by Pete Hautman
What would Billy do? I wondered. He would probably pick the door lock. I didn’t have his lock-picking skills, but maybe the Tisks, being fanatical door lockers, had hidden a spare key someplace. I went back to the front and looked under the welcome mat. I turned over some rocks in the garden. I ran my fingers along the sill above the door. I reached into the mail slot and felt around. No key. I performed a similar search around the back door. Nada. I went back to the front and stood in the shadow of the Jesus statue and tried to imagine where I would hide a key.
“I’m out of ideas,” I said to the statue. “Any suggestions?”
Jesus did not reply. I sat down on the concrete base of the statue, thinking hard. Maybe there was no hidden key, and I was wasting my time. I looked down at Jesus’s feet. Some of the paint was peeling off. Idly, I picked at the loose paint with my fingernail, then felt bad about it. I don’t object to a bit of minor vandalism—I’d TPed Myke Duchakis’s house last Halloween—but I didn’t think I should mess with Jesus’s feet. I noticed, however, that there was a gap between his left foot and the concrete base, and an inch of string sticking out of it.
I pulled on the string and out came a key.
35
The Garage
The Tisks’ house felt dead inside. The only sound was the hammering of my heart, and the only colors were beige, white, or gray. The furniture looked as if it had never been sat on or used. A sepia-toned print over the sofa showed Eve in the Garden of Eden being tempted by the serpent.
I crept down the hall and peeked into the first room. There were two beds, neatly made with coverlets the color of raw canvas. Mr. and Mrs. Tisk’s room, I assumed.
The next room was Dottie’s. I shoved Charlotte between her sheet and the mattress so she’d feel it when she climbed into bed.
There was one more bedroom at the end of the hall. The door was closed. I twisted the knob and eased the door open. One bed, with the covers thrown back and the sheets tangled, but it wasn’t the bed that got my attention—it was the lingering aroma of Bay Rum aftershave.
As far as I was concerned that was proof that Ernest Rausch had stayed at the Tisks’ last night. I checked under the bed and in the closet, hoping to find the REMEMBER machine, but there was nothing. Maybe it was in the garage with his ATV. I found a key hanging on the wall near the back door. The tag on the key said GARAGE. I let myself out, went back to the garage, and unlocked the side door and stepped inside.
The first thing I noticed was Dottie, sitting in a chair on the other side of the ATV, staring at me with a peculiar wide-eyed expression. Her hair looked weird—then I saw that it wasn’t her hair; she was wearing the Rauschinator.
The second thing I noticed was the powerful smell of Bay Rum.
The door slammed behind me.
“Ms. Crump,” said Ernest Rausch. “Shall we take up where we left off?”
• • •
I tried to run around him to the door. He spread his long arms and tried to grab me. I ducked under his left arm and got my hand on the doorknob, but Rausch grabbed the back of my belt and yanked me back. I twisted free and jumped onto the ATV. Rausch lunged for me, but I jumped back down on the far side of the ATV.
“You can’t get out,” he said, edging around the back of the ATV.
I waited for him to get almost all the way around, then jumped onto and over the ATV, heading for the door. He was too fast for me. I had to back off. Once again we faced each other across the ATV. I took a quick look at Dottie. The wires from the Rauschinator led to a square plastic box on the floor—the REMEMBER machine. Dottie was about to get rauschinated, if she hadn’t been already. She looked scared.
“You okay?” I asked her, keeping an eye on Rausch.
Dottie shook her head. I noticed Mr. Peebles then, sitting calmly on the floor next to her feet.
“Dottie is about to memorize the Greek and Latin translations of the Old Testament,” Rausch said. “To take her mind off that Duchakis boy.”
“Myke?” I glanced back at Dottie.
“I wrote some things about him in my diary,” she said. “My mom found it.”
“You’re in love with Myke Duchakis?” I said.
She was blushing. “She says I’m too young to have a boyfriend, so she told Uncle Ernie to give me another attitude adjustment.”
“Uncle Ernie?” I said.
“That’s right,” Rausch said. “Mabel is my sister. This is a family affair, and you have rudely interrupted us.” He shrugged. “But it doesn’t matter. An hour from now you’ll both have other things to think about.”
“Do you want to forget Myke?” I asked Dottie.
“No,” she said.
“I didn’t think so.”
I grabbed the Rauschinator and yanked it off Dottie’s head. “Ow!” she cried out.
Rausch moved faster than I thought possible, leaping onto and over the ATV and diving at me. Before I could move, he crashed into us, knocking Dottie off the chair and landing on top of me. Mr. Peebles yowled and jumped onto a metal shelf against the back wall.
I kicked; I clawed; I bit. It didn’t work. I tried to scream, but Rausch had me wrapped in his long, sinewy arms, squeezing so hard I could hardly breathe.
“If you don’t stop, I’ll squeeze until your ribs crack,” he said. I stopped struggling. “Much better,” he said, relaxing his grip slightly. “And congratulations—you’ve moved to the head of the line. Dottie will have to wait her turn, but she’s a good girl.” He raised his voice. “You’re a good girl, aren’t you, Dottie?”
The answer was a whining growl. Dottie was on the ATV, revving the engine.
“No!” Rausch yelled. Dottie twisted the accelerator; the machine leaped forward and hit the garage door. The plywood panels shattered; the ATV burst through onto the driveway and screeched onto the street.
Go, Dottie, I thought. Go!
36
Slapped
Dottie was free, but my situation had not improved. Rausch was furious. Holding me with one arm wrapped painfully around my waist, he grabbed the chair Dottie had been sitting in and dragged it over by the metal shelves, where it wasn’t visible from the street. He slammed me into the chair.
“Do. Not. Move,” he said. He backed away, keeping me in sight, and picked up the REMEMBER machine and the Rauschinator.
“Dottie will bring the police,” I said hopefully.
Rausch laughed. “I think not. My niece is a good girl. She wouldn’t want to get her parents in trouble.”
“She just stole your ATV and crashed it through a closed garage door,” I pointed out.
“True.” A shadow of worry crossed his face, but he shrugged it off. “In any case, very soon now you will have nothing to tell. Hold still.” He lowered the Rauschinator onto my head. I tried to kick him you-know-where, but he turned his hip and deflected my foot. Then he slapped me, hard, right across the face.
I don’t know if you have ever been slapped hard in the face by a grown man, but if you ever are, you will find that it’s not like the movies when people slap each other all the time and they’re just, like, ouch. A real slap is much worse. My head snapped back, my ears were ringing, and everything went dim for a second. But what happened next was kind of cool.
My eyes regained focus, and I saw that Rausch’s head had been replaced by a large fur ball. Furthermore, a large, puffed-up tail seemed to be jutting from the place where he usually kept his goatee, and the air was vibrating with a horrific high-pitched howling.
The howling wasn’t me. It was the normally sedate Mr. Peebles, who had attached himself to Rausch’s face. Rausch was howling too. I don’t know which of them was louder. I’m sure it would have been Rausch if he hadn’t been trying to scream through Mr. Peebles’s furry body.
Mr. Peebles was hard at work, attempting to detach Rausch’s ears with his unsheathed claws while biting the top of his head. I don’t know how long it went on. Maybe only a few seconds, but to me—and probably to Mr. Rausch—i
t felt much longer. Mr. Peebles finally decided his job was done. He sprang from Rausch’s face and landed next to me. Rausch was staggering around, disoriented and in obvious pain.
Mr. Peebles looked up at me and said, “Merp?”
“Merp,” I replied.
“Aargh!” cried Mr. Rausch.
“Let’s get out of here!” I said to Mr. Peebles.
We took off through the shattered garage door.
37
Rauschinated
Mr. Peebles refused to join me on the WheelBot. I felt bad about leaving him behind, but I had to get to a phone quick. Myke Duchakis lived just a few blocks away, so I headed over there. Guess what I saw parked in his driveway.
Yup, a red ATV.
I hit the doorbell about six times. Myke answered the door with his chinchilla perched on his shoulder.
“Did you call the police?” I said.
Myke and his chinchilla both looked surprised. I guess I was kind of frantic.
“Um . . . no? Why?”
“Gimme your cell.”
Myke reached into his pocket and handed me his phone. As I punched in 911, I saw Dottie peeking around the corner.
“What’s going on?” Myke asked.
“Ask your girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend?” He looked back at Dottie, who ducked out of sight.
“Thanks a lot, Dottie,” I yelled.
“Hello?” said the 911 operator. “Can I help you?”
“Yes!” I told her I’d been assaulted. She had a million questions. I tried to answer them, and finally she said she’d send a car over to the Tisks’ house.
I disconnected and called my dad. He answered on the third ring.
“Ginger?” he said.
“Are you still at the lab?”
“Yes. We’re making progress.”
“I found Rausch.” I quickly told him what had happened, and how Mr. Peebles had saved me. “I called the police, but Rausch might be gone by now.” I heard a siren approaching.
“We’ll get there as soon as possible,” my dad said. “Stay where you are.”
• • •
Stay where I was?
No way! I tossed the phone back to a very confused-looking Myke Duchakis and ran outside to the WheelBot. I arrived at the Tisks’ moments after the police. The two cops were peering through the broken garage door with their guns drawn. I hopped off the unicycle and came up behind them.
“He’s not moving,” said one of the officers. He raised his voice. “Sir! Are you all right?”
“I’m going in.” The cop ducked his head and entered the garage. A moment later he said, “Call an ambulance.”
Right then my dad and two of his security guys pulled up in an ACPOD van. My dad jumped out, gave me the Look, and followed the cops into the garage. A minute later he came out, looking grim.
“Is he dead?” I asked. “Did Mr. Peebles kill him?”
He shook his head. “Didn’t I tell you to stay at Myke’s?”
“Sorry.”
He put his hands on my shoulders and looked at my face. “Are you okay?” He touched my cheek where Rausch had slapped me.
“I think so. He hit me really hard, but it feels okay now.”
“You’re going to have a bruise.”
“What happened to him?”
Dad shook his head. “He’s sitting in there with that device on his head, looking very confused. He doesn’t seem to know who he is, or where he is, or what is going on. He’s quite agitated, talking a blue streak but not making any sense. He’s talking about banana slug mating rituals and obscure baseball statistics and the history of sailing vessels and who wrote which Beatles songs and all sorts of other random trivia. It’s as if somebody ripped the encyclopedia into a million pieces and shoved it into his brain.”
“He rauschinated himself?”
“So it would seem.”
38
Not Quite the End of the Story
They took Mr. Rausch to the hospital and put a guard outside his room, just in case he tried to escape. My dad took the REMEMBER machine to ACPOD, and maybe you think that’s the end of the story, but you would be wrong.
A whole bunch of people—including Billy and my dad—were still missing huge chunks of their memories. And with Rausch in a coma, nobody knew how to get them back.
The Tisks returned home to find their house festooned in yellow police tape. They managed to convince the cops that they had had no idea that Mrs. Tisk’s brother Ernest had been wanted by the police, and they said they were shocked—shocked—that he would subject their dear daughter Dottie to an experimental procedure. I was sure they were lying, but nobody was listening to me.
Dottie was still hiding out at Myke’s, so far as I knew. Would she blow the whistle on her parents? I went back to Myke’s house to ask her, but both Myke and Dottie had left.
“I don’t know where they went,” Mrs. Duchakis told me. “But they took a basket of kittens with them.”
Where would Myke go with a basket of kittens?
I went over to Addy Gumm’s. She answered her door holding two squirming kittens.
“Yes, dear, they were just here. I was only able to take these two—I already have eighteen cats, you see, and I promised the mayor to keep it down to twenty. Myke took the others to find them another home.”
“Where?”
“I really don’t know.”
I texted Billy.
Rausch has been rauschinated.
Trying to find Dottie. Where are you?
I got a text back immediately.
I’m at home. Dottie and Myke are here. Do you need another cat?
Dottie was at Billy’s? I jumped on the WheelBot.
A few minutes later Alfred let me in. I noticed that the holes in the walls had been repaired, and there were no new ones. Presumably, Alfred’s wall-punching tendencies had been curtailed. I ran down to Billy’s room, where he was waiting with Myke, Dottie, and six rambunctious kittens. Dottie was sitting on the floor crying, and Myke was attempting to corral the kittens while Billy sat at his computer looking extremely uncomfortable.
“What’s up?” I said eloquently.
“Myke wants me to take one of his cats,” Billy said. “I said no, and Dottie started crying.”
Dottie wiped her eyes with her sleeve and looked up at me. “I’m sorry I left you alone with my uncle,” she said. “I was scared.”
I couldn’t blame her.
“That was really cool, you blasting through the garage door,” I said.
Dottie almost smiled, then reverted to looking miserable. “He already made me forget Charlotte’s Web once. I didn’t want to forget it again, and I was afraid he’d make me forget Myke, too.”
“Did your parents ask him to do it?”
She nodded and started bawling again.
Billy said, “I was just looking up some info about kids divorcing their parents.”
“Seriously? You can do that?”
“It’s complicated. She’d need an adult willing to adopt her, and a lawyer. I mean, it hardly ever happens.”
“Even if her parents are abusing her?”
Billy shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Dottie, do you have any relatives you could stay with?”
She snuffled, then said, “My grandparents on my father’s side. Only they don’t speak anymore.”
“They can’t talk?” Myke said.
“No! They can talk, but my parents won’t speak to them. My dad says they’re heathens because they won’t go to his church. I miss them. My grandma is really nice.”
I exchanged a look with Billy. “That could be good,” I said.
“Only I don’t know if they’d want me,” she said miserably.
Bing!
“That’s Alfred,” Billy said, looking at his computer display. “Dottie’s parents are here. They want Dottie back.”
“I told my mom where we were going,” Myke said, looking at Dottie.
“She must have told your parents.”
“That’s okay,” Dottie said. “They would’ve found me sooner or later.” She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. “I guess I’ve got to go.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “Let me and Billy handle this.”
39
Fly on the Nose
Billy and I trooped upstairs, leaving Myke and Dottie in charge of the kittens. We heard Mr. and Mrs. Tisk in the foyer, arguing with Alfred.
“Master Billy does not accept unannounced visitors to his room,” Alfred was explaining. “I am sure he will be with you shortly.”
“I’m right here,” Billy said as we entered the foyer.
“Where is my daughter?”
“Why do you ask?” I asked.
Both Tisks stabbed at me with their eyes.
“You!” said Mrs. Tisk.
“Why, yes,” I agreed. “Me.”
“Where is Dottie? We know she’s here.” He thrust a thumb at Alfred. “This clinking, clattering collection of junk has admitted as much.”
“I do not clatter,” Alfred said.
“Dottie is here,” I admitted, “but she doesn’t want to go home with you.”
“That is outrageous!” Mr. Tisk exclaimed. “She is my daughter, and she will do what I say!” He shoved me aside and pushed past Billy and headed for the stairwell. Alfred, who was quicker on his motilators than I gave him credit for, quickly caught up with Mr. Tisk.
“Excuse me, sir. I detect a fly on your nose.”
Fortunately for Mr. Tisk, Billy had made some adjustments to Alfred’s hydraulic arms, dialing back the power to reduce the number of holes punched in the walls. Unfortunately for Mr. Tisk, he hadn’t dialed it back all the way. Alfred’s pneumatic arm shot out and connected solidly with Mr. Tisk’s nose.
• • •
Things got very noisy and confusing after that. Mrs. Tisk became hysterical and insisted on calling an ambulance, even though Mr. Tisk’s nose wasn’t actually broken—it was just bleeding a little. Dottie and Myke came running upstairs to see what was going on. Dottie started screaming when she saw the blood on her father’s face. Gilly arrived home right in the middle of the drama, and the kittens got out of their basket and were running all over the house. I called my parents, and they both arrived at the same time as the ambulance. Alfred made a large pot of tea, killed an actual fly, and set about cleaning Mr. Tisk’s blood out of the carpet. It was all very confusing, but we finally got things sorted out.
