by Sam Fisher
It was while he was looking up at the widow’s walk that he saw three dark shapes flitting about against the silvery sky.
“Uh, that’s weird!” Morton said. “You see those bats up there?”
The others all stopped and looked up in the direction Morton was pointing.
“Oh, yeah, cool,” James said. “What could be more perfect? Bats at Halloween. We never saw bats in the city.”
“Mm! Actually you never normally see them here at Halloween,” Wendy said, squinting up at the tiny black shapes.
“That’s because they’re supposed to be hibernating this time of year,” Morton said, feeling a strange twinge of anxiety.
Melissa looked down quizzically at Morton. “Are you trying to tell us something?” she asked.
Morton paused before answering. He wasn’t really sure what he was thinking. But there was something about the shape of these bats that didn’t look right. Their heads seemed a little too large for their bodies, and Morton couldn’t help but think of the mythical Bat Eyes, creatures that looked almost identical to bats but had one singular large eye instead of a face.
“Well?” Melissa prodded.
Morton still didn’t respond. He peered up at the hovering bats, trying to make out their exact shape, but the tiny black creatures swooped away and vanished from sight, lost in the darkening sky.
“Morton’s getting wound up again,” James said. “We’re just having unusually warm weather and the bats are hibernating late. Isn’t that right, Morton?”
Morton looked at Melissa’s concerned face and realized that James was probably right.
“Uh, yeah,” he said. “It’s nothing.”
“Exactly. It’s nothing,” James reiterated. “This is going to be a normal night, remember? Come on. Let’s have some fun.”
Melissa stared at Morton for a moment longer and then sighed and put on a brave smile. “Okay, but for once let’s do what Dad suggests and stick together, all right?” she said.
“Sure. I think that would be sensible,” James replied, and he pulled Morton’s arm and led him off down the street. Almost instantly, Morton found himself jostled along with the crowds of other kids running up and down driveways, visiting house after house and rapidly filling their bags with candy.
To Morton’s surprise, Melissa seemed determined to collect more candy than anyone else, and she seemed determined to eat more of it than anyone else too.
“I thought you hated Halloween candy,” James said as she stuffed an entire bag of blood-colored marshmallows in her mouth.
“I phoo,” she spluttered back. “But ith thtill better than Dad’th cooking.”
James looked at her aghast for a moment and then burst out into hysterical laughter. Melissa pushed her hand to her face, fighting off a chuckle, but a moment later she exploded with laughter herself, spitting the entire gooey contents of her mouth over a nearby lawn.
“Oops!” James said, looking at the half-chewed globs. “I hope you weren’t enjoying those.”
“No, they were completely disgusting,” Melissa said, and they all burst into laughter again and ran off to the next house.
For the rest of the evening everyone seemed to be in high spirits, and James and Melissa didn’t bicker or argue once. That, combined with the fact that Dimvale really was the perfect Halloween town, should have made Morton feel completely happy, but no matter how hard he tried, he simply couldn’t relax. And it wasn’t just because of the bat sighting. He couldn’t help feeling that somehow everything was out of joint, like a reflection in a cracked mirror that looked almost right, except the picture didn’t quite line up.
Despite this, Morton did his best to appear to be having fun. He smiled at all of the homeowners and he laughed at all of James’s and Melissa’s jokes until after about two hours they finally wandered along a narrow, deserted street and Melissa dropped her heavy bag of candy on the sidewalk.
“That’s it,” she announced. “I can’t take another step — or eat another thing, for that matter.”
“Me neither,” Wendy said. “I don’t know what’s hurting me the most: my stomach or my feet.”
“Definitely my stomach,” James said.
“Definitely my feet,” Melissa countered. “What about you, Morton?”
Morton was about to answer when he heard a faint noise, almost like a distant sea pounding against the shore, coming from down the street. He turned his head sharply and looked in the direction of the sound.
Melissa seemed to notice the shift in his mood instantly.
“What is it?” she said. “More bats?”
“Shhh!” Morton said. “Don’t you hear it?”
Everybody listened intently. After a moment James shrugged. “It’s just the wind in the trees,” he said.
Morton shook his head. “You can’t have wind and fog at the same time. And look at the trees — they’re dead still.”
The smile dropped from James’s face. Melissa, who was already looking tense, stepped closer to Wendy and glanced around nervously. “If it’s not the wind, then what is it?” she said.
“There isn’t an ocean nearby, is there?” James said, trying unsuccessfully to restore the light mood that had so rapidly vanished. They were a hundred miles from the nearest ocean, and they all knew it.
Morton peered into the fog, and as he watched, a shape emerged from the swirling shadows down the road. It looked like a dragon, loping along on hind legs, its head flopping from side to side like a giant green rubber metronome.
James jumped closer to the girls.
A moment later the dragon’s head fell right off, revealing the sweaty and frightened face of a boy beneath. But the boy didn’t stop to pick up his lost head. In fact, if anything he started running faster.
“Run!” he screeched breathlessly as he tore past Morton and the others without so much as a backward glance.
Morton pulled off his mask and gazed into the darkness. At first he could see nothing in the thickening fog, but then he noticed what looked like a dark shadow creeping across the ground and moving rapidly toward them.
He heard Wendy gasp and felt Melissa’s hands clutching at his elbow in the same instant that his fears were confirmed. The dark, flowing shadow was a swarm of rats — but not just any rats. They were Two-Headed Mutant Rodents, vile vermin from the pages of Scare Scape, and there were so many of them so densely packed that they moved as one solid amorphous mass.
A sick, heavy feeling oozed up from Morton’s toes and overtook his whole body, and it had nothing to do with Halloween candy.
Melissa tugged hard on his arm. “Run, you idiot!” she said, and suddenly he and the others were racing down the street. But Morton realized very quickly that it was almost impossible to run in his long leather cloak.
“Wait, I can’t … ,” he called out. But the others weren’t looking back, and even Melissa, who didn’t seem to be having any trouble running in her long dress, was already out of earshot.
Morton slowed to a stop and struggled with the cloak’s bone-shaped buttons. He tried not to look at the broiling pool of yellow teeth and brown fur that was rushing toward him, but he couldn’t shut out the sound. The sound was the worst of all: a screeching, scampering, wet writhing sound that seemed to convey the force of a small cyclone. Struggling wildly, he managed to release three of the buttons, but the final one just wouldn’t come loose, and suddenly a two-headed rat leaped onto his arm and sank its teeth into the thick leather of his cloak. He let out a shout and swung his arm, throwing it off, but by now the rest of the swarm had reached his feet and a dozen more clambered up his cape, gripping effortlessly with their sharp claws. The fetid smell of sewage and filth hit his nostrils, and the high-pitched screeching became unbearable. Before he had time to react, his entire cloak was covered in rats, so many that he felt the weight of them dragging him down, and for a second he was sure his knees were going to buckle beneath him.
Morton flung his sizable bag of candy over his s
houlder and then tugged with all his strength at the remaining button. This time it popped free, and he tore off his cloak and hurled it into the swarm. Suddenly he was running again, and now he had no trouble outpacing the oncoming mass and soon caught up to James, Melissa, and Wendy, who were waiting at the corner. Morton stopped a moment to catch his breath. He noticed that the rats were slowing down to eat the candy that had showered the sidewalks like confetti, and he realized that the others had also dropped all their candy in the panic.
“We need to keep moving,” Wendy said. “Come on, I know a shortcut back to Hemlock Hill.” And with that Wendy took off with such speed that it was everything the other three could do to keep up with her. At first she continued straight along the street, as if heading away from home, but then she made a sharp turn into an overgrown yard and led them around the back of a run-down, boarded-up old house. She strode purposefully to the wooden fence at the end of the yard and lifted up a loose board. “This was the old Grippen mansion,” she said, slipping through the narrow opening. “It’s been abandoned since I was little. We always used to cut through here.”
Morton clambered through after Wendy and the others, and he was surprised to find himself in the parking lot of the funeral home that he knew was only a few blocks from their house.
Wendy started running again and didn’t slow down until they turned at last onto Hemlock Hill, where Morton was relieved to see parents and kids meandering along the streets as if everything were completely normal. They all slowed to a walking pace but nonetheless kept moving toward home.
“I think we’ll be safe here,” James said, still gasping for air. “I don’t imagine even two-headed rats like crowds that much.”
“Let’s hope not,” Melissa said.
“But where did they come from?” Wendy said, scanning the streets anxiously. “Those things were from Scare Scape. I thought we unwished them all.”
“We did!” Melissa exclaimed.
Morton cleared his throat. “We might not have,” he said, remembering now how he and James had seen a stray Mutant Rodent darting down a drain after they had undone their wishes. “I mean, we don’t really understand how any of this magic stuff works.”
“Well, whatever the reason, fortunately it’s only a few dozen rats. We should be able to get rid of them without too much trouble, right?” Melissa said, looking at Morton with a hopeful expression.
Morton looked at his feet, feeling uncomfortable under Melissa’s gaze. “I’m not so sure,” he said. “The problem is they hide in the sewers and breed really fast. There could be twice as many tomorrow.”
“So, you’re saying we’ll need a lot of traps?” James said.
Morton shook his head. “They’re too smart for traps, and they’re immune to all known poisons.”
Melissa and the others stopped walking and suddenly all eyes were on Morton. “Just what are you trying to tell us?” she said.
“I think … I think we might need to use magic again,” Morton said.
“What! Are you crazy?” Melissa screeched, losing her calm completely. “We’re not getting involved in more magic.”
“We might not have a choice,” Morton said. “I mean, you saw them. There are already hundreds of them. By next week there will be thousands, and by the end of the month, who knows?”
“I’ve killed plenty of monsters without magic,” Melissa said. “All you need is a good, sharp sword.”
Morton rubbed at his legs, which felt shaky and sore. Melissa really didn’t seem to be grasping just how deadly the Two-Headed Mutant Rodents could be. “You’d need a thousand swords,” he said, “and a thousand Melissas to go with them.”
“Now that’s a scary thought,” James said.
Melissa scowled at James but then quickly turned her attention back to Morton.
“Let’s presume for one minute you’re right and that we do need to use magic,” she said. “We don’t know anything about magic, other than that it’s really dangerous. Where would we even begin?”
At that moment a group of kids and parents dressed as giant insects passed them on the sidewalk, glancing curiously in their direction.
“I think we’d better keep walking,” James suggested, “and maybe keep our voices down a bit.”
They all did so and Morton reluctantly told them what he was really thinking. “Look, I know you’re not going to like it,” he said, “but I think we might have to get The Book of Portals out of the attic and see if it has any spells in it that can help us.”
Melissa, James, and Wendy all began screeching and yelling at the same time.
“No way!”
“We can’t!”
“That book is dangerous. We swore never to look at it again.”
“I know. I know all that,” Morton said in a calming voice. “But that was when we thought it was all over.”
“It is all over,” James said. “We just have a few stray rats to deal with.”
“A few!” Morton exclaimed. “I almost got eaten alive.”
“Either way, for once I agree with Melissa. We don’t need magic.”
By now they had arrived at Wendy’s house and they all came to a stop at the small white fence that ran around her front yard.
“What do you think?” Melissa said to Wendy. “You’re the rational one.”
“Well, Morton has a habit of being right,” she said reluctantly. “And we definitely have to do something. But we also made a promise to one another to never look at that book again, and Robbie was in on that promise, so I say we can’t make any decisions without him being here. I think we need to have a meeting with Robbie to talk about it.”
Everyone agreed that this was a good idea, and Wendy darted off along the paved path and vanished into her house. As soon as she was gone, James, Morton, and Melissa shuffled wearily across the road to their own house and stepped through the side door into the brightly lit warmth of the kitchen.
Dad, who was now busily ironing shirts, looked up to greet them with a soft smile. “Ah, the pilgrims return,” he said. “How was it?”
“The same as every other Halloween,” Melissa said with a dismissive sigh. “Boring.”
The next morning Morton was pleasantly surprised to find the view from his balcony window completely normal. Before going to sleep the previous night he’d reread the original Scare Scape story about the Two-Headed Mutant Rodents and it had been even more terrifying than he remembered. In the comic, the rats had been created by a genetic engineer to breed and multiply faster than any natural creature ever could. They’d also been engineered to be immune to most poisons and smart enough to avoid traps, making them a formidable foe capable of laying waste to a city in a matter of weeks. Morton had half expected to wake up to a post-apocalyptic, rat-infested Dimvale. Fortunately no such scene awaited him, although this did little to calm his nerves. If the story was right about the Two-Headed Mutant Rodents — and the stories in Scare Scape had been right on many occasions — then he needed to convince James and Melissa just how dangerous the situation might be.
He hastily got dressed and grabbed the comic and headed down to breakfast.
When he arrived in the dining room and found Melissa drumming her fingers nervously and James poking absently at his toast with the tip of the butter knife, he realized that he wasn’t the only one who’d been worried. Melissa glanced up at Morton with heavy eyelids and immediately spotted the comic in his hand.
“Please don’t tell me you’re still reading that thing!” she growled.
“Oh, I was, uh, I wanted to show you something that, uh …”
“Don’t mind her,” Dad said, peering up from behind his newspaper. “She’s in a miserable mood this morning.”
Melissa stopped drumming her fingers and glared at Dad. “I am not in a miserable mood,” she protested.
“Normally I’d blame the weather, but it’s a beautiful day out there,” Dad went on, completely ignoring Melissa’s futile attempt at denial.
> “I’m just tired of living with boys,” Melissa said, putting on her best scowl.
James, who also looked unusually miserable, shot Melissa an angry glance. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.
“Oh, you know,” Melissa said scornfully.
“No, I don’t know,” James persisted, which was obviously the wrong response, because Melissa jumped suddenly to her feet and started ranting in an angry, tremulous voice.
“Yes, you do! Of course you do. It’s all monster comics, monster toys, monster collector cards, and … Just monsters, everywhere!”
“I don’t collect monster cards anymore!” James protested. “And I don’t even read the comic.”
“It’s not just that!” Melissa went on. “I’m tired of living with boys. Stinky socks and … and …” Melissa paused, as if trying to think of something else. “And nobody ever puts the toilet seat down!”
James turned his nose up in disbelief. “What’s the toilet seat got to do with anything?”
“It’s bad manners. I mean, I don’t go into your bedroom and open all the drawers and leave them open, do I?”
“That is not even vaguely the same,” James said.
“Yes, it is,” Melissa screeched, now completely losing her cool. “Only you don’t get it because you’re a boy and boys don’t understand anything!”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Dad said, putting his newspaper down and raising his hands. “No need to shout.”
Melissa opened her mouth and for a moment looked like she was about to bark at Dad, but then she flopped into her chair and stared at the untouched food on her plate.