“Leslie’s right,” Elliot said to him. “She doesn’t seem anything like you described.”
“It is possible,” Jean-Remy admitted, “I may have exaggerated her negative traits.”
“What happened between you two?” asked Leslie.
Jean-Remy fluttered down to the hole and peeked through. He was silent for a moment. Then he clutched his heart and whispered, “Ah, yes . . . Bernard. Hello, my old friend.”
“Bernard?” asked the professor. “Who’s Bernard?”
“It’s not a who,” Leslie reminded him. “It’s a what. ‘Bernard’ is what Jean-Remy calls the embodiment of his heartache. It’s a love he once lost. Giving it a name is how he deals with it.”
Professor nodded. “Very wise, in a creaturely way.”
“Is that why you and your sister don’t get along?” Elliot asked Jean-Remy. “Does it have something to do with . . . ‘Bernard’?”
“It has everything to do with Bernard.” Jean-Remy floated away from the wall. “It was long ago, and, like Gügor in his cage, I was in love. . . .”
Jean-Remy explained that, in his youth, he had been in love with a full-blooded fairy princess named Luna. Of course, being only a humble fairy-bat, the princess’s father (a proud fairy king, of course) would never accept his daughter’s love for, as he put it, “a ragamuffin mongrel.” He banished Jean-Remy from his kingdom, forbidding the fairy-bat to ever see his daughter again.
Distraught, Jean-Remy enlisted the aid of Eloise-Yvette. Her shimmering beauty meant she was often mistaken for a full-blooded fairy. Even amid the towers of a fairy palace, she could pass unnoticed. Jean-Remy asked his sister to deliver a note to Princess Luna. In it, he asked the princess to meet him at the tip of the Eiffel Tower at midnight, so they could run away together. To make sure the letter was received, he made Eloise-Yvette promise she would deliver it personally.
“All night long, I waited,” muttered Jean-Remy. “Shivering in ze cold wind, at ze very tip-top of ze City of Light! But Luna did not come.” Jean-Remy’s pale face flushed a subtle shade of red. “Zat is how I know my so-called sister did not follow my instructions. If Luna had truly been given my letter, I know she would have come to join me. She was, after all, as Gügor would say, my 1TL.”
“Maybe,” said Elliot, looking down at his fuzzy green paws. “Things don’t always work out like you plan.”
But Jean-Remy didn’t want to hear this. “No! My Luna would have come. I know she would have come! You see, I discovered zat ze very same night, Eloise-Yvette, she had an audition at ze top jazz club in ze catacombs! I am certain she merely tossed my letter under ze palace door and fluttered off without a word.”
Leslie narrowed her eyes. “How do you know that’s what happened?”
Jean-Remy shrugged. “It must have. Otherwise, Luna would have come, you see?”
“It sounds to me,” said Leslie, “like you’re the one being selfish.”
“Me?!” Jean-Remy’s face flashed with shock.
“Yes, you. She’s family, Jean-Remy. She’s your sister. The least you could have done was wait for her to give you an explanation.”
Jean-Remy considered this for a moment. At last, he said, “You may be right.” He fluttered back to the hole in the wall, peering into the strange white chamber.
“Jean-Remy!” cried Eloise-Yvette, seeing her brother’s face. She flew to the bars of the cage and called to him. “I’m so glad you are safe! There is something I need to tell you, something important, and it is simply this: I miss you, brother! I’m sorry if things did not work out in Paris, but I want us to be family again. Do you think this is possible?”
“Yes, of course it is,” Jean-Remy answered. He turned and smiled at Leslie. “I have just realized zat I am ze one who ought to apologize. It was rash of me to leave Paris without a word. What does it matter if you ran off to your audition and did not give my letter to Luna? I should have waited to speak to you before I left. Instead, I carried such heartbreak, such resentment, for such a long time.”
Eloise-Yvette furrowed her brow. “Run off? To an audition? I never ran off to any audition.”
Now it was Jean-Remy who looked confused. “But I assumed zat was why Luna did not come. You did not put my letter in her hand, as I asked.”
“That’s exactly what I did,” said Eloise-Yvette. “I did everything you asked. I snuck into the palace, I saw her myself, I gave her the letter.”
“So . . . she did receive it after all.” Jean-Remy was already as pale as the moon, but when his sister told him this, he turned even whiter. “And yet, she did not come.”
“I’m sorry,” said Eloise-Yvette.
Jean-Remy looked terribly disappointed. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but he was interrupted by a loud crash from the main part of the dungeon. A moment later, Patti came running into the chamber, her seaweed hair splashing briny muck in every direction.
“Doc!” she said to the professor. “You’d better come quick.”
“What is it, Patti?” he asked.
“It’s the two Creature Departments,” she said. “They’re having themselves one heckuva fight. And guess who started it!”
CHAPTER 22
In which Reggie picks a fight, and an unusual transformation occurs
Harrumphrey grappled with a triple-bearded oven troll. Bildorf and Pib wrestled with a pair of ankle snypes. Patti Mudemeyer slung gooey hair-sludge at a flock of mini-gryffs. Cosmo Clutch took on a marrowrangler singlehandedly (a rare feat). And even Gabe swiped limply at a slobberwolf, when it tried to drown him in spit.
At the center of everything was Colonel-Admiral Reginald T. Pusslegut, with the two hobmongrels, Bildorf and Pib, clinging to his uniform for dear life.
“Over my cold and slippery corpse, I say! Over my cold and slippery corpse!” Reggie appeared to be battling his way through all the rest of the creatures at once, regardless of whose side they were on. (To be fair, in light of the chaos engulfing Dungeon 101, it was impossible to even tell if there were any sides.) “If you patrolled the tunnels as I have,” Reggie went on, slapping a four-eyed snood full in the face, “then you would know—all too well—that we’ve already got more than enough of those beastly, insufferable, mucilaginous cretins as it is!”
“But we don’t have a choice,” squealed one of the ankle snypes from the Heppleworth Food Factory. “They’re going to grind up Eloise-Yvette—not to mention our beloved CEO!”
“NO,” Reggie boomed, “I won’t have it! A bombastadon never colludes with the enemy! It goes against everything he stands for! Everything he believes! It defies the very blubber on his bones!”
“Reggie! STOP!” shouted the professor.
The Colonel-Admiral paused, a chestful of air ballooning his ribs. He was one small huff away from a Belly Bounce Maneuver when he exhaled (and the dungeon filled with the scent of vinegar, herring, and rancid chocolate).
“What’s going on here?” asked the professor. “Why is everyone fighting?”
“It’s these poor misguided creatures of the Heppleworth Food Factory!” Reggie sniffed. “They’ve succeeded in creating a most abominable elixir! I might even go as far as to call it iniquitous.”
The professor looked to the Heppleworth creatures. “Is this true?” he asked them. “You’ve succeeded? You have the ghorks’ secret elixir?”
A triple-bearded oven troll ambled out of the group, a large glass beaker in his hand. Inside, a sickly green fluid slopped back and forth like boiled custard. “It’s like I told the bombastadon,” said the oven troll. “It’s either this . . .” He sloshed the contents of the beaker. “Or they grind up our friends. So you see, we’re just like you. We don’t have a choice.”
Elliot peered through the glass, then looked up at Reggie. “How do you know it works?”
Everyone looked at each other.
> “Well,” said Reggie. “I just assumed that . . .”
“We don’t know it works,” said the triple-bearded oven troll. “Not yet.”
“In that case,” said a loose-gravelly voice from up above them, “why don’t we give it a test?”
On a large view-screen that overlooked all of Dungeon 101, the Chief’s shadowy face materialized.
“Oh, and look,” he said, “how convenient! Here comes a new specimen now.”
Out beyond the bars of Dungeon 101, Grinner, Iris, and Adenoid Jack came loping along the tunnel. They were dragging someone with them, too, someone Elliot and Leslie recognized.
“C-come on, you g-g-guys,” stammered the waiter from The Smiling Mudsucker. He was hobbled with chains, with another set linking his wrists. “A joke’s a joke, b-b-but don’t you think this is taking the whole Costume Cabaret thing a bit too far?”
“Who told you these were costumes?” snorted Adenoid Jack.
“Of course they are,” the waiter professed. “You look ridiculous!”
Iris blinked her enormous eyes. “Excuse me?”
“It’s true!” the waiter gestured at the three ghorks before him. “Big nose? Big eyes? Big mouth? You three look like cartoon characters!”
“Why, you little—!” Adenoid Jack reared his head back and prepared to drown the waiter in snot.
Grinner stopped him. “Plug your sniffer, Jack. We’re not done with him yet.”
“Thanks, Chef,” said the waiter, speaking to Grinner in a more friendly tone. “And seriously, the costumes really are amazing, but . . . but . . . say, where are we?”
They had arrived at the entrance to Dungeon 101.
“What is this place?” asked the waiter, peering into the cavernous dungeon. For an instant, as he first laid eyes on the creatures, a cloud of fear passed over his face. But it quickly cleared. “Oh! I get it! We’re backstage before the big show. This is some kind of dressing room, right?” He shaped his hands into a pair of pistols and shot imaginary bullets of praise into the dungeon. “Like I said, amazing costumes, you guys!”
The three ghorks looked at each other and rolled their eyes (especially Iris).
Grinner beamed down at the poor man with a conniving smile. “Tell you what,” he said. “You sample one last dish of mine and we’ll let you go, okay?”
The waiter looked relieved. “Um . . . okay.”
Grinner peered into the dungeon. His eyes landed squarely on the triple-bearded oven troll, the one holding the beaker. “Hand it over, bub.”
The oven troll, his knobbly hands trembling, was just about to pass the beaker through the bars, when a big blubbery fist snatched it away.
It was Reggie. “No!” he cried. “I said it once, and I’ll say it again!”
“That’s the story of his life,” Bildorf quipped. He made his hand into a little puppet mouth and flapped his fingers. “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah . . .”
Reggie ignored Bildorf and waved the beaker high in the air, well out of the reach of any nearby creatures. “I resolutely refuse to hand it over!” he bellowed. “For a regimental, not to mention highly decorated, bombastadon such as myself to knowingly act in concert with my enemy’s wishes is inconceivable! Unimaginable! Indefensible!”
“Does he always talk like that?” asked the Chief of Quazicom.
Pib nodded. “Always!”
“How do you even get anything done? With that much hot air, I would have had him fired ages ago. Or worse.”
“That’s because you’re totally evil,” said Leslie.
“Thank you,” said the Chief. “Speaking of being totally evil, why don’t we remind our buttery, blubbery, bewhiskered friend here just how truly evil I can be!” Suddenly, the view-screen fizzled with spots and faded to an image of the cage containing Gügor, Eloise-Yvette, and Dr. Heppleworth. The angle was from above, so the mouth of the blender over which they were suspended was clear to see. The countless blades glinted and twitched, and with a terrible grinding whir, they began to spin.
“No!” shouted Elliot.
The shadow of the Chief returned. “Tell your friend,” the Chief told him, “to give up the elixir.”
Elliot looked at Reggie, who still held the beaker high above his head. His thick arm, however, was trembling. “You, sir,” he said to the image of the Chief, “are utterly without honor.”
“Finally,” said the Chief. “He gets it.”
“An enemy without honor is no enemy,” Reggie muttered. “An enemy without honor is a beast.”
The Chief shrugged. “Beast, enemy. To-may-to, to-mah-to. Just give us the elixir already.”
Reluctantly, Reggie passed it through the bars.
“Seriously,” said the waiter. “Great show and all, but I really need to get back to work, so—”
“Shut your cake hole, specimen,” said Adenoid Jack.
“Wait,” said Iris. “Don’t you want him to open his cake hole? How’re we gonna feed him the elixir if his mouth’s closed?”
“Good point,” said Grinner. “Open your cake hole!”
“I’d really rather not,” said the waiter, grimacing at the awful green slime inside the beaker.
“Suit yourself,” said Iris. “We’ll open it for you.” She gripped the man’s head and pried open his mouth. Grinner stood over him and poured a single drip of the horrid solution onto the man’s tongue.
The waiter shuddered and retched. He looked like he wanted to vomit, but it was too late. His terrifying transformation had begun. The waiter spun round and covered his face, screaming as his whole body erupted in green blotches. The bones under his skin poked and wriggled and crawled like insects into hideous new places where they had no business to be. He grew taller and broader, and his spine creaked forward into the hunched posture of . . . a ghork.
Finally, when he turned to face the others, Elliot saw that what had changed most of all was his nose. It was enormous. The waiter who had once looked haughtily down his nose at Elliot had become a nose-ghork!
“Welcome to the family,” said Adenoid Jack.
Slowly, the waiter raised a hand to his face. When he felt his nose, his eyes popped wide. In that moment, he finally understood none of the creatures around him were people in costumes. They were a bunch of crazy monsters! This was too much for the waiter to take in all at once, which was why he started to cry.
“You’ll get used to it,” Adenoid Jack assured him.
“Excellent,” said the Chief. “It’s just as I planned! Soon, everyone in Simmersville will be transformed into a fine Ghorkolian soldier, just like . . .” The Chief paused. The waiter didn’t look much like soldier material.
In fact, the former waiter wasn’t even listening. His eyes rolled up toward the ceiling, and he stumbled sideways as if he were drunk. Elliot, Leslie, and many of the creatures thought he might faint then and there. But he didn’t. Instead, he howled. He threw out his arms and shrieked a great sob of sickly green anguish.
Unfortunately, because he had just transformed into a nose-ghork, the sob was not without consequences. His crying caused him to empty the incredible contents of his hefty new nostrils. Two gushing torrents of snot blasted to the floor, striking it with such force the ex-waiter was knocked clean off his feet.
“Oof!”
He thumped down in a puddle of his own slime. He pounded the floor in despair, and warm snot splashed in every direction. Grinner, Iris, and Adenoid Jack were splattered with the stuff.
“It’s all salty!” screeched Iris. “It’s stinging my eyes!”
“Calm down already,” Adenoid Jack pointed to his own gigantic schnoz as an example. “It’s not gonna stop if you keep blubbering!”
The waiter kept blubbering.
“That’s enough!” said Grinner. “Get up, crybaby. We’ll take you to meet your new f
amily.”
They moved as if to drag the newly formed ghork away, but they couldn’t. He was blubbering too much, which meant there was way too much snot everywhere. Grinner, Iris, and Adenoid Jack slipped and slopped in it, landing in a messy heap. Meanwhile, the former waiter didn’t want to be dragged anywhere. When the others tried to grab him, he fought back, kicking and slapping with blows that were as fierce as they were slimy.
From beyond the bars of Dungeon 101, Elliot, Leslie and the captive creatures watched all of this with a mixture of horror and (obviously) disgust.
At last, shrieking his loudest howl yet, the former waiter leapt over his captors and ran thumping into the darkness of the tunnel.
“Well,” said Adenoid Jack, flicking a hefty glop of mucus from his fingertips. “That didn’t turn out like we planned.”
“Let him go,” the Chief told the ghorks. “He’ll be back once he realizes this is the only place he belongs—with his own kind. Right now, you need to make sure we dribble a drop of that wonderful elixir into every last dish we’re serving at the end of the cabaret.”
Bowing to his command and flashing a characteristic sneer into Dungeon 101, Grinner led Iris and Adenoid Jack into the tunnels.
“What about Eloise-Yvette,” asked the oven troll, “and Dr. Heppleworth? Now that we’ve done what you asked, you have to let them go.”
“Why would you think that?” asked the Chief. He turned his attention to the creatures of DENKi-3000. “I still haven’t got my ultimate weapon.” He smiled, and the sparkle of his teeth made the rest of his features even murkier. “I’ll leave that to you, Professor.”
In a fizzle of static, he vanished, and the screen went blank. But before it did, an image appeared. It was almost lost in the flurry of static, but everyone saw it: the ghostly image of a gigantic blender.
CHAPTER 23
In which Elliot and Leslie sketch out something new
Elliot’s uncle looked very worried. “They’re going to feed that stuff to everyone at the festival, right after the cabaret. And unless we come up with some sort of despicable ‘ultimate weapon’ for the Chief, Gügor gets ground into filling for a Ghorkolian kebab!” He shook his head. “What are we going to do?!”
Gobbled by Ghorks Page 14
