Creeped Out (8 page)

As they rounded the corner, Saffy and Jasper smacked straight into Felix, who had stopped dead in his tracks.

‘Um, change of plans,' whispered Felix.

There, squelched in front of them, was the Grubbergrind. It thrashed its tentacles in the air as it moved towards them. It looked bigger than when Jasper had seen it dropped into the toilet. In fact, Jasper wasn't sure how it had even fitted down there.

‘Perhaps the rats aren't so bad after all,' Felix whispered.

Saffy slowly pulled the net from her backpack. ‘Easy now,' she cooed. Jasper and Felix stayed frozen to the spot. The Grubbergrind looked like some sort of mutant octopus. A mutant octopus that ate people. Maybe that's why it had grown. Had it eaten another Task team?

Saffy crept in closer to the monster, keeping just out of reach of its giant nipper-ended tentacles. She raised the net over its head. The Grubbergrind seemed to smile. Jasper didn't know monsters could smile.

As Saffy's net came down over the monster's head, it opened its mouth wide and shot a long line of goo towards her. The goo went straight through the netting and hit Saffy squarely in the face.

There was a tense moment as everyone waited to see what would happen. ‘Gross,' said Saffy, wiping the goo out of her eyes.

‘Does it taste like fish?' Jasper asked.

But Saffy didn't reply. Instead, she began to shrink. Bit by bit.

Her arms shrank first, and Saffy yelled in surprise as her arms shrank to the size of two pins. Then the determined look on her face grew smaller as her head shrank away. There was a POP, and her body shrank to the size of an orange pip. Saffy was nothing more than a pair of legs with a miniature body and head attached. And then, with a
swoosh
, her legs seemed to wind in on themselves, and Saffy was no more than the size of a fly.

And drowning in the stinky water.

‘Saffy!' screamed Felix and Jasper together.

Jasper didn't stop to think. He stretched his arm towards the flailing Saffy. He picked her up on his finger, like you would a caterpillar. He was relieved to see she looked OK. Trying to resuscitate someone that small would have been tricky.

‘Aaaaargh!' Felix yelled in some kind of war cry. Jasper looked up just in time to see Felix fly at the monster and deliver a fierce karate kick at its head.

‘Go Felix!' he yelled, forgetting about Saffy for a moment and almost dropping her. A tiny sharp bite to his finger brought him back to his senses.

Jasper had felt the force of Felix's karate kicks before, and didn't think the blubbery octopus had a chance.

That was, until Felix's leg bounced off the monster and he was instantly covered in swirling goo. Felix gave Jasper a look of despair, before following Saffy's performance of shrinking bit by bit into the water.

Jasper knew that if he got shot by goo, they would all drown. He grabbed Felix's tiny body from the water and put both Felix and Saffy into his hoodie pocket. Then he reached carefully into his pack.

‘Chicken, my beauty?' he growled, doing his best impersonation of Mr Golag. Jasper remembered the tender look that had crossed Mr Golag's face when he looked at the monster, and tried to imagine himself feeling the same sort of affection for something so horrible. The Grubbergrind closed its mouth and cocked its head to one side.

Jasper pulled out an entire roast chicken from his bag and threw it towards the monster. The Grubbergrind grabbed the chicken in its tentacles and quickly sucked the bones dry.

Jasper hurriedly threw more and more chicken to the monster. But it wasn't slowing down, and Jasper was going to run out of chicken at this rate. He grabbed the sack and opened it wide.

‘There's more chicken inside, my beauty,' he growled. The Grubbergrind looked at Jasper again. It opened its mouth. Jasper wondered what would happen to his friends if he was shrunk. Would they shrink again? Would they even exist? How small could something get before it just ‘poofed' away?

Jasper waited for the goo to come – but it didn't. The Grubbergrind squelched its way towards the sack, jumping along on its nippered tentacles. It tried to push inside the sack, but it was far too big.

The monster started oozing goo out of the suckers on its tentacles. Jasper held his breath. Then the monster began to rub the goo over its own body, and it started shrinking until it was the size of a large cat. It leapt inside the sack, looking for more chicken.

It must really like chicken,
thought Jasper, tying the string securely. He hoped that the goo couldn't get through the sack. All he could hear was more chewing. The monster seemed happy – for now.

But what about Felix and Saffy?
thought Jasper.
Will the teachers be able to unshrink them? What
sort of life will they have as mini people? Are there
any mini monster-hunting schools?

Jasper thought of their escape plan. The pipes looked so – well, inviting wasn't the word – but still, freedom lay at the end of one of them

He grabbed his friends out of his pocket. ‘Which pipe is the way out, Felix?' All he heard was an angry high-pitched squeak as Felix waved what looked like a very tiny set of blueprints at him.

‘What is it with you two getting Monstered every time we try to escape?' sighed Jasper.

It was no use. There was only one chance of getting his friends back to their normal size. And it was at Monstrum House. The teachers would know what to do.

Jasper put his friends carefully back into his pocket, and heaved the wriggling monster-sack onto his back.

He hurried back along the maze of pipes the way they'd come. He took a few wrong turns, and at one point wondered if he would ever find his way out.

But after what felt like hours of racing through stinking water by torchlight, Jasper finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel. He checked his watch. It was late in the afternoon. Soon it would be getting dark.

He had to get back to school, and get his friends back to size.

15

Jasper crept out of the stormwater pipe and into the ditch. While they were in the drain, clouds had come over and now thunder rumbled through the sky. The afternoon had darkened and sleety, icy rain came tumbling down.

He hated to think what might have happened if they'd still been in the stormwater drain.

He ran along the ditch towards the fence. The heavy monster-sack bumped against his back.

‘Perhaps it's a good thing we didn't try to escape,' Jasper said to his tiny friends. He heard Saffy squeaking something back at him. ‘If you were still normal-sized, we would probably be in the sewers right now. That monster might have just saved our lives.'

More squeaks made Jasper think his mini friends weren't feeling very grateful.

The Grubbergrind wobbled about in the sack on Jasper's back, but didn't seem to be too distressed.
Perhaps he thinks I really am Mr Golag,
thought Jasper.

The rain was pelting down now, turning the ditch into a mudslide. Jasper tried to clamber his way out through the fence, but with the sack in his hands it was useless.

The third time Jasper fell down in the mud, he heard his friends squeak angrily from his pocket. ‘Sorry!' Jasper shouted, probably a bit too loudly for their tiny ears.

He needed to find another place where he could climb over the fence and back into the forest.

He followed the fence line until he came to a place where the wire was completely mangled. It looked as though it had been bashed by something huge. Or gnashed. Or sliced. Or …

Jasper stopped thinking about it. Climbing through here would be easier than fiddling around with the bolt cutters in the dark and wet somewhere else along the fence.

The ground was overrun with tree roots. Jasper used one as a foothold and scrambled up, pulling himself under the fence and into the forest undergrowth.

‘At least I don't have to worry about monsters,' Jasper said to the sack. ‘I already have you.'

Jasper heaved the wriggling sack back onto his back, feeling pleased with himself at having successfully completed the Task. Successful, that is, if you didn't count the size of his tiny team-mates.

He made his way into the darkening forest towards the school.

And then he saw it.

Standing in front of Jasper, was the biggest, most horrible spider he had ever seen. And it had eight long spindly legs.

Technically, this wasn't just the most horrible spider Jasper had ever seen – it was worse than that. It was a spider-monster. Jasper started to shake.

OK, deep breath,
Jasper commanded himself.

‘Um, guys, we have a slight problem,' Jasper said to the tiny friends in his pocket. ‘There's a spider. Well, it isn't really a spider, it's …' but Jasper didn't know what it was.

It had a hairy body and a whole bunch of eyes like other spiders – but it also had wings on its back, rows and rows of sharp fangs, and legs that ended in talons, like you'd see on a vulture. And it was the size of an army tank.

‘It's my worst nightmare,' Jasper whispered.

He could make out the entrance to a large lair behind the monster. The lair was covered in a white, sticky spider web, and behind it were the terrified faces of Class 1B.

‘JASPER! GET US OUT OF HERE!' they yelled as soon as they saw him.

The spider-monster raised its fangs, revealing a blistered yellow tongue oozing with blue pus.

‘WHAT IS IT? AND WHAT IS IT DOING HERE?' Jasper yelled.

‘IT'S THE GRUBBERGRIND!' a voice yelled.

‘CATCH IT!' yelled someone else.

Home-made slingshots littered the ground around the lair. Suddenly the rubber bands and rulers in the storeroom made sense.

‘Hang on,' Jasper said. ‘But I
have
the Grubbergrind.'

He looked down at the sack in his hands. Then back up at the spider-monster. Its gleaming eyes were fixed on him. Jasper could see his face reflected in every eye – and he couldn't help but notice the look of utter confusion in every reflection. It took Jasper a few moments to work things out.

‘But if … if
that
is the Grubbergrind …' Jasper trailed off,
then I haven't caught the Grubbergrind
after all,
he realised.
I just have some random toilet
monster in my sack, two mini friends in my pocket,
a whole bunch of classmates trapped in a lair, and a
monster waiting to catch me.

And it's a Muncher,
he reminded himself, looking at its gleaming fangs.

Suddenly, Jasper felt very cold. The Grubbergrind had moved without a sound. It was right above of him. It lifted its front legs, twirling a ball of web down towards him.

Jasper took a deep breath. Despair filled his body. He didn't even scream. He was done for.

16

Jasper watched in horror as the Grubbergrind – the real one this time – reared its front legs above its head. In some part of his brain, a soothing voice told him that he wouldn't actually be killed, just trapped like the rest of the class.