by David Lubar
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For Matthew, Doris, Caroline,
and Shannon Tyburczy.
Thanks for all the good times,
cold drinks, and burned hot dogs.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
MR. HOOHAA!
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT
SPIN
THE TUNNEL OF TERROR
A NICE CLEAN PLACE
TIED UP
PREDATORS
THE CURSE OF THE CAMPFIRE WEENIES
CAT NAPPED
THE UNFORGIVING TREE
BOBBING FOR DUMMIES
EAT A BUG
THROWAWAYS
TOUCH THE BOTTOM
THE GENIE OF THE NECKLACE
ALEXANDER WATCHES A PLAY
MRS. BARUNKI
MURGOPANA
EAT YOUR VEGGIES
INQUIRE WITHIN
THREE
FAT FACE
THE SODA FOUNTAIN
SNIFFLES
SIDEWALK CHALK
DON’T EVER LET IT TOUCH THE GROUND
PICKING UP
HEAD OF THE CLASS
HALFWAY HOME
HOP TO IT
NOTHING LIKE A HAMMOCK
PUNCTURATION
THE CHIPPER
MUG SHOTS
FORGOTTEN MONSTERS
STARSCAPE BOOKS BY DAVID LUBAR
A WORD OR TWO ABOUT THESE STORIES
READER’S GUIDE
Copyright Page
MR. HOOHAA!
I can stare a werewolf in the face and laugh. I can step up to a vampire and shake his cold, undead hand without trembling. No problem. I’ve sat through every horror movie that’s ever come to our town and visited dozens of Halloween haunted houses. Monsters don’t even make me twitch. But clowns creep me out big-time.
That usually isn’t a problem. I mean, most days, you just aren’t going to run into a guy with a round red nose, a huge painted smile, and wild green hair unless you live in a circus town or something. But my little brother’s birthday was coming up, and Benji was determined to have a clown.
“That’s a waste of money,” I told my mom. “I can entertain the kids.” How hard could it be to keep a bunch of six-year-olds amused? I could just push my palm against my mouth and make fart sounds. That alone would keep them happy for at least fifteen minutes.
“It’s nice you want to help, Andrew,” my mom said. “But Benji has his heart set on a clown. And I found this ad in the paper.” She held up the local weekly. There was a small ad that just read: “Mr. HooHaa! The perfect clown for parties.”
“Looks kind of cheesy,” I said.
But Mom wouldn’t listen. She made the call and booked Mr. HooHaa! for Benji’s party.
“You don’t need me, then, right?” I asked after she’d hung up.
“Of course I’ll need you,” she said.
“But …”
“And Benji will want you there.”
So, two weeks later, I found myself filling bowls with potato chips, lining up plastic cups, and helping Mom string streamers and balloons in the living room.
About fifteen minutes after the brats—I mean guests—arrived, I glanced out the window just as a van pulled up to the curb. The van was white, with a big smile painted on the side. Above the smile was the name “Mr. HooHaa!”
“Everything’s set,” I said to Mom. “Can I go hang out with my friends now?”
“You can’t leave,” she said. “You’ll miss the clown.”
That’s my plan.
The doorbell rang.
“Would you get that?” she asked.
I tried to think of an excuse. The bell rang again.
One of the kids screamed as he spilled half a cup of purple juice on his shirt. Two other kids dumped their juice on him. Mom dashed over, then glanced back at me and said, “Get the door, please.” She turned to the kids and said, “The clown is here.”
As shouts of “Yay!” filled the air, I headed for the door. I really didn’t want to open it, but I guess I had no choice. It won’t be that bad, I told myself. I was wrong. He was standing on the porch. A clown. A creepy, spooky, shivery clown, who smelled like medicine and mildew. I couldn’t pick out any one part of him that, by itself, was scary, but the sight of him still made me shudder.
I opened the door wider and stepped aside, so I could stay as far away from him as possible. He walked in, pointed a squeeze horn at me, and honked it a couple times. Wonka-wonka.
“This way,” I said, heading for the living room.
He rushed past me, leaped into the room, and shouted, “Hey, boys and girls, it’s HooHaa! time!” Even his voice made me cringe.
I wasn’t alone. Half the kids started crying. One tried to crawl under the couch, and another curled into such a tight ball, I was afraid he’d disappear. The clown ignored them and started pulling this really long handkerchief out of his sleeve. Then he honked his horn and fell down. Mom ran around, soothing freaked-out tykes. Benji seemed okay, so I slunk from the room, shivering all the way down to my bones and back up to my clammy flesh.
This is so stupid, I told myself. It was ridiculous to be afraid of some guy with a painted face and big shoes. I stepped outside to get away from the laughs and cries.
“Grow up,” I muttered, hating myself for acting like one of Benji’s friends. I stared at the van. Even with the clown smile painted on its side, it wasn’t scary. I liked cars and trucks. I understood how they worked and how they were made. I wandered over and looked inside. The backseats had been removed. There was a table there, with a mirror on it. I guess he did his makeup in the van.
I looked back at the house. Then I looked in the van again and stared at the mirror. Maybe there was a way to get over my fear.
I remembered last year, when Benji had been scared by the vacuum cleaner. I could have told him to stop acting like a baby, but I knew that wouldn’t help. Instead, I’d unplugged the vacuum, opened it up, and showed him how it worked. Knowledge beats fear, every time.
I went back inside and waited. Mom had only hired Mr. HooHaa! for an hour. Right after he left and I’d heard the van door close, I slipped back outside. I snuck over to the window, hoping he’d take off his makeup before he drove away.
It was that simple. If I saw him go from clown to man, maybe that would get rid of my fear. I peeked inside. Yes. He was sitting at the table. I watched him reach up and pull off the rubber nose.
I let out a gasp as his real nose unrolled. It was thin and long, like a tiny flattened elephant’s trunk that dangled just past his chin. He stripped off his wig, revealing a brain covered by a transparent membrane webbed with tiny veins. Then he reached toward his mouth. As he peeled off the huge red lips, I realized they weren’t painted on. They were plastic. They’d concealed a gumless cluster of long brown teeth that jutted from his jaw like stalactites. He pulled off the gloves. His fingers seemed boneless, like bloated worms. As he leaned over to remove his shoes, I was thankful I couldn’t see what was really at the end of his legs.
I ducked down as he got up from his seat. A moment later, th
e van started and Mr. HooHaa! pulled away from the curb. As the van made a left turn at the end of the block, I saw the driver’s window roll down. A horn stuck out, clutched in those wormlike fingers. He squeezed a short double honk into the air, then drove out of sight.
I stood there for a long time, trying to convince myself I’d been mistaken or fooled in some way. I wanted to believe I hadn’t really seen the things I’d just witnessed. But it was all real. Beneath his makeup, this clown was far worse than anything I could have imagined.
I sighed and headed inside. As soon as I stepped through the doorway, Benji ran up to me and hugged my leg. “I don’t think I like clowns anymore,” he said. “They’re sort of scary.”
“You got that right.” I picked him up and carried him on my shoulders back to the party. “No more clowns.”
“But I’m a big boy,” he said. “Big boys don’t get scared.”
“Sure we do.” I lifted him off my shoulders and deposited him in the midst of his cake-stuffed, sugar-cranked friends. “We just learn to hide it.”
I was more afraid of clowns than ever. But I guess, in a way, that wasn’t such a bad thing. Until today, I had been afraid of them for no reason. Now, it was no longer a silly fear. I wonder whether that will make it any easier to hide.
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT
Dale flashed me an evil grin as he held up the jar. “I’ll give you a buck to eat it.”
“It’s probably spoiled,” I said. We were down in his basement, surrounded by stacks of boxes and piles of magazines. As far as I could see, his folks had never thrown anything out.
“Okay, then. Two bucks.” He put his hand on the lid of the jar.
“The whole thing?” I asked.
He pointed at the bottom of the label. “It’s only a couple ounces.”
I gave the offer serious thought as I looked at the shelves. There must have been hundreds of cans and jars. The stuff ranged from pickles, to soup, to nuts. And to what Dale had in his hand. Baby food. Since Dale was the youngest kid in his family and since he hadn’t been a baby for a long time, the food had to be at least ten or twelve years old.
“Five bucks,” Dale said. “That’s my last offer.”
“Deal.” Hey, five bucks is five bucks. I took the jar and untwisted the lid. It made that hissing, vacuum sound, which was a good sign. I stuck two fingers in the goop—the label said “strained peaches”—and scooped up a big glob.
It didn’t taste bad. In either sense of the word. I got the rest of the glop from the jar, licked my fingers, then held out my hand for my money. “Pay up.”
That’s when my legs wobbled. Uh-oh … .
I took a step back, staggered another step, lost my ability to stand, and plopped down on my butt. I looked up at Dale. Way up. He was huge.
Dale stared back down at me from far away. His expression was weird—like he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. At least, that’s what I planned to ask. But my lips and tongue turned it into, “Wuhhba wummm?”
“You’re a baby,” Dale said.
“And you’re a jerk.” That sentence didn’t come out any clearer than the other one. I tried to stand. And discovered I couldn’t make my body do what I wanted. I looked at my legs. They’d disappeared into my pants. I looked at my arms. I could barely see the tips of pudgy little fingers sticking out of my sleeves. My shirt was huge.
No. My shirt was fine.
I was a baby. Because I’d eaten baby food. I waited for Dale to get help. Instead, he turned to the shelves, said, “Cool,” and started searching through the cans and jars. “What else can we turn you into?”
“Stop fooling around!” As I screamed at Dale, I realized I didn’t have any teeth. That was such a shock, it was a moment before I realized something even worse. A feeling of warmth in the vicinity of my lap drove home the fact that I lacked control over my body functions. I hoped Dale wouldn’t notice. No such luck.
“Oh, that’s just gross,” he said. “I’ll get a mop. But you’re cleaning it up.”
Right. Like I could handle a mop. He walked past me. I heard him go upstairs. Desperately, I scanned the shelves for something that could make me a boy again. Boysenberry jelly? No, too much of a stretch. Kidney beans? Too risky. I wanted to be a kid, not a kidney.
Manwich!
That’s as close as I was going to get. It was on the second shelf. I rolled over, then grabbed the shelf and pulled myself to my feet. I could barely stand. I braced myself with my elbows and picked up the can.
It had a pull-top lid. I yanked at it, but there was no way I could budge it.
I heard Dale heading back.
I put the can on its side, grabbed the pull tab with both hands, and let myself fall. I landed hard on my back. The lid pulled free. Manwich plopped out of the can. I opened my mouth as it rained on my face. I swallowed. Yum. Even cold, it was pretty tasty.
“What’s going on?” Dale asked.
He stood there with a mop in his hand, looking up at me.
I had to admit, I enjoyed looking down at him.
“I had a snack while you were gone.” I pointed to the rest of the spilled can. “Looks like you’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do.”
Dale started to open his mouth, but I guess he realized he had to do whatever I told him. I could get used to being a man.
As he mopped the floor, I searched through a stack of boxes until I found clean clothes that fit me. Then I looked through the shelves some more. I figured that after he’d finished mopping and after he’d paid me my five dollars I was going to reward Dale with a snack. Something interesting. Cat food would work. Or more baby food. I wondered whether his folks had any goat cheese in the fridge upstairs?
SPIN
Jimmy was only five, but he could spin things. Balls, toys, dishes—if it could rotate at all, Jimmy would spin it. This drove his brother, Darrin, crazy. Jimmy didn’t care. Darrin could shout and stomp around all day. It didn’t matter. As long as there was something to spin, Jimmy hardly noticed anything else.
At the moment, he was sitting in the living room, spinning a book on his finger. It was a small book, but that was because Jimmy had small fingers.
“Stop it,” Darrin snarled.
Jimmy ignored him.
“Get out of here. I’m trying to watch TV,” Darrin said.
Jimmy spun the book in the other direction.
Darrin threw down the remote control. “Mom,” he called, “I’m going out.”
“Take your brother.”
“No!”
“Then you can stay home.”
“Oh, all right.” Darrin grabbed Jimmy’s arm, yanking hard enough so the book went flying.
Jimmy let himself get dragged along. He was happy. There were lots of things to spin outside.
Darrin stopped at his friend Ray’s house.
“Why you got him?” Ray asked, pointing at Jimmy.
“Mom made me. Come on. Let’s go to the playground.”
Ray came out, carrying a basketball. Jimmy reached for it. Ray leaned down and started to hand the ball to Jimmy, then snatched it back and laughed. “Sucker.”
Jimmy didn’t cry. He was pretty sure there’d be something to spin at the playground.
When they got there, Darrin and Ray shot baskets. Jimmy knew he couldn’t have the ball while they were playing. He looked around for something else and found an empty soda can. He spun it on the hard, black asphalt. It made a wonderful sound.
Darrin rushed over to him. “Don’t play with garbage!” He kicked the can, sending it flying across the basketball court. Then he turned to Ray. “Come on. Let’s go to the swings.”
Jimmy watched the two of them walk into the sandy area with the swings, slide, and climbing fort. Ray put the basketball down and got on a swing.
Jimmy walked over toward the ball. “Touch it and you’re dead,” Ray said.
Jimmy looked at his big brother. But Darrin didn’t help him. Jimmy w
andered around the edge of the play area, searching for something to spin. He found a paper plate. There was a thin string of pizza cheese sticking to it, but he didn’t care.
“For crying out loud!” Darrin screamed as Jimmy spun the plate. “Will you stop with the garbage?” He jumped off the swing, grabbed Jimmy, and dragged him across the sand.
Jimmy struggled to get free. “Give me a hand,” Darrin shouted.
Ray came over and grabbed Jimmy’s legs. The two of them carried Jimmy to the other side of the play area and plunked him on the highest platform of the climbing fort. “Stay there.”
As Darrin and Ray walked back toward the swings, Jimmy started to climb down.
Darrin spun back and screamed at him, “You stay right there! Don’t you dare move.”
Jimmy stayed. He looked for something to spin. There didn’t seem to be anything he could reach. And Darrin would get angry if he tried to climb down. Then he noticed some sand on the platform. Jimmy dropped one tiny grain onto his palm. It was too small to spin like a ball or a book, but there were other ways.
“Spin,” he whispered.
The grain spun in his palm. It tickled a little. Jimmy liked that. He made more sand spin.
All around, the sand spun. It didn’t spin in a whirl, like a tornado. Each grain spun by itself. The sand on the bottoms of Jimmy’s sneakers spun, making the rubber heat up and smoke. Jimmy didn’t mind. There wasn’t a whole lot of sand on his sneakers.
Down below, there was a lot of sand. Darrin and Ray, caught between the fort and the swings, froze as the sand etched away the soles of their sneakers. By the time they realized they needed to run, they couldn’t.
Jimmy kept spinning the sand. He heard some screams, but they didn’t last very long, and he didn’t pay any attention to them. He was used to getting screamed at.
When he was tired and ready to go home, he looked around for his brother. But there wasn’t any sign of Darrin or Ray. That was okay. Darrin was always running off without him. Jimmy could climb down by himself. And he knew how to get home. Maybe he’d even find something interesting to spin on the way.
