“Mommy, mommy, dey was wittle gween mens wi’ sticks an’ dey was mean!”
“Uh huh, that’s nice, Beth.”
“Mommy, mommy, dey stole Stawbewy Shorcake! I ha’ to go beat ‘em up!”
“That’s nice. So, as I was saying – ”
He shouldn’t have worried. Beth’s babbling was just as messy as her eating, and totally incoherent to anyone who hadn’t been there. The secret of what had happened that afternoon was safe.
Grandfather walked into the kitchen as they were eating ice cream. Peter’s heart beat faster from fear, but he calmed himself down. They had cleaned the house hastily before Mom got home, and there were no tell-tale signs the troll had left behind – not even any hand- or footprints on the ceiling. There was no reason Grandfather would ever know.
“Dad, I got the job!” Mom grinned.
“Good for you,” he said emotionlessly as he walked into the hall.
On an ordinary night Mom might have been crushed, but she just turned back around and kept on chatting about how interesting the job was, and how nice her new boss seemed, and how good it would be to get back to work.
Several minutes of happy ice-cream-eating passed before the poop hit the fan.
“PETER!” Grandfather yelled from down the hall. Peter’s heart immediately leapt into his throat, and he suddenly realized the most important thing he and Dill should have done while cleaning up: not mopping drool. Not replacing the iron. Not pulling stray bits of tape off the front door.
He had forgotten to replace the book in Grandfather’s study.
Whether Dill had figured it out or not, he knew from the tone of Grandfather’s voice that he didn’t want to stick around.
“See you later, dude,” he said as he slid out of his kitchen chair. He turned back briefly, just long enough to snag his bowl of ice cream and carry it with him as he popped out the back door.
“Hey, bring that bowl back after you’re finished!” Mom called merrily after him. Not even Dill’s dessert thievery could ruin her day.
21
Peter trudged warily down the hallway and stopped at the study. His heart was hammering inside his chest as he tapped at the door.
“Come in,” Grandfather snarled from inside.
Peter pushed the door open. Grandfather was sitting behind his mahogany desk in his leather chair. The chandelier was turned off, so the only light came from the tiny, stained-glass lamp on his desk, which cast half of Grandfather’s face into shadow as he glared at Peter.
“I believe I’ve made it clear that this room is off-limits to you when I am not home.”
Peter nodded silently. His knees trembled a little as Grandfather held up the copy of Fairieland: Portals To The Other World And Its Denizens.
“Is there something you’d like to tell me?” the old man barked.
Not really…
“Well, you know how Mom had her job interview today?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you were gone, and Dill and I had to babysit Beth.”
“So?”
“So…something happened.”
The story came out in fits and starts: about the mushrooms in the field, how Beth mysteriously disappeared and then reappeared out of nowhere, how she had acted odd and then started turning into a tiny, green, big-eared troll baby.
Grandfather didn’t seem phased by any of it, though he looked none too pleased.
“Then it chased us in here,” Peter said guiltily and stopped talking.
Grandfather’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Us?”
“Yeah…me and Dill. But don’t worry, the monster baby didn’t get in.”
Grandfather closed his eyes as though he were in pain. “I am more concerned that the monster idjit from next door did.” Then his eyes snapped open and he scowled. “Well? I assume the story ends with something other than you making friends with the changeling and helping it take over my granddaughter’s identity.”
“Oh – you know about changelings?”
Grandfather rolled his eyes. “Do I know about changelings,” he muttered to himself, then snapped at Peter, “Of course I do! The better question is, how do you?”
Peter looked confused. “Well…I told you, it started out looking like Beth, and we had to fight it – ”
“But how did you know it was called a changeling?”
Peter pointed at the book on Grandfather’s desk. “That book.”
Grandfather pointed to Fairieland. “This book.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t leave this book out.”
Peter shook his head ‘no.’
Grandfather looked around his study – not because he needed to, but for dramatic effect. “There are over 6,000 books in this room. How did you manage to find a book about changelings in less than three weeks’ time?”
“Uh…I don’t know.”
“You don’t know,” Grandfather said sarcastically.
“Well, we’d already starting looking when I noticed there was this light shining on one across the room, so I picked it out.” He gestured at the book in the old man’s hand. “That one.”
Grandfather’s eyes opened wide. Wider, in fact, than Peter had ever seen him open them before. He looked genuinely surprised.
“You…saw a light? Shining on just one of them?”
“Yeah.”
Grandfather was silent for a moment. When he spoke, it was in a decidedly less angry voice. “So, you found this book, discovered you had a changeling on your hands… what happened next?”
“Does the light mean anything?” Peter asked.
“Other than an incredible piece of good luck, no,” Grandfather said. “What happened next?”
“But you looked really surpr – ”
“What happened next.”
Peter finished the story, ending with the destruction of the fairy ring. Grandfather sat quietly for a moment. Then he nodded, once, as he stood up.
“Well done.”
Peter had to take a few seconds to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
“‘Well done’?!” he asked, bewildered. “That’s it?!”
Grandfather walked around the desk. “What more do you want?”
Peter backed up against the wall, a little afraid that Grandfather was going to spring across the room at him. “You’re not mad?”
“Well, unlike previous incidents,” Grandfather emphasized with a dollop of irritation, “you didn’t misbehave or do anything mischievous. Things just happened, and you coped with them as best you could.”
Grandfather was almost to the study door. Amazingly, he didn’t seem like he was going to reach out and choke Peter.
“Where are you going, then?” Peter asked.
“To check on your sister. I doubt another changeling came back in her place, but I want to make sure nonetheless.”
“You’re not going to throw her in the fire, are you?”
“That method of detecting changelings went out of style sometime in the 17th century. There are safer, more humane ways.” Grandfather looked at Peter suspiciously. “You didn’t – ”
“No,” Peter said defensively. “Are you gonna touch her with a hot iron?”
Grandfather stopped with his hand on the doorknob and stared at Peter. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“The book said fairies don’t like irons, so we plugged Mom’s into the wall and –”
“Iron. The metal iron, as in the main component of steel. Fairies don’t like iron,it hurts them to touch it.”
“Oh,” Peter said, a little embarrassed.
“But since a laundry iron has steel, it would probably achieve the same effect. I might just use the iron myself to test her reaction – but cold, and definitely not plugged in.”
Grandfather was halfway out the door when Peter spoke up again. “Wait…”
The old man turned back around, severely annoyed. “If you wanted to clear your conscience, consider yourself forgiven. Just don’
t go back in my study again when I’m not here. Ever. Even if you are being chased by – ”
“I saw something on your desk,” Peter blurted out.
Grandfather stopped moving. He froze there at the door, arm fully extended. His face didn’t move in the slightest; his eyes certainly didn’t get larger this time.
“…oh?” he said, sounding only vaguely interested.
“Yeah, there were some books…and a notebook you were writing in. It said something about a curse on the Flannagan family.”
Grandfather didn’t say anything for another ten seconds. When he did speak, his face didn’t change, but his voice was absolutely neutral. Not angry, not irritated, not impatient. Certainly not happy, but…disconnected. Emotionless.
“There is no curse. It’s an old rumor I ran across while researching our family tree.”
“But the notebook talked about the end of the world – ”
“Yes, well, it’s a rather idiotic rumor. Forget you read it.”
“But all your other stories about hobos and vampires are strange and crazy – why isn’t this one true?”
“Because it’s not. Forget about it.”
“But maybe – ”
“I told you it’s balderdash – why in the world would you even care?” Grandfather snapped, back to his old self.
“Tons of bad stuff keeps happening to me. What if it’s the curse?”
Grandfather shook his head. “I’ve told you, Duskerville is a strange place, with supernatural goings-on that have affected hundreds of people over the centuries. Those forces have been here far longer than our family has. Your recent encounters are just part of the bigger picture. They are not connected to any curse, because there isn’t one.”
“But – ”
“Go to bed,” Grandfather said sternly and walked out of the study. Peter could hear the old man’s footsteps on the hardwood floors, fading away.
Though it was a little too early to go to sleep, Peter still went up to his room, if for no other reason than to get out of Grandfather’s way. The rest of the evening, he played the conversation over and over again in his mind. None of his questions had been answered, but there was one thing he was certain of: he had never heard Grandfather use that tone of voice before in his life. The old man had used that neutral, unconcerned way of speaking twice – when asked about the curse, and also when Peter had asked about the light in the study, the one that had pointed out the changeling book.
Grandfather had always been truthful before, at least to Peter’s knowledge. The old man had omitted some things, probably, and refused to talk about others, yes, but he had never flat-out told a lie.
Tonight, for the first time, it sounded as though he might have.
As he drifted off to sleep that night, Peter wondered which was stranger: everything that had happened with the changeling today…
…or the reasons why Grandfather had lied.
PETER AND THE SWAMP MONSTER
1
Rory McCusken and Greg Witherspoon sat on the old wooden dock and dangled their bare feet in the lake. Rory had a simple bamboo stick, and Greg was using a carbon shaft fishing pole, but neither of them was having any luck.
“We didn’t get out here early enough,” Greg complained.
“It’s only 8 o’clock,” Rory pointed out.
“I told you we shoulda been out here by seven.”
“Quit yer whinin’, it’s all good.”
Rory was dressed in cut-off blue jeans and a white t-shirt. Greg was a bit tubby, and his mom wasn’t kind when buying his school clothes. She always went preppy rather than cool, and she seemed to be in denial about Greg’s weight issues. As a result, Greg had on khaki shorts and a collared, button-up shirt that was a size too small. His belly poked out a little from beneath the bottom.
“They’re not biting,” Greg grumbled.
“They will.”
“Maybe we should go tubing instead.”
Rory sighed. “You got no patience, Greg. Just relax.”
“I’d relax better if I had a coke. Get me a coke, will you?”
Rory got to his feet on the boards of the gently swaying dock. It was the floating type that rose and sank as the water level changed, but was still anchored to tall wooden posts sticking up out of the lake. That way, heavy rains wouldn’t cover the dock, and a really dry summer wouldn’t leave it too high above the water.
Rory walked the twenty feet up to the shore. They had left their supplies up closer to the bank so they wouldn’t accidentally knock anything in. The park rangers looooved to hand out tickets for even the smallest bits of littering. If a potato chip bag got away from them and a ranger spotted it, Rory would be cutting grass for two months trying to pay off the fine.
He rummaged in the cooler and pulled out a couple of soda cans from the sixpack. He figured they could have one now, one about eleven when they ate their PB&J sandwiches, and one for the bike ride back home.
He looked up the muddy dirt path that circled through the weeds and marsh grasses. The bikes were a good tenth of a mile up the trail, deep among the twisted swamp trees. He wasn’t worried anybody would steal them, though; the innertube riders never came this far down the springs. Besides, Rory had locked the bikes up with his chain, and that sucker was heavy-duty. Nothing but a blow torch was going to cut through those links.
Frogs croaked from the water and insects buzzed in the trees. The sun sparkled off the lake. The air had started off cool on their bike ride earlier that morning, but was quickly warming up.
Rory popped the top on one of the sodas and took a long, slurping gulp. By the time he’d finished drinking, all the animal noises were gone.
Rory didn’t notice it at first. He was only a few steps along the dock before he realized how silent the lake had become.
“Everything went awful quiet, didn’t it?” he called out.
“Huh?” Greg cocked his head, then noticed that Rory had already opened his drink. “Hey, man, quit takin’ so long with the cokes, I’m gonna die of thirst up here.”
“Okay, okay, I’m comin’, I’m – ”
There was a noise from the marsh reeds over by the bank. A low, rumbling kwwwwwwwwwhhhhh, like a kid using the back of his throat to imitate a bomb going off.
Rory stood still on the dock.
Maybe it was a bullfrog…a really HUGE bullfrog…
“Hey Greg, did you hear that?”
“What?”
“It was like a…a rumbling sound.”
“I hear my stomach rumbling, that’s what I hear. Come on!”
Rory was about to take another step when something long and dark moved through the water to the right of the dock.
It must’ve been ten feet long, maybe more. It was hard to see; the water was pretty clear because of the spring that dumped into the lake, but the sun glinting off the surface didn’t help any. The only detail Rory could make out for sure was a thick tail that tapered to just a few inches wide…
…right before it disappeared under the dock.
Alligator.
“Rory, come ON!”
Rory looked up to see his friend still seated on the edge of the wooden pier.
With his feet in the water.
“Greg, GET UP!” Rory screamed. “GET OUT OF THE WATER!”
Greg frowned in confusion. “Rory, what – ”
“ALLIGATOR! GET OUT OF THE WATER! UNDER THE DOCK, ALLIGATOR!”
Greg’s eyes went wide. Then he grinned.
“Awwwww, good one, man. This ain’t Florida, there aren’t any gators around here.”
Spit flew out of Rory’s mouth, he was so frantic. “GREG JUST PLEASE GET OUT OF THE WATER, PLEASE GET OUT OF THE WATER PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!”
Greg was obviously confused to see this screaming crazy person who, just a few seconds before, had been his mild-mannered friend. Greg rolled onto his back and lifted his dripping feet high in the air.
“There, are you happy n – ”
> CRACK.
The dock between Rory and Greg lifted a foot into the air and buckled in the middle. A dozen boards splintered into jagged pieces before crashing back down.
Between the scraps of shattered wood, Rory caught a glimpse of something before it slipped back into the water.
Rory had never seen a live alligator in his life. The few times he’d been out of Duskerville were to visit his grandparents in Iowa and to go on a family car trip to see Mt. Rushmore. He’d been to Canada twice. That was about it.
But he’d seen plenty of Discovery Channel programs on cable.
And that wasn’t an alligator.
Alligators were scaly and tough and green. This thing…it was grayish and slick and round. The head, or what he had seen of it, was about the same size as his family’s super-huge big screen TV.
Exactly what the creature was, Rory had no idea. But it was very large, and it was powerful enough to turn a six-foot wide dock into matchsticks.
“Greg! Get up!”
Greg scrambled to his feet. His face was white as a ghost, and his body was trembling.
“Greg, get over here!”
Greg shook his head rapidly.
“Greg, you gotta get out of there!” Rory yelled. “It’s still in the water!”
“What do I do?” Greg wailed.
“Jump the cracked part!”
“I caaaaan’t!”
“Yes you can, yes you can! You can do it, I know you can do it!”
Greg crouched down on the wooden planks and started to cry.
Rory scanned the water around the dock and between the broken floorboards, searching for any more dark shapes. Nothing so far, but the thing could be back any second.
“Greg, you can do it, I know you can, just try!”
Greg shook his head. “I can’t…please don’t make me…”
“Greg, it’s going to get you if you don’t get out of there! Just run and jump, you can make it, I know you can!”
Something caught Rory’s attention. Maybe a foot away from him was a glint of red in the gap between the boards. Then it disappeared. Dark sliminess covered it for a brief second, then pulled back, and the red reappeared.
PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume One) (PETER AND THE MONSTERS) Page 27