The League of Beastly Dreadfuls Book 1, page 13
“By gosh,” Prim exclaimed, pointing at the coat with the umbrella, “it’s moving!”
The coat bristled and rustled and fluttered.
“It’s alive!” Prude caterwauled, her face turning white. “It’s come back to life! I felt it! Kill it!”
“Don’t be daft,” Prim snapped, but her face was white, too.
Little tufts of fur began to quiver right off the coat and scamper and jump and squeak and zoom over the marble floor like fuzzy toy cars.
“Mice!” Prim whacked the floor. “Mice! We’re under siege!”
And she began clomping and kicking and saying a lot of impolite words. Her evil jitterbugging and foul language did not bother the mice at all. They were clever and capable. They scaled Prim’s skinny ankles and shins and scurried all the way up her skirt. When they tired of that, they swarmed out of her collar and somersaulted down to the breakfast table, prancing among the shards of china and spatters of Mystery Lumps.
And then, quick as a wink, the mice were gone. Nobody even saw where they went. All that remained of the great mouse invasion were thousands of tiny brown mouse missiles.
Screaming did not help.
Stomping did not work. Nor did threats.
Nor, for that matter, did mousetraps. The clever mice turned up their whiskered noses at the bits of peppermint clamped in the traps’ metal jaws. They burrowed into the sugar bowl and munched the antique furniture and gnawed through the kidnappers’ knitting. They even got into the harpsichord. Anastasia lifted the sheet and watched the keys fidget up and down as though a ghost were pressing them. Of course, it was really just the mice jumping on the hammers and wires in the harpsichord’s belly. It made a wonderful ruckus.
The mice also made a good distraction. Prim and Prude were so busy flinging teacups and walloping their umbrella that Anastasia had plenty of time to slip down to Dr. Grungewhiff’s office to scheme with her fellow Beastly Dreadfuls.
“Look at this!” Ollie said, twirling a silk stocking like a slingshot. It was another scrap of Shadowsilk, this time sloughed off his leg.
Anastasia grabbed the toe. “Tug-of-war!”
She yanked her end of the stocking, marveling as the silk stretched out of the office and all the way down the corridor. The shadow sock pulled taut, but it didn’t snap. “Amazing!” Anastasia skipped back into the mirrored room.
“Stop playing,” Quentin scolded. “We have to conspire.”
“I love conspiring,” Ollie said.
“Good, because our Daring Escape is tomorrow night,” Quentin said.
Anastasia and Ollie gulped.
“Now that you have the sugar key, Anastasia, you can let yourself out of Room Eleven and come unmirror me from Room Thirty-Eight,” Quentin went on. “Ollie, we’ll drag one of these mirrors ajar for you, so you can come up the dumbwaiter and meet us.”
“Freedom!” Ollie huzzahed. “Oh, I can’t wait to get out of this awful basement!”
“But we still have to get out of the asylum,” Quentin reminded him. “There’s a combination lock on the front door.”
“Anastasia, you’re not a safecracker, are you?” Ollie asked.
“Nope. Sorry.”
“We have to come up with another escape route,” Quentin said.
“What about breaking a window?” Ollie suggested.
“Too noisy,” said Quentin.
“Well, poop.” Ollie slumped and began humming “Ballad of the Lovelorn Beluga.” Anastasia closed her eyes and listened to the melody, remembering the days when she had wondered whether Quentin’s peculiar saw music was the sound of wind piping through the chimneys.
Her eyelids snapped open. “I know how to get out!”
And she told the Shadowboys her idea.
“That sounds a bit dangerous,” Ollie said.
“A bit!” Quentin cried. “Anastasia could break her neck!”
“It’s the only way,” Anastasia said. “Remember: escape or die trying.”
Quentin drummed his fingers on his knee. “All right,” he gave in. “But we still have the problem of Prim and Prude.”
“We have to get them away from the windows to give us time to get to the fence. But,” Anastasia mused, “we’re out of chocolate laxative.”
“We only need to distract Prude,” Quentin said. “She’ll be the one on guard tomorrow night.”
“How do you know that?” Anastasia asked.
“I eavesdrop a lot,” Quentin said. “I’m pretty brilliant at it.”
The room was silent as they pondered distractions.
“We’ll have to improvise,” Ollie finally concluded. “Just like when I used nighty-night cough syrup instead of vanilla in my coffee cake.”
“Ollie!” Quentin scolded. “You must promise never to put medicine in your baking! It’s dangerous!”
“It was coffee cake,” Ollie argued. “It seemed sensible to me. Besides, all great pastry chefs experiment with new and unusual ingredients.”
“Not medicine!”
“Maybe you’re right,” Ollie admitted. “Everyone was falling asleep at the table.”
Anastasia perked up. “Medicine!” she cried. “Dr. Bluster’s Patented Sleep Preparation of Most Sleepful Sleep!”
“Dr. Whozit’s whatsit?” Ollie asked.
“Just one drop would knock a rhinoceros on its rump,” Anastasia said. “That’s what the label says. Prim and Prude use it on their peppermints. And I’m sure that’s what they put into your tea, Quentin. There’s a whole bottle of it in their secret parlor.”
“The fiends!” Quentin swore.
“Quite right,” Ollie agreed. “Very fiendish, those two. We should pinch that bottle and pour it right down the drain!”
“No, Ollie,” Anastasia said firmly. “We should pinch that bottle and pour it right into Prim and Prude’s tea.”
“Good thinking!” Ollie cheered. “Now we don’t need any distraction at all! We can just clobber those child-snatchers with sleeping stuff and stroll out the door without so much as a how-do-you-do.”
Quentin scratched his spotty neck. “What about the poodles? And the fence?”
“And the Creature?” Anastasia added.
“We’ll umbrate,” Ollie said, “and if the poodles try to get close to Anastasia, we’ll bite them. Same with the Creature.”
“That doesn’t solve the problem of the fence,” Quentin said.
Anastasia checked her watch. “I’d better get back upstairs,” she said. “It’s getting late, and Prim and Prude will be looking for me.”
They trapped Ollie in the circle of mirrors, just in case the Watchers trotted downstairs to bring him another cupcake of diabolical intent. At the dumbwaiter, Quentin and Anastasia clasped pinkies. Then she hauled herself up to the second floor.
“Anastasia!”
“Oh!” Anastasia gulped as she stepped out of Room Nine. Prim and Prude were standing in the gloomy hallway.
“What were you doing in there, moppet?” Prim asked. “We told you not to go into rooms with closed doors.”
“I—I was looking for a—a ladder so I could really get at those cobwebs hanging from the chandeliers,” Anastasia stuttered.
“Oh,” said Prude. “Well, that can wait until tomorrow. It’s getting close to dark, and as you know, Nice Little Girls—”
“Are in bed before dark,” Anastasia interjected. “Yes, I know. I was—I’m sleepy, anyway.”
“I’m sure you’re not too sleepy to smile for just one little picture,” Prim said, pulling a big old clunker of a camera from behind her back.
“We realized today that we don’t have a single photograph of our darling great-niece!” Prude piped up.
“But—” Anastasia squirmed as she thought of the photographs wincing from the walls of Room Thirteen. “There isn’t enough light in here—and I haven’t brushed my hair this week—”
“Nonsense,” twittered Prude, her fingers darting forward to fiddle with the silver chain at Anastasia’s collar. “You look darling.”
“Besides,” Prim added, “this camera has a heck of a flash. You’ll feel like someone threw a Molotov cocktail right up your nose.”
Prude beamed. “Now stand up straight and say cheese.”
“Cheese,” Anastasia croaked.
Pop! Artificial light dazzled the hallway. Anastasia was still blinking away the sparkles on her eyeballs when Prim and Prude hustled her into Room Eleven and clunked the locks into place.
Fear flooded her freckled body. She knew just how she would look in that picture—ill at ease, as though she were wearing wet socks or underpants that didn’t quite fit, or had just had a tooth pulled.
In other words: just like the other children in the photographs in the secret parlor.
She shivered, glad the Beastly Dreadfuls would be launching their Daring Escape the next night.
Now, she thought, it was time to move to the next step in their brilliant plan. She removed the magnet and sugar key from her satchel and put them to work. She stole into the hallway and hurried down and around and up and through the maze of corridors to Room Thirteen. Looking over her shoulder to make sure the hallway was empty, she peeled back the wallpaper to reveal the keyhole and let herself in.
The sad little faces of the Watchers’ young victims gazed at her as she tiptoed to pilfer Dr. Bluster’s Patented Sleep Preparation. She pilfered the paintbrush, too.
“Goodbye,” she whispered to the photographs. “I won’t see you again.”
Dozens upon dozens of sad eyes watched as she slipped from the room.
22
The Mouse Destroyer
“WELL, AUNTIE PRIM,” Anastasia said, “your dream has finally come true.”
Prim lowered her binoculars, her mouth pulled into an angry line. “What on earth are you talking about?”
Anastasia grinned. “St. Agony’s is a bed-and-breakfast, just like you wanted.” Feeling less inclined to good manners on this, the day of the Beastly Dreadfuls’ Daring Escape, she continued, “A bed-and-breakfast for mice. We could call it…the Squeak ’n’ Poo.”
“Stop smiling,” Prim snapped. “This is a serious matter.”
“We must call an exterminator,” said Prude. “There’s no way around it.”
“We can’t afford an exterminator,” Prim retorted. “Besides…”
The old ladies’ eyes drifted toward the glass walls. The Dread Woods were just a dark blur beyond the fog curling against the glass, but Anastasia knew what they were thinking about. The Creature.
Anastasia gazed into the gardens, too. Down among the topiaries, Quentin was busy shoveling. He couldn’t let the kidnappers know that Anastasia had no intention of winding up in the bone garden. The shovel lashed into the air, flinging mud right onto the nose of a shaggy giraffe (or brachiosaur). As Anastasia watched, the hole deepened until only the bell on Quentin’s head cage was visible.
“I’m sure the mice will get tired of bothering us and just go away,” Prim said, lifting her binoculars back to her face.
“I’m sure you’re right, Auntie,” Anastasia said, smothering a giggle. The mice weren’t going to just go away. They waltzed around St. Agony’s Asylum like they owned the place. There was even, at that very moment, a mouse sitting on top of Prude’s head, surveying the glass tower with lordly curiosity. Prude held her chipped teacup with trembling hands but did not drink from it. There was no sugar, because the mice had devoured it all.
Anastasia admired the mice from the bottom of her soul. They almost distracted her from the nerves jangling her tummy. Within a few hours, the League of Beastly Dreadfuls would launch their getaway. She had already sneaked down to Dr. Grungewhiff’s office after lunch to free Ollie from his looking-glass clinker. She had tucked his music box into her satchel, since he wouldn’t be able to carry it once he umbrated. They hugged, trying not to let their fear show.
For, tenderhearted Reader, Anastasia was fearful. She tallied the flaws in their escape plan. Poodles. Fence. And once past the fence, the umbrated Shadowboys could elude whatever heart-munching Creature lurked in the Dread Woods, but Anastasia would have to plod through the wintry December night as her absolutely ordinary self. The Dreadfuls planned to run until they stumbled upon the nearest town, but how far away might that be? If worse came to worst, the boys could whiz home to faraway Melancholy Falls and get help—but that would mean leaving Anastasia behind in the forest. Alone. With the Creature.
“I can’t live like this any longer!” Prude wailed. “I can’t eat, because the filthy vermin have befouled all the food. I can’t sleep, because as soon as I lie down in bed, the mice jump up and down on my bosom like it’s a trampoline.”
“Now, Prudie,” Prim said, “you know I would like nothing better than to get rid of these rodents. However, like chocolate sprinkles and funerals, the services of a pest exterminator simply cost too much. And besides—”
But whatever wise thing Prim was about to say next was interrupted by three loud knocks. Everyone jumped a bit, even the mouse, who scurried down Prude’s wooly cardigan and vamoosed into the gloom.
Prude set her teacup down. “Was that…”
“Someone at the front door,” Prim said.
Prim and Prude stared at each other with something like shock. They were, Anastasia realized, afraid, and a shiver ran down her spine. Or was it a mouse? It was difficult to tell these days.
“I didn’t see anybody out there,” Prude said.
“It’s very cloudy today,” Prim said grimly. “Bad visibility.”
Three more knocks.
Prim pulled the brim of her hat down and set the binoculars on a crooked little end table scattered with mouse droppings. “Well,” she said, “we’ll just have to see who it is.”
“Maybe it’s someone selling vacuums,” Anastasia suggested.
They descended the spiral staircase and twisted through the moldy corridors to the entrance hall. “Anastasia, go to your room,” Prim said. “And close the door.”
Anastasia scuttled up the green-carpeted staircase, passing the monobrowed portraits and thumping up to the landing. She did not, however, go down the long hall. She pressed tight against the wall, crouching in a shadow. Who, she wondered, could be at the front door? Perhaps it was Mr. and Mrs. Drybread! Perhaps they were here to rescue Ollie and Quentin!
Or maybe it was even Fred McCrumpet!
On the other hand…maybe the Creature was standing at the front door that very minute, its frightful bottom reflected in the mirror bolted to the front porch. Was it too hungry for Anastasia’s heart to wait politely in the woods?
She shrank into her coat, feeling a mouse wiggle against her side.
Prim and Prude exchanged a grim look. Prim held up her long knitting needle and nodded. Prude twisted the combination lock and cracked the door open.
“Who are you?” Prim demanded. “And how did you get through the gates?”
Anastasia sagged in relief. Whoever it was, it must not have been the Creature.
“The gates?” came a manly voice. “Why, they were open. I do hope I’m not trespassing.”
“You are,” Prim said. “We have those gates to keep strange men from bothering us. Now please go away.”
“Good day,” fluttered Prude, but the visitor stuck his foot between the door and jamb before the biddy could shut him out. Anastasia saw four large fingertips peep around the edge of the door, and then it swung back into the Great Hall.
The intruder was so tall that he almost filled the doorway. He had a thick manly neck, and a manly cleft in the center of his manly chin. His glorious ginger-colored mustache curled back from his upper lip like a triumphant banner. He wore a military uniform twinkling with brass buttons and buckles and star-shaped studs, and he was carrying a large suitcase.
“Greetings!” he said. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am the Baron von Bilgeworth, Mouse Destroyer Extraordinaire.”
“Mouse Destroyer!” the sisters gasped.
“Yes indeed.” The Mouse Destroyer plucked up Prim’s withered hand and gave it a little kiss. Prim snatched her hand away and glared at him, but Prude flushed pink with pleasure.
“May I ask your names, fair maidens?” the Baron asked.
“I’m Prudence, and this is Primrose,” Prude twittered. Prim scowled and jabbed her in the side with the knitting needle.
“Delightful,” the Baron said. “Now that we’ve met, I have a rather—er—delicate question to ask. I hate to ask it, but I must. Do you”—he lowered his voice discreetly—“have a mouse problem?”
“A mouse problem?” Prim said. “Oh, no. Not at all.”
“Of course we do!” Prude hissed, her bright hedgehoggy eyes darting between Prim and the handsome Mouse Destroyer.
“Forgive me, ladies,” the Baron said, “but I don’t quite understand. Have you, or have you not, a mouse problem? I only ask because quite a few dead mice have been observed clogging the river downstream from here.” He coughed. “The Department of Health has traced the mice to this location.”
Prim let out a strangled cry as a mouse plummeted from a cobwebby chandelier and landed on her hat. Then she drew herself up to her full five feet of height. “Our house is very clean, thank you,” she said. “No mice.”
“Prim, the Department of Health!” Prude whispered urgently. “The authorities.”
Prim ignored her and went on. “Now kindly remove yourself from our doorstep. This is private property, and we do not wish to be disturbed by trespassers.”
“Even dashingly handsome ones?” Prude pleaded.
But the Mouse Destroyer wasn’t listening to them at that point. He was staring down into the glittering black eyes of the mouse on Prim’s hat. The mouse stared back.
“Listen to me,” the Baron muttered, leaning so close that his fabulous mustache twitched against Prim’s forehead. “Listen to me, you rascal. I’m the Baron von Bilgeworth, Mouse Destroyer Extraordinaire, and darned if I haven’t stomped hundreds of thousands of your rotten relatives. Are you listening, mouse? If you aren’t trembling, you should be.”
