The Creature from Club Lagoona Read online

  I moved into the starting position Barry taught us.

  Bang!

  I sprang from the side of the pool. The last thing I saw before I hit the water was the funny little man with his bucket of chlorine. Did he wink?

  I cut into the water smoothly.

  I could hear everyone in the crowd shouting.

  “Go, Tad!” Polly’s voice shrieked above all the others.

  “You can do it, Tad!” Mom chimed in.

  “Give it your best, Tad!” My father’s voice boomed. “You’re way in front! Keep going!”

  I didn’t worry about the swimmers in the other lanes. I focused on the end of the pool, where I would turn and go back to tag Neal.

  I was nearly halfway across the pool now. I didn’t feel tired. I felt happy, excited.

  From the corner of my eye I noticed the swimmer in the next lane. Gaining on me as we neared the deep end.

  I had to do something to keep my lead.

  I ducked my head down and held my breath, and stroked as hard as I could.

  Suddenly a noise met my ears.

  A whirring noise.

  A hideous whirring noise that sent shivers up my spine.

  I peered through the water and saw a flash of green.

  And I knew what was there.

  I knew exactly what I would discover down in the deep end.

  The giant drain at the bottom of the pool.

  Sliding open.

  And a slimy green tentacle slithering out. . . .

  Only this time it was real.

  This time I would really be face-to-face with the creature of Club Lagoona.

  Are you ready for another walk

  down Fear Street?

  Turn the page for a terrifying

  sneak preview.

  The pitcher wound up. I tightened my grip on the bat. Then, from the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the old man from the abandoned house on Fear Street. The one who scared me the day before. He stood at the fence. Watching me.

  His eyes burned into mine. I felt as if I couldn’t tear my gaze away from him.

  What did he want?

  “Duck!” someone yelled.

  My head whipped around. Oh, man!

  The ball was speeding straight toward me!

  WHACK!

  Pain exploded in my head. I saw a huge flash of white light. Little stars danced in front of my eyes.

  I staggered. Dropped to the ground by home plate. When I hit the dirt, the thud echoed strangely in my ears.

  Then everything went black.

  * * *

  The next thing I heard was someone calling my name.

  “Buddy. Buddy, talk to me, son! Are you okay?”

  I opened my eyes slowly. Man, did my head hurt!

  My vision was blurry for a second. As it cleared, I made out faces peering down at me. Strangers.

  “Are you okay, Buddy? That pitch hit you square in the head.”

  The man speaking was tall, with dark hair that he wore slicked back with some kind of shiny oil.

  How does he know my name? I wondered fuzzily. I’ve never seen him before.

  “Ooooh.” I groaned and sat up slowly. My head throbbed where the ball had struck me. I felt dizzy.

  “Thatta boy. Can you get up?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed my arms and hauled me to my feet. I stood, wobbling for a second.

  “Feeling steadier? Good. Shake it off,” the man with the slicked-back hair told me.

  Shake it off? I thought. I just got clobbered in the head with a fastball! Why aren’t they rushing me to the hospital for a brain scan or something?

  “Uh—I—” I started to say.

  “Come on, tough guy!” he interrupted. “Take your base.”

  “But I—”

  “You’re fine. Take your base.” The strange man tucked his hand under my elbow and hustled me to first base. “Good, good,” he muttered, and trotted away.

  Who was that guy, anyway?

  I stood at first base and screwed my eyes shut, trying to get over my feeling of confusion.

  “Batter up!” the umpire called.

  I opened my eyes to see who was next at bat.

  Then I stared.

  Wait just one second! I thought. Who is that guy? He doesn’t play on my team! And what’s with his uniform?

  The pants were baggy. The shirt was loose. The whole outfit looked like a sack. And instead of the red, white and blue colors of my team, it was white with black pinstripes.

  Come to think of it, my own uniform felt weirdly heavy and loose. I plucked at the fabric with my fingers.

  Black and white pinstripes!

  My team didn’t wear pinstripes!

  Before I could think, the batter hit a grounder toward the shortstop. I took off from first base as the ball skipped past the shortstop and into the outfield.

  I rounded second at full speed, really running now. I slid into the bag and barely beat the throw to third.

  I stood and brushed myself off. A rough hand clapped me on the shoulder.

  “Way to go, Gibson,” a deep voice said in my ear.

  Gibson? Who was Gibson? I turned and found myself staring at a man with a heavy, red face. He had to be the third-base coach. Why else would he be standing there?

  But I’d never seen him before, either.

  What was going on?

  Who were these people?

  I was starting to get a really weird feeling. . . .

  I licked my lips. “Saunders,” I corrected. “My name is Saunders. Uh—who are you?”

  The man laughed. “That’s our Buddy. Always kidding around.”

  “Quit gabbing and get your heads in the game,” the guy with the slicked-back hair yelled from across the field.

  I peered at the next batter. You guessed it—someone else I didn’t know. In fact, I couldn’t find a single familiar face on the whole baseball diamond. Hank, Scott, Glen—they had all vanished!

  It was the same with the people in the bleachers.

  Total strangers, all of them. And they all wore funny clothes. For example, there wasn’t a woman there without a hat on. And gloves. In the middle of summer!

  And where were my parents? They had been there five minutes ago. But now I couldn’t spot them anywhere.

  The pitcher zoomed a fastball down the center of the plate. The guy at bat took a huge swing. He crushed the ball, sending it out of the park.

  “Home run!” people screamed.

  “What’s the matter with you, Gibson? Don’t just stand there. Run home!” the third-base coach urged.

  Why did he keep calling me Gibson?

  I ran to home plate. Then I trotted to the dugout. As I passed the fence, I caught a glimpse of the parking lot.

  Whoa. A huge maroon roadster with an odd, rounded shape sat next to an old pickup truck. The roadster looked like it came from one of those old gangster movies. The truck was straight out of The Beverly Hillbillies.

  “Uh, are we sharing the park with a classic-car show today?” I asked a freckled kid in the dugout.

  He stared at me as if I was crazy. “What’s a classic car?”

  I started to feel really scared.

  I could think of only one explanation for all this.

  What if I really was crazy? What if that knock in the head had made me go insane?

  My temple throbbed. I sat on the bench and rubbed my head.

  “Are you okay? You don’t look so hot,” the freckled kid told me.

  I’m not! I wanted to shout. I’m going nuts! Loopy! Losing my marbles!

  But I was scared to say it out loud. What would they do to me? Cart me off to a loony bin?

  “Head hurts,” I mumbled at last.

  I glanced down at the end of the dugout. A dozen strange, small gloves lay in a pile on the ground. They looked like pot holders. Leather pot holders. Not baseball mitts.

  Nearby was a stack of wooden bats.

  Wooden bats? Our
team always used aluminum bats.

  Didn’t we?

  I was still sitting there, trying to figure it all out, when the freckled kid poked me with a bat. “Get up, Buddy. Our side is retired.”

  “What?” I glanced up. Players in black-and-white pinstriped uniforms streamed past me to the pile of gloves. It was our turn in the outfield.

  I must have looked uncertain, because the man with the slicked-back hair reached into the pile and pulled out a glove. He threw it to me. “Get out there, Gibson,” he barked. “We haven’t got all day.”

  I caught the glove and pulled it on as I ran for third. It looked small on my hand, but it seemed to fit okay. Someone had written Gibson on it in blue ink.

  That name again. I knew it from somewhere, but where?

  Then, suddenly, I remembered the old man from yesterday. The old man from the house on Fear Street. The one Hank thought was a ghost.

  Gibson was the kid the old man told me about. Buddy Gibson. The kid in the photograph.

  The photograph from 1948.

  I stopped running and stood there with my mouth hanging open.

  Could it be? Was it even possible?

  It was the only explanation that made sense. Besides my being crazy, that is.

  It explained why all the uniforms looked goofy. Why the gloves were weird and the caps were strange. Why everything seemed as if it came from an antique shop.

  And why everybody kept calling me Gibson.

  Somehow, I was Gibson.

  Somehow, I’d gone back in time!

  About R.L. Stine

  R.L. Stine is the best-selling author in America. He has written more than one hundred scary books for young people, all of them best-sellers.

  His series include Fear Street, Ghosts of Fear Street and the Fear Street Sagas.

  Bob grew up in Columbus, Ohio. Today he lives in New York City with his wife, Jane, his teenage son, Matt, and his dog, Nadine.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Aladdin

  An Imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 1997 by Parachute Press, Inc.

  THE CREATURE FROM CLUB LAGOONA WRITTEN BY GLORIA HATRICK

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN 0-671-00850-1

  ISBN 978-1-4424-8617-1 (eBook)

  First Minstrel Books paperback printing June 1997

  ALADDIN and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.