Shivers put one bunny slipper in front of the other as he marched quickly through the sand. Margo was right behind him.
Shivers looked back at her. “Do I have to lead the whole way?”
As he said that, he didn’t see the giant hole in his way. He took a step forward and felt nothing but nothingness beneath his bunny slippers.
He screeched as he plummeted downward. Margo reached out just in time to grab his hand as he dangled over the deep darkness.
“HELP!” Shivers shouted, trying to get a foothold. “Who knew bunny slippers would be so slippery?!”
Margo dug her heels into the sand. She pulled so hard she thought her arms might pop off. Finally Shivers came flying out of the abyss and they both landed in a heap.
“What was that?” Shivers asked, shaking the sand out of his hair.
Margo found a small sign next to the gaping hole. THE BOTTOMLESS PIT OF DESPAIR: WHERE QUINCY THOMAS THROWS THE BONES OF HIS VICTIMS.
“AAGGH! A bone bucket!” Shivers quivered.
They sidestepped the hole and made their way to the edge of the forest. A narrow path cut through the trees. Margo knelt down to read a plaque on the ground.
THE PATH OF LOST SOULS:
WHERE DOOMED PIRATES
TAKE THEIR LAST STEPS
Shivers let out a loud, shrill squeak like a mouse with a microphone, but they had to move forward.
Shivers gripped Margo’s arm. As they made their way down the path, they suddenly found themselves in a sticky situation. With each step Shivers took, it became harder and harder to peel his bunny slippers off the path.
“I can’t move!” Shivers cried. “Quincy Thomas is gluing me to the ground!”
“Me, too!” said Margo. Her shoes were just as stuck.
“Albee, go on without us,” Shivers moaned.
“Wait!” said Margo. She squinted and saw the end of the path just a few feet away. “I think we can make it if we jump.”
“What do you mean jump? My feet are stuck to the ground like melted marshmallows!”
“Your feet aren’t stuck,” said Margo, bending down to untie her shoelace.
Shivers was shocked. “Margo, you’d better not be saying what I think you’re saying.”
“You have to leave your bunny slippers behind.”
“No!” Shivers cried in a panic. “They aren’t just my bunnies, they’re my buddies!”
“It’s the only way,” Margo said. “Here, look.” She leaped right out of her shoes and cleared the path, landing on a pile of leaves.
Shivers shifted in his slippers. “If I take these off, I’ll expose my toes and those horrible nails!” he wailed.
“Don’t look down!” Margo said, shaking her head. She never thought she’d have to say that to him while he was standing on solid ground.
“Okay,” Shivers said in a shaky voice. He began to slide his foot out of the slipper while looking straight up at the sky. But then he saw the crescent moon beaming above the trees and he screamed, “AAGH! A giant toenail!”
“Don’t look up, either,” Margo said, exasperated. “Just look straight ahead. And make it quick. Unless you want Quincy Thomas to slurp up your soul.”
Hearing that was enough to make Shivers squirm right out of his slippers. He sprang into the air and came crashing down on the leaf pile like an oversize acorn.
He waved at his slippers. “Good-bye for now, bunny babies! I’ll be back for you!”
Margo knew that the faster she covered up Shivers’s feet, the less screaming she would have to hear. She searched through her big green backpack and found two brown paper lunch bags. She dumped out the food, then stuck Shivers’s feet inside.
“Why did you pack two lunches this morning?” Shivers asked.
“I always pack two. Just in case you show up.” She shrugged.
Shivers and Margo marched through the dirt and leaves. Over the sound of the paper bags crinkling, they could hear the faint screams of more pirates behind them.
“My boots are stuck!” shouted a gruff voice.
“Being cursed is the worst!” bellowed another.
“What kind of sick ghost glues bunnies to the ground?” cried a third.
Shivers and Margo shuddered and shuffled on until they finally made it out of the trees.
There was a steep hill in front of them. Several pirates were climbing it with treasure in tow. When Shivers and Margo reached the base, they were faced with a truly terrible sight. . . . Faces! Floating on the hill with no bodies attached. It was too dark to see them clearly, but the outlines of their horrible heads were more than enough to make Shivers want to head home.
Margo saw a sign staked into the grass. “The Hill of Heads,” she read. “Home to the leftover heads from Quincy’s latest pirate feast.”
“How about we stop reading things?” Shivers yelped.
“Okay,” Margo agreed. “But you have to admit, this place is very well labeled.”
“What are we going to do? What if the heads see us? What if they touch us?” Shivers fretted.
“Give me your coat,” said Margo.
Shivers took off his velvet pirate coat. Margo draped it over them both so they could hide underneath. “Phew!” Margo said, plugging her nose. “This ghost must be close. It smells worse in here than Mrs. Beezle’s breakfast breath does.”
“I know.” Shivers coughed. “This coat is a real stink sack. Let’s get this over with!”
They rushed up the steep incline, crouching as low as they could. They shook with terror, knowing the horrible heads were hovering just above them. Even Albee was shivering. Or maybe he was just swimming; it was impossible to tell.
When they finally made it to the top of the hill, Margo whipped off the coat and handed it back to Shivers.
“AGGH! Another head!” Shivers screamed.
“It’s just my head,” said Margo.
“Oh. Did anyone ever tell you your head looks terrifying in the dark?” Shivers said, putting his coat back on.
Margo looked all around, but she could barely see anything in the dim moonlight.
“Where is this graveyard?” she wondered.
Then, as if in answer to her question, a torrent of terrified pirates rushed toward them with their arms in the air and surprise in the whites of their eyes. They were all shrieking so loudly that Margo was afraid her eardrums were going to explode.
When the pirates finally passed, Margo said, “This is the first time I’ve ever seen so many pirates who are just as scared as you are.”
“I’ve been trying for years to tell everyone how scary the world is. I’m glad some people are finally starting to listen!” Shivers said. “Now let’s bury this treasure and get out of here! I’ve got so many goosebumps, I’m afraid someone might mistake me for a goose!”
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” said Margo.
“That’s definitely not how it works,” said Albee.
They shuffled along the path, trying not to trip in the darkness, until they reached the cemetery gate. Margo took a deep breath and opened it, the rusty metal wheezing like an old cat.
The haunted graveyard was more chilling than Shivers had ever imagined. There were rows and rows of gravestones dimly lit by the cool moonlight. It was overgrown with weeds that crept out of the ground and clutched onto the graves like spiders’ legs. One tombstone towered above the rest. There was a single candle at its base, casting creepy shadows and lighting up the words carved into the marble: HERE LIES QUINCY THOMAS THE PIRATE. There were several freshly dug holes in the ground in front of it.
Margo squinted at her watch. “Shivers, you’re almost out of time. It’s now or never. And I mean never.” She gave him a firm shove toward the grave.
Shivers took a deep breath. Then, in the time it took for him to let out a single horrified scream-to-end-all-screams, he sprinted to the gravestone, burrowed into the dirt with his hands, reached into his pocket, threw the treasure into the hole, kicked a pile
of dirt over it, then ran past Margo, through the gate, and all the way out of the graveyard.
Margo chased after him, screaming a little bit herself just to make sure she was following the instructions correctly. When she caught up to Shivers, she grabbed his hand and pumped it in the air like he was a champion.
“You did it, Shivers! You’re uncursed!” she cheered.
“You’re right!” Shivers stopped panting and started chanting. “Un-cursed! Un-cursed! Un-”
THUD!
Shivers tripped on a tree root and tumbled to the ground.
“Are you okay?!” Margo bent down to help him up.
“I think so,” he said, rubbing his knees through torn pantaloons.
Just then, something caught Margo’s eye—and it was the last thing she wanted to see: A diamond. Attached to a dog collar. On the ground.
“Shivers!” She picked up the collar. “You didn’t bury the treasure!”
“What?!” He stared at the diamond in dismay. “Then what did I bury?!”
“I don’t know, but you’d better fix this fast!”
Shivers leaped back up to his feet. They raced as fast as they could back to the graveyard. They flung open the cemetery gate, but they came to a dead stop when they saw a shadowy figure emerging from behind Quincy Thomas’s gravestone. At that moment, Margo’s watch began to beep.
Margo gripped Shivers’s arm and whispered, “We’re too late. It’s midnight.”
Shivers gulped. “Happy birthday to me.”
BOOM! A BRIGHT LIGHT blasted out from where the ghost stood, blinding Shivers, Margo, and Albee.
Shivers fell to his knees. “I see it! I see the light at the end of the tunnel! DEATH IS NEAR! Please, Quincy Thomas, just make it quick! And promise that there’s lots of popcorn waiting for me on the other side! Albee, take care of my things! Margo, take care of Albee! And tell the people at the ice-cream shop I’m sorry I never paid my tab!”
“SHIVERS!” Margo snapped. “I can see the light, too.”
Shivers’s eyes popped like two corn kernels. “HE’S GOING TO KILL US ALL!”
“Who are you?” shouted the figure behind the light.
“I’m Shivers the Pirate,” he said, crawling through the dirt. “You’ve been following me all day and it’s my birthday and I know that now you have to eat me. Just so you know, I’m mostly made of soft foods.”
Margo was just as scared as Shivers was, but she wasn’t going to give in without putting up a fight. She planted Albee’s bottle firmly on the ground, gritted her teeth, balled up her fists, and charged. “Nobody eats my friends!” she shouted, running straight into the light. But before she got too far, she collided with something and came crashing down to the ground.
“Owie!” whined a high voice behind her. “Owie! Owie! Owie!”
It seemed like a very odd thing for a ghost to say. Margo sat up and saw the bright light on the ground just a few feet away. She scrambled over and realized that it was really just a flashlight. She picked it up and pointed it behind her. Standing in the pool of light was the strangest-looking person she had ever seen. He had the body of a small man but the head of a little baby. He had big blue eyes, curly blond hair, and a plump pink tongue that stuck just a tiny bit out of his mouth. The shovel in his hand and the dirt on his knees made it clear that he had just been digging up the treasure in front of the grave. He glared into the light and launched into a full-blown hissy fit.
“Get that light off me!” he cried. “What are you doing back here, anyway? What part of ‘run away screaming and never return’ don’t you understand?!”
“Who are you?” Margo said in astonishment.
“Margo, it’s the ghost of Quincy Thomas the Pirate! Can’t you see?” Shivers turned to the man. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ghost, she’s not a pirate. She doesn’t understand how scary you are.”
The man cleared his throat and in a much deeper voice than before he said, “That’s right! I’m the ghost. BOO!”
Shivers screamed.
The man continued, “Now get out of here! And never bury moldy string cheese at my grave again!” He held up a piece of green, rubbery cheese.
“That’s what I buried?!” Shivers said. “But how did it get in my pocket?”
Margo sniffed the air around her and smelled a disgusting yet somehow familiar stench. Then, like the cheese from Shivers’s pocket, she began to string things together. “That piece of cheese must have fallen in your pocket when we were on the trash barge. And that’s what was causing the foul odor, not a ghost!”
The man sputtered, “It was! It was a ghost! I mean, it was me! BOO!”
“But Margo,” Shivers said, “what about when I became merciless and violent? The string cheese didn’t make me do that.”
Margo was skeptical. “Shivers, when you threw that book, were you even aiming for Handsome’s face?”
He thought back and admitted, “Actually, now that you mention it, I was trying to throw it at the floor to make a scary noise. I just have really bad aim.”
Margo narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “I’m starting to think there was no curse in the first place.”
“That’s preposterous!” said the man, squirming in his boots.
Shivers was shocked. “No curse?! But what about this terrifying cape of ghostly horrors? I used to be really into capes, but today has just turned me off! I’m back to bibs and bibs only! I mean, when you think about it, a cape is just a big backward bib—”
“Shivers!” Margo interrupted. “I think it’s time to shed some night-light on the Cape of Cods.”
“NO!” said the man, grabbing Margo’s arm.
She shook him off with ease and he tumbled to the ground. Then she turned the bright flashlight on the Hill of Heads. In the light, Shivers could see that the hill had no heads at all. “It’s just a bunch of floating balloons with faces drawn on them!” he said, shaking his own head in disbelief.
Then Margo swung the light around to the Path of Lost Souls. They could see that it was paved with chewed-up gum.
“It’s not the Path of Lost Souls, it’s just a path of lost soles, because everyone loses their shoes when they get stuck in the gum!” Margo explained.
“What about the Bottomless Pit of Despair?” Shivers asked.
She shone the light as far as it would go. “Hm . . . that really is a bottomless pit. But I bet there aren’t any bones in it!”
“So this is all fake?!” Shivers shouted. Then he turned back to the small man. “Then who’s this guy?!”
“I told you: I’m the ghost of Quincy Thomas the Pirate! Can’t you read?!” he said, stomping his feet and pointing at the tombstone behind him.
Margo looked back and forth between the man and the tombstone, and all at once, everything became perfectly clear. She took a permanent marker out of her big green backpack and began to cross out letters on the gravestone. When she was finally finished, she stepped aside and shone the light on her work.
“Here lies Q.T. Pi,” she read aloud. Then she pointed the light directly in the man’s face. “More like here lies Cutie Pie!”
Shivers froze in stupefied silence. He stared at the small man and realized that Margo was right. It was the same adorable face he had seen in the pirate book: Cutie Pie, the pirate zero.
Shivers opened his mouth. But instead of his usual “AAAAGH!” he let out an incredible “AWWWWWW!”
With that, Cutie Pie burst into tears. He flopped down on his stomach, kicking his feet and pounding his fists on the ground.
Shivers couldn’t help but squeal at all the cuteness. “Look at those cute little kicks! He looks like a baby puppy trying to swim!”
Cutie Pie scowled, pulling himself to his feet. He took a giant lollipop out of his back pocket and slurped at it while fat tears streamed down his pink cheeks.
“Look!! He has a lollipop!!” Shivers gushed. He couldn’t help it. Everything Cutie Pie did was irresistibly adorable. “AWWWW!”
“WAAAAH!�
�� Cutie Pie cried. He threw the lollipop to the ground in frustration, then pointed a stubby plump finger at Shivers. “I’ll get you for this, Shivers the Pirate!” he shrieked. “You’ll regret the day you called me cute!” Then he ran from the graveyard and disappeared into a grove of tall pine trees.
Shivers smiled. “Even his threats are cute!” He grabbed Margo’s hands and they jumped around in a joyous circle.
“I’m not cursed anymore!” shouted Shivers.
“You were never cursed to begin with!” Margo shouted back.
“Oh, yeah!”
They grabbed Albee and began to head back to the Groundhog.
“I can’t believe that was Cutie Pie!” Margo marveled.
“I know. And all this talk about pie is making me want to go home and eat some!” said Shivers, patting his belly. “When you think about it, I mean really think about it, every pie is cute in its own way.”
They strolled back through the graveyard gate and into the forest.
As they dodged the roots and rocks in the darkness, Albee stared up at the sky. He was the only one who saw the enormous flock of white parrots flying straight toward the other pirate ships.
“Uh-oh,” said Albee. But nobody heard him.
SHIVERS SKIPPED ALONG THE path, as joyous as Margo had ever seen him. He was babbling happily about his big birthday plans.
“Now that I’m actually getting to celebrate this birthday instead of being eaten by a ghost, I think I want to go all out. I’m going to take a bath with all of my rubber duckies. All of them! Plus, I have so much singing and sleeping to do. I’m going to nap, I’m going to clap, and when I hit that dance deck, I’m going to tap!” His eyes grew wide with excitement. “And you know what I’ve always wanted to do? Eat a whole ham!”
Margo laughed and tried to keep up with Shivers. After all, she was the one holding the flashlight, and she didn’t want him to crack his skull on the Hill of Heads.
The Pirate Book You've Been Looking For Page 6
