by Tony Abbott
“Holleeeeeeee!” came the scream.
But she didn’t hear.
She walked quickly to the store—as Sean fell, fell, fell, to the stomped-on sidewalk below!
8
Getting Incredible!
“Ooof!” Sean slammed face first onto a little patch of grass right next to the sidewalk.
Suddenly, the ground began to thunder. With each thump Sean was knocked back on his face. He finally managed to turn over.
It was a kid, a huge kid, thumping along the grass with giant sneakers!
“No!” Sean squeaked. “He’ll crush me!”
But before he could move, the sky went dark above him. A huge high-top closed in on him! It thundered down on the grass a half inch from his head.
That’s when Sean saw that the sneaker was a red high-top! With blue laces!
“Jeff!” Sean cried out. “Don’t squish me!”
But his giant friend didn’t hear him. In a moment that sneaker would plant him like a seed!
Sean saw his only chance. Jeff was heading for the toy store. He had to make a move. He rolled over, reached up, and leaped for the blue laces.
Yes! He got one!
He held tight, as the giant shoe lifted, swung quickly up through the air, and took him with it.
Thump! Thump! Thump! Jeff ran over to the toy store’s front door. With one powerful swing, he leaped up the step and into the store.
“Now I’m getting somewhere!” Sean said.
But at that moment the big blue laces whipped around.
“Nooo!” Sean lost his grip. He flew up into the air and landed on the soft toe of Jeff’s other sneaker.
KA-BOOM! Sean got blasted across the floor of the shop and into a pile of stuffed bears. He crumpled to the floor like a bean-bag. “Oh, this hurts!”
Mr. Kruger looked up from the miniature set. He stood and stepped in front of Holly, Jeff, and Mr. Vickers. “I have not yet completed my work!” he growled.
Holly sidestepped him and went straight for the closet in the back. She tried the door.
“That room is locked,” Mr. Kruger said, his crooked face beginning to get more crooked. Fluffy the cat jumped up into his arms.
“There’s something in that closet Sean and I need to see.” Then Holly carefully emptied her purse onto the model town. Lipstick, the purple puppy pad, glitter pen, comb, mirror, all tumbled out into the parking lot of the miniature Plan Nine Drive-in. “Oh, no!” Holly screamed. “Sean’s not here!”
“I’m over here!” yelled Sean from across the room. But no one heard.
Mr. Vickers frowned. “I don’t think Sean would fit in your pocketbook.”
“He would, Dad, he would!” Holly blurted out. “Sean’s in trouble—he’s tiny! And somehow it’s because of this man!”
“Ah, children,” the tall man snarled. “Such imagination! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must—”
“But it’s true, Mr. V.,” added Jeff. “I saw Sean. He is getting little! By now he’s probably super small. It’s totally—amazing!”
Mr. Vickers’ forehead wrinkled. “Excuse me, Jeff. If my son is tiny, he is incredible, not amazing. We in the movie business always use the word incredible to describe extreme smallness. And amazing is for big, oversize, colossal—something of that nature. Take, for instance, my new film, The Amazing—”
“Dad!” Holly interrupted. “Sean is in trouble!”
“Oh,” Mr. Vickers said. “Right!”
But the toymaker pushed them all toward the front door. “The store is closed. I must get back to my work.”
Sean had to get their attention. If no one could hear him, at least maybe they would see him. He ran out to the middle of the floor. He began to jump up and down.
Suddenly—meooow!
Fluffy snarled and leaped from the toy-maker’s arms. She shot across the room at Sean.
“No!” cried Holly. “No, Fluffy!”
Sean scrambled across the floor and skittered toward the dark closet at the back of the store. He scraped his shoulder as he slid past the underside of the door.
Meooow! Fluffy slammed into the door, but couldn’t get in.
In the dim light, Sean saw an enormous dark shape filling the small room.
“You must leave. Now!” he heard Mr. Kruger saying.
“No!” shouted Holly. “Sean needs me!”
But Kruger insisted. A moment later the shop bell jangled and all was quiet.
Ka-flang! The sound of a bolt sliding shut.
Footsteps slowly stepping across the floor.
“Fluffy, go!” the toymaker growled. The sound of paws scampering away from the door.
Then the closet door opened wide. And Mr. Kruger looked down at Sean. The man’s giant crooked face screwed up into a wide and devilish half-grin.
“Is he a boy, or is he a toy?” Kruger said as he took off his thick glasses and pushed his hair back. “Now, we will find out!”
9
Run for Your Life
“You can’t do this!” Sean cried out. “I’m a kid, a Grover’s Mill kid, an American! Let me go!”
No answer from the man with the crooked face. Only laughter. Sinister, horrible, awful, terrifying laughter. It filled the shop.
Sean knew the tall man with the white stripe in his hair didn’t want to chitchat. In fact, the man lunged at Sean. He picked him right off the floor, and set him down in the middle of Main Street in little Grover’s Mill. “So! My town now has people in it!” he said.
The ground beneath Sean was made of colored sandpaper. The ceiling was painted blue, like the sky. All around were tiny cardboard buildings. “I don’t think I like this,” he mumbled.
Suddenly, there was a blur of white.
White fur!
“Oh, dear!” the toymaker snorted, his nostrils flaring with evil delight. “Fluffy has gotten away! Too bad for the little troublemaking boy! Let’s see what he does.”
“What the boy does is—run!” Sean screamed. He blasted down the sandpaper Main Street. The table rumbled from the galloping paws of the giant cat charging after him!
Sean hung a tight left between two plastic houses and skittered to a stop.
It looked like a garage.
It really looked like a garage.
In fact, it was a garage!
Jeff Ryan’s garage!
And there was a real car in it. And—
“Jeff’s bike! This is amaz—I mean, incredible!”
Meooow! A giant cat claw pushed between the houses and swiped at Sean.
Sean ducked, but with that single swat, Fluffy destroyed Jeff’s garage.
“Whoa! Mean kitty!” Sean grabbed Jeff’s bike and tore off down fake Birch Street. He backtracked quickly and skidded out to Elm Road.
Fluffy leaped over Duffey’s Diner in front of the X-Rays Us Medical Clinic. She swatted at the sign and knocked down the backward R.
“Ha-ha!” laughed the evil Kruger.
Sean hunched low and powered under the huge furry legs that straddled Maple Drive. He tore out onto Main Street again.
He pumped as fast as he could past the fish-shaped Baits Motel, the WYRD radio tower, and the Double Dunk Donut Den. He veered right at Usher’s House of Pancakes.
Everything was fake. The windows were painted on. The doors didn’t open. Everything was made of cardboard. “No place to hide!”
Meooow! Fluffy pounced after the tiny shape.
Then, the white killer cat slid to a stop. It spied the fake Lake Lake and scampered over to slurp a drink.
“Thank you!” gasped Sean, as he pedaled up the little bluff overlooking the lake. There was one small white house at the top. He pumped as fast as he could. He was out of breath. But he had to keep going. Faster! Faster!
Sean’s wheels spun in the fake dirt.
What he saw then shocked him like a bolt of lightning straight to his brain.
The little white house. It wasn’t fake. It wasn’t made of plastic.
&nb
sp; Sean dropped the bike and ran up to the house.
He tried the door.
It opened.
10
Zem?
Sean stepped into a living room with furniture. A real living room, with real furniture.
Then he heard it. A tiny sound. A song.
And the words!
Camp Smiley—where kids smile.
We smile—in single file.
If it’s sunny—or if it’s damp,
We smile—when we think of Camp …
Smiley!
Sean knew that hearing the Camp Smiley theme song meant only one thing! Someone was singing!
“Hey! Who’s here?” he cried out.
The singing stopped. “Sean?” came a voice. There was a rustling sound from another room. Then a boy appeared.
“Mike?” asked Sean. “Mike Mazur?”
“Yeah!” the boy answered, his face brightening. He ran up to Sean and practically hugged him. “Oh, wow! I thought I was all alone here. This is great!”
Sean made a face. “No offense, Mike, but I’d rather be doing chores.” He looked around the room. “So, this is your house?”
“Yeah,” said Mike. “I got shrunk yesterday I think. There was a flash of—”
“Purple light!” gasped Sean.
“Yeah,” said Mike. “How did you know?”
“I was there,” Sean said. “I was trying to find your house. Then I got blasted, too. But where are your parents?”
“They were out walking our dog, Spot. They work at the Welles Observatory, so they look up at the sky a lot. They probably didn’t notice what happened.”
Sean nodded. “Parents. Kind of weird, aren’t they?” He glanced out the living room window. The white cat was licking his paws on the fake beach of Lake Lake. “Fluffy’s still busy. That will give us time to think.”
“While we shrink,” Mike added.
Sean turned to Mike. “Not funny.” Then horror jabbed him as he realized his Camp Smiley friend wasn’t joking. Mike was still getting smaller. He was still shrinking!
“Mike! You’re—” Sean started to say.
“I know. I was in the center of the blast, remember? But you might keep shrinking, too,” Mike said. “The only way to stop it is to eat.” He rubbed his stomach. “But all the food’s gone.”
“Maybe some of the stuff we learned at Camp Smiley can help us now,” said Sean.
“The great songs?” Mike asked.
“No! Survival stuff,” Sean said. “Like eating bark and roots.”
Mike made a face. “Everything here is made out of plastic or cardboard.”
Sean peered out a side window and saw Mr. Kruger open the door in the back of the shop. He dragged a big thing out to the center of the room. Whatever the thing was, it was covered with a cloth.
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” said Sean. “But I’m pretty sure it’s not good. I’m also pretty sure we’re running out of time.”
“We’re running out of me, too!” Mike added.
Crash! A huge furry white paw suddenly burst through the Mazurs’ front window.
Meooow!
“Let’s get out of here!” Sean tore across the room toward the back hall. He tripped over a pile of newspapers in the hall and slid on a slimy gooey mess of stinky gray glop.
“What’s this?” cried Sean, holding his nose.
“Some kind of alien poison, I think,” said Mike. “A flying saucer flew over before and dropped it on my house!”
Sean looked down. It was all over his sneakers. “Pizza! My dad tossed a pizza and some of it hit your house. These are anchovies! We can eat this stuff! It’s fish!”
Mike pulled away. “I’d rather be small.”
Meooow! Fluffy was breaking through the front of the house.
“Hey!” cried Sean. “Cats love stinky fish!” He quickly scraped some gray glop onto a newspaper. He opened the back door and flung the mess across the backyard. “Here, kitty, kitty!”
Instantly, Fluffy leaped over the house and dived for the anchovy. She teetered on the edge of the table for a moment, then jumped to the floor with the fish.
“Yes!” cried Sean. “A victory for earth-lings!”
“Pah!” boomed the terrible toymaker as his cat dragged the fishy thing across the floor. “Anchovies! I hate zem!”
Sean turned back into the kitchen. “Zem?” he said. “What’s with his different voice?” He stopped in shock to see a tiny figure scurry across the floor. “Mike!”
His Camp Smiley friend was getting tinier! And Mike was jumping up and down on a newspaper. Sean looked at the paper. It was the same one his father had been reading at breakfast. Instantly, the misspelled headlines made sense.
“Mike, look! ‘Water Tower Diapers.’ They mean Disappears. The Grover’s Mill water tower disappeared the other night. And suddenly Kruger has one just like it, with real water!”
“Like my house—” Mike called out.
“And look at this one! ‘Doctor Varnishes.’ They mean Vanishes. Someone named Dr. Gruker vanished from the top secret base in the mountains the very same night.”
“My mom told me a lot of weirdos work up there,” Mike added.
Sean read more of the newspaper. “It says the guy went crazy making things small, and that he plans to take over the world! It says he’s dangerous, and that—” Suddenly Sean gasped. “Wait! Gruker is Kruger spelled backward!”
Mike frowned. “Well, um, actually, it’s not. Gruker is … Rekurg spelled backward.”
“Sideways, then!” cried Sean. “It’s him! The toymaker and the weirdo! They’re the same!”
“But the paper says Gruker speaks with an accent,” said Mike. “Mr. Kruger doesn’t speak—”
CRUNNNNCH!
The roof of the little white house was suddenly pulled completely off and the giant crooked face peered down at the two boys.
“Zo!” boomed the voice above them. “Zee leetle boys have discovered my tiny zecret! Velcome!”
“Velcome?” said Mike, curling his lip.
“The accent!” screeched Sean. “He’s Gruker! He’s the weirdo who wants to shrink the world!”
“QUIET ON ZEE SET!” boomed the strange toymaker. He had a small silver box in his hand. “You boys live in a movie set. How about a leetle movie? I call zis one—Attack of zee Moto-Men on zee Leetle Boys. I’ve fiddled with zee controls zo my Moto-Men just vant to destroy. Does zat sound good to you?”
“No!” yelled Mike, “zat— I mean that doesn’t sound good to us!” Mike was getting small, but he was still fierce.
Sean took heart from the little guy. “Yeah! Make us big! Make us big right now!”
“Ha-ha! My Moto-Men vill make you dead!” Dr. Gruker set six radio-controlled figures on Main Street. “Scene one, take one. Action!”
Then he smiled his evil smile, pressed a button on the radio controller box, and the Moto-Men whirred into action!
11
Attack of the Moto-Men!
Vrrrrr-CHUNG! KA-CHUNG!
Two smoking rocket bombs spiraled down from the end of mini Main Street and—BLAM! BLAM!—burst at the boys’ heels!
“Whoa! Toys with an attitude!” shouted Mike, diving behind Sean’s sneakers.
“I’d hate to see them in a bad mood!” cried Sean.
The radio-controlled army of metallic Moto-Men lurched forward.
Sean snatched Mike up off the ground and slipped him in his pants pocket. “Mike, we’ve got to give this the old Camp Smiley try!”
Mike nodded and began to hum the camp song. But there was another song, more horrible, more menacing than Sean had ever heard before.
It screeched and buzzed and whined from the tiny speakers of the advancing army! It went—
Singing Moto-Men!
Inches tall, we’re ten!
We have rocket arms
And five unique alarms!
Zzz! Vrrr! Eeee! Klang! Wooo!
Dr. Gruker stood bac
k and scanned the scene below. “Ha-ha! I vill conquer zee vorld! Starting here in Grover’s Mill! Starting viss you boys!”
KLA-BAM! Another Moto rocket blasted near the boys, missed, and took the big fish head off the Baits Motel.
Sean dived away from flying bits of cardboard and dashed down Main Street. He wondered if he’d ever see his full-size town again. Sure it was Weirdo’s Mill. But it was home.
BLAM! Acme Hardware and Books blew into a thousand tiny pieces of plastic and paper.
Perfect gifts to give!
No birthday kid will live!
“Oh, man!” snorted Mike. “I sure hope their sense of smell is as bad as their words. That fish gunk on your shoes is making me sick!”
It was pretty bad, but still Sean ran. Past Jabba’s Diet Center.
“First I shrank a vater tower,” Dr. Gruker was saying, beaming as he pushed the big covered shape into the middle of the shop. “Zen a leetle vite house!”
“My house!” Mike snarled from Sean’s pocket.
“And zen a garage!” Dr. Gruker said.
“Can’t we shut him up?” Mike said in his tiny voice.
“He won’t stop,” huffed Sean, gasping under the awning of Picard’s Hair Salon.
KLA-BLAM! Another Moto rocket blasted behind Sean. “His dumb robots won’t stop, either!”
“Zoon, I vill have zis silly town in zee palm of my hand!” Gruker boomed, suddenly whipping the dark cloth off the big thing.
Before him stood a strange and complicated machine on a stand. It nearly reached the ceiling and was cluttered with levers and buttons. At the top was a long barrel with tubes and wires coiling up and down.
“Ach! My amazink shrinkink gun!” Dr. Gruker snarled. “Zee professional toy-maker model!”
He positioned the big gun near the front of the shop. “I vill stomp zis leetle town!”
“Hey!” said Sean. “That’s my dad’s idea!”
“And zen—zee entire vorld shall be mine!
Suddenly, everything made sense to Sean.
“Mike,” he cried, “this guy is a total maniac! We have to stop him before he zaps somebody else!” Sean glanced toward the miniature Plan Nine Drive-in. “I’m going to try something. It’s pretty crazy. It’s mega wild.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” cried Mike. “What if we can’t stop him?”