Trollhunters (30 page)

Five yellow claws wrapped around Tub’s considerable gut and lifted him into the back of the van. There was a bruise on Tub’s jaw from where Steve had thrown him against the locker,
but it was nothing—he looked more certain of himself than at any other point in his life. He grinned at me, showing all those glorious braces.

“You watch my back, I watch yours,” he said. “It’s only fair.”

He offered up a hand and I took it.

“My ninja,” I said.

“My trollhunter,” he replied.

I don’t think Jack was thrilled about having another kid to look out for. But he clenched his teeth and popped the van into gear. The bottom scraped against the driveway with the
additional weight. Blinky shut the side door with a tentacle while another appendage curled around Tub’s neck affectionately. I felt a sob catch in my chest. We might all be headed to our
deaths, but this right here was a family, no matter how unusual it might be.

Off we roared, peeling away strips of lawn and knocking bumpers from cars that, according to Jack, should’ve been parked closer to the curb. Tub shook off the blows and unfolded from his
fanny pack a laminated artifact of Dershowitz lore.

“The cat list!” I cried. “You found it.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t hard to find once all my video games had been eaten. But I’m happy to report that the killing spree is over. Notice there’s no cat hair stuck in
those fancy new braces? I’ve converted our friend to cheeseburgers.”

“Pickle,” said ARRRGH!!!. “Onion.”

“Right, she likes them with pickles and onion.”

“Paper. Is flavor best.”

“Yeah, she likes the wrapping paper left on, too. FYI, you don’t want to know how much two hundred cheeseburgers cost. My god. Point is, she didn’t mean anything by eating all
those cats and she’s done with it.”

“Cat no for eat. For chew.”

I translated and Tub’s face fell.

“No, no, no. We’ve been over this. You can’t
chew
them either, okay?”

ARRRGH!!! gnashed her metal-covered teeth, trying to make sense of it.

Tub sighed and snapped the laminated list.

“I thought a brief eulogy might be in order?”

He cleared his throat.

“For those brave felines who fell in the fight for freedom, I recite these names so that we will not forget that adorable, undeniable sense of curiosity that got them all eaten.”

“Make this quick,” Jack said. “We’re almost there.”

“And now for the naming of the deceased. Curly Fries. CSI. Midichlorian. Dow Jones.” Tub shrugged. “Grandma watches a lot of TV.” He continued. “The Wayans
Brothers. Bridezilla. The Secretary of Agriculture. That’s So Raven. The Cat Formerly Known as Prince—”

“Parking now.” Jack grunted as if bracing for impact. “Parking—parking—hold on—”

Jack did indeed park, or, as I would’ve put it, sideswiped a shoulder barrier until both driver’s side wheels were punctured. The van jerked to an unhealthy halt, and the engine
coughed until it died. I felt bad for Dad but for only a second: Jack pulled down his mask, planted his hands on the edge of the window, and leapt out.

I heard him land on his feet in a pile of dead leaves and hurry away. The other doors were already opening and so I followed. There was a bank leading down to a dry canal bed, but getting there
meant trudging through overgrown weeds. These slowed me down, as did several decades of trash tossed from the street. Only when I had reached the bottom with the others did I realize the
significance of the location.

It was the Holland Transit Bridge.

Though I’d heard my dad speak of the location all of my life, I’d always avoided it. It was easily done: for a generation, people had eschewed it because of a nasty
urban legend about a boy being eaten beneath the bridge in the ’60s. And then, in the 1980s, a freeway bypass ended its usefulness as a thoroughfare.

Now it existed as the last respite of homeless junkies. I stepped into its shadow and warily examined the chunks of cement dangling overhead by thin iron rods. More empty beer bottles than
I’d ever seen had been tossed next to a concrete wall covered in graffiti: demonic beings who bore resemblance to ARRRGH!!!, as well as nonsensical yet ominous declarations like
Harpakhrad Lives!
The structure was in deplorable shape but held the portent of ancient ruins. Something important had happened here, you could feel it.

Jack wandered about with his astrolabe as one does when trying to find a phone signal. ARRRGH!!! snuffled her nose along every clammy surface, giving experimental licks to mold and bird
droppings. Blinky’s tentacles pushed and prodded for any door that might be hiding in plain sight. Minutes went by, then half an hour. Tub and I sent each other private telegrams of panic
until Jack kicked at a pillar, sending pellets of cement skidding down the canal.

“This is the place! I know it is!”

“Gumm-Gumms,” Blinky concurred. “I feel them with my every beautiful pore.”

“I can’t single out the door. I just can’t.”

“The Machine, Jack. Remember the Machine and the will to fight shall prevail!”

The discussion was interrupted by a soft thud. ARRRGH!!! was hunched over the wilted cardboard box that she’d tossed to the ground. Dirt scritched against concrete as the box shifted
around on its own. Jack did not hesitate: he withdrew Victor Power from its scabbard and bolted for the box as if meaning to run his blade through its center.

ARRRGH!!! held out a gentle paw to block him.

“Choice none,” she said.

“Balderdash!” Blinky cried. “I shall double my efforts! Triple! Quadruple!”

ARRRGH!!! picked up the box with a bashfulness that begged for forgiveness.

Jack’s warning crunched from his boom box speaker.

“I’ll cut it out of your hands, I swear!”

Spittle trickled down ARRRGH!!!’s chin as she gave her human friend a smile of metal-packaged teeth. Then she reached carefully into the box and withdrew the Eye of Malevolence. The yellow
orb flopped inside the cage of her hand, its long stems whipping like strings of wet seaweed. A high-pitched, babyish squeak emitted from somewhere inside the feculent flesh.

The thing wanted fed.

“Hold her down!” Jack commanded.

He wrapped himself around ARRRGH!!!’s left arm but was nowhere near strong enough and in seconds found himself dangling from the bicep. Blinky knotted his tentacles around both legs but he
did not look especially optimistic. Tub gave me a desperate look and we both took handfuls of stiff black fur.

The Eye of Malevolence dug its long, stringy fingers into ARRRGH!!!’s face, and that was it for the trollhunters. Jack’s armor crashed loudly when he hit the dirt. Blinky was thrown
into a pillar, setting off a small avalanche of crumbled cement. Tub and I found ourselves rolling over and over, locked in a terrified embrace. I put on the brakes and saw the Eye’s soft
body pulsating as it leeched away our friend’s sanity.

A door to the troll world opened in one of the pillars. I was about to announce this news before dozens more began creaking open and snapping shut from every part of the underpass: the belly,
the walls, the ground beneath our feet. ARRRGH!!! had done her job, but the Eye had countered by opening additional passages to confuse us. For a bonus we received a deranged ARRRGH!!!; she lurched
at her former partners, taking out chunks of concrete and canal bed and sending refuse into the air like filthy insects.

Blinky’s tentacles picked up a dozen jagged pieces of rock.

I withdrew Cat #6. Would we have to hurt her? Or worse?

Or would it be the other way around?

Only Jack, I noticed, had not armed himself. He stood motionless with his hands at his sides.

I pulled Tub closer to the action.

“Jim! No! Bad timing! She’s in a mood! Reschedule! Reschedule!”

“Boost me up!” I shouted. “Now!”

“Oh god oh god oh god oh god,” Tub mumbled as he ran up behind the marauding ARRRGH!!!, kneeled down, and laced his hands together. I planted my foot into Tub’s makeshift sling
and he launched me upward, as he’d done a hundred times in the past. For a delirious instant I was airborne and then my face was full of fur. I wrapped my limbs around an arm muscle bigger
than me.

ARRRGH!!! jerked the arm as if shooing away a pest but paid me little mind as she cornered Blinky. For me the ride was like being churned up and down on some vomitous carnival attraction. I
pulled my face from the carpet of gamy hair, took two handfuls of pelt, and began surmounting the shoulder. The Eye of Malevolence slurped outward to cover ever more of the troll’s face,
digging a couple of stems so far into her nose that they reemerged from her mouth, looking as if they’d made a wrong turn.

A troll door opened from the concrete and knocked Blinky to the ground in a spill of tentacles. ARRRGH!!! bellowed and took advantage of the moment, placing a giant foot on either side of the
Lizzgump scholar and raising a fist for the killing blow. I aimed Cat #6 but was too far from the Eye to strike.

Seconds before Blinky was to be crushed I became aware of a song.

The melody was fragile and inexpert, but it was this very roughness that brought poignancy to the wistful tune. I took a handful of fur and leaned to the side to find Jack coming closer, his
mask and astrolabe dangling from either hand, his swords stashed across his back. The kid warrior, unbelievably, was singing.

ARRRGH!!!’s right arm shot out like an out-of-control garbage truck. It passed inches in front of Jack’s face, whipping the astrolabe from his hand and sending it clattering into the
gutter among the broken bottles. Jack took a single swallow of fear before continuing the song.

ARRRGH!!!’s infested snout twitched with a distant memory of this lilting melody. She lowered her fanged head to get a better look at this curious little being, and then her hairy forehead
peaked in surprise as Blinky’s voice, a distinguished tenor, joined in on harmony.

Just picture it. Forty-five years before, there was Jack, just months after leading the trollhunters to victory over the Gumm-Gumms, finding the glow of battle fading as October and November
passed into December. To a kid, Christmas is Christmas, and the urge to return to his family must have been overwhelming. Thankfully there was an old song about the holiday known to few trolls
outside of their foremost scholar, and Blinky sang it to the little boy while ARRRGH!!! cradled him in her furry arms—their first family ritual. Bonds forged by war are one thing. Those
formed by love are something else.

It was easy to climb a troll so still.

The Eye of Malevolence flicked my way at the last instant, the red veins fattening to the size of my forearms and the pupil widening into that tempting pool of darkness. Not tempting
enough—I chopped with Cat #6, severing half of its stems. The holiday song cut off as the Eye gobbled in pain and withdrew its tendrils from its host’s body. ARRRGH!!! spat until eye
stems were flying everywhere and hitting the ground like bisected worms. With the same paw that had threatened Blinky and Jack, ARRRGH!!! ripped the Eye from her face, along with a great deal of
fur. She threw it against a cement pillar, and it hit the ground with a wet splat.

ARRRGH!!! fell into a sitting position, wrapping her hands around the boulder embedded in her skull. Jack hopped onto her legs and stroked her face despite the pus leaking from her eyes and the
blood draining from her lips. Blinky, too, slid forward to run a gentle tentacle over the fresh wounds. I lowered myself to the ground and leaned against the sticky pelt to catch my breath.

It was by chance that I saw the Eye of Malevolence crawling like a slug and leaving a trail of translucent slush in its wake. What none of us had realized was that all of the doors to the troll
word had shut except one. I stammered and stamped my foot. One of Blinky’s eyes took note; seconds later I had the attention of all eight.