“DOWN WITH MUMMY! DOWN WITH MUMMY!”
A snowball hit her in the head, knocking the red Santa hat off.
“You worthless trolls!” Mummy tried to shout over them. “Fine! See what I care! I’ve still got enough money from one night to last me a lifetime! You can ’ave your godforsaken freezing rock of an island!!”
Black Jack was backing up slowly, and now Mummy was too.
And then they made a run for it.
Snowballs went flying after them. One nailed Mummy right in the keister. Which is to say, her big red butt.
The elves all cheered, and so did we.
But just as I was getting ready to celebrate our hard-earned happy ending, the Truant Officer grabbed me.
“We can’t let Mummy escape!” he yelled above the commotion. “We have to go after her and Black Jack!”
Was he serious? Did he not see the guns? Didn’t he realize that we only have one chapter left?
“Come on!” he said, and raced off after them.
I sighed. And then I started running too.
This was the problem with archenemies. They spoiled everything.
52. THE FLYING SLEIGH RACE
I had never seen Mummy run before, and it wasn’t pretty. It was less running and more like waddling quickly.
Needless to say, my archenemy and I were able to beat her to the sleigh. She had parked the XMAS NITE SPECIAL right outside the stable, with the reindeer still hitched to it.
“So, what’s our plan?” I asked my nemesis.
“We tell them to stop.”
“We tell them to stop?” I said.
This was a terrible plan!
“Stop! In the name of the Sewickley Department of Attendance!” the Truant Officer hollered, holding up his stupid tin badge.
Mummy and Black Jack were not stopping.
I had to hide! But where?
I hopped into the sleigh, but the whole huge thing was stuffed full with bulging sacks of cash. I found a half-empty one and wriggled myself inside.
As I did, the Truant Officer rushed Black Jack and grabbed his pistol arm.
BLAM!
A stray bullet went shooting up into the air as the two of them grappled.
Meanwhile, Mummy took the opportunity to get into the sleigh.
Where I was hiding!
“Mush, you flea-bitten beasts!” I heard Mummy say, followed by the
CRACK
of the whip.
I got a real queasy feeling in my stomach, like I was on a roller coaster.
Were we . . . flying?
“Mummy!” Black Jack said. “Wait for me!”
(At least, that’s what I’m guessing he said. I don’t speak French, remember?)
“Take one of the other sleighs, you idiot!” she hollered, pointing to the stables.
As I was, at that point, stuffed inside a sack—flying higher and (gulp!) higher—I really didn’t know what was going on with Black Jack after that. But I’m not going to let that stop me from telling you exactly what happened.
Because Black Jack did head over to get another sleigh at the stables, where he found the Hooligan, the Rude, and the Thief waiting for him. As for how those three got there and what happened to the rest of the No-Good Nine, well, I can’t tell you right now because
BLAM!
He shot at them!
BLAM BLAM BLAM!
Amazingly—foolishly—heroically, the Hooligan hurled himself into the line of fire to protect the Rude and the Thief.
“Hoolie, NO!” the Rude shouted.
The Hooligan went down on the ground in a heap, and Black Jack fast hitched a reindeer to a sleigh and took off flying.
The Thief and the Rude rushed to the side of the Hooligan, lying in the straw and manure.
“Ow, my head,” he said. “I hit it on the post!”
“How did you not get shot?” the Rude said. “He was only five feet away from you when he fired!”
The Hooligan smiled as he showed them what he was holding.
“My lucky rabbit’s foot!”
Yeah, some luck that bunny paw had given us for the last couple of hundred pages!
In a flash, the Rude had a sleigh and reindeer ready to go, the Thief and the Hooligan climbed aboard, and the chase was ON!
Now I didn’t know any of this at the time, because I was still in the sack, praying Mummy wouldn’t notice me. Of course, she was plenty preoccupied trying to figure out how to drive the sleigh. It wasn’t going well. Or smoothly.
“Black Jack!” she hollered as he came alongside. “’Ow do you steer this thing?!”
“Give it up, Mummy—you’re through!” the Rude hollered, having caught up to both our sleigh and Black Jack’s.
BLAM BLAM!
Mummy shot at them.
For the record it is not a good idea to shoot pistols from the back of a flying sleigh pulled by magical reindeer, magical reindeer not being used to the sound of gunfire.
In fact, it spooked them so bad that they suddenly stopped flying and we
DROPPED
about fifty feet down in the sky.
Ugh, my stomach!
The sleigh pitched sideways, and I got spit out of the sack.
I was suddenly on the floor of the sleigh, in a swirling pile of cash, looking up at Mummy.
“Uh, hi?” I said, and gave her a little wave.
“You!” she shouted. “Get out of my money and drive this tabarnouche sled!”
“But I don’t know how to!”
“Just do it!”
It’s amazing how persuasive a person can be when they have a pistol pointed right between your eyes.
I grabbed the reins, but how was I supposed to steer this thing? I looked over to the other sleighs for pointers.
The Rude and company were now making a beeline for Black Jack’s sleigh. The dirty goon pointed his gun at them, and
BUMP!
The Rude banged his sleigh into Black Jack’s, knocking the bad guy off balance and the gun out of his hands. The weapon went plummeting. At the same moment, the Hooligan hopped from one sleigh to the other, tackled Black Jack, and proceeded to beat the tar out of him.
I’m sure glad that kid was on our side.
In the meantime, our sleigh pulled ahead.
“Hurry up and get them!” the Thief yelled to the Rude.
I tried to sabotage our ride to make it easier for them to catch us, but everything I did to slow the reindeer down—like pulling back on the reins—only sped them up.
The Rude’s sleigh wasn’t gaining on us any and the Hooligan was way behind. He was still too busy beating up Black Jack.
“We’ll never catch them!” the Thief shouted. “They’re too far ahead!”
“Don’t worry, we’ll catch ’em!” the Rude said.
He dropped the reins and climbed out of the sleigh onto the back of the reindeer. It was just like riding a horse at the track!
Except for the flying part.
“Come on behind me!” he called to the Thief.
The Thief paused, and I could see her gulp all the way from where I was. But she screwed up her courage and hopped on too.
As soon as she was seated behind the Rude, he told her to hold onto his legs.
“What? Why?” she said.
“Just do it!” he said, and flipped himself upside down under the reindeer’s belly. From there, he unhitched its harness, and the sleigh went plummeting into the sea.
Free of having to pull the vehicle, the reindeer flew like lightning, with the Rude and the Thief riding on its back.
“Ya-hoo!” the Rude hollered as they fast caught up to us and went soaring over our heads.
“What are they doing?” Mummy shouted.
I
looked up as the air-galloping hooves of the reindeer passed right over our heads. Then I saw the soles of a pair of feet.
It was the Thief! She had leapt off the back of the reindeer—
Is she NUTS?—
and landed right in our sleigh.
Unfortunately, she touched down a little to one side, which caused the entire thing to turn sideways. It was only for a moment, but it was long enough to knock me out of the sleigh.
“AAAAAH!” I screamed.
I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to grab onto one of the runners that were attached to the underside of the sleigh. Try as I might, however, there was no way I could make it back up into the sleigh, and I hung there dangling. I looked down.
Bad idea.
It was miles to the ground. Except there was no ground—just open ocean as far as the eye could see!
Meanwhile, the Thief and Mummy were duking it out.
“This is for you, mummy dearest!” the Thief said, and
POW!
landed a fist to her jaw.
“Bad idea, daughter!” Mummy said, and came back up with a
PUNCH!
to the Thief’s gut.
“Mother versus daughter!” Mummy said. “Just like it always should be!”
“You are not my mother!” the Thief said, cocking a fist. “And I am not your daughter!”
The Thief threw a real haymaker, but she missed and spun around on herself. Before she could recover, Mummy was on top of her, both hands around her throat, choking her.
“I am going to kill you like I should ’ave done before!” she said, flashing a big gold-toothed smile.
I could see that smile, because the two of them were half hanging out of the sleigh. They were so close to me that the Thief’s long black braid was dangling right in front of my nose. I went to give it one last try to pull myself up, but before I could the Thief reached up, grabbed Mummy’s gold tooth, and yanked it out of her mouth.
“You want to keep this tooth?” the Thief said, choking out the words. “Well, go get it!”
And she tossed it right out of the sleigh.
“My toof!” Mummy said. Unable to help herself, she lunged after it, right over the side of the sleigh!
Her upside-down face passed by mine, and then—just like that—she was gone.
No more Mummy.
I looked down to see if I could find her in the waves below.
Still a bad idea.
“A little help here!” I called, and the Thief held out her hand and hoisted me up into the sleigh.
“Nine for one,” she said.
“And one for nine,” I said.
Then I took control of the reins and turned the team back in the other direction, toward Isle X.
“On Dasher, on Dancer, on Prancer and Vixen!”
I mean, I had to say that, right?
Epilogue
So there you have it. The story of how the No-Good Nine saved Christmas!
Which is pretty ironic, when you think about it.
Santa found it more than ironic. In fact, he found it downright unbelievable. But give the guy credit—he stuck by what he had read out that morning, even the stuff he didn’t want to. Namely, that no child would ever receive coal in their stocking again.
Yer welcome.
Santa would also be keeping his promises to the elves of Isle X. In this, he had no choice, because Lefty and Hendrick had formed a Union of Elfin Toy Makers, Local #1, to make sure that he did.
What’s more, Santa gave us a sleigh and reindeer and told us to take them wherever we wanted to go.
That made up for every present he never gave us, and then some!
Our first stop was Quebec City, where the Truant Officer delivered the Brothers Jack to the local Royal Canadian Mounted Police. As it wound up, the sonny-boys were wanted for plenty of crimes, and the Mounties were so impressed by the Truant Officer and his detailed journals that they offered him a job. As a real policeman!
Even if I still considered him my nemesis, I was happy for him.
As we got back into the sleigh, I realized that this was the first time the nine of us had ever been alone together. Y’know, without having to fear for our lives or anything.
“So, what do we do now?” Goody-Two-Shoes said.
We all looked at each other.
I’ve thought about this moment a lot in the many years since it happened, as it was a mighty BIG moment.
Under most circumstances, we would’ve gone our separate ways. But the thing was, we all liked being on a team. Mug Uglies aside, none us had ever even been in a club before. Heck, none of us had ever even had much in the way of friends before. (And you can probably see why.)
“Does anyone want to go home?” the Cruel said.
Not a one of us said yes.
“We have a magic sleigh, a flying reindeer, and a sack of Al Capone’s cash . . .” the Thief said.
“We can go wherever we want and do whatever we want,” the Brat said.
Everyone thought about it. Then
“What do y-y-y-you think we should do?”
It was me the Know-It-All was asking, and everyone turned to look in my direction.
I could tell you what I said—and what we did—but would you ever believe me?
THE END
JOHN BEMELMANS MARCIANO is the author of novels, chapter books, and picture books for young readers. His previous novel, The Nine Lives of Alexander Baddenfield, was illustrated by Sophie Blackall, with whom he also collaborated on the Witches of Benevento series. John continued the legacy of his grandfather, Ludwig Bemelmans, in Madeline and the Cats of Rome, Madeline and the Old House in Paris, Madeline at the White House, and Madeline Says Merci. He is also the author of two books for adults: Anonyponymous and Whatever Happened to the Metric System?
John lives in New Jersey, with his wife, Andromache, and their daughter, Galatea.
*He’s lying. —The Editor
* He’s really not. —The Editor
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The No-Good Nine Page 20
