The Monster's Daughter
Page 25
The queen shook her head. “This is impossible. There was no Kraken here. My people dug out Lough Neagh. And they didn’t leave a monster here.…”
Jack cocked his head to one side. “But you know that someone changed the shape of Lough Neagh. Made it look more like a five-pointed star. And any creature who would do that was a creature of almost impossible power. After the lough was changed to a star shape, someone moved the Kraken into it. The star shape trapped the Kraken here.”
Seven more tentacles shot up out of the lough, showering the platform in water. Jack held tight to the zip line to avoid being washed away. Tim scampered up the platform, away from the water. Each of the enormous tentacles was as deadly looking as the first.
“I think he’s annoyed by the noise from this zip line. You already woke him up with your drilling and explosions—the Kraken’s what caused the earthquake,” said Jack. “It’s got a squid head, you see. Almost totally jellylike. Bass noises vibrate through the head, causing enormous pain. I’ve got a friend called Cthulhu who hates this noise almost as much. Of course Cthulhu isn’t the size of a small city, so he tends to run away from the noise. I don’t think the Kraken is going to run, though.” Jack paused and smiled. “So what do you think will happen if I pull this string again?”
The queen took a step forward. “I forbid it.”
Her words made it so much sweeter when Jack tugged on the zip line for a final time and a deep bass note echoed through Lough Neagh.
Then the eight tentacles writhed in exquisite agony and then centered on the platform, coming down with the force of a meteor strike. Atlantean soldiers, crab machines, and metal were thrown through the air in a confetti of destruction. Jack was lucky that nothing hit him directly. But as his body was catapulted into the air he blacked out. His last thought was Rats! I almost made it through an entire adventure without getting knocked unconscious for once.
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
METEOR STRIKES
NUCLEAR MISSILES
You may have seen movies where enormous meteors are going to strike the planet Earth and kill everyone on it. Without exception the solution to these problems is presented as landing on the meteor and exploding a nuclear bomb on it.
This is a very bad idea, as it wouldn’t actually help. In fact, it would just mean that we’d get killed by a meteor that was both enormous and radioactive.
* * *
56
EXPLANATIONS
Jack came back to consciousness inside a Atlantean crab machine. The only reason he didn’t panic was that Trudy was above him, looking down and smiling.
“I don’t know how you did it, Jack, but you saved Northern Ireland again.”
Jack sat up painfully. Tim was at the controls of the crab machine. It normally took four Atlantean warriors to control one of the machines, but Tim with his eight limbs was driving it with ease.
Jack turned around and looked out of the domed bubble to see the Kraken’s tentacles crushing the fracking platform into dust.
“We picked you up out of the water—but Tim really saved everyone—he dragged us all into this machine,” Trudy admitted. Jack’s face contorted; his head was ringing from the concussion, and it was annoying to learn that the minute he’d passed out an arachnid had stolen his hero status.
Grey walked into Jack’s line of sight. “What I want to know is how you knew about the Kraken.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Jack asked smugly, knowing that it wasn’t. A look in Trudy’s eyes said that Jack would have been the recipient of a severely bruised shoulder if he hadn’t already been so badly hurt.
“Remember what the Misery said to Cthulhu about having to send someone away to ‘boarding school’?”
Trudy nodded, remembering their training with the Misery.
“Well, that’s it. I remembered that the drilling noise caused an earthquake. But why would drilling cause an earthquake? Walls don’t start to shudder every time my dad puts up some shelves. There had to be something causing the earthquake. Something that responded with anger to deep bass drilling noises.”
Trudy realized what Jack meant. “The way that Cthulhu ran when we played the Misery’s MP3 player.”
“Exactly!” Jack agreed. “And the Atlanteans said that when they left Lough Neagh it was a round lake. Something—a creature of immense power—then changed its shape to resemble a slightly out-of-shape star.”
Grey thought about this for a moment. “It isn’t a very well-shaped star.”
“Well, no,” admitted Jack, “but then again, although Cthulhu is a creature of evil and immense interdimensional powers, it doesn’t mean that he has an enormous set of compasses and a huge protractor as well. So the shape’s likely to be a little rough and ready.”
Trudy shook her head. “I still don’t get this. You’re saying that Cthulhu changed the shape of Lough Neagh and trapped the Kraken in it? But why would he do that? Don’t the legends about the Kraken say it destroyed boats and cities—wouldn’t Cthulhu be pleased about that?”
“Well, he would—but what if he started getting worried that eventually people would start hunting the Kraken? Think about it. The Kraken is an enormous creature of evil power, who looks a bit squid-like and can be trapped in a star shape. Remind you of anyone?”
Trudy and Grey both looked shocked. Trudy was the first to speak. “Cthulhu and the Kraken! They’re related.”
Jack nodded. “Of course they are—and the one other thing that made me sure was that they both deal with their loneliness in the same way.”
Trudy couldn’t have been any more astonished and so she just asked the question. “And that is?”
Jack smiled. “Puppets. Hand puppets. When Cthulhu was looking at pictures of Loch Ness he wasn’t looking at pictures of his relative. He was looking at pictures of his relative putting on a puppet show.”
Grey took a deep breath. “You’re saying that the Loch Ness Monster is a puppet?”
Jack laughed—he was enjoying explaining something to Grey for once. “Of course it is. Think about it. The names of both bodies of water are so similar—Loch Ness and Lough Neagh. I guessed that they’ve got similar names because there must be some kind of underwater caves that connect them—a secret passageway. Also, the Loch Ness Monster has to be a puppet. People have been looking for it for years. While it might be reasonable that they might miss a monster that was swimming about, you’d still expect them to find other evidence. A Loch Ness Monster footprint or Loch Ness Monster droppings. But they’ve never found that—and the reason is simple.”
Grey beat Jack to the punch. “Puppets don’t poo.”
Jack wrinkled his nose. “Well, I might have put it slightly more elegantly than that—but fundamentally, yes.”
“All this was a bit of a guess, Jack.”
Jack smiled. “A bit, but it turned out to be right.”
* * *
When they reached the shore, the Ministry operatives clambered out of the crab and found that Cthulhu was sitting and hugging one of the Kraken’s enormous tentacles. He was weeping openly. Jack felt incredibly awkward and pretended to be looking elsewhere.
The other tentacles had corralled Atlantean warriors on the shore. One tentacle was holding the queen high in the air. The fight had gone from her and her body was as limp and wrinkled as a wet rag.
Grey walked over to Cthulhu and spoke to him in his strange gargling language. A few moments later he returned to speak to Jack, Trudy, and Tim.
“Jack was right. The Kraken is Cthulhu’s child.”
Trudy frowned. “Then why did he trap him in a star-shaped Lough Neagh?”
Grey sighed. “The Kraken is an enormous creature of evil and spent all its time destroying ships. Although that didn’t really worry Cthulhu, he quickly realized that if it went on, the Ministry would have stepped in and imprisoned the Kraken. That was why, thousands of years ago, Cthulhu used his powers to reshape Lough Neagh—if the Kraken ha
d to be imprisoned, he wanted it to be close to where he lived. It meant that Cthulhu could come every week to visit and refill the lough with eels. He also knew about the underground passages to Loch Ness—so he knew that the Kraken could amuse itself by putting on monster-puppet shows and scaring the Scottish locals.”
“Sometimes parents have to discipline their children in order to protect them,” Jack said.
Grey nodded. “And if the Kraken had stayed free, she was certain to be hunted by humans eventually. The last thing Cthulhu wanted was for his daughter to be attacked by a destroyer or a warship.”
“His daughter?” Trudy was shocked. “That violent creature is a she?”
Jack looked at Trudy. He wasn’t shocked at all.
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
THE KRAKEN
HOW IT GOT ITS NAME
Many people have wondered how the Kraken got her name. Interestingly enough, the Kraken isn’t actually her real name at all. Her real name is Kirsten. The Kraken is just a nickname.
Essentially the Kraken is an enormous creature with hundreds of tentacles, which means that it is always getting up to mischief but still has a tentacle to spare to get a round of drinks in. In Ireland, anyone who can do this is said to be great “craic.” Over the years people often said this about the Kraken—and with the Irish accent it changed from “Sure she always gets the craic in” to actually calling the great beast of submarine evil the Kraken.
* * *
EPILOGUE
Jack and Trudy were sitting on the banks of Lough Neagh with towels around their shoulders. Grey and Cthulhu walked over. Cthulhu made an obscene gargling noise and one of the Kraken’s enormous tentacles lowered toward the shoreline, dropping the bedraggled queen of Atlantis in front of them.
Trudy stood up and looked her in the face. “Where’s my mother?”
The queen of Atlantis shook her head. “I wouldn’t tell you if I knew, but I don’t know anyway. An accomplice of mine was supposed to bring her here. But with all this”—the queen indicated the devastation—“he’ll have gone into hiding.”
Trudy went to strike the queen with her hand but Grey stopped her. “That’s not the way we do things, Trudy.” Trudy fumed, but relented nevertheless.
“Anyway, she’ll have a long time to think about how she can help us find your mother. She’s going to prison.”
Jack raised his head. “Have you repaired the Ministry prison already?”
“No,” Grey admitted, “but I’ve sent for the king of the merpeople. He’s agreed to take her away and imprison her until we get the party room up and running again.”
Grey pointed to a river that ran out of Lough Neagh. The king of the merpeople had clearly just swum up it. The king was half man (human legs) with a fish head. He walked up the shore toward the heroes, looking very regal. He then began to suffocate in the air, and Jack and Tim had to roll him back into the river before he died. Jack wasn’t altogether confident that he trusted the merpeople to be competent enough to stop the queen from escaping again.
Once the king was safe again Jack turned to Grey. “So how are you going to explain all the damage?”
Grey shrugged. “Easy enough—we’ll just claim the fracking caused earthquakes. Everyone will believe that.”
While Trudy and Jack waited for a car to take them home, they watched as Grey questioned the Atlantean soldiers. The whole plot was exactly as Jack had predicted; however, the one new thing they also learned was why the Atlanteans were selling sponges. It was relatively simple when you thought about it. The Atlanteans wanted to try and have all land with buildings covered in water. By taking sponges out of the sea and putting them on land, they made the sea level that little bit higher. If they harvested and sold enough sponges, eventually the entire world would be underwater.
* * *
When Jack finally got home that night, his mother and father were disappointed to reveal that they’d gotten a phone call from their lawyer. He had just received news that the company they were suing for providing a faulty bath bomb had gone out of business. In a strange turn of events the factory had exploded and its workforce had mysteriously disappeared. His parents’ dreams of hot tubs and sports cars disappeared.
* * *
The next Monday morning Jack and Trudy found themselves sitting on the playground wall outside the school before they went in.
Jack yawned. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired. Although that might just be the cumulative effect of all the concussions.”
Trudy stretched her arm. She hadn’t needed to put the sling back on, although it still ached a little when the weather was slightly rainy. Which meant that it ached almost continually.
“Well, you’re going to need to start counting a lot of sheep, Jack. I need you well rested. We have to find my mother this week.”
Jack nodded. “I’ve been thinking about this. And I’m sure we can figure it out. We just have to think about the clues we’ve gotten so far.”
Trudy smiled at Jack. “You always figure these things out. I know you can do it again.”
Jack was cheered by his friend’s confidence. “I know I can too. I just need to focus, concentrate, and avoid getting distracted.…”
David ran over to where they were sitting. “You want to see this, guys. Edwyn has just had an allergic reaction to a peanut—and it’s turned him into a monster!”
Jack felt like crying a little. “I never should have said that thing about not getting distracted,” he grumbled as he followed David.
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
UNDERWATER CREATURES
THEIR EMOTIONS
Many people have called the shark a remorseless killing machine, although this is not entirely fair. For all we know the shark is absolutely devastated by the fact that it has to kill in order to survive. The thing about living underwater is that no one can tell when you are crying.108
It is for this reason that the Ministry had been unable to ascertain whether Regina Maris is remorseful for her crimes. The chance of her getting time off for good behavior is therefore slim.
* * *
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, thanks go to Holly and the team at Macmillan and Feiwel and Friends for helping to turn an idle daydream into something altogether more shipshape.
I’m glad I make mistakes when I’m writing because it means I get to work with you guys.
Follow us on Facebook or visit us online at mackids.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Gamble, author of The Ministry of SUITs, was born and brought up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He currently works in the civil service. His job only occasionally involves working with dinosaurs. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
Monday
Chapter 1: If You Do Not Keep Up Your Payments Your Teeth May Be at Risk
Chapter 2: Standoff
Chapter 3: Your Doom Is Sealed
Chapter 4: Non-fishy Sounds
Chapter 5: A Snappy Escape
Chapter 6: Parking
Chapter 7: A Damp Squid
Chapter 8: The Party Room
Chapter 9: Prison Break
Chapter 10: The Flood
Chapter 11: Retail Therapy
Chapter 12: The Third Degree
Chapter 13: The World’s Most Bizarre Game of Charades
Tuesday
Chapter 14: Breakfast in Bed
Chapter 1
5: A-Maze-d
Chapter 16: The Spark Knight
Chapter 17: Volty
Chapter 18: True Heroism
Chapter 19: Always Give Clear Instructions
Chapter 20: Drill Practice
Chapter 21: Typical Minotaur
Chapter 22: The Narrowest of Margins
Chapter 23: Too Many Clues
Wednesday
Chapter 24: The Great Soap-Making Disaster
Chapter 25: And We Have a Winner
Chapter 26: You Know the Drill
Chapter 27: The Warehouse
Chapter 28: Take My Card
Chapter 29: Surprisingly Accurate
Chapter 30: Echoes of the Past
Chapter 31: Puppet Master
Chapter 32: Take My Breath Away
Chapter 33: Practice Makes Perfect
Chapter 34: First Piece of the Puzzle
Thursday
Chapter 35: Two Buckets
Chapter 36: Carnival
Chapter 37: Whole Lot of Shaking Going On
Chapter 38: Charades with Seals
Chapter 39: What’s in Store?
Chapter 40: The Horn of a Dilemma
Chapter 41: An Inconvenient Tooth
Chapter 42: A Convenient Tooth
Chapter 43: The World’s Largest Plug Hole
Chapter 44: The Mystery of Atlantis
Friday
Chapter 45: Black Bag Operation
Chapter 46: The Wrong Answers
Chapter 47: Crazy and Cracked
Chapter 48: A Well-Designed Dungeon
Chapter 49: A Scuttling Noise
Chapter 50: Charades Again
Chapter 51: The Cavalry Arrives
Chapter 52: The Zipline
Chapter 53: The Advantages of Aquarobics
Chapter 54: Bang Bang
Chapter 55: The Cavalry Has Tentacles
Chapter 56: Explanations