“I can’t find it anywhere. How can a four-hundred-pound sasquatch disappear?” Pearl asked as she knelt next to Ben. “Whatcha looking at? Oh, wow!” Pushing aside some empty butterscotch pudding cups, Pearl squeezed between the old man’s chair and Maybell’s chair to get a better look. Then she reached out and touched the sasquatch’s leg. It didn’t seem to mind. Ben couldn’t believe she’d touched it. Was that courage or curiosity?
“They think it’s a dog,” Ben told her as the old man tossed another cup under the table. “They can’t see very well.”
“A dog?” Pearl smiled. “That’s so funny.” She laughed. “That’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.”
“Well, it won’t be funny if they find out it’s not a dog. How are we going to get it out of here?”
The sasquatch burped. Then it sniffed the air. Its brown eyes rested on the chocolate bar in Pearl’s hand. Pearl shook the bar. “You want—?”
“Don’t ask it questions,” Ben reminded her. Making the sasquatch angry would just complicate matters. He imagined it stomping through the senior center, old people screaming and fleeing in its wake. “Give it a piece.”
Pearl broke off a corner of the chocolate bar and tossed it. The sasquatch caught the chocolate chunk, shoved it into its mouth, and grunted again. Then it shifted onto its knees and began to crawl toward Pearl and Ben. “Dr. Woo was right,” Pearl said as she backed away. “We can tempt it with chocolate.” She shook the bar again. “Here, sasquatchy, sasquatchy.”
The creature crawled out from under the table. As it squeezed its enormous body between the two chairs, Maybell’s fell over backward. Her sensible shoes stuck up in the air. Ben scrambled to his feet and tried to upright Maybell, but she was too heavy for him to lift.
Pearl moved quickly, waving the chocolate bar as she led the way between tables of seniors who were busy chatting and eating pudding. As the sasquatch crawled after Pearl, it knocked the seniors over like bowling pins. Chairs toppled. Pudding cups and spoons flew, as did eyeglasses, hairpieces, and a pair of dentures. “Whoa!” “Help!” “Whoopsy daisy!”
“Ben?” his grandfather called from across the room. “What’s going on over there? Is that a dog? Oy vey! Who let a dog in here?”
“Sorry,” Ben told Maybell, though she didn’t seem to mind being upside down. She’d found another pudding cup and was enjoying its creamy goodness. Ben wove around the flailing arms and legs, trying to catch up to Pearl and the sasquatch. Pearl had almost reached the back door. They were so close to making their escape. But Grandpa Abe had grabbed his cane and was heading straight for Pearl. Ben’s heart thumped wildly. He needed to create some sort of distraction.
He opened the Sasquatch Catching Kit and pulled out the fog bomb. How did it work? There were no instructions attached, and even if there had been, there was no time to read them. It made fog, right? That’s why it was called a fog bomb. He took hold of the little cord that hung from the green ball. But was it safe to activate it inside a building? Maybe not. Or maybe so. Sweat dotted the back of Ben’s neck. The sasquatch stopped to lick something off the floor. Pearl jumped up and down, madly waving the chocolate bar. Grandpa Abe was getting closer and closer….
Ben didn’t mean to pull the cord. His brain was still arguing with itself about whether it was safe to activate a fog bomb inside a room, especially a room filled with very old people. But he was scared, and sometimes, when riddled with fear, the body doesn’t wait for the brain to finish its debate. And so his fingers pulled the cord.
“Uh-oh,” he whispered as a plume of fog instantly shot out of the green ball, rising straight to the ceiling. Then it spread wide, filling the senior center with an instant fog bank. Cool mist settled on Ben’s face. The scent of the sea drifted up his nostrils. The only thing missing was the sound of a foghorn in the distance. Grandpa Abe and the room itself disappeared. But so did Pearl and the sasquatch.
Everyone started talking at once. “Henrietta? Where have you gone?” “Why can’t I see anything?” “Is this a dream?” “It’s not a dream. It’s fog.” “Henrietta, I can’t find you.” “This is pudding day, not fog day.” “Where am I?” “Henrietta, I love you!”
“Ben!” Pearl called from the floor. “It’s clear down here.”
Ben dropped to his knees. He had a perfect view down there because the fog bank floated about two feet off the ground. By pushing the kit along the floor, he managed to crawl to the exit. Pearl and the sasquatch were already outside by the time he got there.
“Phew!” Ben said as the door closed behind him. “We almost got caught.”
Ben thought Pearl might say something like, “Wow, that was really smart to use that fog bomb,” but she didn’t say anything. She stood, her neck craned, staring at the sky. The sasquatch towered next to her, its face also turned upward.
Ben slowly rose to his feet. This time he didn’t wonder what sort of bird it was. This time he didn’t feel silly for thinking it was a dragon. It circled lazily, then dove behind some trees.
“It’s going to the factory,” Pearl said.
This was the first time Ben had seen the sasquatch standing at its full height. “How are we going to get it back to the factory without people seeing it?” he asked. “We don’t have another fog bomb.”
“I’m not sure,” Pearl said. “It’s huge!”
Ben didn’t know why, but he didn’t feel afraid of the gigantic beast. Maybe because it wasn’t growling at him. Or maybe because it wasn’t glaring at him. Or maybe because it was scratching one of its feet and whimpering. Then it scratched the other foot. It whimpered, then scratched some more. “Mr. Tabby said Dr. Woo was treating it for foot fungus,” Ben remembered. “It probably needs its medicine.”
That’s when a siren’s howl filled the air. The sasquatch’s hands flew to its ears as the howl grew louder. Ben peered around the side of the senior center. Fog leaked out the front door as a Buttonville Police Force car pulled up to the curb. A woman with dark glasses stepped out. “It’s your aunt Milly,” Ben said.
“We need to get out of here.” Pearl looked up at the sasquatch. “We’re going to take you home,” she told it. “Do you—?”
“Don’t ask it questions,” Ben reminded her.
“Right.” She broke off another chocolate chunk. “We can avoid the streets and sidewalks by cutting through the forest.” She handed the chunk to the sasquatch. It popped the chunk into its mouth. “Let’s go.”
18
Sometimes I ride my bike back here,” Pearl explained as she led the way down an overgrown trail. “This path will take us straight to the factory.”
To Ben, a boy who had spent most of his life in the city and on the beach, the forest felt like an eerie place. The sun trickled through the leaves, casting weird shadows. Strange sounds rustled among the treetops. Dr. Woo’s guidebook had said that sasquatches live in the forest, and Ben could see why. If the sasquatch stood still, it would probably look like a tree trunk and blend right in. But because it was following a girl who was feeding it chunks of chocolate, it didn’t blend in at all.
“Go easy on the chocolate,” Ben told Pearl. “We can’t run out before we get there.”
“I know, I know,” Pearl said as she handed the sasquatch another piece. The creature seemed perfectly happy stomping along, collecting the offerings. Ben was starting to get used to its nasty scent, the same way he’d gotten used to the scent of hamster droppings.
“You know what I don’t understand?” Ben said. “If this thing lives in the Imaginary World, then how did it get here? And where, exactly, is the Imaginary World?”
“When we meet Dr. Woo, let’s ask her,” Pearl said.
“You think we’ll get to meet her?”
“Sure. We’ve rescued the sasquatch. The least she can do is thank us. Maybe she’ll give us a cool reward.”
Pearl stopped walking. The sasquatch stopped walking. Ben, who was trying to imagine what kind of reward might come fro
m the mysterious Dr. Woo, bumped right into the sasquatch’s leg. “What—?”
“Shhhhh,” Pearl hissed, a finger to her lips.
The sasquatch put a finger to its lips and repeated, “Shhhhh.”
They’d reached the edge of the forest. The wrought-iron fence was across the street, and just beyond the fence stood the old factory.
“Oh no,” Ben said when he spotted the red wagon and the two people in their red overalls and red baseball caps. “It’s that lady and her daughter.”
“Mrs. Mulberry and Victoria Mulberry,” Pearl said through clenched teeth.
The Mulberrys peered between the bars of the locked gate. A wrapped present waited in the back of the welcome wagon, its glossy red bow sparkling in the sunshine. While Victoria yawned, Mrs. Mulberry glanced at her watch and paced. “Someone is sure to come in or out,” she told her daughter. “I want to meet this Doctor…Doctor…”
“Woo,” Victoria said, pointing to the sign that hung from the gate.
“I want to meet this Dr. Woo before anyone else meets this Dr. Woo,” Mrs. Mulberry said. “As president of the Welcome Wagon, it’s my job to know everything before anyone else knows anything.”
“She’s a worm doctor,” Victoria said, pointing to the sign again.
“I know she’s a worm doctor,” Mrs. Mulberry snapped. “I can read that she’s a worm doctor. What I want to know is, where did she come from? How long will she be staying? And, most importantly, what are her secrets? I must know her deepest secrets.”
“You are the best at finding out secrets,” Victoria said. “No one else in Buttonville can find out secrets the way you can.”
“It’s true, it’s true,” Mrs. Mulberry said. She stuck her thumbs under her overall straps and pushed out her chest. “I can smell a secret a mile away.”
“Drat,” Pearl said as she peered over a huckleberry bush. “If Mrs. Mulberry sees the sasquatch, then she’ll tell the whole town. She’s the biggest gossip on the planet. How are we going to get past her?”
“I’m not sure,” Ben said from behind the same bush. “There’s no way we can sneak around them. I wish we had another fog bomb.”
Just as he said that, the sasquatch swatted at a fly, breaking a branch in the process. Victoria Mulberry spun around and looked through her superthick lenses toward the forest.
“Uh-oh,” Ben said. “I think she saw us.” Both he and Pearl grabbed the sasquatch’s arm and pulled it behind a tree. As they did so, the sasquatch snatched the last piece of chocolate from Pearl’s hand and ate it, wrapper and all.
“Mom, did you hear that?”
“Do not bother me, Victoria. I’m watching the front door.” Mrs. Mulberry squinted through a pair of binoculars.
“But something’s up there in the forest,” Victoria said.
“What?”
“I don’t know. But it looked big and hairy.”
“Is it Dr. Woo?” Mrs. Mulberry dropped her binoculars and called, “Yoo-hoo! Dr. Woo? Is that you?”
“And I think I saw Pearl Petal,” Victoria said.
“Pearl Petal?” Mrs. Mulberry yanked her baseball cap off her head. Her frizzy hair shot toward the sky. “We can’t let that troublemaking Pearl Petal learn Dr. Woo’s secrets before we learn Dr. Woo’s secrets!”
Pearl peered around the tree. “Here they come. What else do we have in that kit? What about the tranquilizer dart?”
“We can’t use that on a person,” Ben said. They couldn’t, could they? “Besides, we only have one dart, and there are two of them. All that’s left is the net.”
Pearl smiled wickedly. “Net?”
Ben set the Sasquatch Catching Kit on the forest floor and opened it. After pulling out the net, he read its instruction label.
It sounded easy. But Mrs. Mulberry and Victoria Mulberry were people, not sasquatches. “Uh, Pearl, I’m not so sure we should do this. What if Mrs. Mulberry gets mad?”
“Of course she’ll get mad,” Pearl said. “But that isn’t important. We have a sasquatch to save, remember?”
They both looked up at the sasquatch. It had found Dr. Woo’s guidebook in the kit and was thumbing through the pages. It grunted and pointed to a drawing.
“Yeah, that looks like you,” Pearl told it. The sasquatch grunted again. Chocolate specks glistened on its yellow teeth as it smiled. Pearl whispered to Ben, “It’s kinda like a big teddy bear.”
“Uh, it’s nothing like a big teddy bear,” Ben said, thinking that the last thing he’d want decorating his bed was a creature with greasy, moss-covered fur and itchy foot fungus.
Pearl reached up and freed a trapped beetle from the sasquatch’s chest fur. Then she cooed in a baby voice. “You’re a nice sasquatch. Yes you are. You’re a very nice sasquatch. We won’t let those mean Mulberrys get you. No we won’t.” Ben rolled his eyes.
“Yoo-hoo!”
Ben clutched the net and took a long, deep breath. When his parents found out that he’d trapped the president of the Buttonville Welcome Wagon and her daughter in a net, they’d explode. But saving a sasquatch seemed a million times more important than anything else at that moment. So Ben reached around the tree and threw the net onto the ground. Holding tight to the cord, he held his breath as Mrs. Mulberry and Victoria hurried down the path.
19
It smells bad in here,” Victoria said. She pinched her nose as she hurried up the path.
“Do you see Dr. Woo?” Mrs. Mulberry cupped her hands around her mouth. “Yoo-hoo! We have a welcome present for you, Dr. Woo!”
If either of the Mulberrys had been looking down at the path, they would have clearly seen the net. There’d been no time for Ben to camouflage it by throwing leaves or dirt over it. But since Mrs. Mulberry and her daughter were looking around for Dr. Woo, they walked right into the trap. Ben yanked the cord.
“Mom?” Victoria asked as the sides of the net rose up around her. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Mulberry said. “Is the ground moving?”
After another yank, the net closed over their heads.
“Mom, we’re trapped!” Victoria’s hat fell off as she kicked at the netting. Then her feet became tangled.
“Help!” Mrs. Mulberry cried. As she struggled, her feet also became tangled. She and Victoria toppled over.
“Where are my glasses?” Victoria cried. “I can’t see anything.”
“Your hair is in my face. I can’t see anything, either.”
“Now,” Ben whispered. As Victoria and her mother struggled to get back on their feet, Ben and Pearl grabbed the sasquatch’s arm and tried to pull it out of the forest. But it wouldn’t budge.
“I don’t have any more chocolate,” Pearl realized. “We need something sweet.”
“Victoria, your elbow is in my ear!”
“I’m sorry, Mom. But I can’t see your ear if I don’t have my glasses.”
“Get off me, Victoria. I can’t breathe.”
“I can’t get off you, Mom. I’m all tangled in this stupid net.”
There was no time to lose. Ben ran across the street and ripped open the Welcome Wagon present, hoping it would be just like the one he’d received earlier that morning. He shuffled through the contents—the movie coupon, the bag of nails—until he found what he was looking for. He grabbed the big chocolate button, tore off its foil wrapper, then held it up in the air. “Here, sasquatchy. Here, sasquatchy.”
With a happy grunt, the sasquatch emerged from the forest. Holding out its hands, it lumbered toward Ben. Pearl gathered the Sasquatch Catching Kit and followed. “They didn’t see a thing,” she announced as Ben broke off a piece of the chocolate button and tossed it. “That was so much fun! Let’s trap someone else!”
Ben was about to tell Pearl that he didn’t think trapping someone else was a good idea when a voice said, “Excellent work.”
At first, Ben thought the sasquatch had chosen this moment to begin a conversation. But a jingling sound directed Ben?
??s attention to the other side of the gate, where Mr. Tabby was fiddling with a ring of keys. “I see Dr. Woo’s Sasquatch Catching Kit came in handy,” Mr. Tabby said as he unlocked and opened the gate.
Ben waved the chocolate button in the air. The sasquatch grabbed the Welcome Wagon present and followed Ben through the gate. As soon as Pearl was also inside, Mr. Tabby locked the gate.
“Help! Help!” Mrs. Mulberry cried from the forest.
“Someone needs to untangle them,” Ben said.
“I shall make an anonymous phone call to the local police and let them know that assistance is required,” Mr. Tabby said as he led them up the driveway. “In the meantime, we must get inside quickly, before someone else comes along.”
The chocolate button lasted right up until they stepped safely into the old factory. Mr. Tabby slid the rusty dead bolt into place. “Dear, dear, what a worrisome morning.” He took the metal box, with its tranquilizer dart, blowpipe, guidebook, and whistle, and set it aside. The sasquatch bent over and scratched its feet.
“You’ve been a very bad sasquatch,” Mr. Tabby told it. “Now go on, get back upstairs. You need more medicine.”
Mr. Tabby pushed the elevator button. The doors swooshed open, and the sasquatch stepped inside. With what remained of the Welcome Wagon present tucked under its arm, it turned and waved to the kids. They waved back. As the doors closed, Ben wondered what the sasquatch would do with the bag of nails, the movie coupon, the refrigerator magnet, and the other things.
Mr. Tabby pulled out his creature calculator. “Sasquatch caught,” he said as he typed.
A loudspeaker, set high in the wall, crackled, and a nasal voice said, “Emergency code deactivated. Emergency code deactivated. Sasquatch has returned to the building.”
Ben and Pearl took long, relieved breaths and smiled at each other. They’d done it!