The Twelve Topsy-Turvy, Very Messy Days of Christmas by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2022-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 34

STANDING IN THE entrance hall listening to the swan honk at him, Henry felt a very strange sensation. Fear? Panic? Confusion? No. Actually, yes, he felt all those things. But he also felt…

Wind.

Not “wind,” like he had gas and was about to fart. Grow up…although…that would be pretty funny.

No, he felt normal wind. Like a breeze. Only, it wasn’t normal because there shouldn’t be a breeze inside the hallway of his house. He bravely pushed past the swans blocking his way and walked to the back of the house, where he found the source of the wind.

The back door was open. The door to the garden. The door to Katie’s garden. The door to Katie’s garden that he had locked shut with a dead bolt and instructions that it never be opened. And yet, there it was. Open.

He stood in the doorway at the top of the four iron steps, overgrown with weeds and vines, that led down into the garden, where he saw the six geese from the previous day happily and quietly feasting on leaves, foliage, and grasses.

“What are you doing?” Henry asked, staring at Will and Ella, who froze at the sound of his voice as if caught in the middle of some devious act rather than standing in the garden of their own house enjoying a bit of nature.

“It’s not their fault, Mr. Sullivan. It was me,” said Mariana in her quick-fire Hispanic lilt. “They told me not to open the back door. They told me not to let the geese into the garden. But they were hungry—the geese, not your children, although maybe your children, too. You know you have no fresh food in your house at all, which can’t be good for growing children, who need fruit and vegetables that are not frozen or canned. I mean, powdered milk is one thing, but—”

“My God, stop speaking,” Henry instructed.

At this point, Will and Ella stepped in to explain that they had called Mariana after Will was nearly pecked to death having attempted to retrieve his toothbrush from the geese’s bathroom. Unfortunately, in his haste to escape, he neglected to shut the door securely, so the geese burst from their confinement and stormed the house like particularly petulant Visigoths attacking the Roman empire.

If the geese were unpleasant before confinement, they were positively rabid after twelve hours locked in a bathroom. They ran riot around the house, pecking and nipping at Will and Ella, who fended them off as best they could with brooms and mops. But with dwindling energy and facing a superior foe, Ella felt forced to call in reinforcements in the form of Mariana, who mercifully arrived within minutes as she happened to live very close by.

“The geese were simply hungry,” Mariana explained to Henry. “They eat roots, grasses, bulbs, small insects…so I suggested the garden would be the natural place for them.”

“This garden is off-limits,” said Henry definitively, waving an authoritarian finger in the air. “It is not for geese. Or people. Or any other animals for that matter.

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