“Zozo?!” they all repeated, just as ominously.
“Not good,” added Pet Rock.
24
ZoZo A-Go-Go
Being captured and crammed into a burlap sack by a bunch of Little Ratty Toy Freaky Deaky Dementos had been the weirdest thing that Billy had ever even dreamed of. At least they’d finally pulled the sack off once they got him to the strange and disturbing place where they’d dragged him. This dark, damp kingdom of toys and weird little creatures was so bizarre that it actually delighted Billy as much as it frightened him.
It’s like a Monster Scary Movie, he thought. Like the Frankenstein guy, but with toys. He’d watched several of these Monster Scary Movies without his parents’ permission, which, of course, was a big deal and almost against the law. They hadn’t told him he absolutely couldn’t watch them, but Billy had a pretty good idea they would say “that’s not age appropperable” or some long words like that.
So, instead of asking, he watched these movies “in secret.” He’d watch the movies when his parents were napping or busy doing parent stuff. If he heard them coming, he would change the channel to Barney or something he knew they thought was good for him; then they’d leave him alone and he’d go back to the spooky thrills of werewolves and hunchbacks and their fog-enshrouded wonderlands that were more wonderful for not being in color. And though these Monster Scary Movies did, in fact, scare him, usually he sort of liked it. And he liked the monsters a lot more than the regular people in the story, which was puzzling to him. “Monsters in black-and-white land are so cool,” he’d told Ollie. Ollie agreed.
But right now was not in black and white nor was it on TV. This place was apparently real life, and Billy would have to deal with it. He was tied up with a dozen different kinds of rope and string, lying on the wet concrete floor in what he’d figured out was some creature named Zozo’s workroom.
And he thought he knew where this workroom was, and thus where he was. The burlap sack had been easy to see through. For most of the journey, the Creeps had dragged and pushed him across the bumpy ground and through a wooded vacant lot. Billy’d been clever enough to shove his action figures, one by one, out of the hole he’d made in the burlap sack during the journey. Once they came to the overgrown entrance of a place called “the Tunnel of Love,” Billy realized that he must be deeper within the Dark Carnival. He had walked on the outer edge of the carnival several times with his mom and dad, but they never explored it, which Billy had desperately wanted to do.
“It’s too dangerous,” his dad had told him. “Huge holes you can’t see. Old rides practically falling down. The place is a menace.”
“I loved it when I was a kid,” his mom had said, and the way she had said it stuck in Billy’s mind. He could tell that remembering the carnival made her happy and sad at the same time. And this made the Dark Carnival Place very interesting to Billy.
But he never dreamed he’d be at the carnival at night without his parents. The Creeps had lowered him into a rotting wooden boat in the shape of a giant swan and rowed it down the Tunnel of Love.
At the entrance he’d managed to shove his winged Pegasus out of the sack at the last second. The toy horse lay quiet and still in the grass and mud, his wings upstretched, the shadows covering him well. Perfect! None of the Creeps had noticed him as they trundled Billy along.
As Billy had lain in the bottom of the swan boat, he’d wondered if his trail of action figures and creatures was still there. And if perhaps he should have made his trail with the candy he’d packed. Hansel and Gretel had used crumbs. That had always bothered him. What if birds or squirrels or a dog had come along? So long, Hansel! See ya, Gretel! No, his small plastic pals seemed the best choice. And indeed they were. The Code of the Toys was unshakable, even for the tiniest of playthings. The code was simple: that a toy would always help whenever possible. Help make their child’s day full of adventures, full of joy, full of comfort.
But this underground otherworld of Creeps and clowns had a different code, and Billy could feel that it was not a good or friendly one. As he was listening to the one called Super Creep talking to the Monster Toy Clown, he figured out these creatures had stolen Ollie at the Wedding. That their mission was to steal any favorite toy they knew about. But Ollie had escaped! Ollie had been so messed up from escaping that Billy almost didn’t recognize him. Then a miserable thought came to Billy. What if Ollie didn’t understand why I threw him? What if he didn’t know I was trying to save him from those Creeps? And if they wanted a favorite, why did they take me?
These guys do a lot of illegal and commit A LOT of mean, thought Billy, and this made him feel big-time mad. Mad that they had taken Ollie and tried to do crummy bully stuff to him. Mad that they had done the same thing to bunches and bunches of other toys. Then he remembered a kid at the grocery store and how the kid had cried so hard and kept saying, “I lost Binky! I lost Binky!” And how that kid and the mom were looking everywhere for Binky. The kid was so sad that Billy felt sorry for her. Really sorry. Almost as sorry as he felt for the lost dog he saw one day when he was riding somewhere with his parents. They were in a whole different neighborhood, and the dog wanted to cross the street but was scared and shivering and skinny, and Billy yelled at his dad to stop the car so they could help the dog. But his dad said the dog would be fine. Billy wasn’t so sure about that. And he thought that maybe grown-ups pretended too. But that grown-up pretending seemed more like lying than pretending sometimes. Billy still worried about that dog. Even though he’d only glimpsed it for a few seconds, Billy knew he would never forget it. Not even when he was superold, like fifty. Or maybe even older. He would remember that poor, skinny dog forever.
And then he thought of Ollie.
How Ollie had been wet and muddy and sad looking. Like that dog. And it made Billy so sad he couldn’t think about it for even one more second.
Billy had had to throw Ollie as far as he could so the Creeps wouldn’t get him. And they hadn’t found him. Billy could tell by what the Super Creep was now telling the clown thing.
“But, Boss, we looked everywhere,” the Super Creep was explaining to Zozo, who glared down from his throne. “The kid tossed him! He unfavorited him!”
Zozo, unimpressed, leaned forward, his hands together like a steeple, his rusted face hidden in shadows. He said not a word.
The Super Creep hated these silences. He tried again.
“I’m telling you, Boss. If a toy ain’t Faved, then it’s nothin’, right?”
Zozo leaned forward even more. The metal skeleton under his faded clothes creaked. With one hand, Zozo slowly reached for a saw-toothed gear that lay on his worktable.
An instant later, with sudden, blinding speed, he threw the gear across the room and neatly beheaded the Super Creep.
Billy’s eyes went wide. “Wow!” he whispered. “He’s a good thrower!”
The Super Creep’s head rolled across the floor and came to rest just a few inches from Billy’s face. It spun like a top and then slowed and stopped, its eyes looking at Zozo.
Billy was a little unnerved. Then the head began to speak and Billy was a lot unnerved!
“Okay, Boss, I get it. You really wanted the plush.” The Super Creep’s body was still standing. It staggered to its wayward head and began feeling around on the floor, but it could only guess where its head was. It began patting Billy’s shoulder and then his cheek. “Wrong head,” muttered the Super Creep’s head. “Over here, doofus.”
The body turned but accidentally kicked its own head—once, twice—before catching it and placing it back on its shoulders, but upside down.
“I will get the plush, Boss, but”—the head tilted and almost fell—“but think about this, Boss. . . .” The Super Creep’s head teetered and fell to the other side, but he caught it and held it at chest level, like a ball. “The kid can do something that no toy, no favorite—not even YOU—can do in a million years.”
Zozo leaned back in his chair. The creaking
sounded ominous.
The Super Creep spoke carefully and with emphasis. “The Kid is a kid. A kid,” he began. “And only a kid can favorite a toy.”
There was a long, unbearable silence.
“Boss,” pleaded the Super Creep, walking over to the worktable, one hand holding his head onto his neck, the other pointing to the cobbled-together dancer doll who lay there and had lain there, lifeless, for more years than any of them could count. “That’s why your dolly won’t dance,” the Super Creep concluded. “It won’t ever. Not until a kid favorites it. And that’s why I brought you”—with a flourish, he pointed to Billy—“a kid.”
25
The Cavalry!
Back at the junkyard, things were getting tense.
Billy’s my favorite, even if I’m not his, thought Ollie. He’s in danger, and I’ve got to help him. He felt this with the purity and strength that comes with having been a favorite toy. He threw me away! And that thought hurt him all the way past his stuffing and into whatever kind of soul a toy has.
The Junkyard Gang knew exactly what Ollie was feeling. If given a chance, any one of them would have rejoined their Humes, too! And while they knew this couldn’t happen for them, now was a chance to be useful again. USEFUL! To be of use! And so they banded together—constructing themselves into the most unlikely cavalry of the cast off, the forgotten, and the brave—to help.
Other pieces of junk eagerly joined in the quest. Chilly, an empty refrigerator who had been junked the longest of anybody, had been the first to volunteer, and he was now being fitted with mismatched tires and wheelbarrows and a makeshift sail. The plan was to turn him into a method of swift transportation. A lawn mower named Clipper Greenfellow came forward. His cheerful, aristocratic manner gave the endeavor a certain what-the-heck flair. “Step back, fellow Junks. I’ve mowed the best lawns and putting greens from here to Hyde Park, and I’m ready to cut the Zozo riffraff down to size! My, I feel yar!” he drawled in his New England–playboy voice.
Reeler used his ample high-tension fishing line to bind Chilly and Clipper together. Topper, with a skill earned from opening tens of hundreds of bottles and cans, cut whatever needed cutting, adding the final touches that would turn Chilly from an oversize, white-enamel metal box into the first ever all-terrain mobile-junk attack vehicle.
Keys typed out last-minute instructions while Clocker reminded them that time was ticking.
Lefty, the only one with four fingers and an opposable thumb, was invaluable in grabbing what needed grabbing and in tying things together.
Brushes gave everyone a quick sweep so they’d look shipshape.
Pet Rock—well, Pet Rock sat in Chilly and waited. “It’s not like I’m really made to do much,” he said a little defensively. “I’m a pet rock.”
When Keys clacked out the words, “Let loose the dogs of war!” a slew of volunteers rushed to join, filling Chilly to the brim, including a bowling ball named Burt; a platoon of knives, spoons, trowels, and kitchen utensils; and quite a few empty cans organized by Tinny.
Ollie stood on what was the sort-of deck of Chilly and wondered what to say to get them started. Keys supplied him with a quickly typed and perfectly historical phrase: “Damn t e torpedoes, full speed a ead.”
26
The Dark Carnival and Songs of Yore
The all-terrain mobile-junk attack vehicle was a triumph of design on the fly, and it functioned like a champion. They were at full throttle and sail, bouncing through the overgrown grass and puddles and roots with wicked, if wobbly, ease. The spirits of the Junkyard Gang were higher than they had been in longer than even Chilly could remember.
And Ollie was the captain. Billy had always been the one who steered when he and Ollie had rolled down hills in his red wagon, and Billy was the hero when they pretended flying and crashing and outer-spacing. But this time, Ollie was the hero person, and it wasn’t pretending, it was real.
And this kind of REAL felt even stronger than pretending, and maybe even better. Which was strange. Everything in this crazy day and night had seemed bigger and outside Ollie’s toy life. This was yum and scary and awesome, all at the same time. And he felt like he would never be quite the same. He just hoped he was as brave as he felt.
Tinny began to jump up and down and twonk his pop-top tab, motioning toward overgrown clusters of vines and small trees. The Dark Carnival was just ahead.
“Everybody hold on!” Ollie commanded as he led them closer. Then he called down to Clipper Greenfellow. “Slow and quiet, if you please.”
“Aye, aye, Captain. Quiet as a green, and slow as a putt,” replied the mower.
When Ollie had escaped from Zozo’s, he’d been running so wildly that he hadn’t really seen what the carnival truly looked like. It was, in fact, grimly enchanting. What at first appeared to be a row of odd-shaped trees turned out to be vine-covered portions of an old roller coaster.
They puttered quietly past the coaster and through the fantastic, moonlit shadowland of old rides. They were just barely visible among the weeds, vines, and trees that gnarled around and within the rusting metal shapes, which seemed like giant, leaf-covered creatures from a nightmare.
A thing resembling a huge wounded spider turned out to be a Ferris wheel, half of its spokes fallen out and small trees growing up from the listing, uneven cars. The merry-go-round had a ghostly emptiness to it. Many of the horses had snapped from their poles and now lay clustered and crammed into a frozen, tormented herd that whirled no more—sad, shadow-shrouded, and rotting. Some were held together only by dying ribbons of honeysuckle vines and poison oak.
The Junkyard Gang were quiet with awe as they passed the go-round. “They rest,” Clocker said of the horses.
“Their time was grand, and they earned a better end than this,” added Clipper Greenfellow.
The sight of these ruined creatures saddened Ollie. He’d seen pictures of merry-go-rounds in books. They looked so beautiful. The painted horses were like nothing he had ever imagined. He had always hoped he and Billy would ride on one of these amazing round-and-round things.
“Ahoy there, horses!” he called as they inched past. “Is there anything we can do for you?”
The Junkyard Gang listened hard for an answer. A breeze rustled the grass and leaves, and to their great surprise, the go-round moved around just the tiniest bit. Its old metal and timbers creaked and groaned. A thin, dry whisper drifted from the wreckage, like the sound of wood flaking into dust. “A tune . . . a tune would . . . be . . . welcome . . .” Then the go-round stilled. That whisper was so delicate, like a creature’s dying breath. They had to do something.
“Who knows a song?” asked Ollie of his crew. They looked at one another. They all knew a song or two. The soda cans knew the jingles of their brands. Pet Rock knew lots of songs from being in the car, listening to the radio.
“Being a rock, of course, I’m partial to rock and roll,” he admitted. Reeler knew many songs of the sea, but they were kinda “not suitable for children.” Ollie knew some songs that were sort of more like nursery rhymes. But he realized they needed to make up their minds. Billy needed to be rescued.
“Clocker! Pick a song!” he urged.
Clocker knew a song. She’d heard it many times. It seemed just right. She began to tick a tempo that was slow, like a waltz. One-two-three. One-two-three. It sounded not happy or sad, but somewhere in between. The can tops started twonking, forks and knives began clattering together. One-two-three. One-two-three. And Clocker began:
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
For the sake of auld lang syne . . .”
The Junkyard Gang began to sing along. They didn’t know how they knew this song. It was a song that just seemed to . . . be. Like the seasons. Or the air. And it conjured up a feeling that was difficult to describe. It was tender, and warm, and stirred something deep inside them. And they played it for
all they were worth. A weird and lovely blend of metals and wood and typewriter keys and plastic fishing line . . .
“For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auuuullllld lang syne,
We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
For the sake of auld lang syne!!!!”
The song took hold of them, and they began to sing and play with more heart and strength than they thought they had left in them, and then, impossibly, the go-round began to slowly turn. The long-frozen ponies moved up and down just a little bit and the old calliope inside the carousel began to play along.
“And there’s a hand, my trusty friend!
And here’s a hand o’ thine!
Let oooolllllld acquaintance be forgot
For the sake of auld Lang Syne!”
The song had a power that was past explaining. But it made the carousel remember and be what it had been—a thing of beauty and music and joy. Remembering is a powerful thing, thought Ollie as their music played out into the night.
27
Face to Face
In truth, Zozo had never been this close to an actual child. At the Bonk-a-Zozo game, he was always behind the counter on his throne, separated by the ten feet of hope or disappointment that spanned the distance children had to throw a ball and bonk the Clown King.
Zozo walked in his slow, mechanical gait to Billy, who wriggled nervously on the floor. He leaned in close to Billy’s face, staring at the way the dim light reflected and shined from Billy’s worried-looking eyes. The eyes of a toy don’t glisten quite like that. There was a scratch on Billy’s cheek, gotten some time during the night’s travels. Zozo picked at the scratch with a tiny crook of sharp metal he held in one hand.
“Ouch!” cried Billy. “Stop that!”
Zozo examined the scratch more closely. He poked again, but harder.
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