by Becket
Key tried to shush him, but it was much too late. Silas and the Hobbeetle shook themselves from their happy reunion to look at Key with something like glum expressions, which surprised her, as she half expected them to come charging at her with a vengeance. But that was never the case. Moreover, to her great surprise, Silas set his Hobbeetle down and wiped a tear from his eye, not the glad tear that he had wept a moment earlier, but a sorrowful tear, as though he had lost Penelope all over again.
Once the Hobbeetle had all its claws on the ground, she crawled closer to Key, not with the speed of attack, but with the steady trot of a rather round horse. Meanwhile, Silas pressed a button on his cybernetic chest. Electricity fizzled alongside his metallic rib cage and steam gushed from his ears. Then a little compartment opened in the center of his chest. Within it were several objects made of various kinds of metal, along with a throne of leather and brass. Key had no idea what all that was for, or what was going on, and she didn’t have much time to consider. She was doing her best to hold back Tudwal’s ferocity, as he was squirming to get away from her to mount a rather savage attack of biting.
“I’ll hold him for you, Mistress,” whispered Pega, taking the immortal puppy from Key’s arms and holding him, making him seem as though he were squirming in midair; for, although Pega had become brave enough to speak with her Mistress, the ghost maid still refused to make herself visible.
— CHAPTER THIRTEEN —
Penelope
Yet for all that, no attack happened. When the Hobbeetle stood before Key, she bowed low, as though Key were someone of great importance. Even Tudwal was confused, cocking his head to one side. Silas also approached, limping all the while, yet keeping his tearful eye on his Penelope. Despite his bad knee, he did his best to genuflect, which was nothing short of his falling down and crushing another Necropolis business in the process – Mab’s House of Fairy Dust, which sent green and violet fairy dust pluming in thick clouds all around him.
The green dust was for sleeping while the violet dust was for floating. So Silas started to get very sleepy and his giant body started to lift up off Autumn Alley. Yet regardless of his eyelid drooping quite sleepily, he worked as quickly as he could to fasten the various metal objects that he had removed from the compartment in his chest to Penelope, his Hobbeetle. To her front claws he fastened Eerie Edward’s Enchanted Elephant Guns. Through her mandibles and over her mouth, fitting to her face like a mask, he fastened Fred Foulweather’s Famous Flamethrower. To her sides he fastened Marvelous Rafu’s Magic Missiles. And over the rest of her he fastened several other devices that Key had never seen before, though all of which looked quite interesting. Some had switches, some had buttons, some had blinking lights while others had knobs and gauges and cogwheels. All the while Silas’s one eye grew heavy with sleep because of the green fairy dust, and his body was almost floating upside down because of the violet fairy dust. He looked as though he might fall fast asleep and float away at any second.
Finally, with a last great effort before the fairy dust took its full effect on him, he fastened the leathery brass throne to the top of the Hobbeetle’s shell. Then he said to Key in a sleepy albeit respectful tone, “I beg your acceptance of this elegant beetle.”
Key had no idea what Silas meant. The Hobbeetle looked at Key with her large black eyes and made more gestures with her mandibles, around her mask. But this seemed even more confusing to Key, until Silas explained in a half awake, half asleep voice. “She has been trying to thank you for breaking her headstone and releasing her from her prison. Old Queen Crinkle had her stuffed inside, probably to make me think she was truly dead so I’d work for her. And I fell for her trickery, too – silly Cyclops. Now my Penelope here owes you fifty-two and two-thirds years of service, according to Hobbeetle custom. I’d be going with you but I just got a little too sleeeeepyyyyy...”
The booming voice of Silas the Cybernetic Cyclops became a thunderous snore, as the green fairy dust took its full effect. And as the violet fairy dust worked its magic, too, the giant slowly tumbled up, up, up into the air, like a parade balloon floating off, up to the Un-snuff-outable Torchlights of the Morrow Dwarves that sprinkled across the Necropolis ceiling like stars.
Once the gloom above had swallowed him whole, Key turned to the Hobbeetle, Penelope. She studied the throne on her back. It looked like just the right size for a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old vampire in the body of a nine-year-old girl. The Hobbeetle watched her. As if knowing what had to happen next, a rope ladder unrolled down along the Hobbeetle’s side, from throne to floor. Key reckoned it was meant for her to climb.
“Don’t you climb one step up that, Mistress,” whispered Pega. “You don’t know where this Hobbeetle has been. They get into the strangest places you’ve ever seen.”
Penelope the Hobbeetle, overhearing this, made one very clear gesture with her mandibles in the direction of Pega’s voice, which Key could not help but guess was not usually seen in polite conversations with beetles.
“How rude!” the ghost maid suddenly shrieked.
“Pega,” said Key, “you speak beetle?”
“Only a little, Mistress,” the ghost maid timidly admitted. Then her voice lowered to an even softer whisper as she added, “One of the unemployed Optomechs in the castle is a friend of mine and it helped me secretly take a correspondence course at All Hallows University. But I’m not sure about this Hobbeetle. Wasn’t she trying to kill you a moment ago?”
The Hobbeetle made more gestures with her mandible, which did not seem as emphatic as the one before.
“Oh, I see,” the voice of Pega responded, sounding surprised and mildly apologetic. “It seems that Penelope here wasn’t trying to kill you at all – except perhaps with kindness. She was so glad that you released her from her Prison Grave that she was a bit over-excited in the expression of her gratitude.”
“You’re welcome,” said Key as she approached the side of the Hobbeetle.
Penelope was so large that Key had no idea if she could ever do what seemed to be expected of her, which was to climb to the throne and ride the Hobbeetle, the way a warrior might ride an Oliphaunt into battle. Nevertheless, she was going to try. She began to put one foot into the rope ladder, when she noticed that she was still dressed in her nightgown.
“The Wicked Watchman was right. This won’t do at all,” she remarked to herself, recalling that Miss Broomble had given her an old Crinomatic.
Taking it from her pocket now, she opened it like a compact mirror. Out shone a bright white light that did not hurt her eyes. The light shone so brightly around her that no one else could see how her nightgown scattered in a swirl of ash. Along with the light, out from the Crinomatic came the tiny mechanical black widow spiders, the Gossamingles, as small as droplets of mist and stamped with the trademark, The GadgetTronic Brothers, Est. ∞. The Gossamingles wrapped all around Key’s body, from head to foot. Their little mechanical spidery legs linked together as they weaved themselves into new clothes and gizmos all over Key.
While changing clothes can sometimes take most mortals all morning, the marvelous work of the Crinomatic took only a second. The Gossamingles finished, the light retreated back into the Crinomatic, and Key closed its lid.
Her nightgown was now completely gone; she was no longer in her bare feet; and her bedhead was no longer mussed. Now she was wearing a long dark green jacket over a white blouse. Around her middle was a copper bodice covered with gauges and cogwheels. She wore black fingerless gloves, violet shorts, and a pair of tall mechanical boots with lights and gauges and wires. Above her eyes were metal goggles with several swiveling lenses of various sizes. Holstered to her side was a brass-plated pistol. Clutched in one hand was a bronze rifle, much taller than her, and loaded with copper canisters and wrapped in glass tubes filled with blue and red ink.
And as she looked at her clothes and gadgets, she had the strangest feeling that she had seen them before. Over the years, her old Crinomatic had fashioned for her
thousands of outfits, yet this outfit was different. She had not worn it before, but she thought she had seen herself in it once already, as if she had worn it in a dream, or in some far distant memory that she could not quite recall with clarity. It was the same feeling that she had had when she first met Miss Broomble – the feeling that she had seen the witch before – and she had, too, on the night Margrave Snick turned Key into a vampire, when Miss Broomble and Mr. Fuddlebee came to her house and ushered her to the City of the Dead.
Now that Key thought about it many years later, she had the distinct impression that she had seen someone else there in her house that night, too, not just the elderly ghost and the witch, not just her mom and dad, not just Margrave Snick and his two zombie henchmen. But someone who looked just like her.
Was that Future Key? Key now wondered.
“Mistress,” whispered Pega. “Old Queen Crinkle is getting away. We must hurry.”
Recollecting herself, Key nodded and clambered up the rope ladder to the leather-brass throne at the top of the Hobbeetle’s shell. Pega carried Tudwal up and placed him beside the throne, which he sniffed with some suspicion. The arms of the throne were decorated in important-looking buttons and switches and blinking lights. Key was a little intimidated to sit down, for she didn’t know if perhaps pressing one button might transform the Hobbeetle into a Hobbat or a Hobbadger or some other peculiar creature that could be found in no other place than the City of the Dead.
Seeing that the giant had floated off, and that the Hobbeetle was now obeying Key’s command, Mostly Dead Bystanders gathered around Penelope and started taking photographs of themselves beside her great claws, to show their friends and relatives.
Once Key mustered up the courage to sit in the driver’s seat, she soon discovered that it was a perfect fit. The throne felt as though it had been made exactly to her shape and size. Never before had a seat felt so comfortable, or the view look so grand; for as she peered out from over the top of the Hobbeetle’s giant back, she could see not only the winding, twisting streets of the Necropolis, but also all the colors of life that could be found among the dead. She could see more graves that looked like shops and more graveyards that looked like popular shopping malls. She could also see, far in the distance, the small figure of Old Queen Crinkle, escaping down one of the Necropolis streets.
The Hobbeetle’s controls looked very similar to the controls on the MotorHog, and Key got the impression that she had to steer both the same way – intuitively. Yes, she would have to trust herself as she drove Penelope the Hobbeetle through the Necropolis streets. So after studying her control panels for a moment, she could not miss the big red button. It looked a little more inviting than the others and it could very well be a button that got the Hobbeetle moving forward. So, making a decision to be brave and to trust herself, Key pressed the big red button.
A missile suddenly launched.
It shot straight towards a business, Reaper & Scythe Savings and Loans, which, in the next moment, was utterly destroyed. Key was relieved to see loan agents being pulled from the rubble, all safe, all whole (for the most part). But the building was a pile of rocks and ash and annihilated loan records. Fortunately, the business had a policy with Imp Insurance Agency; unfortunately, the policy didn’t include protection against Hobbeetle missiles. It would never again be rebuilt. Many indebted Mystical Creatures danced for joy in the streets.
Key’s white cheeks flushed with embarrassment. She leaned forward and whispered to the Hobbeetle, “Let’s just get out of here, alright?”
Upon hearing Key’s command, Penelope reared up like an excited horse and then dashed out of Autumn Alley like a bolt of lightning, with Pega, Tudwal, and Key on her back, clutching to the throne for dear life.
— CHAPTER FOURTEEN —
Grave of the Grim Goblin
The Necropolis Castle had seemed as large as a city, but the City of the Dead was like the size of a country – perhaps much larger. To explore the breadth and depth of its Death and Decay, to meet all the interesting Mostly Dead Mystical Creatures would probably take Key several lifetimes. But that night she didn’t have several lifetimes to catch Old Queen Crinkle. She had an hour at most, maybe two.
As she rode Penelope the Hobbeetle through the Necropolis streets, it was interesting to observe Phantoms glide a step back, Mostly Dead Trolls stare at her with eyes wide in astonishment, and Almost Dismembered Gorgons with all their snake mouths hanging open in awe. Key had never had such respect before, and now she felt a little embarrassed by it. Tudwal, who was always used to attention, sat up a little prouder, wagging his tongue and thumping his tail at all the students from Cobweb Academy who waved at him. Regardless of this, Pega’s invisible worrying could be heard, as she constantly muttered to herself, “Oh dear, oh dear, this beetle needs a bath.”
Key lost sighed of Old Queen Crinkle when she hid in the Graham Cracker House on Bobbapple Avenue. But on the advice of a few Badly Butchered Boggarts, who had happened to see the Old Queen sneak out the backdoor and dart up Spookton Street, towards the Grave of the Grim Goblin, Key drove her Hobbeetle in hot pursuit.
Tudwal and Penelope were quickly becoming as thick as thieves. They let Key do all the worrying and chasing while Tudwal playfully nipped the Hobbeetle’s antennae right before she cracked them like a whip upon his little puppy tail.
After a slight detour due to reconstruction on Yesternight Alley, Key finally caught up with Old Queen Crinkle on Dim Devil Drive, at the end of which was a large gravestone that appeared to be the oldest structure on the block. It was crumbling into ruins and covered all over in withering ivy. It seemed as if all the other tombs and crypts and graves had been built around it over the centuries.
Key hid her Hobbeetle behind Sybil’s Ice Cream Shop, which was in the shape of a crystal ball and run by soothsayers in cone hats. She watched intently as the Queen rapped the end of her scepter three times against the ground. As if on cue, several skeleton sextons pulled themselves up from the soft dirt. They put on their sexton caps and pulled up their sexton shovels, too, and they stood at attention before the Grim Goblin’s gravestone, above which was the epitaph: Be gone or Beware.
The Queen inspected the skeletons, as if she were their commanding officer, and they were her shabby soldiers. Once she determined that they were up to snuff, she ordered them, “Dig up the Grim Goblin.”
Upon hearing this, one skeleton fled in fear while another one fell apart. There had been eight; now there were six. And the rest began shaking so violently with fright that their bones began rattling like marimbas, for they all knew that the Grim Goblin had an appetite for marrow. But the Queen, offering to them her usual unsympathetic scowl, helped them to put their fears in order when she reminded them that the Grim Goblin might devour their bones and marrow, but she had the authority to throw them skull first into the Toag cage. Now that the six sexton skeletons saw reason, they hurriedly gathered their shovels and commenced to exhume the Grim Goblin’s coffin, tossing with their shovel-heaps of earth in all directions. Passersby might have easily assumed that the weather in the Necropolis had suddenly decided to start snowing dirt and roots and grubs – which did happen from time to time. Soon there came the familiar thump of a shovel striking hollow wood. The whole fearful party all understood with one accord that they had finally found the coffin of the one Mystical Creature whom they would have rather left six feet under.
It took all six sexton skeletons to lift the Grim Goblin’s coffin and prop it up against his tall gravestone, so that the Queen might look the Goblin in his grim eye. But just as they had set it upright, the gray-green hand of the Grim Goblin suddenly burst through his coffin lid and latched on to the nearest object, which happened to be the bony throat of a sexton skeleton. With knobby knuckles and long black fingernails like the talons of crows, the Grim Goblin’s hand yanked the skeleton inside the coffin. Following this was the nasty sound of bones being crunched.
Next from inside the coffin ca
me the Grim Goblin’s throaty voice:
Whoever dared wake me
will be scared when you see
my gorgeous shape.
It’s like an ape,
only inside out,
and somewhat stout.
Not afraid of gore?
Never seen me before.
I’ll fight you, bite you,
skew you, then eat you
like a shish kabob
or corn on the cob.
Ever seen Jack the Ripper?
Next to me he’s a kipper.
I’m grim; I’m gross;
I define morose!
I have boils; I have warts;
I am Windows tech support!
I scowl;
I prowl;
I howl
yet never towel
since I never shower;
my odor is my power.
My grimace is a disgrace.
You’d fear to see this face.
So go far from me.
Run and flee!
Go sprinting! Go hobblin’
from me, the Grim Goblin!
By the tone in his voice, Key got the distinct impression that he could have gone on like this for another five to ten minutes. But Old Queen Crinkle had already had enough of it as she rolled her eyes and sighed. “Oh, put a sock in it, Gary.”
There was a slight pause in the Grim Goblin’s voice. Then he spoke in a tone that had altogether changed, no longer so throaty, but more fluty. “Matilda?” he inquired cautiously. “Is that you? How long has it been? Jack’s Halloween Bash, 1792, right? You were wearing that lovely frock with the dead moths —”