The Island of Dr. Libris

by Chris Grabenstein

  The leader was a beefy kid dressed in a sleeveless New York Jets football jersey and bright green mesh shorts. His greasy hair was spiked up into a cockatoo Mohawk.

  “That’s Nick Farkas,” whispered Alyssa.

  “What’s your name, Weedpole?” demanded Farkas.

  Billy shuffled forward. “Um, uh … Gillfoyle,” he said, trying to sound tough.

  It didn’t work.

  “Your name is Gillfoyle?” Nick Farkas laughed. “What are you, a butler or something?”

  “No. That’s my last name. My, uh, first name is Billy.”

  “Um, uh,” said Nick, mimicking Billy. “You sure about that, Gillfoyle?”

  His two buddies snorted.

  “What a stupid name!” said one.

  “Yeah,” said the other. “Stupid.”

  “I guess,” said Billy, his eyes darting around as he looked for an escape route. He noticed something in Nick Farkas’s bike basket: a stack of comic books.

  “Oh, wow—you guys read Space Lizard? I love the Space Lizard.”

  “Well, the Space Lizard can’t stand wimpy weedpoles like you,” said Farkas. “In fact, he’d acid-blast your face till you shriveled up and died!”

  “And then,” said the guy on the left, “he’d pluck out your eyeballs with a flick of his glue-stick tongue.”

  “Yeah,” said the other. “His tongue.”

  “Even though I was already dead?” asked Billy. “Isn’t that a waste of glue?”

  “Huh?” said Farkas.

  “If I’m dead, why pluck out my eyeballs? It’s not like I’m gonna feel it or, you know, go blind.”

  “He’d do it because the Space Lizard hates your bony butt almost as much as I do!”

  Oh-kay, thought Billy. So much for bonding over shared comic book interests.

  He figured he should just go back inside his mom’s cabin and hide until summer vacation was over.

  “See you later, guys,” he said, waving and backing away. “Cool meeting you.”

  “Thanks again for saving Dolly!” shouted Alyssa.

  The boys snorted some more. A broken iPhone and a pack of bullies who hated his guts? Billy wondered if it was possible for his first day at the lake to get any worse.

  “I’m gonna be keeping my eye on you, Weedpole,” said Farkas. “So don’t you dare step across the border.”

  “No problem,” said Billy. “Exactly which border are we talking about here?”

  “The one between your lame-o cabin and my place.”

  Farkas jerked his thumb at the glass-on-glass box up the road.

  So this was how Billy’s first day and entire summer could totally get worse: Nick Farkas was his other next-door neighbor.

  THE THETA PROJECT

  LAB NOTE #317

  Prepared by

  Dr. Xiang Libris, PsyD, DLit

  Subject Billy G. has moved into the test lab.

  I am experiencing minor technical difficulties with the video camera located in his sleeping quarters, but otherwise, all is proceeding according to plan.

  Through a bit of luck, Billy G. recently lost the use of his iPhone entertainment device. Deprived of all familiar electronic stimuli, he will soon be forced to rely solely on the cabin’s book collection for his amusement.

  If, as I anticipate, he passes my final aptitude test and locates the hidden key, first contact should take place in a matter of hours.

  Billy had a microwaved bacon cheeseburger and a pack of peanut butter crackers for dinner.

  Then he went into the living room and stared at the wall where there should’ve been a TV.

  Billy turned and stared at a different wall.

  This one had a framed black-and-white drawing of people with bulb heads walking up and down all these impossibly sideways sets of stairs or walls that faked you into thinking they were floors.

  “It’s an M. C. Escher print,” said his mother, coming down the steps to refill her coffee mug. “He was a Dutch artist famous for his mathematically inspired woodcuts and lithographs. Dr. Libris must be a fan. There’s another one just like it upstairs in my bedroom.”

  “People can’t do what the people are doing in that picture,” said Billy. “It’s impossible.”

  His mom smiled. “Maybe. Maybe not. Some people refuse to accept the limits given to them by others.”

  “Huh?”

  “Sorry. Guess I’ve been reading too many mathematical theorems supporting the concept of parallel universes. So, how are you holding up?”

  “I’m fine,” said Billy, following his mom into the kitchen. She was headed for the coffeepot.

  “Billy, I’m sorry about your phone. But trust me—it’s not the end of the world.”

  Easy for her to say, Billy thought. She doesn’t even text.

  “There’s lots of other ways to amuse yourself up here.”

  “Like what?”

  “Swimming. Hiking.”

  “It’ll be dark soon.”

  She poured coffee into her mug and waved toward the living room. “Well, I saw some board games in those bottom cabinets.”

  “Cool. You want to play something?”

  “Sorry. Not tonight.”

  Right, Billy thought. The dissertation.

  “How about a jigsaw puzzle?” she suggested.

  “Seriously? Are we at Grandma’s house all of a sudden?”

  She smiled at that. “Good point.” She cradled her mug and headed into the living room. Billy followed her.

  “Hey, have you checked out Dr. Libris’s study? He has hundreds of books in there.”

  “Comic books?”

  “Billy, what do you think kids did back before video games or TV or even electricity?”

  “I don’t know. Cried a lot?” He plopped down dramatically on the couch.

  “No, Billy. They read books. They made up stories and games. They took nothing and turned it into something. Like your father taking a taco and turning it into a mariachi singer with a cheesy mustache.”

  “You like that commercial?”

  “It’s funny.”

  “But you don’t like Dad.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Then why isn’t he here?”

  “I don’t know. It’s complicated.” She took a breath and ran a hand through her hair.

  “That’s okay,” said Billy, letting his mom off the hook. “I’ll find something to do. You sure it’s all right for me to check out Dr. Libris’s study?”

  “Definitely. Oh, if you want to read any of the books locked inside the bookcase, you’ll need to find the key. I couldn’t.”

  “Awesome.”

  Hey, a bookcase key hunt beat sitting on the couch staring at weird pictures on the walls.

  Barely. But it beat it.

  The door to Dr. Libris’s study was heavier than any other door in the cabin.

  Billy pushed it open and stepped into a pitch-dark room.

  He fumbled on the wall, searching for a switch.

  Found it.

  A floor lamp snapped on.

  Bookshelves climbed to the ceiling of the windowless room. Every inch of every shelf was crammed with books. The ceiling was covered with stamped-tin tiles.

  And, of course, there was a mini security cam mounted just above the door.

  Next to the floor lamp, Billy saw a leather reading chair with arms wide enough to park a cocoa mug.

  On the wall behind the chair, in a narrow space between bookcases, hung a Wizard of Oz cuckoo clock with its chained pinecone weights lying sideways on the floor. Its hands stood frozen at seven and twelve.

  Billy sat down in the chair and felt a small bump under his butt. He grinned.

  Finding the hidden key was a cinch!

  Reaching under the seat cushion, though, all he found was a switch connected to an electrical cord.

  Click. Click. Nothing.

  Billy was starting to think the switch was a dud when, on click three, a track of miniature spotlights
lit up the far corner of the room.

  “Whoa.”

  The darkness had been hiding the most incredible piece of furniture Billy had ever seen.

  A bookcase twelve feet tall and maybe eight feet wide. It had double glass doors and a wild tangle of swirling wood carvings running along its sides, top, and bottom. There were 3-D dragons, mermaids, sea serpents, towering giants, shriveled gnomes, prancing jesters, kings, queens, soldiers, sailors, Humpty Dumpty, witches, fairies, Pinocchio, and Tiny Tim with his crutch, all chiseled delicately into the wood.

  The books behind the glass doors looked pretty impressive, too. Their leather covers were a dozen different colors, their spines stamped with sparkly gold lettering.

  One book was propped open on the middle shelf: The Labors of Hercules.

  An illustration showed a muscleman wrestling a guy twice his size who looked like he might be made out of mud and rock.

  Billy tugged on the brass pulls to open the doors.

  The glass rattled.

  Duh. His mother had told him the big bookcase was locked.

  He glanced around the room, looking for a key rack. There wasn’t one.

  So he pushed a few of the wood carvings, hoping they might be secret buttons that would pop open the doors. He bopped a bunny on the snout. Poked a juggling bear in the belly. Tried to toggle Tiny Tim’s crutch sideways.

  Nothing moved. The doors were still locked.

  “Okay,” Billy said out loud, “if I were a zany old professor, where would I hide a key?”

  He rubbed his chin and stared at the bookcase.

  Then he stared some more.

  Finally, he saw something.…

  Just behind the brass keyhole, which looked like a yawning lion, Billy saw a small slip of paper the size of a fortune cookie fortune.

  It was under a strip of clear plastic tape that had turned brown around the edges. The fortune itself was so tiny Billy wished he had a magnifying glass.

  He looked around the room.

  Some of the shelves were decorated with trinkets—like a miniature Gandalf figurine in front of a copy of The Hobbit and a whaling ship in a bottle near Moby-Dick.

  But no magnifying glass.

  What about Sherlock Holmes? thought Billy. He always has that magnifying glass.

  There was a library ladder attached to the longest wall of books. Billy rolled it over a few feet, climbed up two rungs, and, working his way through the alphabet of authors, found The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Score! Right in front of the book was a toy magnifying glass—the kind you might get with a Happy Meal. Billy wiped the layer of dust off the lens, climbed down the ladder, and went back to the bookcase.

  Holding the miniature magnifier right up against the glass doors in front of the slip of paper, he squinted to read letters so small they might’ve been typed by a mouse:

  I am an odd number.

  Take away one and I become even.

  What number am I?

  Okay. This was pretty cool. A riddle. Billy loved solving puzzles.

  He did some quick math. “Three, five, seven, and nine are odd numbers. Take away one, and you get two, four, six, and eight.”

  This riddle wasn’t very good.

  Any odd number you subtracted one from automatically turned into an even number. You didn’t need to be an assistant math professor like his mom to know you could do that kind of subtraction to infinity and never end up with a decent answer.

  He reread the riddle. In school, whenever he was stumped on a quiz, he found it helped to reread the question, see what it was really asking.

  I am an odd number.

  Take away one and I become even.

  What number am I?

  Billy smiled.

  The riddle didn’t say “subtract one.” It said “take away one.” One what? It wasn’t specific.

  He snapped his fingers. “The answer is seven,” he said aloud. “Because if you take away one letter—the ‘s’—you end up with the word ‘even.’ ”

  Of course, knowing the answer to the riddle didn’t put the bookcase key in Billy’s hand.

  So he climbed the library ladder again, gave himself a sideways shove, and started looking for a book with “seven” in the title.

  When he reached the far end of the shelves, he stepped up a rung and gave himself a shove back the other way.

  Halfway across the room, he found what he was looking for.

  The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.

  Billy pulled out the book and flipped it open.

  No key tumbled out.

  He ruffled the pages.

  They weren’t bookmarked with a skinny skeleton key.

  He put the book back, climbed down the ladder, and stared at the locked bookcase.

  Seven had to be the answer to the riddle. But was it the secret to finding the key?

  Billy noticed something: The brass keyhole wasn’t just a yawning lion. It was the Cowardly Lion.

  Duh!

  The Wizard of Oz cuckoo clock.

  The hands were frozen at seven and twelve. Seven o’clock.

  Billy stood on the chair and examined the cuckoo clock more closely.

  Were the clock hands actually keys?

  Was he supposed to snap one off?

  Then he had another idea.

  He pried open the little door above the twelve. Something popped out.

  It wasn’t a cuckoo bird or even a barking Toto.

  It was an antique skeleton key with the Wonderful Wizard of Oz’s moon-shaped face inscribed on its head.

  And it fit the bookcase’s keyhole—perfectly.

  THE THETA PROJECT

  LAB NOTE #318

  Prepared by

  Dr. Xiang Libris, PsyD, DLit

  My instincts proved correct.

  Billy G. passed the final aptitude test. Following scant clues and using his imagination, he found the key much more quickly than I had anticipated.

  Now, more than ever, I am confident that this boy will be the “key” to our extraordinary future.

  Since the Hercules book was the only one in the case propped open and displayed on a book stand, Billy grabbed it first.

  Inside the red, dark-as-ketchup cover, Billy found a bookplate:

  “Ex Libris X. Libris” made him smile.

  His dad, who liked to play with words and had two unfinished novels and a screenplay tucked away in his desk, once told Billy that “ex libris” is Latin for “from the books of.”

  Dr. Libris, whose first name was Xiang, was also X. Libris.

  Maybe that was why the professor collected books—just so he could have a funny-looking bookplate.

  Billy sat down in the chair and skimmed a few pages of The Labors of Hercules.

  He read about how Hercules was the strongest man in the world because he was the son of the immortal Greek god Zeus. And how his uncle, Poseidon, the god of the sea, gave Hercules’s ship a poke with his trident spear to send the muscleman off on his latest adventure.

  “Where’s the rock dude?” Billy flipped forward past a chunk of pages.

  Found him.

  Hercules was in a garden where he’d just plucked three magic apples. On his way out, the big rock dude, whose name was Antaeus, challenged him to a wrestling match.

  “You would challenge me?” said Hercules. “Do you not know who I am?”

  “I care not, you feeble fool!” roared Antaeus. “I am the mightiest wrestler who has ever lived. None can defeat me!”

  In a blind rage, Hercules grabbed Antaeus firmly around the waist, raised him high above his head, and hurled the brute to the ground.

  But Antaeus bounced back up, his strength fully restored.

  Hercules was astonished. “I do not believe my eyes. Not only are you not injured, your muscles have doubled in size.”

  “So have my skin and bones!” Antaeus flexed his rocky physique. When he stood, he was even taller than he had been when Hercules threw him to
the ground.

  Awesome superpower, thought Billy. He was totally getting into the story. In his mind, he could see the rocky guy growing every time Hercules knocked him down.

  He could hear Antaeus roar, “You feeble fool!”

  Antaeus’s voice was so loud in Billy’s head it made the glass in the bookcase rattle.

  Wait a second.

  That was impossible.

  Billy looked around the room.

  Nothing happened.

  And then, from somewhere outside, far off in the distance, Billy heard Antaeus again.

  “Beware, Hercules! For I shall surely crush you!”

  Billy slammed the book shut.

  He took a deep breath. Tried to relax.

  Okay, he thought when all he could hear was his own breathing, it was all in your head.

  He carefully creaked the book open.

  “Submit to me, Hercules!”

  The glass rattled again.

  Billy jumped out of the reading chair. The book fell to the floor. He ran into the living room.

  “Mom? Mom!”

  His mother came to the landing at the top of the stairs.

  “Billy? What’s wrong?”

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “A big guy. Yelling.”

  “I didn’t hear anything. Was it one of the neighbors?”

  Okay, thought Billy. This is crazy.

  And if he told his mother that he had heard a chunky wrestler named Antaeus shouting at Hercules outside the garden of Hesperides, she’d think he was crazy, too!

  “Uh, yeah. A neighbor. I think it might’ve been the kid who lives in the house next door. I met him earlier.”

  Suddenly, Antaeus started shouting again.

  “Surrender, Hercules, you weakling! You are defeated!”

  His mother didn’t budge. She didn’t hear a thing.

  Billy, of course, did. That was why his eyeballs were practically popping out of his skull.

  “Billy? Are you feeling okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Maybe I’ll go outside. Grab some fresh air.”