And crunching.
And hooting, and whooshing, and croaking.
“I feel like I’m in the jungle,” Marissa whispers as she clings to Billy.
“I don’t remember it being this overgrown,” Holly says, pushing a sprig of a bush aside. And even in the dark I can see that her eyes are cranked wide and roaming around all over the place.
“I’m pretty sure it’s just a little ways around this bend,” I tell them, but right then there’s a huge crashing, crunching, mega-rustling sound in the undergrowth to our right.
“Ohmygod!” Marissa squeals, and actually jumps into Billy’s arms.
Holly jumps back, too, but before I can grab onto Casey, a flying haystack knocks me flat.
The haystack’s got paws.
Big furry ones.
And a big, hot, slobbery tongue.
One that’s soaking my face!
“Aaaah!” I cry, pushing back.
“Nibbles!” Dot shouts from somewhere in the dark.
“He’s right here!” I shout back.
“That’s a dog?” Billy asks, and then cries, “The Abominable Furball!”
Dot appears with a flashlight and yanks Nibbles off of me. “I’m so sorry!” she says. “He chewed through his rope. He’s had to be out all day because”—she glances over her shoulder and drops her voice—“we’ve been cleaning floors.” She drags Nibbles along and says, “I guess I’ll put him in the basement until after Sinterklaas comes.”
So she goes around the side of the house and locks the Abominable Furball away, and races back to the porch, where we’re waiting for her.
“Shoes off today,” she tells us as she kicks out of her clogs. So we all get down to stocking feet, and then we step inside.
Now, Casey had never actually been inside Dot’s house before, and since this was Billy’s first time anywhere near it, neither was prepared for the Land of Blue. At first their eyes just go a little buggy, but when we enter the kitchen, Billy cuts loose with, “Whoa!”
It was actually very polite, considering. I mean, knowing Billy, he might have said something like, Blind me with blue, why don’tcha! because the wallpaper, the counters, the linoleum floor, the dishes and pots and pans … everything is just bursting with blue.
“Dad says it’s a cross between the sky and the deep blue sea,” Dot explains, then laughs. “And who doesn’t like the sky and the deep blue sea?”
I almost say, Well, if you’re drowning …, but for once I keep my big mouth shut.
Mrs. DeVries’ head pops in through a doorway, and she whispers, “Are we ready?”
Dot hands us each a paper lunch sack. “Everyone’s here!”
Mrs. DeVries smiles at the rest of us. “If it gets too wild for you, just step aside, ja?”
We all nod, and I can tell Billy’s about to make some crack and ja back, so I jab him in the ribs with an elbow.
“What?” he says, pulling a stupid puppy dog face.
“Don’t even,” I tell him through my teeth.
“Don’t even what?”
“I know you, Billy.”
He gives me his impish grin. “Ja! You do!”
I elbow him again even though Mrs. DeVries is gone, and just as I do, a really loud cracking sound thunders through the house.
“Holy smokes!” I cry, and Dot squeals, “Anneke! Beppie! Sinterklaas is here!”
We look at each other all bug-eyed, then scramble out of the kitchen and into a wide hallway by the family room, where Anneke and Beppie are already scurrying around, snatching pepernoten off the floor.
Suddenly there’s another loud cracking sound, and this time I look up and actually see the cookies crash through the ceiling.
“Holy smokes!” I say again as they bounce all over the hardwood floor like some kind of weird cookie hailstorm.
Stan and Troy appear out of nowhere and slide toward us like they’re scoring a run in baseball, crying, “Out of the way!” and “They’re mine!”
“Troy! Stan! This is Billy and Casey!” Dot calls as her brothers snatch cookies off the floor and drop them in cloth bags strapped tight across their chests.
They stop for a second, look at Billy and Casey, and cry, “This is no place for sissies!” then get back to snatching cookies off the floor.
Well, I guess there’s no quicker way to lure boys into battle than to call them sissies, because just like that, Casey and Billy are down on the floor tumbling and tackling and diving for cookies.
CRACK! Another batch of cookies pelts us from above.
“Good grief!” Marissa squeals, covering her head with her arm. “They’re little rocks!”
Now, they weren’t exactly rocks, but they sure weren’t soft-batch cookies, either. They were little tan ovals, about half an inch across, and when I bit down on one, I discovered it was hard, but not in a crunchy way. More in a really solid way.
I also discovered that it was … good.
Like a dense little spice cookie.
“I can’t believe you just ate that!” Marissa hisses. “They look like reindeer plops!”
CRACK! A new batch bursts through the ceiling, and this time I dive after them. “Sinterklaas doesn’t use reindeer. He rides a horse! And if you don’t watch it, his helpers will stick you in the sack!”
Holly’s already on the move, and she and I start slip-sliding across the floor, grabbing at cookies like crazy. Then—CRACK—another batch pounds us from above.
Holly laughs, “This is wild!” and dives after the scattering cookies while—CRACK—another batch nails us.
“I love this!” I call over to Dot.
“Ja, me too!” Billy shouts.
Now, while they’re all scampering around, I take a minute to watch the ceiling. I mean, I know cookies can’t come through the ceiling.
It’s impossible!
Holly notices me watching and starts doing the same. “How do they do it?” she whispers.
We wait and wait and wait, but nothing happens.
And the instant we look away—CRACK—another batch bombards us.
So we give up trying to figure it out and just dart around collecting cookies. And after we’ve all had the chance to build up a bit of a stash, I notice Stan and Troy eyeing Casey’s and Billy’s paper sacks.
Dot sees it, too. “Billy! Casey! Watch out!” she calls, but her brothers are already all over them, trying to wrestle their sacks away.
“Bombs away! Pghhhh!” Anneke cries, piling on top of Stan.
“I’m king of the mountain!” Beppie squeals, climbing on top of Troy.
“You’re a girl!” Anneke yells at her sister. “You can’t be king!”
“Okay, I’m queen of the mountain!” Beppie shouts back, and starts bouncing on top of her brother.
“Uncle!” Billy chokes out from somewhere at the bottom of the pileup.
CRACK! The room thunders with more cookies, which makes everyone abandon the pileup and scurry after pepernoten.
CRACK! Another batch scatters all around us.
And that’s when the actual combat warfare begins.
Stan throws a handful of cookies at Billy.
Billy throws a handful back.
Pretty soon all four boys plus Holly and me are running and sliding around the house, hurling cookies at each other, trying to raid each other’s stashes, laughing our heads off while cookies keep crashing through the ceiling.
“You guys are crazy!” Marissa shouts from the sidelines, and, really, there’s no other way to describe it.
Well, this goes on for another fifteen minutes, and finally I’m just wiped out. So I sit down on the floor and try to catch my breath, and pretty soon everyone else is doing the same thing. “Truce?” Casey asks Stan.
“No way, dude. I’m getting your stash.”
But then, BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM, someone’s pounding on the front door.
“Sinterklaas!” Anneke squeals, and right away Stan and Troy jump up, then do a fakey stumble and fall,
blocking Anneke and Beppie from reaching the door.
“Out of the way!” Anneke cries, and Beppie squeals, “I want to see him! I want to see him! Hurry! Before he flies away!”
“What’s he doing at the door?” I ask Dot. “Isn’t he on the roof?”
“He leaves gifts on the doorstep when he’s done with the cookies.” She looks around, and when she spots her mom giving her a thumbs-up from across the house, she grabs her sisters’ hands, steps over her brothers, and says, “Out of the way, boys! We want to see Sinterklaas!” She nods us over. “Come on!”
So we all gather by the door, but when Dot swings it open, I don’t see any presents.
All I see is a very strange-looking man.
And I may not be Dutch, but right away I know—
It’s definitely not Sinterklaas.
THREE
The man on the porch does have long hair like Dot described Sinterklaas, but it’s black, not white. And he is wearing red and gold like Sinterklaas, but I’m pretty sure what he’s wearing is not something Sinterklaas would be caught dead in.
It’s spandex.
Or, you know, some other stretchy, Morphsuit-ish fabric.
And over his stretchy-looking red-and-gold bodysuit, he’s wearing tall black boots that have buckles everywhere, red knee and arm pads, and a gold chest plate that looks like a cross between a hot-rod grille and a catcher’s chest protector. And in the middle of the chest plate there’s a big red J with a black lightning bolt behind it.
Topping all that off are heavy gold gloves, a Roman centurion helmet, and a black mask across his eyes. And around his waist is a utility belt.
You know—like Batman wears?
Only instead of high-tech Bat-gadgets in his utility belt, this weirdo’s got a hammer, a flashlight, and a slingshot.
I almost say, Hey, Halloween was over a month ago! But even though he’d need to do some serious lifting to be mistaken for a real superhero, from the way he’s standing and from the jut of his jaw, I’m getting the feeling that he actually believes he’s a superhero.
What’s messing with his stance, though, is that he’s carrying a peacock.
A peacock that’s squirming and squawking and trying to peck his arm off.
“I don’t think that’s Sinterklaas,” Beppie says in a scared little voice as she hides behind Dot.
Without a word, Anneke hides behind Dot, too.
“Who are you?” Stan asks, stepping forward.
“Why, I’m Justice Jack!” the weirdo says in a big, booming voice. Then he cocks his helmeted head backward and says, “And that’s my assistant, the King of Clubs.”
We look past him, and there on the path in front of the house is an old dirt bike.
With a sidecar.
And a red pennant flag with a big gold J in the middle of it.
And sitting in the sidecar is another guy wearing a mask, who shakes a wooden club in the air and calls, “Greetings, citizens!”
Troy’s face screws up sideways. “Justice Jack and the King of Clubs?”
“At your service, young sir!” Justice Jack says, holding out the peacock. “We’ll get back to work rounding up the rest of your brood.”
“What are you talking about?” Troy asks, not taking the bird.
“Yeah,” Stan says, stepping forward. “And why are you trying to give us a peacock?”
Surprise seems to pop right through Justice Jack’s mask. “We’ve got the wrong place?”
“Apparently!” Troy says, rolling his eyes.
“Clubs!” Justice Jack calls over his shoulder. “We’ve got the wrong place!”
Suddenly Mr. DeVries is there, working his way through us to the open doorway. “Hey, vat is this?”
“Our apologies, sir!” Justice Jack says. “We’re trying to do a civic good deed! Someone in this vicinity had their borders violated by an evildoer! We are simply trying to restore order to your fair community!”
Mr. DeVries squints at him. “Vat?”
From the sidecar, ol’ Clubs calls out, “Someone cut open a fence and let a bunch of prize peacocks out. We thought this was the place, but we don’t got a GPS in this thing and we musta took a wrong turn.”
Mr. DeVries steps out onto the porch and points toward Meadow Lane. “Try up the road, ja? Go out, turn left to the main road, then left again, and a quick right onto Shady Lane, ja?”
“Shady Lane?” the weirdo asks.
“Ja—it’s a little road like this one here. You’ll see a red barn, ja? Can’t miss it. That’s the Stamos place. They have peacocks.”
“Thank you, good sir!” Justice Jack says, then cries, “To the High Roller!” and charges off the porch. But as he passes the peacock to the King of Clubs and roars away on his dirt bike, me and my friends are all looking at each other with bug eyes, going, “The Stamos place?” because there’s a girl we go to school with named Sasha Stamos who’s … well … different. And even though we knew she lived in a farmhouse in Sisquane with six brothers and twelve cats, all of a sudden knowing exactly where felt kinda … weird.
Almost creepy.
Then Beppie whimpers, “Daddy? Was that Sinterklaas?”
“Nay, schatje,” Mr. DeVries says, scooping her up in one arm and Anneke in the other. “That was Justice Jack.”
Now, the way he says this is all matter-of-fact and cheerful. Like a weirdo running around in red-and-gold spandex carrying a peacock is a perfectly reasonable thing to find at your door, and Justice Jack is a perfectly normal name for someone to have.
Then I remember—I’m in the Land of Blue, where treats appear in shoes, cookies come through the roof, and a man in red robes riding a white horse is expected to leave presents at the door.
Mr. DeVries’ eyes pop wide as he looks across the porch. “Vat is this?” he says, and suddenly Anneke and Beppie have forgotten all about Justice Jack and are squirming out of his arms. “Presents!” they squeal, and before you know it, they’re dragging a burlap sack inside.
Well, apparently Sinterklaas is a fan of books, because Dot and her brothers and sisters each get one.
They also each get scarves and mittens.
And it’s a little awkward being in the middle of this family tradition, just sitting there while all the DeVries open presents, but then at the bottom of the sack Mrs. DeVries finds gifts for “the Honorary Dutch.”
We all go, “Really?” and I don’t know—there’s something totally cool about getting tissue-wrapped gifts out of a burlap sack.
“I got stroopwafels!” I cry, and I really am stupidly happy about it.
“I got hopjes!” Holly says, and she seems pretty happy, too.
Billy and Casey get packages of windmill cookies, and Marissa gets some kind of almond paste cookies that none of us Honorary Dutch can pronounce.
And when the burlap sack’s empty and everything’s been unwrapped, Mrs. DeVries winks at her husband and says, “What do we say to Sinterklaas?”
All the DeVries kids—even Troy and Stan—look up at the ceiling and call, “Dank u wel, Sinterklaas!”
“You too,” Mr. DeVries says, leveling a look at the rest of us.
So we do the best “Dank u wel” that we can—which in Billy’s case sounds like “Donkey well!”—and before too long Dot stands up and says, “I better let Nibbles out of the basement.”
“Good idea!” Mr. DeVries says. “Make sure you close it up tight, ja? It’s supposed to rain tomorrow.” Then he adds, “Say, maybe your friends can help you take him for a walk, ja? He’s been cooped up all day.”
Mrs. DeVries nods. “Yes, please.”
Well, we’re all for that except for maybe Marissa. “Do you have flashlights?” she asks in a timid little voice. “It’s really dark out there.”
“Ja, sure!”
So before you know it, we’ve got Nibbles out of the basement and on a leash, and the six of us are going for a walk.
“Did you know Sasha lived so close?” I ask Dot as Nibbles d
rags her left down Meadow Lane.
Dot shakes her head. “Dad’s the friendly neighbor, you know? He helps out everybody around here. He’s never mentioned them before, but that’s probably because I’ve never talked about Sasha at home.” She laughs. “You guys, yes! Sasha, no.”
Marissa moves in closer. “She was out all week, did you notice that?”
“I’m sure Lars did,” Holly says with a snicker. “Those two are gross.”
We all nod, ’cause Lars and Sasha like to sneak off behind the buildings around school and give each other splotchy purple necks.
“He’s that tall guy?” Casey asks.
I nod. “The one with the whooshy hair.”
Billy does an extreme hair whoosh, then says, “I’m so smart you be whooshin’ you were me!”
We all laugh, and then Holly says, “What I hate is that he acts like everyone else is dumb, but he’s not even that smart.”
Marissa nods. “Sasha is, though. That girl is scary smart.”
We’re all quiet a minute, and then Dot says, “Why would they raise peacocks?”
Holly shrugs. “Maybe they sell the feathers?”
We walk along a little more, and finally Casey asks what everyone else is thinking. “So is that where we’re heading? To the peacock farm?”
“Let’s do it!” Billy cries. “Maybe we can still catch Justice Jack!” Then he adds, “And maybe I can take down the King of Clubs and ride shotgun in the High Roller!”
Casey snorts. “And be what—the Billy Club?”
Billy leaps into the air. “Yeah! I’d be an awesome sidekick!”
Marissa rolls her eyes like, Oh, don’t I know!
“So wait a minute,” I say. “Are we walking up to Sasha’s, or sneaking up?”
“Sneaking?” Dot says over her shoulder. “With this beast?”
I laugh. “Good point.” Because the whole time we’ve been walking, Nibbles has been zigging and zagging, sniffing at the ground like a hound, dragging Dot along.
We’re at the main road now, so we hang a left, then cross over when we see a signpost that’s near a group of three mailboxes.
“This is Shady Lane,” Marissa says, looking up at the sign. “Are we sure about this? Even the name sounds iffy.”
The road is dirt and dark. It goes downhill, then disappears off to the right, but there are six of us, two flashlights, and a dog, so what’s to worry about?