Brass Monkeys (27 page)

“Why does Ming dump all this stuff out here?” Harriet asked.

“‘Cause,” said Ray, “she’s kidnapped so many schools, she doesn’t have room for all the paper. So she’s started hauling it out here.”

We came off the carpet of notebooks and rolled onto a feathery bed of paper.

“How will we know when we’re getting close to the cliffs?” I said.

“Trust me, you’ll know.” There was a grim note in Ray’s voice.

Nervously I picked up my trumpet and blew silently through it. Then I couldn’t seem to help myself, so I began to softly play, “Malagueña.”

Ray and Harriet turned with surprised looks, and I stopped.

“Heck, go ahead and play some more,” said Ray. “My guess is there ain’t nobody within miles of us. Even the Storm boys don’t like to get close to the cliffs, especially at night. Plus, it makes me feel better to hear some tunes.”

I played a bit more of “Malagueña,” but doing it in a real quiet way, and right away my nerves settled down. Even my body aches didn’t seem so bad.

Harriet’s golden-brown eyes glowed. “I love that song,” she said.

“Me too,” said Ray. “Well, almost as much as—”

I didn’t wait, but rolled right into “These Boots Are Made for Walking.”

“Oh man,” Ray cried. “There you go; that’s my tune!”

I was just starting the chorus again, with Ray and Harriet singing along, when I heard what sounded like a scream. I stopped playing abruptly and held up my hand. There it was again, a high, keening wail that rose and fell eerily.

“Oh yeah,” said Ray, his lips forming a grim line. “We’re there.”

“It’s the wind around the cliffs,” said Ray as the wailing sound came again. “We’re close to the edge.”

The Hru-tu-du rose gently now and we started up a long incline of paper. Ray and Harriet pedaled as far as they could, then we jumped out and pushed. Grunting loudly, we finally heaved the Hru-tu-du over the top of the rise.

We stopped right there, frozen at the sight. Thirty yards ahead the paper carpet simply dropped away into a yawning blackness. You couldn’t see a thing below, just misty darkness and blowing paper.

Ray and Harriet turned and looked at me. I was biting my lip hard.

“It’s your show now,” said Ray, lifting his voice so I could hear it over the wind. “Better get that big brain in gear and tell us how we’re going to fasten the rope.”

I stared dumbly at them. “Fasten the rope?”

Ray nodded. “Yeah, you gotta hook it to something. The cart’s way too light and you can’t tie it to a three-ring notebook.”

“Of course not.” I could feel my face flushing. “I know that.”

We climbed cautiously out of the cart. When I stepped down, I immediately sank to my knees in paper. I could see Harriet and Ray floundering about, and I felt a terrible paralysis creeping up my legs. Seeing that horrible drop-off made me realize how insane this was. Still, I acted like I knew what I was doing while we bellied our way up to the edge. All I could see below was darkness and bits of paper that seemed to spiral down into nothingness. If that wasn’t bad enough, the slippery paper beneath me made me feel I might slide over at any moment.

“How far to the bottom?” I called out to Ray.

He gave me a pitying look. “Nobody knows,” he said.

Harriet turned to me, and I saw some of my fright mirrored in her eyes. “What
are
we going to tie the rope to?” she said.

“How about my neck?” I said, and let out a little bleating laugh. “Kidding. Actually, I do have an idea that might work. I think we should simply bury the Hru-tu-du.”

“Bury it?” Ray stared at me like I had marbles in my head.

“Yup, deep as we can.” I tied the rope to the lower part of the cart frame.

“Holy Crow, I get it!” Ray began scrabbling about, starting a hole in the papers. “Get the old Hru-tu-du down deep enough in the junk,
sideways
—that’ll keep ‘er from moving. Very cool, big-brain.”

Harriet and I joined Ray, digging downward like crazed moles. After five minutes of work, we had hollowed out a nice deep spot. I grabbed the trumpet out of the cart while Ray snatched up his backpack.

Then we rolled the Hru-tu-du into the hole and covered it up. I tugged on the rope to see how secure the whole thing was.

“It’s solid,” said Ray. He grinned. “Glad I thought of the idea.”

It took all three of us to roll Ray’s big coil of rope toward the edge of the cliffs. We ended up on our backs, using our feet to boost the coil along.

“How much rope do we have?” Harriet gasped out.

“I think about three hundred feet,” said Ray. “That’s a guess.”

We were at the cliff’s edge now and we simply gave the ball of rope a final kick. It went over the edge with a powerful hiss and dropped into the windy darkness.

Almost as if that were a signal, the great overhead bank of lights came on with a powerful crackle. I looked around and my heart thumped with fear. With the lights on, I could see clearly the huge expanse of white paper and the dark line of the cliff stretching away into the distance. Still, what lay below was shrouded in mist.

Harriet and I glanced uneasily at Ray.

“Why did the lights go on?” I said. “Is it trouble?”

Ray gave me a bleak look. “Depends on how you look at it. It’s the start of a new day and that ain’t all bad. But it means you only got today and tomorrow to round up old McGinty and then sneak back up here and help your friends.”

“Right.” I swallowed nervously. “So I guess it’s down the rope.”

Ray held up a hand. “Hold it, Bumpus-man. You ain’t thinking. You can’t climb down hanging onto the trumpet like that. And how are you protecting the book? Huh? The most important thing we got? Right, you don’t know.”

Ray began rustling in his backpack. He came out with a piece of twine and a large plastic bag. Swiftly, he tied the twine to the trumpet, making a neat sling. With a satisfied grunt, he slung the horn over my shoulder. Next, he put
Brass Monkeys
in a plastic sack, then sealed it and stuffed it under my shirt.

“Now,” he said, “you’re ready.” He grinned at me. “It’s a good thing I’m along on this expedition.”

“Absoltootly,” I said, and I meant it.

I grasped the rope now and began inching toward the edge. When my feet went over, I had a sudden loss of nerve and froze. I must have looked like somebody who had just sat down naked on a block of ice.

“If you want to change your mind,” shouted Ray, “it ain’t too late.”

Then Harriet yelled out something that really hit home.

“Remember Alvin and Weeser! That’s why you’re doing this.”

That did it. She was right, and somehow the thought of their faces, and those of Jack, Lilah, and Teddy, gave me a burst of determination. I nodded and then, scootching slowly like a reluctant worm, I began moving.

I was dimly aware of Harriet coming over the edge above me, then Ray. I was gripping the rope with everything but my front teeth and barely moving downward. Harriet caught up with me quickly and her feet accidentally hit me on the head. When I looked up, I could just make out her features, and I saw her mouth the words, “I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay!” I called back, but I doubted whether she heard me above the wind.

I made a determined face and tried to move a bit faster, but my back knotted up, and a terrific pain shot up my spine and exploded in my head.

I groaned like the wimp of the century, but I knew Harriet and Ray couldn’t hear me. I also knew it wouldn’t do any good if they could. I had a sudden and very clear vision of the predicament I was in. The pain would be a killer if I continued down, but there was no way I could lift myself back up the rope.

“Get a grip, you dumb dufus!” I screamed at myself. “This is survival time!”

I eased down the rope, gritting my teeth, and a great wave of pain rolled over me. I grunted and my knees automatically came up and clamped onto the rope. Using them to hold myself, rather than my feet, eased the pain in my back.

Down and down we went. I couldn’t see clearly because of all the blowing paper and sand. It seemed like we were going on forever, but then, with a jolt of panic, I felt my feet dangling in midair and I knew a horrible truth:
I was at the end of the rope
. I peered down, but I couldn’t see the bottom. I felt Harriet’s feet tapping me. She and Ray were right on top of me.

I began yelling at them, trying to explain, and I was aware of their voices shouting at me to keep moving. I heard Ray scream out, “I can’t hang on!”

I’m not sure what happened next, but it happened fast. I think Ray must have lost his grip and tumbled into Harriet, who then lost hers. They both thudded into me, knocking me loose.
And we were falling
.

It seemed like we fell for a hundred years, but probably it wasn’t more than a hundred feet before we smashed feet first into …
water
. I say water, but it was funny water because as I sliced down through it, I could feel all sorts of squishy stuff. When I broke the surface, gasping and coughing, I could see the surface was littered with all kinds of garbage. Slimy, stinky, scummy crudola.

“Oh no! What is this stuff?” cried Harriet as she popped up. “It’s in my hair!”

“I don’t know, but I hope it doesn’t wreck my horn,” I said. I flipped some reddish glop out of the bell.

“Aaahrrg!” Ray yelled, making an awful face. “That went into my mouth!”

While Ray gave a graphic picture of where and how the glop was sliding down his insides, I had a sudden feeling the book was gone. Frantically, I began digging around inside my shirt, feeling for the plastic sack. With a burst of relief, I felt it. “I’ve still got the book,” I called out. “And it’s dry!”

But Harriet and Ray were too occupied with trying to avoid the stuff in the water. Harriet was paddling in little up-and-down strokes, trying to lift herself above it. “I hate this,” she cried. “We’ll smell for months.”

“Years,” piped up Ray. “I got something lumpy in my shorts.”

For me, after the horrible pain of coming down the rope, floating in a sea of garbage didn’t seem so awful. While Ray and Harriet traded descriptions of what they had swallowed, I was craning around trying to see where we were.

“Looks like we’re in some kind of huge body of water,” I said. “And look way over there. See that misty area? It’s a lot lighter over there.”

“Let’s head in that direction,” said Harriet. “We’ve got to get out of this stuff.”

We began swimming hesitantly through the garbage.

“This is poop water,” said Ray suddenly.

Harriet groaned loudly. “Ray, don’t say that! Please!”

“I think it’s just moldy food,” I said. “Look at the hotdogs over there, and the chicken drumsticks. And look at the spaghetti and pizza.”

Ray got a strange look on his face. “Waitaminnit! I know where we are. I heard the drones talk about this place. They didn’t know where it was, but they’d all heard of it. This is the Sea of Hot Lunches! I’m sure of it! And here’s how it works. When Ming-daddy kidnaps a school, she takes all their worst cafeteria recipes. Then she serves it down here and flushes the leftovers into the Sea!”

“So, where the heck is the Blue Grotto?” My voice rose with tension.

Ray shook his head. “I don’t know, man. All I heard McGinty say was that the Grotto was somewhere below the cliffs. He never mentioned no Sea of Hot—”

“Ray, hold it.” Harriet gave us a pale look. “Did you guys feel something?”

“Like what?” I said. Ray and I stared at her. Without thinking about it, we all paddled closer to each other. We were right in the center of a bunch of breaded fish sticks and tartar sauce, all bobbing along on a thick coating of pea soup.

“I hate fish sticks,” whispered Ray. “I ate a bunch one time at my school and that night I got so sick I dreamed I was a fish stick. It was like I was trapped in my classroom, and I kept trying to swim out of it, but I didn’t have any fins.”

“Sssh!” said Harriet. “I felt it again.”

Ray suddenly yelled crazily and began to slap wildly at his neck. A purplish, crab-like creature darted up and was on his face in a flash. Ray flailed about and accidentally knocked it into Harriet’s hair. She screamed and batted it off into the water. As its body flashed upward, I got a good look at the black dots on its belly, and I swear it looked like the mystery meat we had back in Grindsville.

With a foaming burst the water came alive with them. They were crawling all over us. I began swimming madly, and for a moment I thought the crabs would win. I felt dozens all over my body, nipping and piercing the skin. For a painful second there was one on the end of my nose, but as I flailed about, the trumpet bell knocked him flying.

Finally I began to move out of the greenish pea soup, and the minute I left it behind, the crabs dropped off as if by magic.

“Get out of the pea soup!” I yelled. Harriet and Ray followed me, and just as quickly the purple creatures began dropping away from them.

For a few moments we simply milled around among some bloated burritos, groaning and touching our bites. Ray and I were exaggerating our wounds, and as usual, it was Harriet who cut through the nonsense and got down to business.

“I think I see clear water ahead,” she called out. “Let’s keep swimming.”

She led the way and we swam hard for a few minutes toward the clear, uncluttered water about a hundred yards away. But the closer we came, the slower and more difficult the swimming became. I had swung the trumpet around so it was riding on the back of my neck out of the water, but I was still getting tired.

“There’s some kind of current here,” Ray gasped out. “It’s keeping all the crud in one big area, and us too.”

We flailed harder, and at last we were able to fight through into the clear water. Behind us, the Sea of Hot Lunches seemed to be revolving slowly in a giant circle. Ahead was the lighter, misty area we had seen earlier. As I peered at it, trying to figure out what it was, I felt a strong underwater tug.

“Uh-oh,” cried Ray. “Something else has got us.”

A terrific undercurrent surged in now and pushed us toward the misty area.