Dill gently prodded her shoulder with the spoon.
Beth’s shoulder moved back without any resistance. She watched everything with her eyes, but never moved her head.
When Dill stopped pushing with the spoon, her shoulder moved back into place.
Peter was getting a jar of peanut butter out of the cabinet as Dill conducted his experiments. “Don’t do that,” Peter reprimanded him.
Dill turned around towards Peter and gestured in the air with the spoon. “She seems…different.”
“How?”
“She doesn’t seem crazy.”
With blinding speed, Beth leaned out of the highchair, grabbed the spoon from Dill’s hand, and started whapping him with it on his head.
WHAP-WHAP-WHAP!
“OW! OW! OWWW!” Dill shrieked as he ran over to Peter at the sink.
Beth stood up in her highchair and threw the wooden spoon.
THUNK! It smacked Dill right in the forehead.
“OOOOOOWWWWWW!” he screeched.
“Beth, don’t do that!” Peter shouted.
Beth slumped back down in her highchair and sat, waiting serenely. All the time she had been attacking Dill, her expression had never changed from Zen-like peacefulness.
Peter had to stifle a laugh. It was pretty funny to see Beth looking so totally unconcerned as Dill rubbed his scalp and watched her warily.
“Well, she’s back to normal,” Dill muttered.
“I don’t know if I’d call it normal,” Peter said as he stacked the apples on a plastic dish.
“She’s hitting me and acting like a brat,” Dill snarled. “She’s back to normal.”
6
Peter put the plate of apples and the jar of peanut butter on her high chair tray. Then he turned around to face Dill. “But she’s not making any noise. If she was back to normal, she’d have been screaming her head off the whole time. Look at her, she’s – ”
Peter turned around and stopped speaking.
Beth was sucking on her teeth, like she was trying to get the last morsel out of her gums. Though the peanut butter was untouched, the plate in front of her was completely empty.
“Oh my gosh.”
“What’s the – holy COW,” Dill said as he leaned over and realized what had happened.
“Is that even possible?” Peter asked. “To eat a whole apple that fast?”
“Well, obviously, unless you think she stuck it up her butt,” Dill replied.
“She ate a whole apple in, like, three seconds! And we never heard her! That’s impossible!”
“Better check her butt, then,” Dill advised.
“Shut up, Dill. You must’ve been hungry, huh?” he asked Beth. He retrieved another apple out of the fridge, washed it, and reached for the knife to cut it up.
Dill held up a hand without taking his eyes off Beth. “Dude, wait.”
“What?”
“Gimme the apple.”
“Why?”
“Just gimme the apple.”
Peter handed it over. Dill placed it on Beth’s tray, whole and uncut.
Beth regarded them both peacefully, then looked down at the fruit.
“What’d you think she was going to do,” Peter scoffed, “eat it in one – ”
Beth grabbed the apple and stuffed it whole into her mouth. Her cheeks puffed out like the world’s largest chipmunk. Then she CRUNCHED it twice with her teeth, and GULP it was gone.
“WHOOOOAAAA!” Peter and Dill both yelled at once.
“Oh my GOSH did you see that?” Dill howled.
“That was crazy!” Peter yelled. “That was – that doesn’t happen!”
Beth opened her mouth in a window-rattling BUUURRRRRP and spat the stem out on the tray in front of her.
“That was COOL!” Dill shouted happily.
Beth looked over at the jar of peanut butter and sniffed it. Then she opened her mouth, stuck out her tongue, and scooped out a large dollop of peanut butter with a SLURP.
“Ewww, that WASN’T cool,” Dill said disapprovingly. “She’s even weirder now than she was before.”
As though she heard him and wanted to up the ante, Beth wrapped her lips around the edge of the plastic jar and bit into it with her teeth.
Peter waved his arms in a panic. “Beth, don’t do that, you’ll hurt yourself!”
Beth jerked her head sideways and tore off a huge hunk of plastic from the container. As she chewed, it made a crinkly, crackly noise in her mouth.
“Dude, that is NOT right. That is NOT right!” Dill shouted, his voice back to gleeful.
“Babies can’t do that!” Peter said, not even believing what he was seeing.
Beth shoved some more of the container in her mouth and started chomping. It sounded like somebody was jumping up and down on empty two-liter Coke bottles. The weirdest thing was, she looked no more concerned than if she were sucking on a pacifier.
“Dude, that is messed UP – it is MESSED UP!”
“I know it’s messed up!” Peter yelled back. “You don’t have to repeat it twice! Why are you repeating it twice?”
“Dude, I am just telling you that THIS IS THE BEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN!” Dill shook his head in admiration. “She could totally beat that Japanese guy with the world record for eating hot dogs.”
“Would you shut UP for a second so I can think?!”
“What’s there to think about? We’re gonna be rich, man! You think they have the Guinness Book of World Records telephone number on the internet?”
“Stop talking about world records and hot dogs and – ”
CRUNCH. Beth had picked up the plastic plate and taken a giant chomp out of it. A bite-shaped chunk was missing, and tiny shards of plastic shot out of her mouth as she chewed.
“DUUUUUDE!” Dill howled with glee. “We’re gonna be on TV! I call shotgun, I’m her manager, I get half of everything she makes!”
Suddenly, Beth made a strangled sound, like something was caught in her throat. She wheezed and started to turn pink.
Peter gasped. “Oh my gosh, she’s going to choke!”
“Smack her on the back!” Dill yelled in alarm. “Hurry, she’s valuable!”
Peter rushed around the high chair and thumped Beth between the shoulder blades. It took a couple of whacks, but she finally opened her mouth and gave a horrendous, hacking cough. A slime-covered hunk of plastic shavings shot across the room, hit the cabinet under the sink, and splattered goop everywhere.
“Aagh! YUCK, she got me!” Dill wailed as he danced around, a few dots of mucus wetting his shirt.
Peter checked to make sure Beth was okay (she looked completely unconcerned), then ran across the room to take a look at the upchucked blockage. It was the size of a tennis ball, with jagged pieces of plastic sticking out at all angles. Peter was pretty sure that if a Great White Shark swallowed the thing, the clump of plastic would kill it. Plus, the snot covering it all was thick, green, ungodly smelly, and utterly revolting.
Dill gagged. “Dude, I’m gonna puke.”
Peter covered his nose and mouth with his t-shirt collar and tried to block out the smell. “I didn’t know loogies could smell that bad,” he said, his voice muffled by his shirt.
“Dude, loogies don’t smell at all. That’s a loogie from hell,” Dill whispered.
“Give me a break, it’s not – ”
“From HELL,” Dill repeated.
“Don’t use that kind of language around her,” Peter said, and turned back to his sister. “If she starts saying it around my mom – ”
Peter’s voice caught in his throat.
Beth wasn’t in her high chair.
7
“Dill,” Peter hissed.
Dill turned around from the loogie from hell. “Wh – WHAT? Where’d she GO?”
“Dill, something’s seriously wrong with my sister,” Peter said nervously.
“Dude, something’s been seriously wrong with your sister for a loooong time. It just got wronger today, that�
��s all.”
Peter held up a finger. “Shh.”
They listened carefully. From the next room over came the sounds of baby babbling, the first normal noise Beth had made since coming back in the house.
“Let’s go,” Peter said. They ran across the kitchen and into the den – but Beth was nowhere to be found.
They searched room to room, behind chairs, beneath sofas, even under pillows – but no Beth. They continued their way all through the first floor, looking everywhere they could think of, but wound up without a single lead.
Peter threw his hands up in frustration. “Where did she go? We heard her – ”
Peter and Dill both froze as they walked into the kitchen.
Beth was back in her high chair.
Fear yanked on Peter’s insides. He looked slowly and carefully around the kitchen.
“Dude,” Dill whispered. “Do you think someone else is in here?”
Peter shook his head. “I don’t know,” he whispered back.
They both approached the high chair tentatively, as though waiting for a burnt-up hobo to come jumping out of the pantry, or a fourth-grade vampire to suddenly swoop through the air. But there was nobody but Beth.
They approached from the side and stood in front of her. She was sitting calmly, her hands folded, her eyes staring out into space.
Dill frowned. “Dude…does she look a little green to you?”
Peter ignored him. “Beth…how did you just do that?”
Beth turned her head sloooowly towards them. Her eyes gradually shifted from their thousand-yard stare and focused on their faces. For the first time since the backyard, she smiled.
It was terrible.
The smile was far bigger than her face should have been able to hold. In fact, her cheeks reached several inches past her ears. Inside her lips, the teeth were long and yellow and dagger-like, as though they belonged in the mouth of some ancient, horrible creature.
Peter and Dill grabbed each other in fear.
“OH MY GOD, SHE’S THE JOKER!” Dill shrieked.
Beth threw her half-eaten plate across the room with a clatter, stood up in her high chair, leaned forward, and ROARED. Not ‘roared’ as in yelled, or shouted, or shrieked or screamed like a normal human being might. No. She ROARED the way a lion would, deep and rumbling and full of bass – an impossible sound coming out of any human body, much less a two-foot tall one.
Peter and Dill screamed at the same time.
Beth jumped up out of her high chair – literally jumped three feet in the air – and landed BANG! on the food tray with her legs shoulder-width apart. Then she opened her mouth again and her tongue – not the little pink tongue they had seen scoop out peanut butter just a few minutes ago, but a horse-sized tongue bigger than what was possible for any human being – rolled out and waggled back and forth over her jagged teeth.
Probably more things happened after that, but Peter didn’t see them because he and Dill were running out of the kitchen, screaming at the top of their lungs.
Behind them they heard the highchair crash to the ground. Then came the sounds of toenails scrabbling and scratching on linoleum, like the world’s largest puppy rushing across the floor.
“What happened to her?!” Peter screamed.
“Butt-ugly happened to her!” Dill yelled back.
They raced through the den, into the front hallway, and past the staircase into the dining room. Peter looked over his shoulder, but Beth was nowhere to be seen.
Peter reached out and slapped Dill’s arm. “Hold on, hold on,” he whispered.
“Dude!” Dill snarled as he kept running. “Maybe you wanna be Butt-Ugly Monster Baby’s next snack, but I don’t!”
“She’s not following us!”
They stopped running, crouched down, and looked around the doorway back into the main hall. Beth was nowhere to be seen.
“That wasn’t her tongue,” Peter said in shock.
“Well, it is now,” Dill said. “Either that or she stole it out of an elephant.”
Peter shuddered. “And those teeth!”
“Maybe Beth turned into the Big Bad Wolf or something,” Dill suggested.
“What?!”
“You know – Little Red Riding Hood? ‘My, what big teeth you have’? ‘My, what a big tongue you have’?”
“Little Red Riding Hood didn’t say, ‘My, what a big tongue you have’!”
“She would’ve if she’d seen it. And remember, the Big Bad Wolf ate Granma in that story. I don’t wanna be Granma.” Dill looked thoughtful. “Hey, maybe we can get Beth to eat your grandfather…”
Peter looked back around the corner: no Beth. “What are we gonna do, Dill? We can’t hurt her – she’s my sister!”
“That’s not your sister,” Dill scoffed.
“Maybe it is. Maybe the mushrooms did that to her.”
“Yeah, right. Stoo-piiiid.”
“It’s not any stupider than her turning into the Big Bad Wolf,” Peter snapped.
Dill threw up his hands. “I’m just trying to help. You don’t appreciate it, figure it out on your own.”
Peter was about to retort when he felt something plop on the back of his neck. Terror surged through him and he jerked around, ready to see a razor-toothed monster baby standing right behind him –
Nothing was there. Peter wiped his neck and looked at the clear goop sliming the palm of his hand. Suddenly, three more plops splattered his shoulder.
What the heck?
“Peter,” Dill whimpered under his breath. Peter turned around and saw Dill’s head was craned up, so he looked up, too.
Beth was fourteen feet above them, upside-down on the ceiling. Her body was in crawling position with her hands and knees on the ceiling itself, but her head was pointing up (or down, depending on how you looked at it, since she was facing the floor) as she stared at Peter and Dill. Long, stringy strands of saliva dripped slowly from her fang-filled smile. Another drop plopped on Peter’s forehead.
“Hhr-hhr-hhhhhhhhrrrrrr,” Beth chuckled.
8
“AAAAAHHHH!” Dill and Peter screamed as they took off through the dining room and down the hall.
Peter looked back over his shoulder. Beth was racing upside-down across the ceiling, crawling faster than any baby in the history of the world.
And she was gaining on them.
“SHE CAN CRAWL ON THE CEILING!” Peter shrieked.
“NO DUH!” Dill howled back at him.
Peter tried furiously to think. On the entire first floor, there weren’t many doors they could lock – it was mostly one giant series of hallways and big, open rooms.
Except for the doorway under the stairwell, which was locked – and which Peter was not supposed to open on pain of death, according to Grandfather.
And…the doors to Grandfather’s study. Which was coming up in a matter of yards. Peter could see the doors up ahead – closed. He just prayed that they weren’t locked. “Dill, in here!”
Peter grabbed the back of Dill’s shirt collar with his left hand and tried the door handle with his right. Click. It opened.
“Ggggkkkh!” Dill gagged as Peter yanked him into the study.
Peter had a fleeting glimpse of an upside-down, monstrous grin just as he slammed the study door in Beth’s face. There was a thump on the other side, then garbled baby cursing that sounded like “Rar-ar-ar-ar-arrrrrr!” Then BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG on the wooden door.
Then silence.
Suddenly, there was a shuffling sound across the surface of the door itself, like something was crawling over it. Seconds later, the doorknob started to twist.
“Dude, lock it, quick!” Dill yelled from where he lay on the hardwood floor.
Peter leapt over and clicked the deadbolt lock just as the thing on the other side started to rattle the door back and forth. He could imagine Beth kneeling on the other side, doorknob between her hands as she rocked up and down, trying to force the door open with the weight of h
er body.
After a few seconds and another batch of grumbling “Rarrarararrrarrrarrs,” the sound of crawling slipped across the door and disappeared.
Silence.
Dill looked around in shock. “Where are we?”
9
Peter followed his gaze. The room was truly spectacular – thirty feet high, with every wall housing giant shelves packed with thousands of books. A dozen more shelves filled up the middle of the room. There were no windows, but there was a glimmering chandelier that hung over a giant mahogany desk. On the desk sat a tiny, stained-glass lamp and a stack of open books. The smell of old paper filled the air, and an ancient clock tick tick ticked over the entrance to the study.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Peter asked.
“Cool?” Dill repeated in disbelief. “Dude, you’ve got a library in your house.”
Peter nodded like, Aaaaannd…?
“Dude, that’s about the worst thing I can even think of.” Dill looked back at the study door and shivered. “Except for having a Butt-Ugly Monster Baby crawling around on the ceiling, maybe.” Dill reconsidered. “Maybe.”
“There’s nothing wrong with having a library in your house,” Peter said reproachfully.
“It’s bad enough in schools, now I gotta live next to one?”
“We’ve got bigger problems,” Peter snapped. “What are we gonna do about Beth?”
“I don’t think that’s Beth.”
“Dill, come on. It looks like Beth.”
Dill’s eyebrows shot up in disbelief. “You think that looks like Beth? When did Beth get a mouth outta Lord Of The Rings and start crawlin’ around like Spiderman?”
“I don’t want to think it’s Beth, either, but…what if it is?” Peter asked helplessly. “What if the mushrooms did that to her?”
“Then I guess we better find out how to stop the mushrooms.”
“How?”
Dill scowled and threw up his hands in exasperation. “Dude, we’re in a freakin’ library! Where else are you gonna find out about mushrooms?”
PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume One) (PETER AND THE MONSTERS) Page 23
