by R. L. Stine
And that was all it took for me to know it, too.
“Look, those things out there, they’re R.L. Stine’s monsters. He’s here. He can fix this. But we need to buy him time to write. So … who here has read Goosebumps?”
No one moved. Up onstage, Champ raised his hand proudly. One by one, the kids in the audience followed him, until almost everyone in the gym had their hands in the air.
“Good. Then you’ll all know what to do.”
It felt kind of weird to be in charge.
But also kind of awesome.
The first order of business was finding as many things as possible that could work as weapons: mops and buckets from the janitor’s closet, bats, golf clubs, hockey sticks, and tennis rackets from the equipment closet.
Then I sent the principal and a group of students out to drag some desks from the classrooms and stack them in front of the gym, so we’d have a barricade against the monsters if they came at us.
We didn’t have to wait long for the attack. A crew of tiny, red-eyed robots powered through the barricades, shooting lasers out of their eyes. I recognized them: Annihilator 3000s, determined to annihilate us.
Twelve-foot-tall scarecrows punched straw fists through the windows onto the courtyard. I sent a bunch of kids and teachers up to the roof with baseball bats and balls to try to knock the stuffing out of them.
The rest of us evacuated to the cafeteria and barricaded ourselves behind some overturned tables—just before the vampires attacked.
Fortunately, we had the perfect weapons: serving spoons and a vat of garlic mashed potatoes.
“You sure this will work?” Champ asked.
I scooped up a giant chunk of mush. “Vampires hate garlic, right?”
“Yeah … but do they hate garlic mashed potatoes?”
A vampire and his vampire bride were closing in. Not far behind them, their vampire poodle levitated toward us.
Hannah scooped up a spoonful of potatoes. “Let’s find out, already!”
“Fire!” I shouted, and we let loose with a barrage of garlic mashed potatoes. The vampires screeched in pain and fled. “I can’t believe that actually—”
Another vampire peeked his head into the gym, and we hit him with everything we had left.
Instead of fleeing, the vampire wiped all the potato gunk off his face. “Guys, it’s just me,” he said quietly.
I recognized that face: It was the Goth kid who sat behind me in chemistry.
“Uh, sorry, Seth,” Champ said.
There was no time for apologies. We had lawn gnomes to explode with bowling balls. Bug-eyed aliens to melt with Bunsen burners! A mummy to unravel with an Elmer’s-glue trap! Mutant insects to swat with baseball bats!
“Only a little longer,” I called to Hannah as we blasted through two more giant bug heads. “Stine should almost be done!”
I just hoped that wasn’t wishful thinking.
The author sat at a large wooden desk in the center of a dark stage, staring at his typewriter.
“The night was dark,” he mumbled to himself, punching at the keys halfheartedly. But … no.
“Dark was the night.”
Better.
“The darkness embraced the night.”
Then he had it. He rested his hands over the keys.
“The night was cold.”
A cool breeze kissed the back of his neck. He looked up, suddenly on alert.
Not that it would save him.
Slappy paced the hallways, closing in. “Papa, where are you?” he called. “I want to see your face. I haven’t had a good laugh all night.”
Stine tried to ignore the sense that the darkness was enveloping him. He typed furiously, faster and faster.
“All the monsters had converged. The vicious vampire bats, the praying mantis, the haunted mask—”
“Forgetting somebody?” a tinny voice interrupted.
Stine looked up. The auditorium was dark. Only a single spotlight lit Stine’s desk onstage, and in its glare, he could see nothing. But he knew the dummy was there.
“Slappy?”
Giggles echoed through the empty room. Another spotlight flared, revealing Slappy in a seat in the middle of the audience.
He smiled at his creator. “Good to see you up on the stage,” the dummy cackled. “Are you ready for your final curtain?”
“How did you find me?” Stine demanded.
“I smelled you. Or was that something I stepped in on the sidewalk?” Slappy cackled at his bad joke. “You can’t hide from me. Because I know you. I created you. Or is it the other way around?” He giggled. “I always forget. We’re so much alike …”
The light went out. Slappy disappeared.
“Slappy?” Stine called, panic in his voice. “Where are you?”
Lights on: Slappy was closer now, sitting in the front row. “Think you look good up there?” he rasped. “I’ve seen better heads on a cabbage!”
“What do you want?” Stine demanded.
“I’ve decided to give you a choice. Work with me, and you can live. Work against me, and …” He giggled. How he loved the sound of his own evil laughter. “Well, you’ll miss all the fun.”
“No, Slappy. I don’t want that.”
Slappy stared at Stine and said, “I know you better than you know yourself. ‘I’m done,’ you say. ‘I’ll never write again.’ But you always come back to me. Because you need me. Because you are me.”
Stine grimaced. “We are not the—”
“—same person?” Slappy said the words along with him. Then he laughed. “See? I know your every thought—your deepest, darkest fantasies, Papa. You made me this way. We share everything.”
Stine stood, shouting, “No! Things have changed.”
Slappy shook his head. “Changed? The only thing you should change is your underwear!”
The auditorium went totally dark.
“Slappy?” Stine called. “Slappy?”
But Stine should have known better than to make Slappy unhappy. When the stage lights came on again, Slappy was standing on the desk, holding Stine’s new pages.
Slappy read: “ ‘Everyone in the high school joined forces to defeat Slappy and his monsters.’ ”
No, that wouldn’t do.
Slappy improvised his own line. “ ‘But Slappy had other ideas.’ ”
Stine reached for the pages; Slappy reached for Stine. He grabbed the writer’s fingers and pulled back hard.
There was a sickening crunch, then a gasp of pain.
“Oops. Did that hurt?” Slappy giggled. “My bad! Ha-ha-ha.”
Bad wasn’t the word for it. The author wouldn’t be writing anything more. Not tonight.
Hannah and I could hear Stine groaning in pain from outside the auditorium. We burst through the doors.
He was alone onstage, sitting by his typewriter, holding his hand tenderly, as if it were an injured bird.
“That evil dummy broke my fingers!” he shouted.
Hannah rushed over to help her father.
“I only had a page or two more,” he sighed.
“Forget two pages,” I suggested. “Just write two words: The End.”
He shook his head. “That’s not how it works.”
Suddenly, the building started to shake. Something told me it wasn’t an earthquake.
The PA system buzzed, and the principal’s voice boomed. “I have an emergency announcement! Monsters have overwhelmed Madison High. Retreat to the storage room in an orderly fashion.”
I grabbed the pages and the typewriter. “We’ll figure this out later. Just run!”
We raced down the hallway, dodging monsters every few feet. The principal was right, they were everywhere—man-eating plants blasting out of lockers, bug-eyed aliens marching in lockstep with their freeze rays on full blast, scarecrows, not to mention a jack-o’-lantern creature, bog monster, scary clown, and witch doctor. All of them were chasing us—but somehow we made it through the doors and into the nig
ht.
We crossed the quad and made it into the gym storage room, closing ourselves in with the rest of the student body. Champ and I barricaded the entrance.
Zombies and scarecrows pressed their faces to the window, banging on the glass. The ceiling quaked. Plaster dropped in drifts and clumps. Something was up there, determined to get in.
Roars echoed beyond the barricade. Maybe we were safe for now, but not for long.
“What now?” Champ asked. “They’re gonna get in here.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
Stine gestured at the window facing the parking lot. Most of the cars were crushed, but a row of school buses was lined up and ready to go.
“Slappy wants me,” Stine said. “That’s who he’s after. If I can lead the monsters away on one of those buses, I know they’ll follow me—and you’ll all be safe.”
Hannah looked horrified. “Then I’m coming with you!”
“Hannah, no.” Stine rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’ve run away from people my whole life. I was so mad at the real world that I created these terrible monsters. But I’m not mad anymore. This is my fault. I made this. Not this town. Not you.”
Hannah shook her head. I wondered if she’d even heard him. “There’s got to be another way!”
“Sweetheart, it’s time for me to face my demons.”
Champ held out his hand for a fist bump. “I believe in you.”
“Shut up,” Stine said. Then he took a deep breath and reconsidered. “I’m sorry. I mean, thank you for believing in me.”
I couldn’t believe it. Maybe people really could change, even people like Stine. Were we really going to let him go out there on his own, into the jaws of certain death?
Then I noticed a tackling dummy tucked into the back corner of the room.
And I had an idea.
Slappy watched the author sneak onto the bus. He listened to the roar of the engine. He watched the bus pull away from the gym.
“Oh, Papa, where are you going?” Slappy crooned. “I thought we could watch the destruction together. I got us the best seats in the house.” He flipped a hand at his army of monsters. “Bring him to me.”
Then he thought about it for a moment.
“Actually, just KILL him. I’m getting bored with this game.”
The order had been given.
The monsters galloped and stomped and lumbered after the bus. Slappy followed them in his car, laughing from all the excitement. Very soon, it would be over. Very soon, the author would die. But his creations would live on. And Slappy would lead them all. “I’m writing the story from now on! And trust me, it’s a horror story!”
The bus hurtled down the dark highway, blazing a path through the night. Then, a flicker of giant wings cut through the darkness. A loud hissing sliced through the silence.
The giant praying mantis descended on the bus, kicking it down the highway. The bus rolled and rolled before coming to a stop, its roof nearly torn off, its metal crushed and scorched from road burn.
Inside the wreck, there was nothing but silence.
The monsters crept toward the twisted metal ruin, eager to see the lifeless body that lay inside.
Closer … closer … until they were close enough to discover that the lifeless body was a tackling dummy dressed in the author’s coat.
A hockey stick was propped against the gas pedal. A leather belt bound the wheel in place.
The monsters roared in anger.
One of the ghouls found a wire lining the side of the door. It tugged once, twice, and then there was a strange clicking sound.
The bus exploded.
“It worked!” I crowed, peering through the window of our bus as we sped past the explosion. Who knew that paying attention in chemistry would pay off in such a satisfying way?
“Woo-hoo!” Hannah cheered.
Even Stine cracked a smile. “Okay, now, where were we?” He was dictating as he drove. I typed.
“ ‘Stine’s ingenious plan worked to perfection,’ ” he said.
I stopped typing. Stine’s ingenious plan?
“Am I going too fast?” he said. “ ‘Stine’s bravery was beyond measure. He had blown the monsters to bits and single-handedly saved an entire town. He was an American hero, but he didn’t need to brag about it because that wasn’t his style.’ ”
“You want me to write that last line?” I asked. This guy had sold four hundred million copies worldwide?
“I’m the writer!” he insisted. “You’re the secretary! Just write what I say.”
“Where are we going?” Champ asked.
“Slappy will know wherever I go,” Stine said. “Because he is me.” He didn’t seem very happy about it. “We have to go somewhere I’ve never been. Somewhere I don’t even know exists.”
“I know where to go,” Hannah said.
I was pretty sure I knew where she meant.
The abandoned amusement park looked even creepier now that I knew that monsters were real. But Hannah was right, this was the perfect spot. It would buy us the time we needed.
The four of us scrambled out of the bus and hurried across the park.
“ ‘It was clear that there was only one place in the park left to hide,’ ” Stine dictated.
“I can’t type while I’m running,” I pointed out.
“Just … mental note. ‘There was only one place in the park left to hide. The … arcade gallery!’ ”
“Uh, there is no arcade gallery,” Hannah said.
Stine craned his neck around. “ ‘That was, in fact, a fun house!’ ” he corrected himself.
The fun house was a maze of mirrors. We crept through a kaleidoscope of distorted reflections, our faces grotesquely stretched out and squeezed in.
Hannah shined the flashlight at the keys so I could see what I was doing. I typed as fast as I could.
“ ‘The fun house was terrifying,’ ” Stine intoned. “ ‘Not so much for Stine as for the others, of course. But it offered refuge from the real monsters that lurked outside.’ ”
Speaking of real monsters …
“Well, here you are in a fun house,” a familiar voice rasped. “And guess what? The fun is just beginning!”
Slappy had found us.
All the fun house lights flashed red. Slappy stood before a huge mirror. Half his face was burned and charred from the bus explosion. He looked angrier than ever.
“Papa, you left without saying good-bye,” he said.
Slappy and Stine faced off before the mirror, their grotesque reflections strangely identical.
“I was a good friend and you turned your back on me, locked me up, imprisoned me in the pages of a book. You stuck me on a shelf for years and years. The key was right there, and you never used it.”
“You’re not real, Slappy,” Stine said. “I created you, and I can write you out.”
Slappy laughed. “I’m writing the story now. So sorry there’s no part for a character named Stine.”
Slappy held up a manuscript. “Let’s introduce a new character. Maybe the Blob That Ate Everyone?”
Stine’s face lost all its color. “No, no, not him, Slappy.”
“He just wants to say hi, maybe have a quick bite. Ha-ha-ha.”
He pulled out the golden key and unlocked the book. Then …
“Run!” Stine shouted.
A gelatinous mass burst out of the pages. It oozed through the rotted walls and floor, spreading rapidly, making hungry swallowing sounds, heading straight for us.
The four of us ran out of the fun house—and right into the path of what remained of the monster army. We were cut off.
“The Ferris wheel!” Hannah shouted, and we ran for it. Stine pressed the unfinished manuscript into my hands.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll hold them off. Finish the book.”
“Wait, what do I write? What’s the end?”
“Zach.” Stine moved closer to me as he spoke. “I realize now that the reason Hannah con
nected with you is because there’s something in you that’s like me. You can do this, Zach. End it.”
Could I do it? Could I end it?
I guessed I didn’t have much choice. Stine ran off before Hannah could stop him.
Champ, Hannah, and I climbed up the rusty spokes of the Ferris wheel, making it to the top just as Stine reached the Blob That Ate Everyone.
The Blob swallowed Stine whole. Then its whole ghastly body shivered and quaked in an enormous burp.
Hannah screamed for her father, her voice exploding with pain. She tried to climb down toward him, but Champ and I held her in place.
It killed me to hear her in so much pain, but I couldn’t let her sacrifice herself. Not when it was already too late to save her father.
“Wait, look!” Champ exclaimed. He pointed at the Blob—a Stine-shaped figure was punching from the inside. “He’s still alive in there!”
From our perch on the Ferris wheel, we spotted Slappy walking toward the Blob. There was nothing we could do but watch.
“Hey, Blob-food! You’re trapped,” the dummy taunted Stine. “That’s what it felt like to be locked inside your books. Not so much fun, is it?”
I was supposed to be writing, but the scene was so grotesque and wrong, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Until I noticed movement at the bottom of the Ferris wheel. The monster army had reached it—and they were climbing it.
“They’re coming!” Champ squeaked. “What are we gonna do?”
“Buy us some time!” Hannah ordered him.
Champ bent toward the ground. “Get out of here!” he shouted at the monsters. Then he turned back to Hannah. “That didn’t do anything.”
Champ took off his shoe and hurled it at the closest ghoul. The ghoul kept climbing. “That didn’t do anything, either.”
Okay. I had to try to finish the story. I didn’t know if what I was typing made any sense, or if it would work, but I just kept typing. I had to. Stine had left it up to me.
“Can you write faster?” Champ urged me.
“It’s really hard without a mouse!” I complained.
But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was finding the right words. Stine was right—this storytelling stuff was harder than it looked.
