3 Below

  Leo arrived next and put his letters in, then Alfred inserted his. The only letters they needed were an O and a T, and no matter how hard they searched, no one could find either. Only Remi had those letters, and he was headed for the floor, too afraid to fall and possibly break his arm, his neck, or his butt.

  “I got this,” Leo said. He bunched up like a ball against the ceiling and pushed off with his legs as hard as he could. It was like diving into a meteor storm in space, wooden blocks pelting him from all sides as he sliced through the room and crashed into Remi near the bottom.

  “Not cool!” Remi cried out as he bounced off the floor.

  “Give me the blocks, Remi! There’s no time!”

  Remi handed Leo the O and the T and watched as Leo blasted off the floor like a missile heading into outer space.

  “Dang,” Remi said. “My brother is awesome.”

  The clock ticked down to ten seconds as Leo flew.

  “Get to the bottom! Fast!” he yelled.

  Alfred and Lucy used the same technique Leo had used to push off the ceiling and dive for the floor. Just as Lucy was flying past the one opening no one had come out of, Mr. Pilf stepped through the door into the antigravity chamber.

  “Oh my, this is bad,” he said, turning every which way as he tried to understand what was happening to him. Alfred slammed right into Mr. Pilf and the two of them tumbled end over end toward the bottom, completely out of control.

  At the ceiling, the clock wound down to three seconds as Leo inserted the last two letters and felt them stick to the ceiling like glue. The clock ticked down to one and then zero and then the sound of a giant energy source coming to its end was heard echoing through the antigravity chamber. Leo could feel himself start to take on weight again, but he was a very smart boy in possession of a long pair of hot-coal tongs. He gripped the tongs on a wooden block, which had a nice groove at the bottom of the letter T, and held on for dear life.

  Remi dropped to the floor first, for he was only a foot off the ground. Lucy drifted down like a balloon running out of air as the gravity returned, landing perfectly on her feet. Mr. Pilf and Alfred were in the throes of a twisting, diving, tangled mess, from which Mr. Pilf emerged the big loser. It was he who hit the floor first, followed by Alfred, who found himself sitting on poor Mr. Pilf’s rib cage.

  Everyone looked up, searching for Leo Fillmore and, instead, found thousands of letter blocks falling from the sky. They rained down until Remi and Lucy found themselves hip-deep in wooden blocks and Mr. Pilf was covered entirely.

  “Leo!” Lucy cried. “Hang on!”

  “I’m trying!” Leo yelled back. The tongs were holding, but it was a long way to the bottom.

  “I’ll catch you if you fall!” Remi yelled, holding out his arms as if catching Leo were a real possibility.

  The floor beneath their feet jumped wildly and everyone screamed, even Mr. Pilf, who no one could see under all the blocks.

  “We’re coming to you!” Alfred said. “Don’t move!”

  The floor was going up, toward Leo, and it was not going slowly. It was really moving. When it arrived at the door level, which was about halfway, it stopped abruptly.

  “Oh, come on!” Alfred said with frustration.

  “Climb aboard, Sheezley!” Remi said, because Miss Sheezley could have stepped right onto the platform as blocks tumbled into the maze at her feet.

  “No, thank you,” she said, turning her nose up at Remi. “I believe one hotel will do just fine.”

  And with that, she was officially out of the competition. She had come to the end of her interest in having adventures.

  The floor began to move toward the ceiling again, slower this time. As they looked up, everyone watched and the ceiling split apart down the middle and began to open like elevator doors. Leo was being moved to the left, swaying back and forth, when the floor and the ceiling arrived within five feet of each other.

  “Let go!” Remi said, and Leo did let go.

  He landed on top of the blocks, which were on top of Mr. Pilf.

  “I’m under here,” Mr. Pilf said in a muffled voice.

  No one answered as the ceiling opened all the way and the floor moved past.

  No one answered as wooden blocks tumbled off into a new room.

  They didn’t answer because they couldn’t.

  They’d just arrived inside the most magnificent Merganzer D. Whippet floor of them all, and everyone was speechless.

  Never send your brother to do something you could have done yourself!” Ms. Sparks said. When she was particularly upset, she spoke to the TV set. It didn’t answer her back, but at least it made the sound of voices. It was something. “Why won’t he answer?!” she yelled. Then she got a little too angry and threw the special phone at the TV. It hit with a loud ping! and bounced onto the floor, leaving a deep scratch on the screen.

  “Well, that’s just perfect,” she said, as if some character on a reality show had damaged her TV and she’d had nothing to do with it. She got up from the ratty couch, leaning down toward the floor as her giant beehive hairdo nearly touched the coffee table. She picked up the phone. Her eyesight wasn’t very good, so she held it at arm’s length, turning her nose up and squinting her eyes.

  “Perhaps I dialed wrong that time,” she muttered, tapping in the numbers more carefully. She got no answer, but this time, unlike the last, she did get voice mail.

  She left a message.

  “I’ve been waiting for word since morning. What’s happening? If you’ve lost track of Leo and Remi, find them! And if you can, take them out. Nothing too violent, mind you — don’t push them off a building. Tie them to a tree, something like that. I tell you, they’re in cahoots with that madman Whippet. They must be stopped!”

  She had gotten very loud with the message and cleared her throat, taking down her voice.

  “You and I will run the Whippet Empire, as it was always meant to be. You out front, me in the shadows — he’ll never know what hit him. But oh, we’ll take him for all he’s got, brother. You can count on that. Call me, won’t you? I’m bored. Good-bye.”

  She tapped the END button on the phone, flopped down on the couch, and stared at the ceiling. Her tall head of hair crumpled up against the wall behind her, but she didn’t care. All she cared about was getting her hands on the Whippet Empire. She thought about all the terrible things she would do from a position with that kind of power, and soon she was snoring with her mouth wide open and with the TV blaring in the background.

  “Who turned out the lights?” Miss Sheezley asked.

  It had become suddenly dark inside the maze of fog and mirrors when the floor of the antigravity chamber went by. She’d picked up several wooden blocks in case she needed them as weapons. She could hear sounds from above, but it was impossible to tell what they were.

  “I say, can I get some light, please?” she called into the darkness. To her surprise, the request was granted in the form of a soft glow from around the corner. She followed the light, carefully and slowly, and, turning the corner, found that the light had moved. It went on like this for some time — Miss Sheezley chasing the light, the light moving somewhere else. Had she been, at that moment, in the field of wacky inventions with Merganzer and Mr. Powell, she would have been furious. The two of them were laughing their heads off, running Miss Sheezley around the maze like a mouse after a moving block of cheese.

  “We really should stop,” Mr. Powell finally said.

  “But we’re having such fun. And it’s not hurting anyone. Also, she was beastly to the boys. We can’t have that.”

  Powell looked at a table that lay before him. All the hotel floors were set out side-by-side, in miniature holograms. It was like watching a small world with real people that could be controlled and moved about.

  “You know, we’ve had a multibillion-dollar offer for this technology,” Mr. Powell said. He watched as Merganzer used a key card to turn off a light Miss Sheezley was getting close to and
turn on another farther out. He laughed with a distinctly duckish quality.

  “Who wants it again?” Merganzer asked.

  “That Branson character. A Brit.”

  “Oh, now him I like,” Merganzer said, rubbing his chin. “He’d make a very good telephone out of this business, wouldn’t he?”

  “I believe he would.”

  “Or a movie screen. Can you see it? Everyone sitting around the outside, a giant holographic movie in the middle? Boggles the mind.”

  “Yes.”

  “And we could invent more outrageous things with all that money!”

  “Well, to be fair, you have an awful lot of money already. It’s piled up all over the place. Better we spend more before we go selling anything. This Branson fellow can wait.”

  “We better turn our attention to the remaining competitors. Speaking of which — the girl is possibly going to be a problem.”

  “Lucy?” Powell said. “It all depends, I suppose, on who is left standing at the end.”

  Merganzer nodded slyly and tapped out a few more commands on his key card.

  Miss Sheezley had become so agitated she was running toward the light, hoping to catch it before it went out. It was for this reason that she didn’t notice the hole Merganzer had opened up directly around a sharp corner. It was why she slid down a long, narrow tunnel with many twists and turns. And it was why she landed in the Whippet Library, where she found Miss Harrington and E. J. Bosco.

  “Pull up a chair,” Bosco said. “Afternoon tea just arrived.”

  He had raced through all the best parts of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and moved on to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. On seeing the book in Bosco’s hand, Miss Sheezley thought of how appropriate it was. She was beginning to feel like she was inside a story in which Willy Wonka might pop out at any moment.

  “So you’re out, too?” Miss Harrington asked, sipping her tea and setting down her copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

  “I suppose I am,” Sheezley answered, sitting heavily in a soft chair and leaning back. She smiled then, looking at the tea and the cookies and the books.

  “I believe I’ll take a little nap, if you don’t mind,” she said.

  She closed her eyes and relaxed, for she realized something very important just then. Even though she was not the person to run an entire empire of hotels, she loved her Foxtrot Hotel. She’d thought of little else since she’d arrived. Her task would be to make it the crown jewel of the Whippet Empire.

  And so she slept peacefully, for she knew she had long since found her place in the world, which is a very good thing indeed.

  “This has to be two floors, not one,” Leo said, marveling at the location of the Merganzer D. Whippet Hotel where they’d arrived. Everyone but Mr. Pilf waded through the wooden blocks on the platform and looked every which way. Mr. Pilf sat up, still neck-deep in wooden blocks, and shook his head. When he saw what lay inside the floor, it crossed his mind to bury himself in blocks and hide out until the competition came to an end. He found his hat in his hand, returned it to his head, and stayed where he was.

  Lucy turned in circles, taking in the whole of the place they’d all arrived in. They were all standing on Mr. Pilf’s Spiff Hotel floor. E. J. Bosco’s Boomtown was farther overhead, with a floor of metal grating that was shot through with many giant holes. The two floors were really one, because there was no ceiling on Mr. Pilf’s hotel. MONDAR was spelled out overhead on the metal grate floor, which made it look like it was floating on air. Every corner of both floors was filled with all manner of carnival rides. And it was night inside, so all the rides were lit up with the most marvelous dancing colors. And what was more, all the rides were running.

  “It’s amazing how quiet it is in here,” Leo said, because it was. The rides were so perfectly engineered, they made almost no sound as they moved. A complicated roller coaster snaked all through both floors, but the car running on it was whisper quiet.

  Besides the roller coaster, there were at least five other rides crammed onto the two floors. All of them were dancing with lights, and all of them were already operating as if people were riding them. It was at once breathtaking and eerily quiet.

  “You know what this place needs?” Alfred Whitney asked everyone. “Some screaming. These rides must be ridden.”

  “I believe you’re right, Mr. Whitney,” Leo said.

  “Whoa — hold on a second.” Remi, being the least adventurous of the bunch, wasn’t so sure. “Let’s find some carnival games first. What’s the rush?”

  Mr. Pilf, who had finally decided to free himself from all the wooden blocks, had come alongside them.

  “I wonder if we should start there,” he said, pointing to a lit pathway that lay before them like the Yellow Brick Road. It ended at the far wall of the floor, where something shaped like a refrigerator was hidden in shallow light. Above the fridge-shaped rectangle was a word written in white lights: TICKETS.

  “It’s as good a place as any,” Lucy said. “Whatever gets us on these things the fastest. I love carnival rides!”

  They moved as a group down the lit path, glancing up and down and all around as they went. Remi and Mr. Pilf were the least excited, but even they couldn’t deny the wonder of it all. Merganzer D. Whippet had built a marvelous fair inside two floors of a hotel. It was certainly something to marvel at, even if getting on the rides was the one thing neither of them was hoping their adventure would include.

  “There’s someone in there,” Leo said, stopping in his tracks as they neared the ticket office. “I think it’s him.”

  “Him who?” Remi asked, peeking over Leo’s shoulder.

  “Merganzer — who else?” Leo said with a smile. He started walking again, quickening his pace as everyone followed. But when he got there, it was immediately clear that he had been wrong. There was no man inside, and certainly not Merganzer.

  “It’s like one of those fortune-teller games,” Alfred said. “He’s not real.”

  Now that they were all standing in front of the ticket office, they could see that it was, indeed, more like a fortune-telling machine. There was a sophisticated wooden man inside, which they could see from the waist up, but it was dark behind the glass. He looked like he was sleeping.

  Without asking anyone whether or not they thought it was a good idea, Alfred tapped the end of his duck-headed cane on a weathered old button on the front of the box. The wooden man inside woke up, his eyes wide and frightening, and lights began to swirl behind the glass.

  “You have awakened MONDAR, the king of this hidden realm. Do you come in peace?”

  “That’s just great,” Remi said. “We’ve awakened MONDAR. Way to go, Alfred. Very nice.”

  “Look there,” Mr. Pilf said, leaning in from behind Alfred. “You can answer him.”

  “You’re right!” Leo said, seeing that there was a Y and an N button. “We do come in peace, don’t we?”

  “Let’s go with no,” Remi said sarcastically. “Maybe he’ll blow fire in our faces.”

  Leo rolled his eyes. He’d known Remi long enough to understand that his brother was just nervous about going on the rides. Sarcasm was his way of coping with imminent doom.

  The roller coaster zoomed past, low and upside down overhead, blowing everyone’s hair sideways.

  “That thing is really moving,” Lucy said. “Push the Y already. Let’s get on with it.”

  Leo pressed the Y button and MONDAR’s head turned side to side mechanically, as if he were looking at the people assembled before him. He wore a black cape and his brilliant green eyes glowed inside his painted head.

  “There is only one escape from the realm of MONDAR,” he said in his deep, dramatic voice. “Rides must be ridden in the order of my choosing. Do you wish to leave my realm?”

  There being no other answer that would suffice, Leo pressed the Y button again.

  “So be it!” MONDAR said. “What number is in your party? One?”

  “Can I press
buttons for a while?” Lucy asked.

  Leo stepped back and let Lucy stand before MONDAR. She pressed the N button.

  “Are there two in your party?” MONDAR asked.

  This went on until the number five was given.

  “Do we count Blop, Comet, and Phil?” Lucy said, turning to her companions.

  “I don’t think so,” Alfred answered. “They’re not going to need seats.”

  “Okay, here goes.”

  Lucy pushed the Y button and MONDAR began to laugh slyly. As his laughter subsided, the roller coaster whished past again and Remi gulped, more nervous than ever.

  “Prove to me you’ve mastered the realm of MONDAR!” MONDAR yelled. His voice had grown louder. “Bring me this evidence and I will set you free.”

  A three-by-five index card slid out of a slot on the front of MONDAR’s box. Lucy pulled it out and stepped back as another card started coming out. Each of her companions then came to MONDAR and took a three-by-five ticket, examining it as he or she backed away.

  “It would appear it is time to get down to business,” Alfred said. “Everyone with a pocket pal, make sure he’s secure. We don’t want any little creatures or robots flying off a ride.”

  Remi looked stricken, like he might try to run away, but he held his ground as he made sure Blop was both comfortable and secure.

  “Hey, it’s going to be fine,” Leo told his brother. “Think of all the things we’ve already been through. They seemed dangerous, and maybe they were. But Merganzer has never gotten us hurt. And you know what? We may never pass this way again. Better we enjoy it.”

  “How about if we ride together?” Lucy asked Remi. “You can scream in my face all you want. I won’t mind.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll sit with Leo. He’s my brother from another mother. We were meant to do this together.”

  “I bet all three of us can fit in one seat on these monsters,” Leo said, smiling at the excitement that lay ahead. “Put the adults behind us — let’s do this together!”

  “Agreed,” Alfred said, eyeing Mr. Pilf with some concern. They looked at each other accusingly, like each thought the other was hiding something.