Balthazar Fabuloso in the Lair of the Humbugs

by I. J. Brindle

  “I know,” Balthazar said, shaking his head. “But dad gave up the space a couple years back.”

  Nobody had been happy about the decision, but they couldn’t afford the rent on it anymore and it didn’t make sense to keep sacrificing the present for the past, Mr. and Mrs. Fabuloso had agreed.

  “Apparently not,” Ignatius observed.

  Specializing in bulky-item storage, Stuffy’s was basically one long concrete strip of hangar-like spaces, each with its own motorized metal roll-up door painted with a number that corresponded to the number on the renter’s key. Balthazar and Ignatius had no trouble finding their space. The security guard, who had direct orders from Stuffy not to let any Fabuloso in until their back rent was paid, posed a bit more of a problem. But further conversation revealed that he suffered from selective blindness, conveniently triggered by the exact amount of money they had on them.

  “Did you have to tell him the exact amount?” Ignatius grumbled as the security guard walked off counting the bills.

  “What? He did ask.”

  “And if he had asked you to throw off all your clothes and dance the hoochie-coochie down Lakeshore, I suppose you would have done that, too.”

  Fishing the key out of his pocket, Ignatius fitted it into the lock. Then, taking a long swig from his flask for courage, he gave it a firm twist and stepped back. With a hum and a clatter, the oversized garage door jerked, clattered, then slowly rolled up.

  “Merlin’s green hairy meatballs!” Ignatius whispered, staring into the cavernous space. “He saved everything.”

  Balthazar, speechless, could only nod as he stared in at the staircases, statues, pianos, bars, seats, sets, dressing tables, sconces, cherubim, seraphim, sinks, fountains, even some of the floorboards from the stage. Everything from his family’s old theater was here. All of it burned a deep gray-black. A museum of charcoal. Not one stick of it usable. The wind from the open door was already weathering away at the surfaces of the objects, filling the air with a fine black dust.

  “Why would my dad keep all this stuff?” Balthazar said.

  “Magical thinking.” Ignatius shook his head pityingly. “He still believed that someone somehow was going to bust out with some spectacular act of restoration magic and put the Fantasticum back together.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Not even the Fabulosos are that fabulous. . . . Ha, look! Gigi! My first crush!” Ignatius exclaimed, stirring up a trail of black dust as he rushed over to a charred wooden mermaid statue. “Oh, and there’s old Psycho, the whist-playing automaton—the first one who ever taught me how to play cards.” Jolted into action by Ignatius’s touch, the mannequin flinched and started shuffling its singed little cards mechanically. “Oh, and there’s the bidet I used to think was a water fountain. . . . Oh, what have I done?” he cried, burying his damaged hands in his gray-streaked hair.

  The whole thing had the bad feeling of a big collection of mistakes. What was the point of delving into the ancient past? What they needed to figure out was what happened to his family yesterday. And how to get them back, like, immediately.

  Looking back the way he had come, Balthazar saw his own footprints in the charcoal dust tracing his path from outside. And then his uncle’s footprints, loop-de-looping another clumsy, meandering path though the highlights of his old theatrical salad days. And then . . . wait . . . there was a third set he hadn’t noticed before, older than the other two and already almost all filled in with a fine layer of black dust.

  Balthazar followed the faint footprints, skirting along the wall, then up a set of metal stairs to a narrow catwalk. It was colder up there and smelled like an old refrigerator. Reaching the top, he almost tripped over Ignatius, who was sitting on the top step, emptying out singed shoeboxes of family photos.

  “More footprints,” Balthazar said, pointing to faint ashy traces going past him.

  “Hmph,” Ignatius grunted, not looking up.

  Leaving his uncle to his old regrets, Balthazar continued on, following the prints to a small, grubby, metal-mesh-covered window. Next to it were a straight-backed folding chair and a rusted old telescope.

  Balthazar leaned down and peered through the eyepiece. And then there it was—across an empty lot and five blocks down, wedged in between a discount cutlery store and a bulk fudge shop—the livid pink splash of the Magic Mansion Dinner Theater. Only instead of his family’s regular signage on the marquee, there was a new headline:

  Magic Mansion Dinner Theater proudly presents

  THE FURIOUS FISTULAS

  in

  EYEBALL-STABBING, TOXIC,

  NUTCRACKING RUBBISH!

  Starts TONIGHT!!!!

  Come if you’re not a loser.

  The Fistulas! Of course, those scheming scumbags had kidnapped his family to get them out of the way so they could take over the show.

  “Uncle Ignatius! Look!” Balthazar shouted.

  His family’s posters had been taken down, replaced by huge sneering portraits of the Fistulas—all dressed as grotesque mockeries of the various Nutcracker characters and all wielding medieval implements of war and torture—axe, chain, whip, saw. Their glaring eyes all seemed to be trained on him, including the eight murderous eyes of the tarantula in the Fistula girl’s hair, a mini double-sided axe Photoshopped onto one of its hairy legs.

  “This is very bad,” Ignatius said, emptying out another box of photographs.

  “Yes, I know. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “You have?” Ignatius’s eyes were wild and a little unfocused, and Balthazar noticed he had his flask out.

  “The Fistulas. They’ve taken over our gig! I told you they were behind this!”

  “You and those Fistulas,” Ignatius snorted.

  “At least I have suspects,” Balthazar retorted angrily, snatching the photo from his uncle. It was a photo of the Fabulous Fabuloso boys—his dad, Ignatius and Benjamin—much like the Polaroid he had found in the secret compartment in his dad’s desk, including the dark splotches blotting out Benjamin’s face. Balthazar’s pecked thumb throbbed uncomfortably.

  “Go wait in the car,” Ignatius ordered, grabbing the photo back.

  “Not until you promise we’ll go to the theater.”

  “Hah! You call that greasy spoon a theater? It’s a joke! I can’t believe your father would stoop so low.”

  “You’re the embarrassment!” Balthazar snapped. “All you care about is sitting around and moaning about the past. I don’t think you even want to find my family! You just want a roof over your head because you’re a washed-up creep that sleeps in his car and has nowhere else to go!” As the words hung in the air between them, it was hard not to hear a ring of truth in them.

  “I don’t have time for this stupidity,” Ignatius said, taking a long swig from his flask.

  “Me neither!”

  “Good. Go wait in the car.”

  Edging past his uncle on the narrow catwalk, Balthazar noticed that all of the photos had similar dark splotches. Fire damage, probably, or—“

  Get out of here!” Ignatius shouted.

  Out in the blazing bright day, Balthazar gasped in lungfuls of fresh, cold air and took stock of his situation. His family was gone. The police thought he was a psycho. And his official guardian, possibly the only relation he had left in the world, was a psycho. He was on his own. And if he was to stand any chance of getting his family back, he was going to have to get some answers.

  Log # 376

  I am not afraid to die, but if it’s going to happen, I want it to be on my own terms—i.e., not dressed in this stupid pleather Sugarplum Executioner costume, riding shotgun in this stupid U-Haul being driven by stupid Sugarplum Blake who is too busy air-guitaring to his stupid demo single to pay attention to the road and is also turning into a zombie.

  Not exactly a zombie, but something freaky. His eyes have gone all squiggly, and this morning I swear that lump on that necklace he stole off me had started to
burrow into that gross patch of weird frostbite on his chest. Of course he totally denied it, but then when he sat down for breakfast his shirt was all the way done up to the top button which he NEVER does. Also, his magic is suddenly way better than is natural for him. When I pointed all of this out, Moms just said I was jealous. Which might be true, but that doesn’t mean I’m lying.

  But the ones I feel worst for are the poor guys bashing around in the back of the U-Haul. All wrapped up in blankets so they can’t even see what’s going on. They didn’t ask to be here. Then again, who did? At the end of the day we’re all prisoners. Prisoners of our fates.

  20. Eyeball-Stabbing, Toxic, Nutcracking Rubbish!

  Leaving Tu T Rage and his crazy uncle behind, Balthazar cut across a derelict empty lot and on down the hill toward the Magic Mansion Dinner Theater.

  Slipping through the backstage door, he found the entire theater in a whirl of activity: lights being hung, cords being moved, sets (obviously designed for a much larger venue) being hurriedly modified to fit the space, etc, etc. As he had hoped, everyone was far too frantic preparing for that night’s opening to notice one small boy slipping behind the holiday-themed manacles, scold’s bridles and other medieval torture devices.

  No magicians worth their silks would ever leave their dressing-room door unlocked, but fortunately the Fistulas hadn’t gotten around to changing the locks and the spare key was still in its old hiding spot above the door frame.

  Safely inside the darkened room, Balthazar flicked on the speaker, filling the shadowy room with the excruciating screeching of the Fistulas’ onstage bickering.

  “Where’s the whip? We’ve rehearsed this, what, like a million times? Whip first, then saw,” Mrs. Fistula sniped.

  “No room for a whip in this gerbil cage.”

  “And whose fault is that? If it wasn’t for your constant screwups making me look bad, I’d be getting ready for the Big Show right now, instead of slumming it in this greasy spoon.”

  “Me making you look bad? You manage that well enough yourself, my dear, with your sickening diet-breath.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Back Fat, but if anything is making people sick it’s that sick costume of yours!”

  “Hah! Says you, you scrawny chicken.”

  “Have you ever wondered why I’m skin and bones, Mr. Droopy-Chaps? Because whenever I look at you I lose my lunch!”

  Not pleasant, but at least it let Balthazar know where they were. Closing the door behind him, he flicked on the lights and . . .

  Oh God.

  There, stacked up all around him, were dozens of terrariums filled with just about every species of snake you could imagine. On top of one of the stacks, Pagan Fistula’s creepy tarantula gave him eight stink-eyes from inside its clear plastic carrying case.

  Okay, then, he thought, he would make this quick.

  His search turned up four jars of toenail clippings; three albums of nasty boudoir photos of Mr. and Mrs. Fistula; six oozy, mostly-used tubes of wart cream; and, in the freezer, a Tupperware container filled with a large collection of dead baby mice. All of it disgusting. None of it a crime.

  Disappointed, he rearranged everything back to how he had found it and was about to slip out when his eye caught something poking out from beneath the shifting coils of the biggest, ugliest orange-striped snake—the corner of the Fistula girl’s sketchbook. The one she hadn’t wanted him to look at.

  Danger! the label on the terrarium read. Many-Banded Krait (Bungarus multicinctus). 100% Deadly!!! Super venomous! Keep out or die!!!

  The snake darted its tongue in and out teasingly.

  The Fistulas could be back any minute. Moving quickly over to the freezer, he took out the Tupperware container of frozen mice and tipped their stiff little bodies this way and that, searching for one fat enough to plug the krait’s mouth just long enough for him to . . . to . . .

  Don’t think, he reminded himself, pulling out a chubby little guy with one paw sticking out stiff in front like Superman.

  Unlatching the lid of the terrarium, he chucked him in.

  In a flash the krait had sprung over, wrapped itself around the mouse and shoved the frozen body into its unhinged mouth until all that was sticking out was one pink little Superman paw.

  Quickly, before he could change his mind, Balthazar reached in and grabbed hold of the book, when—“

  Well, well, well,” a dry voice said. “And who do we have here?”

  Standing behind him was none other than Little Orphan Evil herself, Pagan Fistula.

  The split-second distraction was all the snake needed, and before Balthazar could pull his hand out, it had spit out the mouse and struck at him.

  “Ahhhhhh!” he cried, stumbling back, a bleeding triangle of bite marks in the soft skin between his thumb and forefinger. He’d been bit!

  “Oh my God!” Pagan cried. “You didn’t!”

  Stepping over Balthazar, she rushed to the terrarium. “You did! You tried to feed her a frozen mouse!” Reaching in, she snatched out the slimy, regurgitated rodent and chucked it into the corner of the room. “What is wrong with you?”

  “I—I’m dying!” Balthazar croaked.

  “You always have to defrost them first,” she said fiercely. “If even just the center is a tiny bit frozen, it could make her really sick. Are you okay?” she asked the reptile.

  “Is it okay?” Balthazar gasped incredulously, blackness squeezing in on his vision. “What about me?”

  “The pain of a krait bite is technically not supposed to be excruciating,” Pagan retorted, scooping up the snake, which twisted around her wrist like a stack of fat, ugly orange bangles. “Not at first. The effect of the neurotoxin begins with muscle paralysis. Only after that come the cramps, tremors and, generally, death.”

  “Call . . . an . . . ambulance. . . . ,” Balthazar whispered, stiffness spreading through his joints.

  “What I should be doing is calling the police on you for breaking and entering,” Pagan retorted. “But I have to admit your reaction to this whole situation is quite fascinating.”

  “You know, if you were even a halfway normal person you would see this as an emergency, not a science project!” he said, a little indignantly.

  “More like a psychological study,” Pagan said. “Claudette’s not a krait. She’s a corn snake. Not a bit of venom to her. Anyone who knows anything about animals would know that. Totally different coloring. Not to mention the head shape.”

  “But . . . ,” Balthazar said, suddenly not quite sure of what he felt anymore, “but the sign . . .”

  “That’s just to keep McSneakertons such as yourself out of my sketchbook. But I never thought . . . I mean, you really believed it, didn’t you?”

  Ignoring her, Balthazar flipped open the sketchbook.

  “Hey!” Pagan said, grabbing for it. “That’s private!”

  “Then tell me where you guys have put my family,” Balthazar said, holding the sketchbook out of her reach.

  “Your family? What are you talking about?”

  “You guys didn’t . . . didn’t kill them, did you?”

  “Of course not,” Pagan snorted, lunging again for her book. “We’re vegetarians! We don’t kill living animals, no matter how far beneath us they are on the food chain.”

  “Yeah? Tell that to Mr. Mousesicle.”

  “That’s different,” Pagan said. “Snakes need mice to live. Plus, they’re already dead when you buy them.”

  “And my dove?”

  “I found it like that,” Pagan fired back. “I was trying to help. I don’t care if you believe me.”

  “Good, because I don’t.”

  Jumping up onto the dressing table, out of Pagan’s reach, Balthazar flipped open the sketchbook. The page he opened to had a drawing of himself with a blacked-out tooth, an arrow through his head and the words Die, die, die scratched all around it. Quite well done, actually, for a psychotic person.

  “That’s personal! It’s none of your business.
”

  Then, flipping a few more pages, he found it. The evidence he had been looking for. “All the performers are asleep,” he read out loud. “It’s been a long day for them. I don’t envy them their captivity. Where are they, then?” he demanded fiercely.

  “All around you, Sherlock.” Pagan scowled back. “I was talking about the snakes.”

  “You . . . you turned my family into snakes?!”

  “That’s right,” Pagan retorted.

  Swallowing hard, Balthazar looked around, searching the scaly faces. Was there something slightly Fanella-esque in the expression of the black-and-white one? Was that a mischievous glint he saw in the eyes of two little green ones? And then that large old majestic copper-colored one . . .

  “And right after that we all hopped on our broomsticks and flew off to Satan’s Ball, where we danced naked and bathed in virgins’ blood,” Pagan continued. “In what world is that even possible?”

  “And the snakes?”

  “Are just snakes. Claudette Colbert, Gene Kelly, Charlie Chaplin—all of them perform in our show. What would you call them? Props?”

  “I would call them disgusting, creepy, slithery snakes,” Balthazar said.

  Suddenly Pagan’s hands closed around his ankles, and the next thing he knew she had toppled him off the counter.

  “Give it back!” Pagan shouted, trying to pry the book out of his hands.

  “Not until I get my family back!” Balthazar shouted, holding tight.

  “Like we would want your stinking, suburban goody-two-shoes family.”

  It wasn’t that Balthazar wanted to be wrestling a girl, but she really wasn’t giving him any other choice. Tugging the book back and forth, they rolled about on the floor, knocking over the costume rack and smashing a vase of black tulips. There was a sudden rip and the book exploded between them like feathers in a pillow fight, pages flying everywhere. Drawings of Mr. Fistula hung-over in his underwear. Mrs. Fistula sticking a finger down her throat. Blake squeezing a pimple. Pagan with her eyes X’ed out.