The Creature Department

by Robert Paul Weston

  He led them down three flights of steps and then pointed them into a shadowy tunnel. “Straight through zere will take you to ze park. Very simple, a straight line, you understand?”

  They nodded.

  Jean-Remy turned back toward the stairwell. Already, he was eager to return. “We will send for you tomorrow, once ze machines are complete and ready for testing.”

  Elliot and Leslie raced down the tunnel. Rippling pools of luster-bug light shone down on them as they went.

  After only a few minutes of running, they came to the end of the tunnel.

  The dead end of the tunnel.

  “There’s no door.” Elliot turned and looked behind them. There was another tunnel, leading down in another direction. All he could see inside was the indistinct gray of shadow, which quickly faded to an inky black. “Do you think he meant down there?”

  “He couldn’t have. It’s in the complete opposite direction. He said it was simple. A straight line.”

  “What if it’s another secret door?”

  “Quick!” Leslie ran to the wall and began fiddling with every bit of rock she could find. “It’s got to be one of these.”

  Elliot joined her, pulling, pushing and twisting every crag and crevasse, but nothing moved. After poking and prodding at most of the wall, they were beginning to lose heart.

  “Should we go back?” Elliot asked.

  “I’ll be late.” There was real panic in Leslie’s voice. “You don’t know my mom. A week from now, I’ll be on the other side of the country.”

  “So what are we gonna—”

  Elliot stopped. He couldn’t move. Because in that other tunnel, where the gray shadows faded to black . . .

  Something was there.

  CHAPTER 19

  In which Elliot and Leslie discover giants are neither as giant nor as peaceful as they had been led to believe

  The first thing they saw was the mouth. A huge grin, full of terrible teeth. Then the eyes, enormous, wet, and unblinking. Then a crooked, pointed nose. Then a soft, oily, hair-filled ear. Finally, two enormous speckled green hands that seemed to sprout straight from a chin that was lost in shadow.

  Without thinking, Elliot reached out for Leslie and grasped her hand.

  “Maybe there’re no ghorks down here,” Leslie whispered. “But I guess nobody checked for—”

  “Giants,” Elliot whispered. “And I don’t care what Harrum-phrey said. That thing definitely does not look peaceful.”

  The giant appeared to be pulling itself through the shadows with its huge, claw-like hands. They were thrown out directly in front of its face.

  And what a face! It seemed to wobble and hover impossibly, as if bits of it would fall clean off at any moment. The eyes, the ears, the nose . . . none of the pieces fit. And that was when they realized: The pieces weren’t supposed to fit together—because it wasn’t a giant at all. It wasn’t even a single creature.

  It was five.

  Each one looked like something out of an old horror movie. A gremlin or sinister troll, all slick green skin, crooked teeth, and jagged claws.

  Yet still, each one was wholly distinct. Each was marked out by a single gruesomely enlarged feature, and what was most disturbing was that there seemed to be a system to it: Eyes. Ears. Nose. Mouth. Hands.

  The five senses.

  The five creatures ranged in height dramatically. The one with enormous eyes was the tallest, while the one with the enormous hands was shortest.

  When they all stood together, obscured by bushes or shadows, the five creatures resembled an enormous, distorted face. Elliot and Leslie could only watch with horror as the face crumbled into these five creatures. Suddenly, they were surrounded, backs pressed against a cold stone wall.

  “You’re them,” Elliot whispered. “The ones we saw.”

  “You’re ghorks,” said Leslie. “Aren’t you?”

  “That’s right,” replied the creature with the huge, sinister grin. “And not only did you see us, but we saw you too. Isn’t that right, Iris?” He looked to the one with the enormous eyes.

  “Oh, we saw everything,” she said, batting her spidery eyelashes.

  “We heard everything too,” said the one with the enormous ears. To demonstrate, he twitched them. They buzzed like the wings of an enormous insect.

  “The five of us,” said the one with the enormous hands, holding up five incredible fingers, “we’re the perfect spies.”

  “It’s true,” said the one with the huge nose, droning with a nasally voice. “We can sniff out most anything!” He threw his head back and flared his nostrils. It was like staring down a pair of bottomless pits.

  “That’s right,” said the one with the big grin. “We know everything about you two.”

  “Because you’ve been following us,” said Leslie.

  “Of course we have,” said the huge-eyed creature. “It’s our job.”

  “We’ve been hired to make sure Quazicom gets everything it wants.”

  “You work for them?”

  The mouth ghork grinned. “Didn’t you know? Yours isn’t the only Creature Department in the world.”

  The five creatures closed in. There was nowhere to run. For Elliot and Leslie, all they could do was press themselves against the wall, clawing at the stone behind them, hoping to find a secret latch to set them free.

  The creature with the enormous hands reached out as the stench of breath from the huge-mouthed creature washed over them. “You’re coming with us,” he said, licking his endless lips with a soft white tongue.

  “How dare you torment a pair of innocent children,” boomed a voice from the darkness. “Step away from them this instant!”

  All five of the strange creatures turned around, and there was Colonel-Admiral Reginald T. Pusslegut. He looked surprisingly courageous in the dim light of the tunnel, the medals of his uniform reflecting the pearlescent glow of the luster bugs.

  “You!” said the one with the sinister smile. “We’ve had quite enough of you!”

  Reggie drew his saber as all five of the hideous creatures leapt at him. They moved incredibly fast. Three of them instantly darted for the arm holding the golden saber aloft. Meanwhile, the creature with the enormous hands scaled up Reggie’s back to sit atop his shoulders, slapping and punching at his blubbery face.

  The ghork with the massive nose took a few paces backward.

  “Hold him steady!” he cried.

  The others did their best to restrain the great bombastadon. The huge-nosed monster plugged one nostril, threw his head back, and exhaled sharply.

  PHWOOMP! PHWOOMP! PHWOOMP!

  A series of huge globs of snot flew like cannonballs out of the nose’s machine-gun sniffer. They splattered all about Reggie’s head and shoulders.

  “BLEGH! You abominable creatures! Get off me!”

  But of course they didn’t, and in moments Reggie’s whole upper body was dripping with slime.

  “We need to help him,” said Leslie.

  She crouched down and picked up the largest rocks she could find. She flung them with all her might at the back of the nose ghork’s head. He spun around and, nostril still plugged, prepared to return fire.

  PHWOOMP! PHWOOMP! PHWOOMP!

  Now the projectile boogers were flying thick and fast—literally. Leslie and Elliot dove for cover behind an outcrop of rocks, but not before one of the snot globs hit Elliot square in the back. It felt like he’d been hit with a hardball in an especially vindictive Little League game, one in which the balls melted into slime on impact.

  He crouched down with Leslie as more snot balls exploded on the wall behind them.

  “I have an idea,” he said. “But we’ll have to make him come closer.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Leslie stood up and said, “Dr. Schnoz! What’s the m
atter, nobody ever told you about rhinoplasty?”

  “Why you little—!” The nose snorted deeply and PHWOOMP! PHWOOMP!

  Leslie ducked.

  SPLOOSH!

  SPLUSH!

  “Missed again,” she taunted. “I really thought you’d be able to hit me from there. Guess not.”

  The nose ghork growled in frustration. He lumbered toward them, snorting and snuffling and shaking his head, building up a great stockpile of snot inside his monumental sinuses.

  “Now you’re gonna get it,” he said, standing only a few feet away and sounding more nasally than ever.

  He was just about to drown Leslie in mucus when Elliot leapt up with two big rocks. He jumped over the barrier and jammed them right up the creature’s nose.

  The nose ghork screamed and stumbled backward, coughing and sputtering and picking frantically at his nostrils to dislodge the rocks. His heels caught on some larger stones and he fell back, bashing his head on the wall of the cave. He slumped to the floor and just lay there, snoring through his mouth, thick green mucus leaking out around the rocks that remained jammed in tight.

  Reggie, meanwhile, was still struggling to contend with the other four creatures.

  “Now it’s my turn,” said Leslie. “Do what I do.” She bent down and picked up a handful of dust and sand from the floor of the cave. “Watch this.” She ran up to the ghork with the enormous eyes (who was swinging wildly from Reggie’s right arm) and said, “Can you see this?” She held out her empty hand.

  “See what, kid? If you hadn’t noticed, I’m right in the middle of beating up a bombastadon. Hard work, you know!”

  “But can you see this?” Leslie raised her hand higher.

  “What, your hand? There’s nothing there.”

  “Yes, there is. Guess your eyesight’s not as good as you think.”

  Unable to resist this taunt, the bug-eyed ghork let go of Reggie’s arm and leapt down for a closer look. She stooped close to Leslie’s hand. “You’re crazy, kid, there’s nothing there.”

  “Sorry,” said Leslie. “Wrong hand.” She whipped the fistful of dust and sand into the creature’s wide eyes.

  “AEEEGH!” The thing shrieked like a siren and staggered away. “My eyes! My eyes! My beautiful eyes!” The eye ghork went running down the tunnel but—unable to see where she was going—ran straight into the wall, slumping down beside her partner with the gigantic nose.

  With only three attackers to contend with, the odds were finally in Reggie’s favor. He flung off two ghorks and sent them flying into the same heap with the others.

  At last the only one left was the big-mouthed ghork, whose once-conniving grin had turned to a defeated sneer. He backed away from Reggie and tried frantically to revive his friends.

  Reggie, meanwhile, picked his golden saber up off the floor and pointed it at his attacker. “You, sir, are a despicable disgrace to all of creaturedom. Gather your companions and crawl back to the shadow from whence you came!”

  The beaten ghork found his sinister grin one last time. “This isn’t the last you’ve heard from us. We’ll be back—sooner than you think!”

  He managed to rouse his friends and they hobbled, injured and whining, down into the darkness.

  Reggie took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the dusty blade of his saber. “It’s only ceremonial, of course,” he admitted, sliding it smoothly back into its scabbard, “but it does the job in a pinch.”

  “Reggie! Thank you!” Leslie ran up to him and gave the great bombastadon a hug, or rather, she tried to. (Reggie was much too big to receive a proper hug from an average-size twelve-year-old. All Leslie could do was stand to one side, raise her arms, and gently pat his kettledrum of a belly.)

  Reggie, meanwhile, was utterly bemused by this sudden show of affection. He looked down uncomfortably at Leslie, as if the very concept of a hug were foreign to him.

  “Please, you don’t have to—I mean, that’s not at all—er, well . . . you are very welcome, madam.” He waved his hands aimlessly in the air, not sure where to put them. “But truly, I was only doing my duty. Defending the home front, you see.”

  Leslie stepped back. “Those ghorks, they recognized you. Have you been fighting off those things all along?”

  Reggie gave a curt bow. “Your uncle told me to guard the entrances to the Creature Department and so that is what I’ve done.”

  “No wonder you have nightmares.”

  Reggie’s mouth tightened. “On occasion.”

  “Why do they look like that?” Elliot asked.

  Reggie shook his head, swinging his tusks in dismay. “It’s absurd, but would you believe they breed themselves that way? It’s the reason they spend so much time fighting among one another. It’s all over nothing more important than which sense is superior.”

  “Kind of a dumb reason to have a war.”

  “There are very few good ones.” Reggie tapped the medals on his chest. “And sadly, I speak from experience.” He peered down into the tunnel where the ghorks had retreated. “I must say, it’s rare to see five of them all working together.”

  “Um, sorry to cut in,” said Leslie. “I really have to get home. Would you mind showing us the way out?”

  “Certainly.” From his pocket he withdrew a small handheld device, like a mobile phone. On the screen was a map.

  “What’s that?” asked Elliot. “A GPS?”

  Reggie seemed surprised. “How did you know that?”

  “Everyone knows what a Global Positioning System is.”

  “Pah! Don’t be silly. Who needs anything global down here? This, my dear boy, is a Ghork Positioning System. I use it on my rounds.”

  He displayed the map to them, a three-dimensional labyrinth. “Ghorks are denoted by little green spots, and as you can see, the way is clear.”

  “Even still,” said Leslie, staring at the dead-end wall. “I really think I’d like to get out of this tunnel, please.”

  “Yes, of course.” He winked at her. “I’m not a bad engineer in my own right, I’ll have you know. I’ve rigged my GPS to open any of the secret doors down here, by remote control.” Reggie pointed the device at the wall. At the press of a button, the rock face split open. Stone steps led up to an outcrop of granite in the middle of Bickleburgh Park.

  “Here,” said Reggie, handing the GPS to Elliot. “Use it when you return to us tomorrow.”

  Elliot nodded grimly. “It’s our last day before the meeting.”

  Reggie smiled reassuringly, his jowls jostling comically with his tusks. “I’m quite certain one of the inventions the department is currently working on will be a great success! If not, we can always count on your uncle. He’s a good egg, that one. He has never let us down before—and he won’t now.”

  “I hope not.”

  “No need for hope, my boy. I’m sure of it!” He gave Elliot a sharp salute and then, as if to demonstrate his unflappable faith in Professor von Doppler, Reggie turned back toward the Creature Department, lumbering off as casually as if he were on a morning stroll.

  Elliot, however, shared none of the colonel-admiral’s confidence. With only one day left before the shareholders’ meeting, Elliot was beginning to worry . . .

  Where is Uncle Archie?

  CHAPTER 20

  In which the testing phase begins and ends (with a whimper)

  The following afternoon was Thursday, the last day before the shareholders’ meeting. Still there had been no word from Professor von Doppler. When Elliot and Leslie returned to the Creature Department, they didn’t encounter any ghorks. (Of course, Reggie’s Ghork Positioning System came in very handy.)

  In the laboratory, the prototypes were complete. Three oddly shaped structures shrouded in huge white sheets stood in the middle of the room. They resembled a trio of lumpy ghosts.

  “Wel
come back,” Harrumphrey greeted them. “We think we’ve got these working, but we won’t know until we test them. So come on over here.” It was customary, he explained, for those who chose the essences to feed them into each new device.

  They began with the invisibility machine. Patti tugged off the sheet to reveal a tall black rectangular box. It was hollowed out on the inside, very much like the security scanners you walked through at an airport. However, there was one very significant difference.

  When it came to airport scanners, the interiors commonly featured smooth, featureless plastic. The interior of this device, however, could hardly be called featureless. That’s because its surface was lined with something very strange.

  “Eyeballs!” said Leslie.

  Beside her, Patti smiled proudly. “Don’t worry. They’re not real; they just look that way.”

  It was true: Every pair of them looked disarmingly genuine. They were all different shapes and sizes, complete with eyelids and eyelashes, irises of countless colors, and even eerily expressive eyebrows.

  “Super-creepy,” Leslie whispered.

  “Made every one of those myself. See?” Patti demonstrated by running a few fingers through her hair, collecting a glob of her scalp resin. She rolled it into a ball, molding it with such speed it was like magic. When she opened her hand, staring up from her scaly palm was an eyeball so realistic, Leslie expected it to wink.

  Patti stepped up to the machine, gesturing at the many pairs of eyes. “Each one of these,” she explained, “represents all the different ways you can look at someone. Suspiciously, for instance.” She pointed to a pair of squinting eyelids. “Or with astonishment.” She moved her hand to a pair of eyes that were popped wide open. “So the idea is, you put something in the machine, and theoretically, once we get all the eyes to close, whatever’s in the machine will vanish.”

  “Will that really work?” asked Elliot. It didn’t sound plausible at all.

  “It’s weird, but it works,” said Patti. “That’s creature technology for you. Anyway, it’s not the design I’m worried about. It’s the essence. As long as you two got that right, then yes, it oughta work just fine.”