WHOOMPH!
A wall of ethereal blue fire raced up around him. Mama Vee stepped back with a contented look, ready to watch the big finale. But the Grand Guignol simply yawned and stepped out of the ghostly flames. Mama Vee’s smile sank.
“You really thought a Ring of Angel Fire would work again?”
Mama Vee stared, stunned. Yes. She did think that would work again. And now I watched as her confidence melted away, vanishing along with the ring of spectral Angel Fire. The powerful warrior who once stood before me began to back away.
“But . . . That . . . is y-your only weakness,” she stuttered.
“Was my only weakness, darling,” he said, rubbing his fingers together. “But for the past twenty years, I’ve been sprinkling a bit of it into my tea every evening. Slowly building up a tolerance. Now it just . . . makes me gassy.” His tail twitched as he passed wind.
He sniffed the air. “Ah, like roses.” He laughed at his little joke and then screamed at the top of his lungs, “DESTROY THE BABYSITTERS!”
42
I’d like to say we stayed and fought the good fight and won. But we didn’t. All of us, even Liz (who seemed a bit out of sorts after being possessed by the snot monster), decided our best—and only—option could be summed up with one single word: “RUN.”
With the nightmares stampeding toward us, Wugnot scrambled toward the hole in the door, hoisting kid after kid up and out with lightning speed, like he was trying to win a beanbag toss.
Curtis flung a purple koala stuffed with explosives into the monsters. “Frag out!”
An explosion rocked the entire palace. Nightmares yowled and scattered. The shaking crystal chandelier ripped from the ceiling. It smashed down, sending a cascade of glass and fire between us and the growling creatures.
Mama Vee hoisted us up, and we climbed out of the break in the door, slamming down on the sandy ground on the other side. I picked Jacob up and gave him a piggyback ride. The sitters each took a kid, and we ran down the cave toward the distant sound of the ocean.
Moonlight poured through a crack at the end of the rocky tunnel. I squeezed Jacob out and then pulled myself through, scraping my face against the barnacles and starfish. We spilled onto the shoreline of rough pebbles and gray sand at the base of a sea cliff.
Running across the rocks and sand was like running in a terrible dream. Up the winding path, through the brittle tall grass, we made it to the black van. The ground shuddered. Down below, the entire rock wall exploded outward as the Grand Guignol flew from his palace, perched on his flying carriage, whipping his horses. The army of nightmares clamored over the rock, sniffing the air, hunting for us.
Wugnot started the engine.
“Go, go, go!” cried Curtis, watching the rising tide of monsters.
“Not until everyone’s got on their seat belts,” he growled.
“Just drive!” Berna groaned as we buckled up.
The hobgoblin nodded, satisfied, and smashed the gas. The tires shrieked, spewing smoke as the van rocketed off down the road. I looked behind us to see vampires, spiders, and strange unearthly things hunting us. Wugnot pulled the wheel just in time to avoid driving down the gullet of a massive, albino alligator.
The children closed their eyes and balled themselves up, screaming, crying. But Jacob stared out of the window in horror.
“My nightmares,” he said. “They’re everywhere.”
I squeezed his hand and tried to think of something positive to say.
WHAM! Small green things climbed up the back of the van, pounding on the back doors.
“What are those things?!” spat Cassie, pointing to the window.
What looked like stiff green elves with large bushy hair tore at the cage around the van window.
Jacob’s jaw dropped.
“It’s broccoli,” he said with deep dread.
Living pieces of murderous broccoli were scaling the windshield and climbed in through the windows. Wow. Jacob really was afraid of everything. Wugnot turned on the wipers, sweeping off killer veggies. Stalking stalks scrambled under the cages around the windows. They had terrible, cruel eyes and leafy arms and legs. They pulled the children’s hair and bit their fingers.
Cassie swung her machetes, chopping the green bushel-heads to pieces.
“Watch it!” cried Berna, ducking from Cassie’s singing, clanging blades. “You got broccoli on my—”
One veggie climbed onto my shoulder, and I screamed. It squealed back at me. Liz snatched it from my shoulder and bit its head off as it let out a high-pitched cry. She swallowed the top half and threw the bottom half out of the window. Everyone stared at her for an awestruck moment.
“What? Broccoli’s good for you,” she said.
Wugnot slammed the brakes. I shot abruptly forward, jerked to a stop by my seat belt. The smell of burning tires filled the cabin.
Up ahead, the nightmares blocked the road. Behind us, the Grand Guignol’s phantom carriage scraped against the asphalt. We were blocked in. I held my breath, watching the nightmares and the Grand Guignol slowly approach us. It was quiet and past midnight, so no one was on the street, which was lined with quaint shops and an antique movie theater playing a midnight showing of the classic 80s horror film The Gyre. The neon lights of the theater beamed dark red. I felt like a gunslinger in the Wild West facing off against banditos.
Liz had the same distant, faraway look in her eye she got when she was thinking about her brother. The fire inside of her seemed to dwindle.
“Total soup sandwich,” whispered Curtis.
Berna swallowed and coughed. I slapped her on the back, and she made a huge gulp. “Swallowed my gum,” she said mournfully.
“What do we do, Vee?” I asked.
Mama Vee looked back at the demon and his horses, the nightmares, and she nodded to herself.
“We fight.”
“Are you crazhy? We’re outnumbered!” dribbled Cassie. “We should drive through them!”
“And then what?” Berna asked. Cassie didn’t have an answer for that.
I gripped my staff and looked to Mama Vee. I had been afraid of the Boogeyman since I was four years old. I had been afraid my whole life. And I was tired of being afraid.
“The guide says the Grand Guignol feeds on fear, right?” I said. “And that’s what we’ve been giving him. What if we feed him something else?”
“Like poison?” Curtis asked. He fumbled in his bag. “I’ve got some in here somewhere. . . .”
“No,” I said. I looked at Jacob, who was shivering, and then to Liz, who had a haunted expression on her face. I raised the heavy branch in my hand. “Something a lot stronger.”
I locked eyes with Liz. I needed her to gather courage if this was going to work. The babysitters held their bizarre weapons. Liz nodded knowingly.
“Okay, then,” Vee said. “Kids, you stay in the van.”
The four little kids were very happy to hear they did not have to go outside. Out there, it was certain doom.
“Jacob, you’re in charge,” said Vee. “Look after the others.”
Jacob nodded quickly, and the four children clustered around him, who looked a little overwhelmed with his new responsibility. Cassie, Berna, Wugnot, Vee, Liz, and I sprang out of the van and onto the street.
“Semper fi, sitters!” Curtis shouted, leaping from the van.
We stood together, facing the approaching circle of nightmares. The Grand Guignol beat his hooves on the ground three times, and the monster army began slowly walking in sync, stomping their feet together like the drums of death.
Mama Vee clutched her harpoon, waiting for the right moment. Through clenched teeth, she hissed to us, “Babysitters: attack!”
What Was Happening While I Was Battling Nightmares
The dark movie theater was packed.
Victor sat with his buddies, the soccer guys. They were throwing popcorn and shouting with the audience as the blobby monster on-screen swelled from the sea and swallowed its
latest victim, a self-centered lifeguard named Chuck. The oily, chunky ooze peeled away from Chuck, leaving only a meaty skeleton. The audience screamed, “Yes! Awesome!”
Victor sighed.
He was the only one who had no idea what was going on in the movie or why people seemed to love it so much. Growing up in a little town in Guatemala, he missed out on a lot of things his American friends took for granted, and a dumb horror film about a floating, swimming, giant mutated blob of pollution, plastic, and trash called “the Gyre” that somehow came to life and started eating good-looking kids in bikinis and Speedos with really cheesy eighties, teased-out hair-dos on a beach in Malibu was definitely one of them.
Oh, and it was also a musical.
Looking around, Victor saw that everyone in the theater crowd was dressed up to look like a character from the film: zombie lifeguards, people wearing melted plastic bottles on their heads, Lifeguard Chucks, shy but gorgeous Jackie with glasses, surfer studs, the Big Undead Kahuna himself, and countless spring break victims.
People were wildly tossing beach balls back and forth in the crowd. Victor was the only one not dressed up. He was wearing a sweater and felt really out of place in the sea of sunny reverie. He thought they were going to see a movie. Not a so-bad-that-it-was-good movie.
As the ninth victim was pulled off his surfboard and consumed by the floating mass, Victor checked his phone.
Kelly had not texted him back.
“She’s negging you, bro,” Kent, the preppy soccer kid with white zinc on his nose and yellow sunglasses, said. “Told you not to text her too much. Girls don’t like that.”
Victor exhaled. All around him, people laughed and cheered as the surfer’s skin was sucked off his bones while his girlfriend stood on the shore and shrieked at the top of her lungs.
Kent elbowed Victor and pointed at Deanna and her friends in the front row. Deanna had changed outfits and was in full neon spring break costume, along with her friends. They were cheering and laughing and taking selfies of themselves cheering and laughing, so they could show the world how much they cheered and laughed at this totally rando movie.
“She’s the one you should be talking to,” whispered Kent.
Victim number ten, the surfer’s girlfriend, was being engulfed by the Gyre. Victor shook his head; the surfer’s girlfriend really should have run instead of standing there screaming.
Estúpido.
A beach ball sailed into Victor’s face, and he punched it away. Maybe candy would cheer him up. Yeah, candy. The only thing he had eaten all night. Whatever. He just wanted to leave. He squeezed past a crush of kids dressed in bright swim trunks.
“Don’t text her, dude!” called out the soccer guys.
Victor banged through the theater doors into the lobby, shutting out the happy howls of the crowd. It was nice andempty and quiet out here. Victor scanned the brightly lit candy selection of king-sized M&M’s, Twizzlers, Goobers, and Raisinets with disgust. He had eaten so much sugar the whole night he felt like he was going to be sick.
He didn’t want candy.
He didn’t want to watch a movie.
He just wanted to sit, be alone, and check his phone for the millionth time in ten minutes.
There was a scream and a snarl. Victor ignored it, thinking someone had turned up the volume on the movie. CLANG! BOOM! The sounds were coming from outside. Fighting and metal and odd, unholy shrieks.
Was a pack of wolves attacking a Dumpster or something?
Victor curiously walked toward the entrance and looked out of the round window in the door. His eyes widened as he stared in awestruck wonder.
43
An eerie wind blew around us. Swirls of dream dust twisted into waves, curling into formation. Figures grew from the mist. Where there was just air and nightmare dust, there were now claws, paws, and tails.
The nightmares were re-forming. Soon, we were facing the same savage villains we had just beaten moments ago. Rats, roaches, clowns, goblins wearing goat-skull masks . . .
I knew why the Boogeyman smiled. His army of nightmares was unstoppable.
We stared, panting, gasping for breath. My fingers were blistered from clinging to the staff. My forearms ached and trembled. I could hardly lift my knees, let alone fight these creatures again. It was like running a marathon, getting to the finish line, and being told you had to run back to the beginning.
“How do we stop these things?” Berna warily asked Vee.
Vee shook her head in disbelief. Her posture was bent and tired. She had never seen anything like this either. None of them had.
“We can’t get rid of them,” Cassie whispered.
We pressed ourselves against the van as the monsters crept forward. I looked through the window and saw Jacob’s frightened face peering out at his living, unbreakable nightmares.
His nightmares . . . These were his. . . . They belonged to him. . . .
I blinked with an idea.
“Cover me,” I said to the babysitters, rolling open the van door.
I hopped into the gypsy den, where the children were balled up together, like frightened pups in a city pound. I knelt beside Jacob, guiding his eyes away from the horrific things darkening the sky outside until he looked into my eyes.
“Jacob,” I said softly. “These are your nightmares. You’re the only one who can make them go away. And you have to make them go away, or they’re going to eat everyone, and we’re all going to die.”
“What?” he cried.
“Sorry. Let me try that again,” I said, trying to think of a better way to express myself.
I blocked his view of the monsters slogging toward the van, but I could see them out of the corner of my eye, approaching.
“I mean. Hey. Look what you can do. You can literally make your dreams come true. . . .”
Jacob shook his head and swallowed. “I don’t wanna.”
“But you can.”
“It’s weird,” he said quietly.
“Well, yeah. But it’s also pretty awesome. Sometimes . . . we might think something’s weird, but actually . . . that’s what makes us cool. And you—you’re cool.”
Jacob’s eyebrows raised.
“Jacob. You’re a miracle. You might not feel it, but you’re stronger and more powerful than anyone I’ve ever known.” I was trying not to cry when I said it, but I couldn’t help it; the words coming out of my mouth were more true than any I had ever spoken. “You can stop this, Jacob. They’re your nightmares.”
Jacob’s eyes welled up with tears.
“I believe in you, little loaf.”
He smiled thankfully up at me, tears spilling down his cheeks.
“Heads-up!”
CRASH! The jaws of the giant, albino alligator chomped down on the rear of the van, crushing it like a tin can. The windows shattered. The children screamed. We could see down the gator’s gullet. And it was not pretty.
“Everyone out!” I screamed, sliding open the door.
The babysitters scooped out the kids as the alligator shook the van like a rag doll. Mama Vee swung a mace, bashing the albino gator over the head until it burst into dust.
“Kelly?” I heard a voice call my name.
Through the monster horde, I saw Victor standing outside of the movie theater with a bewildered look on his face. I was about to wave hi to him when I thought: Is that the real Victor or is that a mind-trick Victor?
Before I could find out, I felt myself being yanked back and hurled across the street. My backpack scraped gravel.
The Grand Guignol and a circle of his monster minions loomed over me. Their slimy drool rained down and the smell of their musty feet made me gag. I swear, one of the Grand Guignol’s hooves had stepped in dog poo and it was still stuck to the bottom.
“We could’ve been best friends, Kelly,” snarled the Grand Guignol. “Best friends.”
His hoof shot down at my face. I rolled away.
CRACK! CRACK! The sidewalk split under his powerf
ul steps as I dodged them. I could hear the babysitters screaming my name, reaching out for me, but this was my fight.
“Kelly!” Victor shouted, running toward me.
It was the real Victor! Before I could tell him to stop, that I could handle this, a flash of brown fur sprang into his stomach. He was sent skidding along the sidewalk, crumbled up into a ball.
“Victor!” I cried out.
“Oops. Crushed your crush,” snarked the Boogeyman.
Liz rushed the Grand Guignol in a series of kicks and punches that would have made Bruce Lee jealous. The Boogeyman danced with her, fast as a fiddle. His tail grabbed her left arm and twisted, spinning her into him. There was a dull crack, and a sharp look of pain snapped across Liz’s face. She gasped and dropped to her knees, clutching her left arm. The Grand Guignol smiled wickedly down at her.
“Poor little Lizzie,” he said. “Still just a scared little girl.”
Liz was screaming through her clenched teeth, trying to bury her agony. Her left arm dangled unnaturally at her side. The Boogeyman’s tail shoved her to the ground.
Jacob and the other children were hiding behind Mama Vee, who was battling monsters with her mace. She was slowing down with each heavy stroke.
All around me, I heard the defeated cries of the babysitters at war with the monsters:
“No more teddy bombs!”
“I’m out of throwing stars!”
“We’re toasht!”
Nightmares closed around us. Everything darkened.
I clutched the Staff of Destiny. White-hot intensity surged within me. Blisters on my hands cried out in agony, but I ignored them, ignored the pain, ignored my own weakness. I listened to my breath, my heartbeat, and the quiet, still voice that sounded like Maya Angelou spoke to me from somewhere deep within my soul.
“Now, Kelly,” said the voice.
I rose to my feet.
My teeth bared. I was panting. My hair was a mess of sweaty red tangles. Electricity crackled along my skin. Every muscle inside of me wound up like an engine revving.
My focus locked on the Grand Guignol. He was all I could see and smell: every hair on his twitchy tail, every wrinkle in his pale face. It was like a bright spotlight shined on him.
A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting #1 Page 18
