Curse of the Bizarro Beetle #2

by Berry, Julie Gardner;Gardner, Sally Faye

  “What was he, a caveman?” Victor said, turning things over. “This looks like it’s from an ancient civilization.”

  “Look,” Sully said. “There’s a photo of Farley visiting the pyramids. The back says ‘Family vacation, age eleven.’” Sully looked at the other boys. “Our age.”

  “No way was Farley ever our age,” Ratface said. “Impossible.”

  Sully picked up the book and flipped through the pages. “This is his journal,” he said. “Hey, no way. They called him Archie back then. Listen up.” Sully cleared his throat.

  “‘Uncle Rastus stared at me the whole time I was down there,’” Sully said, still reading from the diary. “‘Priscilla said that’s silly. Uncle Rastus has been dead for a long time. But something inside his eye sockets was watching me.’”

  Victor suddenly stopped playing with the skeleton’s arm. “Guys,” he said, “I’ve got a feeling I’ve been shaking hands with Uncle Rastus.”

  “Get to the part about Egypt already,” Cody said.

  “All right, all right,” Sully said. “Ahem. ‘Mummy said if she had to send me to the crypt any more this week, she was going to sell my sarcophagus to a stolen antiquities dealer. Then Priscilla told Mummy I’d been sneaking out of the crypt using the back stairs, the ones leading to the cemetery.’”

  “Sarcopha-what?” Carlos asked.

  “Sarcophagus,” Sully said. “It’s a kind of coffin.”

  “So . . . little Archibald Farley’s hobby was collecting coffins?” Cody said.

  “Pretty much,” Sully said.

  Cody dusted off Uncle Rastus’s hat and put it on. “And nobody thought to lock him away back then? What kind of kid collects coffins?”

  He got up and strolled over to the window and looked down at the shadowy grounds below. A few tilting white gravestones poked up from out of the lawn like crooked teeth.

  Gravestones.

  Gravestones?

  “Sully,” Cody said, “read me that last sentence again.”

  “Why?”

  “Just read it, okay?”

  “‘Priscilla told Mummy I’d been sneaking out of the crypt using the back stairs, the ones leading to the cemetery.’”

  “I thought so!” Cody said. “Look. See those gravestones down there? That’s the cemetery. And see that little building thingy, with the pillars and the doorway? That must be the entrance to the crypt. That’s where Farley is right now, down there, underground!”

  Sully didn’t answer. He just looked at Cody in a funny way, then back at the book, and then at Cody once more.

  “What’s the matter, Sully?”

  Sully put away the journal. “Oh, nothing,” he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE VAMPIRE

  Cody dreamed that night about a monster.

  Not one of the monsters at the school. Those monsters seemed wimpy compared to this one. Chomping teeth, deadly eyes, and a huge, powerful body. It was quick, it was deadly, and it wore the golden beetle around its neck.

  It carried a magical staff, and it whacked Cody on the head with it. It hurt, but then when it was over, Splurch Academy collapsed, and Cody’s mom and dad showed up in their car to take Cody home.

  “There’s no place like home,” Cody told his parents as they led him, skipping through a field of poppies, to their car. “There’s no place like home!”

  “Okay, Dorothy,” a loud voice said. Something plucked him up and out of his happy dream. He blinked and opened his eyes. It was a big pair of glasses talking to him, and behind the glasses, Sully.

  He was still in the infirmary. Cody rubbed his eyes. He was thirsty. Soooo thirsty.

  “What’s the matter?” Sully asked.

  “Just a weird dream.” Cody replied as he slid off his cot and wandered to the sink. Water? Nah. He wanted something that would really quench his thirst.

  The other boys began to wake up.

  “Cody,” Sully said. “You were about to drink blood!”

  “No, I wasn’t,” he said. “It was cherry Kool-Aid.”

  Cody’s head felt full of cotton balls. Was he still dreaming? This was too confusing.

  “Wrong,” Sully said. He flipped on the light. “Look in the mirror, man.”

  “Check out his teeth!” Carlos said. He was staring at Cody like he’d never seen him before.

  “What’s the matter, guys?” Cody said. “Why are you all staring at me like that?”

  “Dude, you’d better look in the mirror,” Ratface said.

  Cody shrugged and headed over to the small mirror that hung over the sink.

  Must be his eyes weren’t working yet. Because when he stood in front of the mirror, his head wasn’t there. His body was, but not his head. He could see straight through to the wall behind him.

  The other boys crowded around him. They showed up just fine.

  “What is this,” Cody said, “some kind of trick mirror?”

  Sully’s jaw dropped. “It’s worse than I thought,” he said. “C-Cody, y-you’re . . .”

  “I’m what?” Cody snapped. “Tell me! Why is everyone acting this way?”

  “You’re becoming a vampire,” Sully said.

  The other boys began backing away.

  Cody began to feel a sinking dread in his stomach.

  “‘The only way to stop someone from turning into a vampire,’” Sully said, flipping through the pages of his book, “‘is to get rid of the vampire who’s biting them.’”

  For a moment no one spoke.

  “G-get rid of,” Ratface stammered, “as in k-k-kill?”

  Sully nodded, wide-eyed.

  “I’m a thief, not a murderer!” Ratface wailed. “I’m not qualified for the job!”

  Mugsy nervously twisted his uniform into knots. “You sure that’s the only way?” he said. “Couldn’t Cody just . . . take a course or something? Maybe swallow some aspirin?”

  “You said, ‘get rid of the vampire who’s biting him,’” Victor said. “But who’s biting Cody? It takes a vampire to make a vampire. And Farley’s underground. Isn’t he?”

  “That’s what’s so weird,” Sully said. “There must be another vampire at Splurch Academy who we don’t know about. But who?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE MONSTER

  Cody petted Rasputin and tried to think, but his mind was too jangly. He paced the floor. Farley. Vampire. The strange dreams. The bites on his neck. What could it mean? The infirmary walls spun before his eyes.

  Me, a vampire?

  I’m only a kid! I can’t be a vampire!

  “Maybe you’d better lie down, Cody,” Sully said.

  “I don’t want to lie down!” Cody yelled. “I want to know what’s going on! First all these crazy dreams, and now this. I don’t get it.”

  “Lie down, Cody,” Sully said, “and tell us about your dreams.” He took a notebook and pencil from Nurse Bilgewater’s desk in her office, and then sat down to listen, his legs crossed. Carlos, Mugsy, Ratface, and Victor hovered around to listen.

  “Okay, Dr. Sully the shrink,” Cody said. “I’ve been having weird dreams about Farley for a while now. They pretty much started when he was banished.”

  Cody gave him a look. “How would you feel if you kept having Farley dreams? They’re automatic nightmares. I felt awful in them.”

  “Hmm.” Sully scribbled in his notebook. “Proceed.”

  “The first time, I dreamed I was down in the crypt with Farley, only there were two of them. Two Farleys,” Cody said. “And they were trying to use a Rebellio-Rodent Recipronator to swap my brain with a rat’s. With Farley and a rat. Like a three-way swap. It doesn’t make sense, I know.”

  “Dreams are often bewildering,” Sully murmured, scribbling some notes.

  “Guess so,” Cody said. “The next weird dream—though I guess this has nothing to do with Farley—was when I sleepwalked out of here and ended up in the dungeons. There were bugs all over me.” Cody pulled his beetle out from under his u
niform. “That’s where I found this guy. That’s just a random accident, though. It’s got nothing to do with vampires.”

  Sully’s pencil raced across the page.

  “So, anyway,” Cody said, “last night I dreamed about a monster that whacked me on the head with some weird stick. He whacked Farley, too. This monster guy was huge, and powerful. More powerful than Farley. He kept whacking and whacking, but when he was done, Splurch Academy fell to pieces and we all went home.”

  The boys’ eyes bugged out. “I’ll whack you on the head if it means I can get out of here,” Victor said. “Let’s start doing it right now.” He held up his arm, ready to strike.

  “Back off!” Cody said. “The monster, he had something to do with it. It was some sort of supernatural thing, okay? And Farley. And the beetle, too. It was there. But it was only a dream, so who cares?”

  “What did the monster look like?” Sully said. “Can you describe him?”

  Cody tried to remember. “He had . . . a head like a crocodile. Big, snapping jaws.”

  Mugsy shuddered. Sully scribbled over the notebook.

  “And a human body. Big and muscly.”

  Sully nodded. “Suspicious,” he said.

  “A crocodile body builder?” Victor asked.

  “And a goofy costume.” Cody added. “He had a skirt, and a big necklace, and something like a dish towel on his head.”

  “Necklace, skirt . . . crocodile. Aha!” Sully dropped his notebook. “Just as I suspected!”

  The other boys looked at one another.

  “What did you suspect, Sully?” Ratface asked. “That Cody’s gone loopy?”

  “Unlock the door, Ratface,” Sully said. “We’re going on a field trip to the library.” And he took off running down the hall.

  Mugsy groaned. “Why can’t we ever take a field trip to a pizza parlor?”

  The library was locked, but Ratface found the key that worked. Sully switched on one small light and went straight to a shelf of tall, dusty-looking books.

  “‘Ancient Mythology?’” Cody read from the spine. “So what? I don’t get it.”

  “Check this out,” Sully said, jabbing at an illustration. “Seen him recently?”

  They all gathered around to look.

  “That’s him,” Cody said. “That’s the thing from my dream.”

  “Ramut the Destroyer,” Sully read. “Demon god of destruction who devoured the hearts of those doomed to wander the underworld.”

  “That’s bad, right?” Ratface asked.

  “Look at what he’s got around his neck, Cody,” Carlos said. “It looks like your golden bug.”

  Sully flipped the page.

  “There it is,” he said. “It’s called a . . . scarab.”

  “A scary-what?” Victor said.

  “Scarab,” Sully repeated, glancing through the book. “An Egyptian amulet shaped like a beetle. It says it has sacred powers. Represents the sun’s power to transform things.”

  Cody sat down on a library chair. He felt a little trembly. The golden beetle around his neck felt heavy, like it might choke him. What was going on? Vampires and ancient Egyptian demons and sacred bugs?

  Was there something true about his dreams? Cody felt the bite marks on his neck. Something about it had to be true.

  He remembered the part in the dream where his parents came and got him from the ruined Splurch Academy. Why couldn’t that part of the dream be true, and all the rest of it be nonsense?

  But he had a bad, goose-pimply feeling it was the other way around.

  “What do we do now?” Carlos asked. “Wait for the vampire to get Cody, or the demon of destruction?”

  “I’m putting my bets on the demon,” Victor said. “He looks like he could kick a vampire’s butt.”

  “Yeah, but a vampire’s undead,” Sully said. “That’s pretty powerful, too.”

  “Thanks, guys,” Cody said. “It’s nice that I can count on you for support.”

  “Shh!” Ratface whispered. “What was that?”

  They froze. Then they heard it, too. Footsteps. Slow, tottery footsteps like a zombie might make on its way to gobble up souls for a midnight snack.

  Mmmmmmmuuuuuuuugggghhh.

  A low, raspy, gravely voice. And it was A low, raspy, gravely voice. And it was coming toward them.

  Mmmmmmmuuuuuuuugggghhh.

  The sound came from deep in the library.

  “Does that sound like a demon of destruction to you?” Carlos said. “Because it sounds like one to me.”

  “Who cares what it sounds like?” Cody said. “Run!”

  They leaped toward the door. Just then the librarian appeared in the doorway.

  “She’s aiming for Cody!” Carlos yelled. “Help, guys! She’s gonna get him!”

  Victor scooped Cody up over his shoulder and bolted out the doorway and down the corridor, the other boys hard on his heels.

  Victor ran with Cody over his shoulder.

  “Tough cookies, lady,” Carlos yelled at the mummy. “You can’t have Cody! So there!”

  The boys skidded down the stairs and through the halls to the infirmary. Ratface locked the door behind them. They stood there, panting, listening for that bloodcurdling sound.

  She didn’t follow after them. But her moans reverberated through the pipes and heating vents of the Academy for the rest of the night.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE ESCAPE

  “Where’s. My. CANDY!” Bilgewater roared the next morning.

  Cody woke and rubbed his eyes.

  She stormed through the infirmary, snatched up Mugsy with her powerful hands, and shook him till his face turned green.

  “I know you’re stealing my candy every night, you little maggots! May your teeth rot along with all your innards. I’ll pump your stomachs to get my candy back. See if I don’t!”

  “How could it have been us, Nurse?” Cody said.

  She strung them up by their ankles on chains hanging from the infirmary ceiling. “If you hang upside down, maybe some of my candy will dribble out your stomachs and onto the floor.” She locked all the doors and left the room.

  “Well, happy Halloween, anyway,” Carlos said.

  “Is today Halloween?” Ratface yipped. “Back home, I’d be bobbing for apples.”

  “And I’d be guzzling gallons of cider,” Victor said.

  “I’d have a bowl of candy corn for breakfast instead of cereal,” Mugsy said. “That’s sorta nutritious, right? It says ‘corn’ right on the package. That’s a vegetable.”

  “No wonder your mother sent you here,” Sully said.

  Cody struggled to sit up in midair and unfasten his ankles. Too bad they didn’t do real exercises in gym class here at Splurch. He strained and reached. No luck. If he didn’t get out of here, he’d be a sitting duck when the vampire returned—whoever it was.

  “Do you think she really does plan to feed us to the party guests on skewers?” Carlos said. “She did say Little Boy Shish Kebabs.”

  “I doubt she knows how to run a barbecue grill,” Cody said.

  “So much for our plans to booby-trap the party,” Victor said. “I wanted to see them freak out when the stink bombs started going off.”

  “Forget booby traps,” Sully said. “Now how do we stop Cody from going vampire?”

  Nurse Bilgewater and Miss Threadbare barged through the infirmary door, talking as though the kids weren’t even there.

  “I need help with the party, Beulah,” Threadbare said. “Is the food ready?”

  “Oh. Er . . . you betcha.”

  “Beulah . . . ” Miss Threadbare said, tapping her toes. “You worry me.”

  The door opened, and Mr. Fronk and Mr. Howell appeared, each carrying a huge load of folding chairs. “Where do you want these?” Fronk said.

  Miss Threadbare went to one of the infirmary windows. “Right down there,” she said, pointing at the grounds below. “There’s a lovely view of the party site from this window.”

>   Fronk pulled a scrolling list from his pocket. “Get this, ladies,” he said. “We’ve got two hundred monsters coming from all over the world,”

  “Even places I’ve never heard of,” Howell bragged, “like Moldova. And Tuvalu. And France.”

  “What do you mean, you’ve never heard of Tuvalu?” Nurse Bilgewater asked as she sampled some mixed nuts. “Everyone knows the great Tuvaluvian Vula Vulture. I hope none of those come tonight. As soon as anyone up and dies, those Vula Vultures are all over them. Won’t save a bite for anyone else, no matter how nice you ask.”

  “Kindly don’t lose our focus with talk of Vula Vultures, Beulah,” Miss Threadbare said. “We have two hundred guests coming tonight. How will we manage?”

  “Worry, worry, worry,” Howell said. “That’s all you do. You’re a party pooper.”

  “I’m not the one who invited two hundred riffraff monsters from who knows where,” Miss Threadbare squawked as they rose to leave. “I knew I should have managed the invitations. You’ve gotten carried away and invited all sorts of dangerous characters.”

  The teachers left the infirmary. Cody waited a minute or two to make sure they weren’t coming back. “Coast is clear, guys,” he said. “We’ve got to get to Farley’s room to get our costumes and booby traps. We can smuggle our costumes back here and hide them under our cots. We can be back before they finish setting up for the party.”

  “I’m starving,” Mugsy said. “Let’s go.”

  Ratface stretched and struggled upright until he’d managed to unlock himself. Then he climbed up over the others, stepping on their chins and noses, and soon had everyone unlocked. One by one they fell onto their cots, rubbed their bruises, and then tiptoed out the door. Mugsy chewed on a candy bar as Cody pulled the door shut.

  “Swiped my keys, eh?” Nurse Bilgewater hissed. “I knew the little slugs were stealing candy. How shall I punish them?”