Greatest Power

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  “A monkey?” Dave gasped.

  It was, indeed, a monkey.

  A small, moderately cute, but highly intelligent rhesus monkey that had been captured by Damien Black on a treasure-hunting excursion in the Himalaya mountains of northern India, and was now kept (as was the case with all Damien’s treasures) locked up tight.

  But the cage that held this monkey was no ordinary barred rectangular enclosure. It was, in fact, quite elaborate.

  Quite snazzy.

  Quite hip.

  The front wall was made of bars, but they’d been painted gold, as had the three interior walls. There were cushy couches, recessed lighting, and a full-service coffee bar—the cage was the mansion’s subterranean espresso café.

  It was the place Damien went to chill.

  To unwind.

  Or, more often, to get amped up with a stiff cup o’ joe.

  You see, the monkey was not caged simply as a pet. That beastly Damien Black had trained him to brew rare and exotic blends of Himalayan coffee (which Damien enjoys drinking black, of course). Unfortunately for Damien, his prized, highly intelligent monkey had also developed a taste for exotic Himalayan coffee. (The result, no doubt, of being caged in an espresso café.)

  Of course, as Dave approached the café, he knew none of this. He just saw a caged monkey in a gold room. A monkey who grew more and more agitated the closer they got, scampering from one side of the front wall to the other, pulling on the bars, stopping, whimpering, pulling some more.

  “He knows we’re here,” Sticky whispered ever so quietly in Dave’s ear.

  Dave gave the gecko a questioning look.

  “He smells us,” Sticky whispered.

  Which was true. Being invisible did not make them in-smell-ible.

  Not that they stank—you and I would never have been able to smell them. But with an olfactory system twice as sensitive as ours, rhesus monkeys can smell things we cannot. And so it was Dave’s odor, his natural (and appropriately managed) BO, that gave them away.

  Perhaps you’re wondering why Dave did not just continue on his quest for the stolen ring. He was, after all, in no danger from a caged rhesus monkey. Damien Black had obviously been and gone (as was evidenced by the still-moist espresso cup teetering on its saucer outside a small to-go window). And Damien’s hard-heeled footprints were still visible, guiding them in the right direction.

  So why didn’t Dave just move along?

  Get with the program.

  Or, as Sticky would say, ándale!

  It was the monkey. Something about his little fur-free face. Something about the way his eyes pleaded through the bars. Something about the whimper. They all said quite clearly what the monkey could not.

  Set me free.

  “Do it, señor,” Sticky whispered, for he himself had been caged at one time by the evil treasure hunter and had great gecko sympathy for the little pleading monkey.

  And so, after a quick glance around in all directions, Dave decided he would set the monkey free.

  Ah, how unexpectedly dangerous good deeds can be.

  Opening the cage was, of course, not easy. There were nine locks dangling from each other, linked together such that one could not be opened without the previous one being sprung.

  And nine locks meant nine keys. “The keys are here someplace, señor” Sticky whispered.

  Which was quite logical. After all, if Damien Black carried around every key to every lock of every room in his nightmarish mansion (or its subterranean maze), he would be covered in skeleton keys (as they, of course, were the sort of key Damien Black preferred).

  So Dave set about looking for the hiding place.

  He checked the pathway for a trapdoor.

  (Damien Black adores trapdoors.)

  He checked the ridge above the doorframe.

  (A foolish waste of time, as Damien Black would never hide keys in a place so clichéd.)

  At last, he checked the wall. The bars, you see, were set back about three feet from the pathway. (Damien felt the recessed look helped give the café a more upscale feel. It was not, after all, supposed to look like a cage in a zoo.)

  And although the wall seemed completely solid, Dave had learned from previous experience in Damien’s maniacal mansion that he should expect the unexpected.

  Keep his eyes peeled.

  Be on the loony-eyed lookout.

  Thinking like a madman helped.

  And where would a madman hide a ring of skeleton keys?

  (Think. Think like a madman.)

  Dave began pressing the stones of the wall. They were cold and damp and rough, but he continued pressing them one by one until he discovered a stone that moved inward about an inch.

  He held his breath and waited for something to happen.

  Nothing did.

  “Let go,” Sticky whispered.

  So Dave let go, and by doing so, he released the spring mechanism behind the stone.

  A drawer shot forward.

  A drawer that was decorated in great detail like an open coffin.

  “Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Damien’s recorded voice laughed (for being the truly demented villain that he is, Damien found great humor in placing anything skeleton-related in a coffin). Immediately a doll-sized version of Damien himself boinged into a sitting position in the satinlined coffin and held out a ring of keys.

  Dave had, of course, jumped back, and as he stared at the mini-villain in the mini-coffin, he whispered, “That guy is wacko!”

  Sticky nodded. “One loco caballero.” Then he added, “But ándale, okay? That doll is giving me the heebie-jeebies!”

  So Dave grabbed the keys from the doll’s outstretched hand and started unlatching the nine locks.

  The monkey was, at first, simply confused. He smelled something, heard something, but did not see something. But when the coffin drawer sprang open, his little over-caffeinated monkey heart started really racing.

  Somebody (who did not smell at all like Damien Black) was opening his cage!

  The monkey bounded up and down the barred wall, swinging and screeching ecstatically as the locks popped open one by one. And when, at last, the final lock was off and the door was open, the monkey flew out of the café with a profound squeal of joy (one that only those who have known freedom and then lost it could truly understand).

  “Good luck, little guy,” Dave laughed as the monkey scrambled down the path in the direction that they’d come.

  Then suddenly the monkey was back, charging past them in the opposite direction.

  “No, no,” Dave said, pointing an invisible arm in the direction of the twisty, rusty ladder. “Thataway!”

  But the monkey kept right on going.

  So Dave began refastening the padlocks (something he thought wise, as it would keep Damien Black in the dark about how this espresso-café jailbreak had occurred). And he’d just finished clicking the ninth lock in place and was moving toward the mini-coffin when the monkey came scampering back.

  This time, he slammed smack-dab into Dave’s invisible (but very solid) leg.

  “Wr-reeeeeeek!” the monkey cried, rubbing his forehead as he fell back onto the ground, dazed. But when he recovered, his nose sprang into action and a mischievous light came to his eyes. And while Dave put the keys back in the coffin and laid the Damien doll to rest, the monkey started slapping the air as he sniffed around.

  “He’s looking for you,” Sticky whispered ever so quietly in Dave’s ear (as he’d been keeping a watchful eye on the little rascal since the monkey had landed with a thump on his fuzzy orange rump).

  “Huh?” Dave said, looking over his shoulder.

  But he was already too late. That rascally rhesus was upon him now and made a solid slap against Dave’s leg. Lickety-split, the monkey climbed his leg, then his back, and then perched on top of Dave’s head, bending over to look him right in the eye.

  “Wr-reeek!” the monkey cried, for he was now also invisible and could see quite clearly that the force t
hat had freed him was, to his surprise, human. “Wr-reeek!” he cried again, this time bouncing with joy on top of Dave’s head.

  “Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky grumbled, shoving the monkey’s tail out of his face. “This is trouble, señor.”

  Ah, trouble indeed. For there is nothing, I promise you, nothing more persistent than a playful monkey revved up on coffee.

  Dave took the monkey off his head and placed him on the ground.

  The monkey climbed back on.

  Dave took the monkey off.

  The monkey climbed back on.

  Dave took the monkey off.

  The monkey climbed back on.

  Dave took the … Well, you get the idea, I’m sure.

  At last, Dave tossed the monkey (in an ever-so-gentle, be-kind-to-primates way, of course).

  The monkey scampered back (in an oh-no-you-don’t!-playful-primate way, as this had now become a very entertaining game of cat and mouse).

  (Or, in this case, boy and monkey.)

  “Switch to Gecko Power!” Sticky said at last. “Climb the walls! Ándale, hombre. This is crazy!”

  And so Dave did.

  Which caused the monkey to do a great deal of blinking and eee-eeeking, but as Dave proceeded along the dimly lit corridor, the monkey simply followed on the path below.

  “Eeee-eeek?” he asked. “Eeeee-eeeek?”

  “Ay-ay,” Sticky grumbled (which, in this case, meant How annoying does he want to be?).

  “I feel sorry for him,” Dave whispered.

  “I think we should have left him caged,” Sticky grumbled.

  “What? How can you say that?”

  “Not this again,” Sticky groaned.

  It soon became clear to Dave that the Wall-Walker ingot wasn’t doing them an iota of good. They weren’t escaping the monkey, and they were now visible (and, therefore, completely vulnerable should Damien happen back down the pathway). And to make matters worse, the monkey was terribly noisy with all his eeeking and squeaking.

  “Can you just shush? Please, shhhh,” he whispered, putting a finger to his lips.

  The monkey pushed his lips forward, put a finger up, and whispered, “Whoooh” (which was as close to shhh as he could come).

  “Whoa, dude, you’re smart!” Dave whispered as he came down off the wall.

  The monkey bobbed his head. “Eee-eeee-eeeeeeee!”

  “Shhhh!”

  “Whoooh!” the monkey replied with a finger at his lips.

  “You’re thinking dangerous thoughts, señor,” Sticky said, for he could tell exactly what Dave was thinking. “That monkey is trouble. Big, big trouble.”

  But Dave, being an all-knowing thirteen-year-old boy (and having within reach something all thirteen-year-old boys want), did not heed the warning. “If you come with us,” he whispered to the monkey, “you have to be completely quiet.”

  “Eeeek-schweeek!” the monkey replied.

  Dave turned to Sticky. “I think he understands me!”

  Sticky shook his head. “You’re loco-berry burritos, man. I tell you—that monkey is trouble.”

  Dave grinned at the gecko. “So are you.”

  “Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky groaned, slapping his little gecko forehead. But no amount of ay-aying, or ay-ay-aying, or ay-ay-ay-aying would talk Dave out of it. His mind was made up. So with a simple click-twist, twist-click, Dave switched from Wall-Walker to Invisibility, all under the watchful eye of one rascally rhesus monkey.

  Moments later, the three of them were proceeding along the pathway, the monkey on Dave’s left shoulder, the gecko on Dave’s right.

  All invisible.

  All heading, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, straight for trouble.

  By straight, I do not mean in a straight line.

  By straight, I mean directly.

  Without sidetracking.

  Or stopping to indulge in, say, after-school snacks.

  The path itself, however, had nothing in common with a straight line.

  It was twisty.

  Jagged.

  Complicated.

  In long (as opposed to “in short,” which clearly this is not), the path went up, down, in, out, this way, that way, pell-mell, roundabout, helter-skelter, and every which way but straight. But it did, as you know, take them straight to danger.

  “The footprints just stop,” Dave said when they found themselves at a wide place in the pathway where Damien’s hard-heeled footprints had, in fact, just stopped. “Where did he go?”

  Ah, where indeed.

  Cautiously, Dave stepped into Damien Black’s final footprints.

  Nothing happened.

  He reached out to the wall on the right, stretching mightily to touch it (thinking that perhaps it would open some hidden passage-way).

  Nothing happened.

  He reached out to the wall on the left, again stretching mightily to touch it (as Damien’s lanky frame provided a much greater reach than young Dave’s).

  Nothing happened.

  “Look up,” Sticky whispered, pointing over-head.

  Sure enough, there was a dangling pull chain. It was rather delicate-looking—like something you might see hanging from a ceiling fan.

  Only it was longer.

  And there was no ceiling fan.

  Or any other mechanism, for that matter.

  Just the dangling chain.

  Up there.

  Dangling.

  Dave stared.

  Sticky stared.

  But the monkey (not being one for standing around staring) reached up and yanked.

  Suddenly, whooooosh, a big, openmouthed Chinese New Year dragon dropped out of the ceiling and swallowed them whole.

  “Holy guaca-tacaroleeeeee!” Sticky cried, holding on tight to Dave’s invisible shirt as a powerful vacuum sucked them up, up, up through an enormous hose.

  “Eeeeeeeek!” the monkey cried, and the force of the vacuum was so great that the monkey (who had, unfortunately, failed to hold on tight to Dave’s invisible shirt) was pulled right off of Dave’s shoulder and (because he was considerably lighter than Dave) whooshed ahead of Dave and Sticky at an impressive speed.

  Now, perhaps you feel as I do that flying monkeys are terribly frightening creatures. Regular monkeys are just fine. But flying monkeys? Oh my. They give me niggly-wiggly nightmares.

  Flying monkeys are just … scary.

  And (as you will soon see) I am not alone in this (admittedly irrational) fear—there are others who feel just as fearful of flying monkeys as I do.

  Not that this particular monkey was an actual flying monkey. He was simply a monkey who, due to his own impatience and impulsiveness, happened to be flying. But he appeared to be a flying monkey, which is all it takes to strike terror through the hearts of those who get niggly-wiggly nightmares over flying monkeys.

  And as fate would have it, there were three such hearts in the room where the vacuuming voyage ended. These hearts belonged to three men known as the Bandito Brothers: Pablo, Angelo, and Tito.

  These three men were already in an extremely jumpy state because Damien Black was (understandably) furious with them. Damien had made it clear that he didn’t want them around, didn’t need them around, and didn’t like them around. Yet during his recent incarceration (or, if you will, stint as jailbird), the Bandito Brothers had holed up in his mansion, making themselves quite at home, eating everything in sight (regardless of its questionable state or expiration date).

  Damien had returned to find the cupboards bare and dirty dishes everywhere. He had immediately bound and gagged the Bandito Brothers and had begun plotting a way to rid himself of them for once and for all.

  Obviously, getting rid of the Bandito Brothers required an especially deep, dark, diabolical deed, because Damien had paced around for three days, plotting, and had been uncharacteristically stumped as to what that deed might be.

  And so (to curb his frustrations and replenish his dwindled cupboards and coffers) he had robbed a bank.


  And snagged a ring.

  It made him feel so much better.

  He felt so good, in fact, that on the ride home on his Sewer Cruiser, he’d come up with a wonderful, fail-safe, deliciously devilish plan to at long last rid himself of those pesky Bandito Brothers.

  “Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” he’d laughed while ascending the twisty, turny, rusty ladder. “Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” And after celebrating with a quick jolt of java at his espresso café and making a whooshing re-entry into the mansion, he’d passed by the Bandito Brothers with the sack of cash slung over his shoulder and pointed with his very pointy pointing finger. “Tonight, you fools,” he hissed. “I get rid of you tonight!”

  “No, Mr. Black! We are your friends!” Angelo said (although through the gag it sounded very much like “Oh, Mawa Bwa! Wa ah oh wen!”).

  “Ooo nee ah!” Pablo said, trying to convey the desperate “You need us” line that all double-crossing criminals use when pleading for their lives.

  “You are not my friends, and I do not need you!” Damien snarled (for, much to his dismay, after three days of their gaggling, he’d learned to understand their tongue-tied words). “Tonight! I get rid of you tonight!”

  Unfortunately for Damien, a flying monkey was about to make a nightmare of his deliciously devilish plan.

  The Bandito Brothers, it’s fair to say, idolized Damien Black.

  They were in awe of his wickedness.

  His deadly, diabolical dark side.

  His sheer, unapologetic badness.

  They had fantasies of becoming just like him. Anyone who had known the Bandito Brothers when they were petty criminals, stealing cash and curios from parties where they’d been hired to play as a mariachi band, would say that they were plenty bad enough (both morally and musically). But in truth, the Brothers were just bad boys in training.

  Minor leaguers.

  Damien Black, they immediately recognized, was the majors.

  After they’d trekked a thousand miles to find him, they’d managed to convince Damien that they could help. They knew that Sticky could talk (something most people would scoff at rather than believe), and they’d convinced Damien that they could help capture the lizard and return it to him. “We have inside information about that sneaky beast,” Pablo had said.