Ghoulies Abroad by Julie Steimle (bts book recommendations txt) 📖

James’s cable car soon arrived at the top. Rick half expected the cableway to lurch to a stop. Andy looked similarly concerned.

But then Eddie’s and Semour’s went in—or almost did. It stopped a yard away—all of the cable cars halting on the line.

“Oh, crap,” Andy muttered.

Rick hated that his instincts were right. They were stuck on the line.

“You’re kidding me!” Chen’s voice echoed over the cold wind.

Rick saw Semour jump from his cabin to the cliff face—grabbing it. It was insane. But he had secured a perfect hold and climbed up the rock face as if he did this sort of thing frequently in his spare time. Eddie sprang after him, making the same leap and grabbing on a branch to heave himself up. If Rick had not seen it, he never would have believed those two guys would have done it. Rick and Andy could hear echoes of a fight ahead.

“Demons,” Andy muttered through his teeth.

“We have to get up there somehow,” Rick said, gesturing to the top of the cableway.

Looking around at the drop below, Andy nodded and yet shook his head. “How? I don’t have Batman’s gadgets.”

Happy Andy had sense, Rick nodded. Yes, they were not Batman.

“Having trouble?” a voice from above asked them.

Rick and Andy looked up. Sun Laoshi was peering into their cabin from the top, looking surreal in his business suit and tie. A spider monkey crawled in and onto Rick’s shoulder. Rick sighed. He looked back at Chen’s empty cableway cabin.

“Can you get us over there?” Andy asked Sun Laoshi.

Sun Laoshi shook his head. “Not from here. But I can go in and activate the cableway again. Keep watch over my monkey.”

The monkey and Rick exchanged dry looks as Sun Laoshi hurried off over the fat cables like a speedy tight-rope walker.

Andy stared after him. “Is he walking on it in an effort to be inconspicuous?” His skepticism in his voice was heavy.

Rick shrugged. “Would it be better if he did his famous somersault and just landed there?

“Maybe,” Andy retorted. “It would give less time for people to gawk at him.”

Andy had a point.

But then people in the pavilion up top were screaming from the commotion inside there.

After a few minutes the cableway started up again. And when they arrived up top, Andy jumped off with sword drawn, jumping into the fray.

It was a full on battle.

Yunu Peak tourists had scattered out of the way while what looked like an Arab swordsman fought with three hideous-looking Chinese cableway operators and an all-American Boy Scout battled off a thuggish troll. Eddie and Semour were ushering back the crowd while Sun Laoshi was helping the cableway cars empty out with polite smiles and nods and nudges away from the battle. Andy had quickly joined Daniel. Rick backed off with the crowd, pushed there by Eddie. Chen the monkey jumped off Rick’s shoulder and ran into the trees.

“You had a monkey!” their eavesdropper shouted, pointing at him. The man looked entirely freaked already from what was happening. “Who are those crazy people with you?”

Rick stared back at him. “Pardon?”

Moaning, their eavesdropper with his tourist friends nearly surrounded him. “You are Howard Deacon the Third! Those guys are with you!”

Staring back at him, Rick said, “You have confused me with someone else.”

“No, I haven’t! I’ve seen you before at a convention in New York City—with that guy!” The eavesdropper pointed at James. “I know you are together.”

Stiffening, Rick recalled only one convention where James had been with him. It was ages ago, his first convention ever where he had to represent Deacon Enterprises. Whoever this guy was, there was no way Rick could credibly lie to him. So he pulled him aside.

“Look, I don’t know who you are and I don’t care who you are,” Rick said. “If you came here on vacation, go on your vacation and stay out of our way. Forget you saw us.”

The eavesdropper scowled at him, and then at the crazy battle scene before him. “I can’t possibly forget this!”

Chen jogged up. “Rick, let me handle him.”

Rick nodded, letting that man go. He walked back toward the edge of the battle, urging people to go down the mountain to get away from battle scene.

“Rubbernecking is an extremely dangerous hobby,” Rick called out, urging them to go. “You could get hurt.”

A good number quickly obeyed. Others pulled out their cell phones.

“But what is going on!?” That eavesdropper actually shouted at Chen and not Rick.

“See that?” Chen pointed at the troll James finally knocked to its back, pouncing on it and stabbing his sword deep into its chest. “That is a demon. They are demon slayers.”

“A what?”

Several more hurried away.

“There’s no such thing,” someone near Rick murmured.

“No way…”

More phones whipped out to record it.

“Pull out their batteries,” a familiar voice said.

Immediately all cell phones held up lost their backs and their batteries dropped like rocks from them.

Rick turned around, looking to the source.

Tom bounced in, appearing a little worse for wear but cheerfully glad to be there none the less. He winked at Rick. “Sorry so late. I had a little detour.”

“That bad, huh?” Rick asked, smirking at him. He was relieved to see him.

“Get down the mountain people!” Tom called out as everyone who had lost cellphone power scrambled to recover their batteries from the ground. “There’s nothing to see here!”

“Where were you?” Semour asked once he directed the next pair of people off the cableway away from the battle. James was now with Daniel and Andy, all three of them finally dispatching their demons now that Daniel was no longer outnumbered. Two others had come dressed like characters of the story Journey to the West. Sun Laoshi had vehemently unmasked them then tossed them over to Daniel who decapitated one and gutted the other. Six demons now lay dead in the open area.

“This is not good,” Rick said as he stared at the carnage.

Andy had a scrape on his arm. Daniel, a nick on his chin. All of them had some blood on them.

“Are there any real operators here at the peak?” Eddie asked, looking about.

“They were real at the bottom,” James murmured. “So real ones have got to be around here some—”

“Found ‘em!” Daniel announced, having walked around the building. He pointed to two unconscious individuals sitting there.

Sun Laoshi rushed up to them, checking their pulses. He then woke them. Almost immediately, those two Chinese cableway operators broke into panicked speech, sptinging up. They hurried to the cableway landing. When they saw the demon bodies, they screamed.

“It’s ok,” Chen said. “Mei shi.”

They stared at him, then at the urging of Sun Laoshi, they went back to the cableway to operate it for the sake of those still coming up.

The Seven dragged the demon bodies off to the side.

“We can’t do this the entire way down,” Rick murmured, staring at all the blood and their defeated enemy.

“We’re going to have to,” Eddie groaned out with intense dismay.

“It would be worse to let them live on the mountain,” Semour interjected, hardly bothered.

Sun Laoshi nodded.

“But we can’t just leave bodies strewn about!” Rick gasped, throwing up his arms. He pointed to Andy and Daniel. “You guys said, no visible body count.”

They nodded then looked to the dead demons. Unlike in fantasy movies, real demons did not puff away in clouds of dust or vaporize into oblivion. They had bodies that rotted, just like people.

“There’s always fire,” Daniel murmured to himself.

Sun Laoshi shook his head. “No. No. No. No. No. No. No fire. This is my mountain. I will take care of it.”

They looked to him.

“How?” Daniel asked.

Sighing heavily, Sun Laoshi gestured for them to continue on. “Don’t you worry about that. As I said, this is my mountain.”

On his word, they reluctantly left the demon bodies where they had dragged them. Then they continued on their trip down the mountain from Yunu peak.

They hurried past the place on the map called the Empirical Exhibition Hall toward Monkey Park. Tourists who had been on the cableway during the attack rushed out of their path, some screaming, others staring while trying to get pictures. There were actually wild monkeys in the park they hurried through, but Sun Laoshi frowned at them.

“Imports,” he muttered. “My old congress died long ago.”

“Congress?” Eddie echoed.

“A group of monkeys is called a congress,” James called up to him.

Daniel snickered, as it was an inside joke between them all that James knew every group tag for every creature alive.

“Fitting,” Chen said as he tromped through.

Sun Laoshi looked at him funny.

The further they went down, rushing over the icy paths, slipping barely as they hurried down to the Jade Emperor’s pavilion, they noticed more burned Stymphalian birds.

“Do you think there are any demons behind us?” Chen asked as they hurried down the steps.

Every one of the Seven shook their heads.

“They are all ahead of us,” Semour said, pointing down the mountain.

Sun Laoshi nodded.

Rick started to wonder as they hurried if he was going to be of any use to their group, or a liability. He couldn’t exactly go wolf in a public place like this. It was insane to.

The Jade Emperor Pavilion had this three story red pagoda overlooking the valley. They peered down the railing from the main landing where they could see the entire valley below. They could see the Sanyan Palace in the center of the area, closer was Water Curtain Cave where Sun Laoshi stared at with intensity. 

“When we get to the bottom,” Sun Laoshi said as though he were about to do a dark and deadly thing, “You do not have to follow me. But I will be going to Water Curtain Cave. I need you to clear out the demons from here on down to the Seventy-two Caves.”

“What is in the Seventy-two Caves?” Eddie asked.

“More demons,” Daniel said with a roll of his eyes.

But Sun Laoshi replied, “Traitors.”

They stared.

Chen closed his eyes nodding.

“Say that again?” Rick asked, listening.

Nodding with a heavy sigh, Sun Laoshi repeated, “Traitors. Seventy-two demons who had sworn to obey me and to serve as a vanguard to protect this mountain. They clearly have betrayed me.”

“Or they are dead,” Semour interjected with sympathy.

Sun Laoshi lifted his gaze to him. “Perhaps. But all of them?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so. If any are dead, they were betrayed by their own. They were powerful.”

“I thought it was seventy-two transformations,” Rick asked, side-glancing Sun Laoshi. “Seventy-two that you can do.”

Sun Laoshi’s eyebrows rose. “I can do more than seventy-two. No. That detail was confused in the story. There were seventy-two demons whom I had defeated, and in exchange for sparing their lives when I could have killed them, I charged them to guard my mountain.”

Rick gave him a wry look. If he had been a demon, that would not have been enough motivation to stay loyal to someone. Demons were treacherous by nature. Tom was also gazing at Sun Laoshi in the same way. So was Chen. They exchanged looks.

“Let’s go down,” Andy said.

They found stairs which took them down.

And down.

And down.

The pavilion had stood on the edge of a cliff area and they had to go down a long way just to get to the Sea View Park on the map. By the time they arrived, their calves ached. Even their mountaineering friends were breathless.

“Holy cow,” James muttered, leaning on a rock as he caught his breath. “The demons here have got to be in the best shape. Can you guys imagine having to hike up this thing?”

“Are you glad we took the cableway now?” Daniel said, passing him.

“The demons attacking us besides?” James followed after him. “Yes.”

Sun Laoshi headed east once they reached the bottom of the stairs.

And they followed.

“I said you don’t have to follow me,” Sun Laoshi said, hurrying on.

“We know,” Andy replied, hand on sword hilt.

Sun Laoshi was about to respond, but Chen said before he could, “We just think we should.”

“Alright.” Sun Laoshi gazed at them, taking a breath with a little more courage, looking a great deal