Villain's Lair

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  And at long last he said, “You cut me to the quick, señor. I am most insulted. Perhaps you are not the one to help me after all.” Then he jumped off of Dave’s shoulder and scurried across Dave’s bedroom, vanishing behind a small bookcase.

  Dave cried, “Wait!” because although he knew a magic wristband was an impossibility, so, too, was a talking gecko lizard.

  And what if it was true? In his wildest dreams, in his very best dreams, he could fly. And to be able to become invisible? That was more than he dared even dream of.

  Dave pinched himself, but he was, in fact, not dreaming.

  “Hello?” he asked, peering behind the bookcase. “Where’d you go?”

  Just as he was beginning to fear that the lizard had disappeared, Sticky emerged over the top of a row of books, dragging the ancient Aztec wristband behind him.

  “Holy smokes!” Dave gasped, for it was plain to see that this was no ordinary bracelet.

  It glowed like a band of sunshine.

  It shimmered like a deep pool of molten gold.

  It had designs on it that were both foreign and mysterious. Designs that seemed to hold the secrets of an entire civilization.

  Designs that, without a doubt, held the promise of power.

  “Holy smokes!” Dave gasped again.

  “So, señor” Sticky said, “do you still think I’m a liar?”

  Dave’s head wagged slowly from side to side.

  “Do you want to be able to fly and go invisible? Do you want to be able to lift boulders like pebbles and climb walls with ease? Do you want the speed of a roadrunner and the—”

  “Yes,” Dave gasped. “Yes!”

  Sticky crossed his arms and cocked his head. “Then you must promise this, señor: you will tell no one about the wristband, and you will tell no one that I can talk.”

  “No one?” Dave asked, for even in his understandably stunned state of mind, he knew that this would be difficult. He had a talking lizard! And a wristband that (he now believed) could make him. fly.

  How could he not tell someone about it?

  But despite his understandably stunned state of mind, Dave did manage to realize that if he did tell someone—anyone—about any of it, the lizard would probably never speak to him again. And if that happened, who’d believe him?

  People would think that he was crazy!

  Mad!

  Wholly and totally mental!

  Or worse, a complete dork.

  So with all these thoughts muddling through his stunned state of mind, Dave grudgingly agreed to Sticky’s conditions:

  He would never tell a soul about the wristband.

  He would never tell a soul that the lizard could talk.

  “Very good,” Sticky said. “Because if you do, I will never talk to you again, and people will think you’re loco, man. Or worse, a complete dork.”

  In the wink of an eye, Sticky had scurried up Dave’s leg and onto his shoulder, where he looked Dave directly in the eye and said, “So, señor, are you with me?”

  Dave nodded.

  “You will help me get the power ingots away from that wicked ratero Damien Black?”

  “I will!” Dave said, his head bobbing with growing enthusiasm. “I swear I will!”

  “I have to warn you, señor” Sticky said slyly, “it won’t be easy…”

  “I don’t care!” Dave cried. “We’re good, he’s evil! We can do it! We can!”

  Sticky smiled.

  They bumped fists.

  And so the pact was made.

  For weeks after, Sticky and his new partner schemed and plotted and planned, carefully detailing ways to retrieve the power ingots. But in the end, they chucked it all and simply headed for Damien Black’s house, armed with the determination to get inside any way they could.

  So! Now that you know what Dave and Sticky were doing, creeping through a frightening forest and an oozy, stinky cave toward the underbelly of a nightmarish mansion, let’s get back to them, shall we?

  They are, after all, in grave peril…

  Chapter 4

  CRUNCHY, SLOOOOOPY GROSS, AND GOOPY

  The musty passageway in which Dave and Sticky found themselves did indeed lead away from the stench and dangling moss and fluttery bats of the deep, dark cave.

  Which was, at first, quite a relief.

  Sticky was on Dave’s shoulder now, helping him keep an eagle eye out for booby traps.

  Or telltale corpses.

  Or tripwire daggers hidden in walls.

  But they saw nothing. It seemed safe.

  Ah, how deceiving cramped, musty passageways can be.

  “Do you have any idea where this leads?” Dave whispered.

  “Thataway,” Sticky said, pointing ahead.

  Dave frowned at the gecko. “Oh, that’s so helpful. Thank you very much.”

  They proceeded along the passageway until a strange sound in the distance caused Dave to raise a finger and whisper, “Shhhh.”

  “I wasn’t making a peep, hombre.”

  “Shhhh!”

  “But I—”

  “Shhhhhh!”

  Sticky rolled his eyes. “Ay-ay-ay.”

  “Ay-ay-ay yourself,” Dave grumbled. He moved forward, trying to figure out what he was hearing.

  It was a watery sound.

  A watery, crunchy sound.

  A watery, crunchy, slurpy sound.

  No, wait. It was really more slooooopy than slurpy.

  Yes. That was it. A watery, crunchy, slooooopy sound.

  Dave couldn’t imagine what made such a sound. He held the torch in front of them as far as he could reach, and at long last he could see…something.

  But what was it?

  “Is that a waterfall?” he asked at last.

  “It doesn’t look like a regular waterfall to me, señor” Sticky replied.

  It was, indeed, much too slooooopy and crunchy to be simply water. Yet it fell like water. And it blocked the entire passageway, just as a waterfall would.

  As they grew closer, Dave could feel something slooooopy and goopy crunching underfoot. He checked his shoe, and when he saw what was stuck in the treads of his sneaker, his face contorted in disbelief. “Snails?” He looked at the slooooopy, crunchy barrier in front of them. “A waterfall of snails ?”

  And yes. That’s exactly what it was. A crunchy, slooooopy, goopy (and, intermittently, poopy) waterfall of snails.

  They stood there for a moment, just staring as the watery wall of snails splashed into a wide, deep trough in the dirt before mysteriously draining away.

  At last Sticky shook his head and said, “That Señor Black is one loco honcho…”

  “Crazy doesn’t even begin to describe it,” Dave muttered.

  Dave stuck the bottom end of the torch into the waterfall, creating a small window beneath the torch through which he could look. The path continued on the other side, but there seemed to be no way to reach it without going through a torrent of snails and water.

  Dave withdrew the torch and then just stood facing the waterfall, saying nothing. Finally Sticky said, “Are you planning to stare at it all day, señor?”

  “Huh?”

  “Andale, hombre. Giddyap! Move it!”

  “You expect me to go through that!”

  Sticky tapped his little gecko chin and said, “Hmm. How do I say this…?” He pulled a face at Dave. “Sí, SEÑOR!”

  So Dave took a deep breath and charged through the waterfall, leaping over the deep trough.

  “Ouch-ouch–ouch!” he cried as he went through, for the experience was much like being hit by an avalanche of slimy rocks.

  “Ouchie-huahua!“ Sticky cried, too, for he hadn’t had the sense to hide inside Dave’s sweatshirt.

  On the other side, Dave shook off slimy water and sloopy snails and revived the sputtering torch. “That is too weird to believe.”

  The torch now illuminated a fork in the passageway ahead of them. To the left was a cavern, with stalactites jutt
ing down from the ceiling and stalagmites poking up from the floor. There was something foreboding about the cavern. To Dave, it looked like the gaping mouth of a monster. A monster with row upon row of dripping, deadly teeth.

  A monster just waiting for something to chew on.

  Yet to the right was a blood-red door, covered with dangling shrunken heads. The sort of shrunken heads you think of when you hear the term “witch doctor.”

  Or “tribal warrior.”

  Or, quite obviously, “headhunter.”

  Each head was about the size of an apple, dark hair intact, eyes and lips sewn closed with coarse lengths of hemp.

  These were not plastic toys.

  Not pig-hide replicas.

  They were real.

  Bone-chillingly real.

  “Those are real,” Dave whispered, shivering from a chill that went, as you might have guessed, clear down to his bones.

  “Ay-ay-yowy,” Sticky whispered in return, his little gecko bones rattling inside his little gecko body. And then, as if offering an explanation for why one might have dozens of shrunken heads adorning one’s door, he said, “He’s a collector.”

  “Of heads ? I thought you said he was a treasure hunter!”

  Sticky nodded. “To him, these are also treasures. He has them in the house, too. He thinks they bring luck.”

  Dave raised an eyebrow in Sticky’s direction. “Like geckos do?”

  “I’m nothing like a shrunken head!” Sticky snapped. Then he muttered, “You cut me to the quick again, señor.”

  “Sorry.” Dave looked back at the door. “So if they bring good luck, does that mean that’s a lucky door?”

  “Are you asking me, or those guys hanging on it?” Sticky asked.

  Dave sighed. “Would you help me out here? Which way do you think we should go? How do we get into the house!”

  So Sticky quit with the muttery remarks, and in the end, they agreed to go through the shrunken-head door. It was, after all, a door, and it’s a well-known fact that doors and houses are usually connected.

  Unfortunately for Dave, the doorknob was also a shrunken head—something he (quite understandably) did not want to touch. But faced with his other choices (going into a monster-mouthed cavern or giving up), Dave at last grabbed the shrunken-head doorknob and twisted.

  The door creaked open.

  The shrunken heads clonked and bonked like a hollow-headed door chime. “Ay caramba!” Sticky whispered. “You’re waking the dead!”

  The thought sent shivers down Dave’s spine as he stepped through the doorway and into a large, empty room. A large, empty room with no windows but one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight doors.

  The moment they were completely inside, the door they’d just come through slammed closed behind them. (So make that nine doors.) Only then did Dave realize that there were no handles (or shrunken-head knobs) on any of the doors.

  And worse, it seemed that the clonking, bonking shrunken heads on the outside had indeed awakened a spirit.

  An evil spirit.

  “Wellllcome!” an eerie voice boomed. “So glad you could drop by! I hope you’ve planned to stay awhile…like for the rest of your life! Bwaa-ha’ ha-ha-ha!”

  Sticky dived inside Dave’s sweatshirt, crying, “That’s him! It’s Damien Black!”

  Dave looked around madly, jerking the torch from one side of the room to the other. “Where? I don’t see him!”

  “He’s evil like that!” Sticky called through the fabric of Dave’s sweatshirt. “He can be everywhere and nowhere, all at the same time!”

  Dave’s heart was pounding.

  His eyelids were peeled way back.

  Again he spun in a circle, searching for the dastardly treasure hunter, but all he saw were nine doors.

  Nine doors and no way out.

  Chapter 5

  THE ONE WAY OUT

  “Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha” came the villainous voice again. “Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha…ha-ha …ha-ha…ha-ha …”

  Dave quit spinning in circles. “Wait a minute! That’s just a recording! And it’s stuck.”

  It was then that he finally noticed a cheesy little speaker mounted to the ceiling. A ceiling that was made of giant dangling boulders. “It’s just a cheesy little speaker!” he cried, jabbing it with the end of the torch until it quit ha-ha-ha’ing at them.

  Dave searched the bouldery ceiling for other hidden devices. Like surveillance eyes. Or movement sensors. Or laser beam alarms. But he searched in vain, for you see, Damien Black did not believe in the use of modern technology. He believed in the use of clever, sneaky things: disguises and booby traps and cheesy little speakers; secret rooms and hidden poisons and scary, flappy beasts.

  And, oh yes, he also believed in agonizing deaths in dungeons and torture chambers.

  He was, in short, an old-fashioned, truly demented villain.

  And Dave and Sticky were, in fact, quite stuck in one of his demented little rooms with dangling boulders and knobless doors.

  Dave tried prying at each and every door.

  Tried pushing on each and every door.

  Tried pounding on each and every door.

  It wasn’t until Dave lost his temper and kicked one that he discovered a way out.

  Whoosh, the door swept inward, and clonk, the top swung down, clobbering him on the head.

  “Ouch!” Dave cried.

  “Ouchie-huahua,” Sticky cried, although he hadn’t actually been hit by the swinging, clonking door.

  Dave scrambled backward as the door creaked on its peg like a giant teeter-totter. No monster came into the room. No voices bwaa-ha-ha’d. Not even a bat fluttered.

  So Dave crept forward, holding the torch well ahead of him so he could see what lay beyond the plank of wagging wood.

  “An elevator?” he whispered.

  “Freaky frijoles! Are you serious, man?” Sticky pushed forward to get a better look. “He always dashed me up and down stairs. Twisty, curvy, creaky stairs! With no handrails. And all this time he had an elevator?”

  “Uh, maybe not,” Dave said, moving in closer. “I think it’s just painted like an elevator.”

  He was exactly right. From the buttons on the wall to the floor numbers above the door, the room was painted so meticulously that as Dave entered it, he still didn’t quite believe he was not in an elevator. Except for one small detail:

  There was a giant tongue of a door sticking out at them.

  “I don’t get it,” Dave said. He looked up into the vast, dark shaft above them, as there was no ceiling to this strange elevator room either. “Why paint a room like an elevator if it doesn’t move?”

  “Hmm,” Sticky said, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s just what you do when you’re a chimmy-chunga, binga-bunga, loco-berry burrito?”

  “Nobody’s this crazy,” Dave murmured. He looked around at the teeter-totter door, the long shaft up, the elevator walls, the dangling boulders outside…Then suddenly he put them all together in his mind and cried, “It’s a catapult!”

  Sticky dived for the safety of Dave’s sweatshirt. “Acat-a-who?Where?”

  Dave stepped onto the door like one might step onto the end of a teeter-totter. “Not a cat, a catapult! It shoots you into the air.”

  “Asombrrrrroso!” Sticky said, scrambling out from inside Dave’s sweatshirt. But then it struck his little gecko brain that perhaps this was not so awesome after all.

  Perhaps this was dangerous.

  (Perhaps, indeed!)

  “Uh, señor?” Sticky asked. “How does it shoot us? Where do we go? Will we get smashed like pimply papayas?”

  Dave turned to face him. “Like pimply papayas?”

  “I’m really just talking about you, señor, not me.” Sticky shrugged. “I don’t have pimples. And I could just crawl up.”

  Dave shook his head. “Thanks a lot.” He went back to searching for a lever. Or a switch. Or a hoist. Or some thingamajig that would shoot them up the shaft.

/>   All he could find, though, was a painted button that said UP, and who in his right mind pushes a painted button and expects it to do anything?

  “Why don’t you push the UP button, señor?”

  Dave’s head snapped to face Sticky, for into his mind had popped the same question that has undoubtedly popped into yours: “You can read?” He squinted at the gecko. “Who taught you to read?”

  Sticky shrugged. “You pick things up in life, señor. Now push it. See what happens.”

  “Nothing’s gonna happen. It’s paint!”

  “Whatever you say,” Sticky said, and then lickety-split, he scurried across Dave’s shoulders and down his arm, spun in the air, and slammed the UP button with his tail.

  It was fortunate that Sticky’s little kung-fu maneuver landed him back on Dave’s sleeve, because outside, a boulder came crashing down, instantly catapulting them skyward.

  “Hurling habañeroooooos!” Sticky cried, his voice echoing off the walls of the shaft as they flew up, up, up.

  The shaft was painted the whole way up. They blasted by the image of an eerie night sky with a giant moon, bats, and wispy clouds. They flew past screaming ghosts, and ghouls from the grave. And then, just as they were losing momentum, they found themselves approaching the most frightening sight of all.

  A man with black hair.

  Pale skin.

  A twisty mustache, devilish smile, and glinting black eyes.

  His coat was long and black and flowing behind him.

  His boots were black, too, with bent and tarnished silver buckles. And the axe he carried was as tall as he was, and at least as fiendish. It had cracks and nicks in the edges of its double blade, yet it glistened evilly. Like it, too, had a dastardly past.

  “Creeping creosote!” Sticky gasped. “It’s him!”

  As real as it looked, it was merely a painting of Damien Black standing on the edge of a cliff alongside a jagged wooden sign that read:

  DANGER

  DO NOT

  ENTER

  Dave knew the man on the wall was just paint, but it crossed his mind that painted objects in this shaft were sometimes more than merely paint. What might happen if he touched him?

  At that very moment, he came face to face with Damien Black’s glinting painted eyes and decided that touching him was not a good idea.