Gobbled by Ghorks

by Robert Paul Weston

  (0:56 . . .)

  The problem facing the ghorks was the same problem Leslie and Elliott had faced all weekend long: No one believed them. Even though everyone in the market square had great globs of snot dripping from their elbows, none of them cared. No one suspected that it was real. No one suspected they were smeared with actual snot, from actual ghorks (who had ever heard of the word “ghork” anyway?). More than anything else, the people of Simmersville were simply having fun, and among the realms of creaturedom, it’s common knowledge that fun is nearly as powerful as hope.

  To the ghorks, the power of fun was frightening and offensive. The hands of the hand-ghorks lost their grip; the eyes of the eye-ghorks clouded with bewilderment; the mouths of the mouth-ghorks hung slack in shock; the ears of the ear-ghorks were deafened by the roar of their own dismay; and the noses of the nose-ghorks ran out of boogers.

  “Wouldja believe it?” said Leslie. “Regular people taking on the ghorks.”

  Elliot smiled at her as a boiled turnip sailed past his head. “I have a feeling we’re about to save the day.”

  Leslie was just about to smile back when her face froze. The food-filled pandemonium of the market square had distracted them from something very important. Here’s a hint as to what it was:

  0:41 . . .

  “The blender!” cried Elliot.

  They spun around and saw the cage that held Gügor, Eloise-Yvette, and Dr. Heppleworth prisoner had been completely swallowed into the mouth of the blender.

  Looking down on them from his view-screen, the Chief raised a hand and twiddled his fingers. “You may have foiled my plans for the Final Feast,” he rasped, “but I’ll still have the distinct pleasure of watching your friends ground to a pulp.” He shrugged as if he ground people to a pulp every day. “At least that’s something I can be proud of.”

  Through the glass of the blender, the shapes of their friends were as blurry as anything in The Green Fairy restaurant, but they could see the huge orangeish lump that was Gügor, still lying unconscious on the floor of the cage.

  0:32 . . .

  “No!” cried Leslie. “We’ve got to stop it!”

  Luckily, with every ghork in the square battling against the blissfully oblivious festivalgoers, there was no one left to guard the blender. Elliot and Leslie ran to it and saw the brightly glowing control panel at its base, flashing with a single word.

  PUREE . . . PUREE . . . PUREE . . .

  At the bottom of the control panel, the same horrifying numbers counted down, just as they did on the view-screen above them.

  0:23 . . .

  Elliot reached out with his furry green finger and pressed the button marked STOP.

  But the blender didn’t stop. The cage kept descending toward the spinning blades. A message appeared on the control panel:

  to quit puréeing your victims

  please enter the passcode

  7 8 9

  4 5 6

  1 2 3

  0

  “You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” The Chief sat back, and his chair gave off a satisfied creak.

  “Please,” said Elliott. “You can’t do this! It’s . . . it’s . . .” He couldn’t think of the word awful enough to describe grinding up his friends in a giant blender. Then it came to him. “It’s abominable!”

  “It’s iniquitous!” cried Leslie.

  0:10 . . . 0:09 . . .

  “I would have settled for evil,” said the chief. He leaned forward, his teeth glittering with almost electric light. “It might be the most evil thing I’ve ever done. And after spoiling my plans, I hope it makes you two the saddest pair of little children in the entire universe!”

  When he said this, Elliot and Leslie looked at each other.

  “That’s it,” Elliott whispered. “The saddest . . .”

  “. . . in the entire universe!” cried Leslie.

  0:03 . . .

  Together they reached for the blender’s control panel and tapped out three simple digits: 1-0-1. Instantly, the blender stopped, and (as with every deadly and dramatic countdown in history) the counter was left with just one second left.

  0:01.

  “Hooray!” cried the crowd of festivalgoers.

  Reggie lumbered up onstage, coated in patches of lasagna and dripping with hollandaise sauce. He helped Elliot and Leslie winch the cage free of the blender. At last, they lowered it gently to the stage, where Reggie popped the lock, using his tusk like a crowbar. The bombastadon blundered inside and lifted Gügor until he was sitting up.

  “Gügor, my friend, snap out of it! You’ve been rescued!”

  “Try belching on him,” suggested Bildorf.

  Pib agreed. “You know what they say. Bombastadon belly gas can wake the dead!”

  “Please, Colonel,” said Eloise-Yvette, “if it will revive my Googy, you must!”

  Reggie dutifully took a deep breath and, after a moment of stomach-rumbling, released a great BRRRRAAAAAP!

  Gügor’s face contorted in disgust, and his eyes blinked open.

  Reggie clapped an arm around the knucklecrumpler’s shoulders. “Gügor, old friend! Wonderful to have you back!”

  “How do you feel?” Leslie asked Gügor.

  “Good enough to crumple something.” He leapt off the stage and led the creatures into the epic food fight. The sky whizzed with baguette arrows and pineapple artillery; the cobblestones were strewn with chili-sauce bombs and banana-peel booby traps; and the air filled with shouts of “Puddings away!” and “Incoming monkfish!”

  All of this turned out to be another advantage the creatures of DENKi-3000 and the people of Simmersville had over the ghorks. After all of the Chief’s wishes for a death ray (or even a “maiming ray”), it was the sheer quantity of nearby food that proved the most effective weapon against the ghorks. Each sloppy, gloppy, greasy, gooey, sticky, sludgy blow rained down on the ghorks like extreme versions of the bizarre anti-ghork devices Elliot and Leslie had invented.

  Eye-ghorks were beaten with buckets of lemon juice; the hand-ghorks, with extra-slippery olive oil; the nose-ghorks, with hefty doses of Limburger and Stinking Bishop cheese; the mouth-ghorks, with tongue-lashings of chili oil; while the ear-ghorks were deafened and unbalanced with cochleas full of tenacious lard! Soon, the ghorks were running for the hills. They had finally realized how foolish it had been to attack a place like Simmersville.

  Grinner shouted to the others, while frantically fanning his swollen tongue, “C’mon, everybody, let’s hoof it! This town’s a madhouse!”

  With that, he ran off himself, leading the last remaining ghorks into the night.

  “Hooray!” The Simmersville townsfolk threw up their arms, flicking food in every direction. Everyone marveled at what fun this year’s cabaret had been.

  “They ought to end with a food fight every year!” said one woman.

  Meanwhile, up on the view-screen, the Chief realized that without his henchmen he was nothing more than a talking head. His shadowy face loomed forward, glaring down at Leslie and Elliot.

  “I want you both to know,” he said, “that there is nothing I hate more than being defeated by a pair of children!”

  “Get used to it,” said Leslie.

  “Never!”

  Then, with nothing more momentous than a fizzle of static, the Chief of Quazicom vanished.

  With everyone free, Jean-Remy was able to give his sister a proper hug. They exchanged a flurry of words in French, and even though Elliot and Leslie didn’t understand what they were saying they sensed the long-lost siblings had reconciled at last. Harrumphrey approached Gügor, the tip of his tail snaking up to slap the knucklecrumpler’s back.

  “Glad you’re safe, big guy
,” he said.

  “More important,” said Patti, joining them, “have you told Eloise-Yvette how you feel?”

  Gügor shook his head.

  So did Patti (disappointedly). “You had all that time, locked up with her in the cage, facing certain death, and you didn’t say anything?”

  The big knucklecrumpler shrugged. “Gügor was unconscious.”

  “Fair point,” said Patti.

  Now that the Chief and his henchmen had been sent packing, the only one left was Giggles. He still sat in his throne, as expressionless as ever.

  Harrumphrey waddled over to the corner of the stage, Elliot and Leslie following him. “I knew it,” Harrumphrey said. “From the moment I saw you up here, I knew we’d never get you to laugh.”

  “You did?” asked Leslie. “But how?”

  “He’s not a ghork at all,” Harrumphrey told her. He turned back to the supposed Sixth Ghork. “Isn’t that right?”

  Giggles shook his head. “I tried to tell them it would never work,” he admitted in a surprisingly deep and resonant—but decidedly expressionless—voice, “but they just wouldn’t listen.”

  Elliot couldn’t believe it. “You mean you’re not the Fabled Sixth Ghork?”

  “Not even close,” Giggles admitted. “Grinner and the others told me they had looked everywhere, but couldn’t find any Fabled Sixth Ghork, which is because it doesn’t exist. It’s kind of the same with all ancient prophecies—just a bunch of old mumbo-jumbo. But they knew if they returned empty-handed, they’d be in big trouble with their boss.” He glanced up at the view-screen. “Anyway, when they found me, they said I looked ghorkish enough to pass, so they brought me back. They said all I’d have to do was sit in my throne and let them do the talking.”

  Leslie sighed. “So after all that, you’re not even a ghork?”

  Harrumphrey shook his enormous head. His tail spiraled up and gestured at Giggles. “This would be an example of creature number 902, subset B: a big-booted solemn-golem. Am I right?”

  Giggles nodded. “How did you know?”

  “He knows them all,” Leslie explained.

  “Quite a rare kind of creature,” said Harrumphery. “Famous for never, ever laughing.”

  “I might,” said Giggles, “if I saw something that was actually funny.”

  Out in the audience, covered with the ingredients of a hundred different dishes, two figures pushed through the crowd. It was Elliot’s parents. Elliot wanted nothing more than to leap off the stage and run into their arms. But how could he, looking like this?

  “Elliot?” asked his mother. “Is that really you?”

  Elliot nodded. “It’s not a costume.”

  “It does sound like you,” said his father, “but . . .”

  “I wish I could explain everything, but there’s too much, so it’ll have to wait until later. Right now all I want to say is . . . well, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I yelled at the restaurant and then ran off. I’m sorry I’m more interested in being a creature than being a food critic, and even though I know we’re totally different—especially now—I still love you guys, and I hope you love me back, even if it means having a three-toed bristle-imp for a son.”

  His parents looked at each other. They still didn’t seem convinced.

  “Oh, wait,” said Elliot. “I forgot I took it off!” He swung his knapsack off his shoulders and plucked out his bright green fishing vest.

  The moment he slipped it on, his mother cried, “Elliot! It is you!”

  Elliot felt a swell of happiness. He did just as he had wanted to moments before: He leapt off the stage and ran into his parents’ arms. The crowd burst out with a collective “Awww!” Even though much of this year’s costume cabaret didn’t make sense, a heartfelt family reunion was something they could all understand.

  Onstage, however, unlike everyone else, Giggles didn’t say “Awww . . .” He was doing something else.

  He was laughing.

  “Wha-ha-ha-ha! I’m sorry . . . but I—I—eeee-heheheheee!” he squealed. “I really don’t mean to laugh but—ooooh-hoh-hoh-hoh!—but . . . but . . . a bright green fishing vest?! Wha-ha-ha-ha!”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Leslie. She was quite shocked. “All we needed to make you laugh was in Elliot’s knapsack this whole time!”

  Giggles nodded vigorously, his eyes scrunched tight. It was all he could do. He was laughing too hard. “Oh, thank you,” he said. “I haven’t laughed this hard since . . . since . . . well, since forever!”

  Leslie turned to her friend. “Elliot, I think I owe you an apology. I was the one who made you take off your vest, after all. If you’d been wearing it at the Great Hexposé . . .” She glanced at the enormous blender, sitting inert behind them. “We might have avoided a lot of trouble.”

  Elliot looked down at his vest. Was it really that funny looking? Yes, maybe it was. “I understand,” he told Leslie. “You were only trying to make me look . . . cooler.”

  When Elliot said “cooler” Giggles laughed even louder.

  Elliot tried to ignore him. “You know what I think?” he said. “Maybe coolness comes in a million different flavors.” He pointed to the sloppy remnants of the food fight. “Just like food.” He glanced at Giggles. “Or like humor.” Finally, he pointed to Harrumphrey. “Or like creatures!”

  “Not a million,” Harrumphrey corrected. “Eleven thousand—”

  “Five hundred and twenty-two,” Elliot finished. “I know. I was just trying to make a point.” He rolled his eyes and took a deep breath. “What I mean is, what’s cool is different for everyone. Take you, for instance. You think Boris Minor and the Karloffs are cool.”

  “Hey!” cried Boris Minor himself. “We’re right here! We can hear you!”

  “Well, to me,” Elliot concluded, “there’s nothing cooler than a bright green fishing vest!”

  This time, it was Leslie’s turn to find the wisdom in her friend’s words. She smoothed down one of the puffier pockets on Elliot’s vest. “I guess I can live with that,” she said.

  Elliot smiled. Watching Giggles double over with laughter, he felt more proud of his vest than ever before. “I might look like the world’s dorkiest werewolf,” he said, “but as long as I’m wearing my fishing vest, I know exactly who I am!”

  “You’re our son,” said Elliot’s father, squeezing him tightly. “And we don’t care what you look like, we’ll always love you.”

  Elliot’s mother squeezed him even harder. “You’ll always be our Elliot.”

  “That’s good to hear,” said Elliot, “because, like the other specimens here . . .”—he pointed to the edge of the stage, where Emily and the others stood in a nervous huddle—“there’s no way to turn us back.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that!” called a voice.

  It was an old voice with a crackle in every word, and it had come from the entranceway of the Simmersville Inn. It was a voice Leslie recognized.

  CHAPTER 28

  In which Leslie learns some family history, and Elliot learns that there’s a little creature in everyone

  Grandpa Freddy!” cried Leslie.

  When she looked toward the hotel, however, she saw that it wasn’t him. It wasn’t even a human. It was a creature, the same one Elliot and Leslie had seen when they first arrived. It was the thing from the hotel’s aquarium, the sea creature that was part turtle, part lobster, part starfish.

  In spite of its oddness, there was something charming in the clumsy way it hobbled and slapped across the market square. (One of the astonished onlookers commented, “That is definitely the best costume of all!”) Stranger still, the creature was dressed in chef’s whites and carried a tray with a silver dome on top.

  With everyone stunned into silence, the creature toddled and slithered onstage. He lifted the silver-domed platter. Underneath were two t
hings: a bamboo box, just like the ones in which dumplings were served at Leslie’s restaurant, and a clear glass bottle, filled with a reddish-pink fluid.

  Leslie pointed to the bottle. “That looks like . . .”

  Before she could finish, the creature unscrewed the corkscrewed, and Leslie caught a whiff of something familiar, a peculiar scent of honey, pickled plums, and Worcestershire sauce.

  “It is! That’s Grandpa Freddy’s cooking wine!” Leslie looked into the creature’s tortoise-like face. “What are you going to do with that?”

  “The same thing I’ve been doing ever since I first laid eyes on your grandmother.” With three great gulps, the creature drained the bottle. Even before the last swallow had rumpled the loose and leathery skin of his neck, a miraculous transformation had begun.

  Before everyone’s eyes, the turtle shell shrank and lost all its color. It became a kind of external spine, but the chain of vertebrae were only visible for a moment. They were sucked inside the creature’s newly soft (and newly pink) skin. Next, the creature’s arms and legs lost their orange color and pebbled surface. Every appendage withered to become the limbs of a lean and wrinkly human being.

  “Grandpa Freddy! I knew you couldn’t let the Food Festival pass by without coming, but . . . but . . .” Leslie didn’t know what to say. Her happiness at finding her grandfather was overshadowed by what she had just witnessed.

  Meanwhile, Leslie’s mother was stalking over from her stall in the market square, dripping with the remnants of the food fight. “Dad? Is that really you?”

  “In the flesh,” said Famous Freddy.

  “But how? And why?”

  “The same reason we all do foolish things,” said Leslie’s grandfather. “Because I was in love. When I saw your mother, I wanted nothing more than to be with her, so I cooked up a potion to disguise myself as a human being.”

  Leslie’s mother gripped the edge of the stage to steady herself, perhaps to keep herself from fainting. “Are you saying you tricked Mom into marrying you?”

  Grandpa Freddy laughed. “Of course not! Your mother knew the truth about me long before we were married. I was so nervous to show her who I really was, but she still loved me when I finally did.” He turned to Elliot. “Just like you and your parents.”