by M. D. Payne
“Because once they’re inside, they can crawl around wherever they want—through cracks, up walls, even on ceilings. If we can keep them from getting inside, then we’d have a little more time to figure out how to defeat them.”
“Well,” said Shane, “why don’t we just lay down one big circle of cheese, all the way around the retirement home? They’d creep up to the house, but not be able to crawl up to the door or through any windows.”
“But we know a few of them came in through the crypt,” I said.
“That’s fine,” said Shane. “We just have to spread some cheese at the bottom of the stairs.”
“This just might work!” I yelled.
We got up to the top of the hill, and were greeted with the excited caws of the ravens. I cupped my hands around my mouth and screamed out a message that I knew the ravens would deliver to the Director.
“We’re back with Parmesan cheese! If we spread it around the retirement home and in the crypt, we should be able to keep the sussuroblats out. We have chunks of Parmesan cheese for each of the residents to hold for protection!!!”
Sure enough, one of the ravens flew away to deliver the message.
“Twenty minutes!” yelled Shane.
A shiver ran through my spine. Twenty minutes to sunset. The light was fading, and it was getting cold outside. I wondered if this crazy idea would even work. Whoever heard of Parmesan cheese defeating monsters? Oh, well, I thought, Dracula hated garlic and giant cockroaches hate Parmesan cheese. I guess monsters just don’t like Italian food….
There was no time to think, or to be scared.
“All right!” I barked orders. “I’ve got the backpack of cheese chunks! I’ll head into the home and get the Nurses to distribute them to the residents. You guys start laying a trail of Parmesan cheese around the building. It’s got to be deep enough to keep the roaches away, but I’ll still need enough to fill up a backpack for the crypt! HURRY!”
I ran into the retirement home and upstairs to the attic. The Director was waiting for me.
“How sure are you that this is going to work?” the Director asked. He looked completely scared—more scared than I was.
Terrified monsters huddled in small groups around the large, open attic. Gordon was nowhere to be found.
“Where’s Gordon?” I asked.
“I asked the first question,” said the Director.
“WHERE’S GORDON?!” I screamed. Grigore started crying again.
“He’s in a private room in the back of the attic, but—”
I didn’t even let the Director finish. I walked past him and handed him the bag of Parmesan chunks.
“Pass these out!” I ordered him.
I walked into the back of the attic, looking for a door.
“Mr. Taylor, I really don’t think you should see Gordon,” said the Director nervously.
I opened the door.
“MR. TAYLOR!” the Director yelled.
I walked inside. Gordon was slouched over in a chair in front of a small table. His back was toward the door, so I ran up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Gordon?” I asked.
Gordon slowly turned around, and that’s when I saw…
HIS MOUTH WAS NOW A COCKROACH MOUTH!
He looked up at me and his eyes filled with tears. He tried to talk, but his cockroach mouth just chattered and drooled a brown substance onto his karate uniform and mixed with the green snot stains from before. He smelled terrible.
“Gordon!” I yelled, and jumped back. I couldn’t help it. My friend looked absolutely disgusting!
From the door, the Director called for me one more time.
“Mr. Taylor,” he said, “I’m dreadfully sorry. The witches tried a few potions, but nothing worked. All we can do is keep him comfortable, and feed him garbage.”
At the sound of the word “garbage,” Gordon nodded his head enthusiastically and rubbed his stomach.
“I have to secure the crypt,” I said. “I’ll grab some garbage on my way back up.”
Gordon gave me a thumbs-up.
I walked with the Director back out of the room and toward the stairs.
“There should be enough Parmesan chunks in that backpack for every resident and Nurse,” I said. “I’ll be back.”
As the sun faded, everyone—monster and human alike—waited in the attic silently to see what would happen next. The residents clutched their chunks of Parmesan cheese as if they were the most precious things in the world. The Director paced continuously back and forth along the creaky attic floorboards. The Nurses tended to the residents that had been wounded in the last attack. Everyone looked upset and scared.
Ben, Gordon, Shane, and I were in Gordon’s room. Gordon had just eaten some coffee grinds and a banana peel that I had brought up from the kitchen.
“Good stuff?” asked Shane.
Gordon gave a big thumbs-up and patted his belly.
“We’ll need to take you to New York City,” said Shane. “I hear that the garbage there is great!”
“We’re not going to New York City!” I yelled. “Because we’re going to kill those sussuroblats and get Gordon’s mouth back!”
“Sorry,” said Shane.
Ben had stuck his head out of the window to get some fresh air. He couldn’t handle Gordon’s smell, and I didn’t think he or anyone else from school would hang with him much if the cockroach mouth became permanent. Ben pulled his head back into the room for a minute.
“Is it time?” he asked.
Shane looked at the time on his cell phone.
“One minute until sundown,” he said.
Shane and I went over to the window to look out with Ben. It was eerily quiet as usual. I tilted my head up and looked to see the raven’s nest at the top of the retirement home. One raven sat in the nest. It was looking to see what happened next, just like we were.
“And…sundown!” said Shane.
Off in the distance, the GRELCHing of the sussuroblats could be heard. At first it echoed faintly through the night, but soon it grew louder and louder.
“There!” yelled Shane, and he pointed down the road we had just come up. Sure enough, a handful of large, drooly cockroaches were on their way up the side of the hill.
“And there!” yelled Ben. His head was tilted all the way to the right, and he was looking around the side of the building.
Butterflies bounced around in my stomach. I knew that this was the moment of truth—the moment we would see if our shield of cheese worked.
“GRELCH, GROOOOLCH, BLULCCHH!”
The sound of the sussuroblats was overwhelming. The grelching began to terrify the old monsters. I could hear stomping feet and squeals of panic through the door to Gordon’s room. Gordon started panicking as well. His roach mouth let out little whispers of grelching and grolching.
“They’re almost up to the Parmesan cheese that Ben and I laid down,” said Shane.
I could see it from the attic window. My friends did a good job of laying the stuff down—too good of a job. All the cheese we had left now was the chunks that the old monsters were holding. The zombies had already eaten theirs.
“Look, one’s run up front to check it out,” Ben said.
There was a single sussuroblat—a really drooly one—that was now chewing into the protective ring of cheese.
At first, it sounded like he was enjoying it, almost like when they were dining on the zombie in the lobby. Then, its “yum-yum” slurpy sounds turned to screeches of pain. Its lips burst into flames, and it screamed even louder, its drool unable to put out the flames no matter how hard it sputtered.
“YES!” Ben said. “It works!”
“Yeah,” yelled Shane at the sussuroblats. “EAT THAT!”
Shane’s remark angered the sussuroblats, and they all began to shout and grelch and snap their snaggleteeth even more. They were all close to the ring, but none of them would go over it. They just got angrier and angrier, snapping and screaming an
d spitting.
“All right!” I said, pulling my head back into the room from the window. “That’s Phase One, gentlemen! We’ve secured the retirement home!”
“Phase One?” asked Ben. “What’s Phase Two?”
“We’ve got to get Gordon’s mouth back,” I said. “And the only way to do that is to destroy every last sussuroblat.”
“Ah, Chris…” Shane said. “We might have a problem.”
“What is it?” I asked, and looked down.
“Over there…” Shane pointed. “It looks like all of the sussuroblats are gathering in one spot, and taking turns to…drool.”
Dozens of sussuroblats spat huge juicy wads of drool and phlegm onto one section of the Parmesan ring that we had built.
“Their drool is going to wash it away!” I yelled.
I jumped away from the window again, and paced the room nervously.
“We have to think of a way to destroy these things!” I yelled. “I can’t believe they’re going to make it through the cheese! Maybe we do need to throw up buckets of barf after all. Or figure out another way to get butyric acid. From Mr. Stewart?”
“No,” said Ben, “I think you knocked out his supply!”
“All right,” I said. “We have to think of a way to create as much barf as possible. Quick, Ben, you’re the expert. When you think about bucketloads of barf, what do you think?”
“Uhhh…” Ben started. “Cafeteria food. Speaking in front of people. Talking to girls. Eating too much ice cream. Brussels sprouts. The Gravitron…”
Suddenly, Ben’s face lit up.
“The GRAVITRON!” Ben yelled. “Oh, man, I never barfed more than on the Gravitron! That would be perfect!”
“And we’ve got weekend passes from Karen,” I yelled. “Let’s get to the park!”
“I don’t think we have time to get over to the Gravitron and back,” said Shane. “Plus, I don’t think there’s any way we can get off of the hill without the sussuroblats noticing.”
“No, we need the sussuroblats to notice,” Ben said. “In fact, we need to lead the sussuroblats there. They’re the ones that need to go into the Gravitron. They’re the ones that need to barf—all over themselves.”
“Oh, man, that’s genius,” I said. “But how do we get them into the Gravitron? We could use some sort of bait, but…”
“But then they’d eat the bait,” said Ben.
“Unless the bait could fly away,” said Shane.
“What?” Ben and I said at the same time.
Shane took another peek outside of the window.
“It looks like we’ve got about five, maybe ten minutes at the most before our cheese barrier is broken,” said Shane. “So we need to work fast.”
Ben and I still had our hands up like What? Shane just kept on going.
“Follow me.”
The old monsters were still panicked in the main section of the attic. They knew their doom was near. The ones that could stand up shuffled over to Shane and me as we met the Director.
“The line of defense?” asked the Director.
“It doesn’t look good,” I said.
The director nodded to the Nurses, and they started putting on their SWAT gear and unpacking different types of clubs.
“But we’ve got an idea,” said Shane.
“Let’s hear it,” sighed the Director.
I could tell he thought Raven Hill was finished. A few more of the monsters shuffled over to listen. They still gripped their Parmesan cheese chunks.
“We’re going to take the sussuroblats to the Gravitron at Jackson Amusement Park,” I said.
“You’re trying to get them to vomit on themselves?” the Director asked.
“Exactly,” I said.
“And how do you propose to get them there?” the Director asked.
Shane turned to the Director.
“We need to lure the sussuroblats into the Gravitron,” said Shane. “But whoever we use as bait to draw them in would be eaten in seconds. So, we need one of the vampires to be the bait. They can turn into bats and fly away, right?”
Shane looked around to find the vampires. The three old vampires made their way over to us. Two of them held their heads down.
“No,” one croaked. “It’s too hard. Ve’re too old.”
The third stepped forward. Grigore.
“Vait,” he said.
Grigore had a bizarre look on his face. He gritted his dentures and started concentrating. The veins popped out of his bald head. He grunted. With a POP, two bat wings sprang out of either side of his head. It was really quite ridiculous, but he didn’t find it funny—in fact it seemed to startle him. He jumped back and let out a small “Huh?” before reaching up to his new headgear.
We kept staring, waiting, barely able to breathe.
“He’s too old,” said Ben. “He just doesn’t have the power.”
“VAIT!” growled Grigore. He shook his head violently, and the bat wings disappeared. He steadied himself, then took on the same look of concentration. He grunted even harder this time—turning a dark shade of red-purple. But it was starting to work! He shrank, his feet came up off the ground and disappeared into his body, his body shrank into his head, and this time the wings came out large and perfectly formed. His face grew hairy; his nose and his ears took on a pointy quality, and soon he was a small vampire bat, flapping in the middle of the room.
Shane held out his hand. The bat fluttered past Ben and me, and hung itself upside down on Shane’s hand.
The bat squeaked a wheezy squeak. Upon closer inspection, I could see that his fur was gone in certain places. His ribcage, heaving from all of the hard work, could be seen clearly through what was left of his hair. He had a small hole on his left wing. Ben bent down and looked through it up to Shane.
The wheezy squeak took on a human quality.
“How’s that?” squeaked Bat Grigore.
“Perfect!” I said. “Now, how do we get out of here?”
The two hairy old men stepped forward, along with the monster that had been stitched together.
“We’ve got an idea,” said the werewolf that had won bingo.
The two old werewolves transformed into their shabby dog forms and raced downstairs—they were filled with energy.
We followed.
The old green stitched monster, the Director, Ben, Shane, the old werewolves, Grigore, and I gathered just in front of the porch. The sussuroblats were frantically slurping and drooling, and the cheese barrier neared its breaking point. The Nurses turned on the flood lamps and stood on the porch, clubs raised, in case any of the sussuroblats were able to make it over the barrier.
The old green monster stepped forward.
“I will zap them!” he screamed. “You run.”
“Zap them?” I asked the Director.
“Frederick came to life thanks to a huge bolt of lightning,” said the Director. “And he still retains a small charge that he can use from time to time. I’ve seen him power a smartphone, but I’m not sure how he intends to create a strong enough ‘zap.’ Nevertheless, you should get ready to run.”
I turned to Grigore, who had changed back into vampire form.
“Are you ready to run?” I asked.
“Ready,” he said. “Must. Destroy. These terrible creatures.”
“Are you guys ready?” I asked, looking at Ben and Shane. “Do you have all of the cheese?”
“Yep,” said Shane. “We collected it from the monsters in the attic.”
“All right!” I yelled. “I’ll help Grigore along. You guys toss the cheese behind us to slow them down.”
The werewolves howled, and a few sussuroblats looked up at us.
The huge old green monster spread his legs apart, unsteady at first.
Then the werewolves began circling around each leg.
Faster and faster and faster.
I could hear a crackle and smell ozone in the air.
“Static electricity,” I said
, astonished.
“Well,” Shane said, “there’s one good thing about being a stinky old werewolf with a mangy, dry coat. Charging up monsters!”
Sure enough, the tall green monster began glowing. Brighter and brighter.
“Aaaaaarrrrggghhhh!” He let out a yell that shook the trees. The sussuroblats stopped for a moment.
And then…
CRACK!
A huge bolt of lightning blew a hole in the seething pile of sussuroblats, creating a path down the middle of the huge, stunned bugs.
“HURRY!” the old monster screamed, and then fell back onto the ground. The old werewolves licked his face and the Nurses ran down to help him.
“GO! Don’t worry about him!” yelled the Director.
We ran through the sussuroblats.
Grigore was slower than I had hoped—I was practically pushing him along.
We hit the forest and headed down the dark, dark road.
Halfway down, we heard them.
BLARFFFF, BLLLLLLARBB, BLURBB!!!
Ben yelled, “They’re right behind us!!!”
“Come on, Grigore,” I yelled. “You’ve got to do better. They’re going to suck you dry!”
We ran down to the bottom of the hill, and as we burst out of the twisty steep drive and onto the main street, the sussuroblats were practically on top of us.
We turned right and ran for our lives!
Shane and Ben began lobbing hunks of cheese behind us. Most were just bouncing off the drooling field of massive roaches with a small thump.
We ran and ran and ran.
They got so close that I could smell their disgusting breath.
GRELCH! GROLCHHH! BLARFFF! BLURRFF! BLAAAARRRR!
Shane lobbed one more chunk of cheese, and he must have thrown it right into the mouth of one of the sussuroblats, because it exploded with a POP like a squishy, thick water balloon.
“Wooo-hoo!” yelled Shane.
The other sussuroblats slowed down for a second to munch on their fallen friend. But not for long.
“Shoot!” Ben said. “They’re still really close.”
“Grigore,” I yelled, “come on!”
We ran into Belle Aire, a quiet little neighborhood on the south side of town. Jackson Amusement Park was just on the other side.
