CHAPTER 19

In which Leslie becomes a gray haze, Jean-Remy muses on the secret of invisibility, and Elliot isn’t quite himself

What happened to your hand?!”

“I think it was something I ate,” Elliot told Leslie.

They were in the alley behind The Green Fairy. Elliot’s right hand looked as if it were part wolf, part bear, and—judging by the curved talons extending from his fingertips—part owl.

“Looks like you’ve grown . . . a paw.”

“I think it’s because I ate ‘the Special.’ ”

“It looks like the hand of a . . .” The word caught in Leslie’s throat.

“A creature,” Elliot said.

“What are we going to do?”

Elliot jammed his fist back into his pocket. “My uncle and the others will help us. We’ve got to find them. Not to mention stop the Chief from turning this whole town into ghorks!”

Leslie cracked her knuckles. “We’d better get started.”

There were three settings on the ImpressionisticatorTM:

1. Partly Hazy

2. Mostly Indistinct

3. Totally Blurrified!

Elliot turned it up to full power. Leslie, in her characteristically all-black outfit, became a kind of pale gray haze. Elliot was transformed into a yellowish-green organic blob. Jean-Remy became nothing more than a silver puff of cloud.

With so much activity at the festival, it was easy for them to sneak through the crowds unnoticed. When they left the market square, they found they had to move more slowly to avoid being spotted. When they arrived at the Heppleworth Food Factory, the offices were mostly deserted. The only people there were a handful of security guards. Being Totally Blurrified!, they snuck past the security gate with only the merest looks of suspicion.

“What was that?” they heard one of the guards say to his partner.

“What was what?”

“Something just blew past us.”

“Aw, you’re seeing things,” said the other.

“Something just ran by the guardhouse, I swear!”

“Oh, yeah? What’d it look like?”

“Like a . . . like a . . . hmm . . . maybe you’re right. I’ll get my eyes checked.”

The lobby of the spoon building had been cordoned off with pylons and construction barriers, which made it appear that the wreckage caused by the crash of the Coleopter-copter was nothing more than an ongoing renovation. Sadly, there was no sign of the flying machine itself. Elliot assumed the ghorks had torn poor Hercules to shreds. They skirted around the barriers and headed for the Heppleworth expectavators.

“You know what?” Leslie whispered to Elliot. “If we stand still, this really is like being invisible.”

“Maybe being invisible isn’t about people not seeing you,” he answered, “it’s about people not noticing you.”

“In zis way,” whispered Jean-Remy, with a note of sadness, “ze world is full of invisible people.”

When they called the expectavator, it too was deserted. Leslie and Elliot were a little disappointed not to find Sunny, the spring-heeled optimistimonster, waiting for them on his bounding leg.

“Which button do we press?” Elliot asked.

There were so many. Wilted Hydrangea beside the Water Cooler in the Accounting Department. Heppleworth’s Organic Vegetable Soup-Stirring Machine. Northeast Corner of the Packaging Plant behind the Broken Shrink-Wrapper. Then there was the whole section devoted entirely to dungeons. Dungeon #1, Dungeon #2, Dungeon #3, and on and on. But there were so many! Which one was the right one? Which one would lead them to their friends? At last, Jean-Remy hovered up to a few buttons improbably mounted in the ceiling.

“What about zis one? It says Secret.”

“Secret what?” asked Elliot.

“Secret nothing. Just Secret. If you have kidnapped not only one but two creature departments, would you not want to keep it a secret? What greater secret zan zis could ze ghorks be hiding?”

“He has a point,” said Elliot.

Leslie wasn’t convinced. “How can it be secret if they have a button for it?”

“It is on the ceiling,” Elliot suggested.

“Fine,” said Leslie. “Press it, and we’ll hope for the best.”

“Mais bien sûr!” said Jean-Remy, tapping the button. “Hope is precisely what we must do! Expectavators, after all, zey are powered by hope, so let us try to be as hopeful as possible.”

“I hope we find our friends,” said Elliot. “I hope Gügor found his true love, I hope there’s no such thing as a Sixth Ghork, and I hope we can stop the Chief from turning everyone at the festival into ghorks.”

“I hope I can get an autograph from Boris Minor and every one of the Karloffs,” said Leslie. “Oh, and I hope my grandpa comes back!”

DA-DING!

The doors opened on a deserted tunnel. It was taller and broader than the one that had led them to Dr. Heppleworth. The walls were smoother, and the floor had been swept . . . or perhaps it was simply well-traveled, its dust kicked away by marching feet. There seemed to be even fewer luster bugs to light the interior, so vast, quavering shadows haunted every surface.

Elliot and Leslie strained their eyes to peer into the tunnel, but it was no use. Its depths quickly faded to an indecipherable darkness. What so-called “secret” awaited them at the other end, they wondered.

As they tiptoed along the tunnel, they smelled something. It was a salt-and-peppery and (almost) appetizing odor, but there was something vague about it. It was as if the scent had been made hazy by an olfactory version of the Impressionisticator™.

At last, they arrived on a balcony overlooking a large space very much like the laboratory at the DENKi-3000 Creature Department. There was machinery everywhere: cogs and gears; buttons and switches; dials and readouts; cables and chains and countless conveyors. However, unlike the Creature Department, where it always seemed like there were a hundred different projects and experiments going on, this room had only one. Every cog, button, and conveyor was dedicated to a single purpose.

Making food.

Eerily, there was no one here. Everything was automated. Monstrous articulated claws stirred huge vats of raw ingredients—vegetables and meats and grains and seasonings. The mixtures sluiced through pipes into blazing ovens.

“Why do I feel like I’m in the belly of giant robot—with stomach flu?” asked Elliot.

“Because zat is exactly what it looks like,” said Jean-Remy.

Finally, trays emerged from the ovens with meals that looked disturbingly familiar.

“Is it just me,” said Leslie, “or is there something weird about those TV dinners? Don’t you think they look like—”

“Faces!” said Elliot. They had seen one just like it before. “They all look like a ‘Special’ from The Smiling Mudsucker.”

“Zees must be what Quazicom and ze ghorks think ze manufacture of food ought to be. Speaking for ze French, it is appalling!”

“Come on,” said Elliot. “If we’re going to find my uncle and the others, we should keep moving.” He pointed farther down, to a dim glow of light leaking into the end of the passageway.

They tiptoed along, having no idea where they were headed but confident that, thanks to being Totally Blurrified!, no one would spot them.

The tunnel rose up in a slope toward a huge, underground coliseum, teeming with ghorks. Staying close to the rear wall, they tiptoed into the chamber. All the ghorks had their attention focused on a plateau of stone at the center. On this platform, seated all in a row, were the Five Head Ghorks: Iris, Adenoid Jack, Wingnut, Digits, and Grinner.

A great black cube hung above them, with a view-screen on each of its four sides. Suddenly, the coliseum was filled with strident, forceful music, like something you might hear before an action-packed news bulletin. All the view-screens flashed to life, showing a stylized Q above the words:

quazicom inc.

taking over everything, one company at a time

The words faded and were replaced with a shadowy face. Its only visible feature was a set of gleaming white teeth. It was the Chief.

“Welcome,” he said, in his loose-gravelly voice, “I’m sure you must be as anxious as I am to finally meet the Fabled Sixth Ghork! Weeks ago I sent your faithful leaders—Grinner, Iris, Adenoid Jack, Wingnut, and Digits—to search all of creaturedom to find him, and now, at long last, he is here with us tonight, the ghork who will lead us in victory over the rest of creaturedom!”

A terrible cheer rose from the sea of ghorks.

“Before we begin the proceedings, however, there is a question that needs answering. . . .” Two tiny daggers of light sparkled in his invisible eyes. “What is that little girl doing at the back of the room?”

Every ghork in the coliseum turned in their seats and looked directly at Leslie. Leslie, meanwhile, looked down at herself and saw—to her horror—that her blurrification had worn off. When she looked up again, she was surrounded by sneering ghorks.

“Would you believe I’m a cabaret performer?” she asked.

(No, they wouldn’t.)

The ghorks grabbed Leslie and pulled her toward the front of the crowd.

“What should we do with her, Chief? You want us to lock her up with the others?”

The chief shook his head. “Let her stay. I’d like her to witness the terror of the Sixth Ghork!”

Up above Leslie, Jean-Remy’s blurrification had also worn off. Before he could flutter away, one of the hand-ghorks leapt up and plucked him out of the air like an insect. Jean-Remy was also pulled forward and given a front-row seat at the Great Hexposé. Only Elliot remained Totally Blurrified!

Up on the plateau, Grinner pointed at Leslie. “I know you! You’re that girl from the hotel. What happened to your little friend, the dorky kid in the fishing vest?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Leslie told him. She hoped to give Elliot enough time to slip away unseen. “I haven’t seen him since yesterday,” she lied. “In fact, I have no idea where he is!”

Grinner gritted his teeth and laughed. “What do you think, I’m stupid? When I asked, what happened to him, I didn’t mean, where is he? We can all see he’s right behind you! What I meant was what happened to him?”

Leslie turned around and—

“AAIIIEEEEGH!”

She screamed because, just like she and Jean-Remy, Elliot’s blurrification had also worn off. Now that he was visible again, Leslie saw that her friend was no longer the person she remembered. In fact, Elliot didn’t look like a person at all.

Elliot was a creature!