“What does it mean?” I asked Uno.
“It means the guidebook for monster fighters. It’s The Monster Hunter’s Manual,” Uno whispered.
Aunt Perrine took out the book and then walked over to a weapon-covered wall. She looked up at the swords, knives, crossbows, silver guns, crosses and shields. She shook her head, and turning away from the wall, went over to a chest.
“Ah,” she said. “Zis is just what we need. Zee perfect weapon to fight zee zombies.”
She pulled four out four very large, cartoon style hands, mounted on long, brightly colored plastic sticks. Each hand had one pointed finger. She put one stick in each of our hands and kept one for herself.
Alex looked at the stick. “You’re joking right?”
“No. I never joke about zombies. Zey are very serious,” she said in a tone that implied she might have been joking.
Alex opened his mouth to say something else, but Uno shook his head in warning and Alex shut his mouth.
“OK,” she said. “Now we go to zee garage.”
We left the secret tower and the secret hall and as we passed each candle, it mysteriously blew out again. Aunt Perrine closed the secret door and took us all to the garage. There we found five large refrigerators. Aunt Perrine opened one and looked at it.
“I need four buckets,” she said.
The garage was a mess. There were piles of furniture, axes, books, and old clothes. All this junk was piled up in no particular order. It took us forever to find the buckets and then we placed them at Aunt Perrine’s feet.
She handed us each a stack of brains, still in the wrapping from the supermarche. Uno started unwrapping the brains and putting them in his bucket and I figured I should follow his lead.
“I thought these were for us to eat,” Alex said.
“No,” Aunt Perrine said. “I ’ate brains. Do you like zem? I can save some for dinner tomorrow?”
“No! No! That’s OK.”
“So if you bought these two days ago and they are for the zombies,” I said, “you must have known you were going to have to fight zombies this week?”
“You are a very smart boy.” She unwrapped a brain and put it in the bucket. “Of course I know. You boys just lost your parents. I know zat you would try to zay goodbye to zem, so I buy brains, just in case.”
“Oh,” I said.
“That’s really gross,” Alex said.
“No more gross zan a ’ungry zombie.”
“I get the brains,” I said. “But what is this stick for.”
“Zombies are easy to fight. Zere are zree steps. One…run…zey are very slow. Two…if zey get to close, push zem away with zis stick. Zree…give them a brain and zey go back to sleep.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Really,” Aunt Perrine said.
“OK,” I said dropping my last brain in the bucket. “Let’s go fight some zombies.”
Aunt Perrine stood up. “Good for you. You say it like a real monster ’unter.”
We all stood up, with a hand stick in one hand and a bucket of brains in the other. We must have looked ridiculous. We were two boys in pajamas, one cowardly vampire, and an old lady, but I knew in my heart we were warriors, and as we opened the gates to the castle, I prepared myself to fight like a lion.
I stepped out onto the cobblestoned road and prepared to face my worst fears. I took a deep breath and held my stick like a sword. The zombies oozy monsters stumbled up the road. The monsters were gross. They smelled like my brother’s farts after he ate bean casserole, and looked like something I found on one of his old tissues, but as soon as I saw them stumbling and fumbling towards us, I knew there was nothing to be afraid of. They moaned and reached out for us, but they were so slow I could have outrun them without even running.
The first zombie came up to me with its hands outstretched. He kept bumping into things, and somehow I didn’t feel too scared. It tried to grab me and I stepped aside. It fell. The next zombie came and I pushed it with my little stick. It fell too. I gave each fallen zombie a brain, they ate it hungrily and then dragged themselves up and stumbled back to the cemetery.
Alex looked as if he was having a lot of fun, as if he had discovered a new sport. He was jumping around the zombies, weaving in and out of them. He pushed them over and laughed at them. “You’re a smelly, piece of dog fart,” he said. “Take that, you gross zombie. You’re so ugly that even other monsters won’t hang out with you.”
“Alex,” Aunt Perrine scolded. “Don’t taunt the zombies. Just give zem zee brains.”
“Why not?” Alex pushed over another zombie. “It’s not like it hurts their feeling or anything.”
“Iz not nice,” Aunt Perrine said. “Zey may have been someone nice in life.”
Alex shrugged and started handing out brains. It kind of felt like Halloween, except the zombies never said trick or treat. Slowly, the zombies began to thin out. Every once in a while, Alex would softly say, “There you go, stinky,” or “Have some brains, booger face.” I tried to ignore him and focus on the zombies, but sometimes I had to laugh.
It wasn’t until Uno started screaming that I felt a little jolt of fear, but when I turned around I saw that Roger was hanging around Uno’s neck screaming, “Braiiiins. I want braiiiins!”
Uno pushed him off and Roger rolled around in the dirt laughing. “I got you good.”
“If you’re not going to be ’elpful,” Aunt Perrine said. “Just go back to the castle.”
Roger started hiking back up the hill to the castle, but he didn’t make it. He fell and yelled out. I had just handed a zombie a brain and turned to see what was happening behind me. At first, I thought it was just another one of Roger’s pranks. I shook my head and continued my work. Alex and Aunt Perrine obviously thought the same thing, but Roger’s screams escalated and when I turned around again I noticed that there was something latched onto Roger’s leg. It wasn’t just Roger either. Some of the zombies appeared to be trapped as well.
“What’s going on?” I asked. I stared at the field.
“Oh no!” Uno cried.
In the field in front of me, there were at least ten zombies in some kind of traps. They were groaning and thrashing, but they couldn’t get out. Roger was caught too. He flailed helplessly in the grasp of a lock-jawed, silver trap.
For a minute, I panicked. I froze trying to figure out was going on. Alex, who never stopped to think about anything, ran blindly into the field after Roger. I looked around. Aunt Perrine was acting slowly, cautiously. She was looking through her bag, removing vials of colorful liquid.
“Ahhhhh!” Alex yelled as the jaws of a trap clamped over his leg. He couldn’t move.
“What is it?” I asked Aunt Perrine.
“It’s the slayers.” She looked calm, but her jaw was set. She was ready to fight.
“What are slayers?” I asked.
“Not what, but who. They are men who think they are monster hunters.”
“Think?”
Roger tried to pry the trap open on his leg and the trap tightened. It didn’t just tighten, it got bigger and a part of it reached out to encompass Roger’s other leg. Roger screamed and thrashed about desperately, but the more he fought the worse the trap became.
“We have to help them!” I cried.
I moved closer to the field, but stopped. I knew if I stepped in, I would be trapped like the others.
“What should I do?” I asked Aunt Perrine.
Aunt Perrine lined the vials up in dirt in front of her.
“We wait,” she said.
The minutes dragged by. Alex was yelling and struggling to escape. Roger was trying to pry the trap open with his bony fingers. The zombies moaned.
“Give the rest of the zombies their brains while we wait,” Aunt Perrine told me.
I took her bucket and started handing out brains. Once fed, the zombies stopped wailing and sat down. Some of them even began digging back into the earth.
The slayers came
from behind the castle. They looked like action heroes – James Bond on a mission. They were dressed all in black. Their hair was cut short and they wore bulletproof vests and combat boots. There were three of them and each of them held a machine gun in his hand.
The leader looked around and sized up the situation. “Bag what you can,” the leader told the others.
The others each took one of the zombies and put it in a body bag while the leader walked up to Aunt Perrine. He was at least a foot taller than our tiny aunt, and he was young and in shape. Compared to him, she looked like the frailest old lady in the world.
“We just can’t get away from you, can we, old lady?” he said.
“No,” she answered plainly.
“I thought we told you to stay away so we can do our job.”
“Zis is not your job. You are throwing the balance of ze world out of order.”
“This is our job and you are in our way.”
The other slayers began bagging another zombie and Roger began to scream. “Help me!” he yelled. “Don’t let them take me!”
“Help him,” I said in desperation.
“There’s no help for monsters, boy,” the leader said to me. “There’s no place in this world for things like him.”
“We’ll be taking that one too,” the leader said, pointing to Uno.
Uno hid behind Aunt Perrine, but Aunt Perrine only smiled and shook her head. “When will you learn?” she said. With that, she crushed all of the vials she had laid on the ground. The liquids blended together and formed a green fog. The fog rose up in twisting, spirals like serpents crawling towards heaven. It rose up and then spread out over the field. It engulfed Aunt Perrine until she was lost in it and I could hardly see her face. She raised her right arm and the traps opened. Roger ran towards the castle as soon as he was free. Aunt Perrine raised her left hand and the soldier’s guns turned to smoke and vanished in their hands.
The leader looked angry, but not surprised. Uno ran off toward the castle behind Roger.
“Why’d you do that, old lady?” the leader asked. “Why do you always protect the monsters?”
“You and I ’ave a different idea of what a monster is,” she said.
Aunt Perrine looked tired, as if the spell had taken all her energy. I ran to her side and held her up. “Zanks you,” she said.
“Someday you won’t have all your tricks,” the leader said. “And then it’ll be you who loses.”
Aunt Perrine just shook her head. Alex ran to her and she wrapped her free arm around He hugged her.
“Bonsoir,” Aunt Perrine said.
Alex and I helped her climb up the hill and into the castle. The slayers took the two zombies they had captured, put them in a black van and drove away.
“Those poor creatures,” Aunt Perrine said as we closed the castle gates and I wasn’t entirely sure if she was talking about the zombies or the slayers.
We helped Aunt Perrine into the house and she sat down on the chair. She looked very tired, but she still gave us her usual warm smile. I fetched Aunt Perrine some tea and she took her time sipping it. It wasn’t long before the color returned to her face.
“I’m getting old,” she said. “I’m not as strong as I used to be.”
“You were amazing,” I said.
“Zanks you.”
Alex’s smile covered his entire face. “That smoke was awesome,” Alex commented.
Aunt Perrine took another sip of tea. “Zanks you,” she said again.
“Thank you for helping us,” I said.
“You should be more careful next time.”
Alex and I both rushed to promise that we would never make that mistake again. We would never use magic we didn’t understand. Aunt Perrine took our promises as earnest.
“I think I should rest now,” she said and she pulled herself up out of her chair and went into her room. She closed the door and Alex and I were left alone with our thoughts. As we left the living room, I couldn’t help but notice that she had left The Monster Hunter’s Manual on the coffee table.
Chapter 8
Ms. Angerboda
After Aunt Perrine had drifted off to sleep, Alex and I went to check on Uno and Roger. Roger was sitting alone in his bed. He was crying.
“What happened?” I asked.
Roger shook his head. “Uno hasn’t come back.”
“What!” Alex exclaimed.
“Uno never came back,” Roger repeated.
“We need to tell Aunt Perrine,” I said.
Roger shook his head mournfully. “We can’t.”
“Why not?” Alex asked.
“Because, she made a deal.”
“What deal!” I asked.
“About a year ago she saved both of us from the slayers. She saved us by sneaking in and stealing us from them in the middle of the night. The slayers were angry and they came to the village to find us. There were hundreds of them and they had big guns and helicopters. Aunt Perrine made a deal with them. They said she could have us just once, but if she ever stole from them again, it would be war. She promised. She won’t go back on a promise.”
“But this is different!” I exclaimed. “She would never let those creeps have Uno.”
“She’s just one woman,” Roger said.
“You saw her,” I said. “She’s more than that.”
Roger just shook his head. “She won’t risk fighting them all for him. She can’t. There are just too many of them.”
“OK. Then we should go get him ourselves,” Alex said.
“How?” I asked.
A cheeky look appeared in Alex’s eyes. “She left the book on the coffee table. We could just borrow it.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Are you really going to let those jerks take Uno?”
“No,” I said. “Let’s go get it.”
Aunt Perrine was sound asleep by the time we crept down the stairs. It was easy to slide the book off the table and make it outside into the courtyard. The book was enormous. It was so thick and heavy it took two of us to carry it out there. The three of us sat down in the courtyard with the flashlight surrounded by cats. We looked at the book. It had thousands of pages all written in French.
“I can’t read any of this,” I said.
I passed the book to Roger. He flipped through the pages. “What am I looking for?”
“A spell to help us find him,” I answered. “And get him back.”
“So maybe teleportation?” Roger suggested.
“Maybe.”
Roger flipped the pages. The book was beautiful. It was handwritten and illuminated. Letters were drawn to look like animals, and there were pictures embossed with gold. There were illustrations of monsters I had never heard of or seen before, along with enormous creatures with tentacles and scales, shark men, and demons. Occasionally there was a feather or a scale glued to the paper. There were old notes carefully tucked into pockets. Samples of flowers and herbs were glued next to detailed drawings of plants and animals. Each page offered some new beauty, but it was impossible for me to make any sense of it.
“I can’t find anything,” Roger said.
“Keep looking,” I urged.
Roger flipped through more pages, the pictures and the handwriting changed. There were now herbs, wands and fairies. Each page was more beautiful than the next, but there was nothing that seemed to be able to help us. The book just went on and on. It would take forever to find what we were looking for.
I didn’t see Eleanor sneak up behind us, but her voice made me look up from the book.
“How did you get that?” she whispered. “Lady Perrine will kill you.”
“The slayers got Uno,” I said.
“What? How?”
“We don’t know,” Alex said. “But we have to help him.”
Eleanor reached out and took the book. “Well you’re never going to find a spell to find him in the section on botany.” She flipped through a few pages and found the spel
l she was looking for. The page she stopped on had a picture of a circle with an object in the center of it. “This is a spell that can transport us to the location of any person in the world. I think this is what we need.”
We all nodded in agreement.
Suddenly Eleanor looked at each of with a seriousness that made me shudder. “You know that if they catch us, they’ll never let us go.”
We all nodded.
“Do you still have the amulet the Moleman gave you?” she asked.
I was astonished. “How did you know about that?”
“They told me. They think you are going to be the next monster hunter. The amulet they gave you is the amulet of the hunter. They make a new one for each new hunter and give the amulet the power to bring its wearer, and all who are touching him, back to Chateau Larcher. You are wearing the key to our escape. Don’t lose it. I’ll get us there, but only the amulet can return us.”
“I won’t lose it,” I said.
Eleanor searched around. “We need something that belongs to Uno for the teleportation spell.”
Roger took out an old teddy bear and handed it to Eleanor. She took it and placed it on the ground. She drew a circle in the dirt around the bear.
“Whatever happens, we have to stay together,” she said.
We all nodded. Eleanor took our hands, and Alex and I took Roger’s hand. We formed a circle around the bear. Eleanor spoke in French. The words came out clearly. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, we were in the dark. Alex’s grip tightened in mine and I could hear his breathing increase. He was afraid and so was I. I wished we were back in the cemetery with the zombies.
Something moaned in the darkness and Eleanor appeared. She lit up like a candle in the dark illuminating the room we were in. I bit my lip to prevent myself from screaming. The room was filled with monsters. There were zombies, werewolves and horned demons. They moaned and snarled, but it didn’t matter because they were all caged and tied down.
“Stay here,” Eleanor whispered. “I’ll find Uno.”
Eleanor vanished and left us in the dark to listen to the snarling of the hundreds of unhappy monsters that surrounded us. It seemed to take forever. We stood perfectly still holding each other’s hands in the dark. We were afraid that if we moved we would seen.
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