Part II: You Can't Handle the Edd
Chapter Four

Nazz and Kevin reached the trailer park and started looking around for the Kankers' trailer.

"Do you know which trailer we're looking for, Kev?"

"Rolf told me he was here once when Ed was taken here." Kevin slowed down as he strained to remember which trailer he was looking for. "The trailer did find its way on my fence at one point, too, so I know what it looks like."

Nazz looked around the trailer park with unease. In the dead of night, most of the trailers were dark, their occupants either asleep or passed out from whatever they did during the day. A few trailers were lit, and those residents were doing a number of things involving fire and/or smoke. Nazz had a feeling that if the Kankers had brought the Eds to their trailer, they would be up and about torturing them.

Yet as Kevin approached the point where he was sure the target trailer was, that trailer was dark. This find raised three possible conclusions: either the Kankers had no involvement in the Eds' disappearance, they had brought the Eds to a different location, or they had trapped the Eds in the trailer and left them to be dealt with in the morning.

Kevin put an ear to the blue trailer, its ownership by the Kankers evident by a heart carved in a nearby tree facing the trailer. If the Eds were inside, Kevin should've been able to hear them talking amongst themselves and/or shouting out hoping that someone would hear them. Though given that the Kankers would've heard them screaming, the latter didn't seem likely.

"See anything, Nazz?" Kevin wandered to the back of the trailer.

Nazz spotted what looked like footprints in the soft dirt making a U-turn about 10 feet from the Kanker trailer, following back on itself toward the cul-de-sac. "Who's footprints are these?"

Kevin looked at the footprints in the glow of Nazz's flashlight. He got on his hands and knees to get a good look at them. "Hmm..."

The footprints showed a normal shoe tread pattern, but a series of dimples in the mud at the front of each print seemed intriguing.

"Looks like this guy was wearing sandals." Kevin stood up and studied the path of the footprints. "And given that the footprints go back on themselves without reaching any of the trailers, and without losing or gaining footprints from anyone else, they probably don't live here and didn't come or leave with anyone else."

Nazz lined up her foot with one of the prints. "And they have a similar shoe size to mine."

"Which would put them in our age group." That's when it clicked. "And there's only one kid in the neighborhood that wears sandals."

"That would be Jonny, right?"

Kevin nodded at Nazz's statement. "So, he was here recently, but he either didn't find what he was looking for or he chickened out on part of a plan involving the Kankers."

"Well, if the Eds have already been captured, then someone's plan must have worked. From what I can tell, it doesn't seem like Jonny has found the Kanker sisters, much less made any kind of plan with them."

"Maybe not here, but he still could've arranged something with them somewhere else."

"Well, if they are here, they're probably asleep. So, I don't think there's anything more we can do here."

"Yeah, we should probably get out of here and meet up with the others." Kevin started his bike back toward the neighborhood with Nazz in tow.

"We had gone to another cul-de-sac to put together a taco stand; as I remember, it was to be called 'The Taco Eds' Mexican Cuisine'. The plan was to constructing tacos from grass, paper plates, and crayons."

"Not to mention my brother's Armenian secret hot sauce."

"Yes, well, the old abandoned house provided a lawn from which we could extract grass, as we figured that people would be cross about grass being plucked from their lawns."

May bobbed her head in interest. "So, how did the tacos come together?"

"The tortillas were paper plates, and the crayons represented ingredients by colour; green was lettuce (along with the grass), red was tomatoes, orange and yellow were cheese, black was olives (atop shaving cream posing as sour cream), and brown was meat, marinated in hot sauce. The remaining crayons, blue and purple, were used to make the sign."

Lee had to laugh. "Did you really think that would work? Was making real tacos more trouble than crayons in a paper plate?"

"We didn't really have access to the apparatus needed for real tacos."

"Plus Ed tried to eat the cheese that was grated."

"I did try to humour him about crayon tastes coinciding with colours, like blue being blueberry pie or purple being pomegranate."

"And then you tried to eat a purple crayon and guzzled half of the hot sauce."

Marie was surprised. "How did you do that, Double D?"

"What, drink that much hot sauce?"

"Yeah."

"Eddy hadn't yet explained that it was hot sauce, and it didn't look viscous enough to be hot sauce. At first, it tasted like tomato juice, which was able to clear away the horrible non-toxic waxy aftertaste of the crayon."

"So, I poured the rest of the sauce into a bowl with the brown crayons to make the taco meat. After putting a taco together, Ed started eating it. I was surprised that he too didn't react to the hot sauce, so I ran a finger through the jar and tasted it for myself."

"I'm guessing that's when the hot sauce kicked in?"

"Yeah. Sockhead started sweating and steaming, Lumpy's head flared up, and my reaction was enough to burn the stand to smithereens."

"That doesn't make sense." Marie picked something from her shoe. "Double D drinks half a jug of hot sauce, and starts sweating and steaming. Ed eats a taco's worth of sauce, and his head burns to a crisp. But you eat just one lick of the stuff and catch dragon breath that's visible for at least a block. How does that even work?"

"My best guess would be that Eddy didn't shake the bottle to ensure a homogeneous mixture; as I found out later on, he had kept it on a hot plate to create the illusion of warm tacos. (The sauce did feel warm when I drank it.) My dosage was the top half of the jar, which would've had a smaller concentration of shredded peppers and spices, which would've sunk to the bottom of the jug. That would've left Ed with a more concentrated flavour for his taco, but Eddy's sample would've been magnified even more-so by the undiluted peppers and spices still adhering to the base of the jug."

A long pause followed the ramble, broken by Eddy. "But, yeah, in the end, the stand exploded and burned to the ground and we had to rinse our mouths out with a nearby sprinkler."

Marie gave a soft laugh. "Well, in any case, that would explain that flash we saw outside."

Ed was surprised. "You saw it?"

"Yeah. We were in the foyer discussing ways to lure you guys to this place when an orange light flashed in through the windows." Marie straightened her wristband. "I ran up to the balcony to see what had happened and looked out the window, running back downstairs when I heard someone outside the house screaming."

"That was probably Jimmy. I imagine that the kids were attracted by the flame spurt thrown up by the taco stand and came over to see what had happened. They were gathered in front of the house, and Jimmy told us that he saw a dark figure in one of the windows."

"Yeah, that was me." Marie slid down in her chair. "So, ho did you guys get in here?"

"We were attracted to the front lawn by Jimmy's shriek of terror, and the kids shared a few theories about this house before Kevin dared Eddy to go in for a jawbreaker."

"I had planned to just step in the door and walk back out, with Ed and Double D there to make a stronger case that the house wasn't haunted."

"But Eddy decided to try and scare the kids by pretending we were being attacked by ghosts."

"The doorknob fell off when we tried to leave, and my finger got stuck when I tried to pick it open."

"We heard a music box go off in a nearby room as we tried to get Eddy loose, and we found ourselves in the basement, where we got separated."

May nodded. "Yeah, Big Ed found a box of cereal in the dumbwaiter, which he rode up to the train station."

Marie continued. "The trail of books leading you to the library, where a crooked book opened a trapdoor to the train station."

Lee finished off. "And Shortstuff got sucked into a stair catapult with a piggy bank at the top that catapulted you to the train station."

"Yeah, and you know the rest of the story." Edd looked back at the door they had fallen in through. "And from the looks of things, you seem to have made a redux version of that day, with our most prized possessions as bait."

May nodded. "And some organ music in the background."

"Yes, 'Little' Fugue in G Minor BWV 578 by Johann Sebastian Bach?"

The girls shrugged before Marie spoke up. "It was a piece of creepy organ music that sounded like it could fit song lyrics."

"Really?" Edd was intrigued. "Tell us about that."

Kevin and Nazz returned to the old abandoned house. Rolf was carving a pig from a block of wood, and Sarah and Jimmy were leapfrogging up the walkway toward the house.

"Any sign of Jonny while we were gone?"

Sarah and Jimmy shook their heads.

"Rolf has seen no sign of the round-headed one."

Kevin sighed. "He's got to be somewhere!"

Nazz hopped onto the railing on the porch. "We don't really know if Jonny's going to come this way before a trap is sprung."

"He said he would be here at the crack of dawn."

Sarah slumped against the door. "So, what are we supposed to do, sit here and wait for him to show up?"

Nazz shrugged. "Unless anyone wants to go on another fruitless search."

"We can't give up yet. He has to be somewhere."

"If we keep looking for him, he'll just hide himself from us."

"Well, what are we supposed to do, Nazz?"

Nazz swung her legs back and forth. "We could just go back home. We can always figure out what Jonny did with the Eds later."

Jimmy didn't think it was a good idea. "But think of what Jonny could be doing to them as we speak!"

"Rolf should know from everything the Ed-boys have gone through that their endurance matches Rolf's own on his family's voyage across the sea."

"Yeah, but we should still do what we can to help them. And the only way we can do that is to figure out where they are, either by reaching them or having Jonny tell us where they are."

Sarah started pacing the porch. "We're not going to find Jonny if he doesn't want to be found, so we'll have to find the Eds. We know they're not in anyone's houses, and Jonny could by bluffing about them being in the house. Is there any place we haven't looked yet?"

"Rolf can only think of the lawn of athletics as the only stone unturned."

"You mean the playground?" Kevin started down the path. "Let's go look there, then."

The kids followed him to the playground.