We had been getting Kev used to being back in the human world. Playing football with him even though it takes five people to tackle him. We’ve been learning sign language to understand him better, and we even got him to agree to a shower once a week. The way he smelled, he needed a shower twice a day, but once a week was a start.
The more we hang out, the more I can see underneath his layers of fur and snarl to a sweet, fourteen-year-old guy who loves animals, his sister, and all kinds of music. We’ve caught him sneaking out to 7-Eleven in the middle of the night. Two weeks ago he snuck into a night club just to rock out. Ever since he showed up, there have been a lot more bigfoot sightings.
But he’s still really clumsy and has terrible anger issues and poor personal hygiene. Basically, a teenage boy.
“School’s on lockdown because of you,” I said.
Kevin kicked the ground. He offered me a chicken nugget.
“No thanks,” I said. He tucked it into my pocket. “Quit messing around.”
In his other paw, the beast held up a red cut-out heart.
“What’s this?” I asked.
His hairy eyebrows raised. Will you be my Valentine? he signed.
I smiled.
“That’s very sweet, but we need to get you out of here,” I said.
His hairy arms whirled around, and he pointed a claw to his forehead.
“What? Kevin, we have to go. What are you saying? You remembered something?”
“Oot, oot,” Kevin said, circling his paw.
“Something about the mixing bowl? The swirl in the sea. The island? Something about Monster Island!”
Kevin pointed at me and then to his snout.
We had been gathering intel ever since we found out there were still missing kids trapped on the island where Kevin was turned into a hairy mutant beastie. These were kids who had been stolen away from their parents by real monsters. Some kids were waiting to be turned into creatures like Kevin; others had already been transformed. I’d promised myself, Kevin, and those kids that as soon as we located the island, the babysitters would bring them home.
I had no idea how I was going to do any of this. I just knew in my gut I had to do it.
Kevin unzipped his fanny pack and rummaged through pens, leaves, and a dead mouse until he found a folded paper. Over the past few months, Kevin had been drawing every little detail he could remember about Monster Island. His drawings were crude fragments, small clues we hoped would help us with our rescue mission. However, we still had not been able to locate it. One of the biggest clues he gave us was that the island was run by the deadliest of the seven Boogeypeople, Baron von Eisenvult.
From A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting
NAME: Baron von Eisenvult, aka the Wolf, aka the Baron, aka the Big Bad Wolf
TYPE: Humanoid wolf; Class 1; leader of the seven Boogeys
STATUS: Living in exile
LIKES: Sheep and human hamburgers
STRENGTHS: Power and ruthlessness; great sense of smell; a keen eye for accounting and business; razor-sharp claws that can slice a babysitter in half with the flick of a wrist; jumping, fencing, basketball (Is there anything this monster can’t do?); incredible hearing; excellent nautical skills; impeccable taste in art and fine wines
WEAKNESSES: Narcissistic and sociopathic behavior. Isolated. His own selfish greed? His endless hunger for vengeance?
WEAPONS: Claws, swords, blades, knives. HIS BITE.
HISTORY: This ruthless leader has no problem tearing children from their families for his own gain. He sees humans as if they were lesser animals and he is the top dog. The Wolf has led many attacks on humanity (see the War of the Five Tentacles, and the Eldritch Battle, on page 64) but has since gone unseen for a few years.
WARNING: Do not pull his tail. He hates that.
Kevin gave me a drawing of what looked like a building with a circle around it. “ELL” was written on the side of the building.
“Ell? What’s ‘ELL’?” I asked.
Kevin grunted and gestured, like he was looking out of a window.
“You saw this. Out of the window? On your way to the island?”
Kevin threw back his head and howled.
Ugh. Monsters. Once they start howling it’s hard to get them to stop. I clamped my hand over his mouth.
“I’m glad you remembered something important, but the Willow Brook Middle Search Party’s gonna hear us.”
Shadows appeared under the door to the hallway. Slowly, it creaked open.
“Hide!” I said.
I shoved him behind the boiler. His horns clanged on the metal pipes. Kevin’s breath huffed onto the back of my head. I shivered and elbowed him to back off.
“Awbarree?” he grunted, pointing to my hair.
“Yeah. My shampoo’s Strawberry Zest. Now be quiet.”
Footsteps clanked down the metal stairs. I held my breath. Mr. Gibbs had for sure realized I was not in attendance and had sent teachers with torches and pitchforks to come and get me.
Please, please, please don’t be the principal or the security guard.
If an adult found us, they would flip out. They’d call animal control, and animal control would lock Kevin up and experiment on him. Or they’d claim to have found bigfoot in our school basement, and every nutjob in the world would want to throw him behind bars so they could gawk at him.
Of course, I would never let that happen. Which means I would have to cause a major scene so Kevin could escape—which would probably land me in detention. And I, Kelly Ferguson—flawless, gold-star student—do not get detention. Especially since I’d made a deal with my parents: I could be a monster-hunting babysitter as long as my grades were good and I stayed out of trouble.
“Kelly? You in here?” Berna whispered.
I jumped out from my hiding place. Kevin followed my lead and leaped out with a happy roar. Berna squealed and threw her flashlight at me.
“That is not funny!” she scolded. “I could’ve killed you.”
“Sorry, Bern. I didn’t think you’d come looking for us,” I said, hugging her.
“What are babysitters for?” she said. “And you, big guy. You know you’re not supposed to be out right now. Wugnot’s going to have a cow so hard he’s going to start mooing.” Wugnot was our hobgoblin babysitting buddy. Since he was trying not to eat humans, he was pretty strict about following the rules.
Kevin nodded, swung his hairy arms around the two of us, and squeezed until the air whooshed out of my lungs. He nuzzled our faces with a long purr.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m happy to see you, too, but that’s enough,” Berna wheezed. “The whole faculty is headed this way.”
“We’re being hunted!” I said. “Kev, we have to get you out of here.”
We scrambled up the stairs. Eyes wide on the empty hallway.
“Nearest exit’s the end of Hall C,” I whispered. “Quietly. I’m talking to you, Kev. You need a bath, by the way.”
Kevin sniffed his overgrown armpit and snorted.
We hustled down the corridor, crouched below the windows in classroom doors.
Curtis turned the corner. “Wait! Don’t go this way!” Curtis shriek-whispered. “I had to create a diversion for the teachers. This way!”
Elbows and knees in rigid military formation, Curtis bolted, like he was running a race for the Dorksville Champion Cup.
“What about the security cameras?” I said, sprinting alongside them. “They’re gonna see all this.”
“Cassie’s in Principal Wing’s office right now, wiping the security drives,” Curtis said.
Kevin grunted and pointed up ahead.
A dark-haired someone huddled behind the water fountain.
Was that—? Could it be? No.
My Kool-Aid king.
My fresh slice of pizza with extra sauce.
My potential but not-quite-yet boyfriend.
“Victor?”
Victor emerged from behind the fountain. “Hola!”
“What’s he doing here?” Curtis said. Kevin snorted in agreement.
“Sounded like you needed help,” Victor said. He proudly held up a walkie-talkie.
Victor winked at me and smiled. I was staring at his dimple so much I almost tripped.
Berna shot me a hard look. “You gave him a walkie?”
“What’s everyone mad about?” I said. “Victor’s basically a sitter.”
“Sitter in Training,” Curtis corrected. “He needs to earn his stripes.”
Curtis was right. Every babysitter around the world needs to pass Heck Weekend, a grueling two-day exam filled with obstacle courses and monster battles. I pride myself on my good grades, and even I failed it.
“I heard something down here!” Principal Wing’s voice echoed behind us.
The sound of a mob of faculty members chased after us.
“We have ten seconds before they catch us,” Curtis said.
“Less talking more running,” Berna said, launching herself down the hall.
We dashed under another banner for the Valentine’s Day dance.
“Are you, um, planning on going?” I asked, sprinting beside Victor.
Victor looked at me like I was crazy. “Go to what?”
Curtis slammed into the exit door, but it was rigidly shut.
“Locked? They locked the exits?” Victor asked.
“It is a lockdown,” I said. “Nothing in or out.”
I could hear the teachers charging down the hallway. Our ten-second lead was dwindling fast.
“I knew I should’ve brought my lock pick to school today,” said Curtis.
He whispered into his walkie. “Cassie, this is Curtis. Over.”
“Shank you for your ushe of ‘over.’ Footage ish almosh bleached. Over,” replied Cassie.
Curtis squinted up at the remote-controlled deadbolt. “That’s great, Sarge. Think you can override the remote locks? Over.”
“Yeah, right. It’sh a middle shkool, not Fort Knosh,” Cassie said.
Faculty footsteps thundered toward us. We were trapped.
Kevin aimed his horns directly at the exit and got into a crouching position.
“No!” I knew he could bash it down, but then we’d be left to explain the gaping hole. We needed a smarter, quieter way out. There were no windows in the hall. The only way out I could see was above us.
“Kevin, you’re gonna have to lift us up,” I said.
“Oooop?” Kevin asked.
“Oooop,” I confirmed.
Kevin easily hoisted me to the ceiling. I slid one of the big foam tiles back and grabbed the thin metal rafters. They were shaky, but they held my weight. I crawled inside the small ceiling space as Kevin hoisted up Berna and Curtis.
Victor tried to jump up himself, but he could barely reach.
“Urppa goo!” Kevin said.
Kevin hurled Victor up a little too high, and Victor bumped his head on a rafter. Kevin chuckled. I had a feeling he liked messing with Victor.
“Don’t touch any of the tiles,” I whispered. “One false step, and you’ll break straight through.”
Just before the herd of middle-aged teachers crowded into Hall C, Kevin leaped up beside us and clung to the fire sprinkler pipe. It creaked and threatened to break under his weight. Miraculously, the pipe held. Kevin was the only one who looked amused. Like this was his idea of a fun hang. I carefully slid the foam back into place.
Through a crack in the ceiling tiles, we watched Mr. Milo check the locked exit. Principal Wing hitched up his pants.
“Something that big doesn’t just disappear,” Principal Wing said.
We clung to the wobbly metal railing, holding our breath. The faculty looked around in defeated confusion and headed back the way they had come. I exhaled. Victor and I exchanged relieved glances.
His big brown eyes sparkled in the dark.
My frizzy red hair fell in my eyes, and I casually flipped it back, trying to look cool. My hair whipped into a dust bunny, and suddenly, I was gagging on a ball of dust. My hand slipped onto a ceiling tile. It broke, like it was made of toast.
I grabbed Victor’s shirt, and we both tumbled down to the speckled linoleum in a double thud-crack.
My skull stung. I groaned, blinking through the bubbles bursting in my brain.
“What was that?” Principal Wing said.
A collection of shoe squeaks followed by the sound of a surge of teachers making an about-face behind us.
I saw Kevin and Berna and Curtis watching us from their hiding place in the ceiling.
“Hide, you nitwits,” I whispered.
A foam ceiling tile slid into place, hiding Kevin’s apologetic eyes.
“Victor, are you okay?” I said. “Victor?”
Lying still beside me, Victor was unconscious.
4
“Victor! Wake up!”
Principal Wing’s hand grabbed my shoulder. His sharp nails dug through my sweater and into my skin.
“Help Victor. He’s unconscious!” I said.
“Dear Lord, get that boy some water. His neck could be broken,” shrieked the principal.
Victor blinked awake and winced in pain. “Where am I?”
“Gosh darn it, Miss Ferguson!” Principal Wing shouted in my face. His blond mustache flared with spittle. “You two are the ones causing all this trouble?”
“Was that you two in my kitchen?” shouted the lunch lady from the middle of the angry crowd.
“Why were you up there? In the ceiling?” demanded the vice principal as he kicked a broken ceiling tile.
“Hiding. Duh,” I said.
“Don’t you duh me!”
“Take it easy, Carl,” Principal Wing said over his shoulder.
“Nobody duhs me!” huffed Vice Principal Flowers. “Duh yourself, girlie.” The red veins around his nose turned into an angry purple.
“Thelma, you said a bear was in your kitchen,” Principal Wing said, side-eyeing the lunch lady.
A haze of doubt changed the lunch lady’s hardened expression. “It was you two who ate all my nuggets?” asked Mrs. Francini.
I took a deep breath. This was really going to sting. But I had to protect Kevin and the other sitters from getting in trouble. There was no point in all of us going down for something so stupid that could jeopardize Kevin and the babysitters.
“Just me,” I said, pulling the half-eaten chicken nugget Kevin had given me from my pocket. “Sorry. I was hungry.”
Luckily, what they found on me were books, notebooks, a can of Pringles, and a jump rope. PS: in case you’re just tuning in, babysitters hide their gear and weapons in toys so parents don’t suspect a thing. Perfect for moments like this!
“A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting?” Mr. Milo said, fishing out my notebook.
My neck muscles strained with panic.
“Art project,” I said quickly.
The security guard thumbed through the guide’s pages of hideous monsters and instructions on how to stop them.
“Whoever heard of a Toadie? Ridiculous,” he snorted, slapping the pages shut.
Principal Wing shouted into a bullhorn. “It’s okay, everybody. Lockdown’s over. Return to your classrooms. Little Miss Culprit and Mr. Ramon have been caught.”
Doors to classrooms slowly opened. Faces peered out at me.
The mob of teachers, proud from their capture, marched me to my doom. Instead of torches and pitchforks, they held rulers and pens and bullhorns. I was def not going to the Valentine’s Day dance. My mom and dad were going to ground me for life, and I would not be allowed to babysit for a long, long time.
That’s when I noticed something odd about the walls in the hallway. They were bare. Every single paper heart had been ripped off. It was as if Valentine’s Day had been erased from the school.
5
“I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record,” said Principal Wing.
The rank odor of stale coffee wafted t
hrough the administration room leading to the principal’s office. The worn-out blue carpet smelled damp. The solid oak door to the principal’s office reminded me of a closed coffin lid.
“There’s a lot of factors to this—” I tried.
“There is one excuse for stupid and that’s stupid, as my grandmother used to say.”
“Well, I think I deserve—”
“You don’t deserve a thing. You and that Victor friend of yours are in a heap load of trouble.”
“He didn’t do anything. It’s my fault.”
“His parents are immigrants, you know.”
“Whoa. What’s that got to do with it?”
“Don’t whoa me, young lady. They worked very hard to get into this country, and now you’re going to destroy their son’s future so you can get your kicks? I won’t have it, young miss. I will not. One. Week. Suspension,” Mr. Wing said.
My heart weighed a ton. I was a straight-A student. Suspension was not my thing.
“Please. I’m one of the few kids here who actually likes going to school,” I said.
“Which is why this is all so confusing to me, Kelly,” he said.
And then to make things perfectly lemon-in-a-paper-cut awful, Principal Wing called my mother and demanded she leave work and pick up her no-good, delinquent daughter.
Outside the window the cold February wind whirled through bony branches. A crow perched on a tree and blinked at me.
“Go straight to your locker,” said Principal Wing, combing his mustache.
“Yes, sir,” I said. But as soon as I turned the corner, I ducked into the school clinic to pay Victor a visit. He was lying down, holding an ice pack to his head.
I covered my mouth. My throat tightened. Tears welled. “I’m so sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay,” he said, woozy. “Babysitters for life, right?”
“Babysitters for life,” I said.
“Kelly. I have to ask you . . . ,” he said.
“Save your strength,” I whispered.
“It’s about the dance.”
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