“Really?” I asked. “In that case, have you ever heard of a game called Monsterville?”
“Monsterville,” he mused. “Ya know, I ain’t heard of that one. What does it look like?”
I described it to him, and he shook his head. “Don’t ring a bell.”
“Well, I’m sure you can help us find something wonderful,” Mom assured him, running her hand along a stack of old Monopoly games. “I have a four-year-old at home, and she loves animals. Do you have anything with horses, maybe? Or bunnies?”
“Sure!”
He was off, running to the back of the store on surprisingly athletic legs. He returned with something called Rabbits in the Carrot Patch.
“I invented this one,” he said shyly. It was cute how into board games this guy was. “Took me about thirty prototypes.”
“Prototypes?” I asked.
“Sure. Takes a lot of versions to get a game perfect. You didn’t think Monopoly always looked the way it does, did ya? You used to go around in a big circle to pass GO.”
“I didn’t know that!” Mom said. “How fascinating.” She reached into her wallet, pulling out a ten and handing it to Tom. “Keep the change.”
“What a sweet man,” Mom said as we left the store, fumbling in her purse for her sunglasses. She put them on and scanned the block.
“Yeah,” I replied, thinking of Tom’s comment about a prototype.
Someone, at some time, cooked up the idea of a board game about the world of creatures living beneath a kid’s bed. Maybe that person knew something about Down Below.
There’d been no company logo on the game—no Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley. Some people pay to get their books published. Maybe that was how Monsterville began—as someone’s pet project.
And I’d found it in Aunt Lucy’s basement. Aunt Lucy, who believed in monsters.
In movies, there are no coincidences.
SCENE EIGHT:
MONSTERVILLE EXPLAINED
I was so tired when we got home that I crawled into bed with my shoes still on and slept through dinner. When I woke up, it was pitch black outside.
My alarm clock glowed, and I squinted to read the time: four in the morning.
“Ugh,” I muttered, swinging my legs over the side of the bed and slipping off my shoes. My face was greasy, and my mouth tasted horrible. I stumbled into the bathroom and spent the next ten minutes washing my face and brushing my teeth. Colgate never tasted so good.
The game shop in Alonquin made me think—prototypes. If Monsterville had started as an idea, there might be more information in our basement. Old notes, drawings …
I didn’t want to go down there. It was dark and clammy, and I didn’t trust those dark corners.
Then I thought of Blue. If someone had designed Monsterville based on Down Below, that meant they’d been there. They could know something Blue didn’t, something useful.
Mustering my courage, I padded down the hall and eased open the basement door. I pulled the chain on the overhead light, blinking in the harsh glare. A red flashlight rested on a wooden shelf. I grabbed it and tiptoed down the narrow stairs.
Five minutes, I told myself. If I don’t find anything in five minutes, I’ll go back to bed.
When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I sneezed. Not once, but about fifteen times. Man, there’s a lot of dust down here.
Switching on the flashlight, I played the beam over the room. The lumpy shapes under plastic tarps were furniture—Aunt Lucy’s old living room set, a broken cuckoo clock, a wooden hutch with a door that didn’t quite close. Everything smelled musty.
Aunt Lucy’s old washer and dryer were pushed up against one of the walls. Along the far side was a storage closet with a wooden door that slid open on metal tracks. That looked promising.
I switched the flashlight to my left hand and tugged at the door. It didn’t budge. When I placed the flashlight on the floor, it rolled a few inches away, scraping against the rough concrete, then stopped. I yanked on the door with both hands. This time it slid open noisily, the shrieking of the metal tracks echoing off the walls.
I stood on tiptoe to pull the chain hanging from the closet’s ceiling. Broken. Figures. I picked up the flashlight and shined it on the shelves.
At first glance, I didn’t see anything interesting. On the top shelf sat a big plastic container with Christmas paper that had faded from red to pink. I pawed through the rest of the shelf’s contents, but it was just holiday decorations—an old wreath, a Nativity set, and a box of glass ornaments shaped like icicles.
Something rustled at the back.
“Ah!” I dropped the flashlight, and everything went dark.
With hands slick with sweat, I fumbled for the light, my fingers groping the cold concrete until my hands closed around the handle. The top had loosened when the flashlight slipped from my hands, and I screwed it back on. A thin yellow beam cut through the room.
I held my breath, aiming the light at the top shelf again. Nothing. Whatever had been there, I’d scared it away.
Taking deep breaths to steady myself, I aimed the flashlight at a shelf that looked empty, playing the beam over uneven wooden boards. There was nothing there but dust.
And a mousetrap. Gross. At least it was empty.
The third shelf was crammed with boxes of what Mom calls sentimental junk: old report cards and wedding invitations and high school trophies.
I lifted a box off the shelf. The cardboard was soft, and it looked like a mouse had been chewing on one of the flaps. Inside were just old recipes and cookbooks. I slid it back on the shelf and took down another one.
Books about trees and birds and insects. I remembered what Adam had said about Aunt Lucy letting him and Upchuck explore her woods.
The last box held office supplies. Spiral notebooks with cramped writing detailing grocery lists and things to do. Loose paper, and Post-its, and dried-up pens. Nothing interesting.
I was about to put the box back on the shelf when I had a thought. When I first started writing stories and screenplay ideas, I kept them in semi-secret journals. Semi-secret because even though I kept the journals in plain sight, the ideas were hidden behind pages of old math problems or English assignments.
On a hunch, I picked up one of the notebooks and flipped to the yellowed pages near the end. Nothing but a list of ingredients for garden vegetable soup.
I picked up another fat spiral notebook and flipped through it. When I reached the middle, my breath caught.
Down Below.
With a shaking hand, I flipped the page. The top right-hand corner said August 4 in faded ink. It must have been really old. The rest of the page was filled with the same slanted handwriting I’d seen on Aunt Lucy’s Christmas cards every year.
I can’t shake the guilt, Aunt Lucy had written.
Guilt? What guilt? I settled onto the floor, ignoring how hard and uncomfortable the cold cement felt.
Of the twelve of us, I was the only one to escape. Even now, all these years later, I still ask myself—what spared me? I wasn’t special. I wasn’t particularly smart. I wasn’t easily frightened, but surely that was true of most of the other children taken.
My mouth went dry and my breath hitched. I hadn’t actually expected to find any information down here. I’d just hoped I would, the same way people who buy lottery tickets hope they’ll be the big winner.
I’ll never forget the moment I realized I could only save myself. The look in that one little boy’s eyes—it hurts to think of it. I left him! How could I do that? From now on, every time I see green eyes, I’ll think of him and blame myself, even if I’ve told myself a thousand times over, there was nothing I could have done.
It’s strange to me how much one night can shape your life. How one experience, standing alone, can create a lifelong mission.
It’s more than a mission. It’s an obsession. It’s all-consuming. Perhaps I couldn’t have saved the other children taken with me. But now that I am older
—now that I know of Down Below and the creatures that lurk there—I may be able to protect others.
Isn’t it my responsibility to do so?
A film of sweat coated my skin. I swiped a hand across my forehead, thumbing through the remaining pages. I was almost afraid to read them. Down Below had never felt more real.
To my knowledge, I’m the only human to use the portals to cross between Down Below and Up There. I’m not sure how my portal remains open. Do the monsters desire my company every Halloween?
Halloween. So I was right. Monster New Year.
After I escaped, I returned Down Below four more times, always on Halloween. Each time I returned home, but barely. And the last time—I shudder to think of it.
I shuddered, too. My entire body felt ice-cold.
It may have been cowardly not to return after that narrow escape, but I believed—believe—that I have all the information I need. I know the terrain of the paths that lead to the Transformation Room, and I can re-create them.
But I can’t simply draw a map for children who might be taken. What good would that do? Small children won’t memorize a map. They need something colorful and fun to entice them. Something they’ll study and learn without even realizing they’re doing so. Something like—
“A game.”
SCENE NINE:
A WISH FOR BLUE
I stayed up the rest of the night reading Aunt Lucy’s journal. She’d gone back Down Below four times, always disguised as a zombie because it was the easiest monster to impersonate.
Monsterville was only one part of Down Below. Also known as the incubator, Monsterville was where new monsters spent their first year before being given permanent assignments. It was also home to the old school creatures that kept the newbies in line.
I wish I could share this with someone, Aunt Lucy had written in one entry.
Having this secret is so lonely. But I’m not foolish. If I were to confide in someone, they’d think me insane. How could they not? This is a secret I’ll keep forever.
Poor Aunt Lucy! Suddenly I realized how lucky I was to have Adam. If no one else knew about Blue, I’d go nuts.
But I couldn’t get over how brave Aunt Lucy was. She went Down Below by herself. That had to make her the most awesome person ever. I felt a twinge of regret I couldn’t have known her better.
According to the entries, when she started designing Monsterville, she knew a guy named Stephen who was trying to get her prototype into the hands of a board game publisher, but he wanted her to improve the game to make it more appealing first. Make it more appealing first
Of course I want it to be appealing! I want every parent to buy it, and every child to play it so that if they are taken, they’ll remember the game and have a chance of escaping. But how do I make the game both accurate and irresistible?
Based on the drawings that filled the journal’s pages, she’d worked hard to answer that question. Monsterville had gone through about twenty versions before becoming the board game now tucked away on Haylie’s shelf.
In one version, Trouble Down Below, the monsters looked really scary. A timer was set for ten minutes, and if the players didn’t make it around the board in time, they all died.
In another version, players landing on a monster’s turf weren’t stuck until the right card was drawn. They were eaten. That one was called No Second Chances.
I could understand why Stephen had nixed those ideas, but I could also see why Aunt Lucy wanted the game to be so scary. She was trying to warn kids.
Near the end of the journal, Aunt Lucy wrote about receiving a prototype of the game from Stephen.
Stephen called it an early birthday present. I suspect he’s humoring an old lady. He knows this game will never see the light of day. He always was terrible at being honest when he knew it would hurt someone’s feelings.
That explained why I couldn’t find Monsterville online, and why Game Shop Tom had never heard of it.
I closed the journal and stood up. It was awful that Aunt Lucy hadn’t gotten to share Monsterville with the world.
But at least I could share it with someone.
“Wow. Down Below.” Blue’s long fingers traced the waterslide snaking from the top of the Monsterville board to the bottom.
I’d finished telling him and Adam about what I’d discovered in the journals. We were sitting in Blue’s cabin, the game board spread out in front of us. Not playing, just studying it.
“So it’s accurate?” I asked. “At least, the incubator part?”
“Yeah.” Blue picked up a card and examined it. “Only it looks more fun since it’s in cartoons.”
“I think that was the idea,” I said. “Kids would want to play it.”
“I’d play it if I were a few years younger,” Adam admitted.
“Haylie’s bonkers about it. She hasn’t been so obsessed with a toy since Sammy Squirrel.” I turned to Blue. “I have a question. Can humans go Down Below by themselves? Aunt Lucy said she went back, alone.”
Blue cocked his head, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “I heard an older monster telling a story about that once.”
“What’d he say?”
“When a human goes Down Below with a monster, it leaves a mark. Like a—” he floundered.
“Imprint!” I offered, and Blue nodded.
“After that, they can go back Down Below every Halloween, using their portal. Once they use it, it’ll glow for them.”
“Like a lighthouse beacon,” Adam said.
“Yeah,” Blue said. “Especially because it glows a different color for the person it belongs to. Yellow for everyone else, blue for them.”
“That’s actually helpful,” Adam said, picking up the Monsterville cards and shuffling them. “No chance of popping up underneath someone else’s bed.”
I watched the cards in Adam’s hands. “There was something odd Aunt Lucy wrote in the margins of the journal: Undo it by leaving the exact same way you came. Do you know what that means?”
Blue pouted. “No,” he finally said.
“Well, think about it. Maybe it means something.”
Adam frowned. “Let me get this straight. A human can only return Down Below on Halloween, and through his own portal. So if his house burns down with the portal inside it, he’s out of luck?”
“Yep,” Blue confirmed. “But monsters have free rein. Any portal, any day. Right?”
“Right. And they can even take a human with them. Through another portal, I mean. So the human wouldn’t have to wait until Halloween.”
Blue looked down then, but not fast enough. I caught the panic in his eyes.
“What?” I prodded.
“Oh.” He picked up his tail and started fiddling with it. “I was just thinking about what Atticus made us do—coming Up There to scare kids, as different monsters each time. If we did a good job, we got treats.”
“What if you did a bad job?”
“Then we got locked in the box,” Blue responded promptly. “To think about what we did. I got locked in the box four times. It smelled really bad in there.”
“Oh, Blue.” Adam looked pained. “This Atticus sounds like a real winner.”
“He didn’t get in charge by being a nice guy. At least, that’s what he said when he made one of the other goblins eat a really big jar of expired pickles.”
“That’s disgusting,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m glad you escaped,” Adam added. “You shouldn’t have to put up with that kind of stuff. No one should.”
“He did worse things, too,” Blue said glumly. He didn’t elaborate, and for once I didn’t have more questions. I didn’t want to know.
I glanced at my phone. “Aw. I’m sorry, Blue, but I’ve gotta go. Mom’s taking me shopping for next weekend, and everything closes early on Sunday.” I dumped the game pieces into the box and climbed to my feet.
“For the big debut, huh?” Adam said, helping me fold the board.
“Yup. My play,
onstage—for everyone to see. And judge.” My stomach fluttered. “What if everyone hates it?”
“They won’t. Stop worrying.”
I stood up, brushing off my jeans. “I can’t help it.”
“I get it.” Adam knocked the dust from his pants. “Oh, I almost forgot. Can you come over at eight, after it’s dark? I have something to show you.”
“Really? What?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Can I come, too?” Blue asked. “I want a surprise.”
“Sorry,” Adam replied. “This one’s for Lissa.”
When I got to Adam’s house, he was waiting on his porch. He’d changed into a sweatshirt and his hair was wet. “Hey.”
“Hey. What’s this surprise?”
“Follow me.” He led me to the picnic table next to his mom’s vegetable garden. He wiped some dirt off the top, then laid on his back, his feet dangling over the side.
“Is that thing going to hold you?” I asked.
Adam raised his head. “Oh, thanks a lot. It’s fine, it has a metal frame. Climb up here with me.” He patted the table.
“Okay, fine.” He shifted to make room. I heard his soft breathing and smelled the clean, sharp scent of his sports soap. “I’m waiting to be surprised.”
“Look up.”
The sky was black, dotted by hundreds and hundreds of stars. Some were bigger than others, and some were brighter. I’d never noticed that about stars before—the differences.
The sky seemed to stretch into forever. Without anything blocking my sight—the outline of a house or the frame of the window—it felt like I was part of it. Like if I reached forward, my fingers might touch a star.
“Wow,” I whispered. I didn’t know how much time went by. Maybe thirty seconds, maybe an hour.
“Sometimes I come out here at night,” Adam said quietly. “When I’ve had a bad day. Looking up at the sky makes me feel better. I don’t know why.”
“I know why.”
Looking up at something so limitless made me feel like my problems weren’t so bad. It didn’t matter that I was hundreds of miles away from my friends, or that Freeburg didn’t have a mall or a movie theater.
Monsterville Page 11