by R. L. Stine
Inside the station, there was no movement, no action, no heroes working to save the day. Everything was perfectly still. Abandoned. It felt like the end of the world.
Lorraine crept inside. “Hello? Is anyone here?”
Someone was there. Someone was watching. But he wasn’t quite ready for Lorraine to know that. Not yet.
A police radio sat on one of the desks. Lorraine decided to take matters into her own hands. “Calling all cops, calling all cops, head to the high school. My nephew’s in trouble. He’s with R.L. Stine. They think they know how to stop all this! Can anyone hear me?”
Silence.
And then, there was a voice. But it wasn’t coming from the radio.
“I can hear you.”
Lorraine turned around slowly.
There in the police chief’s chair, wearing the chief’s hat, was Slappy.
“Sergeant Slappy,” he said, “ready to protect and serve.”
Slappy always liked it—the way they looked when they first saw him, the way their faces froze, as if they were made of wood.
“Oh my goodness!” Lorraine squealed. “You’re—”
“Don’t say it,” he warned.
“A talking—”
He gave her one more chance. “Don’t do it.”
“—dummy.”
She was all out of chances. Slappy signaled to the shadows. “You have the right to remain …”
A squadron of bug-eyed aliens appeared from the corners of the room, aiming their freeze-ray guns.
“Silent,” Slappy said.
The aliens fired.
Lorraine froze in place.
Slappy tossed back his head and cackled. “Bit of a cold spell in here. You look absolutely frozen! Ha-ha!”
As the aliens waited for further command, the station door slid open. A chipped, dented lawn gnome appeared in the entryway. Perfect timing.
“What did Stine do when you attacked him?” Slappy asked eagerly. “Did he cry like a baby and beg for his life?”
Slappy always liked it when they begged.
The gnome said nothing, but Slappy understood, and was enraged. “There were four hundred of you. You couldn’t kill a writer?”
This is annoying—but not a disaster, Slappy thought. Then he smiled. Why leave Stine to his slaves? He had a better idea.
“It’s like they say: If you want to break an omelet, you have to do it yourself.”
The cemetery was the least scary thing I’d seen all night.
Which meant it was still pretty terrifying. The sliver of moon cast shadows in the trees. Stone angels watched our slow progress through the graves.
The only sound was the crunching of leaves beneath our feet and our own steady breathing. I tried not to think about the bodies rotting six feet under.
Stine and Champ led the way, while Hannah and I followed behind, walking side by side, close enough to almost touch. We stayed quiet. It felt comfortable, walking beside her, just being silent.
But soon, Stine and Champ started chatting away. I wondered if they thought their voices could scare away the ghosts.
“So, kid, how’d you get the nickname Champ?” Stine asked.
“It’s not a nickname.”
He chuckled. “So that’s your real name? Is it short for something?”
“My full name is … Champion.”
I swallowed a laugh. Poor Champ.
“My family’s a pretty big sports family,” Champ explained. “My dad won a bronze at the ’92 Olympics and then got a Bronze Star for saving his whole platoon. And my mom was an all-American sprinter and two-time world debate champion. So if you can imagine two athletes like my parents getting married, chances are their kids are gonna be superhumans. So they named me Champ, and I’ve been disappointing them ever since …”
I felt bad for him; I also understood. I knew all about parents who were heroes, parents who made you feel like you had something impossible to live up to.
I was always worried about disappointing my dad, even now that he wasn’t around anymore. Maybe it didn’t make any sense, but that’s how I felt. Like he was waiting for me to do something great.
Stine, big shock, was just a little less understanding. He burst out laughing. “So your full name is Champion? That’s a name for a horse!” he said. Then he must have seen something on Champ’s face, because the laughter stopped cold. “I’m sorry. Bad joke.”
Maybe the guy had a soul after all.
“Yeah, well, I’m still young,” Champ said. “Plenty of time to be a hero.”
Without talking about it, Hannah and I both slowed down a little, lengthening the distance between us and her dad until it almost felt like we were in the graveyard alone. A cloud drifted in front of the moon, blocking its dim light.
“If you’re scared, I’ll hold your hand,” I told her, sort of joking and sort of not.
“Please. You’re the scaredy-cat.”
“Then maybe you should hold my hand.”
Her smile turned into a silent scream. Her eyes bulged. She froze in horror as a gray hand grabbed her shoulder. She let out a little shriek, followed by an embarrassed giggle. We both realized she’d just walked into the outstretched hand of a stone angel.
“Give me a sec,” I said, trying to untangle her from the stone fingers. “It’s caught on your jacket.”
I stretched my arms around her, trying to work her coat out of its snag.
“My hero,” she whispered.
Her face was only a couple inches from mine. Her lips looked so soft.
“There,” I said. Our eyes met. “You’re good to go.”
She didn’t move. Our eyes were locked on each other. This is it, I thought, psyching myself up. This is my moment. All I had to do was step in, just a little, then a little more, until our lips touched—
I stepped forward—and stumbled over a branch, falling to the ground with a thump.
That’s when I realized it wasn’t a branch.
It was a muddy hand, reaching out of a grave.
The hand wrapped itself around my ankle. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. This was like a nightmare, except no nightmare had ever been this vivid, this real, this squelchy and cold.
The ground beneath me shifted and another hand poked through, grubby fingers scrabbling for purchase against the dirt.
I yanked my ankle away just as the creature dragged itself fully out of the grave. A graveyard ghoul! Another hand poked out of the dirt.
There were more of them. And they were all coming up from beneath the ground, coming for us.
Hannah and I crisscrossed through the gravestones, Champ and Stine on our heels, ducking past tombs and beneath statues. The muddy ghouls lumbered after us, more of them clawing up from the dirt all around. I tried not to think about what would happen if they caught up, those pale faces, those dirt-caked hands, dragging us down deep, under the ground, into the grave …
Finally, we reached the gate of the cemetery. Hannah slipped through the wrought-iron rungs pretty easily. It was a tighter squeeze for me, but I made it.
Champ and Stine were almost to safety—when a ghoul grabbed Stine’s foot.
“Save yourselves!” he cried as the ghoul yanked hard, dragging him back into the graveyard. “Hey—dumbhead! I didn’t mean it!” Stine shouted angrily.
Hannah and I spun around. We dove beside him. We each took an arm and pulled as hard as we could.
It was like human tug-of-war. Inch by inch, we pulled him toward our side of the gate. But the ghouls wouldn’t let go. Stine looked like he was about to be split in two.
There were more ghouls tugging on Stine now, all of them pulling in sync. And they were stronger than we were. My fingers were going numb, and I could see Hannah’s hands starting to slip. We were losing him!
“What! Kind! Of! Monster!” Stine shouted with rage. He kicked ghouls in the face with each word. It startled them, and their grip loosened—just for a second. But that second was
enough for Hannah and me to pull Stine out of their grasp and through the gate.
We both collapsed into the dirt, wheezing loudly, struggling to breathe. I felt as if my arms were going to fall off.
Stine was already on his feet, scanning the parking lot for Champ. “I want to have a little talk with that kid. Where is that little goofball?”
Champ peeked out from behind a bush, closer than I’d thought. “I’m so sorry, sir. You told me to run, so I felt that that’s what you wanted me to do. In your heart.”
Stine gave him a hard stare. “Not your fault,” he said finally. “I’m the one who wrote those ghouls. Maybe next time I’ll write about cute little minnows swimming sweetly in a pond.”
He sighed. “Forget I said that. They’d only turn into man-eating sharks.”
“Maybe those are the last of your monsters we’ll have to fight,” I said.
Of course, I was wrong.
In the Madison High gym, a few students danced, gyrating on the dance floor. Some drank punch, awkwardly standing around in the corner waiting for someone of the opposite sex to acknowledge their existence. It was your average, everyday school dance.
But over on our side of the school, the building was dark and empty, hibernating until Monday morning. It felt totally wrong to be there when we didn’t have to be. Like a violation of some law of nature—Thou Shalt Never Go to School Unless Absolutely Necessary.
On the other hand, this was pretty necessary. Somewhere in the enormous maze of lobby display cases, Stine’s typewriter was waiting.
“I thought it was down here,” Stine said, after we’d hit the end of the third corridor. “Or is it that way? Maybe we should split up.”
Champ groaned. “Do you not read your own horror books? You never split up.”
“He’s right. Let’s go,” Hannah said. “We need to get that typewriter.”
We found it in the last place we expected—tucked into a display case outside the gym. Music from inside the gym thumped in the background, and my heart beat in time. My mom was so close by, but I couldn’t worry about that now. I just had to trust that she was okay. No one inside the gym was screaming, which was a good sign.
Stine grinned at the sight of his typewriter—then scowled when he realized what was sharing space with it in the case.
“They put Stephen King’s fountain pen front and center!” he whined, rapping on the glass so hard that the STEPHEN KING’S PEN placard trembled.
“Yeah, that seems like the right thing to focus on.” I examined the lock holding the case closed. “I need to find a paper clip.”
Stine shook his head. “There’s no time. I’m going to break the glass. I need a trash can or—”
“Or that,” I said as Hannah just slid the case open. I guess security was pretty lax at this school.
Stine grabbed the typewriter, hugging it to his chest. “I’ve missed you so much, darling.”
We didn’t have time for this. I got the feeling we didn’t have much time for anything. “All right. So start writing. Did you remember we’re in some kind of a hurry?”
He looked up at me, still clutching the typewriter. “What’s the plot?”
What else? “Monsters lose. Good guys win. The end!”
“No,” he said, annoyed. “It doesn’t work unless it’s a real Goosebumps story: twists and turns and frights and surprises.”
I don’t know about everyone else. But to me, that seemed like a whole lot to come up with in the next ten minutes.
“Go to the gym. Warn everyone,” Stine told us. He’d started shuffling toward the auditorium. “Get them to barricade the school.”
“And where are you going?” Hannah asked.
“To find a place to write. Buy me as much time as you can. Slappy’s going to come for me. I have a deadline—literally.”
We all groaned.
He started down the hall. “Let’s go!”
We went. When I looked back, Stine was slamming Stephen King’s pen against the wall, trying to break it. When that didn’t work, he hurled it into a water fountain.
Nothing to worry about, I told myself, trying my best to believe it. This guy can totally save the world.
Slappy gazed at the football stadium. “Love it! Love it!” he exclaimed. “I smell pain and defeat.”
He sat on the hood of his car, surrounded by his most trusted buddies. The werewolf. The vampire poodles. The snowman. The bug-eyed aliens. The gray-faced, dirt-encrusted graveyard ghouls. They awaited his orders. They trusted him. They would do anything for him. Because they owed him their freedom.
They knew he would do anything to keep them free—forever.
Slappy swayed along with the melody trickling from the car radio. It was a glorious night. If he listened hard, he could hear terrified shrieks floating on the breeze.
The helpful gnomes unloaded a trunkful of manuscripts onto the fifty-yard line. Slappy offered them the key, and they began the noble work. One by one, they turned the locks on every manuscript.
“Not that one,” Slappy suddenly called. “Not just yet.”
That one he was saving for something special.
“Now,” Slappy said, and the gnomes opened the book covers. Monster after monster climbed off the pages, roaring and bellowing and screeching with rage. They’d been locked up a long time.
They were hungry.
“All my Facebook friends together in one place.” Slappy laughed. “I do crack myself up. Now it’s time to crack up some other people.”
He tossed a match onto the pile of books, and they instantly burst into flames.
There was no going back.
“So, this is what a high school dance is like?” Hannah said.
I looked around.
Girls parading in their hippest outfits while guys stared at their phones, pretending to ignore them? Check.
Excruciatingly awkward first dates? Check.
Angry teacher dragging lame guy away by his earlobe? Check.
Two wannabes rocking out in the middle of the dance floor and no one paying any attention? Double-check.
“Yeah,” I told her. “Usually the dancing’s better.”
It was all pretty standard and pretty lame, but Hannah was gaping around her like she was in a foreign country. And I guess, for her, that’s what high school was. Had she really spent her entire life locked up in the house, only sneaking out at night? What kind of life was that?
Just then, I heard an extremely familiar voice screaming my name.
“Mom!” I called. I caught sight of her pushing through the crowd toward me.
She wrapped me in a giant bear hug. Normally, that was one hundred percent against my pretend-we-don’t-know-each-other-while-on-school-grounds rule. But this time, I just hugged her back, wishing I could hold on forever.
“I couldn’t reach you or Aunt Lorraine!” she exclaimed. “I was worried about you!”
I hadn’t realized until now how worried I’d been about her, too. But there wasn’t time to explain all that, much less calm down her inevitable freak-out if she heard what I’d been doing all night.
“Mom, everyone here is in danger,” I told her. “We have to barricade the school.”
Her face fell. “Zach, come on. Not this again.”
I couldn’t believe she thought I’d make something like this up.
“He’s telling the truth,” Hannah said, then held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Hannah. I live next door.”
While my mom was distracted trying to figure out what I was doing at a school dance with a girl, Champ and I jumped up onstage.
Champ bumped the DJ out of the way and grabbed the mic, talking over everyone’s loud groans. “Everyone! Everyone! Eyes up here! Listen up, I have something to say!”
Hundreds of pairs of eyes turned toward him, waiting for something momentous.
“Er … everyone, listen to my best friend, Zach!”
He shoved the mic at me.
“Okay, this is going to
sound insane, but monsters have invaded Madison,” I began. “They’ve blocked every road out of town, and they’ve torn down all the cell towers. We’ve been cut off from the rest of the world. They’re outside the school right now. We need to work to—”
Someone in the back let out a thunderous belch.
As the room exploded into laughter, I suddenly had a lot of sympathy for my mom, and vice principals everywhere.
A jock started screaming, pointing over his shoulder at the window that looked out over the stadium. “He’s right! It’s the boogeyman … and he’s picking his nose!”
I wondered if I could convince Stine to write a book about the Boogeyman Who Ate Jocks for Dessert.
Over the heads of the crowd, I could see the guy’s smug face and the high fives he gave all his grinning friends as the whole student body laughed in my face.
Then I saw him turn and actually look out the window.
He screamed again. “There’s a giant bug, and it’s eating everyone’s cars!”
Another jock gave him the cut-it-out signal. “Dude, it’s getting old.”
“No, seriously—” But before he could finish, a gigantic praying mantis pincer crashed through the window and yanked him straight through.
No one laughed. The gym fell totally silent as a towering bug eye peered through the broken glass at us.
The silence lasted about three more seconds. And then?
Then the entire gym, hundreds of students and chaperones alike, went out of their minds. Screaming, shouting, crying, gnashing teeth, begging for mommy and daddy to come and save them, shouting for the cops, calling for help, calling for anyone oh my god someone help us.
It was deafening chaos, and it wasn’t going to help anyone.
“Everyone calm down,” I screamed. “I know what to do. But I can’t do it myself.”
Silence rippled over the crowd again, and they looked at me like they believed me—like I had all the answers and could actually save the day.
At which point I kind of freaked out, myself. Because who was I to save anything?
Hannah must have seen the panic in my eyes. She gave me one of her best smiles, the kind that said You can do it. I know you can.