The Swivel-Eyed Ogre-Thing

by Barry Hutchison

  The impact made the gauntlet slide faster. Ben grabbed for it and fumbled for the button on its back. Five strands of crackling purple energy streamed from the gauntlet’s fingertips. Dadsbutt tried to stop running as a swirling portal opened in the air ahead of him. He tried, but he failed, and with a bellowing cry and a sound like a boot being pulled out of mud, he vanished into the hole.

  With another press, Ben closed the portal before anything else could be pulled inside. He leapt up and bounded to the window, but Antagonus had already risen out of reach.

  “He’s getting away!” Ben cried.

  Paradise thrust a jar into Ben’s hands. “Not for long,” she said.

  Ben looked down at the jar. The bulging eyes of the Explodi-Toad seemed to wink back up at him. Ben leaned out of the window.

  “Hey Antagonus!” he shouted.

  Five or six metres above him, Antagonus looked down and spotted the jar. “You wouldn’t,” he said.

  Paradise and Wesley both leaned out next to Ben.

  “Oh,” they said. “He really would.”

  And with that, Ben threw. They all watched the jar tumble as if in slow motion. End over end over end it went as it sailed up and up and—

  BOOM!

  The explosion came like the cry of an angry thunder god. The force of it rocked the airship, sending the balloon spinning into a spiralling dive.

  “Did I get him?” Ben cried.

  “You got us too!” Paradise cried. “You couldn’t just wait until he’d floated off a bit, you had to throw it right away!”

  “G-guys, please!” said Wesley. “Fight later. Now, try to stay alive.”

  The goat had wandered off now, and was quietly munching on some cabbage and sprouts. Wesley stumbled to what was left of the controls, trying desperately to make sense of the readings.

  Ben shoved his hand into the Alpha Gauntlet and the aching in his muscles eased. He really needed to study it sometime, but Wesley was right – the first priority was not crashing and being blown to bits.

  Paradise grabbed the wheel and struggled against it, fighting to level the ship off. There was a scraping of metal on rock as the lower floors brushed against the side of Mount Nochance, then they jerked free and the occupants of the airship found themselves spinning even faster, twisting in a hopeless spiral towards the ground.

  “We’re losing pressure!” Wesley yelped. “We can’t slow down. We’re going to crash!”

  “If we crash we’ll wipe half the kingdom off the map,” Ben said.

  “Then let’s not crash,” Paradise said. “Wesley, get downstairs, round up the trolls.”

  “And tell them what?”

  “Tell them to fart,” said Paradise. “Tell them to fart like they’ve never farted before!”

  As it turned out, hurtling towards the ground in a highly explosive airship was pretty strong motivation when it came to farting. Fuelled by the sprouts the trolls parped and trumpeted for all they were worth, and slowly the pressure in the balloon began to build.

  But still the airship dropped.

  “Two hundred metres,” cried Ben, his eyes fixed on one of the few remaining instruments on the control panel. “One hundred and fifty metres. We’re slowing, but we’re not going to stop!”

  “The cabbage!” shouted Scumbo from the back of the room. “Feed me the cabbage!”

  “Wesley, go!” Paradise barked, just as the wizard reached the top of the stairs.

  “What? How come I have to do it?”

  “Just hurry up!”

  Grumbling, Wesley hurried off to shove cabbage in Scumbo’s revolting mouth, being careful not to accidentally stick an arm in.

  “Seventy metres,” Ben said.

  “We’re not going to make it!” cried Paradise.

  “We’re not done for yet,” Ben told her. He joined her at the wheel and they heaved with all their might. The nose of the balloon tilted upwards a fraction, but they were still spinning down, down, down towards a particularly loud and messy death.

  “There,” said Wesley. “I fed him the cabbage, now can I please—”

  A sound like a sonic boom erupted from the far end of the room. It blew Wesley off his feet and roared up through the brass pipework. The airship lurched.

  “Twenty metres,” Ben hissed. The tops of the trees were not far below them now. Any moment they would smash down into them, and everything would be over.

  A second cabbagey rumble emerged from Scumbo, then a third. The ship jerked and jolted and bounced around in the air. Paradise gaped at the control panel, barely able to believe what she was seeing.

  “Still at twenty metres,” she gasped. “Pressure’s holding. We did it! We stopped!”

  “You’re welcome,” called Scumbo, as another parp lifted the airship several metres higher in the sky.

  Ben sagged down and let out a sigh of relief. His glove tingled gently as he stepped back from the wheel. “Well then,” he said with a shaky smile. “Let’s go home.”

  The whole of Lump and Loosh had gathered to watch as the airship bumped down just outside the village boundary. At first there had been panic as the door had opened and dozens of trolls had piled out – particularly from Mr Asquith the baker, who had already lost three limbs to a troll and had grown really quite attached to the fourth one.

  But then a cheer had gone up as Paradise and Ben had appeared. Wesley raced past his friends, then spent a few minutes hugging the ground and crying. None of the villagers were entirely sure what they were cheering about, but the sheer spectacle of the thing made it difficult not to get a bit carried away.

  Tavish smiled proudly at Ben as he and Paradise approached. “So the Pedal-Driven Feather-Based Vertical Transport Device worked, then?”

  “It did,” Ben said. “Although I prefer Flycycle.”

  Tavish tutted. “Flycycle? That’s just silly.” He looked around. “Where is it?”

  Ben shifted uncomfortably. “Um yes. About that…”

  “Where’s the mayor?” asked Paradise, stretching on her tiptoes to see over the crowd.

  Tavish shrugged. “Hmm? No idea,” he said. “I haven’t seen him since—”

  “Here I am, my dear,” said the mayor, pushing his way through the crowd. Paradise threw her arms around him in a hug and just for a moment Ben thought he saw a flicker of pain on the mayor’s face.

  “Well, you’ve had quite an eventful night, it seems,” he said, when Paradise had pulled away. “You must be exhausted.”

  “You can say that again,” Paradise said.

  “Yeah, I could sleep for a week,” agreed Ben.

  Tavish looked at his pocket watch. “It’s a shame that school’s starting in under an hour,” he said. “You’ve been out all night.”

  Ben’s eyes widened in horror. “What? But—”

  “No way!” yelped Paradise.

  “Mr Tavish is right,” laughed the mayor. “Education is so important, don’t you think? You run along to class. I’ll look forward to hearing all about it at the end of the day.” He turned Ben’s way just as a shadow passed across his face. “All about it,” he said, and Ben felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

  “Come on,” Ben told Paradise. “Let’s get Wesley and get this over with.”

  Keeping one eye on the mayor, Ben led Paradise over to where the wizard still clung to the grass. Taking an arm each they hoisted him to his feet.

  Behind them, a hairy figure in a jester’s hat stepped out of the airship and on to the ramp.

  Scumbo breathed deeply in through his nostrils and raised his arms to the sky.

  “Best game of Fart or Death ever!” he cried, then he danced down the ramp to join the other trolls. “Now then,” he said, to no one in particular. “I think I’ll go see if I can fix up my old bridge.”

  Ben and Paradise watched the troll trot off on his merry way.

  “Oh, Paradise, I forgot to say…” began Ben.

  “What?”

  “Saved your
life!” he said, then he smiled, heaved Wesley up over one shoulder, and they all set off for school.

  Benjamin Blank was having a brilliant dream about kicking a giant up the bum when the world began to tremble. His eyes peeled open and he sat up on his horsehair mattress. The floorboards beneath him were rumbling and shaking.

  “Earthquake,” he whispered, then he yelled, “Yes!” and punched the air. He’d never been in an earthquake before.

  The rumbling stopped as suddenly as it had started, and he realised it probably wasn’t an earthquake after all. There was silence for a moment, followed by a loud boing. Something shot into his bedroom through the wooden floor, then punched a hole in the thatched roof on its way back out again.

  “Sorry!” called a voice from below. “My fault. Breakfast’s ready!”

  Ben clambered free of his knot of blankets, stretched, then slid down the spiral metal staircase that led into the room below.

  A huge contraption filled one half of the circular room. Cogs clanked on the front of it. Steam hissed from little chimneys and water bubbled along narrow pipes. Somewhere, hidden in the inner workings, a chicken clucked impatiently. Ben hung back and eyed the machine warily.

  “I built it while you were asleep. I call it the Automated Breakfast Producing Device,” said Uncle Tavish, who’d never had a knack for catchy names. He stepped out from behind the thing and waved the mechanical arm he’d made for himself after he lost one of his own ones. It was twice as big as his other arm, and the movement almost made him fall over. “Watch this,” he said, and he cranked a handle on the machine’s side.

  The cogs turned, the steam hissed and the chicken quacked in a very un-chicken like way. A small brown oval fired out from somewhere inside the machine and rocketed straight for Benjamin’s head. Quick as a flash, he snatched it from the air just before it exploded against his face.

  “An egg,” Ben said, then he felt his fingers start to burn. He tossed the egg up and began to juggle with it. “Ouch, ouch. Hot, hot!”

  “Well of course it’s hot. Who’d want to eat cold eggs?” Tavish thought about this. “Unless at a picnic, perhaps. Or pickled eggs, obviously, mustn’t forget them.” His eyes lit up. “Ooh, an Automated Egg Pickling Device. I must write that down.”

  “Still hot!” yelped Ben, flicking the egg from one hand to the other.

  “Ah yes, sorry,” said Tavish. His mechanical arm whirred and the metal hand clamped shut around the egg. The shell splintered and a gooey blob of yellow yolk hit the floor with a plop. “Whoops,” he said.

  Copyright

  FOR FIONA. My trusty partner in adventure. B.H.

  THE SWIVEL-EYED OGRE-THING

  First published in the UK in 2015 by Nosy Crow Ltd

  The Crow’s Nest, 10a Lant Street

  London SE1 1QR, UK

  This ebook edition first published in 2015

  Nosy Crow and associated logos are trademarks and / or registered trademarks of

  Nosy Crow Ltd

  Text copyright © Barry Hutchison, 2015

  Cover illustration © Chris Mould, 2015

  The right of Barry Hutchison and Chris Mould to be identified as the author and illustrator respectively of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  All rights reserved.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously. Any resemblence to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978 0 85763 307 1

  www.nosycrow.com