by Matthew Ward
Arthur’s father motioned to the massive glistening wall of plaques behind him. It was truly an awe-inspiring sight. Several symmetrically placed ledges held a vast assortment of trophies, while the rest of the wall was almost completely covered in shimmering plaques, so that the wall itself was barely visible.
In Arthur’s dreams, the multitude of plaques graciously spread out to make room for a shiny new comrade—a polished brass plate inscribed with Arthur’s name. In his nightmares, the legion of plaques swooped off the wall and attacked him like a swarm of vampire bats. But whatever scenario was playing out in Arthur’s head, he could not imagine anything greater than to see his own name on that wall, surrounded by his brothers and sisters and father and mother.
“Our family’s under more pressure than ever,” Mr. Whipple explained, “what with our current record shortage and the unfortunate press from the ‘French Toast Fiasco,’ as they’re calling it. We’ve got a reputation to mend—and we can use all the help we can get. Understand?”
Arthur nodded.
“All right, Arthur,” said Mr. Whipple. “Just remember what we talked about. There is nothing in this world more rewarding than being the absolute best at one’s endeavors. Excellence is in your blood, Son—and I am fairly certain that somewhere deep down inside of you, there is a successful boy trying desperately to escape. Now, let’s get out there and break some records—or at least not fail so miserably at them, shall we?”
“Yes, Father,” replied Arthur. “I’ll do my best.”
“It’s nice to do your best, Son. But it’s infinitely better, of course, to be the best.”
“Yes, sir,” said Arthur.
“Very well then,” Mr. Whipple concluded, turning back to the easel to pack up his son’s charts. “You may—”
A sudden, impulsive thought struck Arthur. “Father?” he said.
“Yes?” Mr. Whipple replied, still fussing with the easel.
The boy bit his lip. “What,” he ventured, “is the Lyon’s Curse?”
Mr. Whipple stopped, then whirled around. “Where have you—?” he stammered. “Who’s been—?”
“On Rueing Day,” Arthur spluttered. “After the French toast fell—you said…”
The hysteria slowly faded from Mr. Whipple’s eyes. “I see,” he said, letting out a deep sigh. “I—I wish you hadn’t heard that.”
Sighing again, he peered up at the portrait of the solemn, mustachioed man smoking the World’s Longest Pipe in a framed photograph that stretched across the entire rear wall.
“The Lyon’s Curse,” Arthur’s father began, “marked a dark time in our family’s history. A time, I’m afraid, whose end your distinguished grandfather never saw. It was a time of fear and of catastrophe—and of failure…. But thank God it is all behind us now. There is no use in looking back, Arthur. We must look forward. What you heard the other day, it was just, well—a momentary lapse of clarity. I shan’t let it happen again.” He cleared his throat and straightened his jacket. “Now, I trust you will leave such matters alone. Surely, you’ve enough to worry about in your future—such as improving your failure quotients—without bothering about the past.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy replied. “But I just—”
Arthur’s father gave him a stern look.
“Yes, sir,” said the boy.
“Very good, Arthur,” Mr. Whipple replied. “You are excused.”
Arthur’s rare, one-on-one meetings with his father never seemed to last long enough—and this one had somehow left him with more questions than it had answered. As the boy exited the Whipple Hall of Records, his mind swam with budding hopes and nagging doubts swirled together in a cloud of nameless fear.
Fortunately, the Whipple estate did not lack for distractions. Glancing at the tiny bonsai-wood clock on the mantel, Arthur was consoled to see he might still catch his sisters’ trial attempt at the Highest Hamster-Piloted Model Rocket Launch Ever Recorded.
Indeed, as the boy stepped out onto the south lawn, he came upon several of his siblings gathered in a semicircle. Wearing a white lab coat, Cordelia was hunched over at its center, tinkering with her custom-built rocket, while Abigail stood beside Penelope, Beatrice, Franklin, and George, clutching an adorable and utterly unsuspecting hamster with both hands.
If he had only been given the luxury of a mirror, the fluffy little rodent might have had a better clue as to what the near future had in store for him.
He was wearing a tiny astronaut suit.
“Is our daring space explorer ready?” inquired Cordelia as she made one last adjustment with a socket wrench.
Abigail kissed the top of the daring space explorer’s furry little head, then placed a tiny astronaut helmet over it. “Aye. Ready, sir. Ready and eager to serve his country,” she replied.
“Excellent,” said Cordelia. “I trust the pilot has been checked for enemy bugs?”
“Aye, sir,” said Penelope, holding up a stoppered tube with three bouncing black dots inside it. “Pilot is now certified flea-free.”
“Very good, Private,” said Cordelia. “Unlocking cockpit.” She flipped a latch on the side of the rocket that allowed the nose to hinge outward, revealing a miniature control room with pushpins for dials and tin foil for navigation monitors. “Pilot may now take position.”
Abigail stepped forward and handed the miniature pilot to Cordelia, who placed him in the miniature pilot seat and buckled him in with a tiny seat belt.
“Pilot secured,” announced Cordelia. “Sealing cockpit.”
She hinged the nose of the rocket back into launch position. The little hamster astronaut looked a bit worried beneath his space helmet.
Cordelia and Abigail took a few steps back. Abigail put her tiny arm around Hamlet, her towering canine companion and typical mode of transportation, who was sitting on his haunches and waiting patiently for the launch sequence to commence. Beatrice swallowed the last bite of cider-braised lamb chop she’d been having as a light snack and tossed the bone at the dog’s feet. With a tip of his bicorne hat, Franklin handed the remote control switch to Cordelia, who stood up straight and proud and said, “We are cleared for launch.”
A wave of excitement rushed over Arthur. He had made it just in time.
“Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven…”
Cordelia began the countdown, and Arthur made his way around his siblings to get a clear view of the launchpad.
“Six. Five. Four…”
By the time Cordelia had called out “Three,” Arthur had walked to the end of the line of onlookers and could see the rocket perfectly. What Arthur did not see, however, was the spool of fishing line that had been anchored into the ground behind him—and the single strand that had been attached to the side of the rocket as a way of measuring the height of the launch.
“Three. Two. One. Ignition!”
As Cordelia pressed the big red button on the remote control, Arthur took one last step to his right—and caught the strand of fishing line with his foot. To the shock and horror of all who had gathered, the rocket suddenly jerked toward them, its nose pointing menacingly in their direction—as flames began to stream from its thrusters.
Arthur, realizing what he had done, yanked his foot off the line and threw himself onto Penelope and George, who were standing nearest to him.
Just as the three siblings tumbled to the ground, the rocket launched off its base at a 45-degree angle and shot over them—whizzing through the space that, only moments earlier, George’s head had occupied.
The children spun around to watch, as the Uncontrollable Flying Object sped away over the treetops.
When the rocket was only an orange speck against the evening sky, the children could just make out the profile of a parachute, attached to a small shiny blob drifting on the horizon. It seemed the tiny ejection seat had functioned properly, and there was, at that moment, an uncommonly confused hamster floating through the troposphere, considerably more world-weary than he had been just thirty seconds befor
e. The children watched it for another moment, before the parachute descended behind the trees and out of sight.
Arthur picked himself up off the ground, and immediately felt the icy glare of his sister piercing through him.
“Arthur!” squealed Cordelia. “What have you done?!”
“I’m terribly sorry,” Arthur stammered. “I didn’t see the string, and—”
“Our official attempt is scheduled to launch at 0900 tomorrow morning, and thanks to you, we no longer have a rocket! You know we can’t afford the slightest setback if we’re to make our record quota by our birthday—it’s like you’re trying to lose the championships for us!”
“Please, Cordelia—don’t say that. The attempt’s not spoiled yet, is it? If we just follow the string, shouldn’t it lead us to wherever the rocket’s landed? Perhaps we’ll be able to retrieve it fairly easily.”
“If it hasn’t landed in a lake!” cried Cordelia. “And even if it hasn’t, what about our daring space explorer? How do you propose to retrieve him? He could be anywhere—and how are we going to launch a hamster-piloted rocket without a hamster pilot?!”
“What about one of the other hamsters?” Arthur suggested.
“Don’t be silly, Arthur. Corporal Whiskerton is the only hamster trained for this mission. Do you really think just any old hamster can be a successful rocket pilot?!”
Arthur shook his head. The training to which Cordelia referred consisted solely of persuading their twitchy subject to sit still while wearing a seat belt attached to a tiny chair. It had truly been a breakthrough in hamster conditioning.
“I’m really very sorry, Cordelia. But I’m sure he can’t have gone too far—what with the space suit and parachute and all. We’re bound to find him before the sun goes down.”
“Well,” said Cordelia with a sigh of resignation, “if we don’t find him soon, he’ll run off and join a pack of wild hamsters, and we’ll never see him again.”
Arthur had not been aware of the apparently enormous population of wild hamsters in the neighborhood. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t remember seeing a single wild hamster in his entire life—not even in books. But he figured the tame ones had to come from somewhere.
As the group set out from Neverfall in search of the missing rocket and its furry little pilot, Arthur kept a constant lookout for any uncivilized hamsters who might have absconded with the good corporal. The thought of savage hamster packs roaming the streets was really rather unnerving—albeit in an adorable sort of way.
Surprisingly, Corporal Whiskerton proved much easier to find than anyone had expected.
His parachute had caught in one of the elm trees on the neighboring Nesbit estate, on a branch just out of reach of Mrs. Nesbit’s Irish terrier, Fergus, who was now leaping up and down beneath the tree, barking furiously as he tried to catch the hamster’s dangling feet in his slobbery jaws.
Corporal Whiskerton wore an expression that suggested he had become rather disillusioned with space exploration. Luckily, help was not far off.
Upon spotting their downed comrade, the children rushed to his aid, appalled that a hero of such courage should be made to suffer such abuse. One bellowing bark from Hamlet sent the once-intimidating terrier cowering toward the Nesbit house with his tail between his legs.
“Enemy unit eliminated,” announced Cordelia. “Prepare for retrieval.”
The giant Great Dane, still carrying Abigail on his back, stretched out his neck and removed the parachute from the branch with his teeth, then dropped the traumatized hamster into his rider’s hands. Corporal Whiskerton looked relieved. Arthur shared his sentiment.
The boy stroked Hamlet’s shoulder. “Thanks, Hammie,” he whispered. “I owe you one.”
The dog licked Arthur’s face in reply.
Having completed their first objective, the Whipple children set out once again after their vanished aircraft, following the strand of fishing line to the far edge of the Nesbit estate.
From there, they continued across the estates of their next two neighbors—until they came to an imposing stone wall, which brought their recovery mission to an abrupt halt. Over the wall’s crest, between two of the spear-shaped iron shafts that jutted up from it, the line disappeared from sight.
It was far worse than they had feared: the rocket had landed on the Crosley estate.
Maxwell Crosley had been the president of the Rikki-Tikki Toffee Company—the Largest Toffee Manufacturer in the World—whose confections had once been loved far and wide by children of all ages. Ironically, Mr. Crosley detested children—but there was a lot of money to be made in the toffee business, so he purchased a majority stake in the company when its original founder had died. To cut costs, Mr. Crosley proceeded to alter the century-old family recipe to include substandard ingredients and barely edible industrial chemicals. After several children died upon ingesting his company’s products, Mr. Crosley avoided financial ruin by slightly altering the recipe again and changing its name to Miracle Mud®, a product that went on to revolutionize the tiling and grout industry. In a bizarre twist of fate, Mr. Crosley met an untimely but fitting end when he fell into one of the Miracle Mud® vats while giving a factory tour to a group of potential investors.
In the six years since its owner’s demise, the Crosley estate had fallen into disrepair and was said to be haunted by the ghosts of the unfortunate children killed by Mr. Crosley’s greed. Needless to say, it was not the sort of place one would want her custom-built, hamster-piloted model rocket to crash-land.
The previously plucky band of rescuers stared up at the unwelcoming wall of stone.
“So what now, Arthur?” demanded Cordelia.
“Um…well, maybe it landed just past the wall,” the boy suggested. “Could we try to reel it in?”
Cordelia rolled her eyes and tugged halfheartedly on the line. To her surprise, the line actually moved. “I can feel the rocket on the other end!” she exclaimed, grinning to the others as she began pulling it toward her.
Arthur could hardly believe his luck. It appeared there was still hope for the rescue team after all.
But when Cordelia had reeled in four yards of the line, it refused to give any further.
The girl arched her brow and gave a tug. “I think it’s snagged on something,” she said.
After all they had been through, Cordelia was not about to be thwarted by such a minor detail. She pulled harder and harder on the line—but still, it would not budge. She leaned back on the line with all her weight and gave one last tug—and with that, the string abruptly gave way, sending Arthur’s sister tumbling to the ground.
Somewhere on the other side of the wall, the line had snapped.
“Are you all right, Cordelia?” asked Arthur, running to help her.
“I was—until you decided to ruin everything!” she shouted. “It took me months to perfect that rocket, and now we’ll miss our launch—and we’ll never break enough records in time!” She put her head in her hands and started to cry.
It broke Arthur’s heart to see his sister crying; it was even worse knowing he was the cause of her tears.
“I’ll get it for you, Cordelia,” he said.
Cordelia sniffled and glanced up at her little brother. “But how? That wall must be twelve feet high.”
“It doesn’t look completely unclimbable,” replied Arthur, sounding far more confident than he actually was.
He glanced down to find his little sister, Beatrice, tugging at his shirt. Ever since he had rescued her from the rogue piece of French toast, he wondered if she didn’t look at him just a bit differently somehow.
“But Arthur,” Beatrice whispered, “what about the ghosts?”
“Oh, right. The ghosts,” said Arthur.
In his eagerness to atone for losing the rocket, he had momentarily forgotten about the Crosley estate’s ghastly reputation.
“Um…they don’t come out until dark, do they?” he asked, gazing up at the fading light of the now heavily cl
ouded sky.
Beatrice shrugged.
This was not the response Arthur had hoped for.
“I’m pretty sure ghosts can more or less come out whenever they please,” remarked Cordelia, who had perked up considerably after evaluating her brother’s offer. Then, sensing his growing discomfort, she added, “But don’t worry, Arthur. Ghosts don’t generally murder mortals whose hearts are pure. And you’re fairly pure of heart, aren’t you?”
Arthur looked puzzled. “I suppose so,” he said.
“Yep. You’ll be fine,” said Cordelia. “But you should probably be heading out now—if you want to make it back before dark.”
“Oh. Right,” said Arthur.
His soul-searching cut short, the boy stepped up to the towering wall and began searching for a handhold. But before he started his ascent, he turned to his sister one last time. “Oh, um, Cordelia,” he added, “do you think you might be able to time me?”
Cordelia shot him a bewildered glance.
“It’s just that, well,” Arthur explained, “it’s not every day one gets the chance to break the record for Fastest Time to Scale a Twelve-Foot Stone Wall. I was just reading about wall scaling in the Grazelby Guide the other day. I believe the current record is forty-nine seconds—which doesn’t seem like it should be too difficult to break.”
But Arthur wasn’t being entirely forthcoming about his motives. The truth was, he could not bear the thought of being murdered by ghosts before he had broken even a single world record.
With a sigh, Cordelia removed a stopwatch from her coat and held it at the ready.
“Thanks, Cordelia. I really do appreciate it,” said Arthur, his mind slightly more at ease as he turned to face the wall once again.
Luckily, the wall was quite rough, with stones of different shapes and sizes protruding from its face, thus providing plenty of footing for Arthur’s benefit. Considering the wall’s perilous height, however, it did not seem to him the sort of climb that should be overly rushed.