Mystery at the Pearly Gates

A tongue-in-cheek adventure for the BWG's

By Diann

 

Trixie was having difficulty focusing her eyes. She blinked, shook her head, and blinked again. There, that's better, she thought. Strange, but better. She looked around and saw her six fellow BWGs standing around her with that same expression on their faces.

"Wow," said Mart, shaking his arms and hands, "I wasn't sure for a minute if all of me was still attached. I feel so, so…"

Trixie exploded with laughter. "Ha! It must be the end of the world! Mart can't think of a word to use!"

"Uh, Trix," Brian said solemnly, "you may be more right that you think."

"Whhhaattt?" Trixie cried disbelievingly. "What on earth do you mean?"

"I mean, it's not 'what on earth' anymore," Brian said, waving his arm in a 160-degree arc in front of him. "Don't you notice anything different?"

"Well, yeah, it's awfully bright," Trixie observed, looking all around her. "I thought it was supposed to rain today."

"What about you, Honey?" Brian directed his question to the not-so-secret love of his life.

"Hmmmm, I guess I feel kind of floaty like, like I always feel whenever you look at me with those gorgeous dark eyes, Brian," Honey replied quite dreamily.

"Oh, brother," said Jim. "That's a little too much. But I do feel different. I can't explain it. What about you, Di? Anything strange about all this?"

"Oh my, yes! Look at me! I'm all in white! I never wear white. It washes out my lavender eyes and blue-black hair. Whatever was I thinking this morning?" Di lamented. "And look, the rest of you are all in white, too, for heaven's sake!"

"At last, someone got it right!" A booming voice bellowed from behind them.

"Jeepers! You scared the life out of me! Who are you?" Trixie demanded.

"No, no, that wasn't me who scared the life out of you," the newcomer replied as he stepped out of a pair of gates that somehow no one had noticed before.

"Hello, sir," Honey said politely. "Could you tell us where we are? And oh, by the way, I love what you've done with those wrought iron gates. They look so nice in that pearl white color. Most people use that dreary black."

"Oh, Oh, OHH!!!" yelled Mart, suddenly putting all the pieces together. "You..you…you're …HIM!"

The man cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses, "Well, no, not Him. Just Him's, uh His right-hand man. Most know me by my book," he said, holding up a huge book that seemingly had no beginning and had no end.

"This is too much," Trixie stared wide-eyed at the apparition she now knew was St. Peter. She became so weak-kneed that she tried to sink to the floor. However, she did not realize that the "floor" was actually a cloud and Jim had to grab her before she fell the 10 million miles straight down.

"Thanks, Jim, for saving me--again." Trixie grinned.

"Will the spokesperson for your group please step forward," St. Peter commanded.

Six Bob-Whites stepped backward, leaving Trixie at the forefront.

"Gee, thanks, guys," Trixie said. "Who died and made me queen? Oh, geez, never mind. Forget I asked that."

"Your name, young lady?" St. Peter asked.

"Trixie Belden from Sleepyside, New York," Trixie answered proudly.

St. Peter began thumbing through the B's, finally coming to the Belden section. "Hmmm, Tabitha, Thomas, Timothy, Tobias, Tracy, Tymon. Nope, no Trixie. Could be listed under a different name?"

Mart hooted and Trixie elbowed him in the ribs. "Well, sir, you might try Beatrix," this last word coming off Trixie's tongue as though she was spitting out some nasty bitter creature she had accidentally gotten in her mouth.

"Right, Beatrix. Oh, yes, here it is." When her name fully registered, St. Peter leaped back and shouted, "Oh, jumpin' Jehosaphat, it's HER!"

The sky immediately turned a dark black and sharp lighting split the sky wide open.

"Sorry, Sir," St. Peter said humbly and the sky at once turned back to a beautiful blue, perfectly matching Trixie eyes.

"Are you surprised that I'm here?" Trixie asked.

St. Peter mumbled under his breath, "Yeah, me and the 400 angels now trying to cover their bets."

"Pardon?"

"That's not for me to say, Beatrix. I am only here to judge whether you are worthy to enter," St. Peter explained. He read some more of Trixie's record, sometimes shaking his head in disbelief and sometimes staring at her over his glasses and clucking his tongue. Trixie was feeling very uncomfortable, standing on one foot, then the other.

"And the rest of your group here, these are the other, what do you call yourselves, the BWGs?"

"Right, sir, the Bob-Whites of the Glen," Diana answered cheerfully, eager to make a good impression.

"Just raise your hand as I call your name. James Frayne? Martin Belden? Brian Belden? Diana Lynch? Madeleine Wheeler? Daniel Mangan? Good, all present and accounted for. Somehow I also knew that it would be all seven or none."

"Could you tell us how we came to be here, sir?" Jim inquired. "The last thing I remember is opening the door at Wimpy's. The next thing I know, well, I think I remember passing by a flock of geese and a 747."

"You can view the video later, Mr. Frayne. Right now, I've got to take care of some business. Oh by the way, on your way up, did you happened to catch anything on the news about Hell freezing over? No? Well, all right. As you might know, every person must pass a test in order to be admitted."

"Oh, woe," Trixie wailed. "Please, Mr. St. Peter, don't let it be a math test!"

"Actually, Beatrix, I'm not the one who will administer your test. Another has been chosen and here she is." With that he stepped to the side revealing another specter standing behind him.

Each of the Bob-Whites stared at the one who held their eternity in her hands. Disheveled hair and halo; eyeglasses that were too large dangling from a silver-toned chain; a sagging bosom that indicated her bra should have been replaced eons ago; the hemline of her robe hanging unevenly; and a pair of wings, well, looking like a few feathers had come loose.

"Mrs. Alverson!" all seven cried in unison.

"Who would have ever thought we'd meet our 10^th grade English teacher from Sleepyside Junior-Senior High School here!" Mart declared.

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Belden. Who would have ever thought," Mrs. Alverson said as she stepped behind a podium that had miraculously appeared. "In order for you to enter the heavenly gates, you must first give a extemporaneous presentation. Your topic is "What I Did on My Summer Vacation."

"Oh, no, not again, Mrs. Alverson!" Trixie was obviously dismayed. "I've done that every fall since the first grade! Can't we do something different, like Our Favorite Christmas Present or What Animal We'd Like to Be if We Weren't Human?"

St. Peter slammed the book closed. "Very well, Beatrix Belden, if that's your attitude, you can take your group and go south--way south!"

"No, no, St. Peter, I didn't mean it. I just blurt out things before I think," Trixie said in her most apologetic voice.

Brian stepped forward. "Mrs. Alverson, would it be okay if we responded as a group, since we've always done things as a group and we're here in front of you now as a group?"

Mrs. Alverson patted her hair and picked a stray feather that had fallen from her left wing. "Well, since you asked so politely, Brian, yes, you may."

"Great!" exclaimed Dan. "I'll start. Well, if I remember correctly, we started off the summer by attending a play called The Secret of the Mansion at the high school put on by the Drama Club. I wore my Black Jacket."

"That's right!" Honey jumped in enthusiastically. "I wore that gorgeous Queen's Necklace, Trixie wore the Emeralds that her Aunt Alicia gave her, and Di had on that exquisite purple Velvet Gown."

"Moms and Dad gave us a severe tongue-lashing because we were so late getting home," Brian said, still smarting from the tone in his father's voice.

Mart then chimed in. "We kept taking those detours Off Glen Road and Off Telegraph Road and across the Indian Burial Ground because Trixie kept insisting she was seeing a Blinking Eye in the woods. Turns out it was just the flashlight bobbing up and down on old Belle as Mr. Lytell was riding her home. What a night."

"Why was the play performed after school let out?" Di asked. "The Drama Club usually has its play the first week of May."

"Trixie strikes again!" laughed Dan. "Don't you remember, we put on that Pet Show the weekend before the play was supposed to open and Trixie forgot to put down the protective covering over the auditorium floor. What a mess! But what can you expect with 100 dogs, cats, and birds everywhere! I didn't think the building custodian was going to let her back in school."

"Hey, now, take it easy on Trixie," said Honey protectively. "We were all in that together."

"Thank you, Honey," Trixie sniffed. "I can tell who my real friend is."

"But, then you did get yourself in hot water with the Sleepyside Sun after you told them that my Dad and I were missing," Honey said.

Di giggled, "I still remember the headline: Missing Millionaire and Missing Heiress Still Not Found."

"Missing--really, Trixie. You knew that Mother, Daddy and I had taken the Red Trailer on a trip up to Saratoga and then over to Cobbett's Island," Honey said.

Trixie hung her head. "I know, but when you left on Monday, I thought you said you'd be back "next Wednesday," but you had really said you'd be back "next week." When you hadn't shown up by Friday, I thought you'd become a Vanishing Victim or something else horrible."

"It was another case of Trixie's good intentions going awry," Dan added. "Say…you don't suppose that old say about a certain road being paved with good intentions is true?"

Trixie shuddered. "Don't even talk about it." She then brightened. "But then we put on the costume ball to benefit the girls softball league. It was quite a success!"

"It sure was!" agreed Di. "We raised $500 so that they could buy new equipment. Mart was so cute as the Headless Horseman!"

"Yes, Mart is definitely cuter without a head!" Trixie jested. "And you, Di, went as a Whispering Witch. You were the quietest couple there--Mart without a head and you just whispering!"

Di blushed furiously at the reference to her and Mart being a "couple."

"But then we had that atrocious incident with the punch bowl," Brian recalled. "Seems like Trixie thought we had an Uninvited Guest and a Mysterious Visitor and she threw the punch bowl at them when they tried to leave. Turns out it was the president of Dad's bank and his wife." Brian ruefully shook his head.

It was Trixie's turn to blush furiously. "They wouldn't tell me who they were. They just slipped around all night and when I heard him talking about receiving a vault full of money, well..." Trixie just left the sentence hanging, knowing it would do no good to finish the explanation.

"Ah, yes. The mater and the pater were in acute state of discontentment over that unfortunate incident, to put it more than mildly," Mart said. "And then, as if to massage a commonly used food enhancer into the already gaping lesion, the next night she told Bobby that legend about the Ghostly Galleon sailing down the Hudson River and how the Galloping Ghost chased it down the riverbank."

"I remember how Bobby woke up shrieking at 1:00 in the morning and wouldn't go back to sleep," Brian said. "Moms was to beat the next morning to fix breakfast and Trixie so kindly volunteered. She attempted to fix pancakes but those directions in the recipe were just a Mysterious Code to her."

Trixie flared up at that. "At least I tried, which is more than I can say for you two!"

"Easy," said Jim, cocking his head toward the famous gatekeeper and Mrs. Alverson. "We're trying to make a good impression here!"

"We had quite an adventure on our trip to Happy Valley," Dan recollected. "We thought, well, Trixie had us believing that the pro basketball player who was vacationing on Mead's Mountain was Sasquatch. That night we chased that poor fellow all over the Marshland and through that tunnel we named Bob-White Cave. He thought the Midnight Marauder was after him!"

St. Peter looked at the group thoughtfully. "Would you perhaps like to take a vote on this all-for-one thing?"

"No, sir, of course not!" Di and Honey cried out together, while simultaneously kicking Mart in the shins.

"But really nothing out of the ordinary happened when we visited Uncle Monty in Arizona after we left Happy Valley," said Di. "On our way home from there, we did have that dreamy riverboat cruise On the Mississippi. I don't remember anything unusual there."

"That's because you and Mart had become virtual Siamese twins by then!" chortled Jim. "No, there's nothing extraordinary or unusual about an entire herd of horses running loose through the streets of Tucson or the flood gates being opened while a group from the Corps of Engineers was making a safety inspection!"

"Those weren't my fault!" Trixie took up for herself. "Not directly, anyway. Why don't you at least mention something good I did. Like finding those Castaway Children on Maypenny's property."

"That's right, you did," chimed in Jim. "And you rescued that valuable Antique Doll from the Unseen Treasure Store during the Memorial Day Fire."

Brian tapped his temple thoughtfully. "But wasn't it just after that when we ran from the Gatehouse into the woods chasing after that Phantom Grasshopper--straight into that huge stand of poison ivy? We were all miserable for a week. We all forgot 'leaflets three, let it be.'"

All seven Bob-Whites started chanting in unison, "Leaflets three, let it be! Leaflets three, let it be!"

"EEEEEEE! I can't take any more!" Mrs. Alverson started stepping back. They could hear her screaming as she turned and ran, "Send them back! Send them back!"

POOF!

"Trixie! Trixie Belden! Are you all right?"

Trixie's head was killing her. She reached up but felt no lumps, bumps or bloody spots. Whoa, what a dream. Where am I and who in the heck is yelling at me now?

Trixie felt a strong pair of arms lifting her and leaning her against a brick wall. She shook the fog from her head and saw that it was Sgt. Molinson who had been talking and had sat her upright. "What happened? Where am I?"

"You're the luckiest human I ever saw. You and your bunch of sidekicks," he said indicating the rest of the BWG's, who were also sitting around with stunned looks on their faces. "All of you were about to go into Wimpy's. Just as Jim opened the door, that old gas line that runs along the side of the building exploded, catapulting everyone of you out into the street."

"Was anyone hurt?" Trixie wanted to know.

"It's the darndest thing," Sgt. Molinson replied. "We thought for a minute that you were all dead, the way you flew through the air and hit your heads against the pavement. You all were just lying there, totally motionless. But look at you, all alive and well, and hardly a bruise or bump among you."

Trixie leaned forward and looked at her friends. Di was practically crooning to her lavender sweater. Honey's wide hazel eyes were staring in horror at some three-leaf clovers. The boys just sat there looking from one to the other as though they were trying to speak but were afraid to do so. Trixie said to her friends, "Guys, I had the weirdest dream. Did you? Do you think…you don't suppose...?"

"NAHHHHHHH!" they all cried out in unison!

The End, Amen!