Contents
Cover
Title Page
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
Photo Section
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
THE OLD COUNTRY: THIRTEEN YEARS AGO
At the top of a jagged cliff over the churning sea, preparations were under way for a wedding.
An Addams wedding.
There were no white flowers. There was no frothy lace. The town church stood empty, and the townsfolk shivered and scowled as they watched the bride stride up the street toward the cliff. Heat lightning flickered in the darkening sky. A few bats fluttered behind the bride as she and her black-clad bridesmaids made their way up to the cliff.
“They don’t belong here!” one townsperson hissed to another.
“They’re frightening the children!” she replied.
“Who do they think they are?” another villager spat.
They watched as the bride and her bridesmaids disappeared into the gloomy night, vanishing into the scrub that lined the path up to the top of the cliff.
The villagers glared after them.
“They’ve got to go,” said one, and the rest nodded.
Morticia Frump kept climbing up the hill toward the cliff that overlooked the sea. She ignored how the townsfolk whispered and pointed. She didn’t care what they thought. They were boring, normal people with small minds and prejudiced hearts.
No, today Morticia had better things to think about. She was ready to get married. Not only was she marrying the man of her dreams, but the wedding would bring together two great families. The Frumps and the Addamses were the strangest folks around, and they’d always had so much in common. Morticia smiled at the thought that her wedding would unite everyone.
She’d been preparing all morning. Her knee-high boots were bolted on. Her corset was tightened to the “strangle” setting. Her nails had been dipped in molten lead for that perfect dull gray hue. And her dress looked like it had been stolen from someone’s grave . . . which it very well might have been.
Morticia looked terrifying. Which was exactly how she wanted to look.
She reached the top of the hill, then paused. Here, the hill evened out into a narrow strip of level land. You could walk about ten paces before you hit the crumbling edge of the cliff. One step past that edge, and you’d plummet five hundred feet down into a churning ocean. The footing was uncertain in the dark of night. The odds that someone might wander off the edge of the cliff by accident were pretty high. It was the perfect place for a wedding.
Morticia smiled. And the collected Addams and Frump clans, gathered there at that cliff to celebrate her wedding, smiled back. There were a large number of people assembled on the narrow cliff’s edge. Every single one of them was strange. Some of them were creepy. Others were kooky. One or two were altogether ooky.
And they were all of them just thrilled to be there.
Awaiting Morticia was Gomez, the groom. He sweated nervously in his funeral suit (nothing but the best for a wedding, after all). The band—a ragtag collection of organ grinders and sackbut players—began a dirge-like rendition of “Here Comes the Bride,” and Gomez snapped to attention.
Morticia was coming.
Gomez wasn’t sure if he’d ever been this terrified in his life. His stomach churned. His vision swam. His knees trembled and his ears rang. It was the worst he’d ever felt. He wished he could feel like this forever.
Pat, pat. Gomez patted his pockets anxiously, checking to make sure he had the ring. Pat, pat.
Pat, pat.
Pat.
Patpatpatpatpat—where was the ring?! Gomez looked around frantically. Had he dropped it? Just then, a disembodied hand scampered up. It was running on its fingers like a rat scrambling along on four legs. The hand leapt into the air and snapped its fingers sharply. Gomez looked up just in time. The hand—Thing—tossed the lost ring at him, and Gomez snatched it out of the air with a flourish.
“Thanks, Thing!” he murmured.
And at that moment, Morticia appeared. All the thoughts fell out of the bottom of Gomez’s brain. He just stared.
Morticia.
She looked—she looked like seventy snakes stuffed into an evening gown. She looked like someone who wouldn’t think twice before running several thousand volts of direct current through your head. She looked like a hedge witch at a nightclub. She looked like bad news. She looked like the last thing you see when you die.
She looked unspeakably beautiful—scratch that; she looked unspeakable.
Morticia came to a stop next to Gomez. “Cara mia,” he murmured at her. She winked at him.
The priest stepped up, and Gomez tore his eyes away from Morticia. The wedding ceremony was beginning.
“Dearly be-loathed,” the priest said, raising his arms and addressing the entire crowd. “What an honor to witness the union of these two horrible young people . . . and these two perfectly awful families!”
The crowd let out a bloodcurdling (and heartwarming) cheer.
The priest turned to Morticia.
“Do you, Morticia Frump, take Gomez Addams to have and to hurl, in sickness and depravity, until you drop dead?”
Morticia nodded eagerly.
Meanwhile, as the wedding ceremony continued, the townspeople swarmed up the hill. They’d finally had enough of the Addamses and the Frumps. They were armed with torches and ready for mob action.
“This will teach them not to blindly conform,” one of them muttered as they hurried along the path up to the cliff.
The priest turned to Gomez.
“Do you, Gomez Addams—”
“Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!” Gomez interrupted him. He didn’t mean to be rude—he just couldn’t wait to get married! Morticia was the perfect woman. She was cold, cruel, and terrifying. Gomez clutched Morticia’s hand passionately. She clutched him back, her lead-tipped fingernails digging into his hand. He winced, and shivered happily.
More and more townspeople joined the mob. Soon the crowd streaming up the hill formed a torchlit parade. They waved pitchforks, shovels, torches; several people pushed a homemade catapult.
It would have been festive if it weren’t so murderous.
The priest smiled. “I now pronounce you—”
“Monsters!” A piercing scream tore through the night air.
The assembled Frumps and Addamses turned around—there, cresting the hill, was a ravening mob of small-minded townsfolk.
“Oh dear,” Morticia murmured, her eyes widening. “A ravening mob of small-minded townsfolk.”
Frumps and Addamses screamed and ran as the mob burst in waving torches and crude weapons. Several townsfolk were setting up the catapult and loading it with firebombs.
“Again?!” Gomez groaned.
Morticia sighed and shook her head. “Why do hordes of angry villagers follow us everywhere we go?” she said, dodging a shoe flung by an outraged farmwife. “Don’t they have better things to wave pitchforks at?”
A ball of flame rocketed toward them, launched by the catapult. Gomez swept Morticia out of its path. “Perhaps we should discuss it later,” he suggested. Around them, panicked family members scrambled and ran, slipping through the crowds of angry villagers and scattering into the night.
The villagers ran after them. Morticia and Gomez fled with Gomez’s mother and his brother Fester. Soon they were cornered.
“I’ll hold them off,” Grandma Ad
dams said, drawing her sword. She slashed it viciously through the air, and the villagers flinched back for a moment.
“Grab on to my hairy back!” Fester cried. He tore off his shirt, and Gomez and Morticia clung to his luxurious back hair as he scrambled to safety.
Morticia felt her heart breaking.
Her perfect wedding day, ruined. A memory that should have been cherished, tarnished. A family that had come together, now scattered to the ends of the earth. Morticia loved chaos and anguish, sure, but on her own terms. This . . . this was just mean.
Normal people were not to be trusted. It only ended in fire and tears.
Gomez wrapped a comforting arm around her. “We’re safe, my love,” he said gently. “That’s all that matters.”
Morticia wiped tears away, being careful to smear her mascara and eyeliner as she did it.
“You look like a zombie raccoon now,” Gomez observed admiringly.
“Oh, good,” Morticia said. She already felt a little better. “But where on earth will we go?” The Frumps had been driven out of nearly every community in Western Europe by now, and the Addamses had exhausted all of Eastern Europe. There had just been so many pitchfork-wielding mobs over the last few centuries. Morticia thought about it. Perhaps Zanzibar? Or maybe they could try their luck in Australia.
As if sensing her line of thought, Gomez said, “We will find a new homeland. Somewhere exotic. Somewhere magical. Somewhere that’s truly . . . us.”
“Oh,” Morticia breathed. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Gomez smiled back at her. “Yes, my dear. We both know where we must go.”
New Jersey did not disappoint.
It was barbaric, uncultured, crass, confusing, and dirty. And it smelled bad. Everywhere.
“Unhappy, darling?” Gomez asked, catching Morticia’s hand and kissing it as they tore along a country road in the dead of night. The trees were tall. The hills were rolling. The moon glinted through the dead marsh grass, where it was reflected in the fetid swamp water on either side of the road.
It smelled terrible. Morticia loved this state.
“Yes,” she breathed, “I’m terribly unhappy. It’s wonderful.”
But now that the honeymoon was over . . . Morticia sighed.
“Darling,” Gomez said, looking concerned. “Is that a wrinkle I see on your pallid brow? What’s wrong?”
Morticia clutched his hand. Thing yanked the wheel, and the limo tore around another curve. A dense fog had suddenly gathered, shrouding the road in dark mist. It was impossible to see farther than ten feet down the road. New Jersey! What a charming place.
“We can’t run forever, my love,” Morticia replied. “I want a home again. I want our children to grow up in peace. I want to pick out cemetery plots.”
Whump!
The car gave a huge lurch as it hit something heavy, then screeched to a stop at the side of the road.
Morticia, Gomez, and Thing hurried out of the car. About fifty feet back, a huge body was lying in the center of the road. It was an enormous man wearing a hospital gown and a straitjacket. He was out cold.
Gomez turned him over. The back of the straitjacket had the words State Hospital for the Criminally Insane stenciled on it.
Morticia looked up, and—how had she missed it before? The fog had parted for a moment. Looming up from the top of a hill beyond a wrought iron gate was a gothic monstrosity. A hulking, ornate wreck of a building set just far back enough from the road to feel really unfriendly. It had a crooked steeple and a million broken windows. Sudden lightning lit up the sky, and the house seemed to bend and warp in the flickering light.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Morticia said. “A decent place to sleep for the night.”
A faded sign hanging from the gate banged in the wind. State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, it read. The building had clearly been lying empty for a long time, with the apparent exception of the hulking wreck of a man they’d struck with their car.
Said wreck was now peeling himself off the pavement and lumbering toward Morticia and Gomez. His arms were held stiffly out in front of him, and he gave a cavernous howl.
“NNNNYYYAAAAAGH,” the hulk roared. He was close enough to crush Morticia and Gomez in one motion.
Gomez smiled cheerfully and stuffed their bags into his hands.
“Thank you, old boy,” he said. “Lead the way!”
The monster looked down at the bags, surprised. Then he shrugged and led Morticia and Gomez through the gate and toward the abandoned insane asylum.
Morticia smiled happily. How convenient that they had found a house that already had a butler! She watched him lurch up the path. Lurch . . . what a perfect name. Lurch the butler.
Morticia took Gomez’s arm, and they followed Lurch to the front door of the house. Gomez gallantly swept the Police Line: Do Not Cross tape away from the front door, and they stepped in.
Stale, cold air and absolute silence greeted them. Then a faint sound came through the blackness: the scratching of rats scampering in the walls.
Morticia’s eyes adjusted to the dark. She squinted down the front hall. There was a chalk outline of a body near the staircase.
“It’s creepy,” Gomez said thoughtfully. “Kooky.”
Morticia looked up and caught the eye of a taxidermic moose head. It winked at her.
“Mysterious,” she agreed. “Spooky.”
Plop! Plop! Blood dripped from the ceiling.
Gomez brushed a spider the size of a pigeon off his shoulder. “It’s altogether . . . what’s the word?” he murmured, looking thoughtful.
Lurch lumbered up to the pipe organ at the top of the grand staircase. Thing scurried over and hopped up onto the keyboard. Together, the two of them plunked out the few notes of a decidedly twisted little tune.
“GETTTTTTTTT OUTTTTTTT,” a voice like a sinking ship moaned, interrupting the music. It seemed to come from every hall, from every nook and every cranny. The whole house trembled.
Morticia and Gomez jumped.
“It’s hideous!” Morticia exclaimed.
“It’s horrible!” Gomez agreed.
“It’s home,” they sighed in unison. Gomez dipped Morticia into a dramatic kiss in the doorway of their dream house, and Lurch took up the odd little tune again, with Thing snapping in cheerful rhythm.
Chapter 1
THIRTEEN YEARS LATER . . .
A thick fog still wrapped itself around the hill. Anyone passing by the wrought iron gate would be surprised to discover that a hulking house lurked beyond the blanket of mist. But nobody ever stopped to investigate . . . and nobody had even noticed that the old asylum sign had been replaced with a new sign:
The Addams Family
The sun was rising, but no light reached the house at the top of the hill. The clouds wrapped around it far too snugly. And to make matters worse—or better, if you were an Addams—a torrential downpour was falling on this particular morning.
Morticia threw open the window and smiled as a sheet of freezing rain hit her square in the face.
“What a lovely morning!” she exclaimed cheerfully. The window slammed itself shut, barely missing Morticia’s fingers. She smiled slyly.
“Nice try,” she murmured. The spirit of the house had been doing its best to wound, maim, or kill the Addamses since they’d moved in. Morticia found it extremely charming. She’d always wanted to live in a haunted house—you were never home alone with a poltergeist, after all.
“GET OUUUUT.” The hollow, echoing scream floated through the corridors of the house. Morticia rolled her eyes affectionately.
“Oh, you’re always so grumpy before your morning coffee,” she said. She picked up the coffee pot she’d brought upstairs from the kitchen for just this purpose and walked into the bathroom.
Plsh—Morticia carefully poured the steaming black coffee into the toilet and flushed it.
“Better?” she asked.
“AAAAAAAAAAH,” sighed the house. Th
e floorboards and rafters creaked softly as the entire building settled down and began to vibrate very gently.
Morticia patted the doorframe affectionately.
The house had been fed. Now it was time for the children. She pressed a button on a call box mounted on the wall.
“Lurch,” Morticia murmured into the speaker, “it’s time for breakfast.”
Several stories down, in the sub-sub-basement of the former asylum, Lurch sat on his bed, reading. It had been thirteen years since the Addamses had hit him with their car on that fateful night, and he had been their loyal butler ever since. It beat wandering around an abandoned mental asylum, after all. Lurch gently placed the book next to his other books and groaned as he sat up. With a great creaking and popping of joints, the hulking zombie of a man stood up and shuffled out of the padded cell he called a bedroom, his head scraping along the mattress-covered ceiling.
Morticia’s next stop was the office, to find Thing. The disembodied hand jumped when she opened the door.
“Thing!” Morticia said. “Have Ichabod wake the children.”
She swept down the hallway, and Thing scuttled along ahead of her, swinging open a window and nimbly climbing out of it. Meanwhile, Morticia continued her morning rounds. She caught up with Lurch as he emerged from the kitchen with the breakfast tray. Once the meal was on the table, Morticia sent Lurch off on another task.
“It’s time to begin dusting up for the party,” she said. There wasn’t that much time left before the big event, and Morticia wanted everything to look perfect. Lurch nodded and obediently headed down the hall to fetch the vacuum cleaner. He looked at the wall critically as he went—a single droplet of blood was trickling down the wallpaper. Lurch shook his head and sighed. Poltergeists. He banged the wall a couple of times with his fist, and the entire surface began oozing blood.
There, that was better.
The old, broken vacuum cleaner was stored in the closet off the pantry. When Lurch turned it on, it began spewing dust all over everything. Lurch nodded in satisfaction. He carefully pointed it at the couch, then at the candelabra, then finally at the picture frames on the wall. Soon the room was coated in a thick blanket of stale-smelling dust. It looked perfect. Lurch almost smiled, his cheeks creaking stiffly, before his face went back to its usual wooden blankness. He continued dusting.
The Junior Novel Page 1
