Cuckoo Clock of Doom

by R. L. Stine

  A bright white light flashed. I felt dizzy, stunned. I blinked. And blinked again.

  Several seconds passed before I could see anything.

  I felt cool, damp air. I smelled a musty odor. A garage smell.

  “Michael? Do you like it?” Dad’s voice.

  I blinked. My eyes adjusted. I saw Dad and Mom. Looking older. Looking normal.

  We were standing in the garage. Dad was holding a shiny new 21-speed bike.

  Mom frowned. “Michael, are you feeling all right?”

  They were giving me the bike. It was my birthday!

  The clock worked! I’d brought myself back to the present!

  Almost to the present. Up to my twelfth birthday.

  Close enough.

  I felt so happy, I thought I’d explode.

  I threw myself at Mom and hugged her hard. Then I hugged Dad.

  “Wow,” Dad gushed. “I guess you really do like the bike!”

  I grinned. “I love it!” I exclaimed. “I love everything! I love the whole world!”

  Mainly, I loved being twelve again. I could walk! I could talk! I could ride the bus by myself!

  Whoa! Wait a minute, I thought. It’s my birthday.

  Don’t tell me I have to live through it again.

  I tensed my shoulders and steeled myself for the horrible day to come.

  It’s worth it, I told myself. It’s worth it if it means time will go forward again, the way it’s supposed to.

  I knew too well what would happen next.

  Tara.

  She’d try to get on my bike. The bike would fall over and get scratched.

  Okay, Tara, I thought. I’m ready. Come and do your worst.

  I waited.

  Tara didn’t come.

  In fact, she didn’t seem to be around at all.

  She wasn’t in the garage. No sign of her.

  Mom and Dad oohed and ahhed over the bike. They didn’t act as if anything was wrong. Or anyone was missing.

  “Where’s Tara?” I asked them.

  They looked up.

  “Who?” They stared at me.

  “Did you invite her to your party?” Mom asked. “I don’t remember sending an invitation to a Tara.”

  Dad grinned at me. “Tara? Is that some girl you have a crush on, Michael?”

  “No,” I answered, turning red.

  It was as if they’d never heard of Tara. Never heard of their own daughter.

  “You’d better go upstairs and get ready for your party, Michael,” Mom suggested. “The kids will be here soon.”

  “Okay.” I stumbled into the house, dazed.

  “Tara?” I called.

  Silence.

  Could she be hiding somewhere?

  I searched through the house. Then I checked her room. I threw open the door. I expected to see a messy, all-pink girl’s room with a white canopy bed.

  Instead, I saw two twin beds, neatly made with plaid covers. A chair. An empty closet. No personal stuff.

  Not Tara’s room.

  A guest room.

  Wow. I was amazed.

  No Tara. Tara doesn’t exist.

  How did that happen?

  I wandered into the den, looking for the cuckoo clock.

  It wasn’t there.

  For a second, I felt a shock of fear. Then I calmed down.

  Oh, yeah, I remembered. We don’t have the clock yet. Not on my birthday. Dad bought it a couple of days later.

  But I still didn’t understand. What had happened to my little sister? Where was Tara?

  * * *

  My friends arrived for the party. We danced and ate tortilla chips. Ceecee pulled me into a corner and whispered that Mona had a crush on me.

  Wow. I glanced at Mona. She turned a little pink and glanced away, shyly.

  Tara wasn’t there to embarrass me. It made a big difference.

  My friends all brought presents. I actually opened them myself. No Tara to open my presents before I get to them.

  At cake time, I carried the cake into the dining room and set it in the middle of the table. No problem. I didn’t fall and make a fool out of myself.

  Because Tara wasn’t there to trip me.

  It was the greatest birthday party I’d ever had. It was probably the greatest day I’d ever lived — because Tara wasn’t there to ruin it.

  I could get used to this, I thought.

  A few days later, the cuckoo clock was delivered to our house.

  “Isn’t it great?” Dad gushed, as he had the first time. “Anthony sold me the clock cheap. He said he’d discovered a tiny flaw on it.”

  The flaw. I’d almost forgotten about it.

  We still didn’t know what it was. But I couldn’t help wondering if it had something to do with Tara’s disappearance.

  Maybe the clock didn’t work perfectly in some way? Maybe it somehow left Tara behind?

  I hardly dared to touch the clock. I didn’t want to set off any more weird time trips.

  But I had to know what had happened.

  I carefully studied the face of the clock again, and all the decorations. Then I stared at the dial that showed the year.

  It was properly set at the current year.

  Without really thinking about it, I scanned twelve places down the dial to find the year I was born.

  There it was.

  Then I scanned my eyes back up the dial. 2004. 2005. 2006. 2007. 2009 …

  Wait a second.

  Didn’t I just skip a year?

  I checked the dates again.

  Two thousand and eight was missing. There was no 2008 on the dial.

  And 2008 was the year Tara was born!

  “Dad!” I cried. “I found the flaw! Look — there’s a year missing on the dial.”

  Dad patted me on the back. “Good job, son! Wow, isn’t that funny?”

  To him it was just a funny mistake.

  He had no idea his daughter had never been born.

  I suppose there’s some way to go back in time and get her.

  I guess I probably ought to do that.

  And I will.

  Really.

  One of these days.

  Maybe.

  I love to scare my little brother, Randy. I tell him scary stories about monsters until he begs me to stop. And I’m always teasing him by pretending to see monsters everywhere.

  I guess that’s why no one believed me the day I saw a real monster.

  I guess that’s why no one believed me until it was too late, and the monster was right in my own house.

  But I’d better not tell the ending of my story at the beginning.

  My name is Lucy Dark. I’m twelve. I live with my brother, Randy, who is six, and my parents in a medium-sized house in a medium-sized town called Timberland Falls.

  I don’t know why it’s called Timberland Falls. There are a few forests outside of town, but no one cuts the trees down for timber. And there aren’t any falls.

  So, why Timberland Falls?

  It’s a mystery.

  We have a redbrick house at the end of our street. There’s a tall, overgrown hedge that runs along the side of our house and separates our yard from the Killeens’ yard next door. Dad’s always talking about how he should trim the hedge, but he never does.

  We have a small front yard and a pretty big backyard with a lot of tall, old trees in it. There’s an old sassafras tree in the middle of the yard. It’s cool and shady under the tree. That’s where I like to sit with Randy when there’s nothing better to do, and see if I can scare the socks off of him!

  It isn’t very hard. Randy scares easy.

  He looks a lot like me, even though he’s a boy. He’s got straight black hair just like me, only I wear mine longer. He’s short for his age, like me, and just a little bit chubby.

  He has a round face, rounder than mine, and big black eyes, which really stand out since we both have such pale white skin.

  Mom says Randy has longer eyelashes than mine, whic
h makes me kind of jealous. But my nose is straighter, and my teeth don’t stick out as much when I smile. So I guess I shouldn’t complain.

  Anyway, on a hot afternoon a couple of weeks ago, Randy and I were sitting under the old sassafras tree, and I was getting ready to scare him to death.

  I really didn’t have anything better to do. As soon as summer came around this year and school let out, most of my really good friends went away for the summer. I was stuck at home, and so I was pretty lonely.

  Randy is usually a total pain. But at least he is somebody to talk to. And someone I can scare.

  I have a really good imagination. I can dream up the most amazing monsters. And I can make them sound really real.

  Mom says with my imagination, maybe I’ll be a writer when I grow up.

  I really don’t know about that.

  I do know that it doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to frighten Randy.

  Usually all I have to do is tell him there’s a monster trying on his clothes upstairs in his closet, and Randy turns even whiter than normal and starts shaking all over.

  The poor kid. I can even make his teeth chatter. It’s unbelievable.

  I leaned back against the smooth part of the tree trunk and rested my hands on the grass, and closed my eyes. I was dreaming up a good story to tell my brother.

  The grass felt soft and moist against my bare feet. I dug my toes into the dirt.

  Randy was wearing denim shorts and a plain white sleeveless T-shirt. He was lying on his side, plucking up blades of grass with one hand.

  “Did you ever hear about the Timberland Falls toe-biter?” I asked him, brushing a spider off my white tennis shorts.

  “Huh?” He kept pulling up blades of grass one by one, making a little pile.

  “There was this monster called the Timberland Falls toe-biter,” I told Randy.

  “Aw, please, Lucy,” he whined. “You said you wouldn’t make up any more monster stories.”

  “No, I’m not!” I told him. “This story isn’t made up. It’s true.”

  He looked up at me and made a face. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “No. Really,” I insisted, staring hard into his round, black eyes so he’d know I was sincere. “This is a true story. It really happened. Here. In Timberland Falls.”

  Randy pulled himself up to a sitting position. “I think I’ll go inside and read comic books,” he said, tossing down a handful of grass.

  Randy has a big comic book collection. But they’re all Disney comics and Archie comics because the superhero comics are too scary for him.

  “The toe-biter showed up one day right next door,” I told Randy. I knew once I started the story, he wouldn’t leave.

  “At the Killeens’?” he asked, his eyes growing wide.

  “Yeah. He arrived in the middle of the afternoon. The toe-biter isn’t a night monster, you see. He’s a day monster. He strikes when the sun is high in the sky. Just like now.”

  I pointed up through the shimmering tree leaves to the sun, which was high overhead in a clear summer-blue sky.

  “A d-day monster?” Randy asked. He turned his head to look at the Killeens’ house rising up on the other side of the hedge.

  “Don’t be scared. It happened a couple of summers ago,” I continued. “Becky and Lilah were over there. They were swimming. You know. In that plastic pool their mom inflates for them. The one that half the water always spills out of.”

  “And a monster came?” Randy asked.

  “A toe-biter,” I told him, keeping my expression very serious and lowering my voice nearly to a whisper. “A toe-biter came crawling across their backyard.”

  “Where’d he come from?” Randy asked, leaning forward.

  I shrugged. “No one knows. You see, the thing about toe-biters is they’re very hard to see when they crawl across grass. Because they make themselves the exact color of the grass.”

  “You mean they’re green?” Randy asked, rubbing his pudgy nose.

  I shook my head. “They’re only green when they creep and crawl over the grass,” I replied. “They change their color to match what they’re walking on. So you can’t see them.”

  “Well, how big is it?” Randy asked thoughtfully.

  “Big,” I said. “Bigger than a dog.” I watched an ant crawl up my leg, then flicked it off. “No one really knows how big because this monster blends in so well.”

  “So what happened?” Randy asked, sounding a little breathless. “I mean to Becky and Lilah.” Again he glanced over at the Killeens’ gray-shingle house.

  “Well, they were in their little plastic pool,” I continued. “You know. Splashing around. And I guess Becky was lying on her back and had her feet hanging over the side of the pool. And the monster scampered over the grass, nearly invisible. And it saw Becky’s toes dangling in the air.”

  “And — and Becky didn’t see the monster?” Randy asked.

  I could see he was starting to get real pale and trembly.

  “Toe-biters are just so hard to see,” I said, keeping my eyes locked on Randy’s, keeping my face very straight and solemn.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Just to build up suspense. Then I continued the story.

  “Becky didn’t notice anything at first. Then she felt a kind of tickling feeling. She kicked a little and told the dog to go away.

  “But then it didn’t tickle so much. It started to hurt. Becky shouted for the dog to stop. But the hurting got even worse. It felt like the dog was chewing on her toes, with very sharp teeth.

  “It started to hurt a whole lot. So Becky sat up and pulled her feet into the pool. And … when she looked down at her left foot, she saw it.”

  I stopped and waited for Randy to ask.

  “Wh-what?” he asked finally, in a shaky voice. “What did she see?”

  I leaned forward and brought my mouth close to his ear. “All the toes were missing from her left foot,” I whispered.

  “No!” Randy screamed. He jumped to his feet. He was as pale as a ghost, and he looked really scared. “That’s not true!”

  I shook my head solemnly. I forced myself not to crack a smile. “Ask Becky to take off her left shoe,” I told him. “You’ll see.”

  “No! You’re lying!” Randy wailed.

  “Ask her,” I said softly.

  And then I glanced down at my feet, and my eyes popped wide with horror. “R-R-Randy — look!” I stammered and pointed with a trembling hand down to my feet.

  Randy uttered a deafening scream when he saw what I was pointing at.

  All the toes on my left foot were missing.

  R.L. Stine’s books are read all over the world. So far, his books have sold more than 300 million copies, making him one of the most popular children’s authors in history. Besides Goosebumps, R.L. Stine has written the teen series Fear Street and the funny series Rotten School, as well as the Mostly Ghostly series, The Nightmare Room series, and the two-book thriller Dangerous Girls. R.L. Stine lives in New York with his wife, Jane, and Minnie, his King Charles spaniel. You can learn more about him at www.RLStine.com.

  Goosebumps book series created by Parachute Press, Inc.

  Copyright © 1995 by Scholastic Inc.

  Cover art by Tim Jacobus

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, GOOSEBUMPS, GOOSEBUMPS HORRORLAND, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  First edition, 1995

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-82071-4

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New
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