“I’m Ollie,” Ollie said, his voice not sounding a bit frightened. He cleared his throat and made himself speak louder. “That’s my name. Ollie. And your name is Zozo. So it’s kind of like ‘Ollie.’ You have two Zs and I’ve got two Ls, and Zs are the last letter of the alphabet, and you’ve got two Os, but I’ve only got one. I wish I had two Zs and two Os in my name. You have a cool name.”
There was dead silence. No one spoke. No one moved.
Then there was a strange sound. A kind of rusty, garbled sound.
Laughter, Ollie realized. Zozo was laughing.
“Funny!” Zozo said. He looked at his Creeps. “That’s funny, isn’t it?”
The Creeps got the hint—fast. They started laughing. Louder and louder because it seemed to please their boss.
“Yeah, that’s real funny!” Creep 1 said.
“A gas!” Creep 2 added.
“ ‘Zozo,’ is a ‘cool’ name,” Zozo said. And then his laughter stopped abruptly. It took a moment longer for the Creeps to realize the joke was done, and the Super Creep had to bang Creeps 1 and 2 on the head so they would stop laughing, but finally there was silence again.
“You and I are nothing alike, little plush,” Zozo sneered. Then he turned to the Creeps. “Tie him up!”
Before Ollie could utter a protest, the Creeps grabbed him and took him high up along the curved ceiling of the room. There, among the other sad favorites, they began to twine him tightly to an old, jagged hook that stuck out from the damp concrete. As they yanked the wire ever tighter, Ollie feared his seams would rip right open. The tiny tin bell of his heart made a sharp jangle.
“Wait!” Zozo bellowed from below. Now the Creeps froze. Ollie wasn’t sure whether to be hopeful or scared. Zozo stared up at him. “What was that?”
The Creeps weren’t sure what Zozo was asking about. Creep 2 moved one of his arms back and forth. It made a metallic sound similar to Ollie’s bell. “That sound, Boss?” he asked.
Zozo continued to stare, his eyes boring into them all. The rest of the Creeps hurried to demonstrate their different squeaky, jangly elbows, ankles, arms, legs, and heads until they made a rather displeasing little symphony of metal.
At last Zozo spat out, “ENOUGH!” He turned away in disgust and walked away from them.
“Ollie,” the Creeps started taunting, “with two Ls!”
“Um, how long will I be here?” Ollie managed to ask. “I mean, Billy will be expecting me by tuck-in time.”
One of the Creeps started laughing. “The Bunny-Teddy Plushy wants to go home.”
“He wants to know how long he’ll be here.”
More laughter started up. “Yeah, that’s a good one.”
Ollie tried to laugh too. But before he could, the first Creep shouted, “FOREVER!”
Ollie stopped laughing. But the Creeps did not. Their laughs echoed long after they clambered away to some other part of the nasty network of tunnels.
Ollie closed his eyes and tried to believe he was back home, in Billy’s bed. He tried to imagine what Billy was doing at that moment. He tried to understand how to make forever not be in this place.
13
String Cheese and Light Sabers
The entire time Billy had waited for his parents to leave, for their voices to fade and the house to fall silent, he’d been doing more than struggling to stay awake. He’d been planning. He had been planning his OLLIE DANGER RESCUE NIGHTTIME SECRET MISSION OF SECRECY for what had seemed like at least 217 hours, or maybe all the way past midnight. He looked at his cuckoo clock with the little blue bird that came out every hour, but Billy never really knew what time it was because he’d knocked off both the hands when he was “little,” which was actually only five months earlier, but that seemed so long ago that he had to have been little.
He used a lot of consideration as he readied his backpack for this mission. “Consideration” was one of the longest words he knew. Con Sid Eration. Why was “consideration” so long when it really just meant “think”? Maybe it was just another grown-up way to make something more complicated than it really was. Grown-ups did that all the time.
But all this consideration and thinking it over had kept Billy’s mind busy and very unsleepy. His backpack was filled with basically everything he thought he might need:
1. His flashlight saber. It had a broken speaker so it didn’t make sword-like noises anymore, which was okay because Billy was trying to be supersecret and that meant being superquiet. The flashlight part of the saber was important. It helped him see (sort of, anyway) in the dark, and since it was past midnight, there was gonna be loads of dark. And dark was, well . . . scary, no matter what anybody said. Dark when you’re a littlish kid is scary, and since Billy was by himself, dark was gonna be a really big, fill-all-the-air-around-him-and-then-some SCARY THING. Plus, the flashlight saber was a major protection device in case of dogs, or werewolves, or crazy zombies or monsters of ANY KIND.
2. Crayons. Billy wasn’t sure why he needed crayons. They just made him feel safe.
3. String cheese and goldfish crackers. In case the journey was for a long time and he would starve.
4. Four green-apple lollipops. They tasted good, and Billy sometimes pretended that they made him invisible.
5. A couple handfuls of plastic action figures and one tiny, soft, plastic Pegasus. You just never knew when you’d need some toy action figures. Maybe they’d come magically alive and save Billy. Right? And a tiny, soft, plastic Pegasus was something everyone should have with them all the time no matter what.
That was pretty much it. Everything else was in his hoodie pockets. His parents’ cell phone numbers. His address. Some more string cheese.
Billy changed into his favorite pajamas. Put on his fastest shoes (they had some kinda air cushions in them). He squooshed his pillows in a lump under the covers, so it would seem like he was sleeping in his bed, and then he turned for one last look at his room before he tiptoed down the hall.
“So long, guys,” he said to everything. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
14
The Room of Drak Deeks
As he settled in his workroom, Zozo was troubled. This room was perhaps his only comfort. This was the room where Zozo tried to change his past and seek his revenge. It was in this room where he made the first of his Creeps, taking frayed bits of leftover toys from the old carnival—the toys who had never known the company of a child. They had never sat in the grass under a tree and been a hero in a pretend adventure. They had never been clutched tightly while racing down a slide. They had never been hugged under the covers during a terrible thunderstorm. They had never been the gentle buffer against sadness, or felt the joys of being tossed and hugged and played with. They had never been the one thing that made everything all right for a kid.
So, these sagging, never-loved toys were perfect for Zozo’s needs. They’d only ever been with Zozo, and so they had nothing other than his darkened ways to learn from. But Zozo took advantage of this by making them do things he could not. Zozo had become rusted and slow. And truth be told, he feared the outside world. He could not control what happened there. But in this place, this room of dark deeds, he ruled absolutely, and the Creeps did anything he ordered. Rough and quick and mean were the Creeps. They could sneak about with such stealth and ease that even birds, squirrels, and dogs seldom heard them coming. Favorite toys didn’t have a chance once the Creeps set their sights on them.
They were, as a whole, a sneaky but jolly lot. They enjoyed being Creeps. They liked being bad and stealing toys. But when Zozo was quiet and still, as he was this evening, they grew even quieter and more still. Zozo was fearsome when he had “the quiets,” as they called these moods. It meant that Zozo was “remembering,” and that was a thing that never ended well.
Zozo sat at his large worktable, which was littered with well-organized bits and pieces of old toys: arms, legs, heads, bodies, ears, tails, fabric, thread, and metal shards, as well as rusty s
prings, staples, and screws and nuts with bolts—things similar to what he’d used to make Creeps. But in the middle of the table, on a white piece of nice, clean fabric, there lay a toy who was obviously special, for it was constructed with extreme care and exacting craft. It was a dancer, and it was obviously meant to be Nina. But despite all the detailed care, it somehow was not Nina. The fabric and colors and face were very close, having been pieced together from snippets of favorites that matched as closely as Zozo could manage to the Nina he remembered. But very close can still be a long, long way from what you want, or need, or hope for.
As Zozo now sat in his old rotting throne, its gold paint nearly peeled away, staring silently at this lifeless doll of his memories and his making, he said nothing. The Creeps were worried. And they were wise for being worried. For Zozo was remembering a sound, a sound he’d heard long, long ago. A jingling.
15
Midnight in The Hallway of Giant Monkeys
Billy walked down the hall that led to his front door. It was dark except for a flickering glow coming from the den. The TV is on, Billy noticed, but he wasn’t worried. It was late enough. His parents always fell asleep. Especially if the show was good. Still, he peered carefully into the den. Yep. There they were, his mom and dad splayed on the L-shaped couch like ragdolls, sound asleep.
They’d been watching that channel, the one with all the black-and-white movies, from a time his dad called “back in the day.” Billy found these movies very interesting but strange. There were no colors in back-in-the-day movies. Just white and gray and black. And the dads all wore hats, and the moms wore tight dresses, and the cars were big and roundish. And ALL the people had smoke coming out of their mouths as they talked. And they talked with these weird little sticks called cigarettes between their lips that had smoke coming out of them too. And people talked really fast. Plus, everybody seemed to have guns. They’d stand around and talk fast, with smoke pouring out of their mouths, and almost always after a while they’d all pull out guns, even the moms, and then the music would get really loud and everybody—moms, dads, grandparent people—would start shooting.
Billy had given a lot of thought to all this and had decided that people really had anger issues in the black-’n’-white times.
But tonight the black-and-white channel was showing something even stranger than usual. Billy could hardly believe what he was seeing, and he felt himself drawn to the screen. Without realizing it he had walked into the room and stood gaping: a gorilla—a really, really big gorilla, a big-as-a-house-gorilla—was standing at the top of a tall, pointy building. Not only that, but he was holding a regular-sized lady, and she looked like a toy in the giant gorilla’s hand.
And there were airplanes; funny-looking airplanes with two sets of wings, and the guys flying the planes weren’t even all the way inside of them—their heads were sticking out, like, in the air! And they were shooting at the giant gorilla with these log-sized guns tied to the front of the plane, and the gorilla was really mad, which made a lotta sense to Billy, and the gorilla put the girl down, and she was screaming, which also made sense to Billy, ’cause she didn’t have on a coat or anything and it had to be cold way up there, and then the gorilla grabbed one of the planes and flung it down and it crashed into a building.
Then some guy said, “We gotta rescue Ann!” and Billy thought, Oh, the gorilla’s girl’s name is Ann, and they are trying to save her from the gorilla. . . .
Saving . . .
Saving . . . Oh! Billy blinked. That’s what he was supposed to be doing. He was supposed to be saving Ollie. He tiptoed quietly back out of the room, past his still-sleeping parents. He couldn’t understand how they could fall asleep watching stuff this awesome, and he took one more glance at the TV. The gorilla was still raging. And as Billy inched down the hall, he could hear the big guy’s mighty roars. As he opened the front door as quietly as possible, he could hear the planes and the clatter of their guns that sounded sharp and fast, like a stick brushed across a fence.
And as he shut the door and left the house, Billy faced the great dark of the night. He knew what he was about to do was highly illegal, and big-time in trouble (if he got caught), and was maybe even gonna be scarier than all get out, but in that moment his mind had gone to someplace new. It was a place where pretend and real were all mixed up and he couldn’t quit thinking about that gorilla, because the gorilla looked like he was in trouble and Billy felt sorry for him. Maybe the gorilla had to get in trouble for a good reason. And he thought, I hope that was a real story. I hope that wasn’t pretend. And he wished the big gorilla well, and hoped he’d be all right.
16
The Drak Carnival
Imprisoned toys are a sad and hopeless lot. But whenever a new favorite is brought in, they rouse, just a little. The newbies always gave them a glimmer their former lives. Now, with the arrival of this new favorite, Ollie, they started asking him about “his boy.”
“Is he nice, your boy?” asked Carrot Bunny.
“Oh, yeah!” Ollie said enthusiastically. “He is major nice. Nice. Nicer. Nicerest!”
“What size is he?” asked an octopus who was missing at least one leg.
“Well, he started out a little bigger than me, but that was six birthdays ago. Now he’s six birthdays and a half big.”
All the toys said things like “aaaaaah” or “uh-huh” or “hmmm,” as if they understood. As if they remembered. So Ollie told them all about Billy. How he had been very leaky when he was little, and how they were always together, and what color Billy’s hair was—sorta like dirt mixed with sand—and how Billy smelled after a bath, and about tuck-ins, and slobber kisses, and he told them about huge A-ventures and yum, and the more he talked, the more the other toys liked it, and Ollie realized that he liked it too. Talking about Billy made him feel safe and happy and less unheroic, even though he was tied up here in this strange toy prison.
And that feeling was somehow reaching out and helping all the poor sad toys feel and remember. Then Ollie began to explain how Billy had a hole in his heart, but how it was gone now. The doctor had said so. Then Ollie proudly told them that he had a heart too; it was a bell, sewn into his chest by Billy’s mom. He thumped his chest with one free hand, and the bell tinkled just loud enough for everyone to hear. Everyone, including Zozo.
“Where did the bell come from?” asked One-Eye Teddy.
Ollie was about to answer when they heard a terrible smashing sound from Zozo’s chamber. It was followed by an explosion of shouting so loud, the toys quaked, dust and grit falling from them and adding a dirty haze to the already dark chamber.
“BRING ME THAT HOMEMADE!” Zozo was bellowing.
Ollie could hear the clamor of the Creeps bumping into one another and bumbling around, and he knew that they were coming for him. At the same time, he felt something tugging on his foot. He looked down and his eyes went wide. A tower of other favorites, balancing one on top of the other, like in a circus, were reaching up to him.
“Is this a plan?” Ollie asked One-Eye, who, at the top of the tower, was pulling his foot.
“Yep!” One-Eye said. “It’s our plan for your escape!”
“Well, okay, then.”
Then One-Eye yanked Ollie’s leg really hard and pulled him free. The force of the yank, however, sent the whole stack of them tumbling to the floor. Zozo was still yelling, and the Creeps sounded just steps away.
“Hurry!” Carrot Bunny urged Ollie. “We’ll hold them off!”
Elephant pointed to a dark place in the wall. “That’s the tunnel. It’ll take you out of here.”
Ollie didn’t need to be told twice. He rushed toward the opening. It took him a moment to realize he was the only one running. He swung back around.
“It’s too late for us! We’ve forgotten too much. You still remember!” Elephant insisted. Ollie looked from Elephant to the others. They were all nodding. The Creeps were swarming into the prison room.
Toy after toy broke the
ir bonds. They jumped and slugged and threw themselves at the Creeps.
“Go!” Elephant yelled.
“I’ll come back, I promise,” Ollie told them, meaning it with all his heart. Then he turned and ran.
* * *
The tunnel was twisted and dark. Ollie could hear the Creeps screaming for him in the midst of the sounds of struggle and fighting. The Creeps were on to him! They knew he had escaped, and they were chasing him! The echoing was like a nightmare. Sometimes it seemed like the Creeps were right behind him, and sometimes it seemed like they had somehow surged ahead.
Ollie kept running. He ran until he didn’t think he could run anymore. Then the tunnel ended abruptly, without warning, and he was pitched forward, into the darkness, until he landed—thud—in a patch of soft, oozy sludge and water. Ollie swam toward what little light he could see up ahead until he came to a muddy bank of grassy land. He didn’t like water. It reminded him of being in the washing machine. And this time, he felt even more alone.
Ollie struggled to stand in the mud. He looked up and saw the starry night sky. He was aboveground again! That was good. Then he heard the distant rumble of thunder. Not so good. The stars began to dim as black clouds swept across the sky. He had to keep moving.
He turned to look behind him from where he’d been, and saw a giant smiling head staring down at him, with a sign that said TUNNEL OF LOVE. And drifting in the shallow water at the mouth of the tunnel was an old, sad-looking swan boat. He was in the Dark Carnival Place. He was sure of it! The place where kids were never supposed to go.
Now all he had to do was face the huge, dark night and somehow find home and Billy.
The Lost Page 5
