by Tony Abbott
“Maybe they only know one word,” said Jeff.
“Too bad it’s not a good word,” Sean added.
“Yeah, they really have to work on that vocabulary,” Mike snapped. “Sean, give me one of your bats. I think I want to bonk some heads!”
Then, the five big Tiki heads in the triangle around Grover’s Mill began to turn.
Scrape! Thump! Scrape! Scrape!
The five stone heads began to … walk!
10
Grower’s Island
Scrape! Thump! Scrape!
Liz and her friends stood stunned as the big heads scraped deep trenches in the earth. The ground shook. The air boiled from the hot red glow of the deep Tiki eyes.
All the people in Grover’s Mill rushed around the kids. They looked afraid. “We need some answers!” someone in the crowd shouted. Liz looked into their faces. They were people she had known for a long time. She knew what they were feeling. She felt it, too. The sense of total doom.
Liz stepped forward. “The Tiki men are doing this with their weird powers,” she told them. “They turned back time and brought the ancient jungle back. And now these Tiki heads want only one thing. To destroy us.”
“Isn’t that just a little weird?” someone asked.
“Yes!” Liz pleaded. “It’s a lot weird! It’s totally and absolutely weird! It’s—”
ZZZZ—BLAM! A fiery red beam shot out of the Tiki men’s eyes and exploded nearby.
“Yikes!” screamed Mike, gripping his bat tightly. “I think we get the message!”
“Run!” cried Mr. Duffey, snapping his bullwhip—ka-fwap! “Those mighty heads are up to no good! If one of them loses his balance, we’ll be smushed!”
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! All the heads fired at the crowd. The jungle lit up with the huge blasts.
“To the vines!” Mike shouted.
In a flash, the five kids ran along the jungle floor and leaped up. They each grabbed hold of a long vine hanging from the trees above.
Whoosh! From one vine to another, they swung in the trees, trying to stay ahead of the big heads.
ZZZZ—BLAM! A grove of palm trees burst apart near Jeff and Sean. The explosion sent them swinging off in another direction.
“Everybody meet on the hill!” yelled Holly swinging after them.
Liz swooped up into a tree and waited for Mike to catch up. He swung up next to her.
ZZZZ! The jungle lit up with the sizzling eyes of four Tiki men crashing swiftly after them.
“It’s just you and me again, Mike,” she said.
“Yeah, the odd team.” He smiled. “But the big heads are getting closer, so maybe we should escape to play another day.”
Liz nodded. “Watch out for head number five! He’s hiding somewhere.” She grabbed a vine and jumped.
“I’m right behind you!” yelled Mike, gripping his bat tightly in one hand and a vine in the other. He pushed off after Liz.
Whoosh! Swoop! Whoosh! Liz made her way from vine to vine. But as she swung down quickly to a dense clump of trees, a dark shape with bright eyes appeared among the branches.
“Uh-oh!” she cried. “I think I found hiiiiiiim!”
THWAPPPP!
“Ow!” Liz yelped. She smacked the dark shape hard, let go of her vine, and felt herself scraping down a rough, rocky surface.
“Help!” she screamed. “I’m on a Tiki man!”
THWAPPP!
“So am I!” yelped Mike, tumbling across the top of the same Tiki head.
“Mike, I’m slipping! I’m going to be crushed!” Liz shrieked, sliding down the giant nose toward the ground just as the giant head took a step.
In that instant, her foot caught on the Tiki’s jutting chin. She clung fast to the tip of the nose and swung from it, looking up into its deep, dark, and very big nostrils.
“Whoa!” she cried. “Do Tiki heads sneeze?”
“I don’t think so,” Mike yelled down from above. “But then, they aren’t supposed to walk or talk either!”
The Tiki head lowered its glowing eyes.
“Uh-oh! He’s looking cross-eyed at me!” Liz shouted. “I think he’s going to fire his eyes!”
“I never did like those eyes!” Mike sprawled flat on the head and extended his bat. Liz reached. Her fingers grasped the tip of the bat and Mike pulled up with all his strength just as the Tiki man’s eyeballs flashed.
BLAM! The jungle ahead of them charred black instantly.
“I don’t think he likes us up here!” Mike cried.
“Tough!” Liz snarled, reaching the top next to him. “Hey, I just thought of something. What’s worse than a giraffe with a sore throat?”
“More jokes?” Mike whined. “I don’t know.”
Liz smiled. “A Tiki head with a headache!” She grabbed Mike’s bat and began banging the top of the Tiki head. Boom! Boom!
“Revenge!” thundered the Tiki man.
“That’s the word, all right,” yelled Mike, taking the bat and whacking the head some more. “And we can use it, too!”
That was when Liz and Mike saw the other Tiki heads. They were coming to help their Tiki head pal. And their eyeballs were all glowing and ready to fire.
“Uh-oh! Time to move along!” Liz cried. “Follow me!”
“Huh?” said Mike. “Follow you … where?”
But Liz grabbed his hand and took a running jump off the Tiki man’s head, just as the other heads crowded around him.
They landed on one of the other Tiki heads.
“Revenge!” the head boomed.
They raced across that and jumped to another head. And from there to another and another.
“Revenge! Revenge!” boomed all the heads.
“Hey, just like stepping stones!” Mike shouted. “I love it!” But the Tiki heads didn’t. They blasted at the kids with every leap.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! The jungle exploded with fiery flashes of incredible Tiki eyeball power. But the kids were too fast for them.
Leaping off the last head, Liz and Mike scrambled to the ground and ran as fast as their legs could carry them. They ran straight up the highest hill overlooking Grover’s Mill and straight into the crowd of townspeople and their friends.
“They’re coming!” Liz told everyone. “For their final attack!”
“And thanks to us, they’re way mad,” Mike added.
In the distance Buddy Kool was barking commands into the microphone as his army of thousands of Mango Men massed for a huge assault.
The sun was setting quickly over Grover’s Mill. Over what used to be their town.
Scrape! Thump! Scrape!
Boom-ba-boom-boom!
The sounds echoed up and around the hill from the jungle below. And then came those terrible quaking, thundering words again.
“Revenge! Revenge! Revenge! Revenge!”
The five friends huddled together.
“They’re going to do that ray thing on us and zap us out of existence!” cried Holly.
“They’ll take over once and for all!” Jeff said.
“We’ll be the town that never was!” said Sean.
11
Forever Weird
ZZZZ—BLAM! The Tiki men marched up the hill, blasting away with their deadly eyeballs, destroying everything in their path!
“I can’t stand this!” Liz yelled out, jumping up. “If those Tiki men get here, we won’t have any town left! We won’t be living anywhere!”
Sean shook his head. “What would that be like?”
“It would be like … nothing!” shrieked Liz. She felt so angry she grabbed one of the baseball bats and slammed it on the ground next to her.
WHOOF! The ground crumbled away beneath her. Liz lost her balance and fell into a hole.
“Oh, not again!” she cried. “Man, I hate holes! What is with me today? I’m spending most of my time underground!” Then she looked around. “Hey, wait a second. There’s something down here. A stone. And it’s carved.”
“Uh-oh
,” said Mike. “Tiki man number six?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
“Stand back!” yelled Mr. Duffey. “If it’s stone and it’s carved, it must be archaeological!”
He jumped down into the hole next to his daughter. “Golly, it’s round,” he announced.
“And flat,” Liz added. “With a little hole in the middle like a wheel. It looks like—”
Mr. Duffey jumped up. “It’s a millstone, used to mill or grind things. But … hmm … what would a millstone be doing here in Grover’s Mill?”
“Uh … Dad?” Liz blinked. “Could this stone be, like, you know … the Grover’s Mill millstone?”
Mr. Duffey gasped. “Daughter! You’ve done it! You’ve identified the most important artifact of our past! Yes! This is the Grover’s Mill millstone! Too bad there’s no more museum to display it.”
THUMP! SCRAPE! THUMP! The stone Tiki men had nearly scraped and thumped their way to the top of the hill. The eyeballs readied themselves for a huge blast. Buddy Kool and his Mango Men were right behind them.
Liz was quiet for a while. She looked into the faces of all the townspeople around her. Then it hit her like a blast from a Tiki man’s eyeballs! “That’s what the stone tablet said! But what the great stone heads will steal… That’s Grover’s Mill. One past and future stone will heal.”
“What’s a past and future stone?” Sean asked.
Liz turned to the crowd. “This millstone! It’s our past, but it’s also our future. The only chance we have against these heads is this stone. We need to dig it up. And then we need to—roll it!”
“Yes!” yelled Mike, jumping up and down. “Ka-pow! And down they go! It’s brilliant, Liz. It’s perfect! It’s a plan!”
“I knew you’d do it!” Holly said.
“Liz is the smart one, everybody says so,” Sean said, jumping into the hole with the others.
And in a flash, every grown-up and every child was digging away at the earth. Within minutes, the huge wheel-shaped stone was standing upright before them. And just in time.
ZZZZZ!
“The Tiki men!” cried Liz. “They’re getting ready to blast us! We have to hurry!”
With Liz in the lead, the people of Grover’s Mill moved the giant millstone to the crest of the hill. They aimed it, gave it a little push, and let it go!
RRRRRRR! The ground shook as the round millstone rolled downhill. It picked up speed, thundering over rocks and mounds. With every bounce, it rolled faster. And faster. And faster!
It rolled right at the giant Tiki men. Their dark eyes flashed. It was almost as if they knew what was coming. But they just couldn’t move fast enough.
KA—BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The famous Grover’s Mill millstone slammed into them like a bowling ball into pins. The Tiki heads exploded into millions of tiny Tiki pebbles! The sky rained Tiki dust!
“Busted!” yelled Sean.
“Total gravel!” cried Holly.
“They’re all broken up about this!” said Jeff.
“Major Tiki headache!” shouted Mike.
But the millstone kept rolling. Buddy Kool looked up at it. For the first time, it seemed as if he’d lost his cool. “Hey, people, wait! Can we talk? It’s the Mango Men you want. All I do is tell a few jokes!”
The Mango Men didn’t seem to like that.
They raised their sticks. “Ugh!” they cried.
“Hey, I don’t like your tone!” Buddy Kool took off down the hill. The Mango Men rushed after him.
But the stone kept rolling. It thundered across what used to be Main Street and rumbled to the ball field.
Buddy Kool dived below the pitcher’s mound into his fancy Junga-Lounge. The Mango Men chased him into the caves below.
WHA—BOOOOM! The massive millstone crashed through the lounge’s bamboo door, roared across the floor after them, tipped in the shark pool, and fell flat on its side.
Right over the cave entrance.
RMMM! It stopped there. The entrance was plugged. Buddy Kool and the Mango Men were trapped in the caves. Forever.
“Perfect shot!” Sean yelled from the hilltop.
“Yahoo!” whooped Mike, jumping up and down. “We did it!”
The revenge of the Tiki men had failed.
At that moment, the sounds of the jungle died down. All over town things went quiet and calm. A streak of light eased in from the east and the sky brightened.
It was morning.
That’s when Liz and her friends noticed that something else was happening, too.
“Hey, the grass,” Mike cried. “Look!”
Liz looked down to see the overgrown grass beneath their feet slither silently back into the earth. At once, the jungle trees, bushes, moss, and vines sank back into the ground where they had come from.
“My house!” shouted Principal Bell. “My green house! I see it!”
His house, all their houses.
And all the buildings and streets, cars and bikes, streetlights and telephone poles of Grover’s Mill came back into view as the jungle slipped quietly away.
The waters receded and the desert around town was dry again. Grover’s Mill was not an island anymore. It was back to normal.
“To work!” boomed Principal Bell, forming his grass necklace into a bow tie. Miss Lieberman followed him down the hill. “School starts in just seventy-one-point-three days. Ah, math!”
Liz, Mike, Holly, Jeff, and Sean walked back to town and up Main Street together. Everyone was doing their usual stuff. Opening shops, eating at restaurants, buying groceries, having X rays.
Liz looked around. The town was messed up a little, especially her own house. But, everybody would help rebuild. You couldn’t stop Grover’s Mill that easily. No way.
“The whole thing is amazing,” Holly muttered. “Almost as if it never happened.”
“Weird is the word,” said Liz. “But if there’s one thing we learned, it’s that Grover’s Mill has been weird for a long time.”
“Pretty much since the beginning,” said Mike. “It’ll probably stay that way, too.”
Jeff tossed his baseball cap in the air. Sean caught it, laughed, and started to run with it.
Mike turned to Liz. “Looks like it’s going to be nice today. What do you want to do?”
Liz smiled. “Why don’t we just wait? I’m sure something will happen. After all—”
Bong! went the big donut clock, the sun shimmering off its glazed coating.
“—we do live in—”
Sssss! went the big pancake pan, a stream of smoke hissing into the golden air.
“—The Weird Zone!”
About the Author
Over the last two decades, Tony Abbott has written dozens of mysteries, comics, and adventure books for young readers aged six to fourteen, with series including Danger Guys, the Time Surfers, the Weird Zone, Underworlds, Goofballs, and the long-running fantasy series the Secrets of Droon. He is also the author of the fantasy epic Kringle and the realistic novels Firegirl (winner of the 2006 Golden Kite Award for Fiction), The Postcard (winner of the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery), and Lunch-Box Dream. Among his latest novels is The Forbidden Stone, the first installment of the twelve-book saga the Copernicus Legacy. Tony has taught on the faculty of Lesley University’s MFA program in creative writing, is a frequent conference speaker and visitor to schools, and presents workshops to creative writers of all ages. His websites include www.tonyabbottbooks.com, www.thecopernicuslegacy.com, and the literary blog www.fridaybookreport.com.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 by Robert Abbott
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-4804-8658-4
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
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