“Jasper!” Sara hollered through the gap in the doorway. “Come on out of there, you cantankerous custodian!”
The sisters stood before the door, braced for action and ready to enter. There had been a single occasion in which they had seen a glimpse of the interior of the room beyond. This had occurred when Jasper had emerged from within to harass the Beans, snatching Jack’s backpack and covertly planting a recording device inside of it.
Based on what they had been able to see of the room during that encounter, the sisters believed it was nothing more than a janitorial supply closet. Jasper, however, insisted on referring to it as his “office” (a rather curious choice, the Beans felt).
Consequently, there was no telling what they would encounter in the room, especially with all the odd sounds emanating from the place. But the sisters felt they were prepared to face anything, no matter the danger.
However, they had a strong suspicion that Jasper was lying in ambush, waiting for them to cross the threshold so he could spring some diabolical trap upon their persons. It couldn’t hurt to try to lure him out to the hall first, where the sisters might nullify some of the janitor’s advantage.
Sara rested one hand on the door’s handle, ready to pull it all the way open. Maria stood directly beside her sister, ready to barge in and take action. After all, it was their dad who had been dragged in there - they were going to go in, even if Jasper refused to show himself.
“You’re not scaring us with all your creepy tricks, and you had better not have done anything to our dad!” Maria shouted. “Why don’t you come on out here, you broom-swinging lunatic?”
The taunts of the sisters went unanswered. The only sound was the humming of the heating system, louder now that the door was ajar. Maria and Sara exchanged a glance with one another, their eyebrows scrunched together as they considered the scenario.
It was usually pretty easy for children to get Jasper all worked up, and he became particularly irritated whenever the Beans got involved. Yet, he was not rising to the bait and answering their taunts. He was demonstrating abnormally strong self-control, at least by his standards.
“You know, we’re out here smearing all this gunk all over your precious, shiny floors!” Sara shouted into the room. “Pizza cheese, and mashed potatoes, and oh - what is that, tiramisu? Are you too lazy to do anything about it, you great big galoot?”
“We’re scuffing the living daylights out of these floors!” Maria added, loudly squeaking her sneakers back and forth upon the tiles beneath her feet for emphasis. “And I’ve been dragging mud through this place allllll dayyyy looong! It’s starting to look like a swamp in here!”
Still, there was no answer, and the sisters were perplexed. Jasper’s obsessive compulsion for cleanliness was his greatest vulnerability, and he was quick to anger whenever somebody left a scuff mark upon his immaculate floors.
If he was hiding in the room beyond, waiting in ambush, he would be hard pressed to resist the urge to rush out in defense of his shiny floors, swinging a broom or mop while uttering vehement exclamations about the wickedness of children. Yet… there was still no response.
“Hmm,” Maria grunted. In a low voice, she spoke to her sister. “He’s not coming out...”
“We’re going to have to go in after him, and risk being ambushed,” Sara said.
“Let’s give it one more shot,” Maria suggested.
Sara nodded in agreement, and then shouted, “Don’t make us come in there after you - if you do, there’s no telling what kind of monkeyshines we might get up to, you doorknob! We’re just a couple of messy kids, after all, and we might do something crazy, like get your cleaning supplies all out of order, and jumble everything up!”
There still came no answer from within the room. Even the threat of bringing disorder to his neatly lined shelves of supplies was not enough to ignite Jasper’s short fuse and prod him into folly. The sisters were surprised and disturbed by the amount of self-control the janitor was displaying, which was nothing short of astounding, based on his past record.
The bearish villain had huge advantages in terms of size, strength, and resources. Typically, the Beans would need to exploit his weaknesses in order to defeat whatever nefarious scheming he was up to.
“I thought that would get some kind of reaction out of him,” Maria said, her face conveying surprise. “Looks like Jasper’s really holding it together today. Must be part of this bizarre ‘Phantom’ business he’s gotten up to.”
“You’ve left us no choice, Jasper - we’re coming in!” Sara shouted.
“And you had better not take a swing at us with your mahogany broom, or you’ll just make it worse on yourself,” Maria warned.
Though Jasper was extremely stubborn, he must have surely learned by now that the Beans simply would not back down against him, no matter the odds that were stacked against them. They could not be intimidated, and they would not be swayed from their course of action, no matter the danger involved.
By kidnapping the sisters’ father, he had taken his odious scheming to a new low, and their retaliation was certain. But what was he planning, the girls wondered? What would they find, waiting for them on the other side of the door?
“Ready?” Sara whispered to her sister.
Maria answered with a nod, her eyes filled with focus and intensity. The sisters readjusted the straps of their backpacks upon their shoulders, readying for action. They tensed the muscles in their legs so they could rush forth and act quickly, and each of them took a deep breath.
With a quick yank of her arm, Sara flung the door wide open. She whipped the door so hard upon its hinges, the knob slammed against the lockers in the hallway with a loud clanging of metal.
As one, Maria and Sara launched into the room, the chamber that had always been defended by Jasper’s wily presence, the room that had forever been forbidden, lest one incur the wrath of the irate janitor.
Upon seeing what was on the other side of the door, the girls halted in their tracks. Their eyes bulged with surprise, and there was a sharp intake of air as they gasped from shock.
It was the very last thing they would have expected to find in Jasper’s private quarters: disorder, chaos, and messiness to the utmost.
Chapter Fourteen
Close Quarters Tornado
The Green Beans, Volume 5: The Phantom of the Auditorium Page 13
