How to Curse in Hieroglyphics
Lesley Livingston
PUFFIN
HOW TO CURSE IN HIEROGLYPHICS
LESLEY LIVINGSTON’S books have received many awards and accolades. Once Every Never was the winner of the inaugural Copper Cylinder Award and named a YA Science Fiction book of the year by Quill & Quire. It was also shortlisted for the CLA Young Adult Book Award and the Stellar Book Award. Livingston lives in Toronto.
JONATHAN LLYR is well known for being the on-air host and writer for Canada’s nationally broadcast Space Channel from 1999 to 2007, where he routinely found himself in close contact with major science fiction and fantasy stars, and was a voice for genre fans everywhere. Llyr continues to write and act in film and television. He lives in Toronto.
ALSO BY LESLEY LIVINGSTON
Once Every Never
Every Never After
Wondrous Strange
Darklight
Tempestuous
Starling
Descendant
FOR RACQUEL, MAX, NATASHA AND ZOË
CONTENTS
1 DROOLY ARE THE DARNED
2 STRANGE INVADERS
3 THE THING WITH TWO HEADS
4 MISSION: IMPROBABLE
5 THE CORNDOG MENACE
6 THE MUMMY STRIKES OUT!
7 CAT’S PYJAMAS
8 SOMETHING WICKED THAT WAY WENT!
9 THE BIRDS AND THE BEETLES
10 AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTEEN HOLES
11 DRIVIN’ MOBILE
12 THOSE MAGNIFICENT KIDS AND THEIR FLYING MACHINES
13 LIGHTS … AMULET … ACTION!!
14 THE END! OR IS IT …?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1
DROOLY ARE THE DARNED
“That mummy’s toast.”
“Says you.” Cheryl Shumacher pushed her glasses up her nose and snorted in amusement as she watched the scene in front of her unfold. “I think the vamp is the one who’s about to become tasty breakfast food, here.”
“Mummies don’t eat vampires,” Tweed Pendleton pointed out, chewing on a handful of Licorice Nibs. Beneath a fringe of straight dark hair, her serious grey eyes were unblinkingly focused on the drive-in movie screen in the distance.
Cheryl shook her head, and the wavy, strawberry-blond pigtails perched high on either side of her head bounced with the gesture. “I meant breakfast for those crocodiles,” she said, the braces she wore colouring her words with a quirky little lisp. “Look how the mummy’s seemingly random shamblings have cleverly manoeuvred Ol’ Fang Face in the direction of the croc-pit.”
“The fiend!” Tweed exclaimed in the deadpan monotone that was her trademark.
The two girls sat in the front seat of an old cobalt-blue 1948 Ford pickup truck that was parked beside the Snak Shak at the Starlight Paradise Drive-In Double-Screen Movie Theatre. It was where you could find them almost every night after sundown, when the sky faded from blue to black, and the giant silver screen that loomed high above a sea of parking spaces in the middle of the wide-open fields glowed to glorious Technicolor life. When that happened, the girls climbed into the truck cab and settled in to watch movies the way they were supposed to be seen: through the windshield of an automobile. At twelve-going-on-thirteen, Cheryl and Tweed couldn’t wait until the day they could finally drive up and park a set of wheels all their own in one of the drive-in’s front-row spaces. In the meantime, they made do with sitting in their grandfather’s truck, parked at the back of the lot and rigged up specially with a pair of window-mounted speakers—one on either side—so they could crank up the volume to feel closer to the action. At that particular moment, the soundtrack consisted of orchestra music building to a thundering, brassy crescendo.
“Popcorn?” Cheryl asked, holding out the bag without taking her eyes off the movie.
“Thanks.” Tweed scooped up a butter-drenched handful. “Milk Dud?”
Cheryl took the offered box, mumbling her appreciation through her own mouthful of popcorn, which she then washed down with a gulp of icy-cold fountain pop.
The summer day had been sweltering hot, but now, with the sun long gone and just the hint of a breeze sweeping away the last of the heat and dust, it was a perfect night for monster-movie watching. Of course, for Cheryl and Tweed, most nights were perfect for monster-movie watching. Or any kind of movie watching. In fact, it would pretty much have taken a torrential downpour or tornado weather to get them to skip a flick. Cheryl and Tweed had spent most of their lives at the Starlight Paradise Drive-In, on the outskirts of the tiny town of Wiggins Cross, smack dab in the middle of Nowhere. They’d grown up there, raised by their grandfather, Pops.
Movies were in their blood.
The music coming from the speakers dipped to a high-pitched eerie wail. Cheryl and Tweed knew what that meant. Bad news. But for who? The long-dead evil pharaoh or the undead evil bloodsucker? Tension mounted. The girls leaned forward in their seats …
The mummy attacked!
The vampire leaped!
The crocodiles thrashed!
The—
BANG! BANG! BANG!
“Gah!!” shouted Cheryl. “Urk!!” gurgled Tweed. Popcorn flew everywhere. Licorice Nibs and Milk Duds hit the roof.
From behind them, the girls heard the familiar, genial belly laugh of their grandfather, Jefferson “Popcorn” Pendleton. Pops (he was just plain “Pops” to pretty much everyone in Wiggins) was the sole owner/projectionist/ concession manager/ticket-taker at the Starlight Paradise. He was also, through a strange twist of fate, the sole guardian of two precocious twelve-going-on-thirteen-year-old girls: Cheryl Shumacher and Tumbleweed “Tweed” Pendleton.
It was a favourite pastime of his to sneak out from behind the Snak Shak counter right at the scariest part of a monster movie, climb up into the old blue pickup’s cargo bed and bang loudly on the roof, startling the jujubes right out of his young charges. Of course, the twins got so mesmerized by whatever cheesy monsterfest they were watching that they always fell for it. Every single time.
“The twins” was what everyone in Wiggins called Cheryl and Tweed. But the description, while accurate, was also a touch misleading. The girls were identical twins, sure, but no one ever had any trouble telling them apart. Mostly because they looked nothing like each other. Cheryl was just a bit gangly, with unruly pigtails, and she only ever wore jeans and plaid shirts. Tweed, on the other hand, was serious and deliberate, styling her straight dark hair with bangs and a blunt cut that fell below her shoulders. And if the day ever came when she was spotted wearing any colour other than goth-gloomy black, well … the townsfolk of Wiggins would probably start hoarding canned goods in preparation for the end of the world.
Cheryl and Tweed were two radically different peas in a pod—more like a coffee bean and a cherry Chiclet in a pod—but still, everyone had been referring to them as “the twins” for years now and, technically, they were. Just not with each other.
They were, in actual fact, cousins.
Tweed’s dad and Cheryl’s mom were brother and sister. They had each married, each settled down in Wiggins Cross where they’d grown up, and each had a pair of identical twin daughters. Four little munchkinettes who played together as tots. And then, one fine summer day when the twins were five years old, both families had piled into the cabin of a single-engine airplane, piloted by a family friend, and headed out for a weekend vacation at a lake resort in the mountains west of Wiggins.
That was the last anyone saw of Cheryl’s family, or Tweed’s family, or the family friend. Two sets of parents, two siblings, one extremely experienced flyer and an airplane in perfect mechanical condition had just … vanished into thin air. On a clear, calm, sunny day.
Cheryl and Tweed were found alone, forty-e
ight hours after the plane failed to arrive at its destination, sitting on a rock at the edge of Flat Top Plateau, a steepsided butte rising up out of the foothills … The girls were both unharmed—if a little sunburnt and a lot hungry—and there wasn’t a mark on them. Neither of the five-year-olds remembered anything after what they both described as a flash of bright white light. They didn’t know how they’d got on top of the steep hill. The next thing either of them had known, there was a rescue chopper circling in the sky over them.
The townsfolk didn’t talk much about “The Incident,” but pretty much everyone in Wiggins and the surrounding county had a theory as to what had happened.
The girls had theories of their own. Theories that didn’t involve anything as mundane as a vanishing plane. Theories that had to do with other life forms. In outer space. Cheryl and Tweed had plenty of evidence to back up their claims, too—unless, of course, the movies had lied to them. And that was an unthinkable thought. Over the years, however, the girls had learned to keep their theories to themselves. Wiggins folk were, for the most part, not given to flights of extraterrestrial fancy, and the girls had soon grown tired of all the funny looks they got.
“C’mon now, girls,” Pops said. “Time to hit the hay. Tomorrow is shopping day. I want to get a nice early start and I don’t want a couple of sleepyheads on my hands.”
“But we’re just getting to the good part …” Tweed muttered, unable to tear her eyes away from the looming mummy-vampire smackdown.
“Yeah … good part …” Cheryl mumbled, equally riveted, as she scooped up a handful of Nibs that had landed in her lap and popped them in her mouth.
Neither of the twins moved a muscle with the intention of leaving the truck.
Pops crossed his arms over his chest. “I can always just tell you what happens, if you like—”
The girls shrieked in unison and covered their ears. While they had watched most of their favourite monster movies at least fifty times, Curse of the Blood Red Sands was one they’d never actually seen before. Its ending remained unspoiled.
“Well, then, say g’nite, girls,” he said.
The twins sighed. “G’night, girls,” they answered together. They climbed out of the truck and headed toward the little white farmhouse, where they would climb into their beds, stomachs full of Snak Shak snacks and brains dreaming of mega-monster showdowns to come.
The next day, as promised, Pops hollered for the girls to rise and shine at the crack of dawn. They piled back into the truck and headed out to Bartleby’s Gas & Gulp Service Station and General Store. There they stocked up on provisions, and the girls hauled them out to the pickup in cardboard boxes while Pops got caught up on all the town gossip with Mrs. Bartleby. Cheryl and Tweed could never figure out why that part of the trip always took so long. It wasn’t as if anything particularly interesting ever happened in Wiggins, after all. Still, waiting for Pops to wrap up the gab session gave the twins the opportunity to indulge in one of their favourite pastimes—something the girls called “ACTION!!”
ACTION!! was, essentially, an elaborate game of movie make-believe, where every word uttered was like dialogue straight from a film script, and every move made was like a scene lifted straight from a movie storyboard. Drawing on their vast stores of monster-movie lore and fuelled by their own gloriously hyperactive imaginations, Cheryl and Tweed could transform the most mundane settings into exotic locales, the ordinariest of activities into life-or-death situations, and themselves into action heroes extraordinaire.
Of course, like all good heroes, they needed good villains to pit their wits against, and excursions to the Gas & Gulp were ideal ACTION!! setups for that very reason. A shortish, fidgety, bespectacled, be-sneakered, overalls-wearing reason by the name of Artie Bartleby.
Artie was a year behind Cheryl and Tweed at school, and he’d been helping out around the family business since he was barely old enough to reach the nozzle on the gas pump. But on the days when his mother started gathering a box of provisions for Pops Pendleton to pick up, Artie would start to circle the gas station lot, filled with a kind of nervous anticipation and looking for a place to hide where he wouldn’t be instantly found.
With Pops occupied, Artie in their sights, plots and perils a-bubble in their brains, all it took for the game to start was one of the girls calling out: “Cameras rolling … aaaand …”
“… ACTION!!”
EXT. SMALL-TOWN GAS STATION/GENERAL STORE -- HIGH NOON
CAMERA ZOOMS RAPIDLY TOWARD a stand of trees
at the edge of a clearing.
Two FEMALE FIGURES peer through HIGH-TECH
BINOCULARS.
EXTREME CLOSE-UP ON: the binoculars lower to
reveal a pair of GREY EYES, narrowed in cold
rage.
VAMPIRE HUNTER TEE
It’s him all right. The Daywalker …
EXTREME CLOSE-UP ON: a second set of
binoculars, lowering to reveal a pair of BLUE
EYES, steely with determination.
VAMPIRE HUNTER CEE
Easy, partner. This is what we’ve
been training for. The Undead Ones --
the ones immune to sunlight -- are
the most dangerous of their kind.
Don’t lose your cool…
VAMPIRE HUNTER TEE
Oh, I’m cool. I’m
Frigidaire. And I’m gonna ice this sucker like a frozen
bloodsicle.
A SHADOWY FIGURE IN A CLOAK lurks near the gas pumps, glancing around nervously.
CAMERA CLOSE-UP on the figure -- the
unnaturally GREY SKIN, the RED EYES, the
FANGS (which, clearly, have led to an
unfortunate DROOLING PROBLEM).
COUNT VON BARTLEBURG
They’re out there somewhere …
(SLURP) Stupid vampire hunters …
They’re coming for me. I can
always tell when they’re coming for
me … (SLURP) With their stupid old
binoc-yoo-lars and their stupid old
pointy wooden stakes … Darn it all!
(SLURP) Double darn it! (SLURP SLURP)
CAMERA RISES ON: the two HUNTERS,who are now
perched on top of the GAS PUMPS.
They are EXTREMELY MENACING.
VAMPIRE HUNTER TEE
Creature of the Night -- er -- Day!
VAMPIRE HUNTER CEE
GET HIM!
COUNT VON BARTLEBURG
GLAACK!! (SLURP)
The HUNTERS LEAP!
The VAMPIRE SCREAMS!!
“Ouch! I said CUT!!” Cheryl yelled. She dropped the wooden ruler she was using for a stake and massaged her hand, wincing. “Ow …”
“What?”
“He bit me! That darned vampire bit me!”
“The fiend!” Tweed gasped. “Curse you, Count Arthur Von Bartleburg!”
She shook a fist in the direction their nemesis had scampered off to—after sinking his chompers into Cheryl’s freckled flesh. Tweed shoved her “binoculars” (a pair of taped-together Coke cans) into a black army-surplus canvas bag she wore slung across her torso and inspected her companion’s hand. There were half-moon teeth marks visible on the fleshy part of her thumb, but the skin wasn’t broken.
“You got off lucky this time, partner,” Tweed said in a serious voice. “I would have hated to be the one to have to stake you, pal.”
“I know.” Cheryl smiled at her grimly. “But I wouldn’t have it any other way. And I’d do the same for you, pal.”
They exchanged their C+T Secret Signal (patent pending), which consisted of one winky eye, a pointing index finger pressed firmly against the side of the nose and a firm nod, but Tweed noticed a faint frown shading Cheryl’s brow.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m sure you’re fine. You’re not even pale. We just have to keep an eye out for symptoms for the next twenty-four hours.”
“Oh, it’s not that .”
> “Then what’s wrong?”
“I was just thinkin’ … I really gotta work on my action hero stock phrases.” She kicked at a pebble and glanced sideways at Tweed. “I mean, ‘Get him’? That’s the best patter I could come up with?”
“Well …”
“And you, with the ‘ice this sucker like a frozen bloodsicle’—”
“What?” Tweed stopped in her tracks. “Not good?”
“No, no! Really good. Quality B-movie quip, partner.” Cheryl shook her head, her two pigtails bouncing furiously. “See, that’s what I aspire to!”
“I dunno.” Tweed shrugged. “‘Get him’ has a certain direct charm …”
The girls grinned and punched each other in the shoulder.
“Um …” Cheryl glanced around, her focus returning to the task at hand. “Now … just where d’you suppose our target objective got to?”
“YOU BACK OFF!” Artie shouted, giving the girls a pretty good idea of just where the “target objective” was hiding out: behind the Dumpster, next to a stack of blue plastic milk crates.
The twins knew that, even though he would never ever admit such a thing out loud—certainly not within earshot—Artie got a kind of secret kick out of trying to outwit them. Unfortunately, at the age of eleven, he also wasn’t yet exactly given to deep or innovative thinking. In fact, in nine out of ten monster hunts, he could eventually be found huddled in almost exactly the same spot behind the general store’s garbage bins.
“Y’hear me?” he shouted again. “BACK OFF!”
“Oh sure, Von Bartleburg …” Cheryl issued a series of largely made-up militaryesque hand signals to Tweed. “… Spawn of Darkness, Left Hand of Dracula … We’ll back off …”
The girls split up, circling around on either side of the Dumpster.
Artie crouched there like a gopher in a hole, with messy brown bed-head hair, buck teeth and wonky glasses. Three-foot-tall Scourge of Humanity. Knobby-kneed Creature of Evil. The second he realized that the girls had found him—again—he made another “Glaack!” sound and jumped like a Pop-Tart in a toaster. Tweed made a mad grab for him but he wriggled backwards in his hidey-hole, out between the trash bin and a towering stack of broken-down cardboard boxes bundled with twine. Then he spun on the heels of his ratty old red Keds and took off like a Bat out of Heck.
