Sea-ing is Believing!, page 10
I found part of the mummified hinkapoot chieftain (BLEURGH!), the clay nomad mask that had given me the chills, and a very squashed prattle-peacer machine, but I couldn’t see the glass urn anywhere.
Yanking up more and more debris, I lifted a sheet of silver bark and discovered the crumbled remains of the tiny house we’d seen hours ago. There huddled in one of the nearly flattened window-boxes was Viscera Von Tangle.
‘Banister boy!’ she squeaked, as she glanced up blinking in the bright light of the Gundiskump’s glow. ‘The old ghost! It’s a spectril!’
‘Yep! We figured that out already, Mistress Von Tangle.’
‘Then save me, you idiot!’
There was no time left to think. Grabbing the piskie princess by the scruff of her dress, I plucked her into the air like she was one of Nancy’s crab-curd koftas and dropped her into my jacket pocket.
I was just about to dive back into the wreckage and try to burrow deeper, when I heard scratchy screaming coming from behind me. For the teensiest of seconds, I thought it might be Oculus cursing and howling inside his new prison, and I spun around.
‘Go on, my girlies!’
It definitely wasn’t my bonkers uncle. . .
Flapping around her lepre-caravan like she’d gone around the twist, Maudlin Maloney was running in circles throwing lucky charms at her pet chickens.
‘Be off wit’ yer!’ she barked. ‘Go now!’
‘Maudlin!’ I ran across the dance floor, hurdling great pieces of the balconies and the giant gold claws that held the walls in place. Everything was starting to fall apart!
The ancient leprechaun glanced my way for a split-second.
‘Oh, it’s you…’ she grunted over her shoulder.
‘Maudlin, we have to find the glass jar and get out of here!’
‘Why bother?’ she snapped. ‘No one cares for Manky Old Maloney! No one checks I’m safe before they rocket off on their fishmobile!’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘Not the same!’ she yelled, then went back to what she was doing, throwing charms at her chickens. I watched as each little silver trinket hit their mark and, one by one, her pets were surrounded by a bubble and floated upwards towards the surface of the ocean. ‘Float away, me darlings! Me lovely wifelings!’
CRUUUUUUNCH!
Another enormous piece of the golden claws collapsed, demolishing the carousel and half the food trucks.
‘Maudlin!’ I screamed, turning to see the last of the skeleton mermaids vanishing down the Gundiskumps gaping gullet. ‘We have to go!’
‘I’m not leavin’ me winksome lepre-caravan!’ Maloney wailed. ‘Me spells! Me beautiful curses!’
‘We have no choice! Come on!’
‘Ah, BOG OFF, Frankie Banister, and leave me with my trinks and tatts!’
Maudlin threw a charm at the final hen and it was instantly encased in a football-sized bubble. We both watched as it drifted off, following the others.
‘Good luck to you, my Henelope!’ Maudlin cried. ‘Remember me!’
From down here, the escaping chickens looked like someone had let go of a whole bunch of feathery and very noisily clucking balloons.
BOOOOOOOOM!
One side of the staircase to the Atilantus station cracked in two and fell into the fountains.
It was now or never…
‘Maudlin! Forget the jar!’ I shouted. ‘Can you put us in a bubble like your chickens?’
Maloney turned and looked at me like I’d gone loop-de-loop insane.
‘Don’t be brain-mangled, boy! Those were chicken-bubble charms . . . for chickens! You don’t think I just go skittering about all day with a caravan full of boy-bubble charms or leprechaun-bubble charms, do you? What BLUNKING NONKUMBUMPS!!!’
This was useless! Without saying another word, I grabbed Maloney by the wrist and ran for it. If we could reach the Atilantus platform, we might be able to follow the track-tunnels all the way back to the Nothing To See Here Hotel.
‘GET OFF!’ Maudlin howled, but I refused to let go. We would never have survived my great-great-uncle’s first attempt at destroying us if it hadn’t been for her, and I wasn’t about to let her get eaten by a Gundiskump now.
‘Not much further!’ I called over my shoulder as I sprinted, yanking the hobbling leprechaun along behind me. ‘Don’t stop!’
We darted around fallen objects and jumped over the wide cracks that had suddenly appeared in the floor. If we didn’t reach the tunnels sharpish, we’d be goners for certain. The whole place was crumbling in on top of us.
Just as we reached the base of the stairs, there was an ear-shattering squeal of metal and wood, and we turned to see Maudlin’s lepre-caravan being dragged across the trembling floor as one of the monster’s glowing feelers snaked through the spokes of the brightly painted wheels.
‘MY HOME!!!’ Maloney wailed.
Neither of us moved.
With the Briny Ballroom raining down around us, we watched in horror as the Gundiskump shoved its grotesque face through the walls, glowing and pulsating and belching great gusts of foul-smelling breath as it came.
Water began surging in on all sides as the enchanted bubble started to tear and a voice inside my head whispered, He’s won! Oculus Nocturne has won!
Frozen in fright, the pair of us stood there and stared as Maloney’s caravan was dragged between the Gundiskump’s nightmarish teeth.
It was like everything was moving in slow motion!
My memories of what happened next are a little bit hazy, but I’ll do my best to remember, my reader friend.
Just as the sea monster’s giant teeth began to close around the ancient leprechaun’s home, she turned to me with wide eyes and…
‘There are armfuls of deadlish dangery things in there!’ she shrieked. ‘GET DOWN!’
The world slowed even more as the Gundiskump chomped onto the little wooden caravan and it EXPLODED in the most tremendous blast of magical green and purple flames.
Giant lumps of rancid fish hurtled across the entire ballroom and … THE BUBBLE WALLS CAVED IN!
Crushing waters from outside came surging towards us. I grabbed Maloney and hurled her up the stairs and we ran, tripping and stumbling, but I knew it was no use. There was no way we could out sprint, tonnes of cascading sea water.
‘Goodbye, boy!’ Maloney cried. ‘I’ll see you in the Land of the D—’
Time sped up in an instant as I spotted the yellow knitted hat with blue trim and a red pom-pom laying on the step above us. Without a second to think, I yanked the soggy thing onto my head and just had time to wrap my arms around Maudlin’s little waist, before…
‘WHOOOOOOOOMMMMMMFFFFFF!’
THAT’S THAT THEN . . .
YOU MADE IT ALL THE WAY TO THE END OF THE STORY, MY HUMAN FRIEND!!
I told you it was good’un, didn’t I?
Everything that happened after me and Manky Old Maloney went shooting up out of the ocean like a four-armed, two-headed screeching torpedo with a nice woollen hat on is a complete blur.
All I remember is the sound of Mum’s voice echoing like it was miles and miles away, and the feeling of Hoggit licking my face with his little paws on my chest.
My family found me on Brighton beach, twisted in seaweed and stinking of Gundiskump guts, while Maudlin washed up not too far away with the octopus who’d been flipping pancakes knotted up in her dreadlocks and twenty chickens in bubbles clucking in circles around her.
Hearing her croaking: ‘GET THIS SQUIDGLY THING OFF ME!’ will forever be one of the loveliest sounds I think I’ve ever heard . . . HA HA!
Once we’d both been carried back to the hotel, wrapped in blankets and given mug after steaming mug of pondweed tea from Nancy, I started to feel a bit more like my old self. The fact that Mum gave me a whole month off from chores for being brave also helped a bit!
BUT! That’s not the even best news, because. . .
DRUM ROLL, PLEASE!!!
Among all the debris and chunks of Gundiskump that washed up alongside me and Maloney, we spotted a particular glass jar bobbing about in the shadows under the pier. Well . . . ‘WE’ isn’t quite right . . . it was Great-Great-Great-Grandad Abraham who found it. The REAL Great-Great-Great-Grandad Abraham! He used his ghost senses and located his evil son’s spiteful spectril in no time.
With Oculus’s body frozen in the Himalayas, and his soul trapped in a glass jar on the opposite side of the world, it looked like he wouldn’t be bothering us any time soon. Dad was instructed to store the spectril on one of the highest shelves in the library with all the really old BORING books for now. No one will disturb it there.
And so … that’s that.
Just another average day in the Nothing To See Here Hotel!
Ooof built poor Maudlin and her chickens a little house in the garden by the compost heap, a very bedraggled Princess Viscera Von Tangle has moved into one of the kitchen cupboards, and Grandad Abe has been staying on the three hundred and ninety-nine steps that lead up to Granny Regurgita’s bedroom. Every night when I take the demented rhinoceros her dinner, he’s outside her new door singing love songs through the keyhole.
She absolutely hates it, but it serves her right for being such a grumpy grunion!
Anyway . . . don’t stay away too long, my reader friend.
If you think what happened today was crazy, you’ll pop your clonkers when you hear what happened next at The Nothing To See Here Hotel, where weird is the new normal.
See you next time!
Steven B is an award-winning children’s writer, actor, voice artist and host of World Book Day’s The Biggest Book Show On Earth. When not typing, twirling about on stage, or being very dramatic on screen, Steven spends his time trying to spot thistlewumps at the bottom of the garden and catching dust pooks in jars. His The Wrong Pong series was shortlisted for the prestigious Roald Dahl Funny Prize.
www.stevenbutlerbooks.com
Steven L is an award-winning illustrator based in Brighton, not far from The Nothing To See Here Hotel! As well as designing all of the creatures you have just seen throughout this book, Steven also illustrates the Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam series and Frank Cottrell Boyce’s fiction titles. When he isn’t drawing giant spiders and geriatric mermaids, Steven loves to eat ice cream on Brighton beach looking out for goblin pirate ships on the horizon.
www.stevenlenton.com
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
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Text Copyright © 2019 Steven Butler
Illustrations Copyright © 2019 Steven Lenton
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PB ISBN: 978-1-4711-7873-3
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-7874-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Steven Butler, Sea-ing is Believing!
