by R. L. Stine
Go ahead and scream.
No one can hear you. You’re no longer in the safe world you know.
You’ve taken a terrifying step …
into the darkest corners of your imagination.
You’ve opened the door to …
Welcome…
I’m R.L. Stine. Let me introduce you to Maggie O’Connor. She’s the red-haired girl with the excited smile on her face.
Why is she smiling? Well, today is Maggie’s birthday. She’s thirteen today—and what could be better than celebrating this special time with her three best friends?
They’ve taken Maggie to the little carnival on the pier. And now they’ve stopped outside the fortune-teller’s tent. “Let’s go in,” one of Maggie’s friends urges. “You have to have your fortune told on your birthday!”
Maggie follows her friends inside. The fortune-teller picks up Maggie’s hand and starts to read her palm….
In a few seconds, the tent will ring out with Maggie’s cries of horror.
Happy birthday, Maggie. But be careful. When you step into the fortune-teller’s tent, you’re stepping into … THE NIGHTMARE ROOM.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Go Deeper into This Nightmare…
About the Author
Preview: The Nightmare Room #4 Liar Liar
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
“Maggie, you’re so evil!” Jackie Mullen said, laughing.
My mouth dropped open. “Huh? Me? Evil?”
Jackie pointed across the table to the cupcakes on my plate. “You took three cupcakes and only ate the icing.”
Her sister Judy frowned at me. “What’s wrong with them? I baked them myself—for your birthday.”
I licked chocolate icing off my fingers. “There’s nothing wrong with them,” I told her. “They’re wicked cool cupcakes. I just like icing.”
Jackie laughed again. “Are you getting weird? You never say wicked cool.”
I sneered at her. “I’m thirteen now. I can say whatever I want. Besides, I need a new image.”
“Like a makeover,” Judy said.
“Like a personality makeover,” Jilly, the third sister said. “Maggie wants to be sophisticated now.”
Jilly was right about that. I’ve always been the youngest in my class because I skipped second grade. But now I was turning thirteen. Now I was old enough to transform myself into a mature, confident person. And no one would treat me like “the baby” anymore.
“I am sophisticated,” I said. “I’m thirteen now, and there’s no turning back!”
“Well, you’re off to a bad start,” Jackie said. She pointed. “You have icing in your hair.”
I groaned and reached up and felt sticky stuff up there. For some reason, the three sisters all thought it was a riot. Jilly laughed so hard, she choked on her cupcake.
Jackie, Judy, and Jilly Mullen are triplets, which means that I have three best friends. Everyone at our school—Cedar Bay Middle School—calls them the Three J’s. And they’re very close, although they try really hard to be different from each other.
Jackie and Judy look alike. They both have straight black hair and big, round brown eyes. They both always look as if they’re suntanned.
But they’re so eager for people to tell them apart, they have totally different styles. Jackie’s hair is long, halfway down her back. She wears funky, old clothes, baggy jeans, old bell-bottoms from the seventies, oversized, bright-colored tops she finds at garage sales. She loves clanky jewelry, heavy beads, and dangling, plastic earrings.
Judy is much more preppy. She has her hair cut very short. She wears short skirts over black tights and neat little vests. Judy always looks as if she just washed her face.
Jilly was born last, and she doesn’t look as if she belongs in the same family. She has long, golden blond hair, creamy, pale skin, and big green eyes. She looks very angelic, and she talks in a soft, whispery voice.
Jackie is funny, and kind of loud, and a real joker. She doesn’t take things too seriously. I really want to be like that.
I have coppery hair and a slender, serious face. I’ve been quiet and pretty shy and serious my whole life. And I keep thinking if I hang out with Jackie a lot, maybe I’ll be more like her.
Judy is the brain in the group. She is the perfect student. It’s all I can do just to keep up in school. But Judy is always busy writing essays and doing projects for extra credit.
Judy likes to organize things. She’s always joining clubs and committees at school. These days, she is organizing a huge Pet Fair to raise money for animal rights.
And Jilly? Well … as my mother would say, Jilly is in her own world. In other words, she’s kind of a flake. She’s really into boys, and music, and I-don’t-know-what-else. She’s kind of a dreamy person. You know. Like she’s floating a few feet off the ground.
The only thing I’ve ever seen Jilly be serious about is her dancing. She takes ballet lessons five times a week after school, and she’s really talented.
I’m into dance, too. But I’ve always been too shy to try out for anything. Not anymore, though. In a few days, the “new” me and Jilly are both trying out for a community ballet company. My whole life I’ve dreamed of dancing with a real company, but I’m not looking forward to the audition—because I have to compete against Jilly!
Anyway, those are my best friends, the Three J’s. And of course I wanted to spend my thirteenth birthday at their house with them.
When we finished the birthday cupcakes and I wiped the chocolate icing from my hair, Jackie jumped up, clapped her hands once, and said, “Let’s go!”
“Go where?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” Judy said. She started to pull me from the table. “Just follow us.”
“To the carnival,” Jilly added, tying her blond hair back with a blue, ribbony scrunchie.
I held back. “Huh? The carnival on the pier?”
All three girls nodded. All three were grinning. They had planned this.
So I didn’t argue. I followed them to the carnival.
And that’s when all the horror began.
A short while later the four of us staggered off the roller coaster, laughing, holding on to each other to keep from falling over. I blinked, trying to stop the ground from tilting and swaying. The carnival lights flashed in my eyes.
“That was awesome!” Jilly declared, brushing back her blond curls with both hands.
I held my stomach. “Wow. I’m so glad I ate all those cupcakes!”
“Why do they call it the Blue Beast?” Judy asked. “The cars are bright yellow!”
Good question. Judy always wanted things to make sense.
“Who would want to ride on the Yellow Beast?” Jackie asked.
We all thought that was a riot, and we laughed our heads off as we made our way across the pier.
It was a warm, cloudy night. The air felt heavy and damp, more like summer than fall. I glanced up, looking for the moon. But the low clouds blocke
d it out.
“Wasn’t this a great idea?” Jackie asked, taking my arm. Judy hurried up ahead to buy more ride tickets. “Isn’t this the perfect way to celebrate?”
“Wicked cool,” I replied, grinning.
Jackie shook her fist at me. “Go ahead, Maggie. Say it again. I dare you.”
“I think there are some boys from school here,” Jilly said. She has the most amazing Boy Radar! “Maybe I’ll catch you guys later.”
She started to wander off, but Judy pulled her back. “Let’s stick together for a while, Jilly. It’s a party, remember?”
The carnival opens on the pier every summer. It’s kind of tacky, but we hang out there sometimes on weekend nights. There isn’t much else to do in Cedar Bay.
Fall had arrived. In a week or two they’d be shutting the carnival down and packing up. Some of the rides were already closed. And the big Fun House sign lay on its side on the ground, the paint chipped and fading.
We wandered through a long row of game booths. “Try your luck, girls!” a man shouted, holding up three baseballs. “You can’t lose! Really!”
I stopped across from a brightly lit booth. A young woman stood in front of a wall of balloons. “Hey—darts. Want to throw some darts? I’m pretty good at that.”
Jackie shook her head. “No way. Let’s do something wild.”
I squinted at her. “Something wild?”
“Yeah. Something really crazy,” Jilly chimed in, her green eyes flashing. “Something we normally wouldn’t do. For your birthday.”
“But darts is fun,” Judy argued. “If Maggie wants to throw darts …”
That’s why I like Judy. She’s always on my side.
“Forget darts,” Jackie said, pulling me across the row of booths. “I see the perfect thing. Awesome!”
She dragged me to the door of a low, square building. I gasped when I read the red-and-black hand-lettered sign next to the door: TATTOOS WHILE-U-WAIT.
“Whoa! No way!” I cried. I tried to pull back. But Jackie was too strong. She tugged me through the doorway.
The little room was dark and hot, and smelled of incense and tobacco. Red and blue tattoo samples on jagged pieces of paper were tacked up and down the walls.
Jackie hadn’t let go of my arm. “Check them out. I’ll buy you one for your birthday!” she said.
I stared at her. “You’re kidding—right?”
“Ooh, look at this one!” Jilly gushed. She pointed to a blue half-moon circled by red stars. “That’s the prettiest one. Or how about this red flower?”
“Doesn’t it hurt to get tattooed?” Judy asked Jackie.
Jackie picked up a long needle from a workbench against the wall. She pressed the tip against the back of my hand. “Zip zip zip, and it’s done,” she said. “Can you imagine the look on your mother’s face when you come home with a tattoo?”
“No way!” I cried. “Come on—I don’t want any tattoo!”
I tried to pull free of Jackie’s grasp. And as I did, a large tattoo tacked up beside the door caught my eye.
It was so ugly. A dragon’s head. A snarling green dragon with its jaws open, red flames bursting from its gaping nostrils. And beneath it, red words with blue shadows behind them. Bold, bloodred words:
My Name Is EVIL!
As I stared at the ugly tattoo, I felt a chill run down my back. It seemed to hypnotize me or something. I couldn’t turn away from it. Couldn’t take my eyes off it.
Finally Jackie’s voice cut through the spell. “Pick one. Hurry.”
“N-no,” I whispered. “Let’s get out of here!”
I headed for the door, but Jackie gripped my arm from behind. “Grab her,” she ordered the others. “Don’t let her get away!”
They held on to me tightly, staring at me in cold silence.
Jackie broke up first. “Wow! I think you really believed us!”
Jilly laughed too. “You did! You thought we were serious.”
Judy frowned. “Maggie, I told them it was a mean joke. But they wouldn’t listen to me.”
I stared angrily at Jackie. “You—you creep! You really scared me,” I confessed. “How could you do that?”
Jackie laughed. “Easy!”
“Jackie has a sick sense of humor,” Judy said, still frowning.
“Ha ha,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Jackie shrugged. She put her arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry, Maggie. I really didn’t think you’d believe us.”
I sighed. “I always fall for dumb jokes. Not too sophisticated, huh?”
“Forget about it,” Jilly said. “Now you’re thirteen, remember? Makeover time?”
I sighed again. I felt really dumb.
Why did I think that my best friends in the world would force me to do something I didn’t want to do?
Why did I panic like that?
The four of us stumbled out into the warm night. Across the path a tall girl was heaving baseballs at a target, trying to dunk a young man in a swim tank.
A mother hurried past, pulling two little boys. Both boys carried huge cones of pink cotton candy. They had the stuff stuck all over their cheeks and noses.
“Let’s have some fun!” Jackie declared. She still had her arm around my shoulder. The four of us walked side by side in a solid row.
Jackie pulled back when she saw Glen Martin. I saw him, too. He was with two other guys from school. They were all singing some kind of song, snapping their fingers as they walked, bopping along.
“Oh, wow,” Jackie muttered.
I glanced at her. What did she mean by that?
Everyone in school knows that I have a crush on Glen. Everyone except Glen, that is.
I watched him come nearer. He is tall and lanky, and he’s so cute with his wild, curly brown hair, which he never brushes, and serious dark eyes.
Glen is always goofing, always cracking jokes. He’s always in trouble in school for breaking up the class. He has the greatest laugh. And when he smiles, two cute dimples appear on his cheeks.
Glen doesn’t live in my neighborhood. He lives in a tiny house in the old part of town. And the guys he hangs out with are kind of tough.
Sometimes I think about inviting Glen over or something. But I always lose my nerve.
That’s going to change, too. It’s makeover time, I reminded myself. And I’m going to invite Glen over real soon.
“Hey—it’s the Three J’s!” one of Glen’s friends called.
“Yeah. Jokey, Jumpy, and Jerk-Face,” Glen said.
Jackie tossed back her hair and sneered at him. “That’s a compliment, coming from you—Tarzan!”
That’s so mean, I thought. I can’t believe Jackie is still calling him Tarzan! The name made Glen blush.
“Hey, guys. What’s up?” Jilly walked over to Glen’s two friends and started flirting with them.
Judy sighed impatiently. “Are we just going to stand here? Aren’t we going to do any rides?”
Glen grinned at Jackie. “You’d better hurry. The Ugly Dog Contest is starting over there.” He pointed to a tent at the end of the pier. “You could win a dog bone!”
Jackie scowled at him. “Shut up, Glen.”
His dark eyes flashed. “You shut up.” He grabbed the beaded necklace Jackie always wears and gave it a tug.
“Let go!” she screamed.
I stepped between them. “Come on—be nice,” I said. “It’s my birthday.”
Glen turned to me and his eyes flashed, as if seeing me for the first time. “Maggie—hey. Is it really your birthday?”
I nodded. “Yeah. We all came here to celebrate, and—”
“Wow! It was my birthday yesterday!” he declared.
Before I could utter a reply, he grabbed my hand and shook it. “Happy birthday to us!” he cried.
And then, believe it or not, he raised my hand to his mouth—and planted a wet, noisy, slobbery kiss on the back of it.
His friends laughed. Judy and Jilly laughed, too.
/> I stood there stunned.
Glen started to back away.
Then Jackie shoved me from behind—shoved me into Glen. “Go ahead—kiss your boyfriend!” she cried.
Glen and I stumbled over each other and nearly tumbled to the ground. Everyone laughed. They thought it was a riot.
“Jackie—give me a break!” I shouted angrily. How could she embarrass me like that?
Glen backed away, blushing again. “Happy birthday. Catch you later.” He flashed me a thumbs-up and started off with his friends.
A few seconds later the Three J’s and I were hurrying away, heading past the Tilt-A-Whirl and FreeFall Mountain. Shrill screams rose up all around us.
Judy and Jilly were giggling about something. Jackie twined her arm around mine and pulled me along. “He is such a geek!” she exclaimed. “How can you like him?”
“He totally hates us!” Jilly declared.
“Especially Jackie,” Judy added.
“And I don’t blame him,” I said. “Jackie de-pantsed him in front of the whole school!”
Jackie laughed. “What an awesome moment!”
“It almost caused a riot!” Jilly said. “Poor Glen was embarrassed for life!”
Judy sighed. “Another one of Jackie’s great jokes.”
“I can’t believe you’re still calling him Tarzan,” I said. “That was a whole year ago.”
Last year Jackie was in charge of costumes for the talent show at school. And Glen decided to do a crazy comedy act wearing a Tarzan costume. Well, Jackie had this insane idea. Somehow she rigged Glen’s costume. She secretly removed most of the elastic.
And there was poor Glen, onstage in front of the entire school. And Jackie’s trick worked. His pants dropped to his ankles in front of everyone!
“I’ll never forget those black bikini briefs he was wearing!” Jackie exclaimed. All three sisters exploded with laughter.
“He looked like such a geek!” Jilly cried. “Standing there onstage in the stupid black underpants, trying to cover himself up.”
“He just stood there. He froze,” Jackie remembered. “And the whole auditorium went wild. Everyone just freaked.”
“We’ve called him Tarzan ever since,” Jilly said. “It makes him blush every time.”
“It was a year ago. You should let it drop. Give him a break,” I said.