Scare Scape Read online

  Brad raised his sizable fist in the air and stepped closer to James. “I’m not scared of you.”

  James stepped backward. “You can beat me up if you want, Brad, but I’m not going anywhere until you let Robbie and my brother go.”

  Morton felt simultaneous waves of pride and fear rush through him. James always did the right thing, but he was a terrible fighter, and if it came to blows, there was no doubt he’d lose hands down.

  “Run!” Morton yelled. “Go get help.”

  “Yeah, you heard him,” Brad said. “Run, you little coward.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until you let them go,” James repeated calmly.

  “Oh, now I get it,” Brad said. “You’re the mastermind behind the whole plan. I thought it was a bit too complicated for these two.”

  “Well, if I am the mastermind, then you should let them go and have it out with me.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do. I’m in charge here!” Brad shouted, pushing James on the shoulder.

  James stumbled backward, but instead of reacting to the shove he did something very odd. He began to sniff in the air.

  “You’re afraid of me aren’t you?” he said.

  Brad seemed as surprised by the question as Morton was. “What are you talking about? I’m not afraid of anyone.”

  “Yes, you are,” James said, now taking a step toward Brad. “I can smell it.”

  Morton felt a sudden chill run down his spine. He’d never seen James behave this way before. He usually managed to talk his way out of fights by reasoning with people. He must surely know that this kind of talk would get Brad more riled up than before.

  “I don’t smell,” Brad said, unexpectedly taking a step away from James.

  “Yes, you do,” James said, now in a hauntingly hypnotic voice. “You reek of fear. And you know what the problem with fear is? People who are afraid always make stupid mistakes.”

  Brad took two full steps backward this time and swallowed hard.

  “You don’t scare me!” Brad said, but his eyes betrayed the truth. Morton could see that he really was afraid. But why?

  James held out his hands in a gesture of truce. “We don’t have to fight,” he said. “You’ll only lose if we fight, so why don’t you just let Morton and Robbie go and we can talk about it.”

  Now Morton began to think that James was playing a very clever bluff. It was a bit out of character for him, but maybe he realized that Brad would only respond to threats. Brad seemed momentarily cowed and looked around at Sid and Dave as if asking their advice. Both of them made grim faces and shook their heads. No doubt this spurred Brad on, because at that instant he broke into an abrupt fit of rage and kicked James hard in the gut. James wasn’t ready for the savage attack and doubled over like a crushed pop can. Morton cried out, feeling his pain, but stopped when he saw what happened next. James suddenly belched out an impossibly large cloud of acrid yellow smoke. Morton coughed as the fumes from the yellow haze drifted over him.

  “What the heck?” Sid said.

  The yellow gas wafted into Brad’s face, and he too began to cough. “What’s this? Some kind of joke?”

  James pulled himself back into a standing position and leered at Brad. Morton had thought he was done for, but James looked angrier and more powerful than Morton had ever seen him. “You’d better run now,” he said sinisterly, “because I just lost my patience.”

  Brad blanched for a moment and seemed to waver until Sid and Dave started laughing behind him. Brad joined in the laughter then, obviously thinking the whole thing was an elaborate prank. Without warning he threw a punch right at James’s face. James reacted with lightning speed and raised his arms up to block the blow. Brad’s fist struck James’s forearm with full force and then, inexplicably, Brad dropped to the ground and curled into a ball, screaming and clutching his fist.

  “Arrrgh!” he cried. “He cut me!” Blood began to run down Brad’s arm like red ink, dripping from his elbow and staining his white shirt.

  The grins vanished instantly from Sid’s and Dave’s faces, and the two jumped to their feet, releasing Morton and Robbie. They glanced at James, staggered back a few paces, and then turned and hurtled across the park in a panic. Brad looked at the bleeding gash on his hand with a sickly expression.

  “I’m sorry,” James said, seemingly equally shocked by what had just happened. He stepped forward and offered his hand, but Brad shuffled backward like a crab.

  “Keep away from me!” he cried, and then, wrapping his bleeding fist in his shirt, he leaped to his feet and followed Sid and Dave across the park as fast as his stocky legs could carry him.

  Robbie and Morton jumped up and dusted themselves off. James stood motionless, gazing off into the distance.

  “Are you okay?” Morton asked, but James didn’t answer. He fell to his knees and spewed out another giant cloud of yellow smoke.

  The first thing Morton noticed when he grabbed James’s arm was that his skin was almost too hot to touch.

  “James! What’s happened to you?”

  James pulled himself groggily to an upright position. The strength that he’d shown just a few moments earlier had drained from his eyes, and he looked suddenly fragile and weak. He attempted to smile. “Sorry, got carried away.”

  He clutched at his stomach and moaned painfully again. “You better get me home,” he croaked.

  Morton looked over at Robbie, who was hanging back at a safe distance.

  “Can you grab his other arm?” he asked. At first Robbie didn’t move, but he eventually nodded and stepped forward to grab James.

  “Be careful,” James said.

  “Does it hurt?” Morton asked.

  “No. I don’t want you to cut yourselves,” James explained, rolling back one of his sleeves to reveal a row of razor-sharp spines running the full length of his arm and ending just above his wrist. So that was what had cut Brad’s hand.

  “What is that?” Robbie said, failing to mask the fear in his voice.

  “I was hoping Morton could tell me,” James said, shrugging innocently. “They started growing a couple of weeks ago. I have them down my back too. I thought I might have caught some kind of disease from one of the monsters.”

  Morton looked closer at the spines. They didn’t look familiar, but then again, his experience with mystical diseases was confined to comic book illustrations.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’ll figure it out later.”

  James managed to stand, but his legs were shaking badly. Robbie and Morton did their best to support him, but several times on the way home he doubled over again and belched yellow acidic smog.

  When they finally arrived at the foot of the driveway, Melissa and Wendy were approaching from the other direction. The girls immediately noticed that something was wrong and ran toward them.

  “What happened?” Melissa asked, her face going pale.

  “We’ll tell you later,” Morton said. “First we need you to distract Dad while we get James to his room.”

  Melissa nodded solemnly and sprinted off ahead of them.

  Moments later they crept quietly up the stairs, successfully managing to get James to his room without Dad seeing him. James pulled off his jacket and slumped on his bed, panting heavily, sweat running down his face.

  Melissa and Wendy came in behind them and closed the door.

  “This is your wish, isn’t it?” Melissa said in an accusing tone.

  “I don’t know,” James said weakly. “I think I might have caught some kind of disease from one of Morton’s monsters.”

  Morton looked again at the hard bony spines on James’s arms. In Scare Scape there were lots of stories about strange diseases and curses, but few that gave you spines.

  “It could be a Cactusite,” he said hesitantly.

  “Sounds fun,” James said. “What is it?”

  “It’s a really dangerous cactus plant that gives off spores. If you inhale them, they grow in your bloodstream and event
ually baby cactuses start sprouting on your skin. Have you developed a phobia of water?”

  “No.”

  “Do you feel the need to be in constant sunlight?”

  “No.”

  “Any yearnings for the desert?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Hmm! Probably not that, then. Do you have any other symptoms?”

  James gasped suddenly, and his eyes rolled up into the top of his head. For a moment Morton thought his brother was going to pass out, but then he opened his eyes again and spoke. “The smoke, the spines. My sense of smell is a lot stronger. I can see in the dark better, and I crave rotting food, especially meat.”

  This didn’t make any sense. The only thing Morton could think of was a giant centipede-like creature called a Wargle Snarf, which had poison spines. But Morton had never owned a Snarf toy. In fact, the Snarf rarely appeared in Scare Scape and had been on the cover only once….

  A truly horrible realization crashed into Morton’s brain. Suddenly the room was spinning, and he felt as though he were suffocating. “Where’s that comic?” he gasped. “The one with the girl that looks like Melissa on the front.”

  “A girl like me?” Melissa said questioningly.

  James looked guiltily around the room and then pointed to his dresser. The comic was sitting crumpled under piles of homework. Normally a crumpled comic would have made Morton screech in protest, but that was the last thing on his mind right now. He looked at the cover. A large centipede-like creature with a vast mouth and two rings of razor-sharp teeth was about to devour a skinny girl. Just as Morton had feared, this creature was the Snarf.

  Morton’s stomach twisted in horror. “You wished to be a Wargle Snarf,” he said in a tone of utter disbelief.

  “A whattle what?” Melissa said.

  “It’s one of the deadliest monsters in Scare Scape,” Morton replied.

  Melissa let out a dismissive laugh. “That can’t be right. Why would he wish to be that?”

  Morton couldn’t bring himself to explain it. Instead, he handed the comic to Melissa. As soon as she glanced at the cover her jaw dropped. The look on her face told Morton that she too had figured it out.

  Just before the strange blue light appeared, she and James had been having a horrible fight. James had stormed angrily up to his room with the stone finger in his pocket. Obviously he’d been looking at the image of the girl in mortal danger — the girl who looked just like his sister — and, whether consciously or unconsciously, he’d wished to be the monster in the picture so that he could take his revenge.

  Melissa dropped the comic and glared at James. “How could you?” she hissed in a cold, hateful voice.

  James was shaking his head from side to side as if still unable to believe the truth. “I didn’t … I mean … I was angry and I … I might have thought about it for a moment.”

  “Thought about killing me, you mean?”

  “It wasn’t like that!” James shouted, so forcefully that another puff of yellow smoke erupted from his mouth.

  “Can we please not fight about it,” Morton said firmly. “I mean, the gargoyle is dark magic. It doesn’t grant you what you want. I didn’t wish for my toys to come alive, and Melissa only wished for a big closet, not an infinite one. And obviously nobody really wants to be a Wargle Snarf.”

  “Morton’s right,” Wendy said in a calming tone. “It doesn’t matter how we got into this. The important thing is to figure out how to get out of it, which means figuring out how to make James well again.”

  Morton was thankful to Wendy for being a voice of reason. His head was throbbing, and it was hard to focus. James was transforming into a Snarf before his very eyes, and despite what Morton had just said about dark magic, all he could think about was how it was all his fault. If he hadn’t been so obsessed with Scare Scape, he would never have bought all those stupid plastic monster toys, and James would never have been looking at that comic. Instead, they probably would have wished for sensible things, normal things like health or happiness. But now, because of him, here they were living in a town crawling with monsters, and his brother was only half human.

  “Maybe we should take him to the hospital,” Robbie said.

  “No!” James said firmly. “I can’t go there!”

  “It probably wouldn’t do any good anyway,” Melissa said. “I mean, how do you stop someone from turning into a walking meat grinder?”

  “Well, we have to do something,” Wendy said. “Morton, you know all about these monsters. Don’t you have any ideas?”

  Morton rubbed his face and tried to clear his head. Feeling guilty wasn’t going to help anybody. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and dashed down the hall to his bedroom. Sitting in the top drawer of his bedside table was one of his most prized possessions. It was a set of cards printed in faded ink to resemble an ancient deck of tarot cards, but instead of the traditional figures, like Death and the Hanged Man, the cards featured some of the most popular monsters that had appeared in Scare Scape. It was called the Monster Tarot, and it had cost him a lot of money. He pulled out the pack and began to riffle through it. After a moment of going back and forth he finally slid out the card he was looking for. The frightening creature illustrated on the front had a bony-ridged back with sickle-like barbs running along its entire length. He squinted at the card to read the small print at the bottom.

  * * *

  The Greater Spotted Wargle (rhymes with gargle) Snarf.

  * * *

  He flipped the card over and read the reverse.

  * * *

  Few creatures boast the raw power of the Snarf. Up to fifteen feet long, with an impenetrable bony carapace and a double ring of razor-sharp, metal-ripping teeth, this behemoth is tough enough to tackle a tank … and win. Like its smaller cousin, the Lesser Spotted Snarf, the Wargle can paralyze its victims by secreting a fear-inducing pheromone from glands distributed all over its body.

  This nocturnal creature has perfect night vision, and its sense of smell is ten times more acute than that of a bloodhound. Few humans can survive an encounter with a Snarf, and the unfortunate ones who do discover that exposure to the Snarf’s poison-tipped barbs causes a slow, painful transformation into a hybrid human-Snarf creature.

  Legend has it that the Snarf draws its demonic power from the brimstone in its stomach, which it gets by drinking from the boiling rivers of Hades.

  * * *

  Brimstone! That was the clue Morton was hoping for. He dashed back down the hall, clutching the cards in his hands.

  “Coal!” he said as he burst into the room. “James has to eat coal.”

  The others looked at him with rapt attention as he quickly read the back of the card to them.

  “The coal counteracts the brimstone,” he explained. “And without the brimstone the Snarf has no power, so James will be able to resist the transformation.”

  “How do you know this?” Wendy asked.

  “It was in one of King’s stories. I’d forgotten about it until now, but it’s about a man who escapes from a Snarf and then begins to turn into one. He eats coal to slow down the transformation.”

  “Slow it down, or stop it?” James asked.

  “Uh, it doesn’t stop it altogether,” Morton admitted. “But it will buy us some time.”

  “What happened to the man in the story?” James asked.

  Morton looked down at his feet. He couldn’t bring himself to tell him that the man had finally transformed into a Snarf and eaten his entire family, but then, it seemed his lack of answer was enough. Nobody asked him a second time.

  “Where do we get coal?” Wendy said urgently.

  “I can get you some,” Robbie said. “They sell it at the corner store for barbecues.”

  Morton looked up at Robbie appreciatively. Despite everything, he was still willing to stick by them. “Thanks,” Morton said, “for all your help.”

  Robbie just shrugged. “What are friends for?”

  “I kn
ow, but …”

  “Don’t even think about it. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Robbie said, going for the door, “but then I better go. My mom’s going to be worried about me.”

  James rolled over and let out another painful-sounding belch of yellow smog. This time it filled the room, and they all began to cough. Wendy ran to open the window.

  “I need food,” James said. “Food stops the belching.”

  “By food you mean rotting meat,” Melissa said.

  James nodded guiltily. Morton couldn’t even begin to imagine how James must be feeling.

  “I’ll go get you some food,” Melissa said, thoroughly surprising Morton.

  “No, I can go,” Morton said. “I know the best places to look.”

  “We’ll go together, then,” Melissa said. “I don’t want you skulking down back alleys alone. Wendy, you’ll have to stay with James and keep an eye on him. Lock the door, and I’ll tell Dad we’ve all been invited to your house for supper. Hopefully he’ll be gone by the time we get back.”

  Thirty minutes later Morton and Melissa arrived at the spot where Morton had first seen James scrounging for food. The sun was just setting and cold blue shadows were creeping down the narrow lane, filling Morton with a sense of desolation. Melissa shivered and pulled her arms tightly around her.

  “Let’s hurry,” she said. “I don’t want to be here after dark.”

  A thick, vinegary odor greeted their nostrils, and a swarm of flies buzzed around the Dumpster like an angry gray mist. Morton clambered up onto the pile of garbage bags, which squelched beneath his feet like giant foul-smelling black marshmallows.

  “I am definitely going to throw up,” Melissa said, climbing up after him.

  Morton tried not to think about it and tore open the first bag.

  “Okay, what are we looking for?” she said, producing a large plastic container.

  “Meat,” Morton said. “The older the better.”

  “This wouldn’t have happened if I’d had sisters,” Melissa sighed.

  Morton ignored the comment and began to tear open more garbage bags. The smell was almost too much to bear. When he thought about poor James having to eat this food to fend off his gaseous attacks, the now overwhelming weight of guilt began to crush down on him again. This was by far the worst thing that could have happened. He angrily tore open another garbage bag, but as he did so he slipped on a soupy substance beneath his feet and slid down between the gaps in the bags. Before he knew what was happening, he was up to his waist in garbage. He struggled to climb out, but his hands slithered over the slimy bags and he realized he was completely stuck.