“–IF NOT FOR YOUR PARENTS,” the big people shouted back.
“Everything you have–” continued Mr. Justice Rough.
“–YOU OWE TO US,” chimed in the big people.
The courtroom began to sway around Jacob Two-Two.
“I haven’t much time,” said Mr. Justice Rough. “If I don’t get through your case quickly, I’ll be late for my afternoon nap.” The judge paused; he glared at Jacob Two-Two. “If you’re innocent, why are you here?”
“Because I want two pounds of firm, red tomatoes,” said Jacob Two-Two. “I want two pounds of firm, red tomatoes.”
“Don’t mock me, boy. I heard you right the first time.”
“But, your Lordship, he says almost everything two times,” said the prosecutor, “and that’s why he stands before you.”
Mr. Justice Rough leaned toward Jacob Two-Two. “Why must you say everything two times?” he asked.
“Because,” said Jacob Two-Two, pleased to be able to explain himself, “I am two plus two plus two years old. I have two ears and two eyes and two arms and two feet and two shoes. I also have two sisters and two brothers. I am the littlest. Nobody hears me the first time. They only pay attention if I say things two times. And now, your Lordship, could I have two pounds of firm, red tomatoes? Could I please, please, have my two pounds of firm, red tomatoes?” and, he thought, swallowing hard, be allowed to go home. Oh, please.
“Are you finished, then?” asked Mr. Justice Rough.
Jacob Two-Two nodded twice.
“Thank God for that!” Bang, bang, went the judge’s gavel. Bang, bang, again. “Wake up the jury,” he demanded gruffly.
The clerk of the court shook the jury awake.
“Now, then,” said Mr. Justice Rough, “you’ve heard the evidence. How do you find the defendant?”
“Guilty!”
“Well, if that’s how you feel,” said Mr. Justice Rough, rubbing his hands together gleefully, “I will now pass sentence. Jacob Two-Two, because you are an unredeemed scoundrel, a charlatan, an ingrate, and a smart aleck to boot, I hearby sentence you to two years, two months, two weeks, two days, two hours and two minutes in the darkest dungeons of the children’s prison. I do this for your own good, naturally, and it hurts me more than it hurts you.”
Suddenly, a bell-like voice rang out loud and clear: “We will appeal this verdict, of course.”
“Oh, yes,” sneered Mr. Justice Rough, rocking with laughter, “and who might you be?”
Right there, right then, the two little people shed their disguises.
They flung off their beards.
They discarded their dark glasses.
They tossed away their trenchcoats.
And, lo and behold, revealed in Day-Glo blue jeans and flying golden capes, the spine-chilling emblem Child Power emblazoned on their chests, were the intrepid Shapiro and the fearless O’Toole.
“Take cover, everybody!”
“Look out!”
“It’s the Infamous Two!”
“I am O’Toole,” announced Noah, leaping on to a table.
“And I am Shapiro,” proclaimed Emma, rippling her muscles for all to see.
Immediately, the two burliest policemen in court fainted. Teeth chattering, the prosecutor dived under his table. The jury, wide awake for the first time, stumbled over each other, fleeing their benches.
Shapiro, followed by O’Toole, traversed the court room, swinging from one chandelier to the next, dropping to the floor immediately before the trembling Mr. Justice Rough.
“I-I-I-I,” began Mr. Justice Rough, “a-a-am a grandfather myself. I a-a-a-adore children, beautiful little people. Have a gumdrop?”
“Stuff it,” said Shapiro.
“You’ll be hearing from us,” warned O’Toole.
CHAPTER 5
ut for all their big talk and threats, The Infamous Two did not interfere when Jacob Two-Two was carted off by two policemen to spend the night locked in the cell below the towering courthouse, before being shipped to the abominable children’s prison.
Jacob Two-Two, who was used to being tucked into a warm bed surrounded by his stuffed animals, tried his best to settle down on the bare wooden board in his cold cell. Unable to sleep, he passed the time trying to decipher messages scrawled on the walls by previous prisoners. The most prominent message, printed in blood-red, warned:
BEWARE OF THE HOODED FANG
The who?, thought Jacob Two-Two, when suddenly he heard somebody at his high barred window.
“Psssst! Psssst!”
Raising himself, Jacob Two-Two saw that it was the intrepid Shapiro, accompanied by the fearless O’Toole.
“We could have rescued you,” said O’Toole.
“Oh, yeah?”
“But Child Power needs your help,” said Shapiro.
“Aren’t I,” asked Jacob Two-Two a little sarcastically, “too little to help anybody?”
“Oh no,” said O’Toole.
“You must help us uncover the hidden children’s prison,” said Shapiro, “and rescue all the poor wretches being held there.”
“But how?” asked Jacob Two-Two two times.
“Hide this secret supersonic bleeper in your ear,” said O’Toole, “and we will find you, wherever you are.”
So Jacob Two-Two slipped the supersonic bleeper into his ear and was still wearing it the next morning when, blind folded, he began his long journey to the children’s prison, taking a route so utterly confusing as to confound even the most ingenious of his pursuers. Accompanied by two guards wearing dark glasses, wearing dark glasses all the time, he traveled by car, train, bus, canoe, helicopter, ox-cart, rickshaw, stilts, dinghy, skis, submarine, flying balloon, camel, raft, dogsled, roller skates, glider and motorcycle.
Jacob Two-Two’s two guards on his seemingly endless journey were called Master Fish and Mistress Fowl.
“I suppose,” snarled Master Fish, “that your daddy loves you?”
“Oh, yes,” replied Jacob Two-Two. “Oh, yes.”
“Well, I don’t, you little stinker. In fact, I think you’re perfectly horrible.”
Jacob Two-Two lowered his head.
“I can see,” sneered Mistress Fowl, “that you’re used to being treated kindly. Why, I’ll bet your mother reads you a story before tucking you in at night.”
Jacob Two-Two smiled in fond remembrance. He nodded twice.
“Well, you repulsive little brat, you just wait until you hear the bedtime stories we read over the loudspeaker system in the children’s prison.”
Jacob Two-Two loved stories. “Are they good ones?” he asked hopefully. “Are they good ones?”
“They certainly are,” said Master Fish, “if you like to tremble in the dark and listen to tales of red-eyed witches.”
“Or bloodthirsty vampires,” said Mistress Fowl.
“Or kidnappers.”
“Or monsters from outer space.”
Jacob Two-Two shuddered.
“The children’s prison,” said Master Fish, delighted, “awaits your pleasure.”
“But why,” asked Jacob Two-Two, “why a prison for children?”
Master Fish was outraged. Mistress Fowl was appalled.
“Don’t you think there ought to be a place,” snarled Master Fish, “for little people so utterly hopeless they can’t even ride a two-wheel bicycle?”
“Or dial a telephone number,” sneered Mistress Fowl.
“Or count the laundry?”
“Or even cross the street by themselves?”
Jacob Two-Two swallowed his tears.
“Look here, you useless twerp, little people are always doing the wrong thing.”
“Like waking up their parents at six o’clock on a Sunday morning to say the sun is out.”
“Or gobbling all the peaches on the kitchen table before their elder brothers and sisters come down.”
Or, Jacob Two-Two had to admit to himself, recalling the incident with a shudder, running to answer th
e telephone and telling Daniel’s new girl friend that his brother couldn’t take the call, because he was on the toilet, doing his dump.
“Admit it, clunkhead,” snapped Master Fish, “how many times have you watered all the house plants only an hour after your mother had done it?”
“I was only trying to be helpful,” protested Jacob Two-Two. “I was only trying to be helpful.”
“Yes, certainly. But you drowned them, didn’t you?”
“Ignorant little troublemaker!”
Jacob Two-Two retreated, convinced by his tormentors that there simply had to be a prison for little people as obnoxious as he was, but in his worst dreams he was not prepared for what lay ahead.
Fog, fog everywhere.
Mistress Fowl smiled. Master Fish began to whistle a happy tune. And for the very first time, they actually removed their dark glasses.
Jacob Two-Two shivered. It was so cold. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, the first thing he made out, in the distance, were two gigantic chimney stacks, filthy gray fog billowing from both of them.
“Look,” said Mistress Fowl, “we’re almost there.”
As they emerged from a field of tall spiky grass onto a muddy shore, Jacob Two-Two made out a sign that read:
THIS WAY TO SLIMERS’ ISLE
FROM WHICH NO BRATS
RETURN
The sign pointed toward a rowboat, a leaky rowboat, and Jacob Two-Two was flung into it by his guards.
“I’ll row,” said Master Fish.
“I’ll steer,” said Mistress Fowl.
“And you, my dear,” they shouted together, “will bail. Or we might sink,” they added, bursting into laughter.
Rusty can in hand, Jacob Two-Two bailed furiously, for the murky waters, he quickly saw, were infested with bloodthirsty sharks and slimy crocodiles, their jaws snapping hungrily. And it was no better once they reached the opposite shore, where the first thing to greet Jacob Two-Two was a slithering snake.
“Poisonous, of course,” said Master Fish.
The children’s prison, Jacob Two-Two learned, was built on a marshy island in the foggiest part of England, a place where the sun never shone. The only birds that ever flew over the island were buzzards, and the land could support no animal life other than gray wolverines with yellow snaggle teeth and millions of deathwatch beetles. There were no flowers, boasted Master Fish, but nettles thrived everywhere, hiding the quicksand, added Mistress Fowl.
The prison itself, Jacob Two-Two saw, was built of clammy gray stone. As he approached, its ugly towers, choked with vines that yielded poisonous blackberries, rose gloomily into the never-ending fog.
“Home, sweet home,” cried Mistress Fowl.
CHAPTER 6
inally, they reached the gates of the children’s prison, where an enormous flashing sign proclaimed:
TREMBLE, KIDS!
SHIVER!
SHUDDER!
YOU ARE APPROACHING
THE LAIR
OF THE
HOODED FANG!
Underneath, neon blood dripped into a seething, steaming cauldron, and a perpetual laughing machine cackled “Ho! Ho! Ho!”
Once inside the prison, Master Fish and Mistress Fowl thrust Jacob Two-Two into the warden’s lair. The warden was known as The Hooded Fang. Jacob Two-Two, looking very pale, discovered him sprawled on the floor, smelly and unshaven, sharpening his fangs by gnawing on a beef bone, a marrow bone. The Hooded Fang seized Jacob Two-Two’s charge sheet, muttering to himself as he clutched it between his paws. “Mmmnnn,” said The Hooded Fang, “insulting behavior to a big person, eh? We’ll soon cure that, we will. What led you into such serious trouble?”
“Two pounds of firm, red tomatoes,” said Jacob Two-Two, sighing. “Two pounds of firm, red tomatoes.”
“Why are you saying things two times? Take me for an idiot, do you?”
“No, sir. No, sir.”
“Remove this desperado to the lowest, dampest dungeon,” said The Hooded Fang, “and put him on a diet of stale bread and water. My shaving water! Ho, ho, ho!”
“Can I have two slices, please?” asked Jacob Two-Two. “Can I have two slices?”
“You see,” said The Hooded Fang, strutting, “he’s only been here two minutes and he’s begging for mercy. Am I tough! Oh, boy, I’m the toughest!” The Hooded Fang growled at Jacob Two-Two. He bared his fangs. “Shall I tell you why I hate kids more than anything in this world?”
“Please do,” said Jacob Two-Two. “Please do.”
The Hooded Fang dismissed Master Fish and Mistress Fowl and locked the door to his lair.
“Once,” he began, “I was a star, with my own dressing room. The Hooded Fang, most hated and vile villain in all of wrestling. Why, as I made my way from my dressing room into the arena, the boos were sufficient to raise the roof beams. And the minute I stepped into the ring, the fans pelted me with stinking fish, rotten eggs, and overripe tomatoes. Oh, it was lovely!”
“Then,” said The Hooded Fang, his eyes suddenly charged with menace, “it happened. One dreadful evening in Doncaster, just as I slipped between the ropes, waiting for the eggs and fish to fly … a child laughed. A child, standing on a chair in the front row, pointed at me, laughed out loud, and said, ‘He’s not terrible, Daddy, he’s funny!’ Funny? Desperately, I rolled my eyes. I bared my fangs. I made menacing faces. But nobody threw anything. Not one little rotten egg. The child wouldn’t stop laughing. And, before you knew it, the whole arena was convulsed. The more I growled, the louder they laughed. When my opponent entered the ring, I immediately poked my thumb into his eye, but instead of hitting back, he just fell against the ropes, roaring with laughter.”
The Hooded Fang blew his nose. His head hung heavy.
“These things get around, you know. It was in the newspapers. And soon, wherever I went, all I had to do was crawl through the ropes, and the fans were laughing so hard, tears came to their eyes. All because a child laughed. A funny villain is no good, don’t you see? No good at all.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Hooded Fang,” said Jacob Two-Two. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” asked The Hooded Fang, surprised. “Why?”
“Because you seem to be such a nice man.”
“What?” roared The Hooded Fang. “How dare you! I’m not nice. I’m horrible, disgusting, mean, vicious, evil, and vile! Now get out of my sight, before I sink my fangs into you. Oh, how I hate kids!”
CHAPTER 7
o Jacob Two-Two was removed from the lair of The Hooded Fang and led along a winding corridor and down two hundred steps to a row of subterranean cells by Master Fish and Mistress Fowl.
A tearful little boy stuck his head out between the bars of the first cell Jacob Two-Two passed. “Please, sir,” he cried to the guards, “please, I’ve got a terrible tummyache.”
“Shall we throw him to the crocs, then?” asked Master Fish.
“No, feed him to the snakes.”
“The wolverines are hungrier.”
“How do you feel now?” asked Mistress Fowl.
“Oh, much better, thank you, sir,” said the boy, retreating from the bars.
A few cells farther down, a little girl’s head popped out between the bars. “I’m hungry,” she protested. “I’m so hungry.”
“Here, then,” said Master Fish. “I’ll give you a rotten, wormy apple if you promise to eat every piece.”
“Ugh,” said the girl, retreating.
“What’s she in for?” asked Jacob Two-Two. “What’s she in for?”
“Why that ungrateful little girl broke out in measles on the very day her father had invited the boss to dinner. Ruined everything.”
“You’re in the double-security section,” said Mistress Fowl. “Only hardened criminals here.”
With that, Mistress Fowl unlocked a cell and flung Jacob Two-Two inside. She left him with a jug of water and two slices of stale bread, slamming the barred door.
Jacob Two-Two had hardly adjusted to his s
urroundings when the entire cellblock was plunged into darkness and a loudspeaker began to crackle.
“Good evening, my little dreadfuls,” sang out the menacing voice on the loudspeaker, “I do hope that you’ve all finished every last delicious drop of your good-night glass of curdled wolverine’s milk and that you are all nicely tucked in on your cold, splintery bed boards, with your cell doors firmly locked, because oh, dear, oh, dear, one of our snakes is missing and is rumored to be slithering through the cellblocks right now in search of some tasty toes. Well, now, don’t worry, because once more it’s Happy Nightmare Hour, with your most unlovable Slimer, yours truly, Uncle Oscar Octopus. Last night, if you remember, we left our hateful hero, Dan Disrespectful, fleeing across the haunted swamp, pursued by Wanda Witch and her pack of sewer rats …”
Jacob Two-Two held his hands to his ears, shutting out Uncle Oscar Octopus, until he was certain the Happy Nightmare Hour was over. And, quite suddenly, Jacob Two-Two was very hungry. He had forgotten to eat his dinner. His stale bread. Removing his two slices of bread from his tray, Jacob Two-Two was astonished to discover a chocolate bar hidden beneath. I have a friend in the prison, he thought. But who? Who could it be?
CHAPTER 8
leasant dreams, kiddo,” had been Mistress Fowl’s last words to Jacob Two-Two, and Jacob Two-Two, his supersonic bleeper secured in his ear, did have pleasant dreams, in spite of his squalid surroundings. For he knew that tomorrow, or two days after, the leaders of Child Power – the intrepid Shapiro, followed by the fearless O’Toole – would begin tracking him.
Jacob Two-Two awakened with a bounce and was actually singing when a guard called Mr. Fox, an enormous fellow, wearing a fur coat, scarf, and ear-muffs, came to fetch him and led him to a door marked FREEZER. “You’ll have to have a shower in here,” he said, “before we can issue you with a prison uniform.”