RARE BEASTS (5 page)

Before most of the neighborhood kids realized that their beloved animals were missing, Edgar and Ellen had dragged the valuable prizes home.

Pet huddled in a dark corner among the dust balls and cobwebs, safely out of Edgar and Ellen’s way, as it watched them haul their spoils through the dusty front hall and pile the sacks by the basement door.

Ellen held the door open with her footie. As Edgar passed by, she slipped a nervous hamster down the back of his pajamas.

“Tsk, tsk.” Ellen smirked. “Ladies first, Brother.”

“GAA!” Edgar hopped the entire flight of stone

steps in three bounds, propelled by the hamster racing up and down his spine.

Ellen squealed with delight, then with horror when the baby ferret Edgar had balanced on her shoulder dove headlong into her pajamas. She reached the cold cement floor in only two leaps, breaking what might have been a rather ugly fall on a squirming Edgar.

“Very graceful, Sister.”

“Oh,
you’re
one to talk.”

One by one, the twins shuttled the sacks down from the hall, keeping a wary eye on each other as they passed on the stairs.

When they were finished, Edgar and Ellen huddled in the dank basement over the writhing sacks at their feet. Ellen spread out grubby white sheets
stolen from Mrs. Haggardly’s yard to cover long worktables. Edgar removed the decorations from the battered carton, and, like a surgeon laying out his implements in an operating room, he delicately set all the ribbons and ornaments in a neat row.

“Who might be in here?” Edgar selected a sack and shook out the contents. A kitten tumbled onto the table.

“Oh, you’re just a plain little kitty now,” he said, removing its muzzle, “but cheer up! Soon you’ll be the talk of the town!”

Edgar used paint to change the feline’s fur from brown to several shades of blue and purple. He took his time affixing two small twigs to the creature’s head and attached a round red ornament to its nose. What was a cat, now looked like a glitzy miniature reindeer.

“Hello, little Hamble!” Edgar exclaimed, holding it up so he could look into its mismatched eyes. “Not another one like you in all the world. Definitely exotic! Definitely worth a lot of money!” The Hamble mewed and clawed at its twig antlers.

“Your Hamble isn’t nearly as exotic as my Uggpron or these Snifflepops,” said Ellen. Edgar turned to see that in the time he’d spent transforming one animal, his sister had placed a grass wreath around a poodle’s neck and dyed the whole animal red, turning
it into a little crimson lion, and two once-white bunnies were now decked in glitter and feathers.

“We’re going to make a fortune!” cheered the twins as they removed the rest of the animals from their sacks. They leashed the creatures to a crusty water pipe so the bewildered menagerie couldn’t run away from the fun.

Paint and glue and glitter flew about the basement. The twins gleefully decorated the pets as if they were Easter eggs, singing a little song while they worked.

“We’ve got rare pets, so place your bets
On how much each little critter nets.
People will come on private jets,
Phone their accountants, hire new vets.
So dump more glitter, squirt more glue,
Color them purple, orange, blue.
Soon they’ll be ready for their debut
And we’ll rake in the revenue!”

Puppies and kitties. Bunnies and birds. Hamsters, gerbils, lizards, and a chicken. Dozens of pets separated from their loving owners, trapped in the dank basement, each undergoing its own unique and terrible transformation.

Oh, the horror!

It had grown very late by the time Edgar and Ellen completed their exotic collection. The twins would have danced and pranced to celebrate had they not been so tired from a long day of scheming and pilfering and disguising.

They secured the leashes and spread pages of the
Nod’s Limbs Gazette
on the floor so things wouldn’t get too messy during the night. Then they turned out the basement lights, leaving the animals alone at last, and wearily climbed the many flights of stairs to the attic bedroom.

“Please, no snoring and snorting tonight, Brother,” said Ellen as she shuffled across the room.

“Sweet dreams to you, too, Sister,” sneered Edgar, as he headed toward his stained pillow and mattress.

As they were about to crawl into their ironframed beds, they noticed a steady, groaning noise rising up from the world outside. The twins climbed up the ladder to their observatory in the attic-above-the-attic and peered out through the telescope at the neighborhood below.

It was chaos. Gathered in sad little groups under the streetlights, children cried and screamed and moaned, lamenting the loss of their precious pets. Their parents, unable to enjoy their usual quiet evenings at home with nightcaps and news programs, were out searching for the missing animals, shouting their names and screaming curses, adding to the din of the children’s wails. This tuneless chorus of misery and despair, this sad song of pain and heartache, lasted well into the night.

The echoing lament lulled Edgar and Ellen to sleep, and they slumbered peacefully.

They had a big day ahead of them.

While the rest of the neighborhood woke to hopelessness and mourning, the likes of which Nod’s Limbs had never known, Edgar and Ellen leapt out of bed. Today they were going to get rich!

They abandoned their morning routine of tracking down Pet and roughly scouring its matted hair with their toothbrushes, and instead slid down flight after flight of banisters, cackling all the way to the back door and out into the garden. Strains of accordion music drifted from Heimertz’s shed, and they
were thankful that the caretaker was occupied.

The twins needed something to transport their magnificent menagerie around town. Edgar led his sister to the center of the garden, where they cleared away the tangles of witchgrass and knotweed that hid an old, rusted cart. The dry brown stalks and stems poking through the wheels and twisting around the axles made it clear that Heimertz hadn’t used it in a long time, if ever, and it took some effort to free the long cart and roll it to a flat patch of dirt.

Edgar and Ellen returned to the attic and grabbed a few large pieces of cardboard and some paint. They also dragged down an old puppet theater they had stolen the previous year from Mrs. Pringle’s kindergarten class during nap time. The cloth puppets had long since been chewed apart by rats and moths, leaving nothing but a giant wooden box with a burgundy velvet curtain closed across its stage.

Outside, they hoisted the theater onto the cart. Edgar took some cardboard and painted a sign that read
EXOTIC ANIMAL EMPORIUM
, and beneath that
RARE BEASTS FOR SALE
, and Ellen nailed it to the top of the little theater.

They found the animals exactly where they had left them in the cold basement, and they carried the
wriggling creatures out to the cart. Leashed inside the puppet theater, smaller animals in front and larger ones in back, they formed an impressive display.

Edgar and Ellen made a sign for each animal listing its species, habitat, price, and a description of its particular origin:

C
RACKERMACKER
From the mountains of Dronkle
Only $1,000!
Rescued from the Dronkle City Animal Pound

F
REEPLEWINK
From the desert region of Brifftevo
A steal at $2,500!
Traded from an exotic animal dealer for a Splunx

M
ONDOPILLAR
Terra-aquatic, Uwentic Ocean region
$5,000! Cheap at twice the price!
Captured on a Mondopillar hunt last year

Ellen even gave the animals a little pep talk: “All of you look so much better than you did yesterday. You are incredible creatures now, worth thousands of dollars. And while you may feel a little uncomfortable at the moment, at what price beauty and fame? Anyway, none of this is as bad as that humiliating sweater they made you wear last winter, or all those times they forced you to attend their tea parties.”

“Sister, I don’t know why you bother.”

“Well, you’ve always been a little slow. When the perky, happy-looking ones sell for more than the asking price, you’ll see.”

When the animals were hidden behind the closed theater curtains, their shop-on-wheels had the look of an old-time traveling medicine show.

“Ready to strike it rich, Brother?” Ellen took hold of the front wagon handle.

“Nod’s Limbs will be amazed, Sister,” replied Edgar as he took up position behind the cart.

With Edgar pushing and Ellen pulling and steering, the cart lurched forward and lumbered unsteadily down the nameless lane and out onto Ricketts Road.

As Edgar and Ellen rolled their wagon west, they passed colored pieces of paper taped and tacked to every telephone pole and light post. If the twins had paid any attention to the tear-stained, handwritten fliers, they would have seen:

M
ISSING
!
Bain Bean
My German shepherd puppy
Contact Ritchie ASAP!
555-8328