Invasion of the Junkyard Hog Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2014 by Bill Doyle

  Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2014 by Scott Altmann

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone Book and the colophon are trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web!

  SteppingStonesBooks.com

  randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Doyle, Bill H.

  Invasion of the junkyard hog / by Bill Doyle; illustrated by Scott Altmann. pages cm.

  “A Stepping Stone book.”

  Summary: Nine-year-old cousins Keats and Henry must find a lost magical compass before a destructive magic-sniffing junkyard hog finds it first.

  ISBN 978-0-385-37130-8 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-0-385-37131-5 (lib. bdg.) —

  ISBN 978-0-385-37132-2 (ebook)

  [1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Pigs—Fiction. 3. Cousins—Fiction.]

  I. Altmann, Scott, illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ7.D7725In 2014 [Fic]—dc23 2013008373

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  To five magical friends from 1808

  —B.D.

  For Addie, Dylan, and Melanie

  —S.A.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. WAND WANTED

  2. BEWARE OF THE HOG

  3. CHOPPER ZONE

  4. AVALANCHE!

  5. TUNNEL OF TROUBLE

  6. CAR GRAVEYARD

  7. CATCH THAT HOG

  8. ALL THE WAY HOME

  About the Author

  “HENRY!” KEATS SHOUTED for his cousin. “Help! I’m going to fall!”

  Keats was alone in his backyard on Tanglewood Lane. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem. But he was teetering on a pair of wooden stilts—four feet off the ground.

  Each time Keats tried to step off, one stilt slid away from the other. It was like standing on two giant chopsticks … on ice.

  This isn’t my fault! Keats thought. He’d never be stuck up here if he didn’t have so much free time. The library was closed this week for a summer cleaning. And he’d read all his own books at least twice.

  So when he’d spotted the stilts next to the patio door, he’d climbed up on them. What else was he supposed to do?

  Wobbling even more, he shouted, “Henry!” Keats’s cousin lived next door, but he was nowhere in sight. Keats tried again, even louder. “Help!”

  Suddenly Henry stepped out from behind a tree. The surprise almost knocked Keats off balance. Had Henry been back there watching the whole time?

  “What’s up, cuz?” Henry was nine years old, just like Keats, and usually a couple inches taller. Now he grinned up at Keats. “Huh,” he said. “I guess Slippery Stilts aren’t my World’s Greatest Plan after all.”

  Keats groaned. “You and your crazy World’s Greatest Plans! Just get me off these things!”

  “Hmmm.” Henry pretended to study the stilts. “Oh, I know what would do the trick,” he said, and snapped his fingers. “A magic wand!”

  “Ugh!” Keats should have known Henry would say that.

  Earlier that summer, the cousins had taken on odd jobs for a magician named Mr. Cigam. As a reward, Mr. Cigam had given them a magic wand. Henry wanted to use it all the time for his nutty ideas. First he thought of selling roller skates for cats. Then he came up with a plan to knit leashes for worms. Finally Keats had hidden the wand under his bed.

  “You left these stilts there on purpose!” Keats said. He swayed back and forth. “You knew I’d need help. You just want the wand!”

  “No way!” Henry was scratching his chin. That was a sure sign he wasn’t being honest. “I guess I’ll go find another way to get you down.”

  Keats couldn’t believe it. Henry was leaving!

  “Henry!” Keats shouted. “Wait!”

  “Just kidding,” Henry said, turning back. “If you really need help …”

  That did it. Keats wasn’t as good at athletic stuff as Henry. Still he wasn’t a total klutz. “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll do it myself.”

  Big mistake. The instant Keats lifted one foot off a stilt, the other stilt slipped across the patio. He tried to catch himself, but now both stilts were sliding. He felt like a moving goalpost.

  “Hang on, Keats!” Henry moved fast, just not fast enough. The stilts slid off the patio. They hit the grass and stopped … but Keats kept moving.

  FLA—pinggg!

  He flew sideways through the air, as if flicked by a giant finger. The stilts clattered to the patio. Keats braced himself to smack into the ground.

  Instead, with a whoosh, he sank shoulder first into two pillowy garbage bags. “What …?” he gasped, leaning on one elbow.

  Henry laughed. “I put out bags of grass clippings and leaves this morning, in case you fell.” He jumped, spun in the air, and landed on a bag next to Keats. “You didn’t think I’d leaf my best friend hanging, did you?”

  Keats whacked Henry’s shoulder and opened his mouth—

  Keeeeee! A high-pitched shriek cut him off.

  “Did you do that?” Henry asked, eyes wide.

  Keats shook his head.

  Eeettsss! A different sound, just as piercing, filled the air. “Is that inside my house?” Keats said.

  The cousins hopped to their feet. They ran through the patio door and into the living room. The house was empty. Both their moms were at work at the Purple Rabbit Market.

  Dhenn!

  “That came from the basement!” Henry said.

  The cousins rushed through the kitchen and down the stairs. In the lead, Henry suddenly stopped. “Wait a second, Keats!” he warned.

  Too late. Keats bumped into him, and they fell onto the basement’s orange shag carpet.

  Down there, new noises blared and blasted all around them. Keats felt like he’d tumbled into the middle of a band playing the world’s weirdest music.

  Eeettsss!

  “It’s the radiator!” Keats said. He climbed to his feet and pointed to an old heater in the corner.

  Dhenn!

  “No,” Henry said. “It’s the blow-up dinosaur!” He pointed to the shelf of beach toys.

  Reeee!

  Keats looked around, his stomach flip-flopping. “The sounds are coming from everywhere.”

  It was true. Anything with air inside—from a life jacket to a football—was hissing, sizzling, or whistling. It was like they were teapots filled with boiling water. And the noises were getting louder.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Henry said. He pulled Keats toward the stairs, but they didn’t get far. Jets of steam blasted out of the holes in a watering can. They hit Keats’s arm.

  “Hey!” he shouted. Good thing he was wearing his jacket.

  The steam pushed the cousins into the middle of the room. Henry ducked under the steam and snatched the plastic lid off a big tub of old magazines.

  “This can be our shield!” Henry yelled. “Make a run for the stairs!”

  But Keats didn’t move. “Hold on,” he said. “
There’s something strange about the sounds. Listen!”

  Henry stood still as the air whistled and hissed.

  Keee! Eeettsss! Annnn! Dhenn! Reeee!

  “You’re right!” Henry’s eyes went wide.

  “When you put the noises together, it sounds like Keats and Henry!”

  “This could be magic,” Keats said. He moved a few steps to his left and Henry followed. In the exact center of the room, the weird sounds clicked into place. The cousins heard a message made up of mismatched notes.

  Keats and Henry,

  Our stepbrother is Archibald Cigam. He suggested we contact you. We have a magical job for you today at the Tophat Junkyard. Will you accept?

  Yours sincerely,

  Lillian and Beatrice Cigam

  Right away, the message started over. The hot air shrieked even louder around them. Soon not even the plastic lid would protect them from the blasting steam.

  “What should we do?” Keats yelled. Henry shouted something back, but Keats couldn’t hear over all the noise.

  If the steam got even stronger next time the message played, they’d be in big trouble. When the message got to “Will you accept?” Henry nudged Keats.

  The cousins shouted at the same time, “Yes! We accept!”

  Click! Like someone had flipped a switch, the shrieking and steam stopped. Keats’s ears rang as he and Henry caught their breath.

  “Looks like we have another job,” Henry said finally. “And, Keats, this time—”

  “Okay, okay,” Keats agreed, knowing what Henry was about to say. “This time we’re bringing the wand!”

  THE COUSINS HOPPED on their bikes and took off toward Main Street. The Tophat Junkyard sat outside town on the other side of Steep Cliff Hill.

  “Pick up the pace, Keats,” Henry said. “My mom left chicken in the fridge. I want to be back home for lunch!”

  “Time for turbo speed, Roget!” Keats called to his bike. He struggled to keep up with Henry, especially on the bigger hills. Henry made biking uphill look easy, even wearing his backpack.

  The cousins pedaled by the last of the houses in town, past the park, and up one more long hill. Finally the road flattened out. A twenty-foot-high fence stretched along the left side for at least half a mile.

  Henry slowed down. “That’s the junkyard,” he said. “But how do we get inside?”

  “There must … be a gate …,” Keats said, still huffing.

  Sure enough, up ahead a short driveway led to a closed metal gate. A sign with big block letters had been welded to the gate. It read BEWARE OF THE HOG.

  “Hog?” Henry chuckled. “Looks like someone could use one of your dictionaries, Keats.”

  The cousins got off their bikes, and Keats pushed the gate. It moved a few inches, but a thick chain lock held it shut. “Hello!” he shouted through the narrow opening.

  No one answered. All Keats heard was the wind blowing through the cornfield across the road.

  Henry gave the gate a shove, too. “It won’t budge,” he said. “And our bikes won’t fit through the crack. We’ll have to leave them here.” When Keats hesitated, Henry sighed. “Don’t worry. Roget will be fine.”

  Turning his body to squeeze through the gate, Henry slipped into the junkyard first. “Stunner,” Keats heard him say. “Keats, you’ve got to see this!”

  Keats followed, squirming his way inside. When he took a quick look around, his heartbeat kicked up.

  The cousins stood on a dirt path wide enough for a dump truck. On either side, two solid walls of junk soared into the air.

  Stacks of rusting washing machines loomed next to heaps of busted TVs. Piles of broken lawn mowers sat side by side with towers of stoves, lamps, and toilets.

  “Whoa,” Keats breathed. “This is the second-coolest place I’ve ever seen.”

  Henry laughed. “Yeah, but the library doesn’t have one of those.” He pointed to a bulldozer with a giant scooper. It was parked next to a two-story-high crane that dangled a magnet the size of a small car.

  Keats whistled. “Amazing! So do you think Mr. Cigam’s stepsisters are in there?” He nodded toward a large shed farther up the path. A sign on its door read OFFICE.

  “One way to find out!” Henry said.

  As they started walking, a shadow rippled on the ground in front of them. Something passed between them and the sun, like a cloud or a giant bird. But when Keats looked up, he didn’t see anything.

  For some reason, Keats shivered. “Let’s keep moving,” he said. They picked up speed on the dusty path to the windowless shed. When Henry raised a hand to knock on the tin door, it creaked open. A woman’s wrinkled face, topped by a wild beehive of silver hair, appeared. “Olleh!” she chirped.

  Another, slightly older face joined the first. “She meant to say hello,” the second woman said. “I’m Beatrice, and this is my sister, Lillian. We’re so pleased you gentlemen got our message. Well, come in. Come in!”

  The sisters backed into the shed. Keats gave Henry a look, but Henry just shrugged. Together they went through the door. Inside the small room, sunlight shone through tiny cracks in the metal ceiling.

  Now that he could see the sisters better, Keats decided they were about his grandma’s age. They wore leather jackets over ball gowns. It was as if they had left a fancy party to take a motorcycle ride.

  But the strangest thing about the sisters? They were walking backward and sideways.

  “Are you okay?” Keats asked as Beatrice backed into a coatrack.

  “Enif, enif,” Lillian said.

  Keats was about to ask what she meant when Beatrice said, “No reason to lie, Lillian dear.” Turning to the cousins, she added, “No, we’re not fine. Take a seat, gentlemen.”

  The cousins sat down on stools at a workbench piled high with boat propellers.

  “Do you own a compass?” Beatrice asked.

  “Uh, sure,” Keats said, thrown by the out-of-the-blue question. “My dad’s car has one so we know what direction we’re heading in.”

  “Well, my sister and I had a compass, too,” Beatrice said. “We were making spells with it when something went wrong.”

  Keats shot Henry a look that said, See what playing with magic can do?

  Henry rolled his eyes. “What happened?” he asked the sisters.

  Beatrice sighed. “We cast a dizziness spell. It gave us that wonderful feeling you get when you spin around and around and around.”

  Lillian clapped her hands happily at the memory.

  “But before we could set things right,” Beatrice went on, “our stepbrother Archibald accidentally threw the compass into a box of old toys. He dumped the box somewhere in this junkyard.”

  “Oh!” Keats said. “So without the compass, you’ve lost your sense of direction?”

  Beatrice nodded. “We don’t know which way is what! Poor Lillian even talks backward.” She sighed. “That’s better, of course, than talking sideways. Or diagonally.”

  “Lufwa!” Lillian said, bumping into her sister.

  “So we bought the junkyard. We closed it and moved here to look for the compass,” Beatrice explained. “We even cast a spell on a hog to help us. Hogs can sniff out things, you know. But that went … a little wrong.”

  Keats looked more closely at her faded dress. “How long have you been here?”

  “Shtnom!” Lillian chirped.

  “Yes, months,” Beatrice said. “That’s why we need you gentlemen to find the compass. We used the last of our magic to get in touch with you.”

  “You’re out of magic?” Henry said. “No problem.” He slipped off his backpack and reached inside. “Try this.”

  Henry held out the wand to the sisters.

  Lillian took one look at the goofy rod with the lightbulb on top and ran backward into the wall. “On!” she shouted.

  “Oh, it’s not on,” Henry said, waving the wand around. “We don’t even know if it still works or—”

  “Yooodooohooo!” A yodel came fro
m outside. Then a whooshing noise. Since there were no windows in the shed, Keats couldn’t see what was making the sounds.

  Beatrice yelled, “Put the wand away!”

  Before Henry could … WHAM! Something slammed into the side of the shed.

  The floor tilted, and Henry and Keats were tossed off their stools. Henry held on to the wand but dropped the backpack. It tumbled past the sisters’ feet as they rushed backward and sideways in a panic.

  “Wh-what’s happening?” Keats sputtered as the building was struck a second time.

  WHAM!

  This time the entire shed lifted off the ground. Was it going to flip over? The propellers slid off the table in a series of crashes.

  Lillian yelled, “Goh!”

  “It’s the flying junkyard hog!” Beatrice shouted to the cousins.

  A tusk as long as an elephant’s speared the wall from the outside. It sliced through the metal like a can opener through a tin of tuna.

  “The hog you brought here can fly?” Henry asked, leaping out of the way as a tool cabinet fell over.

  “Now it can!” Beatrice said. “The junkyard is filled with magical rubbish. The hog found a flying charm that gave it wings!”

  The hog’s other tusk poked through the wall and carved upward, lifting the shed higher.

  Keats held on to the leg of the workbench to keep from sliding across the floor. “What does it want?” he yelled above the screeching of tearing metal.

  “It smells the magic of the wand!” Beatrice shouted. “Put it back in the bag!”

  Scrambling, Keats snatched the backpack and tossed it to Henry. The tusks were cutting straight lines up to the ceiling. Soon the entire wall would peel open.

  “Yrruh!” Lillian shouted.

  “Hurry!” Beatrice cried.

  Henry stuffed the wand inside the bag and zipped it shut. The instant the bag closed, everything went quiet. The tusks froze and then slid slowly back out through the wall.

  Freed, the tilted shed rocked to the ground with a wa-oomph. Keats’s teeth clicked together as he was tossed to the floor again.

  “What’s—” Henry started to ask, but Lillian held up a hand.