Insert Coin to Continue Page 12

  A flash of white darted across the floor right past Bryan’s shoe, headed toward the door, which Mr. Tomlins had at least had the sense to close before class started.

  “Come here, you little fuzz ball,” Bryan said. He dropped to his knees and reached out to grab it by the tail. Then stopped as the door swung open. Becky Yao stood there, a blue hall pass in her hand.

  “Sorry, Mr. Tomlins, but I had to stay after and talk to Mrs. Bedfer—what the . . . ?” She looked down just as the mouse scurried between her legs and out into the hall.

  Bryan leaped to his feet. Turned and looked at Mr. Tomlins.

  “Go!” the science teacher shouted.

  Bryan pushed past Becky into the hall. Behind him he could hear the continued screams of Susan Onesacker and the words of Mr. Tomlins calling out to him. “Remember, Biggins, I want him alive!”

  Bryan stopped long enough to slam the door shut behind him. He looked for a wisp of movement, listened for a squeak or the patter of paws, but it was impossible to hear anything with all the commotion from the room behind him. Bryan started to turn to go one way when a ball of white fuzz ambled out from behind a water fountain and darted the other way. Bryan took off after it.

  “Come here, you little rat.” He lunged, trying to cut it off, but the mouse slipped by him, its little paws struggling to find traction on the slick tiled floor. Bryan was nearly on top of it again as the mouse turned the corner at the end of the hall.

  He turned to see the beast taking cover under an empty desk sitting in the hallway. It was huddled against the wall. He had it trapped. He had to be stealthy, though. It would be easier if he had Kerran Nightstalker’s Shroud of Invisibility rather than his own sweat-stained Tunic of Unwashing, but he could at least walk on his tiptoes, holding his breath. Just creep . . . right . . . up . . . on . . . it . . . like . . . Mercutio . . . the . . . ninja . . . and . . .

  “Biggins!”

  Bryan froze at the sound of the voice shouting his name.

  He knew that voice.

  He slowly turned his head.

  There she was, at the end of the hall, standing stiff as a surfboard. Eyes black as midnight, amplified by her thick lenses.

  The Eye of Krug sees all.

  Bryan kept his own eyes on the mouse as she approached, her leather soles clopping steadily down the hallway. “I sure hope you have a hall pass this time,” she demanded, stopping in front of Bryan and holding out her hand.

  “I don’t, actually,” Bryan whispered through clenched teeth. “See, I’m on a mission from Mr. Tomlins.” He tried to motion toward the mouse with his thumb, but Amy wasn’t taking the hint. Instead she snapped her fingers in front of his face to get his full attention. Bryan thought she could be cute if she wasn’t snarling all the time.

  “Look at me, Biggins. Don’t you know that you aren’t allowed to wander the halls without a pass officially signed by a teacher or administrator?”

  “Is this, like, your full-time job or something?” Bryan fired back. “I told you I’m out here helping Mr. Tomlins.”

  The Eye ignored Bryan’s question. Her eyebrows made a sharp V, like a dagger’s tip. “Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor,” she said.

  “Why do people keep quoting things at me?” Bryan blustered. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means show me your hall pass or I’m writing you up!” Krug snapped her fingers at him again. Bryan noticed her nails were cut to the quick.

  “And I told you,” he repeated, speaking slowly this time, looking into her cold, calculating eyes, “I . . . don’t . . . have . . . a . . . pass. I am on a mission to capture a mouse that escaped from Mr. Tomlins’s class and is sitting right . . . over . . .” He pointed behind him to where the mouse was, except, of course, the mouse was already gone. “Terrific. You let it get away.”

  Bryan felt one of Amy’s hands on his arm. “That’s it, Biggins. That’s the second time you’ve been out of class today. I’m taking you in to see the Boss.”

  The Boss. The principal. Mr. Petrowski. Bryan started to plead his case, when he saw the little white fuzz ball dart back across the hall.

  “There it is!” he shouted, and started after it, but Amy’s hands clamped down. The Eye of Krug was holding him back. He jerked his arm free, but she grabbed him by both shoulders. She was a lot stronger than she looked. “Get off of me!” he yelled.

  “No! You’re going to the principal’s office!” she grunted.

  He tried to wiggle out of her grasp, but instead she wrapped her arms tightly around his chest and then jumped up and knotted her legs around his waist, suddenly riding him piggyback. The whole maneuver threw him off balance, causing them both to spin around twice and then topple over onto the floor in a heap of grunts and flailing limbs. Bryan heard an “urf” from beneath him and felt Amy’s grip loosen around his neck. He pried himself free and scrambled back to his feet.

  He looked down to see her holding her stomach, eyes clenched tight, the wind knocked out of her. She opened her eyes and glared at him, but somehow her suit jacket had gotten twisted around her, making it difficult for her to move her arms to get up. She actually growled. Like a wild animal.

  “Seriously, Amy, I’m sorry, but you have to understand,” Bryan said, then saw the mouse turn another corner. Before she could get up and follow, Bryan took off down the hall. Behind him he could hear her voice.

  “This isn’t over Biggins! You’re in big trouble now!”

  Tell me something I don’t know, he thought, running in the same direction as the mouse. He had to catch it. He wasn’t sure how many continues he had left.

  Bryan turned just in time to see the mouse duck through the crack of a barely opened door, leading into another room that Bryan had never been in before.

  The boiler room.

  “You’ve got to be joking.”

  The thing might as well have gone into the kitchen. Or out into the field behind the school. Bryan stood outside the cracked door and looked back down the hall, expecting to see Amy right there, shambling after him, but there was nobody. Maybe she was headed to the front office. If so, Bryan knew he would need evidence to support his story. He would have to catch this little rodent. Bryan pushed open the door to the boiler room and squeezed inside.

  The long hall of a room was dark and musty, floors of cold cement, a maze of pipes and ducts crossing and bending and disappearing into the ceiling. Furnaces and hot-water heaters lined up like high-rise apartments, shooting metal tubes and hoses out in all directions. Valves hissed. Generators hummed. The whole place smelled of burned oil and pine cleaner. There were at least a million places a mouse could hide in here.

  “Impossible,” Bryan said to himself.

  “Nouthin’s impossible.”

  Bryan jumped, spinning to see Mr. McKellen, the school’s head janitor, standing right beside him. It certainly wasn’t the first time Bryan had seen the man, but it was the first time he’d heard him speak. The head janitor was at least eighty years old, by the look of him, with an avalanche of a beard that came halfway down his shirt and eyes ringed with crags and crevices. He had oily rags poking out of both pockets and an assortment of screwdrivers clipped to his belt. He looked at Bryan with one bushy eyebrow raised. “Ya dunna balong here, ya know?” the old man said.

  “I know. I’m sorry,” Bryan said. Did the man always have an accent or was that only for today? Bryan wondered. The janitor’s eyes were a cloudy blue. It was a little unsettling, bewitching even. Like the old man could see into the future or something. “I was chasing a mouse,” Bryan explained. “White. About yay big. Pink tail. It escaped from Mr. Tomlin’s class and came in here.”

  The janitor nodded, stroked his long beard. “I know this creature a which ya speak,” he said, chewing on each word as if it were stuck to the roof of his mouth. “A cunnin’ thing. And vicious.”

  Bryan shook his head. “No. I’m just looking for a mouse, see? It got free from—”
>
  “Cunnin’ and vicious!” the janitor insisted, blowing up those ominous eyes and advancing on Bryan with his hands up. “With claws lek deggers and teeth sharp enoof to dig clane through a man’s heart and out t’other side!” Mr. McKellen reached out with both hands. Bryan instinctively backed up against the wall. The janitor smiled, and Bryan saw he was missing more than one tooth.

  “Sartin we’ve seen their kind bafore. Tried everythin’. Poison. Metal. Wire. All manner a traps. But they’re wily beasts. Once heard a oon got clar in ta the lounge. Hid in the cabinet till the music teacher came and joomped right at ’er; nearly ripped ’er face off, it did.”

  “I really don’t think—” Bryan started to say, but the old man cut him off.

  “Ever been par’lyzed with fear, Mr. Biggins?”

  “Wait a minute. How do you know who I—”

  “Ever felt the ice-cold tooch a death wrap its bony fingers round yer neck?”

  “No, but—”

  “Ever know what it’s like to stare inta those beady red eyes and know ya only have one breath left ta yer name?”

  This old man was seriously creeping Bryan out.

  “Such is the demon ya seek.” The old janitor coughed. Then he laughed. A full-throated, rasping laugh, making the loose skin of his cheeks jump.

  “The demon,” Bryan whispered to himself, looking down at his shoes and then back up at the janitor. “Right, okay. Listen, Mr. McKellen, I’m just going to look around a little bit, you know, just to say I tried. If you want to help—”

  “Do ya take me fer a fool, Biggins?” the janitor interrupted. “I’m sure as sin not goin’ after that ’orrible creature. Best I kin do is ta give ya this.” The janitor reached behind him and handed Bryan a broom. Not one of the broad-headed sweepers that look like giant mustaches and span half a hallway, but a normal kitchen broom that seemed to be missing half of its bristles.

  “Wow. Um. Okay. Thanks . . . for this,” Bryan said, taking it tentatively.

  “Don’t joodge it by its looks. The Staff a Sweeping Joostice has been among our kin for decades. My great-grandfather used it. My own father wielded it. Now you’ll carry it, Bryan Biggins. Into the darkness that awaits ya.”

  “Okay. Whatever. Listen: If a crazy girl in a black business suit and glasses comes to the door looking for me, just tell her I’m not here, all right?” Bryan turned to start looking, but the janitor stopped him again with a hand on his shoulder.

  “Be on yer guard, Biggins. There’re even fouler thin’s than your moose hidden in these shadows.”

  Right. Bryan nodded. My moose. “Got it,” he said, then he took the broom and ventured deeper into the boiler room. He had taken about ten steps when he heard the door slam shut and turned to see that the old janitor with the ghost-blue eyes was gone. He was on his own in this wasteland of steaming machines and empty crates.

  He had the overwhelming sensation that he’d done something like this before. It was really no different from most of the dungeons he’d conquered in Sovereign of Darkness. Except in those he’d used a mouse to fend off evil with a click of his finger. He hadn’t been looking for one. Not to mention Kerran Nightstalker was usually armed with a sword and a bow, not an ancient broom.

  Bryan ventured deeper into the room. Half the lights were burned out, creating patches of darkness. Spare piping and random hunks of metal littered the floor. Bryan took small steps, craning his neck, looking into every crack and crevice. Listening. He thought he could hear a scratching. Soft at first, but growing louder. Tiny claws scraping along metal. It seemed to echo almost, so that Bryan couldn’t really tell where it was coming from. Everywhere and nowhere. All around. He gripped his broom tighter in both hands.

  Cunnin’ and vicious. The janitor’s words whispered in his head. The mouse—half the size of Bryan’s fist—hadn’t looked either when Bryan was chasing it down the hall, but suddenly he wasn’t so sure. He could sense it there, somewhere close by, watching him. Waiting.

  A shadow danced along the far wall, the silhouette of a mouse, except ten times larger than the one Bryan had been hunting. Bryan held the Staff of Sweeping Justice out in front of him, thinking of a horror movie he had seen once where the kid flushed a baby alligator down the toilet and it somehow found enough to eat in the sewers to grow twelve feet long, eventually crawling through a manhole to terrorize the town. Bryan pictured the mouse, suddenly three feet tall, with front teeth like razor blades and claws like kitchen knives capable of tearing through skin and bone, looming up behind him.

  Something knocked and rattled. Bryan spun around and struck at whatever it was with his broom, hitting the furnace that had just kicked on, making an obnoxious gonging sound. A blower or fan suddenly whirred to life.

  Bryan shook his head. He had to get a hold of himself. He was after a mouse. Nothing more.

  He felt something rub against his leg.

  “Aaaaagggghhh!”

  He whirled around, sweeping out with the business end of his broom, doing untold damage to a pocket of cobwebs and banging against a pipe, feeling the tremor dance back up his arms and down his spine. Bryan looked all over the floor, spinning in circles. Something had touched him. Something had run by. He was sure of it. He couldn’t see anything, though, only the shadows on the wall. He spun around, broom held like a battle-ax, trying to catch his breath. Calm down, Bryan. It’s just your imagination. There’s nothing else in here but you and that stupid mouse.

  He paused. Listened.

  Then he felt it. On top of his head. Falling. Dropping.

  Crawling.

  It was in his hair.

  “Gyyaaaaahhh!”

  He dropped the broom and shook his head frantically, batting at it with both hands, seeing whatever it was hit the floor. He banged his left hand hard against an overhead duct and saw a red flash.

  -2 HP.

  Bryan stuffed his three pulsing fingers into his mouth and looked down, blinking away tears. There, on the gray cement slab of the floor, was a spider, or what was left of it, the thing that had dropped into his hair. Just to be sure, Bryan picked up the Staff of Sweeping Justice and gave it a follow-up smash, smearing its guts across the floor.

  +10 XP.

  There’re even fouler thin’s than your moose hidden in these shadows. Guess so. Bryan wasn’t a huge fan of spiders. Much worse than mice, though not nearly as frightening as Tanks.

  Another sound—some other machine roaring to life or some other hideous creature growling behind him. Bryan stepped back instinctively, tripping over a drainpipe, and then stumbled, falling against a water heater, arms flailing. He heard something snap and felt a sharp pain in his left buttock. More red letters appeared in the air before him.

  -3 HP.

  He looked down.

  “Oh no.”

  Beneath him was the Staff of Sweeping Justice, splintered in two where he had landed on it. He pulled the two pieces free and held them together, assessing the damage, then rubbed the sore spot on his butt where the splintered ends had jabbed him.

  It was hopeless. He was never going to find that mouse, and likely he would kill himself or blow up the school trying. He looked back in the direction of the door. He should give up before he broke something even more precious than Mr. McKellen’s broom. He started to get up, when he heard the scratching again. Saw the shadow, even larger this time, almost twice the size of his head. It was growing somehow, becoming gigantic. The shadow moved along the wall. Coming closer. Closer still.

  Coming straight for him, in fact.

  Bryan held on to the top half of the splintered broom, wielding it like a stake, ready to stab the beast as it lunged for him, hoping to find its evil heart before it could go for his throat.

  “I’m not afraid of you!” Bryan shouted at the shadow.

  The creature let out a terrible squeak as it appeared from behind a bucket.

  All three inches of it.

  Its nose sniffed the air questioningly. Bryan sighed.


  It hadn’t grown. It wasn’t a monster. It was barely bigger than a walnut, though it did stare at Bryan with its piercing fiery-red eyes. The mouse bared its teeth and nibbled at the air. Bryan bared his own teeth back.

  “Not so vicious after all, are you?” he said.

  He looked around. The way he was sitting with his front legs spread, there wasn’t much place for the rodent to go. If he could just stretch out his feet on either side, he could box it off with only the bucket for it to hide behind. He had it trapped.

  The mouse stared at Bryan, who slowly reached for the other half of the broom, the one with the bristles. He held it up before him, resting the bottom of the shaft on the cement slab.

  “You. Shall. Not. Pass,” he said.

  The mouse sniffed the air. Then lowered its head.

  And came straight for him.

  Straight for one leg, in fact, and the inviting opening in the cuff of Bryan’s jeans. Before he could think of what to do, the creature had scampered up past his Boot of Average Walking Speed and burrowed beneath his Breeches of Enduring Stiffness, little claws scrabbling along Bryan’s bare skin, crawling steadily upward along his leg.

  Bryan shrieked. He could feel it, tickling and scratching all at once, as the rodent tunneled its way up his pants, up to his knee, toward his boxers. He squirmed and grabbed hold of a nearby pipe and pulled himself to his feet as quickly as he could, kicking out with the one leg as he did. He felt the little ball of fur slide along his leg, shooting out of the cuff of his pants in an arc. Curving high into the air.

  Landing right in the bucket with a thunk.

  Bryan stood there for a moment, paralyzed, the thought of the mouse nearly reaching his underwear. Then he recovered enough to pull his pant leg up and inspect for damage. There was a barely visible scratch. No bites. No rabies. No bubonic plague. Not even a lost hit point. He pulled his jeans back down and looked over at the bucket. It wasn’t moving. He couldn’t hear anything.

  “Oh no,” he said again.

  He got to his hands and knees and crawled over, afraid to look inside. What if he’d really killed it? A spider was one thing, but a mouse? Even one as cunning as this one. Bryan peered over the lip of the bucket.