by Laura Dower
Damon and Jesse raced through the doors a moment after that.
I tried to act cool, like I knew exactly what was going on, even though I didn’t have a clue.
Everyone examined the amulet for me. We passed it around. We all tried it on. It didn’t change one bit.
“Why would the amulet start to glow?” Jesse asked aloud.
I thought about the movie and all the things we’d seen so far.
“Maybe it’s trying to tell us something,” I suggested.
“That’s it!” Jesse said. “The glow is a signal. Remember when we fought against Mega Mantis? All those little swarms of bugs would appear before the B-Monster came on the scene?”
We all nodded.
“B-Force!” Lindsey cried. “Of course! Sometimes there is a powerful energy before the B-Monster shows up. It shows itself in different ways. It could be lots of flying insects . . .”
“Or a glowing amulet!” I cried. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
“Wow,” I said. “San San told me that she got the eyeball amulet when she was making The Beast with 1000 Eyes. It was just a prop she took from the set. After that, it became her lucky charm. But I don’t think she knew that it had the power to glow.”
The school bell rang loudly. A crew of kids pushed and shoved their way into the stairwell, jostling us as they traveled from their last class. School was over.
“Let’s meet in front after school and figure this out,” I suggested. “We can stop over at Auntie San San’s. Maybe she can help us figure out what makes the amulet glow.”
After school, we walked toward Riddle Towers. Lindsey noticed that the amulet’s light kept getting brighter and brighter. That wasn’t the only change.
“H-O-T!” I cried.
“What’s the problem?” Jesse asked.
“How hot can it be?” Damon snapped.
I handed it to Damon but he could hardly handle it, either. It was like we were playing a game of hot potato.
“You hold it!”
“No, you hold it!”
Lindsey finally grabbed the amulet and shoved it inside her camera case.
“I’ll hold it,” she declared. “Until we get to San San’s.”
The Monster Squad turned off the main road and headed for a shortcut to the Riddle Towers parking lot. We passed by a fountain and a public garden and then the carousel in the park and we were about to cross over a little stream when Lindsey grabbed my shoulder.
“Stella! Did you see that?” she whispered.
I looked around. “See what?”
“Something in the bushes,” she said. “Do you think ...”
I looked over at a blooming bush. It shook a little bit. Were we being followed? The shaking bush started to shake a little bit more and more and then—
“RIT RACK!” something growled at us.
Lindsey and I froze in our tracks.
“Did you hear that?” I asked, but she couldn’t say a word. Up ahead, the boys whirled around, too.
“RIVE RIT RACK!” the thing cried out again.
“What is that?” Jesse yelled.
“What is it saying?” Lindsey asked. She grabbed for her camera again, but when she unzipped the case, it flew open and the amulet landed on the sidewalk.
Now it was glowing so brightly, it looked like it had batteries inside.
“RIVE RIT RACK!” The noise came again.
The boys rushed back to us. “Let’s go!” Jesse shrieked. “Fast!”
“RIVE RIT RACK!”
“What does it mean? What is it saying?” asked Lindsey.
“I don’t know—but it’s got to be the B-Force again!” I called out as I ran. “It’s got to be the Eyeball Beast. He must be right here! The amulet glows brighter as it gets closer to us!”
The squad might not have been convinced yet that it was the Eyeball Beast following us. But I was. It had to be. Between the glowing amulet and my dream, it just fit together.
“What are we supposed to do now?” Damon asked.
“Move it!” I shouted. “Riddle Towers is right over there!”
CHAPTER 9
“RIVE RIT RACK!”
San San’s apartment building lobby was empty when we ran inside.
The doorman was not at his post.
I pressed the UP button and waited nervously. I figured that, at any moment, the Eyeball Beast would come bursting through those beautiful glass doors! I sent San San a text message: We’re on our way up. Open the door!
When the elevator opened on the penthouse floor, San San was waiting. “Quick! Inside! All of you!” She led us inside and triple-quadruple-locked the door behind her.
“Whoa! Look at this place!” Lindsey cried when she saw all the art on the walls and photographs on the tables. Lindsey snapped off the lens cap on her camera and took a few photos. Even in the midst of a B-Monster crisis, that girl had her camera ready.
“What’s going on?” San San asked.
“It’s amazing. You guys really do look exactly alike,” Lindsey said as she snapped a photo of San San and me.
I guess movie star looks just run in my family.
“Why are you all out of breath?” San San asked.
“Something large and scary sounding was chasing us down Main Street,” Damon said.
“What?! What did it look like?” she asked.
“We never got to see it,” Lindsey answered.
I pulled the amulet out of my jeans pocket. It wasn’t glowing anymore.
I held it up and asked my aunt, “Where did you get this . . . exactly?”
“I told you. It was a prop in the movie,” she explained. “I used it for a good luck charm.”
“How come you never told me that it glowed?” I asked.
“I never knew! It glows?” she asked.
“The amulet glows at certain times,” Jesse said. “And its temperature rises, too.”
“It gets hot? I’ve had that for years,” San San explained. “It never glowed or got hot for me . . .”
“Never?” I asked. “Ever?”
“Oh dear! I never should have taken it! Give it back to me now and I’ll make sure that it gets thrown away—”
“No,” I said, holding up the amulet. “We need this charm more now than ever! I think this amulet may be a way to help lead us directly to the Eyeball Beast!”
Jesse explained calmly. “On the way over here, we heard these crazy sounds coming out of a row of bushes,” he said. “At the same time, the amulet started to glow like crazy. It was as if the glowing stone and the sound from the bushes were connected.”
“Then the beast started to scream at us,” Damon said.
San San looked confused. “You heard the beast speak?”
She grabbed the scrapbook from The Beast with 1000 Eyesand flipped through the pages as if she were looking for clues.
“Oswald Leery never finished the film,” San San explained. “But there was a full script. I have it right here.”
She fingered through the script.
“Aha!” San San cried.
She read from a scene that had never been filmed. In the director’s notes, there was a line: As the monster runs through the streets, the loose eyeball should glow.
“So it was B-Force!” Jesse cried.
“Hey, I’d want my eyeball back, too, if it fell out,” Lindsey said.
Great Auntie San San sat on one of her sofas and placed her face into her hands. “I’m so sorry, kids. Did all this start when I gave you the amulet, Stella?”
I shook my head. “No. Someone must have screened the original reel of The Beast with 1000 Eyes,” I explained. “Was it you, Auntie San San?”
San San shook her head. “No, no, it wasn’t me Stella. I never had a copy of that movie.”
All of a sudden, my jeans pocket felt warm. The amulet inside began to burn hotter and hotter. I yanked it out. It was glowing even more brightly than before.
“Egads!” Great Auntie San San said.
“It really is alive!”
“The monster must be close,” Jesse said.
San San grabbed her chest and began to gasp for air. “It’s coming for me!” she said.
“Wait a minute!” Lindsey held up one of the silver-framed antique photos from the dining room shelf. It was a black-and-white picture of San San on the set of Rodiak. “Maybe it’s coming for you—and Stella. You look exactly alike.”
San San and I gave each other a quick once-over as if to make sure, one last time, that we looked alike. There was no debate. San San wrapped her arm around my shoulders. “I’m so sorry you had to get involved in all of this!”
“Don’t apologize, San San. It’s not your fault that the monster thinks I’m you.”
“So what now?” San San said. “You need some real help to fight this beast.”
“Wait. You can help,” Jesse said. “We still have to research ways to destroy the beast, right? Leery always tells us that the more we learn about a monster—”
“The more ways we can figure out how to destroy him,” I finished.
“How can I help you?” San San said. Her voice was shaking.
“The script! How was Leery planning to kill the beast before he stopped production on the movie?”
San San flipped back through the script. But the last pages were missing.
San San, her eyebrows knit, was very quiet for a moment. “Wait! I know what to do!” she cried. A thin grin crossed her face. “Leery was very superstitious and often spoke about tempting the evil eye. I bet he built the monster so that it could be vanquished in the same way as the evil eye.”
“Yes!” I said. “That’s a great lead. We should try and find out everything we know about the evil eye.” I raised my arms up with the battle cry, “To the library!”
“No!” San San cried. “We can’t go.”
“But San San, we have to finish this,” I said.
“We can’t go,” San San explained, “because it’s too late. The library is closed right now! But it opens up first thing in the morning.”
“Tomorrow is Saturday. We can meet there when it opens.”
Damon made a face. “Yo, I like to sleep in on the weekend.”
“Look, Damon! I’ve got the biggest karate meet of my life tomorrow, but I’m still going to help Monster Squad!”
“Aye, eye!” Lindsey quipped. She and her bad puns.
“Meet me at nine o’clock in front of the library,” San San said as we headed out to the elevator.
“Double ninja power!” I shouted, just as the doors shut.
CHAPTER 10
BREATHLESS
By 9:06 AM on Saturday morning, the Monster Squad was on the clock. Even Damon “I-Don’t-Wake-Up-Until-Noon” Molloy arrived on time.
We had to sort out all the Eyeball Beast mess smartly and quickly. How hard would it be to squash a thousand or so eyeballs?
We swept past Tricks, the three-legged dog, on the library lawn and hustled up the wide, stone steps to the library entrance. San San was there already, huffing and puffing from the climb. It had been a long time since she left her apartment, let alone had to climb a flight of stairs.
“I forgot how beautiful this library is,” San San said wistfully as we pushed through the enormous library doors. “And high up! Whew! What a workout!”
San San pointed to the stone surrounding the door. There were gargoyles and some symbols cut into the stone as well as some faces.
“Look there!” San San said.
We all looked up and spied a row of eyes over the door.
“Remember that, wherever you go, someone is always watching you,” San San reminded us.
I dreaded the thought of what could have been watching us at that moment.
Inside, the library was dead quiet. The floors were marble and stone, so every footfall, every breath, every single word we spoke amplified like a loudspeaker. Sound bounced around in the entryway like a wonder ball.
Ms. Shenanigans appeared from a side door. She looked surprised.
“My stars! You kids must have gotten up with the roosters! What have I done to deserve a library visit this fine morning?”
Damon cleared his throat. “We need to do a little . . . um, research,” he said.
“Research?” Ms. Shenanigans crossed her arms. “What kind of research?”
“We need to learn stuff about . . . well . . .” Lindsey stammered.
San San stepped up to Ms. Shenanigans and placed her hand on the librarian’s arm. “My dear, we have a situation. We could use the help of an expert . . . and you were the first person we thought to ask.”
Ms. Shenanigans smiled. “Oh, well, if you put it that way . . . Where do you need to do the research? The periodicals room? The rare bookstall? How about the—”
“Stacks!” I blurted. I was eager to get going, we were racing against the clock.
“What’s your topic?” Ms. Shenanigans asked.
“Superstitions,” I said, as if it were the most normal thing of all.
“Hmmm,” Ms. Shenanigans scrunched up her nose. “We’ve got loads of material!”
San San spoke up. “Eyeball superstitions in particular. You know, evil eyes, that sort of thing . . .”
“Well, that’s a tall order,” Ms. Shenanigans said. “But I love a challenge!”
Ms. Shenanigans led us to a cold staircase that went down to the lower level of the library. We followed nervously behind in the dark. Then she clicked switches on the wall and the darkness evaporated. Fluorescent light tubes over our heads began to hum. The light burned gray-white. We stepped into a wide, open space packed with books. All those old books smelled musty, like no fresh air had gotten in here for years.
“This place is like a museum!” Jesse said.
I headed for the computers and punched in the words eye, sight, and symbol. A large book cover image popped up on-screen. It looked like hieroglyphics. There was a picture of an Egyptian holding a scepter. I think he was a pharaoh. In the center of his head was an eye. The title of the book was Horus, Horses, and Hijinx: Ancient Symbols, Ancient Curses. It said there was one copy in the Riddle Library stacks.
I called out to Lindsey who ran over to see the book with me.
“Ooooooh! Cool!” Lindsey said. “I know Horus. He is a cool dude with a giant eye on his hand. That book should be in the nonfiction section.”
I clicked on the cover again to locate the book’s call number. Then Lindsey raced off in search of it.
I glanced at the digital clock on the computer screen: 10:13 AM.
Time was really flying by. I wondered when Ms. Shenanigans would come back.
Kkkkkkkkkrack.
I shot a look at the stairs. “Hello?” I cried. “Ms. Shenanigans?”
No one responded. I turned back to the books.
Damon ran over with another book covered in green leather. It was coated in a fine layer of dust. He blew some off and cracked the book open. Lindsey and Jesse looked over our shoulders.
Ancient Greeks were very superstitious. They believed a person could cause harm to another person simply by looking at them.
“Great,” Jesse said. “So if a stare from a regular person with two eyes can cause harm . . . what about one thousand eyes?”
“Keep reading, Stella,” Damon said. “What else does it say?”
Ancient cultures believed something as simple as a glance from an eye could set a curse on people. And once cursed by an eye or eyes, a person can only break such a spell by doing a few things.
Throw dirty water at the person who has been cursed.
Lick the eyes of the child or adult who has been cursed.
“Aw, those are just gross,” Damon mumbled. “Dirty water? Gack! And I’m not licking one thousand eyeballs! Ptttuey!”
“Keep reading!” I said, pointing to another passage, “It says here you can crack a whole egg on a person’s head if you want to take away the curse of the evil eye—”
“Okay, so th
at means we need to come up with a thousand eggs, right?” Lindsey said. “Every one of the curses needs to be multiplied by a thousand in order to work.”
All at once, San San appeared from behind one of the stacks, holding up an entirely different book. This one was oversized with a picture of Horus on the front.
“Kids, it says in thisbook,” San San continued, “that a person can defeat the power of an evil eye by collecting spit. That spit can then be thrown down onto a cursed person . . .”
“What? Like a SPIT SHOWER?” Damon cried. “Now that’s something I can really get into!”
“No wonder Leery couldn’t figure out how to end the movie,” Jesse said. “There are too many different ways to fight the evil eye!”
“Why isn’t Ms. Shenanigans back yet?” Lindsey wondered aloud. “She said she’d return in a few minutes. It’s been more like a half hour.”
I glanced up at an old wall clock: 11:10.
“Actually, it’s been an hour,” I said.
San San opened a thick encyclopedia of myths and read part of a Greek myth aloud to us.
The story was about a cool creature called Argus. Argus was a watchful giant with one hundred eyes; not unlike the Eyeball Beast that was coming after me and Great Auntie San San. Unfortunately, Argus wasn’t very lucky. A clever guy named Hermes killed him with a magic wand. The wand sealed off all of Argus’s eyes and cut off his head.
“Wow!” I cried. “So what we need is a magic wand like Hermes!”
I reached for the amulet in my pocket. It was warming up.
“Hey, Monster Squad,” I started to say.
Out of nowhere, the florescent lights that Ms. Shenanigans had turned on in the stacks all went off at the exact same time.
But there was still light to help us see down there.
The amulet was burning brightly.
“Damon? Stella? Lindsey? Jesse?” Great Auntie San San’s voice sounded panicked. “Where are you?”
Squooshy . . . squooshy . . . squissssssssh . . .
“OH NO!” I yelled. “Did you guys hear that? The beast is here!”
Squooshy . . . squooshy . . . squissssssssh . . .
I could barely see my hand in front of my face, let alone another person in the stacks. But I could hear clearly. The sound was way too familiar.
