Return of the Mummy (9 page)

“Whoa.” I uttered a startled cry.

White light quivered all around me, so bright I still saw it when I shut my eyes.

Slowly, the light faded. I blinked a few times. I shook my head. Ran my hand through my blond hair.

Sometimes you see funny videos of people spinning around inside big clothes dryers. That’s what I thought of. That’s what I felt like.

Like I’d been spinning endlessly in burning hot air.

And now the room started to come into focus. I saw cluttered shelves and tall display cases. A grinning skeleton propped against the back door.

I knew where I was. This was the little souvenir store where I bought that evil dummy, Slappy. I was back in Chiller House. Back in HorrorLand.

But — how?

I shook myself hard, as if trying to wake from a dream.
Am I going crazy?

That thought flashed through my spinning brain.

I reviewed the facts. I had to make everything clear.

My name. It’s Ray Gordon. I’m twelve. My little brother’s name is Brandon. I shouldn’t call him
little
brother. He’s twice my size.

Okay. My memory was fine. My brain wasn’t totally playing jokes on me.

But one minute I had been at home in my room. And now here I stood, in the aisle of this little shop in HorrorLand.

And as the bright light faded and my mind cleared, I realized I wasn’t alone. I saw other kids about my age huddled together at the front of the store. I counted them. Five in all. Three boys and two girls.

They all stared at me, as if they’d been waiting for me. But their faces were filled with surprise.

I took a few shaky steps toward them. “Are you — are you surprised to be here, too?” I stammered.

They all began talking at once. I could tell they were as confused as me. Confused and frightened.

I gazed around. The six of us were alone in the store. Where was Jonathan Chiller, the old guy who owned the place?

I suddenly remembered. “I held a tiny Horror in my hand,” I said. “It was glowing. Green and yellow light came out of it, and it pulled me …”

“Me, too,” the girl with curly red hair said.

“The little Horrors brought us here somehow,” a round-faced boy, built like a middle linebacker, chimed in.

“Were you all here in this store before?” I asked.

Everyone nodded and said yes.

“Did you all take something home from here?” I asked.

Again, the answer was yes.

“I picked a joke coin,” the very tall girl with straight brown hair and shiny blue eyes said. “A two-headed coin. It got me in all kinds of trouble.”

That started everyone talking again.

“I bought a leather cord with an ancient dog tooth on it,” the big, round-faced boy said.

“I brought home Insta-Gro Pets that grew gigantic!”

Everyone had a crazy story. I think I had the craziest of all. Who would believe a wooden ventriloquist’s dummy could come to life?

As we all shared our stories of horror, I began to catch their names. The middle linebacker with the very worried expression was Andy. The way-tall girl was Jessica. The other girl, the one with red hair, was Meg.

Marco was the one who talked about comic books and some superhero character named The Ooze. Marco was tall and dark and serious looking.

The other boy was Sam. He was short and smaller than the rest of us. He had black hair and dark eyes. His two front teeth poked out when he talked, like Bugs Bunny teeth.

It didn’t take long to put the stories together. All six of us had bought gifts or souvenirs here. All six of us had scary adventures, mostly because of those souvenirs.

“The old dude, Jonathan Chiller, gave me a little Horror,” Sam said. “He told me to take a little Horror home with me.”

“Me, too!” several kids cried.

We all started talking again. It turned out that Chiller didn’t let any of us pay for our gifts. He said we could pay him
next time.

I felt a chill run slowly down my back. I suddenly felt cold all over.

Is this it? Is this payback time?

The shelves and cases were jammed with items. Big stuffed monsters had tumbled out into the aisle. I saw a headless monkey with a lightbulb where its head should be.

Grinning, prune-wrinkled shrunken heads dangled on rubber cords from the ceiling. Globs of rubber vomit glistened wetly on a low shelf. One glass case was jammed full with ugly plastic cockroaches.

The stuff all seemed really funny the first time I was here with my brother. But now it was just frightening.

“How do we get home?” Meg asked. “My parents must be frantic.”

“Does anyone have a phone?” I asked.

Sam pulled a cell phone from his jeans pocket. He peered at the screen. He pushed the power button. He shook the phone.

Then he let out a sigh. “Totally dead. I don’t get it. I just recharged it before … before I was brought here.”

No one else had a phone with them. We had all been pulled away from our homes without any warning.

“Where is Chiller?” I said. “We have a lot of questions for him.”

I made my way to the back room. The door had a werewolf poster across it. It swung open easily. I poked my head inside.

A tiny supply room. More shelves of weird stuff. But no sign of the old shop owner.

We all walked up and down the aisles. He wasn’t hiding anywhere in the store.

“This is kind of like a comic book story,” Marco said. “You know. Time travel. No, not time travel. But some kind of travel. There was an Ooze story about a bunch of kids who could jump from one place to another.”

“But this isn’t a comic book,” Meg said, shaking her head. “This is our
lives.”

I stepped behind the front desk. The screen saver was on the computer monitor. It showed skeleton fish swimming in black water.

I saw a stack of papers in the corner of the desk. I picked them up.

“Hey. This is
disturbing,”
I said.

I held up the stack. They were photographs. I turned them around and shuffled through them. Grainy, blurred black-and-white photos.

“That’s us!” Sam said. He grabbed some of the photos from my hand and studied them. “Photos taken of each of us in this store.”

Jessica pointed up to the ceiling. We all saw the small black security camera up there. It was aimed down at the front desk.

“Chiller took our picture when we stood here,” Sam said.

I took the photos back from him. My picture was on the top. I gazed at it — and felt a chill.

“Look,” I said. I held it up so everyone could see it. “Someone has added something to it.”

Yes. Someone had taken a black marker. They drew an arrow through my head.

I shuffled through the stack. Jessica’s picture had an arrow drawn through her head, too. And Meg’s. And Andy’s.

“All of them,” I said. “Did Chiller do this? Someone very carefully drew an arrow through our heads.”

“Creepy,” Andy muttered. “What does it mean? Is it some kind of sick threat?”

I heard a loud cough. We all turned toward the front door.

Jonathan Chiller stood in the doorway. Blue light from the front window poured over him, making him look ghostlike.

“Welcome back,” he said, and a cold smile spread slowly over his face.

REVENGE OF THE LAWN GNOMES

Another classic Goosebumps adventure
with brand-new bonus material

Clack, Clack, Clack.

The Ping-Pong ball clattered over the basement floor. “Yes!” I cried as I watched Mindy chase after it.

It was a hot, sticky June afternoon. The first Monday of summer vacation. And Joe Burton had just made another excellent shot.

That’s me. Joe Burton. I’m twelve. And there is nothing I love better than slamming the ball in my older sister’s face and making her chase after it.

I’m not a bad sport. I just like to show Mindy that she’s not as great as she thinks she is.

You might guess that Mindy and I do not always agree on things. The fact is, I’m really not like anyone else in my family.

Mindy, Mom, and Dad are all blond, skinny, and tall. I have brown hair. And I’m kind of pudgy and short. Mom says I haven’t had my growth spurt yet.

So I’m a shrimp. And it’s hard for me to see over the Ping-Pong net. But I can still beat Mindy with one hand tied behind my back.

As much as I love to win, Mindy hates to lose. And she doesn’t play fair at all. Every time I make a great move, she says it doesn’t count.

“Joe,
kicking
the ball over the net is not legal,” she whined as she scooped out the ball from under the couch.

“Give me a break!” I cried. “All the Ping-Pong champions do it. They call it the Soccer Slam.”

Mindy rolled her huge green eyes. “Oh, puhlease!” she muttered. “My serve.”

Mindy is weird. She’s probably the weirdest fourteen-year-old in town.

Why? I’ll tell you why.

Take her room. Mindy arranges all her books in alphabetical order — by author. Do you believe it?

And she fills out a card for each one. She files them in the top drawer of her desk. Her own private card catalog.

If she could, she’d probably cut the tops off the books so they’d all be the same size.

She is
so
organized. Her closet is organized by color. All the reds come first. Then the oranges. Then the yellows. Then come the greens, blues, and purples. She hangs her clothes in the same order as the rainbow.

And at dinner, she eats around her plate clockwise. Really! I’ve watched her. First her mashed potatoes. Then all her peas. And then her meat loaf. If she finds one pea in her mashed potatoes, she totally loses it!

Weird. Really weird.

Me? I’m not organized. I’m cool. I’m not serious like my sister. I can be pretty funny. My friends think I’m a riot. Everyone does. Except Mindy.

“Come on, serve already,” I called out. “Before the end of the century.”

Mindy stood on her side of the table, carefully lining up her shot. She stands in exactly the same place every time. With her feet exactly the same space apart. Her footprints are worn into the carpet.

“Ten-eight and serving,” Mindy finally called out. She always calls out the score before she serves. Then she swung her arm back.

I held the paddle up to my mouth like a microphone. “She pulls her arm back,” I announced. “The crowd is hushed. It’s a tense moment.”

“Joe, stop acting like a jerk,” she snapped. “I have to concentrate.”

I love pretending I’m a sports announcer. It drives Mindy nuts.

Mindy pulled her arm back again. She tossed the Ping-Pong ball up into the air. And …

“A spider!” I screamed. “On your shoulder!”

“Yaaaiiii!”
Mindy dropped the paddle and began slapping her shoulder furiously. The ball clattered onto the table.

“Gotcha!” I cried. “My point.”

“No way!” Mindy shouted angrily. “You’re just a cheater, Joe.” She smoothed the shoulders of her pink T-shirt carefully. She picked up the ball and swatted it over the net.

“At least I’m a
funny
cheater!” I replied. I twirled around in a complete circle and belted the ball. It bounced once on my side before sailing over the net.

“Foul,” Mindy announced. “You’re always fouling.”

I waved my paddle at her. “Get a life,” I said. “It’s a game. It’s supposed to be fun.”

“I’m beating you,” Mindy replied. “That’s fun.”

I shrugged. “Who cares? Winning isn’t everything.”

“Where did you read that?” she asked. “In a bubble gum comic?” Then she rolled her eyes again. I think someday her eyes are going to roll right out of her head!

I rolled my eyes, too — back into my head until only the whites showed. “Neat trick, huh?”

“Cute, Joe,” Mindy muttered. “Really cute. You’d better watch out. One day your eyes might not come back down. Which would be an improvement!”

“Lame joke,” I replied. “Very lame.”

Mindy lined up her feet carefully again.

“She’s in her serve position,” I spoke into my paddle. “She’s nervous. She’s …”

“Joe!” Mindy whined. “Quit it!”

She tossed the Ping-Pong ball into the air. She swung the paddle, and —

“Gross!” I shouted. “What’s that big green glob indent out of your nose?”

Mindy ignored me this time. She tapped the ball over the net.

I dove forward and whacked it with the tip of my paddle. It spun high over the net and landed in the corner of the basement. Between the washing machine and the dryer.

Mindy jogged after the ball on her long, thin legs. “Hey, where’s Buster?” she called out. “Wasn’t he sleeping next to the dryer?”

Buster is our dog. A giant black Rottweiler with a head the size of a basketball. He loves snoozing on the old sleeping bag we keep in the corner of the basement. Especially when we’re down here playing Ping-Pong.

Everyone is afraid of Buster. For about three seconds. Then he starts licking them with his long, wet tongue. Or rolls onto his back and begs to have his belly scratched.

“Where is he, Joe?” Mindy bit her lip.

“He’s around here somewhere,” I replied. “Why are you always worrying about Buster? He weighs over a hundred pounds. He can take care of himself.”

Mindy frowned. “Not if Mr. McCall catches him. Remember what he said the last time Buster chomped on his tomato plants?”

Mr. McCall is our next-door neighbor. Buster loves the McCalls’ yard. He likes to nap under their huge, shady elm tree.

And dig little holes all over their lawn. And sometimes big holes.

And snack in their vegetable garden.

Last year, Buster dug up every head of Mr. McCall’s lettuce. And ate his biggest zucchini plant for dessert.

I guess that’s why Mr. McCall hates Buster. He said the next time he catches him in his garden, he’s going to turn him into fertilizer.

My dad and Mr. McCall are the two best gardeners in town. They’re nuts about gardening. Totally nuts.

I think working in a garden is kind of fun, too. But I don’t let that get around. My friends think gardening is for nerds.

Dad and Mr. McCall are always battling it out at the annual garden show. Mr. McCall usually takes first place. But last year, Dad and I won the blue ribbon for our tomatoes.

That drove Mr. McCall crazy. When Dad’s name was announced, Mr. McCall’s face turned as red as our tomatoes.

So Mr. McCall is desperate to win this year. He started stocking up on plant food and bug spray months ago.

And he planted something that nobody else in North Bay grows. Strange orange-green melons called casabas.

Dad says that Mr. McCall has made a big mistake. He says that casabas will never grow any bigger than tennis balls. The growing season in Minnesota is too short.

“McCall’s garden loses,” I declared. “Our tomatoes are definitely going to win again this year. And thanks to my special soil, they’ll grow as big as beach balls!”

“So will your head,” Mindy shot back.

I stuck out my tongue and crossed my eyes. It seemed like a good reply.

“Whose serve is it?” I asked. Mindy was taking so long, I lost track.

“It’s still my serve,” she replied, carefully placing her feet.

We were interrupted by footsteps. Heavy, booming footsteps on the stairs behind Mindy.

“Who is that?” Mindy cried.

And then he appeared behind her. And my eyes nearly bulged right out of my head.

“Oh, no!” I screamed. “It’s … McCall!”