Balthazar Fabuloso in the Lair of the Humbugs

by I. J. Brindle

  “Uh, sure,” he said doubtfully. “But I don’t have magic, so . . .”

  “You don’t?” Gaga lifted the left cucumber slice to stare at him with one sharp blue eye. “Oh, right,” she said, lowering the cucumber back down, “you’re dat one. Vell, not to vorry,” she added, patting his knee. “It must have been one of de others. One of de twins, most likely.”

  That was when Balthazar noticed the water seeping out from under the bathroom door.

  “Who’s in the bathroom?”

  “Freddy and Franky,” Gaga said.

  Balthazar’s heart sank.

  “Guys! Open up!”

  No answer.

  The door was locked from the inside, but with a hard push he was able to get it open, forcing the lock out from the dry-rot-riddled frame and releasing a small tidal wave of water into the hall.

  Swallowing his annoyance, he sloshed his way to the overflowing bathtub, turned off the taps and looked down. Sure enough, there they were, beneath the water, his little brothers, wrapped head to foot in solid iron chains secured by no fewer than seven different locks and one of Fanella’s spandex Magic Gurrrrl thongs. Both were deathly still.

  He hated this. Of course they weren’t dead. Or at least it was highly unlikely.

  “Come on,” he said, giving the tub a kick, “stop hogging the bath.”

  The boys did not move.

  “Want me to tell Fanella you borrowed her thong?”

  Their eyes shot open in terror.

  “Jabingie! Jabungo! Jabinga!” Their magic words rose up in bubbles through the water, sending the tumblers inside the locks rolling. Three seconds later, the twins were out.

  “Sullik llehs esaelp! Esaelp rehl lett nod! Rehl lett nod!” the naked boys babbled in their incomprehensible twin language.

  “It’s not funny,” Balthazar scolded, throwing towels around their knobby shoulders. “You know you’re not supposed to practice escapes without a spotter. What if your magic stopped working?” Why was he the only one who ever worried about this stuff?

  The twins’ faces crumpled like the extra towels Balthazar was using to sop up the pools of water on the floor. “Gnik row dep pots?”

  “You don’t vant to scare de magic out of dem, do you?” Gaga scolded.

  “Can that even happen?”

  “Is magic,” Gaga replied. “Anyting can happen.”

  That was when the sinking feeling started. And not metaphorically. The floor, rotted out from years of water damage, was literally caving in beneath Balthazar’s feet.

  “Get back!” he shouted, pushing the twins away. And then he was falling down, down, down in a cloud of rotten floorboards, cracked tiles and scummy bathwater, like Alice down the rabbit hole only wetter, dirtier and way faster.

  “Razahtlab!” the twins cried.

  Fortunately the busted floor was right above his bed, so instead of crashing down on the rusty-nail-studded floor, he landed with a squelch on his soggy mattress.

  A really stellar human being would have been grateful that he hadn’t cracked his skull, broken any limbs or suffered some horrific spinal injury. But instead Balthazar just felt drenched, jarred and more convinced than ever that today was going to suck.

  “Razahtlab! Razahtlab!”

  “Is dead?”

  Looking up, Balthazar saw Freddy, Franky and Gaga’s white, frightened faces peering down at him through his freshly ventilated ceiling.

  “Not dead,” he grunted. Closing his eyes, he willed it all to disappear. The hole, their faces, his house, his life.

  Bam! The door to his room slammed open and Mr. Fabuloso skidded in, harsh flecks of light bouncing off the sequined lapels of his wrongly buttoned sugarplum costume straight into Balthazar’s eyeballs.

  “Balthazar,” he cried, popping a handful of Tums, “what’s this? Still in bed? You’re supposed to be the sensible one—my wingman of the morning. We have a matinee to perform! A matinee! As in matin, French for ‘morning,’ ” he translated. “I want everyone in the van in ten minutes! Get up, you lazy lizards!” he cried, charging down the hall. “Before life’s liquor in its cup be dry!”

  3. The Horrible Hogsthrottles

  Five arguments, two meltdowns and a burned, weirdly fishy-tasting pancake breakfast later, the Fabulosos came spilling out of the house into the bright winter day. The Sugarplum King (aka Mr. Fabuloso) led the charge, followed by Mother Ginger (Mrs. Fabuloso) doing her best to jolly along Fanella, who was sulking behind her in her glittery, ankle-length Clara nightgown. Next came the twin Rat Kings, babbling away as they half escorted, half dragged the regally tottering Gaga, Queen of the Snowflakes, in her sparkly minidress, spiky headdress and even more spiked high heels, down the path. And, bringing up the rear, Balthazar—now transformed into Nutso, the fabulous Nutcracker Prince, trusty thermos bumping against his side as he peered out through the eyeholes in his oversized papier-mâché Nutso head and tried not to topple over.

  Slipping and sliding, they made their way across the icy, overgrown front yard, through the busted iron gates and over to their vintage, custom-painted Fabuloso-mobile—which Mr. Fabuloso insisted on parking on the street as free advertisement for the show.

  “Great,” Mr. Fabuloso exclaimed, pulling a parking ticket out from under the windshield wiper. “More fan mail from the meter maid.”

  “Fly free, little butterfly,” Mrs. Fabuloso said, folding it up into a little origami butterfly and sending it fluttering off into the blue sky.

  “You know it’s just going to come back,” Balthazar said.

  “Just try and enjoy the moment,” Mrs. Fabuloso instructed, as Mr. Fabuloso scraped away at the iced-over windshield with one of his maxed-out credit cards.

  “Uh-oh,” Gaga said. “Don’t look now . . .”

  So of course they all did.

  Across the street their neighbor, Eutilda Hogsthrottle, was glowering at them from behind the egg-yolk-yellow curtains of her three-time Holiday Lights-contest-winning, four-time Garden Tour-featured home.

  Automatically, they all looked around for what they had done wrong this time.

  “Oh no,” Mr. Fabuloso groaned. “Our sidewalk!”

  Sure enough, while all the rest of the sidewalks on the street had been carefully shoveled into straight, thirty-six-inch-wide paths, the Fabulosos’ stretch was still buried beneath the hardening snowfall of two nights ago.

  “Quick, everyone, get in before we are Hogsthrottled!”

  Fast as they could, they all crammed themselves into the van, fitting their bodies like puzzle pieces into the jumble of silk scarves, ropes, metal rings, swords, billiard balls, silk top hats and other props that had piled up over the years.

  “Hurry!” Fanella urged as the front door of the Hogsthrottles’ house swung smoothly open. “She’s coming!”

  “Oops, Eutilda, I think you dropped something,” Mr. Fabuloso called. Mrs. Hogsthrottle didn’t even blink.

  “Mr. Fabuloso, you and I need to have a talk,” she proclaimed, hands wringing with grim civic duty as she minced her way toward them.

  “Yes, a beautiful day,” Mrs. Fabuloso agreed, slamming her door shut.

  “Balthazar,” Mr. Fabuloso groaned, “what are you doing? Come on! Come on!”

  “Almost there,” Balthazar said, hurriedly stowing his nutcracker head in the back, then squeezing in between Gaga and three rusty saws. “All in!”

  “Now, wait just a minute!” Mrs. Hogsthrottle cried. But she was too late. They were off.

  “Just look at de fish-face on dat sour old mackerel,” Gaga said, chuckling. “I vouldn’t trade places vit her for a million hideously renovated mauve mansions.”

  “Never,” Mr. Fabuloso agreed.

  “Yawon!” the twins nodded. “Sraey noillim ani ton!”

  And, for that brief moment, with the heat from the vents warming his icy toes, his dove nestled peacefully inside his jacket and his family all around him, Balthazar silently agreed.

  “I’ve got a
good feeling about today,” Mrs. Fabuloso declared, pulling an old magnetic audiotape out of the glove compartment and shoving it into the tape deck. “Today is our day to shine!”

  The speakers crackled to life and the tape, all stretched out and hissy from decades of use, began to play The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Do You Believe in Magic,” and the winning, upbeat tune filled the van.

  Blah blah blah blah-blah magic, in a huh-huh’s heart?

  And the magic is mmm-mmm, you know when it starts.

  And one by one, everyone joined in:

  And eet’s magic, yeah baby eet’s de grooviest—

  —tse-eiht oomsy rreb psar a eki lemosewal eefu oy sekam ti!

  Until they were all singing along. Everyone except Balthazar, who, knees bunched up under his chin, had fallen asleep, lulled deeper and deeper by the jumbled cocoon of his family’s voices:

  I will tell you about magic, and it will rattle your coals . . . But ees like trying to teach my daughter about de rock and de rolls . . .

  4. The Furious Fistulas

  Houdini’s handcuffs!” Mr. Fabuloso cursed, slamming on the brakes and jolting Balthazar out of his deep, droolful nap.

  Looking blearily out the window, Balthazar saw a custom leather-and-stud-covered Rolls Royce gliding toward the Magic Mansion Dinner Theater like a precision-machined shark—a car so expensively grungy, so calculatedly corroded, so scuzzily show-offy it could only belong to one family.

  “The Furious Fistulas!” Mrs. Fabuloso gasped.

  The competitive nature of the business meant there was always a degree of friendly rivalry between the various real-magic magicians. But there was nothing friendly about the Fistulas.

  “Vhere dere’s bad eggs, dere’s stink,” Gaga said grimly.

  The Rolls pulled smoothly to a stop in front of the giant rose mural that marked the entrance to the dinner theater. Then the driver-side door swung open and a tall, stooped praying mantis of a man unfolded himself from the car, straightening the skinny yellow snake he wore around his neck like a bolo tie. Next, from the passenger side, stepped a sneering stick of a lady with thin, bloodless lips and long, pointy nails the color of insect guts. Then, from the back, a beefy teenage boy with unnaturally pale skin, aggressively flaring nostrils and greasy dyed-black hair, which he flicked like he was in some kind of anti-shampoo commercial. And, last out, a short, snub-nosed, harshly freckled girl, cupping her hand protectively over a fat brown tarantula nestled in her copper curls like a barrette.

  Balthazar had always had this thing about spiders and snakes. Not a phobia—just plain commonsense survival instinct. But let’s just say, seeing his family’s archenemies heading into their dinner theater with both a snake and a spider was not the most reassuring sight in the universe.

  And how did he know the Fistulas were his family’s archenemies? Because they had announced it themselves a couple of months back.

  Their letter had arrived with the morning mail in a thick maroon envelope, addressed to them in fancy gold calligraphy but with no return address. Gaga had barely even started to open it when the whole thing burst like a firecracker, scattering cockroaches all over the breakfast table. “Vell, clearly ve haf captured someone’s attention,” she remarked, picking up a small rectangle of thick, expensive-looking black card stock covered in spidery silver writing. “Let us see whose.”

  Squinting, she held the card up to the light and read:

  You Fabulosos are finished!

  Time to step aside and let the professionals take over. Resign now or face the consequences.

  Your Worst Nightmare,

  The Fistulas

  “A compliment,” Mrs. Fabuloso declared, brushing the bugs off the scrambled eggs. “Why, a couple of months ago, we weren’t even on their map. We must be coming up in the world.”

  “Or they’re coming down,” Mr. Fabuloso suggested. “Better save this just in case.” But when he had gone to put the threatening letter away, the silvery writing pulled off on his fingers like cobwebs, leaving only a blank card.

  The Fabulosos watched helplessly from their van as the Fistulas strode through the feathery snow toward the box office, capes flapping, chains clinking, nose studs glittering.

  “Look at dose crummy curse-bags,” Gaga tsked, squinting at the Fistulas through her cracked everyday opera glasses. “He has got broken mirror shards on his hat. She is vearing peacock feathers. Dat meathead son of deirs is carrying a copy of de Scottish play in his coat pocket. . . . Now, if dat greaseball could actually read it, I might be impressed—”

  “It’s not grease,” Fanella interjected hotly, “it’s product! Oh my God!” she moaned, ducking down so Blake Fistula couldn’t see her. “I can’t believe he’s going to see me in this dorky costume! Now he’ll never take me seriously as an artist.”

  “Aha, yes, and just as I vas suspecting,” Gaga continued, “dat little midget girl of deirs is vearing her shoes on de wrong feet. Dey’re deliberately trying to bring us bad luck!”

  Spluttering with distaste, Mrs. Fabuloso emerged from reading Mrs. Fistula’s filthy mind. “They’re after our contract,” she reported grimly.

  “I tought de snooty Fistulas vere too high on deir horses to perform anyvhere outside of Toronto.” Gaga frowned.

  “Times are changing,” Mr. Fabuloso said, backing up the van and steering a course for the parking lot behind the dinner theater, “for all of us.”

  Mr. Fabuloso was more pessimistic than usual on account of having recently received his annual rejection from the International Brotherhood of Real Stage Magic—a very old and highly exclusive old-boys club that met in secret in a different undisclosed location every New Year’s Eve to divvy up all the best contracts and solidify their stranglehold control over the best venues for the following year.

  “Who needs those stuck-up old Humbugs.” Mrs. Fabuloso had shrugged it off, folding the rejection letter into another origami animal.

  Mr. Fabuloso had agreed. But there was no denying the Humbugs were making it harder and harder for anyone else to make a living with their magic.

  Looking back at the front entrance to the Magic Mansion, Balthazar saw the Fistula girl, Pagan, watching him from the center of the rose mural, her expression blandly neutral, like she was looking at an orange peel on the side of the road. Deep inside her curls, her bristly spider goggled at him mockingly. Creepy, creepy, creepy.

  Catching him looking, Pagan stuck out her tongue, then turned and ran after her family into the theater.

  Log #367

  Roses are red, roses are pink,

  Too many roses and man, do they stink.

  Bet you didn’t know I was a poet, too, did you? I created this latest masterpiece as I’ve been waiting for Moms and Dad to finish haggling over our tickets with the theater owner, Rose Pfeffenfucher. And in case you forget the name, the lobby is literally stuffed with roses to remind you. Rose carpet, rose sofas, rose light fixtures, rose air fresheners, even rose-colored toilet paper, which is so wrong on so many levels. I AM SUFFOCATING TO DEATH in the middle of a hideous, oversized rose-shaped ottoman, and nobody cares! NOBODY!!!!!!!!!

  Anyway, other than my slow and painful death by respiratory failure, stuff is going pretty good. We’ve successfully infiltrated our enemies’ lair, and our bad-luck charms are already taking effect. Evidence as follows:

  ONE WALLET—dropped unnoticed through a hole in a coat pocket, which will lead to the coat-check girl being falsely accused, fired, and forced into a life of crime to support her six Chihuahuas.

  ONE STOPPED WATCH—which will make its owner miss the train on which he was destined to meet his true love, causing him to live out the rest of his days as an angry divorce lawyer.

  ONE TOOTH—cracked on a breath mint, it will go unnoticed until an abscess forms, resulting in chronic bad breath that even the strongest of peppermints will never be able to mask.

  Mwa ha ha! Mwa ha ha! Mwa ha ha! My evil laugh is drawing the most awesome disturbed looks. But
none of this is giving me the satisfaction it used to. Something is wrong.

  Oh, and by the way, annoying boy . . . the one I was telling you about before? I saw him on the way in. Big moth-shaped eyebrows, old greasepaint smudges around his eyes, rude, judge-y look . . . Humphrey hated him on sight. Smart spider. But never mind. Mr. Normal will be shaken out of his complacency soon enough. Him and the rest of his obnoxious, more-functional-than-thou family. I can at least take some pleasure in that.

  5. A Nutty Fate

  “Hellloooooo!” Mr. Fabuloso shouted, flinging open the backstage door. “Hello? Stu!”

  “Stan,” Balthazar reminded him. “Our stage manager’s name is Stan.”

  “Yes, that’s what I said. Dan!” Mr. Fabuloso called again. “Where is that blasted techie?”

  “Here,” a voice snuffled from behind the door Mr. Fabuloso had just flung open. Then their stage manager emerged, a purplish lump already swelling up on his forehead.

  “Oh no, your head,” Balthazar said.

  “Only a flesh wound.” Stan slurped stoically through his cough drop. “Don’t you worry about me. The show must go on.”

  “Exactly,” Mr. Fabuloso agreed, slapping him hard on the back. “Good man.”

  “Okay, everybody,” Gaga said, dumping the contents of her purse onto the props table. “Pick your poison.”

  “For good luck,” Balthazar explained to Stan as everyone made their choices from the pile: a bit of red string, a mangy rabbit’s foot, a crushed rattlesnake rattle, a flat tin hand, a chipped glass eye, a disintegrating four-leaf clover, a gristly wishbone. . . .

  “Last vun is de charm,” Gaga said, offering Stan a rusty horseshoe.

  “None for me, thanks,” Stan said, blinking his cold-reddened eyes. “I don’t believe in superstition. I believe in lists. And schedules. You know how the Pfeff takes it out of my hide when we start late.”