25. Twelve Days of Chaos

CHAPTER 25 TWELVE DAYS OF CHAOS It didn't take long before the cops showed up. They attempted to restore order, but things didn't go very well. "We can either do this the easy way, or the hard way!" shouted Officer McWiggly. "Let's do it the FUN way!" cried Miss Fitt, as she yanked Officer McWiggly's pants down around his ankles. "I've got a good idea," said George. "What?" asked Harold. "RUN!" said George.

By the time it was all over, the entire staff of Jerome Horwitz Elementary School was in jail. The charges ranged from indecent exposure and resisting arrest to reckless endangerment and pantsing a police officer. The cops didn't quite know what to do with Mr. Krupp, though. He hadn't really done anything wrong. He'd just stood there in the same spot for hours and hours, saying "B-B-Bubba bobba hob-hobba-hobba wah- wah" over and over and OVER again. So it was decided that he should be admitted into the Piqua Valley Home for the Reality-Challenged, where he remained, unchanged, for nearly two weeks. George and Harold and their twins spent the next twelve days being VERY careful.

"Great job!" shouted Yesterday George angrily. "Our teachers are in jail, and Mr. Krupp is in the goof house. These past two weeks have been a total disaster!" "Two weeks?" said Harold inquisitively. "Yeah," Yesterday George continued. "In the past two weeks you guys have— "No, wait," Harold interrupted. "Wasn't something BAD supposed to happen in two weeks?" George, Yesterday George, and Yesterday Harold all thought back to Melvin Sneedly's cryptic warning in chapter 11. "Oh, yeah," they all said simultaneously. The four boys looked around them. They checked the horizon. They sniffed the air. They put their ears to the floor and listened. Nothing. There was no sign of any trouble. "Huh!" said George. "I guess nothing bad is going to happen after all!"

Suddenly, a fireball shot out from behind the clouds. Then came an echoing, eardrum- piercing sound of relentless terror. It was a laugh. A horrifying, sinister, stomach- churning laugh that the boys had not heard for many months. A laugh that they'd hoped they would never hear again. "Uh-oh," said the Georges. "We're doomed!" cried the Harolds.