RARE BEASTS (4 page)

“Look at all of those animals,” whispered Ellen.

“Right outside our door,” answered Edgar.

Deep in thought, the two descended to the attic and paced the floor, leaving tracks in the dust.

They eventually came to a stop by the grimiest corner of the room. Edgar and Ellen contemplated the big moldy cardboard box that held the hundreds of holiday decorations they’d collected over the years, usually nabbed from an unsuspecting neighbor’s front door or the holiday display in the center of town.

“Glitter and garlands, Brother,” Ellen remarked.

“Shiny bulbs and colorful dyes, Sister,” added Edgar.

“Very exotic!” they marveled, arching their eyebrows.

And just like that, a plan fell into place.

Edgar and Ellen chuckled and chortled and whooped. Their new scheme was simple yet ingenious.

“Brother, I’ve found something wonderful,” Ellen said as she pried open a crate near the box of decorations. Edgar helped wrench off the wooden slats and whispered “Oh!” as he pulled out buckled strips of leather and little wire baskets. The twins put the leashes and muzzles in the box of holiday decorations and dragged it all down to the basement, along with an assortment of dyes, glues, markers, and paints.

Ellen coiled lengths of rope over her left shoulder, and over her right she draped a large gunnysack that held a number of smaller, empty sacks. Edgar grabbed his special dark canvas satchel, which always held a variety of objects. Spoons, saltshakers, bonnets,
twine—the items in Edgar’s bottomless satchel would seem ordinary to most people, but in his hands they were something, well…
not
. He added the muzzles to the contents. Outfitted with the necessary equipment, brother and sister left their house and skulked across the drab garden, anxiously scanning the gnarled overgrowth for any sign of Heimertz.

Heimertz was the caretaker, tending to the maintenance of the house and grounds, and had worked there for as long as the twins could remember. He always moved slowly, barely flexing his knees as he went, but he had the uncanny ability to appear without warning, emerging silently from the gloom of the house. It disturbed the twins that in one moment they could be playing alone, and in the next find Heimertz and his vacant smile looming over them.
Very
few things unsettled Edgar and Ellen, but Heimertz was one of them.

Whether or not the caretaker actually took any care was debatable, since the house was always dark and sooty and musty, and the garden dense with weeds and roots and dead bushes. But while he made them uneasy, Edgar and Ellen approved of his work—or lack of it.

Heimertz inhabited a bleak shed in a low, swampy
corner of the yard. Marshy mud and reeds rose up high along its ramshackle walls, making the shed look like it was sinking slowly into the earth. There was only one window, and it was cracked and missing a pane of glass. The twins had once peered through it, out of curiosity, and inside was but a bare room, simply furnished with a cot, a few candles, an old accordion, and a collection of tools, with no other personal effects that might hint at the caretaker’s history.

He was rarely seen outside the grounds of the twins’ home. Older residents of Nod’s Limbs sometimes whispered that, long ago, Heimertz had been a Bavarian circus performer who escaped his family of clowns and acrobats. Edgar and Ellen could never confirm or dismiss the story. The twins found the caretaker too creepy to ask, and even if they
could muster up the gumption to speak to him, it was doubtful he would answer. In all these years, Heimertz had never uttered a single word to them.

To their relief on this hot afternoon, the twins could make out Heimertz far off on the other side of the grounds. He was busy ripping large chunks of bark off of some decaying trees, so Edgar and Ellen silently crept through their backyard and slipped out into the neighborhood.

They had to be very sneaky, because Edgar and Ellen had a reputation around town. At one time or another, most children in Nod’s Limbs had fallen victim to one of the twins’ insidious plots, whether they were aware of it or not. It was not so long ago that the twins had stranded nine-year-old Artie Anderson atop the tallest tree on the block, promising him access to a most amazing tree house. Shortly thereafter they had enticed little Sara Bergstaff to dig for gold in her yard, rupturing her family’s septic tank.

So, carefully, very carefully, Edgar and Ellen slid through the shadows. One by one, they visited each
house in the neighborhood. And one by one, they snatched up all the pets.

Some animals were easy to get, since no one was around to keep an eye on them. Their owners were off doing other things, such as buying comic books or playing kickball. Edgar plucked Ronnie Wringwood’s dog from in front of its doghouse, and Ellen reached through an open window to nab Heather Redder’s parakeet from its cage, leaving nothing but a few fallen feathers.

Other pets required more stealth, and the twins found they needed to create distractions. Edgar pulled popcorn from the depths of his satchel and laid a trail down the driveway of the Bogginer home. While young, peckish Donald Bogginer was lured away by this surprise afternoon snack, Ellen made off with his kitten, Chauncey. Two houses down the street, Ellen rang Franny Finkle’s doorbell and then hid behind the family car. When Franny came running to answer the front door (“Coming, Mr. Crapple! You better have mail for
me
! Mail for ME! ” she shrieked), Edgar ran around to the back door and grabbed her hamster.

Up one street and down another, the twins added to their collection. They muzzled the surprised pets to keep them from barking or meowing or making any loud noises, and then stuffed them into the burlap bags. Soon, their collection grew large enough that Edgar and Ellen found it hard to carry, so they set everything down to rest.

“These animals are heavy, Edgar. All their squirming doesn’t help, either.”

“My arms are starting to get sore, too. But don’t worry, Ellen, I’ve got a plan for transporting our cargo tomorrow. Just you wait!”

“Well, I won’t—hey you! Pipe down!” Ellen whispered as a steady low wail came from one of the sacks. Some of the pets began to growl and whine, so the twins poked and prodded the sacks with their toes, trying to keep the animals quiet.

“Noisy things,” muttered Edgar. “If we don’t watch out, they’re going to give us away. We’d better carry these home where no one will hear them, and then we can come back for more!”

The twins lugged the sacks back to their garden, where they piled them in the overgrowth. Returning to their task, they continued down the block, Ellen filching pets and Edgar running the new finds back to their stash.

They came upon a bright yellow house on the
corner, its pretty painted mailbox decorated with bees, butterflies, and the family name
Pickens
. There was an enormous cage in the middle of the backyard, and coiled in the center of it, fast asleep, was the largest snake the twins had ever seen. Edgar and Ellen had to take a moment to admire the sheer size of the thing, wrapped around and around itself, forming a snoring pyramid.

It didn’t wake up as Ellen opened the cage door and maneuvered behind it. Edgar held open the biggest sack they had, and his sister grunted as she pushed the massive reptile through the gate of its cage and into the bag. The snake stirred and half opened one eye, but Edgar lifted its tail in his arms and rocked it gently until the snake let out a low whistling snore and returned to its nap.

“That’s a full load by itself,” Ellen said. “You take it home while I go look for more animals.” Edgar shuffled back to their house, huffing and puffing from the weight of the snake. He pushed open the back gate with his foot and staggered into the yard. As the gate swung closed behind him, Edgar stopped suddenly, his breath catching in his throat.

All of the restless sacks were still thrashing about, small sounds emanating from within. And standing
above the many bags, leaning over for a closer look, was Heimertz. The stocky caretaker lowered himself to his hands and knees and took great big sniffs of air around the sacks.

Edgar didn’t know what to do. The caretaker was inches away from uncovering their ill-gotten booty. A simple tug on one sack’s cord was all that was needed. Edgar tried to stand very still but the heavy snake was making his arms ache.

Heimertz sat back on his haunches as the animals, lost in the darkness of the burlap bags, shivered and whined. It seemed an eternity before Heimertz stood, wiping his hands on his stained overalls.

Edgar felt a chill as Heimertz turned and stared at the giant sack in the boy’s arms. He inhaled deeply as if to draw the scent off of Edgar and his parcel from across the garden.

Edgar gulped. Without Ellen, he felt particularly vulnerable.

The caretaker’s habitual smile twitched; his nostrils flared wide. He stood still for several tense moments, giving no clue as to his next move.

Maybe it heard Edgar’s heart pounding furiously, or maybe it felt Heimertz’s eerie presence, or possibly it was just having a bad dream, but the snake
stirred against the boy’s chest. Edgar, already unnerved by the caretaker, let out a jumpy “Eeee-
ah
!” as he let the sack drop to the ground.

Heimertz briefly surveyed the rest of the grounds before pivoting his short bulk on his left foot and stumping off toward the shed.

Edgar fled the garden.

The snake shifted in the burlap and settled back into deep sleep, resuming its whistling snore.

Edgar caught up with his sister on the far side of the neighborhood, huddled in the shadows of a tall hedge.

“It’s Heimertz, Ellen! He caught me with our stockpile!” Edgar gasped. “He just walked away, but I didn’t know what to do!”

“Hush, Edgar! Hush! I’m trying to be discreet!”

Ellen nodded her head toward the yard beyond the hedge, and Edgar peeked around it.

Leanne Casey and her friend Bruno were chasing his miniature dachshund around the grass, laughing as the wiener dog ran in bigger and bigger circles. With a playful yelp, the dachshund circled the edge of the yard, and as he darted behind the hedge, Ellen lowered her open sack, and the dog ran right into it.

By the time Leanne and Bruno rounded the
bushes, there was nothing to see. They stood dumbfounded in the quiet street, listening for a telltale bark, hearing nothing but silence.

And so it went, the twins skulking through the neighborhood, emerging from the shadows just long enough to snatch a pet before disappearing again. Soon they had amassed a sizable collection of furry, scaly, and feathered creatures, each in its own gunnysack.