by R. L. Stine
“I don’t know why,” I continued, “but Mandrake gave me this.” I tapped my sneaker against the chest.
“It’s one of his puppets?” Kristina asked.
“No,” I said. “It’s an old ventriloquist dummy. Mandrake said it was special. He said I could have it.”
“Why?” Dad demanded. “Why did he give it to you?”
I shrugged. “He said he didn’t need it anymore. He said he knew I’d give it a good home.”
Kristina pushed her chair back and slid away from the table. “Let’s see it! What does it look like?” she asked.
She bent down and knocked on the lid. “Anyone home?”
Two metal clasps held the lid down. I flipped one up, and Kristina flipped the other one.
Mom and Dad stood behind us. I slowly pulled the heavy lid open. We all gazed at the grinning dummy on its back, resting on a shiny red cloth inside the chest.
The dummy had a big wooden head with dark brown hair painted on the top. Big green eyes. The wood on his sharp nose had a small chip in it. His grinning mouth was painted bright red.
He was dressed in a wrinkled gray suit. His white shirt had a dark stain on the collar. His red bow tie was crooked. His brown leather shoes were scuffed.
“Mandrake said the dummy’s name is Slappy,” I said. “Look. There are a bunch of papers that come with him.”
“Did you read the instructions?” Dad asked.
“Nope,” I said.
Mom made a face. “He’s very ugly,” she said softly.
“You should know!” the dummy shouted.
We all laughed.
Dad squatted down to see the dummy closer. “It really does talk. That’s genius.”
“Yes. Genius,” the dummy said. “Don’t be jealous. Just because your IQ is the same number as your shoe size!”
We laughed again.
“Awesome,” Kristina said.
“Maybe he has voice recognition software?” I said.
“What does that mean?” Dad asked. “He can hear you when you talk to him?”
“No,” I said. “It means you can talk to him, and he will talk back to you.”
“He’s programmed to say things?” Kristina asked. “Cool. Take him out of the case, Aaron. Can I hold him?”
The dummy appeared to stare right at her. “Don’t hold me,” he said. “Hold your breath. It stinks!”
I laughed.
“I don’t know if I like this dummy,” Mom said. “He’s very nasty, Aaron.”
“Talk about nasty,” Slappy said. “Have you smelled your dinner?”
“Maybe you should leave him in the case,” Mom said to me.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” I said. “Mandrake gave me his phone number. See?” I pulled the small slip of paper from my jeans pocket. “He said if there’s a problem, I can call anytime. He said he’ll come and take the dummy back.”
Slappy appeared to gaze at me. “Is that really your face?” he rasped. “Or did a bird fly over and drop something on your neck?”
I couldn’t help it. That joke made me laugh. But I was the only one who did. Mom and Dad and Kristina stared at the grinning dummy in silence.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said, shaking her head. “But I think he is a little creepy.”
I lifted Slappy from the chest. “Mom, listen,” I said. “He just has a bunch of jokes programmed into him. It’s NOT like he’s alive …”
I propped the dummy up in the empty chair next to my seat. Mom cut a slice of meatloaf for me and placed a baked potato beside it on my plate.
Dad scooted behind me on his way to the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” Mom asked.
“To get ketchup for my meatloaf,” he said.
Mom shook her head. “It hurts my feelings when you drown your meatloaf in ketchup.”
“But I like ketchup,” Dad replied. He disappeared into the kitchen.
I took a few bites of meatloaf. Then I turned to the dummy. “Slappy, would you like to eat dinner with us?”
The dummy’s wooden lips clicked up and down. “I’d rather throw up my intestines!” he growled.
“Ooh, that’s horrible!” Mom cried.
“Not as horrible as that big wart on your neck!” the dummy cried. “Or is that your head?”
Dad returned carrying the ketchup bottle. “Aaron, I think you’d better take Slappy away from the table.”
Mom nodded. “Yes, definitely. Whoever programmed those awful jokes is totally twisted.” She turned to my sister. “Kristina, don’t you agree?”
She hesitated. “Well … it’s kind of funny,” she said. “Kind of.”
“I think he’s a riot,” I said.
“Please take him away,” Mom said. “He’s spoiling our dinner.”
“The only thing that’s spoiled is the meat!” Slappy rasped. “You better line up at the bathroom now!”
“That’s going too far!” Mom cried, tossing her fork to the table.
Dad’s meatloaf was buried under an avalanche of ketchup. He squinted at the dummy. “So weird. It really does seem to listen to what you say.”
Dad was right. This programming was awesome.
“Please take it away,” Mom repeated.
“Let’s give him one more chance,” I said. I turned the dummy so that it was facing me. “Slappy, you’re going to be a good boy, aren’t you?”
“Say that again,” Slappy replied, “and I’ll eat your heart like a meatball.”
“That’s enough,” Dad said, jumping to his feet. He had a big ketchup stain on his shirt. You can always tell what Dad had for dinner by reading his shirt.
Dad moved around the table and grabbed Slappy by the neck. “I’m taking him in the other room, Aaron,” Dad said. “I think there’s a problem with the voice programming. Someone gave him a bad personality.”
“Before I go,” Slappy spoke up, “I just want to offer my sincere thanks for the meal.”
Startled, Dad let go of the dummy and took a step back.
Slappy leaned forward over the table. Then he opened his mouth wide, tilted back his head—and began to spew wave after wave of a thick green liquid into the air.
Splurrrp splurrrrp splurrrrrp!
“Ohhhh.” A groan escaped my throat. The smell was sickening!
The green gunk splashed over our dinner table, rolled over the food bowls, covered our plates.
The dummy made disgusting, gross vomit sounds deep in his throat as he spewed the green gunk over all of us. I tried to duck away, and I felt a hot wave of goo sweep over my head and cover my hair.
Dad had been standing right behind the dummy. But he was so startled and grossed out, he froze for a long moment. Finally, he spun the dummy into the air, lifting it out of the chair.
The dummy splashed the disgusting green goo over Dad’s face and down the front of his shirt. I felt sick. The smell was overwhelming. I tried to hold my breath, but I couldn’t get the odor out of my nose and mouth.
Dad shook the dummy hard. He turned it away from him and fumbled for the controls under the dummy’s jacket. Then he turned it over and ran his hand under the dummy’s white shirt.
“I can’t turn it off!” Dad cried. “Shouldn’t there be a way to shut him off? How do you do it?”
Slappy let out one last urrrrp. He stopped spewing. His eyes closed. His grin appeared to grow wider.
“Oh, thank goodness!” I cried. My T-shirt and jeans were drenched. My hair was sticky and matted to my head with the goo.
“How are we going to clean this mess?” Kristina cried.
Dad’s face was bright red with anger. He was breathing hard. He gripped the dummy around the waist.
“Pardon my manners,” Slappy said. Then he tossed back his head and giggled.
Mom wiped the sticky goo off her hands on the sides of her dress. She gave me a gentle push. “Quick. Call the number. Tell that puppet guy to come get his dummy as fast as he can.”
The sheet of paper tremble
d in my hand. I tugged my phone from my pocket. I had to wipe a glob of green gunk off the phone.
My hand shook so much, I had to punch in the number three times. My thumb kept slipping off the screen.
I held my breath, trying to make the smell go away. I knew I’d be smelling it for weeks!
“Tell that guy to hurry over here!” Kristina cried.
The phone rang once. Twice.
A man’s voice came on. “Friendly Hardware. Simon speaking.”
I hesitated. “Uh … is Mandrake there?”
“Who?”
“Mandrake? Mandrake the puppeteer?”
The man named Simon snickered. “There’s no one named Mandrake here, son. This is a hardware store. Not a puppet show.”
I nearly dropped the phone. “Are you sure?”
Simon snickered again. “Of course I’m sure.”
“S-sorry,” I stammered. I hung up. I lowered the phone to my side and turned to my family. “Mandrake gave me a wrong number. We can’t return Slappy.”
Mom scowled and shook her head. “That wasn’t an accident,” she muttered. “He didn’t want you to return this … monster.”
Slappy tilted back his head and laughed. “Would one of you wipe the goo off my chin? I got a little on me.”
“What are we going to do?” Kristina cried. “This is sick. Totally sick. The green vomit—it’s everywhere. I—I—” My sister was so upset, I thought she was about to cry.
Slappy turned his wooden head to face me. “Can I help it if I had an upset tummy? Hahaha.”
“But—why—?” I choked out.
“I just wanted to make sure you’re all paying attention,” he rasped. “Life is going to be fine around here—unless you disobey my orders.”
“Orders?” I cried. “You want us to take orders from you?”
“Enough!” Dad shouted. He swung the dummy around and lowered it into the wooden chest. “Enough!”
The dummy started to sit up, but Dad slammed the heavy lid down hard. Then he squatted and carefully snapped both metal latches.
“I know just what to do with him,” Dad said, dragging the chest out of the room.
“But, Dad—” I started.
Dad raised a hand to silence me. “You three stay and get started on the cleanup. I’ll be back in a short while.”
“And don’t worry,” he said as he headed out the door. “You’ll never see Slappy in this house again.”
Cathy O’Connor. That’s me. Yes, I’m Colin O’Connor’s daughter.
In Timberland Mills, just about everyone knows my dad. That’s because he owns the Haunted Horror Museum on Shadow Street.
It’s the only museum here, and schools start taking classes there for field trips in first or second grade. I mean, there isn’t much else you’d want to visit in our small town.
I’m twelve, and my class is having an overnight at the museum next Friday night. Some kids are excited and a few are a little freaked to spend the night with a real mummy, and a dinosaur skull and some bones, and insect fossils, and mummified snakes and reptiles.
But to be perfectly honest, I think the museum is kind of lame. I guess it’s because I grew up inside it. I spent time examining all the old fossils and dinosaur bones and the vampire bats and my dad’s fake werewolf when I was five years old. That stuff doesn’t exactly give me shivers anymore.
My sister, Shannon, is nine and gets excited about things a lot more than I do. But she is like me. She’s kind of “been there, done that.”
The only thing that’s sort of exciting is that Dad finally got a real mummy for the museum. Dad has been trying to get his hands on an ancient mummy for years. He put out ads all over the Internet for private collectors and archaeologists. And then one day, someone answered all the way from Egypt. We got our mummy!
The museum is so tiny and our town is so small. Who would guess that Dad’s plan would work?
Believe me, that mummy will get a lot of attention at our class overnight. A lot of kids are into horror movies and scary books.
But to tell the truth, I don’t get it. Those things are mostly just gross, aren’t they? And what’s the fun of grossing yourself out or giving yourself shivers?
I know we hurt Dad’s feelings when we make jokes about his museum and make fun of his scary stuff. But he loves scaring people so much … the whole thing gets him so psyched … I guess Shannon and I think it’s our job to bring him back to earth.
Even though Shannon and I are three years apart, we’re very close. We look like sisters. We both have straight black hair and dark brown eyes. We both have kind of round faces, baby faces (yuck), that make us look younger than we are.
We get along really well most of the time. We don’t fight like a lot of sisters do. I have only one main problem with my sister.
She’s a mad tickler.
She’s always tickling me and my friends, and she thinks it’s a riot. Even when we beg her to stop.
Our cousin Logan is in my class. And sometimes when he comes over, I have to tackle Shannon and wrestle her off him to get her to stop tickling him.
Poor Logan hates to be tickled. It actually gives him hiccups. Guess what? Shannon says that’s why she likes to tickle him.
The worst part about Shannon’s tickling obsession is that her hands are always cold. Don’t ask me why. But it feels like your skin is being attacked by ice cubes.
Anyway, on Thursday night, Shannon, Logan, and I were in the Haunted Horror Museum after dinner. (It’s not really haunted. Dad just wishes it was.)
We were supposed to be helping Dad set everything up for the class overnight. Shannon had been tickling Logan in the backseat of our SUV, and now he had the hiccups. Dad started to pull cots into the dinosaur room. He motioned for us to get to work.
But Logan, squeaking with hiccups, decided to pay Shannon back for the tickling attack. He picked up a ball from the top of a display case and heaved it at her. “Think fast!” he shouted.
Shannon caught the ball in one hand and made a disgusted face. “Hey, it’s sticky.”
“Please put that down,” Dad called from across the room. “That’s not a ball. That’s a whale eyeball.”
“Oops,” Logan said.
I laughed. Shannon looked a little sick. She set the eyeball down on a tabletop. She wiped her hands on the sides of her sweatshirt.
“Hey, is Shannon coming tomorrow night, too?” I called to Dad.
“Yes, she is. She’s my assistant,” Dad said. “I need her here tomorrow night.” Dad started to drag another cot across the hall. “She promises she won’t tickle anyone—don’t you, Shannon?”
Shannon grinned and didn’t reply.
“The boys in your class are lucky. They’ll get to sleep in the mummy room with our brand-new mummy,” Dad said. “We’ll put the girls in the dinosaur room.”
“No one will be able to sleep,” I said. “They’ll be shaking and shivering too hard.”
Logan laughed. “Most kids will be so scared, they’ll probably cry themselves to sleep!” The museum didn’t scare Logan either.
Shannon and I laughed along with Logan.
“You’re not funny,” Dad muttered. “I’m so tired of your sarcasm. Aren’t you the least bit excited that we finally have a mummy here? You know I’ve been wanting a real mummy ever since I opened the museum.”
“That was a win,” I said. “Sorry about our bad attitude. We’re just snobs, I guess.”
Now Dad was laughing. “I know you think this place isn’t scary. But wouldn’t you be surprised if something totally frightening happened here in the museum tomorrow night?”
“Totally,” Logan and I said in unison.
We helped Dad line up the cots in both rooms. Then we headed to the little snack bar in the basement. We climbed onto tall stools and served ourselves chips and drinks.
Shannon reached a hand out and tried to tickle Logan’s chin. But he ducked away, and she almost fell off her stool.
&n
bsp; Dad appeared, mopping sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief. It was hot and stuffy in the museum, but he couldn’t afford air conditioning.
“Follow me,” he said. “I want to show you something. You’ve probably seen it before, but it’s pretty awesome.”
We followed him up the front staircase. He took us to the end of the hall, into his office. He slid out a desk drawer. He picked up a handful of shiny little stones. I took one from his hand.
It wasn’t a stone. It appeared to be darkened glass. I squinted hard into it and saw a large winged insect. “Dad, you never showed us these.”
He smiled. “See? I still have a few surprises.”
Logan held one up to the light. “There’s a bug inside. How did it get there?”
“These are thousands and thousands of years old,” Dad said. “The insects got trapped in tree resin and then became fossils.”
“Trapped inside these stones?” I asked, spinning mine in my hand.
“Resin is a liquid that drips down the trunks of trees,” Dad explained. “The insects got caught in it thousands of years ago. Then the resin hardened into these amber stones. And preserved them perfectly.”
“They look like they could be alive,” Logan said.
“Creepy,” Shannon murmured. She handed hers back to Dad.
Dad raised a couple of them to the light. “Mean-looking bugs,” he said. “Look at the sharp pincers on this one.”
“What are you going to do with them?” I asked.
Dad clicked the two oval pieces of amber together. “I have over a hundred of them,” he said. “Shannon and I are going to hide them around the museum. We can have a scavenger hunt for them tomorrow night.”
I rolled my eyes. “A scavenger hunt? Like our birthday parties when we were six?”
Dad dropped the pieces of amber into the drawer and slid it shut. “Give me a break, Cathy. These fossils are rare and very valuable. I think everyone will be excited to hunt for them.”
“Our class?” Logan chimed in. “Our class will be excited to hunt for slices of pizza.”
I laughed.
Dad scowled at me. “We’ll have pizza, too,” he muttered. “But since we are here in a horror museum, I think we should use what we have to entertain everyone. I don’t think kids will find ancient insect fossils or a mummy boring or babyish. I—”
