The guards said things like “Whoa!” and “Ouch!”—unhelpful, brief, one-syllable things. They tumbled backward in a heap.
Jasper, Katie, and Lily ran over them, stepping over their limbs.
Larry was picking himself up off the floor. He screamed, “Guards!”
“Larry’s grain sack!” panted Katie as they ran. “It’s off partway!”
Jasper looked back. “He’s—his teeth! What is that? By dumpkin, what is it?”
They kept running.
“They’ve seen my mouth!” yelled Larry. “Get them! Get them!”
The guards slowly stood.
The mule was stomping down the hallway. The kids were right behind it.
Larry and the guards ran after them.
The guards turned the corner and were confronted by an empty hallway with many doors.
Slowly the guards paced along the hallway, listening carefully at each door.
Larry fixed his grain sack.
“It’ll be hard to find those kids now,” whispered one of the guards to another.
“Oh,” said the other, “but you know what makes it really much easier? A supervisor standing there yelling ‘Guards!’ and ‘Get them!’ That’s super. Thank goodness we have a guy like that on our side.”
“What are you saying?” snapped Larry. “Are you saying something?”
“Nothing, boss,” said one of the guards. “You just keep standing there, hollering ‘Let ’er rip.’ Fix your little grain sack. Maybe eat a snack bar. You’re a great manager. That’s why they pay you the big cashola.”
“Miserable humans,” muttered Larry. “I am so glad that my father married a ...”
The guards all turned to look at him.
Larry folded his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels.
“Now that I’ve got your attention,” he said, “carry on.”
The guards kept creeping along the hallway, listening at all the doors.
“Boss,” whispered one guard, “I can hear something in the conference room.”
Larry nodded. “Break the door down. Like usual.”
They kicked open the door and jumped in.
There was the mule, eating the strategic map of world domination.
And there were the kids, escaping through the opposite doorway.
The guards ran after them.
Oh, I don’t know about you, but I really hate chase scenes. It’s all just chase, chase, chase, up the staircase, down the staircase, bang, bang, bang, “Over this way,” “No—that way,” under the desk, over the chair, and you know that either they’re going to get caught, or they’re not. So why prolong the agony?
I’ll just flat out tell you.
They made it to an old laundry chute.
“They’re right behind us!” screamed Jasper. “Jump down the chute!”
“Jump?!?” said Katie. “Are you crazy?”
“Don’t worry! My Titanium Bullet-Mobile is parked at the bottom. Five seconds from now, and we’ll be blasting away, beyond the reach of Larry and his goons!”
They jumped. They screamed “Whooaaaa!” all the way down.
They landed in their seats—upside down but still, they landed.
“Good job, Jasper!” said Katie. “This is great! Let’s get out of here!”
“No problems now, fellows!” said Jasper. He pulled off his helmet and pulled on his motoring goggles. “With the old Bullet-Mobile, we’ll be off in a jiffy.” He flicked a switch. “It’s the first rocket-powered car! Rocket number one, engage! Rocket number two, engage!” He flicked another switch. The car started to move.
They were beside the old warehouse. They could see guards running out of the doors.
“Hurry!” pleaded Lily.
“Don’t worry,” said Jasper. “They’ll never be able to follow us! Rocket number three, engage—and we’re off!” The Bullet-Mobile rolled more quickly toward the street.
The roar of the engines was unbelievable. Like being inside a firework. Huge flames leaped out of the back of the car. Sparks splattered all over the stone walls and the pavement.
“Hold on to your hats, ladies!” cried Jasper Dash. “You’re in for a wild ride! This futuristic buggy can attain speeds of up to thirty-five miles per hour!”
“Thirty-five?” said Katie.
“That’s right,” said Jasper proudly.
“Just thirty-five?”
“Yes indeed.”
“Oh, great,” groaned Katie, burying her head in the plush calfskin upholstery.
And behind them, guards poured out of the building.
Several of the guards had piled into a green Subaru station wagon and were swinging around corners after the Bullet-Mobile, firing their guns and changing rounds with their teeth.
Jasper expertly steered the rocket-powered car around fruit carts and pedestrians. Flames and smoke billowed out behind him. “We are gone in a flash!” He called backward into the wind, “Now—how do you like the tables turned, you gun-toting rapscallions?”
Katie said, “I wouldn’t make fun of them too much until you reach the speed limit.” She looked nervously backward. “You know, you can still go over twenty in a school zone.”
“Katie, while your comments are well meant, you should know that I would never put myself above the laws of the land and even approach the posted speed limit. I am a plucky yet principled youth, not a maniac daredevil.”
“Jasper,” called Lily. “Jasper?”
“Yes, Lily?”
“It might be better if we ... uh ... parked somewhere.”
“Why, Lily?”
“Because the flames are kind of... visible. We got a big head start, but I think that they can see us because of the fire. Coming out of the back of the car.”
“By jove!” said Jasper. “You may be right!”
He screeched around a corner. They were on a slope in a quiet neighborhood, on a tree-lined street.
Jasper turned off the engines and rolled down the hill. He pulled to the side of the road and kept rolling.
Lily, looking backward, saw the green Subaru station wagon fly past the end of the road. Without the flames to alert them, the guards hadn’t seen the car.
“Quick thinking,” said Jasper.
“Now we can just sit and take a deep breath,” said Katie. “Phew. That was a close one.”
“I apologize for the slow speeds of my Titanium Bullet-Mobile,” said Jasper. “I guess I haven’t been keeping up with current trends. Also, I was forced to register it as an agricultural vehicle so I could drive it while I’m underage. As such, it is not allowed to go any faster than a tractor until I get a driver’s license. Which will be some years from now.” He sighed. “Dash it all!”
Katie stretched her arms. “Well, it wasn’t a very successful mission. We didn’t get the microfilms—I mean, the two-hundred-pound wax roll—with the secret stuff on it.”
“No,” said Jasper unhappily. “More’s the pity.”
“And they know we’re spying on them now,” said Katie.
“I feel as if this is somehow my fault,” said Jasper even more unhappily.
“And if they figure out that it was Lily, then her dad will probably be in danger.”
“Katie,” said Jasper, “there are times when good friends enjoy a certain kind of silence.”
“It’s not a loss at all,” said Lily quietly. “Now we know what we’re up against.”
“Goons with guns?” said Jasper. “That we knew before.”
“No,” said Lily. “We know much more than that. We saw part of Larry’s face. Most of his mouth.”
“It was really weird looking,” said Katie.
“And I think that gives us a hint as to his whole... you know, insane scheme,” said Lily.
Her two friends turned to her.
“Okay,” said Katie. “Now will you please explain?”
Lily tapped thoughtfully on the car door. “Let’s go to dinner at the Aero-Bistro, and I’l
l tell you what I think.”
That night the Aero-Bistro was floating in the middle of Jebb’s Gorge, just outside of town. The trees on the cliffs were strung with lights. The dinner special was a hearty lobster-and-squash bisque. Music for the evening was supplied by members of a string quartet, who were playing energetic chords while sitting in the backseats of four speedsters that did daredevil jumps off the cliffs, flying past the Aero-Bistro. The music—one note per jump—was very solemn and slow, a little drowned out by the roar of the engines and the cries of the pit crews replacing tires.
“Well,” said Katie, leaning back in her chair as a cello went by playing B-flat at a speed of about 170 miles per hour, “now maybe you’ll tell us what that guy’s weird mouth helped you figure out.”
“To me it looked... It was like he didn’t have teeth,” said Jasper. “It was like thick white hairs instead of teeth.”
“Up close,” said Lily, “I’ll bet they’re wider than hairs. I’ll bet they’re made of the same thing as our fingernails.”
“Hmm,” said Jasper. “A whole mouth full of hangnails. No wonder he’s so moody.”
“No,” said Lily. “It’s not actually fingernails. It’s called baleen”
“‘Baleen,’ huh?” said Katie.
Lily nodded.
ba-leen [bay-leen] n strips of hard fiber that occur in the mouths of certain whale species; used to strain out plankton, the microscopic organisms eaten by whales. Example: “It’s so embarrassing going to the movies with my whale cousin and watching him try to eat popcorn through his baleen.”
“Hmm,” said Katie.
“And did you notice?” said Lily. “His skin was blue.”
“So it was,” mused Jasper. “As blue as the woad on a Celtic warrior’s pinkie.”
“Jasper,” said Katie, “can you not use words like woad right now?”
Lily forged on. “One other thing about Larry. He pours brine over his head.”
“So you’re saying ...,” said Katie.
“I’m saying that Larry is a whale-human hybrid. He’s a little of both. Remember when my dad said that he thought the company made stilts for whales? Well, he may not have been kidding. They may actually make stilts for whales ...”
“So that the whales,” said Jasper, catching on, “can invade the land!”
“Exactly!” said Lily.
“Dastardly!” cried Jasper.
“Whoaaaaaaaa!” exclaimed Katie.
They stared into space, uncertain of what to do with this terrifying news. The string quartet whizzed past, leaping between the limestone outcroppings.
“Why couldn’t we have had one of those cars for our escape?” complained Katie.
“Why would we need a string quartet?” asked Jasper.
“I mean, those cars go over twenty miles per hour.”
“But... they’re not rocket powered,” said Jasper, hurt.
“Jasper,” said Katie, putting her hand on his wavy, heroic blond hair, “it’s so sweet how you risk our lives for gadgets.”
“I have a few things I want to ask my dad,” said Lily, tapping her index finger on her teeth.
They all nodded solemnly. They looked out over the gorge and the trees strung with Chinese lanterns.
There is nothing better than friends working together against incredible odds. It is a great feeling. Some friends of mine and I, for example, once had to stop this jerk we knew from middle school who was trying to carve his face next to the presidents’ on Mount Rushmore. He was the richest kid in school, and he had won a bunch of Italian stonemasons in a game of Go Fish. He and the stonemasons were headed down to Mount Rushmore in a bus.
I won’t go into the whole thing, because I’m just trying to make a point that when you work on a project together with friends, and you’re rushing around with climbing gear and scissors, and your friend Dana is explaining how to go up mountainsides, and your friend Bubs is showing everyone how to disable a helicopter, and though you don’t have quite as many useful skills as your friends, you’re doing your part by writing personalized haiku for each of them, you get this intense feeling of love for your friends, and you come to admire them even more than you did before.
You start to think, I would really hate it if they were injured or destroyed in an invasion of whales on stilts.
This is what Lily, Jasper, and Katie were all thinking.
Funny that they should be thinking that, though. Because later that very night...
While the three kids met at the Aero-Bistro, Larry, hidden away in his secret laboratory, was lowering himself into a salt bath. He pulled off his mask, muttering, “And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids and their mule.”
He leaned back in the bath. His skin was thick, slippery, and blue. His mouth was in a big scowl, and in the water his baleen glistened. He spoke to two of his head guards, who stood nearby. “We must find those children before they spread word of my plan. The one girl looked familiar—the one with the hair in her eyes and the handlebar mustache—but I can’t quite place the face. It was quite an unmemorable face. Somehow the mustache throws me off. But that other girl—I know I’ve seen her face somewhere ...”
He absently plucked at his baleen as if playing the harp.
“So they saw my face. My face!” He slapped the water angrily with his blue hands. Then, more quietly, he muttered, “My mother was a razorback whale. My father was a very lonely sailor. They were married in Barbados and lived a happy life together until... But I won’t talk about that. Then they bred me... Me!...A monster! Laughed at by all! Even by my cousin, my jerky cousin who now writes for the dictionary! The dictionary, do you hear? I am a monster! Yes indeed! But a monster who shall one day soon rule the Earth!”
His voice echoed in the chamber.
The two guards stood against a wall.
Finally one of them said, “Do you, uh, want us to say anything? Or just listen?”
“Just listen. That will be fine.” Larry stroked his chin. “Aha! Yes! Eureka! That’s it. I have got it. I know exactly who that meddlesome girl is. Her name is Katie something ... Katie ... Yes. I’ve seen her posters up... here and there ...”
“You mean the one in your office, boss?”
“Yeah, okay? Yeah, the one in my office. It is my business, Rod, if I want to join the Horror Hollow Fan Club. Isn’t it? Tell me, Rod. Tell me right now. Isn’t that my business? So I like to read and improve my mind. So I like novels full of suspense and action. So I joined the Horror Hollow Fan Club. Okay?”
“Fine with me, boss.”
“And that girl, that’s where she’s from— Horror Hollow. Her name is Katie Mulligan. See? Where would we be if I hadn’t joined the fan club?” He clapped once. “Now here’s what I want you to do. Look in the phone book for some Mulligans who live over in Horror Hollow. Send one of our operatives to her house. One of our special operatives.”
“Yes, boss.”
“I think you know what I mean by emphasizing special.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Big, you know... with the...” Larry winked and made a sound like something gigantic on stilts wreaking destruction on a suburban cul-de-sac.
“Yes, boss. You mean ...” The guard stuck his fingers in his mouth and made the sound of something towering on stilts smiting an address in Horror Hollow, and dark smoke rising up to the unforgiving sky.
“That’s it. See that she never tells a soul what she has seen here.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Now. Go!”
The guard turned and left.
Larry sat in his salt bath, thinking. “Very soon,” he said, “very soon” the years of planning will pay off. The world will be amazed at my power. Not much longer! Ha! Great! To think that soon I’ll be...” He sank down and disappeared beneath the surface of the water.
Bubbles drifted up because he was still talking, still describing his fiendish schemes, though no one could hear or make
out his words.
Picture a deserted cove. A dirt road runs right down into the bay. During the day people put their boats in here. It’s a public launch. They zip around Smogascoggin Bay, waving to one another. Their skin looks shiny, and they drink pop.
But at night there’s no one here. Picture that—people not being here. I know that’s hard, because the minute I say “People,” you start to picture them. You see all their striped bathing suits and their sunglasses, and they’re waving at you. Well, you have to get rid of them. Remove them. Just leave a blank space where they were standing or sitting. The motorboat you’re picturing fades away, the burr of its engine softly drifting off over the waves until it’s gone. The water stills. The tide is slowly going out.
The smell of cocoa butter is replaced by the stench of night weeds.
The cooler full of brightly colored colas grows transparent.... In its place the cans of cola are left, crushed and empty, on the beach in the blue of the night.
There are no bare feet anymore. Just footprints in the mud. No bathing suits. Nothing but the tide whispering in the salt marsh grasses.
The trees hang over the dirt road, swaying in the wind.
Far out at sea, a foghorn sounds.
It is not a foggy night, but the lighthouse keeper promised her grandson he could pull the horn once if he was good at dinner.
Everything is motionless, except the gentle shorthand of the lapping wavelets.
Then suddenly the water boils. Startled seagulls flap out of the marsh, squawking. Something is rising through the depths.
You know what it is.
Inch by inch it rises out of the sea. It has barnacles over its eyebrows. It is a great dark lumbering shape. It moves clumsily toward shore. It heaves itself up, towering. And it takes its first steps onto the land, exposed, for the first time, to the glare of moonlight.
An old fisherman is asleep against a stump. He spent the evening chasing saltwater eels. He hears a tremendous crunch—and awakens to see something he can’t even describe striding over his beached dinghy, leaving it in ruins. He starts running. He vows never to drink diet cola again.