Lord of the Hat Read online

He then added that on the second night he would be honored with an award for the outstanding small business by the governor of New Mexico. This was a family vacation, yes—but this was really about my dad getting his award, and if we wanted to have any fun we couldn’t ruin this for him. So I said,

  When everyone was done eating, my dad suggested that we all hike over to the abandoned drive-in theater and see if there were any ghosts. I loved abandoned buildings. My grandpa once gave me a book that was filled with pictures of buildings that had been abandoned. They were all interesting and creepy-looking. Now I would get to explore an old drive-in. I was okay with that. So after dinner we cleaned up and walked as a group out of the RV park, across a road, and up to the drive-in. It was kind of a scary night, and Libby and Melany were acting more frightened than Tuffin. At the drive-in there was a rope holding an old gate closed. My dad pulled the rope, and the gate opened. We walked in to where cars used to park to watch movies. I could see the weathered old screen in the distance. Trevor started to panic.

  I suggested we all run back to the RV and get the camera together, but my dad seemed to think it would be fine for me and Trevor to go alone. Tuffin wouldn’t let Jack come, so it was just us two. We crossed the road and worked our way through the RV park. When we got to our RV, I heard something moving around inside. Trevor was about to blow the emergency safety whistle he was wearing when I said,

  I pointed toward the RV. There was a light on inside, and we could see the silhouette of something. Trevor adjusted his glasses.

  Trevor really wanted to blow his safety whistle, but I wouldn’t let him. I had a pretty good idea of what we were looking at. I didn’t think it was an accident that we ended up with nothing but Lord of the Rings books and Dr. Seuss stuff. I also thought there was a reason why I was rhyming so much lately. I told Trevor that I thought it was possible that Beardy had set something free from my closet and it had traveled with us here. I also told him that if I had to guess, I thought it might be part Dr. Seuss, part Lord of the Rings.

  Trevor no longer wanted to blow his whistle. He wanted to open the RV door and get a look. Trevor loved the Lord of the Rings books. He had read them a couple of times. He also loved Dr. Seuss.

  We could hear something knocking things over in the RV. We could also hear it saying,

  I wished my dad was there, but I knew that I couldn’t go get him, because if the creature was from my closet, it would probably be best that my parents didn’t know. They had no clue what my closet could do, and they’d be blue if they ever knew.

  I opened the RV door and looked inside. There was a dish on the floor, and one of the cabinets was hanging open.

  This is a good example of how different my life had become. In the past I never would have gone into an RV with something strange knocking about in it. Now it was almost normal to be surrounded by strange.

  I stepped into the RV and looked around. One light was on, but there were shadows everywhere. Trevor stepped in behind me. He had his hands and arms up over his face for protection.

  Before either one of us could tell anyone anything, something popped out of a cabinet and flew toward us.

  We both screamed and fell backward. The creature hopped onto the small counter near the stove. From what I could see, it looked like it was part Cat in the Hat and part Gollum. He was wearing a hat, a loincloth, and a red bow tie. Trevor knelt down as if in awe.

  Trevor stood up, and the creature jumped from the counter onto his shoulder. Trevor looked pretty happy about that. I had a few questions I needed to ask:

  This was not good. When Katfish had come from my closet, I had been confused because she seemed to just be a character from one book, The Hunger Games. It wasn’t until she jumped in my pool that I discovered she was part mermaid, and her other half was from The Little Mermaid. This new character seemed to be parts of three characters. In the Lord of the Rings, Gollum was also Sméagol. Gollum was the mean crazy half, and Sméagol was the nice crazy half. And now those two personalities had added a slice of rhyming Cat in the Hat.

  As confusing as the characters in the past had been, none of them had used words like doo-wuzzle-ee. Trevor told me that doo-wuzzle-ee means “good” in Elvish from Lord of the Rings. I told him he was nuts. I asked our new creature if he was here to help, and he said “sort of,” which made me sort of uneasy. I asked him where he had been hiding in the RV, and he said “under,” which made me understand that he was not going to give me straightforward answers. I questioned him about what I needed to do before he could return to the closet, and he screamed,

  The creature jumped down from the refrigerator and dashed under the kitchen table. He grabbed something off of the floor and looked up, smiling.

  There, in his palm, was a ring. I thought Trevor was going to have a geek attack. Ever since I had known Trevor, he had loved Lord of the Rings, and now here was some sort of kitty Gollum holding a ring in his palm. The creature put the ring in a pocket that was sewn into the fabric around his waist. I could see that there were other rings in the pocket as well. He patted the pocket, jumped on top of the refrigerator, and said,

  I wasn’t sure I cared for the rhyming, but the creature was interesting. It would be a difficult task to make sure nobody saw him until we got back to my house and I could hide him in a drawer or backpack. But so far he seemed willing to stay out of the way. If he could keep that up, it would make things much easier. I just didn’t want him ruining the trip for my dad.

  The little creature promised he would do all he could to make our quest successful. Of course he said it in a rhyme and with some made-up words like koodumpfoomagoo. I thanked him and opened the door to the RV. The creature climbed up the side of the RV and disappeared over the top.

  When me and Trevor got back to the abandoned drive-in, my dad had propped up a flashlight and they were casting shadows against the old screen. Libby and Melany were currently acting out some scene from a movie.

  I didn’t love it. Plus, I was thinking about Seussol. Trevor was preoccupied as well. We had already experienced some really cool things as a result of my closet visitors, but this new creature was extra exciting. I grew up on Dr. Seuss books, and the Lord of the Rings movies were on my favorite list. Even though Gollum sort of freaked me out, the part of him that was here was way less frightening. His small size was cool, and he was like a stuffed animal that someone had sewn together wrong.

  After messing around at the theater for a while, we all walked back to the RV and roasted marshmallows. It was nice until Jack accidentally threw one of his shoes into the fire.

  The smell of rubber burning caused everyone besides me and my friends to call it a night. The three of us laid out our sleeping bags around the fire and fell asleep to the smell of Jack’s burning shoe and the knowledge that somewhere out there Seussol was keeping his eye on things.

  CHAPTER 10

  ALL ABOARD

  Because Jack hadn’t snored as loud, and because it wasn’t as cold, I slept a lot better than the night before.

  My dad cooked everyone a breakfast of burnt eggs and Spam.

  He then kept talking about how great food tastes in the outdoors.

  I’m pretty sure most kings don’t have to choke down eggs like that.

  When breakfast was over, we cleaned up our site and drove away from the RV park.

  I don’t know why Jack threw his left shoe into the fire, but then again I never really understand half the things Jack does.

  Now Jack had only one shoe, and we were going to have to find him some new ones at the next stop. There was no way he could go the rest of the trip with only one shoe.

  It was a short drive to our next destination, the town of Broken Wagon, New Mexico. From there we were going to take a train up into the mountains where our hotel would be. My dad parked the RV by the train station, and we got our stuff out to take with us. I was more than a little shocked when I saw what Tuffin was wearing as a backpack.

  While getting stuff out of th
e compartments at the bottom of the RV, my mom found Seussol! And instead of assuming it was a strange creature from her son’s closet, she thought it was a child’s backpack that belonged to Tuffin. Trevor and I had a difficult time not freaking out about it. Seussol just winked at us.

  This trip was beginning to worry me. Yes, I had wanted to ride on a train, but that was before I knew I would be having to keep an eye on Tuffin’s backpack. It wasn’t easy keeping track of something with a will of its own. My closet was messing with me again.

  A pretty cool train pulled into the station. It was an old-fashioned train with ten cars, and supposedly super-famous, but I hadn’t heard of it before. Of course Trevor had.

  The train station was not very busy. I thought there would be a crowd of small businessmen gathered around waiting to ride into the mountains and to the hotel. But it was really just us. My dad gave our eight tickets to a woman sitting behind a glass window, and she let us through a little spinning bar. We all got on, and a man wearing a hat like my dad’s and Trevor’s came into the car and told us a few things we needed to know. He didn’t seem very happy.

  Trevor blew his whistle in excitement, and Wally told him that blowing a whistle when there wasn’t an emergency was a violation of over a dozen train rules.

  After Conductor Wally gave us about a hundred other rules to follow, he reluctantly told us that we were allowed to explore the train and visit the dining car, but that he …

  That was not going to happen. I had never been on a train before, so there was no way I was going to sit still the whole time. I also knew that even if my mom said we had to, my dad would let us run around, because he was almost as excited.

  Wally told us he would be sitting in a chair near the front of the train if we needed him. He then exited the car. The second Wally was gone, me and my friends began to search the train. I couldn’t leave Seussol, so I volunteered to take Tuffin with us because the creature was still strapped to his back. My mom looked really happy.

  We ran off with Tuffin to explore the caboose. There were open windows and lots of seats in the other cars.

  Trevor filmed everything, and Jack kept stopping to point out things that he had never done before on a train.

  We all sat down in the caboose, and I asked Tuffin if I could borrow his backpack for a moment. He said no. So I asked him if I could talk to his backpack. He had no problem with that. He turned around so Seussol faced us. The little guy saw Jack’s Beardy shirt and began to wig out. Jack saw Seussol and did some wigging out of his own.

  Trevor put down his camera and explained to Jack about how we had discovered Seussol last night. And I told Jack that we needed to keep him hidden until we got home and figured out why Seussol was here.

  I talked with Seussol for a few more minutes while Jack kept Tuffin distracted so he wouldn’t turn around and cut off our conversation. I wasn’t so worried about Tuffin ruining the conversation as I was Seussol. Talking to someone with three personalities was exhausting, and one of the personalities rhymed, so that made it even more confusing.

  Seussol was not at all helpful. He was pathetic and clever at the same time. I had read a bunch of Dr. Seuss books to Tuffin yesterday. I had even read some aloud last night to Trevor by the fire.

  But I hadn’t read the Lord of the Rings. The books were so thick it would take me half a year to finish the series. There was no way Seussol could hang around half a year. I was already missing my calm life from a couple of days ago.

  Seussol let go of Tuffin’s neck, and before any of us knew what he was doing, he pulled seven rings from his pocket.

  Then Seussol slipped one of the rings on his finger. In an instant he was gone. It was almost like he disappeared into thin air. He was invisible. Tuffin didn’t like the disappearance of his new backpack. He started to scream and shout while we all called out. It sounded like an episode of Dora the Explorer.

  Tuffin kept crying until I promised I would find his backpack and buy him ice cream from the dining car. He accepted my offer, and we worked our way through the train, stopping only once for Jack.

  CHAPTER 11

  TRAINING

  I don’t know what moves slower up mountains, RVs or trains. As we wound up the mountain, the train was going so slow I could practically step off it and then step back on.

  It was fun to be on a train, but after an hour it wasn’t that great. There was nobody else on it, which made sense because any smart person would have just driven. One good thing did happen. While I was looking for Seussol, I felt something hop onto my right shoulder and hold on to my neck. That same something then whispered,

  I have always wanted a monkey to sit on my shoulder, so I was pretty pleased to have an invisible Seussol hanging out on mine. Him being there made the boring train ride seem a lot better. I had secretly hoped we would be zipping up the mountain and people on horses would be shooting guns and trying to rob us. Instead it seemed like we were trapped on a really long nature ride.

  There were only two things that made it exciting: One was the fact that Seussol was riding on me while no one could see him. The other was the dining car. It was fun eating food on a train, even though some of the food was disgusting.

  Jack dared me to eat one of the gross pickled eggs floating around in a jar, but I refused. Then he followed me around, asking,

  I could hear Seussol laughing on my shoulder. I guess he was happy about how me and Jack were talking.

  One of the train cars had some bunk beds in it. Probably because the train ride was so slow and long that people needed to take naps. We weren’t tired, but we all went to the bunk car and stretched out on a bed. I took a top bunk, and the moment I was on mine, Seussol appeared in the flesh.

  Seussol took off. I was really happy about him wanting to talk. I desperately needed to find out why he was here and what I needed to do to help. I also wanted to make it clear to him that I wouldn’t be reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy because the books seemed too thick and heavy.

  After a couple of minutes, I began complaining that my stomach hurt. I then excused myself to go and use the bathroom.

  I didn’t think bathrooms could be fun, but I made my way down the bunk car, through the dining cart, and over to the bathroom. I opened the door and kept it open for a couple of seconds so that if Seussol wasn’t already in there, he could slip inside. Libby walked by with Melany, and they saw me standing there in the bathroom doorway.

  I didn’t really care if Libby thought I was nuts, but Melany’s little sister, Maggie, was friends with Janae, and I didn’t want Melany going back and telling her sister about me spending time in the bathroom. So I said something dumb.

  Libby and Melany laughed at me the way a heartless person might laugh at an orphan on the streets who just tripped while selling matches.

  I slipped into the bathroom and closed the door. Seussol took off his ring and materialized on the sink. He smiled at me and I smiled back. It was cool to see him. He seemed even more mixed up than the other creatures I had gotten to hang out with in the last few months.

  Seussol nodded. Apparently when he had the ring on, my mom was the only one who seemed to sense he was around. She kept staring at him even though she couldn’t see him.

  I asked Seussol what the quest was he had talked about, and he showed me one of the rings. He said that he must get it to the fire in the mountains where it came from. He then said something curious.

  I had never really thought about where Beardy had come from. He was a doorknob, and in my mind he had just always existed. I knew he was special, because he was the gatekeeper to all the things that my closet created.

  My heart started racing. Never had a creature come from my closet with such a cool quest. Returning a ring to a great fire was something I was definitely okay with. I would help Seussol and in doing so, help Beardy.

  I talked to Seussol in the bathroom for almost half an hour. He let me pick him up and told me all kinds of important things about my closet that
I didn’t know. He said there were many book mash-ups just waiting to come out. He mentioned Wonk and Hairy and Pinocula. He also said that Katfish was doing well. According to him, the reason my closet made such fantastical creatures was because of the combination of books and old fake lab supplies, but Beardy was the key to making it all work.

  After I’d been talking to Seussol for a while, my mom knocked on the bathroom door.

  When I came out of the bathroom with an invisible Seussol, I could see through the windows that the train was pulling into a small town. A few tiny stores popped into view.

  My dad was so excited. I was scared that he was going to explode. I knew that this trip meant a lot to him, but I also knew that it meant a lot to me. I know closets don’t normally act like mine. And now I was going to figure out something about Beardy. We just needed to find Bartholomew’s Hat and the fire that burned on top of it.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE TOWN OF TOLK

  I could barely tell when the train stopped because it was going so slow in the first place.