The Unlikely Adventures of Mabel Jones

by Will Mabbitt

  The other pirates shook their heads. All of them had unfulfilled dreams and hopes. McMasters’s bed-and-breakfast. Old Sawbones’s nursery for zebra foals. All of them had regrets for their lives of crime.

  But Mabel Jones wasn’t regretting.

  She was too busy with a thought.

  One of those little germs of genius that, if nurtured in the grime of logic, can grow into an exploding emission of inspiration!

  This be true, I be no liar,

  In legend find your heart’s desire.

  The words written and left in the grave of Old Hoss, that crafty old ram. The only pirate on the captain’s list who had defeated them! The only one whose piece of X was still unaccounted for.

  But what did the words mean?

  The idea-germ started to multiply . . .

  Split noticed Mabel thinking to herself and stalked toward her with a snarl.

  “She’s been a curse on my ship since she stepped on board!”

  In legend find your heart’s desire.

  What legend?

  “I’ll slit her from nose to navel.”

  Legend . . .

  “I’ve killed so many my bone leg is full. What’s one more life? And a measly little snuglet at that!”

  Legend . . .?

  “One more murder before the dead claim me for one of their own!”

  Leg . . . end . . . LEG END!

  “That’s it!” cried Mabel Jones. “That’s why wherever Split limps, he gets no closer. Because he already has it! The missing piece is in—”

  And then Split sprang. A ball of fury, ripping through the air with a horrifying howl.

  Mabel spun away and drew the cutlass from her belt. Split’s bite missed, but his claws sliced three deep red scratches across her cheek!

  He turned to face her again, ready to pounce. Mabel held her cutlass tightly. Her eyes narrowed with determination, even though she knew mere bravery would be useless against Split’s rage.

  Suddenly Split was whipped away from Mabel.

  Mr. Clunes, the silent orangutan, held him suspended by the throat.

  “If we die tonight, we die without the blood of a crewmate on our hands.”

  Mr. Clunes’s first words in all the twenty years since his hairdressing salon had burned down and he was forced by poverty into a life of PIRACY!

  Pelf stepped forward.

  “Aye,” he said. “We’ve had enough of your bullying ways, Split. You’ve done nothing but lead us to our deaths. And on a fool’s errand at that.”

  Split shook himself free from Mr. Clunes’s vice-like grip. “A mutiny? A MUTINY is it?”

  Mr. Clunes folded his huge muscular arms. “Aye. It appears so. A mutiny!”

  Split leaped again, this time at Mr. Clunes. This time faster, higher, and even angrier. The two creatures, locked in a deadly embrace, tumbled against the clockface. There came an awful noise of cracking glass and they fell through.

  Plummeting to their deaths?

  NO!

  A ledge!

  The other pirates rushed to save their crewmate. For mutiny, once begun, must be seen through to the end.

  Split gets the upper hand. He twists from Mr. Clunes’s grip and prepares to deliver the killing blow, but pauses for a triumphant smile.

  But what’s that behind him?

  A shadow within the shadows. A scrap of silence amid the din of battle.

  OMYNUS HUSSH!

  He rushes forward to deliver a push to Split’s hindquarters. Just enough to knock the captain off balance, tottering toward the edge. His bone leg catches in a hole and for half a second he hangs at an angle from the top of the tower.

  Then there is the sound of splintering bone. Split’s intricately carved false leg—fatally weakened by one tally mark too many—fractures, then

  A flash of fear crosses Split’s crazed eye, boggled from a lifetime at sea.

  Then he is falling . . . falling into the mist.

  Captain Idryss Ebenezer Split is no more.

  Only the bottom half of his bone leg remains, still wedged in the hole that was his undoing.

  Mabel reaches down to help Omynus in from the ledge. She reaches out with the cuff of her pajama sleeve and wipes a tear from his furry cheek.

  “Thank you, Omynus.”

  The door to the bell tower bursts open and Jarvis appears.

  The crew look confused. “Another snuglet?”

  But there is no time to explain.

  “We’re overrun!” yells Jarvis. “The ghosts are inside the tower!”

  He turns and bolts the large door as the crew huddles together in despair, for there is no hope against foes who cannot feel the sharpened edge of a cutlass or the dull, leaden impact of a musket ball.

  Wrong!

  There is one hope. Mabel Jones! She steps forward and pulls Split’s bone leg end from the hole. Holding out her hand, she tips it up and from the hollow center of the bone there falls . . .

  THE

  LAST

  PIECE

  OF

  THE

  X!

  “Old Hoss hid it in the one place he knew Split would never look,” grins Mabel. “In the bottom of his bone leg! That’s what the riddle meant! ‘In leg end find your heart’s desire!’ Split’s leg end!”

  Quickly Mabel assembles the X and passes it to Omynus Hussh. Skillfully, he climbs through the broken glass, up the minutes on the clockface, to the empty space where the missing X belonged.

  “It fits! It fits!”

  The bolted door creaks under the weight of the ghosts pouring up the steps of the tower.

  Slowly the sound of machinery can be heard. A grind of ancient metal on ancient metal. The pendulum in the bowels of the ancient bell tower begins to swing.

  Cogs begin to move.

  The door is breached and the ghosts pour through, arms outstretched to embrace the unfortunate pirates.

  And somewhere, far above, a comet is about to leave the sky.

  CHAPTER 29

  The Sonorous Bong

  CHAPTER 30

  Repercussions of the Sonorous Bong

  A ghostly hand grabbed Mabel Jones’s arm. Cold and icy fingers dug into her flesh.

  Another hand reached out toward her neck. She closed her eyes.

  Surely this time it really is the end . . .

  You don’t mind if I help myself to a pickled onion, do you? It seems a shame to let them go to waste, and this seems a good place to take a short break from the story.

  Ahhh, pickled onions.

  Let me tell you about pickled onions! The secret, of course, is in the vinegar. One must choose the—

  What?

  You don’t want to hear about pickled onions?

  You want to hear about the imminent death of Mabel Jones?

  Oh, very well—where was I?

  Ah yes . . .

  Another hand reached out toward her neck. She closed her eyes.

  Surely this time it really is the end . . .

  But it wasn’t.

  “Mabel?”

  “MABEL! Open your eyes.” It was Jarvis.

  I’m ALIVE!

  The ghosts stood before her, motionless.

  Pelf looked at Mabel. “The dead are at your command, Cap’n Jones,” he whispered.

  For the splittest of seconds, Mabel imagined what it would be like to have her own personal army of ghosts.

  I could be the queen of the dead.

  I could have a crown of bones.

  I could be the most powerful girl that ever lived.

  Then Jarvis’s voice broke her from her daydream.

  “Look! The porthole.”

  A shimmering window had appea
red in the corner of the bell chamber.

  Mabel laughed happily. “The way home!”

  She turned to the ghosts, and in her most queenly voice commanded:

  “RETURN TO YOUR WATERY GRAVES, OH WICKED ONES!”

  The nearest ghost looked at her through blank eyes. Then, slowly, he and the other ghosts drifted from the bell chamber.

  Pelf blew a celebratory smoke ring.

  The mist was settling, and the city of the dead was returning to sleep.

  “Come on,” said Jarvis. “It’s time for us to go home.”

  Mabel Jones turned to the pirates. They might have stolen her from her home, her family, and her whole life, but she had grown to love them. She pulled them into a big hug. All except one.

  “Where’s Omynus? I must say good-bye to Omynus!”

  But there was no sign of the silent loris.

  “I don’t think he likes good-byes, Mabel,” said Milton, drying his eyes.

  Jarvis tapped her arm lightly. “We must hurry!” he said, pointing out of the window. “The comet’s light is fading!”

  The two friends held hands, and prepared to step through the porthole and into the safety of their own world.

  Then a familiarly warm voice spoke from a familiarly handsome face . . .

  “I think you’ve caused enough trouble, Mabel Jones. Step away from the porthole. And that goes for the rest of your mangy flock of vermin!”

  It was the count!

  He was alive. And he was pointing a pistol straight at the heart of Mabel Jones!

  CHAPTER 31

  The Count’s Revenge

  So, dry your eyes, reader. The story hasn’t finished yet. In fact, it’s taken a sudden turn for the worse. And, typically, a hooman Fully Grown-Upman is behind the twist of fate. A hooman who spent the last half-hour quivering and shaking beneath his luxury silk duvet, hidden from the soulless eyes of the dead.

  But now the dead have returned to their eternal sleep. And now the count is angry.

  Very angry.

  “Did you think you could leave me here, Mabel? With these animals?!” He gestured at the crew dismissively. “A man of my standing? I’ve been stuck here too long. I was somebody once, you know.”

  His eyes had a faraway look.

  “Ah yes, the lights, the cameras, the paparazzi. Look closely.” The count angled his head to the side. “Recognize me now?”

  Mabel looked at Jarvis.

  They both shook their heads.

  Mabel scratched her nose thoughtfully. “If you want, you could come through the porthole with us.”

  Jarvis nodded. “We can all go back home! But we must hurry. Before the porthole fades.”

  The count smiled.

  “Together? How sweet.”

  He leered at the two children.

  “But you two are going nowhere! I don’t need any supporting characters in the story of my triumphant return!”

  He pointed the gun at Mabel.

  And fired.

  It happened so quickly.

  In a blurring of silent loris, Omynus Hussh launched himself from the shadows and into the path of the bullet.

  Then he collapsed in a heap.

  The count swore. “Blast! I’ve shot the stupid squirrel thing by mistake!”

  And then the pirates were upon him.

  There was a brief struggle, another shot from the pistol, and then the count lay still.

  Mabel knelt by the body of Omynus Hussh.

  His eyes flickered open . . .

  His lips moved and, though they made no sound, Mabel understood.

  “I love you too, Omynus.” A tear fell from her eye and landed on his furry cheek. “Please, please don’t die!”

  Jarvis touched her on the shoulder. “The porthole is fading. We must leave now!”

  Omynus Hussh blinked slowly, his face twisted in pain.

  “Go! Go, my snuglet!” he whispered. Then his eyes closed.

  Mabel pressed her head against his chest, but there was no sound.

  She looked at the pirates, tears falling from her cheeks. “He’s dead!”

  Pelf smiled sadly. “But he died a happy loris, Mabel—and dying in battle is the pirate way and it will come to all of us eventually. Even you, maybe! So go! It’s been fine knowing you, and you’ll be missed, but your place is not in this world. Farewell, Mabel Jones.”

  And with that Jarvis pulled her into the porthole.

  Now Mabel was falling. Falling through the night. Or was she floating upward? It was hard to tell in all that fog.

  An invisible force pulled her away from Jarvis.

  “Where are you going?” she cried.

  “Back to my own home,” answered Jarvis, waving. “See you around, Mabel Jones!”

  And he was gone.

  And she was back. Back in her room.

  It was night.

  She could hear the neighbors’ TV.

  She could hear the cars driving up and down the busy road. And, when she pressed her ear against the floorboards, she could hear the scuttling of mice.

  Mabel Jones crept onto the landing and pushed open the door to her parents’ room.

  Her mom stirred in her sleep.

  “Mabel? Go back to bed, Mabel.”

  Her dad rolled over, letting out a loud snore.

  “What’s going on?” he mumbled. “Listen to your mom, Mabel. It’s the middle of the night.”

  “OK,” said Mabel, smiling. For she knew no time had passed since she had been taken—no time at all.

  She tiptoed from the room, pausing outside to peek back in.

  “I love you, Mom. I love you, Dad.”

  Mabel Jones was home.

  Really home.

  EPILOGUE

  Although she looked for Jarvis, Mabel couldn’t find him. Not in London. Not in England. Not at all. Maybe she was looking in the wrong way. Maybe she was looking in the wrong time.

  But she often looked out from her bedroom window on foggy nights and thought of her crewmates. Had they sailed off into the sunset on the count’s golden galleon and given up their lives of piracy? Her only mementoes from the voyage of the Feroshus Maggot were the three scars Split had scratched down her face. They looked rather heroic.

  And Omynus Hussh? Mabel would never forget him. And memory is a powerful thing, for when something is alive in your memory it is never truly dead. His last heroic deed stayed with her, as clear as the silence she heard when she had listened for his heartbeat that tragic day.

  Just silence.

  A suspicious silence . . .

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to . . .

  David Lucas, without whom I’d have given up writing long ago. Paul, my agent, Laura, Ben, Jacqui, Joanna, Wendy, and everyboy else at Puffin and Viking. Ross for his amazing illustrations. Mandy for the text design. All the people that read this and the awful stuff that never made it this far, especially Washy, Rat, big brother Rich, and everyone at my writing group. Graham, Martin, and everyone at Polymath Digital. My mom and dad for having a bookshelf filled with amazing stories. Last but not least, Ellen for refusing to listen to me talk about writing a book until I had actually finished one.

  Looking for more?

  Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.

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