Escape from the Drooling Octopod! (2 page)

During history class, it finally occurred to Beamer where at least part of his dream had come from. It should have been obvious.
It was the web! — his web!
Nearly two stories tall and as wide as the house, the famous MacIntyre Web was the nightmare in the attic — the greatest entomological mystery this side of Cleveland.

Up until Christmas, the scientists experimenting on the web in their attic weren't even sure that it was a real web. Some thought it was man-made, somebody's joke or a hobby project or a mad scientist's experiment. But back on Christmas Eve, Molgotha, the web maker, had returned. She'd spun a cocoon around every piece of scientific equipment surrounding the web. Then she sucked the electronic life out of them, leaving them totally useless, as dead as the flies in the little web under the corner gutter.

So now, scientists from all over the country were in the MacIntyre attic, hovering around the web, hooking up this and that sensor. More than ever, the attic looked like the bridge of Darth Vader's Star Destroyer. Cameras now monitored the web 24 – 7, and multiple alarm systems registered every movement. The only reason the MacIntyres were still willing and able to live in the house was because the scientists calculated that all of the security systems gave the spider only “one chance in a hundred” of getting down where they lived. Of course, that “one chance in a hundred” was covered by family prayers every night. How many spiders do you know of that get into people's prayers?

That was three months ago. Spring vacation was only a half circle of the moon away, and still nobody knew who or why or what Molgotha was all about. Part of Beamer hoped they never would. It was kind of cool having a big mystery in your attic, except for the fact that it gave you the heebie-jeebies every time you got near it. You could never lose the feeling that Molgotha was up there somewhere, hiding in the shadows, smackin' her chops for your yummy red corpuscles.

His history teacher interrupted Beamer's little day-dream with a question. Unfortunately, he didn't hear the question — something you could never admit doing in Mrs. Hotchkiss's class. She wasn't called “the drill sergeant” for nothing. Beamer hemmed and hawed, tugging at his polo-shirt collar. He'd read the assignment, for Pete's sake. “Uh, could you repeat the question, please?” he asked sheepishly. “I . . . uh just missed the last couple of words.”

“Murphy Street,” his teacher said simply.

“Huh?” Beamer asked, remembering nothing about Murphy Street in his history lesson.

“Isn't that where you live — Murphy Street?” she asked, growing impatient.

“Uh . . . yes, ma'am, that's where I live all right,” he said with a fake smile.

“Good,” Mrs. Hotchkiss said. “Come by my desk on your way out. I have a little favor to ask of you.”

Beamer groaned. A favor for Mrs. Hotchkiss could be anything from banging chalk out of the erasers until you were coated white to making a full-scale papier-mâché statue of Genghis Khan.

2

Missing: Beauty and the Beast

As it turned out, Mrs. Hotchkiss only wanted him to drop off some study guides for a homeschool student who lived on Murphy Street. Beamer's friend and tomboy neighbor, Scilla, and his brother, Michael, were with him on the way home, as usual. Their friend Ghoulie had already split off for his place. When they got to the address his teacher had given him, all Beamer could see was a huge hedge. They found a walk-in gate. Beamer started to push the call button but bumped the gate. It swung open, so they went on in.

One thing became clear right off: neither his mom nor his dad could ever be allowed to see this yard. It would be “all she wrote” for weekend playtime. If they tried to match this yard, he'd be drafted into slave-labor yard duty up to the age of thirty.

You see, this yard was perfect. Every blade of grass was in place and as green as green could get. Plants and bushes (flowering and otherwise) were perfectly trimmed, and the brick walkway was lined with flowers spaced evenly apart like marching soldiers.

The walkway wound to the right and then to the left and then finally through a row of Italian cypress trees — you know, the trees that look like narrow green flames rising up from the ground. That's when they saw it. Scilla gulped with her mouth open. Michael covered his eyes and looked between his fingers. It was a house guaranteed to make you diabetic at first sight.

Actually, it looked like a giant birthday cake — a very
pink
birthday cake. Beamer groaned as memories of his pink dream rolled around in his head like a loose marble. There were no sharp corners on the house. Everything was rounded off — walls, the tops of windows, and doors — and decorated with fanciful little flower and plant designs. If he hadn't been sure the walls were made of stone, he'd have taken a lick or two. But then pink icing wasn't exactly his favorite.

They walked up a short flight of steps onto a small but elegant porch with columns on either side. Beamer pushed the doorbell. They heard a musical ring inside, but no one came to the door. After a few moments, Beamer pushed it again. Still no one answered. Beamer looked around for someplace to leave the papers, but Michael jumped up next to him and punched the doorbell several times like it was a pinball machine.

“Hey!” Beamer yelped at him. “If they hadn't heard it already, they're probably asleep and won't appreciate being woke up.”

Just then someone opened the door. Beamer had his back to the door at that moment and turned only in time to see a fluffy sleeve and the corner of a frilly dress disappear. Beamer could feel a gust from the rush of movement inside. A young girl had opened the door — he was sure of it — but in a switcheroo move as quick as a magician with a rabbit in his hat, she was gone.

The person who now appeared in the pink doorway had dark blonde hair rolled up in a bun — definitely not a little girl. She wore wire-rimmed glasses balanced on a pointed nose.

“Children, you should have rung me
befoah
coming into the
yahd,
” the woman said, a little flushed from alarm. Her words sounded funny. She definitely wasn't from Middleton. “I'm
sahry
. I don't mean to be rude,” she said nervously as she shoved her glasses back up on her nose. “What do you want?”

“Ah . . . well, my teacher, Mrs. Hotchkiss, asked me to drop off these papers for you.” Beamer noticed the picture of a little girl on the wall in the background.
Was that the little girl
she had yanked away from the door so quickly? She didn't look more
than six or seven.

“Oh, of
coahse
,” the woman said as she took the papers and flipped through them. “Thank you very much for dropping them by.
Heah
, let me give you something for
yoah
trouble,” she added as she moved quickly back inside the house.

“That's all right,” Beamer called to her. “I live just down the street. It was on my way home.” Beamer had run through his mental database of movie characters and concluded that the woman talked like Mary Poppins. She was a magical nanny from England. He didn't see an umbrella, though, and guessed that this English nanny probably couldn't fly like Mary Poppins could.

“Well, that's
vahry
kind of you,” she said as she returned to the doorway. “Please pull the gate closed when you leave,” she said as she started to close the door. “It is supposed to stay locked. Bye now.” Her parting smile was about as sickly sweet as the house.

Beamer and Scilla gave each other questioning looks. Beamer could tell that Scilla was thinking about the same person he was thinking about — someone else who had shooed them away from a door. The memory of the overprotective Mrs. Drummond and her sisters was still very clear in their minds. Those ladies had kept Solomon Parker locked up and hidden from the world so that they could use his great wealth. Was something like that going on with the girl in this house?

“Hey, what's the holdup?” Michael asked impatiently.

Beamer shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Aw, come on, we're just being paranoid.”

Now that the days were stretching longer, Beamer had a little extra time to spend in the tree ship after school. The tree was sprouting leaf buds like goose bumps, and Beamer was beginning to hear the chirping and chittering of birds and squirrels. He'd listened for the crickets, but Ghoulie told him that a lot of insects, including the crickets, wouldn't come out for another month or two.

As he climbed up the tree in his backyard, he wondered what the old broken-down trolley station looked like now. Last winter the snow cover had given it a kind of magical look. Of course, whatever it looked like now, it wasn't going to stay that way. Solomon Parker was already working on plans to revive his trolley business for tourists. Why anybody would want to tour Middleton was beyond Beamer.
It's not
like it is Disneyland.

Solomon Parker's trolley company had gone out of business fifty years ago when buses replaced trolleys on city streets. Although he was a genius who built amazing inventions, like spidery robots and hovering trains, nobody believed they could really work. He finally got so discouraged that he lost all faith in himself and in God. He became a hermit in his own house, exiled to the ballroom on the second floor of his mansion. He was left there amid gathering dust and cobwebs by his house-keeper, who took over his home affairs while he wallowed in depression. Meanwhile, his investment in a railroad grew over the years until he was very wealthy, but his housekeeper hid the truth from him while she and her two identical sisters lived in luxury.

With the help of Beamer, Scilla, and Ghoulie, Solomon got his life back on course and booted the evil triplets out of his home. Now, Solomon had his own railroad and a city that was willing to listen to his ideas.

Beamer didn't know what he wanted to be yet — maybe a SWAT team member or an operative (isn't that what they call a spy now?) for the CIA.
Astronaut
had a good ring to it if you could actually do some real exploring. Scientists were doing most of the exploring these days — in test tubes, accelerators, telescopes, and remote-controlled probes. Everything was viewed on monitors instead of up close and personal. You'd have thought the whole universe was virtual instead of real.

Of course that wasn't a problem for the Star-Fighters. Already in their tree ship they'd visited exploding planets, space platforms operated by robots, and ice moons with ice castles. They'd rubbed shoulders (or . . . whatever) with intelligent insects and cat-like humanoids.

From his spot in the tree in his yard, Beamer could see into the attic windows. He couldn't see the web inside. In fact, he hadn't even been allowed in the attic since the attack on the machines.
What kind of a spider sucks the power out of a machine?
The scientists had been able to prove that the spider was no longer in the house. But how did she get in, and where did she go when she left? Of course, there were also a lot of other questions that began with the word
why
.

Most spiders, of course, could get into a house through any little crack or cranny, but that wouldn't hold for Molgotha. She was definitely one big mama! Judging from the size of the web fibers, the bug scientist guys had figured that the spider had a body anywhere from three feet to five feet in diameter. It seemed to Beamer that somebody would have probably noticed a giant spider strolling down the street. I mean, you add eight splayed-out legs to that body, and you have something right out of a Saturday-night monster flick clomping down the block.

So, if she didn't escape down the street, how did she escape?
Beamer wondered. The wind suddenly picked up, making him rock and roll with the branches. A chill suddenly ran through Beamer's limbs like an electrical shock. What if she made her escapes through a tree — as in this tree? Beamer's eyes suddenly grew as big as fried eggs. He shot into the tree ship and slammed the door behind him. He then whammed all the windows shut, leaving one cracked open only enough for one scared eye to peak through.

The wind stopped blowing, but he still heard the sound of creaking branches from somewhere. The sound got louder as more branches scratched each other.
Something was coming!
Suddenly he heard scuffling and a loud
thump
that shook the tree ship. A long thin something, about the shape of a giant spider leg, slapped the window point-blank in front of his eye. He slammed the window closed and lunged backward across the room. “Aiiiiii!” he screeched before he smacked into a plywood control panel. At the same time he heard a
bang
, followed by a blinding blast of light.