The Slime That Would Not Die (9 page)

We wouldn't be getting to the screening room via a slippery slide today. Instead, we hunted for a staircase to the basement level.

Once we actually got downstairs, it took Lindsey only a moment to find the door that readSCREENING . A door next to it read . We decided to head into the vault first to get the movies we needed to see.

I don't know what I was expecting to see, but it wasn't what we found. The vault was a black room with no windows. None! Shelves overflowed with reels and videos. DVDs lined the walls. I thought I knew Leery's movie collection, but there was so much here that I'd never even heard of or read about. Plus, this room had not been touched in a very long time. Everything was a dusty, grimy mess and nothing was alphabetical. We couldn't really tell if the tapes or reels were copies or real. I assumed Leery would have destroyed originals a long time ago.

I walked over to what should have been the
Slimo
section and saw three movies there that started with the letter
S
:
Snake Boy
,
Saved by the Beast
, and
Son of Slimo
. Luckily, it didn't take too long to find two other
Slimo
flicks we needed:
Slimo
and
Curse of Slimo
were buried in another pile across the room.

We carried
Slimo
and its two sequels into the screening room.

“Here goes nothing,” I said. Stella hit on the projection machine.

As drops of slime appeared at the edges of the screen, I could practically smell the goo.

CHAPTER 13

The B-Monster Vision used to film
Slimo
gives it one of the best special-effects scenes in all of Leery's movies. Just when you think the monster has drowned or disappeared, it rises from the swamp, ready to attack.

The ending with the exploding gas bubble gets me every time. I've never watched another movie where I felt like the screen was splurting at me. I love the fact that Slimo escapes without being destroyed in the first movie. That way, we still don't know what—if anything—is capable of killing the goo.

I took out a pencil and my small notebook, like all the best detectives do. If I was going to be a Monster Squad member, I needed to get serious about asking all the right questions.

Where does Slimo come from?
Don't know.

Who does Slimo eat?
Anyone and everyone—except for shoes.

Does Slimo really die in the first movie?
No!!!

We popped in
Slimo
's first sequel and waited for it to start.

In
Curse of Slimo
, the B-Monster shows up just before a cruise ship leaves port.

The action starts with a group of guests on a cruise ship. They are eating breakfast. Everything is perfect: the sun, the water, and the sky. Then breakfast arrives in oversize serving trays. Only it isn't breakfast at all. It is Slimo, disguised as breakfast! It oozes all over the rooms, swallowing cruise passengers (and whatever else it could eat, like pool chairs, inflatable rafts, and shuffleboard sticks) in great big gross gulps. Of course, it leaves a lot of sandals and flip-flops and a foul, foul stench behind in the process.

Damon loved this sequel the best. He was laughing so hard the whole time, I thought he was going to explode. Every time Slimo gulped down another object, Damon burped like a foghorn. At the end of the movie, it looks like Slimo drowns when it falls off the cruise ship during a bad lightning storm. Damon almost fell out of his chair.

Stella, of course, wasn't laughing one bit. She wanted to debate about how and why the slime dies—or
if
it dies at all in the sequel. After all, it hadn't died in the first flick. We couldn't agree. Lindsey thought it swam away. Damon and Stella both thought a deep-sea creature swallowed it. Maybe it just drowned?

If we didn't know for sure how Slimo died in the movies, how could we ever really figure out how to get rid of the monster?

I had to keep taking notes! There were answers here, on-screen. I just had to look closer.

The next sequel was called
Son of Slimo
. As that reel started up, heavy, dark music played in the background. This Slimo leaves trails of sludge everywhere like an enormous snail, even though it is the dead of winter.

In one of the scenes, Stella spotted a waitress at a restaurant scene. Was that Auntie San San? Walter had told us that Sandy appeared in almost every single B-Monster movie. We had to keep our eyes open!

By the end of the movie, after ingesting a dozen woodland creatures and the town sheriff, the winter slime crawls onto a major highway during a major blizzard. It travels slowly for miles on the road until it finally just collapses. Or does it freeze? Or does it stop breathing?

“It's not dead!” Damon yelled as the movie ended. “Oswald Leery is tricking us!”

“Wait, I think he's just giving us clues,” Stella declared. “In every movie we've watched,
water
is always around when the B-Monster gets destroyed. Maybe that's the answer to all our questions.”

Was Stella right?

Slimo vanishes in water in the first movie. Then, in the first sequel, the ocean gets him again! But what about the last movie? In
Son of Slimo
, was it the blizzard—the
snow
—that kills the B-Monster? Snow is just frozen water, after all.

“You're probably right about the water,” I said to Stella. “Except for the fact that if water kills the B-Monster, then how did it survive in our kitchen and bathroom sinks?”

Stella shrugged. “Oh, good point. This is so hard to figure out!”

“Maybe something is
in
the water,” Lindsey said. “Like flesh-eating microorganisms.”

“Are you kidding?” Damon said, making a face. “That's disgusting.”

“No more disgusting than
you
,” Stella said.

“You guys!” I cried. “We have to figure this out together.”

All of a sudden, the lights went up in the projection room. I squinted at the light.

“Hello, Monster Squad,” Walter said with his ominous voice.

I worried that he might be angry with us. After all, we'd come into the castle unannounced.

But he wasn't angry. He wanted to help.

“Found anything out about the real Slimo?” Walter asked.

Stella flipped her long black hair and sighed. “No, we're stuck. How does Slimo really die?”

“We know it has something to do with water,” I explained. “But we don't know why.”

“Isn't there something else you can tell us?” Lindsey asked.

“Perhaps,” said Walter. “Perhaps there is something
in
the water that helps to destroy Slimo?”

“That's what I was thinking!” Damon cried.

I glared at Damon. He was taking credit for Lindsey's good idea.

“Okay, you guys, it's getting late,” Stella said, looking annoyed. “I have to go home now and do my real homework. Sorry.”

“How can you think about homework at a
slime
like this?” Lindsey cracked.

We all groaned loudly. Stella made a face.

“Have you visited some of the places where you saw the slime?” Walter asked. “Maybe that will help. That's what Dr. Leery always does.”

“You're right!” Stella's face lit up again. “We can check out Mr. Bunsen's classroom tomorrow!”

“Good idea,” Lindsey said.

“How are we ever going to get into school?” I asked. “Tomorrow is Saturday.”

“I know a way in!” Damon said.

“You do?” I said.

“I'm not a member of the Monster Squad for nothing!” Damon said.

I smiled. We really were all in this together now! In order to get Slimo, all we had to do was get back to the scenes of the slime.

CHAPTER 14

Damon may be the fifth grade's most annoying bully, but he is also a total genius.

We sneaked into school the next day, Saturday, through the downstairs double doors. The basketball team played there on Saturday, but Damon figured that even though most basketball players and fans would not use the lower level, the doors would still be open.

He was right.

Damon also figured that Security Guard Spiker might be at the school building.

He was right about that, too.

But Spiker didn't keep us out. He said, “Howdy kids. Enjoy the game.”

I think he knew we weren't there to play ball, but he let us in just the same.

When we sneaked up the stairwell to the third floor, however, we started to get nervous. The school was super-creepy when classes were out of session.

Mr. Bunsen's class was still blocked off with yellow police tape. We had to climb underneath to get inside the doorway.

The first thing that we noticed was the smell.

Everywhere we looked, it reeked, worse than ever.

“Maybe Slimo is already dead?” Lindsey suggested. “That would make life easier, wouldn't it?”

“Right,” Damon said. “Like this going to be easy? I don't think so.”

“Do you think this first Monster Squad mission is some kind of test?” Stella asked as she walked to the other side of the room.

“I feel like everything in life is a test,” I mumbled. “And I'm
this close
to failing.”

“Peeuuuw! All the leftover goop in here smells so bad,” Lindsey said, fanning her nose. “I think I might—”

“Don't say it!” Damon cried. He pinched his nose hard and went into Mr. Bunsen's science closet. This place was usually off-limits. It was where Mr. Bunsen stored jars and specimens. He had a long shelf stacked with videocassettes and piles of papers, plus a slop sink and a refrigerator.

Lindsey and I followed Damon into the closet. Stella was still across the room.

“Hey, the fridge in here is open!” Damon cried as we turned the corner and saw the light glowing.

“And I guess we've found the source of the bad smell,” I moaned, pinching my nose.

We spotted the problem right away. It wasn't slime, though. It was moldy cheese. There were dishes turning black, blue, and green with fuzz.

“How gross is
this
?” Lindsey said. “Welcome to Moldy City!”

“Is there anything grosser than old cheese?” Damon said.

“You mean besides your breath?” I joked.

“I'll pound you later for that,” Damon groaned.

“Wait!” Lindsey said, peering deeper into the fridge. “Look!”

In the back,
way
in the back, was a row of test-tube vials in a small stand. Inside the vials was something green. It appeared to be glowing.

“Get one of those out.”

Lindsey reached in and got it.

“Cool,” Damon said. “This doesn't jiggle like the slime I saw in my bathroom.”

“Let me see,” I said, reaching for one of the vials. Damon was right. It didn't seem gooey at all. “But it has to be the same stuff,” I said.

“So Mr. Bunsen can see Slimo, too . . .” Lindsey said.

“Just like we can,” Damon added.

“What if one of these broke or fell and the slime poured out?” I suggested.

“Massive slimage!” Damon said.

We all turned our heads. It was coming from the classroom!

“Help!” Stella screamed.

We rushed out. Stella was standing on top of Mr. Bunsen's desk. On the floor, all around her was a green slime pool, quivering.

“Heeeelllp!” she cried again. She had assumed her best karate pose, but we already knew even the strongest kung-fu chop could not defeat this goo.