Fakespeare--Something Stinks in Hamlet Read online

  “Yes, I could!” Kyle said, speeding away from the stomach-turning scene. He opened the door just in time to see a deliveryman get into his truck and drive off. On the stoop was a strange-looking package. It wasn’t in a cardboard box, but a small wooden crate. Kyle thought it might be some new baking supplies for his mom, but as he bent to pick it up, he saw the label:

  To: Kyle Word

  But Kyle’s birthday wasn’t for ages—for 249 days, to be exact. So why was he getting a package?

  “What is it?” Halley asked, appearing behind him.

  “I dunno,” Kyle said. He carried it into the living room. Halley trailed after him, carrying Gabe on her hip.

  The crate was nailed shut, but after a minute Kyle was able to pry the top off with his fingers. Instead of foam peanuts, it was stuffed with straw—straw that smelled like it had been soaked in liquefied trout for a week.

  “Is this from a historical society or something?” Halley said, putting Gabe down. “Are you a Civil War reenactor?”

  Kyle ignored her and brushed away the layer of straw. Underneath it were two books, one on top of the other. He picked up the first and squinted as he read the title.

  “Hamlet?” Kyle said. “Is that like a small ham?”

  “Ugh,” Halley said. “You’ve never heard of Hamlet? It’s only maybe the most famous play ever. I mean unless you count the Ancient Greeks, of course…”

  “This?” Kyle said, looking at the cover. “It looks pretty boring to me. The cover’s not even illustrated—it’s just brown with one word on it. A word that sounds like a miniature pork product.”

  The book was solid and heavy. Almost like picking up one of Gross Gabe’s full diapers. A piece of paper slipped out from between the pages. Halley snatched it up and read:

  “To the newest member of our society, the Get Lost Book Club. I’m impressed, Kyle,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you knew what a book was.” She cleared her throat. “May this be the first of many adventures. Sincerely, the Narrator. And there’s a poem here, too.…”

  “Give me that!” Kyle said, trying to grab for the paper, but she moved it out of his reach. He sighed, peering over her shoulder instead. The note was written in the sloppiest cursive he’d ever seen, and, just like on the spelling worksheet, the letters seemed to skitter around on the page like insects.

  “Ahem…” Halley took a deep breath and read:

  Listen! A prince of skulls cries in the dark—

  Beware, for none see the ghostly mark.

  To read or not to read, that is the question,

  But first off, you must end

  the prince’s oppression.

  Then flip the final page and reach “The End,”

  And soon enough, you will be home again.

  “Weird,” Kyle said. Halley handed the note to him. He quickly glanced over it again and then let it drop to the floor as he turned to the book.

  “You really don’t know who sent it?” Halley asked. “Huh. Maybe this was a surprise for you from your parents or something. I’m sure they’re embarrassed to have a son in fifth grade who can’t read yet.”

  “I can read!” Kyle said quickly. He almost shot back that Halley couldn’t draw, but for all he knew she might be great at that, too.

  Halley crossed her arms. “Oh yeah? Prove it.”

  “Fine!” Kyle flipped through the pages. “Here we go. It starts…” He took a very deep breath and forced his eyes to move slowly across the page: “Act One. Scene One. Eli’s nose. Er … Elvis gnome. Sorry, wait. That’s Elsinore. A platform before the castle. Francisco at his post. Enter Bernardo. BERNARDO: Who’s there?”

  The book was so heavy, his hands were starting to shake. How many pages were in this thing? He could barely turn one.…

  That was when he realized—it wasn’t just his hands that were shaking. The book was shaking.

  He let go. The book hit the ground sooner than it should have. Because it wasn’t just shaking. It was growing.

  Kyle heard some knocking and his mom calling from the kitchen, but her voice was distorted and weirdly distant. He couldn’t make out what she was saying.

  The book was the size of a dog, a coffee table, a car. The covers started opening and closing slowly, then a little faster, then so fast they were a blur. Chomp! Chomp! Chompchompchomp!

  “What’s happening?” Halley shrieked. Her eyes were as large as softballs.

  The book was going to eat them!

  Then there was a weird crackle, and Kyle felt his ears pop. The room dissolved in a blur as the book flipped open, and suddenly the whole world was swirling printed ink on paper, rushing and rushing around them.…

  CHAPTER THREE

  CORRECTION: EVERYTHING STINKS

  Kyle blinked slowly. His head hurt.

  Man, what a weird dream, he thought. He’d dreamed that Halley had come over, acted like a know-it-all, and ruined his afternoon of TV. And then, as if that weren’t bad enough, a book had shown up and swallowed the world.

  Well, at least he was awake now. Home in bed, safe and sound.

  Kind of.

  Maybe.

  Certain things, he noticed, were different. Three things, to be precise.

  1. He was lying on hard stone. Which was definitely not what his bed normally felt like.

  2. When he opened his eyes, he saw the open sky, which was not what he normally saw on his bedroom ceiling.

  3. He smelled dead rats and rotting cabbage, which he was pretty sure he hadn’t stuffed under his bed.

  “Ugh,” said a girl’s voice.

  Kyle sat up. There was Halley, also starting to sit up, still holding Gross Gabe, who was asleep.

  “It wasn’t a dream,” Kyle said. “It wasn’t a dream. But that means, that means…” He looked around at what was clearly the top of a castle tower. “That means I really did miss Allosaurus, MD! Noooooo!” he shouted at the overcast sky.

  “Kyle?” Halley looked around. Her face was as pale as an overcooked noodle. “What happened? Where are we?” Gabe stirred and twisted in her arms.

  “Why are you asking me?” Kyle asked. “All I did was open some book, and now poof! Here we are! Why don’t you tell me what’s going on? You’re the one who likes to read!”

  “Wooooooo,” Gross Gabe shouted, waking up. Halley set him down.

  “Well, it kind of looks like…” Halley trailed off, then she gasped. “I think we’re in a castle. Look at the crenellations!”

  “The what?” Kyle said.

  “The border on the edge of the tower where the stones look like the teeth of a zipper,” Halley said, rolling her eyes. “So archers can shoot between them.” She paused for a second as her nose scrunched up. “Is somebody boiling muddy boots?”

  “I think something is rotten,” Kyle said, sniffing again. “It’s such a weird smell, though. It’s not just garbage and dirty laundry and stuff. It’s like somebody stunk up the castle on purpose.”

  “Maybe,” Halley said. “Castles aren’t known for their great sanitation, but this is a little much.” She swatted at her nose as if she were trying to bat it off her face. “Maybe something bad happened. A spill or something.”

  Kyle stood up and peered out over the side of the tower. Where were they? England? Finland? Disneyland?

  Oh please, he thought, let it be Disneyland! But Kyle had been there last year, and he didn’t remember Disneyland smelling like a truck full of tree mulch driving into a tar pit.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” Halley said, pacing in a tiny circle. “So we’re in a castle. Why? Were we just talking about castles?”

  Kyle crossed his arms, annoyed. “Halley, I just read to you that Scene One takes place in a castle! It was your idea for me to read. The least you could do is pay attention.”

  But Halley still wasn’t listening. She was spinning around wildly, looking in all directions. “Kyle! Do you know what this means? I think … I think we’re inside the book. I think we’re actually in the world of
Hamlet! This must be Elsinore! The royal castle of Denmark a long, long time ago.”

  Kyle gaped at her. “But I don’t want to be in a book!” he said. “I don’t even want to be in a bookstore!”

  “Stop yelling,” Halley snapped. “I’m trying to think.” Her forehead wrinkled like an accordion. “Usually I’d just retrace my steps to get home, but we didn’t take any steps.”

  “If you’re right, and this is page one of the book, maybe we have to read the last page?” Kyle suggested.

  Halley’s eyes widened. “Yeah.… Reading the beginning got us in here—so maybe reading the ending is the way out. Didn’t the poem say something about reaching the end and going home again?”

  “I think so,” Kyle said. “It makes sense. We jumped through time and space like Mal and Cal Worthy!”

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Nobody,” Kyle said quickly. He had never shown anybody except Becca his sketches of the Worthies, and he wasn’t about to show them to a girl whose taste in art involved sparkly starfish.

  “… Well?” Halley said. “What are you waiting for? Read it!”

  “I don’t have it,” Kyle said.

  “What do you mean you don’t have it?” Halley said. Her face had gone from white to ketchup red.

  “Don’t you remember anything?!” Kyle said, barely containing his frustration. “The book got as big as a house! It tried to eat us!”

  “Leave it to you to fail at doing something easy like holding on to a book,” Halley said. “I thought reading it would be the hard part.”

  “I read just fine!” Kyle said, getting even angrier. “Obviously, or we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

  CRACKLE! CRACKLE!

  For a moment he thought a thunderstorm had appeared out of nowhere. But when he looked up, the sky was still blue. In fact, it didn’t really sound like thunder at all. It sounded like a giant was flipping through a book right over their heads. Kyle gulped as a loud voice began to speak:

  They had uncovered the secret of the book, but their journey to find that book would be an adventure all its own.

  Kyle and Halley stared at each other wide-eyed.

  The voice sounded like it was coming through a loudspeaker in the sky, yet … not. It wasn’t echoing right. It sounded big and booming, and strangely close—like it was coming from inside Kyle’s own head. But Halley’s return stare told him she’d heard it, too.

  “Um … hello?” Kyle said. They waited a second.

  “Whoever you are, can you help us?” Halley asked.

  Don’t mind me; I’m the Narrator. I just tell the story. You’re the ones who must live it. I may drop in from time to time to check on you and give a hint. Which I just did, if you were paying attention. Now if you’ll excuse me, it seems I have some business in Verona.

  The giant-page-flip sound filled the air again.

  “Ve-where-a?” Kyle said.

  “Beats me,” Halley said. “But I was right! The book is the way out, which means it must be around here somewhere. This castle must have a hundred rooms. One of them is bound to be a library.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go storming into the castle,” Kyle pointed out. “In fact, the whole point of a castle is to keep people from storming it. They’ll throw us in the dungeon if we get caught. And if it smells this bad up here, just imagine the dungeon’s stench.”

  “Do you have a better idea?” Halley said.

  “Yes!” Kyle said. “I think we should find whoever’s in charge and beg for mercy. Maybe impress them with our magical future clothes. Then, we can work on finding the book. Gross Gabe thinks I’m right. Don’t you, Gross G—”

  He turned to look at his brother—just in time to see Gross Gabe crawl right off the edge of the tower.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BABIES MAY SHIFT DURING FLIGHT

  Kyle’s stomach dropped as if it had just plunged from a castle wall, too. Kyle and Halley sprinted for the edge of the parapet, and Kyle dived to his belly.

  “Zoom!” Gross Gabe shouted. He had fallen all of six feet before his diaper had snagged on a gargoyle. He waved his arms happily, swaying back and forth.

  “That’s not gonna hold for long,” Halley said. “We have to get him!”

  Kyle started to shimmy over the edge. He barely fit through the gap in the crenellation. He stretched his arms as far as they went, but still he couldn’t quite get his hands around Gabe.

  Mom was going to kill Kyle! She’d told him it was his job to make sure Gabe played safely, and even in a Mal and Cal adventure, swinging a hundred feet above ground wouldn’t qualify as “safe.”

  “Hey! You up there!” a man’s voice called from below. Looking down past Gabe’s butt, Kyle saw two guardsmen in chain mail and helmets, carrying spears. “Where did you come from?!” one of them yelled.

  “Help!” Kyle shouted back. Couldn’t they see his brother was in danger? “Please, help!”

  But they made no move to help. They stayed where they were, leaning on their spears and chewing something that from a distance looked very much like doughnuts.

  “Don’t make us come up there!” one of them said. But his mouth was full, so it sounded more like Dumph mumph iss com up furr.

  Kyle’s mouth was dry. What would Mal and Cal Worthy do?

  “Lower!” he called to Halley. “I need to go lower!”

  Halley locked her arms around his ankles, and he eased himself over the edge. His stomach leaped for a moment as his weight shifted completely off the tower—and his stomach wasn’t great to begin with, thanks to the rotten-vegetable-and-moldy-cardboard stink.

  “A little lower!” he called again.

  “Urrg,” she said, straining to hold him. “Just hurry up or you’ll be going a lot lower.” She leaned farther over the edge, and Kyle finally got his hands on Gross Gabe’s waist.

  “Zoom!” Gross Gabe yelled again, and pushed off the gargoyle with his legs. The momentum made his weight pull much harder on Kyle, and he heard the gritty sound of Halley’s stupid sparkly hot-pink sneakers sliding off the tower.…

  “Ahhhhh!” Halley screamed.

  “Ahhhhh!” Kyle screamed.

  “Zooooooooom!” Gross Gabe laughed.

  So this is it, Kyle thought as the world seemed to slow down. This was how he would meet his end. A victim of a giant, hungry book and gravity.

  Well, at least it was original.

  For a second, Kyle thought they must have fallen into the world’s largest marshmallow, but marshmallows didn’t smell like a crowded duck pond.

  He came to the surface, coughing out dirty fluff, and Halley’s and his brother’s stunned faces emerged a moment later.

  “The goose down!” one of the guards shouted, as both of them rushed forward.

  “Foo you know how fong it fook to fill tha fart?” The other guard spat out feathers as he spoke. “I mean, cart?”

  Kyle pulled himself to his feet, brushing goose feathers from his shirt.

  “Yeah, we’re, uh, real sorry about that,” he said. “But we don’t want to be here, either. Our arrival was completely an accident.”

  “Could you direct us to the library, please?” said Halley. “We’re trying to find Hamlet.”

  “They want the prince!” the fatter guard said, tightening his grip on his spear.

  “Oh no,” the other guard groaned. “Are you one of Prince Hamlet’s stupid pranks? You tell him that his crazy jokes are wasting our time!”

  Halley shook her head quickly, her ponytail snapping back and forth like the tail of a kite.

  “No,” she said. “We’re not playing any pranks. We’re just looking for the library.”

  “You must be spies, then!” the fat guard said. “I told you, Bernardo.”

  “Actually, Francisco, you said they were gnomes invading from a flying ship, but as usual I tried to ignore you.”

  “Gnomes are real, I’m telling you,” Francisco said, bristling. “You just need to pay more a
ttention.”

  “Attention to what?” said Bernardo. “Your ravings about creatures from fairy land? Like when you started yelling at that horse yesterday?”

  “It was a unicorn!” snapped Francisco, growing red in the face.

  “IT WAS A HORSE WITH A CARROT IN ITS MOUTH!” Bernardo shouted, rounding on Francisco. Kyle turned to Halley.

  “This is our chance,” he whispered. “Run!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

  Kyle scooped up Gross Gabe and tore across the courtyard to a small side gate in the castle wall. If only he had Cal Worthy’s super jet pack … The rapid smack of Halley’s footsteps sounded right behind him. If everyone guarding the castle was as distractible as the first pair of guards, maybe they had a chance.

  “Hey! Stop!” Francisco shouted.

  Chain mail clinked as Francisco and Bernardo gave chase. Kyle and Halley dashed through the open gate, only to skid to a stop at the edge of a moat—a moat twelve feet wide, filled with pitch-black water, and even if they could swim across it, the opposite side was too steep for them to be able to climb out.

  If Kyle remembered anything about castles, there was only one way across the moat.

  “Drawbridge is this way!” said Halley, executing a quick right turn. Kyle rolled his eyes as he ran after her. She even interrupted his thoughts. “Hurry!”

  “I’m … hurrying…,” he gasped. His brother didn’t weigh much more than a potted fern, but carrying him wasn’t easy, especially because all the bumping around was making Gross Gabe even more gassy than usual.

  “Weee—URP—eeee!” he shouted. “URRRRP!”

  They came to a corner. Kyle couldn’t see past Halley, so when she stopped suddenly to turn, he had no warning. He plowed right into her.

  Once again, all three of them went tumbling through the air.

  SPLASH!

  Kyle hit the icy water with a painful belly flop. A massive gulp of moat water forced its way into his mouth. It tasted like a ten-year-old truck tire. He pushed his head above water and blinked his eyes clear, shivering, coughing, and spitting.