Judy and the Beast Page 8

  “You? You’re a scientist?” I said.

  He nodded. He motioned to two framed documents on the wall behind him. Diplomas?

  “Those two boys who brought you to my office … They are here for my treatment as well,” he said.

  “But … but … Ira …” I couldn’t find words.

  “I don’t need your dad to do the carpentry work for me every spring,” Baker said. “I can do it myself. It was just an excuse for him to bring Ira to see me.”

  “Is that why Dad never wanted me to come?” I asked.

  Baker nodded again. “He did everything in his power to keep you from learning the truth about your brother.”

  He leaned back in the desk chair. “After my treatments each spring, it’s safe for Ira to go home till the next spring.”

  My brain felt about to explode. A million thoughts buzzed through my head at once. I rubbed my temples, but I couldn’t smooth the thoughts away.

  “My painting of the cabin …” I choked out. “The red X across it. My phone … smashed to pieces …”

  “I’m sorry,” Baker murmured. “Ira did those things. He wasn’t in control. He couldn’t help himself.”

  “But I saw a paintbrush with red paint in your office,” I said.

  “Ira must have put it there to throw you off the track,” Baker said.

  I shut my eyes. I thought it might make it easier to think straight. But it didn’t help.

  “Harvard is another sample of my work,” Baker said. “I cured him of the Beast disease. Sadly, I have to keep him anemic as part of the cure. But he manages well. He hasn’t had a Beast episode in years.”

  Slowly, I opened my eyes and gazed at him. “Okay,” I said. “Okay. I believe you. I believe you’re telling me the truth.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “It’s very sad. But I am telling you the truth.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” I said. “I’m sorry I thought you were the Beast. I didn’t know.”

  He nodded but didn’t reply.

  I finally uncrossed my arms and let them fall to the arms of the chair. “Now that I know the truth …” I said … “can I go home with Dad and Ira?”

  Baker sat up straight. His expression darkened. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You can’t.”

  I jumped to my feet. My hands curled into tight fists. I shook them at him.

  “Why not?” I cried. “You can’t keep me prisoner here. You have to let me go home.”

  He didn’t move. “Judy, when is your thirteenth birthday?” he asked.

  “It’s … in a few days,” I stammered. “But—”

  He raised a hand to silence me. “Okay. You have to stay here so I can watch you.”

  “Why—?”

  “Since your brother has the Beast disease,” Baker said, “it is possible that you have it, too.”

  “No way—” I started.

  “If you also have it,” Baker said, “we would see the first signs anytime now.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” I cried, shaking my fists again. “You have to let me go. You have to!”

  I had both fists in the air. The sleeves of my sweater slid up.

  I saw my arms—and screamed.

  My arms were covered in thick brown fur.

  I dropped back into the armchair. “Uh … Doctor Grendel,” I said, “can we talk?”

  Haha. It’s cold up on that mountaintop. Looks like Judy won’t be needing a fur coat this winter!

  What’s that old saying? “The family that howls together, prowls together.” Or something like that. Hahaha.

  I’d love to see Ira and Judy’s next game of Slap Tag. Bet it will be a SCREAM! Hahaha.

  That’s our story for this time.

  Let’s all take a long run in the forest to clear our heads. Then I’ll be back with another Goosebumps story.

  Remember, this is SlappyWorld.

  You only scream in it!

  Slappy stared across the table at me. His eyes gleamed under the lamp light, and his red-lipped grin made him look like he was happy to be here.

  Maybe you’ll think I’m weird. But that ventriloquist dummy is my best friend. Ever since Dad gave him to me for my twelfth birthday, we’ve been pals.

  I keep Slappy with me wherever I go. I even took him to school once. Mom warned me not to, and she was right. Some kids in my class laughed at me and made jokes about how I must be a dummy, too.

  Not funny.

  My name is Richard Hsieh, and I’m really not a weird dude. The truth is, I’ve always wanted a pet, and I’m allergic to dogs and cats.

  So I guess Slappy takes the place of a pet for me.

  My family moved to Russet Village less than a year ago, and I started at Russet Middle School last September. So I haven’t had time to make real friends.

  And I have to admit something about me. I’m shy. When I started at the new school, I had to fill out a questionnaire. You know. A lot of questions about what I like to do and what I don’t like.

  At the bottom, it said: Can you describe yourself in one word?

  And that’s what I wrote— shy.

  I was going to write awesome. Just as a joke. But I thought whoever read my answers might take it seriously and think I’m stuck-up.

  I looked at Slappy. Then down at the table.

  I was doing a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with black-and-white pandas on it—no color— so it was really hard. “It’s almost done. Only twelve pieces to go,” I said.

  Slappy grinned back at me. I really wished he could talk.

  Dad keeps telling me to stop talking to the dummy all the time. He thinks it’s too weird.

  But Mom is a doctor, and she doesn’t see any problem with it. “Lots of kids have imaginary friends they talk to,” she told Dad.

  “Sure. When they are three,” Dad shot back.

  “He can talk to Slappy all he wants,” Mom said. “It’s not like Richard imagines that Slappy is alive.”

  Dad shrugged, blew out a long whoosh of air, and left the room.

  Dad is manager of the hardware store in town. A few days before my birthday, he found a beat-up suitcase in the back room of the store. He opened the case and found Slappy folded up inside it.

  The dummy’s gray suit was wrinkled, and his wooden head had scratches on it and a tiny chip missing from his lower lip. Dad asked the other store workers if they knew who had left the dummy there. No one had a clue.

  So that’s how Slappy became my birthday gift.

  Mom and Dad washed him up before they let me have him. “He probably has lice or something,” Dad said.

  “What an evil grin,” Mom said.

  “It is not an evil grin,” I said. “He’s just smiling.”

  “It looks like he’s smiling about something evil,” Mom said. “Maybe you can practice with him, Richard. Practice making him talk. Work up a comedy act. That might be fun.”

  “I … I’m not very good with jokes,” I told her.

  Mom frowned at me. “But it might help build up your confidence,” she said.

  I wasn’t sure about that. But I did like having Slappy with me. And maybe I did talk to him too often. But so what?

  I had been staring at the black-and-white jigsaw puzzle so long, my eyes were starting to go blurry. “Just a few more pieces,” I told Slappy.

  But I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Get your coat, Richard,” Mom said. “Dinner ran so long, we’re late.”

  I looked up from the pandas. “Late?”

  “Did you forget? You’re coming with me to my lab tonight. It’s Bring-Your-Kid-To-Work day.”

  I dropped the puzzle piece in my hand and jumped up from the table. “Sorry, Mom. I’ll get my coat.”

  “And how about some shoes?” she said. “Shoes might be good.”

  I hurried to my room to get my sneakers.

  Mom runs a sleep lab at the hospital. I guess people who have trouble sleeping come to her lab. I’ve never been there before.

  I tied my sne
akers. Then I pulled my jacket out of the front closet. “Is it okay if I bring Slappy?” I asked.

  Mom squinted at me. “Slappy?”

  “Yes. Is it okay if I bring him?”

  She thought about it for a moment. “Sure,” she said. “Bring him along. The more the merrier.”

  And that’s when all the trouble started.

  Mom’s sleep lab has its own entrance at the side of the hospital. We walked down a brightly lit hallway. Then Mom pushed open the doors to the lab.

  I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the dim gray light. I saw dark curtains and narrow beds and lots of computer equipment. The curtains formed a row of bedrooms, with a bed and a computer in each room.

  People were already here. Some sat on their beds. Three of them stood in a corner, talking. They were all dressed in pajamas and robes. They turned as Mom and I walked in.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Mom said. “This is my son Richard. And that thing he has draped over his shoulder is his dummy friend Slappy.”

  “Slappy might give me nightmares!” a man called from one of the beds.

  A few people laughed. Most of them looked pretty old to me. But I saw a couple of younger people, too.

  “Don’t say that,” Mom said. “This is a No Nightmare zone, remember?”

  A young man in a white lab uniform appeared from a back room. He was tall and thin and had dark eyes and straight black hair pulled behind his head in a short ponytail.

  “Hello, Doctor,” he said. “This must be your son.”

  Mom introduced me and Slappy. “Richard, this is Salazar, my assistant,” she said. “Salazar does all the hard work here. I just watch everyone sleep.”

  He chuckled. “Your mom is being modest,” he said. He turned to my mother. “Only six here tonight. Mrs. Baker couldn’t come in. I was just about to hook everyone up.”

  “I’ll put Slappy in my office,” Mom said. She pointed to the back room. Through the big window, I could see rows of computer monitors. “Then you can watch Salazar hook up the patients. He can explain what we do here.”

  She lifted Slappy off my shoulder. “Wow. He’s heavier than I thought.”

  The dummy’s eyelids lowered. I laughed. “Slappy knows he’s in a sleep lab!”

  Shaking her head, Mom had to carry him in both hands.

  “Bedtime, everyone!” Salazar called out. “Settle in, and I’ll get you ready. You all know the routine.”

  In their curtained-off rooms, the patients climbed into their beds. They all stayed on their backs on top of the covers.

  Salazar gave them time to get into place. “What grade are you in, Richard?” he asked.

  “Sixth,” I said.

  “And are you interested in anything particular? Think you might like to be a doctor like your mom?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t really know,” I muttered.

  I hate it when people ask me what I want to be. I know Salazar was just trying to be nice. But I never know what to say. I mean, I’m only a kid. How do I know what I want to do with the rest of my life?

  “You brought that old ventriloquist dummy,” he said. “Are you interested in puppets?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  He nodded. “Well, follow me. We’ll start with Mister Baldwin.” He led the way to the first bed.

  Mr. Baldwin was an older guy with a fringe of white hair around his head and a short white beard that covered most of his face. He wore a black nightshirt and black socks.

  He squinted at me. “Are you Salazar’s new assistant?”

  Salazar answered for me. “It’s Bring-Your-Kid-to-Work Day at the hospital,” he said. “Richard has never seen what his mother does.”

  “She watches us sleep all night,” Mr. Baldwin said. “I don’t know how she manages to stay awake!”

  “Are you feeling sleepy tonight, Mr. Baldwin?”

  He groaned. “I feel tired all the time,” he said. “Except at bedtime.”

  “We’ll see how you do tonight,” Salazar told him. He lifted a bunch of wires from the computer table beside the bed. “These are electrodes, Richard. We attach them to Mr. Baldwin, and they transmit his sleep patterns to the little monitors beside each bed—and to the big monitors in your mother’s office.”

  He dipped an electrode into a gooey liquid and stuck it onto one side of Mr. Baldwin’s forehead. Then he attached a second electrode to the other side of the forehead.

  “There are eight electrodes in all,” Salazar explained to me.

  “Did you ever see the movie Frankenstein?” Mr. Baldwin asked me. “That’s what this looks like. It’s what they did to the Frankenstein monster.”

  Salazar attached a few more electrodes. “There isn’t anything scary about it,” he said. “It allows us to see how deep Mr. Baldwin’s sleep is, when he wakes up, when he dreams, anything that interrupts his sleep.”

  “Can you see his dreams?” I asked.

  Salazar shook his head. “No. Only when he dreams, not what he dreams.”

  He hooked up the eighth electrode. “Pleasant dreams,” he said. “I’ll turn off all the lights when I get everyone online.”

  I followed him into the next curtained bedroom. Salazar talked quietly with all the patients as he attached the electrodes to them. Some of them appeared sleepy, but some seemed wide awake.

  I wondered if I could fall asleep with all those wires connected to my skin. That might be hard. And, I wondered how my mom stayed awake all night, watching the sleep patterns of six patients.

  Salazar hooked up the last patient and pointed to the back room. “You can go see your mom now, Richard,” he said. “She’ll show you what she watches on the computer monitors.”

  I nodded and started to the office. On the way, I had an idea.

  It was a funny idea. “Mom, I want to try hooking electrodes to someone,” I said.

  Mom laughed. “Why? Did that look like fun to you? It isn’t as easy as it seems. They have to go in exactly the right place.”

  “I just want to try,” I said. I picked up Slappy. “Can I try it on him? Can I hook up Slappy?”

  She squinted at me. “Seriously?”

  I nodded. “Come on. Let me try.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Why not? Follow me.”

  I slung Slappy over my shoulder and followed Mom to one of the empty beds. “Put him down here on his back,” she said.

  I settled him on the bed. His eyes stayed closed, as if he was already asleep.

  Mom arranged the wires and electrodes on the table beside the bed. She opened a tube of the gooey stuff and poured it into a small bowl. “Okay, go ahead,” she said. “Dip the electrode into the gel and attach it to Slappy.”

  I did it just the way I had watched Salazar work. I stuck a wire on each side of Slappy’s forehead. Then two on his neck. Three on his chest. And one on top of his head.

  “Okay. Good job,” Mom said. She turned and fiddled with the computer monitor on the table. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  We both gazed at the screen as it came to life.

  Suddenly, Mom’s eyes went wide and she let out a loud gasp. “Whaaaat!” she cried. “I don’t believe it!”

  R.L. Stine says he gets to scare people all over the world. So far, his books have sold more than 400 million copies, making him one of the most popular children’s authors in history. The Goosebumps series has more than 150 titles and has inspired a TV series and two motion pictures. R.L. himself is a character in the movies! He has also written the teen series Fear Street, and the Mostly Ghostly and Nightmare Room series. He is currently writing a series of graphic novels entitled Just Beyond. R.L. Stine lives in New York City with his wife, Jane, an editor and publisher. You can learn more about him at rlstine.com.

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