“Well, I can’t swim that fast,” Berna said.
“I can!” said Curtis.
He pulled off his shirt and his jeans, and so help me, he was wearing a scuba diving suit underneath his clothes.
“Have you been wearing that all day?” Cassie asked.
Curtis pulled on his babysitter backpack and pressed a button on the shoulder strap. Two fins shot out of the side of his book bag, and a compact dive scooter sprang out of the back.
“The Seaside Sitter Dive Scooter,” Curtis said. “I’ve been waiting a long time to use this.”
The dive scooter’s propeller whistled.
Curtis strapped a scuba mask over his face. “All ashore that’s going ashore!”
Everyone stared in shock as he dove into the water.
“That boy is crazy,” sighed Berna.
Cassie yelped. “Don’t you leave me, Curtish Critter!”
Berna grabbed Cassie’s hand and waited until the boat circled around so it faced shore. “Kelly, you take loverboy. Cass, you’re coming with me.”
“I hate all of you! We’re going to die!”
“Shut up, Cassie!”
“I can’t leave my uncle’s boat!” Victor said, clinging to the wheel.
“We’ll come back for it!” I said, and took his hand.
We ran to the end of the boat. The gyre’s growing gullet gurgled behind us like a black hole.
Victor squeezed my hand, and together we jumped. My body shot with tingles. The waves were ice cold. I kicked my feet. Strange tendrils touched my sneakers. Water thrashed. Something snatched my backpack, and I was dragged under the ocean, flailing and screaming.
20
“Swim!”
Berna had grabbed my backpack. Everyone held on to Curtis, and his Seaside Sitter Dive Scooter pulled us away from the vortex, kicking and thrashing.
Victor looked back to see the trash vortex swallowing his uncle’s boat whole. That seemed to satisfy the gyre’s hunger. Its ripples and bulges settled with a long, steamy sigh.
We dragged ourselves onto the rocky beach and caught our breaths.
“My uncle’s boat!” Victor said, staring out into the water.
“Forget your boat,” Berna said. “How are we going to get home?”
The woods along the shore were tall and thick. Strange whistles and insect noises chirped within its darkness.
“We’ll have to find another vehicle and commandeer that home,” I said, wringing water out of my hair.
“Oh, is that all we have to do?” Victor snapped.
“Victor, I’m sorry. If your uncle’s insurance doesn’t cover his boat being swallowed by a monster, then, well, I’ve been saving up to go to Camp Miskatonic. You can use my camp funds to pay for the boat.”
Victor shook his head angrily. This was not going well.
“Supply check,” Berna said.
Luckily, our babysitter packs were waterproof, so most of our gear was protected.
I looked around for my cooler full of food.
“Lost the snacks,” I said sadly.
“The shnacksh are gone?” Cassie cried. “I wash really looking forward to having shome Pringlesh. That’sh it. I’m shending a distresh call.”
She removed her clunky sitter satellite phone.
“A distress call for snacks?” Curtis said. “I don’t think they’ll deliver.”
“You’re hilarioush,” Cassie said, and dialed. “Mama Vee and the order will have to come get ush.”
“Wait, wait,” I said. “We only just got here. We can’t give up. We have to carry on with the mission.”
“You sound like Liz,” Curtis said.
He meant it as a compliment, but it came out as an insult. Liz was always the crazy one.
Am I the new crazy one? I thought I was Kelly Ferguson, reasonable Mathlete who liked watching Korean dramas. Maybe I was not as nice and calm as I thought I was.
“Your confidence, while reckless, is inspiring, Kelly,” Berna said, “but I’m with Cassie. We’re stranded on a monster island. We’re going to have to suck it up and call for help.”
I exhaled heavily and looked at the map. We had failed before we even began.
But they were right. Best to make preparations and sacrifice my pride.
“Make the call,” I said.
Cassie dialed her sitter sat-phone and pointed it at the sky.
“No shignal. We need to get away from theesh treesh and get to higher ground to shend out a call,” said Cassie.
“And then try to find Liz and Kevin,” I said.
Everyone shivered in their squishy sneakers.
“We can do this, guys,” I said. “We stay together and we stay cool and we stay strong. We can do this.”
Everyone grumbled half-heartedly.
“Captain’s right. We got the skills to pay the bills,” Curtis said, and unsheathed the biggest hunting knife any of us had ever seen. “Fourteen inches of stainless-steel power. Can cut through metal, glass, and bone.”
“Good news, guys! My bottle rocket made it!” Victor said, holding up a puny little bottle rocket and a book of matches he had sealed in a sandwich bag.
“It’s a rescue mission, not the Fourth of July, bro,” Curtis said.
“Looks like the compound is this way,” said Berna. “No. Wait.” She turned the map around several times. “Sorry. My GPS is on the fritz. Something on the island’s messing with it. I’m getting a real Bermuda Triangle vibe from this place. That way!”
A graveyard of wrecked boats from all different eras, from schooners to tugboats, had washed up along the shore. We checked them for radios, but their insides had been gutted.
Into the woods. Hazy shafts of sunlight beamed through the thick, thorny treetops.
Keeping a tight diamond formation like we learned in training, with our hands on our weapons and our eyes on alert, we crossed creeks running with bubbling, smelly tar. The atmosphere should have been freezing, but somehow a tropical heat radiated through the island.
Cassie waved her sitter sat-phone around but still couldn’t pick up a signal.
“Keep your eyes peeled,” I whispered. “Who knows what kind of defenses this island has.”
Three huge stones carved into the shape of claws jutted out from the earth. It looked like a giant foot was buried in the ground. We passed a misty waterfall where a huge carving of a monster hand reached out from behind the water.
Farther up we found a private jet that had nose-dived into the ground. Claw marks were torn across its wings. While Curtis checked the plane for a radio, I saw that it had crashed beside an enormous stone face overgrown with roots and vines. It depicted a hideous, thorny-crowned creature with twenty-foot-wide eyeballs peering up at us.
“This thing must have been huge when it was standing,” I said, looking back at all the scattered pieces of the statue.
A shadow streaked behind us. Leathery wings flapped. We looked skyward.
Through the canopy of twisted branches and thorns, massive bat-like wings rode the wind. Talons skimmed the treetops.
Dread seized my heart. I held up my fist, and everyone froze.
Gargoyles. Do not let that thing see you. It could rip us all to shreds.
Its glowing red eyes scanned the horizon and then looked downward.
I pointed to the eye of the monster statue.
We need to hide right now.
Keeping their eyes on the sky, Berna, Cassie, Victor, and Curtis followed after me as I ducked inside the statue’s hollow, cavernous head. We huddled together in the shadows. Higher up in the sky, a second gargoyle banked through the air, making wide turns with the icy calm of a vulture.
Berna snapped a picture of it and quickly pressed herself against the stone wall.
A third monster wove figure eights around its pals. In the quiet I heard Berna’s grip tighten on her weapon. Victor’s breathing was fast and trembling. The three gargoyles patrolled the skies. Their wings raced like rippling kite
s.
I quietly flipped open the Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting.
NAME: Gargoyle
TYPE: Elemental Class 2
STRENGTHS: Swooping; slicing; stealth; frightening people; staying still for a long, long time; guarding a castle. Very, very patient. Do not get in a staring contest with them. Hearing.
WEAKNESS: Being turned into stone. Long-distance travel. Fire. HOT FIRE.
For five minutes no one spoke. The gargoyles soared higher and higher until the whoosh and flap of their wings faded away.
“Wingspan on those things must be twelve feet,” Curtis whispered.
“Fifteen,” whispered Cassie.
“Think they know we’re here?” Victor asked.
“If they knew we were here, we’d be dead,” I said.
We climbed out of the statue’s head and darted into the woods. The ground grew steeper as we trudged uphill. Five creatures waited among the trees. I gasped and held up my fist.
Peering through Berna’s binoculars, I saw five bizarre, crumbling monster statues tilting in the dirt like uneven tombstones.
The creepy carvings stood at the entrance of a fallen temple overgrown with ivy. Crows dotted the sagging rooftop. The building was enormous.
Darkness beckoned inside its crumbling columns. No one dared move another muscle.
“Dude. Queen B. Where is the compound?” I asked.
Berna checked the map and chewed her gum slowly.
“Are we losht?” Cassie said.
“No!” Her voice raised an octave.
“You’re not inshpiring confidensh, Berna,” Cassie said.
“We should keep our voices down,” said Victor, watching the temple crows.
“It’s not my fault!” Berna said. “That trash monster threw us off course.”
“But you’re the great navigator!” Cassie spat.
“Quiet!” I shouted. “If we’re going to get through this, we need to be a team. It’s not Berna’s fault we’re lost.”
“We’re not lost,” Berna mumbled. “We’re somewhere.”
“Where?” I snapped.
Berna pointed to the left side of the island on the map.
“That’s the exact opposite side of the island we need to be on, Bern,” I said.
“I realize this,” Berna said through her clenched teeth.
She held up her compass. It spun in circles. “The island is messing with my compass. North is south, and south is north. I should have figured that out, but it took me a moment to get my bearings. I’m good now, though. I got this.”
Curtis grabbed the map from her. “I think she’s right. Then again, I’m the one following you guys.”
“Great,” I said. “Now we have to cross the amusement park to get to the compound.”
“You said we were going for higher ground,” Berna said.
“We are, but I also want to get to Liz and Kevin and the kids.”
“Kelly, we’re in serious trouble here, and you’re acting like we’re at summer camp,” Berna said.
“I’m just trying to help our friends,” I said.
“What about the friends right in front of you?” she asked.
“You mean the friends who got us lost?” I snarked.
Berna glared at me. “Oh, I’m sorry if I’m reading a map, drawn by a fourteen-year-old monster, I might add, wrong while on an island designed to drive me crazy! You think you can do a better job?”
I locked eyes with her. We were having our first best friend fight, and I did not like it. Not only were we scared, I could feel the island’s weird energy messing with us.
“You’re doing fine,” I said, eager to cut the tension between us. “Let’s keep moving.”
We walked around the temple, keeping clear of its vaulted columns. I caught a glimpse of a towering wall inside. Ancient hieroglyphs were chiseled into the marble. I was drawn toward the wall, pulled by its dark, magnetic presence.
“Kelly, don’t go in there,” Victor said.
My hand reached out as I glided into the temple. The carvings showed monsters bowing at the foot of an enormous, impossibly giant monster that was emerging from the earth.
As my fingers brushed an etching, a low chant rumbled in the dark corridors of the temple.
Victor grabbed my shoulder and swung me around. The chanting stopped suddenly.
“What’s wrong with you?” he said.
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
“We’ve been calling your name for three minutes! I didn’t know where you went,” he said, escorting me into the sunlight, away from the monstrous wall.
“Weird,” I said, joining the others. “I didn’t hear you guys.”
“You okay? We can’t have you spacing out on us now, Ferguson,” Berna said.
“We were yelling for you,” Cassie said with her hands on her hips.
Berna studied me with serious concern. I was going to tell them about the gigundo monster on the wall and how it looked like the enormous statue we had passed, when there was an explosion of dead leaves.
A wild-faced woman had shot out from the dirt. Her clothes were ragged. Her eyes were crazed. I raised my sword.
“Babysitters? It’s me!” she shrieked. “Emmy Banks!”
We held our weapons high.
“Who?” Curtis said.
“Emmy! Chapter president of the Order of the Maine Babysitters.” Her voice was hoarse and raspy, as if she had been screaming all day and night. “We got an emergency request from a sitter named Kelly Ferguson.”
“That’s me!” I threw my arms around the lost, crazy-looking babysitter. I introduced Emmy to everyone. I gave her my canteen, and she guzzled it, water spilling down her chin.
“Thanks for coming,” I said.
“My vice president, Jenny, and I took out our boat, not thinking we’d ever see what we saw. This incredible ship sailing into the moonlight . . . with a wolf at the wheel. We followed it all the way here, but then . . . we weren’t expecting the trash monster.”
“Neither were we,” Victor sighed.
“Jenny and me, we got separated. I don’t know where she is. All my supplies and gear. Down into that trash monster. I barely made it to shore. I’ve been walking since.”
“Have you seen the compound?” I asked. “Chimney stacks. That’s where our friends are.”
Emmy Banks shook her head and pointed grimly in the direction of a sloping hillside. “There’s this amusement park thing that way.” Her voice trembled. “It looks evil. Pure evil. I wanted to get as far away from it as possible.”
“We’re looking for our friends Liz and Kevin. Liz is about this tall, shaved head. Kevin is, well, he’s a monster.”
Emmy’s trembling hand covered her mouth.
“You’re kids,” she whispered.
She looked at me as if she were truly seeing me for the first time. With this realization came a sudden look of fear on her face.
“I’m going to be fourteen in two months,” Curtis said.
“I followed your orders to this island,” Emmy gasped. “And you’re just some kid. Where’s the order? Where’s the council? Where’s the rest of the rescue party?”
“We’re the start of it,” I said.
“My goodness. We’re not going to make it off this island alive,” Emmy whispered. “I’m going to die because I listened to a bunch of kids.”
“That’s maybe a little offensive,” I said. “We’ve done this kind of thing before.”
“Twice, actually,” said Berna.
A sudden rush of air. Branches snapped in the gust of powerful wings. Talons dove and snatched Emmy Banks by her shoulders.
21
Within seconds, Emmy Banks was in the air, screaming. She grabbed tree branches as the gargoyle’s wings furiously beat the air.
Curtis aimed his crossbow. Bowstring taught. Squinting carefully.
His arrow slashed the sky and missed the beast’s wing. The flying terror’s gray eyes studie
d our faces. It emitted a high-pitched squeal and flew out of range with its shrieking prey.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled up from a strong rush of wind.
“Run!” I screamed.
The treetops exploded. With piercing squeals, two gargoyles dove after us. We ran, darting over rocks and roots. Their toothy jaws snapped behind us. Talons slashed. They hovered a few feet off the ground, expertly weaving around tree trunks.
Curtis loaded another arrow and haphazardly fired backward. It whizzed past Victor’s face, missing his ear.
“Watch it!” screamed Victor.
Cassie tripped and slammed into the dirt, the sitter sat-phone skidding away through the dead leaves. Berna grabbed for her as reptile-like claws ripped into Cassie’s backpack, and suddenly, Cassie was in the air, flailing in the gargoyle’s grip.
Curtis dropped his crossbow and grabbed Cassie’s legs. But the gargoyle was too strong. Curtis was lifted up. I jumped and grabbed Curtis’s legs and held on tight. The tips of my toes skidded across the forest floor, and then I was in the air, too.
“Help!” I screamed.
Victor’s arms clamped around my legs. Wind from the monster’s wings kicked up a blizzard of dead leaves. The gargoyle refused to release Cassie’s backpack from its grip. I looked down and saw Victor’s wide-eyed fear. His sneakers were barely touching the ground.
“Here comes the other one!” Curtis screamed.
The third gargoyle dipped into a sharp U-turn in the sky and sailed toward us. We were defenseless, wide-open targets. Kids in a barrel.
The approaching gargoyle’s maw opened unnaturally wide. Its jagged nails stretched out hungrily. It was coming in for the kill.
A whistling blur shot past. An arrow pierced its veiny wing. The monster squealed and barrel-rolled past us and slammed into a tree. Wood exploded, and the gargoyle smashed face-first into the forest floor.
We looked where the arrow had come from and saw Berna, reloading the crossbow.
“Nice one, Berna!” I cried.
Berna fumbled to pull back the bowstring. The gargoyle was dragging all of us through the air to a deep gorge. I suddenly remembered watching seagulls eat clams on the beach when I was a little kid. The seagulls had lifted the clams high into the sky and then dropped them onto the rocks, breaking the clamshells into a gooey mess. In this case, we were the clams.
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