“Tell us what you’ve done with the creatures who work here,” Leslie demanded.
“Where are you keeping Jean-Remy’s sister?” Elliot asked, closing in with his Funky Cheese Wafter.
“The same place we’re gonna keep you two,” replied the nose-ghork, trying in vain to plug his enormous nostrils.
“That’s right,” said the eye-ghork, his eyes squeezed tight. “We’ve turned this whole place into one great big dungeon—and we’ll have all of you down there soon enough!”
“Not as long as I’ve got one of these!” Elliot turned the fan on his Stinky Cheese Wafter to full power.
“It’s not going to stop,” Leslie added, “until you tell us what you’re up to!”
Unfortunately, Elliot’s stinky cheese weapon worked a little too well. With a scream of disgust, the ghorks slid along the wall and ran around the corner behind the elevators. Sensing victory, Elliot and Leslie chased after them, but when they turned the corner themselves, they hit a dead end.
“How did they do that?” asked Leslie.
Elliot lowered his Wafter. “There’s no way out.”
At the end of the hall, there was nothing but a three-dimensional mural featuring all kinds of food. It was a bit like the highway billboard that had welcomed them to Simmersville. Sculpted fruits and vegetables, meats and fish, grains and nuts, and loaves of bread popped off the wall in a kind of topographical map of dinnertime.
“Could they be hiding behind that sculpture?” Leslie asked.
They walked up to it, running their fingers over the surface, but it was perfectly solid. Then, suddenly, Leslie let out a yelp.
“Ew!” She leapt away from the wall, where she had just been examining a basket of artificial carrots and cucumbers. “That one there! It’s . . . warm!” She pointed to a carrot that was smaller than the rest. It didn’t extend as far as the others. She leaned in for a closer look and saw that what she had taken for a carrot was something else entirely.
“It’s a finger!”
“No,” said Elliot. “Not a finger. You found a knottub! It’s like the ones in the Creature Department. I’ll bet it’s for calling an expectavator.”
“There’s one way to find out.”
Leslie reached into the veggie basket and grabbed the disturbingly warm and lifelike digit (complete with a jagged fingernail and wiry hair on the back of its knuckle). When she pulled it, a hidden door hissed open beside the mural. Inside, they saw the colorful buttons of an expectavator.
“Hiya-hiya!” came a cheerful voice that seemed to twinkle as brightly as the buttons. “Welcome to Heppleworth Food Factory Expectavator Number One! My name is Sunny, and it is my sincerest hope to guide you through the hallowed hallways and secret crevasses of—well, well! What a pleasant and unexpected surprise! Such a treat to take a couple of youngsters for a ride! Where to, you two?”
Inside the expectavator was one of the oddest creatures they had ever seen. It looked like a bright orange hairball with hands and a face, which wore an expression of pure, wide-eyed happiness. Instead of two legs, the creature had only one. It spiraled in a circle to the floor of the expectavator like a coiled spring, upon which he was blithely bobbing up and down.
“You are coming in, aren’t you?”
Whatever it was, the creature inside the expectavator seemed harmless enough, but Elliot and Leslie couldn’t just leave their friends. They turned back toward the main lobby, but the moment they rounded the corner, they saw there was trouble. The creatures of DENKi-3000 had run out of ammunition. The hand-ghorks had fought so fiercely over the fluffy pillows, they had torn them to shreds. With nothing remaining to fight over, they could devote their enormous hands to destroying the other weapons. The creatures of DENKi-3000 had lost their advantage. Already, many of them had been captured, hoisted high in a tangle of nets.
Perhaps the saddest sight of all was Hercules, the incredible flying machine that had brought them here. Its monstrous mechanical body filled one half of the lobby, lying inert on the hard marble floor.
“Don’t worry about us,” the professor called to his nephew through the net in which he was trapped. “We’ll be okay! It’s up to you and Leslie now! Find Eloise-Yvette! And find out whatever it is these ghorks are up to!”
“Shut it, four-eyes,” said one of the ghorks guarding the professor’s net (it was an eye-ghork, of course, who would never be caught dead wearing spectacles). He thumped Elliot’s uncle on the back of his head, knocking the professor unconscious.
“Uncle Archie!” Elliot wanted to run to his uncle’s aid, but it was impossible. There were simply too many ghorks—and they were coming straight for them!
They turned and ran for the expectavator.
“Hiya-hiya!” Sunny bounced on his springy leg and rubbed his hands together. “I’m so glad you’re back! It’s going to be so exciting to take both of you on a ride in my very own expectavator! Now then, as I was just saying: Where to, you two?”
Leslie waved her arms at him. “Anywhere but here! Just shut the doors already!”
“Hurry!” Elliot told him. “The ghorks are coming!”
“Oh, I’m very sorry, but I can’t shut the doors until you give me a destination.”
“Eloise-Yvette,” said Leslie. “We’re looking for Eloise-Yvette Chevalier. Can you take us to her?”
“Oh, Eloise-Yvette! So lovely, isn’t she? But . . .” Sunny’s brow wrinkled in thought. “I’m afraid when Quazicom took over, Eloise-Yvette was laid off.”
“No,” said Elliot. “She wasn’t laid off. She was thrown in a dungeon!”
“Dungeon? Oh, well! Why didn’t you say so? That’s something else that changed when Quazicom took over. They installed a whole lot of new buttons in all the expectavators. See?” He pointed to a section of buttons behind them. They were all marked with the same word: Dungeon #1, Dungeon #2, Dungeon #3, all the way up to—well, there were too many to count. “Which one would you like?”
“Any of them!” Leslie cried. “We don’t care! Just press a button and close the door!”
“Oh, no, I could never do that!” said Sunny. “You’re my passengers. You have to decide.”
The first of the ghorks had rounded the corner, rushing down the hall toward the expectavator.
“We’ll start at the beginning,” said Elliot. “Dungeon Number One!”
Sunny clapped his hands. “Excellent choice!”
Leslie and Elliot backed away from the doors, watching in terror as a horde of eyes, ears, noses, mouths, and hands came glaring and flapping and snorting and growling and grabbing toward them.
The horrifying image vanished just in time, as the doors slid shut. After that, there was only the quiet hum of the expectavator, beginning its descent, down and down and down, to Dungeon Number One.
CHAPTER 15
In which every expectavator needs the right operator, and the ghorks need a spelling lesson
Are you sure you’re really an expectavator operator?” asked Leslie. She was staring at Sunny, the small orange spring-loaded creature who had welcomed them aboard. He was bobbing (like a recently popped jack-in-the-box) to the soft bossa nova music that fizzled from a speaker in the ceiling. “I mean, aren’t you a little too . . .” Leslie wasn’t sure how to put it.
“Chirpy?” Sunny suggested.
“That’s it! I thought you had to be depressed to run an expectavator, because they’re powered by hope. If the operator’s too optimistic, you overload the system. Isn’t that right?”
Sunny nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, yes! That’s true! But you also have to account for where the expectavator is, and what sort of people—or creatures—are using it on a daily basis. We used to have some stupendously gloomy expectavator operators around here, but after Quazicom took over, everyone around here was depressed. The expectavators barely got off the ground!”<
br />
“But wait,” said Leslie. “If everyone was depressed after the takeover, how come you’re so happy?”
Sunny responded with a good-natured shrug. “I can’t help it. I’m a spring-heeled optimistimonster.”
“A spring-heeled optimistimonster,” Leslie repeated, slowly sounding out the syllables. “I should have known.”
“I get it,” said Elliot. “You don’t have to be depressed to operate an expectavator, you just have to possess a disposition that’s inversely proportional to the general mood of the surrounding organization.”
Sunny and Leslie stared at Elliot.
“You sound more and more like Harrumphrey every day,” Leslie told him.
“Thank you!” said Elliot.
DA-DING!
The expectavator doors slid open on a dark and deserted tunnel.
“I hope you enjoyed your trip,” said Sunny. “It was a distinct pleasure serving you this evening, and I do hope we’ll be seeing much more of you in the future!” He spread one helpful hand into the murkiness beyond the threshold. “You’ll find Dungeon Number One just ahead on the right. Have a nice day!”
With that, Elliot and Leslie stepped into the darkness. The expectavator doors sealed silently shut, leaving no trace of themselves. All that remained was a craggy wall of stone. The tunnel looked much like the ones beneath DENKI-3000: a dusty pathway, rough stone walls, roots and crags poking down from the ceiling. Here and there, glass domes bulged out from the rock, flickering with luster bugs. Neither Elliot nor Leslie was quite sure of what they would find in Dungeon Number One, but what awaited them was a complete surprise.
They saw a faint glow of light, bleeding from a small room, sealed away behind iron bars. Beside it, hand-painted in a childish scrawl, was a signpost that read: DUNJIN #1.
The room beyond the iron bars was no bigger than Professor von Doppler’s office at DENKi-3000 headquarters. In fact, it looked quite a bit like the professor’s office. There was an old wooden desk and an old wooden chair; there were a few cabinets and bookshelves; and along one wall were tables where metal and glass chemistry sets bubbled with colorful fluids.
Sitting at the desk was a squat old man with long gray hair falling past his shoulders. He was dressed in a threadbare brown cardigan with corduroy patches over the elbows. Elliot thought there was something familiar about that cardigan. . . .
“Sir William? Is that you?”
Slowly, the man at the desk turned around, and they saw that it certainly wasn’t Sir William Sniffledon, the CEO of DENKi-3000. In fact, the figure wasn’t even a human being. It was a creature. His long gray hair disguised a broad mustard-yellow face that somewhat resembled that of a toad. He had large, sad, glistening eyes and a wide slit of a mouth, stretching all the way across his face.
“This is a surprise,” he croaked. “Who might you be?”
Elliot grasped the cold iron bars. “My name’s Elliot and this is Leslie, and we came here with the creatures of DENKi-3000. We’re sort of on a rescue mission, except we haven’t got to the rescuing part yet.”
“More like the opposite,” said Leslie. “Now the rescue party needs rescuing!”
Elliot and Leslie explained the letter they had received from Eloise-Yvette and how their friends had been captured after crashing into the Heppleworth lobby.
“Well,” said the creature. “I certainly hope you succeed in your mission. As you can see, I could use a little rescuing myself.”
“How long have you been down here?” Leslie asked him.
The creature looked down at his soft amphibious fingers, counting them off one by one. It was impossible to tell if he was counting weeks, months, or years. “Too long,” he said at last.
“Don’t worry,” said Elliot. “We’re going to find a way to free everyone and return this company to its rightful owners.”
The creature’s eyes widened. “Are you now?”
Elliot nodded emphatically (though he had no idea how they would accomplish this).
“In that case,” said the creature in his tiny cell, “let me thank you in advance . . . for giving it back to me.”
“To you?” asked Leslie.
“Who else?” The small, toad-like creature rose to his feet and gave them a curt bow. “My name is Dr. Benedict Heppleworth, and this is my company.”
CHAPTER 16
In which the chief’s secret (and very evil) plan is revealed, but no one believes it
You run your company from an underground dungeon?” Elliot asked.
Dr. Heppleworth shook his broad, creaturely head. His mouth curled into a sad smile. “It was the great success of my products that attracted the attention of the Chief and his ghorks. One product in particular brought them here. Something I called Knoo-Yoo-Juice.”
Leslie nodded. “We know all about that stuff. It’s an elixir that disguises creatures as people.”
Heppleworth nodded. “There will always be creatures who wish to . . . how shall I put it? Cross over, I suppose. Knowing this, I began experimenting, and the result was Knoo-Yoo-Juice.”
“Is that why the ghorks took over?” asked Elliot. “They want to disguise themselves as people?”
Heppleworth shook his head. “No. I’m afraid it’s something much worse. What the ghorks want is quite the opposite.”
It took a moment for Heppleworth’s words to sink in, but when the old creature’s meaning took shape in their minds, Leslie and Elliot looked at each other in horror.
“Oh, no,” said Leslie. “You mean . . .”
Elliot gasped. “They want to turn people into ghorks!”
“That’s right,” Heppleworth croaked. “You see, ghorks aren’t the cleverest of creatures. More than anything else, they lack creativity. I believe this may be an unintended result of spending so many generations breeding themselves to augment a single sense. Creativity, you see, has much in common with food and drink. Like any great meal, it requires all the senses working in concert. The ghorks, however, each obsessed with only one sense at a time, have lost all vestiges of inspiration and inventiveness.”
“I guess that makes sense,” said Elliot, even though he was reluctant to admit that inventiveness had much in common with appreciating food, which was basically what his parents did for a living.
“Those ghorks,” Heppleworth went on, “can see no better way of improving something apart from making it bigger. More beautiful? More subtle? More complex? More interesting? All these measures are meaningless to ghorks! Now I’m afraid they plan to apply this same idea to their armies. They intend to start here, in Simmersville, at the food festival.”
“But how will taking over the food festival help make their army bigger?”
“Simple,” said Heppleworth, “by turning everyone at the festival into a ghork soldier.”
“When?” asked Leslie. She was thinking of her mother, who would be right at the center of everything.
“Their plan is to do it tomorrow, when everyone is gathered together for the Costume Cabaret. They’ll put the elixir into the Final Feast, which is traditionally served following the cabaret.” Heppleworth shut his eyes. “My only hope is they won’t discover the formula in time.”
“You mean they don’t have the elixir?” asked Leslie. “One that’ll turn people into ghorks?”
Heppleworth shook his head. “Not yet, but they’re very close. Already they’ve been testing their formulas on the townsfolk, secretly slipping it into dishes at some local restaurant. A place called . . . The Smiling Mudsucker.”
Leslie and Elliot looked at each other.
“Oh, no,” said Leslie. “We had dinner there tonight!”
“I had The Special,” said Elliot.
Heppleworth approached the iron bars of his cell. “Turn around,” he said. “Let me have a good look at you.”
Elliot an
d Leslie each spun in a circle.
“No horns, no tails, no wings, no claws, no unwanted hair.” Heppleworth sighed in relief. “So far, so good.”
“What about that girl we saw?” said Leslie. “Emily, the clerk at the hotel. There was something wrong with her arm. It was all green and scaly. It must have happened because she drank one of the ghorks’ experimental formulas.” She looked to Heppleworth. “But it didn’t look like she was turning into a ghork at all. That skin we saw on her arm—it looked like something else. Like a snake or a lizard.”
Dr. Heppleworth nodded wearily. “That’s the problem. There are just so many different kinds of creatures in the world. Ghorks are only one. So far, they’ve produced elixirs that turn people into one sort of creature or another, but not yet ghorks—thank goodness!” He stroked his leathery, mustard-colored chin. “The scaly green skin of a snake, you say? Yes, definitely not a ghork, but oh! That poor girl!”
“I wish we could help her,” said Elliot.
“You must,” said Heppleworth, grasping the bars with long yellow fingers. “Because it gets worse.”
“How could it get any worse?”
“I don’t know the details, but there is another reason the ghorks want to increase their numbers. It has something to do with a prophecy. I’ve heard my guards talking about it, something about a new leader. They’ve brought him here to Simmersville, and they believe he will guide them to a great victory.”
“So it is true,” Leslie whispered.
“The Sixth Ghork,” said Elliot.
Heppleworth’s already bulging eyes widened even further. “A sixth ghork? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Nobody has,” said Leslie. “But if they brought him to the festival, then maybe—”
Leslie stopped. The sound of marching feet came down the tunnel. Ghorks were coming!
“Hurry!” Heppleworth whispered through the bars. “As of this moment, we three are the only ones who know what Quazicom and the ghorks are really up to. With me locked in here, you two are the only ones who can stop them!” He pointed farther down the tunnel that had brought them here. “Keep going that way. At every fork, turn left. That should lead you back to the market square.”
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