Weirdo Halloween Read online

  TITLE PAGE

  MEET JONATHAN CHILLER …

  PART ONE

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  PART TWO

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  PART THREE

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  TEASER

  HORRORLAND TRADING CARD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  COPYRIGHT

  He owns Chiller House, the HorrorLand gift shop. Sometimes he doesn’t let kids pay for their souvenirs. Chiller tells them, “You can pay me next time.”

  What does he mean by next time? What is Chiller’s big plan?

  Go ahead — the gates are opening. Enter HorrorLand. This time you might be permitted to leave … but for how long? Jonathan Chiller is waiting — to make sure you TAKE A LITTLE HORROR HOME WITH YOU!

  HorrorLand Theme Park is supposed to be “The Scariest Place on Earth.” My brother, Chris, and I had to beg our parents to take us there. And then we had to beg them to let Chris and me go exploring without them.

  So here we were, our first afternoon in the park — on our own — staring into the Tunnel of Screams. All I could see was a long, dark tunnel, as black as night. I could hear shrieks and muffled cries from deep inside.

  “Looks awesome,” I said. “Let’s go.” I pulled Chris into the tunnel.

  We took a few steps and left the sunlight behind. In the gray light at the tunnel entrance, I could see high stone walls curving over us. Like a cave.

  And flickering lights. They danced and darted along the ceiling and reminded me of the fireflies in our backyard in August. The gray light soon darkened to black as we walked farther into the tunnel.

  The other kids and families weren’t in sight. And all I could hear were shrill, horrifying screams. Screams that seemed to come from all sides, in front of us, behind us. Screams of terror. Long, high shrieks of fright.

  “Like stepping into a horror movie,” Chris said in a whisper. He was shuffling next to me, keeping close. I could barely hear him over the screams and cries.

  Was I frightened? Well … my whole body started to tingle, and my legs felt shaky.

  I guess I have to admit that I, Meg Oliver, was actually terrified! Maybe for the first time in my twelve years.

  “Whoooooooah.”

  A low moan right behind me made me spin around with a gasp. But of course I couldn’t see anything there.

  “Chris? Where are you?” I shouted.

  My brother is eleven. But sometimes he acts like a six-year-old and hides from me just to make me worry. There’s only one year between us, but I’m the mature one. And the sensible one. So I’m always in charge.

  “Chris?”

  A shrill scream rang through the tunnel and echoed all around me.

  And someone grabbed me from behind. Grabbed me around the waist. And I felt hot breath on my face.

  I let out a shriek — and spun around.

  In the flickering firefly light, I saw Chris grinning like a cat. He let go of me and did a crazy dance.

  “You creep!” I cried. I grabbed him by the ears.

  Chris has giant ears. Sometimes I call him Dumbo. They are waaay too big for his head. Mom says he’ll grow into them, but I don’t believe it.

  Sometimes when I get angry at him I grab both ears and pull with all my might. Sometimes I do it when I’m not angry at him. I do it just for fun. And because he hates it.

  So I pulled his ears. Then I gave him a push, and we started moving again through the Tunnel of Screams.

  The tunnel made a sharp turn, and we both bumped into the cold stone wall. A little girl’s scream repeated and repeated, high and shrill.

  Even in the dim light, I could see the fear on Chris’s face. I mean, I probably looked scared, too. It’s just so frightening to hear real people screaming in horror.

  And then it got even more frightening — because I thought I recognized the screams. It sounded just like us.

  “Chris —” I called. My voice trembled. “Is that you? Is that you screaming?”

  I couldn’t hear his reply.

  And then I heard two more screams — could it be? Chris and me screaming together?

  But that was impossible. Where did the screams come from?

  This was HorrorLand. It had to be some kind of trick.

  “Chris — are you okay? Do you hear those screams?” I cried. I grabbed for his shoulder. But I grabbed only air.

  The tunnel appeared to grow darker.

  “Chris? Doesn’t that sound like us?”

  No answer.

  The screams were too real. I wanted the tunnel to end.

  “Chris? Where are you?” I called.

  Finally, squinting into the flickering light, I saw him up ahead of me. I ran and caught up. “Chris?”

  I grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. And cried out in shock.

  His face … Chris’s face … it was GONE!

  I was staring at his ugly, grinning skull!

  The empty eye sockets stared up at me like deep, black tunnels. His toothless jaw moved up and down.

  I stumbled back. I jerked my hand from his shoulder.

  He spun away from me and ran. He quickly vanished into the darkness of the tunnel.

  I blinked several times, trying to force that ugly skull from my eyes. I was panting hard. Trembling.

  Finally, I caught my breath. I turned and saw that I was near the tunnel exit. Gray light seeped across the floor.

  And in the weak light, I realized someone was standing in front of me. Chris! His face looked completely normal. “Meg? What’s your problem? Too scared?”

  “N-no,” I stammered. “There was a boy. I thought he was you.”

  Chris crinkled his face up. “So? What’s the big deal?”

  “He had no face,” I said. “He only had a skull. A hideous, grinning skull.”

  Chris laughed. “Did you forget? This is HorrorLand. Some kid was wearing a mask.”

  “You … you’re probably right,” I said. I started to feel a little better.

  But a deep woman’s voice interrupted us: “It wasn’t a mask.”

  “Huh?” I spun around to see a large woman hovering behind us. Even in the dim light, I could see that she was strangely dressed. She wore a tall turban over her dark hair. Her pleated skirt dragged along the tunnel floor. Strings of clattering beads hung over the front of her high-necked blouse.

  A long, low howl rang out through the tunnel. It sent a shiver down my back.

  The woman stared from Chris to me with her glowing, dark eyes.

  “It wasn’t a mask,” she said in her booming, deep voice. “Maybe the faceless boy revealed your future.”

  Chris and I gaped at her. Her perfume was spicy, like cinnamon. She had big painted lips. Her eyes didn’t blink.

  Chris and I both spoke at once.


  “Our future?” Chris asked. “A boy with a bare skull?”

  “Who are you? What do you mean?” I demanded.

  “You may have heard of me,” she answered. “I am Madame Doom.”

  Madame Doom? We’d never heard of her. We waited for her to go on.

  She rattled her beaded necklaces. Then she pushed a curl of black hair up into her turban.

  “Perhaps the boy without a face was a warning,” she said. “Perhaps you should let me show you what life has in store for you.”

  “Are you some kind of fortune-teller?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “I see the future.” She motioned for us to follow her.

  I felt a tingle of fear. Maybe we should run….

  I glanced at Chris. He shrugged. “Might as well,” he said. “I’d like to see my future. She’ll probably tell me I’ll be rich and famous. Of course, I already know that!”

  I grabbed his big ears and gave them a tug. Then we followed Madame Doom to Zombie Plaza.

  Beads clattering, she led the way to a little cottage on the edge of the plaza. As we walked, I could still hear the screams pouring from the tunnel behind us.

  Is that the scariest attraction at HorrorLand? I wondered. Or will we find places even scarier?

  Curtains were drawn over the front window of the cottage. Purple light seeped through the crack between them. The doorway was also bathed in purple light.

  Chris pulled me back. “You really think we should go in there?” he whispered.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Madame Doom said. “We all have to die sometime!” She let out a booming laugh.

  We followed Madame Doom into a small, cluttered front room. The air was hot inside the cottage and smelled of cinnamon, like her perfume. We had to duck under dark purple glass beads strung across the low ceiling.

  Candles flickered. A glass ball about the size of a bowling ball rested on a round table. The table was cluttered with decks of cards, strange little glass figures, a stack of books. Everything glowed in the purple light.

  “Take a seat,” Madame Doom said softly. She pointed to two folding chairs at the table. She smiled. “That’s where my victims sit.”

  It was a joke. But it made me feel uncomfortable. And I could see Chris blinking his eyes rapidly. He does that whenever he’s really tense.

  We sat down, and Madame Doom lowered her big body into the black leather chair across the table from us. The chair groaned beneath her. I heard a cat meow from behind the beaded curtain on the far wall.

  “Let me see what’s in your future, Meg,” she said in a whisper.

  A chill shot down my back. “How do you know my name?”

  She didn’t reply. She reached under the table and pulled something from beneath the black tablecloth.

  I squinted into the purple light. She held up a doll. A rag doll. “Meg, do you believe in dark magic?”

  “Huh? Dark magic?” I stared hard at it. And then a chill shook my whole body.

  The doll had curly red hair, deep green eyes, and freckles on its nose. “It — it looks just like me!” I cried. “It — it’s even wearing the same jeans and T-shirt I’m wearing now! How did you do this? How?”

  I pulled the doll from Madame Doom’s big hand. The stuffing inside it made a squishing sound. The hair was made with red knitting yarn. The smile was painted on.

  But it was my smile!

  “Weird,” Chris said. “Let me see it, Meg.”

  He tried to grab it away from me, and it fell from my hand and dropped to the floor.

  We both dove for it — and cracked heads.

  “Owwww!” I let out a cry.

  Chris handed me the doll.

  I looked up — and gasped when I saw that Madame Doom was gone. The leather chair was empty, glowing in the purple light.

  I turned to the beaded curtain. It wasn’t moving. I searched all around.

  “Where is she?” I cried. “How did she vanish like that?”

  Chris shrugged. “Totally weird.”

  The doll gave me the creeps. I tossed it onto the table and ran out the door. Chris scrambled to keep up with me. I glanced all around Zombie Plaza. No sign of her.

  I guess I wasn’t watching where I was going. I ran right into a tall, thin Horror and almost knocked him over.

  “What’s the hurry?” he groaned. He had green fur poking out from the chest of his purple overalls. He wore bright red-framed eyeglasses. A tuft of green hair stood straight up on his wide head.

  The Horrors are the guides and workers at HorrorLand. They are all purple and green and very furry. They don’t try to help you. They try to scare you. It’s part of their job — and they seem to enjoy it!

  “Have you seen Madame Doom?” Chris asked him breathlessly.

  “We were just in her house,” I added. I pointed to the cottage behind us.

  The Horror shook his head. “Madame Doom? That’s not her house,” he said.

  “But — but —” I stammered.

  He pointed to a little glass booth across the plaza. “You want Madame Doom? There she is, over there.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Chris and I took off, running through the crowded plaza. We stopped in front of the booth — and gasped in shock.

  A bright purple sign on top of the booth read: MADAME DOOM SEES ALL.

  Behind a pane of glass, Madame Doom sat in the booth in front of a purple curtain. But she wasn’t alive. She was a wooden dummy! A mannequin!

  “That dummy — it looks just like the woman in the cottage!” Chris exclaimed.

  “This has to be a joke,” I murmured. I stared hard into the dummy’s painted eyes. They glowed just like the living Madame Doom’s eyes.

  “Nothing is real in HorrorLand,” Chris said. “Everyone just wants to scare you to death.”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “But … who was that woman in the cottage?”

  Slowly, the mannequin creaked to life. The eyes opened wider. The head nodded up and down. And then one wooden hand began to move.

  Slowly, slowly, it shoved a little white card through an opening in the glass toward my brother and me.

  I grabbed it and pulled it from her hand.

  Would it solve the mystery?

  My hand trembled. I gripped the card tightly and read it to Chris:

  “‘For REAL thrills and chills, you’ll find your future at Chiller House! Souvenirs and Gifts!’”

  Chris and I burst out laughing. “It’s a crummy ad!” I cried.

  “What about that woman who said she was Madame Doom?” Chris asked. “All phony, right? Do you think she works for this souvenir shop?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I can’t stop thinking about that doll. It looked just like me. And it had my clothes on.” I shuddered. “What do you think that was about?”

  And then I saw the souvenir store across from us. A sign over the door read: CHILLER HOUSE.

  “We have to go check it out!” Chris declared.

  I took one last glance at Madame Doom. The wooden mannequin stared straight ahead, eyes blank and lifeless.

  Chris and I pushed our way through the plaza and stepped into the little shop. A bell rang over the door, but I didn’t see anyone inside.

  The store had two aisles of shelves and cabinets. Joke gifts and funny posters and T-shirts, magic tricks, plastic skulls, ugly creature dolls — all were piled everywhere. Hundreds of weird souvenirs and gifts.

  Chris picked up a huge safety pin from the first shelf. “Check it out,” he said. “The label says it’s King Kong’s diaper pin!”

  I laughed. A brown shrunken head caught my eye. When I picked it up, water shot out of its nose. A squirting shrunken head! I squirted my brother with it. “It looks like you,” I said. “Check out the huge ears.”

  “Ha-ha. You are so not funny!” Chris said. He poked me in the stomach with King Kong’s diaper pin.

  Then he put it down and picked up something else. “This is awesome!” h
e said. “Look. It’s an abacus. Remember the abacus from first grade? Only this one is all eyeballs.”

  “Very cute,” I said.

  “Do you like the eye-bacus?” a man’s voice interrupted.

  We turned to see that a man had appeared at the front counter. He was big and balding. He had old-fashioned square eyeglasses perched on the end of his nose. He wore a heavy-looking brown suit with a vest, a high-collared white shirt, and a bow tie. He looked a lot like the drawings of Benjamin Franklin in my history book.

  “I am Jonathan Chiller,” he said. “And this is my shop.” When he smiled, a gold tooth gleamed in the side of his mouth.

  “Cool store,” Chris said. “Where do you find all this stuff?”

  “From all over the universe,” Chiller replied.

  I picked up a stuffed two-headed monkey. Gross. I tossed it to Chris. He likes sick stuff like that.

  “Look around,” Chiller said. “I’m sure you’ll find a good souvenir.”

  I pulled a strange doll down from a top shelf. It was about a foot tall, green like a grasshopper but with a fat body and a funny, froggy face.

  I squeezed its smooth belly. It was made of some kind of soft rubber. When I squeezed it, the big froggy eyes popped straight out.

  I laughed. “What is this weird creature?” I asked Chiller.

  He came over and took it from my hand. “It’s called a Floig,” he said.

  I laughed again. “Yes, it definitely looks like a Floig!” I joked.

  “It’s the only one I’ve ever seen,” Chiller said. “Maybe the only one on earth.”

  Yeah, sure, I thought.

  He handed it back to me. I squeezed its belly, and the eyes popped again.

  I turned it over. It had a funny stub of a tail on its behind and rubbery little bunny feet that bent back and forth. Cute.

  “I collect dolls,” I told Jonathan Chiller. “Antique dolls. Not funny ones like this. But … it’s so cute looking. I think I’ll buy it.”

  Chiller’s gold tooth gleamed as he smiled. “Good choice,” he said softly.

  He led the way to the front counter. He placed the Floig on its back in a long box. Then he wrapped the box with silver-and-black paper.

  He tied a black ribbon around the package. Then he pulled a little doll from a drawer. It was a tiny green-and-purple Horror. Like the park guides.

  Chiller attached the little doll to the ribbon. He smiled at me again. “Take a little Horror home with you,” he said.