A howl of laughter went up from the Mustache Mafia as Hedges hit a passing kid with a dollop of mustard. It was Jimmy Ticks. The kid looked over to where Eddie and the others sat, hopeful that they’d wave him over. Pudge shook his head. Jimmy got the clue and headed off to find some napkins to remove the offending mustard.
“Did you have to sit so close to those guys?” Eddie asked.
Pudge threw up his hands. “There weren’t any other lanes. Why’d you call us here, anyway?” He paused. “Hold that thought.” He let loose with a tremendous burp. “I ate too fast. I gotta get a soda. You want anything?”
Eddie and Roxie shook their heads. “More for me,” Pudge said. “Be right back.” And off he went toward the snack bar.
Roxie leaned in. “I don’t think he knows what you did.” Eddie let her continue. “He was busy on the phone at the pizzeria when you popped by. And I’m pretty sure he didn’t see that there were two of you in the back of that cruiser. Do you think he should know that you’ve learned to bop in and out of time, or do you want to keep that between us?”
Eddie had no desire to keep Pudge in the dark. About anything. He was his best friend, after all, but if he brought it up now, he’d have a lot of explaining to do. Not like with Roxie. She seemed to take the whole idea rather calmly.
“Let’s keep it to ourselves. For now,” he said.
“You going to tell me how you managed that little trick?” she asked.
He lifted his shirt to show her the belt when Pudge approached. “I got you both a hotdog anyway. They’re two-for-one, too.”
Eddie was about to tell his friend that he wasn’t hungry when a snide voice echoed behind him, “Oh, waiter! Are those my hotdogs?” It was Lance. Eddie could hear Babcock and Hedges snickering.
Pudge nodded at Lance, laughing silently as if he appreciated the joke, but he didn’t respond. He sat down, setting the plate of hotdogs on the scoring table. “So, what’s the story, Edison?”
Eddie looked to Roxie. “Well, like I was telling her...” Eddie stumbled – he was terrible at lying. Whenever he tried, he got incredibly tongue-tied. “Like I was... I mean...”
Pudge raised his eyebrows. Eddie wasn’t the only one who knew he couldn’t lie to save his life. “You were saying?”
A hand clapped down on Eddie’s shoulder. “What’s the holdup, waiter?” Lance was breathing down his neck as he stared maliciously at Pudge. “Bring those dogs over.”
Eddie looked up into Lance’s face. Lance looked down at him, and a dawning recognition spread across his face. “If it isn’t the midnight cruisers. Have a fun time with the police last night?”
Eddie shrugged Lance’s hand from his shoulder. “We’re busy.”
Lance shook his head. “Oh yeah?” He turned to Babcock and Hedges. “You know, if my old man caught me out on a boat in the middle of the night, he’d ground me for a month.”
“Mine would ground me for a year,” Hedges added with a snort.
“No, he wouldn’t,” Babcock said and elbowed Hedges in the ribs.
“I’ll bet none of your parents know you’re out. And I’ll also bet that if I called them, they’d hit the roof.” Lance pulled out his phone. “Let’s start with you, chubs. I’ve got Pop’s Pizzeria in my contacts.”
Pudge stood and held out the hotdogs. “Here. Now, leave us alone.”
Lance’s wispy mustache twitched. He stepped around Eddie and whapped the plate of dogs out of Pudge’s hand. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
Roxie stood as well. She looked down at Eddie, nodding for him to do the same. He rose, reluctantly and both he and Roxie stepped to Pudge’s side. Instantly, Hedge and Babcock were out of their seats and flanking Lance.
“Hey, boys,” Lance said to his cronies as he cracked his knuckles. “I got fat boy.”
Just as Lance reached out and grabbed Pudge’s shirt, all of the screens above the lanes went dark, wiping out the scores of every game. A collective cry went up from the bowlers. “Where’s my score?” “Turn it back on!” “We’re not done yet!”
Suddenly, a man sporting crazed hair and a mischievous smile appeared on every screen. It was Mesmer!
“Helloooo bowlers!” he said. “Happy Twofer Day. For the next five minutes, and five minutes only, any bowler getting three strikes in a row (not one, not two but three) will receive a three-month free pass to Lake Mohawk Lanes! Starting... now!”
A wounded shriek echoed from Mrs. Branch’s office. She stuck her head out and barked, “That’s not true! Who said that?” But she was drowned out by a sea of cheering kids.
Babcock and Hedges ducked away from Lance’s side and shoved each other aside, each trying to get to his bowling ball first.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Lance shouted at them.
“Three months,” Babcock whined. “Free!”
Lance looked down the line of alleys. Everyone was frantically going for their strikes. He let go of Pudge’s shirt. “I’ll be right back.” He turned, grabbed his bowling ball and muscled in front of Babcock and Hedges.
Eddie hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath. He exhaled and sat. He turned to find Mesmer sitting right next to him dressed in the ugliest bowling shirt he had ever seen. Mesmer smiled.
“So, where’s the belt?”
The bowling alley had gone suddenly quiet. Eddie glanced around. There wasn’t a bowler in sight. Other than Mesmer in his lime-green bowling shirt.
Eddie noticed that even Roxie and Pudge had vanished. He was miffed. “You used your clicker, didn’t you? To shift us out of sync.”
Mesmer rose and began examining his choice in bowling balls. “Makes it easier to talk, doesn’t it?”
“What about my friends?”
“What about them?” Mesmer asked.
“You told me to bring them.”
“I most certainly did not,” Mesmer insisted. “Why would I want them tagging along? We have business to attend to, you and I.”
“But you...” Eddie closed his mouth. The frog-phone call had ended in a lot of static. Perhaps instead of asking him to bring Pudge and Roxie along, Mesmer had asked him to leave them behind.
No matter. “I don’t care. I want them here.”
“Even the boy?”
“His name is Pudge.”
Mesmer stifled a laugh. “Exceedingly odd name. Are you sure? I heard you debating whether or not to tell him about your trips through time. Like you were protecting him.”
Eddie thought about this. Maybe he was trying to protect Pudge. Why was that? Roxie had figured out that he was stepping in and out of time rather quickly, and it didn’t bother him one bit that she knew. He actually found it comforting to have someone know his little secret.
But Pudge? Maybe it was because Roxie was a new friend, and he’d known Pudge since they were in nursery school together. And maybe he didn’t want their friendship to change. Once he knew just how different Eddie’s life had become, Pudge might be jealous or feel awkward around him. Eddie could count the friends he had on one hand. Actually, on two fingers. And one of those was Pudge.
Still, if he was going to move further into this mystery, he’d want Pudge at his side.
“Just do it,” he said.
Mesmer shrugged and produced the clicker from his pocket. There was a slight flash, and then Roxie and Pudge popped out of thin air.
“Whuh?” stammered Pudge, his eyes going wide.
Roxie seemed ticked off. “I didn’t give anyone permission to yank me through time. Where am I? In the future or the past?”
“Neither,” piped up Mesmer as he found the right bowling ball, walked with it to the lane and sent it spinning toward the pins.
Eddie tried to explain. “You didn’t go backward or forward. You kind of went sideways.”
“Whuh?” Pudge repeated.
He still couldn’t get over the disappearance of a bowling alley’s worth of kids.
“We’re in between frames,” Eddie explained, pointing up at the scorecard on the screen. “It’s like we’re in between frame one and frame two. Right?” He looked to Mesmer who was frowning at the single pin he had knocked down.
“Yes, yes,” Mesmer said sounding impatient. “In between seconds, in between frames. We’ve been through all that already.”
Roxie threw him a hard look. “Not with me, you haven’t.” She walked toward the wild-haired scientist and stuck her hand out. “I’m Roxie Michaels. Michaels with an S, and Roxie, never Roxanne. Who in the world are you?”
Mesmer didn’t take her hand but smiled all the same. “You can call me Mesmer. That’s Mesmer without a Z. If you don’t mind, I’m here to chat with Mr. Edison.”
Pudge sat. “Whuh?”
“Oh, be quiet,” Roxie said, and sat next to Pudge. “Go right ahead,” she said to Mesmer.
Mesmer turned to Eddie. “The belt?”
Eddie hesitated and raised his shirt. The belt still hung snug around his waist.
“Excellent. Hand it over.”
Even though he had been in possession of the belt for only a matter of hours, Eddie didn’t want to give it up. He had felt the same way about the metal nut when Lance and company had tried to take it. Why did these objects have such a hold on him? Because they’re part of my birthright, he told himself.
Still, he unbuckled the belt and held it out. Mesmer set about examining every inch. “Yes, mmm, I see...”
Roxie nudged him. “Interesting company you’re keeping.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Eddie said.
Mesmer tossed the belt back to Eddie, an annoyed look on his face. “You didn’t fix it?”
“Fix it?”
“Why else would I give it to you?” Mesmer seemed genuinely upset.
“You never told me to fix it,” Eddie said.
“I never told you not to fix it, did I? How long were your trips? Only two, three minutes?”
“Something like that.” Eddie was becoming as annoyed as Mesmer. The man hadn’t mentioned anything about repairing the thing, had he? No. He hadn’t even given him a clue about what the belt did. But instead of being proud of him, Mesmer seemed disappointed. “I think I did a pretty good job of figuring it out.”
Mesmer grabbed his bowling ball from the ball return. “If anything, you’ve damaged it further. I can’t believe you didn’t fix it!” He took aim and sent the ball down the alley where it jumped the gutter and took out two pins from the adjoining alley. “I never should have sent out that alert.”
Pudge was coming around. “Alert? What alert?”
Mesmer pulled a pen from his shirt pocket. As soon as he did, Eddie could hear that the thing was giving off a ping-ping-ping. “This alert. Anything with a mechanical mesh brain within ten miles will hear it.”
Horror raised the hairs on Eddie’s neck. “You mean... that thing, that monster knows where we are?”
“What monster?” Roxie and Pudge asked in unison.
Mesmer rolled his eyes. “You know the legends about the Jersey Devil? Well, they’re all true, but they get one thing wrong. The Jersey Devil wasn’t born, it was built. By none other than Vernon Sly to act as his slave and protector.”
Eddie was fuming. He raised the belt over his head. “And you’re telling me it wants this?”
Mesmer tilted his head, his face a mix of sympathy and pity. “It would seem so.”
The room was assaulted by the shrill sound of a steam whistle. Eddie froze. The Jersey Devil, the mechanical monstrosity that had come after him back on Echo Island... it was here.
The snack bar exploded in a cloud of candy bars, drywall and wood, and in lurched the metal beast. Its red eyes blazed, its shimmering wings rustled, its clawed hand gripped and opened, gripped and opened. Had the thing been a living creature, it could not be more terrifying than what stood before them.
It scanned the room then locked eyes on the group at lane five. “Oh, no,” Eddie whispered. The thing launched itself toward them, steam streaming from the sides of its metal-toothed mouth.
Eddie turned to Mesmer. “Click us back, click us back!” he screamed. Mesmer just stood there.
“It won’t do any good,” Mesmer said, resigned. “It can obviously shift back and forth as easily as we can.” Was the man actually giving up? Or did he want Eddie to be caught?
Eddie caught Roxie’s eye. “Click. Us. Back!” Roxie caught his meaning and delivered a swift kick to Mesmer’s shin. The man howled in pain. Roxie swiped the clicker out of his hand and tossed it to Eddie.
Eddie pressed the button.
Crack! The crowd of bowlers returned, still eagerly trying for their three strikes in a row. There was no sign of the Jersey Devil...
Zap! The mechanical creature reappeared, still moving at a galloping pace. Kids screamed as the thing clanked forward, knocking them out of the way. Bowling balls went flying as people rushed to get out of its way.
Eddie was transfixed. He didn’t even notice Mesmer come up behind him. The man deftly snatched the clicker out of Eddie’s hand. “I’d put that belt on if I were you,” Mesmer said. And then, with a click, he was gone.
Eddie fumbled to get the belt buckled around his waist, but there wasn’t time. The thing was almost on top of him.
Wham! A bowling ball struck the side of the creature’s head, knocking it off course. It stumbled past Eddie and toppled over the ball return, metal limbs groaning, whistle shrieking.
What had happened? Eddie turned to find Pudge grabbing for a second bowling ball. “So glad I decided to show up.” He hoisted a heavy, multi-colored ball and threw it at the beast. The ball struck the creature in one of its wings, the metal giving off a thunderous, vibrating sound.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Roxie said pointedly, and she was right. Eddie looked around and saw that almost every kid had made it to the exits. Even the Mustache Mafia was nowhere to be found.
Eddie took advantage of the temporary pause in the action to cinch the belt and buckle it. The lights on the packs were flickering dangerously.
He had to concentrate. If he could slip back just five, no, ten minutes ago, he could warn his friends about the Jersey Devil’s imminent arrival.
The thing was back on its feet. It turned toward him. Pudge tried cannonballing one more bowling ball its way, but it easily batted it away, sending it hurtling toward Mrs. Branch’s office. Eddie thought he heard a muffled cry.
Ten minutes ago, ten minutes. Pudge had just returned with the hotdogs. He saw the plate weighted down with the dogs, he smelled the onions piled high, he heard the crack of bowling balls striking the pins, he felt the pinch of his bowling shoes...
Why hadn’t he eaten a hotdog?
The Jersey Devil approached. It towered over him. Eddie could hear its inner workings spinning and spitting. Heat came off the thing like a furnace. It opened its massive, mechanical jaws and leaned in as if to swallow him whole.
Imagine the hotdog. Just imagine it! Maybe that’ll be good enough!
Eddie threw every bit of concentration into imagining what that hotdog would have tasted like. Its skin, the onions, the mustard-soaked bun. Concentrate. Concentrate!
Just as the creature clamped its claws around Eddie’s arms, it began to flicker. It was there, it wasn’t there, it was there. The beast cocked its head, like Cooper did when puzzled.
He looked over to where Roxie was standing. Or... wasn’t standing. She was calling out to him, but he couldn’t hear her.
The packs on the belt grew hotter and hotter. He could smell burning metal and plastic, feel the heat start to singe his skin. The whole world began to strobe. But it wasn’t the whole world strobing, was it? It was him. Whatever mechanism that
made the belt work didn’t like him trying to fake it out. Eddie was caught in a loop, stuttering back and forth between two different moments in time.
The creature moved closer and then... it moved through him. Eddie felt a pressure in his chest as the thing slid through his body, like smoke. For a split second, he could see its insides, see the gears and the pistons and the vacuum tubes that made the infernal thing tick.
And then it was behind him.
The ferocious beast whirled about and tried grabbing at him again. It came up with nothing but air. Eddie grinned, proud of himself, but his smile quickly faded when he saw that the monster had decided to change its tactics.
Moving like lightning, the thing clamped its claw down on Pudge’s wrists. With an industrial howl, it spread its metal wings.
“No!” Eddie and Roxie screamed in unison.
The Jersey Devil beat its wings, and a rush of wind hit Eddie in the face as it lifted off the ground, Pudge in tow.
“I didn’t really eat a hotdog! Abort! Stop! Stop!” He pounded on the belt. Sparks shot out, shocking his hands. And then, the lights went dark. He had stopped strobing back and forth.
The creature flapped around the bowling alley, its wings catching the ceiling panels, ripping them loose. It ran into hanging lights, pulling them from their moorings. It circled the big room twice and then it soared upward, bashing its way through the roof, taking his screaming friend with it.
Eddie pulled the scalding belt from around his waist and ran to stand underneath the huge hole. The Jersey Devil was already disappearing from view into the late afternoon sky.
Pudge was gone.
Eddie could hardly breathe. He looked around. He and Roxie were alone in the bowling alley.
“It took him! That thing. Eddie, was that the…? It couldn’t have been.” Roxie’s mind was spinning.
Eddie heard moans coming from Mrs. Branch’s office. It seemed she’d survived her run in with the bowling ball. He grabbed the belt and headed over toward the office, a shell-shocked Roxie trailing behind. There lay Mrs. Branch, splayed out in a pile of paperwork. “Can I help you, Mrs. Branch?” he asked.
The Mad Scientists of New Jersey (Volume 1) Page 9