“Don’t be ridiculous,” screamed a third person. “It’s the ghost of Horace Hotwater!”
And after that it was pure panic.
CHAPTER 6
KIDS WERE RUNNING around in the darkness, shrieking in mindless terror. Omar Powell crawled under his go-kart. Tina Gomez yanked at her hair and fled toward the ball pits, howling about a supernatural evil that she “foresaw in a dream.” Two of my frightened classmates smacked into each other at full speed and fell to the floor. It might have been Jimmy Choi and Caroline Moody, but it was too dark to tell for sure.
“Guys, it’s not the ghost of Horace Hotwater!” I yelled to no one in particular. “If he haunts our middle school—which he doesn’t—then he can’t haunt here, too. Ghosts only haunt one place. That’s how ghosts work. And also they’re not real!”
My argument was confusing, even to me. And the nuances were clearly lost on the panicking mob of sixth graders. It suddenly occurred to me that whoever had messed with my go-kart was still right here, lurking somewhere in the dark, with me. I shuddered.
“Hammie, is Cartimandua safe?” I said.
He hopped up and down and gave a little yip. He wasn’t worried about her.
“Cool. Then we need to find Dylan!”
The little guy snarled with what might have been cold resolve (or indigestion) and we set out across RaddZone.
I navigated my way through the labyrinth of depowered arcade games on the ground level. The Country Gopher Family Jamboree was in a small amphitheater with a curtained stage in the center; the name was proudly displayed on a sign styled to look like a network of gopher tunnels. The outage had apparently happened in the middle of the show. The animatronic Country Gophers were all frozen midperformance, their rubbery faces contorted into grotesque smiles as they clutched their banjos and washboards. Hammie Rex snarled at them. I felt the same way. In the dark, right after someone had tried to engineer your fiery go-kart demise, the Country Gopher Family Jamboree didn’t look so funny after all.
“Dylan?” I called out. My voice echoed through the empty amphitheater. No one called back. “You here?”
I headed back out onto the main arcade floor. “Hey, Dylan!” I yelled louder. Still no answer. Had something happened to Dylan?
“Sam, look out!”
Dylan tackled me off my feet and onto the floor. Hammie Rex yelped in surprise as he tumbled out of my shirt pocket.
“Easy, Dylan,” I said. “Look, are you still mad I beat you at air hockey? Because, honestly, I don’t know how I did—”
KRASH! Right where I had been standing, a massive object hit the floor and exploded into bits! I covered my face as I was showered with splinters of wood and circuit board. It took me a second to realize that the thing that had almost flattened me was an old-school arcade game. It took me another second to see that it was a vintage copy of Ms. Super Plunger Jr.
“So they did have it,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief.
“I saw it fall from up there,” said Dylan, pointing. “Look!”
A shadowy figure stood by the railing of the second level. An instant later, the person was gone. Hammie Rex roared.
“That Ms. Super Plunger Jr. cabinet had to weigh three hundred pounds,” I said. “How could somebody just fling it over the railing like that?”
“No idea,” cried Dylan. “I’d kill for core strength like that. Imagine how far I could throw a golf disc. Anyway, we can discuss their workout regimen after we catch them!” She was on her feet and running for the stairs. Hammie Rex was right behind her.
“Hang on!” I cried, following as quickly as I could. “Wait for me!”
Owing to her years of relentless sports training, Dylan was the fastest of the three of us. She made it up to the second level well ahead of Hamstersaurus Rex, who had substantially shorter legs. I pulled up the rear, huffing and puffing like the (let’s face it) indoor kid I was. Sixty feet away stood the shadowy figure we’d seen before. I could now see that they were wearing a dark-colored hoodie and a backpack. Covering their face was a bucktoothed Aunt Ellie Mae Country Gopher mask from the RaddZone prize counter. Unsettling, to say the least.
“You stop right there, you!” I cried.
Aunt Ellie Mae ducked behind a row of pinball machines and disappeared. Dylan took off again.
“Oh, you can run, Aunt Ellie Mae,” cried Dylan as she charged, “but you can’t—”
Dylan’s feet shot out from under her, and she hit the ground face-first and skidded into one of those penny-flattening machines with a sickening thud.
“Whoa, are you okay?” I caught up to where she lay and crouched down beside her. Hammie Rex gently licked her knuckles.
Dylan winced and clutched at her leg. “Ow. I think I slipped on something . . .” She trailed off and pointed to the floor behind her. Next to a trash can full of RaddSpudds, a carelessly discarded sour cream packet oozed its contents all over the floor. I saw a telltale smear where Dylan’s foot had hit it and skidded.
“A sour cream slick,” I said. “Can you still run?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can,” said Dylan, trying to get up. “Just need to . . . argh!” She grunted and slumped back down to the ground, grabbing at her ankle. I could see that her right ankle was already swelling up like a water balloon.
“I think it might be sprained,” I said.
“It’s the curse,” said Dylan.
“It’s not the curse,” I said. “Just bad luck. Maybe we should wrap it so it doesn’t—”
“Don’t worry about me, Sam. Aunt Ellie Mae is getting away,” said Dylan.
I nodded and leaped to my feet. Hammie and I ran after the hooded figure. As we rounded the row of pinball machines, I saw that we were at the entrance to Mount Putta-Putta, the complex’s mini-golf course. Aunt Ellie Mae had retreated inside.
The course was nine holes, winding its way up the cone of the fake volcano that, three times a day, erupted with a blast of dry ice and confetti. I knew from playing the Mount Putta-Putta that there was one way in and one way out, through the entrance gate we’d just passed.
“Ha. Now we’ve got ’em,” I whispered to Hamstersaurus Rex as I grabbed a blue putter off the rack. “She might not know it, but Aunt Ellie Mae is trapped in here.”
Hammie and I carefully began to make our ascent. At the third hole, the little guy froze.
“What is it, boy?” I hissed. “What’s wrong?”
Before he could respond, a massive wooden tiki god came bouncing, end over end, down the slope toward us. Hammie and I dove out of the way, and it took out a straw hut behind us. Up ahead, Aunt Ellie Mae disappeared around the cone.
“Come on!” I cried.
Hamstersaurus Rex gave a mighty roar and we ran after the gopher-faced figure. At the seventh hole, we were nearly crushed again, this time under a gigantic plaster sea turtle. If I hadn’t stopped to tie my shoe an instant earlier, I would have been a goner for sure. The turtle had been flung from even higher up on the course: specifically, the ninth hole, the very crater of Mount Putta-Putta.
As we crested the top of the fake volcano, it suddenly occurred to me that I might actually catch the person under that gopher mask. What was I going to do then? The little blue putter in my hand suddenly seemed inadequate.
“Careful, Hammie,” I said. “Whoever that is, they’re crazy strong. That sea turtle probably weighed as much as a refrigerator.”
Hammie and I crept around the corner, approaching the ninth hole. The crater of Mount Putta-Putta was painted in bright reds and oranges to simulate the lava flow of an active volcano. Fake paper flames now hung limp beside the fans that normally made them flicker and dance. If you were playing Mount Putta-Putta, when you made your final putt, your ball rolled down a tube all the way back down to a big basket behind the front desk. If you got a hole in one—which I did once in second grade; maybe that was the Year of Sam?—RaddZone gave you a free RaddSpudd.
I certainly wished I were eating a
RaddSpudd at that moment, instead of facing off against a masked psycho who was buff enough to toss around wooden tiki gods.
Hamstersaurus Rex stopped in his tracks. Up ahead, I saw the shadowy figure standing perfectly still; their back was to us, hood up.
“Freeze,” I said, my voice wavering. “You’re, uh, under arrest . . . I guess?” I could see the putter in my hands shaking. Beside me, Hamstersaurus Rex bellowed. He sounded a lot more confident.
“Hmm,” said the figure in an eerie high-pitched voice, like the sound of metal scraping on metal. “We think not.”
I had a strange feeling on my skin, like when you rub a balloon on your arm and the static collects. Then from out of nowhere, a surfboard came whistling through the air, its point aimed right at my head. Before I could react, Hamstersaurus Rex sprang and somehow caught it in his dinosaur jaws mid-flight. His sideways momentum deflected the board’s deadly trajectory, so that it missed me by a couple of feet. Instead of skewering my head, it smashed to pieces against the inside rim of the volcano.
The masked figure had turned to face us now. The mouth of the Aunt Ellie Mae mask was a ghoulish bucktoothed grin; the eyeholes were two pools of shadow.
“Bravo,” came that irritating squeak-voice. “Another so-called act of ‘heroism.’ I suppose you think you’re so special because everyone adores you, while they all despise us? Well, when we’re through with you, we think you’ll find that you’re not so special after all!”
With a growl, Hamstersaurus Rex launched himself at the masked figure. The little guy chomped on to Aunt Ellie Mae’s calf, which elicited a loud squeal of pain. Aunt Ellie Mae tripped and stumbled over backward, causing her backpack to go flying. The pack bounced across the ground and came to rest near my feet with the flap open. I moved toward it and then stopped. Was I crazy, or had the bag twitched? It twitched again. I wasn’t crazy. Something inside the backpack was alive.
I crouched to peer into the pack’s opening. For an instant, the faint light caught two beady eyes inside, gleaming yellow. There was something about those eyes . . . something . . .
“Sam?” It was Dylan’s voice farther down Mount Putta-Putta. “Don’t worry! I’m coming!”
I blinked. With a piercing squeal, a small, furry creature shot out of the pack and disappeared into the ninth hole. I dove for the hole, but I was too late. Whatever the thing was, it was already out of reach, down into the endless pipe.
I turned to see that Hammie Rex still had his dino-jaws locked in a death grip on Aunt Ellie Mae’s pant leg. Aunt Ellie Mae struggled and fought, but she was no match for the prehistoric might of Hamstersaurus Rex.
“Time to find out who you really are,” I said, and I yanked off the Country Gopher mask.
CHAPTER 7
“WILBUR WEBER?!” I cried.
In the darkness, Wilbur’s face was twisted into an imperious sneer. From above, there came a loud crackle. And then the lights of RaddZone flickered on. All around me I heard the bells and buzzers and other sounds of countless video games coming back to life. The fans started blowing and the fake flames of Mount Putta-Putta began to dance once more. Wilbur blinked in the bright light.
“Whoa. Am I at . . . RaddZone?” he said slowly as he took in his surroundings. “Suh-weeeeet.”
“What? Of course you’re at RaddZone,” I said, grabbing him by the hoodie and yanking him to his feet. “You tried to kill me for your birthday!”
“Um. My birthday was in June,” said Wilbur.
“Why?” I yelled. “Why did you sabotage my go-kart? Why did you try to drop Ms. Super Plunger Jr. on me? What have you got against me, Wilbur?”
“Nothing,” said Wilbur, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sam. But maybe I should get going. I think I’m late for—”
“Stay right there!” I yelled.
Wilbur took a tentative step, but Hamstersaurus Rex gave him a Cretaceous death stare that froze him in place.
I reached in Wilbur’s backpack and found exactly what I expected. “If you didn’t cut my brakes or mess with my gas pedal,” I said, “then explain these.” I held up a pair of wire cutters and several empty packages of the sticky blue office goo.
“Those aren’t mine,” said Wilbur slowly.
“You’re not getting off the hook by playing dumb, Wilbur,” I said. “You tried to crush me with a sea turtle!”
“Listen to yourself,” said Wilbur. “You sound nuts.”
“Only I’m guessing it wasn’t you who was so strong after all, was it?” I said. “It was that nasty little critter in your backpack. I get it now. It’s another Squirrel Kong situation. You’ve got some crazy vendetta, so you’re using a freaky mutant animal with superstrength to attack me and Hamstersaurus Rex!”
“I’m not doing that,” said Wilbur.
“So what is it? Some kind of ferret on steroids? A chipmunk that was bitten by a radioactive gorilla? What?”
“You’re scaring me, Sam.”
“Quit faking!” I roared. Wilbur whimpered and shrank away from me.
“Sam!”
I heard Dylan behind me. She’d somehow hobbled all the way up the course using a golf club as a makeshift crutch.
“You caught him,” said Dylan. “No need to lose your cool.”
“I know, I know,” I said, “but he’s pretending like he didn’t do anything!”
“Let him pretend,” said Dylan. “It won’t change the truth. I saw him, too.”
Dylan, Hamstersaurus Rex, and I slowly escorted Wilbur back down Mount Putta-Putta. Wilbur protested his innocence the whole time. Dylan winced with each step. At the front desk of the course, I checked the ball basket to see if there were any evil rodents. There weren’t. The beast was long gone. Of course, Wilbur wouldn’t say where it had gone.
Una Raddenbach was waiting for us on the ground level, flanked by her teen employees and all of Wilbur’s party guests, who stood in stunned silence. Jimmy Choi and Caroline Moody each had a black eye. The purple-haired girl was nowhere to be seen.
“Here he is,” I said. “The kid who destroyed a vintage arcade game and a fake sea turtle and sabotaged my go-kart in the name of evil.”
“Plus he stole an Aunt Ellie Mae Gopher mask from the prize counter,” added Dylan. “That thing’s worth over three thousand tickets.”
“You’re in a world of trouble, son,” said Ms. Raddenbach, taking Wilbur by the elbow and pulling him toward her office. “We’re calling your parents. Possibly the police.”
“But I didn’t do any of that stuff,” said Wilbur quietly. Then he sniffled, and a second later he was bawling his eyes out. “I m-m-m-miss my sn-sn-sn-snaaaaaails!” he wailed. It was a disgusting display.
“Don’t believe the tears,” I said. “Wilbur Weber is an evil genius.”
“Well, evil, anyway,” said Dylan.
“I’m sorry I ever wished him happy birthday,” said Tina Gomez, removing her party hat like it was radioactive.
“This whole thing seems like more of a Beefer Vanderkoff move than a Wilbur Weber endeavor,” said Julie Bailey.
“Go-kart sabotage; power outage, falling arcade games,” said Jimmy Choi, rubbing his shiner. “Worst party ever.”
“The RaddSpudds were good, though,” said Jared Kopernik, biting into one.
“Seriously,” said Caroline Moody, “it’s only thanks to Hamstersaurus Rex that nobody was killed!”
There was a murmur of approval for Hamstersaurus Rex. He looked bashful in my palm.
Ms. Raddenbach paused. “Um, totally unrelated question, kids,” she said. “None of your parents are, um, lawyers, are they?”
“My mom is,” said Omar Powell.
“Both mine are,” said Lucy Khan.
“Mine, too,” said Drew McKoy.
“You know what?” said Ms. Raddenbach. “Free RaddSpudds for life for all of you . . .”
“Yay!” the kids screamed.
“. . . if you sign a waiver saying that neither RaddZone nor I are
legally liable for anything that may or may not have happened today!” continued Ms. Raddenbach.
“Yay?” screamed the kids, a bit more tentatively.
After signing a nine-page contract with a two-page nondisclosure rider, we each got a RaddSpudd in a red foil wrapper with a picture of Gomer Gopher on it. Hammie Rex ate mine. He earned it. Apparently we could get another one for free any time we came back (“no hole-in-one required; limit one per patron per visit”). The only hitch was that RaddZone would remain closed for the foreseeable future. Ms. Raddenbach assured us it was totally unrelated to the series of near-fatal incidents that may or may not have occurred at Wilbur’s party. Really, she just wanted to spend a bit more time with her family.
As for families, all of us sixth graders called our parents and waited. Through the window to Ms. Raddenbach’s office I could see Wilbur Weber sobbing quietly as he waited for his mom and dad to come pick him up. I didn’t get it. Aside from an unflattering caricature long ago, what had I ever done to him? Even he seemed to be confused about why he was out to get me. Was it possible he was simply a SmilesCorp pawn? Had he gotten into something over his head? It just didn’t make sense.
“Well, evil has been thwarted,” said Dylan. “Even if I’m still cursed.” After the adrenaline of the chase wore off, Dylan could barely walk on her sprained ankle. It had turned a kind of sickly purplish color.
“Sorry about your ankle,” I said. “But you’re not cursed. And evil hasn’t been thwarted. What about the nasty little varmint that Wilbur had in his backpack? It can toss around three-hundred-pound arcade machines like they’re nothing. What if it’s the real danger, not Wilbur?”
“You’re right. We have to stop it!” said Dylan, rising heroically and then clenching her jaw in pain and flopping back down.
“I think you should probably go see a doctor first,” I said, scratching underneath Hamstersaurus Rex’s furry jaw.
“You’re probably right about that, too,” said Dylan. “Hey, didn’t you come here with two hamsters?”
“Oh yeah!” Somehow I had totally forgotten Cartimandua. I raced back to the Love Tester machine. Luckily she was still asleep, exactly where I’d left her. She blinked as I scooped her up.
Hamstersaurus Rex Gets Crushed Page 4
