name,” Max said. For reasons even he didn’t understand, he said it in the crouch.
“I’ll be back soon,” Marcus told the kids as he and Betsy headed out. He was in a much better mood now. “You guys know the getting along — ”
“Notta fist!” Max cried.
“Notta foot!” Maddie added.
“Notta finger!” Theo concluded.
“Notta problem!” Betsy put in.
“Oklahoma,” Marcus told her, as he closed the door behind them.
The Mattigan kids looked at each other. They didn’t know what to say. They were excited. Nervous, but excited.
“He wasn’t ready,” Maddie said.
Her brothers nodded.
Suddenly, the right-side bench flew open and Big-foot climbed out of it. He was out of sandwiches.
Theo rushed into the kitchen and came back with another bagful.
“How did you — ?” Max asked, amazed.
“Emergency reserves,” Theo said.
“Genius!” Maddie took the bag and showed it to the hairy giant, who grunted with pleasure again and took a step toward her. “I’ll lead him into the forest through the basement door,” she told her brothers, adding, “So nobody sees.” She edged backward towards the basement steps, then climbed down on
e stair. “Come on,” she urged. The Sasquatch stepped toward her. “That’s a good — Bigfoot.”
“If that’s his real name,” Max said.
“I think it’s Sasquatch, actually,” Theo said.
“Ah-ha!”
Maddie backed farther down the stairs. The Sasquatch reached the top, but hesitated. Then, looking not entirely unlike Max in search-mode, he crouched. Maddie turned and hurried down into the basement.
Bigfoot followed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
TRUE STORY
“He wouldn’t leave,” Maddie said when she reappeared ten minutes later. “He’s in a room, eating. I left the back door open, so maybe he’ll go out when he’s done.”
“Maybe he’ll stay!” Theo said. He was sitting on the puffy couch next to Max, who had the monster journal open on his lap.
“We’re gonna need to go shopping,” Max said, without looking up.
Maddie walked over to see what he was doing.
Max had his spy pen in hand. After clicking off its invisible ink mode, he said, “I’m sure Dad will toss this out, and that’s probably a good idea. Who knows how much of this stuff is made up. But still — ” He found an empty space on the Sasquatch pages and wrote, “Favorite food: peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches.”
“True story!” his brother and sister proclaimed.
Postscript
BIGFOOT!
And that, dear readers, is how it all began. It’s quite a story if you think about it. On that note, I have a question for you. Out of everyone who stepped foot in the Mattigan Mansion that weekend, who was the real monster?
Teachable Moment, no?
Discuss among yourselves.
And while you’re at it, I’ll do my best to prepare the story of the next Mattigan adventure. It’s monstrously good, too. I just hope it’s not too out there for you.
Meanwhile, here’s some advice. Keep your basement door open at night, and don’t stop leaving those peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches under the bed.
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