Sludge balls! Inkhill Mountain was a bad place to land!
The stone floor under Addy’s butt was really cold.
A thick glass pot on a burner produced a torrent of steam, along with a smell like a tuna sandwich left all day in a hot car. Addy stood up for a second to take a quick survey. A wooden countertop was cluttered with test tubes and beakers and small porcelain trays, each holding something gray and squirmy. The only windows were tiny slits up next to the ceiling. Suspended between them was a clothesline with strips of drying … Addy shuddered. Was that what she thought it was?
Wylder sat next to her, holding the comic book. But where was Catnip?
“What is this place?” Wylder’s voice echoed oddly.
“Shhh!”
The last thing they needed was for Mr. Chatty to open his yippety-yapper in Lickpenny’s laboratory. Not that any of this could really be happening. Was Addy dreaming? Was she making a guest appearance in Wylder’s dream? Nothing made sense!
Focus, she told herself. Find the rat, keep Wylder quiet, get out.
She signaled for him to follow as she inched back into a nook between a giant metal barrel and a shelving unit that held dozens of labeled jars.
“Why are we hiding? There’s nobody here, wherever here is, and—”
“Just. Be. Quiet. There will be someone here soon. A bad someone. Meanwhile, help me find Catnip. I can hardly see in this sludgy steam.”
“Oh, jeez. Catnip again?”
“Yes, Catnip again. I had a good hold on him just as the shot rang out, but he went flying when we crash-landed here.”
“So this isn’t the next page? Did we go forward or backward?”
“Flashback.” She put her hand over his mouth to shut him up. Just in time. With a screech of metal wheels, the heavy laboratory door rolled aside. Wylder’s eyebrows climbed high. She took away her hand.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
A gust of air from outside dispelled the clouds of steam. Professor Lickpenny limped into the room, his head bent over a gleaming gadget held in both hands.
“Oh, gosh! Is that—”
Addy glared and Wylder finally shut up.
Why was Lickpenny a professor? She had asked her uncle. Don’t professors teach? He needed a title, Vim said, and “professor” sounded brainy and eccentric at the same time.
“The villain has to be just as clever as the hero,” said Uncle Vim. “It makes the conflict stronger—more realistic—if they’re evenly matched.”
The professor’s physical appearance was even nastier than she had imagined. Uncle Vim, sketching quickly, had asked Addy for the three most hideous features she could think of.
“First?” she’d said. “Nose hair. You know how it gets on some old men.” Yes, Lickpenny looked like he had a dirty broom stuck up there.
“Next, a comb-over.” Too much hair in the nose and not enough on the head was seriously awful. Vim had drawn long oiled hairs stretching across a pink scalp from one ear to the other.
“Third, bad teeth. He should look as if he rips apart baby squirrels for breakfast,” Addy said. “And sucks on the tails.”
She could now report that Viminy Crowe had succeeded in creating a mouth practically foaming with decay. Addy was pretty certain she could smell Lickpenny’s breath from the not-so-safe hiding place where she sat huddled a little too snugly next to Wylder Wallace. She remembered how she and Uncle Vim had painstakingly printed tiny labels on the jars that now stood next to her on the professor’s shelves: BABIES’ EYEBALLS, PREMIUM MUCOUS, DIAPER EXTRACT, OFFICER ALLEN’S NOSE. That last one was revenge against the policeman who had stopped Uncle Vim for speeding on the Don Valley Parkway. The fleshy, mottled shape in the jar had enormous crusted nostrils. Ew.
“What’s he holding?” whispered Wylder.
“Controller,” mouthed Addy. “This happened six months ago.” She pointed to a row of metal lockers along one wall. “That’s where—”
CLICK!
No need to explain. Professor Lickpenny had pressed a button to open the locker marked SNAP. Wylder gasped as a familiar creature emerged from the narrow space, revealing a broad torso, an oversized head wearing a bowler hat, and long, stiff legs with shoes nearly as big as watermelons. It was as if he’d been folded like a coat and then expanded as soon as he stepped into the laboratory. A slight tremble caused all his metal parts to clatter before he settled, still as a statue.
Addy scanned the room for Catnip. He had to be close by, but where? A second click and the next locker, labeled KRACKLE, sprang open.
Professor Lickpenny jabbed the air with the controller, repeatedly pressing one of the buttons. The mechanical man named Krackle didn’t move.
“Scum-puppy!” shouted the professor. “Hurry up with the catalyzer! You good-for-nothing, lazy glob of putrid phlegm!”
Addy couldn’t help smiling. That was her line.
“There’s a new comic superhero called Phlegm,” whispered Wylder.
“Shh!”
Lickpenny had hold of an ear and was using it to haul a howling boy into the room. Nevins! Even scrawnier and more pathetic than on paper.
“How many times have I hammered this into you? Nothing should prevent you from replenishing the supply of catalyzer serum. Not an earthquake, not a revolution, not Flynn Goster himself! There must always be catalyzer serum! DO YOU HEAR ME? Every morning! Before you eat your plateful of kippers, before you slurp your cupful of brewed chicory, what should you be doing?”
“C-c-catalyzer.”
“If you fail to perform this one essential task, the mechanizmos do not function. Catalyzer is like the blood in their veins. If the mechanizmos do not function, they cannot penetrate the armored car on the Gold Rush Express and abscond with the magnificent gold! If the mechanizmos do not function, you will not continue to function. DO YOU HEAR ME?”
“Y-y-yessuncle.”
“There is nothing I’d like more than to turn your skin into the nice new covering for a mechanical piggy. ARE YOU LISTENING? Or do I need to pull your ear off for a direct line to the hole where your brain is meant to be?!”
He gave Nevins’s ear an energetic twist, then let go. The boy flopped to the floor in a heap and bounced right up again, clutching his head with grubby fingers. He gave a terrified look at the drying shapes on the rope above. Addy knew why he was so scared. And she totally understood. Seeing those twisted strips in reality and up close was pretty terrifying.
Lickpenny raised a hand to squelch the piercing wail pouring from the boy’s lips. “If you weren’t my own sister’s unfortunate offspring, I would have used you for kindling by now,” he growled.
“Y-y-yessuncle,” sniveled Nevins.
“Why are you standing there like an old umbrella?” bellowed the professor.
“This is amazing!” Wylder whispered.
The page coming to life in front of them was the most astounding thing Addy had ever seen. She couldn’t help wondering what would happen later—what the robotic transformation at the climax of the comic would look like …
Krackle’s log-like legs lifted and plunked back down with thundering precision. Its head swung from side to side, its eyes blinking red, its fuel pocket leaking a wisp of steam.
“You will fill the tanks while I make our arrangements for the train,” said Professor Lickpenny.
“Yessuncle.”
“What are the robots covered with?” whispered Wylder. “Looks like patchwork.”
“Uh, human skin.”
Some things were funnier when sitting at a kitchen table than they were in real life.
“Ewww!” Wylder did not whisper. “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” He scrambled to his feet, knee-kicking Addy and upending his backpack on the way. A battered cardboard packet of leftover onion rings spilled across the stone floor like pennies into a fountain.
Lickpenny whipped around. “Nevins!” he cried. “We’ve been invaded!”
The nephew seized a red-nozzled canister from a hook on the wall. It was painted with a skull and crossbones. At that very moment, Addy finally caught sight of Catnip. Horribly, the rat had jumped up to balance on the lip of the big glass pot with his pink nose sniffing—no, actually dipping into—a potion the color of hot dog mustard.
Lickpenny pointed the controller at the mechanizmos, pressing both his thumbs down together. This time the robot called Snap jolted to life and lurched steadily forward with its arms stretching toward Addy and Wylder, metal fingers flexing and groping.
Addy flew out of hiding to snatch Catnip from the brink of drowning.
“Wylder!” she screamed. “Turn the page!” Her fingers tucked under the rat’s belly. “Get us out of here!”
THWIP!
