Demon from the Deep End Read online

  ‘Perfect!’ said Evan, pulling back thorny branches from the pump. ‘If we drain the pool the Blobster will have nowhere to go. Without water it’ll shrivel up like a raisin. This is our weapon!’

  ‘Could be tricky though,’ said Liam, already feeling his bottom cheeks clench in apprehension.

  ‘Fighting supernatural forces is never easy,’ said Evan sternly. ‘But we’re the only ones who can do it.’

  Liam was sure there was probably somebody else who could do it if they just asked around a bit, but not wanting to appear a coward, he reluctantly agreed.

  The rest of the day passed uneventfully, with both of them doing their best to avoid the hotel manager, who regularly patrolled the grounds, casting a watchful eye over his guests.

  When evening arrived, Liam could see that his dad’s eyes were already beginning to glaze over, his expression becoming as blank as the guests’ by the pool as he pulled on his spiky blonde DJ wig. Time was running out.

  Liam turned to his sister, who was engrossed in a thick paperback. ‘I’m going on a dangerous mission tonight, sis. If I don’t come back, don’t try and look for me.’

  ‘Yeah, okay,’ she yawned. ‘’Night.’

  When Liam met up with Evan in the deserted grounds, they both looked as nervous as each other.

  ‘What if the pump doesn’t work?’ asked Liam.

  ‘Then it’s Blobbification for both of us,’ said Evan, quietly feeding the hose into the pool.

  There was no need to say more; the idea was just unthinkable.

  They settled into a hiding place by the pump, both of them relaxing a little as they heard pop songs drifting from the entertainments hall. At least Liam’s dad seemed to be doing his best to rouse the guests from their zombified stupor.

  Just as Evan had begun to snore, the pool waters finally began to bubble, the familiar eruption beginning.

  Liam nudged Evan awake and they tried in vain to start the pump, both of them stabbing desperately at the useless power switch. Aghast, they watched helplessly as the Blobster reduced itself to a thin, slimy trickle and slurped its way up a drainpipe into the hotel.

  Liam’s eyes widened in alarm as they traced the path of the pipe. ‘That’s heading to our block!’ he yelled.

  Within seconds, they had pelted from their hiding position and raced back into the hotel, Evan watching anxiously as Liam banged loudly on his sister’s door.

  ‘Sophie, where’s Dad? Quick, the Blobster’s coming!’

  ‘He’s still out,’ came the muffled reply. ‘I’m in the bath, go away.’

  ‘She’s in mortal danger, we can’t wait,’ panted Evan. He barged against the door and instantly rebounded, clutching his shoulder.

  Liam put his full weight behind a charge and burst into the room, only to see Sophie emerging from the bathroom, dressed in a towel and brandishing a solid-looking loofah.

  If she was annoyed to see her brother break in, watching Evan follow him was the very last straw.

  ‘I’ll give you a horror movie,’ she growled, proceeding to batter Evan with her loofah.

  Liam ran from room to room, hurriedly stuffing towels into all the taps as Evan huddled into a ball on the floor, Sophie’s loofah relentlessly bouncing from his head.

  Liam gasped as he saw the green ooze beginning to emerge from one of the bath taps. He hurriedly thrust a hand towel into the spout, halting its progress.

  ‘We did it!’ he said breathlessly, rushing back to Evan. ‘We saved her!’

  ‘Yay,’ grumbled Evan, rubbing his head.

  ‘We need to get down to the pool!’ urged Liam, hurrying from the room.

  Evan picked himself up off the floor and groggily followed.

  ‘And don’t try and scare me again!’ Sophie called after him, standing in the corridor with her loofah.

  ‘We should have just let it in,’ huffed Evan, as he caught up to Liam in the grounds. ‘Your sister would have beaten it to death.’

  Seeing the thin trail of slime emerging from the drainpipe, they scrambled back to the pump and tried once more to start it.

  The Blobster arrived at the poolside and reformed for a moment, its antennae twitching, before it sank slowly into the water.

  ‘Wait!’ said Liam. ‘The power cord is unplugged!’ With a rolling lunge, he snatched up the cord and plugged it in. The pump began to hum and vibrate, the hose jerking as pool water surged through it.

  Caught immediately by the suction, the Blobster gave a hideous squeal as the hose pulled in its body and forced it through the pump.

  Liam and Evan watched in hushed anticipation as the rest of the pool drained, leaving a black and oily pit. The boys held their breath, afraid that the creature might still escape. But the soaking ground behind the pump remained undisturbed.

  ‘Mega!’ shouted Evan. ‘We kicked its blobby butt!’ he whooped, dancing a small victory jig. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked Liam, who wasn’t joining in.

  The reason soon became apparent, as Evan turned to see the glowering figure of the hotel manager standing over them, the blue pool lights shimmering in his eyes.

  ‘Young fools!’ he hissed. ‘You have interfered in something you should not have! Now there will be a terrible price to pay!’

  ‘We thought your pool needed cleaning,’ stammered Liam.

  ‘I think we should go,’ said Evan.

  The two boys hurried from the poolside with the manager’s high-pitched shriek echoing around the hotel walls.

  ‘Tomorrow, you will learn your terrible fate,’ he screeched. ‘Tomorrow you are doomed.’

  4. Riddle Me This

  By the next morning, the boys had decided that leaving the hotel as quickly as possible was the best thing, even if they needed a sneaky plan to achieve it.

  ‘We have a situation,’ Liam announced dramatically, opening his bedroom door to his dad and sister as they walked past on their way to breakfast. ‘There’s something wrong with Evan. I think you’d better take a look.’

  Liam’s dad stared into the room, where Evan was doing his best to look severely afflicted, tongue lolling out and eyes rolling madly as he thrashed around on the floor.

  ‘I’ll say there’s something wrong with him,’ said Sophie. ‘That’s the worst acting I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘I think he’s developed an allergy or something,’ insisted Liam. ‘We need to get him out of here right now.’

  ‘Maybe it’s the food,’ said Liam’s dad. ‘I’m not feeling too well myself. I’d better speak to the manager. You kids might as well start packing.’

  Sophie waited until her dad had walked off before confronting Liam.

  ‘Okay, so what are you up to?’ she demanded.

  ‘Look, we’re in big trouble, sis,’ explained Liam. ‘We sucked up the manager’s pet blob and watered the garden with his swimming pool. And now he’s going to put a curse on us.’

  ‘Oh no, you don’t,’ she said, wagging a warning finger. ‘I’ve been tricked into his stupid horror movies before. I’m not falling for it this time.’

  ‘But it’s not a trick, honest!’

  ‘Sure…’

  She slammed the room’s door as she left, causing Evan to sit bolt upright.

  ‘Worst acting ever indeed!’ he said indignantly, wiping the drool from his chin. ‘She doesn’t know talent when she sees it.’

  ‘Well, I think my dad believed it, and that’s what counts. We just need to get out of this place as fast as we can.’

  The two boys spent the next hour packing their bags and taking it in turns to stand guard at the door. By the time Liam’s dad returned, both of them were flinching at the slightest noise.

  ‘We’re leaving,’ he told them. ‘The manager wasn’t pleased, but I told him Evan’s ill so there’s nothing he could say. You’d better make sure you have all your stuff together, there’ll be a taxi here for us in thirty minutes.’

  ‘Fantastic!’ said Evan, triumphantly punching his fist in the air before
remembering he was supposed to be ill.

  By the time they were all ready to leave, a thunderstorm had begun to rage outside, towering forks of lightning splitting the sky while heavy rain lashed the grounds.

  For Evan and Liam, standing in the shelter of a covered pathway, the distance to the gates looked a very long one. With the water running in small rivers across the paving, all they could look at was the Blobster-sprayed soil near the bushes, where small bubbles were now beginning to appear.

  ‘I guess we’ll have to walk down the hill again,’ said Liam.

  ‘We’ll get soaking wet!’ protested Sophie.

  ‘The taxi driver won’t come to the gates!’ argued Liam, becoming ever more frantic as he saw small trickles of slime beginning to wind their way over the soil and onto the paving.

  ‘Liam’s right,’ agreed his dad. ‘We’ll have to wait at the bottom of the hill. Come on, let’s go.’

  ‘Sorry you’re leaving so soon,’ rasped a shrill voice as they began carrying their luggage across to the gates.

  They turned to see the manager hovering behind them, his hands clasped, a look of menace in his frog-like eyes.

  ‘Just one of those things really,’ replied Liam’s dad, pulling open the heavy iron gates. ‘Can’t be helped.’

  As Evan and Liam made to follow Liam’s dad and Sophie through the gates, the manager suddenly grabbed them by their collars, holding both in a vice-like grip as he leaned close to them.

  ‘Soon,’ he breathed, ‘Barzabalus will have his revenge!’

  ‘B… B… Barzabababalus?’ croaked Liam.

  ‘Know that Barzabalus is Gatekeeper of the Netherworld, whose entrance lies beneath the pool you drained. He feeds by sucking souls from the world of humans. And you have offended him!’

  ‘We’re very sorry for any inconvenience,’ stammered Liam.

  ‘Foolish children! Barzabalus will enter the body of one of you and use it for four days. And then …’ The manager paused for a cruel chortle, ‘… he will devour you both.’

  ‘Seems a bit harsh doesn’t it?’ protested Evan.

  ‘Can’t you at least give us a chance?’ pleaded Liam.

  The manager paused a moment then lowered his voice to a quiet hiss.

  ‘I’m harder than the thing I’m made of,

  more is hidden than you see.

  Summer and salt make me to vanish,

  whatever could I be?’

  And with that, he uttered a malevolent cackle and released them both.

  Liam and Evan raced down the hill to join the others.

  ‘You two okay?’ asked Liam’s dad. ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Nothing,’ panted Liam. ‘He was just being weird again.’ He edged closer to Evan and lowered his voice. ‘What did he mean by all that “summer and salt” stuff?’

  Evan’s expression clouded with doom, curtains of rain dripping from his eyebrows and nose.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he gulped, ‘but I think we’re already running out of time.’

  Both of them peered back up the hill, where the entire ground had begun to swim and ripple as though something were snaking its way towards them in the deluge.

  ‘This looks bad,’ said Evan.

  When the taxicab appeared through the storm, its headlights blazing funnels through the murk, the two boys could have cheered. With a haste bordering on frenzy, they urged the driver to open the boot and hurriedly stuffed their bags in.

  With the sheet of green slime now drawing close, Liam managed to slam his cab door while Sophie climbed in the opposite side.

  Evan frantically tried to bundle himself in after her, but his shoe became caught on the door and fell into a puddle. He hesitated for a second, then decided to make a grab for it.

  The moment he leaned down, a squishy green slime reared up from the puddle. He squealed in shock as the cold jelly jumped onto his hand, his sleeve swelling as the ooze slithered all the way up his arm. Sticky tendrils sprouted from it to force their way into his nose and mouth, almost choking him, before disappearing again. Evan fell back in his seat, his eyes wide with shock.

  As the cab began to drive away, Liam looked back through the rain to see the faint figure of the manager standing at the top of the hill.

  ‘Everybody all right back there?’ asked Liam’s dad from the front passenger seat.

  Sophie took one look at Evan and made her vomit face. ‘I think Evan is turning into a frog,’ she said, her nose curling.

  Liam scrutinised Evan with growing horror; the boy’s already pasty complexion was now almost translucent and riddled with green veins.

  ‘Evan, can you hear me?’ he asked.

  Evan gazed at him with glazed eyes, his nose and mouth dripping with green goo.

  ‘Anybody got a tissue?’ he gurgled.

  5. Airport Sludgery

  At the airport, Liam bought several large bottles of water which Evan guzzled in quick succession as they sat in the departure lounge.

  ‘Maybe that will flush it out,’ he suggested.

  Feeling a huge sneeze coming on, Evan tried to hold it in but failed. The resulting storm of sticky, green gunge whirled in the air for an instant before slopping onto the face of a small boy. The child ran wailing to his mother as Evan wiped his mouth in embarrassment.

  ‘Look, we all know what happens when the hero turns into the monster,’ he said miserably. ‘You’ll just have to finish me off before it’s too late.’

  ‘No, there has to be a way out of this! The hotel manager gave us a clue. We just have to solve the riddle.’

  ‘I need to pee,’ groaned Evan. ‘Prepare for disaster.’

  Liam helped him stagger to the toilets, where Evan stumbled into a cubicle.

  Hearing the hiss of steam and a dull groan, Liam stepped back in alarm to see a pool of bubbling slime seeping under the cubicle door. Within seconds the small lake had gathered itself up and risen from the tiles, the familiar form of Barzabalus already beginning to materialise.

  ‘Everyone run for your lives!’ yelled Liam.

  As others in the bathroom scattered in panic, the demon snatched a man trying to run with his trousers around his ankles, slurping greedily as it swallowed him up, its claws waving in glee as it spat out his trainers.

  When the toilets had emptied, the creature melted back into a pool and disappeared under the door of Evan’s cubicle. After a small shriek and a vile sucking noise, Evan emerged holding the front of his trousers, a pained expression on his face.

  ‘You just ate someone!’ cried Liam.

  Evan burped loudly. ‘Oops.’

  Liam sighed and shook his head. Doing his best not to look suspicious, he escorted Evan from the toilets and back to the departure lounge, where his dad and Sophie were waiting.

  ‘Is Evan going to be all right?’ enquired Liam’s dad. ‘He looks worse to me.’

  ‘I think he should be quarantined,’ said Sophie.

  ‘I’m not a rabid dog!’ retorted Evan, frothing at the mouth.

  ‘We just need to get him home,’ said Liam. ‘Then we can figure out what to do.’

  The call to board came just as airport security came rushing into the terminal. Liam quickly helped the stricken Evan to get to his plane seat and then laid a towel over his face, explaining to flight attendants that he needed to sleep off some food poisoning.

  But once in the air, Evan quickly dashed any hopes for an uneventful flight when he announced he was feeling airsick.

  ‘Get ready for the mother of all upchucks,’ he said wearily.

  ‘Try and get it all in here,’ instructed Liam, holding up a tiny paper bag.

  Evan looked at him in disbelief then heaved with explosive force, the soaking bag blasting onto the cabin roof, from where it dropped onto a flight attendant’s head.

  The attendant stood still for a moment, her lips quivering as green sludge began oozing through her hair. A chorus of disgusted groans from passengers prompted her to retreat behind the curtain at the
rear of the cabin.

  Liam and Evan huddled in their seats and quivered as a furious commotion ensued behind the curtain, a cloud of steam billowing as the attendant’s shoes flew into the cabin. They watched in horror as thin trails of slime began to run the length of the cabin, heading towards the plane’s cockpit.

  ‘We have to do something!’ panicked Liam. ‘What if it eats the pilots?’

  Rising unsteadily to his feet, Evan put one finger over a nostril and with the other inhaled as hard as he could. In an instant, the rivers of gunge had turned back, gathering under his seat again before flowing as a torrent up his swollen nose.

  With a small hiccup, he collapsed back in his seat.

  ‘I’m at maximum snot capacity,’ he wheezed, blowing a small green bubble. ‘We have to solve that riddle.’

  ‘I know,’ replied Liam sombrely. ‘And we have just four days to do it.’

  6. Slime’s Up

  Mrs Crogan answered the door in her slippers, as usual, and carrying a dirty sponge in her hand.

  ‘He’s in his room, Liam, you can go on up,’ she said wearily, wiping a spot of slime from her cheek. ‘Mind the sludge on the stairs.’

  Liam made his way to the stairwell, avoiding the green goo that was staining the carpets and dripping from the ceiling. Little wonder Evan’s mum appeared so tired. The official story was that Evan had picked up a cold in Spain, though with school about to start the following day, it seemed that no amount of hot lemon and vitamin C could help.

  Liam went into Evan’s room and found him slumped in a pool of bubbling sludge, his camcorder pointed at himself.

  ‘Got some good footage, at least,’ he said dejectedly. ‘Perfect for Gutgobblers from Mars – if I ever get to make it.’

  ‘Has it eaten anybody else?’ asked Liam.

  Evan pointed to a pair of shoes at the bottom of his wardrobe. ‘Nobody important. Just a double glazing salesman.’

  ‘Oh, right. Well somebody’s going to suspect you soon. They’re still looking for that flight attendant from the plane.’