“Knowing … Life …!” Dale E. Basye declared as he stretched his less-long legs onto both the “K” and “L” platters as if this were an alphabetic game of Twister.
“Meant!” Mordacia yelled.
“New!” Cookie shouted.
“Opportunity!” Hadley said, poking the air in front of her to denote a period.
“Packing!” Rakeem exclaimed.
“Quickly!” Roget added.
“Ready!” Annabelle shouted.
“Set!” Mack roared.
“Um … Go?” Winifred murmured. The pouty-faced girl was instantly pitched into the bubbling tar beneath.
Mack strained to reach the “T” platter with his left foot.
“To!” he yelled.
“Undertake … Valleys,” Miss Parker grunted with each of her feet placed on both of the bright red letters.
Marlo panicked. It felt like every time she had ever been called upon in class—piled one on top of the other—the teacher somehow knowing the exact point that Marlo had begun to space out.
The “W” platter clicked beneath her hard leather shoes.
“Wheel!!” Marlo exclaimed, using air quotes to show that she meant this to be an exclamation.
That left Milton to somehow come up with an “X” word. The bridge of platters twitched impatiently, now tilting forward at a near forty-five-degree angle.
Marlo had used an exclamation captured with quotation marks, which meant that Milton should follow that exclamation with a name, for attribution’s sake.
“Xavier!” Milton shouted, crossing his fingers into an “X” to show his fellow Spite Clubbers how the name was spelled. His relief was fleeting, however, as he glanced hopelessly at the remaining two letters, utterly unoccupied, beside him. The bridge clicked another degree. The children squealed. Milton threw himself onto the “Y” platter.
“Yelled!” Milton gasped as he flailed desperately for the bright red “Z.” The alpha-bridge clicked. The remaining children and teachers fought to regain their balance. Milton grunted as he strained forward. A large bubble of tar burst beneath him, spraying his face with scalding-hot drops of burning black. The bridge clicked.
Marlo used her brother’s back as her own personal bridge and raced to the “Z.”
“Zestfully!” she cried.
The tar drained out of the pool below. The twenty-six platters straightened, much to the relief of everyone, then rearranged with a series of clicks and pops into a set of steps. Marlo hunkered down on her knees as the “Z” platter lowered, becoming the last step of the stairway. A concrete door slid open, leading out to an underground hallway that sloped back up to the outside.
Moses departed the red “C” and stormed down the stairs.
“Nice job, Team Captain,” he seethed. “You got three of us ‘word-ered’ in there!”
“What was he supposed to do?!” Marlo spat back at him automatically, genetically programmed to defend the brother that only she was allowed to torment.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Moses said, shoving the others out of his way.
Milton, stepping out of the tunnel back onto the crinkly paper floor of the Outer Terristories, turned to address his accuser.
“I did the best thing I could think of at the time,” Milton replied. “What would you have done?”
Moses paused. “I … I would have had everyone figure out what they were going to say before we walked out on a bridge suspended over boiling tar, for one thing!”
“And get Shake-speared in that A-B-C place?” Marlo replied.
Milton turned to his sister. “Thanks, but I can fight my own battles.”
Marlo stared into her brother’s hazel eyes. They seemed sharper, harder … not a pair of squishy milk duds like they used to. Marlo straightened her ugly tweed coat.
“Yes … I’m sure you can. I’m sure you will …” she said with a dismissive sniff as she turned to walk away.
“AHROOOOOOO WOO WOOOahhhhh!”
Just thirty yards away, a great, shaggy wolf bayed at the smudgy soft-purple sky.
It locked its crazy eyes on Milton and Marlo.
“Run!” Milton yelled as he and his sister darted away from the beast. The wolf bounded after them, taking huge, hungry strides that gobbled up the distance between it and its prey. Milton looked back over his shoulder. There was something different about this wolf’s eyes. Its ink-black pupils were shaped like hooks. Like question marks.
Milton had first encountered a sort of What-Wolf, then a Who-Wolf, and now a—
“Why,” Milton gasped as he and Marlo ran, “Wolf!”
“Of course … it’s a stupid wolf … and why? … because it can,” Marlo panted beside him. “They’re all over this place … Here There Be Grammonsters … remember? I met up with another one.…”
“How did it … try to get you?”
“It dug through the ground. I have no idea how.”
“That’s it!” Milton wheezed. “Who, What, Where, When, How, and Why … the basic questions that reporters and investigators have to answer. I ran into a What-Wolf, a Where-Wolf, and a Who-Wolf. You must have run into a …”
“How-Wolf,” Marlo replied, looking over her shoulder. “So what is this one? And why is it … chasing just us?”
Milton’s handcuff sawed into his tender wrist as the briefcase swayed back and forth. The pain itself seemed to sap the energy from his legs. He heaved the briefcase onto his shoulder as if it were a leather boom box. A high-pitched whine emanated from inside the satchel.
“The briefcases!” Milton cried. “Listen to yours …”
Marlo swung her briefcase up onto her shoulder. She, too, could hear a high-pitched whine.
“With their big wolf ears,” Marlo puffed. “It must drive ’em nuts.”
“That’s why they’re chasing us!” Milton replied. “So all we have to do is get rid of them …”
“We’re wearing … handcuffs … Blind-Stein,” Marlo gasped, a stitch sewn tightly in her side. “And I’m not giving that thing any … finger food.”
Milton looked back at the wolf—which was so close he could smell its hot, swampy breath. It was almost upon them.
ZOT!!
Milton and Marlo skidded to a stop.
“AHROOOOOOO WOO WOOOahhhhh!”
Another wolf-beast roared viciously in front of them. Its pupils ticked along the rims of its yellow eyes like a clock.
“That’s the same wolf we saw when we first came to Wise Acres!” Milton exclaimed. “It must be a When-Wolf.”
The two shaggy creatures spun around to face each other, growling and pacing. Milton and Marlo collapsed to the ground, hugging each other under the delusion that they could form an impenetrable, wolf-resistant Fauster ball.
The Why-Wolf glared at Milton’s and Marlo’s briefcases. Its long, pointy ears twitched in torment at the persistent, shrieking squeal. It reared back on its massive, muscular hind legs and charged toward the quivering mound of Fausters.
27 · RUN OFF AT THE MOUTH
IN MID-LUNGE, THE When-Wolf swiped at the Why-Wolf and sliced a deep wound in its side. The beast howled in agony.
The Why-Wolf let loose an anguished howl as the When-Wolf thrust its furious muzzle into the creature’s side, ripping out a bloody mouthful of guts and tissue. The Why-Wolf fell lifeless to the ground, heaving one last hot, humid breath.
The When-Wolf panted over its victim, its shaggy gray fur matted with blood. Its long ears twitched, tilting toward the source of their suffering.
Marlo peeked fearfully through her fingers. She gasped.
The When-Wolf spun its head toward Marlo and lunged at her with its razor-sharp claws.
“Nooo!!” she shrieked, cowering before the seven-foot-tall beast.
Milton sprang from the ground between the wolf and his sister. He swung his briefcase soundly at the creature’s head. The wolf snapped and tore at it with its vicious jaws. Milton saw a flash of white fuzz through a jagged tear in the satchel.
>
Lucky! Milton thought with desperation. I forgot he was in there!
The When-Wolf, enraged by the startling blow to its head, rested its crazed, restless eyes on Milton.
“AHROOOOOOO WOO WOOOahhhhh!”
It lashed at the briefcase and loosed its painful, high-pitched screech with one ferocious swipe. The handle, now free from the satchel’s torn leather housing, dangled from Milton’s wrist. The When-Wolf clutched the half-mauled briefcase in its claws, cradling it back and forth quizzically. The pupils along its wide yellow eyes ticked to “midnight.”
ZOT!!
The creature was gone. Milton and Marlo panted together on the ground, staring at the pair of massive wolf tracks just a few feet away from them, slowly pooling with spilled Why-Wolf blood.
“Lucky!” Milton gasped, staring pathetically at the briefcase-handle bracelet and the shreds of leather fluttering across the shredded-paper ground. “I … couldn’t save him! I forgot he was in the briefcase, and then like an idiot bashed the wolf with—”
Marlo wrapped her arm around Milton’s shoulder.
“You saved me,” Marlo said with awe. “It was like … instinctual, even though you—”
She uncoiled her arm from Milton’s neck and stared at him, hard.
“Why didn’t you reply to the note I left you?!”
Milton lifted his heavy gaze from the remnants of the savaged briefcase.
“What was there to possibly say?!” he replied, looking her square in the eye, still trembling from the wolf encounter. “ ‘Only one of us can win, and that’s going to be me.…’ ”
“That’s not what I wrote,” Marlo said with a soft shake of her head. “I wrote that, even though only one of us can win, we have to stick together, and though it’s going to be tough, we can do it … which was all really hard to write with alphabet soup letters.”
Milton scrunched up his face. “Was Lucky awake when you left the note?”
“Yeah, I think he … Hey, do you think that fuzzy pig made some edible edits of my note?”
Milton snorted. “He totally did … and to think, all this time, I thought my own sister was out to get me—more than usual, that is.…”
Marlo crushed Milton with an embrace of relief and gratitude. Milton smiled before sighing sadly as he noted the mauled briefcase.
“Lucky—”
Marlo pushed her brother back, smiling in his face.
“Is fine! Remember? The When-Wolf we met before … the one with the other Lucky. He was the same Lucky, only from a different time! The When-Wolf is now with us, back there … back then. Didn’t all that time in the Time Pools teach you anything?”
“You’re right!” Milton said, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Of course … so there were two Luckys for a while, until now, when he returned back … and the other Lucky—the real Lucky—is back in Wise Acres, I guess. So that briefcase the wolf left … it was the one I was going to be carrying all along.”
A gust of wind blew away a small, gore-stained pile of torn index cards. One card, half-submerged in Why-Wolf blood, stubbornly refused the wind’s coaxing. Milton plucked it out of the pool, grimacing. He studied its puzzling words and pictures.
“What do you think it means?” Marlo asked, looking over her brother’s shoulder.
Milton shrugged. “It’s hard to tell with Vice Principal Carroll. It could mean nothing. It could mean everything.…”
He tucked the card into his coat and looked out at the horizon. The screeching, burbling wind was louder than ever. Milton squinted at something through his glasses. The children and teachers were gathered before some sort of promontory, staring at …
Milton took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with his sleeve.
No, it can’t be. Must be dirt …
“Um … are those, people?” Marlo said, her keen kleptomaniac’s vision confirming Milton’s discovery. “Hovering in the air?”
Milton and Marlo joined the others at the headland. There, about a quarter-mile away, was a sort of towering, shivering trident, nearly invisible, more like a gigantic vibrating smudge that pierced the clouds. Its silhouette resembled Vice Principal Carroll’s tiny tuning forks littering the Outer Terristories. What really struck Milton—apart from the building being virtually invisible and larger than any he had ever seen, or even imagined—was that it was filled with people who just seemed to float in the air. They scurried about like ants in a ginormous ant farm.
“I often felt that God, in creating Man, somewhat overestimated his ability,” Mr. Wilde said as he gazed upon the structure in wonder. “But this could be one of those rare instances when I’ve been proven wrong.”
Milton could see Vice Principal Carroll’s white Rabbit driving in the distance. It flickered between the sparse grove of trees edging the bleak, spare clearing.
“There’s no need to be so dour.
You’ve arrived—yes!—at the Tower!”
Clem Weenum rubbed his eyes, desperately craving a nap.
“But … I don’t understand,” the little boy said with a yawn. “How are all those people floating up in the sky?”
Moses snorted. “Duh, Juice Box. It’s obviously built using some kind of reinforced glass.…”
Vice Principal Carroll’s voice squawked through his hood-mounted loudspeakers.
“Glass, I fear, would be unsound.
This tower, here, is made of sound!
Every language—quibbling, grousing—
makes a sturdy sort of housing.
The tongues they overlap and weave
a tension that you won’t believe.
The Tower stands as monument
to the power of argument.”
Dale E. Basye gazed up at the structure. He winced as he pulled a neck muscle.
“So how do we get there?” he asked, rubbing the base of his head.
“Now that you are nearly done,
You’ll run the Run-On Sentence Run!
Three of you, I here anoint,
Will go to Punctuation Point.
Milton, Marlo, and you, Dale,
Shall do your best, the point, to scale.
Only two of you will make the Tower.
The third? Before the snark shall cower!
So make your statement: don’t be slow.
Now get ye ready set and go!”
The children and teachers had collected behind Dale E. Basye, who, uncharacteristically, found himself at the front of the class. The freshly dead author gazed off in the distance at Punctuation Point.
The cliff forked off into three distinct paths. The path on the left was straight, direct, and studded with large round stones, ending abruptly at a massive boulder resting at the edge. The center path—marred with splotches of mud and murk—meandered in uncertain twists, sloping steadily down before coming up sharply in an odd, uncertain curl at the edge of the cliff. The loop was a story tall and incomplete, like an extra-suicidal skateboard ramp anchored by another boulder. The path on the right climbed gradually up to a sharp, declarative point where a tall stone obelisk awaited, perched emphatically atop another boulder. Beyond the cliff was a thick mote of white nothingness surrounding the shimmering, shrieking Tower of Babble.
Hadley Upfling crossed her arms stubbornly. “Well, what if they just don’t go?” she asked. “What’s the vice principal going to do about—”
“Snnnaaahhhhrrrrk!!”
The nine-legged beast roared, spewing a spray of toxic green snot from its moist, snub-nosed snout. It galloped straight toward Hadley and Clem, who—being the smallest—had straggled behind the rest of the group. The snark held its hideous head low as it charged at the two children.
Hadley and Clem screamed as the snark trampled them into two, flat piles of words.
“Snnnaaahhhhrrrrk!!”
The children and teachers scattered like skittish confetti in a really terrible parade. The snark set its slitted eyes upon Dale E. Basye and pawed the ground
with its foreleg. The middle-aged man swallowed.
“Looks like it’s game time,” he muttered as he glanced hectically over his shoulder at the three paths.
The vice principal’s voice squawked as he relayed the event to the radio audience.
“You best be getting on your mark,
before you’re savaged by the—”
Marlo clapped her hands to her ears.
“Doesn’t he ever stop?!” she shrieked, her nerves frazzled and frayed.
The snark jerked and lunged at the running, ragtag remnants of Teams One and Two. Frustrated, it dug its hooves into the ground. The beast caught sight of Milton, Marlo, and Dale E. Basye at the base of Punctuation Point. Clouds of green steam and spray gushed from its snout.
Milton held on to his arms to keep them from trembling.
“We’ve got to try,” he said as he gently urged Marlo forward. “It’s our only way out. I’ll take the left, you go center.…”
Marlo nodded and wiped her eyes. “Lucky no one can see me cry on the radio,” she said.
Milton made his way up the slope to the far path. The path was straight, steep, and studded with large rocks, spaced apart at regular intervals.
Milton ran. And jumped. He ran across the hard ground of compressed paper. Hopping. Over. Rocks. It was hard for him to think beyond each smooth round stone. Just when a thought, a sentence, formed in his head, Milton leapt. And when he landed, he started all over again. Running. Jumping. Getting closer and closer to the end of the cliff.
This course, Milton thought, is a sentence. A bunch of them. And they end just up ahead. With a big fat period.
Marlo darted up to the winding center path. The more she ran, the more confused she became. Each footfall raised not only clouds of paper dust, but also clouds of doubt.
Is this even really running? Marlo thought as she jogged along the circuitous trail. Am I even getting anywhere? What’s with all of this mud? Is it to make it easier for the snark to get me? Would it even need help getting me?
As Marlo made her way toward the question mark-shaped summit, the ground grew murkier beneath her feet.
What’s all this—
She slipped in a small, curved patch of mud and fell to the ground, suddenly unconscious. Milton saw his sister, curled up and motionless on her path, and bounded away from his course of short sentences. Milton arrived at Marlo’s side, hooked his hands beneath her arms, and brought her to her feet. Marlo’s eyes fluttered, like butterflies trying to steal hard-boiled eggs at a picnic.
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