The Book of Ga-Huel Read online

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  Jim’s eyes snapped open. He was back in his room, drenched in sweat, jaws clenched. His arm had gone numb, not from a dislocated shoulder, but from sleeping awkwardly on it.

  “Whew,” sighed Jim, feeling the nightmare fading already. “What was in that guac?”

  The alarm clock read 2:00 a.m. There were still four more hours before he had to wake up for school. Relieved, Jim went back to sleep—only to sit upright in bed all of a sudden and yell, “Holy sheesh-kabobs! I forgot my homework!”

  CHAPTER 2

  ACCIDENTS HAPPEN

  A black hole opened in front of the lockers at Arcadia Oaks High School. Claire stepped out, yawning, and said, “You guys coming?”

  Toby practically sleepwalked out of the vortex. Jim followed his best friend out, saying, “Sorry, guys. I shouldn’t have bothered you with this.”

  “Hey, after two weeks of no Jim, we’ll take all the time we can get with you,” said Claire.

  “Even if it’s at school,” Toby added drowsily. “And way before first period.”

  Jim dialed the combination to his locker and said, “If it’s any consolation, I should have just enough time to finish my Algebra homework and turn it—”

  The sound of raised voices made Jim stop talking. He, Claire, and Toby all turned their heads and looked down the empty hall. Two people spoke again from inside one of the classrooms. Jim strained to make out the words, but they were muffled and indistinct.

  “What language is that?” Toby asked.

  “I don’t know,” Claire admitted. “But whatever it is, it sure sounds heated.”

  They crept down the hallway and stopped just outside of Señor Uhl’s Spanish class. They could see his silhouette pacing in front of the door’s frosted glass and hear his German accent.

  “. . . completely unacceptable!” growled Señor Uhl. “They must step up the timetable!”

  Jim, Toby, and Claire stared at one another and mouthed the same word: “Timetable?”

  “The return will happen as planned,” argued another person with a different accent.

  Curious to get a look at the second person in Uhl’s class, Toby stood on his tiptoes and peered into the window. But his sneakers were still wet with melon juice, making the rubber soles squeak loudly against the linoleum floor. Uhl’s outline went ramrod straight.

  “What is it? Why have you stopped talking?” asked the foreign voice.

  “Shh,” said Uhl. “There may be a spy in our midst. . . .”

  The trio of eavesdroppers scrambled away as Uhl opened the door and poked his flat-topped head into the hall. Around the corner, Claire, Toby, and Jim flattened against the wall and held their breaths. Seeing nothing but vacant hallway, Uhl returned to his class and shut the door.

  “Did you see who Señor Uhl was arguing with?” whispered Jim.

  “No, the only body I saw in there was his musclebound one,” Toby whispered back.

  But before any of them could say another word, an unexpected glow caught their attention. They looked across the hall, where eerie lights danced behind another door.

  “That . . . that’s Strickler’s old office,” stammered Claire.

  “I thought you sent him packing on a one-way ride to Nowheresville,” Toby said.

  “I did,” answered Jim, his face flushing with anger.

  He marched over to Strickler’s erstwhile office and flung open the door, causing even more mysterious light to flood into the hallway. The Trollhunter and his friends shielded their eyes.

  “All right, Walter, what’re you doing back in Arcadia?” Jim shouted into the glare. “Just because you gave me Gunmar’s Eye doesn’t mean you get a second chance with my mom or—”

  And just like that, the light vanished. The teens lowered their arms. Other than the three of them, Walter Strickler’s office remained completely empty. Toby said, “Maybe he installed some of those ultra-bright LED bulbs before skipping town?”

  “That light didn’t come from any bulb, Tobes,” said Jim. “It came from over there.”

  Jim pointed to Strickler’s desk and the old, leather-bound tome left open on its surface.

  “It’s The Book of Ga-Huel,” remembered Claire. “Tobes, we must’ve forgotten to put it away the last time we were here.”

  “In our defense, Angor Rot was trying to murder us and all,” argued Toby.

  Jim ran his fingers against the book’s open pages and said, “For an ancient book of Gumm-Gumm history, the ink still feels pretty fresh.”

  “I could’ve sworn those pages were blank last time,” Claire said.

  “Ah, the AC probably kicked on and blew it open to a different page,” Toby reasoned, hearing a faint hiss in the ceiling air-conditioner vent.

  “Maybe,” Jim said. “But that still doesn’t explain why a book that’s thousands of years old is suddenly glowing in a deserted school office. Right?”

  Claire said, “That sounds like a Blinky question. We should get this to him right away.”

  Toby was about to chime in with his agreement when the hissing grew louder. He spotted something moving behind the vent’s metal grill and swallowed hard. Jim and Claire followed Toby’s blanched gaze, seeing a column of deep, purple smoke bloom out of the duct.

  “Antramonstrum!” Jim yelled to his friends. “Don’t let it touch you!”

  Jim had seen up close the kind of damage wreaked by these sentient death clouds during his tour of duty in the Darklands. He had watched in horror as an Antramonstrum passed over a platoon of Gumm-Gumm soldiers, leaving only their fossilized husks in its wake.

  The sounds of Toby and Claire extending their Warhammer and Shadow Staff pulled Jim back into the present. The Antramonstrum surged over to the book shelf in Strickler’s office and swirled around a pink crystal. Claire said, “It . . . it looks like it’s trying to get inside that crystal.”

  “Only Mr. Toxic-Gas-Giant doesn’t seem to be having much luck,” quipped Toby.

  The Antramonstrum prodded the crystal repeatedly, but only succeeded in knocking it to the floor, where it shattered. Even though it had no lungs, the smoke creature still shrieked in anguish. The three friends covered their ears, until the Antramonstrum’s screech abated.

  Jim said, “That thing’s louder than the school bell! We gotta shut it up before Uhl hears!”

  Claire nodded and summoned a new black hole below the Antramonstrum. But its violet, vaporous body started to drift away from the portal.

  “Tobes, use your Warhammer to weigh it down!” said Jim.

  A knowing, metal-mouthed grin spread across Toby’s face. He jammed the hammerhead into the Antramonstrum’s billowing form and concentrated. The Warhammer’s energies seeped into the writhing smoke, condensing the cloud, increasing its gravity. The Antramonstrum sank lower and lower—and closer and closer to Claire’s portal. Toby and Claire poured everything they had into their weapons until the Antramonstrum dropped like a stone into the black hole.

  “Whoa. Heavy,” said Toby as Claire closed the portal.

  Jim tucked The Book of Ga-Huel next to the Amulet in his backpack just as the first bell rang. Claire cracked open the office door, revealing droves of students now flowing through the halls. Sighing, Jim said, “So much for getting my homework done. Ms. Janeth’s gonna kill me.”

  “Want me to pretend to be you again, like when you were in the Darklands?” asked Toby, pulling an odd, Tiki-like mask out of his own backpack. “I’ve still got the Glamour Mask!”

  “No thanks, Tobes,” said Jim. “My grades are still on life support from last time.”

  Toby shrugged and said, “Too bad they don’t give out As for impersonation. This mask made me look and sound so much like you, not even your mom could tell the difference!”

  “Let’s go. Uhl’s giving detentions to anyone he catches in off-limits areas,” Claire said.

  They exited Strickler’s office and merged with the flow of hallway traffic—only for Jim to immediately
collide with someone carrying a teetering stack of textbooks.

  “I’m so sorry!” Jim said as he helped collect the books. “I wasn’t watching where I . . .”

  Jim trailed off. A redheaded woman in her twenties stood across from him, holding out her arms to accept the books. She smiled dazzlingly and said, “No biggie. Accidents happen!”

  Toby stood riveted next to Jim. They both stared at her with matching dopey grins, absentmindedly holding her books. The redhead still held out her arms, but the guys just kept staring. Claire cleared her throat, reviving Jim, who hastily returned the textbooks.

  “Are you new here?” Toby asked the woman, his eyes still glazed. “You look new. I haven’t seen you before. I’d remember that. You must be new. Are you new here?”

  “Yes, siree, I am!” she said with a snorting laugh. “Sorry, I snort when I’m nervous.”

  “Nervous?” said Jim. “Why in the world would you be nervous? About anything? Ever?”

  Claire shot Jim a dirty look as the woman said, “Oh, it’s my first day on the job. I’m your new school librarian, Eloise Stemhower.”

  “Eloise,” Toby repeated in a singsong way.

  “Well, Ellie for short,” said Ellie. “I mean, ‘Eloise’ sounds so old-fashioned. I don’t know what my mom was thinking when she named me. Other than ‘What kind of name will guarantee my daughter grows up to become a school librarian?’ ”

  Jim and Toby both laughed extremely loudly at the joke. Ellie joined in with more of her snorting, until the second bell rang.

  “Uh-oh. I think that means I’m late!” Ellie yelped. “See ya in the stacks!”

  Jim and Toby kept smiling even after Ellie passed through the library door. Claire shook her head and muttered, “Ugh. I think I’d rather be with that mindless Antramonstrum than you two boys. . . .”

  CHAPTER 3

  A REAL PAGE-TURNER

  Seven grueling periods of high school later, Jim and Toby found themselves still apologizing to Claire as she shadow-jumped them into Blinky’s Troll library.

  “—we were just welcoming Ellie, Claire!” Jim said. “Like . . . like school ambassadors!”

  Their sudden appearance made Blinky—who’d been standing on AAARRRGGHH!!!’s head to reach some scrolls on the tallest shelf—lose his balance and come crashing down with a loud “Yaaaaah!”

  “Ambassadors who can’t stop drooling, you mean,” said Claire. “Sorry, Blinky. My bad.”

  “My drooling has nothing to do with how Ellie’s freckles seem to twinkle like a constellation of heavenly stars whenever she smiles,” Toby protested. “For all you know, it’s related to an ongoing orthodontic condition!”

  “Orka-donka?” AAARRRGGHH!!! mispronounced as he helped Blinky out of the unspooled scrolls.

  “Orthodontic,” Blinky clarified. “A specialized field of dentistry designed to straighten humans’ teeth for some inane reason.”

  “It won’t seem so inane when I get my braces off in another decade or so,” said Toby.

  “Which is about as long as it’ll take to clean this mess,” Blinky muttered, gesturing to the scrolls.

  “Don’t worry, Blink. We’ll help. And maybe this will make it up to you,” said Jim as he unzipped his backpack and pulled out . . .

  “The Book of Ga-Huel!” exclaimed Blinky.

  He raced over to Jim and gingerly took the tome from his hands. The leather binding creaked as Blinky opened the book and ran his sixteen fingers along the arcane script and sketches contained within.

  “Sorta like A Brief Recapitulation of Gumm-Gumm Lore, huh?” joked Jim.

  “Just so, Master Jim,” Blinky confirmed. “The Gumm-Gumm’s former king, Orlagk the Oppressor, commissioned it after learning of the Venerable Bedehilde’s forty-seven volume magnum opus.”

  “Sounds like a real page-turner,” Toby said sarcastically.

  “That it is, Tobias,” concurred Blinky. “For legend holds that this book does not just chronicle the history of the Gumm-Gumm empire—but also its future.”

  Jim, Claire, Toby, and AAARRRGGHH!!! all raised their eyebrows, impressed.

  “The story goes that Orlagk learned of a traitor in his ranks, a soldier who dared to overthrow him and take control of the Gumm-Gumm army,” Blinky went on.

  “Gunmar,” said Jim, based on the firsthand account he’d heard in the Darklands.

  “Correct, Master Jim!” answered Blinky. “Though Gunmar was careful to keep his mutinous plans secret at the time. Growing desperate, Orlagk turned to forbidden, dark magic to help him root out the true identity of his eventual betrayer. Thus was born The Book of Ga-Huel.”

  “But if Orlagk ordered the book’s creation, why didn’t he use it to expose Gunmar and save his own life?” asked Claire.

  “Unfortunately, the answer to that mystery has been lost to time, fair Claire,” said Blinky. “Throughout the ages, many Trollhunters have endeavored to track down the book and use its valuable knowledge for good, rather than evil. But The Book of Ga-Huel has always managed to slip out of their grasp time and time again.”

  “Until now,” added AAARRRGGHH!!!

  “You mean, we could use this book to get a sneak peek at where our enemies are gonna attack before it even happens?” said Claire, her voice rising in excitement.

  “Or the answers to next week’s chemistry quiz?” asked Toby.

  “Why, yes, Claire,” realized Blinky. “And forget about it, Domzalski.”

  AAARRRGGHH!!! looked over to Jim, who stayed unusually quiet. He seemed lost in thought, as if some little detail was nagging at the edge of his memory.

  “Jim okay?” asked the gentle giant.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Jim said unconvincingly. “It’s just . . . there’s something else the book might be able to tell us.”

  Jim felt all his friends’ eyes turn toward him. He tried to organize his scattered thoughts as best he could and said, “That Antramonstrum. Back at Strickler’s. It looked like it was trying to get back into that crystal, didn’t it?”

  Blinky and AAARRRGGHH!!! watched Toby and Claire nod in unison.

  “And Tobes, you told me that the Antramonstrum that attacked you, Blink, and AAARRRGGHH!!! months ago came out of a crystal in Strickler’s office,” Jim went on.

  “Yeah, it did,” said Toby. “Before we sucked it into the Darklands through that Fetch.”

  “Exactly!” Jim said, snapping his fingers. “So what I’m wondering is: What if that was the same Antramonstrum we fought today? What if it followed me back to Arcadia and tried to return to its crystal home? And what if it wasn’t alone when it escaped the Darklands?”

  The members of Team Trollhunters stared at one another in mounting dread. Jim’s voice tightened with nerves as he added, “What if Gunmar got out, too? Could The Book of Ga-Huel show us where to find him?”

  “You raise a most troubling series of questions indeed, Master Jim,” said Blinky, who began fanning through the blank pages at the back. “Though the answers should be easy enough to obtain. All we need do is turn to the very last chapters of The Book of Ga-Huel and—”

  “No!” cried Jim, Toby, and Claire.

  They knocked the book out of Blinky’s hand a split second before one of the blank pages unleashed an intensely bright beam. Claire used her Shadow Staff to generate a protective shade around her light-sensitive Troll friends. Holding his hand in front of his eyes, Jim peeked between his fingers and saw new words and pictures start to fill the illuminated page. A moment later, the blinding glow stopped as suddenly as it had started.

  “By Gorgus!” marveled Blinky.

  He tapped the corner of the book with his foot. No more light flashed, so Blinky figured it was safe to handle. He picked up the tome, looked at the now-filled page, and cried, “Great Gronka Morka!”

  Shaken, Blinky threw the book back onto the floor. Jim and the others rushed to him, inspecting his many limbs for any sign of injury.

  “Blink, what is it?” asked Jim. “Ar
e you hurt?”

  “No,” Blinky said in a dry rasp. “Although it appears that’s about to change. Look!”

  All four of his hands pointed to the Troll library floor, where the book had landed open once again. Everyone else’s eyes all went as wide as Blinky’s. For The Book of Ga-Huel’s newest page now featured an ink drawing of Jim, Claire, Toby, AAARRRGGHH!!!, and Draal all standing in mourning around the broken, stony remains of Blinky’s dead body.

  CHAPTER 4

  BA-BRU-AH’S BODYGUARD

  Doctor Barbara Lake wanted to scream.

  After thirty-six hours of back-to-back shifts at Arcadia Oaks Hospital—and an extra forty-five minutes of traffic on the ride home—Jim’s mom had reached the end of her patience. She slid her key into the front door, entered her house, and kicked off her clogs. Barbara saw the framed wall photo of Jim as a toddler and immediately started feeling better.

  “Jim, I’m home,” she called from the foyer. “How was school today?”

  In the basement directly beneath Barbara, Draal stopped sharpening his ax. He had been scraping a whetstone against his prized weapon, honing its blade to razor-sharpness. But now the spiked Troll remained quiet as Barbara’s footsteps crossed over his head. Draal listened to her walk through the dining room and into the kitchen.

  “Jim? Honey? Are you upstairs?” Draal heard Barbara say through the floorboards. “If you’re doing your homework, I can help! For the first time since fourth grade . . .”

  Barbara muttered that last part under her breath. But Draal had cupped his hand around his ear, and his heightened Troll hearing picked up every last syllable. By now, he knew what would come next. Barbara would realize that Jim was out of the house, that she missed him yet again. Then she would bury her face in her hands and curse herself for not being there enough for her son—for not being present during these important teenage years. But Barbara would then take a deep breath, promise herself she’d do better next time, and try to cook dinner on her own before ultimately burning the food.

  Draal rested his ax on the cold basement floor and listened to Barbara go through her entire guilty cycle: cursing, breathing, promising, and cooking. A minute later Draal heard the kitchen smoke alarm go off, right on schedule. The Troll lumbered over to the window set high in the basement wall, which looked onto the backyard. Through the narrow glass pane, Draal saw Barbara’s bare feet dash into the twilit lawn. She ran over to the trash can—which now sported a rump-shaped dent in its side, courtesy of Toby—and scraped the charred, smoking “dinner” out of her frying pan.