The dust on the ceiling bubbled. It shook.
I grabbed the wall. I knew what was coming.
The patch of purple paint exploded. Rocks flew from the ceiling. The entire tunnel shook. It all happened without making a sound.
“That proves the purple dust is the source of the tremors,” I said when my brain had stopped shaking.
“The Gremlin Gang is using the dust to make a tunnel in the rock silently. No one at the school can hear it. But they can’t hide the shaking.”
It made sense. But something else tugged at the back of my brain.
“Why is Principal Weaver telling everyone it’s the heaters shaking the school?”
“Because I told her to.”
We spun around to see the owner of the voice behind us.
Gremlins swarmed over us. Crawling, clawing and screeching little blue creatures were everywhere. Mr. Zallin wasn’t a mega-gremlin—he was made of gremlins. They pulled my tail and yanked Tank’s hair. Blue gremlins were all I could see. Then everything went dark.
My hands were tied tighter than a choke-viper on a sleeping mudrat. Tank was squished beside me. Her legs and arms were tied up too. Her tool belt and my backpack lay on the ground not far from our feet.
“I knew coming down here was a mistake,” she grumbled.
“Really?” I said. “You couldn’t have shared that with me earlier?”
She didn’t respond.
I yanked on my ropes, but that only made them tighter.
Cold rock pressed against my back. We were still in the large cavern. My head felt like it’d been dunked in a barrel of gooey slick.
Blue shapes danced in front of me. About a dozen of them. The Gremlin Gang. Here, in our school. Our new caretaker, Mr. Zallin, had really been the entire Gremlin Gang in disguise. That’s why he always walked like he was falling apart. Under those coveralls, a bunch of gremlins squished together, moving like a single monster. And it worked. They had everyone fooled, including Principal Weaver.
Now, with their disguise gone, the gremlins giggled and skipped around the cavern. The largest gremlin stood on a rock and barked orders at the rest of the gang. He had Mr. Zallin’s fierce red eyes and large ears. He had been Mr. Zallin’s head, sitting on the shoulders of the other gremlins. With his magical ogre disguise gone, I knew I’d seen his real face before.
Tank gave her ropes another good yank. They were tied up tight.
“It’s no use,” she said, slumping against the rock. “We can’t do anything stuck here.”
The gremlins had stopped the cart where a patch of rock had just been blasted away. All that remained of the cave ceiling were slabs of flat black rock.
“I don’t get it,” Tank said. “Why would a criminal gang try to rob a boring old elementary school?”
“They’re not robbing the school,” I said. While Tank had been pulling on her ropes, my brain had been tugging at another problem. I’d seen those slabs of black rock somewhere before. “They’re robbing Mr. Trellik.”
“The old troll who hates kids?” Tank said.
I nodded. “We’re underground, so that ceiling is somebody’s floor. Those black stones are obsidian. And there’s only one place nearby that has obsidian floors.”
“Trellik’s Treasures antique shop!” Tank said. A little too loudly, because all the gremlins turned to look at us.
“The big goblin has figured it out. Finally.” Snatch cackled.
“Who you calling a goblin?” Tank snapped. “No offense, Fizz.”
The gremlins positioned the slimes beneath the obsidian. As soon as the beasts noticed the dark stone, they stretched their gooey bodies up and out of the container.
“They can sense the obsidian!” I said. “Slimes can’t resist that stuff.”
Snag’s slimes wobbled as they stretched up toward the obsidian. Their tips touched the stone and attached. With amazing strength, the slimes pulled the rest of their goopy bodies up to the obsidian. In seconds, they were munching away on the rock. They began to dissolve it with their powerful acids.
The gremlins cackled and danced in circles, chanting.
“Eat the stone! Eat the stone! Soon the treasure will be ours alone!”
“They’re after Firebane’s Hoard,” Tank said. “The slimes are eating their way into Mr. Trellik’s antique shop.”
“All those valuable treasures would be irresistible to a bunch of thieving gremlins.”
“And we’re stuck here!” Tank growled. She kicked my backpack in frustration.
The front pocket of the pack fell open. A bright green glow pulsed out from inside the bag.
My heart beat faster. A chance for escape.
I kicked my legs at the bag. A small clear container tumbled out.
“Little Scrapper!” Tank whispered.
The little slime glowed bright green. It pushed against the lid of its box.
“It senses the other slimes,” Tank said. “It wants to be free.”
“Maybe it can help us get free too.”
I twisted my body so that I could grab the box with my hands still tied behind my back.
Snatch and the rest of the Gremlin Gang were busy watching the slimes devour the obsidian. They had forgotten all about us. For now.
My fingers ran along the edges of the cube, searching for a way to open it. Hutch had made it look so easy. But his hands weren’t tied behind his back.
“Find the hidden switch and push it,” Tank said.
“I know what I have to do!” I growled under my breath. “It’s actually doing it that’s the hard part.”
My fingers felt like sausages trying to untangle a spider web. I couldn’t find the hidden switch anywhere on the box.
Panic rolled up from my belly. Snag’s slimes had nearly eaten through the obsidian. We didn’t have much time.
“You can do it, Fizz,” Tank said, her voice soft and even. “Just breathe and let your fingers relax.”
I took a deep breath and pushed the panic back down into my stomach. My fingers ran along the box. The surface was smooth. The edges were tightly bound. Except for one spot, right near the middle. I pressed the spot.
The box clicked. The lid popped open. Hutch’s slime oozed out.
“You did it!” Tank whisper-cheered.
Relief rushed through me. It was cut short by the feeling of something cold and slimy on my skin.
“Don’t move,” Tank said.
Hutch’s slime oozed down my arm. It stopped on the ropes around my wrist.
“It’s not burning my skin!” I said. “Hutch was right. Slimes aren’t mindless savages. They only like eating garbage and rocks.”
“And ropes, thankfully,” Tank said.
The little slime’s acids quickly burned through the ropes around my wrist. My hands were free. I picked up a chunk of rope the slime was resting on and put it on top of Tank’s ropes. Immediately, it set about dissolving her ropes.
Seconds later, Tank and I were both free.
But it was too late.
Mr. Trellik’s bushy head appeared over the edge of the hole.
“What is the meaning of this?” he snapped. Gremlins pushed past him and stampeded into his shop. “You can’t come in here! Use the front door!” the troll commanded. His teacup rattled in his hands. The gremlins ignored old Trellik. They bounced into the antique shop, knocked over display cases and stuffed anything shiny into their large sacks.
“We’re too late,” Tank said. “The Gremlin Gang strikes again.”
“Don’t tell that to Little Scrapper,” I said.
The slime slurped toward the container where Snag’s slimes happily dissolved the chunks of obsidian inside it.
“It’s just looking for one last snack,” Tank said, shaking her head sadly. “I don’t blame it.”
“Maybe not.” I scooped up Little Scrapper and dropped it onto Mr. Snag’s slimes. “Hutch said Little Scrapper would send a message when we found Mr. Snag’s slimes.”
The slimes pulsed a rich green and melded together. They became one slime. Nothing else happened.
“Or maybe he just wants to hang out with his slime buddies,” Tank said.
“I guess you’re right,” I said. “I was stupid to expect anything more from a mindless slime.”
Glass shattered in the shop above us. Gremlins cackled at their destruction.
“That sounded expensive,” Tank said.
Trellik’s Treasures was a swirling mass of gremlins. They bounced off the walls. They smashed the counters. They scooped up trinkets, jewels and treasures. Their sacks bulged. They had taken nearly all of Firebane’s Hoard. I looked around the tiny shop, hoping to find a treasure overlooked by the jewelhungry gremlins. I found it against the back wall. A collection of teacups, a ceramic pot with a dragon sipping tea painted on the side and a jug of water. Tank climbed up through the hole and crouched beside me.
“Follow me,” I said and raced to the back of the shop.
I figured the gremlins would be too busy filling their sacks to notice us hurrying past them.
I was wrong. A runt-faced gremlin dropped from the ceiling just as we got to the back counter.
“Where you going, goblins?” it snarled.
“I am not a goblin!” Tank stood up straight and growled at the runt-faced gremlin.
It stumbled back at the sight of Tank at her full height. That was all the chance I needed.
I grabbed Mr. Trellik’s teapot, took off the lid and splashed hot tea into the gremlin’s face. Instantly, its wet skin began to sizzle and pop. The gremlin screeched. Then its skin started turning to stone. The stone spread down the gremlin’s neck and across its body. In seconds, the screeching, jumping gremlin had transformed into a statue.
“That’s a neat trick,” Tank said.
“Water and gremlins. A bad mix,” I said.
“For the gremlins, that is.” Tank grabbed the jug of water beside the cups. “Let’s finish this.”
We jumped over the counter and started splashing. The place was so packed with flying gremlins, we didn’t have any trouble hitting them with our splashes. One by one, as their skin sizzled and popped, the gremlins turned into stone. By the time our teapot and jug were empty, all the gremlins stood frozen, turned into statues with looks of surprise on their faces.
Every gremlin, that is, except one.
The school had never looked cleaner. And Mr. Snag had never looked happier.
“There’s nothing like a hallway cleaned by a slime!” The old ogre’s face beamed with pride. The slimes slurped down the hallway of Gravelmuck Elementary outside Principal Weaver’s office. The floor sparkled. The windows gleamed. Every part of Gravelmuck Elementary was spotless. Everything felt right.
It had been two days since Snatch and the Gremlin Gang got slimed. School had ended an hour ago and everyone had gone home. Well, almost everyone. Tank and I had stayed behind to help Mr. Snag on his first day back on the job.
Principal Weaver scuttled out of her office to inspect the slimes’ handiwork. The webs in the ceiling quivered. A few of Weaver’s babies skittered out to snoop on the ogre’s cleaning and our conversation.
“Very impressive, Mr. Snag,” Weaver said. She did not sound impressed. In fact, she had been working hard all day to sound even a little bit happy about the old caretaker’s return. She wasn’t doing a very good job.
“My slimes take their job very seriously,” Mr. Snag said. “And so do I.”
Weaver slinked back into her office without another word. Her spider babies buried themselves into their webs, disappearing from view. That didn’t mean they were not still listening to us. Weaver’s spies were always listening.
“She should be happy we saved her school,” Tank whispered. “Instead, she blames us for making her look silly.”
“It’s not our fault she was tricked by Snatch and his gremlins,” I said.
After the police had pulled Snatch out of the slime, the Gremlin Gang leader had started talking. He confessed to leading his gang into Gravelmuck Elementary late one night to release the slimes. They used their magical powers to unlock the front door and let the slimes loose. Their goal was to get Mr. Snag fired so they could tunnel under the school to Mr. Trellik’s shop and steal Firebane’s Hoard.
Principal Weaver had known nothing about who Snatch really was or what he was doing. She was just so eager to save money, she believed everything he said about vacuum cleaners and heaters that caused the whole school to shake.
When the police had heard Snatch’s confession, they’d released Mr. Snag immediately, and he’d got his job back.
“Thanks again for your help, kids,” Mr. Snag said. “Without you two snooping around and not listening to your teachers, I’d still be stuck in that jail.”
“Not listening is what they do best!” said a voice at the front door.
LIAM O’DONNELL is an award-winning children’s author and educator. He’s created over thirty books for young readers, including the Max Finder Mystery and Graphic Guide Adventure series of graphic novels. Liam lives in Toronto, Ontario, where he divides his time between the computer and the coffeemaker. Visit him anytime at www.liamodonnell.com or follow him on Twitter @liamodonnell.
MIKE DEAS is an author/illustrator of graphic novels, including Dalen and Gole and the Graphic Guide Adventure series. While he grew up with a love of illustrative storytelling, Capilano College’s Commercial Animation program helped Mike finetune his drawing skills and imagination. Mike and his wife, Nancy, currently live on Saltspring Island, British Columbia. For more information, visit www.deasillustration.com or follow him on Twitter @DeasIllos.
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