Read Online Sinister Substitute by Wendelin Van Draanen - Free Book Online

enter!
    That idiot was, of course, Tito. And when she heard him begin to unlock the thick ironwood door, Ms. Veronica Krockle’s hardened heart skipped a ferocious beat.
    When the heavy metal security latches outside the room went CLONK, CLONK, CLONK,Ms. Veronica Krockle hefted the chair overhead.
    When the door
squeeeee-eee-eeeaked
open, Ms. Veronica Krockle held her breath.
    Her eyes grew steely.
    And when Tito entered the room, CRAAAAAAAACK, CRUNCH, CLATTER-CLATTER-clatter-clatter, Ms. Veronica Krockle whacked him over his head with the chair.
    Dazed and (additionally) confused, Tito staggered for a few steps, dropped the tray of food, but did not go down. (It is, after all, impossible to knock out a rock.)
    But dazed and confused was all Ms. Veronica Krockle needed. Before Tito could react, she’d scooped up a runaway apple (as she was, at this point, starving), dashed out, slammed the door closed, and shoved in the security latches, locking Tito inside the room.
    “Freedom!” she cried (with a laugh that sounded eerily like “Bwaa-ha-ha”). But after she had descended the tower’s steps and looked around, she had no idea which way to go.

    She hurried to the left but had to stop when she came upon a wide hole in the floor. Above the hole, a thick, knotted rope came out of the wall and looped over a paddle-wheeled pulley, then dangled into the hole and down, down down into a deep, dark abyss.
    “How far down does this go?” she gasped, then did a rapid-fire munch-munch-munch-slurp-crunch of the apple and tossed the core into the abyss.
    She quit chewing, cupped an ear, and waited.
    And waited.
    And
waited
.
    No sound came up the shaft.
    At last, she swallowed the apple in her mouth, shuddered, and backed away.
    But after running in the opposite direction,she soon found herself in a cramped corridor of Zulu masks.
    Now, perhaps when you think of a Zulu mask, you imagine a large, crudely carved, semi-rectangular wooden mask with holes for eyes, warrior markings, and a menacing expression.
    This would, after all, be a reasonable thing to imagine.
    And these masks did, indeed, have those features, but they also had coarse bursts of long, angry hair.
    And eyes.
    Eyeballs
, actually.
    Eyeballs that seemed to be tracking each and every one of Ms. Veronica Krockle’s moves.
    The Zulu masks were on both sides of the corridor, and as Veronica Krockle tiptoed through this tunnel of mad-eyed masks, her head whipped from side to side, trying to follow all the eyes following her. “What madman isbehind this?” she gasped, for in her growly gut she knew that the Bandito Brothers could not possibly be the masterminds of this ghastly sight.
    This was all much too bizarre for those simpletons.
    Much too …
twisted
.
    Then she heard footsteps approaching.
    Hard-heeled,
angry
footsteps.
    Immediately she knew it wasn’t one of the clowns who’d bound and gagged her. From the sound of his footsteps, she quickly sensed that whoever it was was dangerous.
    Now, it’s a well-known fact that when panic strikes, the mind pulls in its welcome mat, drops the blinds, and hides. And pounding on the door and crying, “Help! Emergency!” has little effect. You’re out in the cold.
    Left in the dark.
    In a word, doomed.
    So (feeling both panicked and doomed) Ms.Veronica Krockle did the only thing she could think to do.
    She slapped herself against the wall, held her breath, and widened her eyes, hoping (almost praying) that she’d be mistaken for a Zulu mask.

Chapter 15
UNMASKED
    The simple (although admittedly unkind) truth is that Ms. Veronica Krockle’s fearsome face blended in quite nicely with the Zulu masks. And perhaps she would have gotten away with hiding among them had it not been for one inconvenient fact:
    She had a body.
    Which was, unfortunately for her, something none of the other Zulu masks had.
    And so when Damien Black’s hard-heeled feet rounded the corner (followed by the breathless Angelo and Pablo), he