Gobbled by Ghorks

by Robert Paul Weston

  “We look scared,” Elliot explained, “because Grinner is somewhere in here with us.”

  “Zat bigmouth ghork? No-no-no, do not worry about him. We dropped him off already—in ze Simmersville Lake!”

  “But we heard footsteps,” said Elliot. “Big footsteps.”

  “But of course! Zat was Gügor.”

  “Hello,” came a deep, dopey voice. “Welcome aboard.”

  The chamber lurched once again. Elliot and Leslie were thrown to the floor.

  “Sorry,” said Jean-Remy. “Ze pilot, he is still—how do you say—learning ze ropes. But he is very skillful. Most others, zey would have crashed by now.”

  “Very reassuring,” said Leslie.

  “Would somebody mind turning on the lights?” asked Elliot.

  “Don’t worry,” said Gügor. “They’ll be here soon.”

  “They?” asked Elliot.

  “Ah! Here they come.”

  A faint bluish-green glow seeped into the darkness above them. Streams of colorful light, fading softly through every color of the rainbow, illuminated the dimly visible ceiling.

  “Luster bugs!” cried Leslie. She recalled how, when they had first discovered the Creature Department and were lost in the tunnels below it, the luster bugs had guided them to safety. She would always have a special fondness for these gentle, luminous creatures.

  Gügor admired them, too. He gazed upward, his colorful dreadlocks spilling down the back of his neck. “Beee-yooiful,” he intoned.

  They were beautiful, but as the chamber brightened, they saw that it wasn’t just luster bugs above them.

  “W-w-where are we?” asked Elliot.

  “The engine room,” said Gügor. He smiled proudly and cracked his enormous knuckles.

  They were standing at the center of a vast tumult of machinery. Only it wasn’t machinery. It looked like the pulsating internal organs of a living thing! This was nothing like being in an engine room. This was like being in the rib cage of some incredible beast. Translucent tubes, wide as plumbing pipes, corkscrewed in every direction. They covered the chamber walls and pumped with what could only be described as blood. Above them, veiny white lungs (as big as a pair of buses!) inflated and subsided with a slow, steady rhythm. Between them, a glistening, pulsating heart muscle throbbed and juddered—ba-doom, ba-doom, ba-doom . . .

  “It was Patti and Harrumphrey who designed ze flying machine,” Jean-Remy said, nodding. “Since it is a biomechanical machine, it needs ze biomechanical guts, you see?”

  “Makes sense,” Leslie admitted, “in an ooey-gooey, creaturely sort of way.”

  “That’s the best way of all,” said Gügor.

  Surrounded by so many twitching and pulsating biomechanical organs, it was easy to be distracted. Only then did Elliot and Leslie notice Jean-Remy and Gügor were dressed in tuxedos and top hats.

  “Where’s the party?” asked Elliot.

  Jean-Remy looked down at himself. “It is because of your uncle. He insisted on a full dress rehearsal.”

  “You mean for the cabaret?” asked Leslie.

  Jean-Remy nodded sadly. “He made us build an entire stage in ze main cabin, just so we could practice. I really do zink he is taking zis disguise a little too seriously.”

  “Maybe we can talk to him,” Elliot suggested.

  Jean-Remy nodded. “If you would be so kind. Now, come, we will take you upstairs to meet ze others.”

  The main cabin of the flying machine didn’t look like an airplane at all. It looked more like a grand old concert hall. The seats were of a plush blue velvet, while the walls alternated between the soft sparkle of gold leaf and the gleam of polished wood. Many of the creatures of DENKi-3000 were already on the stage: Harrumphrey, Patti, Reggie, and even the hob- mongrels, Bildorf and Pib, every one of them dolled up in top hats and tails.

  “Where’s my uncle?” Elliot asked Patti, when they entered the cabin.

  Patti lowered her voice. “Behind the curtain,” she whispered.

  “Uncle Archie?” Elliot called.

  Professor von Doppler’s head popped out from where the curtains met. “Excellent! I’m so glad we found you.” He raised his eyebrows, and his top hat, which was a bit too big for his head, slipped down over his eyes. He tilted his head back to see under the brim. “We’ll be needing an audience. It’s crucial you tell us what you think.”

  “Are you sure now’s the time? We’re here to rescue Eloise-Yvette, Jean-Remy’s sister—remember? We’re not actually performing in the food festival cabaret.”

  “Elliot’s right,” said Leslie. “Just now, we barely escaped from Grinner. The ghorks are planning to do something terrible at the festival, and we don’t even know what it is yet!”

  “All of that’s true,” said the professor, “but you’re forgetting something.”

  “We are?”

  “Of course! What is it I’m always telling you?”

  “There’s a little creature in everyone?” Elliot suggested.

  “No,” said the professor. “The other thing I’m always telling you.”

  Elliot and Leslie looked at each other.

  “Oh,” said Leslie. “I know.”

  Elliot knew, too. Ever since they had saved DENKi-3000 with a series of bizarre inventions, Professor von Doppler had said it many, many times.

  “There’s more than one way to save the day,” they recited in unison.

  “Precisely,” said the professor. “When you’re dealing with ghorks, you have to be prepared for every eventuality!”

  “Even cabaret?” asked Elliot.

  “Why not? Without a good disguise, we’ll never sneak into Simmersville undetected. And any good disguise is so much more than just an unusual outfit. In order to be convincing, we’re going to have to completely inhabit our roles as traveling cabaret performers. That means practice! In the meantime, why doesn’t Reggie introduce you to our pilot? Quite a dashing fellow.” With that, the professor’s head—top hat and all—vanished behind the curtain.

  “The pilot?” asked Leslie.

  “Indeed,” said Reggie, clomping toward them in his enormous galoshes. “Old Clutchie, a dear old friend of mine! A magnanimous maestro of derring-do! A hero for all seasons! Well, mostly winter—on account of being a fellow Antarctican.”

  Reggie led them through the crowd of creatures and across the main cabin to a narrow door at the front of the beetle.

  “Ahem!” Reggie rapped the door with his blubbery knuckles.

  In response, the Coleopter-copter careened sickeningly to one side.

  “Apologies,” drawled a voice from inside the cockpit. “You broke my concentration.”

  “Reggie here, old chap. A couple of important visitors would like to see you at work. Would you mind if we came in?”

  “It’s your funeral.”

  Reggie chuckled. “Ho-ho! That’s Old Clutchie for you. Such a joker!”

  Reggie opened the door and they saw that, in contrast with the old theatrical atmosphere of the main cabin, the flying machine’s cockpit glowed with modernity. Gauges, switches, buttons, dials, and view-screens covered every surface. Running down the center were so many levers it looked like the cockpit floor was wearing a mohawk, and even these were tipped with blinking lights. The only parts that didn’t twinkle with technology were the windows, two darkly tinted domes that peered out into the starry night.

  Seated at the center of it all was the pilot, his hands moving lightning quick from lever to lever. With his back turned, it was impossible to see his face. All they saw of him was a pair of antlers, branching out on either side of the bucket seat. Then, in the dark sheen of the cockpit windows, Elliot and Leslie made out the smoky reflection of a face.

  “Elliot, Leslie,” said Reggie. “Allow me to introduce Cosmo Clutch. ‘Old Clutchie’ to his
friends.”

  “Old Clutchie” looked like a cross between a yak, a reindeer, and a swashbuckling pirate. He was dressed in a black leather trench coat and goth riding boots, with an eye patch over one eye, a soul patch growing under his lower lip, and a big brown cigar sticking out of his mouth. His hands, sporting only three thick fingers each, gripped tightly to the steering controls.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Clutch,” said Leslie.

  Cosmo Clutch didn’t move. His eyes—or rather, the one that wasn’t covered with a battered patch—remained fixed on the controls. Elliot and Leslie couldn’t help but stare.

  “You’ve never seen a creature like me before, have you?” asked Cosmo Clutch.

  “Does that surprise you?” asked Leslie.

  Elliot, who was always interested in meeting new creatures, said, “What kind are you, anyway?”

  “Guess.”

  “A hairy yakman?” Elliot tried.

  “Nope.”

  “A fuzzy antlerox?”

  “Try again.”

  “How about an unhelpful pain in the neck?” suggested Leslie.

  Cosmo smiled. “Getting warmer.”

  “How are we supposed to guess?” asked Leslie. “There must be a million different kinds of creatures in creaturedom!”

  “Actually,” said Harrumphrey, hobbling up to join them by the cockpit, “there aren’t nearly that many. I believe the precise number is eleven thousand, five hundred, and twenty-two distinct species.”

  Leslie blinked at him. “You really are a walking brain, aren’t you?”

  Harrumphrey nodded proudly. “I may be the only creature in creaturedom who has memorized them all. And if I’m not mistaken, our pilot friend here would belong to creature type one thousand, seven hundred, and seventy-four, subset C.”

  They all stared blankly at Harrumphrey.

  “A snub-snouted danger-moose!”

  “Bingo,” said the pilot.

  “Danger-moose?” asked Elliot.

  “Native to the creaturely realms of both the north and south poles,” Harrumphrey explained, “but quite rare on account of the fact that so many of them perish in feats of ill-advised daredevilry.”

  “It’s the antlers,” Cosmo explained, pointing to the side of his head. “They put pressure on the part of my brain devoted to fear. So I never feel any.”

  “Which is why he’s the perfect pilot for a Coleopter-copter,” said Reggie.

  “You don’t experience fear,” said Elliot. “Is that why you’re smoking in the cockpit?”

  Cosmo Clutch laughed. “Hah! Who’s smoking?”

  “You are.” Elliot pointed to the massive cigar in Cosmo’s mouth.

  “Relax. This baby’s one hundred percent chocolate. The dark stuff, of course.” He plucked it out to show how the tip had melted between his teeth.

  “A chocolate cigar?” asked Leslie.

  “You got a problem with that?”

  “Nope.”

  Professor von Doppler came up behind Harrumphrey, poking his head into the cockpit. Slung around his neck was a steam-powered keytar, an instrument that was part piano, part banjo, part teakettle.

  “Come on, you two,” he said. “We’re just about to start rehearsal, and we desperately need to hear what you think. If our performance isn’t good enough, no one will believe we’re really cabaret performers!”

  “We’re not cabaret performers,” Harrumphrey harrumphed.

  “You are today,” the professor told him. “Now come on!”

  CHAPTER 11

  In which Reggie discovers a whole new vocal range

  The Creature Book of World Records lists the Top Three silliest things in creaturedom as follows:

  1. A bombastadon’s midwinter boot-washing festival.

  2. The wardrobe of a Dandimalion schboov.

  3. A screaming wee-beast with laryngitis.

  However, if the officials from the Creature Book of World Records had been present to witness the performance of the DENKi-3000 Creature Department that night, they might very well have crowned a new champion.

  Elliot and Leslie were seated alone near the middle of the main cabin. All the other seats were empty because the creatures had assembled behind the curtains at the rear. The professor’s voice crackled over the intercom.

  “Ladies and gentlemen! Prepare to—no, wait. That’s not right, is it? Lady and gentleman! It is my great pleasure to—hold on. How old do you have to be to qualify as a lady? How old are you two?”

  “We’re twelve!” Elliot shouted back at him. “And we’re on a rescue mission! We don’t have time for a musical number.”

  “Oh, I’ve got it!” said the professor. “Young lady and young gentleman! That’s the one! Young lady and young gentleman, prepare to be amazed!”

  The lights in the main cabin dimmed. There was an electric whir as every seat turned 180 degrees to face the stage.

  “And now,” crackled the professor’s voice, “bringing you to a whole new level of in-flight entertainment, may we humbly present: The DENKi-3000 Creature Cabaret!”

  The curtains parted, and Elliot and Leslie giggled. They couldn’t help it. It was funny to see all their creaturely friends, huddled awkwardly together in stiff fancy dress, blinking into a spotlight. The professor walked onstage to join them. Click-click-clickety-click went his shoes. Elliot and Leslie realized that the shiny wingtips everyone was wearing were actually tap-dancing shoes!

  “Seriously,” said Elliot. “We don’t have time for this.” He was about to unbuckle his seat belt and voice another objection, when the music started.

  At the rear of the stage, a row of creatures formed the band. They were holding oddly shaped guitars, drums, horns, and flutes. Off to one side of the stage was the professor himself, calibrating his keytar. On the opposite end was Gügor, who held an enormous clockwork horn (it was a homemade electrombone, rickem-ruckemed together from bits and pieces in the Creature Department). Then, all together, they began to play. It sounded like an orchestra featuring nothing but tubas and accordions (and perhaps one or two steam engines), and then . . . the singing:

  WE ARE CREATURES!

  WE ARE LEGION!

  WE’RE FROM EVERY CREATURE REGION!

  BLOW YOUR TRUMPET!

  BANG YOUR DRUM!

  MARCH ALONG WITH CREATUREDOM!

  Patti stepped forward, with Jean-Remy hovering beside her. With each step, they performed bowlegged dips in time to the music’s jaunty beat. Jean-Remy took up the first line:

  Excuse me, madam, but what is zat?

  Something slimy under your hat!

  Patti doffed her top hat.

  It’s no big whoop. Don’t be freakin’.

  My hair up top? It’s always leakin’!

  Now you, my friend, so pale and pretty

  How come you’re so itty-bitty?

  Jean-Remy responded with a typically Gallic shrug.

  My father? He was a vampire-bat.

  Ma mère? A fairy. So zat is zat!

  Pumping their arms foolishly, they knee-dipped back into the crowd as the chorus struck up again:

  WE ARE MISFITS!

  WE ARE CREATURES!

  WE HAVE SPOOKY CREATURE FEATURES!

  HORNS AND FANGS!

  TEETH AND TAILS!

  AND POORLY TENDED FINGERNAILS!

  Next, Harrumphrey toddled to the front of the stage, along with Gügor and his electrombrone. Harrumphrey, of course, looked more disgruntled than ever (which was saying a lot). Nevertheless—and very reluctantly—he muttered in time to the music:

  Singing? Bah! It’s not for me.

  I’m singing this begrudgingly.

  He tried returning to the wings, but the others jostled him back to finish his lines.

  I’m Harr
umphrey, kinda dumpy.

  Mostly head and mostly grumpy!

  That’s okay; I can’t complain.

  Underneath . . . I’m mostly brain!

  Gügor came forward with two booming steps.

  Gügor is a knucklecrumpler.

  Nothing rhymes with knucklecrumpler.

  What is Gügor’s claim to fame?

  It’s in the knucklecrumpler name.

  Gügor CRUMPLES! That’s because:

  Gügor is as Gügor does.

  And so on. . . .

  Every time the creatures returned to the chorus, Reggie tried to muscle his way in front of everyone else, doing his best to steal the limelight. It never worked, of course, but his efforts only added to the sense of blundering, ridiculous comedy. Intentional or not, the performance was hilarious!

  Even though Elliot was worried they really ought to be planning their attack on the Heppleworth Food Factory, he couldn’t help giggling. Leslie was cracking up, too. In fact, they were laughing so hard they had to undo their seat belts so they could (literally) roll in the aisles. The DENKi-3000 Creature Cabaret was the funniest thing they had ever seen!

  At last, the oompah-pah music, the knee bends, the jazz hands, and the ridiculous lyrics all built to a final crescendo. Reggie realized this was his last chance to prove he was the true star of the show. He thundered forward with the ferocity of a bombastadon heading off to war, knocking down all but a single creature. One fuzzy, purple accordionist, bravely played on at the back of the stage.

  The rest of the creatures lay in a heap below the footlights, all of them glaring up at Reggie. Misinterpreting their anger as expressions of awe and encouragement, Reggie assumed his moment in the limelight had finally arrived. He clomped down on one knee, spread his arms, and belted out the final line of the song.

  And so it goes in

  CREEEEEEEE-

  CHUUUUUUURRR-

  DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!

  It was that final syllable that did it.

  The flying machine quivered as if it had hit a pocket of turbulence. But it wasn’t the air outside the flying machine that caused everything to tremble; it was the hot air inside—Reggie’s hot air. The big bombastadon had always had a deep, resonant voice, but when he arrived at the final DOOOOOOMMM in “creaturedom,” he discovered a whole new vocal range. Perhaps even a whole new sound.