Pied Piper of Danville
Doof was grumbling to himself in the basement. "Vanessa's come over for Christmas and I end up having to get her bed up a whole day earlier. It's not as if I have a lot on my mind already, trying to get my Extract-Inator to work and devising another trap for Perry the Platypus -"
He heard a rumbling behind him, causing him to drop the bed. Luckily, it missed his foot. He looked behind him, startled. "What? What is it?" he asked, before his eyes opened wide with horror.
Three days before Christmas, Vanessa had come to her dad's place. Her mother was working abroad this year and had dumped her at the mad scientist's building. Great, Vanessa thought, I'm going to spend my vacation surrounded by weird inventions, stupid schemes and Perry the Platypus. Not that's he's bad, she told herself.
Vanessa had come in to find her dad's lab was a little less crowded than usual. She saw he had come back from flying wherever he had fancied and had baggage in the back.
"So, Vanessa, you want to get a drink or something? Because I'm going to be here a long time." He told her, as he floated slowly down.
Vanessa peered in the back. She noticed the tin trunk, cello case, huge cardboard box, a wooden trunk, a heavy duty duffle bag, a few bundles of straw, some mechanical gears and knobs, a chair from a barber's shop and sets of manacles.
"I'm – not even going to ask about what it is you're doing, Dad," she said as she went to the kitchen, "have fun playing with Perry."
"Actually, Perry the Platypus will be taken care of," Doof told her as she reached the door, "this plan is one of ingenious cunning."
Vanessa sighed and rolled her eyes, turning around and sitting down as her father told her everything.
"My new Inator will extract energy. Energy from happiness and joy, which is all around for this Christmas season. You see, Vanessa, I was sitting down wondering why is it that my brother is so great? What is it that Roger has that I don't have?"
"Would you like the short list or the long one?" Norm piped up.
Doof shot a furious glare at him, before he turned back to Vanessa. "He has the energy to be happy and can go everywhere and do everything. I will extract energy to make myself more likeable and cheerful. Then I can become ruler of the Tri-State Area!" he shouted out loud. Vanessa just raised a bemused eyebrow.
"OK, Dad, see you later. I'll be in my room," she smiled.
Doof looked at Norm as soon as the door shut, "She doesn't respect me, does she? Well, she'll learn. Problem is, Norm," he explained as he walked over to the big pile of metal that was his half-finished Inator, "that this only extracts energy from people. Not animals, not plants, not platypuses. Or is it platypi? It's all very confusing, with the 's's and the I and – it's even hard for a native English speaker. Anyway – Norm, the main problem is that adults will be easy to fight. If you extract happy, joyful energy from a child, they are unlikely to fight you. And children have happier energy inside, before their lives are ruined by taxes and politics and technology. What's wrong with the cup-and-ball I had in Gimmelstump, huh? Before Roger stole it, anyway…"
The Christmas season was already here and the boys were up playing with their new toys. Of course, they couldn't actually tell their parents they were planning to build a giant swing, like their rollercoaster from two summers ago, but now they had the tools for it. Ferb even had a new toolbox.
They'd had to stay in a lot this vacation, though. Linda didn't explain much to them, but she said something about a kid going missing overnight from another town in the Tri-State area. The kid, a small, sad girl called Caroline Goodwin, aged a few years younger than Phineas, had been found early the next day, before her parents even noticed her missing, on the outskirts of town. She'd been alive, but that was all the police knew.
Linda had been a bit nervous though, causing her to lock every window in the house and every door. It had made Perry very grouchy for some reason and he spent most of his days clambering over everything in the house, trying to punch the walls and floors. If Linda didn't know any better, he was trying to escape.
Then other disappearances had been happening. Ruth Spencer aged eight, from the next town over. John Hawley aged ten, from the same street as the Danville library. Mark Frost aged eleven, only a year younger than Phineas, from three blocks away.
Linda had, of course, panicked inside.
Candace was nineteen and old enough to go out by herself and Ferb was now fourteen, possibly too old for whoever was doing this. But one victim, Peter Dawson, had only been a few months older than Phineas, and that meant Linda was in a state about whether their friends should all come over, as they had done over the last two summers. She didn't want to be responsible for someone else's kid going missing.
Then again, she told herself as she made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, that Buford is too muscly for anyone to try and attack him. Especially since he took up boxing. And Baljeet always walked with him and anyway, he lived just down the block. And Isabella's mom dropped her off every day for the last week when she needed to go to work. On top of that, Linda told herself, there was always safety in numbers.
Candace had just finished talking to Stacy on the phone when the news came up.
The twelfth missing child had just been found alive. A girl named Laura Grover aged eleven. Two children were still missing and it seemed as if this strange cycle was going on.
Candace hadn't spent much time listening (that was focusing on busting, Jeremy and hanging with Stacy of course) but she did know that some children had gone missing over the last week.
The children would be in their gardens alone or in their bedrooms and be snatched, vanishing into thin air as if by aliens. Maybe it had been aliens, since the kids were all found alive and within a few miles of their home.
All were dizzy, with slurred speech and wide eyes. Only two had been released to their homes. The children were all a lot younger than Candace, but as her mom had said, one was Phineas' age. The youngest child had been Elizabeth Harper, age six.
As far as Candace or anyone else knew, all the children had been found alive, but traumatized by what occurred. The news said Laura had been found in a better condition than most of the others, in the park a few blocks away from here. She had been talking coherently for one. For another, she had a coat on. One that she hadn't managed to get before her abduction.
Candace felt herself get up and walk to her mom in the kitchen. "Mom?" she asked, "W-Where did the last attack take place?"
Linda looked up from the dishes she was washing and pulled her daughter close. "Oh, honey," she stroked her hair, "it was five blocks away. In a different direction from last time."
"So – my brothers might be OK?" Candace asked her.
Linda shrugged and pulled away, back to the dishes. "I don't know, darling. I don't know."
"But – they're never alone in the back yard, are they?" Candace asked, fearful. "Their friends are always round and I always keep an eye on them," But not for the same reasons, she thought to herself, "and they never leave the house."
Linda sighed, "I'm doing the best I can do. What every parent's doing."
Candace smiled slightly and started walking back to the living room. "Oh, one more question," she started, peering over her shoulder at Linda, "when the kids were gone, nobody – nobody played with them, did they?"
Linda shook her head. "Police said there's no evidence." Not that this was much of a relief for the two of them. Or anybody involved, for that matter.
Candace sat down on the couch and picked up Lawrence's newspaper. The pictures of the kids were there. Smiling and cheerful. Nearly all of them had been from their yearbook. Candace traced her fingers over Caroline Goodwin, Simon Baxter, Ruth Spencer, Peter Dawson, John Hawley, Elizabeth Harper, Mark Frost, Ella Sinclair, Andrew Webster, Shelia Crawford-Foster and James Jennings. It had been yesterday's and Laura hadn't been on there yet.
The last two children had been abducted this morning, both from back gardens in two different places in the Tri-State Area. Eight-year-old Lewis Parson and twelve-year-old Miriam Richardson, both taken from another state. Maybe this guy was going to leave Danville alone. Maybe he wouldn't get her brothers.
Now, Vanessa had not taken her dad's plan well.
Actually, that was quite an understatement. She had been positively horrified. She had come in yesterday to ask him where he had stored the coffee. He'd recently been barking at her and Norm to knock before they came in and he only peeked through the side of the door to slightly to snatch whatever food he had made Vanessa get him. She had heard him shouting at something and thought she heard animal noises. She didn't want to dare go inside.
But now, she hadn't knocked and she found him standing over his Inator with a demented grin.
"Oh, sorry Dad," she began, with one hand around the doorknob, but then she saw what he had been doing.
She saw three children slumped by the wall. Two girls and a boy. Two were in pyjamas, but one girl was in a coat and wellingtons. They were all pale and thin. Their hands were manacled to the wall and were lying on straw. The children were all wide-eyed and shivering.
"Dad!" Vanessa had shouted, before letting off steam, including a few choice words.
Then Doof stormed up and slapped her across the face.
Vanessa fell to the floor and he grabbed her wrist. "You listen, you stupid little girl," he hissed, dragging her over to the wall, "you make sure these kids are alive and healthy while I go get supplies. These kids are draining my fridge."
Vanessa was too shocked to say anything. She glanced into his shiny eyes as she knelt down by the nearest girl. Something about her dad seemed different. Or maybe that was just because he slapped her.
He – slapped – her.
Even though Vanessa had experienced it herself, she never thought that he would ever hurt her. Then again, he had clearly lost it. He was keeping children locked up in his lab. Was he behind the disappearances that had been all over the Tri-State area?
She put her arm around the girl, but she shuffled back against the wall, terrified.
"Hey, hey," Vanessa was trying to calm her, "it's fine. I won't hurt you, kay? I won't harm you." Then she took a good look at the girl properly. "Did my dad cut your hair?"
The three children were nearly bald, with tiny pricks of blonde and black to show where they used to have hair. The younger girl whispered, "The pharma – pharmacist said hair clogged his machine. It stands on end."
Vanessa knew she had to try and ease them. She started by placing a hand on her chest. "My name's Vanessa. What's yours?"
"Shelia," the girl gave a chortled whisper, "I'm seven."
"James," the boy replied, "I'm nine."
"Laura," the other girl answered, her eyes halfway through opening and closing, as if she had just woken up and was trying to move, "I'm eleven."
Vanessa looked at her pyjamas. They seemed soaked and her dad hadn't kept the heating on. "You must be freezing," she said as she pulled her coat off and placed it over the girl's shoulder, "has my dad kept the heating off the whole time?"
"He said it wouldn't work." James said.
Vanessa wanted to look around for the keys but she thought that maybe Dad would react even more if he found she had released his hostages. Instead she wondered how to get a message to Perry. It was the only thing she could think of. The organization had to have a camera or something somewhere, since they always seemed to know what Dad was doing.
But forty-five minutes later she hadn't found anything else. Doof then threw open the door and strode in, dumping a paper sack of groceries on the couch.
"What are you doing, snooping about?" he called, grabbing both of Vanessa's wrists.
"Dad," she frowned at him "you've been crazy. I don't think L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N allows this type of villainy. You told me you had to sign a contract to make all your schemes child-friendly."
But Doof ignored her. Shoving her over to the wall, he pushed her down by her shoulders and then slammed the sole remaining manacle onto her wrist.
"Let me go!" she shouted at him, but he scoffed.
"If I can't keep you out of trouble, Vanessa Marissa Doofenshmirtz, then you'd better stay somewhere where I can keep an eye on you." He replied coolly. He then unlocked the chains around Shelia and James and carried them onto his craft on the balcony. They were so weak that they didn't try to fight.
"I'm going to drop them off and snatch two more. Be good, Vanessa."
When he left, Vanessa pulled against the chain and groaned in frustration. Then she stopped, as she thought.
Marissa wasn't her middle name, it was Mary.
Did this mean there was a reason he had gone insane?