The Mad Scientists of New Jersey (Volume 1) Read online

  “You know, I think it’s time for me to go.”

  “But you just got here.” Mesmer seemed deflated. “We have so much to talk about.”

  “Yeah, I think I’m all talked out for tonight. If you’ll just press that little clicker device or whatever it is, I’ll be heading back.” Eddie started backing toward the door.

  “Wait!” Mesmer shouted, racing over to a closet and throwing wide the door. An avalanche of junk poured out and Mesmer dug through it wildly.

  Eddie took advantage of the man’s distraction to race to the front door. Just as his hand touched the knob, a buzzer went off again, only this time it didn’t stop short. Buzz, buzz, buzz! A red light above the door burst to life, flashing in rhythm with the sound.

  Mesmer bolted out of the closet and stared up at the blinking light. He had something in his hands. Was that a tool belt?

  “Here!” Mesmer cried and tossed the thing to Eddie. Eddie caught it. No, not a tool belt. It looked more like a superhero’s utility belt — leather with five metal bars the size of chewing gum packs stitched in at regular intervals. “Put it on!”

  “What is it?”

  “You’re going to have to figure that out for yourself,” said Mesmer.

  Eddie was peeved. “And why is that?”

  Mesmer stared up at the pulsing red light. “Because I just remembered what that buzzer is for.”

  Something slammed against the door. Eddie stepped back as a shrill whistle pierced the night. Whatever was outside struck the door again, sending cracks zigzagging up and down, left and right.

  Eddie darted back to where Mesmer stood frozen. “How did it find us?” Mesmer gasped. “How could it possibly navigate to this in-between time?”

  “I don’t know what it is, but it’s going to get inside very, very soon!” shouted Eddie.

  “Put on the belt!” Mesmer screamed, and Eddie did as he was told, covering it with his shirt. The thing outside let loose with another nightmare whistle.

  Mesmer turned Eddie to face him. “You asked me why Vernon Sly drowned himself along with the others. I think he did it because he knew that somehow he could come back.”

  “Come back? How?”

  The wooden door shattered, splinters of wood exploding into the room. Eddie caught his breath as the thing stepped through the ruined doorway.

  Its eyes were bright red, like stoplights. It had a long metallic neck and a barrel-like body. It stomped the ground with massive, hooved feet. Sprouting from its back were a pair of shiny, metal wings. If the thing had been flesh and blood rather than steel, Eddie could have sworn he was staring into the eyes of the Jersey Devil.

  The metal beast belched steam and whistled its earsplitting whistle.

  “I’ll catch up with you once you figure out the belt,” cried Mesmer. “In the meantime, take care of Reggie, will you?” The man pulled the mechanical frog from his pocket and thrust it into Eddie’s arms. Mesmer pulled his keychain from his pocket and raised it into the air as the creature charged straight for them, clanking as it came.

  “He needs a little oil at night!” Mesmer shouted and pressed the button.

  The lumbering metal beast reached out toward Eddie and he squeezed his eyes shut tight. There was a crack and a flash of light so bright that Eddie could see it through his eyelids. And then...

  Everything went silent. There was no sound but the chirp of crickets. Eddie opened his eyes. He was back in the abandoned version of the house. Mesmer, the mechanical monster — had they been real at all?

  “Rej-jip!” He looked down. There, still clutched in his hands, was Reggie staring up at him with his little yellow eyes.

  “Don’t worry, little guy. I think we’re safe.”

  A white light pierced the darkness, hitting Eddie square in the face. He put a hand to his face to shield his eyes. The devil, the machine, whatever it was had followed him!

  A laugh echoed in the darkness — a cruel, familiar laugh. Eddie squinted and saw a figure step forward and lower the flashlight.

  “Safe?” Lance hissed. “Oh, you’re a long way from being safe, munch.”

  It was almost three in the morning when Eddie and his mother got back home. Cooper, who had been fast asleep on the sofa, trotted over to nuzzle him with his wet nose and then put himself to bed in his crate.

  Eddie got the silent treatment from his mom on the ride back, but not so now. She was furious.

  “Imagine getting a call from the police in the middle of the night,” she said, clenching her hands.

  And that’s exactly what had happened. Apparently Eddie and his friends weren’t the only ones who had decided to sneak out that night. Lance was hanging out with a girl on his boat when he spied the flashlight shining about on Echo Island. When he went over to investigate, he found Pudge asleep on The Cheesy Breezy and Roxie hunting around, trying to find Eddie.

  Lance called in backup. Soon, Hedges and Babcock were steering their way toward the island as well. The three of them searched every inch of Echo Island and could not find Eddie. Suddenly a flash of lightning lit up the night, and Lance caught Eddie in his flashlight beam.

  Rather than issuing Eddie and company a reprimand, Lance called the police. He and the rest of the Mustache Mafia took Eddie, Roxie and Pudge straight to the boardwalk where two police cruisers were waiting for them.

  “Smell you later,” scoffed Lance as he handed Eddie over to the officer. Eddie sat petrified in the back seat as he watched officers usher Roxie and Pudge into the back of their own cars. Pudge tossed him a glance that told him what he already knew: they were in deep doo-doo.

  The back seat smelled horrible, and Eddie gagged. “Sorry,” said the officer behind the wheel. “Had a guy lose his lunch back there. I’ll crack the window.” He did, but just a crack.

  After waiting at the police station for over an hour, Eddie’s mother had arrived, still in her pajamas. Her eyes were red, and Eddie instantly regretted the night’s excursion. His mother had been through enough already with his father’s disappearance, having to keep their sagging roof over their head all by herself. He felt awful.

  The sergeant on duty had taken Reggie from him when he first arrived, more out of curiosity than anything, but as Eddie and his mother were leaving, the man had given back the metal frog.

  “My niece would love one of these. Where did you get it?”

  “I’m just holding onto it for a friend,” said Eddie. Which was only half true. He was just holding onto Reggie for the time being, but could he count Mesmer as a friend? He had grave doubts about that.

  Now, he sat stroking Reggie’s metal back as his mother paced about his cluttered bedroom. The frog seemed to know better than to sing.

  “Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Eddie’s mother asked.

  “Sorry,” Eddie said, but it wasn’t an answer, simply a plea for his mother to drop it and let him go to bed and forget about the whole night.

  But she didn’t drop it. She didn’t ground Eddie right then and there. Instead she said he’d have to think about what the consequences were, which was even worse.

  Before he went to sleep, Eddie stripped off the leather belt Mesmer had insisted he take and examined it. It wasn’t all that remarkable. Just a leather strap with those five metal packs attached.

  Eddie slept fitfully. His dreams were filled with monsters. The next morning, his mother woke him before his alarm went off. “Get up. We have a meeting with your principal.” She was not happy.

  Eddie almost shook as he sat across from Mr. Wood in his office, his mother seething next to him. Principal Wood was a beefy man with a short, military haircut. He never blinked. He ticked off a list of Eddie’s misdeeds: breaking school property (the intercom), destroying a teacher’s property (Mr. Hubbard’s toupee) and impersonating a school lunch aide.

  He had also recei
ved a phone call from the police informing him of Eddie, Roxie and Pudge’s late night escapades.

  “We have a regular process to deal with these sorts of things, Mrs. Edison. But seeing as this is the first time Eddie has ever acted up, I suggest you take him out of school for the next couple of days for a family vacation.”

  Eddie’s mother looked puzzled. “I can’t. I have a business trip I need to take this week. I landed the voiceover for a new app. The Testy Taster, they call it. For people who want to complain about restaurants. They want me to record it in the city. New York, I mean.” It seemed Mr. Wood made everyone nervous.

  The principal smiled. “I use the word vacation very loosely. It could mean a trip to sunny Florida, I love going down to the Keys, myself. Or it could mean a visit to one’s own home. Without television or computer privileges.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  The principal leaned in to his mother. “If we go the suspension route, that goes in Eddie’s record. Let’s save that for the next time.” He looked to Eddie. “Even though there won’t be a next time, will there?” Eddie shook his head vigorously.

  So it was that Eddie found himself under house arrest, or so he saw it. He was not to watch his shows or play his games or doing anything at all but work through a list of chores his mother was leaving for him. When she insisted he use his phone for emergency calls only, Eddie had to confess that he had broken it, which only made his mother even more upset.

  She rooted around in the kitchen drawers until she found her old phone and gave it to him. “I’ll be back on Saturday,” she said as she rolled her suitcase to the front door. “Don’t give Martha any trouble. And remember: 911 calls only.”

  And like that, his mother was off, and he was alone with his parents’ family friend Martha and her cranky old husband Abel.

  “Don’t worry, Eddie,” said Martha with a wink as she pulled a bag of candy from her purse and held it out to him. “Your father pulled worse stunts than you, believe me.”

  “You were there, weren’t you?” asked Eddie, waving off the candy. “The night he disappeared? That night at the diner?”

  Martha’s face closed and she turned away. Abel simply grunted, plopped himself down on the sofa and proceeded to fall fast asleep.

  ***

  Chore number fourteen on Eddie’s list was vacuuming. He pulled out the family’s old Hoover and checked the bag while Cooper made a mad dash for the basement. Cooper was a brave dog, always ready to bark a stranger away from his yard, but when it came to the vacuum, he was terrified.

  Eddie got down to the boring business of vacuuming the living room, the hallways, the den. Old Abel grumbled even more when Eddie had to clean under the sofa he was snoozing on. Martha didn’t seem to mind, though. She was busy making lunch in the kitchen.

  As soon as Eddie turned the vacuum off, he heard Cooper barking his head off in the basement. Had he cornered a mouse? The little critters had been known to pop through the air vents in Mom’s booth, causing her to shriek in the middle of recording.

  Eddie went to the kitchen and grabbed a broom.

  “I hope you like egg salad,” Martha said.

  “I sure do,” Eddie lied. In fact, he hated the stuff. To him, it tasted like craft paste gone bad. “I’ll be back up in a minute.” He headed down the stairs.

  Cooper was still barking. “Cool it, Coop,” Eddie called. The dog definitely had something backed into a corner next to his father’s workbench and was very eager to get at it. Eddie nudged him aside and raised the broom over his head.

  A small, trembling voice came from the shadows. “Rej-jip? Rej-jip, rej- jip?”

  “Reggie, how did you get out?” Eddie lowered his broom and knelt. He had left the frog in his desk drawer, but apparently Reggie was an escape artist. He held out his hand, and Reggie took two tentative hops forward, saw Cooper and scurried back into the corner.

  Eddie picked up the metal frog and set him on the workbench which was littered with spools of solder, vacuum tubes, home appliances his father had always meant to fix but had never gotten around to.

  The frog wiggled happily, nestled into a pile of old clock parts. Maybe he thinks he’s back home with Mesmer, Eddie thought.

  He looked around the room. Mom’s audio booth sat up against the cinderblock wall. It was a big, black box about the size of a large refrigerator. Inside was a microphone, recording equipment and, as he had learned the one time he had peeked inside, a framed photo of his mom and dad when they were young and happy. Before he came along. Before Dad went missing.

  A sneeze at the top of the stairs caused Cooper’s ears to go on alert, but his tail was soon wagging as old Abel appeared, coming down the steps slowly, wiping his nose with his handkerchief.

  “I gotta use the can,” the old man said as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “The bathroom’s upstairs, Mr. Sparks,” Eddie said, but Abel kept on coming toward him. “Really, it’s upstairs past my bedroom. You can’t miss it.”

  Reggie chose that moment to let loose his loudest rej-jip yet. It echoed through the basement like a car horn. Abel’s eyes fixed on the frog. “What in tarnation have you got there?”

  Eddie instinctively stepped in front of Reggie. Mr. Sparks couldn’t tell the difference between a basement and a bathroom. Who knew what he would do to the frog if he got his hands on it?

  “Nothing!” Eddie said quickly. “Hey, I thought I heard Mrs. Sparks calling us. I think lunch must be ready.”

  Abel curled his lip. “Egg salad sandwiches. The woman knows I despise egg salad.” Eddie smiled at this – it was nice to know that he wasn’t the only one who hated the stuff. In that moment of distraction, the old man grabbed Reggie off the workbench.

  “Rej-JIP!” Reggie cried.

  “What do you got sending current to this thing’s vocal cells, a bridge rectifier? No wonder its voice is fried.” Abel flipped the twitching, complaining Reggie over on his back, grabbed a pair of metal shears and slit him up the stomach like a fisherman gutting a trout.

  “Stop!” Eddie wailed.

  “Oh, quit your crying. If you had done this right the first time, I wouldn’t have to go in and clean up your mess. You’re just like your father.”

  At the mention of his father, Eddie’s attention turned from the squirming frog to the old man. “You used to do stuff like this with my dad?”

  “Of course I did,” said Abel. “How else was he going to learn? It’s not like he had anyone else to teach him. Not like in the old days.”

  “What old days?” Eddie coaxed.

  “Hand me the needle-nose pliers,” Abel barked. “The old days. Back when folks actually knew how to invent, gosh darn it. All gone, all gone now. Only thing left is their junk, leftovers for the rest of us to poke through and wonder about. No, I said the needle-nose pliers!”

  It was the most lucid Eddie had ever seen Mr. Sparks. Usually he slipped in and out, like a radio station that came and went. But right now? The way the old guy’s hands were flying around the workbench, collecting bits of wire, diodes, paperclips, he seemed almost young again.

  “Only a matter of time before this little fella’s brainpan was scrambled. Who taught you how to lay down circuits?”

  “No one,” Eddie replied, but almost instantly he knew that wasn’t the truth. As fast as Abel was moving, Eddie was actually following what he was doing, understanding every step. Mesmer had taught him. Mesmer and his nutty tutor. The Nutty Tutor... that was a pretty good name. He’d have to remember to share it with Mesmer if he ever saw him again.

  “Change the polarity of this micro-speaker, attach an input line and...” The old man sealed the metal frog’s belly back up with a line of solder, leaving a single wire trailing out from its neck. He stripped the end of the wire bare and slipped it into the side of his mouth.

  “Say
ribbit,” growled Mr. Sparks.

  “Griggy!” croaked Reggie.

  Abel gave the frog a shake. “Say ribbit.”

  “Turp-chock!”

  The old man grumbled, grabbed a screwdriver and made a small adjustment.

  “Now, say ribbit!”

  Reggie’s eye lights blinked twice, then he said, “Now, say ribbit!”

  “No!”

  “Say ribbit, say ribbit, say ribbit,” the happy mechanical creature chirped.

  “Forget it. Return to default,” he ordered.

  “Rej-jip,” Reggie yipped.

  Abel tossed the frog to Eddie, yanking out the wire umbilical. “Best I can do.”

  “How did you get him to change what he says?” Eddie asked.

  “You were right here watching, weren’t you? I just set up a neural link, a phone call from my brain to his. But next time, start with the right parts. I swear I spied some telegraph line holding the relays in place. Garbage in, garbage out. Next time you start a project, take it one step at a time, Bill. Don’t rush. One step at a time.”

  “Bill was my father, Mr. Sparks,” Eddie said.

  The old man’s gruff demeanor crumbled before Eddie’s eyes. “I gotta use the can,” he mumbled.

  “It’s upstairs. Here, lemme show you.” Eddie led the old man to the stairs. “Play nice,” he called back to Cooper, who was again eyeing Reggie with territorial disdain. “I’ll be back.”

  ***

  While forcing down the dreaded egg salad, something the old man had said kept looping through his brain. “Take it one step at a time.”

  After excusing himself, Eddie went to his bedroom, retrieved the leather belt and headed back down to the basement. To his disbelief, he found Reggie perched on Cooper’s back. The mechanical frog’s front legs were vibrating rapidly, giving the dog a vigorous back massage. Apparently the two had settled their differences. Cooper was in heaven.