by R. L. Stine
I rubbed my sore neck. I took a deep breath and tried to stop my heart from thudding in my chest. Brandon stood silently beside me, staring down at the lifeless dummy.
“We did it,” I said. “We defeated him.”
“Happy New Year,” Brandon whispered.
We didn’t have time to celebrate.
I heard a sound — and saw Mom and Dad at the top of the stairs. Even in the dim light, I could see the look of horror on their faces.
“This … this can’t be!” Mom cried, gazing at the paint-splotched room. The walls were all splashed. The floor had lakes of paint everywhere.
She slipped on paint and started to fall down the stairs. She bumped into Dad. They both grabbed the banister to keep their balance.
“Oh, no … Oh, no … Oh, no …” Mom moaned. “What did you do down here? Ray, how did this happen?”
“We’re ruined,” Brandon whispered. “We’re dead meat.”
They made their way onto the basement floor. They walked slowly, careful not to step in paint. But it was impossible. The whole floor was covered.
“Where are the other kids?” Dad demanded. “How did this happen?”
I glanced at the dummy, sprawled on the floor.
“The party just got out of control,” I murmured. “I’ll clean it all up, Dad. I promise. I’ll stay down here till the basement is perfect again.”
“All this paint,” Mom muttered, shaking her head. “All this paint everywhere. It’s impossible. It can’t be!”
Mom and Dad gazed around the basement, muttering to themselves and shaking their heads. Finally, Dad said, “We can clean it up.”
“I guess …” Mom murmured.
“Let’s give the kids a break,” Dad said. “It’s New Year’s.”
“Yes! Happy New Year!” I cried. Were we actually getting away with this?
“Happy New Year!” Brandon joined in.
We all cheered.
And actually, there was a lot to cheer about. The evil dummy had been put to sleep. And … we had thrown a New Year’s Eve party no one would ever forget!
* * *
The next morning, Brandon, Dad, and I cleaned up the basement the best we could. Dad said once the paint dried, it would make a great party room. He said he just liked seeing so many colors at once.
Dad has always been weird — thank goodness!
Brandon and I still couldn’t get the paint off our hands or faces or hair. Dad said that might take a while.
That afternoon, I pulled on my parka and boots and started for the garage. Mom stopped me in the kitchen. “Where are you going, Ray?”
“Snowboarding,” I said. “I’m meeting Elena and some other kids.”
“I put that dummy back in your room,” Mom said. “I put it in your closet.”
“But I told you I don’t want it anymore,” I replied.
“Okay,” Mom said. “Should we keep it in a trunk in the basement in case you change your mind?”
“No. No way!” I said. “Get rid of it. Please — give it away or something. I really don’t want it.”
“I found a sheet of paper with the dummy,” Mom said. “It had the strangest words on it. Very hard to pronounce.”
Pronounce?
I gasped in horror. My whole body went cold.
“Mom!” I cried. “You didn’t read those words out loud — did you? Mom? Did you? Did you? Did you read the words out loud?”
I tore off my parka, tossed it on the floor, and ran up to my room. I expected to see Slappy standing in the doorway, ready to pounce at my throat.
I stopped at the landing and listened. Silence.
I crept to my room. No. He wasn’t standing there. My skin tingled with fright. Where was he hiding?
I gazed all around the room. Everything was just as I’d left it. My paint-stained clothes from the party were still in a heap on the floor.
I crossed to the closet. Mom said she’d put Slappy in there.
I gripped the closet doorknob. Should I open it?
A chill ran down my back. I took a deep breath and swung the door open all the way.
I squinted into the dark closet. My eyes glanced over the piles of T-shirts and sweaters and jeans on the shelves.
I pulled the light cord and the light flashed on. I lowered my eyes to the floor.
No. No sign of him.
I stepped into the closet, pushing jackets out of the way. I made my way to the back. I gazed all around.
Gone. Slappy was gone.
Not where Mom put him. Not in my room.
I backed out of the closet. “Slappy?” I called. “Are you here? Are you still here?”
Silence.
Gone.
But what was that green-yellow glow on my bookshelf?
I stumbled over the paint-stained clothes as I made my way across the room.
The Horror. The little Horror that old man at HorrorLand had given me … It was glowing brightly, as if on fire.
A shiver of fear shook my body. I couldn’t take my eyes off the light.
The green-yellow light — so strange, so cold — pulled me. I could feel myself pulled into the light. It spread all around me until all I could see was its eerie glow.
And then it faded away, faded like a dying campfire. And I was standing somewhere else. Not standing in my room.
Blinking hard, shivering, I gazed around. And recognized the shelves of strange objects and souvenirs.
Chiller House. I was standing in that little shop, back in HorrorLand.
And the old man, the shop owner, Jonathan Chiller stood over me, a broad smile on his pale face.
“Welcome back, Ray,” he said in his high, croaky voice. “You’re right on time. The game is about to begin.”
He didn’t want to do his homework. He hated the big science and math textbooks. Sometimes he thought about ripping out each page. Every one of them, one by one. He wanted to rip them out and crinkle them up and toss them into the fireplace.
He’d be so happy watching them smoke and burn.
Except he didn’t have a fireplace in his bedroom. His walls were filled with bookshelves. That’s where he kept all his board games, and puppets, and action figures, and toy soldiers, and costumes. Everything was all jammed together, as if he were living in a big closet.
Maybe that’s why he spent so much time gazing out the window. His one window that looked out on his backyard.
The grass was tall in the back. There were a few low evergreen bushes. And his mother had a small vegetable garden behind the wooden shed. That was all. The yard was pretty bare.
No swing set or lawn furniture. No patio. No place to sit in the sun or play. Well, his parents didn’t like him to play outside. And they definitely didn’t like it when he sneaked out the back door and took himself for a walk in the woods.
The backyard ended at the woods. So it was a short walk to the tall, tangled trees, the cool darkness, the tangy, piney smells, the crunch of dead brown leaves under his shoes.
He liked to hide back there and pretend he was an explorer in a new country. You might guess that he had a good imagination — and you’d be right.
He imagined that no one had ever walked there before. He was the first. He was discovering new lands and claiming them for himself.
He battled the wild woods people. He defeated them. He destroyed them. Then he moved on to discover even more lands.
He had to sneak out to do his exploring. Mother and Father said it was dangerous in the woods. His father wouldn’t go there without his hunting crossbow. Mother forbade him to go past the backyard.
That’s why he gazed out the window so often. Right now, two shiny black crows were fighting over a worm in the grass. He liked to watch them fight. The way they flapped their wings so furiously and pecked at each other.
He liked to see them peck and peck and peck, till the feathers flew and blood spattered all over the grass.
Sometimes he imagined he saw kids in the back
yard at the edge of the woods. Kids his age who were coming to visit him. He imagined they were his good friends, and they were coming to play games, and watch him do a puppet show, and share secrets, and have bowls of popcorn with him.
He wanted to be a normal ten-year-old. He thought he could be a normal ten-year-old.
He’d love to go to school and have friends and go to birthday parties and sleepovers. But Mother said he was better than that. She said he had a special brain that must be nurtured.
He didn’t really know what nurtured meant. And he refused to look it up in the fat dictionary they made him keep on the corner of his big mahogany desk.
If he had a special brain, he didn’t want it. He’d give it back. He’d trade it for a normal brain. No joke.
Sometimes he played a game he invented called The Brain Game. He asked himself really hard questions and then made up really stupid answers. He didn’t know why, but he thought it was very funny. His stupid answers always cracked him up.
He liked to make up games. And he liked to put on plays with his toy soldiers and spacemen. That was normal — right?
Wow. Those two crows were really having a battle. They were shrieking and cawing their heads off. They made such a racket, he didn’t hear his bedroom door open. And he didn’t hear his mother walk into the room.
“Why aren’t you studying?”
Her voice made him jump. He nearly banged his head on the window.
His mother had a big, powerful voice. She never whispered.
Everything about her was big. She was tall, taller than his father. She had broad shoulders and big hands, and she walked heavily, as if she was wearing boots even when she wasn’t.
He thought she was kind of pretty. Her eyes were steely gray, and she had a cold stare. But her wavy blond hair was nice. And when she smiled, her whole face crinkled up, the only time she looked gentle.
He turned away from the window to face her. “Just taking a break,” he said.
He got the cold, silvery stare. “I heard you playing a game before. You are wasting your good brain. Get to your studies.”
She pointed to the stack of textbooks on his desk. “The great scientists await,” she said.
Let them wait! he thought.
But he said, “Okay.” And he shuffled over to the desk. He slid into his big black leather desk chair and opened a science book.
She stood there watching him, her arms crossed in front of her white sweater. He pretended to read. He suddenly had an idea for a new puppet show. Two puppets fighting to the death.
“Every day you need to expand your brain,” Mother said. “Every day your brain will grow bigger.”
That made him snicker. It sounded like a horror movie. The Brain That Wouldn’t Stop Growing.
He wasn’t allowed to watch horror movies. But he read about them.
Finally, Mother strode to the door. She closed it behind her.
As soon as she was gone, he stood up and walked over to his puppet shelf. He had marionettes and hand puppets. And a set of finger puppets his grandmother sent him when he was six.
It was a very good puppet collection. He liked to collect things. It made him feel like his room was crowded. And then he wasn’t so lonely.
He picked up his sad-clown puppet. It had a bright red-and-white-striped costume with a red ruffle around its neck. But it had the saddest frown on its face and little teardrops under its eyes. He named the puppet Droopy.
He carried Droopy to his desk and made him sit next to his science textbook. “We’ll read it together,” he told him. “That’s what friends do. They share things.”
He started to read. But voices outside his bedroom door made him stop and look up.
Mother and Father were in the hall. They were arguing. This happened a lot.
They were talking in hushed whispers. They didn’t want him to hear. But the whispers were loud enough. He could hear every word.
“Why don’t you let him be normal?” Father demanded.
Mother didn’t reply. So Father continued. “You are turning my son into a freak.”
“He’s our son,” Mother said.
“I don’t care. I don’t like what you are doing to him. You have to let him go to school and be with other kids.”
“He’s not like other kids,” Mother insisted.
He’d heard her say this so many times. He imagined himself grabbing her arms and shaking her … shaking her and saying, “Yes, I am. Yes, I am like other kids.”
The crows finally stopped cawing. He could hear his parents’ hushed voices so clearly now.
“He is too smart for the other kids,” Mother said. “He has to study. He has to use his brilliant mind.”
“You’re ruining him,” Father told her. Even through the thick door, he could hear the anger in Father’s voice. He pictured his face, hard and tight and red. “You’re turning him into a freak. He’s a weird little freak.”
A door slammed.
He jumped to his feet. He let out a hoarse cry of anger. “No, I’m NOT!” he screamed at the door. “I’m NOT a freak! NOT a freak!”
He grabbed Droopy. He squeezed his cloth body hard with one hand — and ripped off one of his arms.
“Not a freak! Not a freak!”
He tore off Droopy’s head and tossed it in the trash basket. He tore off a leg. Then another arm. Pulling and tearing and screaming. He ripped the striped costume to shreds.
His chest was heaving. He couldn’t catch his breath. He ripped and clawed at the puppet.
It felt good. It really did.
R.L. Stine’s books are read all over the world. So far, his books have sold more than 300 million copies, making him one of the most popular children’s authors in history. Besides Goosebumps, R.L. Stine has written the teen series Fear Street and the funny series Rotten School, as well as the Mostly Ghostly series, The Nightmare Room series, and the two-book thriller Dangerous Girls. R.L. Stine lives in New York with his wife, Jane, and Minnie, his King Charles spaniel. You can learn more about him at www.RLStine.com.
Goosebumps book series created by Parachute Press, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 by Scholastic Inc.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, GOOSEBUMPS, GOOSEBUMPS HORRORLAND, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First printing, November 2010
e-ISBN 978-0-545-30128-2
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