The Fabulous Zed Watson!

by Basil Sylvester

  “You’re @Hi_Its_Another!”

  “It’s an anagram. I’m clever that way.”

  “The historian,” Gabe said.

  “But you’re right. The librarian wouldn’t give me anything. Said only someone who loved both monsters and plants could crack the code. Said I didn’t love either. But I knew you two did, and they must have told you where to go next. So I followed you again. And I also packed my trunk with some rare volumes from the collection. I do love money.”

  “Did you hurt the—”

  “No need. That old freak just sat and watched me. Although with the money I make off this book deal, I might just buy the place and then burn it to the ground. After I loot even more of those collectibles.”

  He bent over and picked up the box.

  Now I smiled.

  “Gabe, any chance you’ve got all this?” I said.

  “Yup.” He held up Sam’s phone. “Recorded the whole rant. Good thing too, because Roger here told us everything.”

  Stan scowled. “There’s no service out here, you fool. That evidence is useless. Now give me the phone.” He lifted the crowbar.

  That’s when Gabe held up the walkie-talkie in his other hand. “True. I can’t upload your nice speech yet. But there’s more than one copy,” he said.

  Stan stopped, the crowbar hovering at his side.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We worked out a backup plan on the walk here,” I said.

  Gabe waved the walkie-talkie. “When Zed winked at me, I hit Record on the cellphone, but I also pressed down the Talk button on this. And I tapped out an SOS in Morse code.”

  “So?” Stan was clearly having trouble following what was happening. He began to inch forward, crowbar raised.

  “So my sister knows what that means. We both know Morse code.”

  I smiled. “And Jo also knew that she should record whatever came through the walkie-talkie.”

  “You’re lying.” He’d almost reached us.

  “Nope,” Gabe and I said together.

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” he spat. “By the time they get here, I’ll be gone with the manuscript and the money. And you’ll be—”

  There was a cough behind him as Jo and Sam walked into the cave.

  “Nice work, Zed,” Jo called, holding up her cellphone. “Got the whole thing here.”

  Stan whirled around. His head swiveled back and forth between Gabe and Jo. He eyed both phones greedily and smiled.

  “That was a stupid plan. Now I can get my hands on both copies. Hand me the phones. Both of them.”

  “Hold on there, pal,” Sam said. “Unless you’d like to have a little conversation with my friends Thelma”—she pointed to her left bicep, then her right—“and Louise.”

  “And my friend Crowbar doesn’t scare you?” he said.

  “Call that a crowbar?” Jo said. She reached behind her and pulled out a gigantic wrench. “Does a number on lug nuts. Just imagine what it could do to a talkative academic pinhead.”

  Now Stan wobbled. The crowbar shook in his grasp. I couldn’t tell if it was from fury, fear or both.

  “I can’t believe I was outsmarted by a couple of kids and two—”

  Sam held up a fist. “I don’t think you want to finish that sentence. Do you?”

  Stan shut up. He was shaking like a leaf now. It was fear. He dropped the crowbar, which clanged off the floor.

  “Tsk, tsk,” said Jo. “What a horrible way to treat a perfectly good tool.” She walked over to pick it up.

  “The box, please,” I said. I held out my hands.

  Stan practically threw it at me, then he shoved Jo and ran out of the cave. The last we saw of him, he was scrambling away back up the riverbed.

  We watched him go.

  “What if he wrecks our car?” Gabe asked.

  “Isn’t it already a wreck?” I said with a laugh.

  Sam and Jo gave each other a high five. “We fixed it, then moved it down the road. That’s how we got here so fast.”

  I looked at Jo, still holding her phone in her hand. “You didn’t actually record anything, did you?”

  She smiled. “I did once I was standing outside the cave and heard you say to. But that was a good one. And I assume Gabe did actually record?”

  Gabe pressed Play on Sam’s phone, and we heard the sniveling voice of Stan saying, “. . . smarter than the rest of you pathetic sycophants.” He stopped it and smiled.

  Sam walked over and gave us each a huge hug. “Smart thinking on the Morse code, little brother—and Zed. Of course, we’d also been calling you for fifteen minutes with no answer, so we were already on our way. Not that you needed us.”

  “Oops,” I said.

  Gabe turned the volume on our walkie-talkie back up. The static came back.

  “I think you owe Jimi a pretty big thanks,” Jo said.

  “Agreed,” I said. “Now, what say we return to the main plot of our epic story?”

  “You do love being dramatic,” Sam said.

  “You know it!”

  “One other thing,” Sam asked. “What did that jerk mean about money?”

  I smiled and hugged the box, and we walked outside. Gabe leaned over to Sam and Jo, and whispered, “Taylor supposedly buried money with the manuscript!”

  “You’re just telling me this NOW?!” Sam yelled, but Gabe shushed her.

  The sun was setting, casting a golden glow over the scene.

  I gently placed the box on top of a flattened boulder.

  Gabe stuck the key into the lock.

  “Together on three?” I said. “One . . .”

  “Two . . .”

  “Three,” we said together.

  Gabe and I turned the key.

  There was a loud click, and the lid opened just a crack.

  We held our breath and lifted the lid.

  But the box was completely empty.

  Chapter 33

  One Person Alone

  Just kidding! Of course there was something inside.

  Everything we’d been searching for, in fact!

  On top was a faded yellow sheet with “The Monster’s Castle” written in flowing cursive letters. Underneath, the manuscript. Five hundred neatly typed pages with handwritten notes in the margins.

  I lifted it out and kissed it. Gabe did too.

  Then we turned to page one and read the words . . .

  Lysander St. Clair looked down from the highest window of his home, the Monster’s Castle.

  I couldn’t read any more because my eyes had filled with happy tears.

  “Don’t let the ink run, doofus!” Sam said.

  “And we’d better get moving,” Jo said. “Sun is going down fast.”

  I wiped my eyes on Dracula’s face and placed the cover page back on top. I was just about to put the manuscript back in the box when Gabe noticed the envelope that had been tucked into the pages.

  Taylor had written a note on the outside.

  Thank you. I knew it would take someone with an incredible open heart to find my beautiful monsters. It is a rare person who can hold a love for both the natural and the supernatural. Perhaps one person alone cannot. All I can hope is that whoever you are, you will share my story with the world.

  —H.K. Taylor

  Inside the envelope were one hundred crisp hundred-dollar bills.

  That got a cheer from Jo and Sam.

  Gabe and I looked at each other. “Perhaps one person alone cannot,” we repeated. Then we hugged. We carefully closed and locked the box, with the treasure inside, and walked back to the road.

  The sun set behind us, golden and pure.

  A slight breeze rustled the bushes, and a low moan from the castle whispered farewell.

  As we reached the car, one more odd thing happened.

  Sam’s phone buzzed.

  She took it out of her pocket and looked at the screen.

  “What the heck?” she said. “Zed, Gabe, you’re not going to believe t
his.”

  “What?”

  “Do either of you know someone with the handle @Times_Lisa?”

  Epilogue

  One Year Later

  @Times_Lisa turned out to be a newspaper reporter named Lisa Velasco. She was the one who’d written the article that mentioned The Monster’s Castle, so it was incredibly cool that she wanted to talk to us.

  She’d been trying to reach me on the fan site, she said, because she’d heard about our quest while researching a follow-up article on tight-knit online fandoms.

  And she’d been doing stories on our progress for her newspaper.

  In fact, when I logged on to the Taylor fan site from Sam’s phone, the new members’ meter had turned over a thousand times.

  The site was flooded with people who wanted to know more about the story, and about how we’d cracked the code. They were also, it turned out, desperate to read Taylor’s masterpiece.

  And why wouldn’t they be?

  The complete version of The Monster’s Castle was even more incredibly awesome than I ever could have imagined.

  Gabe and I stayed up all night reading it to each other.

  There were a bunch of new characters we had never even HEARD of! Like Sylvia Sargasso. She’s a kind of water monster, and one of the coolest beings ever. She has this superpower where she can talk to anyone who comes into the ocean. She’s kind of like a Siren, except she doesn’t care about luring men to their deaths or anything—although she does love to cause trouble. And she does good too. She warns sea creatures about pollution. She’s fiercely protective of her underground lair, and she scares away people who come to fish and dive there.

  How does she scare them and protect her home? It’s all in the book.

  She’s no Lysander, but she’s still super cool.

  Gabe and I agreed that she was one of the best parts of our discovery, since she’s a monster and—like him—is totally into underwater plant and animal life. The big nerds.

  And it turned out, finding the manuscript was just the start of a different journey.

  A year later, Gabe and I were sitting together on a plane. Gabe was on the aisle, holding Aloysius, and I was in the middle, holding the box.

  “That’s a very interesting container,” said the lady at the window.

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’s a gift.”

  “We decorated it ourselves,” Gabe said.

  I smiled. It was the same box we’d found holding the manuscript. But we’d decorated it with handmade stickers.

  “This one is Lysander,” I told the lady, pointing to a vampire sticker I’d made.

  “Oh, he looks handsome.”

  “This one is a bluebonnet,” Gabe said, pointing to the blue flower.

  “I love those,” said the woman. “Very pretty. Who’s the present for?”

  “That’s a long story,” I said.

  Just then, a voice over the intercom told us to get ready for landing.

  And half an hour later, still holding the box, we walked off the plane in Albuquerque and through some sliding glass doors to the arrivals area.

  “Sam!” Gabe yelled. He ran over and hugged his sister.

  “Jo!” I yelled. She was standing there holding a sign that said “Nerds.”

  We all hugged.

  “Ready?” Sam said.

  Gabe and I nodded. “Totally ready.”

  We walked outside and gasped.

  “You got a new car?” I said. “I thought you’d never get rid of that piece of junk.”

  Sam scowled. “This is that piece of junk. The one that helped you find that book!”

  “Oh. Hello, Dolly,” I said.

  “But it doesn’t look like Dolly,” Gabe said.

  Jo patted the hood. “We’ve made some alterations. Thanks to Taylor’s money.”

  “Now she’s no longer known as Dolly Carton.” Sam bumped Jo’s hip.

  “Say hello to Car-ssandra!” Jo said.

  I gasped. “You read the book!”

  “Uh-huh,” Jo said. “We read it together. And you’re right—Cassandra is awesome.”

  “Get inside,” Sam ordered. “And put a bag over that creepy rabbit.”

  “Never,” I said.

  The drive was about an hour—just enough time to catch up.

  “How’s Leslie?” I asked.

  “Great!” Jo said. “There are these weird monster-loving tourists who keep popping in. They’re apparently retracing some lost-book journey a couple of goofy kids did. He’s sold a lot of jackalopes.”

  “Interesting,” I said.

  Lisa had written a whole long article about our quest, complete with maps and locations and stuff.

  “Jennie says the diner is packed every night now,” Sam added.

  “And Darlene has been able to raise some money to clean Big Blue.”

  That wasn’t all. Jerry had written us postcards. Apparently, there was talk of restarting the summer festival.

  And the video of me dancing to “Mashed Potato Time”? Well, that went viral and the song was back on the charts.

  I guess the world was ready.

  “Okay,” Sam said, “we’re here.”

  The parking lot outside the library was jammed with cars.

  Cars with vampire bumper stickers. Cars with license plates like “MNSTR66.”

  Gabe and I walked to the door.

  Together we put our hands on the brass handle and turned.

  People were everywhere, reading books, chatting and drinking tea with honey.

  We walked past them, all the way to a big oak desk at the back.

  The librarian was sitting there. They looked up and broke into a gigantic smile.

  “Zed and Gabe, what can I do for you?”

  “We have something we’d like to do for you,” I said. I slid the box on top of the desk.

  The librarian’s eyes misted a bit as they took in all the decorations.

  Gabe handed the librarian the key. “Take a look inside,” he said.

  They carefully unlocked the box and opened the lid. Their lips trembled as they reached inside and pulled out a book.

  “It’s the very first one printed,” I said, choking up too. “The publisher sent it to us, and we feel like this is where it belongs. It’s just the kind of strange and beautiful thing that could use a home like yours.”

  The librarian was very quiet as they ran their fingers over the glossy cover.

  “The original manuscript is in there too,” Gabe said.

  “It wasn’t here the first time we visited. But it also seems to belong.”

  The librarian got up and walked over to a shelf. They carefully placed The Monster’s Castle among the other books.

  “I wonder who’ll read it first,” they said, running their finger down the spine.

  “You don’t need to?” I asked.

  “Is that because you wrote it?” Gabe asked.

  They didn’t respond.

  It was the only unanswered question left from our quest.

  Gabe and I looked at each other.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Are you Taylor?”

  The librarian sighed softly and turned back to us with a smile.

  “Now how about some tea?”

  Acknowledgments

  First of all, we’d like to thank Suzanne Sutherland for bringing this book to fruition. Basil had Zed in their head for a while, but it was the push from Suzanne that got us working together and helped form Zed into the dashing, fabulous kid they are on these pages. (There might even be a little Suzanne in the kick-butt character of Sam.)

  We’d also like to thank the great, and tragically gone-too-soon, Sheila Barry. Sheila made all of us better at what we do. She is missed every day.

  Dozens of people help make a book a book. Natalie Meditsky and the design crew at HarperCollins deserve a giant thanks.

  We’d like to thank the members of our family—spread all over the globe. The support we get for our person
al and professional lives is everything.

  And one final thanks. A lot of the editing and illustrating of this book happened in a pandemic, and I got through some of the darkest days with the help of the amazing Drawn to FANtasy gang—led by the DiTerlizzi family—Tony, Ang, Soph, Mimi and Pippin.

  Love each other.

  Make the world a better place each day.

  And listen to each other. You’ll learn a lot.

  —Kevin

  Huge thanks to: my incredible friends and chosen family, Leo, Celia, Sasha, Geena, Kaeli and Manny, Davrielle, Blue and Élie, for everything; I’m so glad we are in this life together. Everyone at Mabel’s Fables and at House of Anansi and Groundwood Books for believing in the power of good books and community. Special shout-out to Cindy Ma for not minding being pestered constantly and for being the best hype man this weirdo could ask for! Our fabulous editor, Suzanne Sutherland, who introduced me to the Glad Day Bookshop in Toronto when I was a teen, where I experienced firsthand how life-changing LGBTQ+ literature was and could be. Kit H. for always being up for talking about writing and ideas and wacky characters and everything! There’s a lot of you in this book. Erin, Mom, David and my extended family a thousand times over, but especially Kit for knowing exactly what I’m going to say, sometimes even before I say it. The Berot-Burnses for always being a heck of a good time. Grandma and Grandpa Carlin for chats on theatre, baseball and complicated ethical questions. Gram and Grampa S. for understanding the importance of good food and good company—Chez Watson is very much inspired by the warm chaos of a Sylvester gathering. And finally, my dad, my co-author and my creative partner-in-crime, Kevin Sylvester. We really did this thing! Time for a celebratory dance party!

  —Basil

  About the Authors

  PHOTO BY LAURA CARLIN

  BASIL SYLVESTER is a nonbinary bookseller. Their favorite monsters are vampires. They live in Toronto. This is their first book.

  PHOTO BY KEVIN SYLVESTER

  KEVIN SYLVESTER is the author/illustrator of more than thirty books, including MiNRS, The Almost Epic Squad: Mucus Mayhem, the Neil Flambé Capers and the Hockey Super Six. He’s also a broadcaster and documentary producer. Sylvester has won awards across Canada, including the Silver Birch Award, the Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award and the Canadian Children’s Book Centre Award. Visit him online at www.kevinsylvesterbooks.com.