Elliot noticed a shiver of movement, up near the scaffolds suspended from the ceiling. The shape appeared to be a bird, a large black raven, perched on one of the railings.
When it spread its wings, however, Elliot saw there was nothing bird-like about it. For one, the wings had no feathers. They were the wings of a bat, yet the skin stretched across them was oddly luminescent, shining with the foggy gleam of a pearl.
The creature—whatever it was—launched itself into the air and swooped straight for them.
Leslie gasped. “What is that?!”
“Not to worry,” said the professor, “it’s only Jean-Remy, one of my assistants.”
It wasn’t a raven gliding toward them, it was a tiny man, no taller than the distance from Elliot’s elbow to the tips of his fingers. The flying man’s skin was ghostly pale and stood out in sharp contrast to the black three-piece suit he wore. Of course, calling him a man—as in “human being”—wasn’t quite right (human beings were a lot taller, for one, and very few of them had wings).
“Bonjour, mon ami,” the little man greeted the professor in French. “Who is zis? Visitors are so rare in ze Creature Department!”
“This is my nephew, Elliot,” said the professor. “And this is Leslie.”
“Ah!” cried the little man. “You have a nephew!” He swooped to Elliot’s face for a closer look at the boy. “You may call me Jean-Remy de la grande famille Chevalier! Or, if you prefer, just ‘Jean-Remy.’”
The man’s face was deathly white, with dark, mournful eyes, a wild shock of black hair, and an upturned nose that made him appear slightly ghoulish. Yet in spite of all this, Elliot had to admit he was oddly handsome.
“Nice to meet you,” said Leslie, raising her hand.
Jean-Remy Chevalier flapped away from Elliot and fluttered down to Leslie’s side. He reached out with one hand, as if to shake, but since he was so small, he could only properly grasp the tip of Leslie’s thumb. Nevertheless, he held it confidently and gave her fingernail a gentle kiss.
“Enchanté, mademoiselle!”
Leslie giggled in a way Elliot had never heard from her before. He felt himself standing up a little straighter. “She’s a friend of mine,” he said. “From school.”
“You have chosen well, mon ami,” said Jean-Remy to Elliot. “I believe she will make you very happy.”
“Um . . . what are you talking about?”
Jean-Remy waved his tiny hand dismissively. “Please, there is no need to be so coy. I am a Frenchman, after all, and so I know a fiancée when I see one.”
“F-f-f-fiancée?!” Elliot stumbled backward as he said the word.
“Hold on there, buddy,” said Leslie (she would die before she married someone in a green fishing vest). “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re only twelve!”
“Ah! Bien sûr. I see zis now. You are much too young for such things.”
“You’ll have to excuse Jean-Remy,” the professor told them. “He’s a fairy-bat. Wherever he looks, he sees . . . you know, doomed love.”
“Hey!” said Leslie, pointing at Jean-Remy. “Are you saying I’m doomed?”
“Oh, non non non! It is simply zat I am half ze fairy, half ze vampire!” He shrugged. “It is not what zey call a traditional coupling, you see? Ze families of my parents? Non non non, zey did not approve. And so, ze doomed love, it is—quite literally—in my blood.” He waggled a tiny finger between Elliot and Leslie. “But you two—non! You are not doomed. Zat is obvious, non? You are made for each other!”
Leslie looked sideways at Elliot’s fishing vest. “Maybe it’s better to be doomed.”
“Um, speaking of blood,” said Elliot nervously. “Did you just say vampire?”
“Please, do not be alarmed.” Jean-Remy swept one arm from his elegant shoulders to his elegant waist. “I inherited only my father’s impeccable dress sense and none of his unfortunate bloodlust.”
“Lucky for us,” said Leslie.
“Jean-Remy is one of our best engineers,” said the professor, possibly to steer the subject away from vampirism.
“I have ze very tiny hands, you see?” Jean-Remy held them up and wriggled his fingers. “It makes me very good with ze . . . how do you say . . . ze fiddly bits!” He proved this by taking a tiny ID badge out of his breast pocket. It featured a dashing photo of his face, along with his job title:
Jean-Remy Chevalier
Chief of Fiddly Bitology
“Come on,” said Elliot’s uncle. “I’ll introduce you to the rest of my team.” He turned to a large pink blob of gelatin with three stumpy legs and said, “Have you seen Gügor?”
The blob of jelly quivered and jiggled and made a noise like someone blowing bubbles into a bowl of custard.
“Of course,” said the professor. He pointed to a large steel door, all painted bright red, on the far wall. “In the Rickum Ruckem Room?”
The blob burbled some more.
“Thanks,” said the professor.
“The where?” asked Elliot. What his uncle had said sounded more like a tongue twister than an actual place.
As his uncle led the way to the red door, he tried to explain. “You know when you put your money in a vending machine, but the drink doesn’t come out? Sometimes, the only way to get it working properly is to give it a good swift kick. That’s what the Rickum Ruckem Room is for.”
When they arrived at the red door, Professor von Doppler was just about to swipe his ID card through the reader when he stopped.
“Maybe you guys had better stand back.”
Elliot and Leslie each took one giant step backward, while Jean-Remy flapped upward, hovering above their heads.
Professor von Doppler swiped his ID card and the red door opened instantly. They were all greeted by the crashing and banging of metal, combined with what sounded like the snorts and groans of a wild animal going berserk.
“Excuse me, Gügor?” The professor spoke politely into the room. “I was wondering if—”
He ducked suddenly as a huge metal pipe came sailing out of the room, only narrowly missing his head. It crash-landed onto a chemistry experiment being conducted by a pair of gremlin-like creatures over on the far side of the room.
“Gügor! Cut it out!” the professor shouted. “Can’t you see the door’s open?!”
The growls and screeches of tearing metal halted abruptly.
“Sorry, Professor,” came a slow, methodical voice from within the Rickum Ruckem Room. “Gügor did not realize you were standing there. Is everybody okay?”
The professor nodded. “I came to introduce you to my nephew and his friend. They’ve come for a visit.”
Elliot and Leslie peered into the Rickum Ruckem Room. What they saw was a creature that resembled a muscly eight-foot salamander—if salamanders grew sloppy dreadlocks, walked around on their hind legs, and had enormous knobbly hands.
The creature’s skin was a light brown color, sprinkled all over with black and gray freckles. His face wore a slightly empty expression. Some might call it an expression of “childlike innocence,” but it could easily have passed for extreme dopeyness. Elliot could just make out the creature’s DENKi-3000 ID badge:
Gügor the Knucklecrumpler
Chief of Rickum Ruckery
The creature’s face was oddly calm. In fact, with its eyes half closed and its flat, expressionless mouth, it looked half asleep. Elliot had difficulty connecting this tranquil behemoth with the incredible wreckage strewn across the floor. Wires and cables, cogs and chains, transistors and circuitry boards, disembodied levers and smashed buttons—the stuff was lying everywhere!
“Did you get it working this time, Gügor?” asked the professor.
“Almost,” said Gügor regretfully. He took a long, slow look around at the electromechanical carnage. “Sorry, Professor, Gügor will try harder next time
.”
The professor patted Gügor’s arm reassuringly. “I just hope we get a next time.”
“What was it you were trying to make?” asked Elliot.
“It would have been a great success!” cried Jean-Remy. “It would have provided for ze dematerialization of matter, ze sending of zis matter through space, and at last ze re-materialization of ze matter—in perfect condition! Amazing, non?”
Leslie narrowed her eyes. “Is he saying what I think he’s saying?”
The professor nodded. “A teleportation device. Unfortunately, so far we’ve only got as far as teleporting hair. See?” He pointed to one of the tables. Heaped on top of it was a pile of fur the size of a small car. Some of it was in unnaturally bright colors—pinks and blues and glowing greens.
Elliot wondered if they had been testing the machine on punk rockers, but he realized the source of the hair was the creatures themselves. He noticed several of them had oddly shaped bald patches on their arms and backs.
“Teleportation has always been a very personal project for us,” the professor explained. “Because, believe it or not, not all creatures are as nice—or as clever—as the ones we have here in the Creature Department. There are certain creatures out there that are, let us say, best avoided. A reliable teleportation unit would help us avoid them entirely.”
Elliot couldn’t help but shiver. “What sort of creatures?”
“In my experience,” said the professor, lowering his voice, “the very worst ones are called—”
“WAAAAAH!” cried a nearby creature, one who looked like a chocolate doughnut with arms and legs. He seemed to be covering his ears (or at least where his ears should have been).
“All right, all right,” said the professor in a reassuring voice. “We won’t mention them. But trust me,” he said to Leslie and Elliot, “a teleporter would certainly help my creature colleagues come and go without being found.”
“You mean they’re hiding?” asked Leslie. “Here in the Creature Department?”
“In a way, yes. In fact, that’s how most of the creatures’ inventions began, as ways to keep the Creature Department a secret.”
“Like a door that doesn’t exist,” Elliot suggested.
“Precisely!” His uncle looked to Jean-Remy, still perched on Elliot’s shoulder. “Now then, why don’t you help Gügor clean up the mess? I’ll take Elliot and Leslie to meet the others.”
Jean-Remy bowed. “Of course. As always, I am at ze service of my fellow creatures.” Elliot felt a breath of wind ruffle his hair as the suave fairy-bat flapped toward the Rickum Ruckem Room. Before vanishing through the doorway, he called out, “Do not worry, Professor, ze next time we build a machine such as zis, it will work. I am sure of it!”
The professor nodded hopefully. He led Elliot and Leslie up metal stairs to the scaffolds above.
“So let me get this straight,” said Leslie as they reached an unmarked office door. “All the crazy things DENKi-3000 has ever produced . . . were invented by them?” She pointed down at the creatures below.
“That’s right,” said the professor, “and nobody knows about it except me.”
“And us,” Elliot corrected.
“And Grandpa Freddy,” Leslie added.
“Mm, yes,” Professor von Doppler grumbled. He stopped at a door where one scaffolded platform met another. When he opened it, Leslie and Elliot saw something even weirder than anything else they had seen so far.
CHAPTER 4
In which Harrumphrey has an idea, Patti drips on the floor, and something explodes
The creature standing inside was all head. Well, mostly head (and what a head it was!). This was the enlarged noggin of a fairy-tale troll: leathery skin, beady eyes, wild hair sprouting in every direction, a bushy beard streaked black and brown and gray, and a big bulbous nose, upon which was perched a pair of dainty pince-nez glasses.
The head was so big, in fact, it came all the way up to Elliot’s waist, and the whole thing (the whole head, that is) was attached directly to the creature’s feet. The creature had no arms, only two fat yellow horns. They curved upward on either side of its head, while from behind, stretching out from the base of its enormous cranium, was a long furry tail. It curled up and waved at Elliot’s uncle.
Perhaps odder still was the very peculiar hat the creature was wearing.
It looked like an umbrella crossed with an accordion: The umbrella-like tip pointed upward, while under the canopy was the zigzagging fabric of an accordion’s bellows. The whole apparatus opened and closed of its own accord, as if it were breathing slowly. A thick rubber tube extended from the top to a humming mainframe computer in the corner of the room.
“Leslie, Elliot,” said the professor, “I’d like you to meet Harrumphrey Grouseman, our resident genius.”
Harrumphrey couldn’t resist embellishing on the compliment, speaking in a voice that was raspy and gruff. “I have a degree in abstractional physics from the CCC. That’d be the Continental College of Creaturedom.”
Neither Elliot nor Leslie had any clue what that meant, but it sounded impressive enough.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Elliot. He didn’t put out his hand to shake (of course), but he did notice the ID badge pinned to the creature’s beard:
Harrumphrey Grouseman
Right-Hand Head
“Harry,” said the professor, “this is my nephew and his friend, Leslie.”
“Pleasure’s all mine,” said Harrumphrey.
“Can I just ask,” said Leslie, “what’s with the hat?”
(Elliot had wanted to pose the very same question.)
“You’ve never seen a cerebellows before?”
They shook their heads.
Harrumphrey glanced up at the umbrella-like awning as it flapped open above his ample forehead. “It’s a—well, y’know . . . a cerebellows.”
Elliot shook his head. “That’s not helping.”
“I thought it’d be obvious from looking at it,” said Harrumphrey. “It’s for sucking ideas outta yer noggin. See? They go up through the tube and into that computer over there.”
“How is that possible?”
“They’re quite common in creaturedom,” Elliot’s uncle explained.
“You gotta understand,” said Harrumphrey. “Things work a bit differently from human science.”
“No kidding,” said Leslie.
“Hey, Harry! Y’all git anything?”
This latest voice came from an open door on the far side of the room. A woman entered, wearing a gauzy, green-tinted ball gown.
Although the woman was beautiful, it took a moment to see her skin was entirely covered in silvery scales. As she came closer, her sheer fishiness became more apparent: the leaky gills on the sides of her throat, for instance, the severely webbed hands, the dorsal fin that stuck out of her back. There was also something odd about her hair. At first glance it looked like regular hair, but now Elliot saw it was more like . . . seaweed.
“Guys,” said the professor. “This is Patti Mudmeyer. She’s head of design at the Creature Department.”
The fishy woman came closer and they saw her dress wasn’t actually dyed green. In fact, the dress was white, or at least it used to be. Now, however, it was stained all over with greenish-brown blotches.
Patti stopped and put her hands on her hips. “Well, sheer me bald and color me sheepish! Didn’t your uncle teach you it ain’t polite to stare at a lady?”
“Oh! Sorry!” Elliot felt himself blushing. “I didn’t mean to stare, but your dress—what happened to it?”
Patti sighed. “Just a fact of life, I’m afraid, for a bog nymph.”
“A what?” asked Leslie.
“Y’all have prob’ly heard of them river nymphs and forest nymphs. They’re the famous ones, but lemme tell ya, once upon a time, way back w
hen, everything was all swamp. Rivers?! Forests?! No way! We Mudmeyers were running the show back when them cutesy pond sprites weren’t nothing but pupae!”
“Um . . . okay, but how does that explain the stains on your dress?”
“Like I said, I’m a bog nymph. It’s all ’cuz of my hair.” She ran her hands through her strange kelp-like locks. When she brought her fingers out, they were covered with a greenish-gray sludge. “I got this stuff dripping off my hair twenty-four seven. You oughta see my pillow in the morning! It’s like the worst dandruff problem in the universe. But what can I do? It’s just in my nature.”
As if on cue, a glob of silt dripped out from behind Patti’s ear. It dribbled down the front of her dress and plopped on the floor.
Leslie jumped sideways to avoid the back splash. “So what is this place, the slime room?”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” said Patti. “’Cuz obviously, y’all don’t know how useful this stuff can be.”
Moving lightning quick, the bog nymph began molding the sludge she had just swiped from her hair. In seconds, she had produced a small greenish-gray bust that looked exactly like Leslie.
“It’s me,” said Leslie.
“That’s incredible,” said Elliot.
Patti shrugged. “Guess you could say I’ve got a pretty versatile scalp.”
“Enough with the pleasantries already,” Harrumphrey harrumphed. “Aren’t we supposed to be having a meeting? Where’s JR and that big dopey knucklecrumpler?”
“They’ll be here soon,” said the professor. “Just tidying up the Rickum Ruckem Room.”
Harrumphrey groaned. “Again?” He reached up with his tail and removed the cerebellows. “Check the computer, Patti. We get anything?”
Patti peered at the monitors. “Same as last time. Six-legged roller skates.”
Harrumphrey sighed. “I haven’t had a new idea in ages.”
“What’re six-legged roller skates?” Elliot asked.
The Creature Department Page 3
