Oddity

by Sarah Cannon

  We luck out. The tunnel slopes gradually up, and even Whanslaw can’t make working a puppet’s controls faster than running with both hands free. By the time we reach stairs, carved into the rock of the hill itself, we’ve caught up to them. From here, we can hear shrill voices raised in glee and argument. Whanslaw, intent on this new disturbance, doesn’t bother to acknowledge us. Cayden tugs my shirt.

  “What do we do now?” he asks.

  Once, he’d have asked that with his voice cracking so much I’d have checked to see if his pants were still dry. Now he sounds like an Oddity Middle kid. I’m his team leader, and he’s waiting for orders. The kid actually makes me proud.

  “Keep your eyes open,” I say. “Anything could happen.”

  I really need that on a T-shirt.

  Chapter 36

  I Hate Puppets

  As Whanslaw and Pearl reach the head of the stairs and step through the open tunnel door into the junta’s basement, there’s a sudden screech, and Pearl takes two swift steps backward into me. She leans against me, my hands holding her arms, her head on my shoulder. She’s cold all over. The chain of the locket digs into my neck. A zombie rabbit charges past, holding a broom like he’s jousting. I can’t see his opponent, but I hear the crash as they connect.

  Whanslaw gives a croak of anger and alarm and he sweeps out of the tunnel, taking my sister away with him. When we follow, I discover he’s entered the workshop full of creepy puppet parts, where Sugar is supervising what appears to be the destruction of everything. Rabbits brandish chisels and rasps, bash wooden arms and legs on every available surface, and operate power tools without permission.

  It’s pretty great.

  Whanslaw looks plenty distracted, but not upset enough for something as precious as a soul to be hidden here. He’s not rushing off to any other room yet, either.

  “You think he’s realized his upstairs is full of aliens?” asks Cayden. He points at the stairs we came down on our first, ill-fated trip. There’s a messy pile of leather-bound books at the bottom. A bossy little voice upstairs is yelling, “Hup! Hup! Hup!” and another book’s arriving every few seconds.

  I’m shaken up from touching Pearl. I want to go upstairs to find Raymond. A girl needs her bestie at a time like this. But searching the pit house is my job, and I don’t know how long we have. Sooner or later, the mess we left at Greeley’s will sort itself, and either the Blurmonster will head up here to kill Whanslaw, or Kiyo and Maggie will come to kill us. I doubt even Whanslaw will be able to stop them.

  “Come on,” I say.

  The zombie rabbit with the broom salutes, as does his opponent, who has a Swiffer. It’s like we have our own zany honor guard on either side of the entrance to the pit house.

  Inside is more chaos.

  I didn’t think there was anything much in the pit house to smash, but it looks like the rabbits have found it all. Then I realize the aliens found the trapdoor and opened it. Everything from the study that isn’t already on its way down the stairs is getting chucked through the hole. The rabbits are using wooden puppet limbs as baseball bats, trying to hit whatever comes down. Some of the aliens are hanging from the log ceiling like bats, and there’s a lot of heckling on both sides.

  “Hey, batta batta batta, sa-wing, batta!”

  “You throw like a tumblegeek!”

  “You catch like a slug!”

  “Slugs don’t have hands!”

  “Exactly! You get it!”

  Cayden shakes his head, marveling. “These guys are ridiculous. Look at that!” He points at the cells, where the rabbits appear to have opened the remaining prisoners’ padlocks.

  “How did you do that?” I demand of Snooks, who’s hauling a tottering, dangerously skinny woman out of her cell.

  He stares. I mean, he always looks like he’s staring, but whatever.

  “I turned the latch,” he says. “Easy.”

  “The what?” I ask. “Show me.” He bounces up onto the nearest barred metal door, which swings partway closed. He snaps the big metal padlock shut, then waggles his hands ceremoniously for our attention. As we watch, he shoves one ear in the padlock, wiggles it for a minute, then turns it. The lock snaps open.

  “Nothing is safe,” says Cayden in my ear. I nod, then help the lady nearest me to the hallway. The escaped prisoners head for the stairs.

  Raymond thrusts his head down through the trapdoor.

  “Hey,” he hollers down. “You guys okay?”

  “No,” I yell back, “and neither are you.” I summarize our situation regarding wildfires, evil puppets, and the A-marsh-a-mallow Snowman.

  “You know they prefer the term yeti, right?” he asks.

  I’d roll my eyes, but I doubt he can see them from here.

  “Did you find anything?”

  He shrugs. “I mean, I’m not sure how we’ll know when we find them. We’re smashing everything, though. That’s a start, right?”

  “Keep looking!”

  He nods and vanishes.

  “Where do we begin?” says Cayden, turning to survey the pit house.

  I’m at a bit of a loss, which is bad, because sooner or later our troubles are going to catch up with us. The cells and the pit-in-a-pit. That’s all there is to this place.

  “Let’s check along the walls. We’ll go in opposite directions, and meet on the other side,” I say.

  He nods, and we start looking. I can’t find anything, though. There aren’t any more doors. There aren’t any niches in the walls. There’s a pile of buckets and stuff in one corner, but those are obviously just for dealing with the prisoners’, um, needs. I wrinkle my nose at the smell. Poor Pearl. By the time I get to Cayden, my stomach is doing barrel rolls.

  “Anything?” I ask.

  “Not a thing,” he says, shoving his hair back impatiently. “Maybe we should go help Raymond?”

  “I don’t want to get that far from Pearl…,” I begin, only now realizing that Whanslaw might have gone upstairs himself, when the lights flicker and go out. I put a hand on Cayden’s arm, just to reassure myself he’s there. Some very dim light is filtering down through the trapdoor, but that’s it.

  “Well, that’s not good,” says Cayden.

  Just as I’m about to call him Captain Obvious, the lights cycle up again, and I hear the cough of a generator in the distance. It’s officially the first time I’m pleased with the puppet junta’s evil brilliance. I sigh with relief. Then—

  “What’s that long black thing?” says a small, wicked voice.

  “I don’t know. Let’s eat it!”

  There’s a loud buzz, then a zapping noise. The lights go out again with great finality.

  In the darkness, someone giggles.

  * * *

  “There you are, Maggie dear,” says Whanslaw from the direction of the pit-house doorway, dashing my last hope that I’d imagined her.

  “Puppets can see in the dark?” I say. “That stinks.”

  “I suppose it will be easier to surrender if you can see our faces,” says Whanslaw. “We had an emergency kit here, with glow sticks, but it seems to be missing.”

  Three glowing zombie rabbits scuttle in from the hallway. One of them has the word SUGAR across his middle.

  “Ah,” says Whanslaw. “That explains it.”

  “Over here, guys,” I say, and they group themselves around my feet, illuminating Whanslaw and Pearl, as well as Maggie and her puppeteer, who are smeared with marshmallow and soot. Cayden and I use the light of the glowing rabbits to keep our distance without falling in the pit.

  “I think you’re assuming a bit much if you think we’re about to surrender,” I say, acting braver than I feel. “From where I’m standing, your house is overrun with vermin, and you’re the only two members of the junta still standing.”

  The glowing zombie rabbits are fist-bumping one another with verminous pride.

  “It makes no difference whether we’re standing or not,” Whanslaw says. “We are far more easi
ly repaired than you.” Maggie giggles and capers in the half-light.

  At that moment, there’s an enormous, roaring shout, and Greeley falls through the trapdoor, making me jump. He fetches up about just above the pit, wriggling in midair, still wearing his porkpie hat, and thoroughly bound in—

  “What is that?” I ask Cayden, who makes a disbelieving idunno noise.

  “Electrical cord,” calls Raymond, his silhouette edged with flickering light. “It was the aliens’ idea, but I tied the knots.”

  At my feet, Sugar chortles.

  “Look at hammy man! He looks like a worm on a hook!”

  “Mmmmmm, worms,” says another rabbit, off in the dark, and suddenly there’s a mad rabbit rush to the pit. Some take the ladder, but most of them jump. I manage to grab Sugar before he joins them.

  “Hey!” he protests as I hold him aloft by his ears, like a lantern.

  “Oh no,” I tell him. “You’re not leaving me here in the dark.”

  From the pit, I can hear dozens and dozens of sets of creepy little baby teeth clacking, like the rabbits are actually tiny sharks. Serves Greeley right for his big fake “I’m your chum!” act. He’s not a happy camper. He’s screaming like a mermaid at her first voice lesson.

  That’s when I see Stella.

  Or at least, I see her arriving. Mist curls from the locket around Pearl’s neck. Pearl, of course, doesn’t react to it at all, and since it’s happening behind him, Whanslaw doesn’t notice, either. As Stella coalesces, I can see her face reflected in Pearl’s sunglasses. Then she turns to me.

  I wore that locket for years, and it never sprouted a ghost before.

  I am totally jealous.

  Stella starts gesturing at me, but I can’t tell what it means.

  “Ada,” calls Raymond, “the fire’s coming up the hill pretty fast.”

  “Good to know.” What else am I supposed to say? I’m trash-talking these evil puppets as fast as I can?

  “Greeley, an update, please,” says Whanslaw. Greeley is man-shrieking as the rabbits leap at him. He pulls it together for boss-puppet, though.

  “Uh, sir, well, one of those conspirators we were looking for fought Miss Kiyo. Kiyo held her own, but she lost in the end, sorry to say.” He grunts as he twists in his bonds, trying to avoid rabbit teeth.

  “And the creature?”

  “Ate both Miss Kiyo and Mr. Lanchester, sir. Darndest thing. Didn’t even know it ate wood—OW!”

  Right on the end of the nose. Cayden and I wince, but I’m thinking more about Kiyo’s poor puppeteer than Greeley. What have I done?

  “The humans?”

  “Ran off, sir.”

  “Then there will be no cavalry,” says Whanslaw, ignoring his employee’s peril. “Excellent.”

  That’s when everything goes sideways. Maggie makes a sudden lunge for Cayden. I try to stop her, but I can’t do anything useful, because I’ve still got Sugar in one hand, and he’s the only reason we can see. Cayden yells, and Stella gets right up in my face, which makes it even harder to see what’s going on and help Cayden. Cayden’s grappling with Maggie, and I’m trying unsuccessfully to stick my head through Stella, when out of the darkness, a round purple head with a big set of choppers appears, and bites Maggie’s left hand clean off.

  Xerple crunches it, which is a huge relief because the last thing we need is a creepy Maggie hand running around. He plants his little feet in defiance, and shouts:

  “You leave my Cayden ALONE!” Then he charges again. Whanslaw was wrong. Xerple’s the smallest cavalry I’ve ever seen, but he’s here, and boy, I’m glad to dimly see him. Now that Cayden has help, I pull my head out of Stella and turn to see what she’s trying to show me.

  I was wrong. The trapdoor and incandescent rabbits weren’t the only sources of light in here. Over there on the wall, there’s a patch of light. Which means there’s an opening, and it goes to the surface. I don’t even think. I start for it.

  “Miss Roundtree.”

  I aim Sugar over my shoulder.

  Whanslaw is holding his small silver pistol to Pearl’s head. She’s working the strings that allow him to do it. Watching her hurts. I freeze.

  “You won’t,” I say. “If you kill your puppeteer, you’re helpless.” Still, I don’t move. How can I? If I move, I might kill her. If I don’t move, she’ll die sooner or later, sucked drier than a chupacabra’s juice box.

  There’s a whoosh, and Raymond slides down through the trapdoor on a second length of electrical cord. Mr. Bakshi, the gym teacher, would admire his free rappelling technique, but that’s not something I should be thinking about right now. When he’s level with the top of the pit, but a safe distance from the now whimper-sobbing Greeley, he swings his way over to the side and jumps off.

  “Ada, go!” he shouts, running our way.

  I’m paralyzed with indecision, and I never am, and I hate it. “I can’t!”

  Just then, Stella swoops in front of Whanslaw. I don’t know who she startles, him or Pearl, if Pearl even can be startled, but his arm jerks. Raymond launches at him.

  I know my cue when I see it.

  “Don’t kill them!” I shout; then I race for the light spot on the wall.

  Chapter 37

  Venting

  It’s some kind of vent. It angles up, and it’s frighteningly narrow, but Whanslaw didn’t want me near it, and we’ve trashed everything else. The souls must be up there.

  I don’t have time to trust in the zombie rabbits’ destructive impulses. I have to do it myself. I drop Sugar.

  “Finally!” he says, and I know he’s about to join the others harassing Greeley. As I force head and shoulders up into the vent, I shout, “Sugar, go help Raymond! Don’t let Whanslaw hurt my sister!”

  “Oh!” says Sugar, startled. “That’s nice. I thought she looked like you.”

  “GO!”

  I hear the whine of a bullet, and feel a vibration in the wall. Maybe Raymond’s got hold of Whanslaw’s arm and he’s shooting wild. Or maybe I’m about to get shot in the legs. I worm the rest of the way in, until I’m past the angle and more or less standing. Then I press my hands and knees against the front of the tunnel, and start worming my way up. The rock scrapes my hands, and the knees of my jeans are going to be gone in minutes.

  The light above me seems so far away. It’s flickering, and even down here I can smell smoke. I work my way up, and up. I don’t know how I’m going to have the strength to get back down if I have to stop. Then, above me, I see an irregularity in the rock. Bracing myself as tightly as I can, I slide one hand up the rock wall. Above my head, almost beyond my reach, my fingertips slide over the lip of a ledge.

  Please, oh please.

  I can’t find anything. I can’t reach the back, either. I give up my grip on the ledge to shove myself a few inches higher, then try again.

  Doggone it, where does this thing go, Tibet? Below me, I hear mass confusion. Above me, my town is on fire. Everyone I love is in mortal peril. I just need one little stroke of luck.

  Then I hear a tiny grunt.

  Way back on the ledge, something is scrabbling, and something else is being dragged. The tips of a pair of flowered ears come into view.

  “These trophies are as heavy as beeves,” complains Snooks.

  He puts a stoppered clay jar into my hand.

  I am going to read that little sack of rabbit all the bedtime stories. He doesn’t need Pearl’s room. He can have mine.

  “Are there more?”

  “Three.”

  “Bring the next one! Hurry!”

  He chortles with competitive glee, and vanishes.

  I turn the jar in my hand. It’s not a jar after all, not really. It’s a clay figure, with closed eyes and lobed ears that stick out on the sides. It has a cork in the back of its head. That’s why I thought it was a jar. It’s almost like—

  “You hid your soul in a puppet? That’s original,” I mutter.

  I look down the vent, between my kne
es. I can’t see the bottom in the gloom. I don’t dare drop this, though. If it doesn’t smash on the angled surface at the bottom, it will roll right out of the vent, and anyone could get it. I cup it in the palm of my hand, draw my arm back as far as I can in the cramped space, and smash it against the side of the shaft.

  I’m nose to nose with the darn thing when it breaks, and I get a face full of a red rageful light that I know at once is Kiyo. For one moment, I see the woman inside the wood. Her soul is so different from the flawless puppet. It’s blotchy and bloodshot-eyed, like her anger is eating her from the inside out. She screams upward in a shower of red sparks, going off like fireworks as she exits the vent, and I’m left temporarily blinded in the dim light.

  “Snooks!” I call. “I need another one.”

  It darn near hits me in the head as he rolls it off the edge. This one is squared-off, though still with a face. It makes it easier to smash.

  It must be Lanchester, though it looks nothing like him. Glimmering light reveals a dark-haired man, good-looking in his way, but with eyes just a little too wide, like he’s trying to appear guileless. I have a sudden breathless sensation, as if I’ve been plunged underwater, then he, too, streaks away to the surface.

  The smell of smoke is worsening, and I cough as Snooks hands me the third puppet jar. My legs are tired and starting to shake from bracing me against the walls of the shaft, and I feel sick from the hatred swirling around me. I smash the jar without looking.

  At once, I feel nasty, grabby hands all over me. Poking, pinching. The shaft reverberates with the echo of wild giggles. But this soul doesn’t go up. It scuttles away down the shaft like it’s looking for something.

  “Look out!” I yell. I don’t know if anyone can hear me. I cough my throat raw, and try again. “Look out!”

  Alarmed yells ring out below me. I have to get back down there.

  “Snooks!” I say. “HURRY!”

  “Okay, okay,” he says crabbily. “Hold your forces.”

  He brings me a clay frog. I don’t have to smash this one to know whose it is.

  I lift my arm, ready to smash it as hard as I can.

  Then the wall of the shaft crumbles under my left shoe, and I slip.