by Gary Urey
The old guy had just asked me three questions in a row. I didn’t know which one to answer first, so instead I hurled the meat I was holding at him and made a break for the door. The man fired at me. I braced myself for the shotgun blast. But instead of bullets, all I got was water. He wasn’t holding a real gun. It was just a fancy water pistol!
Once I got outside, I inhaled a hard gust of wind and sailed into the clouds. I looked down. The old man was watching me fly away, firing rounds of water into the sky.
CHAPTER 9
THE REYKJAVÍK REVIEW
When I arrived back at the Nostril, Vivian and the Not-Right Brothers were waiting for me.
“Where have you—” Jimmy started to ask, and then pulled his shirt over his nose.
“Holy stinky skunk, Schnoz!” TJ cried out, plugging his nostrils.
“You absolutely reek!” Mumps gagged.
Vivian handed me my street clothes, “It’s the Super Schnoz costume that smells,” she said. “Go outside and change.”
I stepped behind the nostril and took a huge whiff of my cape, tights, and shirt. They smelled exactly like the malodorous meat hanging inside that old guy’s garage.
“I don’t know what you guys are so upset about!” I yelled from outside. “That smell is awesome, second only to the Gates of Smell in my opinion.”
“We’re not letting you back inside until you change!” I heard Vivian shout through the wall.
I peeled off my suit and plopped it in the grass. Within seconds, the smell had attracted a swarm of green poop flies (technical name: bottle fly). Poop flies were my favorite insect. Next to dogs, they were the only ones who loved stinky, rotting things as much as I did.
So as not to nasally offend my friends any further, I took a shower with a garden hose before slipping back on my street clothes.
“What nasty substance were you rolling in?” Mumps asked me when I went back inside.
“Some kind of meat,” I replied.
“Were you spending time at the roadkill butcher shop?” Jimmy joked.
“No,” I answered. “The meat was actually hanging from a peg, drying inside a building deep inside the WMNF.”
“Explain,” Vivian ordered.
I told the gang the whole story, from flying over the WMNF, smelling the meat, to almost getting my head blown off by a crazy old guy with a high-powered water gun.
“I wonder why a person would be living that far out in the woods.” Vivian said.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Don’t know. But he was some kind of scientist. There was a sign along the path heading to his property that said The Center for UFOs, Earthquakes, and Alien Abduction. The guy’s first name was long with a bunch of squiggly lines over the letters. His last name was Wackjöb, with two dots over the o. Dr. Somethingorother Wackjöb.”
Vivian scratched her chin, thinking. “Hmmm…” she muttered. “TJ, would you please fire up your laptop and Google UFOs, alien abduction, Dr. Wackjöb.”
TJ typed in the search and hit Enter. He scrolled through a bunch of pages before finding something relevant. “This may be something,” he said. “It’s an old article from the Reykjavík Review—Iceland’s English Newspaper.”
We huddled around the computer and read.
Doctor Defends UFO Research
By Sigudur Bödvarsson
REYKJAVÍK, Iceland—The well-respected seismologist, Dr. Aðalbjörn Wackjöb has been accused of misappropriating money from the University of Iceland’s Geology Department where he had been Chairman. This week Karí Thordarson, University President, fired Dr. Wackjöb for the unauthorized funding of his controversial UFO earthquake theory.
The investigation looking into Dr. Wackjöb’s activities has been ongoing for the past eight months. University officials feel they have unearthed enough evidence to terminate the doctor’s tenure. “UFOs are the cause of the entire world’s seismic activity!” Dr.Wackjöb shouted to reporters as police led him away from his office. “My scientific research will prove it!”
What Dr. Wackjöb calls science, others call “just plain kooky,” according to several of his colleagues inside the University’s Geology Department. Dr. Wackjöb has also become a laughingstock in the scientific and academic worlds with his claims that aliens are abducting thousands of people (mostly children) each year and using them in their extraterrestrial earthquake experiments.
Dr. Wackjöb, who also has an advanced degree in astronomy from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Germany, plans to relocate to the United States to continue his UFO, earthquake, and alien abduction studies.
“That was his first name,” I said. “A…owl… bee…yourn, or however it’s pronounced. The sign said Aðalbjörn Wackjöb.”
“Do you think it’s the same man, TJ?” Vivian asked.
TJ turned to me. “What was the name of his center again?”
“The sign said The Center for UFOs, Earthquakes, and Alien Abduction—Dr. Aðalbjörn Wackjöb, Director.”
“It has to be the same guy,” Jimmy said. “How many Aðalbjörn Wackjöb’s can there be who study UFOs, earthquakes, and alien abductions?”
“I one hundred percent agree,” Vivian said. She then produced a flash drive from her pocket and plugged it into the USB port of TJ’s laptop.
“What are you doing?” TJ grumbled, miffed that Vivian was touching his computer.
“I’m transferring the video of Schnoz and the alien from the computer to the flash drive.”
“Why would you do that?” Mumps asked.
Vivian peeled Mr. Sticky from the window and gently stroked the reptile’s head. “Because Schnoz is living evidence of Dr.Wackjöb’s theory and the video proves it.”
CHAPTER 10
GRÍÖARSTÓR NEF
Vivian had a dentist appointment that afternoon, so we had to wait until the next morning before heading to see Dr. Wackjöb. I went to bed that night sniffling with anxiety. TJ had hooked up the camera system to get another video, but the whole thing still freaked me out. I smuggled a two-liter bottle of soda into my room and chugged it down before bed, hoping the caffeine would keep me awake.The idea was a complete waste of high-fructose corn syrup and carbonated water. By the time midnight rolled around, I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
The morning came and it was clear there had been another earthquake.This one was a 6.0.The walls of my bedroom were slightly cracked and my dresser had toppled over.
“The town’s in an uproar, Schnoz,” Mumps said when the guys arrived at my house. “There’s damage to a lot of houses. People are really angry.”
“We have to get you out of town,” Jimmy said. “It’s for your own safety.”
While I got dressed, TJ downloaded the new video from the camera to his laptop, and then to the flash drive.
“Let’s watch it,” Mumps suggested.
“No time,” TJ said. “We have to meet Vivian and then get to Dr.Wackjöb’s compound ASAP.”
Vivian was waiting for us when we got to the Nostril. She was holding up a brand new Super Schnoz costume.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked.
“I made it for you last night,” Jimmy said. “Your old one was way too smelly so I threw it in the garbage.”
I ran inside the Nostril and slipped on my new suit. It was the exact same color as my old one—black tights, black shirt, blue cape, and blue Super Schnoz emblem. Jimmy had added a utility belt with hidden pouches to hold jars of cayenne pepper, spray bottles of saline solution, and an electric nose hair trimmer.
“It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Super Schnoz!” I cried, jumping around the corner.
“Let’s get a move on,” TJ said. “We need to see this Dr. Wackjöb.”
“How are we going to get there?” Mumps wondered. “It’ll take hours to ride our bikes way out there.”
Vivian dragged out the harness I had used to fly everybody onto the school rooftop during my battle with ECU. The stitchwork Jimmy had done on the fabric was st
ill perfect, right down to the feathers that made it look like a pregnant turkey buzzard.
“We’re not riding our bikes,” Vivian said. “Schnoz is going to strap on the harness and fly us all there.” She slipped five jars of cayenne pepper and two spray bottles of saline solution into my new utility belt.
“What’s this stuff for?” I asked her.
“Just in case,” she said. “You never know what we’ll run into way out there.”
“Like Bigfoot!” Mumps screeched.
Vivian rolled her eyes as she and the Not-Right Brothers crawled into the harness. I secured the belts to my back, slipped on my Mardi Gras mask, and was ready to fly. The wind wasn’t very brisk, so we had to wait for me to get enough air inside my nostrils for takeoff. When my nose finally inflated to its full glory we were off, sailing into the sky toward Dr. Wackjöb’s compound deep in the WMNF.
The smell of the rotting meat guided my way. After thirty minutes of flying, I made a perfect landing on the path leading to the UFO Center.
“See the sign,” I said, pointing. “It’s over there, stuck in the ground.”
“The Center for UFOs, Earthquakes, and Alien Abduction—Dr. Aðalbjörn Wackjöb, Director,” Jimmy read. “If this guy can’t help us, then no one can.”
I pulled off the harness and hid it in the bushes. “Like I told you,” I said, “the old guy is kind of loony. He asked me if I was from the government.”
“Sounds paranoid to me,” Mumps said. “And a little—”
“I don’t blame him,” Vivian interjected. “After getting fired from his job, the man has trust issues.”
Jimmy laughed. “You sound like a therapist. Maybe you should make him lie on a couch.”
Just as Vivian opened her mouth to fire a volley back at Jimmy, we all heard a loud crack in the nearby woods.
“What was that?” Mumps cried out.
I pressed a finger to my lips, hushing everyone up.We all grew as silent as dandelions and listened for more sounds.
There was nothing.
“Maybe it was a moose or a black bear,” TJ whispered.
Jimmy shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever it was, it’s gone now.”
And that’s when a cannon blast of frigid water hit me full force in the stomach.The water pressure was so powerful it knocked me off my feet and sent me nosefirst into a thick maple tree. My Mardi Gras mask flew off my head and landed on a branch above my head. Vivian and the Not-Right Brothers got the same treatment. The intense surge of water sent them flying a good ten yards into a stand of white pine.
When I came to my senses, I saw Dr. Wackjöb emerge from the woods dragging a fifty-footlong fire hose.
He looked at Vivian and the Not-Right Brothers. “That’s what you get for trespassing!” He then turned to me, an angry scowl on his face. “And as for you, Gríöarstór Nef, that was for ruining two hunks of my precious hákarl!”
CHAPTER 11
ROTTEN SHARK MEAT
I reached for my bottle of cayenne pepper, ready to sneeze Dr. Wackjöb back to the Paleozoic Era, but Vivian stopped me.
“Stop spraying us!” Vivian shouted. “We have proof that aliens exist!”
Dr.Wackjöb lowered the fire hose. “What kind of proof?”
“A video,” TJ said. “The kid you called Gríöarstór Nef—whatever that means—has been visited by aliens. They shove big pipes up his honker and make him snore.”
A look of skepticism washed over Dr.Wackjöb’s face. He held up the hose, like he was going to water blast us again. “I’ve been laughed at and shunned by the scientific community,” he said bitterly, “I won’t allow a bunch of children to make fun of me too.”
“We’re not here to make fun of you,” Vivian pleaded, and then plucked the flash drive from her pocket and tossed it at Dr. Wackjöb’s feet. “Plug this into your computer and watch it for yourself,” she said. “It’s a video of weird aliens doing some nose experiment on Schnoz.”
Dr.Wackjöb picked up the flash drive, rubbing it gently with his fingers like it was a precious diamond. He looked at us, back down to the flash drive, and then back at us again. “What are your names?” he asked.
“Vivian.”
“TJ.”
“Mumps.”
“Jimmy.”
“Andy,” I said. “But my friends call me Schnoz.”
“Or, if you get on his bad side,” TJ added,“he’ll become Super Schnoz and pepper-sneeze you all the way back to Iceland. This guy’s whiffer has the power to blow up a fleet of armored tanks and blast an eighteen-wheeler in half.”
Dr.Wackjöb stared at my nose for a long second. “I like the name Gríöarstór Nef for you better. Follow me. My computer’s in the observatory.”
All of us looked like dripping wet rats as we trekked to the observatory.
Vivian handed me my mask. “Here,” she said. “You’re not Super Schnoz without your disguise.”
“I might as well leave it off now,” I said. “Dr. Wackjöb’s seen my face so what does it matter?”
The Not-Right Brothers and Vivian plugged their noses as soon as we stepped into the compound.
“That smell is disgusting,” Jimmy choked.
“It reeks like your gross old Super Schnoz suit,” Mumps gagged.
“That’s the building where he dries the meat,” I said. “The place is full of the stuff.”
“Ask him what it is,” Vivian said.
I broke away from the gang and caught up with Dr.Wackjöb. “Excuse me, but can you tell me about that meat drying in that building? What’s it called again?”
“Hákarl,” Dr. Wackjöb said, not breaking a stride. “It means rotting shark in the Icelandic language. It’s a delicacy in my country served at the midwinter Þorrablót Festival.”
My nostrils flared wide. Any food that started with the word rotting made my nose hairs tingle with delight. “How do you make it?” I asked.
Dr. Wackjöb explained the fine art of hákarlmaking as we walked. A butcher kills, guts, and debones the shark. He then leaves the meat to rot in a hole covered with stones for two months. After that, he dries the meat in a well-ventilated room for another two months.The Hákarl is then ready for eating.
“Why do you let it rot?” I wondered. “I mean, why not eat it fresh?”
“Sharks that live in the waters around Iceland are poisonous,” Dr.Wackjöb answered in his funny accent. “Those sharks don’t have urinary tracts like you and me. That means they must secrete their urine from their skin. The high amounts of uric acid in the meat are so concentrated that eating it can cause people sickness. If you allow the shark to decay, the urine is naturally removed from the flesh making it digestible.”
I looked over my shoulder to see if Vivian and the Not-Right Brothers had caught Dr. Wackjöb’s hákarl explanation. From the sickly green expressions on their faces, I could tell they heard every word.
The observatory was a lot bigger than I had remembered from my first visit. The place had a round roof and was as large as a four-story building.When we walked inside, I saw computers, printers, and other beeping gadgets that looked so hi-tech I didn’t know what they were for.
Above our heads was something extraordinary.
“The glass is beautiful,” Vivian said with a hint of awe in voice.
“Like something from a church,” Mumps said.
“What you are looking at,” Dr. Wackjöb explained, “is a telescope mirror that allows me to see ten billion light-years into the universe. I call it the Cosmoscope, and the viewer can observe planets that orbit distant suns. I have seen new planets form in spectacular supernova explosions.”
“This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life,” TJ said, his mouth hanging open in wonderment.
“Where did you get the glass for the lens?” Jimmy asked.
“I made it myself,” Dr.Wackjöb said with pride. Vivian’s eyes lit up. “How’d you do it?”
We listened intently to Dr. Wackjöb’s every
word as he described the fascinating process. “I heat chunks of glass in a large furnace at two thousand degrees Fahrenheit,” he explained. “The glass melts into a syrupy liquid and then drains into a large mold. The glass takes ninety days to cool enough for the finishing touches.”
“How do you make—” TJ started to ask, but Dr. Wackjöb cut him off.
“Enough questions for now,” he said. “I want to see this video.”
I snatched the flash drive out of the seismologist’s hand. “No one sees this video until you answer my question,” I said, my nostrils flaring. “What does Gríöarstór Nef mean?”
CHAPTER 12
PLANET APNEA
Gríöarstór Nef means vast nose in Icelandic,” the doctor explained.
In an instant, the Not-Right Brothers were laughing so hard that tears rolled down their cheeks.
“We should have called you Super Gríöarstór Nef!” TJ guffawed.
“Very funny,” I said sarcastically. “I wonder what loser translates to in Icelandic.”
“Loser is tapar in my native language,” Dr. Wackjöb said.
“Knock it off, you guys,” Vivian ordered. “All four of you are tapars as far as I’m concerned. Let’s watch the video so we can get down to business.”
I handed the flash drive back to Dr.Wackjöb and he connected it to his computer.The video started to play and his already pale complexion grew even paler when the creepy shadow materialized into an alien on the screen. I winced inside as the little gray nose-molester shoved the hoses up my two sniffers.
When the video ended, Dr. Wackjöb was speechless. He sat up, walked over to the Cosmoscope, and sat there in silence for what seemed like an hour.
“Um…excuse me, Dr. Wackjöb,” Vivian said. “Aren’t you going to tell us what you think of the video?”
“It’s…it’s…” Dr. Wackjöb stuttered. “Utterly amazing. It’s the concrete proof I have been searching years for.”
“Then why do you seem so upset?” Mumps asked.
“I’m not upset. I’m just stunned because four American children found the proof before me, a highly educated scientist.”