CHAPTER 4

In which Gügor tells his tale

Gügor wasn’t kidding—his story really did begin at the beginning.

“Gügor was born the youngest in his family,” he explained. “Gügor had thirty-six brothers and sisters!”

Patti whistled sympathetically. “Thirty-six?! I’ve only got the three myself. Sisters, that is—and I can hardly stand ’em!”

Gügor explained his early days, growing up on Mount Squash, the ancestral home of knucklecrumplers. “Gügor’s parents wanted him to follow in the family footsteps, and get a job crumpling things with his hands. But Gügor wanted to know why. ‘Because it’s tradition,’ said Gügor’s father. ‘And look at these hands, son. It’s what knucklecrumplers are made for.’” Gügor held up his own hands, showing off his big knucklecrumpler mitts to everyone in the laboratory.

“He had a point,” said Elliot. “Your dad, I mean.”

Gügor nodded. “Yes, but Gügor didn’t want to crumple things just for the sake of crumpling things. Gügor wanted to make things . . . by crumpling things. That’s rickem-ruckery, fixing machines—or even inventing new ones—with nothing but your bare hands.” Gügor smiled a goofy grin and poked one big thumb into his chest. “Gügor has an advanced degree in applied rickem-ruckery from Mount Squash College! After graduation, Gügor went off to make his fortune! That was how Gügor ended up in Paris, where he met Eloise-Yvette.”

“Why Paris?” asked Leslie. She was curious, and besides, it was a city she had always dreamed of visiting.

“Yes,” said Jean-Remy, “why Paris—and where does my sister come into all of zis?!”

Gügor lowered his voice. “Not everyone knows this, but lots of creatures live in the catacombs underneath the city. Four-eyed snoods and triple-bearded oven trolls, even a few marrowranglers, who are distant cousins of us knucklecrumplers. Gügor met them all. Most of them were artists and writers and musicians, of course. Except in Paris they had a special word for them.”

“Unemployed,” said Harrumphrey.

“No,” said Gügor. “Bohemians. When Gügor showed them his rickem-ruckery skills, they gave him a job inventing instruments to play in their underground jazz clubs. Gügor was so proud! His first real job! Gügor even learned to play one of his very own creations: a steam-powered electrombone!”

“You play electrombone?” asked the professor. He seemed quite impressed.

Gügor nodded proudly. “Gügor invented the electrombone!”

“Smarter than he looks,” Harrumphrey quipped.

“Eventually, Gügor began performing with the other creatures.” He chewed his lip and glanced at Jean-Remy. “That was how I met Eloise-Yvette. They had a special name for her, too. She was called the Bluebird.”

Jean-Remy nodded. “I remember. It was her stage name, on account of her sapphire skin and what I can only assume was her melancholy singing voice. I never went to see her perform. I wanted nothing do to with her ridiculous ‘Bohemian’ friends.”

Gügor sighed. “If you had come, you would have seen Gügor perform, too. On his electrombone! They called us ‘The Bluebird and the Brute.’” Gügor hung his head. “I’m sure you can guess who ‘the Brute’ was.”

Leslie patted the back of Gügor’s big warm hand. “We know you’re not really a brute. At least not when you’re in the Rickem-Ruckery Room.”

“Thank you. But next to Eloise-Yvette, that was how Gügor felt.” The knucklecrumpler’s shoulders fell, and he sighed heavily. “She probably thought the same thing. That was why Gügor never told her how he felt. Gügor never told anybody how he felt. Not even you, Jean-Remy . . . until today.”

“Aw, Gügor, you poor thing! I know just how you feel. Maybe a bit like this.” Patti ran one hand through her seaweed hair. She came out with a lump of silt and sculpted it into a tiny heart, complete with a jagged crack down the middle. She held it up for him to see.

Gügor nodded.

“But if you don’t tell her how you feel,” Patti went on, “then you’ll never have a chance to do this.” She gently squeezed the heart, and the crack vanished.

Gügor shook his head. He twisted his toes nervously into the laboratory floor. “Gügor is shy.”

“Everybody’s shy sometimes,” said Leslie. “My mom used to move us around so much, I was always new in town. I hated going up and introducing myself to the other kids, but sometimes that’s what you have to do. You just have to tell people how you feel.”

“So that’s what we’re gonna do,” said Elliot. “We’re going to Simmersville, we’re going to rescue Jean-Remy’s sister, and Gügor is going to tell her how he really—”

“No, no, no!” Jean-Remy swooped down between Elliot and the others. “I told you. Ze telegram is a fake!”

Gügor opened the letter and sniffed it. “It smells like Eloise-Yvette. She always wore Lait de la Lune perfume.”

Jean-Remy sighed. “Okay, let us say—hypozetically—the telegram is real, and zis city, Simmersville, it has been infiltrated with ghorks, and yes, my sister and her friends, zey have been kidnapped. Perhaps it is all true—which I do not believe it is—but if it is, yes, we must go and rescue her. But Gügor! My friend! Do you really crave ze love of someone like my sister? Someone so vain and selfish, who cannot be trusted?”

Gügor frowned. “That doesn’t sound like Eloise-Yvette at all.”

Leslie and Elliot couldn’t understand the discrepancy between Gügor and Jean-Remy’s versions of Eloise-Yvette. How could they be talking about the same fairy-bat?

“I don’t get it,” said Leslie. “What’s up with you and your sister?”

Jean-Remy sighed. “I don’t like to talk about it,” he said. And that was all.

“Maybe if you did, we’d be able to under—”

Leslie was interrupted when the doors at the far end of the laboratory slammed open and a big blubbery figure came slopping across the floor. It was Reggie. He was dripping with something slimy. With every plonk of his enormous galoshes, the huge bombastadon dribbled a trail of what could only be described as . . . snot.

“What happened to you?” asked the professor.

“Ghorks,” Reggie muttered. “With insidiously exaggerated nasal passages.”

Harrumphrey sighed. “Not again. We just finished cleaning up after the last time!”

“Fear not, my friends,” said Reggie. He shivered his epaulettes and spattered several laboratory tables with mucus. Two globs sailed clear across the room and hit Bildorf and Pib.

“Hey! You did that on purpose,” cried Pib, “and you’ve completely ruined our uniforms!”

“Yick,” said Bildorf, doffing his postman’s cap. “You can expect a hefty dry cleaning bill, you big blubbery bonehead!”

“As I was saying,” Reggie continued, ignoring the complaints of the hobmongrels, “I don’t believe we have anything to fear . . . at least for the time being. No attack on the Creature Department is imminent. In fact, the ghorks don’t appear to be interested in DENKi-3000 at all.”

“That’s a new one,” said Harrumphrey.

“Yes, quite.” Reggie poked his lower lip out thoughtfully between his tusks. “Apparently, they are preparing to fulfill some sort of ancient Ghorkolian prophecy.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” said Patti.

“What sort of prophecy?” asked the professor.

Reggie explained what he had discovered about the so-called “Great Hexposé” of the Fabled Sixth Ghork.

“A sixth ghork? How could there be a . . .” The professor trailed off, obviously unsure of what to make of this news. He looked around at his creaturely colleagues. “Has anyone ever heard of a sixth ghork?”

They all shook their heads. Elliot and Leslie were just as dumbfounded. They looked at each other, wondering the very same thing: What would a sixth ghork be like?

“No way,” said Patti. “That’s nothing but pure, down-home hooey! There’s only five kinds of them bozos. Ever’body knows that!”

“That’s what we all assume.” Reggie puffed out his floppy jowls. “But what if it’s not quite accurate? What if this Fabled Sixth Ghork truly does exist? What could it mean?”

“A ghork with a sixth sense,” Elliot whispered.

“With psychic powers,” said Leslie.

“Like telepathy.”

“Telekinesis.”

“Predicting the future.”

“A ghork with that kind of power,” said Harrumphrey, “could mean the end of creaturedom as we know it.”

The professor looked to Reggie. “Did you find out anything else?”

The bombastadon stroked his flabby chin. “Not a great deal. Merely that the insufferable cretin was headed to join the rest of his monstrous friends in some nearby hamlet. He called it . . . Simmersville, I believe.”

Leslie’s eyes popped wide. “So it is true. The ghorks really are in Simmersville. I knew it!”

“Sounds to me like it’s time to save the day,” said the professor, unable to suppress the note of hopeful excitement in his voice. “The only question left is: How best to get there?”