The Monster Catchers--A Bailey Buckleby Story

by George Brewington

  Down below, Mr. Boom had long since lost his patience. “Bring that sea giant down here, NOW!”

  “I won’t,” Nikos yelled back. “The boy and I had an honorable duel, and he won fairly.”

  “NOW, YOU DISOBEDIENT COW!”

  “I don’t think Mr. Boom intends to leave,” Bailey said.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Nikos said, shaking his bull head. “And I don’t suppose he will pay me for my efforts, either. But I can admit to you now that Axel Pazuzu had two plans of attack prepared.”

  Savannah stood on an overturned bucket to grab Nikos by the left horn. “What do you mean, two plans?”

  Nikos cleared his throat to regain his composure. “At this very moment, goblins are tunneling into your back room. They intend to overwhelm you and take Henry for themselves. They are working with Axel, too.”

  Savannah gasped and immediately dove down the stairs.

  “Hey, wait for me!” Bailey yelled after her. “It’s not safe for you down there alone!”

  “Stop her, young Buckleby,” Nikos said urgently. “There are more goblins beneath the earth than you realize.”

  Bailey’s father sat up, looked around at an imaginary crowd, and asked, “Is it my turn to speak? This doesn’t look like the Las Vegas Monster Hunters Conference at all!”

  Henry licked Bailey’s father’s face happily and barked roump, roump, roump!

  “Please watch my father and Henry,” Bailey said as he hurried down the stairs and caught up with Savannah in the back room. She already had her sword raised, ready to bring it down in a swift, deadly chop on whatever threat lay in front of her.

  “They’re trying to trick us, but we’re smarter than them,” she whispered.

  Bailey had only known Savannah as the loudest girl in Mrs. Wood’s classroom, and he’d never heard her voice so quiet and serious before. He sidestepped softly around her, keeping his back to the wall and gripping one of the red Frisbees between his thumb and finger.

  “Savannah, just step back. The goblins are coming for us and we don’t know how many there are.”

  “They’re already here,” she whispered, pointing at a gaping hole surrounded by torn-up linoleum and dirt where the goblins’ cages had once sat. Canopus and Capella had dug their way to freedom, and now Savannah, just a few feet from the tunnel, stared intently at a clear Ziploc bag filled with shining gold nuggets. A long piece of twine uncoiled from the bag into the hole, which led down into the darkness. The bag of gold was slowly creeping, inch by inch, toward the hole, like bait for a fish.

  Savannah was the fish.

  “Step back from the bag, Savannah. The goblins are right there.”

  Her sword rose higher. “I know,” she whispered, swinging the sword down and chopping the twine in half, releasing the bag of gold, which she grabbed and held up in the air.

  “We’re rich, Bailey!” she screamed in victory, turning to him with a huge glowing smile. But it was short-lived, because suddenly a bright light shone from the hole, growing more and more dazzling, blinding them both.

  A voice growled: “Star light, star bright, we respect your power and your might!”

  Then Bailey felt a painful thunk on the back of his head, and he crumpled to the ground.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  WE VOW WE WILL GIVE YOU BACK THE NIGHT

  BAILEY WOKE WITH a splitting headache in a bouncing cage made of white plastic piping tied together with nylon rope, rusty bicycle chains, and copper wire. The makeshift cage bobbed up and down in time with six marching goblins who struggled underneath the weight. The pipes jutted out from all sides, and because the tunnel they walked through had been dug by two-foot-tall goblins, there wasn’t much spare space for a seventh-grader-sized cage, so the pipes frequently stuck against the tunnel walls, causing the goblin guards to have to stop and tilt the cage to the left or right to keep moving. Bailey sat up and saw he wasn’t the only one imprisoned—Savannah sat in her own cage carried by six more goblins just ahead of him.

  Bailey checked his pockets. No luck—his phone was gone, as was the Frisbee that he kept in his secret hoodie pocket. They even took his belt, which might have proved useful for a possible breakout.

  He figured he and Savannah had been taken deep underground into one of the legendary goblin tunnels he had read about in In the Shadow of Monsters. He wondered how long he had been unconscious and how far down into the tunnels they had traveled.

  It would be totally reasonable for a twelve-year-old girl in this situation to fear being dismembered, disemboweled, dissected, or even eaten, but if Savannah Mistivich worried about such fates she did not show it. She stood on the tips of her toes and reached her slender hand through a crack in the piping so she could run her fingers along the dirt ceiling as they marched along.

  She saw Bailey was awake. “Hey, Bailey boy,” she whispered. “How you feeling?” She winked and wiggled her fingers as they dragged along the dirt ceiling, but Bailey couldn’t guess what she was up to.

  He grabbed two of the plastic cage bars and gave them a good shake. They were securely tied with chain and wire. His father might have been strong enough to pull the pipes apart, but not Bailey.

  “Don’t shake the cage,” one of the goblins snapped. Bailey sat down to calm himself. Without a weapon, he could only rely on his words, so he considered what he said next very carefully.

  “Which one of you is in charge? I have an offer.”

  “I’m in charge,” Capella said, “and we’re not interested in any of your human tricks.”

  “She’s not in charge, but she’s right—no trickery,” Canopus said.

  Capella hoisted her corner of the cage up higher and snapped back, “I’m certainly more in charge than you, Canopus! Who let themselves be captured by the humans and nearly got us both sold into slavery?”

  Canopus raised his head higher. “It was all part of my master plan, wasn’t it? And now we have two human prisoners to bargain with.”

  The goblins at the back corners of the cage started chuckling quietly.

  “Shut up back there!” Capella barked.

  “Don’t tell them to shut up,” Canopus said.

  “They were laughing at you, my dear.”

  “No, they were laughing at the situation.”

  “You’re the situation!”

  The other goblins snickered, obviously trying to keep from laughing out loud.

  Bailey tried to be as patient as possible. “Listen, I know you’re probably very upset that we locked you up in cages, but you have to understand that our customer was scared of you, and we didn’t realize that you think the lights you were stealing are stars—anyways, I want to make you an offer that will make you the richest monsters in the world.”

  Now all the goblins let loose laughing.

  “You’ll soon see, human boy, that we goblins have all the gold we could ever need, which is none at all,” Capella said. “Mr. Pazuzu and humans may worship gold, but we serve far higher and nobler masters—the stars.”

  “Bailey, look, she’s right!” Savannah said in awe, pointing at the walls of the tunnel, which were gradually become larger, smoother, and brighter as they marched along. The tunnels enlarged into halls warmly glowing with torchlight, each torch held in place with a clamp made of pure gold. Beneath them were slabs of gold worn smooth by goblin feet. From the ceiling, large crude gold hooks held gold bowls of oil that burned and provided more light.

  “So much gold,” Savannah whispered in awe.

  All twelve goblins chuckled.

  “You probably want a gold necklace for your long, ugly neck,” one of the goblins chided her.

  “And you probably want gold rings for all your hairless fingers,” another hissed.

  “You probably want to wear as much gold as you can until you couldn’t even walk!” said another one whose face had so many boils, Savannah couldn’t tell where his eyes and nose were.

  “Gold doesn’t even have a very pretty color. Why woul
d you want to wear it at all?” a tiny female goblin guard asked, and Bailey did see that although all the goblins wore plenty of jewelry, not one piece was gold. They wore painted stone necklaces, and iron bracelets, and collars that were once plastic key chains. One goblin had pierced his ear with so many safety pins, Bailey couldn’t even count them.

  “Gold shines because it is cursed with evil magic,” Capella informed them matter-of-factly. “It drives all monsters to madness—especially humans. If they knew how much gold was down here, they would probably dig and dig and ruin everything in their path to take it all and cover themselves in it, from their funny-looking heads to their disgusting stubby toes.”

  “They would,” said one of the goblins in the back.

  “They surely would,” said another.

  “They definitely would,” said another. “And they’d destroy our homes without a second thought.”

  “Yes,” Canopus said. “But we will turn that greed against them and save the stars.”

  All the goblins bellowed in squeaky unison, “To the Eighteenth Goblin Order of Star Guardians!”

  Capella tugged on Bailey’s hoodie to show him her necklace of stones that shone a bright metallic goldlike color. “I like the color myself,” she said. “But these stones are fool’s gold. It’s a much healthier mineral to use—completely magic-free.”

  Again Bailey wondered how these creatures who were smart enough to build all these tunnels could believe in such ridiculous things as fallen stars and evil gold magic. But then he had to admit that most humans he knew would do just about anything for even the tiniest chunk of gold. Maybe these goblins were right after all.

  The goblins marched on, only occasionally complaining about Bailey’s and Savannah’s weight. Bailey realized that the tunnel was gradually sloping downward. He had to pop his ears twice and feared that they were miles beneath the earth. As they took turn after turn, Bailey knew that if he were to escape, he’d have no idea which way to go.

  “Pst! Bailey boy! Look!”

  Savannah opened her hands to reveal a whole collection of stones, many of them small chunks of gold. She sat cross-legged in the middle of her cage, cupping her hands, and slowly, methodically, started sharpening the two biggest stones against each other.

  “Your girlfriend’s plots are useless,” Canopus said to Bailey, and he feared the goblin was right again.

  Hours passed and anxiety kept Bailey from sleeping. Even though he had been told they were to be ransomed, he feared that if he went to sleep, these goblins would slit his throat. He felt awful that he had brought Savannah into this mess. She was by far the strongest and bravest kid he knew, but she might also have been the loneliest. Her parents never came to Parents’ Day, she had no siblings, and other girls often made fun of her for being so tough. Bailey knew his father had to be worried he was gone, but would anyone worry about Savannah? Maybe she was so strong, even loneliness could not beat her.

  He listened to Savannah scraping and scraping. Bailey had to figure a way to talk them out of this dilemma.

  The tunnel opened into three passageways, and their guards took the middle one. Other goblins began to squeeze by them, many of them carrying electrical wiring and power strips. The goblin chatter was high, and as they passed they greeted Bailey and Savannah’s captors with “Hello!” and “A Good Day to Be Goblin to You!”

  The tunnels crisscrossed and were labeled with signs like HEAVEN’S HIGHWAY and KEEPER’S BOULEVARD. The one they were marching down now had a wooden sign that read STARLIGHT SANCTUARY NORTH END, and the farther they marched, the brighter the tunnel became.

  The goblins put their cages down, and others stopped to peer and poke at the human prisoners.

  “What do they eat?”

  “You know what they eat. Anything. Blood, ice, the milk of any mother of any species.”

  “Oh, that’s just foul!”

  “Foul indeed. Don’t put your fingers in the cages. Humans bite them off.”

  Their goblin guards were putting on shaded goggles. In front of Savannah’s cage, two of them raised a huge spotlight that was twice their size. Three goblins from down the tunnel rushed forward with an extension cord that seemed to unravel forever. A power strip was connected to the end in one of the goblins’ hands. As she approached, the goblin knelt down on her right knee.

  “Star of the night, I offer you light.”

  Savannah’s guards replied, “This rescued star accepts your light.”

  With heads bowed, the guards presented the plug of the spotlight to their fellow goblin, who held her palms out. She took the plug carefully, ceremoniously, kissed it lightly, and plugged it in. The spotlight blazed brilliantly, and Bailey then knew this was the light the goblins had used to blind them in the back room.

  The goblins without goggles were mesmerized and immediately put into a trance. The adjoining tunnels filled with goblins who hummed with reverence at the bright star, here in their presence, under the earth instead of high above it. They chanted in unison:

  “Star so bright, you give us light, we vow we will give you back the night!”

  Canopus could barely look away, even with shaded goggles on.

  Capella turned to Bailey and said, “You should count yourself fortunate. You are about to see what no human has ever seen before. We are about to enter the greatest achievement of all the Goblin Orders—the Starlight Sanctuary.”

  Their guards picked up their cages while two more joined their train to carry the bright spotlight. Then they marched forward through a grand gold entrance into the largest underground chamber Bailey had ever seen or could ever imagine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  LAMPS, LAMPS, LAMPS

  BAILEY WISHED Dr. Frederick March and his father could see this. If the two hunters could agree on anything, it would be that this room was stunning monster ingenuity. The mammoth cave extended so far, Bailey could not see the end of it, even though it was incredibly well lit. Christmas tree lights dangled from the ceiling, wrapped around stalactites that dripped into silent pools. There were hundreds of electrical lights, if not thousands. White and red and green and every other color, too. Reading lamps sat on every available rock. Headlights without cars attached to them had been carefully set in circles surrounding stalagmites and beautiful geodes. Around these minerals stood spotlights that fired their beams toward the cave ceiling high above. Fluorescent light tubes had been stacked into pyramids, globes intended for ceiling fans had been stacked into cubes, lamps without lampshades to hinder their glory stood in formation for hundreds of feet. All blazed bright, filling the cave with light.

  The goblins carried Bailey and Savannah into the great chamber where hundreds of other goblins knelt in prayer, all wearing shaded goggles. Many of them wore tiny white robes that looked to be human T-shirts stitched crudely together. Goblins with white robes and white gloves were carefully polishing the lamps with men’s business socks. Bailey wondered which department store manager had come in one morning to find his entire underwear display gone along with all the store lights, with no evidence of a break-in except a freshly burrowed hole through the tile floor.

  The goblins set the cages down in the center of a circle of stage lights, which blazed directly at Bailey and Savannah, burning their eyes and making Bailey realize just how tired he was.

  Canopus gave Bailey’s cage a good kick.

  “Now you know, human boy, what it’s like to be the one in the cage.”

  Capella showed more compassion. “I would give you dinner, but we don’t have human food here,” she said.

  “I can hear a waterfall. Could we have fresh water at least?” Bailey asked, feeling parched, trying to remember sixth-grade human biology, during which he might have learned how long the human body could survive without water.

  “That’s not a waterfall. Those are the bicycles. But I will bring you water from one of the pools.”

  Bailey looked in the direction of the roaring sound. It was coming from
the other side of a row of streetlamps. Between them he saw rows and rows of stationary bicycles, and on each one a goblin pedaled furiously. In unison, their pedaling did sound like the roar of a waterfall. From each bicycle flowed a thick black cable, which all joined to a thicker black cable, which snaked to the center of the Starlight Sanctuary and connected to a large black machine, which could only be a generator. From the generator flowed many smaller cables, which broke into power strips, which fed all the lights with electricity.

  “Mr. Pazuzu is greedy for gold just like you humans, but he has proven useful to our mission. He taught us how to transform our love into star food, and he has promised that he will help us put the stars back into the sky.”

  “You mean electricity,” Bailey said. “That generator is converting your energy into electricity.”

  “No—star food. The stars need our love or they die,” Capella insisted.

  “Those lights aren’t stars. They’re man-made devices being lit by electricity created by that man-made generator.”

  Capella shook her head and closed her eyes. “You humans are so arrogant, you think you’ve created everything. I’ll get your water.”

  As Capella left, a dozen goblins ventured closer to their cages with sticks in their hands. They prodded Bailey and Savannah at a safe distance, looking for proof of what they had heard—that humans could shoot small stones from their fingertips so fast they could split a goblin’s head open and kill him instantly.

  “Show us your fingers, human boy. Show us your fingers, human girl.”

  Bailey opened his hands, which were empty. He looked over at Savannah’s cage. Her long black hair was ratty from sweat and dirt that had fallen from the tunnel roof that she had disturbed with her fingertips. Bailey feared she would open her hands to reveal two sharpened stones. They would surely kill her if she did, but her hands were empty.

  “Cast a spell for us, human. Show us magic.”

  “Humans aren’t magical,” Bailey explained. “We’re just good at science.”

  “Show us science, then,” one of the ugliest goblins garbled. He had large boils that erupted from half of his nose.