The Tell-Tale Start

by Gordon McAlpine

  “Maize,” Aunt Judith remarked, turning and grinning at them. “We’re in a maze of maize. You know, M-A-I-Z-E? The Native American word for corn. It’s a pun. Do you get it, boys?”

  Of course they got it. But that didn’t mean they thought it was funny. Still, Aunt Judith had given it her best shot. So they forced crooked smiles.

  She beamed.

  Soon the stalks thinned, and the road led out of the maize to a dusty lot where a few cars were parked beside two buses.

  Uncle Jack pulled in. “All right, boys. Let’s find this professor, get your cat, and start back home again.”

  Edgar and Allan nodded, though they doubted it was going to be quite that simple.

  At the emerald-green ticket booth, Uncle Jack grinned widely when a clerk in a funny hat told him the professor had left them free passes. However, the smile faded when the clerk added that the professor was currently “indisposed” and that they should all just “enjoy the park for a couple hours until his schedule cleared.”

  “After all the miles we’ve traveled he’s too busy to see us?” Uncle Jack said incredulously.

  The clerk shrugged, helpless. “Don’t worry, sir. He’ll track you down in no time. You’re his special guests.”

  The twins didn’t like the sound of “track down.”

  “It’ll be OK, Jack,” Aunt Judith reassured, patting his arm. “Let’s go in.”

  He turned to her, still put out. “Who does he think we are? His Munchkins?”

  “I’m sure it’ll be fun,” she said, leading him toward the entrance.

  The boys weren’t sure what it was going to be.

  Inside the front gate, a cracked cement sidewalk had been painted to look like the Yellow Brick Road. Hedged on either side by tall cornstalks, the path branched in two directions. A signpost pointed one way toward the Authentic Gale Farmhouse, and in the other direction toward the OZitorium.

  There were very few other tourists around.

  And oddly—particularly for a sunny Saturday—there were no children.

  Instead, they were either old folks wearing wide-brimmed sun hats or middle-aged couples dressed in embarrassing colors (or worse, in husband-wife matching outfits). An amusement park with no kids? The boys wondered if this was a sign of danger or just characteristic of any crummy roadside attraction.

  “This is a strange place for a professor to call home,” Aunt Judith observed.

  “Not if he’s a strange professor,” said Edgar, his tone a bit suspicious.

  “Or a professor of the strange,” Allan added.

  Uncle Jack gave the boys a funny look.

  “Maybe he’s in the farmhouse,” their aunt suggested reasonably.

  Uncle Jack nodded and started in that direction.

  The other three Poes followed.

  They rounded a corner and arrived at the crest of the hill.

  From there, they could see the farm, which looked like any abandoned, broken-down, century-old place, only worse. The barn consisted of a small forest’s worth of rotting wood piled haphazardly within the boundaries of a barely recognizable barn-shaped frame; the pigpens were empty; the water tower leaked; and the farmhouse was nothing more than a collapsed pile of splintered wood, roof shingles, and twisted metal bed frames and stovepipes. In short, the house looked exactly like what it claimed to be: a small wooden structure that had been lifted off its foundations and into the air by a tornado and then dropped from a great height. Crash! It was hardly a house at all anymore.

  A sign beside the wreckage read:

  AUTHENTIC FORMER HOME

  OF DOROTHY GALE

  “That’s all there is to it?” Aunt Judith said.

  Uncle Jack shook his head, disgruntled. “The professor must be at the OZitorium, whatever that is.”

  The boys kept their eyes open for anything unusual or threatening as they retraced their steps and then took the other path, passing a souvenir stand that sold T-shirts, DVDs of The Wizard of Oz, paperback editions of the Oz books, snow globes, Toto dog leashes, and “authentic” Dorothy Gale sunglasses and cell-phone cases. They continued around a bend until they came to the OZitorium, which was just an ordinary-looking auditorium. A murmur of voices from inside resolved itself into music and singing as the Poe family drew nearer.

  “We’re off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz…”

  Aunt Judith smiled. “Oh, I do love a live show.”

  A sign above the entrance to the OZitorium read:

  At the entrance, the Poes were stopped by an attendant dressed like an old-time movie usher. He was as round as he was tall and wore a walkie-talkie holstered on his hip.

  “Sorry,” he told them. “No one’s allowed inside after the show begins. Come back at three thirty. Until then, you can tour the authentic Gale Farm.”

  “We already did,” Aunt Judith said.

  “It took about two seconds,” Uncle Jack added dryly.

  “Well, I don’t make the policy,” the attendant said, looking past them as if on guard against nonexistent battalions of gate crashers. “Now, why don’t you all just move along?”

  “Look, we’re not actually here for the show,” Uncle Jack said. “We’re here to see the professor.”

  “Yes, he found the boys’ lost cat,” Aunt Judith added.

  The security guard’s eyes widened. He moved away from them, turned his back, and whispered into the walkie-talkie. The boys couldn’t really hear what he said, but they caught this much: “Poe twins.”

  They didn’t wait around for more.

  By the time the security guard turned back to the Poe family, saying, “It seems we’ve made special arrangements for you folks,” the boys had disappeared. He looked around, worried. “Hey, where’d they go?”

  Uncle Jack and Aunt Judith had no idea.

  WHAT THE POE TWINS DID NOT KNOW…

  From: Archer@The-poes.net

  Sent: Sat, Nov 19, 11:10 am

  To: perry@The-poes.net

  Subject: Monkey Business

  Professor Perry,

  All is ready. As planned, the park is populated today only by our invited guests, the local Etiquette Society. This will ensure that the Poe brats stumble upon no natural allies. In further accordance with your brilliant plans, security will move in on the twins and their guardians at the conclusion of the play.

  If it’s all right with you, sir, I would like to rejoin the cast today, in my old role, as a way of commemorating this day and your historic triumph.

  Admiringly,

  Ian Archer

  MONKEYS

  ALLAN and Edgar knew what they had to do: find and recover Roderick Usher, then rejoin their aunt and uncle and get out of there, all the while avoiding whatever nefarious plot the professor had in mind for them. And they had to do it quickly, as they suspected their nemesis already knew they were here.

  So they raced away from the entrance to the OZitorium and toward the back of the building to make a plan in private.

  As they rounded the corner it was not solitude they discovered but a long trailer that served as a dressing room for the musical’s cast members. The place buzzed with activity as a dozen little men and women scurried about, some costumed as Munchkins, others as flying monkeys. The boys looked at each other—in other circumstances, this might be fun. Today was serious business.

  Just then, a quartet of private security guards, all more formidable-looking than the usher at the front entrance, emerged from around the far corner, their handcuffs clattering on their belts, their walkie-talkies held at the ready.

  There was no place for the boys to hide, and running away would only draw attention—so, lightning-fast, they infiltrated a nearby group of female Munchkins who were doing ballet exercises to loosen up before going onstage. Their backs to the guards, the boys imitated the ladies. They were glad none of their classmates was there to see them do the daintiest of the stretches, but the ruse worked. The security guards continued past.

 
Clearly, there was no time to waste.

  The first thing the boys needed was a disguise.

  They entered the trailer’s dressing room. “Where are the costumes, miss?” Edgar politely asked a Munchkin princess.

  “Munchkin costume or flying monkey costume?” she inquired in a high-pitched voice.

  “Flying monkeys, of course,” the boys answered.

  “Over there,” she said, pointing to a rack against one wall.

  A few minutes later, in furry costumes and headpieces, Edgar and Allan were identical to those around them, just as they ordinarily were to each other.

  Edgar

  Allan

  Others

  “Attention! Flying monkeys, we’re onstage in five minutes,” called their leader, who was differentiated from the other monkeys by a blue ribbon on his uniform. “Let’s go.”

  His voice sounded familiar, though the twins couldn’t quite place it. The other flying monkeys shuffled into the center of the room. Edgar and Allan took the opportunity to slowly drift toward the back.

  “This is a very special day for the professor, so let’s put on a great show,” Flying Monkey Number One said to his underlings as they lined up in single file. “Egad, you’re a motley bunch!” he added.

  Egad?

  The boys’ stomachs lurched. Nobody used that word anymore. That is, no one but the mysterious little man from the principal’s office—the hair plucker, Mr. Archer. That’s why his voice sounded familiar! So this did stretch all the way back to Baltimore.

  Or might it go back even further than that?

  Unnoticed, Edgar and Allan continued backing away from the group and then slipped behind a costume rack. From there, they watched the simian squadron follow Number One/Mr. Archer out of the dressing room.

  As a precaution, the boys waited two minutes.

  Stillness, silence…

  Emerging from behind the rack, they adjusted the monkey headpieces, lining up the eye holes to see out, and crossed the room to the door. Yes, the costumes were good. But was their posture monkeylike enough to blend in with the others?

  No.

  So Edgar hunched his shoulders and bent forward at the waist, allowing his arms to dangle. Allan imitated him, then bent his knees and turned his feet outward to add a convincing spring to his step. Edgar did the same.

  Yes, better.

  Allan opened the door. Outside, this was what they spied:

  A few aged park visitors mingled harmlessly beside a cotton candy cart being operated by a bored teenage girl in an ill-fitting Glinda the Good costume. Near the entrance to the restrooms stood a pair of reed-thin ladies and their pot-bellied husbands, all talking distractedly on smartphones. Finally, beside an overfull trash can near the back entrance to the OZitorium, a trio of crows pecked at spilled popcorn.

  There was no one else around—no flying monkeys, no Munchkins, and, most important, no security guards.

  Relieved, Edgar turned to Allan, looking him up and down. “You know,” he said, “just because you look like a monkey, you don’t have to smell like one too.”

  Allan smirked, though of course the headpiece hid his expression. “Very funny,” he muttered sarcastically (he’d thought of the identical joke just a moment before). “I guess it takes one to smell one.”

  Now Edgar smirked too.

  (Actually, the boys couldn’t smell anything except the musty odor of fake fur and a subtle hint of the Tabasco sauce they’d accidentally dripped on their shirts that morning at breakfast.)

  “What we need,” Edgar observed, “is not the smell of monkeys but to have a monkey’s sense of smell.”

  “Yeah, that way we could sniff our way to wherever the professor is holding Roderick Usher.”

  “I guess we’ll have to use our brains instead,” Allan said.

  The boys put their minds to work.

  Within seconds, the air inside their monkey headpieces heated up by at least three or four degrees.

  After a moment, they had it figured out.

  “Where’s the best place to hide valuables?” Edgar asked, knowing the answer.

  “In a pile of junk,” said Allan.

  “And what’s the biggest pile of junk on the premises?”

  There was little doubt. “The Dorothy Gale farmhouse and barn.”

  “Exactly!”

  “I’ll look for a secret entrance in the house,” Allan volunteered.

  “I’ll take the barn.”

  And the boys were off, shuffling and skipping with arms dangling, retracing their steps along the painted yellow path like a pair of slightly drunk primates.

  By this point, most of the tourists (including Uncle Jack and Aunt Judith) were seated in the OZitorium watching the live musical production of the Wizard of Oz. So when Edgar and Allan arrived back at the “authentic” Gale family farm buildings, they encountered only a few disinterested stragglers who assumed the costumed boys were park employees.

  The furry pair jumped over the picket fence that separated the exhibit from the pathway.

  Allan started exploring the ruins of the farmhouse.

  Edgar began combing through the massive woodpile that had once been the barn.

  What a bunch of junk! the two thought as they sorted through splintery boards and rusted sheet metal. The minutes ticked by….

  Allan was the first to find something of interest.

  In the rubble of the farmhouse, he spotted an old-fashioned toilet and overhead water tank, the sort used a hundred years ago. This stopped him. Wouldn’t such a modest old farmhouse have relied on an outhouse instead of indoor plumbing? Adding to his suspicions was the fact that there were no twisted, rusted pipes anywhere near the toilet. Intrigued, he examined the antique tank, which was at about eye level.

  He pulled the chain to flush it.

  As there were no pipes, there was no actual flush, no flow of water. Instead, there was an unexpected metallic grinding nearby…and what had appeared to be an eight-foot-square section of collapsed roof proved to be a secret door that slid open to reveal a hidden room.

  Always remember to flush, Allan thought.

  From atop the nearby junk pile that had been the barn, Edgar watched his brother slip into the newly revealed room. “Clever monkey,” he murmured.

  Then he returned his attention to his own heap of planks and rusted hardware, looking for anything unusual that might serve as a key to a hidden room there, too. But he spied only a jumble of weathered, rotted hickory and pine. Nothing as obvious as an unplumbed toilet.

  Then he noticed a single weathered plank of oak, indistinguishable from the hickory and pine to all but the most experienced carpenters or arborists. Edgar was no carpenter, but fortunately he had a passing interest in arboriculture.

  He went to the incongruous plank and pressed his furry foot on it.

  A loud crack!

  And then…you guessed it.

  A nearby section of rubble slid aside to reveal a secret room there as well.

  These were no ordinary piles of junk.

  And we’re no ordinary monkeys, Edgar thought before disappearing into the dark space.

  WHAT THE POE TWINS DID NOT KNOW…

  A LETTER DELIVERED TO THE AUTHENTIC GALE FARM

  AND OZITORIUM TWO DAYS BEFORE:

  IGER COFFIN MAKERS

  Serving discreet customers since 1845

  Dear Professor,

  Tonight, we will be making the midnight delivery of one child-size coffin, as scheduled. Your business is important to us and we take pride in offering our clients the best prices.

  Sincerely,

  Markus Iger, Esq.

  P.S. We are sorry to report that we no longer offer discounts for child-size coffins.

  STAGE FRIGHT

  ALLAN looked through the doorway and into the small secret chamber he’d uncovered by flushing the old toilet in the rubble of the Gale house. The walls were painted a crisp white, and the floor was tiled in a checkerboard pattern of bla
ck and red. At the center of the room, on a small metal table, was an old-fashioned desktop computer, its heavy, glowing monitor as deep as it was wide. Otherwise the place was empty—no chair, no lighting fixtures, no pictures on the walls, nothing.

  As secret lairs go, this one was more like a basement than a Bat Cave.

  Allan stepped inside, glancing back at the door, hoping it wouldn’t slam shut behind him (as he knew secret doors had a tendency to do). He moved toward the computer, confident that his hacking skills would be useful. But the computer was so old, slow, and weak that even Allan was unable to make it do what he wanted. Dating from the early nineties, it offered little more networking options than a portable TV set. Allan groaned at the cruel irony of being defeated not by high tech but by low tech. Was this professor some sort of outmoded fool? Or was he an unexpectedly clever adversary?

  So Edgar did the only thing he could do: he watched the screen.

  It showed a live black-and-white image of the front entrance to the Gale Farm and OZitorium. Not much happening there. If all this was just an ordinary security camera setup, then why hide it in a secret room?

  After a few seconds, the image shifted to a view from another camera—this time a shot of the parking lot. Cars, buses, nothing of note…. Next, the OZitorium, outside of which a pair of burly security guards paced. Allan was about to turn away when the next image caught his attention.

  It was the exterior of the Poe family house back in Baltimore.

  “Our house?”

  Next, the screen switched to a live, hidden-camera shot of the Poe family’s backyard.

  “What?” This was creepy.

  And last, a feed from behind the heating grate of the twins’ own bedroom!

  Who’s been spying on us? Allan wondered.

  Of course, he knew the answer. What he didn’t know was why. Or how. Had that repairman who’d rewired their house last year been working secretly for the professor? Or the plumber who’d put in the new upstairs bathroom over the summer? Or the carpet layers who’d replaced the old shag in the basement after the boys’ Halloween prank ruined it? Or someone else from the crew who’d built Aunt Judith’s classroom? Had one of them secretly installed cameras?