The Green Beans, Volume 5: The Phantom of the Auditorium
Page 30
“The crank! You’ve got to go for the crank!” Double H shouted from afar, where she remained perched within the rafters.
The sound of the Phantom’s voice snapped the sisters from their trance-like state, and they sprang into action, scrambling to their feet. The rope was deteriorating before their eyes, and they realized they would have precious little time to do something that would prevent a catastrophic fall for their father.
“It’s over there!” Sara said, pointing as she ran.
Sprinting in such a precarious setting was foolhardy at best, but the girls had no choice. Maria was right behind her sister, and their feet clattered on the catwalk as they raced ahead, oblivious to the dangerous height at which they ran and the obstacles that lay in their path, which they ducked under and scooted around with little conscious thought.
The rope that suspended the chief’s chair was attached to a large wooden spool, which was operated by a crank. Much of the rope had been wound onto the spool, thereby reeling the chair to its current, elevated position.
Sara reached for the crank and immediately ran her hands over it, seeking a way to disengage it so the rope could be unwound. After a moment of frantic searching, she found a way to do so. “Here we go!” she exclaimed, beginning to move the crank in a counterclockwise fashion.
Filled with anxiety, Maria watched as the chief’s chair began to slowly descend toward the stage. “I really think you should try to go a little faster,” she suggested.
Sara began using the muscles of her powerful pitching arm to accelerate the process. Chief Fresco’s descent picked up speed dramatically, but he was still a long way up.
“We’ve got a problem,” Sara gasped. Having already pushed her body to her physical limits, she was finding herself short of breath and nearing the point of exhaustion. “Look below us.”
“I know,” Maria said, wringing her hands with anxiety. “But what can we do?”
A large number of the mecha-monkeys had already been taken out of the picture by battery failure, and their metallic, shiny bodies were scattered across the floor of the stage. The sisters had also dispatched their fair share of the gang of gremlins with well placed swats of their hammer and wrench.
But there were still more... many, many more.
Several dozen of the rambunctious critters were on the stage, and they were gazing up at the chair as it descended. They gathered directly beneath it, and they began hooting and hollering and gnashing their gnarly teeth. They pounded the stage with their fists and howled up at Chief Fresco, their strange, masked eyes radiating malevolence.
“We can’t drop him into that mess with his hands tied,” Maria said. “Those things will tear him to shreds!”
“But the rope’s breaking! I can’t very well let him fall from this distance!” Sara pointed out.
Even as they watched, the damaged rope was becoming increasingly frayed, with strands popping free and unraveling, undoing the integrity of the only thing that remained between Chief Fresco and a deadly drop.
And that was far from the end of their worries. Though most of the mecha-monkeys remained below, waiting for the chief to descend, others had scrambled up into the rafters, eager to confront the girls and stop them. They scurried and scampered, moving toward Maria and Sara at an alarming rate, their claws clicking and clacking on the metal surfaces. The sisters watched the mechanized foes approach, and they tensed for the impending confrontation.
“We can’t let them stop us,” Sara panted.
“Don’t worry about them - I got your back!” Maria promised. “You just keep focusing on what you’re doing!”
Trusting in her sister, Sara ignored the gremlins, even as they closed within striking distance. She worked the crank as fiercely as she could, and her muscles burned from the exertion.
Maria adjusted her grip on the wrench and belted out a challenge. “Come and get it, you crazy monkeys!”
Her words were met with hoots and screeches, and then the mecha-monkeys pounced, swinging from the rafters and leaping at the girls.
Sara didn’t even pause or flinch, she just kept at the crank, helping her father descend to safer heights. Maria did her part, keeping the creatures from laying hands on her sister. She wielded the wrench like a tennis racket, administering blows with both forehand and backhand strokes while bouncing on the balls of her feet, maximizing her efficiency. It was, by any measure, an epic thumping.
Maria risked a glance at the stage, and she noted that several more of the mecha-monkeys had become still, betrayed by their failing batteries. “They’re falling!”
“Still too many,” Sara gasped.
Chief Fresco had been lowered significantly, and he was no more than eight or nine feet above the stage. The gremlins were leaping for him and slashing with their claws, but he remained beyond their reach. Sara continued uncoiling the rope, and she paused when the chair was about five feet above the floor.
At that height, she was sure her father could endure the fall, even bound to the chair as he was, and it was a distance at which the mecha-monkeys still couldn’t reach him. The problem was, if the rope broke and he fell, the gremlins would be able to get their hands on him and unleash their fury.
“The rope’s tearing – it’s gonna break!” Sara shouted. “I don’t know what else to do!”
“I’ll help!” Double H cried out.
The sisters looked to the self-proclaimed Phantom of the Auditorium, who was perched among the rafters. Her arm was raised and her fist was balled, and within those clenched fingers was the last of her smoke pellets.
“This should conceal him for a few moments. The mecha-monkeys might become disoriented and not be able to find him,” she explained.
“Do it!” the sisters shouted as one.
Double H nodded, and with eyes overfilling with mischief and a thousand-watt smile, she launched the handful of pyrotechnics from her perch. “Shazam!”
Her aim was true, and the pellets contacted the floor almost directly beneath Chief Fresco, in the center of the gathered gremlins. Immediately, the capsules erupted, dispensing thick clouds of colored smoke into the air.
From their vantage point, Maria and Sara watched as the plume of smoke quickly grew, enveloping everything within its considerable radius. As the clouds of smoke expanded, the last thing they saw was the rope snap… and Chief Fresco went plummeting into the heart of that dense, chaotic plume.
“Dad!” Sara cried out.
Maria groaned in dismay. “What’s happening down there?”
She had been forced to take her eyes away from her father, as the last of the mecha-monkeys in the rafters converged on her. One of the assailants got bonked on the head with the wrench and was quickly dispatched, while the other stumbled to a clumsy halt as its battery ran dry.
“I don’t know,” Sara said. “I just don’t know…”
The two of them dropped to their hands and knees on the catwalk, staring down at the stage. The smoke whirled and swirled, and from within that cloudy mass, they could hear scrapes and scuttling, thwumps and thwacks - but they had no idea what was happening.
Gradually, the noises diminished and the smoke began to dissipate. As the air slowly cleared, the girls squinted their eyes, desperately trying to penetrate the smoke with their vision. They were frantic to discover what had become of their father, and they could feel their hearts racing, thudding in their ears. Their limbs were weary with exhaustion and anxiety, and the passing seconds felt like centuries.
Finally, the smoke cleared enough so that they could see – and they exhaled enormous sighs of relief.
Their father remained in his chair, sitting upright. He was sweaty and dirty and frazzled beyond measure… but he was untouched by the hands of the uncanny horde.
The mecha-monkeys were completely done for, the last of their number lying on the floor, their energy stores depleted. An occasional spark and wisp of smoke was emitted from their inert bodies. Piles of them surrounded Chief Fresco, and he looked
around at the carnage with amazed eyes, shaking his head with a mixture of disbelief and relief.
“Hah!” Double H laughed, throwing her head back and chuckling with unchecked glee. “Did you ever dare doubt the Phantom of the Auditorium?”
Chapter Thirty-One
The Great Outdoors