Lair of the Bat Monster

by Ursula Vernon

  Fortunately, it was a very large tunnel. The floor was rough and broken, but at least they weren’t running into any walls. Camazotz could have walked through here. Danny wondered why she didn’t.

  They didn’t see anything that might be a way out—but as Danny was sweeping the flashlight in front of them, something glittered.

  “What’s that?” asked Wendell.

  “I don’t know. It looks like metal . . .”

  They moved closer. The glitter became a gleam and the gleam became a shine.

  Gold.

  Danny was transfixed. He, like all dragons, loved shiny things. Wendell had to grab him before he stepped off the edge of a short cliff, where the tunnel mouth opened into a vast chamber.

  Gold covered the floor—shields and scabbards and disks and daggers and knives and necklaces. The flashlight’s beam was caught by the gold and reflected back at them in a rippling sea of light.

  “Now this,” said Danny in awe, “this is a hoard.” Wendell looked at his friend. The dragon was transfixed with the purest of pure greed.

  “You can’t carry it,” he growled. “And it probably belongs to somebody. The Zapotec gave it to the bat.”

  “Then it belongs to the bat! The bat isn’t using it! The bat doesn’t care!” Danny waved his hands in the air, making the flashlight beam zigzag wildly over the ceiling. “Besides, I don’t want all of it! Just . . . y’know . . . a little gold. Not much. Camazotz’ll never miss it.”

  “There was gold back up top if you really want it,” said Wendell, annoyed. “We don’t have to climb down there. How would we get back up? And I don’t see a way out.”

  “Out . . .” said Danny distantly, clearly not hearing a word Wendell was saying. He swept the flashlight over the tide of golden offerings again. He was going to be rich. He was going to have a hoard that was the envy of every dragon on the continent. Oh, probably his parents would make him put most of it into savings, but they’d leave him a few pieces—they weren’t unreasonable—and he’d probably even give one to Mom, that would be even better than a butterfly named after you, and . . .

  Something moved.

  Far back in the cave, a shape that Wendell had thought was a rock formation unfolded itself from the ceiling.

  It was another bat. Another Camazotz.

  Wendell knew Danny was looking at the gold and didn’t see the monster, and he knew that he should scream or grab his friend or shout a warning or something. But his mind was running in little gibbering circles and for some reason, all he could think was: Steve was wrong. They do sleep hanging upside down sometimes.

  Nothing that big should be that silent. The bat put a wing tip down on the floor and slowly flipped itself over. In that huge room, it should have looked small, but instead it looked even bigger than their Camazotz.

  Danny swept the flashlight over a particularly fine golden shield and made appreciative noises. Wendell could only see the edge of the monster now, the long folds of the wings, and the gleam of enormous eyes.

  “This is the find of the century!” said Danny. “I’ll never fit it all under my mattress. I might need a bigger bed . . .”

  Wendell said, somewhat louder, “Eeeep!”

  “What?” Danny gave him an annoyed look. “Do you need to go to the bathroom or something?”

  The monster lunged.

  It broke Wendell’s paralysis. He grabbed Danny’s shoulder and flung them both backward into the cave mouth.

  “Whaa—crud!!”

  The flashlight spun out of Danny’s hands and bounced down the drop, throwing crazy shadows. The bat closed the gap between them like a racehorse.

  “RUN!” screamed Wendell, who turned to do so himself and promptly fell flat on his face.

  The bat slammed into the stone. Jaws snapped an inch from their faces, and warm, foul-smelling spit sprayed across their skin. Wendell shrieked. The bat chattered savagely at them, a horrible staticky noise that Wendell felt with his whole body, not just his ears.

  The second Camazotz was indeed stuck. The opening was too small for its shoulders to fit through the hole.

  But its wing tips could fit. It shot one, a great leathery mass with a scythe-like claw at the end, and slashed at them. Danny fell flat and yanked Wendell down with him.

  The wing clawed futilely at the air over their heads, then pulled back. The head of the second Camazotz appeared again, snaking into the corridor and snapping its jaws.

  Danny was remembering Big Eddy at the pool. The bully couldn’t beat him up if there were grown-ups there. If he could get his Camazotz down there—

  “Camazotz!” he yelled. “Camazotz, help!”

  “You’ve lost your mind,” said Wendell. “I know I say that a lot, but really this time—”

  The second Camazotz clawed at the tunnel. The hillside shook, dust starting to come down in earnest, with bits of stinging gravel. Where was his Camazotz? Was she still asleep? Did she not come down here?

  Danny stopped his wailing long enough to hiss, “If you ever tell another living soul about this, I’ll tell them you sleep with a stuffed bunny named Mr. Higgins!”

  “You leave Mr. Higgins out of this!”

  Danny took another breath. Was the crying helping? Did the bat hear him? Would she respond?

  And then, suddenly, there was a rumbling squeak. Danny turned.

  He had time enough to register that it wasn’t as dark in the cave as it should have been without the flashlight, before the light was blotted out. A moment later, a familiar claw grabbed him around the middle, and lifted him up.

  The light was coming from the entrance to the cave. It was definitely after dawn. Camazotz had grabbed them both, one in each claw. She leaned down and sniffed Danny, then gave him a brief lick.

  Another spate of chattering came from farther down the tunnel, and then the sounds of claws battering on stone. The whole hillside seemed to shake, and dust drifted down from the ceiling.

  Apparently she did. The giant bat set them down in the mouth of the cave, gave Danny another lick, and turned back down the tunnel. There was another burst of furious static, and the hillside shook as if a bus had run into it.

  Camazotz took a step down the tunnel, toward the other bat monster.

  “Come on!” hissed Wendell. “Let’s get out of here!”

  Danny looked after Camazotz. “I—but—I don’t want her to get hurt!”

  “Let’s get out of here! This place is shaking, and I don’t know what that noise is—”

  Danny grabbed his sleeve. “Steve, there’s another one! Down there! It’s stuck in the cave, and our Camazotz is going after it.”

  Steve looked ready to start down the tunnel and watch, but Wendell blocked them both, waving his arms. “There’s no way we can possibly stop them! Let’s just get out of here before we get squished or eaten or both!”

  Another chittering roar came from the tunnel, and was met with chittering from Camazotz.

  “She sounds annoyed,” said Danny.

  “I’m sure she can handle it,” said Steve.

  Wendell had given up on both of them and was halfway out of the cave already.

  There was another sound, a leathery boom! as if somebody had just been slapped upside the head with a wing the size of a barn door, and then a yelp. Somehow, Danny didn’t think it came from his Camazotz.

  “Sounds like she has the situation under control,” said Steve.

  “Yeah . . .” Danny remembered how she had dealt with the anaconda.

  “We should probably go.”

  “Yeah.”

  DRAGONBAT

  The return to Steve’s research station seemed to take forever—probably because while Wendell kept looking behind him to make sure they weren’t being followed, he accidentally walked through another spiderweb. He spent the rest of the trip trying to paw invisible webs off him and shuddering, while Danny told Steve about the night he’d had. (Danny would have felt worse about Wendell and the spiderweb if Wendell hadn’
t been making “waaaah!” noises at him and snickering. When he got home, Mr. Higgins was going to get strapped to a bottle rocket and become the first stuffed bunny in space.)

  He was very glad to see Steve’s house, though. Even if the bats could have ripped the door right off, there was something comforting about having a layer of wood between him and the jungle.

  Steve got them both some hot chocolate and wandered around the room, muttering to himself.

  “If he grew too big to get out of the roost, she’s probably been feeding him.” Steve took a slug of hot cocoa. “That’s not unheard of. Vampire bats will share blood with bats back at the roost. She probably didn’t want to bring you down there, because she thought he’d eat you. Hmm, I wonder if we can get him out?”

  Danny thought about what it would be like to be stuck in a cave for your entire life. It was hard to feel sorry for the second Camazotz, but in that position, he’d probably be pretty grumpy too. “Well . . . if it’s for science . . .”

  “I’m not helping you break out a giant bat monster,” said Wendell grimly. “Not even for science.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Steve. “That’s what unpaid interns are for. You two are getting back on a bus and going home with your little bat friend.” He reached into the closet with a gloved hand and carefully detached their bat. “Looks like he ate some mealworms too.”

  It was a quiet ride back to the bus. The birds were still shrieking, the bugs were still buzzing, but Wendell was so tired he couldn’t get up the energy to worry. If his limbs fell off, they fell off. Hopefully they’d do it quietly.

  Steve waited with them until the bus arrived. Danny took the pillowcase with their bat in it, and they climbed up the steps. Wendell found a seat and collapsed into it, but Danny paused to look back at Steve.

  “Will Camazotz be okay? I mean, she was pretty nice—for a giant bat monster. And the other one was awfully big . . .”

  “She’ll be fine,” said Steve. “She’s a new species to science, and they’ll protect her cave and the others near it, just in case. You and Wendell helped save her species—and my bats too.” He grinned. “I think I’ll call her Camazotus dragonbreathii .”

  “Ooooh . . .” said Danny. Having a butterfly named after you was one thing, having a monster named after you—well, it just didn’t get any better than that.

  “Hey! Don’t I get a Latin name?” Wendell appeared in the window.

  “Well . . .” Steve considered. “For your undeniable bravery in going in after Danny . . . I could probably name the bat’s lice after you.”

  “Have a good trip,” said Steve.

  “Let us know about Camazotz,” said Danny, and the bus took them away.

  They slept most of the way home, at least after Wendell stopped muttering about horrible giant lice. It was nearly noon by the time they staggered into Danny’s kitchen.

  “You look exhausted,” said Danny’s mother. “Did you have a good time?”

  Wendell and Danny looked at each other.

  “Were you up all night?” Mrs. Dragonbreath emptied out the remains of the coffeepot.

  “Yeah. Uh . . . Steve showed us the cave where he does all his bat research.” That seemed safe enough. “It was really . . . um . . .”

  “Exciting,” said Wendell.

  “Yeah.”

  Danny’s mother looked them over, took in the dirt and the scrapes and the dark circles under their eyes. She decided that they were back safely, and beyond that, she didn’t want to know. “Well, that’s good. Why don’t you boys go wash up, and I’ll get some lunch ready for you?”

  “Lunch would be awesome,” said Danny, and went to go scrub off the bat slobber and other last remnants of the night’s adventure.

  That evening, just after it got dark, Danny and Wendell stood in the backyard. Danny was wearing gloves, and Wendell was hiding behind a lawn chair, just as a precaution.

  “Okay, little guy,” Danny said to the pillowcase. “Time to go.” He opened the pillowcase.

  Nothing happened.

  Danny frowned, and pushed on the underside of the bag, turning it inside out until the bat was sitting on a wad of fabric in his hands. It lifted its tiny, wrinkled face and looked around.

  “Go on,” Danny urged. “Go . . . be a bat somewhere. There’s lots of bugs.”

  “Tasty, tasty bugs,” called Wendell from behind the lawn chair.

  The bat chittered, stretched its wings, and launched itself into the air. It circled once around the lawn, a flash of brown in the porch light, and then was gone.

  “Well, that’s that,” said Danny, dusting off his hands. “Let’s go watch TV.”

  “There’s a show about bats on the nature channel,” said Wendell, grinning.

  “I like bats,” said Danny with dignity. “Bats are cool. I hope our bat has a great life. But I’ve had about enough of bats for the last few days. Is there something on with explosions or ghosts or haunted houses?”

  “I’m sure we can find something,” said Wendell. “We always do.”

  and watch out

  for the haunting

  fifth book in the

  Dragonbreath series:

  NO SUCH THING

  AS GHOSTS

  COMING SOON!

  A WORD ABOUT BATS. . .

  Bats are one of the coolest—and most useful!—animals on earth. A single bat can eat over a thousand mosquitoes an hour. (That’s a lot of bugs!) Many plants, including some of our favorite fruits, are pollinated by bats too. The smallest bat on earth weighs less than a penny, while some flying foxes have six-foot wingspans.

  Unfortunately, bats are in trouble. People are often scared of bats, thinking they all carry rabies or will get caught in your hair. And bats have been hit hard by diseases and destruction of their home caves. So these days, bats need our help.

  You can find out more cool bat facts, see photos of all kinds of weird species, and learn what to do if you find an injured bat (Hint: Always get a grown-up!) at Bat Conservation International (www.batcon.org).

  1 Danny’s mother had been very annoyed by this experiment, and Danny’s explanation that he was trying to invent a new way of sweeping did not help matters.

  2 Wendell’s SuperSkink (Now with death lasso and authentic kung-fu grip!) had never been the same after his beheading, but Wendell had never liked SuperSkink’s expression anyway.

  3 He’d been grounded for a month, and they’d had to spend three days at a hotel until the stink died down. Danny had definitely learned his lesson on that one, which was that digging for gold was a bad idea.