Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder (14 page)

“And you're glowing,” the professor said. “You're your own flashlight. Now hurry up!”

Nilly crawled up onto the rim of the toilet and hopped down into the water, making a splash.

“Brr,” he said.

“Ready?” the professor asked, looking down at the tiny little, and now phosphorescent, boy who was treading water in the toilet.

“Ready,” Nilly said.

“Take a deep breath and hold it,” the professor said.

“Roger!” Nilly said, taking a breath and pinching his nose.

And with that, the professor flushed. The toilet gurgled and spluttered and sloshed. And then it turned into a steady rushing noise, and the professor peered into the toilet and Nilly wasn't there anymore.

Life in the Sewers

NILLY WAS IN a free fall. He had once tried the waterslide at some water park or other, but this was totally different. His body whooshed like a torpedo toward the center of the earth until a bend in the pipe flung him to the left. And then to the right. And then straight down again. He felt like a cowboy riding a
wild horse of water, and he couldn't help himself—he had to yell, “Yee ha!”

The pipes were exactly big enough with exactly enough water to soften all the falls and turns. He was carried farther and farther down, and although it was getting both darker and colder, he was having so much fun and things were glowing so green around him that he wasn't thinking about being wet or freezing cold. And he realized why that rat in their cell had swum and scrambled all the way up into their toilet: This was the roller-coaster ride of a lifetime!

It felt like such an adrenaline rush in his stomach every time the pipes turned and Nilly plunged into a new free fall that he hoped the ride would never end. But it did have to, of course. And it did. Rather suddenly, too. The walls of the narrow pipe disappeared and he was stretched out in the air as flat as a pancake and saw something black approaching with alarming speed. Then the black thing hit him.
Or to be more precise, Nilly hit the black thing. No one has ever witnessed an uglier belly flop in the Oslo sewer system. Brown, slimy goo sloshed up against the walls. And, boy, did it sting! Nilly felt like he was lying facedown in a frying pan.

He stood up and discovered that the water only came up to his waist. He looked around. Besides the glimmering green light coming from him, it was pitch-black. And once the sloshing had subsided, it was completely quiet, too. But, yuck, did it stink! It smelled so bad that the author advises you to do the same thing Nilly realized he had to do: Stop thinking about it.

What was I thinking about?
Nilly wondered, since he wasn't thinking about the smell anymore.
Right, that I need to find a manhole cover.
And with that Nilly started wading through the sewer system looking for a way out.

Unfortunately, it's not as easy as you might think to find a manhole cover in a sewer system after the
sun has set. The reason being that the sun is no longer shining through the manhole covers' small holes that are designed to let water in from the street. And although Nilly was glowing, the light didn't reach far enough to illuminate the shafts above him. But he didn't give up.

AFTER NILLY HAD waded for a long time and quite some distance, he heard a hissing sound. And he thought the hissing sound must be coming from a manhole cover. Because obviously hissing sounds don't come from the sewer.
Who the heck would be hissing down here?
he thought.

But he wasn't totally sure and noticed that as he approached the location where he thought the sound had come from, his heart beat faster. A lot faster …

And as he rounded a corner, he froze and stood still. Completely still. Actually stiller than he'd ever stood before.

Because he thought he'd seen something.

Something that had gleamed at the very edge of the circle of green light. A row of much too white, much too sharp, and, most of all, much too big teeth. Because teeth that big and that sharp should not be down in the Oslo sewer system. They should only be found in the Amazon River and thereabouts. And in a dreadful picture on page 121 of
Animals You Wish Didn't Exist
. More specifically, in the mouth of the world's largest and most feared constrictor. The anaconda.

It had been a long time since Nilly had read the anaconda chapter in the thick, old book from his grandfather, but now he could clearly picture every single dusty word. And Nilly realized that he was in trouble. First of all, because he was standing up to his waist in what, according to his grandfather's book, was the anaconda's favorite element: water. Not very clean water, but water all the same. Secondly because Nilly was probably the most visible thing in
the Oslo sewer world right about now: a transparent, glowing green boy. And thirdly because even if he hadn't been a glowing larva, there still wouldn't have been anywhere to hide.

So he kept standing there. And there was that hissing noise again. And there were those teeth gleaming in the light again. And they were attached to the biggest mouth he'd ever seen. On each side of the mouth, an evil anaconda eye was staring at him, and in the middle of the mouth, a split red anaconda tongue was vibrating. And Nilly had to admit that even the dreadful picture on page 121 didn't do
the creature justice. Because this was much, much worse and way creepier. The mouth came toward him relentlessly.

AND NOW AS Nilly is about to be eaten, maybe you hope that something will happen at the last minute, something completely unlikely, the kind of thing that never happens anywhere besides in stories just as the hero is about to meet his demise. But nothing like that happened. All that happened was that Nilly slid right down the gullet of the giant snake, glowing all the way. And only two days before Independence Day.

A FULL MOON hid behind a cloud over Cannon Avenue as if it didn't dare watch. Truls and Trym stood by the fence to Doctor Proctor's yard.

“Breaking in is fun,” Truls whispered.

“Breaking in is fun,” Trym whispered.

But even though they were whispering, they still
made too much noise. The moon emerged from the clouds and cast shadows that ran across the overgrown yard like big men in hats and capes.

“Maybe I should stand watch out here while you go in and get the fart powder?” Truls suggested.

“Shut up,” Trym said, staring at the crooked wooden house in front of them, which didn't have any lights on. The house that was so small in the daylight seemed enormous in the dark.

“Are you a tiny bit scared?” Truls asked.

“Nope,” Trym said. “You?”

“No way. Just wondering if you were.”

“Come on,” Trym said, and climbed over the fence. When they were on the inside, they stood still and listened. But all they could hear were a couple of grasshoppers that had lost track of the time and the wind rustling in the pear tree and making the walls of the house creak and groan like an old man telling dusty old ghost stories.

They waded through the grass toward the house. Truls could hear his own heartbeat. And maybe Trym's, too. When they got to the cellar door, Trym held the crowbar up.

“Wait!” Truls whispered. “Check if it's locked first.”

“You idiot,” Trym hissed. “You don't think he'd be so stupid that he would keep a fortune's worth of fart powder in an unlocked cellar, do you?”

“Who knows?”

“You want to bet on it?”

“I'll bet you a bag of fart powder.”

“Okay.”

Truls pulled down on the door handle and tugged. And do you know what? It turned out that the door was actually … was actually …
locked
! What did you think? That someone would be so stupid that he would keep a fortune's worth of fart powder in an unlocked cellar?

“Darn it,” Truls said.

“Hurray,” said Trym, pressing the tip of the crowbar in between the door and the frame and pushing on the other end.

It creaked a little. It creaked a little more.

“Wait!” Truls said.

“Not again,” Trym groaned.

“Look at the window.”

Truls looked at the window. And then eased up on the crowbar.

“Broken,” he said. “Must have been some pranksters throwing rocks.”

“Or some rotten sneaky thieves who beat us to it.”

They climbed in through the window and turned on their flashlights.

The cones of light from their flashlights slid over all kinds of strange equipment, test tubes, barrels, drums, tubes, glass containers, and an old motorcycle with a sidecar. And stopped on two enormous mason jars.

“The powder!” Truls whispered.

They moved closer and shone the light on the labels. The writing on them was the kind of swoopy lettering Mrs. Strobe had tried to teach them, but that neither Truls nor Trym had really gotten the hang of.

“
Doctor Proctor's Totally Normal Fart Powder
,” Truls read one with difficulty.

“
Fartonaut Powder
,” Trym read the other one. “
Keep out of reach of children
.”

“Heh, heh,” Truls laughed.

“Ho, ho,” Trym laughed. “This'll make Dad happy.”

“And then we'll get a swimming pool. Come on, bro.”

With that, they each grabbed a mason jar and snuck back out the same way they'd come in. And only the moon saw them as it timidly peeked out from between the hurrying clouds.

And maybe one person in the red house across the street. At any rate, the curtains in one of the windows on the second floor moved a little.

The Even Greater Escape

THE SUN CAME up over Oslo and Akershus Fortress. And there was a great commotion there.

“What do you mean,” growled the Commandant, “the gunpowder from Shanghai is missing?”

“It disappeared while we were unloading it onto the wharf yesterday afternoon, sir,” said the steadfast
but obviously nervous guardsman in front of him.

“Disappeared? How is that possible?”

“The longshoreman swears it was eaten by a big snake, sir.”

The Commandant's growl made the window-panes in his office rattle. “Are you trying to convince me that some snake ate the whole crate of gunpowder?”