“Doesn’t matter.” My voice was still quavering.
The Grand Guignol cocked his head, studying me with his sickly yellow eyes. “If they’re your friends, then where are they? Where’s Tammy, hmm?”
I gulped with growing fear.
“Where are Mom and Dad, hmm? Answer: They’re not here, and you’re all alone because they don’t love you. No one does. But I’m here, Kelly. Because . . . I care.”
I shook my head, fighting the muddy, dull feeling that pulled me down.
“Don’t be sad. They had their chance. Now it’s our turn.” He handed me a lace hankie and circled me, like a great white shark. “In a few moments, it’s going to be a whole new world, Kelly. What fun we’ll have! What games we’ll play! We can braid each other’s hair and eat popcorn and talk about boys! Come see!”
He snatched my hand and pranced me around his lair. “Do you like my palace? Believe it or not, I found that chandelier on Craigslist. Amazing what steals you can find on there.” He nodded at the enormous entrance door with its creepy gargoyle carvings far across the cave. What do you think? Scale of one to ten. Be honest. It’s a ten, I know.”
I swung like a helpless rag doll in his grip as he yanked me around. My focus stayed on the long table where I had laid my staff down, like an idiot. I needed to grab my weapon and end this monster.
“I don’t haunt just anybody, Kelly,” he said. “I like you. Both of us can’t stand children. We both love raw slugs. And we both have very large empty spots in our hearts.”
I looked at him with disgust as he sniffed and dabbed fake tears from his eyes. “Banished to the shadow realm. No one to call. Alone. Invisible. When all people do is scream and run from you, it’s very hard to make friends.”
He scowled at the seven empty place settings at the table. “I invited the Others . . . ,” he said mournfully. “Serena, Cleetus, Baron.” He shook his head at the bizarre Boogeyman portraits on the wall. “Do you think they RSVP’d? No. Not a word. Not one of the six others! They’re just jealous because I’m the only one who really counts.”
I slipped my hand out of his and crept toward the table while he moaned on about his sad life.
“And so I hide in closets. Lurk under beds, choking on dust and broken toys. And I get called names like ‘creepy evil, twitchy goat legs’ or ‘that scary man who keeps trying to eat me.’”
I was four steps away from the table.
“I might be a monster. But I have feelings, too.”
My hand slowly reached for the staff.
A black blur shot before me. WHAM! The Grand Guignol snatched my staff and spun it in whirling, hypnotic circles.
“That’s why I know what you really want . . . ,” he hissed with a smile.
I wanted to run, but I was strangely drawn toward the spinning staff as it blurred around and around in circles.
Oh no. It’s happening again. He’s pulling you under his spell. . . . Resist, Kelly. Don’t . . . resist, Kelly. Don’t resist, Kelly.
He jammed the staff into the floor and reached into his tattered coat pocket. A brochure with a picture of a lake and forests on it sprang into his hand. He unfolded the shiny pages, and I saw pictures of beautiful teenagers around a campfire. Arts and Crafts. Happy horses. A warm breeze that smelled like pine needles, suntan lotion, and hamburgers on the grill blew my hair back. I tasted chocolate s’mores. I felt warm sunlight streaming through evergreen trees while I rode on the back of a horse.
No, Kelly, I thought. Don’t let him trick you. . . .
The Grand Guignol was standing in a field, dressed in red running shorts and a yellow tank top, with white socks pulled up to his furry knees. He blew a whistle that was hanging around his neck and gave me a thumbs-up to dive off the wooden dock into the refreshing crystal-clear lake with all my friends.
Splash.
“It’s everything you wanted, Kelly.” His voice slithered, hot against my ear. “Independence. Confidence. Your truth. And you’ll never be invisible again.” His finger tapped on the payment information page of the magical brochure. “And I’ll give it all to you. Just come with me.”
His foul, poo-smelling breath snapped me out of my daydream. My fists hardened into stones and rose, shaking, shivering.
“I want Jacob . . . and Liz . . . and Kevin . . . now.”
The wrinkled warts and moles on the Grand Guignol’s face drooped as he frowned down at me, his tail angrily ticking back and forth. A hermit crab clicked along the sandy floor. His hoof stepped on it with a sickening crunch.
“Wrong answer, Kelly.”
Talons grabbed me from behind. Toadie claws sank through my sweater, almost piercing my skin. “Ow!” The smell of rotting garbage gagged me as the Toadies pried off my backpack and tossed it onto the dining table. The more I shook in their grip, the deeper their claws dug into my skin.
“Keeeeeleeeee,” cooed Snaggle.
“Jacob’s just a kid! Let him go!” I demanded, kicking at the Toadies.
The Grand Guignol’s smile widened. “That kid has the ability to turn dreams into reality . . . and nightmares into monsters. He’s the most powerful force I’ve encountered since I first looked in the mirror. That boy is the first chime in the Time of Nightmares, the beginning of the Era of Monstrosity, the—the . . .”
He stared into space for a moment and then snapped his fingers at the Toadies. “What did I call it earlier?”
“Drumpf?” gurgled Snaggle.
“Ah, yes—bringer of a world of evil. That’s the one,” said the Grand Guignol.
I shot my heel into his shin, but he just jeered at me, as if to show me I had no power over him.
“And here I was, so worried about you, Kelly. But you’re just a girl,” he said, stroking the knotted tangles of my red hair with twisted pity. “You truly are invisible.”
I bit my lip and refused to cry, even as tears blurred my eyes.
“Now, go do as you’re told, little girl. And disappear into nothing,” he said.
The Toadies dragged me back, and something within me snapped. My knee caught a Toadie in the face. My elbow crunched Snaggle’s beak. They acrobatically climbed over me, collapsing me under their weight.
“No!” I kicked and wailed as the Toadies dragged me off. “By the Order of the Babysitters of Rhode Island, I demand you surrender!”
The Grand Guignol’s eyebrows peaked, and he let out a snooty cough. “First night on the job, huh, Kell?”
“I know you’re scared of me!” I screamed. “That’s why you tried to get me all those years ago!”
The tall monster looked down his nose at me, a hint of concern in his snake eyes.
“Well, guess what?” I shrieked at the top of my lungs. “I found you this time. And I’m gonna get you!”
My voice echoed off the cave walls, and there was total silence. The Grand Guignol swallowed, adjusted his cuff links, and cleared his throat. Even the Toadies looked surprised by the crazy threat that had shot from my mouth.
“Douse her with extra rosemary and lemon,” the Grand Guignol called over his shoulder as he walked away. “We need to sweeten her up. Horrible, bitter, smelly thing that she is.” His hooves clicking across the floor sounded like my mother’s high heels. He marched down the rock-hewn staircase and into the dark hole as the Toadies hoisted me over their heads and carried me away.
Riding atop their talons, a teeny-tiny feeling of victory passed through me.
I got to him. I got to the Grand Guignol.
That little thought, that flicker of hope, lit a small flame in my heart, and even though I was being carried away to my death, I smiled.
The Boogeyman is afraid of me.
36
A crude cage the size of a car hung by a large chain at the end of the cavern. Snaggle unlocked it, and the others flung me inside.
“Merken der donugs!” mocked Snaggle from behind the thick iron bars. They drizzled olive oil and clumps of rosemary on me. They squeezed lemons in my face, stinging my eyes a
nd blinding me.
“Gerf, gerf, gerf!” grunted Snaggle as he turned a crankshaft fixed to the wall.
My cage rose in jerky bounces up to the rocky ceiling. Rubbing my eyes, I saw the floor was littered with candy wrappers and moldy bits of Starburst and Tootsie Rolls. There was a bag ripped up near the candy with “Trick or Treat” written on it. A final clink, and the cage lurched to a swinging stop, high off the ground. Drifting back and forth, I could see that little pest Snaggle latch the crankshaft and scurry off with Goggles and the others.
I shook the bars, but the cage swayed uselessly, bumping into another hanging cage nearby. Someone was inside!
“Hey,” I called out hopefully.
The figure, dressed in a fisherman’s outfit, didn’t turn around.
“Hey!” I called out again.
With a dusty creak, his head rolled back on his shoulders. A skeleton with a crooked jaw glared back at me. I gasped and turned away from my new neighbor. My guts twisted, and I was seasick in my rocking cage.
I picked a piece of rosemary out of my eyebrows and nervously bit the edge of my brown sweater, trying to think. Fifty feet below, I could see the crankshaft that held the chain to my cage in place. If I could reach that latch, I could lower this cage. . . .
I undid my shoelaces and tied them together, but that didn’t reach nearly far enough.
I’m going to be cooked like a roasted chicken. My parents, Tammy, Victor, and the rest of the human race would have to live in a world of darkness, ruled by evil monsters and living nightmares. And it’s kinda all my fault. Great movie! Bad night for Kelly.
I took a deep breath and searched within myself for that spark of greatness Mama Vee believed I had.
There’s always a way, I remembered Liz saying.
I gnawed my sleeve, like a nervous mouse, and felt the clump of woven yarn unravel in my teeth. I pulled at the woolly string in amazement. The knitted sleeve slowly came undone in one single thread. I kept pulling it until I held a coil of thick yarn in my hand, my eyes widening.
I was wearing my way out.
“I love you, itchy brown sweater!” I cried as I threw off my jacket then quickly unraveled my entire sweater into a pile of woolly yarn onto my cage floor. I shivered in my green T-shirt as I knotted and braided the yarn into one long, fuzzy rope. Watching all those YouTube videos on how to weave friendship bracelets, like they do at summer camp, finally paid off.
Good ole Camp Miskatonic. I might just get there yet.
I tied a loop at the end and knelt down in my cage to lower the world’s longest friendship bracelet toward the crankshaft’s lever.
The rope swayed inches from the latch. I stretched out my arm. The loop brushed the release. “C’mon,” I muttered.
I needed to get closer. If only I had the staff, I could tie the rope on the end. . . .
Think, Kelly.
I slumped against my prison’s bars, and it wobbled. I narrowed my eyes and jumped to my feet. The cage shifted with my weight. . . . Yes! I grabbed the bars and pushed with my feet, like I was standing on a giant swing. The cage waved backward and forward, gaining distance each time.
When I swung closest to the wall, I dove, holding the rope out.
The loop brushed the crankshaft’s lever. I drifted backward.
No, no! Push it, Kelly!
With all my might, I pressed my face against the rust-caked bars, squeezing forward, fingers barely holding the thick yarn.
My tiny lasso caught.
“Got it!” I crowed, pulling the sweater-rope.
The latch clicked, and I braced myself for the drop of a lifetime.
Gently, my cage creaked back and forth. I blinked and leaned my head against the bars to see if the latch had been pulled clear, but the rusty gears were not turning.
I sighed in defeat and looked at the limp brown rope of friendship in my hand.
Whoosh.
The cage suddenly dropped.
37
You know that feeling when you’re on an elevator and it whooshes down so fast your stomach floats up a little? Multiply that by a hundred and then follow it with a shuddering, bone-shaking crash.
I was thrown into the other side of the cage. One of the bars had snapped and broken, pointing its jagged end an inch from my eye. I gulped.
“What the devil?” The Grand Guignol’s voice boomed from below the chamber, followed by the sound of swishing trash bags.
Pulling back on the broken bar, I dragged myself out from the wreckage. Toadies launched from the depths, claws scratching against the rock walls.
“Gerba-dunk!” Snaggle snarled at me.
I backed up against the cave wall and held up my hands. “Wait! I’ve got something for you!”
I pulled Penny’s sparkly tiara out of my back pocket. A glint of light hit it, sending sparkles into the greedy trash trolls’ eyes.
“Parrrrrklleeeee,” they said, gurgling together.
I moved the tiara to the right, and the Toadies hungrily followed it. When I swung the tiara to the left, they lunged to the left, sniffing at it and rubbing their grubby claws together.
“Oh, yeah. It’s from a real princess, too,” I taunted them.
They stalked toward me. One troll’s key ring jangled like cowboy boot spurs.
I tossed the tiara three feet away, and the trolls launched for it. They wrestled one another for a chance to hold it. I grabbed the lever on a second crankshaft, the one holding the skeleton’s cage. I pulled. Gears spun out a fury of clanking chains. Huddled tightly around the gleaming tiara, the Toadies looked up at the massive falling cage.
“Nurm?” was Snaggle’s last word.
Like four roaches meeting someone’s heel, the Toadies burst into waves of goo. I shielded my face from the gloopy splatter. It was awesome and gross at the same time.
“Anyone for Toadie pancakes?” I smiled.
I glanced at the leaning grandfather clock. Only two minutes to midnight.
The Toadie’s keys. I had a feeling I would need them.
“I can’t even,” I said, looking at the gooey mess that was formerly a Toadie quartet.
Yes, you can.
I looked away and jammed my hand under the cage into the juice and entrails. Feeling past slimy bones, I pulled out the key ring, slicked with a ribbon of slime. I wretched and wiped my hand on the wall.
“Nastiness!” I said.
No one said it would be pretty.
I grabbed my staff off the diabolical dining table and swung my backpack over my shoulders. I felt a surge of power. I forced my feet to walk to the edge of the dark staircase where the Boogeyman had gone.
Like a tiger wagging its paw at a mouse, the hole seemed to smile at me. Step inside, little girl. I won’t hurt you.
My hands choked up on my gnarled, heavy staff, like it was a sword. I climbed down the stairs and into a ghostly, flickering light.
At the very least, I could stop this guy from hurting anyone else. Even if it meant I wasn’t exactly around tomorrow, I had to do it for a chubby-faced boy; a crazy, blue-haired girl; and the whole stupid world.
38
The bottom of the stairs pulsed in a wash of colored lights. Something big and bright was beaming around the corner. Static electricity tickled the hairs on my neck. Clenching my staff to my chest, I stepped into a hallway of glimmering light.
Hundreds of televisions, flat-screens, big glassy TV tubes, and old computer monitors were stacked around the cave. Each screen was playing a horror movie or a creepy cartoon or a news broadcast about an environmental disaster. I squinted at freakish home movies of bugs, rattlesnakes, and explosions, playing on a loop.
“What is this?” I whispered in the bewildering light that was giving me a headache.
A snort in the shadows made me spin around. The black carriage with the four towering skeletal horses was standing in the corridor. They were sniffing at something in my backpack, hooves hungrily stomping the ground.
Somethi
ng else moved at the back of the carriage.
Children. Four of them.
A little girl dressed like the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, a four-year-old boy in polka-dot pajamas, a six-year-old girl dressed like a cowgirl, and a boy wearing a pumpkin sweater. But no Jacob.
The children’s eyes bulged like hard-boiled eggs. They were glued to the wall of televisions. I waved my hand in front of them, trying to break their trance, but they remained spellbound by the scary images pulsing around us.
The children had on leather skullcaps with straps buckled under their chins. Long glowing wires ran from the top of each cap and out of the carriage, deep into the cave.
Poor little guys. What is he doing to them?
I tried to open the cage door, but it was locked. The keys I dredged out of the Toadie puddle jangled in my pocket. I tried a few keys until one fit. As I unlocked the door, the skeletal horses whinnied and rose on their hind legs in protest.
“Shh. Quiet,” I angrily whispered. “Shut up.”
I quickly removed the strange black apples from my pack and held them out. The horses bit them hungrily, bridles clacking in their bony jaws as they shook their ghostly manes. Bits of apple fell through their spectral throats, plopping onto the floor. I guess ghosts can’t eat no matter how hungry they are.
A funny smile crept over my face.
Good thinking, Ferguson.
I made sure the phantom horses were all munching happily before I opened the cage door, unbuckled the straps beneath the little kids’ chins, and ripped off the bizarre wired helmets.
One by one, the children blinked, their eyes shrinking back to normal size. Seeing they were in a very bad, very smelly place, they began to panic.
“Please, please, don’t scream, you guys,” I whispered. “My name’s Kelly. I’m a babysitter. I’m here to help.”
They looked at me, chins trembling.
“I have to pee,” said the Red Queen.
“I want my daddy,” said Polka-Dot Pajamas.
“I’m hungry. I want Doritos. Did you bring Doritos?” begged the cowgirl.
“Mommy?” wailed Pumpkin Sweater.
A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting Page 16
