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  CHAPTER 24

  It had to be a dream, just a bad dream. The snow. The dark woods. The people in their brown robes and hoods. The black candles. The circle of tiny lights. And then my mom and dad in the middle of the circle, wearing white monkey masks.

  I looked at Cara. Her face had no expression on it at all. It was too much to register. It was too impossible, too weird, too unreal.

  Is this why Mom and Dad had abandoned us? To come to the woods and lead this weird cult?

  When they said they had club meetings on Thursday nights, were they actually out here in their robes and masks doing—doing what?

  What did they do? Were they witches, or something?

  I thought of all the moving we’d done; a new place, a new house every year or so. My parents must have been moving to start new cult chapters. They weren’t computer installers. That was just a cover-up for their real jobs—cult leaders!

  I thought I was going to be sick. Our lives had all been a lie. Our parents had lied to us about everything. And then they had left us without a word, abandoned us for the Brotherhood!

  I looked back at Cara. She was staring straight ahead; so much fear in her eyes, so much horror.

  What was going to happen to us? Why had Gena brought us here?

  What were we supposed to do?

  Suddenly the circle of hooded figures moved in closer. So Gena, Cara, and I moved closer, too.

  I realized there was a large, flat tree stump near the center of the circle. The hooded figure who had ripped the masks off my parents led them to the tree stump.

  A gust of cold wind came up and blew his hood off. I saw his short, dark hair and heavy, black glasses. I recognized him immediately. It was Mr. Marcus, the big cheese at Cranford.

  So this is why he lied to us, I thought. Mom and Dad probably told him to lie to us, to tell us they weren’t there. Mom and Dad didn’t want to see us anymore. They were too busy leading these robed weirdos!

  “Now we are ready!” Marcus shouted, not bothering to pull his hood back on. “We of the White Monkey are ready to take back the America that is ours! For too long we have stood by while others determined our nation’s fate. No longer! No longer! Soon we shall rise up… and take back by force what is ours!”

  He kept his arms raised high as he talked. “The government of this nation has given in to criminals, but we are going to change that! Our revenge will be swift and our justice will reign. No criminal will be safe once our army has proven its capabilities. We will take back our community—and our nation from the criminal element—by force!”

  The robed figures, except for my parents, cheered behind their hoods.

  “No to the courts! No to the weak-kneed police! Yes to the Brotherhood!” Marcus screamed, and another cheer echoed through the woods.

  As the cheer died down, Marcus lowered his arms and looked down at my parents. “And they who have betrayed us shall be the first to feel the vengeance!” he shouted.

  Betrayed us? What did he mean?

  He raised his hands again. Now I saw a long-bladed knife in his hand.

  “The Brotherhood of the White Monkey is always merciless to traitors!” Marcus shouted. The crowd cheered.

  “The vengeance is always swift!” Marcus shouted, and everyone cheered again.

  The wind came up and almost blew back my hood. I grabbed it and held it with both hands. I hoped no one had seen my face.

  When I looked back to the center of the circle, a hooded man stepped forward and forced my dad down onto his knees. He was pushing his head down onto the flat tree stump.

  “We’ve got to do something—now,” Gena whispered to me.

  Marcus raised his knife above my dad’s head. “The sacrifice will be done!” he shouted. “This is the way our army will administer justice!”

  Ohh! I uttered a silent gasp. My head throbbed. I felt a shock of fear run down my spine.

  Why had it taken me so long to realize—my parents weren’t the leaders of the Brotherhood. My parents were about to be murdered by them! And they couldn’t run or fight—because the hooded man had a gun on them.

  Marcus pressed his knee down onto my dad’s back. He raised his knife above his head again. “Will you confess that you are a traitor to the White Monkey?” he bellowed.

  “Confess!” someone in the crowd shouted.

  The wind swirled. Again, I grabbed my hood. Cara squeezed my hand. “Mark,” she whispered, “what are we going to do?”

  “He will not confess!” Marcus cried. “The vengeance will be ours!”

  He lowered the knife over my dad’s head.

  “No! NO! Don’t kill him!” my mom screamed. She grabbed Marcus and tried to pull back the hand with the knife.

  He pushed my mom away and the hooded man grabbed her from behind. Then Marcus turned back to my dad, whose head was still down against the tree stump.

  “The vengeance will not be slowed!” he cried.

  I knew I had to act now if I was ever going to do anything. But what could I do without a weapon of any kind? If I tried to run up and leap on Marcus, I’d only be stopped by someone in the cult, or I’d be shot.

  “Mark…” Cara said. Her eyes were brimming with tears.

  She brushed against me, and I felt something in my jeans pocket. Quickly I reached under the robe, and I pulled it out of my pocket.

  It was the little white monkey head, hard and cold. The little white monkey head I had picked up off the floor in Gena’s room.

  I didn’t think. I didn’t aim. I just heaved it at Marcus, as hard as I could.

  I wanted to hit him right between the eyes. If I stunned him, it might give my parents a chance to get away.

  He turned in my direction just as I heaved the tiny white monkey head. His hood was back on his shoulders. His face was revealed, vulnerable.

  Perfect, I thought. Perfect.

  The white monkey head sailed through the darkness.

  It sailed right over his shoulder.

  I missed.

  I missed by several inches.

  “Who threw that?” Marcus bellowed.

  He was staring right at me.

  CHAPTER 25

  I saw Mark throw something. And then I saw Marcus spin around and come toward Mark.

  I guessed that Mark had missed. I couldn’t really see in the darkness.

  “Who threw that?” Marcus shouted,

  He took two or three steps toward Mark.

  Mark started to back up.

  This was all the distraction my parents needed.

  Suddenly my mom pulled away from the hooded man, knocking his gun to the ground. My dad leapt up and shoved Marcus hard from behind.

  Marcus cried out in surprise as he fell facedown in the snow and the knife bounced out of his hand.

  All of the rest of the hooded cult members seemed totally confused and surprised. Some started to run away. But most of them just froze there in the circle.

  My dad dived for the gun and came up with it quickly. He kicked the knife out of Marcus’s hand as my mother scrambled to his side.

  Dad pressed the gun against Marcus’s neck. “Don’t anybody move, or I’ll blow his head off!” he screamed. “You’re all under arrest. FBI!”

  Ignoring Dad’s threat, the hooded Brotherhood members began to scatter, fleeing into the woods.

  Mark and I threw back our hoods and went running up to our parents. Mom saw us first. “You—you’re here!” she cried, and she rushed forward and gathered us both up in a hug. “Oh, I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! You’re here! You’re okay!”

  “Get to the house. Call for some assistance. We’re a little outnumbered here,” Dad shouted, keeping his gun pressed tightly against Marcus’s throat.

  “Dad, everyone else is getting away,” I cried.

  “I know who they are. They can’t run far,” Dad said.

  Mom grabbed up the knife, then hurried toward the house.

  Dad turned to Mark. “Where’d you
ever learn to throw?”

  “Sorry,” Mark started, then he saw the smile on Dad’s face.

  “You saved our lives, Mark.”

  “Actually, Gena did,” Mark said. He put his arm around her shoulder.

  A big man in a robe walked up slowly, his hands raised above his head in surrender. “I tried to stop them, Greg,” he said. It was Dr. Rawlings, Gena’s dad. “I did the best I could. But I was afraid—afraid of them, afraid for Gena, afraid for me. At least I persuaded them not to go after your kids.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Dad told him, his hard expression not changing. “But now I’m afraid I have to put you under arrest. How’d you ever get involved in the Brotherhood in the first place, Rawlings?”

  Gena’s dad uttered a weary sigh. “I believed in what Marcus and the others were saying—at first. I believed that we had to do something about crime, that we had to make this country safe again. But I didn’t know they were going to stockpile weapons, to take the law into their own hands… to kill people. I wanted to get out, Greg. But I was scared, scared they’d come after me.”

  Marcus scowled and spit into the snow. “You’re a coward, Rawlings. You’ll die for your cowardice. The vengeance of the White Monkey will be swift,” he muttered, and looked away.

  Dad ignored him and turned to Gena. “I think I owe you an apology, for trying to keep you and Mark apart,” he said. He shoved Marcus toward the house. “Come on. Move. I want to get out of this robe. I never did like going outside in a bathrobe.”

  We started walking toward the house. “I’m so sorry. I’ll bet you two have been worried sick,” Dad said.

  “That’s a bit of an understatement,” I told him. I could hear police sirens in the distance. Mom must have made her call.

  “Where’s Roger?” Dad asked. “Isn’t he here, too?”

  “Uh… Roger is dead,” I said.

  Dad stopped walking. His eyes narrowed. He shook his head. “No. Oh, no. Roger was one of our best agents. After the Brotherhood found out your mom and I were agents, I was worried they’d come after Roger—and you.”

  “A man named Murdoch was killed, too,” I told him.

  Another look of shock and sadness crossed Dad’s face. “Murdoch was our field director here. The Brotherhood killed him, too?”

  “Not the Brotherhood,” I said. “A man named Farraday.”

  “Who? Farraday?” Dad’s face filled with shock and disbelief. He stared past me, thinking hard. “Farraday? He’s here? He’s out of prison? What’s he doing here?”

  “Who is he, Dad?” I asked.

  “He was a cop, Mark. A bent cop. Your mother and I were responsible for his getting sent up on racketeering charges. He killed Roger and Murdoch?”

  “We thought he was a real cop,” Cara said. “He had a police radio and everything.”

  “Anyone can buy a radio that gets the police band,” Dad explained.

  “Farraday was looking for you,” I said. “We locked him in the garage.”

  Tears formed in the corners of Dad’s eyes, the first tears I had ever seen him shed. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I never meant for you two to be involved in any of this.”

  “It’s over now,” I said. I hoped against hope that I was right.

  We followed Dad to the Rawlingses’ house, feeling very relieved but still terribly confused.

  CHAPTER 26

  “We were in a terrible fix,” Mom said to Cara and me. “We didn’t want to lie to you, but we didn’t want you involved. We just thought you’d worry about us all the time if you knew we were FBI agents.”

  We were home, all four of us together. The police had come to collect Farraday and remove poor Roger’s body. And so it was just us four. We were so happy. Dad made hot chocolate and we sat around the kitchen table and talked.

  “So you never were computer experts?” Cara asked. She looked very confused.

  “Yes, sure we are. We know a lot about computers,” Dad said. “But we know a lot more about subversive groups.”

  Mom sighed. “It isn’t pleasant work. I guess you saw that tonight.”

  “And that’s why we move so much?” I asked.

  Mom nodded. “We tried to give you normal childhoods, as normal as possible. That’s why we didn’t tell you the truth.”

  “Up till now, we’ve been lucky,” Dad said.

  “We’re still lucky,” Mom interrupted. “Lucky to be alive.”

  “But this was the first time our cover was blown,” Dad said, twirling the cup around between his hands. “These White Monkey followers really were going to kill us.”

  “But why, Dad?” I asked. “Why did all these people do what Marcus told them to?”

  “He was a forceful, charismatic leader,” Dad said. “And he told them what they wanted to hear. He made them believe that he could lead them to a better way of life.”

  “Where were you all this time?” I asked.

  “Marcus kept us prisoner in the basement at Cranford for three days,” Mom said. “He had to wait till the meeting night to execute us.”

  “Did you really work at Cranford?” I asked.

  “Yes, we did,” Mom said. “That’s how we infiltrated the Brotherhood. Marcus and his crew planned a complete takeover of Cranford. That would have given them access to a lot of top-secret government weapons.”

  “I think they really would’ve used those weapons,” Dad said, shaking his head. “If they’d gotten half a chance.”

  “But it was the Burroughs family to the rescue!” Mom cried, and we all cheered.

  “Mark, I hope you understand why we tried to warn you about Gena,” Dad explained, putting his hand on my arm. “There we were, trying to get enough evidence to arrest the Brotherhood members, and we knew that her dad was one of them. I tried to warn you away, but of course I couldn’t tell you the reason.”

  “I guess Gena surprised everyone,” I said. I wondered what she was doing now.

  “She’s a very brave girl,” Dad said.

  “And what about Roger? He wasn’t really our cousin? He was working for you?” Cara asked.

  “Yes. He was one of our agents.”

  “He acted so weird after you disappeared,” Cara said. “We didn’t know what to think.”

  “He must have been frantically trying to find us,” Dad said. “He and Murdoch. They were probably searching everywhere.” He looked at Mom, who looked away sadly.

  We drank our hot chocolate. There wasn’t much else to say. All of the questions had been answered. Well, almost all.

  “What happens next?” I asked.

  “We move on to the next case,” Mom said. “Only this time it will be different. Our cover has been blown with our own family.”

  * * *

  By Saturday, Mom and Dad were already packing cartons, preparing for our next move. The doorbell rang just after breakfast. It was Gena. Behind her, I saw a taxi in the drive.

  “Hi. Come in,” I said.

  “I can’t. I’m on my way to the airport.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Detroit. My mother is there. I’m going to live with her… while my dad… you know.”

  I took her hand. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I guess. It’s going to take a long time for everything that happened to sink in. And I—I’m going to miss you.”

  “I’m—I mean we’re leaving, too, I don’t know where,” I said, “but I’ll write to you.”

  “Good. I’ll write, too.” The taxi driver blew his horn. He was anxious to leave. Gena reached up on tiptoes and kissed me. Her face was cold, but her mouth was warm. It was a long, wonderful kiss. I knew I’d never forget it.

  Then she slipped a small package into my hand, turned, and ran to the taxi without looking back.

  I stepped out onto the front porch and watched her leave. She waved, and then the taxi was gone.

  I looked at the package. It was a little box, the kind jewelry comes in. I pulled it open. Inside wa
s a little white monkey head with rhinestone eyes.

  Why on earth did she give me this? I thought.

  I pulled it out of the box. Something was stuck inside the grinning mouth. It took me a while to get it out. It was a narrow strip of paper. I unrolled the strip of paper. Gena had written her Detroit address and a message on it: Can you keep a secret? I love you. Gena.

  I rolled up the slip of paper and stuffed it back into the monkey’s mouth. I held the white monkey in my hand. For the first time, it didn’t feel cold. It felt very warm. I tossed it up into the air, caught it, and stuffed it into my jeans pocket.

  I wouldn’t need it to remember Gena and my stay on Fear Street, but I planned on keeping it a long time anyway.

  More from this Series

  Secret Admirer

  Book 36

  The Overnight

  Wrong Number 2

  Halloween Party

  More from the Author

  The Evil Lives!

  High Tide

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  R.L. STINE invented the teen horror genre with Fear Street, the bestselling teen horror series of all time. He also changed the face of children’s publishing with the mega-successful Goosebumps series, which went on to become a worldwide multimedia phenomenon. Guinness World Records cites Stine as the most prolific author of children’s horror fiction novels. He lives in New York City.

  www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/R-L-Stine

  Simon Pulse

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division