Sami came flying out the front door of her apartment building. Tears were streaming down her face. She turned to her right and started running down the sidewalk. Ahead of her, already halfway down the next block, she could see the colorful tablecloths and the white sheet flapping as Alejandro and Brian ran down the street.
“Wait!!” Sami screamed without stopping.
They skidded to a stop, looked back, and waited until she joined them. She was puffing for air and still crying.
“What’s the matter?” cried Alejandro.
“Mr. Sanchez…Mr. Sombra…” was all she was able to get out.
Alejandro looked up and past her. “Uh oh,” he said. Brian and Sami turned. There was Mr. Sombra just exiting the apartment building and heading straight for them. “Let’s get out of here!” He grabbed Sami’s arm, but she yanked it back.
“Just a sec!” She was leaning forward now, squinting at Mr. Sombra, who was getting closer by the second. A flash of green had caught her eye. Now she could see that Mr. Sombra’s head had been jammed through a big piece of the material from the green chair, and now he wore it like a green clown collar. Sami smiled and wiped her eyes once and said to herself, “He’s alright.”
She whipped around, grabbed both Alejandro and Brian, and yelled, “Come on!” They raced off down the sidewalk.
Mr. Sombra was not far behind.
Blocks and corners later, Sami, Alejandro, and Brian were out of breath and had to stop running for a moment. They were on a street that ran beside the closed and dried-up Water World. Alejandro bent over, his hands on his knees, and coughed. Sami was panting, and Brian was gasping for air from beneath his sheet.
“I’m too hot,” he wheezed and started to take off the sheet. But Sami stopped him.
“No, Brian. Someone might see you.”
“Think we lost him?” said Alejandro, still coughing.
“Hey you!” They turned to see that Mr. Sombra had just come around the corner and spotted them.
“Rats,” said Sami.
“This way!” Alejandro urged them, and took off running. Brian and Sami ran after him. Instead of continuing to run down the street, Alejandro led them in a sudden right turn down a service road that ran behind Water World. They ran through blowing scraps of paper and trash and slipped on broken pieces of colored plastic, past tall, chain link fences, past the back of a huge building with steel doors for delivery trucks, past stacks of wood pallets, past a row of dented and smelly dumpsters…and ended up at a block wall at least eight feet high. It was a dead end.
The three of them—Konoko, the ghost, and Sami—looked at each other, then dived behind the nearest dumpster to hide.
Brian looked up at the darkening sky and saw one shining point of light. “A star,” he whispered, then said louder, “It’s getting dark. Perhaps he won’t be able to find us.”
The three of them carefully peered around the edge of the dumpster to look down the access road. They were rewarded with the sight of Mr. Sombra running past the entrance to the access road and continuing out of sight. But just as they sat back, relieved, Sami’s cell phone started ringing loudly. She frantically pulled it out of her pants pocket and fumbled with it like it was a live fish, trying to turn it off. Finally she found the right button. She looked at the screen. “Oh man,” she whispered, then looked at her friends. “It was my mom.”
The three of them peeked around the dumpster. Mr. Sombra had heard the ring tone and was now standing at the entrance to the access road, staring right at their dumpster. He started walking slowly towards them.
“Now what’ll we do?” said Alejandro.
The three of them turned in every direction, looking for a way to escape. Then Sami pointed and shouted, “There!”
She ran to a chain link gate just behind the dumpster. It was actually two gates chained together and padlocked. A dump truck must have backed into the gates at one time, because one of them was bent. This made a space between the two gates that Sami was able to squeeze through.
“Come on, Brian!” she urged him.
While Alejandro kept watch on the approaching Mr. Sombra, Brian tried squeezing through the gates. But his ghost sheet caught on something and trapped him between the two gates. Brian struggled and Sami pulled, but he was stuck.
“Hurry up!” Alejandro yelled at them.
Brian reached up from inside the sheet, put his fingers through the two eyeholes and, with a grunt, tore the sheet wide open. Finally free of it, he slipped inside beside Sami.
“Alejandro!” she yelled.
Mr. Sombra was very close now. Hoping to slow him down, Alejandro stepped out from behind the dumpster and heaved his broom handle spear at the man. Mr. Sombra caught it in one hand, smiled, then easily snapped it between his hands.
Alejandro dove out of sight. He tore off the two tablecloths, then bent below the chain and got his head and shoulders through the opening between the gates. But he was bigger than either Sami or Brian, so he was instantly jammed and stuck between the two gates. Brian and Sami were pulling on his arms and grunting loudly when Mr. Sombra came around the dumpster. He tossed away the broken pieces of broom handle and ran to grab Alejandro. Just as he made his grab, Alejandro popped through and the three friends ended up in a heap on the ground. All Mr. Sombra got was a fistful of Brian’s white sheet.
With Mr. Sombra stuck on the other side of the gate, Sami at last felt safe. She grinned triumphantly at the man as she stood up to brush herself off. Mr. Sombra stared at her for only a moment before kneeling down to grab one side of the already bent gate. He planted his feet against the other gate, gritted his teeth, and began to pull. Sami’s grin faded as she watched the gate bend and bend and bend. Now Brian and Alejandro were on their feet, too, and no one needed to tell the three of them to run. They ran.
They ran through parts of Water World that few people got to see. They ran past sheds covering rows of big machines—riding lawnmowers, riding vacuums, golf carts, floor polishers, wagons. They ran past piles of equipment and replacement parts—stacks of water slides in red, blue, yellow and green, racks of orange life vests, mounds of yellow and black rubber rafts, small mountains of white plastic pipes, and boxes heaped high with plastic pipe fittings and red valves. They ran past offices with padlocked doors and dressing rooms with signs that warned Employees Only. They ran into a long passageway that had a row of doors along one side. Some of these doors were half open and swinging on creaking hinges. The three friends ran through the first one they came to and found themselves in a snack bar kitchen. They ran past the oily stoves and piles of burnt pans, out past the front counter, and through the stacks of dusty chairs and tables in the outdoor dining area. Suddenly they found themselves in the middle of the water park. And they stopped running.
They stood panting and looking for a place to run to, a place to hide. Brian looked to his left and saw a gigantic birdcage. It had once held a dozen brilliantly colored macaws, but now its door hung open and the cage was empty. To his right he saw a group of plastic palm trees, sun-dried and cracking and starting to fall apart. A sign screwed to one of the trees read, “Desert Island Dining.” He shook his head and asked, “Where are we?”
Sami and Alejandro knew very well where they were, although they had not been inside Water World for two years. It was getting dark, fast, and black shadows were starting to swallow up everything. Even so, Sami and Alejandro had no problem identifying the attractions of Water World. Right in front of them was a huge fountain, in the middle of which was a very tall saguaro cactus made out of concrete. The saguaro was now splotched with patches of faded and peeling green paint. Surrounding the giant cactus and facing in three different directions were three statues; a miner panning for gold, a Hopi Indian pouring water from a clay pot, and a group of explorers on a wooden raft. Water had once flowed through, out of, and from under these statues, then spilled into a wide wading pool that surrounded them.
To the left of the fountain was “Flash Flood,” an enorm
ous swimming pool that had a wave-making machine in it so people could body surf. Just behind Flash Flood was a hill called “Monsoon Madness.” Up there you were drenched in a constantly pouring rain, then, if you wanted to, you could slide down on a zip line and fall into Flash Flood.
To the right of the three friends was a high mountain of fake rock called “Copper Country Mining Sluice.” From the top of the mine you rode down in a rocking ore car that dumped you down a water chute—the sluice—that eventually spit you into “The Sink Hole.” The Sink Hole was a huge funnel with water swirling around and around in it. Once in The Sink Hole you too were swept around and around—like being flushed down a toilet—until you finally dropped through the hole in the middle and, again, landed in Flash Flood.
Straight ahead, behind the fountain and towering over everything was the super slide of Water World, “Rattler!” Five enormous rattlesnakes twisted around each other, with their tails high in the air and their heads aimed down into a vast swimming pool. After climbing a long spiral staircase to get to the top, you jumped inside the tail of a rattlesnake. The rattle started rattling and down you flew through the snake. Just before you got to the snake’s head, its giant jaws would open, exposing its fangs, and it spit you out into “The Grand Canyon.” This was a very wide slide, with high rock walls on either side of it. It also sent you sliding down to The Sink Hole.
Sami and Alejandro stood there, remembering all of these fun rides, remembering what it was like to have all the water they wanted, to not even think about it, but to just enjoy it. Then they heard the door of the Desert Island Dining kitchen suddenly bang open and the crash of pots and pans being knocked to the floor.
“Let’s get out of here!” cried Sami, and the three of them raced off toward the Copper Country Mining Sluice.
Mr. Sombra emerged from the darkness of the kitchen in time to see them running off and disappearing into the deep shadows of the park. His eyes narrowed and he pressed his lips together as he realized that soon it would be completely dark and he would never be able to find them. Then he nodded to himself and hurried back into the gloomy blackness of Desert Island Dining.
Sami, Brian, and Alejandro were huddling together in a deeply dark shadow. They squatted there, not daring to move a muscle and barely breathing as they listened for footsteps. A minute passed…then another…and they heard nothing. Sami whispered, “I think we lost him.”
The next moment the world around them was flooded with dazzling light. They squinted and covered their eyes as the park lit up. Signs glowed in neon reds, blues, greens, and yellows. Lamps lit walkways and floodlights beamed up at Water World’s rides. They could hear the growl of motors starting up inside the rides, and then they heard the scraaape… whump! scraaape…whump! of Flash Flood as it uselessly tried to make waves in its empty pool. The image of a dragon flashed into Sami’s mind. It was from a movie. The dragon had been awakened in its cave where it had slept upon a pile of gold for a thousand years. The angry screech of the dragon exhaling a flood of orange flame and the leathery thump of its beating wings sounded just like the wave machine in Flash Flood. Sami shivered.
Now completely exposed in the bright lights all around them, Sami, Brian, and Alejandro jumped to their feet. From behind a nearby corner, the shadow of a man flowed out onto the pavement like a spreading black bloodstain. The three friends whipped around and ran in the opposite direction, up the ramp leading to the top of Copper Country Mining Sluice.
They stopped at the top, gasping for breath. Then the sound of Mr. Sombra’s heavy footsteps came pounding up the ramp behind them.
“Now what!” cried Alejandro, and the three friends frantically spun about, searching for something that could be a weapon or a way to escape. But there was nothing up there except fake wood, fake boulders, and two ore carts sitting on the edge of the landing. There was no other way down. The heavy hammering of Mr. Sombra’s footsteps was suddenly very close, and then they saw his shadow slithering up the ramp ahead of him.
“Get in!” Sami shouted, and shoved Brian forward. He climbed into one ore cart, while Alejandro climbed into the other. Sami tumbled in behind Brian, then reached up to a release cord and gave it a yank. Their cart started to roll forward, Alejandro pulled the cord over his ore cart, and he too started forward. The carts rolled slowly at first, then suddenly tipped down a steep track.
Brian’s eyes went wide with fear as he and Sami zoomed faster and faster down the track, heading for the blue chute below them. When it hit the bottom, the ore cart tipped forward and dumped them into the chute. Normally there would have been water pouring down this chute, but now it was bone dry. So instead of sliding down in a slippery rush of water, Sami and Brian tumbled down the chute, banging their elbows, knees, and heads as they went. “Ow! Ow! Ow!” “Ow! Ow! Ow!” At the bottom of the chute they rolled into the Sink Hole. “Oof!” “Oof!” They knew that the pool below them was empty and a long way down, but there was nothing they could do to stop themselves; even without water, the sides of Sink Hole were steep and slippery. Sami and Brian rolled around like two marbles in a funnel, then dropped down the hole. Fortunately, foam floats and rafts had been left in the pool and were now piled up at the deep end. Sami and Brian plopped down onto them, safe.
Meanwhile Alejandro’s cart had not gone speeding down its track. Instead it had slowed down! “What the heck?” he wailed as his cart came to a complete stop just before coming to the blue chute. He looked up the track behind him and saw nothing. Then he saw a pair of big hands clamped onto the back of his ore cart. Then Mr. Sombra’s head rose up behind his cart, and he snarled at Alejandro.
Mr. Sombra shoved Alejandro into the giant birdcage and slammed shut the cage door. The metal clanged like a jail cell.
“Hey!” Alejandro protested.
Mr. Sombra stuck a piece of wire through the holes that had once been used for a padlock. He twisted the ends of the wire together several times, then he turned to scan Water World. He spotted a figure running up the stairs to Monsoon Madness and hurried off in that direction.
Alejandro leapt to the cage door and tried to get his hands on the twisted wire, but it was too far away. Frustrated, he angrily shook and kicked the door. But it did not budge.
Mr. Sombra pounded up the winding stairway leading to the top of Monsoon Madness. Far below and to his left was Flash Flood. The wall that was supposed to make waves was still shooting back and forth—scraaape…whump! scraaape…whump!—uselessly in the empty pool. Mr. Sombra was a very strong man, and proud of being in good shape. But now his chest was heaving and his legs were starting to ache. Sweat streamed down his face and neck, staining his collar and shirtfront. This was embarrassing to him and only increased his anger at these annoying kids. He knew he would get them in the end, and that all of this running around was just a waste of time and effort.
By the time he reached the top he was gulping air. He stopped to catch his breath and to scan Monsoon Madness. Where were those stupid kids hiding? he wondered. Bright lights and the sounds of thunder echoed all around him. He looked up. Above his head floated fake clouds laced with neon lightning bolts that flashed here and there while recordings of thunder boomed from hidden speakers. Mr. Sombra could see a network of pipes and sprinkler heads above the clouds but, of course, no water poured from them now. If it had, it would have been raining down on the fake saguaro desert in front of him. There were dozens of the towering, plastic cactuses—some with no arms, some with many—and plastic boulders for children and their parents to run among while the storm sprinklers drenched them. Now, each time the neon lightning flashed, the tall saguaros cast shadow fingers in many directions. It looked like an alien planet and quite spooky.
Mr. Sombra could see no one in these brief flashes of light and shadow, so he began to slowly walk among the tall cactuses, looking for the kids he knew must be hiding there, somewhere.
At last, in a neon lightning flash, he spotted the toes of a pair of shoes just poking
out from behind a saguaro near the edge of the zip line drop to Flash Flood. After each lightning bolt, Mr. Sombra used the sudden darkness to creep closer and closer to the pair of shoes. When he was just a few feet away, he pounced. “Gotcha!” he yelled as he jumped around the saguaro, his hands out to grab a kid.
But all he had in his hands was air. He stood, stunned, and looked down at a pair of empty tennis shoes. Before he had time to start thinking again, Sami rushed out from behind a boulder and slammed into Mr. Sombra’s back as hard as she could. He was much bigger than her. But he was not expecting it and Sami was mad, and that was enough to knock him over the edge of the drop.
“Whoa whoa whoa!” Mr. Sombra screamed as he lost his balance and started over the edge. His hands waved wildly, trying to grab anything to save himself. On his way over the edge, Mr. Sombra managed to grab two things. One was the handle to the zip line over his head. The other was Sami.
Down the two of them flew. The wheel of the zip line whirred overhead as the big man and the little girl twisted beneath it. Suddenly it was the end of the line. The zip line wheel banged into a rubber stopper, but Mr. Sombra and Sami kept going. They hit the bottom of the pool pretty hard and went rolling. Fortunately, the pool of Flash Flood was shallow.
Sami’s brain was pretty jangled by the fall. It was filled with the scraaape… whump! scraaape…whump! sound of the furious dragon waking up on his pile of gold. She struggled to her feet and stood there, trying to clear her head. When it did clear, what she saw was Mr. Sombra, back on his feet and reaching for her. “No!” she screamed at him angrily. She turned to run, and— whump!—the wave-making wall smacked into her, knocking her off her feet…and right back into the hands of Mr. Sombra.
Mr. Sombra tossed Sami into the giant birdcage beside Alejandro, shut the door with a terrible clunk, and locked it with the wire. Alejandro put his hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
But Sami did not answer him. She was too busy glaring at Mr. Sombra.
The big man glared back at her and said, “Do you want out of there?” Sami continued to look daggers at him. “All I want is the boy. He’s nothing to you. Less than nothing! He’s just an alien. Now, where is he?”
“He’s gone!” said Sami. Then she grinned and growled, “Where you’ll never find him!”
BRRRRRRR!
Sami, Alejandro, and Mr. Sombra looked up at Rattler. One of the giant rattlesnake rattles was rattling.
“Oh no…” Sami whispered.
Mr. Sombra glanced back at her, sneered, then ran off toward Rattler.
“Now he’s got him,” said Alejandro, and he sank to the floor of the cage.
Mr. Sombra was not going to waste any more time and energy chasing the alien up and down these rides. This time he would let the kid come to him. He climbed down into the pool beneath Sink Hole. In a moment he had kicked away the foam mats that were piled there and was standing under the hole itself. He looked up at the hole and listened as he heard the kid banging down the chute inside the rattlesnake…the clack! of the rattlesnake jaws opening…the alien kid swooshing down The Grand Canyon…the kid flopping into Sink Hole…the kid whooshing around and around Sink Hole, going faster and faster. Mr. Sombra grinned and held out his arms, ready.
Into his arms plopped a three-foot long, plastic horned toad.
Sami and Alejandro were sitting on the floor of the birdcage, silent, looking frustrated and grim. Sami (whose sneakers—actually, Brian’s sneakers—were still up at the top of Monsoon Madness) was looking at her big toes sticking out of her socks. Then she heard a small grunt. She and Alejandro looked up. There was Brian, working hard to untwist the wire that locked the cage door. They jumped to their feet.
“Brian!” Sami yelled.
He shushed her and continued untwisting the wire.
“What happened to Sombra?” asked Alejandro.
Brian paused to smile, and Sami answered for him. “Subterfuge,” she explained.
Brian nodded. “Exactly.” He glanced down at Sami’s feet and said, “Here.” He kept his hands on the wire as his body twisted for a moment. Then his right leg and foot came up. Like his hands, Brian had a big toe on either side of each foot, and he could use them almost like hands. Gripped in his toes he now held Sami’s sparkling red shoes.
“Way cool!” said Alejandro.
Brian tossed the shoes in through the bars and went back to work on the wire.
Sami had just slipped on the second shoe when the wire came free. The door creaked as Brian swung it open. His two friends hopped out and the three of them ran into Desert Island Dining… and disappeared.
Mr. Sombra sat on the pile of foam floats. He had the plastic horned toad under one arm. He was thinking. Finally satisfied with his thinking, he nodded to himself and pulled his cell phone from his pocket.
Chapter 20
“I’m going home”