“Not yet.” I heard Brady fumbling around in her pockets, and then a beam of light shot out from where she was perched. Her pocket flashlight! “I’ll read you the titles and you write them down.” I would’ve hugged her if she wasn’t my sister. “Okay, hold on to the opposite side of the bookshelf so you’ll catch me if I fall.” I took a step back to the other side and held on tightly. For a split second my brain reminded me that this could be the dumbest thing I’d ever done in my life. Muchas gracias, brain.
“Bad news,” she said. “A lot of these books are so old that they don’t have titles on the spine. Okay, here’s one. Just a sec, it’s hard to read it with the light reflecting off the glass. Moby Duck? I think one is Moby Duck.” I didn’t have a pen, but I wasn’t about to forget that title. What famous book is about a duck named Moby? “Here’s another one. Don Quickie? Yeah, it says Don Quickie.” Do all famous books have dumb titles? “There are a bunch in other languages. And some are mostly faded out.” She spent a few minutes silently searching. “Oh, here’s one last one. Molly Cat.” Yes. All famous books have dumb titles.
The way down was a hundred times scarier than the way up, especially with the rope tied around my waist to remind me that falling could equal death. We made our slow way down, and it felt like it took years. Finally my feet touched ground, I let out a monster exhale, and Wiki asked, “Where are the books?”
“It was locked,” Brady said, shaking her head. “But Javi wrote down the titles of the ones we could make out through the glass. Javi?”
“There were only three. Moby Duck, Don Quickie, and Molly Cat. Any of those have epic heroes in them? Maybe someone with laser eyes or super strength?” We started walking back toward the tables while Wiki mulled it over.
“Well, the first one is Moby Dick, not Duck.” Bummer. I was hoping for a huge talking duck. “Moby Dick is a white whale, so I’m not sure why that book’s up there, unless there’s secretly an enormous leviathan living in an ocean under our school.”
“There are only whales in that book?” Brady asked. “Are there talking fish too? Sounds more like a cartoon.”
“No, the story’s told by this sailor named Ishmael, and then there’s Captain Ahab. He’s this old, grizzled ship captain with a peg leg and a big scar running down his face. He’s completely obsessed with whales and getting revenge on Moby Dick, the white whale who ate his leg.”
“Wiki.” I gasped so long that I must have sucked up all the air in the library. “Fake leg. Giant scar. Whale obsession. Think about it.”
It was like I cast a freeze spell on Wiki. He stood perfectly still except for his eyes, which raced back and forth as they got wider and wider and wider. “No. It can’t be. That’s ridiculous. Except. Except there’s no other explanation. Mr. Scrimshaw? Our science teacher is Captain Ahab?”
“That’s why he hates Blackbeard so much!” I said. “The dude has tussled with pirates before.”
“Well, can he take on Barfbeard?” Brady asked.
Once Wiki got over the shock, he muttered, “I don’t think so. He’s definitely no hero, and unless Blackbeard turns into a massive whale, I’m not sure he could face off against him.”
Then we heard whistling. Sometimes whistling is sunny and carefree and it mellows you out and brings a smile to your face. But if you hear whistling in an ancient castle’s library late at night when it’s perfectly dark, it’s eerie and bloodcurdling and brings a look of complete and utter terror to your face. Brady slapped her hands over both of our mouths immediately and gave us a “don’t move” look.
Who hung out in this nightmare library at night? It had to be a ghost. What else but a ghost? Maybe some old student had a dictionary fall on his head and died and haunted this place. “Que paraíso, esta biblioteca…” Except the ghost spoke Spanish and sounded like an old man. Weird ghost. Wait, I knew that voice.
“Señor Aleph,” Brady whispered as quietly as she could. The head of Finistere’s libraries. He was completely blind but could find any book in all three school libraries guided just by his memory. He was obsessed with books like no one I’d ever met, and honestly it didn’t seem that weird that he was taking a stroll through the stacks this late at night. “If we stand perfectly still, he won’t know we’re here.”
“¿Hay alguien ahi?” he asked from just a few feet away.
Chill, Javi. He can’t see you. Calm down. Don’t move. Not a muscle. Not. One. Muscle. Nope. Not happening. “Run!” I yelled, and the three of us made a mad dash through the stacks, past the tables, and out the door. Once we were on the other side I listened but heard nothing. He wasn’t following us. Brady shoved me a little and shook her head. Yeah, not my best moment. “Okay, so Mr. Scrimshaw’s not going to save us. What about Don Quickie, Wiki? Don Quickie and Molly Cat?”
Wiki pursed his lips. “You must have misread those titles. I don’t recognize them. But even if I did, the chance that they would have epic heroes in them is almost nil. Think about it. Why would Principal Gale summon a knight or a brawny hero to teach us? Better a famous scientist or mathematician.”
Yikes, Wiki was right. “Okay, but it was a good plan in theory,” I protested. “It was—”
Footsteps. Not very far away. The sound of a door creaking open. Then shut. Then silence. Was Finistere a nightclub after midnight? Why did everyone wander around here at all hours of the night? At first I was spooked that we’d get caught. But then Brady pointed out the real issue.
“That was Principal Gale’s door. If the noise came from over there, it had to be.”
“There’s only one person who would be sneaking into her office after hours,” Wiki said.
Brady immediately started sprinting toward Gale’s office, turning around and motioning to us when she realized we weren’t following. Corner the scariest pirate ever in the dead of night? Not my idea of a good time. Then again, what choice did we have? It was either that or let him have the bell and eventually get murdered by mateys. And if there was one death I wasn’t down with, it was murder by mateys. After groaning loudly, we joined Brady’s race through the halls.
We heard another noise on our way over. It must have been the door shutting, because when we peeked around the corner to Principal Gale’s hallway, a shadow was disappearing down the other end of the hall.
“We’re too late,” Wiki said, deflated.
“Only one way to find out,” I said. Once we were sure the shadow was gone, we made our way to the scene of the crime.
27
“Are we sure this is a good idea?” Wiki asked. Standing in front of the principal’s office and getting ready to break in, I had to admit, it was a valid question.
“Wiki!” Brady hissed. “We have to know if Blackbeard took the bell. We’re doing the principal a favor.” She pushed the door and it swung open. No lock? That wasn’t a good sign.
I walked in first. It was pitch black, so I borrowed Brady’s flashlight and we crept over to the cage where the bell had been hidden. The principal’s office was absolutely terrifying in the dark. All of the things that made it awesome in the daytime made it a nightmare now. The shadows that the weapons and strange instruments cast made me want to tear out of there at full speed.
“Point the flashlight at the cage,” Wiki whispered. I stopped staring at the medieval crossbow and having a panic attack and shined the flashlight on the cage.
“Whew. It’s still here.” We all let out a huge sigh of relief. “Now how secure is it?” Brady asked, examining every surface of the little prison. “He’s going to come back for it at some point.”
The cage was pretty interesting. It looked kind of like an ancient birdcage, except the bars seemed strong enough to hold a bear. It was so heavy that none of us could lift it even a centimeter off the ground. After studying it for a few seconds, we found a little door, which was almost invisible except for the small keyhole at its corner.
“It looks impenetrable. He would need to find the key,” Wiki whispered. “Clearly it’s with Principal Gale. She likely wears the key around her neck. Or puts it in a safe in the school basement. Or—”
“You mean this key?” It was the only thing in the principal’s top desk drawer. I motioned to where I found it, and Wiki looked dubious. Brady grabbed it and ducked down to try it on the cage.
“There’s no way the principal keeps the cage’s key right next to the cage. This is her ultimate safe. Like I said, she probably wears it on her neck in a box that requires another key to open it, and—”
CLICK. “Yep, it worked,” Brady said.
Wiki slapped his forehead. “My respect for the principal just dropped two notches. And here you trusted her to keep us safe?”
“Why would she make it so easy?” Brady asked. Opening the tiny door was difficult at first because it was heavy, and the bars scraped against each other as Brady tried forcing it. But then the door gave way and swung right open.
And as it opened, the cage laughed at us.
It wasn’t exactly a human laugh. It made this noise when it creaked open like it was snickering at us. It was strange enough that we all jumped back.
“Did that cage just laugh at us?” I asked, spooked out of my mind.
“No, it…it sounded like it was calling a pet,” Brady said quietly. “Like, ‘Here Fluffers. Tsk-tsk-tsk. Come here.’”
“Maybe this wasn’t the best idea,” Wiki whispered, scowling at us.
Then we heard a noise we’d never heard before.
It was the sound of wings, but they sounded different than bird wings. They sounded bigger. And more menacing. And there were a lot of them.
At first the sound was faint and off in the distance, but it was getting closer. And closer. The three of us completely froze, listening to it get louder and louder. Whatever it was, it was heading for us.
Wiki whispered, “Is it coming from the hallway or outside?”
Brady whispered, “I think it’s coming from—”
And then, with a crash and a howl, a hideous flock of dark, winged beasts shattered the window, screeching as they came for us.
“RUN!” I yelled as we tripped over each other and then broke into a mad dash out of the room, racing through the stone hallway. I looked back and couldn’t believe my eyes. There must have been fifteen of these furry, winged creatures chasing us, hissing at us, gaining on us. The sound of their flapping wings raised the hairs on my neck.
“This way!” I shouted, racing down the stairs, hoping we would lose them. But they came screaming down the stairs after us, floating ever closer. “Follow me!”
We scrambled down another hallway, took a right, and sprinted down another.
“Are you taking us somewhere specific?” Wiki asked, losing his breath.
“I sure am.”
I was getting close. Mr. Loxley’s economics classroom… Señora De Burgos’s creative writing classroom… Mr. Fenrir’s drama classroom…almost there…
We rounded another corner and got to my destination: Mr. Hotep’s high school science class, one of the few classrooms in the high school with a door on it. And I noticed earlier that it had been left open.
“In here!” I yelled, and we practically threw ourselves into the room, the beasts only a few feet behind us, as I slammed the door shut and locked it. The beasts kept ramming their wings against the little window in the door, glaring at us and screeching.
Finally Wiki stepped back from the window and exhaled loudly. “Well, they won’t be able to pierce through that small window, given their size and apparent strength, so we should be safe in here.”
“What are those things?!” Brady screamed. “Summoning Mozart for dinner is one thing, but flying monsters chasing us through school? What the heck is going on?”
We both turned to Wiki out of habit.
“Don’t look at me. I’m as lost and confused as you are. My only guess is that these creatures were once summoned through Andy. He summoned Jekyll and Ahab—it’s clear that he can summon just about anyone. Or anything.”
“Do you think Principal Gale summoned them?” Brady asked.
“She may have. Who knows what other creatures are lurking in the school.”
“Hey, there’s a gang of flying monsters right outside this door that want us in their bellies. There’s no need to freak us out even more,” I said shivering. “Now what do we do?”
“Nothing,” Wiki said quickly. “We can only wait. If no one’s ever seen them before, logic dictates that they’ll have to leave before the school opens. So if they don’t break through the door and kill us, hopefully they’ll be gone by then. Since there is no other exit to this room, I think that’s our only choice.”
The creatures screeched again, as if they understood Wiki and didn’t like his plan.
“It’s going to be a long night,” I said, sitting down on a table and realizing how exhausted I was. “A long, terrifying, screech-filled night. At least we got the bell before Blackbeard stole it.”
“I didn’t grab it…” Wiki said slowly. We both looked at Brady.
“We were about to get eaten by flying monsters! Of course I didn’t have time to get it!” Brady screeched.
“So the bell is sitting in an open cage just waiting for Blackbeard to take it,” Wiki groaned.
“Fiddlesticks,” I said, burying my face in my arms and trying to sleep through the shrieks.
28
“This is definitely not a dream. But the flying monsters. That was a dream?” I was practically sleepwalking to school with Wiki, the two of us with massive bags under our eyes, stumbling groggily and trying not to fall asleep on the spot.
“No. No, that wasn’t a dream either,” Wiki said yawning. “I wish it had been, but we were definitely fully awake all night. They were all too real.”
“I can’t get their shrieking out of my head,” I moaned. “I thought it would never end. I swear I still hear it now. Ugh, I wish the sandman would just punch me in the face with sleep.”
We’d been stuck in the science classroom until 5:00 a.m., when the sun started peeking out and the flying furries finally flew away. We made 100 percent sure the coast was clear, then snuck past Gale’s office, raced home, changed, told Dad our (fake) sleepover with Wiki was fun, and started walking back to school.
I guess this is what it feels like to pull an all-nighter when you’re in high school. Except I bet studying for a test is a teensy bit less stressful than fending off monsters for hours and hours.
“Hey,” Brady said breathlessly, catching up with us. She said she’d forgotten something in her room, ran home, and then ran back. I have no idea how she was so infuriatingly awake. She studied Wiki for a second and shook her head. “Stop looking so hopeless, Wiki—there’s a pretty good chance we’re in the clear.”
“Oh?” Wiki asked, stopping and looking at her directly. “How did you come to that conclusion?”
“Well, I doubt that Blackbeard went back for the bell after hearing all the screaming, and when we tried sneaking into Gale’s office this morning she was already in there. You know the minute she walked into her office she closed that cage, and there’s no way Blackbeard’s going to break into it. Good luck with the flying creepies, Mr. Teach.”
Wiki looked unconvinced. “That cage was open for at least eight hours last night, and Blackbeard is desperate for that bell. For all we know, he was just waiting for someone else to trigger the monsters.”
“I don’t know, Wiki. I think Brady might be right,” I said. “I thought we were dead meat until we tried to open that cage last night. Wow. I think I’m actually feeling kind of optimistic now.”
Suddenly I felt wired. We might survive! I tried to do a cartwheel, but I just did a sloppy half-forward roll and then plopped on my stomach and started falling
asleep.
“Come on, Javi,” Brady said, kicking me lightly. “If we don’t get to sleep, neither do you.”
First period was awful. It was creative writing class with Ms. Sherry-Zadi, who usually taught for five minutes and then slipped into telling us a long, involved story for the rest of class. The stories were usually pretty awesome, but I was way too tired to listen to anything, so my face kept falling on my desk. I think she was kind of insulted when she realized I couldn’t stay awake.
Second period was even worse. It was Ms. Vlad, so I couldn’t show any weakness—now I was even more convinced she was an actual garlic-hating, fangs-for-days, neck-chomping vampire. And who knows, maybe if someone fell asleep in her class she would bite them and turn them into a mini Dracula. I had to somehow sit with perfect posture and with my eyes wide open, even though my entire body was screaming Go to sleep, Javi! as loud as it could. The only line that ran through my head the entire period was, “Must…stay…awake…” If we escaped Blackbeard’s wrath, I wasn’t about to get killed by Ms. Vlad. I doodled drawings of pirates getting summoned by Andy to keep myself awake. Why us, Andy? Why did you curse us with your friendship? And why couldn’t you have been a magical hoverboard or a radioactive spider?
The three of us met at our lockers and headed to lunch. Wiki was this kooky mix of exhaustion and paranoia, like Blackbeard could jump out of any corner and murder us, but Wiki was almost too tired to care. Brady was full-on wired, skipping through the hall, humming a little song.
Then we saw Blackbeard at the end of the hall. He wasn’t his usual wicked self—in fact, the guy was smiling innocently. Uh-oh. That’s the last expression he should have had on his face today. Both Brady and Wiki noticed it too. Brady stopped humming immediately. Wiki’s mouth opened a little and he shook his head slowly.
“Come on, we’ve gotta get to the bottom of this,” I said. “Let’s tail him.”
We walked quickly until we were about ten feet behind Blackbeard, hiding behind some older kids who were walking right in front of us. That’s when he started whistling to himself. It must have been some old pirate song, but it sounded extra annoying. Why was he whistling now, of all times?
Time Villains Series, Book 1 Page 12
