“Perfect for blowing stuff up without anyone noticing,” Tank said.
She was right. Around us, the harbor continued to bustle with activity. Trolls and ogres sauntered along the docks. Boats moved around the piers. It was as if nothing had happened.
“Why blow something up if you can’t make it go boom?” I said. “The noise is the best part.”
“You’ll have to ask the monsters using this powder.”
“Monsters can’t use magic,” I said.
“Monsters that live up here near the surface can’t use magic,” Aleetha said. “But there are beasts from the Dark Depths that can tap into the forces of magic.”
“We found the powder in our school.” Tank tugged her spiky hair with worry. “That means somebody at Gravelmuck is messing with monsters from the Depths?”
“Another reason for you two to drop this case.” Aleetha looked hard at both of us. “Trust me, you do not want to mess with creatures from that deep under the mountain.”
The air behind her shimmered with a yellow glow.
“Time to go. I’m late for my transmutation class.” Aleetha stepped into the yellow light. She turned to us. The teasing was gone from her voice. “Be very careful with this one. Okay?”
She stepped into the glowing doorway and vanished.
We didn’t say much on the walk home. Both of us were deep in our own thoughts. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this mystery was growing too big for a pair of fourth-grade detectives.
Who at our school would have contact with monsters from the Dark Depths? That realm was serious business. The Depths was not a place you went on summer vacation. Demons and dragons lived down there. Any monster with half a tail knew not to mess with monsters from the Depths. And now someone at Gravelmuck Elementary was doing just that.
And what was the deal with the magic powder? It made things go boom without any noise. Why would anyone need that at our school? What did it have to do with the escaped slimes? More questions to add to the pile cluttering up my brain.
Don’t get me wrong—I like questions. It’s what keeps me in the detective game. But every once in a while, a case comes along that pushes even my limits. Where were the slimes? Did Principal Weaver let them escape so she could get rid of Mr. Snag? Why was a garbage truck racing straight for us again?
The truck screeched to a stop right where we had been standing only a second before. Angry black smoke billowed from the exhaust pipe. In the dump tanks in the back, two large slimes fell off the pile of garbage they had been devouring.
The driver’s door opened. A pair of heavy boots emerged, followed by a pair of very large legs attached to a wide chest and hairy face that looked familiar.
“Oh no,” Tank said. She scrambled to her feet. “It’s the ogre from the Shadow Tower!”
The ogre’s dark eyes locked onto us. His thick eyebrows scrunched together.
“There you are,” he said in a growly voice. He rolled up his sleeves, like he was getting ready to toss us into the back of his garbage truck.
“And here we go!” Tank yelped and ran down the street.
I took the hint and followed her. The ogre also got the hint and followed me.
“Get back here!” he boomed. He lumbered down the road behind us. Running wasn’t something this guy did a lot. It took him a few steps to gain some speed. But when he did, his extra weight gave him momentum. I could hear his heavy footsteps pounding closer with every step.
Tank took a sharp turn into a dark alley between two tall buildings. I was right behind her. I ran down the alley.
And into a wall.
It was a dead end. Some bright monster had decided to block the alley with a very strong, very steep wall. Boxes and garbage bags lined the walls, but there were no doors, ladders or anything else of use to a goblin about to be crushed by an angry ogre. And there was also no Tank.
Panic welled up inside me. Tank had ditched me. She had left me behind to save her own troll skin.
“So this is how it ends,” I said to the bags of garbage. “Abandoned by my friend and left to be smushed by an angry garbage ogre.”
“There you are!”
The very large, very angry shape of the ogre filled the open end of the alley. I closed my eyes and waited for the smushing to begin.
The ogre didn’t stand a chance. The Ticklebot’s tentacles went for his soft spots. They zeroed in on that tender spot under every monster’s chin. They tickled behind his knees. They tickled under his big armpits. He rolled around on the ground, howling with laughter.
Tank’s Ticklebot had claimed another victim.
“Stop!” the ogre gasped between guffaws. He swatted away tentacles with his big beefy hands. But there were too many nimble ticklers for the big beast.
The Ticklebot had only just begun. If it was fully cranked, those tentacles would keep the ogre occupied long enough for us to escape.
“Move it, Fizz!” Tank shouted from the top of the wall. She reached down to pull me up.
“Stop! Stop!” the ogre pleaded. I was halfway up the wall when his words changed. “Snag! Snag!”
I let go of Tank’s hand and dropped back to the ground.
Tank scowled. “Fizz! Get back up here. That thing won’t keep him busy much longer.”
I ignored her and raced to the helpless ogre. Tears of laughter streamed down his cheeks and soaked the bristles on his green face.
“What did you say?”
“Snag! Snag.” He was going to say more but was lost to another fit of laughter as a tentacle caught the soft spot under his chin.
I called to Tank, “How do I stop this thing?”
“You don’t,” she barked from her perch on the top of the wall. “Fizz, we have to go. That ogre wants to feed us to his slimes!”
Dodging a pair of waving tentacles, I searched the brass ball. I’d seen Tank switch it off in her workshop. There was a button or switch or something. My fingers ran across a small raised square on the Ticklebot’s surface. I pushed it.
Immediately, the tentacles went stiff, like icicles. They zipped back into the ball one at time with loud pops, until all that was left was a simple brass ball.
And a wheezing ogre.
I took a step back from the monster. He struggled to catch his breath from all that laughing. I hoped I hadn’t just made a big mistake. He sat up and wiped a tear from his eye.
“Thank…you,” he said. His chest heaved as he tried to speak.
“Do you know Mr. Snag?” I asked. “You said his name.”
The ogre nodded slowly. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. He reached out with his large hairy hand and offered it to me.
“Read it,” he said between heavy breaths.
Tank scrambled down from the wall. I opened the paper.
“You do know Mr. Snag!” Tank said.
Hutch got to his feet. “We joined the Guild of Cleaners together many years ago. We were just kids then, not much older than you.”
He pointed to the crest on his chest. Two mops crossed over a slime. The sign of the Guild of Cleaners. Mr. Snag had the same crest on his work shirts.
“Are you a school caretaker too?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, I collect garbage around Slick City.”
“That explains the truck,” Tank said. “And the slimes in the back.”
“Scrapper and Fetch are two of the finest garbage-eating slimes I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.” Hutch chuckled. His big brown eyes got misty at the mention of his slimes. “Those two can chew through a pile of trash faster than Mayor Grimlock can take a bribe. And now slimes like them all over this city are in trouble.”
“Trouble? How?”
“Schools have outlawed slime cleaning. All because somebody released Snag’s slimes. Now they’re replacing all the slimes with fancy cleaning machines in every school in the city. The slimes have nowhere to go. They’ll all dry up if they’re not cleaning the schools. Caretakers everywhere
are worried about what will happen to their cleaning beasts.”
Tank sighed. “We’re having enough trouble clearing Mr. Snag’s name. We can’t save a bunch of slimes too.”
“Yes, we can.” Hutch smiled. “If we can prove someone released the slimes, we will clear Snag’s name. And we will show slimes are harmless when handled by responsible members of the Guild of Cleaners.”
“First we actually have to find the slimes,” I said.
Hutch scratched the bristles on his chin and grinned. “That’s easy,” he said. “Scrapper knows where they are.”
“Scrapper the slime knows where the other slimes are?”
“Of course he does,” Hutch said. “Follow me and he’ll tell you himself.”
Hutch’s garbage truck was still parked where he had left it, on the side of the road. The slimes were in their tanks, happily devouring a pile of garbage. Hutch opened the driver’s-side door and pulled out three sets of strange-looking headphones. Each had a cord ending in a wide suction cup. He handed us each a set and then gave the glass tank a few gentle taps. The slimes stopped their munching and slurped toward Hutch.
“They’re answering your call,” Tank said, her eyes wide in amazement. “I didn’t know that was possible.”
“They respond to vibrations,” Hutch said. He pressed each of the suction cups from the headphones against the side of the glass tank. “There’s a lot folks don’t know about slimes. Just because they have no bones and eat garbage doesn’t mean they aren’t smart.”
The larger of the two slimes pressed its gooey body against the glass where the suction cup was stuck.
“That’s Scrapper. He usually does the talking. Fetch is kind of shy.” Hutch put on the headphones and spoke into a tiny microphone attached to the side. “Hey, Scrap. This is Tank and Fizz. Tell them what you told me about Snag’s cleaners.”
Our mountain is filled with all kinds of life, from silent glowing mushrooms growing on rocks to super-intelligent dragons deep down in the Depths. Some creatures are very smart and run things in the mountain. Other creatures are not much smarter than the rocks that make up the mountain. I’d never thought of slimes as being much smarter than a pebble. I was wrong.
Hutch gathered the headphones. “I’ve asked them many questions, but all they say is the slimes are under the school and they’re hungry.”
“The poor things,” Tank said. She gazed sadly at the slimes in the tank. “Just because they’re slimes doesn’t mean they can be taken away and treated badly. We have to find them, Fizz.”
“How?” I said. “We’ve been searching all week, Tank. How are we going to find the slimes in time to save Mr. Snag?”
“With this,” Hutch said. The ogre held up a small glass container the size of a pop can. It was half full of green slime. “This is Scrapper. Well, part of him. Slimes can sense each other. This slime will glow brightly when you are close to Snag’s slimes.”
Tank’s eyes lit up. “Like a slime radar.” She took the cube from Hutch. “It’s cute.”
“Drop this little guy into Snag’s slimes when you find them,” Hutch said. “That will tell Scrapper where you are. And we’ll come to help.”
The entire success of saving our caretaker came down to following a slime in a cube. We were in big trouble.
Bringing a metal-chewing slime to school is never a good idea. I was taking a big risk. And not just the risk of the cube cracking in my bag and the slime dissolving my homework. Actually, that wouldn’t be so bad.
I was risking getting kicked out of school.
After the slime escape, slimes had been officially banned in all schools. Getting caught with one in my backpack would get me booted out of school faster than Rizzo Rawlins could snatch lunch money from a first-grader.
Finding the slimes was the key to solving this mystery and clearing Mr. Snag. And that meant taking some risks. It didn’t mean Tank was happy about our secret package though.
She met me outside the cafeteria at lunchtime.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said, a grim look on her warty face. “We have until the end of lunch to sneak down to the basement and find the missing slimes.”
We hurried to the basement stairs but froze at the top when we heard voices in the main office.
Their laughter echoed down the hall, all the way to the school’s front door.
“Did you hear that?” Tank hissed. “Rizzo’s dad is selling tons of vacuum cleaners because of that stupid anti-slime law. He’s happy the slimes caused so much damage.”
“Maybe he’s behind their escape,” I said.
The walls shook as another tremor ran through the school. I grabbed the handrail. As quickly as it came, the shaking stopped.
“Did you notice that?” Tank asked.
“Kind of hard to miss,” I said.
“Not the shaking, dragonbait,” she said. “The noise.”
“What noise? There wasn’t any noise.”
“Exactly! There was no boom or crash. It was like magic.”
“The purple dust!” I said.
“Someone is using the purple dust to make silent explosions.”
“That’s why the school is shaking so much!”
We hurried down the stairs. The basement was cold and silent. We saw no sign of Mr. Zallin. That wasn’t a surprise. The caretaker was always busy at lunchtime, mopping up spills and sweeping up dropped sandwiches.
The basement shook with another tremor. Rock dust drifted down from cracks in the ceiling. The shaking was getting worse. Still there was not a sound.
We had only just stepped into the tunnel when the walls began to shake. Another tremor rocked through the school. Behind me, in Zallin’s office, tools rattled along his desk. Something heavy fell to the floor, landing with a loud crash. The shaking was much worse down here, but still there was no boom or loud noise.
“That’s the third tremor today,” Tank said. “That’s the most we’ve had in a day.”
The tunnel was longer than I had first thought. We trudged through the darkness without speaking.
I pulled the jar of slime out of my pack.
“Little Scrapper isn’t glowing,” I said. “I don’t think our slime radar is working.”
“Stop!” Tank grabbed my shoulder. “Did you hear that?”
Something heavy scraped along the tunnel behind us. We froze.
There it was again. Footsteps on stone.
Getting closer.
“Someone’s coming,” Tank whispered.
The footsteps got louder. And closer. Whatever was coming was moving fast.
I spied a small crevice in the wall. It was barely big enough for a goblin. I jumped in anyway. Tank pushed in behind me. She didn’t get far.
“I don’t fit!” she hissed, stumbling back into the tunnel. “Hold on. Let me get something.”
She rummaged through the pockets on her tool belt.
We waited until the sound of its voice had faded before tumbling out of our hiding spot.
“That was close,” I gasped.
“Too close.” Tank hastily folded the piece of fabric.
“What is that thing? A new invention? Some kind of mechanical camouflage barrier?”
Tank shook her head. “My raincoat. Mom always makes me pack one.”
“Your raincoat! You planned to save us with your raincoat?”
“You’re the one who pulled me into that bug hole!” Tank stared at something over my shoulder. “Your backpack is glowing.” A soft green light showed through the material of my bag.
“Little Scrapper!” I opened my backpack. Safe inside its little container, the slime glowed a calm green. Hutch was right. This thing could sense Snag’s slimes. “We’re getting close.”
A newfound sense of confidence washed over me. I held Little Scrapper’s container close to my chest. Ahead, the tunnel opened to a wide cavern. We crept to the entrance and peered inside.
Little Scrapper lit the cavern wall with a soft
glow. The rocks were jagged and sharp, like they’d been hacked out by a blind ogre with a pickax. Bits of pulverized rock lay everywhere. A haze of purple dust floated in the air.
In the middle of the cavern, a blue creature smaller than me skipped around the room, singing.
“Boom, boom! We make room! Boom, boom! Treasure be ours soon!”
It was the monster that had skipped past us. It had large fat ears and a tail that ended in a sharp spike. I’d seen a lot of different monsters in Slick City, but I’d never seen one of these creatures.
On second thought, maybe I had.
“Gremlins,” I said. Icy claws ran down my spine, gripping me all the way to my tail.
“We’ve found the Gremlin Gang,” Tank said in a whisper almost too quiet to hear.
The Gremlin Gang had arrived in Slick City. Mom had said they were on their way here.
It didn’t make sense. Slick City had banks with stacks of money and galleries with priceless works of art. And yet, here was the Gremlin Gang, right under my school.
The gremlin stopped singing and charged to a dark corner of the cavern. He returned with a heavy-looking bucket. He zipped to the middle of the cave and climbed a ladder standing beneath a shallow hole in the ceiling. The ladder looked familiar. On its side were the words Property of Gravelmuck Elementary.
“That ladder is from the school!” I said.
“They’re a gang of antique thieves,” Tank whispered. “Stealing a battered old school ladder is not going to bother them.”
The gremlin teetered at the top of the ladder. One hand carried the bucket. The other held a large paintbrush. He dipped the brush in the can. It came out covered in purple paint. Purple, sparkling paint.
“The purple dust!” Tank said. “It’s in the paint.”
The gremlin spread the paint on the ceiling of the cavern. He hopped off the ladder and dragged it to the far corner. He turned to face the hole in the ceiling and got that look of concentration I’d only ever seen on Aleetha. The gremlin said the same magic words Aleetha had used at the harbor.
Tank & Fizz Page 5