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running up to the indestructible creature with a long arm and paper seemed ridiculous.
The creature emerged with a thud. It stomped toward Erec, shaking the floor. Erec sprang into motion
and darted away. He ran to the end of the hallway.
The creature swiftly overtook him. Erec s breath jerked in spurts, but he was barely aware of it. He flew
around the corner and then stopped.
It was strike first or be eaten. With one swift motion he stretched his burl wood arm as far around the
corner as it could go. As soon as the destroyer was in reach, he put paper over the thing s suction hole.
It stuck. The tiny corner of paper that touched its mouth hole sizzled away.
Erec darted back around the corner. The destroyer continued forward, arms out in front, but slower. It
looked silly and grotesque at the same time, paper held onto its nose in an eternal sniff. The thing walked
straight into the wall, where it sucked back in with a pop.
Before Erec could catch his breath, two more destroyers emerged from a wall in front of him, faceless
heads swinging toward him.
Erec s heart and lungs were running at hyper speed, pounding and panting wildly. He tried to focus. His
body told him to run, but they would easily outrun him. He grabbed paper with his wooden hand and
took a step, shaking, toward the closest destroyer. As soon as it was within reach, he popped paper
over its nose hole, avoiding its broad arms by reaching high and letting the wooden arm arc down. He
dashed away.
The destroyer turned its head wildly, swinging and hitting walls. Finally it stumbled onto the floor. The
blind creature must have needed smell to tell it where the walls were. Without smell, it was in a blank
void.
The other destroyer pounded down the corridor toward Erec. Roughly it shoved the confused destroyer
out of its way. Erec was ready with paper. The wooden arm worked like a charm. In a moment the
baffled creature was attacking the other destroyer. Soon they jostled back into the walls.
Right then another destroyer appeared behind him. Erec reached high on his toes to paper it and then
darted down the hallway. He was amazed that he had not had a cloudy thought. They seemed to come to
him in far less dangerous situations than this. Maybe it was because he already knew what to do. But it
would be nice to know which hallway to take. Erec was amazed that for the first time in his life he
actually wanted a cloudy thought.
A destroyer turned the corner right in front of him. He jumped back and reached it with paper just in
time. Behind him, two more appeared. Erec ran back and papered the closer one, but it continued to
walk in his direction. He ran to the middle of the hallway, but he was stuck between two of the stony
goliaths walking right toward each other.
Erec dropped to the floor, careful not to jiggle the formula, and looked wildly around. The two
destroyers continued straight toward him, even though they couldn t smell him. He was about to become
part of a terrible sandwich.
In wild fear, he crawled in the direction he was first headed. The destroyer strode toward him, but did
not reach down to him. He scrambled between its legs, tripping it.
The thing spun and hit the wall. The other one tripped over it. Both tussled on the stone floor, confused.
In the meantime, Erec took off.
At the end of the hallway, four more destroyers sucked out of the walls, one in front and three behind
him. These were closer than before. Erec worked quickly with paper on the closest two and then waited,
trapped between them. He squeezed the glass jar to his chest.
The two destroyers that still had their smell pushed the other one toward Erec. He had an urge to splash
the formula on them, but he would probably end up blasting himself to pieces. He wondered with a sick
feeling if he would ever find the inner dungeons or if he was trapped with these monsters forever.
The destroyers came dangerously close. Erec crouched, ready to crawl past one s legs, but then it
stumbled, disappearing, into a wall. He ran down the hallway, thankful that his magic Sneakers made his
shaky strides steady. The two uncovered destroyers behind him pushed past and tore after him.
Before Erec reached the end of the hallway, a bunch more squeezed from the wall behind him, at least
five. He was sure that, sweating and panting, he was a flashing neon billboard by now to their sense of
smell. He didn t stop but rounded the corner and saw an amazing sight.
The hallway ahead of him was filled with destroyers, lumbering toward him with outstretched arms and
dripping mouths. And behind them, at the end of the hallway, bright light gleamed. The inner dungeons.
Erec felt so close, but the disgusting stone zombies surrounded him. He would never make it. He reached
with his wooden arm, unsure which way to point it first, when his head started to spin. It was the heat and
the smell. He was fainting. Either the jar would drop or he would be devoured by acid. Either way he
would certainly die. He grabbed the jar tighter as the creatures approached.
Then the fog in Erec s head melted. He was having a cloudy thought, different from any other. His
stomach felt fine. The dizzy feeling was much shorter, possibly because he would die if it lasted longer,
and his determination was stronger than he had ever known it to be. He felt as if his strength had
doubled.
Instead of fighting the cloudy thought, he became one with it. For once, it felt like his own will in action,
not something outside of himself. Maybe because he knew he would die without it or because he had [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]