Balthazar Fabuloso in the Lair of the Humbugs

by I. J. Brindle

  “My book!” Pagan’s cry was like that of a wounded animal.

  A page wafted down in front of Balthazar. “The performers,” the caption read. Beneath it was a detailed drawing a knotted tangle of sleeping snakes.

  “Snakes,” she said, furiously snatching the paper away from him. “I told you.”

  “Oh.”

  In the quiet of the room, Mr. and Mrs. Fistula’s arguing became more distinct over the intercom. “You think I wanted this? I never even wanted a family!” “How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. . . .”

  “Shut up!” Pagan shouted, turning off the speaker. “Just shut up!”

  “I should go,” Balthazar said, picking up a couple of Pagan’s scattered journal pages and handing them to her.

  “So your family’s really missing, then?” Pagan demanded. “That wasn’t just an excuse to spy on us?”

  “They really are missing,” Balthazar confirmed.

  “Lucky,” she muttered. “I wish it had been my family that disappeared.”

  “Me too.”

  Looking down, he saw one of the sketchbook pages floating on top of the puddle of spilled tulip water. It looked blank at first, but as it soaked up the water the paper became translucent and the drawing on the other side came through. A drawing of a man with a big black scribble in the middle of his face.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Nobody,” Pagan said, lifting up the wet page and shaking it out. “Just a figment of my nervous breakdown.”

  Which was when Balthazar heard the muffled snarfling and struggling noises coming from a large chest just outside the dressing room.

  21. The Snarfling Box

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Pagan lied.

  Ghhhhrrrrrsnfflesffl.

  There it was again.

  Balthazar pushed past Pagan and moved out into the hall. The sound was coming from a largish-sized box all wrapped up in designer-rusted chains and secured with a large padlock. “What’s in here?”

  “Nothing.” Another ghhhhrrrrrsnfflesnffl snarfled out of the box. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

  “Trust you? Really? Give me the key.”

  “Key?” Pagan snorted. “We don’t have a key.”

  “Then how do you . . .”

  Raising the padlock to her mouth, she blew on it and it popped open in her hand. “Magic.” She rolled her eyes. “Duh.”

  Throwing off the chains and unhinging the hasp, she let the front of the box drop to the floor with a flat, thudding whap. “There,” she said. “Satisfied?”

  There were a number of words Balthazar could have used at that exact moment to describe his feelings. Disturbed, creeped-out, traumatized . . . satisfied was not one of them.

  For there, in front of him, squished into a fetal position inside the box, wearing a pleather toy-soldier straitjacket and matching gag, was his family’s poor stage manager, Stan Snopes.

  “Oh no, you guys would never kidnap anyone,” Balthazar said sarcastically. “You’re vegetarians.”

  “It’s not what you think,” Pagan said, undoing the buckles on Stan’s gag and straitjacket. “Go on,” she ordered sternly. “Tell him.”

  Stan spit the gag from his mouth like a scolded dog. “It wasn’t anything personal,” he said apologetically. “I just saw my chance and I had to take it.”

  Balthazar was confused. “Chance for what?”

  “To be a star.”

  “In exchange for sabotaging your family’s act, my folks agreed to let him have a little part in our show.” At least she was polite enough to look embarrassed. “He’s rehearsing.”

  “You . . . you sabotaged us?” Balthazar demanded of Stan.

  “I didn’t think it was in me, either,” Stan snuffled. “But then when the opportunity presented itself, it just seemed so right, like it was opening a door to the real me! Not that it was easy, mind you. Like swapping out your dove for the parakeet. That was some really tricky sleight of hand.”

  Balthazar thought back to bumping into Stan on his way to the stage. The flying white papers, the fluttering hands . . . classic sensory overload. And he had fallen for it like a total rube.

  “I had some other great stuff planned as well,” Stan added, popping a fresh cough-drop into his mouth, “but then you guys up and took off in the middle of the show, so . . .”

  “We figured you were all so humiliated, you ran off and hid under a rock somewhere,” Pagan said. “We had no idea that the disappearance was for real.”

  “And what about Rover?” Balthazar demanded. “What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing,” Stan insisted. “She just had a little dust-up with Sweetums.”

  “Sweetums?”

  A creepy feeling prickled over Balthazar—a feeling that something was watching them, something intelligent, cunning and not quite human. And along with that feeling came a smell—sweet and putrid like rotting meat.

  Looking up, he saw a white bird with rubbed-out black eyes peering down at him from atop a stack of boxes. The parakeet! The same one that had ripped through his costume, humiliated him in front of a live audience and caused him to abandon his family. The same one that had almost killed his dove. A frostbitey ache throbbed up in his pecked thumb.

  “Ack-ack-ack,” it squawked.

  Stan’s head jerked up, a dopey grin spreading over his face. “Oh, there you are, Sweetums. Come to papa.”

  With a chalkboard screech, the bird swooped down and landed on his head, its sharp black talons pushing through the slicked-down stringy strands of his hair and deep into his scalp.

  “Oh look, it’s got a chip off the end of its beak, poor thing,” Pagan said.

  “It’s not poor,” Balthazar retorted. “It’s evil.”

  “Evil is a human construct. It’s just a bird being a bird. You’re a cute little thing, aren’t you?”

  “Ack,” it chirped again. “Ack-ack-ack.”

  Catching Balthazar’s eye, the parakeet cocked its head and made a low, tock-tock-tocking whistle. Balthazar was unable to tear his eyes away. He felt like one of those mastodons getting sucked down into a tar pit.

  Narrowing his eyes, he stared back at the bird. Bird McNuggets, he thought. Barbecued parakeet on a stick.

  For a moment they were deadlocked, the tension buzzing between them in a high, very uncomfortable frequency only the two of them could hear, the thumbscrew pain in his hand throbbing harder and harder.

  Then, just as Balthazar was about to totally lose it, the parakeet blinked its round eyes and looked away.

  Released, Balthazar staggered back into Pagan.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she demanded.

  “Didn’t you see what just happened? Those black wriggly things coming out of its eyes?”

  Pagan stared at him blankly. “You’ve been under a lot of stress.”

  “You didn’t see anything?”

  “I saw you glaring at that poor bird like you wanted to eat it. I think you traumatized it.”

  “Ack,” the bird squawked, tilting its head. “Ack-ack.” Pushing off from Stan’s head, it launched itself at Balthazar, talons out. Balthazar barely managed to duck in time. Turning, he watched the creature flap off toward the stage, skimming low over the greasy head of Blake Fistula, who was swaggering down the hall toward them, the chains on his pleather Nutcracker Prince costume jangling like out-of-tune Christmas bells.

  “Whoa, watch the hair, you dumb cluck!” he shouted.

  22. Canoodling

  “Oh crap,” Pagan said. Then, to Balthazar: “Don’t move and maybe he won’t notice you.”

  Balthazar had no other choice, so he froze.

  “There you are, ya drab little spitball,” Blake said, checking his greasy hair in the mirrored knob on the top of his cane. “I’ve been looking for you for, like, two minutes.”

  “Maybe if you spent less time looking at yourself, you’d have found me faster,” Pagan retorted.

  “Har, har,” Blake said.
“Bitter much?”

  Amazing, Balthazar thought, hardly daring to breathe. Pagan was right, Blake Fistula was so caught up with checking his reflection, he hadn’t noticed him at all.

  “Anyway,” Blake continued, “I need you to find that helper-on-the-stage guy, you know, that wormy dweeb whatshisname?”

  “You mean our stage manager?” Pagan asked with withering scorn. “The one who’s standing right under your stuck-up nose?”

  “My nose is not stuck-up, you stunted little Ewok,” Blake retorted, nostrils flaring. “It’s perfectly aquiline. If you don’t believe me, check Magic Beat magazine, September ninth, the one I’m on the cover of? They say so themselves, page eighteen. They also say that I have a mysterious and elusive allure. Anyway, you need to tell that lame-o list-making organizey schedule guy—”

  “You mean Stan, who is right here in front of you,” Pagan reminded him. “Hearing every word you say.”

  “Bingo,” Blake said, swatting away a fly that had started circling his fruit-scented, greasy hair. “Tell him they need him in the dining room.”

  “Dining room?” Stan said. “Don’t they need me on the stage? Shouldn’t we be rehearsing my part?”

  “Your part?” Blake said with a look of surprise. “Didn’t anyone tell you? Your part got cut. On account of you, you know, sucking so bad? But they do need you for cleanup. Something gross is stinking up the place but no one can find where it’s coming from.”

  Nodding, Stan squeaked off droopily in his pleather straitjacket and chaps.

  “What a schmo,” Blake sneered.

  Balthazar shrugged noncommittally, then remembered that he was not supposed to move. Too late. Blake had already pinned him to the wall with the hard metal tip of his cane.

  “What’s this?” Blake demanded.

  “Nobody,” Balthazar said.

  “Yes, well, that’s obvious,” Blake snorted. As the beefy teenager leaned in on his cane to get a closer look, an unpleasant coldness pulsed up from the necklace that hung around his neck. There was also something weird about his pupils. “It looks familiar. Do I know it?”

  “Of course you do,” Pagan said. “He’s . . .” She hesitated, staring at Balthazar impassively. “He’s a busboy.”

  “Busboy,” Blake cackled. “Speckles is trying to make nice with the Normals again?”

  “Shut up,” Pagan snapped.

  “Blake-eeeeee,” Mrs. Fistula’s voice shrilled out from the stage. “Momsy is waiting for her Nutcracker Prince to come rescue her!”

  “Your princess is calling you,” Pagan said.

  “Don’t be disgusting,” Blake said. “You just want to be alone so you can show your boyfriend your bruises.” Smirking, Blake swiveled on Balthazar. “Guess you go for the dumb, ugly types, huh?”

  “Blake-eeeeee!” Mrs. Fistula shrilled again, more fiercely this time.

  “Coming!” Blake said, skulking back toward the stage.

  “Ugh,” Pagan groaned, turning back to Balthazar. “My brother is such a cretin.”

  “My sister’s in love with him,” Balthazar admitted, rubbing the bruised spot on his chest where Blake’s cane had been pressing.

  “Then she’s a cretin, too.”

  A fly buzzed by. Quick as a frog’s tongue, Pagan caught it out of the air and deposited the buzzing speck in a small metal mesh change purse already swarming with dark little bodies. “Dinner for Humphrey,” she explained.

  “Yum.”

  “Pagan!” Mrs. Fistula’s shriek interrupted them. “What’s this about you canoodling with the help?”

  “Quick,” Pagan said to Balthazar. “Get out of here!”

  23. The Serpant’s Giant Jaw

  Hidden inside a partially closed spike-filled nutcracker-shaped coffin, Balthazar watched as the Fistulas tromped back to continue their dress rehearsal, all cursing each other loudly. He had no idea whether this repulsive gang was behind his family’s disappearance or not, but there were still too many questions swirling about the theater to leave just yet, like what was the deal with that strange bird and who was responsible for that terrible, terrible smell which, even as he stood there, was growing stronger and stronger.

  From the area of the stage, a swarmy, buzzy sound had started up, getting louder and louder. It was eerily familiar. Then suddenly a harsh, terrified shriek ripped through the theater.

  “No!” he heard Pagan scream. “Moms!”

  Without thinking, Balthazar leaped out of the coffin and ran toward the stage.

  Skidding into the wings, at first Balthazar couldn’t see anything but white clouds of plaster dust. Then he started to make out serpentine forms moving on the stage, the red glow of their eyes piercing through the white clouds like searchlights in a snowstorm. The giant nutcracker snakes that had been a static part of the set had come to life. From the mouth of one, Mrs. Fistula’s skinny white legs kicked wildly. “Let her go!” Pagan shouted as the massive serpent slurped up her mother’s legs.

  “Pagan!” Balthazar tried to stop her, but she had already run off deeper into the blinding cloud of white dust.

  Choking on the stench that had engulfed the stage, Balthazar searched for her through the freezing fog. Then, up ahead, in the very heart of the cold and the stink, he saw Blake, caught in the red spotlight of another snake’s eyes. Fearless and defiant, his hair whipping dramatically around his chiseled cheekbones as he brandished his cane in fast, acrobatic moves, he looked like one of those handsome mythological heroes—the kind that always saves the day against unbeatable odds.

  “Kee-yah!” Blake shouted, swinging his staff hard into the serpent.

  CRASH! The thing exploded into the air in a mass of flying metal scales and swarming black flies.

  “Wow,” Balthazar said. “That was amazing.”

  “What are you still doing here, busboy?” Blake demanded, swatting away a fly from his necklace. His lips were blue and he was shivering. Then more and more of the strange black flies started flocking to the necklace, like iron filings to a magnet. Faster and faster.

  “It’s the necklace!” Balthazar said. “It’s somehow attracting them!”

  “Back off. It’s mine!”

  “You gotta take it off!”

  But it was too late. A cloud of flies had enveloped Blake, and he was now just a struggling mass of black. Then one by one the fallen metal scales started sticking to him as well, until the giant serpent had re-formed around him. Baring its teeth, the snake turned on Balthazar with a terrible sucking hiss.

  Taking off, Balthazar bashed into Mr. Fistula, his glasses cracked and coated in white dust. “You have no idea who you’re messing with!” the panicked magician shrieked blindly as another serpent clanked up behind him. “We aren’t your usual stage-show hacks. We have connections! Big-time connections! In fact, my aunt-in-law just happens to be—”

  “Mr. Fistula, look—”

  But before he could finish his warning, the serpent’s giant jaw dropped down and, with a loud slurping sound, it sucked Pagan’s dad away as easily as if he were a dust bunny.

  “Pagan!” Balthazar shouted, panting and stumbling through the fog. And then he found her, alone in the middle of the stage, three monster nutcracker snakes herking and jerking their way toward her like out of some old monster movie.

  “Balthazar?” Pagan stared at him confused. “What are you doing here?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” he said, frankly a bit stunned to be there himself. “Saving you?”

  “Saving me,” Pagan repeated in a way that sounded like she might almost have burst out laughing if their lives weren’t so obviously about to end in a brutal and terrifying fashion.

  The metal serpents had now circled them entirely, cutting off all escape routes. Back to back, the two kids stared up at the three massive mouths, swarming with blackness, moving down for the take. In a second they would be snake food. But there was something off about the trajectory of their three monstrous nutcracker heads. All three serpent
s were so focused on devouring their prey that they were completely oblivious to the collision course they were on with one another. Which meant . . .

  “Duck!” Balthazar shouted, throwing himself on top of Pagan.

  SMASH! The three snakes collided right above their heads, filling the air with an explosion of flies, shattered ice and twisted metal.

  Then all was silent except for the crazy jackhammering of their hearts. It was over.

  “Mmmh-mmmfff.” The muffled voice was coming from underneath him.

  “Oh right,” he said, moving off Pagan. “Sorry.”

  Sitting up, they looked around at the wreckage of smashed metal and icy cogs already dissolving into puffs of putrid, chilly fog, the flies scattering back to wherever they had come from. The percussive force of the impact had created a perfect debris-free circle all around them. Otherwise, the place was a disaster. And the Fistulas were gone. Pagan was freakishly pale, like a ghost. Plaster dust, Balthazar realized. Which was coating him, too.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Pagan said, “I’m just perfect.” Then she burst into tears.

  “Oh no. Don’t . . . please . . .” Quickly he unscrewed his thermos, poured some cocoa into the cap and offered it to her.

  She wouldn’t take it, so Balthazar drank it himself as he waited awkwardly for her to stop crying.

  “Do you think . . . ,” Pagan said at last, pinching her arm viciously like she was hoping to wake herself up from a bad dream, “do you think our families are still alive?”

  “Yes,” Balthazar said. And as he said it, somehow he knew it was true.

  “What the hell is going on in there?” The Pfeff’s voice filtered in from the lobby, getting closer. “What’s all the racket?”

  Pagan and Balthazar looked around in panic at the wreckage.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Balthazar said. “Now!”

  24. Brumating

  “So,” Balthazar said as he and Pagan tugged a tarp-covered dolly loaded high with snake terrariums along the boardwalk that skirted the shore of the huge frozen expanse of Lake Ontario. “Got any suspects?”