by R. L. Stine
It didn’t breathe. It didn’t throb.
Mrs. Vanderhoff glared at me. “Kat, what’s the meaning of this?” she huffed. “This is an ordinary kitchen sponge.”
She made a face. “A dirty one, I might add.”
“You’re wrong!” I cried shrilly, desperate for her to believe me. “It’s much more than a sponge. It’s alive. It has eyes—see? You’ve got to see!”
Mrs. Vanderhoff squinted at me, shaking her gray-haired head.
“Oh, all right,” she said with a sigh. She bent her head and examined the sponge closely. She ran her fingers over its wrinkled surface.
“I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about,” she said angrily, motioning for me to take my seat. “This thing doesn’t have eyes. And it’s not alive. It’s a dirty, dried-up old sponge.”
Mrs. Vanderhoff glared at me. “If this is your idea of a joke, Katrina, I don’t get it. I don’t get it at all.”
“But…” I started.
Mrs. Vanderhoff held up her hand. “Not another word,” she instructed. She handed the sponge back—dropping it into my hand like a piece of junk.
My stomach churned with disappointment.
Couldn’t I say anything else to convince her?
The sharp rap of a ruler on her desk interrupted my thoughts. “I’m going to pass back the papers from your math test last week,” Mrs. Vanderhoff announced.
Everyone groaned. The surprise quiz on long division had been a major disaster for all of us.
“Settle down,” Mrs. Vanderhoff snapped.
She reached into her desk to pull out the test papers, and—slammed her fingers in the drawer!
With a howl of pain, she shrieked, “My fingers! Owww—I think I broke my fingers!”
I was still standing beside her desk. Holding her hand, she turned to me. “Help me, Katrina. I’ve got to get to the nurse’s office!”
I opened the classroom door for Mrs. Vanderhoff. Then I helped her down the hall to the infirmary.
“What’s happened?” Mrs. Twitchell, the school nurse, jumped up from her desk and came running up to us. Her starchy white uniform rustled as she moved. She sat Mrs. Vanderhoff in a comfortable chair.
“My fingers,” groaned Mrs. Vanderhoff, holding up her red, swollen hand. “I smashed them in the desk drawer!”
“All right,” Mrs. Twitchell said soothingly. “We’ll put some ice on that hand. And I’ll make sure the principal sends somebody to watch your class.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Vanderhoff moaned. “Katrina, you can go on back to class now. You’ve been very helpful.”
Helpful?
Everywhere I went these days, I told myself, somebody seemed to get badly hurt!
Unhappily, I shuffled my way back toward classroom 6B.
“Kat! Kat!” I heard someone shouting my name.
Daniel raced out of the library, nearly tripping over his untied shoelaces. He crashed right into me.
“I found it!” he cried breathlessly. “I found the sponge creature! In a book! I know what it is!”
9
I grabbed Daniel by the front of his shirt. “What is it? What?” I demanded. “I have to know!”
“Whoa. Take it easy. Cool your jets.” Daniel pushed my hands off his shirt. “I’ll show you,” he promised. “I have a picture in here.”
“In where?” I asked.
Daniel gazed around the hall. No one in sight.
He pulled a book out from under his shirt and handed it to me. A big black volume.
I glanced quickly at the title: Encyclopedia of the Weird.
“Is your picture in there?” I teased.
“Ha-ha. Very funny,” he replied. He grabbed the book away from me. “Do you want to see your sponge?”
“Definitely!”
Daniel flipped the pages quickly, muttering to himself, “Grebles, Griffins, Grocks. Here it is!”
He shoved the book under my nose. It smelled funny—sort of musty. I guessed it had been sitting on the library shelf a long, long time.
Daniel pointed to a drawing on page 89. I lowered my eyes to the page.
Wrinkly skin. Tiny black eyes. “It does look like the sponge,” I gasped.
I began reading the story underneath the drawing.
“This is a Grool.”
A Grool? I thought. What in the world is that? I returned to the book:
“The Grool is an ancient and mythical creature.”
“Mythical?” I cried. “That means it’s not real—that it’s made up! But it is real!”
“Keep reading,” Daniel urged.
“The Grool does not eat food or drink water. Instead, it gets its strength from luck. Bad luck.”
“Daniel,” I stammered. “This is weird. Really weird.” He nodded, his eyes wide.
“The Grool has always been known as a bad-luck charm. It feeds on the bad luck of other people. The Grool becomes stronger each time something bad happens around it.”
“This book is crazy,” I muttered. I eagerly read some more:
“Bad luck for the Grool owner never ends. The Grool cannot be killed—by force or by any violent means. And it cannot—ever—be given away or tossed aside.”
Why not? I wondered.
The next lines gave me the answer:
“A Grool is only passed on to a new owner when an owner dies. Anyone who gives the Grool away will DIE within one day.”
“That is so stupid!” I exclaimed. “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”
Turning to Daniel, I said in a low voice, “There is no such thing as a creature that lives on bad luck.”
“How do you know, genius?” Daniel demanded.
“Everything needs food and water,” I replied. “Everything that’s alive, anyway.”
“I don’t know,” Daniel said. “I think the book could be right.”
The drawing of a creature on another page caught my eye. “Hey, what’s this?” I asked.
It looked like a potato—oval and brown. But it had a mouth full of sharp, pointy teeth.
I quickly read the description.
“The Lanx is a cousin of the Grool. But it is much more dangerous.”
“Yuck!” Daniel cried, making a face.
I kept reading:
“Once the Lanx latches on to someone, it never lets go—until it has drained every drop of energy from that person.”
I slammed the encyclopedia shut. “Here, Daniel, take this dumb book!” I shoved the Encyclopedia of the Weird back into my brother’s arms. “This stuff is totally crazy. I don’t believe any of it.”
“But I thought you wanted to know more about the sponge,” Daniel said.
“I do. But not this made-up stuff!” I told him.
I knew I was acting sort of rotten to Daniel. And that he only wanted to help.
But give me a break. After all that had been happening, I was a little stressed out.
I mean, it had been a bad couple of days—with Dad falling off the ladder, and Mrs. Vanderhoff slamming her hand in the desk.
And me nearly being crushed by the tree branch!
I stomped down the hall back to class. “Stupid book,” I muttered to myself.
But another thought kept forcing its way into my mind: What if the book is right?
I stared at the Grool, still sitting in its container on the corner of Mrs. Vanderhoff’s desk. I walked up to it.
It was wet again. And breathing. Its cold, black eyes stared back.
I felt a chill of fear and a prickling all over my skin.
“Mythical creatures don’t exist,” I whispered to the creature. “I’m not going to believe that book. I’m not!”
The sponge stared up at me, breathing softly.
I picked up the container and shook it angrily. “What are you?” I cried. “What?”
Daniel told Carlo the whole story on the walk home. I walked behind them, trying to think about something else. Anything else.
“It’s called a Grool. A
nd it’s a bad-luck charm,” Daniel explained excitedly. “Right, Kat?”
“I think you’re the bad-luck charm,” I snapped. “And I don’t think that book makes any sense.”
“Oh, yeah?” he cried. He grabbed my backpack.
“You don’t need these books, do you?” he teased. “You’re so smart, you know more than the encyclopedia.”
Dancing down the street with my books, Daniel turned on to Maple Lane. “Hey, Mom’s outside!” he cried, surprised. He started to run.
Carlo and I hurried to catch up with Daniel.
Mom stood at the door, waiting for us. Her face wore a tense, worried expression. “Hi, kids. Come on inside,” she said.
Daniel, Carlo, and I followed Mom into the kitchen.
“I’m afraid I have some very bad news,” she began sadly.
10
“Killer is gone,” Mom announced. She bit her lower lip.
“Gone?” Daniel and I shrieked at once.
“He ran away,” Mom explained. “I can’t find him anywhere. He must have slipped out when I went to put some things in the garage.”
“But, Mom—” I protested. “Killer never runs away. He’s never done it before.”
“Kat is right!” Daniel agreed. “He’s not brave enough to run away.”
“Don’t worry,” Mom said. “I’m sure we’ll find him. I’ve called the police, and they’re out searching for him right now.”
“I’ll find Killer,” Daniel cried. “Bet I can find him before the police! Come on, Carlo!”
Daniel grabbed a handful of doggie treats and ran out. Carlo followed close behind.
The door slammed shut behind them.
Poor Killer, I thought. Out somewhere alone. Probably lost. Bet he’s scared.
Our new house is so close to the highway—to all those speeding cars. What will happen to my little dog?
I suddenly felt like crying. I grabbed the sponge in its container and ran up the stairs.
“It’s all your fault, isn’t it?” I accused the creature. “I bet you are a Grool after all!”
As I talked, the Grool pulsed. It shook so hard, I expected it to throb right out of the container.
Ba-boom. Ba-boom.
And it breathed fast and deep.
Whoa-ahhh. Whoa-ahhh.
I yanked the Grool out. “We’ve had enough bad luck!” I wailed. “Maybe this will stop you!” I hurled the horrible thing as hard as I could against the wall.
The Grool hit the wall with a sickening splat.
And I let out a shrill cry of pain.
11
I glanced down and saw red.
Red blood.
Flowing over my left hand.
As I threw the Grool, I slammed the hand down on my desk—onto the sharp point of a pair of scissors!
“Ohhh!” I moaned, checking out my hand. A deep, nasty cut.
I wrapped some tissues around the cut to slow the bleeding. Then I spotted the Grool down on the floor.
Dead, I hoped.
I bent down.
“Gross!” I yelped. The Grool was breathing and throbbing—faster and harder than ever before.
Whoa-ahhh. Whoa-ahhh.
I leaned in closer.
Heh, heh, heh.
“Hey, what’s that?” I murmured.
Heh, heh, heh.
I guess you’d call the noise a laugh. A dry, cruel snicker that sounded more like a cough.
Then, as I listened to that evil laugh, the Grool began changing.
Its color suddenly brightened—from dull brown to light pink. As I stared in amazement, the Grool turned bright tomato-red.
As red as the blood on my cut hand.
My hand! Yuck! Blood seeped through the tissues and dripped slowly onto the floor.
I needed help with this. Mom’s help.
“Mom!” I called, leaping up. “I need a Band-Aid. A big one!”
As I hurried down the hall, a jumble of questions ran through my mind.
Why did the Grool change color? I wondered. And that laugh—I’d never heard it before. What did it mean? Was it really laughing?
Did I hurt the Grool when I threw it against my bedroom wall? Is that why it turned red?
So many frightening questions….
I listened at the door, cupping my hand around my ear.
Voices. Inside my room.
“Who’s there?” I called out shakily.
The door flew open.
“It’s the ghost of the Grool,” Daniel whispered in a spooky voice. “Owoooooooo.”
Daniel and Carlo stood over the gerbil cage, giggling.
“Oh, I’m so scared,” I sneered. “Did you find Killer?”
“No,” Daniel replied sadly. “Carlo and I searched all over the neighborhood. Mom says the police will find him.”
I turned my eyes to the gerbil cage. “How did the Grool get back in there?”
“I found it on the floor, so I stuck it back in the cage,” Daniel replied. “How did it get out?”
“Beats me.” I shrugged. I didn’t feel like explaining.
Carlo, who’d been studying the Grool closely, stared at me. “Hey, what happened to your hand?” he asked, pointing to my bandage.
I didn’t want to tell them.
“Oh, uh, nothing,” I replied. “Just a little cut. Why are you guys standing there staring at the Grool?”
“Carlo still wants to borrow it,” Daniel explained, tapping the side of the cage to get the creature’s attention. “I told him no.”
Carlo turned to me. “Please,” he begged. “I promise I’ll be careful. Please, please, please, please…”
That stupid Grool! “Oh, take it and keep it!” I snapped.
“Excellent!” Carlo’s eyes lit up, and he reached eagerly into the plastic cage to grab his prize.
“Wait!” Daniel cried, grabbing Carlo’s arm to stop him. “Kat, remember what the Encyclopedia of the Weird said.”
Daniel began reciting the Grool entry from memory, staring at me all the while.
“You cannot give a Grool away. Anyone who gives the Grool away will DIE within one day.”
A feeling of dread grew in my stomach.
But I couldn’t believe that stupid book. Could I?
Did the encyclopedia say that Grools laugh? Or change color?
No.
Carlo and Daniel stared at me. Waiting for my decision. Should I give the sponge creature to Carlo?
I studied the Grool.
“Don’t do it, Kat,” Daniel urged. “Please don’t give it away. It’s too dangerous.”
I knew only one thing. I wanted to get the Grool away from me as quickly as I could. And if Carlo wanted it so badly, I decided, let him have it!
“Go ahead, Carlo,” I said. “Take the gross, disgusting thing.”
Daniel grabbed the Grool out of the cage and held it tightly. “No!” he cried. “Carlo is not taking it. I don’t care what you say. I won’t let him take it!”
“Now who’s the scaredy-cat?” I asked, giving Daniel a poke in the arm.
“I’m trying to save you!” Daniel exclaimed. “Don’t you understand?”
Poor Daniel. He seemed so serious, so frightened. I decided to give him a break.
“Well, okay. Carlo, I guess you’d better not take the Grool,” I announced.
Daniel heaved a sigh of relief.
Carlo frowned. “Okay. Bye. I’m out of here.”
“I’ll go with you,” Daniel said, tossing the Grool back into the cage. “Come on, let’s ride our bikes to the park. Maybe Killer’s there.” As he hurried out of the bedroom, Daniel turned and gave me a thumbs-up.
After the boys left, I collapsed on my bed. What’s going to happen next? I wondered.
I lifted my eyes to the plastic cage and glared at the Grool. I felt a deep hatred for the little creature.
“If one more bad thing happens around here, I’ll bury you,” I promised it. “I’ll bury you so far in the ground th
at no one will ever find you or see you again. Ever.”
It was a promise I would soon have to keep.
12
The next morning I woke up with a jolt.
Toot! Toot! Daniel stood at the foot of my bed, blowing away on a party horn.
“Time to get up, Kat!” he squealed.
I reached out to grab the noisy horn away. “Quit it, you loser!” I grumbled. Then I remembered.
My birthday! Finally! Something to celebrate.
I jumped out of bed. Time to get ready to go to WonderPark!
I planned to be on the Seattle Log Flume and the Wild Wave Slide all day long!
Running to the window, I peeked out through the glass. “No!” I cried in disappointment. “No! It can’t be!”
Rain poured down. Lightning crackled through the sky. Thunder boomed so loud, I felt the house shake.
How could we go to WonderPark in this mess?
“Kat,” Mom called from downstairs. “Breakfast.”
I threw on my purple-and-pink-striped leggings and a purple T-shirt and ran to the kitchen. On my birthday Mom always makes my favorite—waffles with strawberries and powdered sugar.
“Here’s the birthday girl. Happy birthday, honey.” Mom beamed, giving me a big hug.
“I’m dressed for my party,” I said hopefully as I sat down at the table.
“Oh, honey, I’m afraid we’ll have to cancel your party,” Mom said sadly. “We certainly can’t go to WonderPark in this storm.”
Cancel? I poked unhappily at my waffles.
“Can’t we have the party here—indoors?” I pleaded. “We’ll order pizza and play computer games in the den.”
“You know that we can’t do that,” Mom said. “The painters will be here all day in the living room and dining room. With all those ladders and buckets of paint, I can’t have your friends running around.”
What rotten luck.
“But, Mom, it’s my birthday!” I protested, throwing down my fork. “And you promised I could have a party. You promised!”
Mom sighed. “I know how disappointed you are, Kat. We’ll have your party another day. Maybe next weekend.”
Another day wouldn’t be my birthday. “Everything’s going wrong!” I cried. “Ever since we moved!”