Escape from the Drooling Octopod! (5 page)

Good grief
, Scilla thought,
I've never heard so many “uh's” coming from an adult before. This lady definitely has something to hide.

“Thank you for
yoah consahn
,” the voice continued, “but please don't call again. She can't, you see. She just can't.” There was something funny about the way her voice sounded. It was almost like she was ready to cry.

Scilla heard a
click
, and the speaker was silent. “Well, that's that,” she said as she turned to Ghoulie and Beamer. She was so relieved she didn't have to play with the girl, she almost felt like dancing the jig — except, of course, she didn't know how to dance the jig.

“Sounds an awful lot like what we heard when we tried to visit Solomon Parker,” said Beamer.

“Yeah, sure does,” echoed Ghoulie.

At that moment, the mail carrier walked by and started to slip a large bundle of mail into the mailbox. It didn't fit in the box very well, and several envelopes and pieces of junk mail fell to the ground. Scilla picked them up and handed them back to the mail carrier. She got a “thank you” in return and something else — she'd seen the name Malcolm Franck on three of the envelopes.

Ghoulie didn't look all that amazed when he actually found something about a person named Malcolm Franck on the Internet. But then, outside of the CIA and the NSA, Ghoulie and his computer had the best chance of tracking anyone down.

Scilla had never seen Ghoulie's place, and she was wide-eyed when she finally did. His town house looked like something out of the
Jetsons
. There were glass walls that could be either see-through or not at the push of a button. Scilla didn't see any robotic maids running about, but some-body or something spent a lot of time pumping Windex on all the glass. In fact, everything looked so shiny and clean, she was almost afraid to breathe on, let alone touch, anything. She wondered how real people could actually live here.

But then Ghoulie took them up three floors in a cylindrical glass elevator to his room. Scilla's eyes popped open even wider. Ghoulie's room was about the size of an entire floor in her grandma's house! It was divided into three different sections. One part was for music and TV and gave a whole new meaning to the idea of “home theater.” Another part was for jumping and climbing and bouncing around, complete with a trampoline, jungle gym, pogo stick, and a whole maze system to climb, crawl, slide, or jump through. Still another section was set off for electronics and radio-controlled cars, trains, planes, and boats. It wasn't up there with Solomon Parker's automated world, but then you could only get so much into a town house without scaring the neighbors.

This is ridiculous. No kid should be allowed to have this much
stuff ! It was un-American. It was disgusting: anything he wanted,
Ghoulie's parents got for him. In fact, there was a good chance they
didn't wait for him to ask. Of course, the reason they got him all this
stuff was because they were rarely at home. Pretty good deal, you'd
think — everything in the world to play with and no parents around
to tell you what you couldn't do all the time.
She wondered if Ghoulie looked at it that way.

When she finally made it up to his computer loft, Scilla saw computers of every size and shape, along with just about anything that could be attached to a computer, including some parts that only the Department of Defense might recognize.

Before she could take a good breath, Ghoulie was already online and searching sites with language so technical, Scilla had a better chance of reading Sanskrit. They found the name Malcolm Franck on the website for a major chemical company. He was identified as a scientist who had developed a new kind of insecticide. There was only so much a seventh-grade brain could process, no matter how smart it was, but they knew the word
genetics
. Apparently, Franck had genetically engineered his insecticide to target certain insects without harming other insects, animals, plants, or human beings. The company billed it as being quite a breakthrough — up there with the invention of the electric lightbulb.

Dr. Franck's discovery had made him mucho rich, but it had come at a price. His wife had worked for the same company but had been killed in a toxic chemical spill four years ago.

“There's nothing here about their daughter, though,” said Ghoulie.

Since the lady on the call speaker had mentioned that she was “special,” Scilla suggested he try hitting hospitals and clinics to look for records about her. He found no records at all!

“It's beginning to sound more and more like Solomon Parker all over again,” grumbled Beamer.

“Could be,” Scilla said, “but the lady doesn't sound like Mrs. Drummond.”

“You can't tell from her voice,” said Beamer. “Some people have a special voice to talk with visitors and another one for every day. Remember how greasy-sweet Cinderella's stepmother sounded at the ball?”

“That's a fairy tale, MacIntyre,” Ghoulie said with a wry grin.

“Oh, she's hiding something, though” said Scilla. “I'm sure of that.”

7

Invasion

It was D-day, or Pink Day . . . whatever. They were going to invade the Pink Palace! The Star-Fighters had waited until the lady with the pointed nose was out of the house and the father was still at work. All systems were go! They were going to use pretty much the same procedure that had gotten them to Solomon Parker. Hopefully, the Pink Palace wouldn't have as big a yard or be guarded by robots that looked like giant daddy longlegs.

Of course, they couldn't climb all the backyard fences and walls between Beamer's house and the Pink Palace, and they couldn't just drop into her backyard with parachutes. That left the old “me Tarzan, you Jane” transportation system — through the trees. There wouldn't be any swinging, though. They had discovered secret passages through the trees. You see, somebody or something had broken or trimmed back tree branches to form archways through which people could walk. These arched tunnels went from tree to tree all over the neighborhood. It wasn't as if Murphy Street didn't have enough mysteries. This one, though, was really weird. Secret passages were supposed to be in old houses and underground, not in the treetops.

“Have you checked to see if one of these passages goes through our tree?” asked Ghoulie.

Beamer's face stretched into a sheepish expression. “Come to think of it, I guess I haven't.”

“Holy tamole!” said Scilla. “Do we even know if one happens to cross over her yard?”

“We'll just have to take our chances,” said Beamer. “If it doesn't, we may have to make a little detour to get there. Come on,” he said. “Let's start lookin' in our tree. Spread out. Remember these things aren't all that easy to spot unless you happen into them.”

The tree was filled with the sound of swishing and creaking branches as they each took a different route up through the branches. Then it happened like magic. One moment Scilla was removing a twig that had snapped into her face, and the next she ducked down and around to see the passage rotate into view, front and center. It was like she'd suddenly switched from a 2-D to a 3-D world. “Whoa!” she said. “Hey, y'all, I found it!” she shouted to the others.

The first time they were in one of these tree tunnels, it had been winter. Now, with leaves starting to pop out all along the way, it looked like the passage had green wallpaper. Magical and fanciful is how Scilla thought of it, like something out of a fairy tale. “There it is,” she said when Beamer and Ghoulie joined her. “Not exactly straight and true, but mostly running along the same direction as Murphy Street.”

“Which means it will probably cross the backyard of the girl's house,” said Beamer.

Scilla had the sense they were walking in one of those hedge mazes. With the sunlight shooting between the leaves, it was very bright, almost like walking in the sky. That's not to say it wasn't scary. After all, the branches below their feet weren't all that close together. Every once in a while, she lost her footing and fell through. There were plenty of hand-holds, though, so she always caught herself — at the cost of a few scrapes and scratches. Scilla planned to wear long sleeves next time — maybe even a jean jacket.

Finally, they came to a yard that reeked of pink. The house — three stories tall plus an attic — looked even more like a pink birthday cake from the higher angle. Feeling a touch of nausea coming on at the thought, she shifted her gaze to the backyard. Smaller pink items were scattered about — a swing, a wishing well, several park benches, a gazebo, even a pink jungle gym.

The biggest pink thing, other than the house itself, was a playhouse shaped like a castle. Complete with delicate towers, it was perched atop a man-made hill with steps that wound around, leading up to the pink castle gate. Circular stairs in the back led to a second story and up to a tower.

She must be a little “princess.”
Scilla rolled her eyes at the thought. She had run up against them before.
Anything they
wanted, they'd get, and everything had to be perfect — perfect hair,
perfect eyes, and perfect face. They didn't wear clothes; they wore
costumes. This little party was going to be a nightmare!

She suddenly saw a pair of eyes staring up at them from a tower window. “Hey, y'all — ” she called.

They heard a scream and saw a girl hurriedly trample around the staircase, out the gate, and down around the winding steps. Scilla rolled her eyes and sighed when she saw the pink dress with all the ruffles.

“Hey, wait!/Hey, stop!/We come in peace!” Beamer, Scilla, and Ghoulie yelled at the same time as the pink girl ran into the house.

So much for the damsel-in-distress idea. At the moment, they were the ones causing her distress. Without thinking the situation through, they quickly rustled down the tree, dropped to the ground, and ran after her. They scrambled up a broad set of steps onto a stone patio as wide as the house. Then they shot through a wide set of glass doors and down a broad hallway.

Before they could skid to a stop, they were in a room right out of Disneyland. The whole front wall was curved and had a row of fancy windows about four times as tall as Scilla. These had half-circle windows at the top with lots of squiggly designs. Chairs, sofas, cabinets, grandfather and mantel clocks, lamps, and bookcases were all delicately designed in shades of pink with lots of curves and squiggles like they'd come out of
Beauty and the Beast
or
Aladdin
. Some people probably would have called it pretty, but after a few pink dreams and a trip to a pink planet, Scilla just found it sickly sweet. It made her dizzy just looking at them. What she would have given for a few straight lines.

Everything that wasn't pink was made of glass. Hundreds of little glass dolphins or unicorns or dragons . . . whatever . . . covered the tables and filled the cabinets. They reflected the light coming through the windows, casting sparkles around the walls and ceiling like a mirror ball at a dance party. Strangely enough, though, Scilla noticed that you couldn't see a ghost of a reflection in the larger pieces of glass — the glass cases or the windows.

Everything looked so . . . breakable that she was afraid to move. Scilla slapped Ghoulie's hand away when he tried to touch the horn of a glass unicorn. But she accidentally knocked off a glass penguin. In the process of trying to catch that, they tipped over still more glass figures. It was like a chain reaction! Before they knew it, they had a full-scale glass avalanche. All three of them ended up doing a major juggling act that involved several incredible jumps and diving catches. Amazingly, nothing was broken, but they were left lying on the floor, sucking their breath in like they'd just come up from a deep-sea dive without diving suits.

There was no sign of the girl, however. Scilla was relieved that she had, at least, stopped screaming.