[Janitors 03] Curse of the Broomstaff (23 page)

The voices were rising in unison now. “Spencer?

Spencer?”

He felt his gut twist with nerves. He couldn’t trust Aryl enough to abandon his friends. Leaving the Aurans was one thing. But Daisy, his dad, Bernard, Walter, Penny? “I have to go back,” Spencer said. “At least for a little while. We didn’t come all this way to chicken out now. The minute I think the Aurans are on to me, we’ll make our escape.”

Aryl shrugged. “Just don’t wait too long.” He tugged at the collar of his cloak again, as if to give Spencer one final clear look at the Pan.

“Spencer?” the voices called from below. “Spencer?”

“Thanks for your help, Aryl.” Spencer shook the Dark Auran’s still-outstretched hand.

“You better answer them,” Aryl said.

Spencer let go and leaned over the edge of the tires.

“I’m up here!” he shouted as loudly as he could.

Spencer sat up again. “Think they heard that?” he asked Aryl. But when he turned, the Dark Auran was gone.

S
pencer awoke to morning sunlight and acrid smoke. His eyes fluttered a few times and then he sat bolt upright. They were still in the Valley of Tires, but the place looked quite different than when they’d arrived. There were scattered body parts from ruined Thingamajunks littered around. The Aurans must have set fire to the remains, and the smoldering scraps of trash tainted the air with dark pollutants.

“You woke up with a jump,” Rho said, crossing over to him. “Thought you were still up there?” She pointed up the side of the wall of tires. Spencer felt dizzy just looking at it in the daylight. It was much higher than he’d thought.

Spencer had come up with a good story. The girls already suspected that a Dark Auran was behind the Thingamajunk stampede. Lying to the Aurans would only arouse their suspicions. So he went with the truth. A
version
of the truth, anyway.

“So you didn’t catch his name?” Rho asked as she passed

Spencer a steaming bowl of oatmeal.

“Whose name?”

“That Dark Auran you met last night,” Rho said casually.

Spencer shook his head and ladled a spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth. “I told you, he pulled me out of that Thingamajunk’s mouth, dunked me in a tub of rainwater, and then made me climb. By the time we reached the top, you were all looking for me. I shouted down, and I guess he didn’t want to get caught, so he took off.”

He was pretending. And he hoped it was good enough to fool Rho. In a way, it felt satisfying to deceive her. She’d lied to him about being Jenna. And according to Aryl, she might be lying now. He stared into her eyes, trying to see if she knew about his Auran sense.

Spencer took a few more bites of oatmeal. It burned his tongue, and he could just picture his mom saying, “That’s what you get for lying.” But he couldn’t tell the Aurans the truth. He had to be cautious and see what he could learn from them.

Spencer scanned the valley. The Aurans were looking worse for wear, silvery hair disheveled and dirty. The fight against the wild Thingamajunks had been grueling, but all the Aurans had survived. His Rebel friends were helping to untangle mop strings from the barbed-wire trap.

“Why did V tell me that the Dark Aurans were dead?”

Spencer asked.

“They are dead to us,” Rho answered, unwilling to make eye contact. “They’re evil, Spencer. I’m surprised he didn’t hurt you.”

It was risky, but he probed further. “He was wearing something strange. It looked like a piece of metal around his neck.”

Rho shrugged. “I don’t know anything about that. I haven’t seen the Dark Aurans in years.” She swallowed a mouthful of oatmeal and quickly changed subjects. “So, V’s getting ready to use the Spade,” Rho said.

“She’s literally going to rock the earth. The ground is going to peel up out of the gorge in front of us, and the ground behind us is going to get sucked down into the gorge that you crossed yesterday.”

“What about your building? The one with the round table?”

“It has a Glopified foundation,” Rho said. “It always stays topside, regardless of the rotation.”

Spencer paused, thinking about what might happen to Aryl when V used the Spade. It would be suspicious if he asked outright, so Spencer thought of a cover question. “But the Thingamajunks?”

“We’re at the north side of the landfill right now, but the Spade will roll us back to the south.”

“So all the Thingamajunks behind us will get pulled underground,” he said.

Rho nodded. “It takes them a while to crawl out, but they usually find their way topside again.”

Thingamajunks were creatures of Glop and garbage, so they could survive underground. Aryl was a human being who needed oxygen. Spencer was surprised to find that he was nervous for the Dark Auran. His anxiety was probably misplaced anyway. If Aryl had been clever enough to set that elaborate stampede to separate Spencer, then he was probably clever enough to stay ahead of the Aurans when V used the Spade.

V strode past, gripping the rawhide handle of the Spade in both hands. “All right!” she called. “Let’s get packed up and get a move on!”

Spencer tossed his Styrofoam bowl of oatmeal and stood up. He secured his janitorial belt and pulled on his backpack. Leaving Rho to follow, he set off after V.

The Aurans and Rebels gathered around V at the edge of the north gorge. “It’s been a while since we’ve trekked this deep into the landfill,” V said. “Things kind of get out of proportion from here on. After the ground shifts, we’ll break into three groups again. We travel fast and rendezvous at our destination just after dusk.”

V lifted the Spade. It looked like an ordinary shovel in her hands. “Brace yourselves,” she said. Then, with a mighty thrust, she drove the metal end deep into the hard soil. A huge crater formed in the ground where the Spade touched down, as if the force of V’s thrust had blasted the soil away. At the same time, a shock wave rippled out from the Spade, knocking Spencer onto his back.

There was a tremendous grating sound, and Spencer felt the ground shift beneath him. His fingers dug into the dirt, and he felt like he might fly off the earth at any second. He heard Daisy crying out in surprise at his side.

Something bizarre was happening in the north gorge.

The landscape was bending and warping, new formations appearing like cardboard cutouts in a child’s pop-up book. The earth seemed to be rolling away from the gorge.

Spencer watched the abyss grow smaller and then disappear completely, his view claimed by new, odd trash-scapes. Then it ended as suddenly as it had begun. The ground came to a ripstop halt, and Spencer’s momentum sent him rolling in the dirt.

He sat up, taking stock of his surroundings. The Rebels were still in the Valley of Tires, surrounded by Aurans. But the Valley of Tires, instead of being near the north gorge, was now comfortably situated at the opposite edge of the landfill, near the spot where the bridge had collapsed under Bernard’s garbage truck. With the new terrain exposed, another day’s worth of hiking lay before them.

“Is everybody all right?” V said, picking herself up off the ground and plucking the Spade out of its newly formed crater.

“I’m a little motion sick,” said Daisy, grasping at her head. “That was like a bad roller coaster.”

The Aurans seemed less affected. They were on their feet in moments, while the Rebels rose unsteadily, as though the ground might get pulled out from under them again. “Okay,” Bernard said, dusting off his tweed coat. “This place is officially crazy. Enchanted landfill, trash with a mind of its own. What’s next, dumpsters that dance the hula?”

T
hey set off, leaving the Valley of Tires behind at last. Gia, Lina, Netty, Dela, Shirley, Sylva, Yorkie, and Jersey had gone ahead to scout, just like yesterday. Rho and V remained behind with the Rebels.

Just as Rho had mentioned, the Valley of Tires was only a foreshadowing of the strange features yet to come. This far into the landfill, the landscape became even more affected by the settling Glop pollutants.

They hiked through huge arches that looked like they’d been chiseled by wind and eroded by water for thousands of years. But instead of natural rock, the twisting archways were formed entirely of garbage. Dirty plastic bags, their contents resilient against decomposition, were knit together by the percolated Glop.

The morning drew on with little conversation and few breaks. Every time Daisy put down her left foot, she whimpered. When Spencer finally asked what was the matter, she paused just long enough to pull down her dirty sock to reveal a blister the size of a quarter.

“Here,” Spencer said, unclipping the orange healing spray from his belt. “This should help for a while.” He sprayed the blister and watched it miraculously heal as the liquid foamed up.

“Thanks,” she said. “I didn’t think of that.”

Spencer was growing weary too, and the heat of the day already seemed stronger than yesterday. His thoughts turned once more to his conversation with Aryl. The Dark Auran had warned him about the girls. The Rebels had been tightlipped about Spencer’s secret. But Spencer’s thoughts kept straying back to his time with Jenna at the Academy.

He decided to take a risk and try to get Rho talking— see if she suspected anything about him. The conversation would seem harmless, like reminiscing over old times. Especially if he included Daisy.

Spencer waited until the two girls were side by side, and then he jogged a few steps to catch up with them.

“This hike makes P.E. at the Academy seem like a cake walk,” Spencer said.

“Actually, I think this is better,” Daisy said. “There’s no Dez here.”

“Dez?” Rho asked.

“He’s that annoying kid that came with us to New Forest Academy,” Daisy said. “Remember?”

Rho nodded. “What ever happened to him?”

“He stayed there,” Spencer answered. “Made a deal with Slick. Now he works for the BEM.” They hiked in silence for a moment, but Spencer refused to let the conversation dead-end.

“You know,” he said, “we had some pretty good times at the Academy, didn’t we?”

Daisy gave him a big-eyed look like he’d gone insane. “Good times? I only remember being chased, kidnapped, attacked, paralyzed, and scared out of my mind!”

Spencer nodded. “There was that. But the Academy had a great library, I remember that.”

“Didn’t you pass out in the library?” Rho asked. Good, she had taken the bait. Spencer had collapsed in New Forest Academy’s library when he had touched the bronze doorknob and unexpectedly gone into a vision.

“How is your fainting problem?” Rho said. “Any idea what causes it?”

Daisy nearly gave him away, but Spencer managed a quick elbow to her ribs.

“I was under a lot of stress,” Spencer lied. “I’m better now.”

The conversation was frustrating as they danced around the subject. Spencer couldn’t tell what Rho was thinking. And he couldn’t exactly come right out and say, “By the way, did you know I’m an Auran too?”

Spencer didn’t dare probe further. He fell back a few steps and hiked in silence beside Walter Jamison.

They journeyed on into a strange new landscape with high plateaus rising like cliffs on both sides of the trail. V paused before they entered, scanning the narrow slot canyon ahead for any signs of a trap.

“Umm,” Bernard said, poking the vertical side of the nearest plateau. “This definitely isn’t stone.” He poked it again and it compressed, soft and spongy.

“You’re right,” Rho said. “It’s a couple of mattresses. Queens, I’d guess.”

Daisy made a surprised face. “Queen of England?”

“Queen size,” Rho corrected.

Daisy stared up at the towering mattress. “She must be huge.”

“This canyon’s only wide enough to enter two at a time,” V said. “We should pair up and—”

Suddenly, a huge black hose rose into view like a massive python. The hose was ribbed and flexible, dipping low between the mattresses. The head of the hose was wide like a mouth, with an underworking of spinning bristles.

“That’s a vacuum hose,” Walter muttered.

“With an attachment,” Penny added.

“Why’s it so big?” Daisy said.

As they watched, the hose swooped low, an insanely loud suction ripping through the canyon. Trash flew upward into the mouth of the vacuum attachment. The spinning bristles caught the debris, tearing it and sucking it out of sight.

“Everybody hold still,” V said. “Maybe it’ll go away.”

Everyone froze. Spencer slouched into a bulky lump of trash, hoping to conceal himself among the rubble. But the vacuum hose didn’t retreat. It dragged its attachment along the trail, sucking up every scrap of garbage on a path toward the travelers.

“I don’t think it cares if we’re holding still,” Bernard said. “This isn’t Jurassic Park.”

“Why didn’t the scout team double back to warn us?” Alan asked.

“The vacuum probably moved in after they passed through,” Rho said.

“Or maybe the vacuum already ate the scout team,” Bernard said. When his comment was met with disapproving glares, he tried to amend it. “Or maybe they’re all happy and safe, having a picnic on the other side.”

V turned her attention back to the massive vacuum hose. “I’ve never seen this thing before. I’m open to suggestions.”

“Why don’t we find a different path?” Alan said. “Go around the mattresses?”

“That’ll add a couple of hours to our journey,” Rho said. “We’ll never make it to the Glop source by nightfall.”

“If it’s a vacuum,” Walter said, “maybe we can unplug it.”

V shook her head. “Things don’t really run on electricity around here. That thing’s definitely Glopified.”

“What we need is a distraction,” Penny said. “I bet I can scale one of these walls. I’ll climb up on top of the mattress and draw the vacuum after me. The rest of you make a run for it, two by two.”

“Like Noah’s animals,” Daisy pointed out. “Except they had a flood. We have a giant vacuum.”

Spencer could see the vacuum hose clearly as it drew even closer. It strafed along the trail, hovering about six feet high. In a heartbeat, the area below the hose was cleared out. Trash flew through the air, catching in the whirring attachment as it whipped hungrily toward them. The hose seemed to be in no hurry, and Spencer was pretty sure that it hadn’t spotted them yet. Did it even have eyes?