The 13-Story Treehouse Page 3

  He landed right in the middle and bounced many times before finally coming to rest. It looked kind of fun...well...a lot of fun, actually.

  I helped Terry out of the marshmallow pile and dusted him off.

  “That was the best fun ever!” he said with a big grin. “You should try it!”

  “I would,” I said, “but we’ve got a book to write, remember?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Terry. “I forgot.”

  We rode the elevator back up to the main deck. This was really it. No more distractions. No more excuses. No more flying cats, giant banana attacks, barking dogs, pretend mermaids, evil sea monsters, popcorn parties, lemonade guzzling, burp-gas-filled bubblegum bubbles, or marshmallow trampolines...we were just going to do our book.

  We sat down at the table.

  “So, where were we up to?” I said.

  “‘Once upom a time’ I think,” said Terry.

  “Very funny,” I said. “Now let me see...Once upon a time there was a...what?”

  “Finger!” said Terry.

  “Finger?” I said.

  “Yes!” said Terry. “Why don’t we put your beginning and my drawing together? You know, like, ‘Once upon a time...there was a finger. But let’s not make it an ordinary finger—let’s make it a super finger!’ Like this.”

  “That’s crazy!” I said.

  “Oh,” said Terry, looking disappointed.

  “So crazy it might just work!” I added.

  “Then what are we waiting for?” said Terry, beaming. “Let’s do it!”

  So, there we were.

  Me writing.

  Terry drawing.

  It was turning out pretty good, too, as you can see...

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  THE 13-STORY MONKEY HOUSE

  “Well, what do you think?” I said.

  “It’s great!” said Terry. “It’s the best story we’ve done all year!”

  “It’s the only story we’ve done all year,” I reminded him. “Come on, let’s write the next one.”

  We were just about to get started when the doorbell rang.

  “Hey, Terry,” called Bill. “Got another package for you.”

  “Oh great!” said Terry. “It must be my replacement sea-monkeys!”

  “Replacements?” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Terry. “I rang the sea-monkey company and told them what happened. They said they’d send some more eggs. They were very sorry.”

  “They were sorry?” I said. “You’ll be the one who’s sorry if you get another sea monster!”

  But Terry wasn’t listening to me. He was already on his way to the front door.

  I waited for a while but Terry didn’t return. I figured he must have gone straight to the lab to make his new sea-monkeys.

  So I went down to see and, sure enough, there he was.

  “I’ve done it!” he said, holding a jar up to the light.

  “These are definitely sea-monkeys!”

  “Congratulations,” I said. “Are you happy now?”

  Terry shrugged. “Nah, not really,” he said. “Sea-monkeys aren’t that interesting after all.”

  “Never mind,” I said. “Let’s get back to work.”

  Soon we were back at our table, about to start work on the next story, when we heard a loud crash.

  “What was that?” said Terry.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But it sounds like it came from the lab.”

  We both jumped up and rushed to the elevator.

  As the doors to the laboratory slid open we were greeted with a scene of total chaos. There were monkeys everywhere and they were wrecking everything!

  They were swinging and leaping and chasing each other all over the laboratory. The noise was deafening.

  “Oh no!” said Terry. “I hope my sea-monkeys are all right!”

  “They are your sea-monkeys!” I yelled, pointing to the empty jar on the floor. “Except they’re not sea-monkeys—they’re monkey monkeys! That stupid company has sent you the wrong sort of eggs again!”

  “But I hate monkeys!” said Terry.

  “Not as much as I do,” I said.

  “They’re getting into the elevator!” said Terry.

  “Oh great!” I said. “Now they’re going to wreck the rest of the treehouse!”

  We watched helplessly as the doors closed and the elevator rose through the trunk back to the main level.

  In the time it took for the elevator to come down again and take us back up, the monkeys had created complete havoc on every single story of the treehouse.

  There were monkeys in the bowling alley!

  There were monkeys in the bathroom!

  There were monkeys in the swimming pool!

  There were monkeys in the kitchen!

  There were monkeys on the observation deck!

  There were monkeys everywhere!

  “Watch out!” I shouted.

  A bunch of monkeys were riding the marshmallow machine straight at us and firing marshmallows at our heads.

  At the same time another bunch of monkeys were swinging toward us on a vine.

  “Duck!” I yelled.

  We bobbed down.

  The monkeys on the vine collided with the monkeys on the marshmallow machine.

  Monkeys and marshmallows and bits of the marshmallow machine went flying in all directions.

  But the collision didn’t seem to bother them a bit. They picked themselves up and began pelting us with anything they could get their dirty little monkey paws on.

  “What are we going to do, Andy?” said Terry.

  “Definitely not order any more sea-monkeys,” I said.

  “Yeah, but before that,” said Terry.

  “Whack them with the giant banana?” I suggested. “It’s just there.” I pointed to where it was lying on the floor near Terry.

  “But you said two wrongs don’t make a right,” said Terry.

  “They do when there’s monkeys involved!” I said.

  Terry picked up the giant banana and, holding it like a baseball bat, began whacking back the marshmallows, pens, pencils, erasers, paintbrushes, paints, and monkey poop being hurled in our direction. And then he began knocking the monkeys right out of the tree!

  But then the strangest thing happened. As fast as Terry could knock the monkeys out of the tree they climbed back up again. But not to continue their crazy rampage...it was simply to sit and watch him. Or, more to the point, to watch the giant banana. As Terry swung, more and more monkeys came to sit quietly in front of him.

  “Why are they just sitting there?” said Terry.

  “They seem to really like the banana,” I said. “Just keep waving it slowly back and forth...I think you’re hypnotizing them.”

  Sure enough, Terry soon had the entire gang of monkeys under the spell of the giant banana.

  “What do I do now?” he said.

  “Lead them up to the top of the tree,” I said, “and put them in the giant catapult.”

  “Of course!” said Terry. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “You did, actually,” I reminded him.

  Terry had originally designed the catapult as a garbage-disposal unit but we had to stop using it for that because we got too many complaints from our neighbors.

  For a while we used it to play tricks on each other...

  but these days we mostly use it for getting rid of unwanted guests...in this case, monkeys!

  I followed Terry as he led the monkeys up to the top of the tree and helped him load them into the catapult.

  “You’d better put the giant banana on board, too,” I said, “just in case they come back looking for it.”

  “Done,” said Terry, strapping the banana to the mesmerized monkeys.

  “All right,” I said. “Prepare to launch!”

  The enormous arm of the catapult hurled the monkeys and the giant banana up,

  up,

  up into the air and far,

&
nbsp; far,

  far away.

  “We did it!” said Terry.

  “Yes,” I said, “now we can get back to finishing our book!”

  CHAPTER 11

  THE GIANT GORILLA

  But before we could get back to finishing our book we had to clean up the mess the monkeys had made.

  Finally, after about a thousand million trillion gazillion years, we had everything back to normal and were ready to start work again.

  I had just finished writing the words, “Once upom another time,” and Terry had just finished pointing out that I had misspelled “upon” again when the table began shaking.

  “Quit shaking the table!” I said.

  “I’m not shaking the table,” said Terry. “I thought you were shaking the table.”

  “I’m not shaking the table!” I said, as the treehouse began to sway.

  “Quit swaying the treehouse!” said Terry.

  “I’m not swaying the treehouse,” I said. “I thought you were swaying the treehouse.”

  “It’s not me,” said Terry. “I think it’s that giant gorilla down there.”

  “But why would a giant gorilla be shaking our tree?” I said.

  “Beats me,” said Terry. “It’s not like it’s a banana tree.”

  “Of course!” I said. “That’s it! To the gorilla it is a banana tree...a giant banana tree!”

  “Huh?” said Terry.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I said. “The giant banana we catapulted must have landed on a distant tropical island...

  where the giant gorilla lives...

  and it found the giant banana and ate it...

  and loved it so much that it made a boat out of the giant banana peel...

  and used its giant nostrils to track the giant banana’s scent all the way back here...

  and is now shaking our tree in the mistaken belief that it’s a giant banana tree.”

  “It seems a little far-fetched,” said Terry. “All that trouble for a banana?”

  “A giant banana,” I reminded him. “With extra giant-banana flavor.”

  Just then we heard the unmistakable roar of a giant gorilla that has traveled across the ocean in a giant banana peel boat in search of giant bananas.

  “I think you could be right,” said Terry. “It would certainly explain why it’s here, shaking our tree. What are we going to do?”

  “Give it more giant bananas, of course!” I said.

  “We can’t!” said Terry. “The monkeys broke the banana-enlarger!”

  “Can’t you fix it?”

  “Maybe, but it would take too long!” said Terry. “They’ve completely pulled it apart!”

  “Well we’ve got to do something!” I said. “Before it shakes the treehouse to pieces!”

  “BANANA!” roared the giant gorilla. “BANANA!”

  “There are no bananas here!” shouted Terry. “Well, there was, but not anymore!”

  “BANANA!” roared the gorilla in response.

  “It’s no use,” I said. “Apart from the word ‘banana,’ I don’t think it speaks English.”

  And then, just when we thought the day couldn’t get any crazier, a white stretch limousine pulled up at our front door and a chauffeur in a fancy uniform got out and rang our doorbell.

  “We’re up here!” I called down to him.

  “Which one of you is Terry?” he said.

  “Me!” said Terry.

  “Well,” said the chauffeur, “I’m very pleased to inform you that you have won first prize in the Barky the Barking Dog drawing competition with your drawing of Barky at the beach.”

  “Wow, that’s so exciting,” said Terry. “What do I win?”

  “You get to meet Barky,” said the chauffeur.

  “When?” said Terry.

  “Right now!” said the chauffeur, opening the back door of the limousine.

  “This is great!” said Terry. “Barky’s here! Not only do I get to meet him, but he can save us—and the treehouse!”

  “And how exactly is he going to do that?” I said.

  “By barking, of course!” said Terry.

  Right on cue, Barky emerged from the limo and began barking at the giant gorilla.

  He barked,

  and barked,

  and barked.

  And then the giant gorilla lifted up one of its gigantic feet and stomped on him.

  We watched as the chauffeur scooped Barky up and carried him to the limo.

  “Do you think he’s okay?” said Terry.

  “Well, he’s still barking,” I said.

  “I didn’t even really get to meet him,” sighed Terry.

  Meanwhile, the gorilla wasted no time in getting back to shaking the tree, only this time even harder than before.

  “Oh no,” said Terry. “We really are in trouble. Even Barky couldn’t save us. What are we going to do?”

  “Say good-bye to the treehouse,” I said, “and say hello to the monkey house. Without the treehouse we’ll have nowhere to live and nowhere to write books.”

  “I hate monkeys,” said Terry. “And giant gorillas.”

  “Well, you’ve only got yourself to blame,” I said. “If you hadn’t sent away for sea-monkeys or fooled around with giant bananas in the first place, none of this would ever have happened!”

  But Terry wasn’t listening to me.

  He was looking up into the sky.

  “Can you hear that?” he said.

  “You mean the sound of a giant gorilla destroying the treehouse?” I said. “Yep! Coming through, loud and clear!”

  “No,” said Terry. “The sound of a flying cat. It’s Silky! She’s come back! And she’s not alone!”

  CHAPTER 12

  THE DAY SILKY SAVED THE DAY

  I looked up. Terry was right!

  Flying cats!

  A whole bunch of them...13 to be exact, with Silky in the lead!

  They were flying in formation, coming in low and fast, like fighter jets.

  “Oh, great,” I said. “As if a giant gorilla wasn’t bad enough, now we’re being attacked by a flock of flying cats!”

  “How do you know they’re attacking us?” said Terry. “Maybe they want giant bananas, too.”

  “Cats don’t eat bananas!” I said. “Everybody knows that. Besides, they look angry, not hungry!”

  “Maybe it’s the gorilla they’re after,” said Terry. “Look how scared it is!”

  Terry had a point. The gorilla was no longer shaking the tree. It was staring at the cats, its fur bristling. It roared loudly, but if the cats were worried they didn’t show it. They were definitely taking aim at the gorilla.

  We braced ourselves for a 13-flying-cats-and-one-giant-gorilla collision.

  But it never came.

  At the last possible moment the cats separated into two groups, flew past the gorilla, and soared up into the sky, where they re-formed into a menacing circle high above us.

  That’s when the gorilla started to climb the tree.

  “There are no giant bananas up here!” shouted Terry. “We already told you that!”

  “I don’t think it’s after giant bananas anymore,” I said. “I think it’s getting into a better position to fight the cats.”

  The gorilla climbed higher...

  and higher...

  and higher...

  until it was standing at the top of the tree. It beat its enormous chest and roared at the flying cats, which continued to attack and torment it.

  The cats swooped...

  and the gorilla swiped.

  Occasionally, the gorilla would strike the cats and send them crashing to the ground, but they always landed on their feet and rejoined the battle just as quickly as they’d left it.

  Eventually, the 13 ferocious flying cats became too much for the gorilla. It lost its grip, fell out of the tree...

  and crashed to the ground with a sickening thud.

  But the flying cats still weren’t finished with the gorilla.
Before it could get up they swooped down, sunk their claws deep into its fur, and lifted it into the air. Then they carried it away.

  “Well, it looks like Silky and her pals saved the day!” said Terry. “If I hadn’t turned her into a flying cat the treehouse would have been destroyed for sure!”

  I was about to point out that the only reason the treehouse was in danger in the first place was because of him, his sea-monkeys, and his stupid giant banana, but at that moment the doorbell rang.

  “Oh no,” I said, “not more sea-monkeys! Terry, how could you?!”

  But Terry didn’t answer. He was already gone.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE END

  I raced Terry, determined to stop him from hatching another bunch of eggs that might threaten our treehouse, not to mention our lives.

  But it wasn’t Bill the postman at the door.

  It was Jill!

  She was panting as if she’d run the whole way over. “Was that Silky I saw,” she said, “flying away from your treehouse with a giant gorilla?”

  “Yes,” said Terry.

  I elbowed him hard. “He means no,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Terry. “I mean no.”