The penciled words seemed to be a translation of the ancient book. Every so often there were questions in parentheses, as though Grandfather was not clear about the meaning of some of the strange text.
The CURSE shall fall upon the Flannagan family for thirteen generations, at which point it (the family? the curse?) will end, and all debts will be paid. The final member of the family will bring about great works and woe, but the last battle between good and evil (final battle of the family, or final battle of all time?) will settle the CURSE and finally destroy
“Destroy what?” Peter whispered under his breath.
“What’d you say?” Dill asked, his voice muffled.
Peter looked up. Dill was nowhere in sight; apparently he was somewhere behind a bookcase.
“Nothing,” Peter called out, then looked down at the notebook. He flipped back through several pages of the handwritten journal, but the rest was mostly boring scraps of sentences about things he didn’t understand – “the library at Alexandria,” “the rise of the Beast,” “the great Deceiver.”
The CURSE…thirteen generations…the last battle between good and evil…the final member of the family…
What did it mean?
And destroy what?
“How do I look?” Dill asked as he came out from behind the bookcase, his trademark yellow, orange, and red-striped shirt turned inside-out. So were his oversized shorts: the holey pockets hung outside the pants like the bunny ears of a raggedy, stuffed animal. Thank God his underwear was nowhere to be seen.
Dill immediately saw that Peter looked exactly the same as five minutes before. “Hey, what gives? You’re not even dressed yet!”
Peter had been so engrossed in the foreboding translation about the Curse that he hadn’t realized Dill was getting prepped for battle. “Um…I was getting ready to…I, uh, got distracted by something else in the book,” Peter half-lied.
“Do you see me getting distracted? No! Do you see me slacking? NO!” Dill ranted. “Get it in gear, Normal!”
“All right, all right,” Peter said as he slipped out of the chair.
“When that troll baby bites your butt, I’m gonna laugh my head off! But it’s not gonna bite me! Wanna know why?”
“I know why! Now shut up and let me change!” Peter snapped as he headed behind a bookshelf.
But Dill was enjoying himself too much to let it go. “Am I the only one around here who cares about getting your sister back from the troll baby?”
“You don’t care about Beth at all, you just want to wear your underwear inside-out!” Peter stuck his head out and looked around the bookshelf. “By the way, thank you very much for not wearing it outside, at least.”
Dill grinned. “Ohhhh, I’m not wearing it at all.”
Peter frowned. “What?!”
“That’s right, I’m goin’ commando,” Dill said proudly as he fished out something from his back pocket. “And if that troll baby comes after me, I got my secret weapon RIGHT HERE.”
Dill thrust his dingy tighty-whities up in the air like some proud soldier rallying his troops in the Underwear Wars.
Peter ducked back behind the safety of the bookshelf, thankful that he had seen only dull gray in Dill’s hand and nothing yellow or brown.
15
The first assault on the troll baby didn’t go so well.
They opened the doors of the library quietly and peered outside. The ceiling, walls, and the floor were bare; the changeling was nowhere to be seen.
“Head for the kitchen first,” Peter whispered. “Let’s get the iron.”
They padded softly down the hallway, Peter looking forward and Dill looking behind them for any sign of the creature. When they reached the kitchen, Peter stuck his head through the open doorway and scanned the room. No sign of Beth…or whatever had taken her place. That didn’t mean she wasn’t hiding somewhere, though.
The laundry room was across the kitchen and eating area, in a little cubbyhole just past the oven and stove. The door was closed, which hopefully meant the changeling wasn’t inside.
Peter looked back at Dill and jerked his head in a c’mon motion. They tiptoed across the kitchen, looking every which way for an indication they were being followed.
Instead, they heard it first: a low, raspy, breathing sound. Hhh…hhh…hhhh…
It was behind them.
Peter and Dill looked over their shoulders, and Peter mentally slapped himself on the forehead. When he had stuck his head in the kitchen, he had looked at the floors, at all the walls around him, at the ceiling. He had looked up; he just hadn’t looked straight up.
Beth was right above the door, clinging sideways to the wall in a crawling pose. Except it definitely wasn’t Beth anymore. It still wore the pink rainbow shirt and plastic potty-training pants, but now the changeling had turned a light shade of green, gone completely bald, and developed long, pointy ears. Its eyes had also bugged out of their sockets like ping pong balls with tiny black pupils. The creature stared at Peter and Dill with a slightly quizzical look, perhaps confused by their inside-out clothes.
That didn’t stop it from attacking, though.
“Raarararararaaaa!” it shrieked as it launched itself from the wall like a giant frog and thudded into Peter’s chest, knocking him to the ground.
All the air in Peter’s lungs whooshed out the second he hit the floor. He never had the chance to scream, but Dill was doing fine for both of them.
Peter desperately tried to breathe, but couldn’t – and what was worse, his arms and legs felt so weak that he could do nothing but stare up at the green, grinning thing on his chest. It opened its jagged teeth and flopped around its purplish-pink tongue. The bug eyes stared intently into Peter’s as the changeling cocked its head. Peter didn’t know what was more horrifying: lying there helpless with the hot, damp breath on his skin and the droplets of drool on his shirt – or what happened next.
A white shape zoomed directly over his head and flopped over the changeling’s face. Except the shape wasn’t exactly all white…there were some faded tan and yellow stains all over it, and several brown-colored streaks.
Dill’s tighty-whities.
Unfortunately, it was right about then that Peter’s breath rushed back into his lungs, and he was hit with a smell like a school bathroom that hadn’t been cleaned in three weeks.
Behind him, Dill yelled, “Bullseye!”
Peter screamed louder than he had in his entire life, louder even than when he had confronted vampires and burned-up dead men. Dill’s underpants were just that horrifying.
Bad as Peter had it, the changeling had it ten times worse. It didn’t realize what had happened, apparently, and it jerked its head left and right with the tighty-whities draped over its face. Then it took a big snuffling breath, like a dog sniffing another dog’s butt.
Peter assumed that Dill’s butt smelled much worse than a dog’s, because the changeling screamed louder than Peter had ever heard anything else scream, even himself.
The baby troll flipped backwards off of Peter’s chest, apparently in a panic – but, blinded by the foul underwear wrapped around its head, it ran full-tilt into the wall. WHAM!
It immediately turned around and raced right into a kitchen chair.
SLAM!
It staggered around in circles, screaming and shaking its head violently, trying to shake free of the nasty blindfold on its face.
“ACK-ACK-ACKACKACKACKACKACKACKACK!”
“WHO’S THE MAN!” Dill shouted at the changeling. “WHO’S YER DADDY!”
Peter pulled himself off of the floor, grabbed Dill by the arm, and dragged him towards the laundry room. By now the changeling had gotten wise: it had rolled onto its back and was kicking, scratching and clawing at the tighty-whities on its face.
Of course, Dill was still being Dill. “WHADDAYOU THINK OF ME NOW, BUTT-UGLY MONSTER BABY? WHAT DO YOU THINK OF ME NOW?!”
By the time Peter opened the laundry door, the changeling had rippe
d the underwear to shreds, flipped back onto all fours, and was positioned to charge. It looked like a miniature bull with Yoda’s face, except Yoda was furious, his eyes were bloodshot with rage, and he was foaming at the mouth. Plus he was wearing a pink rainbow shirt and plastic undies.
“BOO-YAH, TROLL BABY! BOO-YAH!” Dill whooped.
“Get in here!” Peter yelled as he dragged Dill inside the laundry room. The changeling charged full-tilt, its finger- and toenails scrabbling over the floor. Peter slammed the door just in time, and the changeling hit the wood with a BOOM!
“Raaaaaarararararararararararararar!” it screeched, and head-butted the door again. BOOM! And again. BOOM! And again. BOOM!
Thirty seconds later the head-butts ceased, and Peter could hear the thing muttering angrily to itself as it paced back and forth across the kitchen floor.
“KISS MAH BUTT, TROLL BABY!” Dill yelled in a fake Southern accent.
There was another screech outside, another clicking of nails, and another BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! against the door before the changeling went away chattering to itself again.
“Don’t make it any angrier than it already is!” Peter hissed.
“Maybe it’ll knock itself out on the door, you ever thought of that?”
“Maybe it’ll come busting through the door, you ever though of that?”
“You’re just jealous that my underwear totally saved the day,” Dill said smugly.
“Yeah, about that: if you ever have to make the choice again between letting me die and throwing your smelly underwear two inches in front of my face, LET ME DIE, okay?”
“Whatever. I noticed that our turned-inside-out clothes didn’t do a dang thing. You notice that?”
“I was too busy trying not to puke.”
“Yeah, that troll baby’s gross now, huh?”
“I wasn’t talking about the troll baby, I was talking about the – ”
“That’s why I don’t read books,” Dill interrupted. “You read something, you do it, and freakin’ troll babies still kick your butt. Stupid books. I’m never going to read anything again my entire life.
Dill paused. “Except comic books.
He paused again. “And the funny papers. Except FAMILY CIRCLE, I don’t read FAMILY CIRLE. Or BEETLE BAILEY – why do they even still have BEETLE BAILEY?” he complained.
Peter had moved on to looking for the iron. There it was, up on the rows of metal racks lining the laundry room wall. A thousand things sat up there: liquid detergent, bottles of bleach and stain remover, a box of Snuggle dryer sheets, several rolls of paper towels, an old blender, an even older egg beater, tons of unused Tupperware containers, a package of 20 Scotch tape dispensers Mom had bought from the nearest office supply store, a giant pack of Post-It notes, a rusty old can of ball point pens and Sharpies, a spray bottle of furniture polish, mounds of rags for dusting –
“Why don’t we just go out the window?” Dill asked.
Peter looked over at the ancient washer and dryer sitting side by side and the window just above them. It would have been so easy to climb up on one of the machines, open the window, jump out, and make a run for it. Peter could clearly see the rose bushes out back and the open sky and fields beyond.
But Mom would be coming home soon. They couldn’t possibly stall her for longer than two minutes. If they begged her to stay outside until Grandfather came home, that would surely make her barge past them into the house. If the changeling didn’t kill her, shock over finding a troll baby instead of her daughter would. OR she would freak out over Peter and Dill losing Beth and kill them both, which was a situation worth avoiding, too.
There was the chance Grandfather might get home before her. He might know exactly what to do. But even though he had been surprisingly un-angry about the vampires and the hobos, he hadn’t exactly been nice about them, either...and Peter still felt guilty that he had lost Beth, and that somehow this was all his fault for being a bad brother.
Not to mention the fact that it could be hours before either of them came home. And during that time, the trolls and fairies could be doing God knows what to Beth on the other side of the fairy ring. They had to get her out now. There really was no choice.
He reached up, pulled the iron down off the shelf, and looked at Dill resolutely.
“No. We’re going back out.”
Dill pointed at the iron. “We don’t know if that thing’s gonna work.”
“The book said – ”
“The book said inside-out clothes were gonna scare it, too. Which they didn’t. Only my underwear saved the day, which certain people said was a bad idea.”
“And it WAS,” Peter shot back. He hefted the iron up in the air, and swung it like a weapon. It was quite heavy. “If it doesn’t like irons, we can still use it to clobber it over the head. That’ll knock it out, and we can go take it to fairy land and get Beth back.”
Dill held up the iron’s electrical cord. “Should we get it hot first?”
Peter raised his eyebrows. “Good idea.”
There was an outlet on the wall right next to the door. Peter plugged it in and sat it upright on the ground to wait.
The two of them discussed options for a couple of minutes, such as using the egg beater as a weapon, or maybe the ironing board, which stood folded up against the wall. Eventually they abandoned those ideas. The book said fairies hated irons; it said nothing about egg beaters or ironing boards.
“How do we know it’s ready?” Peter asked.
“Hold it up,” Dill advised him. Peter did, and Dill spit a tiny ptt of saliva out of his pursed lips.
Peter made a face. “EW!” Then he saw the spit sizzle, pop, and disappear from the iron’s surface. “Oooooh.”
Dill nodded wisely. “It’s ready.”
16
The second attack on the troll baby didn’t go so well, either.
Peter unplugged the iron. He waited until the troll baby sounded like it was far enough away from the laundry room, then burst through the door with the iron held out in front of him.
At first the changeling wheeled around, a look of fury on its face. Then utter bewilderment took over. Its mouth closed, its eyes bugged out even more, and its eyebrows (actually, the empty brow where its eyebrows were supposed to be) shot up on the green forehead.
Peter laughed. “It doesn’t like it!”
“Come on, punk,” Dill sneered at the changeling in the voice of an action-movie star. “It’s laundry day!”
“Huh?” Peter asked.
Dill changed the line. “It’s ironin’ day!”
“That’s stupid.”
“I don’t see you saying anything cool. ‘It doesn’t like it!’” he mimicked Peter in a high-pitched, girly voice.
“Shut up! I don’t – ”
“It’s moving!” Dill squealed. “Iron it, iron it!”
The changeling was on the move. It had crouched down on all fours and was now circling them slowly, teeth bared. A low rrrrrrrrrrrr rumbled from its throat.
Peter turned around slowly, keeping the iron between him and the changeling at all times. Dill followed his lead, keeping Peter and the iron between him and the changeling.
Peter accidentally stepped on the loosely trailing power cord, and tried to kick it away.
“What’re you waiting for?” Dill yelled.
“What’m I supposed to do?” Peter yelled back.
“Steam it, fold it, press it, I don’t know!”
Peter thrust the iron out a few inches. The changeling immediately scampered back a foot, then resumed its slow circling.
“YES!” Dill cried. “I’m gonna get ALLLL the wrinkles out of your face, Butt-Ugly!”
Peter lunged out again, but further this time. The changeling backed up quickly, never taking its eyes off the iron.
Dill cackled like a maniac. “HA HAAAA! I’m takin’ you to the cleaners, troll baby! I’m gonna – ”
The changeling suddenly darted forward, its teeth snapping midai
r. Peter and Dill both jumped back in panic.
“CRAP!” Dill shouted and whined all at the same time.
“Dill, you’re not helping!”
“Well you’re not either!”
“You’re welcome to take the iron and get up here instead!”
“Uh, no, that’s okay, you’re doing a great job.”
Suddenly the changeling bolted forward – though not at Peter or Dill. Instead, it aimed several feet to their right. Peter jerked back and watched, puzzled, as the changeling zoomed past. He realized too late what the little monster was aiming for: the iron’s electrical cord, which Peter had kicked off to the side.
The changeling snagged the cord in its jaws mid-stride and never slowed down. With a powerful yank, the iron jerked out of Peter’s hands and sailed through the air. It CLANGED on the floor, leaving a huge dent in the linoleum, then bumped and bounced crazily as the changeling ran out of the kitchen, pulling the iron behind it like a Chihuahua dragging a pull toy.
“You were doing a great job,” Dill amended.
They could hear the iron clanking and thumping around the house…and then nothing. Then came the skittering of tiny claws on hardwood floor.
“Uh oh,” Dill said.
“Back to the laundry room!” Peter shouted as the changeling roared around the corner on all fours, its face livid and eyes bulging out as much as ever.
Once more they just barely got the laundry room door shut in time.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
This time, it took more than a minute for the changeling to stop head-butting the door. Every twenty seconds or so, it would return for another BOOM! and then walk away again, muttering under its breath in troll babble.
“Do you think that gives it a headache?” Dill asked.
Peter sank down against the washing machine and put his face in his hands. “What are we going to do now?”
“Dude – the window.”
“We have to trap it, Dill!”
“The eggbeater?”
“No,” Peter moaned.
PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume One) (PETER AND THE MONSTERS) Page 25
