The Curse of the Werepenguin

by Allan Woodrow

  “I can’t do it!” wailed Vigi, throwing the knife away, where it stuck into a tree. “Look how cute and cuddly this baby is!”

  “It’s covered in drool and spit-up,” Felipe said with a deep frown, plugging his nose.

  “But it’s very cute and cuddly drool and spit-up.” Felipe couldn’t help but agree. Vigi smiled at the baby, and the baby smiled back. “I will keep the baby and raise it as my own.”

  “But the Code of the Bandit says only men can be members of the Brugarian Forest Bandits and no babies are allowed,” said Felipe. “I think.” The Code of the Bandit was eight hundred pages long and boring, so Felipe had never read it. Very few bandits had.

  “Then we will add a new subsection, allowing for unclaimed baby girls to be raised as bandits.” Vigi tickled his new daughter, who squealed and then spit up again. “We’ll call her Annika. Now go make us a pumpkin strudel to celebrate.”

  12.

  The Stroke of Midnight

  Back at the manor, as Bolt and Frau Farfenugen stepped into the tower bedroom just before midnight, Bolt’s mouth was open, about to scream, convinced horrid creatures would attack him. But he closed his mouth before any sound escaped. There was no monster inside the room, although a monster would have felt at home. Bolt followed the housekeeper through the doorway and into a large, round bedroom, as comfy and cheerful as a funeral home invaded by vampires.

  Everything was gray, from the gray walls and wooden floor to the antique furniture covered in grayish dust. There was a bed, a full-length mirror next to the window, a closet on one wall, and a large bookcase along another, dingy and grayish. The bookshelf was missing chunks of wood, as if rats had gnawed on it, and its shelves were stuffed with massive ancient leather-bound books, gray from grime. The dull, gray bedspread had holes. There were even picture frames on the wall—but inside the frames were merely pictures of gray boxes painted on gray backgrounds.

  The large bay window was open, allowing the cold wind to slam the gray shutters against the wall.

  Slam! Slam!

  Frau Farfenugen dropped Bolt’s bag onto the mattress. Dust spewed into the air from the bed. The housekeeper walked to the flapping window and closed it. “I was airing out the room,” she explained. “It’s been many years since we’ve had a prisoner here.”

  “A prisoner?” gasped Bolt.

  “I mean a guest, of course. If you have any troubles, just scream.”

  “And you’ll come running?”

  “Of course not. What could I do? Sometimes it feels better to scream when something is trying to eat you. Besides, you’re so far up, no one would hear you anyway.” She looked around the room as if searching for prying ears, and she spoke in a whisper, “Do not leave your room until morning. Do not let anything in your room. Do you understand me?”

  “But why?” Bolt croaked.

  The grandfather clock downstairs chimed, its clamorous chirps loud enough to be heard in the tower.

  Frau Farfenugen yipped. “It is midnight. I must go, before the clock finishes its ring. We may never become friends, and you may never cheer me up, but if you listen to me, you just may survive. You probably won’t, but you may, although I wouldn’t get too optimistic about the chances, if I were you.”

  Frau Farfenugen hurried out, slamming the door behind her. Her boots clopped on the stairs, growing fainter as she wound her way farther down.

  Bolt ran to the door, hoping to follow her, fearing being alone in this dismal gray room.

  The door was locked. He wrestled with the doorknob, but it did not budge.

  The grandfather clock completed its clangs. Almost immediately a penguin’s bark rang in the distance. The sound crawled into the room and up Bolt’s back. A multitude of penguins roared in response, seemingly from everywhere. They continued to shout, growing louder, more menacing, and more numerous. There were hundreds of barks, maybe thousands.

  Bolt unzipped his bag, grabbed his stuffed penguin, and ran to his bed, eager to bolt beneath it. He knelt and rubbed his hand along the wooden floor, which felt cold and clammy and slightly sticky. Yuck. Bolt wiped his fingers on his pants and instead jumped atop his bed, lifted his gray bedspread, and scurried underneath, fully clothed, shaking and squeezing his stuffed penguin as tight as he could.

  It might not have been as comforting as hiding under the bed, but it would have to do.

  “You’ll protect me. Right, Penguin?” he mumbled, hugging the animal tighter.

  The barks! They echoed inside Bolt’s head like bouncy balls. Each one ricocheted inside him, burying itself deeper. As before, he understood them:

  Destroy! Attack! Eat fish sticks!

  Bolt tried to keep the barks out of his head, but like the ravenous clothes-eating bugs back at the orphanage during the Night of the Thousand Moths, they refused to leave. Not only were the barks threatening, but they also seemed to talk directly to Bolt.

  Bark, Bolt! Join us and bark!

  Bolt cowered under his covers. He had no desire to bark.

  Well, maybe he had a little desire, which was odd, because he had never felt the urge to bark before. Yet, something about the barking did seem enticing. It felt familiar, as if a bark had been sitting inside him for his entire life. At one point, Bolt opened his mouth, but then swallowed the bark that wanted to come out.

  He swallowed repeatedly, hoping to tuck the yearning to bark back to wherever it had been hiding. All his swallowing did, however, was make him thirsty.

  Still shaking and with his heart pounding, Bolt reminded himself that he needed to act fierce and thunderbolt-like. He told himself that things were better now, and that he finally had what he always desired. His father. His real family. He was wanted, at last.

  Bolt’s mind wandered to a poster he had once seen in a book, a poster of a criminal. The poster had read Wanted, dead or alive.

  The image stayed in his head as he trembled under the hole-speckled blanket, clutching his stuffed animal, wondering if it might have been better to remain unwanted instead of finding his family in this accursed house.

  13.

  The Baron Cometh

  The next morning, Bolt awoke from a night of terror. The bags under his eyes felt like they had melted permanently into his cheeks. During the night, Bolt had quaked under the blanket for hours as the penguin barking outside had grown increasingly frenzied. The sounds had filled his head like air into a balloon until he thought his brain might pop.

  The voices spoke to him. They called to him. At times Bolt shivered and nearly screamed with panic. Other times, he felt as if he was carried away by a wave of familiar barks.

  In his dreams, which came eventually amid continuous tossing and turning, the eyebrow-clad horned penguin from the train platform chased him. Bolt ran, or at least he tried to, but since it was a dream, he ran in place without actually moving forward, and the penguin reached out with its wing to grab him. It snapped its beak and growled. It cried out, “Bolt! Join me! Be one of us!”

  When Bolt woke up, he was sweaty from his nightmares and from sleeping in his too-tight clothes. His stuffed penguin was wrinkled from squeezing so hard, and the rip, the one in place of the animal’s missing wing, appeared slightly enlarged.

  Sunlight streamed in from the window, making the room’s grayness less depressing, although the room was still, in general, gray and depressing.

  Bolt stepped groggily from the bed. He peeked out the window, expecting to see swarms of angry birds dashing across the countryside in wild packs. But there was no sign of them. The sun beat upon the spacious grounds, the lawn calm beneath a thin snowy veneer, as if the menace from the night before had been all in Bolt’s imagination. He laughed to himself. Maybe it had been!

  The house sat on high ground. Bolt could see for miles from the window, across the long forest all the way to the rocky shores of the Blacker Sea. The water glowed an
d stretched on endlessly.

  The manor’s antiquated catapult sat on the roof below the tower. Bolt wondered if it still worked and why the catapult was part of the Day of the Penguin festival. So many things about his new home were odd.

  It would all feel normal once Bolt met his new father. He dropped Penguin and kicked it under his bed. A boy his age needing a stuffed animal? Ridiculous.

  Bolt strode across the room and opened the closet. A dozen black tuxedo suits and ruffled white tuxedo shirts hung from hangers, along with clip-on bow ties. The only other clothes in the closet were a few pairs of black underwear, black socks, and glossy black dress shoes.

  Perhaps Bolt would be attending daily balls. The life of a Baron must be grand, with extravagant parties. Frau Farfenugen might have said differently, but Bolt was convinced he would soon be attending ice cream socials, along with playing games of water polo.

  Bolt threw his old, damp clothes into the corner of the closet and put on fresh clothes. The shirt was stiff, with lots and lots of buttons, and the tuxedo pants itched, but they fit him well—it was a joy to wear pants that weren’t too tight. He slipped on a jacket. He even clipped on a bow tie.

  He wanted to make a good impression for his father. Still, Bolt would ask the Baron if there were less formal clothes he could wear. His father would probably be happy to find jeans for Bolt.

  Freshly dressed, Bolt walked toward his bookcase. Most of the books in the small Oak Wilt Home for Unwanted Boys library were how-to books, such as How to Protect Yourself from Moth Attacks and How to Capture Toe-Nibbling Moles. The orphanage also had a few silly horror books, but Bolt hated silly horror books.

  Bolt approached his shelf eagerly.

  He frowned.

  Every book was about penguins. An entire shelf was taken up by an encyclopedia set titled Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Penguins and More—it was twenty-two volumes long, so Bolt felt the title was likely accurate. The shelves also included a book about penguin chick feet called The Little Prints, another entitled One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, which went into great detail about proper penguin diets, and a handful of novels, such as Huckleberry Fin, The Lord of the Wings, and Charlotte’s Webbed Feet.

  Bolt sighed. He would ask the Baron about getting new books, too.

  Bolt tried the doorknob. Someone must have unlocked it during the night, because it turned on the first try. He headed down the dark circular stairs. After twisting and turning endlessly, they led into the main house. Here the narrow, gothic windows bathed the floor with sunlight. Any lingering dust had settled overnight.

  The creepy dimness of the night before was gone.

  Bolt took a deep and hopeful sigh. He ignored the iron bars over the windows. He didn’t stare at the pool of dried blood—or what might have been dried blood—on the floor. He looked away from the note on the baseboard, perhaps etched by someone’s fingernails, that read Help, it’s going to eat me! Instead, he concentrated on smiling. His father would expect his son to smile. Family reunions were joyous occasions.

  As Bolt reached the second-floor landing, a voice rose from down below, a screeching and snapping voice without a hint of kindness. Bolt stopped in his tracks, his foot hanging above the next stair. He eyed the great hall below, where a small man in a black cape stood, his back to Bolt. Next to the cape-clad man stood Frau Farfenugen. The two were about the same height. The housekeeper trembled.

  “What do you mean we have no flounder chips?” screamed the man. His voice was soaked in nastiness, like a rag dropped in kerosene, wrung out, and then dropped in again.

  “I am sorry, sir. They were out of flounder chips. We had so many other treats, I thought you wouldn’t mind.”

  “You thought? You are not here to think. You’re a lowly housekeeper.”

  “So true, sir. Sorry, sir. Of course I won’t ever think again. What was I thinking? Something, and that’s not good at all. Not good for someone as lowly as me.”

  “Next time, when I say flounder chips, I want flounder chips! If you ignore my demands again, I shall feed your elbows to a pack of wild bears and dip your toes into a vat of boiling prune juice. Do you want your toes pruned?”

  “No, sir. Never, sir.”

  “I should hope not. Do not disobey me again or I shall get very angry! And you don’t want to see me very angry!”

  Frau Farfenugen stared at the floor. She squeaked, “No, sir. It shall not happen again. Not from this lowly housekeeper.”

  Bolt stood at the top of the stairway, transfixed. No wonder the housekeeper was so miserable. Bolt wondered if it was too late to bolt, and whether he could find his way back to Oak Wilt, and then under a bed. Maybe he could swim across the Blacker Sea and convince Ms. Blackensmear he wasn’t a purple pen running out of ink. While he thought this, Bolt’s foot still hung in midair. He put it down, and the staircase emitted a loud, lengthy creak.

  The little man whirled around. His eyes flashed scarlet, glowing like embers. His brow furrowed and his face contorted with rage.

  But as soon as he saw Bolt, the anger dissolved. He smiled.

  Bolt gasped.

  The man below wasn’t a man at all.

  He was just a kid wearing a tuxedo exactly like the one Bolt wore, and no older than Bolt himself.

  14.

  Questions without Answers

  The face of the boy standing in the great hall below was white, pure white, as if all the blood had drained from it long ago, or baby powder had been sprinkled on him and then smoothed down. In stark contrast, his hair was jet black, with small tufts pointing out, hornlike. He had a large pointy nose, and over his eyes sat two enormous eyebrows.

  They were very bushy eyebrows. They reminded Bolt of the penguin by the train station platform, the penguin on the door knocker, and the penguin from his dream.

  Silly thoughts.

  “You must be Humboldt,” said the boy, giving Bolt a friendly, dimpled smile. “Welcome to my home. I am Baron Chordata.”

  Somewhere, two people screamed, and Bolt assumed the thump was from someone fainting.

  As Bolt walked down the stairs, his mind raced. This was Baron Chordata? Impossible. He must be the Baron’s son. That would make him Bolt’s new brother. A brother! Sure, his new brother seemed a little mean, even sort of evil. But a brother was still a brother, and that couldn’t be all bad.

  Bolt had a father and a brother and a housekeeper and who knew what else?

  The stairs rattled and groaned as Bolt climbed down them.

  “You really must fix those stairs,” snapped Baron Chordata to Frau Farfenugen. “They make the manor sound as if it is haunted.” To Bolt he said, “Of course my house is not haunted. There are no such things as ghosts.”

  “Of course not,” agreed Bolt as he reached the bottom of the staircase.

  “Or witches,” added the Baron.

  “No.”

  “Or unicorns, goat creatures, or sea serpents.”

  “Or mummies, goblins, or werewolves.”

  The Baron sniffed. “Says you.”

  Bolt waited for the young Baron to smile, but no smile came. Bolt squirmed.

  Frau Farfenugen curtsied. “Please excuse me, but I must finish setting the table for breakfast, and then do my chores until my hands bleed and I cannot move without agony, as always.” She clicked her combat boots together and, without waiting for a response, clopped forward and exited the hall through a large wooden door.

  The Baron’s eyes remained fixed on Bolt, staring him up and down like a butcher examining a steer carcass. “Your nose is a bit small.”

  “I always thought my nose was sort of big,” Bolt admitted.

  “No, it could definitely be longer. And your hair stands up in strange ways, but not as strange as it possibly could.” He pinched Bolt’s hair as if examining it for grease or texture. “But
we can work on those things. Do you have any talents, such as singing, memorizing state capitals, or creating interesting nicknames?”

  “Um, well . . .” Bolt stammered. “Not really.”

  The Baron shrugged. “No matter. Perhaps you have talents you have not yet discovered. We shall see, Humboldt.” He smiled.

  Bolt waited for a laugh, or some indication the boy was teasing him, but no such sign followed. Bolt relaxed a little. “No one calls me Humboldt. You can call me Bolt.”

  “Excellent. I have a nickname, too. You can call me Baron or, if you prefer, The Baron. No need to bow when you say it. But I like Bolt. It’s short, and that’s always good. It’s easier to yell things. Bolt, wake up! Or, Bolt, don’t move or you will die a horrible death! Not that I hope to say that. You can sleep in as late as you’d like.”

  The Baron smiled again, but it was not a pleasant smile. If anything, the expression was unnerving. It reminded Bolt of the time Mr. Smoof had found a dead rat in the bathroom at the orphanage. The assistant headmaster had worn that same unpleasant half smile while serving “mystery stew” for dinner that evening.

  The Baron wasn’t only unpleasant and unnerving, though. He was young and short and thin, much like Bolt, yet something about him felt powerful and fearless.

  Bolt looked around the room for a sign of a grown-up, such as a large shoe or coffee stains. He had been waiting for this moment his entire life. He would soon meet his father. His real father.

  It was odd there were no pictures of him, though. Bolt stared at the picture of the dead Baron over the fireplace. The dead Baron’s eyes stared back at Bolt. Bolt didn’t think he would ever get used to the painting.