Fiend of the Seven Sewers

by Steven Butler

  I looked at Gully and saw that he was suddenly twice as tall as I was.

  ‘The shrinking spell!’ I yelled. ‘It’s wearing off!’ A second later, I could feel my arms and legs stretching and warping.

  ‘Oh, blunkers!’ Morkie howled as she suddenly grew so tall, she couldn’t keep hold of the trolley. I turned just in time to see her trip and fall onto her front in the middle of the road. There was a loud POP and she exploded into her full size, putting both her massive feet through the front of an art gallery wall.

  The room-service trolley may have been enchanted not to topple over or crash, but it wasn’t protected from buckling under the weight of a quarterling and a faun child as they scrabbled to stay on top of it.

  When Morkie had uncurled the squeaky thing to the correct size, she hadn’t been much bigger than Hoggit, and I felt a shudder as the little wheels bent and broke beneath us.

  Before I could shout, ‘HOLD ON!’ there was a squeal and I rolled across the cobblestones with a painful HUMPH!

  * * *

  ‘Gully,’ I murmured, my face squidged against the ground. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I think so…’ he groaned from a little way off.

  ‘Viscera?’ I wheezed. ‘Are you…?’

  ‘NO, I AM NOT!’ her piddly voice barked right next to my ear. ‘Get up and look, Banister boy!’

  I slowly raised my head and focused on the pointy tip of a spear that was hovering just above my head.

  I followed it upwards until I saw a stumpy green hand, then a suit of blood-red goblin armour, then the sneering face of Captain Pugnacious Grumpwhistle.

  ‘Well,’ he said, raising one bristly eyebrow. ‘What have we got here?’

  SO, THIS IS THE END?

  In seconds, there were goblin guards all around us.

  ‘Thought you’d just wander out of here, did you?’ Captain Grumpwhistle laughed cruelly as he snatched up Viscera Von Tangle and stuffed her into a pouch on his belt. Then he seized the back of my collar and hoisted me to my feet. ‘No one escapes Grimegorn on my watch!’

  I wriggled in the hulking goblin’s grasp and turned just enough to see Gully struggling with Flott and Lickspittle. They’d snared him with trap-lace and I could see my faun friend was quickly learning that the more you struggle, the tighter it gets.

  ‘Let us go!’ Gully yelled, but his captors only snickered and jeered at him. ‘Let us GO!’

  ‘Not on your nelly, you snizzly spit-stain!’ Flott guffawed.

  A little further up the street, I could see Mrs Morkie contending with her own gaggle of guards. There must have been twenty of the blighters and they were each clutching their own lengths of horrible gold rope that coiled round the poor cuddlump’s legs, arms and middle.

  ‘Frankie!’ she cried, catching my eye.

  It was dreadful to watch Mrs Morkie being tied up by those gruzzly little grimlies. She was too kind and cuddly to fight. If the huge creature had been born for anything but snuggling, she could have defeated every goblin guard in Gradibash with a few swats and stomps of her enormous hands and feet. She could squish the entire city in a matter of minutes!

  ‘Clonk ’em, Morkie!’ I shouted, but it was no use. I could already hear her offering to make the bullyish brutes some tea.

  Just like our days back in Grimegorn, we were paraded through the streets while nosy goblins gawked and hollered, throwing food and calling us names. All the commotion had drawn a gigantic crowd, and the stumpy citizens of the great sewer-city lined the pavements, trying to get a good view of us.

  ‘Look this way!’

  ‘And this way! OVER HERE!’

  Reporters from the local goblin newspapers, the Sunday Grimes and the Observerator, took our photographs as we were dragged back towards the top of Hungdunkem Avenue and left on to The Yelps.

  I didn’t even have to wonder where Captain Grumpwhistle and his flunkies were taking us. I knew already. In no time we were crossing the Just-About-In-The-Middle Bridge and Queen Latrina’s palace was looming ahead of us.

  This was it. All my hopes of seeing The Nothing To See Here Hotel again were over. The BONKERS ruler of Gradibash may have thrown me into a zoo for a first offence, but there was NO WAY I’d be so lucky this time.

  I flinched as the thought of being grunched by Doris the colossal crocodile slobbered its way across my mind.

  There was no doubt about it.

  We were absolutely done for.

  THE POODLY PLAZA

  By the time we’d reached the far side of the Just-About-In-The-Middle-Bridge, the clamour and noise of the crowds was echoing off the great cistern walls and the entire city was vibrating.

  Big boomy trumpets were being blown from the watchtowers that surrounded the lake’s edge, waking everyone, and a regimental band had collected to bang drums and honk on horns.

  ‘LOOK! COME SEE!’ Captain Grumpwhistle hollered over the gathering throng of nosy goblins as we were carried past the front of the palace. ‘IT’S THE PERFECT MORNING FOR A FLUSHING!!’

  A flushing? I’d forgotten about that particular punishment!

  Ahead of us, I could see an open town square with a raised wooden platform at the far end. Beyond it was the gaping mouth of an enormous rusted sewer-pipe that gurgled and spluttered like a hungry monster.

  ‘Frankie!’ I heard Mrs Morkie yell as we were dragged towards the horrible thing. ‘I’m not quite sure this is what you had planned! I think it’s gone wrong!’

  ‘You’re right about one thing!’ Flott laughed as he pulled Gully alongside us. ‘You lot are in a wallopy stinksome heap of trouble!’

  ‘It’s gone VERY wrong, if you ask me!’ snickered Lickspittle. ‘You’re about to be sluiced!’

  The battalion of Queen Latrina’s soldiers hauled me, Gully and Morkie into the centre of the square as the cruelsome crowd closed in around us.

  ‘Welcome to the Poodly Plaza!’ Grumpwhistle declared. On his command, the guards dropped us to our feet and we gawped around in horror. There was no way we could escape with this many goblins on all sides.

  My heart started to race and my knees felt weak as we were marched through the howling horde towards the platform at the far end of the town square. There was a small staircase on one side of the wooden stand, and we were heading straight for it.

  ‘Up you go, you disgusterous bunch of zoolies,’ Captain Grumpwhistle sneered. He was really enjoying this, the melon-headed brute! I could tell!

  ‘What do we do, Frankie?’ Gully hissed at me with wide frightened eyes as we were pushed up the steps. ‘What now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ was all I could reply… and I was telling the truth.

  When we reached the top of the platform, I saw a row of huge winches attached to long, rusty cranes. Each one had a metal hook hanging from it on the end of a thick rope, and each hook was dangling above the massive upturned mouth of the open drain. It was the most disgusterous thing I could ever hope to see – or smell.

  ‘I bet you wish you’d stayed in Grimegorn now, don’t you, quarterling?’ Grumpwhistle smirked. ‘You will very soon!’

  ‘Is that… Is that the…?’

  ‘Poodly-pipe,’ the captain finished. ‘Yes, it is, boy.’

  ‘And are we…?’

  ‘You’re going straight down it,’ he jeered through grimy gritted teeth. Then he turned to the cheering crowd and bellowed, ‘WHO’S IN THE MOOD FOR A GREAT BIG FLOPSY FLUSHING?’

  The mob of goblins went wild. They started throwing vegetables and shrieking.

  ‘THROW ’EM IN HEAD FIRST!’

  ‘Dunk the dunklets!’

  ‘Flush ’em to the dookiest depths!’

  I glanced sideways at Gully and Mrs Morkie shaking with terror, and my heart broke. This was all my fault. If it wasn’t for me, we’d be safely in our cage back at Grimegorn Safari Park, snoozing or telling stories.

  I was just considering throwing myself to my knees and begging for forgiveness, when a commotion in the cro
wd caught everyone’s attention.

  ‘GET OUT OF MY WAY, YOU COMMONLY CANKLES!’

  The jostling goblins parted as a gigantic crocodile lumbered towards us with a very irritable-looking Queen Latrina on top.

  ‘MOVE – OR YOU’LL BE SNACKS AND CRUNCHLINGS! DORIS HASN’T HAD HER BREAKFAST!’

  CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

  ‘What the blunkers is going on?’ the pumpkin-sized ruler snapped. She was wearing a nightgown and tiny hinkapoot slippers, and her bristly hair was knotted round a headful of rollers. ‘There had better be a whoppsy good explanation for waking me up from my beauty-tooty sleep… WELL?’

  ‘Your Majesty!’ Captain Grumpwhistle called from the platform’s edge.

  ‘Hmmmm?’ The queen looked about in all directions and steered Doris in a full circle, scattering goblins this way and that. ‘Who said that?’

  ‘Up here, Your Highness!’

  Latrina squinted up at Grumpwhistle and her face creased into a crooked smile.

  ‘Grumpsy! There you are,’ she cooed. ‘What under the worlds is happening? Are we at war with those skuzzly thistlewumps again? Did we win?’

  ‘Not quite, Your Majesty,’ the captain continued. ‘You see, these three…’

  ‘BLEEEUUURRRGH!’

  The queen heaved a dry retch when she saw what the captain was gesturing to. She looked at us like we’d already been inside the poodly-pipe and had crawled back out. ‘You could have warned me, Grumpykins! I nearly pukey-pootled!’

  ‘Sorry, Your Royal Rightness,’ Grumpwhistle exclaimed, taking a low bow.

  ‘What the blunkers is that?’ Latrina grimaced, pointing at Mrs Morkie. ‘It’s uglier than my Great-Aunt Repulsa, and she was a total fungus-face!’

  ‘Charming!’ Mrs Morkie gasped. ‘How rude!’

  ‘This one smells like a bog-bonker’s barnyard…’ the queen continued, pointing at Gully. ‘And that one is…

  AAAAAAAAGGGHHHH!!’

  No sooner had Queen Latrina laid her piggy little eyes on me, she was squawking and wriggling around in her throne-saddle just like last time.

  ‘It’s that horribump HIDEOUS human again!’ She yanked on Doris’s reins and the hulking creature stomped round in another circle, swiping an entire group of goblins over the edge of the plaza and into the cistern-lake with a dull splash. ‘Why is that stinkerish quarterling still here?’

  ‘These cruminals escaped from Grimegorn, Your Majesty,’ Captain Grumpwhistle explained as Latrina steered Doris back around to the front.

  ‘WHAT?’ The queen glared at us and wrinkled up her squat nose. ‘No one escapes from my zoo!’

  ‘WELL, WE DID!’ Gully suddenly shouted. He scuffed his hooves and snorted in anger. ‘IT WAS EASY!’

  Queen Latrina looked so surprised that someone had answered her back, she almost toppled out of her golden seat.

  ‘You’re in for it now,’ she growled. ‘I’ll grind the three of you into giblet jam and eat you on crackers!’

  ‘Actually, Your Royal Grumptiousness,’ the captain interrupted, pulling a furiously wriggling Viscera Von Tangle from the pouch on his belt and holding her at arm’s length. ‘There are four.’

  Queen Latrina glared at the flailing piskie as though someone was dangling a flea-infested rat in her face, and turned a strange shade of even-greener green. ‘Bluh!’ she grunted in shock. ‘Such repugnuts! I… Um… Guh…’

  ‘Yes, Your Majesty?’ the crowd asked. Even from where I was standing on the platform, I could see they were itching for the stumpy queen to hurry up and sentence us.

  ‘Huh-puh!’ Latrina heaved in revulsion. ‘Bwuh!’

  ‘What is it, Your Majesty?’

  ‘Fluh… Fluh…’

  Everyone was holding their breath.

  ‘Fluh… Fluh… FLUSH THEM DOWN THE POODLY-PIPE! ALL FOUR OF THEM! SPLISH! SPLASH! SPLAT! SPLOO!’

  BRACE YOURSELF!

  Okay, my reader friend. We’ve made it to Chapter 35 and no one has popped their clonkers just yet… but I know what you’re thinking.

  You’re clutching this book with clammy hands, worried and nervous that you’re about to turn the page and see me, Gully, Viscera and Mrs Morkie plummet to a poodly end in the dookiest depths of that horrible pipe, aren’t you?

  Well, don’t give up hope just yet. I couldn’t be here now, telling you this story, if there hadn’t been a whopping great plot twist or two coming up.

  So, get ready and brace yourself. It wouldn’t be a Frankie Banister story if there wasn’t an almighty WHOOOOMF at some point… And while Captain Grumpwhistle and his cronies were stringing us up in the air by our feet from the platform-cranes, we had no idea that the whoooomfiest whoooomf we’d ever heard was about to happen… Even whoooomfier than any of the whoooomfs before.

  * * *

  Here we go…

  WHOOOOMF!!!

  ‘It was an honour to know you, my friend,’ Gully whimpered as we were lifted high into the air above the dreadful sewer pipe. Those grizzly little goblins had tied us with trap-lace round our ankles and attached the metal hooks to our feet.

  Thousands of leering upside-down faces watched as we were winched further and further out over the roaring abyss of sludge and slime.

  ‘Oh, my littl’uns!’ Mrs Morkie sobbed. She was so heavy, three cranes had to be used to dangle her in mid-air next to us. ‘Just think of picnics and tea… Lots of tea with skunkurrent buns and badger milk biscuits to dunk.’

  ‘Don’t say “DUNK!”’ Viscera squeaked as she blew about on the end of a tiny thread. ‘That’s what these grobskwonking goblins are about to do to us!’

  While my friends nervously chattered, I couldn’t bring myself to say a single word. If I was about to go head first into a gurgling whirlpool of revolting-smelling sludge, I wanted to be thinking of my family and The Nothing To See Here Hotel and all its WONDERFUL inhabitants as I went.

  ‘Prepare to flush the pukelings,’ Latrina barked from her throne-saddle.

  ‘NO!’ Morkie howled.

  ‘Farewell, my dear friends!’ Gully wept.

  ‘This dress cost a fortune!’ Viscera screamed.

  I clamped my eyes closed. There was a jolt and the sudden thundering of rushing water. I heard the crowds of goblins cheer with glee as we were falling… falli… fa…

  Hang on a minute! We weren’t moving. I opened my eyes to find that we were still swinging about in exactly the same place over the poodly-pipe and the cheers from the throng of onlookers weren’t cheers at all. They were cries of alarm.

  ‘Eh?’ Mrs Morkie blurted. ‘Is this right?’

  Wriggling about to get a better view, I saw that the sound of roaring water was coming from the Great Cistern Lake on the other side of the Poodly Plaza.

  The normally calm waters were foaming and churning like they were being boiled and entire fishing boats were being flung into the air by the ferocity of it.

  ‘What’s this?’ Queen Latrina hollered, steering Doris round to face the surging lake. ‘Who is interrupting my flush-tivities?! I demand to know what’s going—

  There was an explosion of water, followed by a great fizzing sound, as a colossal bubble rose into view from the dark depths. It shimmered and sparkled in the mushroom-light like a Drooltide bauble… and there, inside its delicate walls, was a spectacular PIRATE GALLEON!

  It was all happening so fast, I could hardly keep up.

  The bubble popped, with an ear-splitting PING that echoed off the vast cistern walls, and I got a clearer view of the ship inside it. Even though I was upside-down and feeling very woozy, something about the many people rushing about on the galleon’s deck seemed vaguely familiar. Like a memory from long ago…

  It wasn’t until a short, tattooed figure with ratty dreadlocks clambered onto the ship’s railing, brandished a cutlass and yelled, that I realised who I was looking at.

  ‘GIVE ME BACK MY FRANKIE, YOU BUNCH OF SQUITLERS! WHERE’S THE BOY?’

  ‘Maudlin?!’ I cried, feeling lik
e my heart might topple out of my mouth and vanish down the poodly-pipe. My leprechaun friend was here in Gradibash and she was standing on the bow of… of… THE BLISTERED BARNACLE! CALAMITUS PLANK’S SHIP! I hadn’t seen it since it had smashed through the hotel’s foyer and Captain Plank, the most famous goblin pirate of them all, retrieved his magical diamond dentures from thieving little Grogbah. ‘MAUDLIN, we’re up here!!’

  * * *

  Now, I’ll do my best to explain everything that happened next, but there was so much chaos and I was SO confused, it wasn’t too easy to take it all in.

  * * *

  In seconds, there was a wild howl as several of Captain Plank’s crew of Squall Goblins swung on ropes from the tall masts of the ship and landed amongst the poshly crowds jostling about in the plaza.

  These seafaring rumpscallions were much taller than the squat inhabitants of Gradibash and they barged their way through the startled crowds, swinging cutlasses and firing pistols.

  ‘Move, you bulging bunch of blighters!’ a familiar voice shouted as its owner reached the bottom of the wooden steps and climbed into view.

  From where I was dangling, I watched a pair of buckle-covered boots stomp their way across the platform.

  ‘What have you got yourself into, Frankie Banister?’ The voice spoke again. I lifted my eyes past the buckled boots, past a peacock blue coat.

  ‘TEMPESTRA!’ I cheered.

  I swear, I don’t think I’ve ever been so pleased to see a goblin in all my life. It was Calamitus’s daughter and second in command on the BLISTERED BARNACLE, Tempestra Plank. She stormed her way across the wonky boards and ordered the nearest worker, who was controlling my crane, to reel me back in.

  ‘Do it now, or I’ll personally throw you down that pipe myself,’ she commanded, swishing her cutlass this way and that.