Balthazar Fabuloso in the Lair of the Humbugs

by I. J. Brindle

  “Oh no,” Pagan gasped. “The poor bird has mange.”

  “That’s no bird,” Balthazar said, pulling out the old phone Mede had given him. “It’s a Burrower. It shed its feathers to throw off the Magi.”

  The other line picked up after the first ring. “The owner of this mailbox is not available to take your call right now,” a neutral female voice on the other end informed him. “Please leave a message.”

  “Hi, it’s me, Balthazar. I’ve found it. The Burrower. It’s not in Vegas, it’s here! Call me back right away.”

  Balthazar hung up and stared at the cell phone, which just sat there. He looked out the window again. The Burrower was still there, but who knew for how long. He picked up the phone and dialed again. Again the voice instructed him to leave a message. “Hi, uh, it’s me again. So I’m wondering if, you know, we should do something. Like try to catch it or . . . I don’t know. Anyway, call me back.”

  Again Balthazar hung up. Again the phone did not ring.

  “And what’s the big deal about this bird again?” Pagan asked.

  “The Magi said they could use it to find the Gloaming nest.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I . . . I don’t really know,” Balthazar admitted. “But it’s behind whatever happened to our families. That’s what the Magi said. And that Burrower thing is somehow connected.”

  “Then I guess we’d better capture it. Humanely,” Pagan added sternly. “It’s still a living thing.”

  “Uh, sure.” Balthazar nodded, looking skeptically at the Burrower’s rotting carcass.

  Prying the tread off the bottom step of the back stairs, Balthazar pulled out the twins’ bug-out bag.

  “Smoke bombs, Twizzlers . . . ,” Pagan said, poking around inside the bag. “How come you get to be the one with cool brothers?”

  “Shhh,” Balthazar warned as they slipped past the kitchen where Ms. McGinty, all tangled up in the ancient phone cord like a manic pot roast, was stirring soup and whispering frantically into the phone. “And we’ll need a mental health professional as well, possibly two or three. . . .”

  Outside, a few picturesque flakes had started to fall, giving the neighborhood a surreal winter-wonderland feeling, totally at odds with the darkness of their situation. The Burrower, still on the telephone wire, had not moved its empty gaze from the front door.

  “So I’m going to climb that tree over there and throw this zombie net over it,” Balthazar said, pulling a net out of the twins’ bag. “Once it’s netted, you grab it and stuff it in here. Just make sure you don’t let it scratch or peck you, or you could get infected by Gloaming spawn, which would eat all your magic away until there is nothing left of you but a rotting husk.”

  “For real?”

  “It’s not as cool as it sounds. Okay, get ready.”

  His footsteps muffled by the fresh layer of snow, Balthazar dashed across the street and hoisted himself up into the ginkgo tree in the Hogsthrottles’ front yard. Then, reaching eye level with the telephone wire, he stretched himself out across an upper branch and started inch-worming toward the Burrower. Opening the net, he was readying for the throw when there was a sudden loud clatter from the window behind him.

  “Trespassing!” Mrs. Hogsthrottle moaned triumphantly.

  Startled, Balthazar botched the throw. Losing his grip, he plummeted down through a tangle of branches and landed with a painful, muffled thud in a snowdrift.

  Raising his head, he saw the Burrower had also dropped down from its perch and was taking off down the road, running faster and faster on its raw, pimpled drumsticks.

  “Quick!” Balthazar shouted, struggling painfully to his feet. “Buttercup!”

  “What did you just call me?”

  “Not you, McGinty’s bike!” Balthazar cried. “Grab it! The Burrower’s getting away!”

  “I grew up in a penthouse in downtown Toronto,” Pagan protested. “Where was I supposed to learn to ride? The roof? It’s not like everyone has the same typical, ideal suburban life you do.”

  Typical? Ideal? The remark was so off-base, Balthazar didn’t even know where to start.

  “Balthazar!”

  Ms. McGinty was out there now, too. Heading down the front steps.

  “Quick,” Balthazar said, limping over to the bike. “Get on behind me. I’ll double you.”

  “Like this?”

  “Keep your feet off the chain.”

  “Balthazar, stop!” Ms. McGinty cried, slipping and sliding toward them.

  “He’s stealing your bike!” Eutilda Hogsthrottle bellowed from the window. “Stop, thief!”

  “I’m here to help!” the social worker pleaded.

  “Now hold on tight,” Balthazar instructed. Then, keeping Buttercup as straight as possible, he pushed off—a bit wobbly at first but straightening up as they gained momentum.

  Pedaling fast, Balthazar banked out onto the street.

  “This,” Pagan shouted in his ear, a huge grin splitting her wide, wind-stung face, “is . . . amazing!”

  But there was no time for elation. The Burrower had launched itself into the air and, in total disregard of its lack of primary flight feathers, had started to fly. The chase was on!

  28. Ice Palace

  After the last couple of days, Balthazar thought there was nothing left that could freak him out. But chasing undead poultry through the streets of Grantham in the dead of winter on a sunshine-yellow cruising bike with Little Orphan Evil’s arms wrapped snugly around his waist and her pointy chin poking into his shoulder had done the trick.

  “Over there!” Pagan shouted, pointing to the Burrower, which had jagged a hard left past the library and back onto James Street. “Concentrate!”

  “I am!” Balthazar protested, swerving around a honking snowplow.

  By the time they reached St. George Street, the tip of Balthazar’s nose had lost all feeling and his legs were shaking so badly from all the standing-up pedaling that it was hard to walk.

  “I think we lost it,” he panted, looking up and down the dusty-windowed storefronts.

  “It went through there,” Pagan said, pointing to a narrow gap between the Rock-Around-the-Clock Golden Oldies Used Sheet Music store and the Ortho-riffic Orthopedic Shoe Shop.

  From the street, the buildings on both sides of St. George Street looked like they were on regular solid ground. But stepping through that little-used chink onto the ice-slicked metal landing, you saw immediately that the south-side stores were actually built out over a precipice, propped up in midair by a pick-up-stick jumble of rusty metal braces and warping wooden beams sloppily anchored into the eroding cliff face.

  “Oh wow,” Pagan said. “What’s that?”

  Balthazar just stared. There, down at the bottom of the cliff, in the middle of the frozen Thirteen-Mile Creek, was his family’s old theater, mysteriously and horribly resurrected out of soot and shards and ice into a twisted, phantasmagoric version of its former glory. A zombie’s reimagining of a fairy-princess castle, lit from within by a cold, sinister light that only made the shadows look darker. And flapping toward it was the raw, rotting Burrower.

  “My family’s old theater,” Balthazar gasped. “But . . . but it wasn’t there yesterday.”

  At the grand front entrance to the twisted ice-show palace, Lamborghinis, Bentleys and Ferraris were pulling up to let out their passengers onto the blood-red carpet. Every one of them was wearing a dark purple fez.

  “The International Brotherhood of Real Stage Magic.” Pagan frowned. “They’re meeting here? In Grantham? Tell me you guys aren’t Humbugs.”

  “Hum-what?”

  “Humbugs. That’s what Moms calls that snooty clique of fancy-pants old magicians. Humbugs. On account of how they’re always sneering at everyone else and hogging all the good opportunities for themselves. Cheats and thieves, all of them.”

  “My dad always applies, but . . .” Balthazar couldn’t help but think how offended his father would be if he knew that
the Brotherhood he had been rejected from was not only in his hometown but actually holding its annual meeting in some ghastly re-creation of the Fantasticum. You couldn’t dream up a bigger indignity if you tried.

  “Moms is desperate to join them, too,” Pagan admitted. “But if they didn’t want them before, what would they want with them now? And what does that have to do with that Gloaming stuff?”

  “I have no idea,” Balthazar said. They were in so far over their heads, they might as well be in Atlantis.

  Pulling out Mede’s emergency cell phone, he tried the Magi’s number once again. Once again he got the voice mail.

  “Hi, me again, Balthazar Fabuloso. This is a serious emergency! I think we’ve found the Gloaming nest. We’re at—”

  “Sorry,” the voice-mail voice interrupted, “but the mailbox you are trying to reach is full. Please hang up and try your call again later.”

  “I can’t call again later!” Balthazar shouted at the phone. “We need help now!”

  “So what now?” Pagan asked.

  Balthazar shook his head. “I guess we go down there.” Not much of a plan, but it was the best he had.

  “Ready when you are,” Pagan said, squeezing Balthazar’s hand. Which actually felt kind of good, until he looked over at her and saw her pet tarantula ogling him from behind her curls.

  “Oh, hi, Humphrey.”

  Pagan rolled her eyes. “Please, he’s a spider. He doesn’t speak human.”

  29. S is for Snitch

  When they had first started down the cliff, Balthazar had allowed Pagan to convince him it was a good idea to bring his social worker’s bike, Buttercup, with them in case they needed to make a fast get-away. But after struggling it down two shaky, poorly anchored flights of steps, the flaws in this logic started to become pretty obvious.

  “This is a bad idea,” Balthazar panted, crouching low as they dragged Buttercup across a shaley landing. “We need to leave the bike here.”

  Pagan shook her head. “No,” she said. “We need to bring it with us. I have this feeling it’s important.”

  “And I have a feeling that this stupid bike is going to break my neck—which also happens to be important.”

  “Yes, but I have real magic,” Pagan retorted, “so there’s a potential that my feeling might be some sort of latent psychic ability. Whereas you, according to my mom, have no real magic, so all you’re doing is complaining.”

  Balthazar’s stomach dropped. It wasn’t like his lack of real magic was officially a secret, it just was something that they never talked about outside the family.

  “God, is it true?” Pagan’s face fell. “I thought it was just one of those mean things she makes up. I’m so sorry. . . .”

  “What for?” Balthazar retorted, shaking off her hand. “I mean, it’s not like real magic has made you and your family any happier.”

  It was a low blow. And it hit home. “Excuse me,” Pagan said, cheeks flushing, “but my family’s just honest, okay? They aren’t big phonies pretending to be all lovey-dovey and fabulous all the time and then turning out to have some wacko evil undead uncle lurking in the closet they just happened to never mention. They’re rude, obnoxious, self-centered, repulsive. . . . of course I can’t stand them, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love them.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Balthazar said. “I was talking about real magic. I mean that’s what our families were doing when they disappeared. That’s probably what got them into whatever mess they’re in.”

  “Bitter much?” Pagan muttered under her breath, spinning Buttercup’s front tire with a steady click-click-click.

  Flipping up his collar, Balthazar turned and started making his way down the next flight of stairs.

  “Hey,” Pagan called after him. “What about Buttercup?”

  “You want to break your neck, that’s your business,” he called back.

  The lower sections of the cliff were much grubbier than the top bits. Cigarette stubs, broken glass and crushed beer cans littered the trail, and crude tags and paintings of skulls and rude body parts started cropping up on the cliff wall.

  In front of Balthazar, the cliff face bulged out like a knot in a tree, the path around it tapering down to a little strip no wider than the length of his boots.

  He would wait for Pagan once he got around to the other side of this tricky bit, he decided. The narrow path would have forced her to leave the bike behind by then, so they wouldn’t have to argue about it anymore.

  Distracted by these thoughts and by the effort of keeping his footing, he didn’t even hear the voices until he had come all the way around to the other side.

  “Have another pull,” the first voice was saying. “It’ll take the sting out of that shiner.”

  Up ahead, no more than five feet away, a little bonfire was going, throwing a creepy, flickering under-light on two teenage faces—one slab-like and expressionless, the other all sinew and bone and swollen black eye. Two of the Trolls from the Gabriella Park bathroom were camped out right in the middle of the path, with a case of champagne and a few trays of dainty canapés that appeared to have been stolen from the catering truck parked outside the theater below.

  Quietly, Balthazar began backing away.

  “How long do you think Greggy’ll get?” Donno asked through a mouthful of watercress sandwich.

  “Dunno. Deserves it for being soft,” Kier snarled, smashing the top off a fresh bottle of champagne with a rock. “Should’ve let me crush that little snitch when we had the chance.”

  His back against the cliff, Balthazar was retreating onto the narrow ledge when his heel hit a metal can, sending it bouncing and clattering down.

  Forgetting the narrowness of the path, he turned to run, the ledge disappearing from under his feet. And down he was going, over the edge, when a powerful hand caught him by the back of his jacket and hauled him up.

  “Well, well, well,” Donno said with a dead, dull smile which made it clear that Balthazar would have been way better off if he had fallen, “if it isn’t magic boy.”

  “So where’s old Farty-Pants now, eh?” Kier snickered, coming up beside him.

  “He’s coming,” Balthazar bluffed, “right behind me.”

  “Oh yeah? Let’s go find him, then,” Kier said.

  “Okay, okay, there’s nobody,” Balthazar said, remembering Pagan. “I’m all alone here,” he added loudly.

  “Nobody to hear you scream,” Kier giggled, picking a glittering shard of broken champagne bottle up off the ground. “How’d you like a nice little S right here?” The sharp tip of the glass pressed into Balthazar’s forehead. “S for snitch. What are you looking at?”

  “Your eye,” Balthazar said. “It looks really painful.” Then he head-butted him. The first head-butt of his entire life! It hurt worse than slamming his head into a brick wall, but was way more satisfying.

  “Aaaaah! Ya little freak!” Kier howled.

  “Oh no ya don’t,” Donno said as Balthazar tried to struggle free from his meaty grip.

  “You are so gonna get it,” Kier hissed, his face a mask of rage and the bottle shard glinting claw-like in his clenched hand.

  “Just do it already,” Donno grunted.

  “Hey, you! Cretins! Up here!” a familiar deadpan voice shouted down at them from somewhere higher up the cliff.

  “Huh?” As the two thugs looked up, Ms. McGinty’s sunshine yellow bike came hurtling at them from out of the sky, smashing right down on top of Donno. A direct hit!

  Unfortunately, there was no second bike to take care of Kier, who was coming at Balthazar again.

  “Humphrey?” Balthazar heard Pagan calling from up above him. “Humphrey? Where are you?”

  Reaching his hand up to his forehead, Kier felt something: a fuzzy egg-sized lump, sprouting out in eight furry legs. “Sp-sp-spider!” Kier cried, shaking his head wildly. “Get it off! Get it off!”

  Humphrey flew through the air and landed on Donno.

  �
��Ah,” Donno groaned, shaking his hand violently. “Now there’s one on me, too!”

  Again Humphrey went flying, landing this time on the front of Kier’s bomber jacket, his eight furry feet struggling to get a grip on the slick leather.

  “Another one!” Kier shrieked. “You’ve gone and stirred up a whole nest, dummo!”

  Next thing you knew, the two thugs were screaming and flailing off down the cliff, convinced they were under attack by a whole army of spiders.

  Balthazar threw his head back and laughed. But his laughter dried up when Pagan came around the rocky outcropping and he saw her expression.

  “Where is he?” she demanded.

  “Who?”

  “Humphrey! He fell out of my hair when I leaned over to drop the bike. Don’t move.”

  Dropping to her knees, Pagan began feeling around the dark, rocky ground. Then suddenly she let out a little cry.

  There in front of her, lit up by the flickering firelight, was Humphrey, legs curled under his cracked, bulbous body, atomic green slime oozing out through his spiky little hairs. Very still.

  “Trampled to death,” she said. “Clumsy oafs.”

  Pagan took the thermos Balthazar offered and poured the last dribble of cocoa onto Humphrey’s broken body. “First man down. Libation to any god that exists or cares.”

  “He was a good bug,” Balthazar said.

  “He was an arachnid, not a bug,” Pagan snapped. “And he wasn’t good or bad. Spiders don’t operate along those narrow moral principles. I won’t have him saddled with your human judgment system.”

  “I was just trying to be sympathetic,” Balthazar protested.

  “Well, don’t,” she said. “It’s annoying.”

  Nodding, Balthazar looked away so she wouldn’t see him seeing how red and splotchy her face was getting.