A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting 2

by Joe Ballarini

  I gasped when I remembered the old rhyme kids said about Harriet Hargrave, the infamous sixteen-year-old girl who killed her family with hedge clippers:

  Harriet Hargrave, child, what did you do?

  Snipped and clipped your family in two.

  Did you mistake your parents for a hedge?

  What evil thing sent you over the edge?

  Harriet Hargrave, what else will you do?

  Say her name three times, and she’ll come for YOU.

  I sent Cassie and Curtis a quick group text.

  You guys close?

  No response.

  The elevator descended into the dank, stone-cold basement of the cottage. We wheeled Bullgarth under the old brick archways where gleaming brass nameplates were stuck to the walls. “Agatha Barnes, 1763–1779.” “Thomas Brattle 1769–1799.” I shivered. The bones of the founding chapter of the Rhode Island order were all buried down here.

  Chains jangled from around the corner. The snapping of a metal collar. I rushed into the corner of the basement where Wugnot and Liz were attempting to chain Bullgarth through the bars.

  “No chains!” I said.

  “Are you crazy?” Liz said.

  Bullgarth rose with a growing howl and crunched his head against the top of the cage. He grumbled and rubbed the lump on top of his head.

  I pointed to a ring of red, raw skin under the patches of rubbed-off fur around Bullgarth’s neck. “I think he gets locked up a lot.”

  “Because he’s a wild monster,” said Liz. “And I don’t care if I have to wax the fur off his hairy butt cheeks, this thing is going to give me answers about Serena and Kevin.”

  The Sasquatch-thing looked up suddenly.

  “You can understand me, can’t you?” Liz shouted at him.

  Bullgarth wrung his hairy paws together, considering whether or not he should answer the question.

  “Grunt once for yes, twice for no.”

  He tilted his horned head down, crouching so he could peer directly at Liz. Liz kicked the bars. Bullgarth didn’t startle. He just stared at Liz.

  “Quit looking at me, freak!” Liz shouted again.

  His enormous claws scratched at the worn fur around his collar, but the beast’s silver eyes never once left Liz.

  I dug my hand into my backpack. “Liz, he left me this.”

  Liz stopped. Her entire being focused on the small, dented, scratched tin soldier in the palm of my hand. She slowly turned the pewter figurine upside down to look under its base. A quiet, shocked noise caught in her throat.

  “This was my brother’s,” she said in a hushed tone.

  Bullgarth sighed a deep sort of purring sigh.

  She showed me the bottom of the soldier. Underneath all the scratch marks were two small crooked letters that I hadn’t noticed until this very moment (I blame the poor penmanship): “KL.”

  Kevin LeRue.

  “Where did you get this?” Liz said, her voice trembling.

  Her shaking fist clutched the tin toy. She smashed her knuckles into the iron bars.

  “What have you done with Kevin, you—you—stupid shag rug!”

  Bullgarth tapped his chest and made deep breathy huffs. His glimmering eyes softened.

  “TELL ME!” Liz demanded.

  Frustrated, the bigfoot slammed his fist into his chest. His sad, powerful moan was full of yearning, longing. It sounded almost human.

  His rumbling roar stopped Liz. She leaned forward with curious wonder.

  “What’d that thing say?” Wugnot whispered to me.

  I couldn’t answer. I was too excited and afraid.

  The beast reached his giant hand out through the bars. Transfixed, Liz made no move to step away or protect herself as his paw, twice the size of her face, gently touched the side of her cheek.

  20

  Tail twitching anxiously, Wugnot took a protective step forward, but I put my hand on his shoulder. We stood totally still as the monster’s paw rose slowly up Liz’s face and wiped the tears that were falling from her eyes. His own tears had slicked the fur around his cheeks into dark stripes.

  Liz choked. She could barely form a whisper.

  “Kevin? Is that you?”

  The beast’s eyes brightened. His lips curled into a tusky smile as he nodded. Liz held the giant’s warm, hairy paw through the bars.

  “No way,” I said in hushed wonder.

  “Come closer,” Liz demanded. “Let me see your right eyebrow.”

  The monster pulled back the fur from his forehead, showing a tiny scar just above his right eyebrow. Liz gasped.

  “When Kevin was four, he fell and cut open his right eyebrow. . . . That’s the scar!”

  She quickly unlocked the side of the cage.

  “Wouldn’t do that,” Wugnot warned.

  Liz boldly entered the monster’s pen.

  “Liz! It could be a trap!” Wugnot shouted.

  But Liz was only listening to the voice of her broken heart. She had been waiting almost a decade to see her brother again. Nothing was going to stop her.

  Bullgarth charged suddenly and embraced her with his woolly arms. Clinging tightly, Liz was almost buried under his waves of long, matted fur.

  “I never stopped looking for you,” she said quietly.

  Kevin, the monster once known to us as Bullgarth, held his sister tightly. He wailed long and low as his massive paw stroked her pink-and-black hair.

  Wugnot and I stood outside the bars. I wiped the back of my sleeve across my eyes. I heard a snotty snuffle and saw Wugnot flick a green tear from the corner of his eye just before he pulled the brim of his hat down low.

  “How is this possible?” I said.

  Liz studied Kevin’s face. She traced her finger across his black snout, his dagger-sized tusks, his flea-infested fur.

  “She turned him. Somehow. She took him and she turned him,” Liz whispered.

  Kevin nodded sadly. She carefully touched the jagged edge of his broken horn. He winced and pulled away.

  A wrenching growl from Kevin’s stomach broke the emotional moment.

  “You hungry, little brother?”

  Monster Kevin patted his furry stomach.

  Liz led him out of the cage. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

  “I don’t think you should take him out of there,” Wugnot suggested as Liz led Kevin from the cage. “It’s going to be all hugs and cuddles and then screaming and running. Fine. Don’t listen to me. I’m just a monster. What do I know?”

  21

  “The Spider Queen did this to you?” Liz asked.

  Kevin nodded.

  “Is she here?” Liz handed him a piece of paper and a pencil.

  With fear in his eyes, he nodded again. It sent snowballs rolling down my spine. “That was nine years ago,” I said. “That would make you . . . fourteen. Around my age.”

  Kevin nodded. I couldn’t help but feel terrible for the little boy who grew up imprisoned in the body of a beast, forced to serve Queen Serena’s awful whims.

  “Is this her house?” I said, pointing at a drawing he had made for us.

  He nodded quickly, excited to be understood. He jammed his pencil down and drew lines across the house. They looked like prison bars. The point on the pencil snapped. Kevin dragged it across the page, ripping through the paper. Roaring, he swept the whole thing away and buried his gorilla face in his hands.

  Liz gently patted his heaving, scraggly mane. “It’s okay, Kev.”

  He leaned his giant horned head on Liz’s shoulder.

  “Where is this house?” I asked.

  He went quiet. He couldn’t tell. He musn’t tell. He touched the chain marks around his neck and wrists.

  “She can’t hurt you anymore,” Liz said. “You’re with me now, little bro.”

  The beast gave his sister a thankful expression. His paws crawled in the air like vicious spiders, as if he was trying to tell us No matter what you do, Serena the Spider Queen cannot be beaten.


  “Tell us where she’s hiding so I can go there and clean out her hive for good, and she’ll never hurt you again,” said Liz.

  “Hargrave Manor?” I asked. “Is that it?”

  Kevin looked at me, shocked.

  “That’s where Cassie and Curtis went!” I exclaimed.

  “Human heart stew!” Wugnot ladled a steaming bowl of stew out of the kitchen cauldron and slid it before Kevin. “Minus the human heart, of course. Extra spicy. Old hobgoblin recipe. It’ll put hair on your chest. Not that you need it.”

  Kevin picked up the bowl with one paw and gulped the food down like a high school hipster shooting a single shot of espresso at a poetry slam. Wugnot went to pour more into the bowl when Kevin picked up the cast-iron cauldron by the handle and guzzled the remaining stew.

  “Hey! I was gonna have some of that,” Wugnot said, sadly looking at the soup ladle in his hand.

  Kevin’s hairy arm wiped the slobber from his long, dark beard. He belched a gust of reeking wind that hung in the air like a methane gas leak, and then ambled over to the fridge.

  “Don’t let him near that fridge!” whined Wugnot. “We’re not gonna have anything left for Christmas dinner!”

  “He’s had a terrible life,” Liz said, sounding warm and kind, unlike her usual acidic tone. “How can I say no to him?”

  “You ever babysit a Squatch?” Wugnot said. “They’re impossible.”

  “We’re the greatest babysitters who ever lived,” Liz announced. “We can look after him. Think of it like a mission from your clandestine hobgoblin days.”

  “Yeah!” I said, and high-fived Liz.

  I stupidly held up my hand to Kevin for a high five. His paw slammed into my palm, and I went flying backward.

  Kevin walked around in circles and squatted down in the corner.

  “He better not be doing what I think he’s doing,” Wugnot said.

  The beast was, in fact, doing what Wugnot thought he was doing.

  Nasty!

  Kevin finished his business and kicked his feet backward like a dog covering his poo with leaves.

  “You’re cleaning that up,” Wugnot said, pointing at Liz.

  Suddenly, Kevin straightened up. His wet snout sniffed the air. He shoved Liz aside and bounded out of the kitchen and into the hallway. His galloping paws slipped across the floor and he slid, bumping into an aquarium full of snails. The glass box toppled, and Wugnot dove, barely able to catch it.

  “Stop that ape!” Wugnot shouted.

  Liz and I dashed around a corner, trying to keep up with the hairy streak in front of us.

  Kevin swung open a door, and we saw just what he smelled: Baby Theo.

  Mama Vee was giving him a bath in a giant claw-foot tub.

  Theo stopped splashing. He started to cry, sensing trouble darkening the doorway.

  “It’s okay! He’s my brother!” Liz cried out.

  Kevin howled and lunged into the room, paws out for the baby in the bath. Mama Vee spun Theo out of the water, cradling his naked butt in her arms while kicking over the tub. Steaming water sluiced the floor, distracting the giant for a moment as Berna rounded the corner, raising a baby rattle in her hand.

  “Hey, dog boy!”

  Berna aimed the rattle at the monster’s forehead.

  “No!” Liz screamed as the end of the rattle exploded.

  22

  A capsule of purple mist exploded from the baby rattle and wound itself around the beast’s face in erratic circles, as if it were a balloon with the air being let out. A giant sneeze sent the cotton candy–like cloud into fizzling bits. Kevin released a woozy wail, and his silver eyes crossed. He yawned and stumbled onto his butt, splashing in the tub water.

  “Flumorian Flatulence Pellets,” Berna said. “No fun to collect, but they have a powerful calming effect.”

  We watched the oversized ball of fur playing with the soap bubbles. Vee caught her breath. She was holding a knife she kept hidden inside her long braid for emergency situations.

  “That’s my brother, you idiot!” Liz screamed at Berna.

  “Don’t yell at me. He was about to eat Theo,” Berna said.

  “He was not!”

  “Kinda was,” said Wugnot.

  Vee studied the dazed creature. “He must have been injected with some form of simian mutagen.”

  “I’d love to run some tests,” Berna said.

  “You’re not poking my brother with a bunch of needles!” Liz said. “He’s fine the way he is.”

  Everyone exchanged skeptical glances. Someone had to break the news to Liz.

  “Liz, Dawn told me Kevin came to take Theo. Kevin was going to bring him to Serena.”

  Liz clenched her jaw. She didn’t want to accept that maybe her brother was not a 100 percent nice kid.

  “Liz, your brother’s a monster and that’s cool,” Mama Vee said. “But . . . we have to be aware of the fact that, well, he’s been gone a long time. There’s no telling what kind of influence Serena or his captors have had on him throughout the years.”

  “You calling my brother a creep?”

  “I’m saying that Kevin has been a monster longer than he’s been a human,” she said.

  Liz rubbed her eyes. She was on the verge of tears.

  I took Theo and put a clean diaper on him. “Kevin’s okay. He saved Dawn and me. So, I know there’s good in him. Somewhere like deep, deep, deep down.”

  Liz looked at me thankfully.

  Or is he like a Trojan horse sent by Serena? We didn’t find Kevin. He found us. He could be a pawn in her bigger plan. . . .

  “But,” I continued cautiously, knowing Liz was not going to like what I had to say next, “I don’t trust him around the baby. And it’s my job to protect Theo.”

  “And it’s my job to protect my brother,” Liz said, baring her teeth.

  I saw her fists coil up.

  “I don’t want a fight. Just keep him away from Theo,” I said, snapping the buttons on the Theo’s fresh jammies.

  Mama Vee put it bluntly to Liz. “You want to keep Kevin, you have to train him.”

  Liz scowled. “Kevin’s not a dog!”

  “Smells like one,” Wugnot snorted.

  “Like you’re one to talk, cheese-claws,” said Liz, jabbing her finger at Wugnot.

  “Careful where you point that digit, LeRue.” Wugnot clicked his teeth at her and stormed out of the room.

  “Like it or not, Liz, Kevin is a wild thing,” Mama Vee said. “And we need to proceed with extreme caution.”

  Liz let out a humorless laugh. “I can’t believe you clowns. I finally find my brother, and you’re acting like the best day of my life is the worst thing in the world.” She took Kevin by the paw. “Come on, Kev. Let’s ditch these losers. You can crash in my room.”

  Kevin wobbled to his feet and strummed his paws in the air, waving good-bye to all of us.

  “Careful! Flumorian Flatulence wears off pretty quick,” Berna called after her.

  We watched them go, sister and eight-foot-tall hairy brother.

  “How’s Dawn?” I asked Berna.

  Berna held up a vial of blood and swished it around.

  “I’ve never seen anything like the venom in her system.”

  A cold draft from the echoing hallways ran its fingers across my shoulders.

  “It attacks the neural system. Makes people do whatever the parasite wants them to do. Makes them their puppet.”

  “Is there a cure?” I asked.

  “I’ve tried the usual antivenom remedies: Soro antibotropicocrotalico. Aracmyn. Anti Latrodectus. Nothing works.”

  My heart sank into despair.

  “I do have one idea. If I were able to get ahold of the source of the venom—or better yet, the venom itself—I might be able to make an antidote from it.”

  I gagged at the thought of trying to catch whatever spider had bitten Dawn. I checked my phone. No replies from Cassie or Curtis. But plenty of angry, worried messages from my mother.
/>
  Where are you, Kelly?

  Call us! You said you would be home!

  DINNER READY IN 30 MINUTES, YOUNG LADY. U BETTER B HERE.

  father and I r worried. y aren’t u calling?

  My stomach clenched. I had a sinking, gross feeling that I was about to be in major trouble on the home front.

  “I gotta call my folks before they go nuclear,” I said.

  “Tell them you’ll be back in twenty minutes,” Vee said. “Wugnot will drive you home. I’ll go check out Hargrave Manor. See if I can find Cassie and Curtis.”

  “What about the turtle hatchling?” I asked, feeding Theo a bottle of formula.

  “Until Dawn gets better, we can’t have Theo and Monster Kev in the same house. That’s just a disaster waiting to happen.”

  “Where are you going to take him?”

  “Your house.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “A little. Let’s go get you a stroller,” she said.

  I followed her to the bust of Joan of Arc. She twisted the statue’s head, and a far wall rumbled and descended into the floor. We darted down the dark, hidden staircase into the weapons room. A giant, gleaming sword that looked like it weighed more than me hung on the wall beside a pair of tomahawks made from two giant fangs.

  A cabinet was filled with beakers full of funky monster parts. Jars of fire juice collected from the tongue of the Jersey Devil. Bottles of knockout troll farts. Venomous spittle. Gorgon armpit hives. A ball of evil elf earwax.

  We moved down rows of weapons made to resemble toys. A ballistic soccer ball. G.I. Joe action figures that doubled as nunchaku. A Hatchimals egg loaded with an actual wild monster inside, lying in wait to pounce on whoever opened it.

  Vee wheeled a black-and-gray baby stroller from behind a rack of teddy bear bombs. Its handles were smooth and sleek. The large, nubby wheels were ready for any obstacle. If Batman had a baby, this would be his stroller of choice.

  “I give you the latest in stroller tech: the Lone Wolf Tactical Stroller, Series Five. Developed by the sitters in the Tokyo office. The L-Five is the finest in baby transpo and protection. Ideal for running and traveling over rough terrain. The padded handlebars, with a cup-and-phone holder that offers nine positions to create the perfect fit for sitters of all heights, conceal two swords here and here. And . . .”