The Creatures from Beyond Beyond Read online

  Other Books by R.L. STINE

  SERIES:

  • Goosebumps

  • Fear Street

  • Rotten School

  • Mostly Ghostly

  INDIVIDUAL TITLES:

  • It’s the First Day of School…Forever!

  • The Haunting Hour

  • The Nightmare Hour

  • Zombie Town

  • The Adventures of Shrinkman

  • The 13th Warning

  • Three Faces of Me

  • My Alien Parents

  THE CREATURES FROM BEYOND BEYOND

  THE CREATURES FROM BEYOND BEYOND

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2000 Parachute Press Cover illustration by Tim Jacobus

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  A Parachute Press Book

  Published by Amazon Publishing

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781612183275

  ISBN-10: 1612183271

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About the Author

  • R.L. STINE •

  I admit it. This is a strange book.

  It starts out with something I love to write about—an evil doll that comes to life. Then it moves on to giant, ferocious space lizards that invade Earth. And then the story is about battling someone controlling your mind. Poor Randi, our narrator, is being controlled by an alien from outer space.

  You get a little bit of everything in this book—and it’s ALL scary!

  Let’s start with the evil doll. I’ve written so many books and stories about dolls and puppets and dummies that come to life. It’s something I found frightening even as a kid. Even as a very young kid.

  When I was three, I had to take a nap in the afternoon. And before each nap, my mother would read a chapter of a book to me. One of the books she read was the original Pinocchio.

  I’m not sure why she picked this book—because it scared me to death!

  The original Pinocchio book is very violent. Pinocchio takes a big wooden mallet and smashes the cricket flat against the wall. Then poor Pinocchio falls asleep with his feet on the stove. Remember? He’s a wooden puppet? Well, he burns his feet off!

  I was only three, but I never forgot that scene. I think that’s why I’ve found puppets and dummies and dolls scary ever since. And I think a lot of other people find them scary too.

  My most popular Goosebumps villain is definitely Slappy, the evil dummy. When someone says the mysterious words KARRU MARRI ODONNA LOMA MOLONU KARRANO, Slappy opens his painted eyes and comes to life.

  Slappy is so popular that I’ve written seven books about him, starting with Night of the Living Dummy. Right now I’m working on a new book called Son of Slappy, and I’m sure the son will be just as terrifying as his dad.

  When Randi and Tyler, the twins in The Creatures from Beyond Beyond, move into their summer house, they find a pile of old dolls in a bedroom. Will one of the dolls come to life? You can bet on it. And as in all these stories, it will not be nice!

  Where did I get the idea for this book? I have an office in my apartment in New York City where I write my books. One day I was sitting at my desk staring at the movie posters on my wall. I have several posters of old horror movies that inspire me.

  Some of the posters on my wall are:

  • ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS

  • THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US

  • THE DEADLY MANTIS

  • TARANTULA!

  • ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES

  • THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON

  Everyone loved monster movies when I was a kid. Monster insects were most popular. But movie audiences also loved monster birds, monster lizards, monster gorillas, monster sea creatures. And just plain ugly monsters who didn’t look like any Earth creature at all!

  Everyone likes a good scare. The first—and maybe most popular—movie monster was King Kong. King Kong was made in 1933 and started the mania for big, biiiig monsters.

  Audiences had never seen anything like King Kong. The audience tingled with fear when the explorers on an unknown jungle island saw King Kong, the gigantic gorilla, for the first time. And when the mile-high gorilla reached down and picked up the woman in the group and kidnapped her, audiences screamed.

  The film was so popular that it led to Son of Kong later in 1933 and Mighty Joe Young in 1947, a film about another gigantic gorilla. Since then there have been many King Kong remakes and sequels.

  Why? Because who doesn’t like to see an enormous imaginary creature destroy everything in its path?

  Audiences loved watching King Kong loose in New York City, stomping on cars and buildings and grabbing trains off their tracks. In the 1950s, Japanese moviemakers got into the destruction act with their own huge monsters. Godzilla and Rodan stomped all over Tokyo. And movie fans all over the world went wild for them.

  When my brother Bill and I were kids, we went to see a horror movie nearly every Sunday afternoon. The movies were slower in those days. You had to wait a long time before the monster appeared on the screen. But when it finally stomped or flew or swam onto the screen, we all went nuts, screaming and jumping up and down and cheering the monster on.

  Those are great memories for me. And as I sat in my office staring at my movie posters, a title popped into my head: THE CREATURES FROM BEYOND BEYOND.

  I loved the title. It sounded just like all the movies I loved as a kid—with a little bit of a funny twist.

  I wrote the title down. And then I started to think up the story. Dolls coming to life…ugly monsters from outer space…weird mind control. It’s all here. Hope it scares you!

  I walked up the front stairs of our latest “summer place.” Every year for summer vacation, my family goes someplace new. Which doesn’t necessarily mean someplace good.

  “I have first dibs on a room!” Tyler yelled, knocking me over as he raced up the front steps.

  “No fair!” I shouted, chasing him into the house.

  Tyler and I are twins. We both have curly brown hair and gray-blue eyes. It’s easy to tell us apart, though. That’s because Tyler is a boy and I’m a girl.

  I reached the top of the stairs.

  Tyler had already thrown open all the doors. As he looked into the last room at the end of the hall, he let out an ear-shattering shriek.

  I rushed up next to him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing! This one’s awesome. And it’s miine!” he chanted. I peered into the room. Monster masks on the wall, cartoon characters on the bedspread, and sketches of comic-book heroes tacked up on the corkboard over the desk. A totally cool room!

  “That one can be yours, Randi!” He waved his hand at the other room.

  I look
ed inside it.

  Ugh. Dolls. A whole wall of them! Old-fashioned dolls, tickle-me dolls, staring dolls with gleaming glass eyes, baby dolls, troll dolls, even a couple of turtles in karate gear.

  I hate dolls. They creep me out. Tyler knows it.

  He is such a jerk sometimes.

  He knew I would never be able to talk Mom and Dad into making Tyler live in a room full of dolls so I could have the cool room. Our parents try to be fair, but even they have their limits.

  “You are so totally taking advantage of me being a girl,” I muttered.

  Tyler shrugged and tried not to smirk.

  I checked out the other open doors on the upstairs landing.

  Master bedroom. Mom and Dad would sleep there. It had a big closet with a window. They could put my little brother Alex’s bed in there. He was four and didn’t need a big room to himself.

  Next was a bathroom with a shower-tub combo. I glanced through the bathroom window. A big house stood next door—no curtains on the windows, no furniture in the rooms. Vacant, I guessed.

  There were two closed doors in the upstairs hallway. One had a sign taped to it that said off limits in dripping Halloween letters, and the other opened to reveal a linen closet.

  No other bedrooms. I was definitely stuck in Doll-land.

  Every summer my family switches houses with some other family in another town. I wouldn’t mind spending the summer in L.A. with my friends, but when I ask, Mom and Dad always say no.

  Other families totally want to switch houses with us so they can go to Disneyland and Universal Studios and the La Brea Tar Pits and other stuff I’ve seen a hundred times.

  And I have to admit, we’ve seen some terrific things living in different places. Like the year we stayed in New Mexico and went to Carlsbad Caverns. Coolest caves I’ve ever seen.

  Tyler and I took turns videotaping Carlsbad. We’re working on a horror movie together. At twilight, tons of bats come whooshing out of the caves. It’s totally scary!

  My other favorite was the summer in New Orleans. Everything in New Orleans is weird. Tyler and I got some terrific cemetery footage. So why were we in Blairingville this summer?

  Blairingville. It should be called Boringville!

  Dad said it would give us a feel for small-town living. Too bad I had zero interest in small-town living.

  So far I hadn’t seen a single thing that excited me. Just a bunch of identical houses, streets, trees, and summerbrown lawns. Oh, and a totally dinky mall. Nothing like the Galleria at home.

  I dropped my duffel bag on the doll-room floor and sighed.

  I wanted to throw a sheet over those dolls so I wouldn’t have to see them every minute of the day and night.

  “Wow!” A voice came from the doorway.

  I turned and saw Mom standing there. “Oh, wow!” she said again.

  “Museum,” piped my little brother Alex from beside her. He stared wide-eyed at the dolls.

  “It’s not a museum, it’s a nightmare—” I began. Then I glanced at Mom.

  Her eyes went soft as she stared at all those plastic people on the shelf. “So beautiful,” she whispered, coming into the room and picking up a doll dressed in velvet and lace. She touched its cheek, then its tumble of brown curls.

  “You and Dad can have this room,” I offered. “I’ll take care of Alex!”

  Mom glared at me, her eyebrows lowered.

  “It was just a suggestion,” I grumbled.

  She put the doll back. “Be sure you don’t play with these, Randi,” she said. “They belong to someone else.”

  I stuck my index finger in my open mouth and made a gagging noise. Playing with dolls? No chance.

  Mom patted me on the head and left the room. Alex followed, clinging to her pant leg.

  We unpacked and went out for pizza. Later, we all settled in for our first night in Blairingville.

  Going to bed in a strange place is always a little uncomfortable. But this place was weirder than I expected. As I took my nightgown from the drawer, I felt someone staring at me.

  I whirled around. The dolls! Everywhere I went in the room the dolls seemed to stare right at me. My imagination was totally getting away with me. I jumped under the sheet and clicked off the lamp as quickly as I could.

  Lying in the darkness, I could feel those creepy doll eyes on me. I pulled the sheet up over my head and tried to fall asleep.

  No use. I lay awake tossing and turning for hours. That’s it, I thought. I’ve had enough. I clicked on the light and glared at the dolls from my bed.

  When I really focused I could tell that most of them just had dull dusty eyes that didn’t see anything. Then I noticed something—a doll on the top shelf that bugged me.

  It was a boy doll that looked like it was supposed to be about twelve years old, which was totally weird. I mean, who ever heard of a twelve-year-old boy doll?

  I glanced over at the dolls next to him and—hey, wait a minute! Had the boy doll’s eyes just shifted?

  It couldn’t be—but I decided that he would be better off in the closet for the night, anyway. I got the desk chair and dragged it over to the shelves. I climbed up onto it and stood face-to-face with the boy doll.

  Whoa. This doll looked totally real. It was only eight inches tall, but he had real blond hair, gleaming blue eyes, a lopsided smile. He even had actual eyebrows instead of painted-on ones.

  His clothes had great details, too. He wore a green-and-white striped shirt and blue jeans, and his jeans had tiny rivets on the pockets. His black-and-white sneakers had real laces. Creepy! But also, kind of…neat.

  Whatever. I didn’t want that thing watching me while I slept. I hesitated, then grabbed it. It felt so…warm!

  My finger touched the back of the doll’s neck. I felt something weird—a little sticky patch. Yuck! Was it chewing gum?

  I touched it again—

  And the doll moved in my hand.

  It moved!

  I gave a little scream. My first impulse was to throw the doll across the room. But I went with my second impulse and just held on tight. If I broke something in someone else’s house, Dad would never let me hear the end of it.

  The doll had moved! I stared at him.

  No, wait. He hadn’t moved. He had grown. He was twice as big as he had been just a second before. I was sure of it.

  “Hey!” someone yelled in my ear.

  I spun around in shock. Tyler.

  “Cut it out,” I growled. I gave his shoulder a shove.

  “I heard you moving around in here,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  I took a deep breath, then got down off the chair, still holding the doll.

  “You have to see this,” I said, my voice coming out all shaky. “It’s really weird.”

  Tyler glanced toward the door of our parents’ room. All clear. He closed the door behind him.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  I set the doll carefully on the quilt on the bed. “Look.”

  “What? It’s just a dumb doll.”

  I turned the doll facedown and brushed the silky hair away from the back of his neck. Where was that sticky spot?

  Right there. A square black patch on the neck.

  “Watch this,” I said. I touched the black spot.

  The doll’s size doubled again!

  “Whoa!” Tyler yelped. “Too cool!”

  My brother and I spend a lot of time prowling the Toys “R” Us aisles and we’d never seen anything as awesome as this!

  We both pressed the black spot on the doll. It grew again.

  Tyler and I glanced at each other. Then we pounced on the doll, tapping the black patch as fast as we could.

  With each growth spurt my doll looked more real. Soon it was almost my size!

  I tapped once more, and the doll grew bigger than I was. I stretched myself to tap his neck one more time.

  I reached for the black patch…and the doll turned over—by itself! He stared up at me with his blue eyes
—and grabbed my wrist.

  I gasped. My eyes widened with surprise.

  The doll-boy tightened its grip. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  Ow! His grip on my wrist hurt.

  I couldn’t believe it. This was happening! That doll turned into an actual kid!

  I stared at him in shock. He had blond hair, blue eyes, a California tan, and zero zits. He was just like somebody on the cover of one of those teen magazines my friend Roxanne started bringing to school, I realized.

  And he was breathing!

  I glanced at my brother. Tyler had a look of total shock on his face.

  The doll-boy dropped my wrist. “Who are you?” he asked me.

  I slid off the bed and stepped away from him toward my brother.

  Whoa! What was this doll? I wondered. A person? A robot? And where could it have come from?

  Tyler stood watching, his mouth still half open.

  The boy glared at us. His eyes looked totally cold.

  I thought for a second about that horror movie where a doll comes to life and goes around slicing up everybody.

  Was this that kind of doll?

  I flexed my wrist. It still hurt from the doll’s grip.

  “Or, I guess the real question is, what am I going to do with you?” the doll-boy muttered.

  My heart pounded. What did he mean? What was he going to do with us? A knock sounded on the door.

  “Randi! It’s the middle of the night. Why are you up?” Mom muttered through the door. “And don’t pretend you’re asleep! I can see the light under your door.”

  “Mom!” I yelled.

  “Shh,” Mom hissed through the door. “Not so loud! Don’t wake Alex. It took him hours to get to sleep!”

  The boy stared at me and Tyler again. He slid off the bed and dropped on his belly to the floor.

  What was he doing?

  The boy reached under the bed. I heard a weird, faint, high noise. It sounded kind of like a dentist’s drill, but muffled.