How to Curse in Hieroglyphics

by Lesley Livingston

The PRIMITIVES, running madly through the

  NEAT ROWS of CORN, driven by the GRR-ILLA

  SOLDIERS, who execute a precision PINCER

  MANOEUVRE.

  The unsuspecting PRIMITIVES are being driven

  toward a WAITING ROPE-CAGE TRAP!

  CUT TO:

  A LONG-SHOT reveals the hanging ROPE-CAGE

  TRAP, suspended from a distant TREE.

  The PRIMITIVES are right where the GRR-ILLA

  SOLDIERS want them!

  SOLDIER TEE’s WHIP SNAPS through the air!

  The TRIP MECHANISM is TRIGGERED! SPROING!!!

  And the PRIMITIVES are SCOOPED UP in a

  shocked, screeching tangle of fur and fury!

  CUT TO:

  The ROPE-CAGE swings from the tree, a bundle

  of EEE-EEE-OOOH-OOOH-ing savagery and extreme

  grumpiness.

  GRR-ILLA SOLDIER CEE

  (triumphant -- and kinda grossed out by a chewed-up pacifier) Ha! Got them!

  GRR-ILLA SOLDIER TEE

  (smugly)

  Let them eat cage.

  It is the CONCLUSION of another successful

  HUNT …

  “CUT!” Cheryl yelled again as she pulled her ten-speed bike (trusty warhorse) up short and dismounted, an annoyed frown replacing her smile of satisfaction at the seamless capture. “Dang it,” she muttered.

  “What?” Tweed skidded to a stop beside her.

  “I did it again!” Cheryl shook her head, her pigtails bouncing furiously. “You quipped effortlessly and all I could come up with was ‘Got them’!”

  In front of the girls, the collapsible playpen they’d brought along stood overturned, acting as a kind of temporary “confinement unit” for the four toddlers who’d managed to stage the breakout.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Tweed consoled her cousin. “You’re the hero-of-few-words type. Schwarzeneggerian, as it were.”

  “Great. I’m hard to pronounce.”

  “Terminator-esque?” Tweed tried again.

  “Super,” Cheryl groused. “Whereas you’re like a short gothy female Bruce Willis.”

  “Do not dismiss Terminator comparisons, cuz.” Tweed’s expression grew solemn. “The Terminator rules.”

  The playpen cage rattled restlessly as the fugitive kiddies tested its limits.

  Cheryl pulled an air horn out of the gear bag the twins had stashed earlier when they’d pre-set their (patent pending) Tot Trap and blew three short blasts, signalling a successful conclusion to the hunt. Then, together, the twins hitched up their catches to a linked string of toddler walker-harnesses, packed up the collapsible pen and marched the bunch back to the Bottoms house, about a quarter mile away on the other side of the cornfield, double time. The whole operation, from the time they’d received the call to the successful tot-return, had taken just over half an hour. The twins operated with clockwork efficiency.

  Mrs. Bottoms was grateful, if perhaps a bit red-faced.

  “I sent Mr. Bottoms out the minute we noticed the gate was open but … well … his sense of direction just isn’t the best, I’m afraid!” She shrugged as she saw her husband suddenly come bustling around from the front of the house (the exact opposite direction from where Cheryl and Tweed had found the youngsters).

  “Aha! Found ‘em, Honey!” he yodelled upon spotting the tykes where Cheryl and Tweed had temporarily tethered them to a picnic table. “Whoo! Little monsters sure can motor, can’t they? Gosh, if we can’t keep ‘em corralled in our own backyard, how in heck are we gonna herd ‘em all around when we head on out to Dudley’s World-O-Wonders?”

  Cheryl and Tweed recoiled at the mention.

  “You mean the … carnival?” Cheryl asked, frowning darkly.

  “Well, heck yes!” Mr. Bottoms enthused. “Fun for the whole family!”

  “In our experience, there is no such thing as fun for the whole family,” Tweed muttered. “Someone always gets left behind.”

  “Well!” Mrs. Bottoms clasped her hands briskly, rather more perceptive than her husband, and steered the conversation away from what was becoming a touchy subject. “Okey-dokey, then. Looks like everything’s back under control .”

  She led the twins into the house, past Hazel Polizzi and Cindy Tyson, who glared at Cheryl and Tweed as the twins went to collect their fee and Fudgsicles.

  “Figures,” muttered Cindy with a sour expression on her face—and a gauze bandage pressed to her leg. “Takes freaks to catch freaks, I guess.”

  Hazel giggle-snorted and said, “Maybe they had help from their space alien pals.”

  Cheryl stopped dead in her tracks, her fists clenching at her sides.

  “Easy, partner,” Tweed murmured out of the side of her mouth, urging Cheryl forward. “Professional jealousy is an ugly thing.” Over her shoulder she pegged the rival sitters with a stony stare and, gesturing to Cindy’s leg, said, “Better put some butter on that.”

  Cindy’s ears turned bright red and she sputtered a bit.

  Cheryl suppressed a grin and together the twins hurried to catch up with Mrs. Bottoms in the kitchen. As she led them through the living room to the front door, a gaggle of other mothers in attendance all praised Cheryl and Tweed for their cleverness and efficiency but, sadly, neglected to immediately book them for any sitter appointments.

  Out on the front porch, Cheryl sighed gustily, while Tweed glowered, biting determinedly at her frozen fudgy treat. They would have to circle around the long way to get to the other side of the cornfields so they could collect their bikes and gear. But before they could step off the porch, the door behind them opened again and a tall, angular woman stepped out to join them. She had a cloud of frowzy brown hair and large glasses that magnified her eyes and gave her an owlish stare.

  “Girls!” she bleated, urgently. “Wait!”

  Even though neither of the twins had so much as twitched a foot.

  “Howdy, Miz Parks,” Cheryl said.

  Tweed nodded and said, “Hiya.”

  Miss Marjorie Parks was the Wiggins Cross Middle School librarian, and both the girls were, frankly, a little surprised to see her there. Or anywhere, really, that wasn’t the library. Tweed had once expressed a vague notion that she might actually be some kind of robot or something, and when the school got locked up for the summer, they just powered Miss Parks down and rolled her into storage until fall. It appeared, however, that she was wrong about that. Because there she was, standing in front of them with a strange, awkward smile on her face.

  “Leaving so soon?” she asked.

  “Uh … yeah.” Cheryl glanced at Tweed, who shrugged. “The situation here is all sorted up. Even with Cindy outta commission, Hazel oughta be able to handle the rest of the festivities now that you adults are on high-alert.”

  “And the garden gate is padlocked,” Tweed added.

  “Well. Yes.” Miss Parks blinked at them. “Of course. Well. I think you did an excellent job back there and I just wanted to commend you.”

  Cheryl brightened up a bit, her professional pride somewhat bolstered. “Thanks, Miz Parks—”

  “And I wondered if you’ve ever considered expanding your services to … well … non-humans,” the librarian asked in a slightly breathless rush.

  “Non …” Tweed frowned. “Like … aliens?”

  But Cheryl had clued in right away. The librarian’s trousers were coated in a fine layer of fuzz—white, ginger, grey, brown—a virtual haze of hairs. Miss Parks had cats. Lots of cats. And, apparently, no lint brush to speak of.

  “Ha ha!” Cheryl laughed brightly to cover Tweed’s mistake and nudged her cousin with her elbow. “What my esteemed colleague means is—yes! In fact, feline companions of the four-legged variety are our new field of expertise!”

  “‘Of the four-legged variety’?” Tweed muttered, glancing sideways at Cheryl. “How many other varieties are there?”

  “Here … ” Cheryl was already fishing through the pockets of her jeans. “Let
me get you our card. We specialize in difficult cases.”

  “Oh! Right!” Tweed was on board now—here was something that could open up a whole new world of opportunity for them. “We also offer our one-time bargain introductory ‘Best Dang Babysitters’ rate for people with your unique circumstances, ma’am.”

  “‘Unique’ …” Miss Parks blinked, momentarily confused. “Oh, of course. You mean—no actual babies to sit.”

  “I’m sure your cats are just like children to you, Miz Parks.” Cheryl beamed, kicking into full sales-pitch mode while still fishing for a business card. “And, therefore, on your next out-of-town foray, business jaunt or well-earned romantic getaway, you might do well to consider enlisting our services. Wouldn’t want to leave the little puddins’ well-being to just anyone.” She finally found one of the While-O-Wait cards and handed it over.

  Miss Parks squinted at it. “There’s a typo— ”

  “It’s a slogan.” Cheryl brushed the remark aside with an airy wave.

  “Ah. Well. I see.” The librarian smiled, a prim little curling of her mouth-corners. “I mean, it’s not that I go out much, but—”

  “Oh, but you should!” Cheryl enthused.

  Tweed nodded seriously. “Stylish young thing like yourself. No need to turn away gentleman callers any more, ma’am. Now that you know you can leave the precious shnookumses in our more than expert care.”

  Miss Parks pocketed the card. “Well … there is that new carnival in town I’ve heard of. Perhaps I’ll—”

  “Keep us in mind, Miz Parks.” Cheryl’s smile turned brittle. “Just … keep us in mind.”

  “I will.” She nodded. “Thank you, Cheryl. Bumblebee.”

  “That’s ‘Tumbleweed,’“ Tweed corrected through a pained attempt at a smile. “Please—call me Tweed.”

  Miss Parks retreated into the house, a bit of bounce in her gawky gait.

  “D’you think she’ll call?” Tweed asked.

  Cheryl grinned. “Oh, she’ll call, Bumblebee. She’ll call.”

  5

  THE CORNDOG MENACE

  “Sometimes I just don’t understand you two.”

  It was mid-afternoon on the day after the twins’ successful tot-retrieval, and Cheryl and Tweed, programming duties already having been dispatched with crackerjack precision, had some time on their hands. They had decided that, for their very first programming effort, they would go with tried-and-true classic monster fare. Creature from the Black Lagoon and its two sequels, Revenge of the Creature and The Creature Walks Among Us, fit the bill nicely, and now all they had to do was wait until evening.

  The heat waves shimmered up from the dusty, barren landscape as the sun beat mercilessly down. Tweed was concentrating fiercely, using a hand-held magnifying glass to focus the sunlight into a single beam of bleached-white laser-light focused on a single un-popped popcorn kernel lying on an old aluminum pie plate. The pie plate was carefully positioned in the sunniest spot available: in the middle of the cargo compartment of Pops’s pickup, which was parked beside the barn.

  “Don’tcha know you’re supposed to use that thing to fry ants?”

  Cheryl straightened up and glared fiercely at Pilot, who was leaning against the side of the truck, watching them, an easy grin on his face. It was a rare second day in a row that his mom hadn’t needed him out at the airstrip helping her with the crop-dusting, and he’d taken the opportunity to ride his bike over to the drive-in to hang out with the twins.

  “What did ants ever do to you, Flyboy?” Cheryl asked.

  She was in a particularly foul mood for such a sunny day. She and Tweed had woken up that morning to see the last few support arms of a Ferris wheel skeleton clawing their way up into a pale-blue sky to complete the circle of the ride. Dudley’s World-O-Wonders was almost finished setting up shop across the road. It was starting to feel like some kind of alien invasion.

  “It’s what ants might do …”—Pilot grinned, oblivious to the thundercloud hovering over Cheryl’s head, and made creepy boogity-boogity hand gestures and oooOOooeee noises—”in the future …”

  His attempts to draw her into a bout of their usual banter fell flat.

  “Never mind frying ‘em. I see you so much as look sideways at an ant, Yeager, and you’ll answer to me,” Cheryl said, a fierce sparkle in her eyes.

  “Aw, c’mon, Cher-bear,” Pilot said mildly, jumping up on the open tailgate to join the girls. He nudged Cheryl with his elbow. “You know I was only joking. I like bugs.”

  Cheryl just raised an eyebrow and turned back to her cousin and the experiment at hand. Tweed ignored them both, picking up a small spray-bottle full of cooking oil and carefully misting the tiny, golden-brown kernel.

  “Actually … he might have a point,” she murmured finally, never taking her eyes off the kernel.

  “Howzat?” Cheryl asked, still grumpy.

  “Consider what we know of the subject, cuz .” Tweed said. “The movies have told us time and again that some kind of future atomic catastrophe could easily turn all Earth’s innocent little insects into rampaging, giant-sized carnivorous monsters.”

  “Oh.” Cheryl blinked. “Right.”

  As the three of them pondered the horrors of a looming giant-insectoid invasion, Tweed moved the magnifying glass an inch or two closer to the pie plate. And the kernel popped with an earth-shattering

  KA-BLAAMM!!!

  The girls both leaped back in surprise, blinking in amazement at the puffy morsel, all thoughts of enormous ants banished from their minds. For a moment, they thought the popcorn experiment had been a success on an explosive scale! But when they looked up, it was to see Pilot pointing at the sky … to where a man in a spangled jumpsuit and garish yellow helmet was soaring in an arc through the bright-blue heavens.

  A human projectile invading Wiggins airspace, so close to their own stomping ground? Clearly, the enemy encampment—or “carnival,” as everyone else in town called it—had powerful weapons at its disposal. Cheryl’s glowering frown returned to her freckled brow in full force.

  A long, tense moment passed between Pilot and the twins …

  And then Cheryl said, “Wanna go spy on ‘em?”

  Tweed leaped to her booted feet and Pilot nodded, scooping up the puffy white morsel from the pie plate and popping it in his mouth.

  “Needs salt,” was all he said as they ran toward the dirt road that cut through the cornfields like a line drawn between two opposing camps—the Starlight Paradise Drive-In Double-Screen Movie Theatre versus Colonel Winchester P. Q. Dudley’s World-O-Wonders Travelling Curiosity Show.

  “So this is what’s got the whole town buzzing like somebody kicked a beehive,” Pilot murmured, staring dubiously at the carnival’s fence. “Huh. Y’know … it’s weird. Nothing ever comes to Wiggins.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Cheryl harrumphed. “I don’t see the attraction. I mean, it’s just a buncha rickety rides and greasy fried corndogs and old dusty junk in a tent, right? That’s all a carnival is, right?”

  A silence stretched out and Cheryl turned to Tweed, whose grey eyes had turned dark as storm clouds. Something was niggling at the back of her mind.

  “Tweed?” Cheryl asked.

  Tweed shook herself from her reverie. “Right,” she said. “Rickety corndogs …”

  “Right.” Cheryl smacked Pilot in the chest. “Nothing to—”

  “Carnival of Souls!” Tweed blurted out, her gothly cool suddenly vaporizing.

  Cheryl froze … and slowly turned toward her cousin, her expression tinged with creeping horror.

  “Carnival of who?” Pilot looked back and forth between them.

  “Carnival of Souls, 1962. A low-budget masterpiece of psycho-terror …” Cheryl murmured. She knew, suddenly, exactly what Tweed was driving at. And why she herself had been so ill at ease. “Oh no …”

  Tweed nodded gravely and pointed at the fence. “We stand here in spitting distance of the most terrifying horror sub-genre of them all
!”

  “Circus of Fear, “ Cheryl exclaimed, “1966.”

  “Carnival of Blood, “ Tweed gasped, “1970.”

  “Freaks!” shrieked Cheryl. “And by that I mean the movie, 1932! The grandpappy-most-terrifyingest carnival movie of ‘em all …”

  “Funhouse!” Pilot chimed in suddenly, caught up in the spirit of the thing. “Uh … 1980-whatever—I saw it—not fun! NOT FUN!”

  The three of them stood gaping at each other, overwhelmed by the real implications of having a CARNIVAL suddenly put down stakes in their very midst. Cheryl, feisty as ever, was the first one to shake off the paralyzing unease. After all, this was not the moment for the trio to lose their nerve. This was a moment that

  called for … that’s right … ACTION!!

  “Okay, Flyboy,” Cheryl whispered, turning to Pilot. “Let’s do this thing. You know the drill.”

  “I know, I know.” Pilot glanced around hesitantly. “We go on ‘Action!!’ and not a second before.”

  “Right.”

  The summer heat haze made the fields shimmer like a mirage in the distance, and the afternoon was getting late. They didn’t have all day. Tweed did a last-minute check on the pair of ropes dangling from the branches of one of the cornfield’s big old oak trees, which conveniently overshadowed the back corner of the carnival fence.

  The trio had “borrowed” the ropes from a stack of gear left untended near one of the flatbeds parked outside the carnival enclosure. They would, of course, return them . but for now, they were vital components of the equipment C+T would need for the “mission.”

  Cheryl crept close to the eight-foot-tall fence. She put an ear to the plywood and, sensing the coast was clear on the other side, nodded to her companions. The three of them scampered up the tree and into position.

  Tweed checked the knots she’d made and gave the C+T signal.

  Cheryl nodded grimly. “Cameras rolling … aaaand …”

  “…ACTION!!”