Dill placed one finger against his lips and frowned for a few seconds. Then he brightened up considerably.
“Okay…first we open the dryer door.”
Peter turned to look at the circular door on the machine next to him. Unlike the washer, which loaded from the top of the machine, the door was on the front side of the clothes dryer.
“Then you open the laundry room door,” Dill continued. “The troll baby’ll come running and jump at you. You duck, and it’ll fly through the air right into the dryer. I’ll be on top of it and slam the door shut, and BAM! Put a fork in it!” Dill punched the air in excitement. “We can even turn the dryer on if you want to! Yeaaaaah.”
Peter stood up, a light in his eyes and the gears turning in his brain. He opened the dryer door. A bunch of bedsheets and pillowcases were still inside, forgotten and unfolded.
He looked from the laundry room door to the dryer, then back to the wooden door. The light in his eyes died.
“It won’t work,” he said glumly.
Dill was outraged. “What?! Why not?!”
“The dryer’s not in a straight line with the door. If the changeling doesn’t jump from exactly the right place, it’s not gonna go in the dryer. Even if it does jump exactly right, the dryer hole is really small – it might not go in.”
“If, if, if. All I hear are ‘ifs.’ What about a good old-fashioned ‘We can do it, Dill, cuz you’re the smartest dude ever and that’s the best idea IN THE WORLD’?”
“What happens if I don’t duck in time?”
“Well, just make sure that you do.”
“Well, what happens if I do, but the changeling jumps too high? Then it’s gonna land on top of you on the dryer.”
Dill paused and thought about that. “Okay, new plan.”
“It was a good idea, though,” Peter reassured him. “If we just had a big enough hole for it to jump into, and we were sure we could get it to jump straight in…”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Dill grumbled.
Peter’s eyes lit up again. He looked down at the dryer door, then searched the metal shelves lining the wall.
“Dill, I got it.”
“What,” Dill muttered.
“We’re going out the window.”
“THAT’S MY IDEA!” Dill sputtered.
“And it’s the best idea ever.” Peter started rummaging through the sheets in the dryer, looking for something.
Dill was slightly taken back. “Uh…I know. Thanks.”
Peter pulled a pillowcase out of the machine and held it up for inspection.
“Uh…are we going?” Dill asked.
“Get up on top of the washer and open the window. And see if you can get the ironing board outside.”
“Huh? Why?”
“You’ll see.” Peter placed the pillowcase on top of the dryer and turned to the metal shelves against the wall.
“What are you doing?”
Peter grinned over his shoulder. “Just taking a few things with us.”
Dill scrambled up on top of the dryer. “If we leave, how’re we going to catch the troll baby?”
“Simple. I’m coming back in.”
“WHAT?”
“But first,” Peter said cryptically, “we’ve got to get the hole ready for the troll baby to jump through…”
17
Twenty minutes later, Peter opened the kitchen screen door as slowly as he could. No matter how carefully he tried, though, it still made a long, low squeeeeeeaaaaak. He looked through the panes of glass in the wooden back door but couldn’t see the troll baby at all. Hopefully it had moved on to another part of the house. But he was still planning to look directly overhead before he opened the door all the way.
Fool me once, shame on you, troll baby. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Peter chuckled to himself. Not because he found the thought particularly funny, but because he was trying to ignore his heart hammering in his chest.
The screen was still shredded from where Mercy had tried to rip her way through it just a couple of weeks before. Grandfather hadn’t gotten around to replacing the wire mesh yet.
Last time I went through this door to get away from somebody trying to kill me; this time I’m walking through it to get to somebody trying to kill me.
Peter didn’t chuckle at that thought.
He opened the wooden kitchen door, making sure to look through the crack overhead for any signs of a green troll in a pink rainbow shirt. Once the door was open all the way, he looked behind the door, too, and everywhere else he could think of. Nothing.
Pausing for a second, he cocked one ear towards the kitchen and listened. No skittering of toenails, no troll baby muttering, no raspy breathing.
He walked slowly into the middle of the kitchen, his gaze flitting around as quickly as he could move his eyes.
No changeling.
Peter picked a spot in the middle of the kitchen where he could see both the doorway to the den and, on the other side of the room, the hall that led to Grandfather’s study.
Do I really want to do this?
No.
But I have to.
For Beth.
He took a deep breath and screamed as loud as he could, “HEY, SNOTBALL, I’M IN THE KITCHEN!”
From somewhere in the den he heard a quizzical grunt, “Gurn?” followed by the puppy-dog clacking of toenails on a hard surface. Within seconds, the changeling barreled over the top of the doorway, still on all fours and upside-down on the ceiling. Slobber dripped from its bared teeth and splattered on the floor below. Its eyes glowed with a ferocious hatred as it headed straight for Peter, who took off in the opposite direction.
Peter pumped his legs as fast as he could move them. He could hear the troll baby behind him as he rounded the corner into the hallway. There was the study, coming up fast on his left.
He blew past it and headed for the dining room.
Behind him, he could hear the chk-chk-chk of the changeling’s nails on the ceiling. He couldn’t tell exactly where it was – whether a few feet behind him, or a dozen – and he couldn’t look over his shoulder, not even for an instant. If he did, and stumbled and fell, or if he lost even a second to his pursuer…
Peter pushed the thought out of his mind as he ran through the cavernous dining room and headed for the main hall of the house.
There was a loud THUMP behind him, and suddenly the nails were scratching CRK-CRK-CRK along the hardwood floor instead of the ceiling. The changeling had decided to continue the chase right-side up, and from the sound of things, it was maybe ten feet behind him, if that.
Crap – it might not be enough…
Peter sped out of the dining room and into the main foyer. He ran to the front door and opened it a couple of inches. For the first time, he allowed himself to look back.
The changeling was hurtling around the corner of the dining room and into the hall, twelve feet away.
Peter stood there, doorknob in hand, frozen to the spot.
The changeling locked eyes with him. Without breaking stride, it catapulted into the air, straight for Peter’s head.
With every bit of speed he could summon, Peter flung open the front door and dove to the ground.
18
The changeling sailed right by his face – in fact, he could feel the breeze as the green claws swept past his hair. But missed him it did, and instead sailed right into the web of Scotch tape that crisscrossed the entire front doorframe.
Back in kindergarten, Peter’s Physical Education class used to play ‘Popcorn.’ The PE teacher had an old parachute, one she said that soldiers had had used in World War II when they jumped out of planes. All the kids would take a handful of the silk material and stand in a circle, then whip the cloth in a frenzy as the PE teacher threw dodgeballs in the center. The balls would shoot up in the air like popcorn kernels, fall back down, hit the billowing cloth, then shoot back up again.
Peter had always wondered what would happen if the class had held the outstr
etched parachute over an empty swimming pool and a kid had jumped off the high dive. When he and Dill were standing on the ironing board attaching the strips of Scotch tape across the doorway, each strip an inch apart in a tightly woven pattern that looked like a giant tennis racket, the question came back into his mind: what would happen?
He figured it would probably look something like what happened to the troll baby.
The changeling smacked right into the scotch tape and kept on going. There was no way the tape was strong enough to hold to the doorframe like a spider’s web – the troll baby was too heavy and going far too fast – but Peter was counting on that. Instead, the tape grid ripped off the doorway and closed around the troll like a butterfly net, and immediately stuck to itself. The changeling went flying through the air encased in a sticky, scotch tape cocoon.
Then it hit the brick steps outside and bounced. “AAG! EEG! OOG!” it screeched every time it smacked into a new step. By the time it hit the lawn in front of the porch, it was a helpless jumble of balled-up scotch tape rolling around in the grass.
But Peter knew it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Already the changeling was gnashing its teeth and trying to break free of its plastic bindings.
“Dill, the pillowcase!” he yelled as he raced out the front door and down the steps.
Dill darted out of the bushes and whipped the pillowcase around the taped-up ball. “Got it!”
Peter looked over at Dill’s house. None of the Bodinskis were outside, and since Grandfather lived on an otherwise deserted side street, that meant no one had seen anything.
Peter grabbed one edge of the pillowcase from Dill. “Come on!” he shouted. “We can’t let your family see!”
“My family’s seen weirder things!” Dill yelled back.
“What, weirder than us dragging a screaming troll baby around in a pillowcase?”
“I’ll just tell them it was your sister – they’ll completely understand!”
19
Both boys ran as fast as they could, dragging the snarling load behind them. They sped around the front of Grandfather’s house, down the side past the garbage cans, and into the backyard towards the rosebushes.
Peter could hear the changeling’s enraged screeches and the sound of plastic popping inside the pillowcase. It was just a gamble now if they could reach the mushrooms in time.
They sped past the roses and angled away from the garden patch, towards the stretch of open field where this nightmare had begun only two hours before. The pillowcase slid and bumped along the grass behind them.
Peter heard the sound of fabric ripping. He looked down and saw four tiny, clawed fingers shredding the cloth.
“HURRY!”
“I’M HURRYING!” Dill shrieked.
They mowed over at least a hundred mushrooms as they frantically searched for the fairy ring where Beth had disappeared.
“IS THAT – CAREFUL!” Peter warned.
“I AM, I AM!”
Then he saw it, plain as day: a perfect circle of brown toadstools, six feet ahead.
“STOP!” Peter cried.
Dill dropped the twitching pillowcase without being told twice. The cloth bag was thrashing and rolling every which way like some horrible cocoon about to produce the world’s most terrifying butterfly.
Dill eyed the fairy ring. “Dude, we don’t have to go in there, do we?!”
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” Peter said frantically. Tiny green hands were tearing the pillowcase to shreds; in a matter of seconds, the changeling would be out. If it didn’t kill him and Dill on the spot, it might just jump in the fairy circle and go back to its own world. The idea of following it to a land of a thousand troll babies was about the worst thing Peter could imagine.
“Wait – dude, Beth’s a hostage, right? We’ve got a hostage, too!”
Peter eyed the snarling pillowcase. “You call that a hostage?”
Dill jerked his thumb at the fairy ring and whispered, “They don’t know that.”
As Dill’s meaning dawned on Peter, he smiled – Ahhhhh! – then just as quickly frowned again. “So?”
“So do what they do in every bank robber cop movie – negotiate!”
“Uh – okay, okay – ahem.” Keeping one eye on the thrashing pillowcase, Peter started shouting at the fairy ring. “UM, FAIRY PEOPLE – WE HAVE YOUR TROLL BABY! AND I KNOW YOU HAVE MY SISTER! UH, WE WILL TRADE YOU BETH FOR – ”
Peter didn’t have time to finish before the grass in the fairy ring began to whip and shake like some giant fan was blowing on it. A tiny head rose up through the green, as though an elevator platform hidden beneath the ground was pushing its way up through the lawn.
Peter and Dill gasped, expecting an army of green, fanged monsters to start popping out at them.
Instead, Beth rose up through the grass, apparently unharmed. She was dressed in some sort of strange leather outfit, with a ragged little skirt, a halter top, and a chain of tiny bones hanging around her neck. She also had scraps of the same leathery material clutched in her hands and, oddly enough, clenched between her teeth.
She looked over at Peter and Dill.
“BETH!” they both cried out.
“Oh my gosh, I’m happier to see you than I’ve ever been in my whole life!” Peter exclaimed.
“Dude, that’s not saying much.”
“Shut up, Dill! Beth, get out of that circle of mushrooms – hurry, come over here!”
Completely ignoring her brother, Beth bent over, faced the grass beneath her feet, and screamed. The piece of leather in her mouth fell to the ground. Beth didn’t care; she just kept screaming.
And it wasn’t scared or frightened screaming. No, Peter knew the sound from experience: it was pure, flat-out rage.
As though summoned by the sound of her voice, the changeling slashed through the last bits of cloth and burst out of the shredded pillowcase. Strands of tattered scotch tape covered every inch of his body like the scraggly feathers of a prehistoric dodo bird just hatched from its egg.
But this dodo bird was maaad.
The changeling faced Beth and fixed its bulging ping-pong eyes on her.
Beth quit screaming and looked up from the fairy ring.
Peter’s heart stopped in his chest.
The changeling lunged forward onto its front arms, opened its mouth, and ROARED. Its tongue flailed back and forth like a whip and sprayed spit and mucus across the grass.
Peter knew the changeling was about to charge. Though it was suicide, he tensed his body, ready to tackle the troll and wrestle it into the fairy ring himself – anything to make sure his sister got away safely.
Beth looked at the changeling, then squatted down and HOWLED. Her face was a mask of fury. Her skin went fire-truck red. Her eyebrows were so contorted with hatred, Peter could barely recognize her. In fact, he was kind of frightened.
So was the changeling.
The troll baby shut its mouth and hunched back on its hind legs. It blinked once, and seemed utterly lost as to what to do about the wailing banshee in front of him.
Beth rushed out of the fairy ring, arms beating the air, still screaming with rage.
The changeling whimpered like a scared dog, then turned around and fled.
Beth chased it, screaming, in circles around Peter and Dill. She never got close – the troll baby was too fast for that – but she never let up. She just kept screaming and chasing, screaming and chasing.
The troll baby kept darting looks over its shoulder at Beth, then doubling its speed and zigzagging away, the strands of tape on its body fluttering like plastic streamers from a little kid’s bike handles. Seeing the look of terror on its face, Peter almost felt sorry for it.
Almost.
Finally it gave up. It jumped in the air and dove headfirst into the fairy ring. Like a jungle animal falling into a trap in the ground, the changeling disappeared completely, leaving behind only shivering blades of grass.
Having lost the main object of
her fury, Beth turned on Peter. “WHERE MY STAWBERRY SHORCAKE BA’ING SUU?”
Peter was too shocked by the troll baby’s exit to understand her right away. “Your, uh – ?”
“WHERE STAWBEWY SHORCAKE!” Beth screamed at the top of her lungs, her face now an unnatural shade of purple.
“In the house, in the house! In your room, up in your room!”
Beth turned and ran howling across the field. When she got in the back door to the kitchen, she didn’t stop screaming; the sound just got muted a little as she raced through the house up to her bedroom. Peter assumed that she had found her bathing suit when everything finally went silent.
Peter looked over at Dill, whose mouth had dropped open at the beginning and never shut the whole time. Dill looked back at him.
Without a word, they ripped out all the toadstools that made up the fairy ring, scattered them across Grandfather’s giant backyard, and ground them to pulp beneath their tennis shoes.
And, just to be sure, they kicked over every other mushroom in the field, too.
20
Mom got the job.
Fifteen minutes after Peter and Dill cleared the field of mushrooms, she walked in beaming and laughing, carrying take-out Chinese food and a half gallon of fancy ice cream. She was in such a good mood that she even invited Dill to stay, which was a miracle.
Over dinner, she told them all about how the head of the Office of Legal Affairs had been so impressed with her background, how he said they never got people at Charterton University with such big-city experience, and that after twenty minutes of talking he’d asked how soon could she start?
“We still have to iron out the details, of course,” Mom said.
Peter and Dill exchanged a look. Iron, Dill mouthed with a giggle.
Mom ignored him. “I’ve got to get daycare for Beth, and I’m still negotiating my final salary, of course…”
Speaking of his sister, Peter watched her carefully throughout dinner. From every indication, she seemed to be the same old Beth: wearing her Strawberry Shortcake bathing suit, messily eating Kung Pao Chicken with her hands, and throwing won tons off her high chair onto the floor. Every so often she would interrupt Mom’s story, at which point Peter’s stomach would clench with fear.
PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume One) (PETER AND THE MONSTERS) Page 26
