The teeth were bulky but surprisingly light, and carrying them wasn’t particularly hard.
Don finished his side of the mouth quicker than she did and rushed over to help her.
The pit gurgled noisily, acid eating away at the pulled teeth almost as fast as the kids could dump them in.
“Lucky for us this is a game for little kids,” Don said as he hauled the last tooth out of its socket.
Covering her mouth again, Lucy said, “You call this lucky? Are you nuts?”
“It’s pretty easy, really. To figure out and stuff.” He dropped the tooth into the pit, and the barrier of teeth blocking the way out opened wide.
Bright light momentarily blinded the kids, but they stumbled forward, anxious to leave the mouth cave behind.
Once they were clear, Lucy lost the battle with her stomach and vomited onto a scoop of strawberry ice cream the size of a rhododendron bush.
23.
Savage strolled out from behind the bush, his chocolate whiskers speckled with ice cream.
“ARGH!” Don screamed. “We’re at the gym again!”
Lucy wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and saw that he was right. They stood before 24/7 Fitness again.
“We went backwards?” she cried. “That’s not fair!”
Twisting himself between her legs, Savage meowed up at her before trotting off past the front of the building and around the side.
Groaning in misery, the children followed. As they went by the fitness center’s front door, they were surprised to see nothing inside. No pool. No Nerds. Nothing.
They plodded on through drifts of ice cream, both of them too distressed to give much thought to the chilly landscape they were now in.
Once they’d rounded the building’s corner, they were in a completely different part of town. Before them stood the city library--a building they themselves hadn’t spent much time in.
“Oh, man,” Don said. “I hate books.”
Lucy was about to voice her agreement when she spotted gingerbread dad seated on a stone bench at the top of the library steps.
“Dad!” she shouted and raced up, Savage jogging beside her. Don followed them, smiling his first smile in he couldn’t remember how long.
“Thank God!” Lucy said, touching the gingerbread man’s chipped shoulder. Dad was looking a bit worse for wear, but she supposed they did as well.
The twins spent a moment trying to get their bearings before turning to the library doors.
“Here we go again, I guess,” Don muttered.
“Yep.”
More anxious than usual, Savage stood on his hind legs and pawed at the door handle.
“Okay, okay,” Don said. “We’re coming.”
He picked up gingerbread dad and followed Savage and Lucy through the doors.
Inside was nothing like it was supposed to be, but by now this fact wasn’t particularly surprising.
Instead of rows upon rows of bookcases, a massive tower of books sat in the middle of a large windowless room.
The books were stacked every which way, vertically and horizontally, paperbacks and hard-covers, all the spines facing outwards. The tower seemed sturdy enough and stood ten feet tall, while being about five feet wide.
But the odd stack of books wasn’t the thing that commanded the most attention in the room.
That honor went to the enormous white ghost that floated back and forth at the opposite side of the room.
Raising an eyebrow, Lucy said, “They have got to be kidding.”
Don could only shrug.
The ghost was almost comical. The cheapest Halloween costume anyone had ever seen: the draped white sheet with eye holes cut out of the top.
Except that it wasn’t a sheet.
Although the exact consistency was hard to determine at such a distance, it was obvious that the ghost was very solid. And yet, it defied gravity, floating a couple feet off the floor.
Lucy sighed. “Okay, let’s get this over with. What are we supposed to do this time?”
“Not sure, but at least it doesn’t look like anything gross.”
She gazed up at the tower of books, chewing her lower lip. “It looks like that game Mom always wants us to play. With the blocks?”
The ghost shot towards them, its face morphing into that of a snarling zombie-like ghoul, its mouth stretching wide as it screeched out a deafening blast of static.
The twins screamed in terror, falling over each other and covering their ears.
Don dropped gingerbread dad and fell on top of it, cracking off a mitten hand.
Hovering above the cowering kids, the ghost/ghoul/zombie continued its aural assault for what seemed like hours, but was in reality no more than ten seconds, before it retreated to its previous position and became what looked like a harmless joke once more.
Whimpering, sweat beading on their foreheads, the children took another minute to drop their hands from their ears.
When her heart slowed a bit, Lucy looked at her brother. “I almost peed my pants.”
“I did pee my pants,” Don said. His face flushed pink. “Just a little.”
They got to their feet, eyeing the floating ghost warily.
“I don’t know what we did to make it do that,” Lucy said, “but let’s not do it again.”
Don nodded his agreement. “What does the manual say?”
After consulting the book, Lucy said, “Just like I thought--we have to pull books from this tower and,” she glanced down, reading aloud, “‘appease the ghost.’”
He wrinkled his nose. “Appease it? Not sure I like the sound of that.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“But what does it even mean?”
Lucy strolled around the tower, studying it carefully, before pulling out a trade paperback. The tower barely moved at all and was in no danger of falling. She opened the book to a random page and faced the ghost.
“YAY AY AY!”
The voice shouted/sang from inside the tower itself and the kids barely acknowledged it.
Clearing her throat, Lucy began to read. The book made very little sense. It was apparently about a man who was in love with his house, but the ghost sighed, slumped to the floor and began to snore.
“ONE! TWO! THREE! STOP!”
Lucy stopped reading and tossed the book aside. “That was weird. Your turn, I guess.”
Don looked like he might throw up. “Oh, come on! This sucks even worse than pulling teeth.”
She gave him a sympathetic look, and the ghost began to stir again. “You’d better hurry.”
Cursing, Don carelessly grabbed a book from the tower. His breath caught when it teetered precariously.
“Be careful,” Lucy hissed.
Luckily, the tower remained standing, and Don opened the book and started to read a teen romance about vampires. He’d barely read two sentences when the ghost flew at them, blaring static again.
Startled, Don tried to slam the book back into place, knocking the tower down on top of himself and his sister.
Lucy didn’t even have time to scream. All she knew was that she was in that odd limbo place, out of her body, and then she was in the library again, facing the miraculously reassembled tower, the ghost floating lazily in the background and her brother beside her.
“Man, I hate dying,” Don said.
“It definitely sucks,” she agreed.
“I don’t even know what I did wrong. I read fine, just like you did.”
“I think the ghost hated the book.”
Don balled up his fists. “That’s not my fault! How are we supposed to know what’s a good book and what’s a bad one?”
“No clue.”
“DO THE PEPPERMINT TWIST!”
“Oh, for crying out loud!” Lucy complained. “Give us a second!”
The complaint infuriated the ghost, and, as a result, the twins ended up covering their painfully ringing ears again.
When the punishment was over,
she carefully chose her next book. Since the trade paperback had worked well before, she plucked another one out and began to read aloud. This one was about a mustache contest, and the ghost liked it quite a bit, cooing gently as it slipped softly to the floor.
“ONE! TWO! THREE! STOP!”
Don was up again. He grabbed another hardback because he recognized the author as someone whose books his mom occasionally read. The book had something to do with an old timey Italian inventor whose name Don couldn’t pronounce, and it totally enraged the ghost.
“Stop picking those fat books,” Lucy scolded. “He really hates them!”
Sulking, Don crossed his arms. “Whatever.”
Lucy managed to choose wisely again, and soon the ghost was snoring. Don followed suit, reading about animals making a movie, and an odd thing began to happen. Not only did the ghost continue its slumber, but the wall behind it began to turn translucent.
That was weird enough.
What was even more weird was the fact that through the translucent wall they could clearly see their grandma’s little white house.
24.
The tower collapsed on top of them again.
The ghost screamed static at them again.
And the tower collapsed.
And the ghost screamed.
Again.
And again.
But eventually-finally-the twins got it right because the ghost fell fast asleep and the wall behind it vanished all together.
Don and Lucy raced for their grandmother’s house, weeping with relief and joy, bounded up her front steps, and pounded impatiently on the yellow front door.
Grandma Grace opened up a minute later, wiping her hands dry on a blue terry-cloth dish towel. She grinned at them. “What took you so long?”
25.
After hearing about the adventures the twins had had, Grandma laughed as if it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.
The kids sat at the kitchen table, crestfallen. They’d been scrubbed clean and were wearing the spare clothes they kept in the spare bedroom for when they visited overnight. They each held steaming cups of tea-neither one of them had wanted cocoa.
“You don’t believe us?” Lucy’s eyes filled up with tears.
“Oh, I believe you alright,” Grandma Grace replied.
“Then why are you laughing?” Don was beginning to feel the first twinges of anger.
“I just can’t believe it worked.”
“What are you talking about?” he demanded.
“That silly children’s game. Peppermint Twist. I bought it in a little shop downtown. Hardly anyone knows about it. They sell things like potions and books with spells and whatnot. Foolish things, really. But they do sell a lovely tea I like to pick up now and then. You’re drinking it right now. Isn’t it delicious?”
The twins looked down at their teacups suspiciously.
Grandma Grace waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, it’s nothing bad. Don’t worry. Just a little pick-me-up sort of thing. But the game…my goodness. It packed quite a punch, didn’t it?”
“I want to go home,” Lucy said.
“So soon? But you just got here.”
“I do too!” Don said, pushing back his chair. “And if you don’t drive us, we’ll walk. Right, Lucy?”
“Right!” Lucy jumped up and raised her chin defiantly.
Their grandma frowned. “Well, okay. You don’t have to be so pushy about it. Of course I’ll drive you.”
Together, Lucy and Don hurried out of the house and into Grandma Grace’s car. She came out a minute later, shaking her head. On the ride home, she asked them several times if they’d like a stick of gum or a piece of hard candy. Both kids shrank back from the offers, fighting back gags at the mere mention of sweets.
Grandma Grace eyed them in the rearview mirror. “I suppose all you want to do is get back to your video games.” She sighed sadly.
“No,” Don said, looking out the window.
“What about you, Lucy?”
Lucy felt her stomach roll again. “I don’t think so. I might…I don’t know…find something else to do, I guess.”
“Read a book perhaps?” Grandma Grace suggested.
“Maybe.”
The old woman smiled and focused on the road.
As they pulled up in front of the twin’s house, something cracked against the roof of the car.
An acorn? Lucy wondered.
But then their dad opened the front door, all smiles and definitely a real man-not a gingerbread man.
The kids leapt from the car and ran to greet him.
Before they made it, the sky opened up and began to pelt them with colorful little balls that bounced hard when they hit the pavement and hurt when they struck skin.
“Ouch!” Don cried, holding his head.
Lucy felt a now familiar dread as she looked down at the candies puddling on the ground. Skittles maybe?
“Good grief,” the father said. “You guys better hurry inside before you get pummeled.”
Still smiling, he reached for them with a familiar hand and one strange, puckered stump.
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