Story Fourteen - Part Four

Continued from:
Monkey June and the Raiders of Monkey Island - Part Three

After Mr. James pointed out that they were all prisoners, everyone in the hangar office grew very quiet and concerned. For a while, no one spoke.

Monkey June’s dad finally said, “It doesn’t make sense for anyone to kidnap a whole plane full of people. We’re just a group of nice people trying to visit an island to help some monkeys. Why would anyone want to keep us from doing that?”

“Maybe they didn’t know who we were,” Ryan said.

“Maybe they just wanted to kidnap someone random,” Carolyn suggested. “To get money or something.”

“They knew who we were,” Monkey June said. “They even thought they knew how many of us were coming. That rude guy said, ‘We weren’t expecting six of you’, and there are three chairs in here. That’s one for me, one for my dad, and one for Mr. James.”

Mr. James thought for a moment and agreed. “You’re right. They knew about our trip, but they didn’t know that we had added three of your friends. That means my pilots aren’t working for them. That’s good news. Now we just need to figure out why they are holding us here.”

“And who the ‘boss’ guy is,” Monkey June’s dad added.

“I think the most important thing we need to figure out is how to get out of here,” Marilyn said.

“Totally,” Ryan said. “This place is boring. And creepy. And boring. I don’t like it.”

“You said ‘boring’ twice, Ryan,” Marilyn pointed out.

“Because it’s twice as boring as anywhere I’ve ever been!”

“It also smells funny,” Marilyn pointed out. “Like airplane oil or something.”

“I think the most important thing is to find some food,” Carolyn said. “I’m hungry.”

“How can you think of food at a time like this?” Marilyn asked.

“Philippians 2:14,” Monkey June said quietly.

“Huh?” Ryan asked.

“I know that one!” Monkey June’s dad said. “‘Do everything without complaining or arguing.'”

“Exactly,” Monkey June said. “I’ve been saying that verse to myself a lot lately. It helps me cut down on my complaining and arguing.”

“That’s great!” Monkey June’s father said.

“It is great,” Marilyn said, “but I don’t think it helps us get out of here.”

“I think it does,” Monkey June said. “When people are busy complaining and arguing, they don’t have time for more important things—like solving their problems.”

“Good point,” Mr. James said. “Let’s put our heads together and see if we can come up with a plan for when this ‘boss’ person arrives.”

“Okay,” Monkey June said. “You’ll have to start without me, though. That looks like a bathroom door at the back of this empty office, and if it is a bathroom, I’d like to use it.”

Monkey June (and Tusks) went to the door at the back of the office. After peeking inside, Monkey June turned back to the others and gave them a thumbs-up. It was a bathroom! Monkey June went in while the others continued talking about their situation—this time without complaining or arguing.

That was the last they saw of Monkey June for quite a long time…

Monkey June looked around the bathroom. She really had wanted to see if it was a bathroom, but more importantly she was hoping to find a way out of the building. She knew that most bathrooms had some kind of ventilation—a little window, or a fan, or something. She hoped that if she found something like that it might be big enough for a girl (and a stuffed walrus) to use to get out of the building.

She immediately noticed that the bathroom did have a small window. It was just the right size for a girl her size to climb through! Unfortunately, that small window was in the ceiling of the bathroom. It was the kind of window known as a ‘skylight’.

If you or I had looked up at that skylight, we’d have just shaken our heads and headed back to the group. Not Monkey June. She gave Tusks a tight squeeze and jumped up onto some pipes that ran up one of the bathroom walls. She climbed the pipes up to where she could get a foot onto the top of the bathroom mirror. Then she swung up and over a light fixture that hung down from the ceiling. Once she was perched on that, she could reach the window.

It probably hadn’t been opened in years, because it was very hard to turn its latch and it was even harder to push the window sideways along its track. She managed it though—as slowly and quietly as she could—and in a few seconds she was out on the roof of the building.

Monkey June could see a lot from up there. She could see the woods on one side of the hangar and the airfield on the other side. She also saw the other building where the bad guys were probably waiting for their boss to arrive.

She saw something else too: a thick, grey fog rolling in from the sea, creeping in through the woods and blanketing everything around the airfield.

“Better do some exploring,” she said to herself (and Tusks) as she climbed down a drain pipe on the outside of the building. “Once this fog covers everything it’ll be a lot harder to see and get around.”

As soon as her feet hit the ground, she had another interesting thought.

“Tusks, ol’ buddy,” she said, “this fog might be the best thing that’s happened all day.”

Monkey June walked through the foggy woods near the airfield buildings, wondering if she should sneak around to the other building to try to hear what the bad guys were up to.

She heard a rumbling motor sound coming through the woods, though, and realized that it was the sound of a boat arriving! That told her that she couldn’t be very far from the shore! She went off through the woods towards the sound.

She got to the edge of the woods just in time to see the boat being tied up at an old wooden dock by two men, and another man stepping out of the boat. The new guy was obviously the man they called ‘Boss’.

After the boss man and the two guys from the airfield walked up the path towards the buildings, Monkey June ran (as quietly as possible) over to the boat to get a better look at it.

There was no one else in the boat; it was just sitting there, empty. She wondered if she could move the boat to a different spot without starting its engine. She didn’t want the bad guys to hear that she was at the shore messing with their stuff.

She looked at the heavy rope holding the boat at the dock and realized that she could unhook it and pull the boat by walking along the shore! She tucked Tusks under one arm and pulled the boat along by the rope with her other arm. After just a few minutes she had pulled it around a bend in the shoreline, where it would not be visible from the dock. When the bad guys came back they would find their boat missing and probably start fighting with each other about which of them hadn’t hooked up the rope properly. (She was pretty sure they wouldn’t remind each other about Philippians 2:14.)

Now she just needed to figure out how she might get her father and friends out of the hangar and down to the boat so they could make their escape—and leave the mean guys behind on the island.

Halfway back to the airfield, Monkey June got completely lost in the woods. The fog was so thick that she couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her.

It wasn’t just that the fog made it hard to see very far; it also made the woods darker and creepier than they had been on her way down to the shore. She clutched Tusks a little closer as she tried to find her way back to her dad and her friends.

Suddenly, a chilling noise echoed through the woods around her:

“WOOOOOOOOOOOO-WOOOOOOOH!”

The fog made it sound like it was coming from every direction at once. It sounded like the cry of a sad ghost, or maybe a wounded animal of some kind.

Monkey June whispered quietly to herself, “Jesus said, ‘Don’t be afraid.’ Luke 12:7.”

“What was that?” said a man’s voice not far away from her on her left. The bad guys were still walking back to the airfield and she must have nearly caught up with them! She froze where she was.

“It’s the Monkey King’s Ghost!” one of the men said, sounding terrified.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” another man said angrily. He had to be the boss guy. “Nobody believes in those silly legends.”

“It’s not a legend!” one of the other men said. “It’s true! Monkey ghosts have haunted this island for years, and the ghost that people talk about the most is the Monkey King’s Ghost! He was the King of the Monkeys before they were all scared away from here. He wants revenge!”

“WOOOOOOOOOOOO-WOOOOOOOH!” came the eerie sound again, sounding like it was a lot closer this time.

“Boss, we gotta run!” one of the men shouted.

“Calm down,” the boss said. “It’s probably just the wind.”

Suddenly, Monkey June heard the sound of a large branch crashing down from a tree. Based on the sound of all three men screaming, it must have landed nearly on top of them.

The next thing she heard was all three men shouting and running away towards the buildings.

When Monkey June didn’t come back from the bathroom after a very long time, the others started wondering what was taking her so long.

“I’ll go get her,” Ryan said, jumping up from his spot on the floor.

He was back in a few seconds.

“Nobody in there!” he said.

“She has to be in there, Ryan,” Marilyn said. “Where else could she be?”

At that moment, they heard the door of the office being unlocked. In walked a very mean looking man they hadn’t met yet. The rude man who had locked them in the room stood behind the new guy, blocking the doorway with the third man next to him.

“You may call me ‘Boss’,” the man said.

“I’ll do no such thing,” Mr. James said. “You have many questions to answer. What’s the meaning of this?”

The man ignored Mr. James and turned to the man in the doorway.

“I thought you said there were six of them,” he said gruffly.

“There were six, Boss,” the man said. “I swear.”

“My daughter is in the bathroom,” Monkey June’s father said. “She’s probably upset and crying and needs some time alone. It’s not every day she gets kidnapped for no reason on her way to help a friend.”

“But—” Ryan started to say.

“SHH!” Marilyn and Carolyn said at the same time.

“Doesn’t matter where she is, Boss,” the man said. “There’s no way out of here. We checked the place over like you said to.”

A loud crashing noise out in the hangar suddenly startled everyone. It sounded like something huge had fallen over.

“What was that?” the boss asked.

“Maybe some boxes fell over?” one of the men guessed.

“It’s the Monkey Ki—” the other man started to say.

“Don’t…even…say it!” the boss said angrily. “Stop guessing and go check it out.”

The men went to check.

The ‘boss’ waited for them to return, but they never came back.

“Stay here,” the boss said. “I’ll deal with you later.”

With that, he went out, slamming and locking the office door.

After the boss locked them back in, Monkey June’s father said, “I have a feeling my daughter might have been involved with that crash.”

“I don’t care who was involved with that crash!” Ryan said while running towards the bathroom door. “I’ll be hiding in the bathroom if anyone needs me!”

After opening the bathroom door and running in there, though, he screamed loudly and ran right back out. He slammed the bathroom door and leaned against it, panting like he had seen a ghost.

“There’s a monkey in the bathroom!” he shouted.

“Hush,” Mr. James said. “This is not the time for foolish jokes.”

“It’s not a joke!” Ryan shouted. “It was huge! It looked at me with…scary eyes…and…it kind of…kind of…”

“Kind of what, Ryan?” Marilyn asked.

“Spit it out,” Carolyn insisted.

“…kind of…waved at me!”

“What’s so scary about that?” Marilyn and Carolyn asked at the same time.

“I think I might know that monkey, Ryan,” Monkey June’s dad said. “Pull that door open so I can get a good look at him.”

Ryan looked confused and terrified, but he opened the door. A cute, friendly monkey face peeked out. Monkey June’s dad shouted a happy ‘Hello, there!’ and opened his arms. The monkey ran out and jumped up on Monkey June’s dad, giving him a huge hug.

“Friends, this is Mango Monkey!” he said.

Marilyn, Carolyn, and Ryan were shocked and surprised, but they were also happy to meet the legendary monkey who was Monkey June’s best monkey friend.

“What is he doing here?” Carolyn asked.

“Good question,” Ryan said. “And how did he get into the bathroom?”

“He probably can’t tell us, since he can’t talk,” Marilyn said.

“He is a very smart monkey,” Monkey June’s dad said. “Mango Monkey, can you tell us why you’re here?”

Mango Monkey jumped around on the floor, running from one side of the room to another, acting out a series of strange scenes that didn’t make any sense to the humans watching him—not to most of the humans, anyway.

“Oh! I get it!” Ryan said. “He floated here on…something…and then he saw Monkey June…and then he scared some guys in the woods, and then he came here and pushed over something…really big…and then he ran around the outside of the building and…climbed up on the roof, climbed in through the bathroom window, and came to set us free!”

“You got all of that from watching him jump around?” Carolyn asked.

“It was perfectly clear!” Ryan insisted.

“How’s he going to set us free?” Marilyn asked.

Mango Monkey answered that question by holding up a key that he had been holding clenched in his monkey hand the whole time.

“I think that crash was a distraction, which he used to steal the key,” Mr. James suggested. “He is a smart monkey indeed. I’m sorry that I used to think of him as ‘dangerous’. Let’s not waste any more time talking; let’s get out of here.”

A minute later they were in the woods behind the hangar. They had walked out as quietly as possible, following Mango Monkey. It seemed that he could hear the bad guys from quite a distance away, and he knew the best way to sneak around to avoid them.

Once they were safely hidden in the trees, Mango Monkey waved for them to follow him, and off they went towards the shore.

Monkey June was waiting for them at the shore, of course. She quickly and quietly showed them where she had hidden the boat.

“All aboard!” she whispered as she motioned for everyone to get into the boat. “I hope you know how to start this thing, dad.”

“I’m sure I can figure it out,” he said.

Mango Monkey didn’t jump into the boat with everyone else. He quickly hugged Monkey June and waved ‘goodbye’ to the others. Then he ran off into the woods.

“YOU THERE!” a man’s voice called across the beach. “STOP RIGHT THERE! THAT’S MY BOAT!”

They did not stop, of course. The boat’s motor rumbled to life, and before the boss guy could run to where they were, the boat backed out into the ocean. In less than a minute they were so far from the shore that they couldn’t hear the boss man’s shouts and threats at all.

“What’s all this stuff?” Ryan asked, pointing to a lot of papers and charts and maps on a small table in the boat’s cockpit.

“It appears that the people who were keeping us prisoner are raiders,” Mr. James said, looking through the notes and papers on the table. “They were planning to take over the island, and they have marked out places on this map to resume some kind of mining operation.”

“Yup,” Monkey June said. “That ‘boss’ is the same guy who went to jail for illegally mining here. I recognized him as soon as I saw him. Look at the shore from where we are now, Dad. It’s Monkey Island! I recognized it when I moved the boat around that part of the shore. Our plane just landed on the side of the island we had never seen before.”

“So that guy got out of jail somehow and was planning to start doing illegal stuff here again?” Marilyn asked.

“Looks like it,” Monkey June’s dad said. “I wonder why he had us kidnapped, though.”

“Mango Monkey and his family were already here,” Monkey June explained. “I met him in the woods and sent him to save you. He must have moved his family right after the earthquakes started. I think that’s why he didn’t join us on the boat; he was going back to their hiding place or their new home on Monkey Island. I think he’s been scaring and tormenting the bad guys for a while, and they couldn’t figure out if he was a ghost monkey or a real monkey. When they heard we were coming, they decided to trap us and get us to figure out what kind of monkey business was going on here. They were obviously too frightened to do it themselves.”

“They didn’t realize that Mango Monkey was smarter than they are!” Carolyn said.

“Now that you have trapped them on Monkey Island with no boat,” Mr. James said to Monkey June, “I can send the police to collect them. They’ll be in jail a lot longer this time.”

“Once they are gone,” Monkey June’s dad said, “we’ll come back over to this island and visit Mango Monkey and his family properly.”

“Yay!” Marilyn and Carolyn shouted at the same time.

“I know what that means!” Ryan said happily.

“What does it mean?” Monkey June asked him.

“I get to visit a cursed monkey island TWICE on the same trip!”

They did visit Mango Monkey and his family at their new home, but I’ll have to tell you about that in a future story. This one is already quite long.

You might be wondering, though, how Monkey June was so good at climbing pipes, getting out through a skylight, climbing down the outside of a building, and pulling a large boat along the shore by its rope.

Maybe you already figured out her secret. Maybe you remembered back to the night when Monkey June was preparing to leave, when she spent some time in her room with Tusks before heading out to her Thinking Tree. Maybe you realized that Tusks was the kind of stuffed animal that has a tiny, hidden zipper that allowed him to be opened up. Maybe you imagined someone possibly opening him up, taking out some of his usual stuffing, and hiding a scrunched up monkey pillow inside of him.

Maybe—if you figured all of that out—you also knew that Monkey June had her monkey pillow with her everywhere she went on that trip, and no one had even noticed.