Attack of the Shark-Headed Zombie

by Bill Doyle

  “There’s an alarm!” Henry said. He was pointing at a big red button on the wall near the door. Keats squinted to read the writing on the button.

  “Wait!” Keats shouted. “The button says it’s only for emergencies.”

  “I think this counts,” Henry said. Still on his back, he jabbed the button with his foot. Suddenly a Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! filled the house.

  “What did you do?” Keats yelled.

  The alarm kept ringing. The windows and the front door started to fade. Then they were just gone. In their place was a solid wall.

  The cousins were safe from the zombie … at least for now.

  AFTER A FEW seconds the alarm stopped. The house was silent.

  “Stunner,” Henry said.

  Keats and Henry lay on the carpet in the front hall, trying to catch their breath.

  “What just happened?” Keats finally said. He stood up slowly. His baseball cap had turned around when he fell. He fixed it and looked around the room.

  It was empty except for an old chair and a coatrack in the corner. Keats ran his hand over the wall where the front door used to be. The wall was smooth and solid.

  “Where’s the door?” Keats asked. “And the windows?”

  “I don’t know.” Henry got to his feet, too. “Probably the alarm made them disappear. You know, to protect whatever is inside the house. It must be some kind of magic.”

  “That’s crazy,” Keats said. “There’s no such thing as magic—”

  Blam! A sudden pounding on the wall next to Keats made him jerk back.

  The zombie was on the other side of the wall trying to get inside. Blam! Blam! Blam! The wall shook but remained sturdy.

  “A shark-headed zombie is on the porch and the front door just vanished,” Henry said. “Ready to change your mind about magic, Keats?”

  “Okay, okay,” Keats said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there is magic.” His stomach was flip-flopping like crazy.

  “Don’t panic,” Henry said. “It will take time for the zombie to break through. We’ll be okay for a while.”

  Keats looked to see if Henry was scratching his chin. He wasn’t. Keats felt a little bit better knowing Henry was telling the truth.

  “We need to come up with a plan to get out of the house,” Henry said. “Thanks to the alarm, the door and windows are gone. We’re trapped.”

  Keats thought for a second. “I have an idea,” he said. He held up the note from Mr. Cigam. “See where Mr. Cigam says he’ll take us home when we finish the to-do list?”

  Henry snapped his fingers. “That’s it! We just have to do all the jobs on the list. And Mr. Cigam will come back and get us out of here.”

  They both leaned over the note and read the jobs Mr. Cigam had left for them.

  Weed the garden.

  Bring the box of lightbulbs down from the attic.

  Battle and defeat the shark-headed zombie.

  Sweep the garage.

  “Okay,” Keats said. “We weeded the garden. So that’s done. The next thing we have to do is bring the lightbulbs down from the attic—”

  “And then battle and defeat the shark-headed zombie,” Henry said, skipping ahead. “But if the zombie is magical, we’ll need magic to fight it. Like a spell. Or maybe a wand—”

  “A wand!” Keats said. “At the end of the note, Mr. Cigam says there’s an extra wand in the kitchen sink. Where’s the kitchen?”

  Both boys turned to gaze down the long hallway that led out of the front room. They could see a refrigerator through a doorway at the end of the hall.

  “Let’s go,” Henry said, already moving. Keats followed close on Henry’s heels. He couldn’t wait to get away from the zombie pounding on the wall.

  The instant they left the front room something strange happened.

  The doorway they had just passed through shimmered. Then it vanished and became part of the wall. They walked through the next door-way and it happened again. The doorway was gone and a wall stood in its place.

  “It must be part of the alarm system,” Keats said. “I bet every time we go through an opening, it disappears. Just like the front door and the windows. We can’t go back the way we came.”

  “We better stick close together,” Henry said. “If I go through a doorway without you and it fades away, we’ll be split up.”

  The boys walked through the last doorway into the kitchen at the same time. They watched that door turn into a wall, too.

  The kitchen was messy but looked pretty normal. It had an old stove, a counter stacked with dirty dishes, and the big gray refrigerator. Another door was on the other side of the room.

  Keats looked for a phone to call for help. There wasn’t one, but he spotted something else. A thick, dusty book sat on the kitchen table. Keats went over to it and read the cover. The book was called How to Zap Anything. A bookmark was stuck inside. Keats flipped to the marked page and read it.

  Zap a Zombie

  Step one: Stand on one foot.

  Step two: Wave the wand.

  Step three: Now say

  The rest of step three was gone. The page was torn. It was almost as if something had taken a bite out of it.

  “You’ve got to see this, Henry!” Keats said. “Mr. Cigam found a spell to zap the zombie with the wand. But it’s missing the most important part of—”

  “Ahhhhh!” Henry interrupted. He was standing by the counter with his back to Keats.

  Keats jumped. “What!” he demanded. “What is it now?”

  “Oh man. This is just nasty.” Henry held up a plate covered in furry mold. “When’s the last time Mr. Cigam washed the dishes?”

  “You scared me to death.” Keats shook his head. “Get serious, Henry. We have to find the wand. It must be in the sink buried under all those dishes.”

  “What a grouch,” Henry said. “Being chased by a zombie must be bad for your funny bone—” Suddenly Henry stopped and shouted, “Ahhhhh!”

  This time Keats didn’t freak out. “You need some new jokes, Henry.”

  “Uh, Keats,” Henry said quietly. It was the voice he used when he didn’t want Keats to panic. “I think you found the sink.”

  “Oh yeah?” Keats wasn’t going to fall for one of Henry’s pranks. “What makes you say that?”

  “Because you’re standing in it,” Henry said. “Look at your feet.”

  Keats did. Or tried to. He couldn’t see his feet. They were gone!

  His sneakers had been sucked into the kitchen floor like it was quicksand.

  “I’m sinking!” Keats shouted.

  KEATS TRIED TO pull his feet free. But he couldn’t budge. If anything, struggling only made him sink faster. The floor quickly rose to his shins. Soon he would be sucked all the way down.

  Henry and the rest of the room were still on solid ground. This was the only part of the kitchen with a squishy spot.

  “That must be what Mr. Cigam’s note meant by the kitchen sink,” Henry said. “It’s some kind of sinkhole.”

  The floor was up to Keats’s knees now. It was like sliding into taffy. “Henry, help me!” he yelled.

  Thinking fast, Henry tied two crusty dish towels together and tossed one end to Keats. He grabbed it and Henry pulled. Just as Keats started to climb up, his foot bumped into something.

  “There’s something jammed in here,” Keats said.

  With one hand still on the towel rope, Keats reached into the spongy floor. There was a gurgle as he yanked out a small scepter, like a king might carry. Only this one had a lightbulb screwed into the top.

  Keats flung the rod to Henry. He put it on the counter so he could keep pulling.

  But crawling out of the sinkhole was getting harder. When Keats had tugged the rod free, it was like unclogging the drain in a bathtub. Things started going down the hole faster. The floor began to swirl a little as it spun around Keats.

  The moving floor made the table tip over. Still open to the marked page, the How to Zap Anything book fell
and skidded toward the pit.

  “The spell!” Keats let go of the rope with one hand again. He reached for the book. But he was only able to grab one page. The page ripped off in his fingers and the rest of the book was sucked into the hole.

  There was a shuuuwmack sound. Suddenly everything stopped swirling. With Henry’s help, Keats pulled himself onto solid ground.

  “The book must have plugged up the hole again,” Keats said, getting to his feet. He uncrumpled the torn page in his hand. “But I saved the spell!”

  “Great job, Keats,” Henry said, and picked up the rod on the counter. “Do you think this is the wand Mr. Cigam was talking about?”

  Keats eyed it. “I thought a magic wand would look different. This is just a goofy stick with a lightbulb on top.” He shrugged. “But in this house, that’s weird enough to be right.”

  “Good point,” Henry agreed.

  BLAM! The boys jumped as pounding started on the wall behind the counter.

  Keats began to panic again. “The zombie is trying to break into the house! It’s right on the other side of that wall!”

  Henry tried to calm him down. “That works out great,” he said. “We can try out the wand and the spell you found.”

  Keats took a deep breath, then nodded. “It’s only part of the spell, but what do we have to lose?” he said. “After all, it’s called Zap a Zombie.”

  The boys faced the wall where the zombie was pounding. Keats held the spell, and Henry held the wand.

  “Okay,” Keats said. “Step one says we have to stand on one foot.” The boys did. Keats was a little more wobbly than Henry.

  Keats read step two. “Now wave the wand.”

  Henry did. “What’s next?”

  “I don’t know,” Keats answered. “We’re supposed to say something. But step three is missing. I don’t know what the words are.”

  “You named your bike after the guy who wrote the dictionary,” Henry said. “You like words! Make something up!”

  Keats thought for a second. “How about … zombie, go up a tree and set us free!”

  “That’s really strange,” Henry said with a nod. “But I like it.”

  Henry waved the wand, and both boys said, “Zombie, go up a tree and set us free!”

  Keats held his breath. Henry was grinning, waiting for a bang or something big.

  But nothing happened. The zombie just kept ramming the wall. The boys put both feet on the floor again.

  “Sorry,” Keats said, disappointed. “We need the real words to make the spell work.”

  “It’s not just that. Listen.” Henry shook the wand again. Keats heard a rattling sound. It was the noise a burned-out lightbulb makes.

  Keats said, “The bulb is burned out. The wand probably can’t work with a busted bulb.”

  “No problem,” said Henry. “We’ll just get another one.”

  But it was a problem. They looked in the cabinets. There weren’t any bulbs there. And the ones in the lamps in the kitchen were all too big. They didn’t fit into the wand.

  “Hold on!” Henry said. “I know where we can find a bulb. In the note, Mr. Cigam asked us to bring the box of lightbulbs down from the attic. The bulbs are waiting for us! We just have to go get them.”

  Keats felt his stomach flip-flop.

  If the garden and the kitchen were so creepy, he could only imagine how scary the attic would be.

  “WAIT A SECOND, Henry,” Keats said. “I just want to make sure I understand your new World’s Greatest Plan.” He took a deep breath and asked, “You want us to go up to the attic to get the lightbulbs and bring them downstairs and use one of them to put in the wand so we can zap the zombie with a spell and finish the to-do list so the owner of the house will come back and take us home?”

  Henry laughed at the really long question. He knew Keats was trying to stall. “Don’t go chicken on me, Keats. We can follow my plan. Or we can stay here and wait for our zombie pal.”

  Keats looked at the shaking kitchen wall. The pounding from outside had gotten louder. Cracks were forming in the wall. It wouldn’t be long before the zombie broke through.

  “Okay, let’s go,” Keats said.

  Henry opened the door on the other side of the room. Behind the door was a hallway.

  “Another hallway?” Keats asked.

  Henry shrugged. “I guess that’s why Mr. Cigam called this place Hallway House.”

  The hallway was fairly dark. Doors lined both walls. And at the end, they could make out the bottom steps of a winding staircase.

  “Those steps must lead up to the attic,” Henry said. “Come on.”

  With Keats holding the wand, the boys crept out of the kitchen. After they walked through the doorway, it shimmered. Then it was gone. This seemed totally normal by now. But it also made the hallway even darker.

  Slowly, the boys made their way down the hall.

  “Ouch!” a voice said.

  Henry chuckled. “What’s wrong now, Keats?”

  “I didn’t say anything,” Keats said.

  “Then who said ‘ouch’?” Henry asked.

  “I thought you did,” Keats said. He took another step.

  “Ouch!” a voice said again. Something nipped at Keats’s toes. He could feel it through his sneaker. He jerked back his foot. “What was that?” Keats asked in shock.

  “It’s too dark,” Henry said. “I can’t tell.”

  Keats pressed the button for the light on his watch. He aimed the light down at the carpet.

  “There are faces on the rug!” Keats yelled. In the dim light from his watch, he could see the pattern in the carpet. Faces as big as oranges had been woven into the fabric.

  The faces were repeated over and over. There was one about every three inches—and they were moving!

  Blinking, yawning, frowning. Each face was like the head of a stick figure. They just had eyes and mouths and looked like something a little kid might draw.

  Henry crouched down and touched one of the faces.

  “Ouch!” the face cried. It bit Henry’s finger. He pulled his hand back.

  “I don’t think they have teeth, but that still hurts!” Henry said. “Why would Mr. Cigam want a carpet like this?”

  “Maybe the faces are like the zombie, and he doesn’t want them here,” Keats said. “What are we going to do? We can’t go back. And we can’t get to the attic steps without stepping on the faces.”

  Henry frowned and then snapped his fingers. “Sure we can!” he announced. “Just walk on your toes. Like this.” Henry stood up on the tips of his shoes and stepped forward. As Henry moved, he put his toes in the empty spaces between the faces.

  Henry tiptoed farther down the hall. “Come on, Keats! It’s kind of like dancing.”

  That was the problem. Keats wasn’t a very good dancer. But he didn’t have a choice.

  Keats got up on his toes. He looked down and started walking carefully on the carpet. His eyes were used to the dark now. As Keats stepped between the faces, they watched him. A couple opened their mouths. They were ready to bite him if he stepped too close.

  That made it even harder to think about what he was doing. Keats started tiptoeing faster. Soon he was moving so quickly, he couldn’t stop. If he did, he’d fall over.

  Waving the wand in front of him, Keats pushed past Henry and almost tripped both of them. Then he started to mess up.

  “Ouch!” said a face on the carpet as Keats stepped on it.

  “Ouch!” said Keats as the face bit his toe.

  “Ouch!” another face shouted, and bit down.

  “Ouch!” Keats cried again.

  The hall filled with shouts of “Ouch!” from the faces and Keats.

  “Almost there!” Henry called over the racket. “Keep going!”

  The boys were just a few feet away from the attic stairs. But Keats couldn’t make it. A face bit down especially hard on his toe. Keats finally lost his balance and fell sideways.

  “Ack!” Keats yel
led. He tumbled through a doorway. The wrong doorway.

  Henry didn’t have a choice. He had to follow Keats or they would be separated.

  “I’m coming, Keats!” Henry shouted.

  And before the door could disappear, Henry dove after him.

  THE COUSINS ROLLED through the doorway, across the room’s hard floor, and banged to a stop against a bookshelf.

  Once again, Keats and Henry found themselves lying on their backs, trying to catch their breath.

  “Where are we?” Henry asked, sitting up.

  Keats sat up, too. Luckily, he had managed to hold on to the wand. He looked around the room. Bookshelves climbed up the high walls. Weird railings that looked like thick tubes wove in and out of the shelves.

  “It’s a library,” Keats said. He was still a little dizzy from all the tumbling.

  Henry looked pretty unhappy. “Well, I’m glad we’re in one of your favorite places,” he said. “Because we’re trapped.”

  It was true. The door to the hallway had become a wall after they fell through it. And there wasn’t a single door or window in the room.

  Keats felt lousy. “I’m sorry, Henry. We were so close to the attic and getting the lightbulb! I just couldn’t keep my balance.”

  Henry gave him a smile. “Hey, don’t worry about it, Keats,” he said. “I wanted a tour of the house anyway.”

  Keats smiled, too. Then he thought of something. “In books,” he said, “libraries in creepy houses always have secret passages.”

  Henry frowned. “Secret passages?”

  “Sure, you know, hidden doorways,” Keats said. “We just have to pull on the right book, and I bet a way out will open up.”

  “There are thousands of books in here,” Henry said. “But it can’t hurt to try.”

  The cousins got to their feet. They started sliding books on and off the nearest shelf. Nothing happened.

  Maybe one of the books on the higher shelves would do the trick. Keats climbed up onto one of the wide railings. It was a little soft but held his weight.