Revenge of the Tiki Men!
Read Revenge of the Tiki Men! Online
Authors: Tony Abbott
Revenge of the Tiki Men!
The Weird Zone, Book 8
Tony Abbott
To Helen, for all the laughs
Contents
3. Make Like a Treeâand Leave!
1
Non-Weirdness
S
itting alone on the top row of bleachers, Liz Duffey looked out over the baseball field behind W. Reid Elementary School.
“First day of summer vacation,” she said to herself. “First Monday with no school. First baseball game. Incredible sunshine. This is all soâ”
“Odd!” yelled a voice below her. “Odd-odd-odd!”
Liz frowned. “That's not what I was going to say ⦠for once.” She turned to see Mike Mazur and Holly Vickers standing behind home plate.
“I'm odd,” Mike insisted, holding one hand behind his back, ready to choose sides for the game.
“You're odd, all right, Mike,” Holly said with a laugh. “So I guess I'll be even. Ready? Set. Go!” She thrust out her hand, showing three fingers.
Mike stuck out two fingers. “Ha! The odd team wins! I choose Liz and we're up first.” He smiled up at Liz.
Liz made a face at him as she jumped down the bleacher steps to the field. “Oh, goody, I'm on the odd team. What I always wanted.”
“Don't let it get you down, Liz,” Holly joked. “Odd is pretty normal around here.”
Holly's brother Sean strolled up to the plate with Jeff Ryan. “Odd, even. Why do we have to do math during the summer?”
Liz chuckled and handed a glove to Jeff.
“Baseball is the absolute coolest game,” said Sean. He dropped a pair of bats and ground a brand-new baseball between his palms.
Bong!
The Double Dunk Donut Den's donut-shaped clock on Main Street chimed the hour.
Sssss!
The pancake pan sitting high above Usher's House of Pancakes steamed the hour, too.
“And now it's official,” Liz said, picking up one of Sean's bats. “Time to play ball!”
Holly pulled on a glove and took up her position at first base. Sean trotted to the pitcher's mound and began to stretch. Jeff strode out between second and third to his favorite position of shortstop.
“Blast one out to left field,” Mike said, crouching behind the plate to catch for Liz. “You'll get a good triple at least.”
Liz swung the bat around and nodded. “My dad told me that centuries ago this field had all kinds of caves running under it. Tunnels and pits and stuff that people used to live in.”
Liz's father, Kramer Duffey, was an archaeologist who dug holes and found prehistoric fossils and artifacts all around Grover's Mill.
“Caves?” Mike mumbled. “That's weird.”
From home plate Liz could see all the way north of town to the secret army base. Jeff Ryan's mother worked there. In the east was the Humongous Horror Movie Studios where Mr. Vickers made scary low-budget films. And in the west was one of her father's archaeological sites.
“Sure it's weird.” Liz tapped the plate with the bat. “That's because Grover's Mill is right in the center of a giant triangle of weirdness. It's obviously been that way forever.”
Mike laughed, pounding his glove with his fist. “At least since people used to live in those caves. Hey, wouldn't it be great if today turned out to be the first
non
-weird day? I mean, there's a first time for everything.”
Liz tapped the plate again. She knew what he meant. Their town had had a lot of first times.
The first time zombie Martians attacked the earth was in Grover's Mill. The first time a prehistoric dinosaur
egg
hatched out a living dinosaur was there. The first time octopus monsters from Planet X landed was there, too.
But the first non-weird day?
Tap! Tap!
Liz tapped the plate again. The sounds echoed beneath her.
“Get ready to strike out!” Sean yelled, starting his windup.
Liz pounded the plate again, a little harder.
Boom!
The ground rumbled deeply beneath the plate. It shuddered and quaked.
“Whoa! Did you hear that?” Liz said.
Mike stood up and frowned at the ground. “Sounds hollow ⦔
Liz pounded the plate some more.
Boom-boom-boom!
The ground around them started to shake and shift. Their legs wobbled as they tried to keep their balance.
“This isn't right.” Mike threw down his glove and picked up the other bat. He started to pound the plate, too.
“Hey!” Jeff shouted. “One batter at a time.”
But with every hit of the two bats, the ground rumbled and boomed louder and more deeply.
“Stop joking, you guys!” Sean yelled. “My fastball is gonna slow down if we don't start!”
“Butâit's hollow under here!” Liz shouted.
RRRRR!
The earth rumbled sharply. It swelled under the plate and shifted with a suddenness that caught Mike off balance.
“M-M-Mike, watch out! C-c-c-cave in!” Liz stammered. “The g-g-g-ground!”
The g-g-g-ground exploded!
KA-BOOOOM!
Home plate shot up like a rocket and the earth erupted from below with a loud
wumping
sound. Huge chunks of dirt and rocks blasted out everywhere.
The ground sunk beneath Mike suddenly and he tumbled into a deep dark hole.
“Help!” he screamed.
But he wasn't down there for long.
Something was coming up out of the ground.
Something very big.
2
Head's Up!
“M
ike, what is going on?” Liz screamed, scrambling back to the backstop for protection.
“Something's down here! Something big! And it's moving!” he screamed from down below.
Dirt exploded out everywhere. The rumbling shook the earth under the field. Sean, Jeff, and Holly came running over.
A second laterâ
whoom!
âMike rose up into view, sprawled on top of a giant flat stone. He leaped off when the stone came to the surface.
But the giant stone kept rising. It pushed itself up out of the ground and continued to blast up, higher and higher into the air. Ten feet. Twenty feet. Thirty feet!
It was big! It was huge! It was enormous!
Finallyâ
RMMMM!
âthe stone stopped. The ground thundered once more, then fell silent. The dust cleared around the huge stone.
It towered over the field.
“Whoa!” Liz gasped when she saw the size of the stone. “That was
under
us? It's ⦠it's ⦔
“It's humongous!” Mike cried, looking up from the ground. Then he squinted. “It's also carved like a statue.”
Mike was right. The stone was a giant carved head. In the middle of the face was a long nose rising between sharp, high cheekbones. Underneath was a broad mouth and a jutting chin.
But those weren't the most striking features.
“Creepy!” muttered Holly, running over to Liz and Mike. “The eyes. The eyes are so deep and creepy!”
“For once, I've got to agree with you,” Sean said, moving up next to his sister. “Deep eyes are always creepy. Remember that movie our dad made?
The Creepy Creep with Eyes So Deep?”
“Yeah, but that creep didn't show up to ruin a baseball game,” Liz said. She looked up. Way up. “Talk about odd? How did this
thing
get here? And what even is it?”
Jeff jerked back from the big head. “Maybe he's ⦠you-know-who. Grover.”
“Grover?” Sean said. “Who's Grover?”
“You know, the original Grover of Grover's Mill?” Jeff said. “Maybe it's a statue of him.”
Liz shook her head, circling around the big stone. “I don't think so. I've seen pictures of this kind of statue. But they're normally far away on jungle islands in the Pacific Ocean.”
“Well,
normally
doesn't work around here,” Holly said. “Remember where we live?”
Liz made a face. “You've got a point.” She stared at the big head.
Snap! Snap!
The kids turned and squinted into the sunlight. There they saw a man standing on the pitcher's mound, snapping his fingers.
“Who's he?” Holly whispered.
“And how did he get there without us seeing him?” Liz muttered. “Odd. Very odd ⦔
The man stepped down from the mound and danced lightly across the infield to them.
He was dressed in a bright turquoise suit with a velvet collar, narrow pants, and shiny black shoes. He wore sleek black sunglasses. “The big guy is what you call a Tiki man,” he said. “Hey, that reminds me of a joke.”
The man's hair was black, slicked flat on the sides, and combed to a high peak in front. A curl dangled down to the middle of his forehead.
“What do you call a twenty-foot-tall Tiki man?” he said. The kids shook their heads.
“Shorty!” the man burst out. “Isn't that cool? And, hey, speaking of cool, so am I. Buddy Kool's the name. That's
Kool
with a capital
K
!
”
“Uh-huh,” said Mike, brushing the dirt from his pants. “Well, we were just trying to play a game andâ”
“Watch the dust, kid!” the man said. “You want to uncurl my curl?” He pulled a small comb from his pocket and touched up his hair. “Am I perfect yet? Wait, don't answer. I already know I am!”
“Excuse me, sir?” Liz began, backing up into her friends. “But where exactly did you come from just now? I thought I sawâ”
“Tssst!” the man hissed, putting a finger on his lips. “Buddy Kool talks, you listen. When Buddy Kool snaps his fingers, you listen, too.”
“Listen to what?” asked Sean.
“This!” the man said.
Snap!
Suddenlyâ
boom! boom!
The air echoed with booming sounds coming from the pitcher's mound. Liz glanced over to see five more strange shapes standing on the mound.
“More people!” she mumbled. “What's going on? How did
they
get here? And what are they wearing? They look sort of human, but ⦠I don't know ⦔
The five figures hunched over to them. They did look sort of humanâtwo arms, two legs, one head eachâbut they were completely covered in ⦠weeds!
“Oh, you like the look?” Buddy Kool asked, peering over his sunglasses and brushing his fingernails on his jacket. “It's my great pleasure to introduce ⦠the Mango Men. They've come to play!”
On their heads the Mango Men wore headdresses of shaggy, woven grass. Big floppy leaves crisscrossed their shoulders, and their pants were made of thick brown twigs stuck together. They snapped and crackled when they walked.
But the strangest thing was the big, thick, ugly wooden stick that each carried.
“This is really starting to weird me out,” said Holly.
“Okay, look, you want to play?” said Sean, walking up to the men, tossing a ball from hand to hand. “Some basic rules first. You guys have
way
too many batsâ”
“Ugh!” one Mango Man grunted. He grabbed the ball from Sean, sniffed it, and took a bite.
Chomp!
He began to chew it.
“Hey, that's a brand-new ball!” Sean whined.
“Hit it, men!” shouted Buddy Kool.
Boom! Boom!
The Mango Men struck their big wooden sticks together. They snarled at the kids. They growled. They clacked their teeth like angry dogs.
Then they attacked.
3
Make Like a Treeâand Leave!
“H
it it, Mango Men!” Buddy Kool repeated, jerking his fingers at the five kids.