by David Lubar
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For those big brothers who remain loyal
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Author’s Note
1. Getting Spooked
2. Totally Bushed
Illustration 1
3. Berried Alive
4. Just Passing Through
Illustration 2
5. That Sinking Sensation
6. Haunt and Seek
Illustration 3
7. Welcome?
Illustration 4
8. The Spirits Are About to Speak
9. Has Anybody Found My Body?
10. Repulsive Rory
Illustration 5
11. The Ride of a Lifetime
Illustration 6
12. Hospital Hospitality
13. Getting Through Is Hard to Do
14. Out and About
15. Old Stuff
Illustration 7
16. That’s a Switch
17. Smash and Crash
Illustration 8
18. Galloping Ghosts
Illustration 9
19. Rory the Star
20. Running Out of Time
21. Figuring Out an Action
22. Get the Message?
Illustration 10
Illustration 11
23. Now or Never
Illustration 12
24. Great Expectations
Afterword
Excerpt from The Bully Bug
Starscape Books by David Lubar
About the Author
Copyright
Author’s Note
I’ve always been a fan of monsters. As a kid, I watched monster movies, read monster magazines, built monster models, and even tried my hand at monster makeup for Halloween. Basically, I was a creepy little kid. It’s no surprise that, when I grew up and became a writer, I would tell monster stories. I’ve written a lot of them over the years. My short-story collections, such as Attack of the Vampire Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales, are full of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, witches, giant insects, and other classic creatures. The book you hold in your hands is also about a monster. But it is different from my short stories in a wonderful way. Let me explain.
Years ago, I decided I wanted to tell a tale through the eyes of a monster. That idea excited me, but it didn’t feel special enough, by itself. Then I had a second idea that went perfectly with the first one. What if a kid became a monster? Even better—what if the kid had to decide whether to remain as a monster or to become human again? The result of these ideas was not one book, but six. It seems the town of Lewington attracts a monsterrific amount of trouble. To find out more, read on.
One
GETTING SPOOKED
Being little stinks. Adults act like I don’t exist. Even when I’m in the room, they act like I’m not there. They talk about me right in front of me. Maybe they think their words just shoot across the room and don’t reach down to me. It’s amazing. I can be sitting right there—right under their noses—and they’ll start talking about me. Rory this and Rory that. Rory had a bad day today or Rory shouldn’t be playing with that boy down the street. Sometimes I want to shout at them, “Hey, I’m right here!”
They all do it. Mom and Dad, Mr. Nordy next door, Dr. Bugwitz, my teacher Mrs. Rubric, everyone.
Being little stinks. But it’s better than being dead. Being dead can really stink. No joke. I don’t mean you start to stink. Well, I guess you do if you’re really dead. But I’m just sort of dead, so I don’t stink. Maybe I’m just almost dead. But I know I’m dead enough to be a ghost.
I’m skipping over a bunch of stuff. I’ve got to go back, so it makes sense. It’s like Mom says when I get excited. “Slow down. Just tell one thing at a time.” Okay, I’m going to slow down and tell one thing at a time.
First, who am I? I’m Rory. But that doesn’t tell you a lot. I’m in kindergarten. I’ve got a brother, Sebastian, who is really great. He’s my big buddy. He lets me look at his monster books. I’ve got a sister, Angelina. She’s the oldest. She’s getting close to being a big person, so sometimes she treats me like I’m not there. But she also makes me cookies sometimes. And she was a witch for a while. Not a nasty witch, but a fun one. Angelina and Sebastian fight all the time. Not hit and punch fight, but with words. Sebastian usually wins. He’s cool. His friends call him Splat. That’s a funny story. I’ll tell it later if I remember.
I like soldiers and monsters and trucks—especially monster trucks. I like guns, but Mom doesn’t. I don’t have a lot of guns. I used to not have any, but I made guns out of sticks, so Mom gave up and let me have some toy guns. Dad doesn’t mind if I have toy guns. I don’t point them at any real people or animals—just at enemy soldiers and monsters.
Wow, I’m really chattering. If I keep talking about me, this story won’t go anywhere. I’d better hurry through the rest. So, there’s Sebastian and Angelina. I told you about them. I have a friend, Becky, who lives down the street. She’s great. She can bend her thumb back so it touches her wrist. And she can do that trick with her eyes where she makes them go all white. Her mom hates that. I think Sebastian has a crush on Becky’s big sister, Dawn. He acts real goofy when she’s around.
I have another friend, Tony, who lives down the street, but the other way. Becky and Tony hate each other right now. Oh, and I’ve got parents. Mom and Dad. That’s what I call them.
Before I got dead, I guess I was just a normal kid. I’m still a normal kid, except I’m a ghost kid. That would be cool, if I was alive. But I guess you can’t be alive and be a ghost. It’s like when Dad says, “You can’t have it both ways.” My parents are always saying things. Most of the time, I’m not really sure what they mean. Like, what does “Someday you’ll thank me for this” mean? It’s more like “Someday I’ll spank you for this.” That, I understand.
So anyhow, now you know enough about me. And—oh, yeah—I live in Lewington and I go to morning kindergarten at Washington Irving Elementary School. I don’t know if I’ll be going there anymore, since I’m dead.
Now you know everything about me except how I got into this mess. Well, I guess it really started when I broke the television.
Two
TOTALLY BUSHED
I figured it would be great to have the sound from the television come out of the big speakers on the stereo. My friend Tony’s dad had their set hooked up that way. It didn’t look hard, and the television sounded real good. I was up early in the morning and everyone else was asleep. I was bored. So I got some wire from Dad’s tool bench in the garage and started trying to connect things. Really, how hard could it be?
Harder than I thought, I guess. As soon as I hooked up the first wire, there was this ZZZZZAAAAP sound and a burning smell. I jumped halfway across the room when that happened. Then a bunch of white smoke came from inside the television. It smelled awful.
“I’m dead,” I said.
Dad would kill me when he found out. I didn’t have to think twice about what to do. I rushed straight out of the house. There was no way I could hide what I’d done. If I’d broken something small, like a radio, I could hid
e it. But even if I had a place to hide the television, I couldn’t move it by myself. Our television weighs a ton. There was no way I could blame someone else, either. I’d broken enough things before so they always knew, whenever anything broke, Rory did it.
The alarm clock was my fault. I’ll admit that. I wanted to see how it worked. How could it always ring at the right time? But I didn’t mean to break the vacuum cleaner. And I sure didn’t mean to wreck both garage door openers on the same day. But all those things just sort of happened to me.
I went out the back door. There were some bushes at the corner of the yard next to the swings. They were real thick and the branches drooped to the ground. Dad kept asking Sebastian to trim them. And Sebastian kept saying he would. But he never did it. I crawled through the branches and hid. It was almost like being under my blankets, but there was fresh air.
I could see it now. It’s always the same. First, they’d get angry. Then they’d try to figure out a reason—like if there was a reason I did it, then it wouldn’t be so bad. So I’d tell them I was just trying to make it better.
“Didn’t you think?” Mom would say. “Didn’t you stop to think?”
“We are very, very disappointed with you,” Dad would say.
Then they’d start in on the safety stuff.
“You could have gotten hurt.” That was the one I heard the most. That’s what they said when I tried to drive the car. That’s what they said when I tried to cut down the old dead apple tree with Dad’s handsaw. That’s what they said when I tried to teach myself to swim in Mr. Nordy’s pool. I guess I could have gotten hurt, but nothing ever seems dangerous when I start out.
Then they’d figure out my punishment. That would be bad. I mean, I’d destroyed the television. We practically lived around it. Every night, we watched TV. And I had broken it. No doubt about it—I was dead.
Sitting under some bushes can get pretty boring. I dug around, looking for bugs to play with. I didn’t find any. There’s never a good bug around when you need one. I had my watch with me. Mom and Dad gave it to me for my last birthday. There aren’t any hands like on the clocks at school. Those are hard to read. On my watch, the minutes are numbers. Sebastian taught me how to read it. He’s always teaching me important stuff. I thought I’d been under the bushes for at least an hour, but it had only been two or three minutes.
Then I started getting hungry. I thought about sneaking into the kitchen for a box of cereal. But I wasn’t going to leave my hiding place for a long time. I was just going to stay until they forgot about the TV. Then I’d come back. It might take a day or two, but it was my only hope.
While I was looking around for something to do, I noticed there were red berries on the bushes. Tony said that all red berries are poison. But Tony lies all the time.
Last week, Tony said, “My dad used to tame lions in the circus.”
I’m pretty sure that isn’t true. His dad doesn’t have any scars. And he wears a suit when he goes to work. Lion tamers don’t wear suits.
“I have a spaceship in my closet,” Tony told me last month.
I looked. He didn’t. I wish he did.
Tony also told me he was starring in a new television show. He isn’t. They wouldn’t let him have a show. He talks too fast and I’m just about the only one who can understand him.
He even told me he was going to have a rock group at his birthday party, but all he had was Chuckle-Buckle, the Happy Clown. I can’t think of anything he ever told me that was actually true. So there was no reason to believe him about the berries. I pulled one from the bush and looked at it. Strawberries are red, and they aren’t poison.
I rolled it around in my fingers. It was so small. There was no way one little berry could do anything bad to me.
I put it in my mouth.
Three
BERRIED ALIVE
The outside of the berry didn’t have any taste. I figured if it was poison, it would be bitter.
I bit it.
The inside didn’t have much taste, either. It was a little sour, but not too bad. I tried a couple more. By then I realized that there weren’t enough to fill me up, anyhow. I’d just have to put up with being hungry. That shouldn’t be a problem. A real soldier can stand anything. We can walk for days through the mud and the rain, carrying a ton of stuff. We can go forever without any water except a little sip every eight hours.
My stomach had stopped rumbling.
I wondered whether they had tried to turn on the TV yet. I could see it. Dad would switch it on and there’d be nothing. He’d thump it on top a couple of times, or maybe shake the remote. It still wouldn’t turn on. So he’d call Mom. And they’d both try it. Then they’d check the plug to make sure it was in. Then they’d call Sebastian, since he’s the only one in the house who knows how to use the remote and program all the video stuff.
My stomach didn’t hurt anymore. It didn’t feel like anything. It was more than not feeling. It was like it never had any feeling at all.
Maybe they’d smell it first. They’d walk into the living room and smell the burnt TV smell. There’d been a pretty big puff of smoke. It probably still smelled in there. Big people can sniff stuff like that and know exactly what happened. It’s amazing. The time I melted one of my tub toys with the magnifying glass, Mom knew right away what was going on. And when I’d tried to paint Dad’s tires to surprise him for his birthday, he came running out to the garage before I’d even gotten the first one finished.
My legs felt funny, too. They felt like they had no feeling. I wondered if I’d been sitting one way for too long. I stretched them out. They still felt strange.
I hoped Sebastian wasn’t planning to watch anything special tonight. I wouldn’t want to get him mad at me, too.
“Rory?”
Someone was calling for me. It sounded like Dad. I pulled myself deeper into the bushes. I had to use my arms. My legs weren’t working.
This was bad. I wondered if they’d found out about the TV already, or were just looking for me. Luckily, I could be anywhere. There were a bunch of places for them to look. I could be at Tony’s, or at Becky’s, or at the playground down the street. I could be just about anywhere on the block.
My fingers started to tingle.
It wouldn’t be easy for them to find me. I’d be safe for a while. This was a real good hiding place. I used it only for big emergencies. They didn’t know about it—not even Sebastian. They’ve never found me here. Maybe they won’t turn on the television. Maybe if I got some books or magazines for everyone, they’d read instead. That might work.
My arms felt funny. I couldn’t sit up anymore.
Something was wrong. I didn’t feel anything anywhere. Just my face. I couldn’t move my body.
“Mom?”
I called Mom. She could fix anything. Sometimes Sebastian called her Dr. Mom. I tried to shout but it wasn’t even a whisper. I think my lips moved. I’m not sure. They tingled for a while. But now I couldn’t feel them, either. I couldn’t hear anything. I couldn’t see anything.
I couldn’t feel myself thinking anymore. I couldn’t …
Four
JUST PASSING THROUGH
Gee, I felt a lot better when I woke up. I must have fallen asleep. That was really weird. I sat up. It was brighter outside. I checked my watch. It was almost twelve o’clock. I stretched, but I didn’t feel stiff. That’s funny. I usually have to stretch when I wake up. Then I saw him. I don’t know how he got in here with me. He was sleeping.
“Hey, wake up,” I said to the other kid. What was he doing in my secret place? He looked familiar. Wow. He looked just like me. That made me feel really creepy. It was like looking in a mirror, but without the mirror. “Wake up!” I shouted at him. I decided to shake his shoulder. I tried to do it. But I couldn’t touch him. My hand just couldn’t get close.
Maybe it was time to find another place to hide. I started to push my way through the bushes.
But the bushes went through me
.
They just went right through my arm.
“Mom!”
I shouted without thinking. I didn’t care about the television anymore. I just wanted my mom. I ran toward the house.
Sebastian stepped out the back door. “Rory,” he called.
“Here!” I waved my arms and shouted. I ran toward him. But he just looked around, like I wasn’t even there. Maybe he was so mad, he was going to ignore me. But that didn’t make any sense. Why was he calling me if he was going to ignore me?
I ran to the steps. I tried to run up them, but I went through them. I was in the steps, up to my chest. It was like I’d been cut in half. Sebastian was right in front of me. His shoes were right in front of my eyes.
“Sebastian!” I shouted as hard and as loud as I could. He tilted his head for a second. I think he almost heard me. I shouted again. And again. He stood for a moment. I kept shouting. I shouted so hard, I knew my face was red. My brother turned around and went inside.
I looked down. I was half in the porch. I didn’t like that. Seeing my body cut off that way made me shiver. I lifted my hand. It came right up through the old boards with the chipped gray paint. No, I didn’t like being inside something. I stepped back. I got out of the porch.
I looked behind me, at the bushes. The kid in there … No, it couldn’t be.
I knew the answer. “I’m dreaming,” I said. It was that simple. I’d fallen asleep, and this was a bad dream. It had to be. I couldn’t really walk through the porch. I laughed at myself for being fooled by a dream.
All I had to do was wake myself up. That was easy. “Hey, wake up!” I shouted.
It didn’t work. I tried again. It still didn’t work. No matter how loud I got, I didn’t wake up.
Maybe I could wake the kid in the bushes. But something about him scared me a little. I sort of had an idea who he was, but I didn’t want to think about it. Sooner or later, I knew someone would come along and tell me what to do. Adults ignore kids a lot of the time, but they never let them alone for too long. I decided to walk around to the front of the house. Maybe I could get inside from there, since the porch didn’t have a lot of steps.