Moon-Faced Ghoul-Thing (5 page)

Chapter Eight

Ben was woken by a stick poking him in the face. Groaning, he prised open his eyelids and looked up, only to see something short and skinny looking back down.

At first he thought it was Paradise in her green robe, but he quickly realised that this wasn’t the case. The figure was a little shorter
than Paradise for one thing, and it wasn’t his clothing that was green. It was his skin.

Ben nudged the walking stick away from his face and sat up. This hurt. There were loads of little scratches and cuts on his hand and legs. From the way it ached to blink he guessed there were a few on his face too.

His clothes were thick with grime and broken twigs, and he was lying on something lumpy and uncomfortable.

“Get off,” said Paradise from beneath him.

Ben slid sideways as Paradise wriggled into a sitting position and spotted the green-skinned figure peering at them.

He was a strange-looking little man, with a head shaped like a sagging rugby ball and wide, bloodshot eyes that took up seventy per
cent of his face. There was barely room left over for his long pointy nose and his puckered little mouth that reminded Ben of an inside-out walnut. He had fluffy grey eyebrows, which wasn’t particularly unusual, but they were on his cheeks, which was.

His clothing had been fashioned from a few old sacks, tied with a length of rope around his middle. He had stopped poking Ben with his knobbly walking stick, but the man now held it in front of him like a sword.

“Who are you?” Paradise asked.

“Who am I?” said the little man, his eyes darting nervously. “Good question. Good question. Here’s another. Who are you? Hmm? And why did you fall through my roof?”

Ben and Paradise both looked up. Sure
enough, there was a large hole in the thatched roof above their heads. Wesley dangled upside down from it, his robe snagged on a piece of broken wood.

“Hello there,” Wesley said, then he fell in a heap to the floor. He bounded back to his feet and smoothed his crumpled robe with both hands. “I’m up, I’m fine. I’m fine. Meant that.” He spotted the little green man. “Oh. A goblin.”

“Where?” said the little man. “Oh, me. Yes. A goblin I am. Not just any goblin. No, sir. A Luck Goblin. Very rare.”

“A Luck Goblin?” said Ben. He hadn’t read about those in Lunt Bingwood’s book either.

“What kind of Luck Goblin?” Wesley asked. “Bad luck or good luck?”

The goblin glanced around the ruined remains of his house, lingering for a moment on the small dragon that had crash-landed on what looked as if it had once been his kitchen table.

“Guess,” he said and then, with a
ping
, his trousers fell down. He hurriedly pulled them back up. “Sorry, that happens occasionally. Well, regularly. Well … six times a day.”

The dragon let out a happy-sounding little
yip
and wagged her tail as Paradise approached her. She looked like a big, weird-shaped dog. With wings.

“I think she’s OK,” Paradise said. The dragon licked her cheek, pasting slobber all over her face. “Yes, definitely fine,” Paradise spluttered.

Ben looked at the damage around them. It had probably been quite a nice little house until a few minutes ago. The walls were made of mossy stone, and the furniture – what was left of it – looked quite rough and rustic, but it was pleasant in its own way.

“Mr Nuttendudge,” said the goblin.

Ben and Wesley exchanged a glance. “I’m sorry?” said Wesley.

“Me. My name. Mr Nuttendudge,” the goblin said. He held out a hand that looked much too large for the rest of him. Ben reached out with the gauntlet and shook the offered
hand. The goblin’s eyes widened when it felt the metal against its skin, but he didn’t say a word.

“I’m Ben.” He tried to take his hand back but Mr Nuttendudge kept hold of it, his eyes firmly fixed on the gauntlet. With a firm tug, Ben pulled it free and gestured to the others. “This is Wesley; that’s Paradise.”

“Ben, Wesley, Paradise,” said Mr Nuttendudge. He repeated their names a few times, then gave a nod. “And who is your young dragon friend?”

“She’s, um…” Ben began. “Actually, we don’t know what her name—”

“Burnie,” announced Paradise. “Her name’s Burnie.”

Ben opened his mouth to argue but Paradise
shot him one of her looks. He shrugged. “Yeah, looks like we’re going with that.”

Mr Nuttendudge nodded. “Apt. Good. Appropriate. Not often you see a dragon. Especially not in my kitchen.”

With some difficulty he pulled a small wooden chair free of the wreckage, dusted it off then sat down. It collapsed immediately, and he barely had time to let out a panicky “Wargh!” before he hit the floor.

Ben helped him back to his feet. “I see why you’re a Bad Luck Goblin.”

“This? Ha! No, no, this is nothing, nothing at all,” blurted Mr Nuttendudge. “I have a measurement scale, you see? Of unluckiness. I call it the Nuttendudge Scale.”

“You named it after yourself?” said Ben.

Mr Nuttendudge blinked slowly. “Goodness. Yes. My word. So I did,” he said. “I thought it sounded familiar.”

He picked up another chair, looked at it for a moment then thought better of it. “Zero Nuttendudge is a day where nothing terrible happens. Nothing terrible at all. Theoretical, of course; I’ve yet to experience one,” he said, wringing his oversized hands together. “Five Nuttendudge is the average. This? Why, this
is barely a two.”

There was a
crash
as part of his house fell over behind him. “Two and a half at most,” he said, doing his best to smile.

Wesley scurried over and peered through the gap the collapsing wall had left. Acres of cloudy grey sky stretched overhead, and just twenty or thirty metres from the house stood the edge of a tall dark forest.

“Any sign of Scarrabus?” asked Ben.

Wesley shook his head. “Thankfully not.”

Mr Nuttendudge’s saucer-sized eyes somehow managed to grow even wider. “Scarrabus? Lord Scarrabus? Coming here? Why would he be coming here?”

“He was sort of chasing us,” Ben explained. “We escaped his castle and stole his dragon.”

“We didn’t steal his dragon, we freed his prisoner,” Paradise corrected. She tickled the dragon under the chin. “Didn’t we, Burnie? Yes we did! Yes we did!”

Mr Nuttendudge hobbled back and forth, shaking his oddly shaped head in dismay as he muttered to himself. “Lord Scarrabus. Coming here. Not good, not good. And them just children. Terrible. Terrible thing.”

“It’s not that bad,” said Ben. “It’s actually been kind of exciting so far. Don’t you think?” He looked to the others and smiled. They didn’t smile back.

“No,” said Paradise.

“It’s been horrible!” Wesley agreed.

“Come on!” said Ben. “Castle chases, weird monsters, dragons, dramatic escapes – it’s been
pretty fun.”

“Oh my no, oh my no,” said Mr Nuttendudge. “Lord Scarrabus is not fun, not fun at all. Terrible. Terrible man. If he finds you…” The goblin smacked himself on the forehead, trying to drive an unwelcome thought away. “No. He must not. He cannot.”

“We’d really like to go home,” said Wesley. “Can you help us?”

Mr Nuttendudge stroked his cheekbrows thoughtfully. “Perhaps. Yes. Perhaps. But first …” He lowered himself carefully on to another wooden chair and held his breath. The chair stayed in one piece and the little goblin relaxed. “… you must tell me everything.”

Chapter Nine

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Paradise said.

She, Ben and Wesley had found broken bits of furniture among the wreckage and were perched in a semicircle around Mr Nuttendudge. Burnie had padded through from the kitchen and was curled up at Paradise’s feet, snoring softly.

“One minute I was fast asleep in my bed, the next I’m being woken up by Wesley screaming.”

“I wasn’t screaming,” Wesley protested. “I was … whistling.”

“You were
whistling
‘Help me, help me, I don’t want to die’?”

Wesley shifted on his stool. “Yes,” he said. “I’m very talented.”

Mr Nuttendudge nodded. He had nodded
at pretty much everything they had said, and Ben was starting to wonder if his neck had developed some sort of mechanical fault.

“Interesting. Yes. Very revealing,” the goblin mused. “So, a servant of Scarrabus brought you to his castle, yes?”

“The Moon-Faced Ghoul-Thing,” Ben said.

Mr Nuttendudge frowned. “The what?”

“The Moon-Faced Ghoul-Thing,” Ben said again. “It’s a sort of … thing.”

“A sort of ghoul-thing,” said Wesley.

“Yeah,” Ben agreed. “It’s a sort of ghoulthing.”

“With a moon-face,” Wesley finished.

Mr Nuttendudge shook his head. “Never heard of it.”

“It’s got a big cloak and these kind of spider legs,” explained Paradise.

“Oh,
that
servant of Scarrabus!” cried Mr Nuttendudge. He leaped to his feet dramatically, realised he looked a bit silly and so carefully sat down again. “Not Scarrabus’s servant. His slave. Trapped. Forced to bring fresh victims into Goonderslarg.”

“What is Goonderslarg exactly?” asked Ben.
He and Paradise leaned forward on their bits of broken furniture as the goblin and Wesley explained in hushed whispers.

“It’s a demon dimension,” said Wes.

“One of the eight Monstrous Realms,” continued Mr Nuttendudge. “Not the worst of them, perhaps, but still horrible. Horrible.”

“Most of the scary things in our world – trolls, ogres, Shark-Headed Bear-Things – they come from one of the eight realms,” said Wesley.

“Well, that’s good,” said Ben. “If they escaped then so can we.”

“I still don’t understand what we’re even doing here,” Paradise said. “We left out the sweets. We did everything we were supposed to.”

“We did! We absolutely did,” agreed Wesley. “Didn’t we, Ben?”

Ben was suddenly taking a keen interest in a splodge of mud on his knee. He licked his thumb and tried to rub the smudge away, doing his best to pretend he hadn’t heard.

“Ben?”

Ben looked up. “Hmm?”

“I said we left our tributes,” Wesley said. “On the steps. For the Feast of Scarrabus. We left them out.”

Ben cleared his throat. “Well, yeah. We… I mean… When you say ‘left’…”

Paradise slowly got to her feet. With Ben sitting down, this made them almost the same height. She seemed to tower over him, though, as she fixed him with a glare so stern
it could’ve shattered solid stone.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“What makes you think I did anything?” Ben asked, doing his best to sound innocent.

Wesley stood up. “Ben?” he said. “What did you do?”

Ben looked at both his friends in turn. He tried to smile, but the muscles in his face were having none of it and it came out all wonky.
“Itookallthesweetsback,” he murmured all at once.

Paradise drew in a sharp breath. “What did you say?”

“You said yourself it was all make-believe, so I didn’t think anything would happen,” Ben explained. “And if it did it would just be a bonus.”

“A
bonus
?” said Paradise. Wesley stood beside her, shaking his head, like he didn’t want to believe what he was hearing.

“Yeah,” said Ben. “We were bored. Nothing exciting had happened in months. I thought if the Scarrabus stuff was true, it might be – I dunno – fun.”

“Fun?” Paradise growled. “You thought it might be
fun
? You idiot!”

Wesley stepped between them. “Paradise, please. Let me handle this,” he said calmly. He turned to Ben. “You
idiot
!” he yelped. “We weren’t bored.
You
were bored. Not us. Not me. I love boring. Being bored is the most exciting part of my day!”

“I didn’t think it would—”

“That’s just it, Ben. You didn’t
think
,” said Wesley, clenching his fists and stamping his foot. “You never think, you just act. You act like everything’s an adventure. Like danger is something to be laughed at!”

Sparks swirled around Wesley’s clenched fists. Tiny flickering dots spun in his eyes, turning them into whirlpools of shimmering light. His voice took on a deep booming tone that seemed to shake the remaining walls of
the house.

“But do you see us laughing, Ben?” he demanded, and flashes of power flitted across his teeth. “Do you see anyone here laughing about what you’ve done?”

Slowly, Ben stood up. “Easy, Wes,” he said. He reached out to his friend, but a jolt of energy crackled up his arm, forcing him to jump back.

“You’ve trapped us. You’ve doomed us to spend the rest of our lives stuck in this demon dimension
because you were bored
!”

“Calm down, Wesley,” said Paradise gently. “He messed up, but he didn’t know it was going to turn out like this.”

Wesley spun to face her. Magical energy flickered across his face and fizzled through his hair. He unclenched his fists and a crackle of purple light trailed from his fingertips.

“Stop protecting him,” said Wes in a voice like rumbling thunder. “Stop making excuses. Why do you always—”

WHAM!

A metal tea tray clanged against the back of Wesley’s head. The magic glow sparked and flickered away. Wes’s eyes crossed. He wobbled gently from side to side, said “Flibble,” with quite a surprising amount of enthusiasm then fell over.

“Sorry about that,” said Mr Nuttendudge, lowering the now badly dented tray. “Seemed like your friend was getting quite unfriendly.”

Wesley lay face down on the floor in an X shape, his arms and legs spread out wide. Ben gave him a gentle nudge with the toe of his boot.

“What was that about?” he wondered. “Since when was Wesley so…”

“Angry?”

“I was going to say ‘magic’,” said Ben. “He’s normally useless at magic stuff.”

The goblin gave his chin a thoughtful stroke. “The Feast of Scarrabus,” he said. “It’s the day of the year when the barriers between the Monstrous Realms are at their thinnest.”

“Meaning?” asked Paradise.

“Meaning magic is flowing freely through all the dimensions. Even your own. Your friend has been soaking up dark sorcery and demoncraft for hours. He’s dripping with evil magic now.”

Wesley rolled on to his side, giggled something about kittens then began to snore.

“Are you sure?” Ben asked.

“Positive,” said Mr Nuttendudge. “Certain. He’ll probably swell up like a balloon and pop in a minute. Won’t be pretty. No, sir. You might want to take a step back.”

“What?” gasped Ben.

“Or find a waterproof hat.”

“What?”

“There must be something we can do,” Paradise said.

Mr Nuttendudge puffed out his cheeks, making him look even more toad-like. “We must get you home. Away from here. From the worst of the magic. We must find a way to open a portal out of Goonderslarg.”

“Wait a minute! A portal, that’s it!” Ben held up the gauntlet. “This opens portals!”

Mr Nuttendudge hurried to his side. “It does? May I see?”

Ben hesitated. He knew the goblin was asking him to hand over the gauntlet, but it was his most precious possession in the world and he didn’t like the idea of taking it off and passing it to someone he’d just met. Instead, he held his arm out so Mr Nuttendudge could get a closer look.

The goblin gave the gauntlet a sniff, then touched the tip of his thin purple tongue against the metal. He flicked his tongue around inside his mouth for a moment, analysing the taste, then his eyes went even wider with wonder.

“Wyrdanium,” he gasped. “This metal, it’s wyrdanium.”

“What’s wyrdanium?” Paradise asked.

“Only one of the most magical elements in existence,” Mr Nuttendudge said. His fingers traced across the gauntlet’s surface. “You say it makes portals? Where to?”