The octopus exhaled slowly and shook his head. Alex thought for sure he was about to say no, but then he quickly placed a tentacle around Alex’s shoulder. With her arm outstretched, she took a picture of the two of them smiling, heads leaning together.
“If you send it to my agent once you develop it, I can sign it for you!” said the Extremely Ginormous Octopus.
“That would be great!”
The octopus thought carefully for a moment. “Well, maybe you are right, that Steve would listen to me. I am, after all, pretty terrific.”
At which point the two men in black suddenly burst through the door again. In one fell swoop of a tentacle, they were sent soaring back out through the window. Instantly the Extremely Ginormous Octopus returned to his enraged self.
“You see! He only sees me as some stupid animal!” The Extremely Ginormous Octopus turned and glanced out of one of the windows. “Look at them all, watching to see if the great director can tame the wild beast. None of them see the true artist inside. I shall not be paraded like some sort of circus monstrosity!”
Alex sighed. She had been so close. There was a silence as she stared out the window at the large crowd. “Okay, if I can convince the rest of them to leave, and ask only Steve to stay and talk with you, would that be okay?”
There was no response.
“Look, let me talk to him,” said Alex. “I’m pretty sure I can persuade him.”
The Extremely Ginormous Octopus gave an extremely ginormous shrug. “You’ll come right back?”
“I’ll come right back,” Alex assured him, hopping off the bar. “Um . . . I guess you can keep ahold of Giggles for now.” And she gave Giggles a look of apology. Which he did not accept.
“He wants what?”
“He wants to act. He wants to be in the movie. I’m sure that if you let him, then all your problems will be solved,” said Alex.
“No, I can’t. I just can’t. I mean, what about all that expensive motion-capture equipment we’ve bought? What about our advertising campaign: The Greatest Special-Effects Movie of All Time? No, it’s impossible,” said Steve, putting a plaster on one of the men in black’s big toe.
“Look, special effects aren’t that special anymore anyway,” insisted Alex. “I mean, how much more original would you be if you used a genuine monster? Think of that publicity!”
“She makes a good point,” said Holly. “He could actually be the face of The Emperor and the Necklace—we could get him on talk shows! People would certainly be interested in seeing that!”
Steve thought about it, scratching the stubble on his face.
“Would we have to pay him?” he asked.
“I think it has more to do with pride than money,” said Alex.
“Are you sure he can be trusted, though? I mean, he is a monster.”
“Well, first you have to send everyone away. He only wants to talk to you. But that means . . .” Alex looked at Holly. “Steve, will you be able to drive me to Port Cullis afterward?”
Steve looked at Holly, who raised her eyebrows at him. He gave a short nod. Holly then quickly set about dismissing everyone for the day, which really wasn’t all that difficult to do as everyone was pretty ready to call it quits anyway. And Alex escorted Steve toward the pub, explaining softly, “I think that if you ask him nicely, and really, you know, compliment him and stuff, he’ll like that a lot.”
Steve shook his head. “I don’t know about this.”
“Wait here a minute,” she instructed, and she reentered the pub.
“Well?” asked the Extremely Ginormous Octopus as Alex climbed back on top of the bar.
“They are very interested in having you act in the movie. They want to make you the face of The Emperor and the Necklace. They want to put you on talk shows!” said Alex with a big smile.
“Talk shows!!” roared the octopus. “Do they want me to sell my soul as well? Perhaps they would like me to tap dance and juggle twelve poodles while I’m at it!” He slammed a tentacled fist on the bar.
“Um . . .”
“I am an actor. I am an artist!” He stopped, panting heavily. After a few moments of charged silence he asked, “Did they say which talk shows?”
“Look, I’ll go get him, and he can explain everything to you.”
Now if Steve was normally pasty white, it was nothing compared to how he looked approaching the Extremely Ginormous Octopus. He picked up a bar stool and tentatively drew it up beside the octopus, who all the while was glaring at him intensely.
“Hey . . . Ginormous Octopus,” he said nervously.
“Hey? Hey?! That’s all you have to say after trying to kill me,” said the octopus in a very low voice.
“No, not kill you, no, just . . . you know . . . stun . . . you . . .”
“And that’s better!!” exploded the octopus. “That’s better, is it? You ask for my help and then treat me like some sort of . . . animal!”
“Now, to be fair,” said Steve, gaining some nerve, “you did sort of leave us in the lurch there. I mean, we did make a deal.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I am so sorry. Do forgive me for leaving the very important director man in the lurch,” sneered the octopus.
“And you know what else? You are an animal! How else do you want me to treat you?” retorted Steve, bringing himself nose to nose with the octopus (or rather nose to where an octopus’s nose would be, if it had one).
“That’s enough!” interrupted Alex. “Steve, didn’t you have something you wanted to say to the Extremely Ginormous Octopus?”
Steve backed off and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Alex waited for him to say something. But he didn’t.
“Well, he was thinking,” started Alex instead, “that it might be nice to have an actual monster in the movie and not a CGI one.”
The Extremely Ginormous Octopus turned his back to them.
“Um . . . and that normally they would never make this offer, but you are one of the greatest movie monsters of your generation. . .”
To which the Extremely Ginormous Octopus made a sound like “harrumph.”
“Oh yes!” joined in Steve, finally clueing in. “When I was a boy, I saw you in . . . that big movie of yours . . . and was frightened to tears.”
“Was he that frightening?” asked Alex.
“Yes, he was that frightening,” replied Steve.
The Extremely Ginormous Octopus said quietly, “I have always been famous for frightening people to tears.”
“And for obvious reason!” continued Steve with more confidence. “And you make a good point. I mean, why animate pictures when you can have the real thing? I mean . . . can animations feel?”
“Can they cry on cue? Do they understand the arc of a story? Do they study the poetry in the text? I think not!” added the Extremely Ginormous Octopus.
“Now, of course, we don’t exactly know what you would take in payment . . .”
“Twenty cases of whiskey would be sufficient,” the octopus said quickly.
“Done!” And Steve extended his hand. The octopus grasped it with four of his, and they shook.
“Excellent!” exclaimed Alex. “Well, now that that is taken care of,” she said clasping both of them on their backs, “don’t you think we’d better get going?”
Steve nodded and smiled. It was only when he did that that Alex realized she had never seen him do it before. He suddenly seemed like a normal person. And she smiled back. And then the Extremely Ginormous Octopus smiled too.
And then the door of the pub exploded off its hinges in the most violent and destructive way possible.
THE TWENTY-SECOND CHAPTER
In which Alex finds herself trapped.
Alex, Steve, and the Extremely Ginormous Octopus turned and blankly stared at the gaping hole that had recently been the entrance of the pub.
“Oh!” exclaimed Alex. Without pause she dove low to the ground and hid behind the bulk that was the octopus, her mind racing. It wasn’t possible, it ju
st wasn’t possible.
“Good afternoon,” said a voice, with an attempt at warmth, but failing miserably. “I hate to barge in on you like this. But, you see, I am looking for my grandchild. Alex.”
Alex crawled over so that she could peer between two of the octopus’s tentacles. There, in the doorway, stood the leader of the Daughters of the Founding Fathers’ Preservation Society, Poppy. Behind her stood the other four, arms crossed and grinning sweetly. All except the tall, long-haired Rose, who spat the pin of the just-detonated grenade onto the floor with a resounding clink.
“I’m afraid Alex is,” continued Poppy, “how can I put it delicately . . . mentally disturbed, which is why he has run away from home.”
“Isn’t Alex a girl?” asked the octopus.
Without a batting an eyelash, Poppy said, “Yes, that was merely a test. Isn’t that her crouching down behind you?”
Alex whimpered as the octopus turned to look down at her.
“We don’t want to take up any more of your time, dearie. Please, she needs to be with her family.”
But Steve and the octopus didn’t move. Alex could understand their hesitation. There was something deeply troubling about the way Poppy spoke. Though every word she uttered made perfect sense, she somehow still came across slightly as a crazy lady who’d been locked in an attic one too many days.
Poppy edged closer to the octopus.
“If you don’t mind,” she said, trying to maneuver herself around him. Alex was mere inches away from those click-click shoes of hers.
“She seems quite scared of you,” said the octopus, taking another glance at Alex. “But at the same time . . . I mean, family is a great thing.” Alex shook her head at him, but he had turned back to Poppy. “I have always felt that very strongly, because . . . well . . . because I never knew my father, you see. Though I have been told he was a great actor in his day . . .”
“Yes, yes, how sad for you, dear.” Alex watched the click-click shoes shuffle to the left and then the right.
“The greatest, I would imagine. I remember once, ha! this you might find amusing. He wasn’t around when I was growing up, you see, and one day I decided to find him. Oh my, yes, how silly of me . . . how old was I then . . . oh, I can’t remember . . .”
“Dear, is this really the time?”
“I know I had just been in a youth production of The Tempest—I played Caliban. Do you know The Tempest? Well, it is quite popular, I should imagine . . .”
“Look, to be frank . . .”
“I mean the question is more like, who hasn’t seen The Tempest? Though interestingly . . .”
“I insist you desist with this blathering . . .”
“. . . I knew an abominable snowman who hadn’t. Now that, I told him, is abominable!”
“Will you shut up, you degenerate beast!!”
There was a stillness that seemed oh, so wrong.
“What did you call me?” asked the Extremely Ginormous Octopus softly.
“You heard me. Now out of my way, before I get Rose to do something very unpleasant to you, you filthy animal! What . . . stop that, put me down this instant!”
Alex watched Poppy’s feet lift off the ground until they vanished from her line of vision. Revealed to her, as though a curtain were rising on a play, was Rose by the doorway of the pub, reaching for a crossbow. Suddenly Giggles plummeted from on high, landing in front of her with a thud, and Rose was whisked off her feet in his stead, followed closely by the other three.
“How dare you?” the octopus said in a low voice that vibrated through the pub. “Who are you, you old hag, to call me such despicable names? What plays have you ever been in? What stars have you worked with? Are you the face of The Emperor and the Necklace?”
Steve made a small noise that indicated he would rather his film were left out of this particular confrontation but that he still thought the octopus was an excellent actor and he hoped he wouldn’t be offended by his making that small noise.
“I don’t think so!” boomed the octopus, oblivious to Steve. “I am not some creature that lives only by its baser instincts! I am not some monster for you to gawk at! I am not, as you so delicately put it, a degenerate beast!! I am . . .” He rose to his full height, which was sincerely impressive, “. . . an actor!!”
Alex stood and looked at Steve, who had been cornered accidentally by the octopus in his fury. The octopus had begun to swing his captives around slowly while the Daughters were screaming and blaming each other for this predicament. All except Poppy, who pointed at Alex.
“You can’t hide from me, urchin! Wherever you go, whatever you do, I’ll find you!!” She swooped over Alex’s head and back, and then again.
Alex bolted through the doorway of the pub, grabbing Giggles as she did so, and stuffing him back into her bag. She hopped on Mr. Underwood’s bicycle and began to pedal down the dirt road in what she hoped was the direction toward Port Cullis. As she went, she passed a parked tan car with the bumper sticker “Driving slower than the speed limit is legal, for your information,” which she presumed belonged to the Daughters.
The road was long and narrow, and there seemed to be no turnoff in sight. Pedaling as quickly as she could, Alex realized that, eventually, once they were released, the Daughters would overtake her in their car. She slowed to a stop and took stock of her situation. There were no two ways about it. She looked mournfully toward the thick brush of the forest. And then, with a resigned determination, she climbed off her bike and, pulling it behind her, pushed her way through the trees.
She plodded along for a while, and then, when the foliage had thinned somewhat, she started to run. She ran. And she ran. She ran as fast as it was possible to run dragging a bike with you. She did not dare stop. Every time she slowed down she thought she heard the dreaded click-click of their shoes and anticipated feeling a bony hand grab her shoulder, and she would jump as if she had been electrocuted and speed up again.
She continued to run until she could run no farther, and for the first time, she looked behind her. No one. Nobody was following her. She stood quietly, and aside from her heartbeat, there wasn’t a sound. Alex collapsed onto the ground and sat stunned. She wanted to cry. She wanted to cry because she was both relieved and angry. She had managed to elude the Daughters of the Founding Fathers’ Preservation Society once again, but she was also back in the forest. Not only that, she was still no closer to reaching Port Cullis, to finding Mr. Underwood, or the treasure. And just to add insult to injury, it appeared that maybe . . . Alex looked around . . . no, not maybe, she was quite certain of it . . . she was also completely and utterly lost.
THE TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER
In which we come across a Very Illustrious Hotel.
Now Alex was a determined person. When she set her mind to something, she stuck to it. This meant that when she set a goal for herself, like, for example, rescuing a sixth-grade teacher and seeking out his fortune, anything that hampered the end result was very, very upsetting to her. And what upset her even more was how nothing seemed to be going as she planned it. All she wanted was to get to Port Cullis, and that simple goal had somehow become impossible. She couldn’t take the train. And now the road was off limits as well because of those little old ladies.
Rage filled her gut. What were those little old ladies doing there anyway? Alex wondered furiously. How had they found her? Would they plague her the rest of her life? Didn’t they have better things to do than to chase a ten-and-a-half-year-old girl across the countryside? Alex leaned her head against a tree.
Suddenly her knapsack launched itself into the air.
“Oh, Giggles!” she exclaimed and opened the bag for him. He leapt out and looked at her resentfully. “Sorry.” She picked him up. With a shake of his head, he curled up in her lap, and she scratched him behind his ears. “So, Giggles,” she said with a sigh, “what do we do now? Do we just keep going and hope that we’ll just stumble onto Port Cullis? Do we turn around? Do we just move i
nto the forest and live here forever?” Giggles looked up at her. “Not really, don’t worry.” She sighed. “I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know which way to go. I can hardly tell up from down. It all seems so pointless, it all seems so . . . is that a lawn mower?”
Giggles jumped off her lap, and slowly she stood up. They walked through the trees toward the sound and suddenly found themselves standing in a beautifully manicured garden. This was surprising. What was even more surprising was the large white hotel that stood just beyond it.
It was a particularly odd hotel, though at first glance you wouldn’t have thought so. It was very grand, with a veranda that wound all the way around the ground-floor level. And, yes, you are right that the gardener pushing the little mower around the front lawn was not particularly strange. In fact, he was downright friendly. This would be even clearer to you if you knew that his name was Tom Friend, but you don’t know that, because he never introduced himself to Alex and plays little to no role in this particular chapter. But I still insist that this hotel is a strange thing. And now I will explain why.
There are lots of different factors that contribute to owning a successful hotel, but the most important thing to know about is location, location, location. For example, if you have a hotel in the heart of the theater district, then that is good because then all the people who like to see plays will stay in your hotel. But if you have a hotel deep in the heart of a big, thick forest, a hotel to which no road goes and that everyone has forgotten exists, well, dear reader, I can confidently say that no one will stay in your hotel. And this was why this hotel was so strange. It was completely out of place.
“What a strange hotel,” said Alex. She looked at Giggles, and Giggles looked at her, and they silently agreed to investigate.
They approached the hotel, walking up the gravel drive, and climbed up the pristine white stairs to the entrance. Next to the door was a sign that read, “On the Edge Hotel.” Inside they found themselves facing a wide white staircase, which led up to the upper floor, where three large windows filled the room with light. The floor was done in a pinewood, and two well-tended orange trees framed a desk where a young lady in a crisp gray suit was busy writing in a book. She glanced up momentarily as Alex and Giggles wandered past her out of the foyer, through to what appeared to be the dining room.
Alex and the Ironic Gentleman Page 12
