Chapter 1
It was an incredibly dull Saturday. Chester tried to think of something to do. He looked out the window again.
Maybe a huge airplane would appear. It would drop boxes from high in the sky. Boxes of supplies, because the invasion was coming! Everyone would rush outside to look!
But there wasn’t an airplane today. There wasn’t even a purple balloon.
Nothing could be worse than a dull Saturday. Well... almost nothing.
Nothing, except cleaning the hall bathroom.
Cleaning the hall bathroom was a job that used all kinds of of nasty, smelly chemicals. Chester had to scrub with these smelly chemicals until they had almost leached through the sweaty, itchy gloves he had to wear, gloves that went up to his elbows.
But without gloves, the strange chemicals would probably eat holes through his hands, leaving him as a circus weirdo forever!
Then everyone would stare at him through cage bars. The boy without hands!
If Chester dared to come out of his room, he would be spotted and sent into the hall bathroom right now.
“Chester!” his mum yelled from another room. Chester got up very slowly and started out his bedroom door to certain doom.
“Could you please take this bill to your Uncle William?” mother said almost politely, clutching a basket of laundry and handing out an envelope.
It was a trick, Chester knew. His mother would ask him for something small usually...
And then another chore, and then another, and then before he knew it, it was too late and he was trying to shove his fingers into those itchy rubber gloves...
Uncle William lived directly down the street. He was kind of weird and Chester didn’t like his house very much. He lived with some other weird folks who were almost as old as him.
But still, Uncle William’s stuffy house didn’t hardly compare with the ultimate terror that awaited on his return!
Chester rang the doorbell. He looked around. The house was like many others in the neighborhood, but older. The paint had spots of dirt and the boards were cracking.
It looked like every single house had been repainted except Uncle William’s.
No one was coming! He rang the doorbell again.
There wasn’t anything to do except look at the shrubby little plants beside Uncle William’s house, and try to peek into the windows, which had tiny curtains on them.
But Chester knew there wasn’t much to see inside. He had been here before.
Chester wondered over and over what was taking so long! Usually someone came to the door after a few seconds.
The tiny curtains kept him from seeing anything inside. Maybe he could sneak behind the bushes and look through the cracks.
Finally Uncle William slowly opened the door and just grinned at him with his old, smiling teeth. He kind of stared and smiled and smacked his lips for a moment.
“Chester it is! What have you got me for?” he said brightly, as if he had just won a million bucks from the sweepstakes.
Chester handed him the envelope. The old man tousled Chester’s hair and said would he like some candies?
Chester already knew what the candies were. They were odd little pastel balls filled with weak chocolate. Chester didn’t really like them.
Then he thought of the window cleaner bottle waiting at home.
The candy dish was on the tiny table where it usually was, and Chester slowly reached for one of the lumpy balls. He hoped they would taste better this time.
Some of the other folks who lived there were wandering past. There was a short, spectacled guy with frizzy hair and some lady with a frilly pajama set.
“Jeffrey? Have you met Chester yet?” William said loudly. Of course he had, many times before!
“How nice to see you again,” said the lady in pajamas. She had a fancy English way of speaking, like the announcer for that cat food commercial, and sat down on the fusty couch by the table.
Chester tried to concentrate on choosing which candy to eat next. Sometimes light blue ones tasted better than pink, he thought.
“Ho ho! Chester my boy!” said the frizzy guy, who must be Jeffrey, Chester thought.
“We’ve just been discussing some things,” he said, giving a wink to William through his glasses.
“Oh, don’t bother the dear,” said the lady. “Let him enjoy the candies.”
Chester wondered what they were going on about. They were always weird.
“Yes let’s not bother him, Auntie,” Jeffrey went on with glee. “After all, they are top secret things. Strange things. Things we’ve been working on for quite some time, we have.”
“Oh, hush, Jeffrey.” said the nice lady. “You and your nonsense.”
Chester watched them. Things were getting weirder than usual.
“See? Now you’ve got him all curiousity!” the lady said.
“Curious-ified!” said Uncle Bill happily.
“Curious-it-ified you mean!” went Jeffrey. “Hee hee!” And he looked ready to dance a little jig with his slippers. Chester really didn’t know what to do except keep munching on the candy.
“Now that’s enough,” the lady said with suddenness. “It’s time for Chester to get home of course.”
Jeffrey seemed a bit disappointed and stopped smiling. Chester didn’t really want to leave. At least not yet.
“I don’t want to go yet,” he said.
“Why? Why not?” Jeffrey said, leaning over. His eyes gleamed at Chester through the spectacles.
“Have you got mumbers in your closet?” Jeffrey whispered with mischief.
“Or has a dust mop been after you?” Uncle William said. He winked at Jeffrey.
“I never!” went the lady.
“Or your teddy ran off?” Jeffrey squealed.
“I say, you two are...!” went the lady.
“Or what? Come on, out with it!" Jeffrey finished at last.
Chester looked up at them. Somehow it seemed they really wanted to know, they weren’t just kidding him. But his thoughts of the hall bathroom seemed stupid and childish now.
“Don’t leave us curious-ified,” said Uncle William.
“Curious-it-ified! Ho ho!” Jeffrey said.
“Really, let him speak,” the lady said with gravity.
“I just...” Chester began.
“It’s the ultimate terror. The hall bathroom.” said Chester at last. He felt better somehow, saying it.
No one laughed at him. No one looked as if he had said something odd.
“Oh... Ah... I see...” said Jeffrey somberly. “The ultimate terrors.”
There was no sign of mocking on his jolly face.
“The ultimate terrors,” William repeated slowly after Jeffrey. Everyone was quiet for a moment.
The lady kept thinking for a long time. Chester wondered what she was thinking about.
“I think it’s time. We should tell him,” she said with absolute decision. William and Jeffrey looked at her and then back at Chester.
As if on some invisible signal, Jeffrey went and checked that the windows were locked and curtained, and then William went and ruffled inside a drawer, pulling out some various papers. The lady continued sitting on the old couch, mulling over some thoughts.
William brought the papers and spread them out all over the small table. There were large papers, and little notepad papers, and some that were covered with strange scribbles. He kept pointing at things with a stubby pencil as he talked.
“Well, I started out my calculations with fripperology, but then I realized I needed something more analytical like stufferisms.”
William shuffled through the stack and tried to find some more papers, which he put on top.
“Finally I arrived at the schematic B here, (he pointed at what looked like a ridiculous mousetrap) and then with some difficulty I used the frippological calculations I had done before...”
Here he pointed at a bunch of arrows, which pointed at other arrows and then back at the first arrows.
“Conjunctified with some values from the table of mumbers...”
William kept on talking, waving the pencil around.
“...arrived at the schematic F here (and he pointed at something like a bionic toaster blueprint) which all leads me back to my first clue, as I had suspected at first!”
And then he took something out of his front right shirt pocket, very, very carefully, as if it were made of finest tissue paper.
He unwrapped it slowly and laid it out on top of everything, smoothing out the wrinkles gently with his old, soft fingers. Chester recognized it, it was a Berzerker Joe gum wrapper.
It always had a funny little comic on it that was almost unreadable and sometimes not that funny. But Chester always liked the Berzerker Joe comics anyways.
“Read the comic,” William said commandingly.
It was a comic Chester had seen before actually. He often got some gum, and had a lot of wrappers himself. In the first panel Berzerker Joe was at the beach in his swim trunks. Then it ended with a joke about the “salty sea”, he remembered.
But the paper was wrinkled, and there were a few dots of ink, and it almost looked like it just said “saltines”.
“Read right here,” William said, carefully pointing the pencil stub.
“Hey, it says saltines!” Chester exclaimed.
“Exactly.”
