As terrible as all that sounded, the word pond made Luca pay attention. The water in the ditch was quite shallow. An actual pond would presumably be deeper and take a while to drain, which would give them more time to figure out what to do next. They had to find it, quickly. He gestured for Alberto to follow, and slithered out of the culvert back into the ditch.
"What did these kids do ?" asked the voice of Curtis. He was panting, as if he'd run all the way across the car park.
"They're corporate spies," Waternoose growled. "Doubtless here to steal our superior collecting technology. Don't let them get away!"
"Let me get my boots," somebody else said. "I'm not going in there in my bare hooves."
Moving carefully so as not to cause even a ripple, Luca and Alberto felt their way along the bottom, looking for the pond. It was impossible to see anything in the filthy water so they had to navigate by touch and sound, keeping their hands and feet on the bottom and listening out for the splashes of monsters entering the water to look for them. What alerted them to the right direction was the sound of a pump starting up. Luca took Alberto's arm and headed in that direction, and soon they were in deeper water.
Where to go from there? Luca risked poking just the top of his head out of the water to look, and saw the wall of the factory building in front of them. A big pipe was sticking out of it, which was dripping a bit... that was big enough to crawl into, but somebody might see them. When he turned around, he saw two monsters standing on either side of a pump with a much narrower pipe leading into the water, and quickly dipped back under again.
It was Alberto who figured out what to do next. He found an old baseball cap lying on the bottom, put a rock and a handful of slimy algae inside it, and stuffed it into the pump's pipe. The machine whined and coughed to a halt, and the two monsters leaned over to examine it while Luca and Alberto quickly climbed into the bigger pipe and via that route into the factory.
This was difficult, slippery work, and Luca's heart beat faster and his throat felt tight as he wondered if they might get stuck and never get out again. He muttered silenzio Bruno under his breath and pressed on, and soon the pipe ended and the boys found themselves inside a big dark space full of waist-deep cold water. Their breathing could be heard echoing off metal walls. Overhead, something went clank , and they could hear the sound and feel the spray of more water showering down from above.
Luca climbed up on Alberto's shoulders and found that the top of the space had more pipes leading into it, but these were much too narrow to climb through, only a few centimetres across. Down the far end, however, he also found a square hole with a cover closed over it, and by pushing as hard as he could, he was able to force it open. This allowed them to climb out into a room with concrete floors and cinder block walls, dimly-lit by one unshaded lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. Rows of pipes in the ceiling turned down and entered a huge metal tank, and there were several signs saying things like DANGER and CONTAMINATED .
Luca looked more closely at one of these. " Door wash water ," he read. " Do not open without protective clothing ." A cartoon image showed a monster in a plastic suit similar to the ones the exterminators had worn the previous afternoon.
"They're just dumping it out in the pond, though," said Alberto, and then realized why. "Because it's not actually dangerous. Humans aren't poisonous and Mr. Waternoose knows that."
"But everybody else thinks they're really dangerous," Luca agreed. That wasn't right – Waternoose was trying to keep all the screams for himself so he could sell them, when they could have been freely available. Of course, giving Rocco nightmares wasn't a very nice way to collect power in the first place. Didn't the monsters have anything better?
They could think about that later, Luca decided. Right now, they had to figure out the situation they were in. "We can stay in here a while because everybody will think this room is dangerous," he said, "but how do we get out without being seen?" Their sea monster forms were no longer a disguise. Waternoose would have everybody looking for them.
"No problem," Alberto replied. "We just wait until everybody goes home tonight."
That was right – the monsters slept at night, just like humans and sea monsters did! All they had to do was weit.
It was going to be a long wait, though. It was only just about noon, and the boys still hadn't eaten breakfast. Their stomachs gurgled as they sat on the floor of the maintenance room, listening to the sounds of people moving around upstairs. Luca began to feel a bit ill, like he had the day he'd desperately been trying to finish some homework and hadn't had time to eat his lunch before going back to class.
To distract himself, he asked a question that had been on his mind since yesterday afternoon. "Alberto? Are my letters boring?"
"What?" asked Alberto, who was chewing on a hang nail.
"My letters," Luca repeated. "From school."
"No way," Alberto told him. "Why would you ask that?"
"Well, you thought school was boring yesterday."
"Yeah, monster school where I don't know what they're talking about." Alberto waved a dismissive hand.
"You don't know what human school is talking about, either," Luca reminded him. "When I tried to tell you about the layers in the Earth, the core and mantle and all that, you didn't understand at all." Alberto had asked if the core was where the seeds were.
"Yeah, but you don't write about that stuff," said Alberto. "You just tell me you're having fun." He examined his hang nail critically, then gave Luca a brief, worried glance. "What about my letters?"
"What about them?" asked Luca.
"You know. Are they boring?"
"No way!" Luca assured him. Alberto's letters were usually very short because reading and writing were difficult for him, but he was getting better at it, and Luca was proud of him although Alberto would have been embarrassed if he'd said so.
"You sure? Because you think all that school stuff is interesting, and I don't do any of that."
Luca wondered if this idea were new to Alberto, too, or if he'd been thinking about it for a while. "If you don't think my stuff is boring, then I don't think your stuff is boring," Luca promised, feeling much better about it now.
"Oh. Good," said Alberto. He sighed and rearranged himself, sitting with his back to a bundle of pipes. There was nothing in the room that might remotely be called furniture, and the bare floor was very cold to sit on. "Do you remember what Rocco's closet door looked like?"
Luca had to think about it, and as he did, he felt his stomach sink. He hadn't realized until that moment that they were now going to have to find it without Harry's help. He could remember what had been inside the closet, because he'd noticed that there wasn't really any room for a monster in it. The door itself, though? Luca couldn't even recall if it had been painted.
"I don't think so," he admitted. "Do you?"
There was a long silence, ended at last by Alberto saying, "nope. I think it was brown."
That didn't help.
"Too bad our room doesn't have a closet," Alberto said, referring to the one he and Giulia shared during the summer. "I'd definitely remember what that looks like."
"Our room has a closet," said Luca, meaning the one he shared with his grandmother, "but it doesn't have a door." That was no good, either, but it did give Luca one good idea. "When we get back, we have to tell Signora Marsigliese to take the door off Rocco's closet. The monsters can't come in if there's no door."
Alberto nodded eagerly. "If she won't, I'll do it myself!" he promised. "Massimo's been teaching me to use stuff like hammers and screwdrivers, so I'm basically an expert now."
"Perfect!" Luca smiled and relaxed a little. They still didn't really know how they were getting home, but at least they had a plan for what do do once they got there.
Luca and Alberto had left the maintenance hatch open so they could quickly climb back into the tank if anybody came in, but the minutes ticked by, and nobody did. That was a bit surprising when Luca thought about it – wouldn't it occur to anybody that they might have gone up the pipes? Maybe not. If everybody thought humans were deadly poisonous, they would expect the boys to know that, too, and avoid the contaminated water. And Mr. Waternoose couldn't have anybody search this part of the factory, because anyone who did would discover that the water was just being dumped without cleaning it. Why didn't he just clean it anyway for appearances' sake? Maybe he thought that would cost too much money.
The boys had originally planned to hide in this room all day, but as the time went by it became increasingly clear that their stomachs were not going to stand for it. Luca's was so angry it felt like it was moving around inside him – the last time he'd been this hungry had been on the first day in Portorosso, when he and Alberto had missed both breakfast and lunch. That evening they'd finally been able to gobble down platefuls of Massimo's trenette al pesto , but now there was nothing.
Luca didn't like to complain about things, so he wasn't going to mention it, but then he heard Alberto's insides gurgle loudly, and couldn't stop himself from giggling a little. Alberto smiled sheepishly back, and then both began to laugh as Luca's stomach rumbled as if in reply.
"I wonder what kind of food they've got in that cafeteria," said Alberto.
"Dunno." The three-eyed fish, which Luca had eaten a couple of mouthfuls of, had just tasted like fish. He hadn't had any interest in finding out what the eyeball candy was like.
"Too bad we don't know where it is," Alberto said. "Maybe we could sneak in."
They waited a few more long, hungry minutes, as their stomachs continued to complain, until both of them gave up. Luca got somewhat stiffly off the cold floor and peered through the hatch into the giant tank. They'd been able to hear water flowing through it intermittently – it was currently full enough for Luca to reach the surface with his fingers without climbing in. He started splashing himself. Without any questions or protests, Alberto joined in. It was time to see if they could find something to eat.
Once properly monstrous, they cracked open a door and checked out the hallway beyond. It was long and dim, with similar utilitarian construction to the tank room – bare floors, cinder blocks, and pipes in the ceiling. Many of the pipes, along with bundles of electrical cables, passed through the wall above the door, and there was a sign on the outside that said RESTRICTED ACCESS – DOOR CLEANING WASTE WATER . It ought to be an easy place to find again as long as they kept track of their path.
More importantly, there was nobody in the hallway. A clock on the opposite wall showed that it was quarter after noon. Maybe everybody had gone for lunch.
They crept down the hall, checking doors as they passed them. Some were locked. Others could be opened, but there was nothing inside but storage and records rooms with no promises of food. Then they found one that opened onto a much larger room full of bins and conveyor belts, dedicated to processing garbage. Luca would have moved on, but Alberto headed in to explore further.
"That's trash," Luca protested.
"Humans throw out all kinds of good stuff," Alberto informed him.
"You can't eat it! It's garbage!"
"That's what Massimo says, but one time I found half a box of Alassio cookies. What was I supposed to do, just leave them there?" Alberto opened a bin and began rooting around.
To Alberto's disappointment – and to Luca's, although he wouldn't admit it – the trash proved to be largely inorganic, all cans and cups and napkins and other resolutely inedible things. Alberto wandered into an adjoining room to try there, while Luca happened across something odd – a stack of newspapers that were still all packed up in strings as if they hadn't even been delivered yet. These were called The Monstropolis Argus and showed a photograph of the factory blazoned with a bold red headline: INCURSION RUMORS AT MONSTERS INC .
Maybe the newspapers had been meant for people at the factory but Mr. Waternoose had ordered them thrown away because he was angry.
"Luca!" Alberto's voice called from the other room. "Come quick! There's a cake in here!"
"A cake?" Luca asked. That didn't sound right. He opened the door, and found a little kitchen with chairs and a table, a sink, a fridge, and a small oven sitting on the counter. The room smelled like the coffee that was cooling in a glass pitcher on the table, and next to that was about half of a big sheet cake decorated with buttercream roses. The top had writing on it, some of which was still readable as the words HAPPY 30th and below it something smeared that was probably the top of BIRTHDAY.
Not that Luca and Alberto cared what the cake said . There were paper plates and plastic forks in packages on the counter, so they cut themselves slices and dug in. The fridge contained an assortment of sodas with names like Fright and Creepy-Cola , so they opened those, too. The cake was very plain, as cakes went, but Luca wouldn't have cared if it tasted like cardboard as long as it filled his empty stomach.
They were working on their second helpings when they heard the voices outside the door. Luca and Alberto exchanged a glance, then grabbed their cake and sodas and crawled into the cabinet under the sink. Moments later, the door opened and a group of monsters entered, laughing and talking.
"You guys are too much," a woman's voice said.
"Nothing's too much for a birthday, Maureen!" somebody else replied, "especially when it means we get to take an extra-long lunch!" The sounds of cleaning up began. Disposable kitchenware was dumped into bags and crumpled, and empty soda cans were tossed into bins. Luca waited, heart pounding, for the moment somebody noticed that more cake had vanished, but nobody said anything.
"I don't know how I feel about Louise having contributed to the lunch fund when she got fired this morning," Maureen said. "She should at least get a slice of cake."
Now it was going to happen. Somebody would notice that part of the leftovers were missing.
"We could give one to her assistant for her," another person suggested. "I'm sure he'd be happy to pass it on."
"And it isn't like we don't have leftovers," somebody else agreed. "If I see him, I'll mention it."
"That means no picking at the rest!" said the second speaker.
"Ow!"
"You heard me. You don't need any more." The boys heard plasticky sounds as a lid was put on the cake, and a sliding as it was put away on top of the cabinets.
"Great! That means you can all get back to work!" another man announced. This was greeted by groans, but the speaker impatiently clapped what sounded like more than two hands. "Come on, come on, party break's over. We've got trash to process."
Maureen heaved a sigh. "At least we're not the poor suckers in water processing down the hall," she remarked. "I heard they have to keep their fur shaved and bathe in bleach at the end of every day."
"Yeah, I wouldn't want to work anywhere near anything that's come in contact with humans!" another person agreed.
A few moments later the group was gone again, and the door closed behind them.
Luca and Alberto waited a few minutes, then cautiously opened the cupboard door. There was nobody in the room. They quickly wet themselves down in the sink again and then cracked the door open to see what was happening in the main garbage processing room.
There was no hope of slipping through. The room was now full of monsters, sorting trash into bins or pouring it onto conveyor belts to be crushed into cubes. Machines were rumbling. Two women were talking cheerfully while flattening soda cans, and a man was singing in Spanish.
The boys let the door close again.
"Okay," said Luca. "We're still okay. It's just instead of hiding in the other room until everybody goes home, we'll hide in here instead."
Alberto nodded. "And we can eat the rest of the cake."
"No, we can't!" Luca stood between Alberto and the cupboards. "We have to leave enough for Curtis and Louise. Plus a little extra. If we don't, they'll figure it out."
Alberta scowled. "Fine, but we gotta have at least one more piece."
By the time they'd each finished their third helping of cake, the boys were beginning to feel sick. The remaining slices were therefore safe as the afternoon wore on, seeming to take forever to pass. At first Luca and Alberto poked around in the kitchen hoping to find something to occupy their time, but then they had to quickly duck back into the cupboard when somebody came in for a cup of coffee. After that, they tacitly agreed they'd better stay in their hiding place, no matter how cramped and smelly it might be, just in case.
It was starting to seem like the day would never end.
Unlike the maintenance room with the tank, the kitchen at least had a clock in it. Luca was therefore able to watch the time passing, and let Alberto know how long they had until everybody would presumably leave for dinner. Three hours left, then two, then one. Starting around five, the monsters who worked in the garbage room seemed to be just waiting around rather than really doing anything much. They wandered in and out of the kitchen more frequently, and hung around talking to each other.
One of the things they talked about was that somebody really ought to mop the kitchen floor, and Luca started getting nervous. What if somebody decided to do it right now? What if they opened the cupboard looking for a bucket or sponge, and found two apparently human boys in there?
Before anyone could make that decision, though, the door opened and another group of people came in, and the boys heard a familiar voice.
"... and Louise went to high school together," Curtis was saying. "Real shame she couldn't be here today. She even asked the shift supervisor if she could keep her key long enough to drop in, but he wouldn't let her."
"That's too bad," said a deeper voice. "It's been a hell of a couple of days for her, wasn't it?"
"Yeah. Wish I knew what was going on with all this," Curtis said. "Hey, folks! This is Billy Sullivan, new guy on the scare floor! He's green, but he's got potential."
"It's a pleasure to meet y'all," said Sullivan, with a slight twang in his accent. "Lieberman's been telling me how hard I'll be working to live up to expectations around here. I wish I could have met this Louise. She sounds like a superstar."
"Oh, she was," said Maureen. "She was the first girl at our school to win the Fangmeier Scare Scholarship, and she beat all the boys by miles. Have some cake, Mr. Sullivan."
Cake was served, and the chit-chat took a less worrying turn, mostly concerning how Louise and Maureen had run into each other again when they found they were both working at Monsters Incorporated, albeit in very different capacities. The only moment of panic was when, as Luca watched through the gap between the cabinet doors, Curtis wandered over to the sink and turned on the tap for a glass of water.
Alberto decided this was an opportunity. "Psst," he whispered. "Hey!"
Curtis paused with his glass halfway to his mouth, and looked around.
"Sir," Luca said softly. "Down here."
"Huh?" Curtis knelt down, and Luca saw the door begin to open.
"No, no, don't open it!" Luca said urgently. He and Alberto were bone-dry. If Curtis saw them he would scream.
"Who's in there?" Curtis whispered. "Is this those kids?"
"Yes, Sir," said Luca. "We're not spies, we promise. We need your help!"
"Curtis?" Maureen asked. "What are you doing over there?"
"I dropped something." Curtis stood up again, and walked away to rejoin the conversation. "Louise will be happy you thought of her. I was planning to drop by and check on her anyway – let me just box up a slice of that cake."
Alberto began to blow a raspberry out of disappointment, but Luca stopped him. There was nothing they could do now but wait.
Which they did – the continued to wait for another hour and a half, while one by one the monsters grabbed their coats from the closet and their lunchboxes from the fridge and cabinets, and said goodnight to their coworkers. Half-six came and went, and then six o'clock, and finally at a quarter after Maureen took what was left of her birthday cake and carried it out of the little kitchen, turning the light off behind her.
Luca counted to ten, and then burst out of the cupboard to run for the bathroom. Alberto was close behind him.
Once they'd taken care of that, the two boys went to open the kitchen door.
It was locked.
Alberto first wrenched on the knob, then rattled it, and then said several words that made Luca cover his ears, knowing his mother wouldn't have approved of him hearing them. "Alberto stop!" he pleaded. "Somebody might still be out there and they'll hear you!"
Alberto stopped, but he took a step back and kicked the door in frustration.
As if in response, a light came on underneath it.
The boys scrambled back into the cupboard under the sink as the door creaked open and the light snapped back on.
"Hello?" Curtis called out.
Luca peeked out through the crack between the two doors. Curtis appeared to have come alone. He was no longer wearing his hard hat, and his two stalked eyes were swivelling in different directions as he took in the room. Then he began walking towards the sink again.
"Wait!" said Luca. He and Alberto hadn't bothered to get wet. "Not yet!"
"What?" asked Curtis.
"Don't open the door yet," said Luca. "Just go back outside, and we'll come out."
"Why?"
"We'll explain later. Just trust us," Luca pleaded. Not that Curtis had any reason to. He'd suffered almost as much of an upset as Louise, having to go to work for a totally different person, and it was all their fault.
Curtis retreated. The boys climbed out of the cabinet, soaked themselves, and then took deep breaths and headed out into the garbage processing room. Luca held Alberto's hand to help himself be brave, hoping desperately that this was going to work. What if it didn't? What if Curtis had brought Mr. Waternoose?
But it was just Curtis, standing there leaning on one of the now motionless conveyor belts, waiting for them. They emerged dripping wet and wearing cautious grimaces that were the nearest they could manage to smiles. Curtis did not smile back.
"Hello, Sir," said Luca.
"You two are filthy," said Curtis.
"Sea monsters," said Alberto. "We gotta stay wet."
"The ditch was the only water there was," Luca agreed.
Curtis shook what was probably his head, although it might have been his body. "What have you gotten yourselves into? What were you doing in that kid's room yesterday, for one thing?"
"We'll tell you all about it," Luca said, although he wasn't sure if that were a promise he inteded to keep. "But we need to find Rocco's door."
"The one Louise got us out of," Alberto clarified. "Like, right now."
"Please," Luca finished, "we just want to go home."
Curtis sighed. "I can't take you to the scare floor now, everything's locked up for the night. And even if I could, we couldn't get that door. It's on review. I submitted the report last night and they came and got it this morning." He scratched the thick fur on the side of his head and thought for a moment, then picked one black plastic garbage bin on wheels from the tidy line of them by the wall. "Get in," he told the boys.
Luca and Alberto climbed into the bin, and Curtis cut open the packet of untouched newspapers Luca had been looking eat earlier and crumpled them up into a layers to cover the two passengers. Then he closed the top, and began whistling as he wheeled them out of the room and through the building.
The boys crouched in the bin, hardly breathing. They could only hope that he was taking them somewhere safe, or at the very least somewhere he thought was safe. But what if it wasn't safe? Even if he wasn't just going to turn them over to Waternoose, what if there were other dangers nobody had anticipated? Luca desperately wished he could open his eyes and find he was home in his own bed, with Nonna right across the way to tell him it was only a bad dream.
There was the creak of a door opening, and a jingle. "Thanks for the keys, Maureen," said Curtis.
"No problem," she replied. "Tell Louise how sorry I am."
A moment later they began to hear the patter of rain on the lid of the bin, which was a reassuring sound – it meant that they didn't have to worry about transforming in front of Curtis when they climbed out. Stones on the pavement grumbled under the wheels of the bin as they crossed the car park, and then Curtis stopped and opened the lid.
"Okay," he said, looking around to make sure nobody was watching them. "Get in the car."
Luca and Alberto stood in the rain for a moment to make sure they were damp, and then climbed into the back of Curtis' little car. This one was much more like the small, cramped, stuffy vehicles they were familiar with from Portorosso. Curtis gave them a blanket to pull over themselves, and they curled up on the seat and tried their best to look like a pile of laundry.
"See you tomorrow, Curtis!" somebody called to them.
"Night!" Curtis replied, and started the car.
They were well out of the car park and on their way back into the city before the boys dared to peek out from under the blanket. Curtis looked at them in the rearview mirror, then rotated one stalked eye to look over his shoulder at them before turning it back to the road again. Nobody spoke.
Eventually, Curtis pulled into the car park of a set of buildings in different sizes – all were three storeys tall with four windows across the front, but only one was the size of a proper building. The left one looked like it was built for creatures no more than a metre tall, and the right one for giants three or four metres in height. Curtis stopped in front of the middle building, and turned the car off.
"Okay," he said. "What's going on? I get the idea that something's up behind the scenes at the factory, and Louise lost her job because she got involved in that by accident. Is that right?"
"No, Sir," said Luca. "It was just a mistake."
"What kind of mistake?" Curtis asked. "How did you get into that room without anyone seeing?"
Luca swallowed. They'd told Harry bits and pieces of the truth and it had nearly led to disaster. What proof did they have that Curtis would be any better?
"You gotta promise you won't turn us in," said Alberto.
"To who?" Curtis wanted to know. "The police? Mr. Waternoose?"
"Anybody."
"We didn't do anything wrong," Luca said yet again. "We just want to go home."
Curtis was silent for a moment. "I want to help Louise," he said. "We've been working together for six years. She's always been there for me and I want to return the favour, and I know in my gut that whatever happened yesterday wasn't fair to her."
"Louise didn't do anything wrong, either," Luca said, and came to a decision – if they were going to tell the truth, they had to tell all of the truth. He hadn't liked lying to Harry, and it hadn't gotten them anywhere anyway. "We're not... well, we are monsters, but we're not the same kind of monster you are. We need to stay wet because when we dry out we transform and look like humans."
It shouldn't have been possible for Curtis' stalk eyes to widen, but they did. "That's why Steve Watkins said he saw humans with her!"
"Yes!" said Luca.
"We live in the human world," Alberto said, "and a friend of ours there asked us if we could get rid of the monster in his closet."
"We didn't believe there actually was one," Luca put in, "but we said we would because his Mom thought it would help him stop having nightmares."
"But when Louise found us she thought we were with Harry's school group, so she took us back to them..."
"... and on the way we ran into Steve and he saw us Change and freaked out."
"Yeah, so we hid in the bathroom and got wet again, which is how we got past the exterminators..."
They went on like this, interrupting each other but keeping the whole messy tale more or less in chronological order, until they got to the part where they'd left the water tank room hoping for something to eat. Curtis listened, but with fur all over his face it was difficult to tell what he thought of any of it. He only stopped them to ask a question once.
"So you're immune to human toxins?" he asked. "You must be if you live with them. That's how you knew you could get into the water purification system?"
"No," said Luca, "humans aren't toxic at all, and Mr. Waternoose knows that but he wants to keep it a secret so he can sell people the screams."
Curtis blinked. "You've been reading those conspiracy newspapers, huh?"
"No, it's true," Alberto said. "See?" He shook the last of the water off one hand so it would transform, and reached to touch Curtis' fur. Curtis flinched away in horror, but then steeled himself and reached out his own hand. Alberto grabbed his wrist, and Curtis hissed through his teeth as if in pain – but nothing happened. "There!" said Alberto. "See?"
Curtis jerked his hand back and rubbed at the wrist as if it were burned.
"We're very sorry Louise lost her job," said Luca, now also transformed. "Is there anything we can do to help her?"
"Does she know this story?" Curtis asked.
The boys shook their heads.
"All right." Curtis opened the car door. "Let's go tell it to her."