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Hollow Souls
The moon cast a dramatic lighting upon the construction equipment that sat motionless, looking like sleeping dinosaurs in the parking lot. And even though the gates had been chained shut and there were several warning signs forbidding anyone from entering the grounds, the boys took that as an invitation to go exploring. After all, it wasn’t every day that they were going to be able to explore an abandoned high school.
Let alone one that has been rumored to be haunted.
“I heard that the swimming pool fills up with blood every full moon,” Dewey said as he used the tarp they brought to cover up the barbed wire. He jumped onto the chain-linked fence and started going up.
“I heard that in the original blueprints that they didn’t put in a teacher’s lounge, but you can find it,” Louie said, following after his brother. “And if you go inside, the door disappears and you stay in there until you die.”
“I heard that there’s a blackboard with irrational math problems written on it, and if you stare at it long enough, you go insane,” Huey said.
They had been telling and re-telling all the urban legends surrounding the old high school. The city had finally decided to tear it down after it was abandoned in the 70s. Considering that it was over one-hundred and twenty years old, it was about time.
Since its abandonment, it had turned from a make-out spot, to graffiti central, to a gang hang-out, then where the homeless broke into when it was too cold to sleep on the streets. But that was still long ago. Once the rumors of the high school being haunted started spreading, not even the homeless wanted to go there.
But every few months, a group of kids would grow curious about the old high school and sneak in. Before the construction crews, it was easy. There was an old drainage pipe that went under the fence, which was the path that almost every ten to fourteen year-old followed through on a dare. It was practically a rite of passage in Duckburg.
And on the eve of its destruction, Huey, Dewey and Louie weren’t going to pass up their chance to go inside.
“I heard that the skeleton in the science lab was the principal and that the science teacher murdered him and hung his skeleton up. Nobody noticed until kids started disappearing,” Dewey said once they were over the fence.
“I heard that the ghost of the cafeteria lady won’t let you leave until you eat her meatloaf surprise,” Louie said. “The surprise is that it’s made out of rats.”
“Ew,” Huey said. “Where did you hear that one?”
Louie smiled. “I didn’t. I just made it up.”
“That one doesn’t count,” Dewey said. “No made-up stories.”
“They’re all made up,” Louie said. “They’re just dumb ol’ ghost stories that kids have been making up for decades. This place, while creepy and quite possibly dangerous, has no ghosts.”
“How could you say that, after knowing Duckworth?” Dewey asked. “Ghosts are real.”
“I didn’t say they weren’t real,” Louie said. “I’m just saying that there is no ghost out there who is pitiful enough to think that this decrepit pile of junk is worth haunting.”
They wended their way through the machines brought in for the demolition. They stopped to look at the main event: a large truck with a wrecking ball.
“But that’s why ghosts want to haunt the high school,” Dewey argued. “They’re grumpy and hate visitors, so they find places like this. Otherwise ghosts would have the reputation of being friendly and inviting.”
“I’m just saying that if I was a ghost, I wouldn’t make my home here,” Louie said. “I’d find the nicest house and haunt the people living there until they left, then sit back and relax. That would be the life.”
“That’s practically the life you have now,” Huey said.
“Except that I still have to share a room with brothers,” Louie said with a sigh. “A mansion full of empty rooms, and we have to share a room.”
Huey rolled his eyes, tired of this complaint, and Dewey smirked. “You know, I think I could persuade Uncle Scrooge to give you your own room,” the blue-clad triplet said.
“Oh, yeah?” Louie asked. He hadn’t been successful in his cajoling, and doubted his brother would have any better luck.
“Yeah. But we’ll have to persuade him to stop the demolition,” Dewey said, jabbing his thumb at the dark silhouette of the school. “It’ll take some time to redecorate, but you’ll have plenty of room for your ego.”
Louie slugged his brother in the arm, but not as hard as he could. After all, joking and ribbing was free game when they were on one of their adventures alone.
“Let’s see. What other stories have I heard?” Dewey said. He had the better memory for them since he had proactively been looking for more. “Oh, I heard that the library was once used to brain wash kids, especially when it had become a Beagle Boy correctional facility.”
“Oh, that’s a good one,” Louie said, back to being brotherly.
“I heard that the school has a basement that’s most of the time locked because whatever is down there is too dangerous for anyone to see,” Huey said. “In fact, it’s the reason that the school was abandoned.”
Dewey and Louie stopped in their tracks.
“I’ve not heard that one,” Dewey said.
“Hey, I already tried making up a story to pull one on Dewey,” Louie said. “Stop copying me.”
“I didn’t make it up. It’s a story I heard,” Huey said.
“Oh, yeah? Who told it to you?” Louie challenged.
“I overheard it from Mom and Uncle Donald,” Huey said.
That stopped his brothers in their tracks.
The night before, they asked Della and Donald if they had snuck into the high school. It was a rhetorical question because they knew that their mom and uncle had. It was a guarantee. They didn’t know of two braver individuals aside from Uncle Scrooge. And when they asked, they were expecting the best story of all, whether it was true or not.
But Della and Donald didn’t tell them a story. They only looked at each other, exchanged looks and had a conversation without words that only twins could do. And then as one, they said, “You boys are forbidden from sneaking into that school.” And that was all they said about that.
If there was one thing to guarantee the boys to sneak into an abandoned building at night, it was both their mother and their uncle forbidding them.
“Before we went to bed, I went downstairs for a drink of water,” Huey said. “And I heard Mom and Uncle Donald talking about the school. They talked about the basement, and that they’re glad that the school was finally being knocked down. It sounded as if whatever was in the basement was really bad, so much so that they went back and made sure nobody could go down there again.”
Dewey and Louie felt a chill run through them, but Louie was quick to laugh it off.
“Oh, man. Mom and Uncle Donald really got ya,” Louie said. “They must have heard you coming down the stairs and made up that story.”
“I don’t think so,” Huey said, not liking the idea of being tricked. “They sounded really sincere.”
Dewey jumped in. “You know, they probably know we’re out here right now. They’re probably waiting up for us and laughing silly, thinking that their story is going to scare us.”
Louie nodded. “Yep. Classic parent behavior.” At least it was classic in his family.
Huey frowned but didn’t say anything. What else could he say when his brothers were against him?
They approached the school’s front entrance, then skirted to the side where there were a couple of broken windows. The city was constantly boarding up the school to prevent anyone from getting in, but the precautions were never in place for long. The boys didn’t even have to do anything since the latest attempts had been torn off, leaving an empty gap. They took the same tarp they used on the barb wire and laid it over the window to protect them from broken glass.
Inside, they pulled out their flashlights and took a look around.
“Principal’s office,” Louie determined first, taking in the old-fashioned metal desk and filing cabinets. “Wow, it’s like they got all the furniture from a prison.”
They boys moved on through the front office out into the hallway. There was graffiti decorating every wall, both artistic and profane, and sometimes both.
“I don’t think they’re using that word correctly,” Huey said, frowning at a four-letter word.
The hallways were littered with trash and debris, the former left behind by druggies and the transient, the latter from the ceiling which was falling apart. The boys moved away from the front entrance to explore. They poked their heads in several classrooms, finding a science room without any skeletons except for a few from rats. They found the gym and looked for the blood stains where one gym teacher forced a kid to run until his feet fell off. No blood stains. They found the pool, which had a few inches of green-algae water but no blood. And they skipped the cafeteria because the smell was too much for them.
“Well, this is a colossal waste of time,” Dewey said, who had been recording and commenting throughout the entire time. “There’s nothing I can put on my Vlog.”
“What did you expect?” Louie said. “You do realize that all those stories we’ve heard are not backed by fact. Nobody has actually died in this school.”
“How would you know?” Dewey defended.
“Because Junior Woodchuck McGee here would have told us,” Louie said. “I bet he knows everything about this school since the moment we decided to come here.”
“True,” Huey said. “All of that’s true. Nobody’s died here. And I do know everything about this school. Fun fact: The Historical Society tried to have the high school declared a historical site, but then Uncle Scrooge ‘nicely’ told them no. He says he’s going to build a mall here.”
“I was just hoping for something exciting to happen,” Dewey said, putting his phone away. “I imagined my first time in an actual high school would be more climatic than this. This is such a bummer.”
Huey and Louie remembered Dewey’s dream of being the popular kid in high school.
“Well, brother, if it makes you feel any better, you’re the most popular kid in this high school,” Louie said, putting an arm around his brother.
“Yeah,” Huey said. “In fact, let’s vote on who should be school president. I vote for Dewey.”
“I vote for Dewey as well,” Louie said.
Dewey smiled. “I know you guys are just teasing me, but…I also vote for Dewey. It’s unanimous. Dewey is president.” He raised his fists in triumph. Then his eyes strayed. “Hey, those look like stairs. They must go to the basement.” He raced off.
Huey and Louie followed, and they all went down a couple of steps to a door.
“So much for Mom and Uncle Donald making sure nobody could get to the basement,” Dewey said, testing the door, which he opened just a crack.
Huey bent down and picked something up. It was a thick chain with a lock. “They must have used this. Strange…”
“What?” Louie asked.
“The chain appears to be in excellent condition. No rust. No sign of someone using bolt cutters or anything. And look, the links are all connected and the lock is still in place. It’s as if the chain just…fell off? But that’s impossible.” Huey looked worried.
“Or Mom and Uncle Donald left it here as a joke,” Dewey said. “They had plenty of time to set it up while we were pretending to fall asleep.” He raised his voice. “Nice try, Mom!” He opened the door wider. “Oh, more stairs.”
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Huey said, playing with his fingers. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Relax, Hue,” Louie said. “It’s going to be fine. The only dangers we’re going to come across are tetanus and black mold.”
“Actually, I made sure we’re up to date with our shots, so no lock jaw for us,” Huey said. He watched as Dewey and Louie went through the door, then with a sigh, followed.
The stairs were darker than the school and even with their flashlights, it was hard to see where they were going. They went down the steps slowly, and after a while, they looked at each other worriedly. They were certain they should have reached the bottom by now.
“Maybe we should go back,” Huey said timidly. His flashlight wouldn’t light up more than a few steps in front of them, and he couldn’t see where they ended.
“Just a little more,” Louie said convincingly. “We’re almost there. It’s probably really deep because it used to be a bomb shelter or something.”
“Okay,” Huey relented, and to his surprise, Louie turned out to be right. The steps ended at another door just like at the top, and they pushed it open more forcefully than needed, all three feeling the need to escape those steps.
And they came out into a hallway just like one at the top of the steps. In fact, it could have been the same hallway.
“Huh? What?” the three of them said together, looking around confused. They took in the tile floor, the lockers along the wall, and the doors with numbers on plaques.
“This doesn’t look like the basement,” Dewey said, having pulled out his phone to record once more. “Where the confining spaces? The dank, dripping, and noisy pipes? The evil clowns?”
“This can’t be the basement,” Huey declared. He pointed upward. “Look.”
The ceiling held several skylights spaced six or eight feet between them all down the hall, the stars twinkling above them.
“That can’t be. We went down the—“ Louie looked behind him, and gasped.
The door they had come through was still open, but the stairs went down, not up.
The three stared at the stairs, not quite believing what they were looking at.
“Maybe it’s a portal, just like on Neverest?” Louie guessed. “If we go down those stairs again, we’ll just arrive right back here again.”
“So, if I go down and you guys stay here, you’ll see me appear out of thin air,” Dewey declared, ready to do just that.
“Wait,” Huey said, stopping his brother. “And what if that’s not what happens. What if it didn’t send us right back where we started? Don’t you guys notice anything weird?”
Louie and Dewey looked around and shrugged.
“Where’s the graffiti? Where’s the debris? Where’s the moldy smell? Doesn’t this hallway look far too clean and new to belong to an abandoned building?” Huey asked.
And since their brother mentioned it, they suddenly saw all these details.
“Maybe we’re in a part of the building that nobody’s been to,” Louie guessed, looking for the easiest answer.
“Or maybe we’ve been transported to a different school, one with a similar design,” Huey said. “We could be in a different city or state.”
“Or maybe we were transported back in time,” Dewey said. “We could be back in the 80s. Or the 60s. Or the 20s. Imagine. Gangsters.”
“Dude, I doubt they had Wifi back then,” Louie said, showing he had full access on his phone. “And according to GPS, we’re exactly where we should be: the high school.” He showed his map’s app, the red tag pointing at their location.
Huey frowned. “This doesn’t make sense. I could have sworn the hallway didn’t look like this.”
“Or maybe we ran into a patch of black mold,” Louie said. “We could be hallucinating. So the best thing for us to do is get out of here, go home, and get a good night’s sleep.”
Huey couldn’t argue because he couldn’t think of anything that couldn’t be fixed with a good night’s sleep. He was tired, and not in the best conditions to think this conundrum over.
They exited the school a different way, finding a door close by that didn’t seem to be locked. Outside, they easily found a hole in the fence so they didn’t have to hazard the barb wire, and then circled around the school to look for their bikes.
“This is wrong,” Huey said, walking next to his brothers.
“Not again,” Louie grumbled. “What is it this time?”
“Look at the school,” Huey said. “All the windows. None of them are broken or boarded up. It looks…new.”
This time, Louie didn’t have an excuse ready to assuage his brother. In fact, he was starting to feel uneasy as well.
“Hey, what happened to our bikes,” Dewey cried out, rushing to the place where they had stashed them. “I swear they were right here.”
“We’ve been robbed,” Louie said, in his grumbling voice. “Oh boy, our luck this night.”
“No, they’re still here,” Huey said. “You can see one of the tires sticking out of that bush.”
Together, they pulled out their bikes from the bushes which took some time since they were covered and tangled up with thick, woody vines.
“The chain is rusted,” Dewey said, testing his pedals. “These can’t be our bikes.”
“So three kids riding bikes after midnight saw our bikes and decided to trade them with their crappy ones?” Louie asked sarcastically. He wished that it could be true, because the alternative was not going to be good.
“These are our bikes. Look, this one has my bell,” Huey said, ringing his bell. “And this is my helmet. Something isn’t right. Look at the bushes and the plants and the trees. They haven’t been maintained. And the road. It looks as if an earthquake happened recently. Or many earthquakes. I—I don’t think we’re in Duckburg.”
“But the GPS. And these are our bikes,” Louie protested. “We’re in Duckburg.”
“Yes, we’re in Duckburg, but I don’t think we’re in our Duckburg,” Huey said.
“Uh…come again?” Dewey asked.
“I’ll spare you the science talk,” Huey said. “But there are some who believe in the multiple dimension theory where several dimensions exist in the same timespan but on different planes of existence. Basically, there are millions and millions of Duckburgs out there, but all of them are different. Perhaps in one, Mom was born an only child. In another, we don’t exist. In another, we might be all girls.”
“Ew,” Dewey and Louie said, sticking out their tongues.
“The point is, when we went down that basement, we were transported to a different dimension,” Huey said. “One where the school looks new, but our bikes are old. And one where the moon is red.”
They all looked up, noticing for the first time the moon that supplied most of the night’s light.
Louie’s voice trembled. “Okay, so all we need to do is go back in the school and go into the basement, right? Then we’ll be sent—“
Louie stopped speaking as he heard a rustling noise down the road from them, making them all freeze. With wide eyes and held breaths, they watched the bushes where the noise came from, hoping that by remaining still that nothing bad happened to them.
With a burst of speed and a cry that ripped through the air, a bipedal creature rushed out and toward them. The boys could only see a vague outline of it in the moonlight, and that’s all they needed to know that it was trouble. Screaming, their bodies told them to flee, but they had the foresight to jump on the bikes they were still holding onto and pedal as fast as they could. Even with rusty chains and bits of vines interwoven in the spokes, the boys pushed the bikes to their maximum speed.
“What is that thing?” Louie shouted as they raced down the broken streets.
Once they turned off the road that the school was on, they found a veritable obstacle course before them with a variety of vehicles littering the pavement, some looking as if they were parked while others had obviously been in some sort of accident, on its side or upside down. The boys zigged and zagged around them while listening to the creature pursuing them.
“I don’t know,” Huey said. “Just go faster.”
Adrenaline added to their strength and speed as they zipped around town, seeing familiar places and building but not as they had seen in their world. It was as if Duckburg was a warzone with how broken and torn apart it looked. They even caught a glimpse of Uncle Scrooge’s money bin, and it looked like a broken bottle, the top burst open and jagged edges rising toward the sky.
“Where are we going?” Louie shouted after they had been speeding for several minutes. He was only a half second behind his brothers and was just following where they were going, but as far as he could see, they were going in circles.
“I don’t know,” Dewey shouted, having been picking the direction based on which street looked safer.
“Then let’s get to the mansion,” Louie shouted, glancing behind him. He hoped that the creature that was pursuing him was slowing down, and glancing back, he found that it was still right on their tails. If he slowed down a little more, the creature could grab his back tire. He sped up, taking the lead.
“No, not to the mansion,” Huey said, his voice sounding winded. “We can’t lead this creature back to our family.”
“Then where?” Louie demanded.
“The park. I have an idea,” Huey said, turning to the left. His legs were starting to burn, a combination of riding as fast as he could as well as forcing the rusty chains to move.
When they arrived at the park, Huey didn’t hesitate to jump off his bike and race to the playground equipment. His brothers did, but followed, screaming, as the creature knocked into their bikes as it skidded to a stop, tearing Dewey’s shirt in the process.
“Quick, over here,” Huey shouted to his brothers as he headed to an obstacle course that was made of recycled material. There was a jungle-gym made of rope and tires, and Huey dove through one of the tires.
Louie and Dewey followed, surprised that Huey wasn’t running anymore. But after a while, they saw that they didn’t have to.
The creature dove after them but got stuck halfway.
“Whoa, that’s cool,” Dewey said, watching the creature as it ineffectually fought the tire and reached out for them.
“I thought it would work. Remember when Uncle Donald was playing with us here,” Huey said.
Louie nodded but Dewey had to think of the day years ago, when they were a lot younger, when Uncle Donald still played with them. They were playing on this playground back when it was brand new, and Uncle Donald got stuck in one of the tires. The firefighters had to be called to cut him out.
“Good idea,” Louie told his brother.
“But what is this thing?” Dewey asked, standing just barely out of the creature’s reach. “Is it a zombie?”
Huey looked closer. “No, it’s alive. It’s not rotting.”
The creature did have the appearance of a man—at least they guessed the creature was male—but he was all wrong. His eyes were white and blank, as if they were marbles. His mouth wasn’t full of sharp teeth, just ordinary ones, but it seemed as if he had more than what was comfortable for a mouth to hold. He kept snapping his teeth as if trying to bite something. His hands were longer, more slender, looking as if they ended in claws. His whole body looked stretched out and twisted, as if his back bone was made of more flexible material. And while they could distinguish feathers from clothing from beak and webbed feet, all the colors were muted and grayish, not looking realistic.
“Is he even a duck?” Louie asked.
“No, his physiology isn’t right,” Huey said. “It’s like someone altered him to be monstrous.”
“Or maybe that’s how people are in this dimension,” Dewey said. “Maybe we’ll look like the monsters here. We haven’t exactly met anyone besides this guy.”
“And I don’t want to,” Louie said. “If we go looking around, I know exactly what we’ll find. We’ll find everyone we know to have become just as twisted and ghoulish as this guy, ready to bite our heads off, or they’re all normal but living behind large walls with weapons and canned food, waiting for help or to die. I’m not going to explore some post-apocalypse world. I wanna go home.”
Dewey and Huey looked at their brother, realizing just how close he was to breaking. What they had been through was a lot, even by their family standards. And they remained quiet for a while, which was the only reason that they picked up that the creature was strangely quiet.
The three triplets turned to the creature, who had relaxed in the tire and was chomping his teeth together. It made a hollow sound that carried through the air much more than it should.
“Do you hear that?” Huey asked, looking around.
“Hear what? This…ghoul snapping his teeth because he’s pouting,” Dewey asked.
“That sound. It’s coming from all over,” Huey said. “Keep quiet and listen.”
They did, and after a while, they could pick out small sounds from all over, very similar to the ghoul snapping his teeth.
“He’s calling more of them,” Huey said. “We have to get out of here.”
They scrambled out of the tire jungle gym and started for their bikes but Dewey saw something and pulled them into a tunnel slide that was nearby. They all silently crawled up the slide and waited at the top.
Then more ghouls came loping into the park, heading for the one that was trapped in the tire. At first, they poked and prodded their companion, but then wandered around as if searching for something.
“Do you think they can smell us?” Dewey whispered.
“I don’t think so. They are looking not sniffing. They must have good vision,” Huey whispered back. “I wish I knew how good their hearing is.”
Louie looked around and picked up some woodchips that had been scattered on the ground to make the playground safe for children. He waited for the ghouls to all be looking away from them, then chucked them as far as he could. The woodchips clattered in the bushes, but only one ghoul noticed.
“I don’t think their hearing is all that great,” Louie said.
“So, as long as we stay here, hopefully they won’t find us,” Huey said, although he didn’t look too convinced.
“We need another plan,” Dewey said. “Eventually one is going to look over here, and then what?”
But they didn’t need a plan. The trapped ghoul, at the appearance of the other ghouls, started making whining, pleading noises that were becoming increasingly panicky. And as the boys kept glancing from their hiding places, they watched in horror as one ghoul finally attacked the trapped one before they all converged on it, biting and eating it while it was still alive.
The boys saw only seconds of the gore before they huddled back down, covering their ears so they wouldn’t hear the screaming. Huey was trembling, feeling his muscles lock, and Louie had pulled the hood of his sweater over his head. Lucky, Dewey recovered from the shock quickly enough to get his brothers moving.
“We have to leave now while they’re distracted,” he said, barely heard over the screams. “Come on.”
With Huey still trembling and Louie hiding as best he could in his hoodie, the three crept down the playground stairs and tiptoed away, heading to the nearest building and leaving their bikes behind. The screams ended soon after, but they could still hear the other ghouls feasting.
They climbed through the broken window of an office building, heading to the back and finding a room with a door which they locked behind them. Only then, did they feel safe.
“We should stay here for maybe an hour or longer,” Dewey said. “They should be gone by then.”
“Or we should go now while they’re still eating,” Louie said, the shock wearing off of him.
Huey huddled in the corner, not reacting. He was pretty good at thinking in tight situations, but hearing the ghoul’s dying screams and seeing the blood that was too bright of a red had cracked his confidence. “I wish Mom were here,” he said in a tiny voice. Her bravery made him feel braver.
“Well, she’s not. I wish that, too. I wish that I could pick up my phone and call her right now, but we can’t because we live in another dimension that probably doesn’t have any cell service,” Louie said.
“Wait, but don’t you have GPS?” Dewey asked, remembering from before. “You could tell that we were in Duckburg.”
“Huh, yeah,” Louie said, pulling out his cell phone and taking a look. “GPS is working. I’m even getting notifications from Twitter. Do ghouls use Twitter?”
Huey felt a little broken, but the mystery of Louie’s phone was enough to pull him out of his defensive shell. “Perhaps you’re getting wifi signals from the portal to our world. We’re not that far from the school.”
“Well, the signal is kind of weak,” Louie said. “Do you think I should try to email someone?”
“No. Literally call Mom,” Dewey said. “Who is going to answer email? It’s the middle of the night.”
“I would,” Louie said defensively. “Okay, I’ll call her. Let’s just hope I get our mom, and not some half-cyborg this-world version of her.” He pressed the speed dial.
It started ringing, and when someone picked up, the voice was sleepy and muddled. There was a lot of static in the background.
“—lo’?” Della’s voice came through the speaker.
“Mom?” Louie cried out, feeling more emotion coming through then he intended. It was so good to hear her.
“Put her on speaker,” Huey demanded. He hardly ever demanded.
Louie pressed the button.
“Mom!” both Dewey and Huey cried out.
“Boys? What’s going on?” Della asked, yawning. “It’s like three in the morning. What are you doing up? And why are you calling me?”
“It’s a long story, Mom,” Huey said, tears in his eyes.
“Not really,” Dewey said. “We went to the old high school, we went into the basement, and now we’re stuck in an alternate dimension and being hunted by ghouls.”
“WHAT?!” Della shouted, sounding more awake. “Didn’t I say that you were forbidden from going there? You boys are—I’m gonna—First, I’m going to come and rescue you, then I’m going to think of a really good punishment for you.”
The boys started laughing in relief. Their mother was coming for them. Everything was going to be alright.
Della said she would call them again when she got to the school, but they were to stay where they were and to make weapons while they waited. The boys looked around, but there wasn’t much in the office they had sequestered themselves. Cautiously, they crept out into the hallway and found a closet of cleaning supplies. Dewey grabbed the broom, Huey the mop, and Louie took two bottles of cleaning supplies.
“What? Did you see their eyes? They’re huge. And this stuff stings,” Louie said in his defense.
So the boys waited for Della to call, holding their weapons in a death grip and watching the phone. When it finally did light up and vibrate, they were so on edge that they jumped.
“Yeah, Mom?” Louie said when he picked up the phone.
“Okay, I’m at the school, but I can’t find the door to the basement,” Della said. “I can’t remember where they put it.”
“Huey, you studied the blueprints of the school. Where’s the basement?” Louie asked.
“It’s close to the gym. The door is between classrooms 131 and 132,” Huey quickly rattled off.
Louie repeated the information to his mother and waited. She was going to find the basement, transport to this dimension and find them. They would be home safe and sound within the hour.
“Uh…it’s not there,” Della said.
“What? Okay, maybe Huey got it wrong?” Louie said nervously, looking to his brother. But Huey never got things wrong.
“What do you mean it’s not there?” Huey said, his pitch rising to high C. “It’s got to be there. That’s where we found the door to the basement.”
“It’s not there!” Della shouted. “Maybe you got the numbers wrong. I’ll check 113.” Through the speakers, they could hear her breathing loudly. “No. Nononononono.”
“Mom, you’ve got to find it. It’s got to be there,” Dewey pleaded, keeping a tight grip on his broom.
“Boys, I’m not seeing it anywhere. I’ve looked everywhere,” Della said. “You’re going to have to get back to the school on your own.”
The brothers exchanged worried looks.
“You can do this,” Della said. “Just be very careful. Move from one hiding place to another. And don’t hang up. I’ll be listening the whole time.”
“Okay, Mom,” Dewey said, doing his best to be the brave one. “Let’s go. The ones at the park should be gone by now.”
They crept back out onto the street, and they heard not a sound. The lack of noise put them more on edge than ever. They were used to a Duckburg that made noise, even late at night. Luckily the red moon still gave enough light, otherwise they would be walking blind with all the streetlights no longer working.
And it appeared to them that they might get to the school without any trouble if it wasn’t for the nervous Huey, who was feeling as if the stress of starring in his own personal horror film hadn’t made him constantly look around, keeping watch for anything that moved. He was so concerned with looking in all directions that he didn’t see the car as he bumped into it. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem. The cars looked as if they hadn’t worked in years, but the one that Huey ran into still had some battery life in it. And a live car alarm.
The lights to the car flashed and a loud, screeching alarm filled the night. Huey’s screams added to the cacophony.
Dewey and Louie looked at their brother with wide eyes. And although their words couldn’t be heard over the din, their beaks clearly mouthed the word, “Run!”
Together they bolted, knowing that they were only a couple of blocks away from the school. If they could just get out of sight of the car, any ghouls that were attracted to the sound might not see them. But they weren’t so lucky.
As they rounded the corner to the street leading to the high school, they came in line of sight of a ghoul that was racing toward the noise. It zeroed in on the ducklings with mouth wide, teeth extending outward like a snake ready to strike.
Huey and Louie skidded to a stop, terror seizing them. They gravitated to each other.
Then Dewey stepped in, giving a quick yell and hitting the ghoul over the head with his broom. He then stabbed the creature in the gut and when it was bowed over, he cracked the broom like a baseball bat in the creature’s face. Down it went, along with half of Dewey’s broom.
“Come on,” Dewey told his brothers. “Let’s go before more come.”
His warning could have been a reading for the future because they could already see three more creatures coming at them, the red light of the moon illuminating them. They were coming from the opposite direction as the school and coming upon the ducklings fast.
The triplets ran, knowing they wouldn’t be able to outrun the ghouls. They could barely outrun one while on bikes. They nearly made it to the school’s fence when the creatures caught up, and they had to turn and fight.
Having seen their brother defeat one single-handedly, Huey and Louie became emboldened. The ghouls weren’t invulnerable. Huey rushed at the closest one and tripped it with the mop handle, then shoved the whole, grimey mop into the creature’s mouth. The cloth-like tendrils were too much for the ghoul’s wide mouth that it couldn’t spit it back out.
Louie aimed his squirt bottles filled with chemicals right at the last two creature’s eyes, holding them out like a gun-fighter. Just as he predicted, the creatures didn’t like it. They reared back, holding onto their faces and screamed.
“Haha, take that,” Louie said, blowing on one of the nozzles as if clearing smoke from a barrel.
Then the air was filled with noise, the sound of ghoul teeth chattering like the one from before, calling its fellow ghouls to a feast. They could see eyes glowing all around them.
“Get to the school,” Dewey shouted. “We have to reach the basement first.”
They raced up the chain-linked fence, heedless of the barbed-wire on top, leaving behind feathers and drops of blood in their frenzy to run away. They were so filled with fear that they didn’t even consider that they might not be able to get inside the school, that it might be locked up tight like the one from their world. And when they reached for the door and it smoothly opened for them, they didn’t even thought that this might be strange.
Dewey pulled closed the door behind him, panting for breath. Right behind him, bodies thudded into metal, wood and glass with so much force that it was surprising something didn’t break: the doors or the ghouls.
But the doors held…for now.
“Kids! Kids! What’s going on?” Della’s voice came from Louie’s pocket.
Louie pulled out his phone. “We’re okay, Mom. We made it. We’re in the school.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Della said. “You shortened my life by twenty years. Now find the basement and get back home.”
One of the ghouls threw itself at the glass, making more cracks. Another broke through a smaller window, the glass shattering. Luckily, the ghoul could only get an arm through.
“Come on. That won’t hold them long,” Dewey said, leading the way.
But they didn’t get far when they heard more glass breaking and the sounds of feet slapping against tile. Tired as they were, they found it in them to sprint down the hall, passing by classrooms and lockers as the ghouls gained on them.
“There. There it is,” Huey shouted, pointing to two steps that went to the basement door.
The boys didn’t slow down. They basically bounced off the wall as they made the turn at full speed, flying down the two steps and slamming into the door. Huey and Louie fell onto the steps in the inky blackness, but Dewey was still on his feet and jammed his broken broom handle against the door to prevent the ghouls from getting to them.
“We did it! Oh, we did it,” Louie said, gasping. “Hey, Mom. Are you still there? We’re heading down the basement steps.”
“What about the ghouls?” Della asked.
“Well, we have the door jammed, but you might want to have that lock and chain handy once we get back,” Dewey said.
“It’s why the chain was there in the first place,” Della said with frustration. “Donald and I never wanted anyone to go through what we went through.”
“Uh...” Huey said in the dark. “Am I the only one who dropped their flashlight?”
“I’ve got nothing,” Dewey added.
“I’m just glad I have my phone,” Louie said, shaking his phone to turn on the flashlight. “Let’s go.”
This time, they went down much faster, not caring that if they couldn’t properly see, only that they wanted to be home. Despite them going faster, it seemed to take longer for them to reach the bottom of the steps, and when they did, they burst out of the door, smiling at the scene before them. Broken debris, trash piled high in corners, and rats sniffing for any kind of food.
And down the hall was Della. She spotted them, her eyes lighting up and she raced toward them.
“My boys!” she cried out, taking all three of them in a hug. “Oh, my boys are back. My boys are safe and alive.”
“Mom!” they all cried out, taking pleasure in the security of being in her embrace.
They stayed that way for several moments, and Della was the one to break it off.
“Well, we have a lot to talk about when we get home, at least, once you boys had a good night’s sleep, some food in you and a bath,” she said. Then she took a large chain and lock, and wrapped it around the door to prevent anyone else from opening it. “Now, let’s go.”
She held out her hands, taking Dewey and Huey’s while smiling at Louie.
Louie started to follow, when he heard his name being called.
“Louie. Louie! Are you there? Is something wrong? I’ve been waiting for a long time,” Della’s voice came from his pocket.
And Louie froze, taking out his phone. “M-mom?” he whispered.
And that’s when he saw it. The Della who was leading his brothers away, she had two complete, flesh-and-blood legs.