[Janitors 03] Curse of the Broomstaff (24 page)

“It’s as good a plan as any, I supposed,” V said. “You take one mattress, I’ll take the other. Two distractions are always better than one.”

Without another word, Penny drew a broom and launched herself straight up. When the broom began to lose its power, she pulled out a plunger and leapt onto the side of the mattress. The plunger clamped on, and she clung like a bedbug as she drew a second plunger. Then, hand over hand, she clamped the plungers and pulled herself higher.

V used the same approach to scale the other wall, and Spencer was amazed at how strong and coordinated she looked. Then again, she’d had almost three hundred years of practice.

As Penny and V finished their climb, Walter turned to the remainder of the group. “Rho and I will lead. Alan and Spencer come next, but wait a few minutes for us to get through. Then Bernard and Daisy will take up the rear. Don’t enter the slot canyon unless you’re sure the vacuum is distracted. We’ll be sitting ducks in there.”

Rho stepped up next to Walter at the mouth of the canyon. It wasn’t long before they heard Penny’s voice rising to a shout. She hurled a piece of trash at the vacuum, causing the attachment end to perk up. The long hose reared back and came sucking down blindly on the top of the mattress.

“Now!” Walter shouted. He and Rho sprinted into the long slot canyon, trying to cover as much ground as possible before the distraction ended. In a moment, they were out of sight.

Spencer and his dad stood ready, their eyes on the vacuum hose. After several long minutes, Alan took his son by the shoulder and said, “Let’s go!”

They sprinted into the chute, Spencer bouncing off one of the walls as he grazed against it. Sound seemed muffled between the two oversized mattresses. All the dense foam and fabric held a stifling amount of heat. And the smell was worse than a wet dog.

Spencer’s feet pounded. A roaring suction sounded overhead, and his eyes flicked upward. The vacuum hose was right above them, the canister perched on the edge of the mattress. It must have grown tired of groping sightlessly for Penny and decided to return to the windblown scraps of garbage caught between the mattresses.

Spencer shouted a warning to his dad, but his voice was whisked away as the attachment bristles whirred closer.

Then mop strings streamed overhead, lashing out from V’s side. The strings whiplashed into the vacuum hose, causing it to rise once more in search of its aggressors.

Spencer and Alan burst out the other side, stumbling in the trash and falling to their knees next to Walter and Rho.

The warlock’s eyes were directed up toward the tops of the mattresses. “Two more to come,” he muttered. “Keep it up.”

Spencer waited, patiently at first, but growing more anxious as time ticked by with no sign of Daisy or Bernard. V and Penny were growing desperate, throwing every attack they could to keep the vacuum hose from dipping down again.

“Where are they?” Spencer said, trying to peer down the narrow canyon. “They should be here by now!”

“Relax,” his dad said. “They’re probably just waiting for an opening.”

Spencer pointed to the vacuum hose. “It hasn’t come down since we came through!” He might have been jumping to conclusions, but he said it anyway. “Something happened to them. We’ve got to go back.”

“They’ll be fine,” Alan said. “Give them a minute.”

His dad’s comment seemed insensitive, and that bothered Spencer. Was Alan even worried about Daisy and Bernard? They could be hurt . . . or worse.

Spencer’s jaw tightened as he glanced at his dad. Talking got him nowhere. It was better just to act. With that thought, Spencer bolted back into the slot canyon, his dad calling after him.

Spencer was halfway through when he saw the problem. Bernard was slumped in the middle of the pathway, unmoving. Daisy seemed frozen, her Glopified belt in a heap next to Bernard and her back to the mattress. She was weaponless and trembling.

And right before her stood a growling Thingamajunk.

I
n his panic, Spencer tried to run faster. “Daisy!” he screamed. But his feet were moving too quickly for the rest of him to keep up. His toe caught a length of plastic webbing and he went down hard, stars dancing in his peripheral vision. His leg was tangled and stuck. In his haste, he’d ruined any chance of saving his friend.

The Thingamajunk dropped forward onto its long arms and roared into the girl’s face. It looked similar to the other Thingamajunks they’d encountered: hulking scraps of garbage fused together by the Glop that gave it life. This one had a dented lunch box for a head, with a moldy textbook hanging on like a dislocated jaw.

“Daisy!” Spencer shouted. “You have to trash-talk it!” She glanced sideways at him. “What?”

“Trash-talk!” Spencer said. “Pretend like you’re tough!”

Daisy’s hands balled into tight fists. She leaned forward slightly and shouted, “Hey there, big guy!”

“No!” Spencer coached. “You have to insult it!”

She took a deep breath. “You’re huge and scary!”

“That’s not an insult, Daisy,” Spencer yelled. “That’s what it’s going for!” He drew his razorblade and started cutting himself free of the plastic webbing. “Say the meanest thing you can think of!”

Daisy squinted her eyes and screamed at the trash, “You’re made of garbage!”

The Thingamajunk reached out with its long arm and knocked her back against the spongy mattress.

“I’m sorry!” Daisy’s voice was small and quivering. “But you are.”

The Thingamajunk made a series of grunts and grabbed Daisy by the arm. With only words to defend herself, Daisy gathered her courage and made one final attempt.

“Listen here, big buddy. You are big and scary and made of trash. But under all that yucky garbage, I bet there’s a really nice guy. Maybe you’re upset because you don’t have any friends. Maybe you’re mad because other people make fun of you. Maybe you feel like there’s not a single good thing about you. I’ve been there, buddy. I’ve felt like garbage. Dez Rylie made me feel that way every day of fifth grade. But I didn’t go around trying to eat people!”

The Thingamajunk paused, its lunch-box head cocked curiously to one side. It snorted once as if in disbelief over Daisy’s pathetic resistance. Then the covers of the old textbook peeled back to reveal a crooked line of broken pencils that, more or less, formed teeth. But squirming between the Thingamajunk’s jagged teeth were at least a dozen pale worms, munching away on the decomposing paper.

“Bookworms.” Daisy shuddered from head to toe. The Thingamajunk continued gnashing its teeth savagely, but Daisy was on a roll now.

“There!” she said. “That’s better. At least you’re smiling now.”

Spencer didn’t point out that the Thingamajunk was actually gnashing. Smiling and gnashing were two very different things. Spencer stood, at last free of the webbing. But Daisy didn’t seem to need help anymore.

The Thingamajunk dropped the girl to the ground. Its mouth closed and then opened again, stubby pencil teeth jutting awkwardly in an attempted smile.

Daisy cringed at its rotting mouth. But seeing the Thingamajunk’s nasty attempt at a smile seemed to spark an idea for Daisy. She dug into her pocket and quickly found the item she was looking for.

It was a pink retainer. The one from Bernard’s strange dumpster collection.

“Here.” Daisy held it out. “It might be a little small, ’cause you’ve got a huge mouth. But you seriously need some dental work.”

The Thingamajunk leaned forward, examining the small item in Daisy’s outstretched palm. It cocked its head to the other side and grunted in thought.

“Take it,” Daisy insisted. “It will help your teeth get straighter. Then maybe there won’t be enough room for the worms.”

Spencer dropped to his knees next to Bernard. With a shot of orange healing spray, the garbologist began to revive.

“What’s she doing?” Bernard muttered, sitting up.

“She’s bargaining for her life,” Spencer said. “With a retainer.” It was absolutely ludicrous!

“One of my dumpster retainers?” Bernard asked. “Those are special edition! Carefully collected in more than forty states!”

The Thingamajunk’s hand was hovering just above Daisy’s. It seemed frozen, like it was expecting some kind of trick.

“Go ahead,” the girl coaxed. “Take it.”

The garbage hand closed around the pink retainer. And just like that, the Thingamajunk exploded.

It happened so unexpectedly that Daisy was knocked backward against the wall. Trash fell to the floor around her like shrapnel.

Daisy’s eyes were big as she staggered back to her feet. “What happened?”

“He blew up,” Spencer pointed out. It didn’t make much sense.

“Because I trash-talked him?” Daisy asked.

“You couldn’t even insult a pile of garbage!” said Spencer. “I don’t know what that was, but it definitely wasn’t trash-talking.”

“Trash-whispering?” Daisy tried.

“I suggest we finish this debate in a safer location.” Bernard pointed upward as the huge vacuum hose dropped into the slot canyon, bored of Penny’s and V’s distractions.

Bernard led the way, with Spencer and Daisy close behind. The vacuum attachment was bobbing up and down, gobbling trash between gasps of fresh air. The trio paused, trying to time their escape perfectly.

The garbologist went first, diving and rolling through the trash as the vacuum hose lifted. Spencer was right behind him, feeling the suction lift his hair as he barely made it past.

Daisy came last, but her timing was off. She rolled forward just as the vacuum attachment came down. The girl screamed, her braid flying upward as her feet left the ground. Spencer doubled back, calling her name, but he realized that she would be swallowed long before he could reach her.

Abruptly, a pile of garbage directly beneath the vacuum hose sprang to life. It leapt straight into the air, bits of scrap and trash forming together into a Thingamajunk.

The garbage figure caught the neck of the vacuum hose in both apelike arms. It roared, a rustling sound that outmatched the whirling attachment. The vacuum hose bucked under the attack, but the Thingamajunk continued to squeeze, pinching off the hose and stopping the suction.

Daisy dropped to the hard trail as the vacuum hose went slack. The Thingamajunk swung sideways, its garbage feet kicking off the wall and pulling the hose so that it doubled over itself. Then, with a final roar, the Thingamajunk dropped down, tying the vacuum hose into a tight knot.

The vacuum reared back, pulling its knotted hose over the top of the mattress and out of sight. The Thingamajunk dropped onto all fours and lifted Daisy back to her feet.

She stared at the garbage figure, too stunned to say a word. Then the Thingamajunk smiled at her. And there, wedged into the moldy textbook that formed its mouth, was a pink retainer.

R
ho, Walter, and Alan came sprinting down the slot canyon. The Auran girl at the lead saw the Thingamajunk and instantly started trash-talking.

“Get out of here, you clumsy pile of scrap! You’re a disgrace to garbage!”

The Thingamajunk started growling. The pink retainer, clipped between two stubby pencils, started rattling as the garbage figure drew itself up to full height and roared.

“That’s right!” Rho carried on. “I’m not afraid of you or your smelly excuse for a body! You can go—”

“Stop it!” Daisy screamed, stepping between the Auran and the Thingamajunk. Rho backed up, surprised that Daisy would stand so close to the dangerous creature. Daisy reached back and put a steadying hand on the Thingamajunk’s arm.

“He’s not hurting us,” Daisy explained. “Bookworm saved my life.”

“Bookworm?” Alan asked.

“That’s what I’m calling him,” said Daisy. In response, the Thingamajunk bent low and flashed its wormy imitation of a smile. The Rebels all pulled back in disgust.

Just then, Penny and V drifted down from the mattresses, landing skillfully with brooms in hand. Instinctively, V began a strain of loudmouthed trash-talking when she saw the Thingamajunk, but Daisy quickly cut her off.

“What’s going on here?” the Auran demanded.

“Looks to me like Daisy made a friend,” Bernard said.

V shook her head. “Impossible. You can’t make friends with a Thingamajunk. It’s got to be a trap. This one must be smarter than the others. It’s going to wait until we turn our backs and then attack when we’re least prepared. We should destroy it now while it’s outnumbered!”

The Thingamajunk began slinking away from V as her voice rose. Daisy reached out a hand for the garbage being.

“Don’t listen to them,” she said. “Nobody’s going to hurt you.” Daisy took a step closer. “Do you speak English?”

The Thingamajunk shook its lunch-box head, grunting a few times in response.

“I don’t think that was English,” Daisy said, looking to her companions for affirmation.

“Definitely not,” Bernard said.

Spencer stepped forward to ask Bookworm another question. “Do you understand us when we speak to you?”

The Thingamajunk nodded, grunting something that sounded like “garblar.”

“Garblar,” Daisy said. “Maybe that means ‘yes.’”

“Why did you save Daisy from that vacuum hose?” Spencer asked.

The Thingamajunk reached up to its mouth and plucked out the pink retainer. It held the object for all to see, nodding excitedly.

“You liked my gift?” Daisy asked.

“Oh, please!” V rolled her eyes. “You gave it a gift?”

Bookworm popped the retainer back into its mouth and gave another smile.

“Has anything like this ever happened before with a Thingamajunk?” Walter asked the Aurans.

“Never,” Rho answered. “We’re always fighting them off. Thingamajunks don’t help people.”

“Maybe that’s because you trash-talk them all the time,” Daisy said. “Maybe you hurt their feelings and that makes them mad.”

V shrugged incredulously. “They’re made of garbage. Garbage doesn’t have feelings.”

Daisy was going red in the face, trying to mount some defense for her rescuer. Whether Bookworm had feelings or not, Daisy had changed something about the Thingamajunk. She’d shown it a bit of kindness, given it a simple gift, and now the garbage figure was standing behind her like a bodyguard.