Monster High: Monster Rescue: Track Down Twyla!

by Misty von Spooks

  “Weeks!” Draculaura exclaimed.

  Cleo patted her arm comfortingly. “I couldn’t do it,” she said sympathetically. “Weeks without my phone might be even worse than spending a millennium trapped in my tomb!”

  “That’s not exactly what I meant, but I see your point,” Draculaura replied. “I’m worried about Twyla! Is there any way to access her message? We need to know what else she said!”

  “Not until your phone is fixed, I’m afraid,” Frankie told her.

  “So, ghouls, this puts us in a tricky situation,” Clawdeen spoke up. “We already said we weren’t going on any more rescue missions until the school is set up unless it’s urgent.”

  “And without listening to the rest of Twyla’s message, we have no idea if it is urgent,” added Lagoona.

  Draculaura started twirling a strand of her pink-and-black hair around her finger as she thought about it. “Ghouls, I just hate the thought of Twyla sitting out there waiting for us—or even a response from us—and getting nothing,” she finally said.

  “I know I was going fishy waiting to hear back from you ghouls,” Lagoona spoke up. “If only there were some way to reach out to Twyla…”

  “There is,” Draculaura said. She held up the Skullette, which dangled from a long golden chain. The glowing charm was the most important element of the Monster Mapalogue. It gave the ghouls the power to travel to other monsters anywhere in the world instantaneously.

  “So you think we should set off on another rescue mission right now?” Cleo asked.

  “I’m ready!” Clawdeen announced.

  “It’s the right thing to do,” Draculaura said. “I just wish…”

  “What?” asked Cleo.

  Draculaura sighed. “I just wish that we knew a little more about where exactly we’re going. The last two rescue missions have been, well, pretty—”

  “Daring?” asked Frankie.

  “Dangerous?” Cleo interrupted.

  “Disastrous?” suggested Clawdeen.

  “All of the above!” Draculaura said. “One thing we’ve definitely learned: We’ve got to do our homework before we take off on another mission.”

  “But we know practically nothing about Twyla,” Lagoona pointed out. “How can we do our homework when the only clue we have is that she’s a Boogey-ghoul?”

  “That’s a fangtastic point,” Draculaura admitted. “I mean, Boogey-ghouls can be anywhere. That’s kind of their thing—spooking Normies when they least expect it.”

  “Visiting a Boogey-ghoul could be extra spooky,” Clawdeen pointed out. “I mean, I’ve never met any Boogey-ghouls before, but I’ve heard that they are not big fans of Normies. Like, they really don’t want them in their space. That’s why the Boogeys are always trying to scare Normies away. After the great monster Fright Flight, most monsters went into hiding and didn’t try to make trouble for the Normies. But even when the Boogeys hid, the Normies kept finding them. So they kept scaring them away.”

  “If they’re ready to scare all the Normies away, do you think they’ll even let us in?” asked Draculaura.

  “I don’t know,” Clawdeen said. “Maybe they’re just misunderstood.”

  Frankie frowned. “No matter what, we should rescue any ghoul who wants to go to Monster High,” she said.

  “I totally agree,” Draculaura said at once. “We can’t leave Twyla stranded, especially since she reached out to us!”

  “So if we don’t know enough about Twyla to research the area where she lives,” Frankie began, “that leaves us with just one option.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Draculaura.

  Frankie nodded. “Recon mission. We’ll have to use the Skullette and pay Twyla a visit,” she announced. “No response video, no research, no warning.”

  Draculaura tried to smile—but everyone could see that she was a little nervous. Her pale skin grew even paler. She was still a little shaken up by her big fright in the Howl of History. On all their rescues so far, Draculaura had been especially brave and daring. She’d deceived a raging mummy to protect Clawdeen and Frankie. And in the midst of the Great Barrier Reef, she had battled a tropical cyclone. Maybe this scaredy-bat had earned a little break from journeying into the great unknown.

  “You know,” Frankie said in a louder-than-usual voice, “I have an idea.”

  “What is it?” asked Lagoona.

  “Actually, it’s about you,” Frankie replied. “You’ve barely gotten a chance to get settled in. I mean, you’ve only seen the pool so far! Monster High has a voltageous Creepeteria, and some pretty sparktacular dorm rooms—”

  “And just wait until you see the art studio!” Clawdeen exclaimed.

  “And the best room: the Mad Science lab! Though I’m a little biased,” Frankie said, blushing. Then she turned to Draculaura. “You know this place better than anybody. Maybe you and Lagoona could stay behind, and you could take her on a tour.”

  “Sure, I’d be happy to do that,” Draculaura said. “But it doesn’t sound very fair. Why should you and Cleo and Clawdeen have to go on a rescue mission all by yourselves?”

  “Oh, we’re not going on the actual rescue mission,” Frankie assured her. “It will be a very quick trip—just so we can figure out where, exactly, Twyla lives.”

  “Then we’ll come right back here for the research part!” added Cleo.

  “Well… if you’re sure you don’t mind…” said Draculaura. Everyone could see how relieved she looked.

  “We’ll be back in a flash,” Frankie promised her.

  Draculaura hesitated for only a moment before she passed the Skullette to Frankie. Cleo and Clawdeen placed their hands on it.

  “Twyla… Exsto… monstrum,” Frankie solemnly said.

  And just like that, they vanished.

  CHAPTER 3

  As the Skullette dropped them in the vicinity of Twyla’s house, the three ghouls tumbled onto a grassy slope, landing in a tangled heap.

  “I try, and I try, and I try, but I just can’t get used to traveling by pendant,” Cleo complained as she dusted off her tunic.

  “I’m sure it’s a big step down from traveling by chariot,” Clawdeen joked.

  “Yes, it absolutely is,” Cleo agreed with a sniff.

  “Well, the good news is, we won’t have to take the Skullette home,” Frankie said.

  “What do you mean?” asked Cleo.

  Frankie pointed up the Hill. “Because Monster High is right over there. See? We’re practically in the backyard.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Cleo groaned. “That bumpy landing was for nothing?”

  “I hope the Skullette isn’t malfunctioning too,” Clawdeen said, sounding worried. “First Drac’s phone, now the Skullette…”

  “Oh, I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Frankie said. “Look!”

  Clawdeen and Cleo turned around to see Frankie pointing at a creepy-cool mansion that was half concealed by a grove of trees. The massive house was covered in dozens of doors and windows, all sitting at strange angles and heights and painted a variety of eerie colors.

  “Seriously?” Clawdeen cried. “That’s Twyla’s house?”

  “Looks more like a mansion to me,” Cleo added. “Her place is huge! It’s easily half the size of my tomb—and she’s not even a princess, is she?”

  “There’s one way to find out if Twyla lives there,” Frankie replied. “We’ll just walk right up to the front door, knock, and ask for Twyla.”

  “Yeah, but which door?” asked Cleo. “There are, like, a billion! And none of them look like the front door. They completely lack the grandeur of a mansion’s front entrance!”

  “Honestly, the place looks like it was designed by somebody who had too many Mummy Mochas!” Clawdeen noted with a laugh. “The whole house is lopsided.”

  “We don’t know if we’re in the right place, we don’t know which door we should pick,” Frankie said, ticking off each obstacle on her fingers. “Let’s apply the sc
ientific method here.”

  “Huh?” asked Cleo.

  “You know… we make our best guess, and then we’ll investigate with a little trial and error!” Frankie explained. Then she marched right up to the odd mansion. Even though Frankie was feeling especially adventurous, there was something about the mansion that gave her a serious case of the creeps. Maybe it was the gloomy lavender-colored walls and shingled lilac roof. Maybe it was the sloping balconies, which were connected by rickety outdoor staircases. Or maybe it was the spindly spires and too-tall turrets. “It’s not just me, right?” Frankie whispered to the other ghouls as they approached the doors. “You’re getting all weirded out too, aren’t you?”

  “Oooh, yes,” Cleo said right away. “I have to give the Boogey family props. If it’s this spooky on the outside, I can only imagine what they’ve done with the interior!”

  “It’s safe, right?” asked Frankie. For the first time, there was a nervous edge to her voice.

  “I’m sure it’s fine!” Clawdeen said breezily. “After all, the Boogeys want to scare away Normies—not other monsters like us!”

  “So… which door should we try first?” asked Frankie. The front porch sheltered three doors. Any of them could’ve been the right one. There was a green door that was completely horizontal; a diagonal one with purple panels; and even a blue door with an unusual shape on it. It almost resembled an hourglass… or the mark on a poisonous black widow spider.

  “You’re the science-y one,” Cleo said, nudging Frankie forward. “Aren’t you going to scientific-method it?”

  “We know you can do it, Frankie!” Clawdeen encouraged her. “Surprise us!”

  “Okay,” Frankie said. She took a deep breath as she approached the rickety stairs leading up to the front porch. Even though it was still broad daylight, the trees near the house cast long, creeping shadows, making the hour feel much later—and the air feel somehow colder—than it really was.

  Frankie stood back and examined the doors with a critical eye. “It’s possible that they all open and lead into the house,” she told the other ghouls. “Then again, it’s just as possible that none of them do. Or maybe there’s one special door—”

  “And maybe all the other doors are cursed,” Cleo suggested. She shrugged as the other ghouls stared at her. “What? It’s how we’d handle that sort of thing back in the pyramids.”

  “Well, curse or no curse, that’s a risk we’ll just have to take,” Frankie replied. She approached the door with the hourglass on the front—and as Frankie drew closer, she noticed that it had a small glass window near the top, almost like a peephole!

  Feeling even more certain that she was on the right track, Frankie raised her fist and gave a loud, confident knock at the door. The sound echoed loudly across the porch as if she’d somehow managed to knock on every other door at the same time. Apprehensive, Frankie took a step back.

  Then something even stranger happened.

  The door opened—not outward, not inward, but upward!

  “Hey! Check it out!” Frankie exclaimed. “Maybe I did pick the right door!”

  “And on your first try,” Clawdeen said admiringly. “Way to go, ghoul!”

  “Twyla?” Frankie called out from the threshold.

  There was no response.

  “Twyla?” Frankie tried again.

  “This could take hours,” Cleo complained. “In a place this big, Twyla might not even realize that you knocked. Come on, follow me!”

  Cleo scooted past Frankie and strode through the doorway. A second later, Clawdeen and Frankie hurried after her.

  “Twyla! Ghoul! Where are you?” Cleo called out loudly. “It’s your lucky day! The Monster High Student Outreach Committee is here to—”

  Without warning, Cleo’s voice halted.

  “What?” Clawdeen asked in a whisper. “Is something—”

  Then she saw it too. And so did Frankie. All three ghouls froze in place.

  A pair of large, glowing eyes was staring at them from the darkest, most shadowy recess of the foyer.

  Clawdeen gulped. “Is that—” she began.

  “Twyla?” Frankie asked. “Is that you?”

  For a long moment, no one moved.

  Then the eyes blinked!

  “Ghouls,” Frankie began, “maybe we should—”

  A low, menacing growl filled the entryway.

  “RUN!” all three ghouls screamed!

  CHAPTER 4

  Whoa!” Draculaura cried as Frankie, Clawdeen, and Cleo suddenly materialized in the middle of the Libury. She put her Mummy Mocha on the table and hurried over to her ghoulfriends, with Lagoona following right behind her. “What happened? Tell us everything!”

  “You ghouls look like you could use a Mummy Mocha too,” Lagoona said as she hurried out to the Creepeteria. “Give me just a second to figure out the Mummy Mocha machine…”

  “Well, the Monster Mapalogue did it again,” Frankie began. “We were right outside Twyla’s house!”

  “And you’ll never believe where it is,” Cleo said dramatically.

  “Where? Where?” Draculaura asked eagerly. She could barely contain her excitement.

  “Right down Monster Hill!” Cleo announced, flinging her arm out as she pointed. “Ghouls, we could walk there in less than ten minutes!”

  “You mean Twyla is my neighbor?” Draculaura asked, her violet eyes wide with surprise. “All this time, my next-door neighbor was a Boogey-ghoul, and I never even knew?”

  “It sure seems that way,” Clawdeen told her. “I bet you’ve seen her house before. It’s the big, rambly, weird-looking one—you know, sideways doors and windows, about a hundred turrets and towers…”

  “Yes!” exclaimed Draculaura. “I just didn’t know that monsters lived there. Though come to think of it, maybe I should have!”

  All the ghouls laughed. It really was a house fit just for the Boogey Man!

  “Ghouls, this is incredible!” Draculaura announced excitedly, her eyes as wide as her smile. “Now we can rescue Twyla without any of the other challenges we’ve faced. Just think—no tropical cyclone coming at us, no raging mummy flinging curses at us. We’ll just walk down the Hill and knock on the door.”

  “Sounds easy enough,” Lagoona said, walking into the room with a tray of Mummy Mochas.

  “Almost too easy,” Frankie said. “I hate to say it, ghouls, but I think there’s going to be a catch.”

  “Like what?” asked Draculaura.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Frankie admitted. “I just have a funny feeling that this monster rescue isn’t going to be as easy as it looks.”

  “We should approach this like any other monster rescue,” Clawdeen said. “We need to start with research!”

  “That’s a fangtastic idea,” Draculaura said. “So, what do we know?”

  “Twyla is a Boogey-ghoul,” Cleo said, counting each fact on her fingers as she listed them. “She lives super close. Her house has an interesting architectural design.”

  “Well, I don’t know a lot about Boogey-ghouls,” Draculaura said. “But I know a lot about my neighborhood. This close to Normie Town, we won’t have to worry about wild animals or extreme weather or anything like that.”

  “So the environment shouldn’t be too risky,” Clawdeen said. “What else do we know?”

  “Not enough,” Frankie replied, the hint of a frown on her face. Suddenly, the bolts in her neck lit up.

  As Frankie started excitedly tapping on her phone, Draculaura leaned over to take a peek at the screen. “Hey—that doesn’t look like the Monster Web,” she noted.

  Frankie glanced up and grinned. “That’s because it’s not,” she replied. “I thought I’d start my research on the Normie Web.”

  “The Normie Web?” Cleo asked. “Why bother?”

  “Just a hunch,” Frankie said. “I was thinking about that house… it’s unusual, even for monsters. You just know that Normies must have noticed it too.”

  “And if No
rmies have noticed it…” Lagoona began.

  “They’ve probably got some opinions about it,” Clawdeen finished her thought.

  “Exactly!” Frankie replied. “Now all I have to do is type in a detailed description of the house…” Frankie’s fingers flew across the keyboard as she spoke. Then finally, her eyes lit up! “I think I found it! Twyla’s house is called Boogey Mansion.”

  “Seems a bit obvious,” Cleo added.

  “Listen to this.” Frankie started to read aloud from a Normie website. “Boogey Mansion is, perhaps, our town’s most spooky spot. According the legend, the Boogey Man moved in—and his ‘reign of terror’ began!”

  The ghouls couldn’t believe what they were hearing! They were sure the Normies were being scaredy-bats.

  Frankie continued in a dramatic voice. “Despite warnings to avoid the odd-looking house at all costs, every year some daring soul attempts to get to the bottom of all the scary stories… and only succeeds in adding to the list.” Then Frankie burst out laughing again as she read down the page. “Listen to all these ‘confirmed hauntings’ at the Boogey Mansion,” she continued. “Flickering lights. Black cats. Wind whistling through the trees. Doors and windows that open and close by themselves.”

  The other ghouls cracked up too.

  “Oooh… spoooooooky!” Clawdeen said in a funny voice, which made everyone laugh even harder.

  “Where was this article posted?” Draculaura asked Frankie after she finally caught her breath.

  Frankie glanced up from her phone. “It’s a Normie blog about spooky things in town,” she replied. “Any Normie who experiences something scary can send it in, and the blogger will investigate it.”

  “Investigate?” Draculaura replied. She wasn’t laughing anymore. “Are you telling me that Normies are, like, spying on us? And then writing about their monster encounters for every other Normie to read?”

  “I don’t know,” Frankie said. “Maybe.”

  “That’s—that’s horrible,” Draculaura said.

  “What’s horrible?” asked a new voice.

  The ghouls turned around to see Draculaura’s father, Dracula, entering the Creepeteria.