4
Head for Home!
WHACK-WHACK! Mike swatted the vine again and again with his bat. “Back off, you stinky weed! You’re not getting Liz!”
Sean and Jeff stomped on the vine while Holly tried to peel its slimy fingers off Liz’s arms.
“Let her go!” they screamed as they struggled.
Thlurppp! The vine loosened its grip for a fraction of a second and Liz’s friends pulled her quickly through the door.
WHAM! Mike slammed it shut.
Liz slumped to the floor, out of breath. “Thanks, guys! Nature is sure zoning on us today!”
“Yeah, your lawn’s got a definite attitude,” Sean said, peering back out the window.
Mike stood next to him and watched. In seconds, slithery plants crawled up the side of the house and covered the door. “This is pretty much the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“My shoes are all messed up,” said Jeff, scraping green slime off his sneakers on the doormat.
“It’s those giant Tiki heads,” Liz groaned, double-locking the door behind them. “They’re doing something very strange here. I don’t know what, exactly, but it has something to do with those eyeballs and those Mango Men and that … that … uncool Buddy Kool! Guys, we’re definitely on a weird alert.”
Mike turned and caught a glimpse of something in Liz’s living room. “Uh, then you probably won’t like what’s been happening here,” he said softly. “Unless you, uh, like green a lot.”
Liz held her breath. “It’s not my favorite color.” She turned around slowly. “Oh, no!”
Spiky plants were sprouting wildly from the corners of the living room. The piano at the far end was overgrown with grass, as if it had green fur on it. The sofa was prickly with thorns, and bark was growing over the cushions.
“No place to relax here,” Sean said.
“Total jungle,” said Jeff.
Beneath their feet the rug was sprouting puffy toadstools. Moss crept slowly down the walls.
Liz gulped. “My mom is going to have a fit! She hates green as much as I do.”
Thlurppp! The television was up near the ceiling, in the grip of a giant plant. Making its way down the trunk was a long thick snake.
Mike gulped loudly. “I don’t like snakes.” He stepped back to the front door. “I really don’t.”
Liz glared at him. “You don’t like snakes? You think I like snakes? I hate snakes. Especially snakes in my own house!”
“Okay, okay, everybody,” said Holly. “How about we move to another room?” She stepped into the kitchen. Something green unfurled from the sink and looked at her. “Nope, not that way. I think up is the way to go.”
“Definitely,” Jeff said, tearing his feet away from a snarly clump of grass and heading for the stairs. “While we can still move.”
“Those things really seem to like you, Jeff,” said Sean.
Liz gulped, rubbing her arms where the vine had clutched her. “Let’s just hurry. I don’t want to shake hands with any more green slimy things.”
BRNNNNG!
“The phone!” Liz cried. “Yes! It might be my dad!”
They rushed up the stairs and scrambled into Liz’s bedroom only to find the walls covered with flowers. But it wasn’t Liz’s wallpaper.
“The house is alive!” Mike said, watching tiny green tendrils stretch out from an electrical socket in the wall.
BRNNNNG!
“Quick,” yelled Liz. “Before they hang up!”
Sean searched the bushes growing around Liz’s night table. “I don’t see the phone! There’s a clock, and a book, and a box of tissues, and—”
BRNNNNG!
“We’ve got to find it!”
Liz leaped over to the top drawer of her desk and pulled out a purple plastic ruler. She dived at the thick bushes. She sliced at the vines. She chopped at the weeds. Chop! Chop!
BRRR—“Got it!” Liz yanked the phone up.
“Liz,” said the voice. “This is your father. I—”
“Dad!” Liz screamed into the phone. “The jungle is all over our house, and—”
RRRRR! Rumbling and quaking shook the house suddenly, throwing the kids to the floor! Terrible crunching noises echoed up from the basement.
“Oh, no! Not again! Another Tiki man!” Liz screamed into the phone. “Dad! Another Tiki man is coming up from our basement!”
“Let’s get out of here!” called Holly.
KRRAKK! The living room floor shattered as the giant head crashed up from the basement.
“Before it’s too late!” Mike pushed open Liz’s window and kicked out the screen. A big, shaggy tree was growing right outside. Long vines curled around on it, reaching for the house.
“Everybody out!” Sean yelled. He climbed out the window to the nearest limb. Holly followed him, then Jeff.
RRRR! The stone head pushed into the living room below, throwing couches and end tables out of the way.
“Dad!” cried Liz. “We’ve got to get out!”
“Get to the museum right away!” her father yelled into the phone. “We’ve found the answer to the—”
Nnnnnn!
“The phone’s dead!” said Liz.
“Let’s not be next!” said Mike, half out the window and holding his hand out to Liz. “Will you come on!”
Liz took one more look around her room and jumped to the window just in time.
KA—KROOOOM! The fifth giant Tiki head exploded up through the floor.
5
Where Science Rules!
Liz and Mike swung out to the tree and followed their friends to the ground just as—
KRUNCH! The giant stone Tiki man burst from the roof and rose up over the house, sending splinters flying in all directions.
The kids scrambled across the yard and back out to the road. Liz felt angry when she saw the damage to her house. She gritted her teeth. “Somebody’s going to pay for this.”
Boom! Ba-boom-boom! Mango Men emerged from the thickening jungle and circled the new stone head. They pounded the ground. They flapped their floppy leaves.
A moment later, Buddy Kool was there, too, snapping his fingers.
“Wherever that guy is, something bad happens,” whispered Holly.
Sean gripped his bat. “Yeah, I wish we could take these guys on right now. We’d break their branches. We’d rake their leaves.”
Eeeee! As the pounding got faster, the eyes on the big head began to glow. Soon Liz’s house was completely overgrown with thick gooey vines. The vines spread to the sidewalk and across the road.
Mike motioned to his friends. “Come on, let’s get to the museum. Between my parents and Liz’s dad, we’ll get to the bottom of this.” With his bat held high, Mike started bashing his way into the jungle. The others followed.
Looking up one last time at the giant Tiki man sticking out of her roof, Liz wasn’t so sure science would help. Who knew if there even was a bottom to all this? Maybe the whole thing was … bottomless!
Like one of those caves under Grover’s Mill.
Like one of those deep dark pits!
After battling their way for what seemed like forever, the five friends finally saw the dome of the Welles Observatory and Science Museum.
“There it is!” cried Mike, clobbering a tough weed that lay in his path. “The place where science rules.”
Rrrrr! The ground rumbled under them again.
“Hurry,” Liz urged. “It’s getting worse.” The kids tore up the broad steps, through the massive double doors, and into the museum.
Inside the large rooms it was almost normal. The jungle was climbing up outside the double-paned windows, darkening them. But it hadn’t broken through the thick stone walls. Yet.
“The laboratory is straight ahead in the big room,” Mike said. “It’s where all the research and stuff happens. Where they find the answers to scientific questions.”
“That sure sounds good,” said Liz, rushing ahead. “Answers to questio
ns. Because I sure have lots of questions.”
But when the kids entered the vast laboratory, things didn’t look good.
The first thing they saw was Mr. and Mrs. Mazur scribbling lots of words all over a large chalkboard. Actually, they were scribbling one word lots of times.
The word was—Help!
“Uh-oh,” Liz said, turning to Mike and making a face. “Something tells me your parents are still working on the answers.”
Mr. and Mrs. Mazur waved cheerfully and kept scribbling. Behind them—nnnnng!—a huge complicated piece of machinery was whirring and chugging in a back corner of the laboratory.
Next to the machine stood Liz’s father, Kramer Duffey. He was dressed in a leather jacket and field pants. A bullwhip hung on his belt, and a length of rope was coiled on his shoulder.
“Cool!” Mike whispered. “His outfit is so great.”
Liz ran over. “Dad, giant Tiki heads are coming up everywhere! And there’s a weird guy named Buddy Kool—”
“With a K!” Mike added. “He’s doing weird stuff, and whenever he snaps his fingers—”
“These guys dressed like walking plants start to pound their huge sticks—” added Holly.
“They’re called Mango Men,” Jeff cut in, “and they dance and flap these big floppy leaves—”
“And then the Tiki men’s weird eyes go real bright and silver,” said Sean, “and that’s when the jungle happens and—”
Mr. Duffey looked from Liz to Mike to Holly to Jeff to Sean and back again while he listened. When they were done, he shook his head slowly in silence. He looked over at Mr. and Mrs. Mazur, who had stopped writing on the board.
“It’s exactly like the old legend!” he said.
Mr. Mazur nodded and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Actually, yes.” He rolled a nib of chalk between his fingers. “Quite strange, too, this jungle effect. For, in fact, Grover’s Mill was a dense tropical jungle centuries ago.”
“Centuries ago,” said Mr. Duffey. “That’s the past.”
“At that time,” Mrs. Mazur continued, “the town was completely surrounded by water. All that’s left of that ocean is Lake Lake.”
Liz stood there, stunned. She narrowed her eyes. “Uh … the old legend? What old legend?”
“Oh, you know,” said her father. “The one that says that giant Tiki men would pop up everywhere one day and make our town a jungle.”
“No,” said Liz. “No, I didn’t know.”
Mr. Duffey looked shocked. He turned to Mr. and Mrs. Mazur. They shrugged. “Oops!” Mr. Duffey said. “I guess we forgot to tell you kids. But no one ever thought it would really happen! I mean, wouldn’t that be just a little weird?”
Ching! The big machine suddenly stopped making noises and spat out a little strip of paper. “Ah!” said Mr. Duffey, his face brightening.
“But the Tiki men will go away, right?” asked Mike.
His parents shrugged. “Sorry, son,” his mother said. “We can’t remember that part.”
Liz started to pace the giant room. “Let me get this straight. We don’t really know why the Tiki men came up from under the ground?”
“That’s right,” Mr. Duffey nodded.
“But we have to stop them?” Liz said.
“That’s the easy part!” he replied. “And all because of this!” Mr. Duffey held up the little strip of paper that had come from the big machine.
Mike frowned at the paper. “What do we do, fold it really tight and hit them with it?”
Mr. Duffey shook his head. “No, that wouldn’t work. Using this big fancy device we have located the famous Tiki Key, the ancient stone tablet with all the answers! It’ll tell us everything we need to know to stop these big old stone heads.”
Liz looked at the sheet of paper her father held. “And where is this incredible Tiki Key?”
“Actually, that is where science steps in.” Mr. Mazur flipped over the chalkboard to reveal a map of Grover’s Mill. He took the paper from Liz’s father and drew an X on the map.
“I knew it,” Liz gasped. “The baseball field!”
“It’s buried in one of the caves under the field,” Mr. Duffey said. “All we have to do is leave here, hack through the jungle, get to the ball field, find the right hole, climb in, dig up the stone, bring it up, dust it off, read what it says, translate it, do what it says, and the Tiki men should be a thing of the past.”
“That’s all, huh?” Liz muttered.
“Actually, the Tiki men are a thing of the past, ha, ha,” Mr. Mazur said. “That’s a little, ah, science joke.”
“But you’re sure this will work?” Mike asked.
Mr. Duffey shrugged. “If it doesn’t, it’s the end of civilization as we know it.”
Thurrrlp! All of a sudden, they could hear vines and shrubs and trees slithering up the sides of the building.
“The jungle is getting closer!” Jeff said. “The vines are all around us!”
KA—RRRRUNCH!
Instantly, the massive double doors of the museum burst into splinters!
And the jungle poured in!
6
The Deep Dark Pit
THURRRLP! The jungle took over the laboratory in an instant. Long slithery vines barreled across the floor, instantly trapping Mr. Duffey and Mr. and Mrs. Mazur against the back wall. “Ouch!” they cried.
“Dad!” Liz cried out, running to her father.
“No! You kids get out of here,” he yelled back. “Find the you-know-what and stop the you-know-who! Here!” He threw his climbing rope to Mike. “Save our town!”
“Come on!” Liz called to her friends. “We’re the only hope!”
But Jeff and Sean bumped into each other, trying to be first to the back door.
“Ooof! Some hope we are!” Jeff muttered, as thick vines quickly swirled around him and pinned him against the chalkboard next to Sean.
Holly dived past, but a giant flower closed on her legs, holding her down. “Holy Zabajaba!” she cried. “This is crazy!”
Within seconds they were all trapped.
“Save yourselves!” Sean yelled bravely to Mike and Liz, swinging his bat. “But if you don’t come back for us, we’ll never play baseball with you again! Now go!”
Liz looked at Mike. Mike looked at Liz. There didn’t seem to be any choice.
“We’re out of here!” Mike said, pulling Liz by the arm and slipping out the back door. “But we’ll be back, you can count on it!”
“Please, no more math!” Sean mumbled.
Liz and Mike skittered along a narrow hallway and out the rear door of the museum into the thickening jungle. They ran for a long time.
“Wait up,” Mike murmured, slowing to catch his breath. “I think we’re lost.”
“We’re not lost,” Liz snorted, looking into the dense greenery and trying to feel brave. “I just don’t know where we are.”
Mike gave her a look. “Isn’t that the same—”
“Shhh!” she hissed. “I hear something.”
Mike crouched next to her. “Pounding?”
“No,” Liz whispered, “singing.”
With a little grass shack for an office,
And a bamboo desk for two,
We could learn what goofing off is
Like, just me and you.
Liz pulled aside a thick wall of vines and peeked through. “It’s … Mr. Bell! Uh, hello, sir!”
Mr. Leonard Bell, principal of W. Reid Elementary School, always wore a suit. Now he was dressed in a grass suit, with a grass necklace around his neck. Assistant principal Miss Lieberman was dressed the same. They were pushing their way through the thick jungle.
“Ahem! Children!” boomed the principal, resting his hands on his hips. “Have either of you two young students seen my house?”
“What color is it, sir?” asked Liz, trying to be helpful.
“Green,” the principal answered.
Mike looked at Liz, then beyond her at the thick green growth all
around. “Sorry, tough color. But can you tell us where school is from here?”
“We need to get there fast,” Liz added.
Mr. Bell brightened. “Ah, excellent. Good to see your enthusiasm for your school. It is, after all, only another seventy-two and one-quarter days until we reopen.”
“Our school is one-eighth of a mile in that direction,” said Miss Lieberman, pointing up ahead. “Between the twelve-and-a-half-foot waterfall and the one-third-acre alligator swamp.”
The principal beamed. “Ah, the wonder of fractions! A summer math program would be a splendid way to spend the summer, hmm? Well, let us go, Miss Lieberman. Much to do!”
In a moment Principal Bell and Miss Lieberman were gone.
“Our school is between a waterfall and a swamp?” Liz breathed. “Mike, this is really getting me down.”
They pushed on, right into a crowd of shouting people.
“My husband is stuck in those branches!” screamed one woman, rushing through the trees. She pointed up to a man wearing a barbecue apron. “And he’s so afraid of heights!”
“Put me down!” the man screamed. He swatted a long vine with a burger spatula.
“I found my car,” cried another man, jingling his keys wildly. “But where’s my garage?”
“Why must I have Tiki men in my town?” shrieked Mr. Sweeney, the janitor of W. Reid Elementary.
A moment later the crowd rushed by and the jungle grew quiet once again.
“Come on,” Mike said. “We’re not far now.”
They were out of breath when they finally reached the school baseball field.
The field was totally overgrown and full of open pits and caves. The giant Tiki man stood tall and silent over what used to be home plate.
“It’s like some weird jungle adventure movie,” Mike said, breathing hard.
“Except that you can leave a movie.” Liz sighed. “I don’t know if we’ll ever get out of this one, Mike. I mean, the way things are going, this could be our last adventure.”
“Never say that!” Mike looked at her. “It’ll take more than big stone heads and guys with sticks to stop us. Even though I have to admit this is pretty much the strangest day I’ve had for a long time.”
“Yeah. Non-weird, it’s definitely not.” Liz cracked a smile as she pulled out the strip of paper the machine at the lab had spat out. She stepped over to a hole near third base. It was dark. Liz couldn’t see the bottom, but she felt as if the pit was calling to her. “Mike, I think this is where the Tiki Key is buried.”