First the mummy, now the skeletons, Flo thought with a shudder. All this undead stuff gives me the creeps.
Mrs. Shamp was talking about learning to read maps, but Flo barely heard her. She kept her eyes on the window. She hadn’t seen another skeleton since that morning. Maybe we got lucky and someone else took care of the problem, she thought. Maybe they’re already back where they belong.
Mrs. Shamp pointed to a giant world map tacked to the bulletin board. “Can anyone tell me what the little box with the symbols on a map is called?” she asked.
“A legend,” someone replied.
Flo looked up at the clock nervously. She was supposed to leave to meet Furry any second. As the second hand swept past the seven, Flo’s stomach started to rumble nervously.
It was time.
Flo raised her hand. “Um, excuse me, Mrs. Shamp? Could I have the hall pass?”
Mrs. Shamp turned to face her. “Are you feeling okay, Flo?” the teacher asked. “You look a little pale.”
“I do?” Flo asked.
Mrs. Shamp nodded and went to her desk. She rifled through the top drawer and came up with a small spiral notepad. She wrote something down, tore off the rectangular piece of paper, and handed it to Flo. “Did you eat anything at lunch?” she asked.
“No,” Flo admitted. “I wasn’t hungry.”
“You don’t look like you feel very well,” Mrs. Shamp said. “Why don’t you go down to the nurse’s office and lie down for a bit? Make sure you bring your lunchbox with you and eat something.”
“Okay,” Flo said, feeling a little less nervous. Now she wouldn’t have to worry about being back right away. With a note for the nurse, she could leave the classroom, find Furry, and head out to stop the monsters.
Again.
“I’ll call down to the nurse’s office and let her know you’re coming,” Mrs. Shamp said. She picked up the classroom phone, punched a few numbers, and talked to the school nurse on the other line.
Rats, Flo thought. There goes that plan.
* * *
Furry was waiting in the hallway when Flo walked out. “Whoa,” he said. “You look like you’re going to barf, Flo.”
“I know,” Flo said. “That’s why I have to go to the nurse’s office.”
“Are you kidding?” Furry shook his head. “We don’t have time for that. I just saw a bunch of skeletons hiding behind the bushes across the street. More and more are appearing every minute!”
“Has anyone else seen them yet?” Flo asked.
“I don’t think so, but if we don’t do something, the whole city will be full of them!” Furry said. He motioned to a side door. “Let’s go out this way. If we hurry, no one will ever know we’re gone!”
Flo ignored him and started walking down the hallway toward the nurse’s office.
“Hey, where are you going?” Furry said.
“The nurse’s office,” Flo said. “Maybe I can have them call my mom to pick me up. That way, I won’t get in trouble for sneaking out of school on my first day.”
Furry shook his head. “That won’t work!” he insisted. “If you’re sick, your mom is going to make you stay in bed.”
Flo sighed. Furry had a point. She looked up and down the empty hallway. If they left now, no one would see them go. But the school nurse was expecting her. If she didn’t show up . . .
“Flo Gardner?” a voice called from down the hallway. Flo turned to find a woman wearing a white shirt and dark cotton pants. She was waving to her.
“Nurse’s office it is,” Flo whispered.
* * *
A few minutes later, Flo sat on the small, paper-covered cot near the window in the nurse’s office. The school nurse, a pretty lady named Janice, took her temperature.
“Well, you don’t have a fever,” the nurse said.
“I didn’t eat anything today,” Flo said. “I felt kind of dizzy after lunch.”
Janice sat on a short stool and studied Flo. “Do you feel up to eating now?” she asked.
Flo shrugged. “I guess,” she said. “I mostly feel tired, though.”
The nurse nodded understandingly. “It’s not easy being the new kid, is it?” she said. “You probably just have a nervous stomach, and if you don’t eat anything, you won’t feel so hot. Do you have your lunch with you?”
Flo nodded and opened her Dyno-Katz lunchbox. She took out a turkey sandwich — her specialty. Flo prided herself on making the best turkey sandwiches of anyone, kid or adult. And she never left home without one.
“Tell you what, why don’t you eat your sandwich and lie down for a little bit?” Janice suggested. “Some rest will do you good.”
Flo glanced up at the window near her cot, feeling a little guilty about what she was about to do. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay.”
Janice opened the door to the room and looked back at Flo. “I’ll check back in on you later, okay? You won’t miss much,” she said with a wink. “The first day of school is usually the easiest.”
Clearly none of her first days have involved skeletons, Flo thought.
CHAPTER 5
As soon as the door closed and she was sure the nurse wasn’t coming back, Flo carefully slid the window open. Lucky for her, the nurse’s office was on the first floor. She climbed out the open window as quietly as she could, careful not to clank her lunchbox against the window frame.
Flo dropped to the ground outside, her heart pounding like a drum in her chest. She was almost more nervous about leaving school than she was about dealing with the skeletons. Where are all of these skeletons, anyway? she wondered.
Just then, a flash of navy blue caught her eye. An instant later, Furry stood next to her.
“Let me guess,” Flo muttered. “You could smell that I was over here.”
“Yeah,” Furry said with a wide smile. “Werewolf senses are awesome. Now let’s get moving before someone notices we’re gone.”
Furry and Flo cautiously headed toward the fence surrounding the school property. In a single leap, Furry was on the other side. It took Flo a moment to climb over and join him. Once they’d made it off school property undetected, Flo glanced around. She didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. No skeletons roaming free. No one screaming for help. No cars crashing into fire hydrants.
“I don’t see anything,” Flo said. “Maybe they went home.” She hated to risk getting in trouble for nothing.
But Furry was already heading toward the street. “I don’t think so,” he said. “There are lots of them out here. I saw a bunch from the second-floor window. Plus I can smell them.”
“Ooh, what do they smell —” Flo started to ask. Then she remembered the mummy they’d had to deal with. It had stunk something fierce. She definitely didn’t want to think about that again. She shook her head. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
“We should head back home and see what happened to the crack,” Furry said.
“Fine,” Flo said. “Let’s hurry up before the nurse notices I’m gone. The last thing I need is to get in trouble on my first day.”
Just then, a beat-up yellow pickup truck screeched around the corner. The driver jammed on the brakes and left a thick layer of black skid marks on the road. “Ferdinand, is that you?” the driver shouted out the window.
Flo looked closer at the old man in the driver’s seat and recognized Curtis Rockwell, the retired caretaker at Corman Towers.
“Hey, Curtis,” Furry said.
“Don’t you ‘Hey, Curtis’ me,” Curtis snapped. “Get in, you two. We’ve got problems back home!”
Furry and Flo scrambled in through the passenger-side door, and Curtis hit the gas. In seconds, the truck was racing toward Corman Towers. Flo couldn’t buckle her seatbelt fast enough. Outside her window, traffic and people on the street whipped by in a blur.
“I told you to quit messing with that seal,” Curtis said, glaring at Furry.
“I didn’t mess with it!” Furry cried. “How could I? You cemented it shut!”
Curtis honked his horn and veered to the left, sending Flo careening into Furry. “With that portal-cutter thing,” he said. “You could have easily opened the seal back up.”
Flo groaned. The portal shard. That thing was more trouble than it was worth. Still, she knew if Furry tossed it through the crack and closed it for good, he’d never be able to go back to his world. And he wasn’t ready to do that.
“I didn’t do it,” Furry insisted. “I’m only wearing the shard to keep it safe! You gotta believe me, Curtis!”
Flo’s shoes rustled the fast-food wrappers and cups on the floor. She wondered what they’d find back at the apartment building. Judging by the way Curtis is driving, probably nothing good, she thought.
“Have you seen these skeleton things before?” Flo asked.
“Yeah,” Furry admitted. “Just once, though. They’re called the Bone Horde back home. They do people’s dirty work for them. They can appear and disappear on command. Whoever holds the Bone Talisman controls the Bone Horde.”
“So who’s controlling them?” Flo asked. “And why can’t we find them?”
“Oh, I found them, all right,” Curtis muttered. “You should see the mess back at the apartments.”
* * *
Moments later, Curtis screeched to a stop in front of Corman Towers. They all jumped out of Curtis’s truck and raced to the side entrance. They scrambled down the steps into the basement hallway and turned the corner to the laundry room door.
There was a shovel wedged under the doorknob to hold it closed.
“You kids might want to back up,” Curtis warned them. He reached out and pulled the shovel away. The door immediately swung open.
As soon as she saw what was inside, Flo gasped. The laundry room was crowded with skeletons. When the Bone Horde realized the door was open, they immediately surged toward the door, swiping with their bony fingers as they tried to claw their way out.
“Back up!” Curtis shouted, swinging the shovel with all his might. He connected with one of the skeletons, knocking it into a pile of bones. Ribs, a clavicle, and a tibia bounced off of the washing machines and dryers.
In the hallway, Flo turned to Furry and watched as her friend plugged his nose and blew to make his ears pop. Gray hair instantly exploded across Furry’s skin as he transformed into a werewolf. He tore through his shirt and split his pants in two spots. As soon as he was fully wolfed out, Furry leapt into the room, growling and snapping at another skeleton.
“We have to keep them inside!” Curtis yelled as he smacked another skeleton to bits. He kicked the disassembled bones away and dodged a skeletal hand.
Flo watched helplessly from the hallway as Curtis and Furry battled the Bone Horde. Then she suddenly remembered something and didn’t feel so useless after all. “Holy socks!” she cried. “I think I know what happened!”
CHAPTER 6
Flo ducked as a skull sailed across the room and smashed against the doorframe. The jawbone came apart and clattered across the floor.
“Furry!” she yelled across the bony battle. “What does that Bone Talisman thing look like?”
Furry bit into a leg bone, tugged, and let the rest of the skeleton topple to pieces before answering. “I don’t know,” he growled through his teeth. “It’s got a jewel of some sort. Kind of shiny?”
Just like what the repair guy found this morning! Flo thought. Had that piece of junk he’d found behind the dryer slipped out of the crack before Curtis sealed it up? It seemed possible. After all, stranger things had definitely happened at Corman Towers in the past. Flo could vouch for that.
Flo grinned. “I think I know who has it!” she hollered. But the boys were too busy battling the well-armed skeletons to pay much attention.
“Goodnight!” Curtis yelled. He smacked the last skeleton in the hipbone and watched it crumble to the floor. With all the skeleton remains strewn around, it looked like Halloween had exploded all over the laundry room.
“This isn’t all of them,” Furry said. “There are more out in the city.”
“I know,” Curtis said. He used the shovel to scoop up as many bones as he could. “And there’ll be more coming through any moment. Come over here, you two.”
Flo carefully tiptoed past the piles of shattered skeletons and followed Furry and Curtis to the hidden space behind the dryers. She wasn’t the least bit surprised at what she saw.
There were chunks of concrete all over the floor. The nice cement work Curtis had done was gone, replaced with a jagged, glowing crack in the floor. The seal had split, and the portal back to Furry’s world was open once more.
“Oh, great,” Furry said. “That means there are more skeletons on their way. Until they’re told to stop, they’re just going to keep coming.”
Flo grinned, proud of herself for solving their problem. “Then we’re in luck,” she said. “I know who has the Bone Talisman.”
“Who?” Furry asked.
Flo couldn’t remember his name. “Some guy who came to fix the dryer,” she said. “I met him this morning. He had really dark hair and a mustache.”
Curtis groaned. “That doesn’t narrow it down much,” he said. “Can you remember anything else? We’ve used twenty different repair services over the years.”
Flo thought about it. “He was really bad at whistling,” she said. “Like, terrible.”
A rumbling sound suddenly came from deep within the crack, and it glowed brighter blue.
“Great,” Curtis said. “Sounds like we’re about to have more company!”
A skull suddenly popped through the crack in the floor. Curtis quickly wound up and clonked it on the head with his shovel, knocking it back into Furry’s world.
“We need to find that thing,” Curtis said. “And quick. I can’t hold these things off forever. Besides, I’ve got my afternoon programs to watch.”
“Can you remember anything else about that guy?” Furry asked. “Dark hair and bad whistling isn’t really much to go on.”
Flo tried to think. The man had asked if the brooch belonged to anyone. He’d collected his tools. Then . . .
“He threw something in the garbage!” Flo said. “Some lint and something else. Maybe there’s a clue in there.”
Flo ran to the garbage can and started digging. Finally she unearthed the giant lint ball and a crumpled piece of waxy paper. “Got it,” she hollered. She flattened it out and saw it was blank.
“Great, it’s blank,” Furry said. “That doesn’t help us at all.”
Flo shook her head. “It’s the back of a sticker,” she said. “He must’ve put a sticker on the dryer he fixed!”
Flo hurried back over to the row of dryers and crouched down next to Furry and Curtis. Furry pointed a hairy paw to a small red service sticker clinging to the back of the troublesome dryer. The words SERVICED BY PANJI & SON REPAIR were clearly printed. The shop’s phone number and address were listed below.
“This is it!” Furry shouted. “He’s close by. I can almost smell him.”
“That was my next idea, Sniffy,” Flo said. She looked up at the clock on the laundry room wall. They’d been gone from school for way too long. She hoped the nurse hadn’t gone back to check on her. But as nervous as she was about getting in trouble, Flo knew they couldn’t go back to school yet.
“Get moving and find this guy and that medallion thing,” Curtis ordered. “It sounds like a ton of them are coming through.”
Curtis grabbed the shovel again and stood guard over the glowing crack while Furry and Flo raced out the door.
CHAPTER 7
Flo grabbed her bike from the storage room and headed for the side door. Furry bounded up the stairs
behind her, still in his werewolf form. They needed to move quickly if they hoped to stop the Bone Horde before they caused too much damage.
It was hard to steer with her Dyno-Katz lunchbox in hand, but Flo never went anywhere without her lunchbox, so she tried to make the best of it. Furry did his best to look like a dog — a dog running in a pair of torn shorts and a hooded sweatshirt.
“C’mon,” Furry pleaded. He seemed eager to turn up the speed and get to the repair shop, but he waited for Flo.
“I haven’t seen any skeletons out here yet,” Flo said, ignoring Furry’s need for speed. “Maybe the talisman isn’t working.”
Furry shook his head, sniffing the air. “No, they’re here in the city,” he barked. “I can smell them. But I can’t tell where.”
Flo hopped her bike over the curb to cross the next street. At least the sidewalks aren’t too crowded, she thought. If all those skeletons were out here, we’d have some serious explaining to do.
Furry suddenly came to a stop right across from City Park. “We’re here,” he said.
Flo braked next to him and hopped off her bike. Sure enough, the window next to them had the words PANJI & SON Repair stenciled in chipped, faded letters. A sign on the door read: OPEN — COME ON IN!
Flo took a deep breath. She watched Furry pretend to sniff a fire hydrant.
“Should I just go in, or . . .” Flo’s voice trailed off as someone inside the store flipped the sign around so that it read: CLOSED — PLEASE CALL AGAIN SOON!
“Oh, no!” Flo said.
Furry glanced over from the fire hydrant. She watched him sniff the air.
Just then, the front door of the repair shop opened. Furry and Flo quickly ducked behind a car as Mr. Panji and a woman exited. The repairman’s dark hair had been neatly combed. He held the woman’s hand and carried a picnic basket with his free hand. The woman wore a nice skirt and a dark sweater.
The Skeletons in City Park Page 2