by B. A. Frade
If Tyler had any remaining doubts that the Scaremaster was supernatural, this latest weirdness should prove it.
Mom left the room, then came right back. “I have to work today, but Dr. Rasmussen left these new multivitamins for the staff to try. They aren’t for sale yet. It’s a special blend he invented. He said they ‘cure everything.’” She laughed. “Obviously that’s not true, but they’ll probably help with whatever you two are coming down with.”
She handed us the vitamins and gave us each a kiss on the head, saying, “I’ll be back around three.” She pointed at the vitamin in Tyler’s hand. “Take it.” Then to me, “And rest.”
Mom scooted out the door, and a few minutes later, we heard the garage door close.
I leapt out of bed and put the vitamin in my desk drawer. We didn’t need them. We were healthy and fine. Tyler put his in a drawer too.
Since we couldn’t destroy the book, Tyler had decided we needed a way to get rid of it. Something where there was no risk of another kid at school finding it and the Scaremaster continuing the stories.
Ty took out the book and set it on his desk. The cover fell open.
“Did you—” I started to ask.
“Must have been the wind,” he said, though the windows were closed and the ceiling fan off. He peered down at the first page. “Here’s the story we’ve been expecting,” he groaned. “Let’s find out your fear, Ry.”
But it wasn’t a story. The writing said:
Good morning! Think of all the scary things that could happen today. I can barely contain my excitement.
“I think he’s threatening you,” Tyler told me.
“I know,” I said, feeling powerless.
“Hmmm.” Tyler paused. I was getting a headache from his active brain. Sometimes this twin power is a pain, literally. He was silent for a long time, then jumped up and blurted out, “Since we don’t have to go to school, let’s go back to the costume shop.”
“Genius, Ty! Let’s visit the woman with the weird eyes,” I said. “See what she knows about the book, since she was the one who gave it to us!”
“I didn’t know you noticed her eyes!” Tyler’s voice rose in an excited way. He quickly found his shoes and slipped them on without untying the laces. “We’re going to give her back the book.”
An hour later, the bus dropped us off near the costume shop.
We burst through the door to discover the shop was packed with customers. It looked like everyone in town had taken the day off to do some last-minute shopping.
We wove our way through the crowd to the checkout counter. An older man was standing behind the register. He had gray-brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a vampire cape and false teeth.
We had to wait in line.
When it was our turn, Tyler plopped the old journal down on the counter.
“Howww caaan I help yooou?” the man asked, rolling out the vowels to sound like Dracula.
“We need to return this,” Tyler told him.
The man peeked over his glasses. “I’ve never seen this book before.” He dropped his accent. “You got it here?” With a long manicured finger, he traced the etchings on the cover.
“Yes,” Tyler and I said at the same time. Then Tyler added, “We don’t want it anymore.”
The man took out his teeth. He drooled a little and wiped his chin with his sleeve. “Do you have a receipt?”
“No,” Tyler said. “It was free. We just want to give it back to the woman who owns the store.”
“I own the store,” he said, looking extremely puzzled.
The line behind us was growing, and people were getting antsy. A large woman with three hyper kids was tapping her foot.
I had to ignore her and concentrate on the conversation.
“Do you have another clerk?” Tyler said. “She took us to the back room and let us see some sale items.”
“And a box of free stuff,” I chimed in, pointing again at the journal.
“Long dark hair. Color-shifting eyes.” Tyler added, “She told us that the journal was one of a kind.”
“There’s no one working here fitting that description. And there’s no discount area. Are you sure you kids are in the right store?” the man asked. He glanced over us to the line that now snaked down the aisle.
Tyler nodded. “One hundred percent.”
The man picked up his fake teeth and turned them around in his hand. “I can’t take that back because I didn’t give it to you.” Looking down at the book, he told us, “If it was free, why not give it away or throw it out?”
“We can’t—” I started, but Tyler cut me off before I could explain how this supernatural book was writing evil stories and how we didn’t think throwing it away would stop its tales.
“Do you have a trash can?” Tyler asked.
“There’s a dumpster out back.” The owner tipped his head toward the room where the woman had taken us, but added, “You’ll need to go around the building.”
“Sure,” Tyler said. He swept the Scaremaster’s journal off the counter and headed toward the main door.
The woman behind us muttered, “It’s about time… let someone else get to the register.”
I snarled at her.
The man at the counter put in his teeth. “Howww caaan I help yooou?” he asked her in his Dracula voice.
Tyler started toward the front of the shop but then ducked around a corner. “You give up too easily,” he said, showing me his new “face trouble” attitude. He stepped in front of me. “Come on.”
The store was so crowded that it was easy to blend in. We moved step by step through the people to the back of the shop. The area we’d been in, where the offices were, now had a big, worn-out Employees Only sign posted.
“We came all this way only to be told that there’s no mysterious woman. No free stuff. And the guy at the counter looks like the guy described in the online reviews.” Tyler boldly marched past the sign, head high like I’d taught him. “Something is fishy. Let’s investigate.”
A minute later, we were standing in front of a normal door that led to a normal storage room with a normal desk and shelves packed with brand-new stock.
“This is so odd,” I breathed. I kept expecting something to pop out. Maybe there was a fake door panel that led to an alternate storage room?
But before Tyler and I could discuss it, a teenaged boy wearing an astronaut costume nabbed us by the shoulders. “What are you doing back here?” he asked, his breath sounded heavy, like a real astronaut in space.
I had a reply ready. “We got lost on the way to the dressing room.”
I was a bad actor, but Tyler was worse. “It’s not back here?” he asked, glancing around the room pretending that he’d just realized this wasn’t the dressing area.
“Where are your costumes?” The astronaut was smarter than us. Our hands were empty, except for the book Tyler held.
“Did I say dressing room? I meant bathroom,” I said, grabbing my belly and crossing my legs like a four-year-old.
“Up front.” The astronaut didn’t let go of our shoulders. He pushed us toward the main part of the store. I crossed my feet and let myself trip, bumping hard into Tyler, intentionally knocking the book out of his hands.
It slid across the floor, stopping underneath that plain-looking desk.
Tyler went to grab it, but I hissed, “Leave it. That thing belongs here. We can honestly say we returned it to its owner.”
“Let’s go, boys,” the astronaut said, tugging us along.
Tyler took one last glance at where the book was now partially hidden by the desk’s shadow. He nodded at me and then said, “We were just leaving anyway.”
Chapter Seven
Mom’s car was turning onto our street just as we were getting off at our bus stop around the corner.
“Run!” Tyler shouted.
We bolted behind a house and cut through the park, getting home and inside mere seconds before the garage do
or opened.
We leapt up the stairs two at a time and were both in our beds, under our covers, when Mom called up, “Boys, I’m home.”
We were wearing our clothes, sweaty, flushed, and breathing heavily, when Mom came in.
“You guys look awful,” she said. “I brought more of those vitamins. Dr. Rasmussen really thinks they’ll help get you back on your feet for tomorrow.” She came to my side first and handed me two vitamins. “He advised me to up the dose.” Mom handed the pink capsules to me and gave me a kiss on my head before doing the same for Tyler. I knew the “kiss on the head” trick was to check our temperature but didn’t let on.
She wore her long hair in a tight bun for work. After removing the pins, she stood at the end of the curtain so she could talk to us both at the same time. She said, “I’m not sure how well the vitamins will work, but I’ll make chicken soup for dinner. Every mom knows that’s what really cures everything!” She laughed at her own joke, then kept on giggling as she made her way down the hall.
I let out a huge breath. “Too close,” I said, opening my drawer to put the vitamins inside.
“Augh!” I jumped back so fast that I accidentally got tangled in the curtain between our beds. It fell to the floor with a whoosh.
“What?!” Tyler came to my side so quickly I thought he should join the track team.
I pointed.
The Scaremaster’s book was in the drawer.
“No way!” I said, reaching out to take it.
“Don’t touch it.” Tyler stopped me. “This confirms that he’s after you now.” He looked me over from top to bottom. “Are you scared yet?”
“Is there such a thing as bookaphobia?” I snorted. “It surprised me, that’s all. But no more than the popping-up parts in a movie. Are you scared?” I asked. Not that it really mattered, but I was curious.
Tyler considered the question. “Honestly, no,” he said.
Comparing our reality to horror films, this was how the story was meant to go. The Scaremaster was directing a classic movie plot. Just when the main characters thought they were safe… dah, dah, dah… they weren’t.
I took the book and plopped down on the floor, right were we were standing. I opened the cover, and as expected, there was a new story. “We gotta read it.”
Once upon a time…
I really, really hated that beginning.
… there was a boy named Ryan.
Yep, Tyler had been cut out.
He pretended nothing scared him. He told everyone he had no fears. But the Scaremaster knew the truth.
Tomorrow night, at the dance, Ryan would know real fear.
His plan to scare the others would haunt him.
One zombie, two zombies, three zombies… zombies everywhere.
“Are you afraid of zombies?” Tyler asked me.
“No.” I said, considering the Scaremaster’s words. There was no way the entire school was going to show up as zombies. As Tyler would say, statistically speaking, it was improbable.
“I’m gonna force the Scaremaster to leave us alone,” I said firmly, as if that were possible. I crossed the room to get a pen out of Tyler’s cup and was about to write something strongly worded when I noticed something odd. There were crumbs in the page creases and chocolate chip smears on the page edges.
“Were you eating cookies the last time you opened the book?” I asked my brother.
“No. What?” It was as if he didn’t hear my question. He was thinking. “If I’m afraid of getting in trouble, what are you afraid of? What does the Scaremaster think he knows?”
“I don’t have a clue.…” I said truthfully, sweeping the crumbs out and onto the floor.
“Really? No ideas?” Tyler asked. “Whatever is in that book comes true. We can’t destroy it. And we can’t get rid of it.” He shook with a whole-body shiver. “Doesn’t that scare you? Even a little?”
I shook my head.
“If a supernatural book doesn’t scare you,” he asked me, “what does?”
I didn’t have an answer. Was it possible that the Scaremaster knew more about me than I knew about myself?
Friday at school crept by slowly. No one talked to us. If Wednesday afternoon was bad, taking time off had made things worse for us both. Rachel had had a whole day to build on the anxiety that Tyler and I were going to find out everyone’s greatest fears and scare them. No one wanted to be next, so everyone stayed far away. Even the teachers ignored us.
“I can’t wait for school to end,” I told Tyler when we met for lunch.
After school, we’d get dressed for the dance, then, after dinner, come back to school.
“Let’s work on our makeup ideas.” Tyler had brought the journal with us, figuring that if we left it at home, it would show up in his backpack anyway.
We had it, but that didn’t mean we had to open it! Instead, I took a blank sheet of notebook paper from my own backpack. I drew a circle head and said, “Don’t forget we have to cut my hair this afternoon.”
Tyler’s eyes gleamed. He didn’t seem worried about getting in trouble anymore. He just wanted to have fun at the dance. In fact, he had some crazy ideas of times when we could trade places and double the scares.
This was going to be awesome. I drew marks across the face to show where scars could go. Tyler liked the one by the eye but not by the lips, so I erased that one and added peeling skin there instead. We shaded under the eyes and added blistering skin on one cheek.
“Cool,” he said. “Draw a body, and let’s decide where the bone pieces can go.”
“Put that sharp bone closer to the knee,” a voice behind us said.
It was so shocking that anyone was talking to us that we both leapt back. I almost knocked over Tyler’s milk. The person behind us reached forward and nabbed it just in time. Spill avoided.
I looked up. “Soon-Yi?”
“Are you surprised to see me?” she asked. I could tell she was teasing. “I came to say thank you.” She set down Tyler’s milk.
Tyler’s jaw dropped so far open it practically rested on the table. I shoved his leg with my foot. He looked at me. “Talk,” I mouthed.
“Uh… you’re welcome… why?” he asked. I thought that was pretty good for his second time speaking to her.
Soon-Yi was a dancer. She was thin and always wore dance clothes since she went straight to dance class after school and never had enough time to change. Her nearly black hair matched her eyes. Those eyes were now staring at Tyler as she spoke.
“I know you were behind the scary clown that popped up in my window the other night.”
Tyler didn’t speak, but he shook his head.
“It’s okay,” she said, setting a hand on his shoulder. “Rachel told me how you two have been scaring everyone all week.”
Tyler shook his head even more adamantly and managed to say, “Not us.”
“You don’t have to pretend,” she said. “I’m not getting you in trouble.” She smiled as if she was in on his big “scared of getting in trouble” secret.
“Your spooky clown appeared in my bedroom window, on my computer screen, and on my phone screen. Later, there was a projected clown car image above the bed with an endless number of clowns piling out.” She closed her eyes. “That one was the worst.”
I was surprised by how many images the Scaremaster had managed. She must have been terrified.
“I didn’t sleep all night.” As she said that, she laughed. “I stayed home because everywhere I looked, I thought I saw clowns. My mind was playing scary tricks on me.” She shook her head as if to get rid of the memory. “But then Rachel told me what you did in Spanish class, Tyler,” Soon-Yi said.
He blushed but clearly didn’t understand.
“When you told Mr. Ramirez that you’d thrown the keys on the roof and faced getting in trouble for that… it was the right thing to do. Rachel told me that you were really brave and honest. That was when I realized I also had to face my fears to overcome them!” She
gave us a big smile and said, “I’m going to dress like a clown for the dance.” Taking the pencil from me, she flipped my page over and drew out her own makeup. “Big red lips, puffy nose, blue around my eyes…”
When her sketch was done, Tyler said, “Wow.” Then, to my huge surprise, he blurted out, “Can we dance together?”
Ha! In that moment, I knew he’d faced another of his fears. I hadn’t even known that Tyler had one fear, but now it was clear he had two. His inability to talk to a girl he liked was a small, sort of silly fear, but still, seeing him overcome it was awesome!
“Of course!” she said happily.
Things really were looking up. Tyler’s inspiration was contagious. Soon-Yi told us that Maya was going to be a spider and Eddie had found the perfect dog costume.
“I thought the Scaremaster’s story said everyone was going to be a zombie!” I exclaimed after she walked away. “He’s so wrong!”
Tyler grinned and said, “Once again, the story’s changing.” Then his eyes brightened. “Hurry,” he said. “We’ve got something important to do.”
“What?” I asked.
“Soon-Yi gave me an amazing idea.” He smiled at me as we approached a table of eighth graders. “We probably can’t scare the Scaremaster, but we can beat him at his own game. The Scaremaster’s days of scaring are about to end.”
Chapter Eight
When Tyler and I arrived at the dance, we were certain we had the Scaremaster beat. We were the only zombies, so already he was wrong. And as for scaring people based on their fears, we’d solved the problem. If the Scaremaster couldn’t scare me, he wouldn’t be able to scare anyone else, as he’d shown with Tyler.
When Ty had faced his fear, the Scaremaster had moved on, knocking Mrs. Clancy off the roof since she was afraid of falling.
Now, if he didn’t scare me, there was no one left to scare. We were one step closer to beating him at his own storytelling game.
