Elliot and the Goblin War (Underworld Chronicles 1)

Only there were five of them this time.

Five Goblins with boiling, bubbling skin. With each bubble, they grew larger and blacker. Their skin was wet, and in the moonlight Elliot saw bulges form along their back and down their arms and legs.

Run! Elliot’s brain screamed it to him, but not loudly enough to get his legs to listen. He could do nothing but stare at the emerging beasts.

His heart beat faster, pounding against the wall of his chest. Pounding in rhythm with the bubbling skin.

The Goblins’ faces were changing too. Their jagged teeth, already protruding from their wide mouths, grew into a mouthful of fangs. The ends of their fingers extended into claws long enough to pry a door off its hinges, and their coloring darkened to a sooty dark green. The Goblins banged their teeth together, and the earth shook beneath Elliot’s feet. The yard swirled around him. Everything was in a dizzy motion except for the monsters before him. He could see them all too well.

Elliot’s breath locked in his throat, and he gasped for air. His lungs must have shut down, because they didn’t want to help him breathe anymore. They only wanted to get away from this. His heart knocked unevenly now, like it couldn’t keep up with the rhythm from the Goblins’ gnashing teeth.

Elliot’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell to the ground. Someone ran into the yard with a broom. Was it Agatha? She moved fast for a woman her age. She swung the broom at the monsters, and they clawed back at her. She started yelling at them, although he couldn’t hear the words…just the pounding rhythm.

It was the rhythm that mattered.

The rhymes. Agatha’s curses were in rhyme.

Suddenly, the air filled with light and all went silent. Elliot closed

his eyes, and just as quickly, his world went black.

The first thing Elliot heard was giggling. He didn’t expect to hear giggling, because surely he had been scared to death by the Goblins, and whoever thought that being scared to death was funny was just plain rude.

Tubs was rude, and Tubs also might have thought Elliot’s death was funny, but Tubs never giggled. So who was it?

Elliot opened one eye, just a peek to see who might be giggling, but he couldn’t see anyone. Then he thought maybe he wasn’t dead after all. Because if there’s one thing dead people can’t do, it’s open their eyes to peek at the living world.

Elliot did an official test to see if he was alive. He wiggled his toes.

Uncle Rufus once told him a story about a dead person who wiggled their toes. It had something to do with the body’s nerves still working for a few hours after death. Elliot gasped. Maybe he was one of those stories! Now all he had to do was figure out how to become a zombie. How cool was that?

Then his brain woke up and told him to stop dreaming. If he was going to become a zombie, then he’d be out on the streets moaning already. Not lying in a bed listening to someone giggle. He was definitely alive, and it was time to wake up.

Uncle Rufus and Agatha stared down at him. Agatha’s bulging left eye looked as if it were ready to fall out at any second. Elliot shifted in his bed so it wouldn’t land on him, just in case.

“Quiet now,” Agatha said. “Don’t get up too fast.”

“You saved me from those—” Elliot stopped and looked at Uncle Rufus. He knew he couldn’t say anything about the Brownies. That probably meant he couldn’t talk about the Goblins either.

“He knows,” Agatha said.

Elliot sat up on his elbows. “He knows what?”

“I know about Agatha,” Uncle Rufus said, smiling. “It wasn’t hard to figure out once I realized everyone saw something different than I did.”

“Why can you see her and nobody else can?” Elliot asked.

“You’ll see her too, in time,” Uncle Rufus said.

“Oh.” Elliot stole a hopeful glance at Agatha, just in case. It didn’t work. She was still the most hideous creature he’d ever seen. He looked back to Uncle Rufus. “Where’s my family?”

“Off to work or school, so it’s just us to take care of you,” he said.

Agatha tapped Uncle Rufus on the arm. “Elliot will be thirsty, dear,” she hissed. “Will you get him a drink of water?”

Dear? Just how long had Elliot been asleep?

As soon as Uncle Rufus left, Agatha turned to him. “Your uncle knows about me, but that’s all. He thinks the Goblins came to find me and knows nothing about the Brownies. Your secret is safe.”