STAY INSIDE! (part 5)
“My plan will work if we can get in touch with the Tonic Woman,” said Splind through the phone line. “She always knows how to open and close The Dimension and work her magic.”
“But her tricks don’t always work,” said Officer Gurt. “They worked with Timmy and Bearhair, but they don’t always.”
“Well, I mean, Bearhair is a moving pile of sloppy guts and Timmy is two-dimensional… And we don’t know what happened to Little Bailee.”
“True. So what is your plan?”
“Well like I said, we need to get in touch with the Tonic Woman.”
“I can talksh to her,” said a voice behind Gurt. He turned and saw that the little creature named Dangling Jerry had come up the stairs and overheard his conversation.
“You can?” asked Gurt. “How?”
“Eashy. She gave me her number,” replied Jerry.
“No she didn’t, she doesn’t have a telephone!”
“Yesh she doesh, she’s just particular in who she gives her number to,” said Jerry coolly.
Gurt was baffled. Why would the Tonic Woman of Crumb Hill give this little beast her number? He got off the line with Splind and let Jerry dial the number (Jerry made him turn around as he did).
Gurt listened as Jerry began talking to the mysterious woman.
“Mmmhmm….Yesh. No, jusht today…. Yesh. No, but I can ashk.” Jerry turned away from the phone and asked Gurt, “Do you have any dynamite?”
Gurt was shocked, then answered, “Uh, maybe at the station?”
“Maybe at the station,” Jerry said into the phone. “Mmmhmm. Yesh. Mmmhmm. Ok, thank you. Bye,” and he hung up.
“Well, we need the dynamite,” said Jerry. “And, she said, the entrances and exits to The Dimension have different rulesh every day. And only she knowsh what they are.”
“So did she say what we need to do today?” asked Gurt.
“Yesh, here ish the plan. It all hash to be done by 1:17, sho we only have one chance…” and the creature explained it all to him.
An hour later, Gurt had called one of his deputies to bring him as much dynamite as he could.
“That’s an awful lot of ‘splosive,” he said.
“Yup,” said Gurt. “We have to be sure it works the first time. We have one shot.”
Gurt then told him what to do. He and Jerry told the deputy which tree to set all the explosives on, and to blow them at exactly 1:17. He did not tell him about the hatch or the beasts or the newspaper.
“Uh, you’re sure about this Officer?” asked the young deputy.
“Nope. But it’s the best shot we have.” Then he added, “and if you see Principal Hairbear sliming his way around town, feel free to invite him to come watch the explosion with you. It may be good to give him something to do.”
Half an hour later, things were in place. At least, Gurt thought so. He assumed the deputy would have the dynamite wired about now, and he hoped Bearhair would be near.
And all he and Jerry had to do was step outside his home right at 1:17. Currently it was 1:15 and he kept nervously checking his watch. He and Jerry and his wife stood inside the front door.
They had one shot.
The Tonic Woman had said that the beasts would come running for them as soon as they stepped outside. Then the dynamite would blow up the hatch and for just a moment, there would be a tear in The Dimension that would suck in the monsters and squirt out Splind’s daughter.
1:16.
Gurt had his hand on the doorknob and could feel his heart pounding out of his shirt.
Ten seconds.
Then he was turning the knob and they were stepping outside. He heard the furious patter of footsteps rushing toward them, standing on his porch. The beasts were moving too fast to be seen. He braced for the impact, preparing to be dragged to The Dimension. His eyes were closed tight.
Then he heard what sounded like a strong wind, or some sort of gigantic suction. The sound of the beasts was gone.
Then a moment later, he heard the delayed boom. The deputy had done it!
Gurt took another step out onto the porch, then onto the street.
Nothing happened.
The Tonic Woman’s crazy plan had worked.
But suddenly he heard a scream coming from high above him. He looked up and saw a large, round girl falling down toward the street. The scream got louder as she hurtled closer.
She hit the street twenty feet from Gurt and again, he flinched as she struck the pavement, hard.
But then she bounced up, dozens of feet into the air. She kept screaming.
She came down in his neighbor’s back yard and launched up again ten feet into the air. This hopped her over the fence and into the Gurts’ back yard.
They ran through the house and found her lying there, unable to get up because of her rotund middle.
“Splind?” asked Mrs. Gurt. “Are you Splind’s daughter?”
“Yah,” she replied from the far side of her bulbous body.
As they got closer, they realized her skin was made of tough rubber and she seemed to be filled with air. She was crying — shocked and confused.
“Wh-where am I?” she asked.
“You’re back in Crumb Hill,” answered Mrs. Gurt gently.
“I-I was in this place where everything was balloons. I was bouncing around on them. There were so many colors.” She cried a bit more. “And then I bounced too high and it felt like I got launched out of the atmosphere, then I landed back down here and bounced around.”
Mrs. Gurt continued to comfort her until the deputy arrived to debrief Officer Gurt.
He also seemed to be in shock, but unharmed.
“Well, I did find Principal Bearhair…but…but I think he’s gone.”
“What happened?” asked Officer Gurt.
“Well, I had everything wired up and from behind me, I hear someone gooping around. I turn and sure enough, it was Principal Hairbear. He was looking all suspisious. I mean, I know he’s just a pile of guts, but he was acting suspicious.
“It was pretty simple. I waited till 1:17, and pulled the detonator. It exploded. But then…then I see all these beasts flying past me, faster than a horse, and they’re going right into the hole I just made with the explosion.
“Then I hear screaming and look and bit by bit, Principal Hairbear is being sucked into the hole too. But weirdest thing, I don’t feel it sucking me in at all. I just stood there. Then after all of Hairbear was sucked in, I hear this escalating sound of a loud wind. Then a pop and kind of, excuse me officer, kind of like a fart? Like breaking wind? And it shoots a little girl out of the hole, high into the sky.”
Officer Gurt pointed out the back window to where Mrs. Gurt was still talking to Little Splind.
“Yes! Her! She shot out of the hole! And then finally everything was quiet and then I came here.”
“Well good work, deputy,” said Gurt. “We pulled that off perfectly.”
The deputy looked confused. “You’re not going to tell me what happened?”
“Maybe someday. Well, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure myself how it all works here. Just know for now that you did it perfectly, saved some people from The Dimension, and sometimes…that’s just the way things go here in Crumb Hill.”
the end
e
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Day 78 of 100 Days of Blog
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