Revenge of the Tiki Men!

by Tony Abbott

  Revenge of the Tiki Men!

  The Weird Zone, Book 8

  Tony Abbott

  To Helen, for all the laughs

  Contents

  1. Non-Weirdness

  2. Head’s Up!

  3. Make Like a Tree—and Leave!

  4. Head for Home!

  5. Where Science Rules!

  6. The Deep Dark Pit

  7. Trapped, Captured, Caught!

  8. Just Hanging Around!

  9. Zonerama!

  10. Grower’s Island

  11. Forever Weird

  About the Author

  1

  Non-Weirdness

  Sitting alone on the top row of bleachers, Liz Duffey looked out over the baseball field behind W. Reid Elementary School.

  “First day of summer vacation,” she said to herself. “First Monday with no school. First baseball game. Incredible sunshine. This is all so—”

  “Odd!” yelled a voice below her. “Odd-odd-odd!”

  Liz frowned. “That’s not what I was going to say … for once.” She turned to see Mike Mazur and Holly Vickers standing behind home plate.

  “I’m odd,” Mike insisted, holding one hand behind his back, ready to choose sides for the game.

  “You’re odd, all right, Mike,” Holly said with a laugh. “So I guess I’ll be even. Ready? Set. Go!” She thrust out her hand, showing three fingers.

  Mike stuck out two fingers. “Ha! The odd team wins! I choose Liz and we’re up first.” He smiled up at Liz.

  Liz made a face at him as she jumped down the bleacher steps to the field. “Oh, goody, I’m on the odd team. What I always wanted.”

  “Don’t let it get you down, Liz,” Holly joked. “Odd is pretty normal around here.”

  Holly’s brother Sean strolled up to the plate with Jeff Ryan. “Odd, even. Why do we have to do math during the summer?”

  Liz chuckled and handed a glove to Jeff.

  “Baseball is the absolute coolest game,” said Sean. He dropped a pair of bats and ground a brand-new baseball between his palms.

  Bong! The Double Dunk Donut Den’s donut-shaped clock on Main Street chimed the hour.

  Sssss! The pancake pan sitting high above Usher’s House of Pancakes steamed the hour, too.

  “And now it’s official,” Liz said, picking up one of Sean’s bats. “Time to play ball!”

  Holly pulled on a glove and took up her position at first base. Sean trotted to the pitcher’s mound and began to stretch. Jeff strode out between second and third to his favorite position of shortstop.

  “Blast one out to left field,” Mike said, crouching behind the plate to catch for Liz. “You’ll get a good triple at least.”

  Liz swung the bat around and nodded. “My dad told me that centuries ago this field had all kinds of caves running under it. Tunnels and pits and stuff that people used to live in.”

  Liz’s father, Kramer Duffey, was an archaeologist who dug holes and found prehistoric fossils and artifacts all around Grover’s Mill.

  “Caves?” Mike mumbled. “That’s weird.”

  From home plate Liz could see all the way north of town to the secret army base. Jeff Ryan’s mother worked there. In the east was the Humongous Horror Movie Studios where Mr. Vickers made scary low-budget films. And in the west was one of her father’s archaeological sites.

  “Sure it’s weird.” Liz tapped the plate with the bat. “That’s because Grover’s Mill is right in the center of a giant triangle of weirdness. It’s obviously been that way forever.”

  Mike laughed, pounding his glove with his fist. “At least since people used to live in those caves. Hey, wouldn’t it be great if today turned out to be the first non-weird day? I mean, there’s a first time for everything.”

  Liz tapped the plate again. She knew what he meant. Their town had had a lot of first times.

  The first time zombie Martians attacked the earth was in Grover’s Mill. The first time a prehistoric dinosaur egg hatched out a living dinosaur was there. The first time octopus monsters from Planet X landed was there, too.

  But the first non-weird day?

  Tap! Tap! Liz tapped the plate again. The sounds echoed beneath her.

  “Get ready to strike out!” Sean yelled, starting his windup.

  Liz pounded the plate again, a little harder.

  Boom! The ground rumbled deeply beneath the plate. It shuddered and quaked.

  “Whoa! Did you hear that?” Liz said.

  Mike stood up and frowned at the ground. “Sounds hollow …”

  Liz pounded the plate some more. Boom-boom-boom! The ground around them started to shake and shift. Their legs wobbled as they tried to keep their balance.

  “This isn’t right.” Mike threw down his glove and picked up the other bat. He started to pound the plate, too.

  “Hey!” Jeff shouted. “One batter at a time.”

  But with every hit of the two bats, the ground rumbled and boomed louder and more deeply.

  “Stop joking, you guys!” Sean yelled. “My fastball is gonna slow down if we don’t start!”

  “But—it’s hollow under here!” Liz shouted.

  RRRRR! The earth rumbled sharply. It swelled under the plate and shifted with a suddenness that caught Mike off balance.

  “M-M-Mike, watch out! C-c-c-cave in!” Liz stammered. “The g-g-g-ground!”

  The g-g-g-ground exploded!

  KA-BOOOOM!

  Home plate shot up like a rocket and the earth erupted from below with a loud wumping sound. Huge chunks of dirt and rocks blasted out everywhere.

  The ground sunk beneath Mike suddenly and he tumbled into a deep dark hole.

  “Help!” he screamed.

  But he wasn’t down there for long.

  Something was coming up out of the ground.

  Something very big.

  2

  Head’s Up!

  “Mike, what is going on?” Liz screamed, scrambling back to the backstop for protection.

  “Something’s down here! Something big! And it’s moving!” he screamed from down below.

  Dirt exploded out everywhere. The rumbling shook the earth under the field. Sean, Jeff, and Holly came running over.

  A second later—whoom!—Mike rose up into view, sprawled on top of a giant flat stone. He leaped off when the stone came to the surface.

  But the giant stone kept rising. It pushed itself up out of the ground and continued to blast up, higher and higher into the air. Ten feet. Twenty feet. Thirty feet!

  It was big! It was huge! It was enormous!

  Finally—RMMMM!—the stone stopped. The ground thundered once more, then fell silent. The dust cleared around the huge stone.

  It towered over the field.

  “Whoa!” Liz gasped when she saw the size of the stone. “That was under us? It’s … it’s …”

  “It’s humongous!” Mike cried, looking up from the ground. Then he squinted. “It’s also carved like a statue.”

  Mike was right. The stone was a giant carved head. In the middle of the face was a long nose rising between sharp, high cheekbones. Underneath was a broad mouth and a jutting chin.

  But those weren’t the most striking features.

  “Creepy!” muttered Holly, running over to Liz and Mike. “The eyes. The eyes are so deep and creepy!”

  “For once, I’ve got to agree with you,” Sean said, moving up next to his sister. “Deep eyes are always creepy. Remember that movie our dad made? The Creepy Creep with Eyes So Deep?”

  “Yeah, but that creep didn’t show up to ruin a baseball game,” Liz said. She looked up. Way up. “Talk about odd? How did this thing get here? And what even is it?”

  Jeff jerked back from the big head. �
�Maybe he’s … you-know-who. Grover.”

  “Grover?” Sean said. “Who’s Grover?”

  “You know, the original Grover of Grover’s Mill?” Jeff said. “Maybe it’s a statue of him.”

  Liz shook her head, circling around the big stone. “I don’t think so. I’ve seen pictures of this kind of statue. But they’re normally far away on jungle islands in the Pacific Ocean.”

  “Well, normally doesn’t work around here,” Holly said. “Remember where we live?”

  Liz made a face. “You’ve got a point.” She stared at the big head.

  Snap! Snap!

  The kids turned and squinted into the sunlight. There they saw a man standing on the pitcher’s mound, snapping his fingers.

  “Who’s he?” Holly whispered.

  “And how did he get there without us seeing him?” Liz muttered. “Odd. Very odd …”

  The man stepped down from the mound and danced lightly across the infield to them.

  He was dressed in a bright turquoise suit with a velvet collar, narrow pants, and shiny black shoes. He wore sleek black sunglasses. “The big guy is what you call a Tiki man,” he said. “Hey, that reminds me of a joke.”

  The man’s hair was black, slicked flat on the sides, and combed to a high peak in front. A curl dangled down to the middle of his forehead.

  “What do you call a twenty-foot-tall Tiki man?” he said. The kids shook their heads.

  “Shorty!” the man burst out. “Isn’t that cool? And, hey, speaking of cool, so am I. Buddy Kool’s the name. That’s Kool with a capital K!”

  “Uh-huh,” said Mike, brushing the dirt from his pants. “Well, we were just trying to play a game and—”

  “Watch the dust, kid!” the man said. “You want to uncurl my curl?” He pulled a small comb from his pocket and touched up his hair. “Am I perfect yet? Wait, don’t answer. I already know I am!”

  “Excuse me, sir?” Liz began, backing up into her friends. “But where exactly did you come from just now? I thought I saw—”

  “Tssst!” the man hissed, putting a finger on his lips. “Buddy Kool talks, you listen. When Buddy Kool snaps his fingers, you listen, too.”

  “Listen to what?” asked Sean.

  “This!” the man said. Snap!

  Suddenly—boom! boom! The air echoed with booming sounds coming from the pitcher’s mound. Liz glanced over to see five more strange shapes standing on the mound.

  “More people!” she mumbled. “What’s going on? How did they get here? And what are they wearing? They look sort of human, but … I don’t know …”

  The five figures hunched over to them. They did look sort of human—two arms, two legs, one head each—but they were completely covered in … weeds!

  “Oh, you like the look?” Buddy Kool asked, peering over his sunglasses and brushing his fingernails on his jacket. “It’s my great pleasure to introduce … the Mango Men. They’ve come to play!”

  On their heads the Mango Men wore headdresses of shaggy, woven grass. Big floppy leaves crisscrossed their shoulders, and their pants were made of thick brown twigs stuck together. They snapped and crackled when they walked.

  But the strangest thing was the big, thick, ugly wooden stick that each carried.

  “This is really starting to weird me out,” said Holly.

  “Okay, look, you want to play?” said Sean, walking up to the men, tossing a ball from hand to hand. “Some basic rules first. You guys have way too many bats—”

  “Ugh!” one Mango Man grunted. He grabbed the ball from Sean, sniffed it, and took a bite.

  Chomp! He began to chew it.

  “Hey, that’s a brand-new ball!” Sean whined.

  “Hit it, men!” shouted Buddy Kool.

  Boom! Boom! The Mango Men struck their big wooden sticks together. They snarled at the kids. They growled. They clacked their teeth like angry dogs.

  Then they attacked.

  3

  Make Like a Tree—and Leave!

  “Hit it, Mango Men!” Buddy Kool repeated, jerking his fingers at the five kids.

  In a flash the five wild Mango Men surrounded the kids and pushed them behind home plate.

  “Don’t hit anything!” Liz cried. “Especially not us!” She felt the wire backstop digging into her shoulders.

  “We’re trapped!” said Mike.

  The Mango Men brought their sticks down suddenly and hit—the ground!

  Boom! Ba-boom-boom! Ba-boom-boom! Ba!

  “Oooh, so swingin’!” cooed Buddy Kool, snapping his fingers to the beat. “Yeah! Make nice music for the people.”

  The Mango Men began to dance slowly around the giant head. They flapped their big floppy leaves like wings as Buddy Kool sang.

  Tough to dance, in those crazy suits they wear.

  Dressed like plants, insects living in their hair.

  But they’ve come a long, long way.

  Now they’re here they’re gonna stay.

  It’s not France, but, hey, your town’s got flair!

  “Faster with the pounding!” Buddy Kool urged his men. They pounded faster, and as they did—

  Eeeee! The two deep dark eyes on the giant Tiki head began to glow. They glowed red! Then silver! Then green!

  “Could this get any weirder?” Mike asked.

  “Probably,” Liz said. “What’s happening with those eyeballs?”

  Suddenly—whoosh!—a sharp breeze swept across the field. And the unbelievable happened.

  The grass, so trim and neat, began to slither up through the ground in wild bunches!

  In seconds, it was five, six, seven inches tall!

  “Oh, man!” cried Sean. “There goes the field!”

  “This is impossible!” Liz shrieked, watching the grass pour out under her feet. “It’s incredible! It’s like a videotape in fast-forward!”

  “Ha-ha! More like fast-backward!” said Buddy Kool, chuckling mysteriously. “Right, my melodious Mango Men?”

  “Ugh!” they agreed, pounding faster and louder. Then, as if calling to the kids from the real world, there were other sounds.

  Bong! The donut clock chimed the hour.

  Sssss! The pancake pan hissed it, too.

  “Check, please!” Mike shouted, as dandelions swiftly coiled around his sneakers. “Me and my shoes are out of here!” He tore free of the winding weeds and ran.

  Together the kids grabbed their bats and baseballs and tore off past W. Reid Elementary and down School Road away from the field.

  “I think we can forget about this being a non-weird day, Mike!” Liz said, catching her breath.

  “Right,” Mike agreed. “Let’s go tell your dad about the strange statues. It’s archaeology. That’s his department.”

  “It’s also pretty weird,” Holly added. “That makes it our department, too!”

  But when they got to Main Street, the ground shook and quaked and rumbled again.

  RRRRR! The street shifted from side to side.

  “Oh, no! Not again!” cried Liz. Yes, again. A second giant Tiki man burst up from the ground at the north end of Main Street. A third one exploded south of town at the movie studio. A fourth one shot up at the dinosaur graveyard in the west.

  “Big heads are coming up everywhere!” cried Jeff.

  “We’re being invaded!” Mike shouted.

  Then all the Tiki men’s eyes glowed like the statue on the baseball field. They all seemed to be staring back at each other. Their eyes sparked.

  Then—ka-thoomp!—a tall palm tree clustered with coconuts crashed through the sidewalk and wiggled up into the air. A dozen more followed it, swaying up and down the streets. Telephone poles sprouted giant leaves. Streetlights burst into bloom with wild, colorful flowers.

  “Grover’s Mill!” Liz cried. “The weird jungle thing is happening all over!”

  And it was getting worse. With each rhythmic beat of the Mango Men’s sticks on the ground, the town was becoming more and more jungly.

  Boom! Big l
eafy plants exploded from all the mailboxes. Boom! The benches on Main Street became masses of tangly vines. Boom! Wild branches blasted out the front windows of the supermarket, Pay & G’way.

  “Down! You bad greens!” gasped Sean, swinging his bat below him as he leaped over a sewer grate with long green tendrils swirling out.

  “We need lawn mowers just to walk down the street!” Jeff cried.

  Boom-boom-ba-boom! The pounding went on.

  “It’s Buddy Kool and his Mango Men,” said Mike, squishing a bunch of unruly flowers. “I think they’re making this happen.”

  “Let’s go to my house right now!” Liz called out. “We’ll be safe there and we can call my dad. He’ll know about these giant Tiki heads. Come on, it’s our only chance!”

  Liz scrambled up a hedge of vines, jumped down the other side, and headed for Oak Lane. A few minutes later, she and her friends batted their bats through a dense wall of thickets.

  “I think I see your house,” Mike said, cautiously. “Well, I think it’s your house. It’s hard to tell.”

  Liz peered over the mass of green growth that half hid her street. Her heart sank. Yes, the yellow shape ahead of them was her house. But it was different now.

  Giant vines twirled out of the flower border near the lamppost. The driveway was full of holes where tall weeds had already broken through. A lush tree poked through the porch.

  It was a mess. But it was her house.

  “Follow me!” she yelled. She ran as fast as she could and rushed for the front door just as a giant vine coiled up the steps toward the knob.

  “Yuck!” muttered Jeff. “This vine’s all slimy!”

  Liz tried to jump away, but it grabbed her ankle. “Let go!” she cried, kicking her foot wildly.

  “Off my friend, you dumb weed, or I’ll prune you!” Holly shrieked, trying to pull Liz free.

  But the vine was strong. It tugged Liz down the steps. It pulled hard, as if it had muscles. As if it could think. As if all of its thoughts were bad!

  Liz clung to the railing, but lost her balance. “Help!” She stumbled back down the steps.

  Instantly, the vine’s long green fingers coiled thickly around her arms.

  They had her tight in their grasp.

  They pulled her swiftly to the ground.