The Splendid Baron Submarine Read online

  The Splendid Baron Submarine

  Eric Bower

  Amberjack Publishing

  New York | Idaho

  Titles in The Bizarre Baron Inventions

  The Magnificent Flying Baron Estate

  The Splendid Baron Submarine

  The Wonderful Baron Doppelgänger

  For George and Doris Erk.

  Very Peculiar Underwear, Stephen

  September 14th, 1891

  “And that’s when the killer monkeys showed up. They all started to attack me, slapping me senseless with their big monkey paws, when suddenly—”

  “Thank you, Waldo,” Miss Danielle said quickly. “That was a very . . . interesting report. But I think we’ve heard enough fiction for today.”

  I winced, just as I did every time someone called me Waldo instead of W.B., since W.B. is what I prefer to be called. But then I smiled and nodded my head, happy that my teacher had appreciated my report to the class about how I had spent my summer.

  It wasn’t until I had sat back down at my desk that I realized I might have misunderstood what she’d said.

  “Wait, Miss Danielle?” I said, raising my hand. “Is fiction the one that is true, or the one that is made up?”

  “Made up,” Miss Danielle answered. “Fictional stories are made up, and nonfiction stories are true. Now, class, we will be discussing—”

  “But it’s not fiction,” I interrupted her. “What I said was the absolute truth. And I can prove it.”

  I heard the rest of the students begin to whisper and giggle to their friends. They always whispered to their friends whenever I talked about my family. It used to bother me when they’d do that. In fact, sometimes I’d whisper along with them, so I wouldn’t feel left out. I’d look around and whisper long words like “hasenpfeffer” and “sousaphone,” so it would seem like I had friends in class too.

  But now I’ve sort of gotten used to the whispers, as well as the names they call me, and the scorpions they hide in my lunch box, and the hot coals they slip into my trousers, and the kid who sits behind me who occasionally decides to give me a haircut without me asking for one. I suppose you can get used to just about anything if you deal with it for long enough.

  Except maybe the hot coals. I’m still not too fond of them.

  “You cannot prove a single word of your story,” Miss Danielle told me as she went to the closet and pulled out a large, cone-shaped hat, “because it did not happen. It’s obviously a lie, which you’ve made up in order to get attention. Now go sit in the corner and wear the dunce cap until you’re ready to tell the truth.”

  “That pointy dunce cap sure looks a lot like the hats that were worn by the ghosts who were—”

  “That’s enough, Waldo Baron!” Miss Danielle interrupted, angrily stuffing my head into the dunce cap. “I won’t listen to any more of your ridiculous stories. Go sit in the corner, right now.”

  The other children laughed. I walked to the corner and sat in what had become my regular seat in class, while wearing what had become my regular hat. I didn’t really mind wearing the dunce cap. It kept my head warm, and it made me a good eighteen inches taller, too. Plus, it provided great protection for when I’d trip and land on my head, which you could say I did more than the average kid.

  As I sat in the corner, I stared at the little hole in the wall and waited for Howard to come out.

  I’d recently learned that a small family of mice lived in the wall of the Pitchfork schoolhouse. At first I thought that it was just one mouse, which I named Howard. But there are actually five different mice in there, which I’ve also named Howard. The Howards like to poke their heads out and stare at me while I’m sitting in the corner, thinking about what I’ve done to upset Miss Danielle and the class.

  I waved to the mousy face that poked out of the hole. Howard stared at me and shook its head. Howard can’t believe that I’m in trouble yet again. I can’t believe it either.

  Believe it or not, I’m not actually a bad kid. I just have a lot of strange adventures with my parents, Sharon and McLaron Baron (I call them M and P, and they’re quite possibly the cleverest inventors in the country), as well as their assistant, Rose Blackwood (whose brother, Benedict Blackwood, is quite possibly the worst criminal in the country), and my Aunt Dorcas (who is quite possibly the eggiest and weepiest aunt in the country). And sometimes, when I try to tell people about these strange adventures, they think I’m lying.

  It’s really not my fault. Miss Danielle is the one who always asks us to give reports on what we do during our holiday breaks, and what our parents do for a living. I just tell her the truth, and then she puts the dunce cap on my head and makes me sit in the corner. I suppose I could lie and tell her I do all the boring things that the other kids do with their families, like shear sheep, sew bonnets, and plant potatoes, but I don’t like to lie. I’m not particularly good at lying.

  Are you confused?

  Alright, let me give you an example. Here is the report I just gave to my class about how I spent my summer vacation . . .

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Oh dear,” P said. “I wonder how we’re supposed to answer that.”

  A knock on the door isn’t usually a problem for us. But P had just shown us his newest invention, a nifty little device that he named the Gravity-Switcher-Ma-Thinger.

  He wasn’t the greatest at naming his inventions.

  The Gravity-Switcher-Ma-Thinger looked a bit like a glow-in-the-dark accordion, and when you pressed a button at the end of it, it caused the gravity in the room to flip. The force that normally pulled you to the floor would suddenly start pulling you up to the ceiling, which was why my parents and Rose Blackwood and I were all currently on the ceiling. In fact, everything in the living room was on the ceiling, including our sofa, chairs, table, lamps, the area rug, and our bookshelves.

  This is the sort of thing that happens quite regularly here at the Baron Estate.

  “W.B.!” M said angrily. “I told you to sweep the floors this morning. All of the dust and dirt from the floor is now up here. The ceiling is filthy!”

  “Sorry.”

  My stomach was flipped upside down as well, and I was finding it very difficult to keep down the bacon, cheese, pickle, tomato, fried onion, and jalapeno sandwich that I had eaten for my third breakfast. It was rather dizzying to be experiencing the living room upside down, and I can’t say that I enjoyed it. I missed our normal gravity, which kept us all safely on the ground where we belonged.

  “I think I prefer having the ceiling as the floor and the floor as the ceiling,” P declared, resting his fists on his hips. “It just feels right. Perhaps I should make this a permanent change in the Baron Estate. From now on, we are an upside down family!”

  P was the only one of us who actually looked like he was upside down, but that’s because my father always looked like he was upside down, even when he was right-side-up. My father’s hair is always standing straight up from the root. You see, his head is rather fond of lightning (he’s been struck by lightning over twenty times), and every time it hits him, his white hair turns a shade whiter, and stands up in wild porcupine spikes.

  And, believe it or not, that’s not even one of the top ten weirdest things about my father.

  “Um, Mr. and Mrs. Baron?” Rose said quickly. “I can tell from the look on W.B.’s face that he’s about to be sick. That will be really gross and really difficult to clean from the ceiling later on.”

  “Oh dear,” said M as she frowned at me. “He is a bit green, isn’t he?”

  I held in a burp.r />
  There was another knock at the door, and this one sounded a bit more urgent. My father walked over to the wall and tried to grab the doorknob. But he couldn’t reach it, even when he stood on his tiptoes. I’ve noticed that most doorknobs aren’t located in a place on the door that allows people who are on the ceiling to reach them. That’s clearly a silly design flaw, not to mention incredibly inconsiderate towards our country’s upside down population . . . which I suppose just consisted of my family.

  “Perhaps I should invent some sort of an arm extender,” P said as he thoughtfully stroked his nose. “That way I wouldn’t have so much trouble answering the door.”

  “Or you could just turn off the Gravity-Switcher-Ma-Thinger?” M suggested. “Whoever is at the door might be upset if they were to walk inside and suddenly fall up to the ceiling.”

  “That’s true. Especially if W.B. gets sick all over it,” P agreed. Then, without warning, he switched off the Gravity-Switcher-Ma-Thinger.

  Everyone and everything fell from the ceiling to the floor. No one was seriously hurt, though a bookshelf did land on my head. But my head had been through worse. My head attracts heavy things in the same way that P’s head attracts lightning. I wish I had inherited M’s head, which didn’t really seem to attract much of anything.

  With our living room now in shambles, M stood up and went to the door, adjusting her glasses and hair before opening it.

  “Hello,” she said. “How may I help you?”

  Two of the largest men that I’d ever seen slowly lumbered into our home. They looked like a pair of gorillas that had been shaved and stuffed into suits, though that would be a pretty lousy thing to do to a gorilla.

  One of the men was holding a piece of paper up to his face and reading from it very carefully. I could tell by the creases in his forehead that reading was not one of his favorite things to do. In fact, I could actually hear the sounds of his brain straining to understand the words, and it was not a pleasant noise. It sounded very squishy, like someone stepping on an old pumpkin.

  “Mr. McLaron Baron?” he finally said to my mother, in a rather dopey sounding voice.

  “No, but you’re close,” M told him politely. “I’m his wife. What can I do for you, sir?”

  The large man looked back at his paper and struggled to read for a moment, his eyebrows bouncing like a pair of rabid caterpillars, before looking up again.

  “Mrs. Sharon Baron?” he said.

  “That’s me.”

  The other large man pointed to me and Rose.

  “And those two is Rose Blackwood and Waldo Baron?”

  I winced. I really hate it when people call me Waldo. It’s pretty high on my list of my least favorite things to be called, along with “weirdo,” “chubby,” “dummy,” “clumsy,” and “Julia,” which is what the weird old man at the grocery store calls me.

  “Yes, we are. And who might you be?” my mother asked the men, emphasizing the correct grammar.

  “It don’t matter who we are,” one of the large men said gruffly. “We’re gonna need you all to come with us.”

  “Yeah,” the other one echoed. “We’re gonna need you all to come with us.”

  “Alright,” said my father, who stepped forward to follow them out the door, despite the fact that he wasn’t wearing shoes.

  My father is a genius, but sometimes he can be very scatterbrained and naive. I’d like to blame it on all the times that his head’s been struck by lightning, but he’s always been like that. He’s just a unique person, which I suppose is a nice way of saying that he’s a bit of a nut.

  “Wait, McLaron,” my mother said as she caught my father by the arm. “I don’t think we should go anywhere with these men until they tell us who they are, as well as what they want, and where they’re expecting us to go.”

  “I told you,” one of the men grunted as he scratched the inside of his nose with his thumb. “It don’t matter who we are.”

  “Yeah, it don’t matter who we are,” the other one echoed.

  “Yeah, it don’t matter who they are, Sharon,” my father told my mother. “Let’s go with them. You’re always so suspicious of large and dangerous looking strangers who come to our door and give us mysterious orders. I don’t understand why.”

  As you can see, it’s not particularly difficult to convince my father to do something. Usually all you have to do is repeat yourself a few times. Luckily, my mother has much better sense than my father, or we’d all be in a lot of trouble.

  “What happens if we refuse to go with you?” my mother asked the men.

  The two men began to pound their fists into their palms.

  “Oh, you’ll be going with us,” said one of them. “We guarantee it.”

  “Yeah, we guarantee it,” the other echoed.

  “Why do you always repeat what the other guy says?” I asked. “Do you think we’re not hearing him?”

  The echoing man blushed, but then he pounded his palm with his fist even harder.

  “You’re coming with us, or we’re going to play the song ‘Camptown Races’ on your spines,” he growled, and then whistled the first few notes from “Camptown Races.”

  “Camptown Races” was a catchy tune that we’d been singing around the Baron Estate for the past few weeks. It was currently our favorite song, and whenever one of us started to sing it, the others had to join in. We sang it at breakfast, lunch, and dinner; we sang it when we did our chores; and we sang it before we went to sleep at night. So when the large man whistled the opening notes to the song, I couldn’t help but hum along. Rose Blackwood snapped her fingers, M tapped her feet, and P pulled two spoons from his pocket and began to slap them rhythmically against his thigh. Soon we were all tapping and humming, clapping and snapping, singing and whistling, while the two shaved gorillas began to whoop and twirl as we had ourselves a little “Camptown Races” hoedown. One of the men showed us a new dance called “the stinky onion,” which was a lot of fun to do until I somehow managed to get my head stuck in the fireplace.

  The fun always stops when my head gets stuck in the fireplace.

  “While I do love ‘Camptown Races,’ I’m sorry to say that it’s not possible for you to play that song on our spines,” my father told the two large men when we had all finished dancing. “You see, a spinal column wouldn’t produce the proper variety of notes due to its shape. Now, if you were to take our rib cages, you might be able to play them like a xylophone if you—”

  One of the men grabbed my father’s lips and pinched them tightly together so he couldn’t speak. They clearly weren’t interested in learning which parts of our bodies they could use as musical instruments.

  “You talk too much,” the man told him.

  “Mmmmphllegnnnmm,” P agreed through his smushed lips.

  The men then began to pull my father towards the door by his mouth.

  “Stop that!” M cried.

  “Let go of him!” warned Rose Blackwood. “Or else.”

  “Or else what?” asked the man pulling my father’s face.

  “Yeah, or else what?” the other one echoed, then he blushed as he glanced at me.

  “Yhhmomehmhuhhff?” my father asked.

  “Or else . . .” Rose began, and then looked to me for help.

  Back when she was still trying to be a villain (like her evil brother), Rose Blackwood carried a gun. But she didn’t carry one anymore. Now she was an inventor’s assistant, which was a much more respectable job, though it meant she only carried inventor things, like small tools, and pencils, and rulers, and goggle cleaner, and throat spray for when my parents’ throats hurt from too much maniacal inventor laughter.

  Suddenly I had an idea. I don’t get them often, but when I do get them, they tend to be doozies.

  “Or else this!” I cried, grabbing the Gravity-Switcher-Ma-Thinger and pressing the
button on the end.

  Suddenly, everything and everyone on the floor was once again on the ceiling, including the two shaved gorillas.

  “Oh dear, I forgot to tell them to wipe their feet,” M said with a sigh. “Now there will be scuff marks all over the ceiling.”

  The two men were unable to wipe their feet, since they’d both been knocked unconscious by the confusing fall up to the ceiling. They hadn’t expected to fall up because no one ever expects to fall up. It would be like expecting a tap dancing duck to suddenly pop out of your birthday cake. You can hope for it, but it probably isn’t going to happen.

  Probably.

  Rose took the paper that one of the men had been holding and quickly read it.

  “Good thinking, W.B.,” my father said to me. “I was beginning to miss the ceiling as well. It’s much nicer up here.”

  “That’s not why he did it, dear,” M said, patting P on his spiky head. “And that was a very clever way of saving us, W.B., though I’m still upset with you for not sweeping the floor.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Baron?” Rose said. “You should take a look at this.”

  “What is it, Rose?” M asked.

  Rose handed the paper to my mother, who adjusted her glasses and read from it out loud.

  “Mongo and Knuckles, please collect Mr. McLaron Baron, Mrs. Sharon Baron, Waldo Baron, and Rose Blackwood from the Baron Estate, and bring them to me. Do not tell them your names, and do not answer any of their questions. Sincerely, Levi P. Morton V.P.U.S.”

  “V.P.U.S? What does V.P.U.S. stand for?” I asked.

  “I’m pretty sure it stands for ‘Very Peculiar Underwear, Stephen,’” my father answered.

  “V.P.U.S. stands for ‘Vice President of the United States,’” my mother told me.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded knowingly.

  “I’m positive. Levi P. Morton is the name of the current Vice President of the United States, so this letter must have been written by him. What else could V.P.U.S. stand for?”