Either way, the monster didn’t take it well. It roared and lunged at Dill.
“Oh crap,” Dill whispered just before the giant jaws grabbed him. “HELLLP!” he screamed as the monster lifted him high in the air.
“DILL!” Peter shouted. He looked vainly for anything to use as a weapon, but there was nothing on the ground. The hatchet was too close to the creature. As Peter turned around to look behind him, his flashlight rolled against his skin like a wet popsicle. Peter ripped his tucked-in sweaters out of his pants, and out dropped the flashlight.
“HANG ON, DILL!”
Too late. With a flick of its head, the monster tossed Dill a good twenty feet through the air. He landed with a thud on the muddy bank, and his screams were cut short.
“YOU – YOU – ” Peter yelled, trying to think of the worst word he knew, but instead he just ran forward and smacked the monster’s knee with the flashlight. As soon as he did it, he realized just how bad a mistake he had made.
The creature looked down at him and opened its mouth wide. Peter held up his arms and the flashlight, trying to shield his face. He knew the tongue was coming – but unlike before, his head was the closest thing to the monster, and it was unprotected. If the tongue hit his scalp, he would fall asleep for who knew how long, and then it would zap Dill and carry them both back to the cave, and patch up the hole, and no one would ever find out what happened to them –
But the tongue didn’t flash down at Peter.
Instead, the monster’s whole head did.
There was a second’s impression of the mouth getting very big, VERY fast, and then great wet flaps of skin slapped all around Peter. Suddenly he was hoisted into the air and turned upside down. He slid fast and hard into goopy darkness, like he’d gone headfirst down a waterpark slide made out of raw meat.
Nasty wet flesh pressed against him from all sides until he landed in what felt like a cocoon made of chicken liver. He couldn’t tell, because everything was completely black. Water sloshed all around him. Something hard slammed into his back and he grunted in pain – but the chicken liver pressed against his face and wouldn’t allow him to breathe.
It was at that moment he realized he had been swallowed alive.
He was going to suffocate to death in the stomach of the monster.
35
Terror ran through his body like electricity, and he forced his arms out in front of him. With his nose tucked under his arm, Peter now had a pocket of air, and he sucked it in greedily. It smelled worse than the rotting fish in the cave, but he breathed it anyway.
The whole jiggly mess around him shook, and the hard object behind him jutted into his back again. The monster was walking.
Peter kicked his legs until he somersaulted into a right-side-up position. It was like trying to turn around inside a sheet of plastic greased with Crisco, but he did it.
His nose was still under his arm. He pushed his hands out, and the chicken-liver stuff gave way. He had a little more room to breathe. Now if only he could see.
As he flailed about in the slimy darkness, he remembered that the flashlight was still clutched in one icy fist. He clicked it on, and kind of wished he hadn’t.
The thing’s stomach pressed in on him from all directions like an overly tight sleeping bag. It was rather small, considering how big the monster was. And it looked exactly like chicken guts, too, except spongier and a bit pinker, with tons of veins running just under the skin.
Peter wanted to barf, but he couldn’t let himself. He had to figure out how to get out of here. No time for puking.
If he only had the hatchet, he could have cut his way out. Kill the monster at the same time, too. But the hatchet was sitting harmlessly outside.
Peter thrashed around in the fleshy balloon and realized he had to do something else before he got out: he had to breathe. There was almost no air in here, and he would probably black out if he didn’t figure out something quick.
The hard object stuck in his back again. He turned his head and the flashlight and immediately saw the scuba tank. The monster had swallowed it out in the boat, and now it was in here with Peter, inside the creature’s stomach.
It’s full of air! At least I’ll be able to breathe…
The whole stomach shook, and Peter and the tank jostled around violently. It felt like the monster was running now.
Peter scrambled to grab the knob atop the scuba tank. He dropped his flashlight, but it didn’t matter because his hand found the dial. He turned it quickly round and round.
Ssssssssssssssssssssss.
The welcome sound of hissing air filled his ears and he whooped with joy. Almost immediately, the fleshy walls of the stomach began to pull away from his body. Faster and faster they expanded, until he could reach out in a sweeping circle and not touch anything.
The air tank is blowing the monster’s stomach up, just like a raft!
The jiggling around him came to a halt; the monster must have stopped moving. Peter and the air tank sloshed around in the goop. In the glint of the flashlight, he could see he shared the space with at least a dozen dead fish, a car license plate, and a bunch of tangled fishing line.
The stomach kept getting bigger and bigger. The veins stood out even more clearly now in the rapidly stretching flesh.
UUUUUURRRRRRRPPPPPP.
Rattling vibrations shook Peter. Air whooshed past him as the stomach shrank by a good two feet.
Uh oh…nononononononono
Peter shone his light up above him. There was a hole at the top of the stomach, though it was clenched tightly together. It looked a lot like the back of Peter’s own throat when he looked at his tonsils in the mirror.
It was slowly getting farther away from him as the stomach expanded again.
The hole was clamped shut, and then all of sudden, it opened to the size of a basketball.
UUUUUUUUURRRRRRPPPPPPPPP.
Peter shook like he was on a roller coaster, and the stomach shrank smaller.
The monster was burping. It was burping out all the air in its stomach.
“On no you DON’T,” Peter yelled, and ripped off his life preserver. The hole was closer to him now, and he stood up shakily. The way the flesh gave way under his feet, it felt like he was standing on a waterbed or on one of those Moon Bounce castles at little kids’ birthday parties. But he was able to keep his balance long enough to cram his life preserver into the hole, forcing it past the flap of skin that kept the stomach clamped shut.
Sssssssssssssss went the air from the scuba tank. The stomach was inflating again, and the life-preserver-jammed hole was out of reach within seconds. Peter toppled back down on his butt and watched.
The stomach jiggled again, but this time, the hole didn’t open. It was stuffed closed with the life preserver.
And the stomach was getting bigger.
Big as a refrigerator…
Bigger…
Big as a car…
Peter could have filled the place up with water and done laps like in a pool, it was so big. Suddenly the whole place pitched and swayed, and Peter got thrown to the other side of the stomach. The canister rolled over beside him.
They were moving. But it didn’t feel like before; this time, the monster seemed to be staggering around instead of running.
Then it fell.
Peter toppled over and over. The tank clanged against his head, but he didn’t cry out, because he was so amazed at what he heard outside: a giant kersploosh of water.
The monster was in the lake.
The whole stomach was shaking like an earthquake and getting bigger every second. The stomach lining was stretched as tight as a volleyball now, and Peter’s hands and body didn’t even sink down in the flesh anymore. He knew this because he was bouncing back and forth as the monster thrashed and jerked around him.
Suddenly there was a ripping sound and a POP like a giant balloon. Peter’s face got smacked with slack, goopy skin, and then cold water rushed over him.
&
nbsp; He screamed, but only bubbles came out of his mouth. He kicked and tore through whatever was around him like he was tearing through stretched-out chewing gum.
His face broke the surface of the lake, and he coughed and gagged for air.
“PETER?!” Dill screamed from the shore. He was only twenty feet away.
Peter kicked hard and strained with his arms. Without his life preserver, though, the soggy sweaters were weighing him down, pulling him underwater.
I survived being eaten alive…I’m NOT going to drown today.
He forced himself above water and took another gasping breath, but more water filled his mouth than air.
Okay, maybe I am going to drown…
As his head slipped beneath the water, small hands grabbed him and forced him up to the surface.
Dill.
Dill had jumped in the lake, wearing his own life preserver, and was dragging Peter towards the shore.
“KICK!” Dill screamed in his ear.
Peter kicked with every ounce of energy he had. A few seconds later, he felt his feet hit the lake bottom. He and Dill trudged the rest of the way and collapsed on the muddy bank.
36
Then Peter remembered what had just happened and turned back around.
Thirty feet from shore, the monster’s body was floating in the lake. It lolled about on its back, and its arms and legs twitched in the air. But where its belly had once been, there was a giant gaping hole.
“Oh my GOSH you should have seen it,” Dill gasped. “You ever seen a frog blow up its throat so it can croak? Not die, I mean, but krrk-ikkkk, krkk-ikkkk.”
Dill did a surprisingly good imitation of a frog.
“Well, the monster’s belly started getting huge – I mean, HUGE – and he stopped chasing me and just stood there. Then he BURPED really loud, and his belly shrank. He started coming after me again, but he stopped and burped again. And then he tried to burp again, but he didn’t. He just kept snapping his mouth but nothing would come out, and his stomach got bigger, and bigger, and BIGGER, and he started walking around like he was drunk, and then he fell back in the water and BOOM! Monster guts were flying EVERYWHERE! It was like the nastiest piñata you ever saw, dude! And then YOU came out, and I was like, HOLY CRAP, I thought you were dead! How’d you do it?”
“He ate the scuba tank out on the lake. It was in there when he swallowed me…” Peter stopped for a second and trembled at the horrible memory, then resumed his tale. “I turned it on, which made the stomach bigger. Then I stuffed my life preserver in his throat so he couldn’t burp anymore.”
“AWESOME! Dude, that was better than flippin’ JAWS, man! They just blew the shark up, you came OUT of the monster from the INSIDE! Freakin’ WICKED!”
“Yeah,” Peter laughed weakly. “I kind of feel like Jonah.”
Dill stared at Peter. “Who’s that?”
“Jonah? In the Bible? Got swallowed by a whale?”
There was absolutely no sign of recognition on Dill’s face.
“And the whale spit him up after three days?” Peter persisted.
“Dude, you’re thinking of Pinocchio.”
Peter sighed and looked back out at the lake. The sun had begun to come up somewhere in the distance – not over the horizon, yet, but there was enough light in the grayish-pink sky to clearly see the carcass of the monster, which had stopped twitching. It just slowly floated out further into the center of the lake.
Peter almost felt sorry for it. It was a magnificent animal…nobody had ever seen a living creature like it before, and now it was dead. He had killed it.
Then he remembered that the thing had swallowed him alive, and he didn’t feel bad at all. In fact, he was pretty dang glad.
“Hey Pete, you know the best thing about this?” Dill prodded him. “We got proof this time. Yeah, I know your grandfather believes us and all, but we never really got in trouble like this before, and then you went and broke into the rangers station…man, we’d’a gone to jail for sure. But they can’t say anything about THAT!” Dill cackled, and pointed out at the creature’s body. “DUDE, WE GOT PROOF!”
As if it had heard them and wanted to take its last chance at revenge, the monster began to slowly sink into the lake. First the giant hole in its chest filled with water…then the legs and arms slowly sank beneath the surface.
“NOOOOO!” both boys screamed at once, pleading with outstretched arms.
It was over within seconds. The tips of the webbed fingers disappeared, and the monster was entirely gone.
Peter stared out at the lake in a daze. Dill shook his head and muttered, “Why? Why me?”
“Why you? Why ME?! I’m the one who got swallowed alive!”
Dill frowned and scrunched up his nose. “Yeah, and got covered in monster guts.”
Peter looked down at his clothes and saw that he was indeed slimed over with pieces of skin and raw meat, not to mention a layer of milky-looking goo. In that second, his mind flooded with the horror of what he had just been through. The monster’s mouth slamming down around him…the stomach pressing against his face…the smell.
He screamed, jumped to his feet, and tore the top two layers of sweaters off. Then he pulled the top layer of jeans off, too, and cast them aside. He collapsed on the ground and moaned.
Dill looked at him. “You okay, man? You looked like you were freakin’ out there. Kinda like ol’ Greg.”
“That’s cuz I was,” Peter grumbled.
“Hey, what about Greg and Rory? What do we do about them?”
“We can’t drag them out, and I don’t about you, but I can’t even walk ten feet.”
From behind them came a burst of static. Peter and Dill both whipped their heads around. Further up the bank, Dill’s walkie-talkie lay on the ground, and a series of voices crackled over the speaker.
“This is Jacobs, I’m down at the station. Looks like somebody broke in.”
“How bad?”
Dill pointed at the radio in surprise and indignation. “They’re not saying ‘over’!”
“Broke the window in the main office, cracked the lock on the shed…looks like they stole a raft and some scuba equipment, probably some other stuff.”
“Great. Anybody got any idea who did it?”
Peter crept up the bank and pressed the button on the walkie-talkie. “Uh…that’d be me.” He let go of the button, then remembered something and pressed it again. “Um, over.”
“Who’s this?” a voice demanded angrily.
“Tell him he’s supposed to say ‘over,’” Dill instructed.
Peter waved his hand for Dill to be quiet. “Uh, this is Peter Normal. The kid from yesterday?”
“Oh, I remember you, all right,” the voice growled. “Where are you?”
“Out by the lake, on the shore. You might want to bring a doctor or something – we found Greg and Rory. They’re okay, they’re just knocked out. Over.”
There was a stunned silence for about five seconds on the other end of the radio.
“Stay there. We’ll find you. Jacobs, switch over to the other band.”
No more voices came out of the walkie-talkie after that.
“I don’t get it…how did those guys ever get to be rangers, and they don’t even know to say ‘over’?” Dill complained. Then he sighed. “So we’re just gonna wait for ‘em, huh?”
“You could take off…I didn’t say anything about you, so you could run for it and not get in trouble.”
Dill brightened. “That’s right, I totally could…” Then he looked serious again. “Naah, I better stick around. You always need back-up.”
Peter smiled. “By the way, thanks for saving my life.”
“Twice,” Dill said, and held up two fingers. “If you’re keeping track. I’m not.”
“How do you figure?”
“I got you out of the cave, and I pulled you out of the water.”
“Well, you dug a hole in the cave, but you smacked me in the face when you jumpe
d in. Plus, I blew up the monster, so that kind of evens out the whole cave thing.”
Dill narrowed his eyes. “Sounds like somebody’s keeping track.”
The sun was just beginning to peek over the trees across the lake. The wind blew slightly, and the first birds began to chirp behind them.
Dill scooched across the ground on his rear end and settled about ten feet away from Peter.
“What’d you do that for?” Peter asked.
“Nothin’. You just wait over there, and I’ll wait over here.”
Peter looked at him in surprise. “Why?”
Dill pinched his nose with his fingers and thumb. “Cuz you stink, man. Ooooooo-weeeee.”
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The rangers arrived about twenty minutes later, along with a couple of paramedics and three sheriff’s deputies, including Deputy Jenkins (who had on his sunglasses, even though it was barely light outside). Ranger Eric led the way.
“Peter, Dill – are you alright?” he called as they broke through the woods.
“Yeah, we’re okay,” Peter said.
Eric got close to Peter, then backed off with a sour look on his face. “Ugh, what’s that smell?”
“I told you you stank, dude,” Dill guffawed.
“Where’s the other kids?” Jenkins snarled.
Dill pointed. “Down in the hole.”
The deputies rushed over and peered in with flashlights. One of them climbed down the rope and disappeared from view.
The paramedics started checking Peter and Dill out, shining little flashlights in their eyes and moving their arms and heads back and forth.
“Cut that out, man,” Dill complained.
“We’re fine, we’re fine,” Peter assured them. “I think you better go help Rory and Greg.”
“Found ‘em!” the man in the cave called, his voice hollow and muffled. “They’re alive!” Then he said something else under his breath, some words Peter had never heard before, followed by, “You guys, there’s bones everywhere down here.”
Jenkins and Eric turned around and stared at the boys.
“Don’t look at me, man,” Dill said.
PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume One) (PETER AND THE MONSTERS) Page 37
