by Matthew Ward
And so, with a quick wave to the bewildered girl, he turned and hurried for the exit.
Stepping out into the night air, he cautiously scanned his surroundings—and was pleased to find them devoid of all clown life. He drew a deep breath, then set out across the estate. By the time he had rejoined his uncle at the main stage, he had all but forgotten about his latest encounter with the mysterious duo.
“Now,” grinned Nonstop Norman, “might we have all the birthday boys and girls up here on stage? I’ve got a special announcement for you.”
Smiling and waving to the crowd, Arthur’s parents led his siblings up the stage steps, then clustered them together at center stage. The Whipple children grinned and wrung their hands in anticipation. They had waited all year for this.
“Boys and girls,” said the announcer, “it’s time…for cake!”
Six spotlights positioned on the sides of the stage snapped on, blinding the audience and forcing them to look in the opposite direction. There, at the rear of the crowd, was the cake.
Every year, the Whipple family birthday cake was bigger than the one before, and this year was no exception. The cake was almost twenty feet high—twenty-eight, if you counted the candles—and thirty feet in diameter.
Wilhelm trudged forward at its front, clutching a tow rope over each shoulder and cleaving a wide path through the crowd as he went. When he had reached the stage, the butler wiped his brow, and the cake lurched to a halt. The crowd gasped in amazement, then promptly filled in around it for a closer look.
The cake was iced in white buttercream with huge ribbons of lavender marzipan running down its sides, while fourteen giant candles jutted up around its top edge—one for each Whipple whose birthday it was.
As the band played their specially arranged intro of “Happy Birthday to You,” Wilhelm wheeled a towering metal staircase up to the side of the cake.
Uncle Mervyn nudged Arthur and whispered, “It’s time,” then led the boy through the crowd.
Wilhelm greeted Arthur with a firm handshake and a warm smile, which helped to calm the boy’s nerves—until, of course, Wilhelm handed him the blowtorch.
“Just like vee practiced, okay?” smiled the butler.
“Okay,” said Arthur as he took the torch and turned to climb the stairs.
When the boy had reached the top step, Nonstop Norman addressed the crowd again, much to Arthur’s surprise. “Performing the candle-lighting ceremony tonight: the only member of the Whipple family not to hold a single world record or to be born on the first of March—please give a generous round of applause for—I’m sure he could use all the applause he can get—Arthur Whipple!”
The audience obliged the announcer’s request, but with a fair amount of bewilderment, as most of the guests were still unsure for whom exactly they were applauding.
Still, it was the most applause Arthur had ever received, and he couldn’t help but blush. He looked down at Wilhelm, who replied with a smile and a nod, signaling the boy to begin his task.
This was it. The special honor he’d been preparing for. His parents had finally deemed him fit for the distinguished role of birthday-candle lighter. And though he knew the position had only fallen to him because he was the sole member of the family not celebrating his own birthday, he vowed he would not let them down.
Arthur raised the blowtorch over his head and touched the flame to the tip of the broad candlewick above him.
The next moment, a great roaring flame danced atop the four-foot-wide candle. Now lit, the wax monolith would have appeared more at home marking the entrance to an ancient temple than sticking out of a birthday cake.
One down… Arthur thought to himself.
Wilhelm grasped the carousel-like platform that provided the cake’s base and, with a heaving grunt, rotated it a few yards to the left, positioning the next candle just in front of Arthur. The second candle lit as easily as the first.
Soon, the cake had come full circle and Arthur was holding the blowtorch to the last candle—when he happened to look across at one of the candles he’d already lit. A foot or so from the top of the candle, he noticed a tiny flame inching its way down the candle’s back. It struck him as different from a normal flame, in that it seemed to sparkle as it burned. He scanned the other candles and saw they all had tiny sparkling flames inching down their backs as well.
But before he could give the matter much thought, the tip of the last candlewick ignited in a ball of flame—and the crowd gave a cheer so loud it nearly knocked Arthur backward.
The boy clutched the railing as Wilhelm wheeled the stairs away from the cake, and Arthur took the opportunity to admire his handiwork. The flaming pillars of wax cast a warm, flickering glow over the silvery surface of the cake. The only way it might have looked more beautiful was if it had been Arthur’s own.
Surprisingly, the candle-lighting ceremony had gone off without a hitch, which was really a first for Arthur. He was used to things going horribly wrong with any activity in which he was involved. Perhaps his luck was finally changing.
With the boy still perched atop the stairs, Wilhelm pushed the staircase up to the side of the stage and aligned its top step with the narrow, towering catwalk that stretched across to the stage’s other side. As the butler stepped away, Arthur’s family gathered at the bottom of the stairs and proceeded to climb them.
Mr. Whipple still seemed a bit dazed from his recent encounter with Rex Goldwin, but when he reached the top, he shook Arthur’s hand and said, “Good work, Son.”
“Thanks, Father,” replied Arthur. “Happy birthday.”
His mother bent down and kissed him on the cheek. “You were terrific up there, dear. Now be sure to get yourself an especially large piece of cake.”
“I will. Happy birthday, Mother.”
Following behind their parents, the Whipple children smiled and waved to their brother as they paraded past him. Arthur turned to watch as they filed out onto the catwalk, high above the stage.
“And now,” declared Nonstop Norman, “as the birthday boys and girls prepare for the traditional candle-extinguishing ceremony, please join Johnny Stump in singing ‘Happy Birthday.’ Take it away, Johnny!”
The band piped up, and the whole crowd began to sing along.
Soon the Whipples had formed a single row along the platform and stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the crowd behind a guardrail draped in black cloth.
“Happy birthday, dear Charles, Eliza, Henry, Simon, Cordelia, Penelope, Edward, Charlotte, Lenora, Franklin, Abigail, Beatrice, George, and Ivy…. Happy birthday to you!”
On the last note, the black cloth fell away, revealing a row of fourteen industrial-strength electric fans.
Arthur stepped forward and pressed the glowing green button on the steel post at the end of the platform. The row of fan motors sprang to life.
Grabbing hold of the handles built into each fan, the Whipples aimed their respective blowers at the flaming targets before them. From the stairs where Arthur stood, it looked like the Most Fun in All the World.
In a matter of moments, three of the candles closest to the platform had been blown out.
“I got the two on the right!” shouted Henry.
“No you didn’t,” retorted Simon. “I got at least one of them! Think I should know, seeing it was me who invented these candle snuffers….”
“Stop bickering, you two,” chimed in Cordelia. “We go through this every year; we’ll blow them out much faster if we work together. See that one on the far right there? It won’t be nearly as easy to blow out as those first three. But if we all aim for it at once, we’ll be sure to get it on the first try.”
The boys begrudgingly agreed, and the three siblings pivoted their fans in the direction of the specified candle. As soon as their wind streams aligned, the roaring flame sputtered and went out.
“See,” said Cordelia. “As usual, I’m the only one clever enough to recognize the importance of teamwork.”
Bu
t then something happened that none of them had expected. There was a loud pop—accompanied by a small flash of light at the base of the candle. Chunks of icing shot out from the side of the cake and spattered several of the onlookers below.
Assuming it was merely part of the act or a practical joke of some kind, the affected guests cheerfully wiped the icing from their smiling faces.
When the candle began to fall, however, their smiles vanished.
The colossal column of wax wobbled slightly, then slowly leaned over the outer edge of the cake. Cries of laughter turned to shrieks of terror as molten wax poured from the top of the teetering candle onto the horrified crowd.
“What did you have us do, Cordelia?” cried Simon.
“I don’t think we did that…did we?” stammered the girl.
The towering candle leaned further and further outward, and then, with a crack, completely broke away from the cake. As it tumbled toward the earth from twenty feet above, dozens of screaming partygoers ran for their lives.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
A gaping hole formed in the crowd as the guests scattered to get out from under the falling candle like a school of frightened fish dodging a hungry barracuda.
Whizzing past coattails and evening gowns, the column of wax crashed to earth with a thunk, gouging a deep crater in the lawn.
Screaming gave way to silence as the partygoers struggled to catch their breath and comprehend what had just occurred.
It was a wonder nobody had been killed.
“That was a close one, eh?!” exclaimed Nonstop Norman over the loudspeakers. “Sincere apologies to those of you who were almost crushed—I’m afraid that’s just an occupational hazard of being a guest at the Whipple estate! I can assure you everything is now under control, so do remain calm. Anyone with wax burns may report to the nurse’s station and they’ll get you fixed up just as soon as—”
But before he could finish his reassuring speech, he was cut off by another loud pop, accompanied by another flash of light—this time at the base of a candle on the stage side of the cake.
As the candle leaned menacingly toward the bandstand, Nonstop Norman looked up to see the flaming wax pillar looming directly over him, and discovered that—for the first time in his life—he had been struck completely speechless.
“Oh, God,” Mr. Whipple gasped from the towering catwalk. “It’s the curse….” Then, turning to his family, he cried, “Everyone off the platform, now! To the stairs!”
And yet, even as the Whipples watched the candle tilt over the cake’s edge, Arthur’s baby sister, Ivy, remained still—gripping the fan in front of her as tightly as she could with one hand while clutching a party-hat-wearing stuffed bear in the other.
This would not have been half so problematic, had Ivy not been the youngest of the Whipple children and subsequently standing at the end of the row, nearest the stairs. Because the platform barely allowed for a single file line, the frightened little girl and her bear were inadvertently, yet effectively, blocking her family’s only escape route.
“Ivy!” shouted Mr. Whipple. “Move! Now!”
But this only caused the terrified toddler to hold on tighter.
Realizing that if Ivy did not move out of the way very soon, his entire family would be trapped thirty feet in the air, Arthur braced himself against the staircase railing and reached out his arm toward her. “Come on, Ivy,” he said. “Let Mr. Growls go. He’ll be all right. You can do it. Just grab my hand…”
But it was too late. Before Ivy could be persuaded, the fiery column crashed into the stage.
Had Nonstop Norman followed his own advice and remained calm, he would have, at that moment, been smashed flatter than a French crepe. As Arthur soon realized, sometimes—no matter what anyone else says—remaining calm is simply not the appropriate response to a given situation. Sometimes, the appropriate response is to run like mad.
Luckily, the announcer recognized the situation for what it was—a time to run like mad; unfortunately, he took it to a rather extreme level. Instead of stopping when the immediate danger was over, Nonstop Norman kept running and running until the Whipple estate was completely behind him—leaving the rest of the endangered partygoers to fend for themselves. For this reason, Nonstop Norman Prattle was not present to witness one of the worst catastrophes in Whipple family history.
As the candle collided with the stage, it bounced off the floorboards—and promptly crashed into the tower of scaffolding at stage right. Regrettably, it was this tower that was responsible for holding up half the platform upon which the Whipples stood.
There was a long, hair-raising creeeak—and then, a sudden crash. Showing no regard for its distinguished occupants, the far side of the platform dropped out from under the Whipples’ feet as the entire structure jolted forward.
Arthur’s family clung to the handles of their fans, and Arthur felt the stair tower beneath him lurch sideways. His insides went suddenly squishy. As he watched in terror, the top step on which he stood sheared away from the catwalk—and began leaning over the horrified crowd below.
The tilting tower paused, as if weighing its options. Luckily, Arthur had the presence of mind not to wait around for a decision. Whirling about, the boy flung himself down the stairs as fast as his legs would carry him.
He had only descended three steps when the staircase made up its mind—and proceeded to topple.
As he felt the toppling tower pick up speed beneath him, Arthur ran faster. Over the railing to his right, he could see scores of screaming partygoers scurrying to get out of the tower’s shadow.
There was, however, one partygoer who did not flee.
Making a beeline for the foot of the staircase, Wilhelm charged across the lawn into the falling tower’s path. “Hang on, Master Arthur!” the butler shouted. “I’ve got you!”
As Wilhelm caught hold of the tower’s base, Arthur felt a stutter in the tower’s momentum. But some things, once set in motion, are simply too big to be stopped—even by the World’s Strongest German. And so, after a brief hiccup in speed, the twenty-five-foot staircase continued to fall.
Arthur had only made it halfway down the stairs when he was thrown abruptly against the handrail.
There was a splintering crunch followed by a sharp shattering of glass as the staircase smashed through the cocktail bar that stood near the side of the stage.
With a rush of adrenaline, Arthur leapt free of the stairs and dove onto the lawn. Rolling into a skid, the boy gouged a muddy groove with his shoulder as the staircase crashed down behind him in a mess of tangled struts and twisted steel.
Arthur lay on the ground for only a moment, before staggering to his feet and turning toward the wreckage. “Wilhelm!” he cried, spotting the butler’s body pinned beneath the edge of the structure that had once served as its base.
Limping to the spot as fast as he could, Arthur could see the unconscious butler stirring under the tower’s weight. The boy strained to lift the mangled frame, but it would not budge.
The next thing Arthur knew, his uncle was at his shoulder, heaving at the staircase alongside him. But even with their combined strength, the structure barely shifted an inch.
“I’m afraid what we need, lad,” Uncle Mervyn panted, “is another Wilhelm. And since we haven’t got one of those, we’ll have to wait for a crane or a jack or something with a bit more muscle than us mere mortals.”
It immediately became clear, however, that they had no time to wait for anything.
As it happened, the cocktail bar that had been crushed in the fall had housed the World’s Largest Hand-Blown Bottles of Brandy, Vodka, Whiskey, Rum, and Gin—the contents of which were currently gushing onto the surrounding grass.
In the past, Arthur had often heard concerned grown-ups warn underage citizens to stay away from alcohol. This had always seemed to him good advice, and indeed, it still did—though less because of alcohol’s capacity to transform even the brightest individuals into blithering id
iots, and more because of its high degree of flammability.
As another fiery candle fell from the cake and landed near the twisted staircase, the demolished bar—drenched in alcohol—burst into flames.
Arthur and his uncle looked at one another in horror.
Rivers of flaming liquor poured from the pile of debris in all directions—including that of the trapped butler.
“Oh no!” cried the boy.
“Come on, lad!” shouted Uncle Mervyn.
Clutching the staircase once again, the pair heaved with all their might—but still, they could not lift it. The heat stung Arthur’s cheeks as the river of fire snaked its way to within inches of Wilhelm’s head. The butler was about to be burned alive.
As the last drop of hope drained from Arthur’s heart, the boy felt the ground begin to rumble beneath him. He spun his head around—and was confronted by an astonishing sight.
With flames reflecting in his dark eyes and wind coursing through his wild, abundant hair, the Panther-Man of Pandharpur bounded onto the scene atop a charging elephant, while Hamlet and the high-diving dogs raced in at their rear.
As Mr. Mahankali approached the blaze, he yanked back on Shiva’s reins, bringing the hulking beast to a skid—and overturning the portable diving pool harnessed behind him. A massive blanket of water gushed forth, extinguishing the flames with a screeching hiss as billowing columns of steam and smoke escaped into the air above.
“Hold on, my friend!” cried the Panther-Man. “Shiva is here!”
Rushing to the base side of the staircase, the elephant grasped the bottom beam with his trunk and proceeded to lift. As the near side of the structure rose into the air, Hamlet and the other dogs joined Arthur and Uncle Mervyn in sliding Wilhelm’s drenched but unburnt body out from underneath it. Once the butler was clear, Shiva sent the staircase crashing back to the ground.
Mrs. Waite rushed to Wilhelm’s side as the dogs whined anxiously.
“He’s still breathing,” she gasped.
Just then, there was a sharp clang of metal from over the stage—followed by a harrowing chorus of screams.