Hamish X and the Hollow Mountain Read online

  Praise for Book I

  Hamish X and the Cheese Pirates

  Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Juvenile Canadian Crime Literature

  “Hamish X and the Cheese Pirates has subplots and subsubplots that Cullen populates with heroes, superheroes, and vile, nasty villains. All of which adds up to an action-packed adventure held together by a humorous and clever narrator with a penchant for cliffhangers and riddles…. Just when you think everyone is doomed and there is no way out, Cullen comes up with an imaginative, often ingenious solution to unravel the knot…. Seán Cullen leaves us with a craving for more Hamish X.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “Incorporating humour through aspects such as his story’s characterization, narration, and language, Cullen creates an engaging, well-paced narrative with distinctive characters and settings that will keep readers wondering what will happen next.”

  —CM Magazine

  “The action, buffoonery, and puns pushed to their limits will have many young readers laughing out loud and keep them entertained from beginning to end.”

  —Edmonton Journal

  “Many young readers will be eager to follow Hamish X and his magical boots into their next adventure.”

  —Peterborough Examiner

  Praise for Book II

  Hamish X and the Hollow Mountain

  “Hamish X, mysterious and powerful orphan with his otherworldly boots and fearless demeanour, is back for a second adventure, this time leading his cluster of friends to the remote Kingdom of Switzerland. The evil Mr. Candy and Mr. Sweet are back as well, and it’s touch and go who will triumph in this fast-paced and inventive battle between good (kids) and bad (cyborgs). Seán Cullen, a Toronto comedian, has found his legs with Hollow Mountain…. The notion of a monarchy hidden inside the Alps, run by a boy-king served by robotic raccoons, is so pleasing that I’m happy to strap in for the ride.” —Georgia Straight

  “But the best contender for the Potter–Snicket throne may be Seán Cullen’s Hamish X books. That’s because they combine the best elements of both those hits—the adventure-filled plots of the Potter saga and the eccentric narrator of the Snicket tales.”—The Province

  “Cullen delivers an over-the-top action-packed adventure that is filled with buffoonery and zaniness, a compelling narrative about orphans and cyber-robots that will leave young readers laughing and craving more…. Cullen has done a masterful job of interpreting his son’s imaginary landscape with an abundance of tomfoolery.”—Hour (Montreal)

  “Weaving elements of farce, fantasy, hero tales, and science fiction of the more outrageous kind, Cullen concocts a dizzying potion about his hero Hamish X.… Sounds crazy? Well, it is, but it’s the kind of craziness that kids lap up.”—The Muskokan

  PUFFIN CANADA

  HAMISH X AND THE HOLLOW MOUNTAIN

  Comedian SEÁN CULLEN was a member of the highly influential musical comedy troupe Corky and the Juice Pigs until 1998. His stage and screen credits include CBC’s Seán Cullen Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the Showcase series Slings and Arrows, and the Toronto stage production of The Producers. He is the winner of three Gemini Awards.

  Also by Seán Cullen

  Hamish X, Book I:

  Hamish X and the Cheese Pirates

  Hamish X, Book III:

  Hamish X Goes to Providence, Rhode Island

  PUFFIN CANADA

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in a Puffin Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2007

  Published in this edition, 2008

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

  Copyright © Seán Cullen, 2007

  Illustrations copyright © Johann Wessels, 2007

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Manufactured in Canada.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-14-305312-5

  ISBN-10: 0-14-305312-4

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication data available available upon request

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.penguin.ca

  Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see www.penguin.ca/corporatesales or call 1-800-810-3104, ext. 477 or 474

  For Glen, my father, who could fix anything

  Well, hello again and welcome to the second book in the saga of Hamish X. I can only assume that you enjoyed the first book, seeing that you are reading the second. Unless, of course, you prefer to torture yourself by reading things you don’t really enjoy.1 If that is the case, you are very strange indeed and should perhaps find another hobby.

  In the first book we shared a wonderful adventure complete with Cheese Pirates, daring escapes, explosions, poop-hurling monkeys, and woolly mammoths. That’s not a patch on what’s going to happen in the second book. Oh, lucky you.

  Since I last narrated to you I have gone on a sabbatical2 to central Tibet, where I studied with one of the finest storytellers in the world, Ta Lhasi Bo. He is a monk who is renowned for telling stories of incredible length and complexity. He once told a story so long that he died in the middle of it and his audience had to wait until he was reincarnated to finish the tale. Unfortunately, he was reincarnated as a salmon first, then a polar bear, and finally as another Tibetan monk. The process took seventeen years, and many of the original audience members died in the meantime and were reincarnated as various animals and insects. In the end, he couldn’t finish the story because all the dogs, cats, mice, lemurs, donkeys, and mosquitoes were making so much noise he couldn’t be heard at all.

  Ta Lhasi Bo lives in a remote village reached only by catapult. I stayed there for eight months and did an incredible amount of training. He put me through gruelling exercises to improve my stamina and concentration. For example, he forced me to tell a ver
y complicated story while being poked in the buttock with a sharpened yak bone for hours on end. Although it certainly improved my stamina, it didn’t do my buttock much good. I have to wear specially designed pants now. My concentration, however, is impossible to break.

  And so, fresh from the highlands of Tibet, I bring you the second tale in the series detailing Hamish X’s amazing exploits: Hamish X and the Hollow Mountain. The Hollow Mountain is the home of the legendary King of Switzerland.

  What’s that? Switzerland has no king? It’s a republic, you say? That just shows how little you know about the true state of world affairs. Trust me, everything will be explained in the pages to come. Have I ever steered you wrong? Of course I haven’t.

  Where did I leave you at the end of the first book? Oh, yes! A bit of a cliffhanger!3 After all, the third lesson taught at the Advanced Narrator’s Certification College in Helsinki is Always Leave Them Wanting More.4 (The first lesson is Have a Story to Tell, which may seem obvious, but I can assure you that many well-intended narrators go down in ruins because they have no idea what they want to write.)5 The children had defeated the Cheese Pirates and were enjoying their new freedom at the cheese factory in Windcity. Mr. Kipling had proposed to Mrs. Francis. Parveen had smiled (extremely out of character for him). Then the Grey Agents of the ODA showed up in a helicopter, with a strange woman’s voice luring Hamish X into their clutches. Hamish X was in a trance, unable to recognize his companions. Indeed, he even drove one of his famous boots right into Mr. Kipling’s stomach. Certainly not the kind of behaviour we’ve come to expect from Hamish X.

  Part 1

  TO SWITZERLAND

  Chapter 1

  Mr. Sweet extended a gloved hand towards Hamish X. “Come,” he said soothingly. “You are finished with them now. Time to come home.”

  Mimi shivered and wiped the freezing rain from her eyes. Hamish X, however, was oblivious to the cold water sifting down. He stared at Mr. Sweet and nodded.

  “No!” Mimi tried to step in front of Hamish X, but he pushed her away. She fell with a splash into the mud.

  Hamish X stepped over her towards Mr. Sweet.

  Mimi reached up a muddy hand and clutched Hamish X’s right boot. “No!” she shouted again. She spat at the agent. “He doesn’t wanna go with y’all!” She pulled herself up and grabbed Hamish X’s sleeve. He stared vacantly down at her tear-streaked face. “Ya belong here with us.”

  For an instant, confusion showed in Hamish X’s eyes.

  “Yer my friend, Hamish X. You saved us all.”

  “Little girl,” Mr. Sweet laughed, “he belongs with us.”

  “He belongs to us,” Mr. Candy hissed.

  “No!” Mimi shook her friend. “These people don’t care about ya. I don’t know what they want but it cain’t be good. Don’t go with them. Remember who you are! You’re Hamish X!” She swung around, gathered her hands into fists, and ran at the agents. Mr. Sweet stepped forward and calmly held out his arm, easily deflecting her charge and sending her off balance to fall once more in the freezing mud.

  Hamish X blinked. He shook his head clumsily, as if trying to clear it. Anger showed in his eyes. “No …” He drunkenly shambled to interpose himself between the agents and Mimi, who had fallen on her face, banging her bony nose on the ground hard enough to send blood trickling from her nostrils. “Don’t touch her …”

  The loudspeaker whispered again, more insistently, “Come to Mother, Hamish X. I’m waiting for you at home.”

  The voice had an immediate effect. “Home?” Any spark of recognition in the golden eyes was extinguished. Hamish X turned his back on Mimi and walked to the waiting agents.

  Mr. Sweet reached into his coat pocket and extracted a pair of smooth white bracelets. “Excellent, Hamish X. We’ve wasted enough time.” He guided Hamish X to the door of the helicopter. The boy didn’t resist. His eyes were dull, his mouth slack.

  Mimi pushed herself up on one elbow. Tears and mud plastered her face. Her hair hung in lank strips. She turned to look for Parveen but found he was gone. Had he run away and left her? She couldn’t believe it. “Hamish X!” she wailed.

  Mr. Candy stopped and turned his head towards Mimi, his goggles resembling the glittering eyes of an insect. “The boy you know as Hamish X never really existed,” he shouted over the rising wind. “And soon, neither will you.”

  Suddenly, from the direction of the harbour, there came a crash and a rumble. The ground shook. The sky glowed red. Flames leapt into the night as several wooden buildings ignited. Over the slanted roofs of Windcity, a bizarre and terrifying shape rose.

  The body was birdlike and balanced on two towering legs. A slender neck coiled with cables ended in a cluster of funnel-shaped nozzles. The overall impression was of a giant ostrich made of dark shiny metal. From the nozzles, gushing streams of flame sprayed over the tilted houses of Windcity, setting them alight, burning them despite the freezing rain that encased them. The heat baked Mimi’s upturned face. As she watched in horror yet another of the strange bird machines appeared, rising above the roofs of the houses to the south. The long serpentine neck swung and the nozzle on its head began spitting flame. New fires bloomed.

  “Marvellous machines, our Firebirds, don’t you think?” Mr. Sweet gloated. “They’ll make short work of this tinderbox town.”

  “You and your friends have served your purpose, little girl,” Mr. Candy explained, his voice devoid of emotion. “You will be erased.”

  Hamish X watched the bird machines approach and something stirred in his golden eyes. “Mimi,” he said groggily. “No!” He turned and looked at her. “NO!” At that moment Mr. Sweet snapped the bracelets over Hamish X’s wrists. The light in his eyes dulled once more. Hamish X’s head dropped forward, hanging like a lead weight.

  The metal birds stomped closer, their paths converging as they moved towards the orphanage. Reaching the edge of the concrete square in front of the factory, the terrible things paused, their pointed heads swinging back and forth like snakes scenting the air.

  “Destroy the town,” Mr. Sweet commanded. The creatures swivelled their heads towards the sound of his voice. “Leave nothing and no one standing.”

  Fire spurted from the horrible heads, setting the houses next to the factory alight. Mimi scrambled backwards in terror. Mr. Neiuwendyke, still dressed as a cat, staggered out of his burning home, meowing loudly.6 He dodged into an alleyway to escape the marching behemoths’ rage.

  “Hamish X! Parveen! Somebody help!” Mimi screamed.

  Mr. Sweet and Mr. Candy seized Hamish X’s arms and heaved him into the helicopter. They climbed into their seats and the craft began to rise above the destruction wrought by their horrible creations.

  A huge metal foot crunched in the mud just in front of Mimi. She looked up into the terrible funnels and waited for the flames to engulf her.

  “Hey!” Parveen’s voice caused the machine’s head to jerk in the direction of the ruined doors of the factory. Droplets of flaming liquid spattered and fizzed on the wet ground. Mimi spun towards the voice of her friend. In the factory doorway, Parveen, tiny but defiant, stood holding a tangle of wires and circuit boards loosely duct-taped together. “Try this.” Parveen stabbed a finger into a button on the side of the bundle and hurled the object into the air.

  With a loud Crump the device exploded, showering bits of plastic and copper wire all around. The explosion wasn’t large but the effect on the mechanical creatures was profound. The one close to Mimi lurched back and spun in a circle. Mimi rolled out of the way to avoid being trampled by its flailing feet. Suddenly, it reeled to one side, staggered several metres, and fell headlong into a burning building with a resounding crash. It tried to rise but failed, spouting flames directly up into the night sky. Then it collapsed back into the rubble. After a single twitch of one spindly leg, it lay completely still.

  The second thing fell sprawling on its front, smashing through abandoned houses as if they were all so much paper and matchs
ticks and skidding to a stop under a pile of burning debris.

  The helicopter didn’t escape unscathed. In its cockpit the two agents flailed as though an electrical current were coursing through them. The craft turned lazy circles in the sky, completely out of control. After spinning around three times and knocking down a row of abandoned shops with its tail, it dropped hard on its runners, snapping them off and slamming the craft hard onto its belly. The running lights flickered and went out. The rotors shattered against the walls of the buildings nearby. Mimi and Parveen threw themselves to the ground as a large piece of metal scythed through the air at head height, burying itself in the brick wall of the factory.

  Finally, save for the crackle of the burning houses, silence fell.

  As Parveen hauled Mimi to her feet she shouted, “What the heck was that?”

  “EMP bomb,” Parveen said matter-of-factly. “It generates an electromagnetic pulse that fries all electronic circuits. I made it from the old microwave and some other junk I scavenged. Just for fun, to see if I could do it, you know?”

  “Just fer fun? Who does that fer fun? Baseball’s fun! Hide and go seek. That’s fun!” Mimi wiped a blob of mud from her cheek and mumbled, “Still, it did the job. Thanks for saving me. Fer a second, I thought ya’d run off and left me.”

  Parveen stared into her eyes. “I would never do that.” Then he shrugged to dispel the serious mood. “Come on.”

  Mimi and Parveen ran through the freezing rain to the helicopter. Mr. Sweet and Mr. Candy lay twitching in their seats, their goggles flickering with some ghostly internal light. Mr. Sweet’s fedora had fallen off, revealing a nest of circuitry that sparked and sizzled.

  “They ain’t people at all,” Mimi breathed. “What in heck are they?”

  Parveen reached down and peeled one of Mr. Sweet’s grey gloves off his limp hand.