War of the World Records

by Matthew Ward

  Arthur scurried back toward his original course, more exasperated than ever. As he passed the first tree a second time, he now noticed a small, light-colored object ensnared in its roots. He plucked the article from the ground and discovered it to be a crumpled piece of paper.

  He smoothed out its creases to reveal a typewritten note on a sheet of stationery. Below the familiar-looking seal of a flaming five-pointed crown, Arthur could just make out the following text in the moonlight:

  Dear Messrs. Overkill & Undercut,

  My patience is wearing thin. Though you have succeeded in creating a moderate amount of chaos, you have yet to eliminate a single one of your targets. This time, I’ll make it very simple for you:

  [ X ] 14:30—Get out of bed.

  [ x ] 21:00—Retrieve the key.

  [ ] 23:00—Feed the lizard.

  I would hate to have to inform the CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD if your failure continues.

  Signed,

  The Treasurer

  Arthur’s hands trembled as he folded the note and slipped it into his pocket. He repeated his search of the area, but found himself all alone once again.

  Feud for Thought

  Apart from the sinking sense of dread he now carried in his bones, Arthur had escaped the Goldwins’ dinner party with only a few small bandages over some minor scrapes and scratches. Hamlet, however, would not be so lucky.

  The scariest thing about Komodo dragons, it turns out, is not their quick speed or enormous size, nor their powerful jaws or serrated teeth, but rather a fifth weapon in their arsenal—a weapon virtually invisible, yet far deadlier than any of the others, and located in the unlikeliest of places: Komodo dragon drool.

  Inside the mouth of every Komodo dragon lives a microscopic legion of lethal bacteria just waiting to be deployed. Consequently, the creature needs only to land a superficial bite anywhere on an animal’s body and simply wait for the bacteria to do its work. Soon the wound festers, and the unwary animal is dead within a week. The Komodo dragon consults its appointment book to see which animal it nibbled on the week before, and thus what will be on the evening’s menu, then uses its super keen sense of smell to track down the corpse. And voila! Buffalo buffet.

  Of course, since the Goldwins’ Komodo dragon was no longer around to claim its final bite-victim, Hamlet was in little danger of becoming Komodo dragon fodder anytime soon. If only there were some way to tell this to the bacteria.

  Try as he might, Mr. Mahankali could not stop the infection in the dog’s front leg. In order to limit the spread of gangrene, he was left with one terrible option.

  “Is there no other way, Mahankali?” entreated Arthur’s father.

  “I am afraid not,” Mr. Mahankali replied, his grave expression showing through the thick hair that covered his face. “The leg must be removed. Even then, there are no guarantees he will recover, but it is our best chance at saving him.”

  Arthur felt sick to his stomach as he considered the unfitting reward Hamlet would receive for such heroic actions.

  “Please, Mr. Mahankali,” Abigail cried, “he saved our lives. Don’t hurt him anymore!”

  “Do not worry, little one; I will make sure he does not feel a thing.”

  “How can we help?” said Mrs. Whipple, doing her best to keep her composure.

  “Please, all of you, you must go and get some sleep. There is nothing more you can do for Hamlet tonight but pray.”

  • • •

  The next morning, Arthur awoke before the sun. He checked under his mattress to make sure the Treasurer’s note was still there, then returned it to its hiding spot. Before he could devote himself to detective work, however, he would have to clear his mind of another matter first. He threw on his robe and crept out into the corridor. There, he found Abigail already standing at the top of the stairs, holding a tiny hamster in an astronaut suit.

  “What are you doing up so early, Abigail?” he whispered.

  “Corporal Whiskerton and I are too worried about Hamlet to sleep,” she replied.

  “Yeah,” said Arthur, scratching the top of the hamster’s head with his finger, “me too. Let’s go see what we can find out.”

  Just then, the intermittent sounds of clicking latches and squeaking hinges filled the hallway. One by one, each of the other Whipple children emerged from the row of bedrooms and quietly crept toward the stairs.

  “Come on then,” whispered Henry when everyone was accounted for. “Let’s go.”

  The children found their father outside on the terrace, heading back toward the house.

  “Dad,” Abigail blurted, “have you spoken to Mr. Ma-hankali yet? How did the surgery go? Did Hamlet make it? When can we see him? Is he going to recover?”

  Mr. Whipple smiled a warm but heavy-hearted smile. “The surgery went well. Mr. Mahankali has made up a recovery room within his quarters, so he can watch over Hamlet—though I’m afraid it’s too soon to say whether or not he’ll actually recover. You can see him now, if you like, but he is heavily sedated—and likely will be for some time. Come, children, I’ll walk with you.”

  The sun’s first rays shone through the trees as the Whipples made their way past the private zoo at the corner of the estate and crowded onto the doorstep of the small house beside it.

  The door soon opened to reveal the hair-covered face of the Whipples’ menagerie manager. In the light of day, Arthur couldn’t help but notice the scarred section of dark skin below Mr. Mahankali’s right ear where hair no longer grew. Until his fiery brush with death during the Birthday Cake Catastrophe he had indeed been the Hairiest Man Alive.

  “Ah, children,” the Panther-Man smiled, “come in, come in. We must honor our courageous friend, yes?”

  Mr. Mahankali led the group through his elegantly decorated home, past exquisite textiles and artwork, ancient artifacts and yellowing Sanskrit parchments, each display carefully illuminated with museum-style lighting.

  They passed through a door at the far side of the front room to find their giant Great Dane lying on a bed surrounded by glowing candles. Apart from the gentle rising and falling of his belly, the dog was motionless. Where once his front right leg had been, there was now only a short stub, wrapped in white gauze.

  Abigail burst into tears and rushed to Hamlet’s side. “Oh, Hammie,” she cried, “what have they done to you?” She placed her tiny hand on the dog’s massive chest and buried her face in the bed, where she continued to quietly sob.

  Arthur and the other children looked on in silence, many of them fighting back tears, some of them unsuccessfully. Heartwarming as it was to see Hamlet alive on the other side of surgery, it was equally heartbreaking to find him in this new truncated state, lacking any of his usual exuberance.

  Corporal Whiskerton stood on the bed beside Abigail and Hamlet, holding his little space helmet in his tiny clawed hands. Ever since Hamlet had rescued him from a neighbor dog after a test launch gone horribly wrong, the rocket-piloting hamster had become especially fond of his Great Dane comrade. The sight of the forlorn little corporal was almost as sad as the sight of the dog himself.

  “So what’s the prognosis, Mr. Mahankali?” said Henry, doing his best to sound practical. “What are Hamlet’s chances at recovery?”

  “Who can say?” the Panther-Man replied. “He was very, very weak, and yet, he made it through the surgery. This shows to me that his will is strong. Still, we must not forget that life is a fragile, mysterious thing, which does not worry itself with our silly predictions. We must wait and see.”

  • • •

  When everyone had said their temporary goodbyes, Mr. Whipple led his children—all except for Abigail, who insisted on staying with Hamlet—away from Mr. Mahan-kali’s cottage and back to the main house.

  There, they were met by the scent of slightly burnt sausage and toast.

  “What is that deli
ghtful smell?” said Beatrice.

  “That,” Mr. Whipple replied, “is your mother in the kitchen.”

  “But what about Chef Mulchmann?”

  “Gave him the sack first thing this morning. Until we find someone better suited to taking Sammy’s old position— impossible a task as that may be—your mother will be cooking the meals around here. I trust you will all find this agreeable.”

  There were no complaints. Amid the darkness of the previous night and subsequent morning, here was a tiny bright spot. The Whipple children took their breakfast in the parlor, where they enjoyed their first smiles of the day. Though the toast was a bit blackened and the eggs slightly runny, it certainly beat another one of Chef Mulchmann’s casseroles.

  Arthur realized, of course, what a major concession this had been for his father. His mother possessed many extraordinary talents, but cooking was not exactly one of them. Any cuisine-related records for that morning’s meal had been effectively forfeited.

  With this in mind, Arthur took another bite of burnt toast. It was a strange feeling to eat his food simply because he was hungry, without trying to break any world records in the process. Indeed, it felt rather refreshing.

  In the chair beside him, his father sipped from a teacup while studying the newspaper. Arthur was glad to see him relax a bit after the week their family had had. His father then flipped to the headline on the second page.

  WHIPPLE DOG KILLS

  WORLD’S LARGEST LIZARD!

  DEVASTATED OWNERS REX AND RITA GOLDWIN MOURN LOSS, SUSPECT RETALIATION FOR RECENT UNSAFE SPORTS VICTORIES

  Before Arthur could read any more, the paper was abruptly spattered with tea as his father burst into a fit of coughing.

  “That does it!” Mr. Whipple spluttered, flinging the newspaper into the fireplace. “We must put an end to this mockery! Finish your breakfast, children. From now until the World Record World Championships, we shall do nothing else but prepare ourselves for the competition, that we may silence these Goldwins once and for all!”

  • • •

  And so, after a brief reprieve, it was back to business at the Whipple house. And then some.

  When they had finished their breakfast, the Whipple children scattered across the grounds and set to work on their daily record attempts, which were now instilled with even greater purpose. Arthur, equally caught up in the fervor, rushed off to the terrace to meet Uncle Mervyn for his scheduled attempt at Most Wine Glasses Balanced on Chin.

  After nineteen tries and a dozen bins of broken glass, however, Arthur was forced to sit himself on the steps for a breather.

  Uncle Mervyn swept up the glittering remains of the latest attempt and smiled down at the melancholy boy. “That was a good one, lad. You had it—right up until the point when you didn’t quite have it anymore. Very close, indeed.” He laid down the broom and took a seat next to Arthur. “If you keep trying, you’re bound to get it one of these days. . . . But perhaps, in the meantime, we should try to find a more suitable event for this year’s championships.”

  “You think so?”

  “My boy—not that it will make you any finer a lad—but if you want it, I believe you have the potential to be one of the great record breakers of our time. You’ve got the will, you’ve got the means—and you’ve certainly got the heart. The way I see it, the only thing standing between you and the Grazelby Guide is the right event—and we just need to find it.”

  “Wow, thanks Uncle Mervyn. Believe me, I do want to be a record breaker—more than anything. But if I’ve been searching my whole life with no luck so far, do you really think we’ll be able to find such an event in just a few weeks?”

  “Well, of course I can’t say for sure—but it’s certainly no less probable just because you’ve been looking for a long time. That’s the nature of searching: one minute you haven’t found something and the next minute you have. When Ikey Newton discovered gravity, he had gone his whole life up to that moment without discovering gravity—and it had been right beneath his boots the entire time.”

  “I’m pretty sure the only thing beneath my boots right now is broken glass, but I think I know what you mean. Just because I’ve gone all my life without breaking a record, doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen tomorrow, right?”

  “That’s the spirit, lad. Now, have you still got your magical domino?”

  Arthur reached into his pocket and removed the small black tile he’d received from his uncle on his last birthday. “Always keep it with me,” he said.

  “And it’s brought you luck so far, has it?”

  “Er,” said Arthur, thinking back to the uncommon run of catastrophes he’d endured since it had come into his possession, “I guess so.”

  “Well,” Uncle Mervyn coughed, “never mind about that. The important thing to remember is that, like that domino in the Most Dominoes Toppled record, we all have our part to play—right?”

  “Right,” said Arthur, trying to believe what he was saying.

  “Good. Now take the rest of the day and make a list of all the events that sound even remotely appealing to you. Tomorrow, we’ll start at the top of the list and quickly work our way downward. If an event gives you too much trouble, we’ll simply skip it and move on to the next—until we find the record you were meant to break.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Mervyn,” Arthur said, smiling, as he jumped to his feet. “I’ll get started right away.”

  “Very good, lad. Today begins a new chapter in the life of Arthur Whipple—a chapter entitled ‘Success.’”

  Arthur marched back into the house with his head held high, his hopes lifted by Uncle Mervyn’s encouraging words and their new plan to get his name in the record books. With that settled, he could get back to thinking about even more important matters. He ran up to his room and grabbed his leather-bound copy of the most recent Grazelby Guide along with a notepad and pen. Then, after a quick glance at the clock, he retrieved the Treasurer’s note from under his mattress, hurried back down the stairs, and headed for the front door. He did not want to be late for his midday appointment with Ruby.

  On his way out, Arthur peeked into a room on the right, where his mother sat squeezed into a corner by the enormous pair of woolen mittens she was in the process of knitting.

  “Mother?” he called. “I’m heading out to do some, um . . . research.”

  “All right, dear,” came Mrs. Whipple’s muffled reply. “Don’t be too long, though. Penelope might need your help a bit later with her team of dancing centipedes. You know how they give her trouble sometimes, and we really can’t risk any of your brothers’ or sisters’ fingertips at present, as we’ll need all of them intact if we’re to beat the Goldwins at the World Record World Championships.”

  “Of course, Mother,” Arthur replied. “I’ll be back soon to help out however I can.”

  With that, he strode purposefully out the front door. He had an investigation to resume.

  • • •

  Arthur arrived at the Undertakers’ Graveyard at noon, just as he and Ruby had agreed the night before. Not immediately seeing his partner, he slipped through the creaky iron gate, then cautiously made his way to the winged statue of Obediah Digby Lowe, Father of Modern Undertaking, at the center of the cobblestone square.

  Arthur was pleased to find the statue far less terrifying in the light of day than it had been in the light of a lantern at midnight. Indeed, as he sat himself down in the statue’s shadow, he could hardly help but think of the gaunt figure holding the human skull above him as a wise old friend. After what had happened the last time he was there, the whole graveyard now seemed strangely peaceful—almost pretty somehow. Perhaps there was something to Mr. Lowe’s fondness for the place after all.

  And so, with a lightness of heart and a clear view of the graveyard gates, he resigned to sit and wait for Ruby.

  A creeping thought
began to nag at the back of Arthur’s mind. He reached into his pocket and produced the sinister scrap of paper he’d discovered the night before. With a bracing breath, he opened the note.

  Arthur’s eyes fell on the flaming crown insignia that opened the message. Illuminated in the midday sun, there could be no doubt.

  It was the same seal he’d seen on the skeleton’s ring in The World Record.

  Either a new treasurer had written this diabolical note, or else the old treasurer’s skeleton was not as dead as it had appeared. Arthur wasn’t entirely sure which would have been worse.

  Drawing a deep breath, he proceeded to the body of the note and began carefully rereading every terrifying word.

  Dear Messrs. Overkill & Undercut . . .

  There was, of course, no question to whom these names referred. This only confirmed what Arthur had seen the night before—that the dwarf and the giant had survived the wreck of the Current Champion and were still after his family. But plenty of other questions remained.

  For instance, who was this “Chairman of the Board” mentioned in the last sentence? Arthur had heard a fair bit about the Ardmore Board of Directors recently, but he’d never learned anything about any of its members other than the one whose predecessor had turned up dead. Could it be that the board’s leader had a hand in the Whipples’ recent spate of calamity as well?

  And what about the author of the note: the mysterious Treasurer? Until now, Arthur had imagined this rumored new treasurer as a faceless figure sitting at a desk counting coins and writing checks for stationery supplies. But in Arthur’s current estimation, the Treasurer was the most menacing of the four characters mentioned. Indeed, it seemed this last figure was the one actually devising the plots that Overkill and Undercut carried out.

  As Arthur reread the first paragraph a second time, his eyes stuck on the word “eliminate.” Though you have succeeded in creating a moderate amount of chaos, you have yet to eliminate a single one of your targets.