Villain's Lair Read Online Free Page A

could find, though, was a painted button that said UP, and who in his right mind pushes a painted button and expects it to
do
anything?
    â€œWhy don’t you push the UP button,
señor?”
    Dave’s head snapped to face Sticky, for into his mind had popped the same question that has undoubtedly popped into yours: “You can
read?”
He squinted at the gecko. “Who taught you to read?”
    Sticky shrugged. “You pick things up in life,
señor.
Now push it. See what happens.”
    â€œNothing’s gonna happen. It’s paint!”
    â€œWhatever you say,” Sticky said, and then lickety-split, he scurried across Dave’s shoulders and down his arm, spun in the air, and slammed the UP button with his tail.
    It was fortunate that Sticky’s little kung-fu maneuver landed him back on Dave’s sleeve, because outside, a boulder came crashing down, instantly catapulting them skyward.
    â€œHurling
habañeroooooos!”
Sticky cried, his voice echoing off the walls of the shaft as they flew up, up, up.
    The shaft was painted the whole way up. They blasted by the image of an eerie night sky with a giant moon, bats, and wispy clouds. They flew pastscreaming ghosts, and ghouls from the grave. And then, just as they were losing momentum, they found themselves approaching the most frightening sight of all.

    A man with black hair.
    Pale skin.
    A twisty mustache, devilish smile, and glinting black eyes.
    His coat was long and black and flowing behind him.
    His boots were black, too, with bent and tarnished silver buckles. And the axe he carried was as tall as he was, and at least as fiendish. It had cracks and nicks in the edges of its double blade, yet it glistened evilly. Like it, too, had a dastardly past.
    â€œCreeping creosote!” Sticky gasped. “It’s him!”
    As real as it looked, it was merely a painting of Damien Black standing on the edge of a cliff alongside a jagged wooden sign that read:
    DANGER
    DO NOT
    ENTER
    Dave knew the man on the wall was just paint, but it crossed his mind that painted objects in this shaft were sometimes more than merely paint. What might happen if he touched him?
    At that very moment, he came face to face with Damien Black’s glinting painted eyes and decided that touching him was not a good idea.
    Not a good idea at all.
    It was, however, also at that very moment that Dave stopped going up and started tumbling down. You see, even in strangely painted catapulting shafts, gravity still rules the day. What goes up will most definitely come down.
    That is, unless something stops it.
    â€œAaaah!” Dave cried, looking around madly for something to stop him. “Aaaah!”
    It was at this point that Sticky leapt fromDave’s sleeve, climbed lickety-split up the wall, and slapped the ENTER part of the painted DO NOT ENTER sign.
    Kaffffflank! A
plank shot out beneath Dave, and
brrrr-ivack-yak-yak-yak-yak
, a section of the shaft wall went up like a rolltop desk.
    Sticky scurried down the wall and reunited with Dave, who was futilely scrabbling for his dropped torch as the plank beneath him began to retract, pulling him into the opening in the wall. It was as though the shaft had opened its mouth and stuck out its tongue, much as a frog would catch a fly.
    Moments later, they were inside, not a frog, but a room. A
normal
room, with four walls, a window, furniture, and a rug.
    And there was no Damien Black in sight.
    â€œWe made it!” Dave whispered, looking out the window at the forest beneath them. “We’re inside the house!”
    They sneaky-toed over to the door, which hada normal doorknob. (It was bent and dented, but it was metal, at least, and not somebody’s head.)
    Dave eeeeeased the door open.
    They peeeeeeked outside.
    And of all the dastardly, dangerous, daggery things that might have been there, you will never, I promise you,
never
guess what awaited them on the other side of the