Curse of the Bizarro Beetle #2

by Berry, Julie Gardner;Gardner, Sally Faye

  Everywhere they looked they saw dead people. Not the people themselves. Caskets lay everywhere. A tall, ancient mummy case lay propped against one wall. A skeleton draped in the remains of a fur coat reclined in one open coffin.

  “It’s Uncle Rastus!” Carlos yipped.

  “Nope,” Sully said, reading the name plate. “It’s his wife, Farley’s Aunt Rhoda.”

  “Okay, well, the sightseeing’s been great, but we’ve got work to do,” Cody said. “Get your garlic ready. Where’s Farley?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Sully pointed a shaking finger.

  There, against the far wall of the crypt, sat a coffin that looked newer than the others, though that wasn’t saying a lot. Cody grabbed a torch for a closer look.

  ARCHIBALD FARLEY, it read. HEADMASTER AND GENIUS.

  “Even when he’s dead he’s got a big ego,” Mugsy said.

  And next to it lay a rat-sized coffin. RASPUTIN, ALTER EGO AND SIDEKICK, it said.

  “See?” Sully said. “What did I tell you? Rasputin and Farley are one.”

  “Hey, guys,” Ratface said, “lookit this.”

  Just a short way off stood a brand-new coffin, medium sized. A piece of masking tape obscured the label.

  Ratface peeled it off.

  Cody felt his mouth water, his armpits sweat, his knees shake, and his eyes roll back in his head. Thirsty. Thirsty. If only he weren’t so thirsty, he could think straight. But where could he get a drink? There was Carlos, right beside him, his neck within easy reach . . .

  “Snap out of it!” Sully yelled. “Wake up, Cody! Don’t go over to the dark side.” He shoved Cody away from Carlos so he toppled onto the floor. Cody landed on his tailbone with a painful crack.

  “We’ve got to stay focused and get the job done,” Sully said. “Who knows? Any minute now, the Destroyer may figure out we’re down here. Now, somebody’s got to open up Farley’s coffin.

  They all looked at Cody.

  “All right, all right,” Cody said. “I guess this is my problem, anyway.”

  Cody’s heart pounded in his ribs. At least I still have a beating heart, he thought. I’m not un-dead yet.

  He gripped the sides of the coffin. He took a deep breath. Candlelight played over the placard saying HEADMASTER AND GENIUS.

  Headmaster and lying, evil, stinking, rotten, foul, treacherous . . .

  He heaved the lid open.

  He didn’t dare look, until . . .

  “It’s him,” Mugsy whispered. “Farley.”

  “I can see right up his nostrils,” Ratface said. “It’s just like old times.”

  Cody opened his eyes. There, below him, lay the cold, waxy form of Archibald Farley, headmaster of Splurch Academy for Disruptive Boys.

  Cody realized he was breathing hard, like he’d just run a marathon. He turned to Sully. It was all so creepy, being down here, looking at Farley’s body like this. He wasn’t sure what to do next. “Now what?”

  “Now it’s time to garlic him to death,” Sully said.

  “Are we really actually supposed to kill him?” Carlos asked.

  “Think of it as saving Cody,” Sully said. “And ridding the world of a dangerous vampire . . . and crummy headmaster. Everyone, get out your garlic weapons.”

  “Mugsy’s eaten all of it,” Ratface said.

  “Not all of it.” Mugsy said. “There’s lots of chips left.”

  “Who’s got the garlic paste?” Sully said.

  Once they got over how gross it was to be touching an almost-dead body, they got right into their work. They squirted garlic paste in his nostrils, ears, and eye sockets. They shook garlic powder over every inch of him. They scattered garlic chips all over the paste and the powder. They smeared garlic goo over every surface of his face and hands, even yanking down his socks and sliming it over his hairy ankles.

  They shook their cans of garlic powder out all over him until he was covered in little garlic powder mountains. His hair was so full of garlic powder, he looked like he was wearing a yellow powdered wig.

  “I used to like garlic bread,” Carlos said, “but if I survive tonight, I don’t ever want to eat another bite of garlic as long as I live.”

  “Pee-yew!” Victor said. “This place stinks!”

  “Garlic is naturally pungent,” Sully began, but Ratface pointed an accusing finger at Mugsy.

  “All right, men,” Sully said, passing out shish kebab sticks. “Time to be brave. If we’re going to save Cody, we’ve got to drive stakes through Farley’s heart.”

  “I’m a kid, not a psychopath,” Ratface said. “I’m too young and innocent for this kind of thing.”

  “Hooey,” Carlos said. “C’mon, Ratface, help us out.”

  “How do you know these teensy little stakes will do the job?” Victor said. “They’re the size of Pick-Up Sticks.”

  “All we can do is hope. Stakes ready?”

  The boys nodded grimly. Except Cody, he felt like he was going to puke. All that garlic was making him light-headed. The bite wounds on his hand and neck throbbed with sharp pain.

  “I can’t do it, Sully,” Cody whispered. “I can’t explain it. I just can’t.”

  “It’s probably because Farley’s partly controlling you,” Sully said. “We’ll do it for you. Now, everyone. One . . . two . . . three . . .”

  They heard a sound. A scuffle. Maybe a mouse. Or a bat. Probably nothing.

  But the hair on the back of Cody’s neck rose. Did he dare look?

  Gggrrrowwwwl.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE AWAKENING

  They didn’t need to look. They could feel the pulsating aura of power.

  It was Ramut the Destroyer, stepping out from behind a sarcophagus.

  He’d gotten there first. And he wasn’t going to let them finish Farley off. Had he been waiting for Cody all along?

  Cody ran and stood between the other boys and the demon. The boys scrambled back as far as they could. They huddled, smooshed against a wall, and waited for those crocodile jaws to chomp down on them.

  But they never chomped.

  Ramut went straight to Farley’s corpse and held his hand over him. There was a strong smell, like sizzling garlic sautéing in a pan, and Farley’s body rose straight up from the coffin. It was as if Ramut were a magician doing a levitating trick. Farley was stiff as a poker, dead as a shish kebab stick, still covered all over in a sticky, tacky crust of garlic yuck.

  There was a scuttling sound on the ground. A live rat made its way through the jungle of rat skeletons and junk on the floor.

  The rat scampered up to Ramut. As he tried to climb up on to the demon’s foot there was a hot, hissing sound.

  “Hope he burned his paws real good,” Cody whispered to Sully.

  “It’s not the rat’s fault that Farley brain-swapped him,” Sully whispered back.

  “I don’t care.”

  “What’s he doing now?”

  The rat was bowing to Ramut, over and over, his little front paws held high above his head. Ramut bent over and held out his open hand to Rasputin, who cautiously climbed onto it. No sparks this time. Ramut placed Rasputin on top of Farley’s head. Then he pointed his staff at Cody.

  A beam of arcing, fizzing light zapped straight from Ramut’s hand to Cody’s chest, and reeled Cody forward like a tractor beam. Cody kicked and swung his arms, but it did no good. The Destroyer pulled him closer, until they stood in a cozy little triangle together—Ramut, Farley’s body with Rasputin on top, and Cody.

  Cody tried to run away, but he couldn’t move. The demon tapped Cody’s forehead with his staff.

  “Ow!”

  Then he tapped Farley’s zombie head. Thwap.

  He tapped Rasputin’s head.

  “Squeak!”

  Again and again he tapped everyone’s heads. “Ow!” Thwap. “Squeak!” “Ow!” Thwap. “Squeak!” Cody was sure the demon was going to bust his skull right open.

  Then, suddenly, the demon god of destruction r
aised both hands high and triumphant in the air. His staff brushed the cobwebs on the ceiling. He opened his mouth wide and roared. “Raaaaaaaagghhh!”

  A booming, banging noise filled the crypt like a gunshot. Smoke flew everywhere. Cody fell flat on his back. Farley and Rasputin toppled onto him.

  I’m dead, Cody thought. I died pinned underneath a brain-dead vampire.

  Sully and the other boys ran over to Cody and lifted him up.

  “I’m better now,” Cody said. “I can feel it. No more vampire stuff. I can just tell.”

  “But if you’re better,” Carlos said, “then what about . . .”

  They all turned to look at Farley. He still lay on the ground, his limbs twitching. Then they went still. His eyes popped open.

  He hopped, he shrieked, he screamed, but the more he rubbed at his eyes and face, the more he smeared the garlic around. He did a frenzied dance just trying to fling the garlic off himself. Bits of garlic powder and paste scattered all over the crypt.

  “I have to say, I’ll take garlic smell over dead body smell any day,” Victor said.

  “You saved me, guys,” Cody said. “Thanks. I owe you, big-time, forever.”

  Farley wiped the garlic off his face and glared at the boys with oozing, bloodshot eyes.

  “Save the speeches, Cody,” Sully whispered. “Our ‘forever’ is probably only another three minutes, tops.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE BEETLE

  Farley dropped to his knees in front of the demon and raised his hands high.

  “O great Ramut,” he cried. “Mighty Destroyer, Devourer of Souls, I offer you the Beetle of Infinite Power. Grant me the Lizard of Endless Dominion over Children!”

  The Beetle of Infinite Power?

  Victor elbowed Sully. “When did lizards enter the picture?”

  “Ssh!” Sully hissed. “It’s hanging from Ramut’s neck!”

  Ramut pointed his scepter at Cody’s beetle. Farley turned and smiled.

  “You played a most helpful role in restoring me to my full powers. Remind me to thank you properly someday. But now, to business. Hand over the beetle.”

  “Hand over the what?” Cody said.

  “You can’t fool me, lad,” Farley snapped. “I know where you wear it. I led you to it and showed you how to use it.”

  Whatever you do, don’t give him the beetle, Cody thought.

  “So, uh, where’d you find a Beetle of Infinite Power, anyway?” Cody said, edging half an inch toward the door. “Do they sell them at the mall?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Farley said. “Give it to me.”

  Cody ooched a little closer to the door. “You’re right, that was stupid of me,” he said. “They’d never let a creep like you in the mall.”

  The other boys followed Cody’s lead. There was nothing they could do to stop Farley, not now that he had his full vampire powers. Cody knew that. But it felt better having his friends close by.

  “Give me the beetle, Cody Brat,” Farley said, “or I shall be forced to make things very unpleasant for you.”

  “You never did tell me where you found him,” Cody said. Closer. Closer.

  “Egypt,” Farley said. “Obviously.”Cods

  Ramut still stood like a statue. Cody crept closer to the door. “When did you go to Egypt?”

  “When I was a little boy,” Farley said.

  Closer. “If you’ve had a Beetle of Infinite Power, how come you never used it?”

  “None of your beeswax,” Farley snapped. He smoothed his tie but forgot he was a walking stalk of garlic glop. “The beetle was cursed. Anyone who took it from its true resting place would fail in his quest for power and lose the beetle.”

  Cody was halfway to the door now. “You mean to say,” he said, “you had the beetle, and then you lost it, and it’s been loose in your dungeons ever since?”

  “You were able to keep it,” Farley said, “because you didn’t steal it. You cheated. That beetle only stayed with you because it liked you, though why anything would want to hang around near your repulsive neck is more than I can fathom. Every time I bit your neck as Rasputin, I had to gargle with salt water afterward. Little boys taste vile.”

  Cody took another step. He had reached the sarcophagus. He was almost to the door!

  “We don’t taste vile,” Cody said, still edging closer. He was almost home free! “I mean, um, yeah. We sure do!”

  Gggrrrowwwwl.

  Ramut pointed at Cody. In a flash, Farley realized it, too. Cody and the boys were almost to the door. Ramut flung his scepter toward the door. It clattered on the steps and transformed . . .

  Into a giant, hooded cobra!

  Shoot.

  Cody backed away, bumping into the sarcophagus.

  “Give me the beetle, Cody Mack,” Farley said, “and I promise you that your gruesome death will be swift.”

  Cody reached into his shirt for the beetle. Was he really going to give in to his archenemy? Never!

  He pulled it away from his neck, and the golden bands dissolved. He held in his hands the living, stinking beetle with its constantly twitching, probing feelers and creepycrawly legs. He didn’t really have a plan for what he was going to do with it. But Farley made a grab for it, so Cody held it high over his head.

  Brrrzzzz. Brrrzzzz.

  Ramut opened his great jaws and roared. The blast from his angry breath nearly knocked Cody over.

  Brrrzzzz. Brrrzzzz.

  What could Cody do?

  He opened his mouth to speak.

  And suddenly, words appeared in his mind. So he yelled them for all he was worth.

  Ramut and Farley flapped their arms like chicken wings!

  They looked at each other. Farley looked confused. Ramut looked—could it be?—afraid.

  “Cody’s cracked,” Carlos said sadly. “De-vampiring him was more than his poor brain could take.”

  “What are you, blind?” Sully replied. To Cody he called, “Whatever you’re doing, Cody, keep doing it!”

  Sully was right. Whatever Ramut and Farley were doing, they weren’t eating the boys. At least not while Cody chanted his strange words. Where on earth were they coming from?

  Let’s see if I can make them do the Bunny Hop, Cody thought. Why not?

  He spoke what came into his mind.

  “Differ donder lulu, makka-moo flee,

  Kizmo poofypie, my-a buy-a rumba.”

  The beetle was telling him what to say! At least, that’s what it felt like. While Cody chanted, Ramut and Farley tried, and failed, to pat their heads while rubbing their bellies and spinning in a circle. With every strange syllable, Ramut’s aura faded.

  The beetle glowed. He was angry.

  “Wow, this really is a Beetle of Infinite Power,” Cody said. “I’m more powerful than a demon god and a vampire! I can bust us out of here, and destroy Splurch Academy, and send us home.”

  The other boys cheered.

  Cody held the beetle even higher in the air. C’mon, magic words, he thought, tell me what to say so I can save my friends and stop this demon-turkey once and for all.

  Ramut spun Sully over his wide open jaws.

  Cody lowered the bug. He didn’t have enough control over its magic to know for sure that he could save the others. He handed the hissing, squirting beetle to Archibald Farley.

  “Aaaaaaahhhh,” Farley said. “At last! The Lizard will soon be mine!”

  “Not so fast, you creep,” Mugsy yelled, and he aimed a squirt of garlic paste in Farley’s eye. But the garlic barely fazed the headmaster now. Both he and Ramut stopped in their tracks as the door to the sarcophagus slowly creaked open . . .

  And the Splurch Academy librarian appeared.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE MUMMY

  Her?

  Out she came from her upright tomb. Ramut and Farley froze where they stood.

  She didn’t look like she usually did in the library. She was dressed differently, for one thing. A dry, angry sound r
ose from her throat to fill the gloomy crypt, and she held her arms high in a karate-chop formation.

  Ramut and Farley’s eyes bugged out of their heads.

  “I’m seeing things, right, Cody?” Carlos whispered. “Tell me that’s not our librarian. She shows up at the weirdest times.”

  Ramut made a loud, growly, whiny sound. It was like the terrified yelp of a mighty crocodile that’s just gone completely chicken. The demon-god dropped Sully like yesterday’s tissue. He fell to the ground with a thud.

  The mummy librarian clapped her bandaged hands together, and Sully was lifted off the ground and dropped back down safely by the other boys.

  Then her gaze fell upon Farley. The librarian hissed at him, and his knees began to tremble.

  “Y-YOU?!” he stammered. “One of my own staff? You’re the High Priestess-Queen Hatshepsut? You’re the lady pharaoh?”

  She didn’t answer. She only hissed and pointed a menacing arm at Farley.

  “But your mummy was never found! You . . . you can’t exist!”

  The mummy’s gaze fell on the beetle Farley clutched in his hands.

  She let out a cry of joy, and held out both her arms.

  The beetle buzzed, straining to reach her.

  Ramut the Destroyer bolted for the exit. He grabbed his cobra and it turned back into a scepter.

  “Wait, stop!” Farley cried. “My Lizard of Endless Dominion Over Children!”

  But Ramut was deaf to Farley’s pleas. He blasted up the stairs, lizard and all.

  “Stinks to be Farley,” Carlos whispered.

  “Pee-yew,” Ratface said. “You can say that again. He’s the Garlic Death Lord.”

  The Splurch mummy librarian, or Pharaoh-Queen Hatshepsut, whoever she was, turned and walked stiffly back to her opened sarcophagus. She backed inside it, still cradling her beetle. It clasped its pincers around her neck, and the mummy made a windy, wispy sighing sound. The heavy sarcophagus door slowly closed.