Balthazar Fabuloso in the Lair of the Humbugs

by I. J. Brindle

  Desk drawer safe under his arm, Balthazar bolted after his uncle out of the den.

  “Not exactly what I’d call a secret compartment,” Ignatius sniffed. They could hear the sound of papers violently crumpling themselves against the door as Ignatius poked around in the contents of the drawer. “But nice try,” he added, fishing two tens and a twenty out of the clutter of bank overdraft notices and tucking them into his gaping robe.

  “Hey,” Balthazar protested, “those aren’t yours!”

  “Look, I know I might look like a Rockefeller here,” Ignatius retorted, “but I’m not getting paid for this babysitting gig. Which means all we have to live off right now is the twenty bucks I found rolled up in your mom’s bra and—”

  “You went through my mom’s underwear!?”

  “That’s not the point. The point is, we need the money.”

  “So does my family!”

  “Not if they never come back, they don’t! . . . Sorry.” Ignatius shook his head. “That came out wrong.”

  Balthazar stared at his uncle. All he saw was a dodgy scruff of a man wearing his mother’s clothes, snooping through his family’s stuff and stealing his family’s money. But he had to believe there was more to him than that. He had to believe it because he had nobody else in the world.

  “The secret compartment’s underneath,” he said at last.

  Balthazar had learned about this secret compartment a couple of months before, when he had lost the quarter that he had been using to practice the stupid disappearing-coin trick.

  There are some houses where people leave money just lying around—dollars show up in the laundry, coins are scattered around as casually as broken crayons or bottle caps. The Fabuloso house wasn’t like that. Any spare change they had went directly into the pickle jar in the den, which they would periodically raid to liberate their latest set of posters from the printer or get their electricity turned back on. So when Balthazar lost his quarter, the den was the place he had to go to get a new one.

  “Balthazar!” Mr. Fabuloso said, his face flushing as he hurriedly dropped the false bottom back into his desk drawer. “What are you doing up?”

  “Practicing,” Balthazar said. “I lost my quarter so I just came down to get another. What’s in there?”

  “In here?” Mr. Fabuloso said, casually batting away a paper moth as he pulled open the drawer. “Nothing, nothing. Just pens and papers, regular desk stuff.” With the false bottom back in place, there was, of course, nothing to see.

  Balthazar was too tired to argue—and the strange, uncomfortable look on his dad’s face gave him this sinking feeling like he probably wouldn’t want to know anyway. “Well, I’ll just go to bed.”

  “Sure,” Mr. Fabuloso said nodding. “Good idea. It’s way past your bedtime.” Not that they ever had anything as organized as bedtimes in their family.

  “Okay,” Balthazar said. “Good night.”

  “Balthazar?”

  Balthazar stopped.

  “Did you actually make it disappear, then?” Mr. Fabuloso asked hopefully. “The quarter?”

  Balthazar shook his head. “It just fell through a crack.”

  “Ah well, no matter,” Mr. Fabuloso said heartily. “Stick with it and you will.”

  And as he did with all awkward and uncomfortable encounters, Balthazar had put it entirely out of his mind. Until now.

  There was no give in the bottom of the drawer as he pressed down on it. Not a pressure latch, then. No pinholes. No sliding pieces. Maybe it really was just nothing, like his father had said . . . but then he noticed a hairline-thin space around the top lip of the drawer. Fitting the thin end of a letter opener into the groove, he ran it around the edge until he felt a slight resistance, then pushed down. There was a small clicky sound and the smooth false bottom popped free of its snug frame.

  Carefully, Balthazar lifted out the bottom to reveal the hidden compartment beneath, which contained:

  twelve losing lottery tickets

  a bunch of Clissold’s nasty reviews that Mr. Fabuloso claimed to never read

  a blotchy old Polaroid

  a random block of wood

  a Hair Club for Men brochure.

  “Hair Club for Men?” Ignatius guffawed, fishing out the flier. “Don’t tell me Samson is losing his locks.”

  “Just a little patch at the back,” Balthazar said, frowning. He squinted at the old Polaroid. It was a photo of three young men standing in front of the old Fantasticum before it burned down. One tall, with a thick head of dark hair and a luxuriant mustache, giving the camera a thumbs-up with a flashing movie-star smile. His father. Another, Ignatius, broad-chested and beetle-browed, with an impatient smile that said there were better things he could be doing than posing for this silly photo, and didn’t you just wish you knew what those things were. Both brothers had their arms draped around the shoulders of the third young man. He was high-shouldered and skinny, his face blobbed out by dark splotches in the Photo’s emulsion. “Benjamin,” Balthazar whispered, squinting harder. But the harder he stared, the deeper and more impenetrable the blobs became.

  “Aha,” Ignatius interrupted, picking up the wooden block. “And what do we have here!”

  “A block of wood?”

  “You’re a block of wood,” Ignatius retorted, clunking him over the head with it. “This is a puzzle box.”

  Rubbing his head, Balthazar looked again, this time noticing the almost imperceptible differences in the grain where the pieces of wood had been artfully fitted together.

  Holding the block in from of him, Ignatius glared at it for a full minute. “Un-huh, un-huh. And then . . . but . . . aha! Yes!” Gingerly he pushed on the top right edge until it slid out slightly. Working from there, he started sliding the different sides in and out, the well-oiled segments moving silent as a secret, faster and faster, back and forth, back and forth, until finally, twenty-seven steps later, the top of the block popped off in Ignatius’s hand, revealing beneath it . . . another, smaller box. Mahogany, brass and mother-of-pearl.

  “Seriously, brother? Seriously?”

  Impatient now, he twisted and turned the metal and wood until, seventy-six steps later, there was a whirring sound inside and a circle on the top of the box retracted like the iris in a camera.

  Shoulder to shoulder, Balthazar and his uncle stared as a little platform rose up out of the box, holding another, even smaller puzzle box—this one gray and lumpy and covered in sharp-tipped spikes like a sea urchin. Ignatius stared at it, baffled.

  “Why don’t you have a go?” he said at last, tossing it to Balthazar.

  “Me? No, I . . . ouch!”

  One of the spikes had jabbed into his palm.

  “Will you look at that,” Ignatius breathed. “Marvelous.”

  “You mean my puncture wound?”

  “No,” he said, pointing at the spiky box, “that.” The drop of Balthazar’s blood was shooting up the pointy spine, spreading out through the entire urchin-thing until all the gray was tinged pink.

  “It needed blood to open?” That was a little creepy.

  “Not just any blood,” Ignatius said. “Fabuloso blood.”

  Then, with a sighing little shudder, the spikes softened and fell open to reveal a smallish, rusty key with the number 28 stamped into it.

  “Get dressed,” Ignatius said. “We’re going for a drive.”

  18. The Angry Scotsman

  It was hard for Balthazar not to feel annoyed with the oblivious brightness of the sun as it beamed cluelessly down at him like some half-witted aunt as he waited outside for his uncle. After finding the key, Ignatius acted all in a hurry but then seemed to find every excuse to delay: checking the weather report, making four extended trips to the bathroom, and now ransacking Balthazar’s dad’s closet in a search for something “suitable” (i.e., something that would actually close over his big hairy tummy).

  Balthazar had come outside, partially to shame his uncle into hurrying up but mostly to
avoid strangling him with one of his dad’s “hopelessly bourgeois” ties.

  Unscrewing his thermos, Balthazar poured himself a cup of cocoa to warm his hands and steady his frustration. Eyes closed, he breathed in through his nose, inhaling the sweet, comforting smell of the cocoa and feeling the velvety warmth of the steam against his eyelids. Then he breathed out through his mouth. Then in again through his nose, drawing in the rich, hot aroma of . . . old-man breath?

  Opening his eyes, Balthazar found himself staring into a gaunt face—all bushy eyebrows, dingle-dangle earlobes and a grubby tartan eye patch. Seeing Balthazar staring at him, the old man made a loud, disgruntled bagpipe honk through his sizable nose.

  “Ah!” Balthazar jumped, spilling his cocoa down the front of his jacket.

  “Buttafingahs,” the old man scolded in a thick Scottish brogue. He was very tall and very thin, with long, knobbly-kneed bare legs sticking out from under a moth-eaten museum piece of a kilt.

  “Can I help you?” Balthazar asked.

  “Yew?” the man snarfled spittily. “What makes y’think yew can help anyone?”

  “I don’t know,” Balthazar confessed.

  “Spoken like a true failure,” the Scotsman grunted, fishing a stubby pipe out of his pouch and furiously packing its bowl with foul-smelling tobacco.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  “Wasting my time,” the old man shouted at the sky. “It’s perfectly obvious he’s not the one.”

  “What one?”

  “The one I’m looking for. The one yew hain’t.”

  And before Balthazar could ask any more questions, the old man had sucked himself into his pipe and vanished into the air in a puff of smoke.

  “Wait!” Balthazar cried, but a gust of wind had already blown him away.

  “You just imagined this,” the old Scotsman’s voice whispered in his ear.

  The pipe hung in the air for a second, then dropped onto the sidewalk and shattered.

  “Balthazar, yoo-hoo!”

  Looking up, Balthazar saw his neighbor, Mrs. Hogsthrottle, slipping and sliding miserably toward him along the icy sidewalk, wringing her hands like they were someone’s neck.

  “Just the person we were looking for, weren’t we, Edwin?” she said to the puffy red parka bobbing along behind her like a balloon.

  “Snort,” the pink nose tip poking out from the hood snuffled in agreement.

  “Did . . . did you just see that?” Balthazar asked, a faint memory that he couldn’t quite recall nagging at his brain.

  “That pipe you just dropped?” Mrs. Hogsthrottle said sadly, waving away some last imaginary smoke clouds and coughing a bit from the nonexistent fumes. “Yes, yes, I’m afraid I did. Filthy habit. And so young. But what can one expect, with the role models you’ve been exposed to. And I’ll tell you something else we’ve seen,” she added, eyes swimming tragically behind her tinted glasses. “Believe me, I wish we hadn’t, but we did, didn’t we, Edwin? It was just so terribly disappointing.”

  The pink nose sniffled in the affirmative.

  “What did you see?” Balthazar asked, hoping she might have noticed something useful, some kind of a clue. She certainly snooped enough for it.

  “The boarder,” she replied triumphantly. “No point denying it. We’ve seen him ourselves, haven’t we, Edwin? Your family has taken in a boarder.”

  “Boarder?”

  “Somebody who pays to rent a room in your house,” she explained. “Which is strictly against our local zoning laws. Which is why we are forced to go to City Hall again to lodge another complaint. We hate to do it,” she added, wringing her hands some more, “but if things continue on like this, next thing you know we’ll have vagrants sleeping in our doorways and peeing in our azaleas. Ah! Look! He’s right there! Right there behind you.”

  Turning, Balthazar saw his uncle charging out of the house in a crazy wreck of a tuxedo. Also, he had forgotten to put on shoes. Ignatius looked at Balthazar and looked around, like he was expecting to see someone else. Not seeing whoever he was looking for, he shook his head in irritation and, spinning around abruptly, headed back inside.

  “Him? Oh no, that isn’t a boarder. That’s, er . . . well, that’s my uncle.”

  “His uncle,” Mrs. Hogsthrottle repeated to the red parka. “Did you hear that? Along with the grandmother. Next it will be a whole raft of cousins, no doubt. How many of you are crammed in there now?”

  “Just me and him,” Balthazar said as Ignatius burst out of the house again, still with no shoes, but now with his umbrella under one arm and a stuffed badger under the other.

  “Aha!” he cried, like he was expecting to surprise someone. He held up a hand casually like he was just checking the rain, then turned around and went back inside again. It was almost like he was trying to convince people he was crazy.

  “It’s only temporary,” Balthazar added, “until my family gets back.”

  “Back?” Mrs. Hogsthrottle pounced. “Back from where?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “What? Did you hear that, Edwin?” Mrs. Hogsthrottle gasped. “It’s outrageous. His family just upped and left this poor, poor boy here with that . . . that Wild Man of Borneo!

  It’s negligence, that’s what it is, isn’t it, Edwin? Quick, find me the number for Child Services.”

  “It’s not like that,” Balthazar protested. “They disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?” Mrs. Hogsthrottle gasped, with a thrilled, tragic smile. “All of them? Perhaps never to return? Oh my dear child, but that’s terrible. You were right to confide in us,” she cried, grabbing Balthazar suddenly and smooshing him into her big, wooly bosom, “wasn’t he, Edwin? You need people with level heads to help you through this difficult time. To guide you through any estate issues that will certainly come up. How do feel about your house? A little big for one boy, hmmm?”

  “They’re coming back,” Balthazar said, wrestling his way out of her smothering hug.

  “Of course, of course they are,” Mrs. Hogsthrottle simpered, shooting a significant and satisfied look at the red parka. “Believe me, we understand the whole situation. You didn’t ask to be born into that family of yours. We’ve always felt so sorry for you, haven’t we, Edwin?”

  “You aren’t sorry,” Balthazar blurted.

  “But . . .”—Mrs. Hogsthrottle blinked—“but of course I am, aren’t I, Edwin?”

  “No, you aren’t,” Balthazar retorted, his face getting hot. “You love it when horrible things happen to my family! This is probably, like, the best news you’ve ever had in your whole miserable life. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m going to get my family back. And when I do, I’m going to . . . going to . . . pee on your azaleas!”

  Behind him there was a sudden explosion, and then a rusted-out, smoking pile of scrap metal came lurching out from behind the house in shuddering stop-start fits.

  “What in God’s name—” gasped Mrs. Hogsthrottle.

  “All aboard!” Ignatius shouted, throwing open the passenger-side door and releasing a small cascade of empty Vienna sausage tins onto the road.

  Balthazar hesitated. The passenger seat was filled with sharp, splintery wood fragments of an old, busted-up door. “What’s the door for?”

  Ignatius stared at him incredulously. “To go through. You know, knock, knock, open, shut. Step lively, now,” he said, tossing a dinged-up old doorknob into the back. “She craps out if I idle too long.”

  Not wanting to give the Hogsthrottles the satisfaction of seeing his distress, Balthazar clambered in.

  “The welds on those hinges are a bit dodgy,” Ignatius warned. “Best to hold it tight shut, just in case.”

  “Is . . . is this where you live?” Balthazar asked, noticing an old sleeping bag poking out of the piles of dirty clothes and mounds of old newspapers and candy wrappers piled high in the backseat.

  “You call this living?” Ignatius scoffed, craning his neck to see around
the huge clump of decomposing traffic tickets wadded under the windshield wipers.

  “If you stop for a second I can take those off.”

  “Not in my car two minutes, and already the kid’s messing with my filing system.”

  19. Stuffy’s Storage

  Enveloped in its own personal cloud of exhaust and engine fumes, Ignatius’s old junker panted and wheezed along beside the vast frozen expanse of Lake Ontario, the gray ice sprinkled like confetti with skaters taking advantage of the record-breaking cold. Shoreside, bundled-up tourists poked along the lakefront stores, window-shopping for artisanal pottery, maple fudge, faux-beaver-fur potholders and other regional specialties. They had been driving for some time in silence, Ignatius studying Balthazar out of the corner of his eye.

  “So are you going to tell me what that old fart was after, or are you going to make me guess?”

  “Who . . .” Balthazar started. “Oh, you mean the Hogsthrottles?”

  “No, before that. The angry, kilt-wearing, geriatric Scottish bastard. What did he want? Did he ask about me?”

  Balthazar frowned. “I didn’t see anyone like that.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” Ignatius muttered.

  Hooking a left, the car shuddered inland and uphill toward Dalhousie Street, the street that marked the boundary between the trendy tourist area and the auto-body shops and warehouses beyond—and also the street where the Magic Mansion Dinner Theater was located. Only instead of turning right on Dalhousie, the car continued uphill before making a right on Albatross Avenue and pulling up behind a large concrete lump of a building with a washed-out sign that read TU T RAGE, weathered down from the original STUFFY’S STORAGE.

  “Stuffy’s?” Balthazar frowned.

  “Where we used to keep the spillover from the Fantasticum. The really oversized stuff,” Ignatius explained.