The Monster Catchers--A Bailey Buckleby Story Read online

  “Maybe we should turn the lights off so this one doesn’t go blind.”

  Bailey’s father looked up from his sketch pad as if to see his subject for the first time.

  “Agreed. This little guy is going to burn his eyes out and we don’t want a defective specimen. He doesn’t know what’s best for him. You’re a good boy, Bailey. Go upstairs, write your presentation, and I’ll feed everybody this morning. Even you, Gobelinus cuniculus, will get a square meal from the Bucklebys, although you did bite my finger off. I was fond of that finger, you know. What’s your presentation on, son?”

  Bailey hesitated. “How George Washington and his trained yeti won the Revolutionary War.”

  His father sucked in a big breath. “I don’t know if you want to tell that version.”

  “Dad, I know what you’re going to say—”

  His father put his hand up to stop him. “It’s not just that I want to protect the family business from scrutiny, Bailey—I’m trying to protect you. I’m proud that you know how the yeti helped Americans win the war. The yeti—as bloodthirsty as they are—deserve our eternal gratitude for the part they played in our country’s fight for independence. But you know how mean kids can be. They’ll turn on you rather than hear the truth.”

  That’s just what Bailey was afraid of. And yet, he almost wanted a fight.

  Seven o’clock arrived. Bailey put on his hoodie, grabbed his backpack and skateboard, and pushed off down windblown Oceanview Boulevard toward John Muir Middle School.

  He heard the sound of a skateboard coming up on him and immediately knew who it was. His heart beat just a little faster.

  “Hello there, Bailey boy.”

  “Hey, Savannah.” Bailey stood up as tall as he could on his board.

  Savannah was still taller than him. In fact, a lot of the seventh-grade girls were taller than Bailey, but knowing he could fight off a horde of goblins, a wind demon, and a bloodthirsty faery with just a Frisbee and his wits gave him the courage to look directly up and into Savannah’s eyes, which shone a beautiful brown and seemed to reflect the whole world. He wanted to look in those eyes forever. Except he couldn’t help but be distracted by the worn leather-bound trombone case tied around her chest and shoulders with nylon rope. Bailey knew she didn’t play trombone in the school band, but he was impressed she was able to ride her board like that without falling off.

  “What’s in the case?” he asked.

  “It’s no trombone. I’ll tell you that much, Bailey boy.”

  Then Savannah did lose her balance. She pushed forward when she should have braked, and her board shot forward, she fell backward, and she rolled onto the sun-bleached asphalt.

  Bailey stopped. “Are you okay?”

  She stood up. Blood soaked the left knee of her blue jeans, but she didn’t cry out at all. She was more concerned with the trombone case, which she unlatched and peeked into. Satisfied that what was inside had not been disturbed, she quickly latched it shut before Bailey could see.

  “This is my A+ project.”

  “What is it?”

  “Like I said, it’s no trombone.” She grinned wickedly. “Where’s your project?”

  Bailey tapped his temple. “All up here.”

  “So you’re still not ready.”

  Bailey sighed. “No.”

  And Mrs. Wood wasn’t giving out any free passes. She sat behind her large metal desk like a gargoyle ready to take a swipe at the face of any student who dared suggest that maybe they could postpone the presentations and just watch a movie instead? Her hairdo was outdated and her glasses were too small for her beady eyes, reminding Bailey of one of the mole people featured on page 142 of In the Shadow of Monsters. Even her skin was pale and pasty like a mole person, and she grumbled quietly like a broken toaster with bread stuck in the bottom that could catch fire at any moment.

  As Bailey and Savannah slipped into their seats, Ella Robertson, who wore ribbons in her hair and had a tiny face, asked her what a trombone had to do with the Revolutionary War. Savannah told her to mind her own goofy Ella Robertson business.

  “Aaron Aackerman!” Mrs. Wood bellowed. Nothing.

  “AARON AACKERMAN!” No response. Bailey groaned to himself. How could Aaron be absent today of all days?

  “Bailey Buckleby!” Mrs. Wood barked.

  Bailey willed himself invisible like the giant chameleon salamanders of the South Pacific featured on page twelve.

  Bailey pulled In the Shadow of Monsters out of his backpack and walked past Savannah’s desk to the front of the class. As he passed her, she smiled and whispered, “Good luck, boy,” and he immediately stood up straighter.

  Everyone stared at him, the boys smirking and the girls already bored. Only Savannah smiled at him like he was a rock star. He took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders back.

  I can do this.

  He closed his eyes and let the words come.

  “The Abominable Snowman saved America!”

  A long horrible pause, then the class laughed in unison.

  Savannah hissed, “Shut up, you dingleberries.”

  Bailey opened his eyes. Mrs. Wood and Savannah and the whole class were still there—waiting. He took a deep breath and continued:

  “George Washington was the greatest general and yeti tamer of our country, and yet no history book in our school recognizes the fact that without the yeti of New Jersey, the Revolutionary War would have been lost. The yeti—commonly known as Abominable Snowmen—were originally natives of the Himalayan Mountains. Yeti are ten feet tall on average, covered in white fur, and have claws as hard as stone. Male yeti have tusks instead of canine teeth, while females just have regular yeti teeth. Many yeti, minotaurs, and other monsters were transported through Africa and then to the American colonies on slave ships to be sold as exotic pets to plantation owners. However, some yeti escaped and traveled to colder climates like New England. Yeti like snow and often live in caves and suck on icicles like Popsicles. George Washington and fifty of his bravest men climbed to the peak of High Point, New Jersey, to find yeti and tame them with frozen cherries and rum and Virginian tobacco cigars, because it turns out that yeti like smoking as much as humans do. Then George Washington and his soldiers saddled them and used their incredible yeti strength to fight the British—”

  “This is a bunch of bull, Monster Boy!” Derek Whiffle threw a wadded-up piece of paper at Bailey. Derek had black eyes, no hair, was constantly sweating, and when he showed his teeth, too many of them came to sharp points. He looked a bit monstrous himself.

  “Mr. Whiffle! You DO NOT raise your voice or use foul language in my classroom! Nor do you throw things at your classmates while they are presenting.”

  Mrs. Wood’s face had turned red, and her hands had become claws. If this had been a classroom in cold New England during the time of George Washington and the yeti, laws of corporal punishment would have allowed Mrs. Wood to smack Derek upside his head, which she would have surely done. Instead, she slammed her right claw down into Jenny Lester’s papier mâché replica of the Liberty Bell and put a much larger historically inaccurate crack in it. Jenny burst into tears immediately, because she had spent all week on that stupid Liberty Bell without any help from her mother. She stood up, crying, and ran straight for the girls’ bathroom without a hall pass.

  Savannah stood up to make her voice heard.

  “You shut up, Derek! Let Bailey finish!”

  “MISS MISTIVICH!”

  “Your boyfriend is lying,” Derek said. “He’s telling lies that are un-American! There are no such thing as yeti or any other monsters! My father said—”

  “No one cares what you and your dumb father think. You both look like baboon butts!” Savannah yelled.

  “MISS MISTIVICH! MR. WHIFFLE!”

  Bailey was stunned momentarily. Did Derek just say boyfriend?

  “I have pictures,” Bailey said quietly. He lifted up his beloved well-read, worn-cornered In the Shadow of Monsters, op
ened it to page 288, and held it up high to show the class the detailed pencil sketching of General Washington and his fifty brave men offering rum-and-cherry Popsicles and Virginian tobacco cigars to the yeti of High Point, New Jersey. In the sketch, one of the yeti sat on an ice throne with a cigar and lifted a Popsicle up to toast his new buddy, General George Washington.

  Derek Whiffle stood up. Most of the class was laughing by now.

  “Liar! Traitor! You’re telling lies about George Washington, and that’s treason against America!”

  Derek had gotten himself very worked up and was about to cry with passion.

  “But I have proof,” Bailey insisted.

  “Miss Mistivich, you SIT DOWN! Mr. Whiffle! DOWN!”

  Savannah stared directly at Derek Whiffle, and the rest of the class looked horrified. No one was looking at Bailey anymore.

  “You and your father are the liars,” Savannah said sternly. “There are monsters in the world. You can pretend like there aren’t, but everyone in Whalefat Beach knows your father hired the Bucklebys to rescue your mother from a Redwood sasquatch who had kidnapped her two years ago. But I bet he told you that story wasn’t true, either.”

  Derek started whimpering and stuttering. “It’s NOT true. That’s another Monster Boy lie!”

  “You should be thanking Bailey, not yelling at him,” Savannah continued. “I bet your daddy told you San Francisco wasn’t destroyed by sea giants, either.”

  “Damn right! San Francisco was destroyed by an earthquake!” Derek’s voice squeaked in fury.

  “LANGUAGE!” Mrs. Wood screamed at the top of her lungs.

  Then Ella Robertson stood up and spoke very evenly. “No, Savannah is actually right. San Francisco was destroyed by sea giants, because the Bucklebys practice black magic. They worship the devil, and they raised the sea giants up from hell, and thanks to them, millions of people had to run for their lives. We should kick the Bucklebys out of the country and make them take all their evil demons with them.”

  “No, Ella,” Bailey said quietly, with his beloved book still above his head. “There are monsters, but there is no such thing as black magic. At least, there is no scientific reason to think so.”

  But no one could hear Bailey over the impending riot. All his classmates started giving their opinions at once. Some said yes, they had seen the sea giants marching toward the city with their very own eyes. The nonbelievers called them liars who should shut up, and then the believers called the nonbelievers babies who should grow up. Ella and Savannah both remained standing, staring at each other with pure venom.

  Then little Billy Dolby stood up. “San Francisco was destroyed by an earthquake caused by the oil companies, and that made the sewers explode. The oil companies did it!” Billy’s voice was the loudest of all, which surprised everybody, including Mrs. Wood, because tiny Billy Dolby hadn’t said a word all year.

  “No,” Bailey said matter-of-factly. “You can still see the sea giants if you just take a boat trip. The Farallon Islands are right in the ocean where they used to be, but they’re not actually islands. They’re the tops of the giants’ heads. They settled back there after they retreated.”

  “Bull turds, Monster Boy!”

  “MR. WHIFFLE!”

  “Listen to Bailey for just one second, you buttheads!” Savannah yelled.

  Ella covered her ears, closed her eyes as tightly as she could, and screamed, “The Bucklebys are evil! The Bucklebys are evil! THE BUCKLEBYS ARE EVIL!”

  “EVERYBODY QUIET DOWN!” Mrs. Wood stomped to the front of the classroom and put her hands on Bailey’s shoulders, pushing him forward just hard enough to let him know his presentation had ended. He walked past Savannah to his seat, and everyone quieted down as reality set in—Mrs. Wood was quite capable of punching her fist through more papier mâché projects, and no one wanted to risk that. Everyone sat and tried to stop laughing from the awkwardness of it all. Only Savannah and Ella remained standing in their tense stare-down.

  “Miss Mistivich. Miss Robertson. Please. If you would each like to take a five-minute break and walk around the playground to cool your heads, you may do so.”

  The class let go a short burst of laughter. The girls didn’t accept the offer, but they did finally sit down.

  Mrs. Wood ended social studies early, which made everybody happy because nobody else had to give a presentation that day. Everybody was happy, that is, except Bailey and Savannah. Mrs. Wood gave Bailey a B− for causing such a disruption and not finishing his speech, even though she had been the one to end his presentation prematurely. She did compliment him for sparking an interesting class discussion, which every good social studies presentation should do. Savannah was upset because she hadn’t gotten to reveal what was in her trombone case.

  At the end of the day, Bailey and Savannah slowly skateboarded across the cracked and weed-infected basketball court toward Oceanview Boulevard.

  “I’m sure you’ll get to show off your secret project tomorrow.”

  “Actually, I might need to use it right now,” she said.

  Bailey saw where she was looking. The four high school bullies had skipped their afternoon classes to come to John Muir Middle School and wait for Bailey, no doubt wanting revenge. Bailey dropped to one knee to open his backpack and ready four Frisbees, one for each of the thugs’ foreheads.

  But Savannah moved faster than him and already had her trombone case open.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE BULLHEAD BRIGADE

  “YOU’RE GONNA LISTEN to us this time, little seventh grader.”

  Fuzzy carried a baseball bat. Burper wielded a formidable tree branch. Chinless and Caveman had nothing but their fists, but they clearly believed those would be enough. As the four thugs marched toward them, Bailey felt the adrenaline of fear fill his body, even though he had confronted five times as many goblins last Saturday night. Frisbees might not be enough ammunition this time. But then the sophomores stopped dead in their tracks, staring at Savannah. Bailey turned to look, too.

  Her right hand gripped the hilt of a sword, a weapon more than two feet long that looked quite old and spotted with rust but still very, very sharp. The blade was blackened steel, the hilt polished wood with a silver tracing that curved and ended in the head of a bull. It was a soldier’s sword and yet Savannah Mistivich—seventh grader with semi-decent skateboarding skills and mostly C’s on her report card—handled it with ease. She swung it in front of her like she was fighting off one hundred redcoats.

  “Get back, you British hooligans.”

  None of the sophomores were British, so they looked at one another in confusion.

  “Back! Back!” Savannah advanced, and the boys stepped back. Bailey dropped to one knee with a black Frisbee cocked and ready to fly, surprised by Savannah’s bravery.

  “What do you think you’re gonna do with that?” Fuzzy seemed to have forgotten that he was carrying a baseball bat. Other middle schoolers were approaching the chain-link fence, attracted to the smell of a possible fight. The sophomores didn’t want an audience. Even if they thought they would win, high schoolers beating up seventh graders was not a good look.

  Savannah was breathing heavy. “Do you … want to sing … like Michael … Jackson?”

  “What are you talking about, you weirdo?”

  “One by one … with this sword … I’m going … to make … each one of you … castrato.”

  The boys had mostly D’s on their report cards, but still, they knew that vocabulary word and it wasn’t good.

  Savannah screamed and charged, swinging her blade like the bravest militiawoman of the thirteen colonies. Bailey didn’t even need to throw his Frisbee before all four turned and ran. He had to chase Savannah for four blocks and grab her arm to stop her or she would have run after them all the way to whichever 7-Eleven they called home base.

  “Okay, okay. They’re gone,” Bailey said, and they both fell to the ground, laughing. Flat on her back with adrenaline still pumping
through her, Savannah waved the sword up in the air.

  “Isn’t it great, Bailey? It’s a Mistivich family heirloom. Check out how perfect it is. I like how it feels in my hand. It’s a 1765 hanger sword that American officers used during the Revolutionary War. Some swords were stolen off British officers by American soldiers, but this sword was made by a blacksmith in Boston. See the bull head? That signifies the Bullhead Brigade that my great-great-great-great-grandfather was a member of. They were the bravest of the bravest soldiers. The British were so scared of them, and they had such a reputation for being so fierce, that they were nicknamed the Bullhead Brigade. Some even said that half of them weren’t even human and had the heads of bulls. And I’m directly descended from one of them!”

  Bailey couldn’t believe it. “You know the history of the minotaurs in America! You were going to give a speech about monsters in history, too!”

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “I was pretty excited to see the looks on their faces. Who knows what Ella Robertson would have called me! Are you that surprised, Bailey boy? I told you I knew monsters were real. Monsters are in my family!” She swung the blade back and forth slowly, watching it shine in the after-school light coming down through the eucalyptus trees.

  “It’s probably good you didn’t get a chance to give your presentation, Savannah. I don’t think swords are allowed on school grounds. Even fake ones. And that is a real sword.”

  “It’s a family heirloom, which makes it totally different,” she said.

  “Why do you keep it in a trombone case?”

  “So no adults at school would know I was carrying a sword.”

  The wind off the beach cooled their sweat. Bailey reached over to touch Savannah’s wrist, but she jumped up, waving her sword, before he could even consider more.

  “Let’s go. I think I just saved your butt and you owe me.” She put her great-great-great-great-grandfather’s blade back in the trombone case. “I want to see it.”

  “See what?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You know exactly what I mean. I want to see what every kid in this town wants to see whether they will admit it or not—the famous back room of Buckleby and Son’s Very Strange Souvenirs.”