The League of Beastly Dreadfuls Book 1, page 17
Prim’s knobbly fingers clawed at the lip of the grave, and then her trampled hat appeared, and her frazzled pink curls, and her glinting glasses, and her fierce teeth.
“We have to run,” Quentin urged.
Anastasia nodded, but she also knew that she couldn’t lug the snoring mice with her anymore. They were too heavy. At the same time, she couldn’t very well abandon them.
Another brainstorm zapped her cranium. She grabbed the little bottle of smelling salts dangling from the chain at her waist. She uncorked it and opened her satchel and waved it beneath the twitching pink noses of the mice. The mice jolted, their furry eyelids snapping up. They stared at her and then swiveled their heads in unison toward Prim, who was tottering at the edge of the grave, yanking Prude’s wrists.
As if moved by a single brain, the mice stormed toward the kidnappers, leaping onto their coats, scurrying up their necks to bite at their faces. The potent smelling salts must have zinged the sensitive mouse-nostrils of even the rodents sleeping in Anastasia’s pockets, for her coat began to twitch and shudder as all the mice started elbowing each other to get out, swarming to join their allies in the wild battle.
Prude tumbled back into the hollow, and Prim’s gun blasted as she squalled and swung around, mice clinging to her earlobes by their teeth. Skating on the slippery frost, she shot once more before pitching backward into the hole.
“Come on!” Anastasia leapt to her feet and catapulted toward the fence, the Shadowboys scudding alongside her. She reached into her pocket and pressed the button on the electric gate opener. The bars buzzed into action, and the gates slowly butterflied toward the black trees of the Dread Woods.
“Look!” Prude whooped. “There! She’s running! And the gates are open!”
“She mustn’t get away!” Prim shrieked.
Anastasia’s gaze boomeranged to the kidnappers. The old ladies were out of the grave again, and buckshot whizzed and singed the night air in the great battle of wolf and mice versus Watchers. Prude was holding off the animal offensive, and Prim was chasing after the Beastly Dreadfuls. The old woman had thrown down her gun and was racing over the frosty ground and laughing. Her laughter was high and hysterical and evil. Anastasia turned her face back toward the spiked fence and the deep, dark woods that lay beyond it. The Shadowboys had already torpedoed through the open gates, but Prim was going to catch Anastasia—unless…
She squeezed the button on the remote control once more. The gates began to swing shut. Anastasia’s galoshes thumped. She could hear the electricity humming in the iron bars. Prim was so close behind her that she could smell the sickly scent of her rose-water perfume. There was only a small gap left between the two doors. The thornbushes tore at Anastasia’s coat and hair as she burst past them and leapt through the gates at the very last second. The bars clunked shut behind her, with Prim trapped on the other side. Anastasia cried out as the old woman’s arm snaked between the bars to grab her braid.
“Little beast!” The words hissed between the silver teeth. Anastasia gasped as the old woman yanked her by the plait until her nose was just inches away from the electrified bars.
“Let her go!” Ollie yelled. “I’ll bite you! I’ll bite you!”
CRUNCH! Clank! “Owww!” Ollie collapsed into a ghostly puddle.
“What did you do to him, you crazy old hag?” Quentin cried.
Prim smiled horribly and raised her other arm. Her knitting needle glinted in her fist, and her furry sleeve rolled back to reveal a row of bracelets stacked on her arm like a silver shell. “It serves you right, you nasty little boy,” she spat at the whimpering shadow. “Next time, I’ll bite you.” She gnashed her silver teeth and swiveled her glare back to Anastasia. “So you thought you could get away, did you? Oh, no, my dear dreadful girl. You’re not getting away tonight, or any night, for that matter.” And the spike arced down toward Anastasia’s pitter-pattering heart.
“No!” Anastasia grabbed Prim’s wrist. The pointed tip of the knitting needle twinkled just inches from its target. The kidnapper and Anastasia struggled there, panting and desperate as snowflakes sizzled against their sweaty cheeks. The fence buzzed between them. If either Anastasia or Prim even touched one of the bars, they would both be frizzled. Anastasia stared up into Prim’s eyes, hypnotized by the hatred burning there. The hungry needle trembled ever closer. The point pressed against Anastasia’s chest.
She gulped a tonsil-rattling breath—the type of breath you inhale right before you blow out all the candles on your birthday cake—and huffed it out in one frosty cloud, right onto the lenses of Prim’s spectacles. The glass bloomed with the delicate whorls and swirls of Anastasia’s crystallizing breath, and then each lens made a funny squeaking noise as cracks spidered across them. Prim let out an enraged scream, her fingers loosening, and Anastasia twisted out of her grasp. The ancient kidnapper lurched, stabbing wildly at the air. But instead of burying itself in Anastasia McCrumpet’s almost-eleven-year-old heart, the silver needle clanged against the authentic Victorian fence.
As you may know, silver is an excellent conductor of electricity. The energy simmering and buzzing and trembling in the fence jumped into the knitting needle and jolted up Prim’s arm and into her body and sent her flying into the air like a wrinkled rag doll, and then down to the ground perhaps fifteen feet away. Anastasia stared at her. Prim’s hat had rocketed off her head and her pink hair was sticking straight out from her scalp. The needle lay beside her scorched hand.
“Victory,” Ollie croaked.
Anastasia dashed to his side. “Ollie, are you okay? Did she stab you?”
“No,” he mumbled. “I just chomped her silver bracelets. Owwwww. I have a terrible toothache.”
“ANASTASIAaaooooooo!”
She whirled. The wolf was galloping toward the fence, with Prude and the mice swarming behind. Before Anastasia could even twitch a muscle, the wolf hurdled over the iron spikes, clawing the frosty ground as it crashed to a landing beside her.
“Anastasioooo!” it said. “Come with me!”
The wolf was looking right at her, and it was speaking. “Get on my baooowck! They’ll kill us both!”
Had she gone barmy with terror? Wolves didn’t speak English! Or Chinese, or Swahili, or Spanish, or any human language, for that matter!
“Hurry!” the wolf shouted. “Get on my back! We haooooowve to get out of here!”
As absurd as it all was—as much as she felt she was in a senseless, horrible dream, and as ridiculous as it seemed to climb onto the back of a gigantic talking wolf—this is exactly what Anastasia did. One couldn’t exactly say no to a gigantic talking wolf, you understand. She felt the cold swoosh of Quentin and Ollie sliding up behind her onto the wolf’s rump.
“Hang owwwwwwn!” the wolf bellowed above the din of gunshots and whizzing pellets and squeaking mice. “Hang on and don’t let gawooo!”
Anastasia wrapped her arms around the wolf’s shaggy neck. She took one last look at Prim and Prude and the Baron’s brave army of mice and the dark asylum as the wolf cannonballed toward the trees. If Anastasia had been capable of thinking at that point, she might have wondered whether the wolf was taking her into the forest to eat her. But her mind was a confused jumble of sounds and smells and fear as they smashed through the branches and over the bracken, into a gloom so dark even the blazing full moon couldn’t touch it. She buried her face in the wolf’s fur. The beast’s pulse throbbed in its neck and juddered her arms. They tore deeper and deeper into the Dread Woods. Finally the wolf slowed to an easy lope. Anastasia dared to lift her nose and open her eyes. Her heart still battered against her ribs, but she was suddenly unafraid. She sat up a little on the wolf, the air whooshing through her hair. It was a thrilling, fabulous feeling. It was better than the best bicycle ride you can imagine. And she was alive!
Long, glowing shapes danced ahead. It was the moon shining between trees. The wolf stopped altogether. His sides heaved. He sat down, and Anastasia slid from his shaggy flanks to the frozen earth, the Shadowboys clinging to her.
The wolf turned around and looked at her. His tongue lolled.
“My gosh,” he panted. “You’re heavier than you look.”
Of course, the Shadowboys had hitched a ride on the wolf’s back, too, but Anastasia wasn’t about to mention that. Ollie and Quentin slinked into the shadows, hidden and mum.
“Your ear is…is bleeding,” Anastasia finally stammered, getting to her feet.
“They got some buckshot in my hind end, tooaoooo,” the wolf sighed. “Bosphorus! This means another trip to the doctor. I’m sure those owwwwooold nasties were using silver buckshot.”
“Silver buckshot?” Anastasia echoed. “You mean, silver bullets? The kind that’s supposed to kill werewolves?” She took a step backward, the fizzy thrill of escape draining away like soda through a sieve. Quentin’s shadow arm looped protectively around her shoulders, sending chills down her back.
“Werewolves!” the wolf chortled. He grinned at her. It was a very toothy grin. “There’s noaoooo such thing as werewolves.”
“Oh.” Anastasia eyed him. “I thought the Creature in the Woods might be a werewolf. Wait—are you the Creature in the Woods?” she demanded.
“What?” The wolf blinked. “What in blazes are you talking abowwwt? What creature?”
“The Creature,” Anastasia said, “that Prude and Prim are so scared of. They have the fence and those poodles to keep the Creature out, and they’re always watching the woods from their tower because they’re so frightened. I think they were even going to…feed my heart to the Creature.” She remembered Prude tittering about little bones, and she shivered as a twig snapped beneath her foot. “Are you sure you aren’t the Creature?”
The wolf let out a yodel of laughter. “The Creature in the Woods!” he said. “By gum, that’s a goowwwood one.” He shook his bearded head. “These woods are safe and sound. Just fireflies and squirrels and owwwwoools. And the trees are full of delicious sap for making the Happy Forest Maple Syrup you drizzle on your waaooowffles.”
“No,” Anastasia insisted. “I heard them talking about it. Prude—or was it Prim?—said the Creature made her skin crawl. They said it could attack at any moment.” She took another step back.
The wolf grinned again. “My dear girl,” he said, and it occurred to her that he was rather a well-spoken wolf, “the fence and dogs weren’t to keep anyone ooowwooowwt of the asylum. All of those precautions were to keep yawwoooo in.”
Anastasia goggled at him.
“Anastasia,” he said softly, “you’re the Creature.”
27
Weirder and Weirder
A CLOUD SLIPPED over the moon and plunged the woods into darkness. The wolf’s eyes, jolly and clear and green, twinkled at Anastasia. Then, like two Christmas lights flipped off by a switch, they disappeared. The nearby bushes rustled.
“Wolf!” Anastasia cried. “Wolf! Don’t go away!”
The moon struggled from the cloud, dappling the forest floor with shimmering light. A large moonlit figure towered beside her. Anastasia jumped as though someone had stuck a pin into her arm.
“Baron!”
He looked puzzled. “Did you whump your head on a tree branch or something?”
“Where were you? I thought you were dead as a dormouse!” To her great embarrassment, tears flooded her eyes and started to drip down her cheeks. “I mean, I didn’t see you at all after you went off with Prude. And when the kidnappers came after us…”
“Oh, golly. I’m sorry, Anastasia,” the Baron said. “You see, I’ve battled so many child-snatchers in the past, it becomes rather routine. Not that things didn’t get a little hairy back there, but…I’ve been through much worse. Of course, you haven’t seen anything like that before. You must be scared out of your wits, poor child.” He flung back his scarf and reached into the pocket of his bomber jacket—when had he changed clothes?—and pulled out a flask. “Have a drink of this,” he said. “It will calm you down.”
In movies, people usually swill brandy to soothe their nerves after a shock. The Baron’s flask, however, contained nothing stronger than ginger ale. Anastasia gulped it down, the bubbles buzzy in her nostrils. She handed the flask back to him. She did feel a bit better. “But you still haven’t answered my question,” she pointed out. “And that wolf…Where did that wolf go? Did you see it? It talked! That wolf talked to me!”
The Baron blinked at her. “Why!” he exclaimed. “I assumed you knew!”
“Knew what?”
“Well, well!” He stroked his mustache. “My dear, that was me! I’m the wolf!” His green eyes gleamed at her. “Or rather, I was the wolf. I can change back and forth. Sometimes it’s a bit difficult, but on a night like this”—his gaze flicked up toward the moon-tinseled treetops—“it’s very easy. In fact, on full-moon nights I usually prefer to go about as a wolf. But it’s rather difficult talking as a wolf—all teeth and tongue and my vowels come out in yodels—so I’d better stay in man-form now.”
“So you are a werewolf!” Anastasia exclaimed.
The Baron shook his head, winced, and touched his ear. “Bosphorus, that smarts! No, Anastasia, I told you—there’s no such thing as werewolves.”
Anastasia also shook her head. The night was getting weirder and weirder. “What did you mean when you said I’m the Creature? What creature? Why would Prim and Prude be scared of me?”
“Anastasia!” An anxious voice rang out behind them.
Anastasia spun around. “Miss Apple!”
Quentin slithered to the ground as the Mooselick Elementary librarian hurried from between two trees. She knelt to inspect Anastasia’s face and ears and pushed the sleeves of her coat up around her elbows, scrutinizing her hands and arms. “Lots of scratches. Not as bad as it could be, though.” She hugged her close. “Are you all right? Did those kidnappers hurt you?”
“They made me eat Mystery Lumps. I had to clean a bunch of gross stuff.” The words jumbled out. “They locked me up every night and I had to use a chamber pot.”
“Despicable!” Miss Apple seethed.
“And they hate mice,” Anastasia said. “They’re horrible mouse-haters.”
“Oh, I know they are,” Miss Apple said with a small grin. She hugged Anastasia again.
“Are you okay, Penny?” the Baron asked. “Nobody stepped on you? Squished you?”
“Squished you?” Anastasia said.
Miss Apple let out a nervous little laugh. “I’m fine.”
“Are you sleepy?” the Baron teased.
Miss Apple let go of Anastasia. Her little librarian’s face was bright pink. “Not anymore,” she said. “I’m sorry about that, but you know how it is.”
The Baron chortled. “Quite all right, sister.”
“Sister?” Anastasia blurted. “You two are brother and sister?”
“Indeed we are,” the Baron said, nabbing Miss Apple in the crook of his elbow and ruffling her hair with his knuckles.
“Stop that!” Miss Apple groused, untangling herself from the Baron’s manly noogie. She frowned at him. “Did those kidnappers silver you?”
“I got nicked on my ear,” he replied. “And I’ve got buckshot lodged in other, more private places.”
Miss Apple groaned. “The gluteus maximus again?”
The Baron crimsoned. “Again.”
“Miss Apple,” Anastasia said, “what in the world is going on?”
Miss Apple nodded. “An excellent question. And I will do my best to answer it to the fullest, but right now the clock is ticking. We must get out of here. Those bounty hunters can’t be too far behind.”
“Bounty hunters?”
“Kidnappers. Bounty hunters. They’ve probably called for backup by now,” the Baron said. “Those two are in for a world of guano from their bosses. They’re going to be desperate to track us down. They’ll assemble an angry mob armed with pitchforks and torches and crossbows and guns and knitting needles. They’ll burn down this whole forest if they have to, delicious syrup or not, and follow us to the ends of the scorched earth.”
Anastasia squeaked.
“By the way, Penny,” the Baron said, “did you bring any snickerdoodle cookies? You know those are my favorite escape cookies.”
“Snickerdoodle!” Ollie cried. “Oh, I love snickerdoodles!”
“Quiet, you pudding!” Quentin hushed him.
The Baron and Miss Apple froze.
“Who said that?” Miss Apple demanded. She peered at the carpet of frosted leaves and pinecones. “Why—! There are two Shadowboys here!”
The Baron followed her gaze. “By the marble buttocks of David, so there are!”
Anastasia was flummoxed. Miss Apple and the Baron knew about Shadowboys?
“What are you doing in these woods, children?” Miss Apple asked. “Don’t you know about the nasty child-snatchers living nearby?”
“Of course we know,” Quentin replied. “We just escaped from them, along with Anastasia.”
“They kidnapped us ages ago,” Ollie added.
“My goodness!” Miss Apple said. “Well, you can’t stay here. You’ll have to come with us.”
“Thank you,” Quentin said, “but we live just a ten-minute Shadowflight away, in Melancholy Falls, and I’m sure our parents are worried about us.” He rustled against a tree. “Goodbye, Anastasia. We’ll meet again.”
“Will we?” Anastasia faltered. “What about your address? And telephone number?”
“I think we’ll probably leave Melancholy Falls pretty soon,” Ollie said. “The kidnappers knew about us living there, remember.”
“Where are you going?” Quentin asked Miss Apple.
“Nowhere special,” the librarian replied.
Quentin nodded. “Then we’ll see you there.”
“Oh, but I am sad to say goodbye for now, Anastasia!” Ollie squeezed her in a cold hug. “I’d change back to boyform, but I’m wearing my birthday suit,” he apologized.
“Goodbye,” Quentin said, also giving her a shivery embrace. “We’ll see you before long, I promise.”
