by Bill Doyle
Keats pulled on book after book. Still no sign of a secret door. Suddenly the railing he was standing on started to move. It twisted and turned under his feet.
Keats dropped the book in his hand. He jumped down to the floor.
“Was that an earthquake?” Keats asked.
“More like an earthworm,” Henry said. “A big one.”
He pointed at what Keats had thought was a railing. The thick tube was sliding around with squishy, glooping sounds.
“That’s not an earthworm. It’s a giant bookworm!” Keats cried.
As if to prove Keats right, the worm pulled its head out of a nearby book. It didn’t have eyes or ears. But its mouth was as wide as a watermelon. The worm chomped down on another book. It tore off part of the cover and chewed slowly, like a cow with a mouthful of grass.
Keats looked around the library again. There were at least six more giant bookworms tunneling through the books. Each one was as long as a minivan. They must have gone still when the boys burst into the room. But now they seemed to realize the cousins weren’t a threat and went back to eating.
And as they ate they made gassy sounds like Gloop! Shoolllop!
“Oh man,” Keats said. He pinched his nose.
“That’s totally disgusting,” Henry agreed. “They don’t look dangerous. Unless they want to stink us to death.”
Keats started to put back the book he’d dropped. Then he noticed the title.
“Spells—No Wand Needed,” he read out loud.
“Great!” Henry said. He took the book and flipped to the middle. “Let’s try one. It could help us get out of here. This spell sounds good. It’s called Egg-cellent Idea!”
“Wait a second,” Keats said. “We shouldn’t mess around with this stuff.”
But it was too late. Henry was already reading the spell. “ ‘Put the cluck right up there or the yolk will hit our hair!’ ”
Blip! A live chicken popped into the air in the middle of the library. It was about six feet off the ground. It clucked and laid an egg. Henry stuck out his hand and caught the egg before it hit the ground. Flapping its wings, the chicken fluttered to the floor.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Henry asked. “I just made a chicken appear out of thin air! How cool is that?”
The chicken started strutting around the library, pecking at the floor. It clucked again. Then, with a blip!, the chicken vanished.
Keats took the egg from Henry. “Well, when we want an omelet, we’ll know what to do. But how is that spell going to help us against the zombie?”
“Okay, you’re right,” Henry said. “Let’s find another one.”
Before they could look for a more useful spell—
Ker-thunk! Crash!
Keats dropped the egg in surprise. It smashed on the floor.
“What was that noise?” he asked.
“That was the sound of a hole being made in the kitchen wall,” Henry said. “You know what that means?”
For a second Keats couldn’t talk. He knew exactly what that sound meant.
The shark-headed zombie was inside the house!
THROUGH THE WALLS, Keats heard the zombie banging around the kitchen. Pots and pans clattered. Glasses shattered. Then there was a huge WHAM! that made him jump. Keats figured it was the refrigerator being tipped over.
Henry and Keats looked at each other with wide eyes. Up until this moment, they had felt safe from the zombie. But now it was inside the house with them.
Henry finally said, “If the zombie breaks through the walls and gets in here—”
“We’ll be sitting ducks.” Keats finished the sentence for him. “We have to get out of this library.”
Henry nodded. “But how? There was just that one door. And it’s gone.”
Keats slid a few books off a nearby shelf.
“We tried that, Keats,” Henry said a little sharply. “Yanking on books isn’t going to open a secret passage.”
“I have a new idea,” Keats said. He pulled out another book. This one had been half eaten by the worms. The cover was ripped off. The pages inside were shredded. Keats grabbed a handful of torn pages. He waved them at one end of the nearest worm.
“What are you doing?” Henry asked.
Keats didn’t answer. He dangled the pages like bait. Then he started talking to the worm. “Mmmmm, delicious book juice,” he crooned.
Henry chuckled. “If you’re looking for the worm’s face, you’re at the wrong end.”
Keats blushed. He went to the other end of the worm, which was half buried in a book. Keats shook the torn pages in the air again.
The worm pulled its head out of the book and sniffed the air. It smelled the pages. Then Keats rubbed them on the wall next to the worm.
“Come and get it, wormy!” Keats said softly.
Gloob. With yet another gassy sound, the bookworm wriggled to the wall. Its mouth opened wide. The worm took a huge bite out of the wall, right where Keats had rubbed the pages.
Instantly the worm’s whole body shook. It spit out the pieces of the wall on the floor. Plaster, wood, and a few chewed-up pages dribbled out of its mouth. Keats could imagine the worm thinking, “Gross!”
Henry said, “I bet that’s how I look when I eat my mom’s tuna surprise.”
“Pretty much,” Keats agreed with a laugh.
The worm slithered higher up the bookshelf to find a better meal. And the boys were left looking at a pile of bookworm vomit and a hole in the wall. The hole wasn’t big. But the boys could squeeze through it and get out of the library!
Henry slapped Keats on the back. “Great job, cuz,” Henry said. “And sorry. I did it again. I doubted that you’d find something in a book to help us.”
Keats smiled. “No big deal, Henry.”
Without waiting another second, the boys crawled over what the worm had thrown up and went into the hole together. Three words on a scrap of paper in the goop caught Keats’s eye.
“… zap the zombie …”
He plucked it out of the gunk and kept going.
Once they were through, the hole closed up behind them, just like the doorways. But it didn’t matter. They were back in the hall. Careful to avoid the faces in the carpet, they got to their feet.
Keats wiped the scrap of paper on his pants. “Look! That worm must be the one who took a bite out of the How to Zap Anything book. This is the missing part of the spell!”
Keats held the scrap next to the page from the book in the kitchen. Like two puzzle pieces, they fit perfectly. “For step three, we say, ‘Pause the snapping jaws and zap the zombie from IS to WAS!’ ”
“We have the rest of the spell?” Henry asked.
“Right,” Keats said. “But we still need the lightbulb to fix the wand. We’ve got to get up to the attic.”
Keats glanced back toward the kitchen. The wall where the kitchen door had stood was shaking. The zombie was breaking through it. They didn’t have long.
The cousins headed quickly toward the spiral staircase at the other end of the hall. This time they didn’t bother trying to tiptoe. They just ran. Their feet smooshed the faces in the carpet.
“Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!” the faces cried.
The faces tried to bite their toes, but the boys were moving too fast.
“Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” Keats and Henry told them.
When they reached the winding staircase, they raced up to the gloomy, dusty attic.
There were no windows, but light came through small cracks in the roof. Keats brushed cobwebs out of his eyes.
It was like Keats’s attic at home, but about ten times bigger and jammed full of all sorts of junk. Boxes were everywhere. Old clothes hung on racks. There was even a rusting suit of knight’s armor in the far corner.
“Let’s hunt down that box of bulbs,” Henry said. He took a step. There was a scary creaking sound. “Be careful, Keats,” he said. “The floor is rotting. We don’t want to end up on top of the zombie thing below.”
The boys
split up. Keats took one side of the attic and Henry took the other. They moved slowly at first, worried they might crash through the floor.
Then another loud smashing sound came from downstairs.
“The zombie is in the hallway,” Henry said. “I think it’s trying to get through that last wall at the bottom of the stairs.”
“We have to find the lightbulbs NOW!” shouted Keats.
Henry and Keats stopped being careful and raced around the attic. They yanked open boxes and pawed through them. Keats pulled out the drawers in a wobbly dresser. He found a few old toy cars. They were pretty cool but wouldn’t help them now.
“Whoa!” Henry cried from across the room. Keats turned to see what was wrong. Somehow Henry had gotten tangled up in an old dress. He tripped and fell. Dust flew into the air and the floor creaked under him again.
“What’s this?” Henry asked. He had landed right next to a box in the corner. On the side of the box were the words LUXE WAND LIGHTBULBS.
Henry tore free from the dress. “I found it!” he shouted.
Of course! Keats thought with a smile. Only Henry could trip over a dress and still have everything work out.
Keats unscrewed the bad lightbulb from the wand. “I can put in a new bulb. And we can use it to zap the zombie. Hurry!”
Henry took a step forward. He was about to hand the box to Keats when—
The weak floor under Henry caved in. The rotting wood tore like paper. Henry dropped through the hole, taking the box of bulbs with him.
Keats rushed to the edge of the hole. Luckily, Mr. Cigam had left a ratty old bed in the middle of the dirty garage below. Keats was just in time to see Henry land on it with a bounce. Keats heard lightbulbs in the box breaking.
“Keats!” Henry called up to him. “You have to jump through the hole before it disa—”
Too late. The hole in the attic floor shimmered and sealed shut. The boys were now separated.
Keats was alone. But he wouldn’t be for long.
He could hear the chomp, chomp, chomp of the shark-headed zombie at the bottom of the stairs.
In just a few seconds the zombie would break into the attic.
WHEN THE ZOMBIE burst into the room, Keats knew he was in big trouble.
From his hiding place, Keats held the wand and watched the zombie hop around the attic on its tail. It looked kind of like a clumsy jack-in-the-box. Normally Keats would have laughed. But silly-looking or not, the zombie was dangerous. It would probably like to make a meal out of him.
On top of everything, the zombie stank like fish. Fish that had been sitting out in the hot sun for a couple of days.
Keats forced himself not to gag. Seriously, the thing needed a bar of soap and a good toothbrush.
Now would be the perfect time for Keats to zap the zombie. But he couldn’t. He needed a lightbulb to make the wand work. And all the lightbulbs were with Henry down in the garage.
The zombie hopped again, and then it froze. Its eyes were locked on Keats’s baseball cap in the corner of the attic. Then it spotted Keats’s jacket!
With two quick hops, it bounced closer.
The zombie lifted the arm of Keats’s jacket.
“Wait,” Keats whispered to himself. “Don’t move yet.”
The zombie bit down on the jacket. There was a clang as the zombie’s teeth struck metal.
“Mrrrrhhhs!” The zombie moaned in pain. It sounded hurt and confused.
Keats’s trick had worked!
Just before the zombie had broken into the attic, Keats had come up with a plan. He had put his baseball cap and jacket on the suit of armor. Meanwhile, he had hidden behind a box across the attic.
The zombie was really angry now. With a flipper, it touched its sore mouth. Then it shoved the suit of armor like a bully pushing a kid on the playground. The armor rocked back and forth. It toppled on the zombie, trapping it against the wall.
“Now!” Keats told himself. He leapt out from behind the box.
The zombie saw Keats and let out an angry burp. But it was stuck under the heavy armor.
Keats looked for the spot where the floor seemed the most rotten. He jumped as high as he could. Then his feet hit the floor. With a giant crack!, the old boards gave way. Keats plunged through the attic floor.
He landed hard on a thick shag rug in the room below. His legs buckled and he fell to his knees. But he was okay, and so was the wand.
Keats must have picked the wrong spot on the floor of the attic. He had hoped to end up in the garage with Henry. Instead he was in a living room. A huge television from around 1965 filled one corner, and a big orange couch sat across from it. Through an open door, Keats saw the hallway with the weird faces on the carpet. On the other side of the room was a second door. It was closed.
How could he get to the garage?
Keats was just getting to his feet when he heard the zombie up in the attic. It was throwing aside the suit of armor.
Oh no! Keats looked up at the hole he had made. It was closing. At that instant the zombie dove headfirst toward Keats.
Keats pressed down into the rug, waiting for the zombie to land on him. But it never did.
The zombie had jerked to a stop. It was hanging upside down in the air, just inches above Keats. The zombie’s flapping flippers couldn’t quite reach him. Neither could its snapping jaws.
What happened? Keats wondered as he slid from under the zombie. Then he saw the answer.
The hole had closed around the zombie’s tail! It had trapped the zombie like a wriggling trout on a hook.
There was no time for a victory dance. The zombie was curling up toward the ceiling and pounding on it with its flippers. It would break free before long.
Keats had two choices. He could go out the open door to the hallway with the weird face carpet. But that way could be a dead end. After all, the attic, kitchen, and library were all sealed up.
Or he could try the closed door on the other side of the room. But that meant passing pretty close to the zombie.
The zombie was almost loose. Keats would only have time to choose one door.
Be like Henry, Keats thought. Take a chance. Try the closed door.
Holding his breath against the fish smell, he inched along the wall and past the upside-down zombie. The creature was too busy flapping at the ceiling to notice him.
Keats reached the small door and opened it. “Yes!” he said. It was another hallway!
He stepped through the door just as the zombie jerked out of the ceiling.
Keats turned to see the zombie and pieces of the ceiling fall to the shag rug. Boing! The zombie was up in a flash, bouncing toward Keats.
At the last second, though, the zombie stopped. It cocked its head, looking at the doorway, which was now shimmering. Keats could tell the zombie didn’t want to get stuck again. It wasn’t going to risk coming through just as the doorway was becoming a wall.
Since he was safe, Keats couldn’t resist doing something else Henry might do. He gave the zombie a funny salute and said, “Better luck next time!”
The zombie let out a frustrated burp and waved its flippers angrily. Then the doorway vanished. A wall separated the zombie and Keats.
He laughed. He had done it. He had escaped the zombie!
Now he just had to keep his fingers crossed that this hall led to the garage. Keats hurried down the dark passageway. As he went, he opened different doors. There were closets and a bathroom. But no garage.
He opened the last door. It was the garage!
And, even better, Henry was there. With his back to Keats, he was standing on the middle of the bed. Right where he’d landed when he fell from the attic.
Keats was so happy to see his cousin. He burst in without looking at anything else. The door behind him vanished. And so did Keats’s smile.
“Rats,” he said.
Keats wished he had looked more carefully before rushing into the garage.
Why?
Because th
e shark-headed zombie was already there.
WHILE KEATS HAD been running down that last hallway, the zombie must have gone back up to the attic. Then it had busted through the attic floor to the garage!
Now the zombie was circling Henry, coming closer and closer to the bed. Standing up on the mattress, Henry looked as if he was stuck on a raft with a hungry shark swimming around him.
Only the shark-headed zombie didn’t need water to swim. It wriggled on its belly through the old newspapers and trash that covered the floor. The creature glided smoothly in the garbage, the way it had in the ground outside. Keats guessed this was easier for it than all that clumsy hopping.
“Henry!” Keats called. “Are you okay?”
At the sound of Keats’s voice, the zombie glanced his way. Keats scrambled up onto a nearby workbench. But the zombie didn’t come after him. It seemed to be having too much fun scaring Henry. And it just kept circling the bed.
Henry turned around. He held two lightbulbs. “Keats!” Henry said with a big smile. “Wow, am I glad to see you!”
“Me too,” Keats said. “Why didn’t you get out of the garage when you had the chance?”
“I couldn’t,” Henry answered. “My foot got stuck in a mattress spring when I hit the bed. I just got it free when that thing showed up.”
As if hearing its name, the zombie’s head popped out of the trash. Its jaws snapped in the air near Henry.
“Watch out!” Keats yelled.
Henry threw a lightbulb at the zombie. It ducked back under the garbage. And the bulb shattered against a rusty lawn mower.
“I’ve been holding the zombie back with the lightbulbs,” Henry explained. “It’s scared of them for some reason. But most of them broke when I fell.”
Keats nodded. “Toss me the lightbulb!” he shouted. “I’ll put it in the wand and say the spell.”
Up on the workbench, he was about fifteen feet away from Henry.
“Okay,” Henry said. “But don’t drop it! It’s the last one.”
Henry got ready for a throw. Just then the shark-headed zombie bumped the bed. If Henry had thrown the bulb, it would have shattered on the floor.
