by David Lubar
For Dr. Ronald Julia, Dr. Donald Schinstine, Dr. Patrick Brogle, Dr. Joseph Trapasso, and Dr. Marilyn McDonald.
Thank you for keeping me walking, smiling, seeing, breathing, and all that good stuff. I am fortunate to be in such talented, caring, and capable hands.
Title Page
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
About the Author
Sneak Peek
Don’t Miss Any Monster Itch Books!
Copyright
“You’re killing me!” I screamed.
My shouts made the grip grow tighter. I struggled to breathe, but my ribs had no room to expand. “Let go.”
“But I’ll miss you so much, Alex,” Mom said.
I glanced past her at Dad, who offered me nothing more helpful than a shrug. If shrugs could talk, this one would have said, You’re on your own.
And right past Dad, my cousin Sarah, who had just gotten out of the car, also shrugged. But the message from her shoulders, as they brushed against the ends of her brown hair, was more like, I’m glad your parents brought us here and not mine.
I could understand how she felt. Both our moms loved hugs and hated good-byes.
“It’s just for one week,” I said, using the last air in my lungs.
That didn’t help. As Mom clamped down, I could feel my belly button pressing against my backbone.
“For goodness’ sakes,” Grandma said, coming down the front-porch steps of her house. “Stop trying to squeeze him in half. He’s already enough of a handful to keep an eye on. There’s no way I’ll watch two of him—even if each one is just half the size.”
Mom loosened her grip enough so I could escape.
“Hi, Grandma,” I said. I spun a safe distance from Mom’s arms. “We’re here.”
Grandma shot me a sharp look. If looks could talk, this one would have said, Don’t waste my time stating the obvious. Of course you’re here. But then the glare softened, and she said, “Glad you kids came for a visit. I can’t wait for you to see the new place. Take your bags upstairs. There’s a guest room at each end of the hall.”
I inhaled a deep breath of the fresh country air, then walked over to the car.
“What a great house,” Sarah said. “I’ll bet it’s haunted.” She flashed me a grin. Just because I didn’t like creepy movies, she was always trying to scare me.
“That’s why we bought it,” Grandma said. “They promised there’d be a ghost. But I suspect they were trying to fool us city folks.”
She’s a writer. And Gramps is an artist. They make this comic book called Little Grendella about a girl who’s a monster. It’s really twisted, but not too scary for me.
Gramps joined Grandma on the porch and said, “The place is wonderfully creaky.” He laughed and added, “Just like me.”
He was joking. Grandma and Gramps are both in great shape. They go skiing and hiking all the time. They even own a pair of kayaks.
Sarah and I unhooked our bikes from the rack on the back bumper of the car and wheeled them over to the side of the garage. As we were walking back to the car, Dad popped the trunk. I reached in and grabbed my duffle bag.
That’s when Grandma said, “One of the rooms is a teeny tiny bit nicer than the other.”
She might as well have said, “On your mark. Get set. Go!”
Sarah and I ran flat out for the front door. Just because she’s five whole days older than me, she always thinks she should get the first choice, the biggest piece, and the best seat.
Not this time. I might not be a faster runner than Sarah, but I was a lighter packer. My bag didn’t slow me down at all, while hers was so heavy she almost had to drag it. I reached the steps with a good lead.
“Wait!” Mom shouted. “You forgot something!”
I looked back. That was a mistake, because I also kept running forward.
“Oof!”
I tripped on the bottom porch step. Luckily, the stairs broke my fall.
“I’m okay,” I said, bouncing back to my feet before Mom could start checking me for wounds.
Sarah raced past me and flung open the screen door. Mom raced toward me, holding THE BOX. “You almost forgot this.” She thrust it at me. I could hear footsteps upstairs as Sarah ran toward the right side of the second floor.
“Don’t worry,” Grandma said, snatching THE BOX from Mom. “I’ll take good care of everything and everyone.”
I used to have really bad allergies. That’s why Mom had brought THE BOX—it was full of stuff to treat sneezes, wheezes, coughs, itches, twitches, and pretty much anything else that didn’t need stitches. She was terrified that I’d get sick.
The fact that she’s a doctor doesn’t help. The fact that she’s an allergy doctor makes things a whole lot worse. I can’t even scratch a tiny itch on my arm around her without getting covered with creams, ointments, and lotions. If she hears me cough or sneeze, I’m totally doomed to spend the rest of the day in bed, even if I feel fine.
Grandma told Mom not to worry in seven or eight more ways and finally got her heading back to the car. I heard Sarah run to the other end of the hall. Then the steps stopped. I guess she’d had plenty of time to look at each room and choose the best one for herself. Oh, well. It’s not like the rooms would be all that different.
Mom reached the car. “Take care of yourself,” she called.
“Bye.” I gave my folks a last wave as they got into the car.
Last wave?
Yikes. That thought made my throat close up a little. As excited as I was to spend time with Grandma and Gramps, I had to admit I’d miss Mom and Dad a tiny bit.
Grandma held the screen door open. “Alex,” she called as I lugged my bag up the stairs. “About the rooms … ”
“What?” I asked. I remembered how she’d said one was a teeny tiny bit nicer. With Grandma, that could mean anything.
“Never mind,” she said.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I walked over to the room on the left and looked inside.
“Wow,” I said. The room Sarah had snagged was enormous, with a thick rug on the floor, giant windows in two of the walls, and a huge TV opposite the bed. She was standing by a wooden dresser, unzipping her bag.
She flashed me a grin of triumph. I knew that grin. I had the same one, except I rarely got to use it when Sarah was around. We look so much alike, people think we’re twins. But I keep my hair really short, and I never wear jeans—Sarah wears them all the time.
I went to the other end of the hall and pushed the door open. If Sarah’s room was a castle, mine was a dungeon. It was dark, small, and filled with boxes. Grandma and Gramps liked to buy weird stuff at auctions and flea markets. I made my way across the room to where a narrow bed was crammed against one wall.
“A teeny tiny bit nicer,” I muttered, remembering Grandma’s words about Sarah’s room. But I didn’t plan to spend much time upstairs. I was here to hike in the woods, go fishing, and hang out with my grandparents. I also wanted to explore Thistle’s Falls. I’d heard there was an awesome ice cream place in town.
I dropped my duffle bag next to the bed.
That’s when I felt the itch.
It started as a tickle, like one ant had crawled up my wrist to the middle of my forearm. But it swelled from ant to spider to tarantula, and then to rat or maybe even a wolverine. I looked at my arm.
What I saw was so horrible, I let out a shout.
There was a rash on my arm, right below my wrist. No—calling the horrible thing I was staring at a rash was like calling the ocean a puddle. This was one monster of a rash. It was as wide
as my arm and nearly reached to my elbow. It was red and purple and lumpy, and it looked like it was about to start dripping things I didn’t want to see dripping out of my body.
That’s a very long description of something I looked at for less than a second before I let out that shout and raced downstairs.
I flung open the screen door and scrambled onto the porch. Grandma was still outside.
I slid to a halt when I realized why she was there. She was talking to Mom, who was standing right at the bottom of the porch steps.
Mom had come back!
She does that a lot. I could see that Dad was waiting for her in the car. This was the worst possible time for Mom to be here. I clasped my hands behind my back to hide my arm.
“What’s wrong?” Mom asked. “You screamed.”
If she saw the rash, she’d take me right home. No hikes. No fishing. No ice cream. “I saw a spider,” I said. “A big one. Huge! Enormous! Big enough to eat a bird!”
As I spoke, I heard Sarah come down the stairs behind me.
Mom frowned like she didn’t believe me. I should know better than to try to fool her. Especially when my brain was still trying to get back down from whichever corner of my skull it had fled to when I saw the rash. I think the part about the bird might have been a bit too much.
Mom held her hand out. “Let me see your arms.”
Was I that obvious? I guess I was.
I unclasped my hands, which had built up a layer of sweat, and held my arms out in front of me, palms down.
“Turn your arms over,” Mom said.
I turned my arms over.
Mom stared. I stared.
My arms looked perfectly normal. The rash was gone.
“Alex will be just fine. Stop worrying,” Grandma said to Mom. A minute later, Mom and Dad finally drove off.
“What was that all about?” Grandma asked after the car reached the end of the driveway and turned onto the main road.
“I’m allergic to something in that room,” I said. “We have to switch.”
“Yeah, right,” Sarah said. “Nice try.”
“I am. Come on, I’ll show you.” I walked up the stairs. I didn’t like the idea of getting another rash, but I figured it was better to do it now, so I could change rooms, than to have it happen when I went to bed. I walked into the room and waited for the itch.
Nothing.
I stared at my arms, waiting for the first ant tickle.
No ant. Not even a flea.
Sarah knelt and opened one of the boxes. “Cool,” she said, lifting out a pair of wind-up chattering teeth.
“A novelty shop went out of business,” Grandma told her. “We bought a lot of their inventory.”
At least I’ll have something interesting to look at, I thought. Though boxes of jokes and pranks didn’t seem anywhere near as good as a giant TV.
Sarah got up. “I guess I’ll go unpack my stuff in my room.” She headed down the hall.
Grandma put THE BOX down on a small desk next to the bed.
“Can I look through this stuff?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. “Have a ball.”
I opened the closest box, which was barely big enough for a small pair of shoes.
“Yikes!”
There was a bloody hand in the box. I jumped back and tripped over the box behind me, landing on my butt.
“Relax,” Grandma said. “That’s not real.”
“I knew that,” I said as I climbed back to my feet. Though it sure looked real. “It just startled me.” A smile spread across my face as a thought hit me. What if I stuck the fake hand under Sarah’s sheets?
Grandma stared right at me. “Don’t even think about it,” she said.
“How did you know what I was thinking?” I asked.
“Because you’re just like your mother,” she said.
“No way.” I shook my head. I couldn’t picture my mom playing jokes on anyone.
Grandma laughed. “Why don’t you go run around outside and burn off some of that energy?”
That sounded like a good idea. I grabbed my ball and glove, and went down the hall. “Did you bring your glove?” I asked Sarah. We both loved sports. And we were both left-handed. But that was absolutely all we had in common.
“You bet,” she said. “Just give me a minute to finish up.”
It looked like she was already unpacked—her bag was empty. But I guess she had more to do. “I’ll meet you outside,” I said.
It took Sarah a while to come down, but I passed the time throwing pop-ups to myself and watching the squirrels chase each other around the front yard. They were dashing across the grass, skittering up trees, and leaping from branch to branch like acrobats. It looked like their grandma had told them to burn off some energy, too.
“Hey,” Sarah said when she joined me, “if you really were allergic, I’d have swapped rooms with you.”
“I know.”
“Here,” she held out a stick of gum.
“Thanks.” I unwrapped the gum, which promised MASSIVE BERRY FLAVOR, and popped it in my mouth. By about the second or third chew, I knew something was wrong.
My mouth tasted like fish—and not good fish. Not even bad fish. This was definitely terrible fish.
“BLEH!” I spat out the gum.
Sarah was laughing so hard, she was folded over like she had a stomach virus.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
She couldn’t even speak. She handed me the pack of gum. Each stick was labeled with BERRY FLAVOR, but the outside of the package read: DOCTOR QUACKWACKIE’S PRANKSTER GUM. IT TASTES LIKE DEAD FISH!
Well, that was sure true. “You got that gum from a box in my room, didn’t you?” So that’s what she was doing upstairs.
“Guilty,” Sarah said.
“I’ll get you back,” I said.
“I’m sure you will,” she said. But her grin hinted that she wasn’t worried.
After we’d played catch for a while, we sat on the porch steps and watched the squirrels. Then we went back inside.
“Want to help Grandma and Gramps make dinner?” Sarah asked.
“I need to unpack,” I said.
What I really needed was to check the boxes for a good joke to pull on Sarah. I went up to my room, but the boxes were gone. So I went downstairs, where my grandparents were peeling potatoes and chopping onions.
“What happened to the boxes?” I asked.
“We took them to the attic,” Gramps said. “Feel free to look through them up there. They have some wild stuff. Great pranks. All sorts of fun things!”
“I think I will,” I said.
I went up the stairs and heard Sarah following behind me before I even reached the second floor. I guess she knew what I was planning. I’d just have to figure out a way to be sneaky. The problem was, I’m not a sneak.
As we climbed the attic stairs, my arms started to itch.
“Oh, no,” I said. I didn’t want another of those monster rashes. But I also didn’t want to let Sarah spend time alone with a ton of pranks. Maybe I could put some anti-itch lotion on my arms. It was worth a try. I certainly had just about every type of allergy cream there was, thanks to Mom. I went back down to my bedroom and reached in THE BOX to sort through the tubes and bottles. But the itching had stopped.
Weird. I headed back up the stairs and my arms started to itch again. I decided to ignore it. Even if the rash came back, and even if it was terrible to look at, it seemed to go away just as quickly as it appeared. I wasn’t going to let allergies run my life.
I climbed all the way up the stairs, crossed the landing, and opened the attic door.
“Aaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Sarah screamed, thrusting a bloody hand in my face.
I shouted and jumped back. “Very funny,” I said after I got control of my heartbeat.
“Got you!” Sarah said as I walked through the door and knelt by the closest box. “I love this stuff.”
I wasn’t list
ening. My arms were itching so badly, I figured I’d have to leave the attic. It was even worse than before. And the rash was on both arms now. I was afraid Sarah would make fun of me, but she was already opening another box.
This isn’t worth it, I thought. I decided to leave.
“Look,” Sarah said, holding up a large metal can painted bright orange and covered with black lettering. “It’s Doctor Quackwackie’s Patented Vanishing Powder. It says it makes stains, spots, and spills disappear like magic. That’s perfect for you!” She pulled open the lid and walked toward me. “I’ll make you vanish, and I can have the grandparents all to myself.”
“Stop it!” I knocked the can from her hands. Powder went flying all over, getting in our hair and eyes and noses. Neither of us vanished. Sarah let out a monster sneeze so fierce, she bent over. This time, at least, she wasn’t laughing at me, and my mouth wasn’t filled with the taste of dead fish.
I didn’t sneeze. Instead, I let out a gasp.
There was someone standing in front of me, in the cloud of powder! But the only way I knew he was there was because he wasn’t there. I mean—there was a person-shaped adult-size powder-coated spooky emptiness in the dust reaching toward me. As I stared and rubbed my eyes, the emptiness filled in with a few transparent details, like someone was tinting a sketch with light dabs of watercolors. He was thin and tall, wearing a strange hat that looked like only a brim—a type of visor, I guess—and clothes like the kind you would see in ancient photos from the eighteen hundreds.
There’s only one kind of person who looks like he isn’t there …
“Ghost!” I shouted.
Sarah had recovered from her sneeze. But she was still bent down, reaching for the can of powder. “Ha-ha. Very funny,” she said, not looking up. “Nice try, but you’ll have to do better.”
Then she looked up.
Sarah screamed. I grabbed her shoulder and dragged her toward the door. Halfway there, she started moving on her own. We both shot for the stairs. I looked over my shoulder on the way down, but nothing was following us.
We didn’t say anything more until we got to the bottom of the stairs. My heart was pounding so hard, I could hear it.
