“I call ’em the creepy wheelies,” said Harrumphrey. “I’ve got a prototype right here.” He waddled around behind the table, and when he came out again, he was wearing a pair of bright white roller skates with bright red wheels—six wheels on each foot. Each wheel was supported by metallic, articulated arms, so Harrumphrey looked like he was riding on the backs of two very odd-looking spiders.
“No wonder you call them creepy,” said Elliot.
“What are they for?” asked Leslie.
Harrumphrey smiled, or rather he smirked out of the side of his mouth. (True to his name, Harrumphrey Grouseman was far better at scowls, sneers, grimaces, and other related frown-like facial expressions. He was a master of the harrumph.) “The creepy wheelies,” he announced, “finally solve the age-old problem of roller skating up and down stairs.”
“Are you serious?” asked Leslie.
“If you’ll indulge me—and since the others are late—I’ll give you a demonstration.” He wheeled around to Patti. “Bring out the testing stairs.”
Patti didn’t look very enthusiastic. “Y’all sure you wanna do that?”
Harrumphrey nodded and skated back to the rear wall. Patti pushed a set of four simple wooden stairs out of a closet and placed them in Harrumphrey’s path.
“Ladies and gentlemen: The creepy wheelies.” He skated full-bore at the stairs and when he reached the first step—
CRASH!
Harrumphrey, both creepy wheelies, and even the mock-up stairs themselves went flying. Harrumphrey ended up flat on his back in the corner, while the creepy wheelies rolled under the table.
“Like I said,” Harrumphrey explained. “It’s still a prototype.”
“I’d totally want a pair of those,” said Leslie. “If they worked.”
“I’m sure you would,” the professor agreed, “but articulated roller skates won’t save this company. What we need is something truly spectacular.”
“And we gotta come up with something quick,” said Patti. “The shareholders are gittin’ all tetchy on us.”
Just then, Jean-Remy flapped in behind the professor, followed by the lumbering Gügor, who stooped deeply to enter the room. Both of them joined the others around the conference table.
“Finally,” Harrumphrey harrumphed. “We can start the meeting.”
“What about us?” asked Elliot. “Can we come?”
“Aw, let ’em stay,” said Patti. “They’re adorable!”
“They’re more than just adorable,” said the professor. “They’re going to help us rescue the whole company!”
“They are?” asked the creatures.
“We are?” asked Elliot and Leslie.
“Of course,” the professor told them. “Did you really think I’d bring you here just to look around?”
“That’s sort of what the word tour means.”
Elliot’s uncle waved his hand. “I put that in the letter so your mom and dad would let you come. If I’d said, ‘Please let Elliot and his friend come help a secret department of weird creatures come up with some revolutionary new invention to save all of DENKi-3000 from bankruptcy,’ I’m sure your parents would have had a lot of difficult questions.”
The professor had a point. “But why us?”
“Leslie’s grandfather told me about your success at the city science fair, so—”
“I wouldn’t exactly call that success,” said Leslie. “We tied for third place.”
“It’s not the placing,” said the professor. “It’s how you competed.”
“Messily,” said Elliot.
“Think y’all better explain what happened.”
They did. On the day of the Bickleburgh City Science Fair, both Elliot and Leslie showed up with extremely similar experiments. They had tested how high they could launch a model rocket. The only difference between their approaches appeared to be one of style. While Elliot’s rocket was bright red (with orange flames lapping down the sides), Leslie’s was entirely black, with a grinning skull painted on the nose cone.
Both of them claimed they had broken the city record for the highest-ever flight using only a high-pressure vinegar and baking soda solution. The judges were impressed, but there was a problem. The two entrants had independently achieved the very same results. In fact, all their data was identical!
This could only mean one thing: Before the judges could settle on the final standings, there would have to be a “blastoff.”
Elliot and Leslie took their rockets out to the middle of the running track, and both of them put everything they had into the test. Together, they counted down (Three . . . Two . . . One . . .) and then—
PHWOOOSH!
Both rockets drenched every one of the judges in a sour, foaming, high-pressure spray of vinegar and baking soda! At the same time, the launch went perfectly . . . and set a brand-new record, beating all the results of their original experiments . . . and (once again) both rockets flew to precisely the same height!
It was infuriating.
Elliot and Leslie requested a second tiebreaker, but the judges weren’t interested. They were furious that they would now have to spend the rest of the day reeking of vinegar, and they had no desire for a second drenching. However, the rocket launch had been so impressive they had no choice but to award both Elliot and Leslie a prize in the competition. (Third was the lowest placing they could award them without looking petty.)
“Basically,” said Patti, “y’all created one great, big, vinegar-flavored explosion.”
“That’s one way to put it,” said Elliot.
“Perfect,” Harrumphrey harrumphed. “You’ll fit right in around here.”
Jean-Remy nodded solemnly. “After hearing ze story, I can certainly see why ze professor wanted you to join us in our time of need.”
“Speaking of which,” Elliot’s uncle began, “I don’t need to remind everyone that DENKi-3000 hasn’t come up with a single new product since last year’s TransMints. If we don’t come up with something to impress the shareholders soon . . .”
“Something bad will happen?” suggested Gügor.
“Very bad,” said the professor. “The whole company will be sold to Quazicom Holdings International, which is why we need to come up with something truly revolutionary, something so amazing it’ll convince the shareholders not to sell.” He looked around the table at everyone, even Elliot and Leslie. “Any ideas?”
No one said anything, and besides, before they could even open their mouths—
BOOM!
“Was that what it sounded like?” asked Leslie.
All the creatures nodded.
“Yep,” they said. “An explosion.”
CHAPTER 5
In which Reggie awakes and Elliot sees something in the woods
They rushed out of the meeting room, thumping back onto the scaffolds. An acrid plume of emerald-green smoke was rising from the laboratory floor.
“Hurry, Jean-Remy,” said the professor. “Fly up and open the vents!”
The handsome fairy-bat soared upward. He tapped buttons on a control panel near the ceiling, opening a series of chimney exhausts.
“Is everything okay?” asked Elliot. He came to stand on the scaffold with his uncle.
“Don’t worry,” said the professor. “It’s only Reggie.”
“Who’s Reggie?” asked Leslie.
“Colonel-Admiral Reginald T. Pusslegut.” Patti shook her head in a pitying way. “Poor fella thinks he used to be a bigwig in the military, but who’d ever believe those cockamamie war stories!”
“Colonel-Admiral?” asked Leslie. “Is that even possible? Colonel is a top army guy and admiral is a top navy guy. They’re two totally separate branches of the armed forces.”
“Y’all would have to take that up with Reggie. I get the impression they do things
a little different down in the South Pole.”
“Around here,” said Harrumphrey, “we let him be a security guard. Or pretend to be one. Here he comes. You can just about see him through the smoke.”
On the floor below, a huge, lumpish silhouette emerged from the haze of green. The shape was nearly as big as Gügor but nowhere near as muscular and intimidating. This was the silhouette of something far more soft and blubbery.
At last the huge, woolly, potbellied creature emerged from the smoke, coughing and spluttering and waving its arms. Its face was part walrus, part English bulldog, with flabby jowls and a massive underbite. The jutting lower jaw was rimmed by a row of jagged incisors that curled over its top lip. Those upturned teeth, however, were dwarfed by a pair of huge, faintly yellow tusks, slicing down on either side.
The creature—“Reggie”—wasn’t wearing a white lab coat like the others. Instead, he was dressed in elaborate military regalia, complete with frilly epaulettes, a chest full of medals, and a jangling ceremonial saber. On his feet were possibly the largest pair of rubber boots the world had ever known.
“Please, you must all listen!” he was saying. “Something terrible is going to happen! I’ve seen it in my dreams!”
“Shouldn’t you be hibernating this time of year?”
“I so wish you would!”
Darting out from behind Reggie’s bulk were two small creatures that looked like a pair of calico rats (ones that walked around on their hind legs). They had pointed, conical faces, bristling with whiskers and set with cold, suspicious eyes. The first was a girl: thin, gangly, and possibly molting; the second was shorter and stockier, with thicker hair but far more unkempt. The two of them looked like the creature equivalent of boxcar hobos.
“Preposterous!” cried Reggie. “How do you expect a gentleman to rest with these infernal night visions?! And worse!” His eyes rolled deliriously. “They are the dreams of things to come!”
“Oh, sure,” mocked the first rat-like creature. “Like the time your ‘night visions’ predicted Big Ben was turning into cheese?”
“Gouda,” said Reggie.
“Or the time you dreamed it was going to rain camels on Chicago?” mocked the second rat-like creature.
“Bactrian camels, no less!” cried Reggie. “That’s two humps, not one!”
“Ugh! When have any of your ‘night visions’ come true?”
“Merely because my nocturnal auguries have not yet come to pass, it is no reason to discount them as false! Surely you know a hibernating bombastadon is a premonitory creature! And this latest dream—oh!”
“Wah-wah-wah!” mocked the first rat-like creature. “Whine, whine, whine!”
“Oh, boohoo! I had a baddy-waddy dweamy-weemy,” taunted the other.
“Who are those two?” asked Elliot, up on the scaffolds.
“And why are they being so mean?” asked Leslie.
“They’re hobmongrels,” Harrumphrey harrumphed. “It’s in their nature.”
“The boy’s called Bildorf,” Patti told them, “and the girl’s Pib. As y’all can see, they don’t get on so well with Reggie.”
“Why must you torment me?!” Reggie cried from down below. “Why can’t you leave me in peace, you cretinous things!”
He spun in a clumsy circle, as if doing a sort of interpretive dance inspired by his nightmares. With his blubbery arms spinning round like a helicopter, he knocked over a few more chemistry sets and delicate prototypes, causing a series of all-new (but thankfully minor) explosions.
“Colonel-Admiral!” Elliot’s uncle called down, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Calm down! It was only a dream!”
Abruptly, Reggie stopped his manic spinning. He looked up and saw Professor von Doppler and the others, standing on the scaffolds.
“Ah! Archimedes, my dear fellow, there you are! Surely, a man of your intellect can perceive the danger besetting us all! You and I—Colonel-Admiral Reginald T. Pusslegut of Her Majesty’s Royal Antarctic Brigadiers—we are gentlemen not merely of fortitude, but foresight!”
“Um, yeah,” said the professor. “Sure thing, Reggie.”
“Does he always talk like that?” asked Leslie.
“I’m afraid so.”
“But this dream! Ho! Teeeerrible! Oh! The darkness! Oh! The teeming, insidious hoards!” He started spinning again (and knocking things over).
“For obvious reasons,” the professor explained in a low voice, “we do our best to keep him out of the laboratory.”
“Oh, fer cryin’ out loud!” Patti called down to the other creature scientists. “Would someone please get the bombastadon some tea and biscuits?”
The small crowd of creatures around Reggie scattered in all directions. They were all murmuring, “Tea and biscuits! Tea and biscuits!”
It was the two hobmongrels, however, Bildorf and Pib, who were already prepared. Giggling like mischievous children, they opened a nearby drawer and took out a silver tray. It featured an enormous tea set and a plate piled high with chocolate biscuits. It was a struggle for them to carry it, but they managed to blunder it over to Reggie, who instantly stopped his melodramatic spinning.
“Is that what I think it is?” Reggie asked disdainfully.
“Quit blabbing and have some,” urged Bildorf. “It’ll do you good.”
“Go on,” said Pib in a wheedling voice. “You know you want to.”
“You insult me!” cried Reggie. “I am a soldier and a gentleman! Why, I once brought peace to the vast snowy—”
“Wastes of Antarctica,” said Pib, finishing the sentence. “We know. We’ve heard it aaaalllll before.”
Reggie turned up his nose to the hobmongrels and their silverware. “Then of course you’ll know you can never quell the terrifying night visions of a bombastadon with something so ordinary as tea and chocolate . . . chocolate . . . cho—I say, are those chocolate biscuits?”
“Chocolate-covered pickled herring biscuits,” said Bildorf. “Your favorite.”
Instantly, Reggie attacked the tray, devouring the biscuits and slurping loudly from the enormous teacup. As he did so, the two hobmongrels backed away to the corner of the room. They pulled back a curtain and helped as some of the other creatures pushed out an enormous velvet divan.
As Reggie continued to gorge himself full of tea and biscuits (the more he ate, the more sluggish he became), the closer the divan was pushed up behind him.
“Teeerible . . . teeerible . . . ” he muttered, melted chocolate dribbling down his chin. “Such teeerible . . .” With one last slurp from the teacup, he toppled backward precisely and perfectly onto the divan. As soon as he was down, the creatures heaved and pushed the slumbering Reggie back behind the curtain. All the while, he snored like a poorly tuned pipe organ. “What do you put in those biscuits?” Leslie asked the professor.
“Are they drugged or something?” asked Elliot.
“Not at all,” said the professor. “Bombastadons merely have a metabolism that makes them quite susceptible to tea and biscuits.”
“He certainly made a mess,” said Leslie, looking down at the smoking wreckage. “Does he do that a lot?”
“More than we care to admit,” Harrumphrey grumbled.
“But,” said Jean-Remy, “it is not as if we can send him away. When it comes down to it, even as annoying as he can be, Reggie—he is one of us.”
Elliot’s uncle sighed. “He certainly is, and it looks like we’ll spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning up this mess.” He turned to Leslie and Elliot. “So why don’t you two head home for today? Come back tomorrow and we’ll get you started working with the others.”
Leslie wasn’t convinced. “Are you sure you want our help? Just because of how we did at the science fair?”
The professor smiled. “You’d be surprised what you can learn from an exploding model rocket
—or two. And besides, it takes a young and flexible mind to understand creature technology. What kind of mind is as young and flexible as a twelve-year-old’s?”
“I guess that makes sense,” said Elliot. Like Leslie, he wasn’t convinced, but on the other hand, he was happy they would soon be returning to the Creature Department. Just knowing this place existed was a privilege, but being able to help with the experiments was almost too good to be true.
“Come on,” said the professor, leading them along the scaffold. “I’ll show you the way out.”
On the way home, Elliot and Leslie buzzed with excitement. When they reached the park, they lingered on the field, going over and over everything and everyone they had seen: the words written on glass, the secret entrance to the old mansion, Jean-Remy Chevalier, Gügor the knucklecrumpler and the Rickum Ruckem Room, Harrumphrey Grouseman and his creepy wheelies, Patti the bog nymph, Reggie the bombastadon, and even those two mischievous hobmongrels, Bildorf and Pib.
“I can’t believe I thought Bickleburgh would be boring,” said Leslie. “Now that I’ve met your uncle, it seems like we might live in the most amazing place in the universe!”
Elliot agreed. “I can’t believe my uncle knew about all that stuff—and never told me.”
“I could say the same about Grandpa Freddy. Although he did tell me. Well, sort of. He hinted at it after downing a couple bottles of cooking wine.”
Eventually, Leslie realized she would have to be home soon. “My mom’s crazy about punctuality. Once, I was half an hour late getting home and she thought I was ‘running with a bad crowd.’ We moved away a week later.”
“You’d better hurry, then,” said Elliot, “because according to my uncle, the Creature Department needs us both.”
They parted ways, but not before planning how they would return to DENKi-3000 the following day.
“My grandpa will be making a big lunchtime delivery tomorrow,” Leslie said. “Now that I know all about it, he’ll have to take me along—and you too. Meet me at the restaurant around noon, and we’ll all go together.”
The Creature Department Page 4
