How to Curse in Hieroglyphics (14 page)

He shied away from the light and scampered a few feet back, strangely hunched and—as Mr. Bottoms had earlier observed—positively green around the gills. Only it was more like green around the
scales.
A mouthful of pointy fangs clacked and snapped and dripped drool onto Artie's remaining sneaker (which now had five pointy toes sticking out of the end) and his ears seemed to have almost disappeared. His arms were scaly and his fingernails were like claws!

Cheryl gasped, sudden, real fear crawling up her throat.

Tweed jammed a fist against her mouth to keep from screaming.

Pilot swallowed noisily and began to back away.

But then, Artie turned to face them, blinking and snuffling in the brightness, and the fact that he still wore his glasses perched on top of his elongated snout lent a somewhat comic effect to his altered state. The tortoiseshell frames clashed with a golden headband that was fastened tightly around his forehead, bearing the jewelled insignia of a beetle with the wings of a vulture. As accessories went, it was a little over the top, but its tackiness was offset somewhat by the fact that it was also pulsing with a sinister, greenish glow, the same colour as the fireballs.

Pilot and Tweed scrambled over to join Cheryl. Together, they gaped in slightly bemused horror at Artie in his transformed state. Cheryl was trying not to giggle
nervously at the sight of a spiny, pointy tail poking out of Artie's overalls at the back.

“Art-Bart?” Pilot called. “What
happened
to you?”

Before Artie had time to answer, the mummy princess rattled off another stream of ancient curse words, and five or six of the scarab beetles flew at each other, colliding in mid-air to form an even bigger fireball. Then, with another gesture from the Princess, the vulture they'd seen earlier swooped out of the dark sky, gripped the flaming orb in its talons and carried it over to where they were huddled behind the fake stone presidents of Mount PuttsMore. With a hideous screech, the bird dropped the bug-bomb right in their midst.

They leaped out of the way only just in the nick of time as the orb slammed into the middle of the Astroturf green, right under the nose of a disapproving-looking George Washington. The flames melted the plastic grass into a glossy, verdant puddle and made an awful stink.

“Hey! Pops is gonna have to clean all this up, y'know!” Cheryl shouted indignantly.

The Princess hissed something back that sounded awfully rude.

“What did she say, Shrimpcake?” Cheryl demanded.

“How the shufferin' sham-heck am I shupposhed to know what she'sh shayin'? Sheesh!” Artie shouted back. The reptilian snaggleteeth gave him one heck of a spitty speech impediment. “And shtop callin' me Shrimpcake, Cheryl!”

“Uh … you're taking all of this pretty well, Art-Bart,” Pilot said warily.

“Yeah? You think sho?” Artie shot back, snarling and spitting. “Lishen here, Armbrushter, I already tried panicking when mummy-girl firsht hit me with the whammy! You wanna know what happened? I
bit
my
lip
!Look at my teeth—d'you know how mush that shtang?”

Pilot had to give the little guy that. Teeth like those? They'd sting all right.

“You've been transformed! You're her minion, Artie Bartleby,” Tweed shouted back. “And minions are always the interpreters for their evil overlords and demonic mistresses.”

“Yeah? Well, I ain't no shminion and I can't—”

Growing impatient, the Princess spat out a string of angry words, interrupting Artie, who blinked, turned and glared at her with his bulgy crocodile eyes (made all the bulgier by his glasses).

“Hang on a shecond there, shishter,” he admonished the mummy girl. “No need for that kinda language … Oh! I guessh I
do
undershtand what she'sh shayin' …” He turned back to the twins and shrugged his minion-hunchy shoulders. “It'sh not like they give you a minion'sh handbook or shomethin' …”

The Princess spoke rapid-fire at him again. And then stamped a sandalled foot for emphasis.

“Yeah, shure, I heard you the firsht time!” Artie-croc huffed. He turned back toward Pilot and the
twins, planting his scaly fists on his hips, and translated: “The Princessh Shahara Sh-shafiya shpeaks: ‘Blah blah blah, shquiggly line, shideways-walking guy, fishing rod, bird, two bugsh and a eyeball …'” Then he broke down into snorty giggles, highly amused by his own hieroglyphic joke.

“Artie, stop clowning around!” Pilot hollered. “What does she want? Ask her what she wants!”

“Sheesh!” Artie rolled his bulgy eyes and shook his head. “Well, for shtarters, I think she wantsh to know who shrunk the pyramidsh!” He waved a scaly limb at the mini-golf display and started snorting again.

“Artie!” the twins yelled in unison.

“I shwear,” Artie huffed, “one shingle creature of the undead shows up and you guysh all of a shudden loosh your shenshesh of humour! I'm the one lookin' like luggage, here, y'know …” He pointed at his scaly hide. “Well, never mind. You'll find out shoon enough what that'sh like. She was shupposhed to rule a whole darn kingdom way back when, but I told her Wigginsh ish awful nishe and sho she shaid she'll shettle for jusht a whole town! Ol' Zee here is gonna turn all the kidsh in Wigginsh into her own pershonal shcaly army—and
you
guysh are next! She'sh gonna take over, Armbrushter. And I'm her shecond in command. Neat, huh?”

Pilot turned back to the twins. All three of them sported identical expressions of horror. The Wiggins folk, for the most part, were trusting and mild-mannered. With small
town manners and unlocked front doors. They wouldn't stand a chance against the likes of Zahara-Safiya. Most of them couldn't even tell that they were getting taken to the cleaners by that creepy faker Colonel Dudley. And that was just the adults. The other kids in town? What did they know about fighting off the supernatural forces of toothy doom? Nothing. Cindy Tyson couldn't even handle the Bottoms boys when they were
boys.

Cheryl and Tweed, at least, knew what they were up against. They, at least, were armed with knowledge. But would that, alone, be enough? The girls exchanged a glance and each knew what the other was thinking.

They had W-O-W power. Zahara-Safiya had real power.

They had the gear and the grit. She had minions and magic.

If this was just another one of their ACTION!! games, they would have wrapped her back up in her bandages and sent her packing. But it wasn't. It wasn't just a game any more. It wasn't make-believe. The Bottoms boys were depending on them. Artie—clearly—needed their help. Even if he seemed to be somewhat enjoying his role as real-life sidekick to a monster.

“What are we gonna do?” Pilot asked.

Cheryl was still in a bit of denial. “What would we do if this was a movie?”

So was Tweed. “If only we'd seen the last reel of
Curse of the Blood Red Sands!”

“No!” Pilot said. He said it as gently as he could, which was still pretty adamant. “Stop. Cher-bear, Tee-weed, this
isn't
a movie. We're
not
gonna solve this by following a script. There's
nothing
in the movies that … in … uh … wait.”

He blinked.

A look of surprise, followed by one of revelation, flooded his face.

The girls waited impatiently for him to continue.

“I … I think I have an idea,” Pilot said, slowly. “It's crazy … but it just might work.”

“Where'd you get this crazy idea from?” Cheryl asked, suspicious.

“Um.” Pilot might have actually blushed a bit. “A movie …”

“A newfangled movie?” Tweed asked, her voice carefully neutral.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “It's a new one. But there's a mummy in it, and—here's the thing—it's afraid of cats.”

Cheryl frowned. “Why would a mummy be afraid of cats?”

“Well, according to the hero of the picture,” Pilot explained, “the Egyptians worshipped them. They thought they were guardians of the underworld that kept departed souls from returning to walk the earth. Maybe a close encounter of the feline kind is just what we need to send that mummy spirit packing, back to the Great Mummy Beyond!”

“I don't know … sounds pretty far-fetched to me …” Cheryl said.

“You mean
farther
-fetched than flaming bug-bombs and croc-toddlers?”

Cheryl blinked and thought about that for a moment. “Point taken.”

She poked her head up to check on Zahara's movements and had to duck back down again as another insect sizzled through the air. It landed on the ground right beside her and she scrambled back, stomping on the thing and, in spite of her earlier protests, winding up with bug guts on the sole of her shoe. Flaming, evil bug guts. She stomped again to put out the green flames, grimacing at the smell of burning rubber.

“Wait!” Tweed pointed at the squashed remains. “Pilot might be on to something.”

“Whazzat?” Cheryl asked, skeptical, scraping her sneaker bottom off on the Astroturf.

“Remember how the bugs reacted when Miz Parks's puddins all started to meow?” Tweed said.

“That's right! They freaked!” Pilot urged. “Come on, Cheryl … think about it! If we can get Artie to help lure the mummy princess and the Bottoms kids into the barn, we can unleash the feline fury of a whole army of cats on them.”

“The shnookumses?” Cheryl paused, mid shoescrape, glancing back and forth at her companions. “An army?”

“She
has minions.” Pilot jerked a thumb in the direction of the Princess. “Why can't we?” He tapped one foot, waiting anxiously for the twins to see the genius of his plan.

Tweed tilted her head, contemplating what would happen when Pigwidgeon, Kittums Fat Fat, Mr. Sniffers and the rest were turned loose on an unsuspecting mummy princess.

Cheryl frowned, working the logic—the scarab beetles
had
skedaddled at the first yowl of cat-song. Surely it couldn't be coincidence, could it? The girls had long spouted on about the wisdom of the pictures. Maybe Pilot could take what he'd learned from
his
movies and apply it in the very same way.

He pleaded his case: “A movie's a movie's a movie,” he said. “Right? It's worth a try, isn't it? At least it might distract her long enough for us to get Artie and the boys away from her …”

“What do you think?” Tweed asked Cheryl. “Can we make a break for it?”

“Heck yes, we can!” Cheryl answered, a fierce gleam in her gaze as she unholstered two cans of Silly String from the belt around her waist and slammed the welder's mask back down over her face.

Tweed settled the 3D glasses down over her eyes.

Pilot nodded and flipped his ball cap the other way around.

“Go! Go! GO!” shouted Cheryl.

Tweed and Pilot burst out from behind their mountain hideout and sprinted for the mini-golf entrance gates, arms and legs pumping for all they were worth. Cheryl lagged, diving and ducking behind the igloo on hole three, just as the first volley of fire-beetles went blazing past, overshooting her in their flight to take down Pilot and Tweed. She let them get out front and then, with a cool head and steady hands, Cheryl stood, aimed with both cans, and let fly with a wide, wildly colourful spray of plastic string that burst into spectacular, flaming gyroscopic patterns of pyrotechnic kablooey in the night sky as the scarabs were hit with the improvised bug-catcher net and exploded on contact.

The second they did, Cheryl took off, sprinting to catch up with Pilot and Tweed.

“Hey, Shrimpcake!” she yelled over her shoulder, goading Artie with the nickname. “You tell your evil mummy princess—she wants to minionize us? She's gonna have to catch us first!”

And, with that, she poured on a burst of speed, catching up to Tweed and Pilot as they ran through the drive-in's (annoyingly) empty lot, ducking and dodging the vulture that was dive-bombing them, shrieking and flapping its wings.

“Flyboy!” Cheryl shouted as she ran. “Catch!”

She tossed him a can of string and Pilot snatched it out of the air without breaking stride. Cheryl drew even with him as the vulture readied for another dive, arcing
up into the sky and then arrowing sharply downward, hooked beak gaping open and uttering a piercing
skreeeee.

“Target that chicken's six, Flyboy!” Cheryl ordered. “I'll take tea time! Tweed—order us up some hot wings and spice that sucker up!”

Pilot and Tweed reacted as any well-oiled SWAT team or superhero squadron would. Pilot stuck out a hand, grabbed the nearest drive-in speaker pole, pivoted sharply around it and loosed a stream of string aimed at the vulture's “six o'clock”—its tail feathers—while Cheryl fired a neon blast at its right wing—the “three o'clock, time for tea” wing. Tweed, right on cue, slapped a Nerf bolt in her crossbow, spun, executed an entirely unintentional (but somehow still totally wicked-cool) shoulder roll, came up onto her knees and fired.

Cheryl suppressed a surge of stunt-double envy and kept on running.

Tweed's sponge bolt hit the buzzard right on the beak and a cloud of chili powder exploded from it. The bird squawked in surprise, sneezed violently and tumbled through the air on a wildly off-target trajectory. It crashed to the ground in a rolling heap at Zahara's sandalled feet, bowling over its mistress in an explosion of Silly String, feathers and mummy princess outrage. As they ran, Pilot and the girls could hear Zahara-Safiya's ancient Egyptian curse words and the vulture's squawks.

“You guysh are in for it now!” Artie shouted, rushing to help free his malevolently magical mistress from the
hopeless tangle of wings and strings. “Nobody meshes with Flappy and getsh away with it! You're curshed now, for shure!”

“You're making that up!” Cheryl shouted back. “Evil mummy princesses don't name their hench-birds ‘Flappy'! And you'll
still
have to catch us!”