The No-Good Nine

by John Bemelmans Marciano

  Believe it or not, the first No-Good Ninester to step forward and take a stand alongside Goody was the Cruel.

  Her reason for wanting to stay and stop Mummy, however, had nothing to do with making amends or anything noble like that.

  “I want revenge on that miserable bootlegger,” the Cruel said.

  The Brat seconded the notion. My archenemy however, saw things differently.

  “Revenge helps no one,” the Truant Officer said. “But this woman does need to be stopped.”

  “Let’s start by smashing up the factory,” the Hooligan said. “I hate that place.”

  “Yeah!” the Rude said. “We did such a good job of wrecking it by mistake, think of how great we’ll do when it’s on purpose!”

  There were more excited shouts, and everyone was getting all riled and ready to have at it. With the exception of one naysayer.

  “If you think you can stop Mummy, then all you Naughty Listers are even DUMBER than I thought,” Santa said. “She has the elves. Even if you managed to get her money and destroy the factory and escape, the elves would just rebuild it and she’d make even more money! And imagine what she’d do to you if she CAUGHT you?” Santa smiled at the thought of it. Then harrumphed. “You should all just leave—while you still can!”

  Everyone began arguing over what to do. It was chaos, and time was running out.

  If someone was going to save the situation—to bring us together in one common purpose—it was going to have to be me.

  Yeah, that’s right. Me.

  I stuck my fingers in my mouth and gave the loudest whistle I could. Everyone stopped yelling and stared in my direction.

  I began by reminding my fellow members of why we had banded together in the first place.

  “Remember, if the No-Good Nine stands for anything, it’s about doing whatever we want. So let’s take the money—and smash the factory—and escape this island—and stop Mummy, too! Because Goody-Two-Shoes and my archenemy are right. We can’t just ruin Christmas and let Mummy run the Mob. This is our fault and we have to stop it!”

  It was a swell speech if I do say so myself, but I didn’t mean any of it. Stopping Mummy didn’t matter much to me, and what did I care about fixing Christmas? It wasn’t like I’d be getting any presents, and was Mummy really going to be a worse mob boss than Al Capone?

  No, what I couldn’t bear was the thought of all those elves following a dumb red suit. We had to show them they could think for themselves!

  “But how?” the Know-It-All said. “You h-h-heard what Santa said.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I have a plan.”

  “Oh yeah? And how did your last plan turn out?” the Cruel said. “If not for the Thief making like Babe Ruth with Rooster Jack’s head, we’d still be trapped in here, or worse!”

  “Yeah, but this is a good plan,” I said.

  I smiled.

  No one else looked convinced.

  “One for nine?” I said, making the Sign of the Nine across my chest.

  Everyone shrugged and gave a very unenthusiastic, “Nine for one . . .”

  The Truant Officer was in, too. And so was Hendrick, who never much cared for Mummy Claus.

  Just as I was about to explain how we were going to break the elves away from Mummy’s control, the Hooligan raised his hand.

  “Does any of this plannin’ stuff involve us gettin’ sump’m to eat?”

  50. THE BEST CHAPTER YET!

  Getting food was the easy part. With Rooster Jack tied up, gagged, and locked in our old prison, we were able to stroll into Santa’s former house and pull a rack of meat out of the fridge.

  “Take off your boots!” Santa said. “And get your feet off the table!”

  “This ain’t your house no more, remember?” the Rude said, and wiped his mouth on the tablecloth.

  As we filled our bellies, I revealed the Plan.

  “I call it . . . The GREAT ELF UPRISING!”

  The name was aces, right?

  First, we’d split into four groups, each designed to take advantage of the special—er—talents of its members.

  The first team was the least likely, as it put the Thief and the Brat together. The reason for this was that the Brat didn’t trust the Thief with what she was going to do. Namely, break into Mummy’s vault and steal all her loot, which included his loot. (We’d be doing something else with Mummy’s arsenal of weapons. More on that later.)

  The members of group two—the Hooligan, the Rude, and Hendrick the guard elf—would be on factory-wrecking duty.

  Team three would make use of Goody-Two-Shoes’s particular brand of naughtiness. To help her were the Cruel, the Vainglorious, and a very special friend. More on him later.

  Because first I have to tell you about the final—and most important—squad, which was made up of the Know-It-All, Santa, the Truant Officer, and myself.

  We would be delivering the morning message, and it would be a message unlike any the elves had ever heard before.

  “But how is it going to change their minds?” Santa said.

  A fair question. This speech was going to have to be so amazing—incredible—indisputable that the elves would have no choice but to believe it.

  “And you are going to read it!” I told Santa. He harrumphed and crossed his arms.

  While the others left to carry out their assignments, the Know-It-All and I stayed to write the irresistible speech.

  It took us a couple of hours, but when you combined the Know-It-All’s sense of reason and smarts with my own sense of drama and deceit, it led to something pretty darn good.

  “I can’t read THIS!” Santa said as he looked it over. “I don’t believe a word of it!”

  “But you’ve gotta read it!” I said. “It’s the only way to convince the other elves not to follow the suit. And besides, don’t you want to be Santa again?”

  He threw the script to the ground.

  “Santa, I think you had better start believing it,” the Truant Officer said, reaching for the dropped paper. “Every word of it.”

  My archenemy held the speech out for Santa to take.

  “YOU are telling me this?” Santa said. “You are the one who crossed five thousand miles of subarctic wilderness to stop these dirty rotten Naughty Listers! What about them being a bunch of spoiled American negodniks?”

  “I was wrong, Santa. And so are you,” my nemesis said. Then he turned to me. “I was especially wrong about you, Luigi Curidi.”

  Oh, yuck! How could he say that to me? Was my archenemy going all soft on me now? Were we going to have to become friends or something?

  Under any other circumstances, I would’ve told him to go to heck—we were nemesisses and that was that. However, with enemies like Mummy and Black Jack, I needed all the friends I could get.

  “Just never call me that name again, O.K.?”

  * * *

  • • •

  When we stepped out of Santa’s house, the sky was just beginning to brighten in the east, drowning out the stars on the horizon. While the rest of my group went to the Eye to get the morning broadcast ready, I went to check on the progress of the other teams. First, I stopped by the factory.

  Walking in, I almost got brained by a case of flying bottles.

  “Hey, watch where you’re goin’!” the Rude said, glass shattering everywhere. “We’re destroyin’ stuff here!”

  It looked like an earthquake had hit the joint. The equipment was smashed—the Hooligan and Hendrick were swinging sledgehammers at everything in sight—and the floor was covered in shards of glass, sticky puddles of molasses, and a murky river of ruined rum.

  “Great job, fellers!” I said.

  “Thanks,” the Rude said. “Now help me roll these barrels.”

  “Uh, I actually have to go check on the others
,” I said.

  Physical labor was not my talent.

  Inside Mummy’s vault, I found the Brat and the Thief having—what else?—an argument.

  “I stole it fair and square!” the Thief said, pulling the trunk of silver away from the Brat. “It’s mine!”

  “But it was mine first!” the Brat said, yanking on the opposite handle.

  “No, it wasn’t,” she said. “It was your daddy’s. And he stole it from someone else!”

  The Brat looked like his head was about to pop off.

  “Guys, guys!” I said. “Stop it! You were supposed to be carting off the money and the weapons.”

  The Thief told me that the cash was already loaded into the sleigh, but we had to hurry with Mummy’s arsenal. The sun was nearly up!

  The three of us pushed wheelbarrows of guns, ammunition, and dynamite down the hill and into the Square, where we found Goody-Two-Shoes’s team. They were at work on the walls of the buildings lining the plaza.

  And what they had painted on them was fantastic.

  Graffiti might have been Goody-Two-Shoes’s special skill, but the Cruel and the Vainglorious had the knack for it, too. As did their special helper—Lefty.

  “He didn’t want to do it at first,” Goody said, motioning to the paint-splattered elf. “But he’s really taken to it.”

  “You know that we elves hate to break the rules. But this is fun!” Lefty said, finishing up a note to his fellow workers.

  I’d tell you what it was, but just then the sun broke the horizon and

  —BZZT!—Good morning, fellow elves! This is your Santa speaking. Your FORMER Santa, that is . . .—

  As he read the address, elves began to come out of their sleeping quarters, to better hear what Santa was saying. They were mesmerized, unable to believe his words. Which is to say, our words.

  It was a beautiful speech, if I do say so myself.

  It was about fairness. And justice. And the true meaning of Christmas.

  “It makes me want to vomit,” the Cruel said.

  “Shhh!” I said. “He’s getting to the good part!”

  —but more than that, my fellow elves, I want to apologize to all of YOU. I have been wrong about many things. I should have treated you better. I should have paid you more. I should not have worked you so hard. I promise that all this will change if you make me your Santa again. And so will . . . (wait, do I HAVE to say this part?)—

  That last bit was muffled, like Santa was covering the microphone.

  ( . . . but it doesn’t even have anything to do with the elves—what do THEY care about the Naughty List?)

  The Truant Officer said something garbled in the background, and Santa sighed.

  He continued:

  —And SO will how we decide who gets presents. Because . . . ahem . . . EVERY child should get presents on Christmas, no matter how ROTTEN or THIEVING or LYING or—

  Hey, that wasn’t in the script!

  —or HORRIBLE or WRETCHED they are. And so I announce that—if you DO make me your Santa again—there shall be NO . . . MORE . . . NAUGHTY LIST.—

  Bingo!

  If you can believe it, even the Cruel gave me a smile and a pat on the back.

  O.K., there was no pat. And she didn’t smile so much as she just stopped scowling for a moment.

  —In closing, I want to leave you with one last thing that I have learned, and I hope you have too: It is not the suit that makes the Santa, but the SANTA that makes the suit. The only thing any of you should follow is your own mind and, most especially, your own heart. Thank you for listening . . .—BZZT!

  By the time the broadcast was finished, all the elves had spilled out into the Square, where they stood staring up at the giant loudspeaker attached to the Tower. I waited for them to cheer. It was a most cheer-worthy speech, after all.

  But they weren’t cheering.

  They still looked confused.

  And that’s when we heard

  BLANNNNH!

  It was the sound of Mummy’s sleigh, returning.

  Why was she back so early?

  I suddenly wondered if we had really thought this thing through.

  Whose dumb plan was this anyway?

  51. THE RETURN OF MUMMY CLAUS

  You almost had to feel bad for Mummy. I mean, imagine—you’re coming back from the greatest night of your life, when you not only make a fortune but you impress the most vile and dangerous criminals on the planet so much that they make you a member of their exclusive underworld syndicate. Then you come flying home, thinking of all the glorious bad-guy gloating you’re about to get to do, and you see all the elves wandering around the Square, and you know something has gone wrong.

  So you can see why she was annoyed from the moment she stepped out of that oversize sleigh.

  With Black Jack trailing behind her, she walked from the stables toward the Square, where she found a group of elves gathered around a wall.

  “What are you fools looking at?” she said.

  “Mummy Rummy is an evil dummy,” one of them said.

  “What did you just say?” Mummy said, her gold tooth glaring as she snarled.

  The elf pointed at the wall.

  MUMMY RUMMY IS AN EVIL DUMMY

  And that’s when Mummy saw it—the graffiti on all the buildings.

  DON’T FOLLOW A SUIT

  GIVE MUMMY THE BOOT!!

  MAKE TOYS NOT BOOZE

  THE FREE REPUBLIC OF ELVES!

  WORKER ELVES UNITE!

  GET NAUGHTY!

  NEVER TRUST A LADY WITH A FAKE

  BEARD AND A GOLD TOOTH!

  DOWN WITH MUMMY!

  DOWN WITH MUMMY!

  DOWN WITH MUMMY!

  DOWN WITH MUMMY!

  DOWN WITH MUMMY!

  and

  THE GLORIOUS IS HANDSOME!

  “I can’t believe you wrote that!” I said to the Vainglorious.

  “Why do you think it was me?” he said. “Anyone could have written that!”

  The other teams were now coming to see what was going on, and all nine of us were together again. For the first time.

  I flashed the Sign of the Nine. And everyone flashed it back.

  Which is when Mummy saw us.

  “The No-Good Nine!” she said, spitting the words out. “’Ow did you all escape? What did you do to Rooster Jack?”

  “He’s tied up at the moment,” the Thief said.

  “You!” Mummy said. “I should ’ave known! I never should ’ave trusted you. It is the love a mother ’as for a daughter that leads to such mistakes!”

  “And here I thought it was the chest of silver,” the Thief said.

  “Your factory is destroyed, Mummy,” the Rude said. “All of it!”

  Her face went white.

  “And this is yer last bottle of booze!” the Hooligan said, proudly holding it up.

  “That factory was nothing!” Mummy said, recovering. “With all the money I’ve made, I’ll build a factory that puts that one to shame. In fact, I’ll build ten of them. And my army of elves will ’elp me!”

  “Yeah, the money—we took all that,” the Brat said.

  “And the weapons,” the Thief said. “They’re over there.”

  She pointed to the big pile in the middle of the Square. Then she nodded to the Hooligan and the Rude.

  “Boys?” the Thief said. “Do it!”

  The Hooligan pulled the cork out of the bottle of rum with his teeth

  Pop!

  turned it upside down, and made a trail of alcohol to the pile of weapons. The Rude lit a match, dropped it on the rum, and

  FWOOM!

  and then

  KABOOM!

  The fireworks display might have been a bit more intense than we had planned
for, but it did the trick.

  “Noooo!” Mummy shouted. “All my guns! And dynamite! What ’ave you DONE?”

  “Ain’t it beautiful?” the Rude said.

  “You’re through, Mummy!” I said. “That was your entire arsenal. All of your guns are gone!”

  “Except for these!” she said as she and Black Jack each pulled out a pistol.

  Oh, right! I forgot they always carried guns.

  “I’ll get you for this!” Mummy said, waving her gun at us. “All of you!”

  “No, you won’t!”

  It wasn’t one of us who said it. It was an elf.

  Amanuensis.

  He was at the head of what had become a mob. The elves were headed straight for Mummy, and they no longer looked confused.

  “What’s the matter with you, you stupid little gnomes!” Mummy said. “Get away from me and get to WORK!”

  “We’re not going to work today,” Amanuensis said. “Not for you.”

  Mummy’s face bubbled with fury.

  “What did you say?” she said.

  “I said,” Amanuensis said, “we’re not going to work for you. Ever!”

  “Don’t you see this?” she said, tugging on her red jacket. “And this?” She tugged on her beard. “You ’ave to follow me! I wear the suit. I am the Santa!”

  “No we don’t, and no you’re not,” Amanuensis said. “You’re not an elf, and you’re barely even a human being.”

  He stepped up to Mummy, grabbed the end of the beard, and yanked it off of her

  snap!

  “’Ow dare you, you little troll!” she said. “Do you ’ave any idea what I can do to you. Why I—I—”

  Mummy stopped.

  There must’ve been two hundred elves gathered around her now, and they were closing in.

  They did not look happy.

  Remember what I said about elves holding a grudge? I wasn’t kidding.

  “You’ve stolen our home!” an elf shouted from the back of the crowd.

  “We don’t want to make your rum anymore!” another yelled.

  “MAKE TOYS NOT BOOZE!” someone hollered.

  There was booing and hissing. And then the chant began.