The Monster's Ring

by Bruce Coville

  Immediately, he felt that everyone in the town was looking at him. Even the buildings seemed to have eyes.

  Yet the world was strangely silent.

  He shivered at the feel of the cool October air against his bare skin. Then he began to run.

  When he reached the corner he noticed that the ring was gone. It must have slipped off when his hand had returned to normal. He hesitated for a moment. Did he want it back, or not?

  He turned back toward the shop.

  No. Gone was gone. The ring had caused him enough trouble already.

  To his shock, he realized the shop was gone, too.

  He decided maybe that wasn’t so surprising after all.

  Well . . . good-bye, ring, and good-bye, Mr. Elives. He waved a hand in farewell, then started to run.

  Once the first fright had passed, Russell actually began to enjoy his homeward run. The chill in the air—and the sheer craziness of racing across town in his birthday suit—made him wildly alert. He felt open to the world, delighted by every sight and sound his greedy senses could absorb.

  By taking to the backyards, he managed to remain unseen until he reached the development where he lived. Then, scooting behind a gray house, he saw a tired-looking woman standing at a window, holding a cup of coffee and gazing out with her eyelids at halfmast.

  When she saw Russell, it looked as if someone had plugged in her curlers. Her eyelids shot up, her jaw dropped down, and coffee flew in all directions.

  She strained to see who it was. But he was gone, trying not to let his laughter slow him down.

  Five minutes later, he was home, and facing a new problem: What was the best way to get into the house? When he was a beast it had been easy, at least until he grew those wings. He would just scramble up the side of the house and through a window.

  No way to do that now.

  In fact, the only way in was through the front door, using the key hidden under the mat. Taking a deep breath, Russell scooted around to the front of the house. As he bent over to get the key he heard a scream from across the street.

  It was Mrs. Micklemeyer. She had stepped out to get her morning paper. Now she stood with her hands pressed to her cheeks and her eyes bulging out.

  Russell unlocked the door and slipped inside as fast as he could.

  Peeking through the window, he saw Mrs. Micklemeyer staring at the house. Her face was twitching, as if she wasn’t sure whether she should be showing anger or astonishment.

  Well, that put an end to the idea that he could keep his parents from knowing he had been running around without any clothes on. Mrs. Micklemeyer never kept her mouth shut. Actually, if she stayed true to form, the entire neighborhood would know he had been running around stark naked.

  Shaking his head, he tiptoed up the stairway and toward his room. He opened the door, then stepped back quickly.

  His mother was sitting in the chair beside his bed, sound asleep.

  Russell was sure she had been there all night, waiting for him to come home.

  He scurried down the hall to the bathroom, grabbed a towel, and wrapped it around his waist. Once back in his room, he switched it for his bathrobe, which hung on the bedpost. Then he went to his mother and gently shook her shoulder.

  “Mom,” he whispered. “I’m home!”

  Her eyes flew open. She jumped up and threw her arms around him, hugging him close.

  Hugging her back, he could feel her tears on his head.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded, thrusting him away from her. Then she caught herself and pulled him close again. “Never mind,” she said. “I’m just glad you’re home.”

  Russell knew he would have to tell her something eventually. But for now, the words “Never mind”—words he didn’t think he had ever heard her speak before—were just about the sweetest sound he had ever heard.

  Epilogue

  Russell was sitting in his room, thinking. Actually, he was supposed to be doing his homework. But thoughts of the ring kept pushing into his mind.

  He wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t thought about it too much once everything had settled down after Halloween week. Of course, there had been a lot to settle down.

  First he’d had to deal with his parents. He smiled as he remembered the story he had spun out to explain his absence that night.

  Actually, the yarn had had bits of truth in it. He had blamed the trouble on the teenage boys, telling his parents that the boys had taken him into the woods and burned his clothes as a Halloween prank. His father had been furious and had wanted to call the police, but Russell had convinced him that there was no point in that, since the boys had been wearing masks and he had no idea who they were.

  Then there had been Mr. Rafschnitz and his wall-shaking lecture to Russell on the Monday after Halloween. (Not to mention two weeks of staying after school to pay for his crimes.)

  And, of course, there was Eddie. His reaction to Russell in school after Halloween had been so comical that teachers and kids alike had besieged Russell with questions about what had happened. His noncommittal answers had not satisfied them but had left Eddie with some self-respect. Eddie seemed grateful for that.

  All because of the ring.

  Russell looked at the faint scar it had left on his finger and smiled.

  Suddenly he felt a sharp pain just under the scar. He looked again, more closely.

  The scar, usually almost invisible, was bright red.

  And it was throbbing as if it were on fire.

  What was going on?

  Russell looked up and saw moonlight spilling over his windowsill—the light of the first full moon since Halloween.

  His skin began to itch.

  His forehead started to throb.

  A wild urge to howl rose within him.

  Now, finally, he understood what Mr. Elives had meant by “aftereffects.”

  He sighed.

  “Well, Crannaker,” he told himself, “that’s what you get for not following directions.”

  Crossing to the window, he laid one hairy paw on the sill.

  It was time to go out for the night.

  A Note from the Author

  It is probably no surprise to anyone who knows my books that Halloween is my favorite holiday. When I was a kid, I would haunt (you should pardon the expression) the library shelves during October, looking for just the right book to read on Halloween night. For me, the “right” book didn’t just mean one that was scary. It meant one that had a combination of fright and fun, horror and humor—and, even more important, a sense of mystery and magic.

  Though I found a lot of great books, I never did find just the one I was looking for. One reason I started writing The Monster’s Ring was to fill that gap on the shelves, to come up with the perfect book to read on Halloween night.

  Well, the book is not perfect, of course—which is all right with me, because that means I get to try again. Even so, it does contain most of the elements that I was looking for in a Halloween story.

  One of those elements is Mr. Elives’ magic shop, which made its first appearance in this book. Basically, it’s the magic shop I used to fantasize about finding when I was a kid myself. Even so, when I first wrote the book, I had no idea that I would come back to the shop so many times. But it is too interesting a place for me to stay away from—partly because I never know what’s going to happen when I go back through its doors.

  As the world of the shop has grown in my imagination, I have tried to weave more continuing elements through the books. That’s why it was a pleasure to have a chance to revise this first book in the series.

  I had to walk a delicate line in doing this work. I know that one of the things people have appreciated about The Monster’s Ring is that it is compact, a book that parents have told me time and again is the first book their son or daughter ever read by themselves. I love hearing that, and I wanted to keep that lean, fast-paced quality.

  But I also wanted to bring this edition of the book closer to
the tone and style of the subsequent magic shop tales. In that regard, it was especially fun to weave in Roxanne and Jerome, the talking rats first introduced in Jennifer Murdley’s Toad.

  Oddly enough, a great deal of this book is based on real life. Russell and Eddie are both modeled on kids who were in my classes when I taught elementary school. Boardman Road Elementary itself is modeled on the school where I worked, though our principal was much nicer than “Beast” Rafschnitz. The geography of the school and its Halloween customs are taken from life. As, believe it or not, is the scene where Russell goes berserk at the Halloween party: It’s drawn from the things that happened when my “half-mad twin brother, Igor” used to come for his annual Halloween visit. (I’ll let you figure out the details on that one yourself.)

  For me, the world of the magic shop is a place to celebrate mystery and marvels, a place where I go to remember that there is more wonder and strangeness swirling around us than we can ever understand.

  A final note: I’m often asked for the correct pronunciation of the name of the man who runs the magic shop. The answer is easy. Just remember that “Mystery lives!”

  About the Author

  BRUCE COVILLE is the author of over 100 books for children and young adults, including the international bestseller My Teacher Is an Alien, the Unicorn Chronicles series, and the much-beloved Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher. His work has appeared in a dozen languages and won children’s choice awards in a dozen states.

  Before becoming a full time writer Bruce was a teacher, a toymaker, a magazine editor, a gravedigger, and a cookware salesman. He is also the creator of Full Cast Audio, an audiobook company devoted to producing full cast, unabridged recordings of material for family listening and has produced over a hundred audiobooks, directing and/or acting in most of them.

  Bruce lives in Syracuse, New York, with his wife, illustrator and author Katherine Coville.

  Visit his website at www.brucecoville.com.