Slimy Underbelly

by Kevin J. Anderson

  It seemed the most obvious direction to go, with or without the pointing dowsing rod. Thunder Dick trudged along as the sewer water rose up to our waists. Several mutated flying rats buzzed overhead, swooping down to gulp mosquitos out of the air. As he felt his wand grow stiff and full of power, the weather wizard became enthused.

  He wasn’t watching where he was going, though, and I had to grab the collar of his rainbow-colored robe to make him stop. I pointed to a sign at an intersection of sewer corridors. “Careful!”

  CAUTION PIRANHA CROSSING.

  One of the flying rats swooped overhead, and a large fish leaped out of the murky water, chomped down on the squeaking rodent, and pulled it into the channel, which became a froth of churning fish and pink water, then nothing.

  We waited for the piranhas to pass, then glided across the intersection.

  Thunder Dick got even more excited as the willow wand bounced and bobbed in his hands. We passed drainage pipes that dripped and glopped effluent into the sewers. Finally, after the weather wizard swirled around in circles and got his bearings, the wand pointed straight down into the water.

  “We found it! The talisman is here.”

  Despite the thick, discolored water, Thunder Dick dunked his head beneath the surface and fumbled and pawed the bottom of the channel. At last he came up dripping, gasping but triumphant, as he held his small, portable sundial. “Just what I needed! I’m powerful again.”

  I indicated his face, and he self-consciously wiped a runny smear of green slime off his cheek, then ran his fingers through his beard to straighten it. “Thanks! I guess we’re a team now. So, how can I help you wrap up your case? Would you like some snow? A little sleet, maybe? How about a big wind?”

  “Maybe in a few minutes—I’ll use you as my secret weapon. The headquarters offices of Ah’Chulhu Underground Realty are down here somewhere, and I need to confront him. I think I know the way.” Actually, I knew nothing of the sort, but I was being optimistic.

  “If you want to sneak up on him, let me give us some cover,” suggested the weather wizard. Using his precious talisman, Thunder Dick conjured a roiling mist that accompanied us like a smokescreen.

  My uneasiness grew as we made our way toward the half-demon’s grotto, trying to figure out what he was up to—something so evil and despicable that Lurrm and everyone at the Recompose Spa had paid with their lives. Ah’Chulhu had been trying to buy up the patents of evil protective gadgets, and had confiscated Jody Caligari’s prototypes when he repossessed the kid’s lab; I had no doubt that the tentacle-faced slumlord was also behind the recent break-in at the patent office. Even though the UQPD had been unable to find and capture the giant tentacle creature, I knew Ah’Chulhu was responsible for the bathhouse massacre, as well as the murder of Fletcher Knowles. And I was armed with only a flaccid weather wizard who needed help keeping his spells up.

  Ahead, sonorous voices echoed through the enclosed catacombs : the barbershop quartet of frog demons. Ah, so we were heading in the right direction. “It’s this way.” I sloshed off toward the sound of music, but it turned out to be a ghost echo bouncing around corners, so it led us nowhere.

  The catacombs looked less and less familiar. After an hour, Thunder Dick’s enthusiasm began to wane. “Are you sure you know where you’re going, Mr. Chambeaux?”

  “Absolutely certain.” We reached a set of metal rungs that ran up a shaft to a manhole and the street. I decided to climb up, have a look around, get my bearings, at least figure out the cross street.

  Hand over hand, I worked my way up the rungs while Thunder Dick waited for me below. I was feeling stiff and soggy, and I didn’t smell like flowers either. When Howard Phillips Publishing adapted this particular adventure, the vampire ghostwriter would no doubt find some way of making it glamorous.

  Standing in the brown water beneath me, the weather wizard was barely visible through the mist he had conjured. Suddenly, he yelped and splashed around. “There’s something down here, Mr. Chambeaux.”

  “Probably just an alligator,” I called back to him. “A lot of people flush them down the toilet when they outgrow being cute.”

  “No, not an alligator. It’s long and rubbery and—ack!” He began to flail and thrash.

  I doubted the piranhas would have passed out of their normal sanctuary zone, so I dropped two rungs down on the ladder to try to rescue him.

  That’s when a large, wet tentacle wrapped around Thunder Dick’s waist, lifted him out of the water, and squeezed. Hard. He grabbed at his sundial talisman, even though I couldn’t guess what sort of meteorological effect he intended to conjure to drive off a tentacle monster.

  With one arm locked around a metal rung, I pulled my pistol, but I couldn’t see much in the mist. I tried my best to aim.

  Before I could shoot, however, two more tentacles rose out of the water, probing in the air. I scrambled back up toward the manhole to get out of their reach, but one tentacle looped around my ankle and tugged hard enough to make me lose my grip (though fortunately, not hard enough to detach my leg).

  I tried to hold on to the rung, but the tentacle tore me free. I was suspended in the air, wrapped in its slimy embrace. The tentacles dragged us out of the mist and around a corner, where I recognized the arched brick entrance to Ah’Chulhu’s headquarters grotto, which was crowded with far more attendees than had been present at the Phantom’s recital.

  “Oh, we were close after all,” I said.

  The tentacles held us prisoner as three of Ah’Chulhu’s gator-guys marched out to meet us, accompanied by a pair of spotted frog demons. Then the hideous half demon himself emerged to regard us with impatience and annoyance. He still wore his gray business suit and power tie.

  The gator-guys were pleased with themselves. “Look what we found, boss.”

  “Crikey, you didn’t find them—my tentacle watch dogs were doing their bloody jobs.” The half demon looked up at me. “Mr. Chambeaux, what are you doing down here?”

  “Slumming,” I said. “Don’t mind me.”

  Thunder Dick finally managed to grasp his portable sundial. “I am a weather wizard. You may have heard of me—Thunder Dick? I’m running for Wuwufo president. I just dropped into the sewer to retrieve my talisman. My cat accidentally flushed it down the toilet.”

  Angry, Ah’Chulhu gestured to one of the frog demons. “Take the talisman. No dramas, no disruptions. Bonzer big ceremony tonight, and we need to have good weather.”

  The frog demon hopped forward and grabbed the sundial pendant from Thunder Dick’s hands. The creature opened his mouth wide, tossed the sundial in, chain and all, and swallowed.

  Thunder Dick wailed. “Aww, that was the key to all my powers.”

  The frog demon said, “No worries. You’ll get it back whenever the boss says it’s okay.”

  “Get it back? How am I going to get that back? You swallowed it.”

  “I can think of one or two ways it could come back out,” I said.

  Ah’Chulhu directed the gator-guys. “See that these two blokes are locked up in our finest dank holding cell. I’m going to need my tentacles back now. About ready for the big show.”

  The squirming appendages writhed and twisted, then released us. Thunder Dick and I plopped into the sewage. The weather wizard clutched his sore ribs, gasping, barely able to breathe. I was probably damaged as well, but nothing that couldn’t be repaired—provided I remained intact enough to get out of this.

  The huge tentacles twitched, swayed, and returned to the brownish water. I watched them shrink and deflate, growing smaller until they were no larger than struggling snakes. The disembodied tentacles squirmed, dwindling to the size of garden slugs. As they swam back to Ah’Chulhu, he bent down, careful not to get his gray slacks dirty. He reached into the water, and the now-shrunken tentacles crawled into his palms. He lifted them up, rearranged the similarly sized tentacles around his face, and applied them like leeches. The sucker ends of the miniature tentacles attached them
selves, clinging like lampreys among his other squirming chin appendages.

  Now I knew why the police hadn’t found any gigantic tentacle creatures when they did their dragnet through the sewers. “So that’s how you had an alibi when Fletcher Knowles was killed,” I said.

  “I’m an important bloke, Mr. Chambeaux,” said Ah’Chulhu. “Had to learn how to delegate responsibility. Fletcher Knowles refused to provide what I needed. I can’t abide inconvenience—it’s so . . . bloody inconvenient. I’m the son of a powerful Senior Citizen God. Crikey, I deserve a little respect!” He stroked the now even-more-crowded mess of tentacles on his chin. “Besides, when you have so many of these things around your gob, who notices a tentacle or two missing?”

  The gator-guys seized me and Thunder Dick. In vain, the weather wizard reached out toward the retreating frog demon who had swallowed his talisman, but the gator-guys wouldn’t let him go. “Come on. The boss says you have to be locked in a dank holding cell.”

  On the bright side, that was better than being crushed or torn apart by gigantic tentacles.

  As we were hauled away, Ah’Chulhu straightened his gray business suit and turned to look at us. “I’ll be back with you gents soon. I have to destroy and remake the world first. G’day!” He cracked his knuckles and drew a deep breath that made the tentacles quiver around his mouth. He marched back into the grotto where his minions and followers had gathered for some kind of ceremony or inspirational talk.

  In his voice I detected a hint of nervousness and uncertainty. “Tonight . . . I’ll finally make my parents proud of me.”

  CHAPTER 41

  I found myself behind bars—rusty, slimy bars that even a barnacle would have found repulsive.

  The gator-guys threw us into the cell with extreme prejudice—which meant they hurled politically incorrect insults about me not being a real zombie, or suggesting that the weather wizard was probably gay. Sticks and stones—Thunder Dick and I had suffered much worse.

  The gator-guys slammed the prison door and slid the lock bar into place, which was out of our reach. The chamber had scabby walls and scum-covered stagnant water that came to our knees. Moaning, Thunder Dick sat on the single narrow bench and pulled his knees up to his chest. “I have to use the toilet. Do you think they’ll let me out for that?”

  I gestured toward the sewage flowing around us and leaking out into the slimy catacombs. “Pick a spot.”

  In his frantic phone call just before the massacre at Recompose, Lurrm had insisted that Ah’Chulhu was going to end the world. Since he was not a frog demon prone to unfounded panic, and considering the slaughter at the spa, I decided to take that warning seriously.

  “I miss my cat,” the weather wizard sighed, shaking his head. He continued in a low voice, “I’m so pathetic. Always placing my affections where they don’t belong, looking for love in all the wrong places. My relationships always go sour.”

  “Sorry, I can’t help you with those sorts of problems. I’m a detective, not a relationship counselor.” I squared my shoulders. “No use feeling sorry for ourselves, though—we have to get out of here in time to stop Ah’Chulhu and save the world.”

  Thunder Dick summoned courage from deep within himself. He straightened and put on a brave face. “Yes, and the Wuwufo election will be held soon. I don’t want to miss that.”

  I rattled the sludge-encrusted cell door, hoping that the corrosion had damaged the bars enough that I could break them. But, like myself, the bars were well-preserved. I thrust my arm through the gap, straining to reach the locking bolt, but it was too far away.

  We were stuck.

  I ran through the clues in my mind, trying to guess what the half demon’s sinister plot might be. Being dumped down a manhole as a helpless infant would mess with a person’s self-esteem, no question about it. Now Ah’Chulhu wanted to impress his parents, the Senior Citizen Gods who had vanished long ago into the Netherworld for marriage counseling. I didn’t know how anyone would attempt to impress a pair of titanic gods from another dimension.

  Flying rats swooped by, leathery wings fluttering, naked pink tails twitching. As I peered through the bars, I realized there was a lot of traffic in the sewers. Gator-guys, frog demons, and various amphibians continued streaming toward the great chamber where the half-demon real-estate agent sat on his towering porcelain throne.

  Thunder Dick stood next to me at the cell gate. “Ah’Chulhu seems to be attracting a crowd. Maybe it’s a buffet dinner.”

  I rattled the cage bars again. If I used all my strength, I wondered which one would break first, the bars or my limbs. “Are you sure you can’t perform any weathermancy without your talisman?”

  “I wouldn’t know how,” said Thunder Dick. “Are you needing more sunshine?”

  “A cold snap might help to break these bars. Or a lightning strike to blast the lock. Maybe a conveniently placed tornado?”

  He hung his head. “Not without my talisman.” As if to prove it, he squeezed his eyes shut and strained, pushing hard as if battling constipation. The humidity level might have increased by a little bit due to his efforts, but nothing significant.

  I could hear distant chanting, drumming, even pipe-organ sounds coming from the main grotto. It sounded like a warm-up act to the big show; the dire ceremony would begin soon.

  Now would have been a good time for Sheyenne to come flitting through the catacombs in search of me, or McGoo leading an entire police squad, or even Stentor the ogre practicing his squeaky voice.

  I tried to find some other way out of the cell, but came up with nothing. Thunder Dick and I would have to rely on ourselves.

  Then I heard a faint scuttling sound, a stealthy, fleshy pattering. The sewers had grown quiet with all the flying rats gone and all of Ah’Chulhu’s minions already inside the chamber.

  I pressed my face against the bars, peering out into the main tunnels, studying the rusty pipes and electrical conduits through which the half demon had piped his sound system. Then I saw a shape moving along like a giant tarantula, flesh colored . . . a hand. A crawling hand!

  “C.H.!” I yelled, and the hand paused as it scuttled along the pipes. He raised his pinky in a query. I stuck my arm through the bars and waved frantically. “We need your help, C.H.”

  The severed hand backtracked on the pipes, found a cross support, and hurried over to the moss-encrusted bricks of the sewer wall. Gingerly, C.H. worked his way down the wall, fingerhold by fingerhold, until he reached our barred door.

  Seeing C.H., Thunder Dick grinned with relief. He couldn’t keep himself from asking, “Can you lend us a hand?”

  C.H. cringed, then gave a brisk thumbs-down signal.

  I turned to the weather wizard. “That was a little obvious, don’t you think?”

  “We’re desperate,” Thunder Dick said.

  I leaned closer to the hand. “We need to get out of here, C.H. Ah’Chulhu is about to launch some kind of horrific plot, and it’s bound to be even worse than what he and his slimy minions did at Recompose.”

  With heroic finger acrobatics, C.H. grabbed the slippery bars of the cell door, swung his way over like a graceful lemur on the monkey bars, and finally reached the metal latch that held the cell’s locking bar in place. Straining, wrapping his two forefingers around the crossbar, C.H. tugged and hooked his thumb around another bar for support. Gaining traction, he tugged again. Finally with a scraping sound, the latch lifted. The cell door opened a crack, and I pushed. With a howling shriek of unattended hinges, the door swung open.

  “Thanks, C.H.!” I said.

  He raised his fingers in an open palm gesture, so I gave him a high five—which, unfortunately, knocked him sideways and into the water. Embarrassed, I fished him back out and set him up on one of the pipes. C.H. raised a thumb to give me the all clear, and I grabbed Thunder Dick by the sleeve.

  Ahead in the great chamber, I could hear the chanting of the crowd and the ominous pipe-organ music growing louder. “We don’t have much
time. We have to stop this.”

  Thunder Dick wiped down his beard and his matted hair. “Good plan, Mr. Chambeaux—but what are we going to do?”

  I was already moving toward the grotto. “A zombie detective and an impotent weather wizard to save the world—who could ask for more?”

  “I’m not impotent,” Thunder Dick said, and he splashed after me.

  CHAPTER 42

  Crackling with power and prominence, the great Ah’Chulhu rested on his porcelain throne. Below, the Phantom sat on a bench decked out in his formal wear in front of his enormous pipe organ, a forest of brass and chrome above so many keyboards that it looked like a waterfall of ebony and ivory. He played lilting melodies on the mammoth setup, which had supposedly been relocated from Paris. Apparently, for such an important occasion, the portable Wurlitzer just wouldn’t do.

  Several gator-guys stood in important-seeming positions on the new stage that surrounded the main dais. They all wore scarlet ceremonial robes that made them look awkward and uncomfortable. By the porcelain throne, numerous trunks, lockers, and equipment boxes were piled up, as if visitors had brought birthday gifts and stacked them beside Ah’Chulhu.

  The center of the tableau was a large stone basin, like a birdbath for a pterodactyl, which was mounted next to a rune-etched concrete altar. Arcane symbols were carved around the perimeter of the stone, like festive decorations.

  When Thunder Dick and I hurried into the chamber, we ran into shoulder-to-shoulder crowds as if it were a Black Friday sale of that year’s hottest toys. The amphibious groupies stared forward, trying to get a better view of the main stage. I stood on my tiptoes, jostling two frog demons who flicked long tongues at me in annoyance. One creature said to her husband, “I hate festival seating. Next time, we pay for tickets up front.”

  Feeling the urgency, Thunder Dick and I worked our way toward the dais and the altar stone. This was harder than getting through the Refunds and Exchanges line on the day after Christmas. The weather wizard kept muttering, “Excuse us, please . . . excuse us.” The underdwellers elbowed him back.