You Have to Stop This Page 8

  The revelation that the Midnight Sun had financed the mummy exhibit certainly added an interesting wrinkle to the Curious Case of the Walking Mummy. It meant that the Midnight Sun knew who Dr. Amun was and that they wanted the mummy nearby. That much was clear. What confounded Max-Ernest as he walked home that afternoon was the question of whether or not they were now in possession of the mummy.

  He saw three possibilities:

  One, the Midnight Sun had broken into the museum and taken the mummy. If so, why were they not on the video?

  Two (and he was hesitant to believe this), the Midnight Sun had somehow managed to resurrect the mummy. The mummy had then left the museum according to their instructions and was now their zombie slave.

  Three (equally unlikely), their plan had backfired. The mummy had come back to life—whether with the Midnight Sun’s help or on his own—and had then walked out of his own accord. In this case, the mummy was now roaming the world as a rogue agent.

  Max-Ernest didn’t accept any of these possibilities, but no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t think of any others.

  Thinking, as you probably know from experience, can be very hazardous to your health. I don’t mean that thinking may lead you to do something hazardous (like investigate secrets), although of course that’s true as well. I mean thinking can cause you physical harm.

  On the best of days, Max-Ernest was prone to walking into things: walls, cars, telephone poles, fire hydrants, people carrying trays of food or bags of groceries. When he was deep in thought, as he was now, he was liable to walk off a cliff.

  Luckily, the drop from the curb to the street was only a few inches. Still, it was sufficient to cause him to trip and fall and lie sprawled on the asphalt cogitating anxiously about all the possible sprains and abrasions and breaks and bruises that he might or might not just now or in the future be suffering from.

  The view from ground level is seldom pleasant—unless you happen to be lying in a meadow or on a sandy beach—but it can be revelatory. Sometimes when we are at our lowest points, we make our greatest discoveries. Not so Max-Ernest. Eyes blurred, cheeks scraped, Max-Ernest stared across the street to the empty lot on the other side. He waited for some profound realization. It didn’t come. (Thankfully, neither did any cars.) He did, however, see something that caused his pulse to quicken:

  A movement in the bushes.

  And—what was that? An arm? A leg?

  Then… nothing.

  Max-Ernest’s first instinct was to stay where he was and play dead. Then he realized that was silly. If there was someone—a reanimated mummy, for example, or more likely his reanimated schoolmate, Amber—who wanted to attack him, he would be far more vulnerable lying in the street than standing up. And even if nobody meant him any harm, there was still the probability of being run over.

  Reluctantly, he stood.

  Imagining that Cass was watching—and judging—his actions, he resisted running home and instead walked across the street to investigate.

  “Hello?” The word came out as a screech.

  Nobody answered. There was no sound of any kind.

  Until a pigeon flew out from behind a bush.

  Max-Ernest looked around, feeling rather foolish.

  His mother’s house—or, more accurately, his mother’s half house—had stood here in this lot during the time it was separated from his father’s half house. Max-Ernest remembered that time well: a hopeful time when it seemed for once that his parents might live like normal divorced parents—that is, separately. Now that his mother’s half house had rejoined his father’s (and his parents were once again cohabiting and once again not speaking to each other), all that remained in the place of his mother’s half house were a half dozen or so slabs of cement and a variety of sad-looking weeds.

  Usually, nothing decorated the surface of the cement except dead leaves and the occasional splatter of bird droppings. Today, however, he saw something more intriguing.

  He looked around to make sure he was unobserved. Then he leaned down to inspect the cement more closely. Yes, there they were, faint but unmistakable: two symbols drawn in chalk.

  Hieroglyphs! Could it be a message left for him by the mummy? This time real and not dreamed.

  He looked again. No, it wasn’t a message from the mummy.

  Still, the markings looked very similar to hieroglyphs, and in a general sense they were hieroglyphs. Not ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs but modern ones:

  They were hobo marks—a written code used by hobos to communicate secretly with one another, often offering warnings and advice.

  To most people, the marks at Max-Ernest’s feet would mean nothing. Even to a hobo, they would appear contradictory, if not downright crazy.

  Literally translated, the two symbols meant:

  GO QUICKLY / FLEE—STAY / SAFE PLACE TO SPEND NIGHT

  To members of the Terces Society, however, they meant something quite different:

  URGENT—MEET TONIGHT AT HEADQUARTERS

  Max-Ernest walked home with a furrowed brow.

  Why was Pietro calling in the troops? They’d been sending him regular reports on the mummy situation, but maybe he wanted to hear about it in person. Or perhaps Pietro had some information for them.

  In either case, Max-Ernest welcomed the chance to talk to the old magician. No doubt he would provide new insight into the Curious Case of the Walking Mummy.

  Shortly before midnight, Max-Ernest stood across the street from Cass’s house, anxiously checking his watch. Pietro was the kind of man whose favorite form of relaxation consisted of fixing old clocks so they kept perfect time; he didn’t like it when people were late.

  Max-Ernest felt a tap on his shoulder. Flinching, he turned around—all the way around—until he saw Cass smiling mischievously at him.

  “Just a little taste of your own medicine. Hope I didn’t scare you… too much.”

  “Only because you’re late,” he replied irritably. “Three minutes and forty-two seconds later than last time. You should practice climbing out your bedroom window more often.”

  “And you should stop looking at your watch. I’ve been standing right behind you for longer than that.”

  “Really?”

  “No, but I might have been. You should be more careful.”

  He opened his mouth, trying to think of a snappy comeback, when Yo-Yoji walked up.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey,” said his friends.

  “Sorry about in the library today,” said Yo-Yoji. “I know that was kinda goofy. Mrs. Johnson made me go with Amber and then—”

  “What are you sorry for? People like who they like,” said Cass.

  “I don’t like her. When I saw her bag, I decided to be nice to find out if she knew anything.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Why you have to be like that, dude?”

  “Like what? Dude.”

  “Um, guys,” said Max-Ernest, trying and failing to get their attention.

  “I just think you should be careful,” said Cass. “I mean, it’s kind of dangerous hanging out with somebody who’s in the Midnight Sun, don’t you think?”

  “I was not hanging out with her!” said Yo-Yoji, clenching his fists in frustration.

  Max-Ernest tried again. “Guys! Can you stop talking for a second?”

  Cass and Yo-Yoji looked at him in surprise. The idea of Max-Ernest, of all people, telling anybody to stop talking was a bit funny, to say the least.

  “We’re late,” he said.

  “I know—stop dawdling,” said Cass, a little smile crossing her lips. She started walking. “C’mon, it took us thirty-five minutes to get there last time.”

  “Thirty-six,” Max-Ernest corrected.

  Yo-Yoji followed, scowling.

  “Bogus,” he muttered. “So bogus, it’s re-bog-ulous.”

  Although officially an “old-fashioned traveling circus,” Pietro’s circus hadn’t traveled so much as an inch in the past yea
r. The half dozen or so tents and equal number of trailers that made up the circus sat on a big dirt lot that by now had come to seem a permanent, if not always pleasant, home to the circus folk.

  The lot was surrounded on all sides by an old wire fence. There was only one way in—a dirt road crossed by a rusting chain. Usually, the chain wasn’t any real hindrance to passage. You simply walked over it. Or unhooked it from a post if you were driving a car or carting something heavy.

  Tonight, there was an additional obstacle blocking their way:

  “Who’s that?” whispered Cass.

  A man—or the shadow of a man—stood stiffly in front of the chain. His arms and legs were spread, signaling that they were not to cross. His face they couldn’t see.

  He didn’t move as they came closer. He could have been a scarecrow.

  It didn’t necessarily look like the mummy. Then again, in the video, they hadn’t been able to see the mummy’s face, either.

  “Chill,” said Yo-Yoji. “Even if there’s some mummy walking around out there who wants to kill us for taking his finger, how would he know we were coming here?”

  “Yo-Yoji’s right,” said Max-Ernest. “That wouldn’t make any sense.”

  “Well, let’s keep going, then,” said Cass. She didn’t say what she was thinking: that the ring hanging from her neck might be acting as some kind of homing device, attracting the mummy.

  They had no choice but to walk right up to him.

  The man was wearing a rumpled old suit and a stained fishing hat with a broken pigeon feather stuck in it. His face was smudged with dirt and grease. He might not have been a mummy, but he looked very much as though he’d been dug out of the ground. Not a reassuring sight, by any means.

  “Yo, what’s up?” said Yo-Yoji nonchalantly. He kept walking as if he had every intention of stepping over the chain and entering the circus.

  “Not so fast, buster,” said the man in a low rumble. His arm shot out in front of Yo-Yoji. “Password?”

  “Password? We come here all the time,” said Max-Ernest, trying not to sound nervous. “We’re… friends of Pietro’s.”

  “I don’t care if you’re friends with the queen of England. Nobody enters without the password.”

  “But nobody told us the password,” said Cass. “We didn’t even get a hint!”

  “OK, OK, if you would shut your bazoos and stop barbering for a second, I’ll give you punks a hint,” said the man, softening. “What a bronc is to a cowboy, a train is to a blank.”

  “That’s easy,” said Max-Ernest. “A cowboy rides a horse. A conductor rides a train.”

  “That’s true, but that’s not the password. The password is four letters long.”

  “Well, how about pass, then?” Cass asked. “Short for a passenger riding a train. But also for password. And for Why don’t you let us pass now—this is crazy.”

  “Clever,” said the man, not moving. “But no go.”

  “Wait, I know what it is,” said Yo-Yoji unexpectedly.

  “Hobo!” Max-Ernest blurted out, saying the word at the same time as Yo-Yoji.

  Yo-Yoji gave him a look.

  “Sorry,” said Max-Ernest. “I just figured it out and—”

  “And you had to say it, I know,” said Yo-Yoji. “No worries.”

  “You guys got it! Hobo it is,” said the disheveled crossing guard. “Just like me.” The hobo held up his arms and turned in a circle to show off his outfit. “You like the suit? I dressed up in case anybody saw me leaving those chalk marks today.”

  “Owen!” cried Cass.

  “The very same,” said the actor turned Terces Society spy. Grinning, he took off his fishing hat and bowed. “At your service, m’lady.”

  “I’m going to kill you!” said Cass. (Although she had great affection for Owen, it infuriated Cass that he always pretended to be somebody he wasn’t—even when it wasn’t strictly necessary.)

  “You know who we are—it’s not like we’re in disguises,” said Max-Ernest. “Why couldn’t you just let us in?”

  “What fun would that be? Besides, I’m trying to delay going to the meeting,” said Owen, his grin fading.

  “Why? What’s the meeting about?” asked Yo-Yoji. “Can’t be worse than what we’ve been dealing with.”

  “Let’s just say we have an unfriendly guest.”

  Alarmed, the kids looked at one another. Could the mummy somehow have found his way into the circus after all?

  From somewhere in the darkness came the braying of circus animals and the sound of tents flapping in the wind.

  It would be hard to overstate the shock Cass, Yo-Yoji, and Max-Ernest felt when they saw their old nemesis, Dr. L, sitting by the campfire behind Pietro’s trailer.

  This was the man who had nearly succeeded in sucking out Benjamin Blake’s brains through his nostrils and who had later brainwashed the boy into spying on his friends. (Benjamin was now being homeschooled and, thankfully, was doing very well.) The man who had lured Cass and Max-Ernest aboard his boat and then tried to feed them to sharks. The man who’d helped Ms. Mauvais build a secret chocolate plantation on the backs of slave children. The man they’d last seen dressed as a Renaissance courtier casually orchestrating a lopsided duel between Yo-Yoji and the deadly Lord Pharaoh.

  He was one of the leaders of the Midnight Sun. Their sworn enemy. And there he was, sitting on a lawn chair next to Pietro and the other members of the Terces Society, exactly as if he were one of them.

  “Peanuts?” Dr. L offered, holding up a striped bag of the classic circus snack. “They are so much better in the shell. I’d forgotten.”

  Pietro smiled. “My brother and I, we used to climb up the trapeze and throw the peanuts at the clowns,” said Pietro, his Italian accent noticeably stronger—and warmer—than his brother’s. “We laughed and laughed, but then we were always too scared to climb back down, ti ricordi, Luciano?”

  Dr. L chuckled. “That’s because the clowns were waiting to throw us into the water with the seals.”

  The sight of these two men—one looking very much like a man in his seventies or eighties, the other looking half that age—reminiscing together would have been odd even if you didn’t know about the intense animosity between them. Under the circumstances, it was unspeakably weird.

  The newcomers scanned the faces of the older Terces members for an explanation. From the looks of it, everyone else was as puzzled as they were.

  Mr. Wallace, the certified public accountant who was secretly the Terces Society’s archivist and oldest surviving member, had a contorted, almost pained expression, as if he were lifting a heavy object (or was just very constipated).

  Lily, the violin instructor who happened to be the Terces Society’s resident physical-defense expert, stared angrily into the distance, so infuriated by the presence of Dr. L that she couldn’t even get herself to nod in welcome to her old student, Yo-Yoji.

  Myrtle, the circus’s bearded lady and Pietro’s gal Friday, stood nearby, grimacing with disapproval.

  Owen, meanwhile, kept standing up and sitting down and standing up again, as if he were barely able to keep himself from walking over to the interloper and clobbering him.

  Only Pietro seemed happy. He beamed like a proud parent. Gesturing to the three available hay bales, he said, “Take a seat, my young friends. Myrtle, can you make them some hot cocoa?”

  Muttering to herself, Myrtle disappeared into the camper.

  Dr. L glanced around the circle. “This is all of you? You were stronger in my imagination. I fear my visit here may be in vain.”

  Owen stood up again, his face red and his fist curled. “We are as strong as we need to be. Strong enough to crush you!”

  “Owen, the actor, am I right?” Dr. L inquired. “You certainly have a flair for the dramatic.”

  “I also have a flair for slugging people in the eye!”

  Pietro motioned for Owen to sit. “Please. My brother, he has come to us of his own free will, at great risk
to himself. We should listen to what he has to say.”

  “With all due respect, Pietro, you are blinded by your love,” said Mr. Wallace. “What can this man possibly have to say to us?”

  “Lies and more lies,” Lily spit out. “That’s what.”

  She swatted the ground with her violin bow. As the rest of them knew, the bow was secretly a sword. Lily appeared to be on the verge of using it on Dr. L.

  “Anyone else care to share their feelings?” asked Dr. L politely.

  Nobody said anything. Their silence was eloquent enough.

  “Very well.” He smiled thinly. “As you all know, I am not a sentimental man. I do not shudder to see a baby bird taken from its nest. I do not flinch at the sight of blood.”

  “On the contrary. You take great pleasure in it,” said Lily through gritted teeth.

  “Not pleasure. Merely interest. I am a scientist. But I am still a man. Somewhere inside.”

  “You are a little boy inside—that is what you are, fratello mio,” said Pietro, his old voice trembling with emotion. “The little boy whose childhood, it was stolen from him by that despicable woman, Ms. Mauvais.”

  Lily swatted the ground with her bow again, her rage reaching the boiling point. “His childhood? What about all the childhoods he stole?”

  Dr. L shrugged. “Perhaps I am still that boy. Or perhaps I was born old…. Either way, I have discovered that even I have limits. No longer will I condone the unnecessary loss of life.”

  “Tell us why you are here,” said Pietro gently.

  “Well, this is an appropriate location because what I have to say concerns a ghost,” said Dr. L, his eyes blazing in the firelight. “The ghost of a Swiss doctor who lived five hundred years ago. The greatest alchemist of his time. Perhaps of all time.”

  “You mean the rottenest alchemist,” said Max-Ernest, taking a cup of hot cocoa from Myrtle, who had just returned. He sipped greedily. The taste of chocolate gave him the courage to address Dr. L without fear. “You’re talking about the founder of the Midnight Sun, Lord Pharaoh.”

  “That is the name he gives himself, yes. He has more than a touch of grandiosity.”