Claws! Page 8

  I cupped him in my hands and ran back to the Caplans’ house.

  I was heartbroken. I didn’t want to lose Zorro. He was an awesome pet.

  But I couldn’t be more desperate. My life depended on this. He was my only hope. My only hope of not having to spend my life haunted by a dozen scraggly, vicious dead cats.

  I carried him into the living room. No one had moved. The Caplans sat on the couch, shaking their heads, murmuring to each other. Mr. Caplan had Bella in his lap. Amanda stood leaning against the back of an armchair.

  The dead cats all turned to watch me. I raised Zorro high so they could see him.

  “What are you doing?” Amanda demanded. “Why did you bring your mouse?”

  “Just watch,” I said. “I hope—I hope this works.”

  I pulled the front door open wide. Then I swung Zorro around so the dead cats could all see him again.

  Then I lowered the little white mouse to the floor. Gave him a light push. And sent him scampering to the door.

  I turned to the cats. “Go get him!” I cried. “Chase him! Get him! GO!”

  Again, they stared up at me. Again, they didn’t move.

  “Get the mouse! Chase the mouse!” I screamed. “Go, go, GO!”

  I turned and saw Zorro darting to the Caplans’ front yard. I felt so bad. The cats weren’t moving. Had I sacrificed my pet for nothing?

  I dropped to my knees on the carpet. Defeated. Ruined.

  I felt like crying, but I forced it back. I couldn’t keep my shoulders from heaving up and down. I buried my face in my hands.

  Then I heard a soft padding sound. I lowered my hands. I saw the dead cats sniffing the air, gazing at the open front door.

  Sniffing the mouse?

  Without warning, they took off.

  They darted past me, brushing me as they went by. They didn’t make a sound. They stampeded out the open door, picking up speed as they ran after the mouse.

  Bella leaped off Mr. Caplan’s lap. The Caplans both uttered startled cries as the black cat hurtled across the carpet and out the front door.

  None of us spoke.

  We froze there in the living room. The four of us. No cats.

  A few seconds later, I heard the squeal of skidding truck tires and Bella’s screech of death.

  35

  We stayed silent for a long moment. The silence rang in my ears.

  Mr. Caplan jumped up from the couch. His face was very red. A smile spread slowly across it. He slapped me a high five. “Brilliant!” he boomed.

  Mrs. Caplan was smiling, too. She stood up and came over to Amanda and me. “Mickey, that was genius,” she said. “We couldn’t return the dead cats to Cat Heaven. But they could return themselves.”

  “They all ran out to recreate their violent deaths,” Mr. Caplan said. “They will be back in Cat Heaven in no time.”

  Mrs. Caplan let out a long sigh. “Thank goodness that’s over,” she told her husband. “Let’s unpack our bags and then go to Cat Heaven and pick up Bella from the back room. She hates it when we leave her there too long.”

  Well, I guess it was kind of a happy ending. The Caplans paid Amanda and me an extra fifty dollars each since we had so much trouble.

  A few days later, Mom was driving me to my tennis lesson. I’m not a great tennis player. But I’m getting better.

  The tennis courts are inside a huge white bubble on the outskirts of town. There are maybe a hundred courts. The smack of tennis balls is deafening.

  We were almost there when I saw a store I’d never seen before. “Hey, Mom—stop,” I said. I pointed to the big sign over the door. “Check that out.”

  The store was called Mouse Heaven.

  “I have to go in for a minute,” I said. I started to open the car door.

  Mom held me back. “Mickey, you’ll be late for your lesson.”

  “I’ll just be a minute,” I said. “I swear.”

  I darted into the store. A long, narrow store with two rows of glass cages. The air inside smelled of piney wood shavings.

  I moved down the two rows of cages. White mice crawled through their shavings or slept curled up on the cage floors. A few stared out at me, twitching their little noses.

  I stopped at the very last cage. I lowered my face to the glass.

  “Zorro!” I cried. “There you are!” The little guy stared up at me, twitching his tail.

  “Zorro!”

  Should I bring him home?

  WELCOME BACK TO THE HALL OF HORRORS

  The fire has gone out. The Unliving Room has grown cold. Through the black window I can hear the flap of bat wings as they circle the Tower of No Return.

  Did you know the stairs in the Tower only lead UP? They do not lead DOWN.

  Don’t be tense, Mickey. You will not be staying there. Tonight you will sleep in the guest deadroom.

  My assistant is digging your bed right now. The soil will be a soft, welcoming mattress. The tombstone at its head reads: DO NOT DISTURB. So you will have a peaceful sleep.

  I am the Story-Keeper, and I will keep your story here in the Hall of Horrors, where it belongs. Tomorrow before you leave, I will have a gift for you. Maybe you can guess what it is.

  One word of warning: Don’t look in the carrying case till you get home. Shredder gets upset if you look at him. Why is he called Shredder?

  Hahahahahahahahaha! Funny question.

  Oh, I’m being rude. We have a new guest.

  Come right in, young man. I believe your name is Steven Sweeney. Yes?

  And you have a story you’d like to tell. It’s called Night of the Giant Everything. And you think it’s scary enough for the Hall of Horrors?

  Well, come in, Steven. Just step over that giant python throw pillow. I believe it’s napping.

  Come in. Plenty of room in the Hall of Horrors. You know….There’s Always Room for One More Scream.

  Preview

  Ready for More?

  Here’s another tale from the Hall of Horrors:

  Goosebumps

  HALL OF HORRORS

  NIGHT OF THE

  GIANT EVERYTHING

  1

  “Pick a card. Any card.”

  I held the deck up to Ava and Courtney. They’re in my class. Ava Munroe and Courtney Jackson.

  They both laughed. “Steven, we know this trick,” Ava said.

  Ava is the tallest girl in the sixth grade at Everest Middle School. She’s very pretty, with wavy blond hair and blue eyes. But I think being so tall gives her an attitude.

  She likes to look down on me. And I’m only two or three inches shorter than she is.

  I waved the deck of cards in their faces. “Maybe this trick is different. Go ahead. Pick one and don’t tell me what it is.”

  Courtney crossed her arms in front of her blue hoodie. “It’s the ace of hearts,” she said without picking a card.

  Courtney is black, with short hair and big dark brown eyes. She wears long, dangling earrings and lots of beads. She has a great laugh.

  I hear her laugh a lot. Because she likes to laugh at me and my magic tricks.

  “How do you know your card will be the ace of hearts?” I asked.

  “Because every card in the deck is the ace of hearts,” Courtney replied.

  She and Ava bumped knuckles and laughed again.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “You guessed that one.” I tucked the trick deck of cards into my jacket pocket. “But here’s a trick you don’t know. Can you spare any change?”

  I reached up and pulled a quarter from Ava’s nose.

  Ava groaned. “Steven, that’s totally obnoxious. Why are you always doing that?”

  Obnoxious is one of her favorite words. Her brother is obnoxious. Her dog is obnoxious. Today she said her lunch was obnoxious. I’m not kidding.

  “I just feel a change in the air,” I said. I pulled a quarter from Courtney’s ear. I spun it in my fingers and made it disappear.

  “Know where the quarter went?” I ask
ed. “Ava, open your mouth.”

  “No way,” she said, spinning away from me.

  “Steven, give us a break,” Courtney said. “We’ve seen all your tricks—remember?”

  It was a cool fall day. A gust of wind blew my hair over my eyes. I have long, straight black hair. My mom calls it a mop of hair. She likes to wait till I brush it just right and then mess it up with both hands.

  Everyone in my family is funny.

  Most of the guys in my class have very short hair. But I like it long. It’s more dramatic when I’m doing my comedy magic act onstage.

  Ava, Courtney, and I were standing at the curb on Everest Street. School had just let out. Kids were still hurrying out of the building. The wind swirled, sending brown leaves dancing down the street.

  Courtney tucked her hands into her hoodie. “So tomorrow is the talent assembly?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. My act is going to kill.”

  “Not if Courtney and I kill you first!” Ava said.

  Ha-ha. LOL. They’re both crazy about me. Otherwise, they wouldn’t say things like that—right?

  “You’re my assistants tomorrow,” I said. “We have to rehearse the act. Practice your moves.”

  Courtney squinted at me. “You’re not going to pull quarters out of our noses in front of the whole school, are you?”

  “Do you have any tricks that aren’t obnoxious?” Ava asked.

  “For sure,” I said. “Here. Check out this new trick.”

  They didn’t see the spray can of Silly String hidden at my side.

  I leaned forward. Then I pretended to sneeze on Ava. A biiig sneeze.

  And as I sneezed, I squirted a stream of white silly string all over the front of her sweater.

  She gasped and staggered back in surprise.

  It was a riot.

  But then Courtney tried to grab the Silly String can from my hand.

  And that’s when things went out of control.

  2

  Courtney swiped at the can. My finger pushed down on the button. And squirted the stuff all over her face and in her hair.

  “Yuck!” She let out a cry and tried to wipe the Silly String gunk from her eyes.

  Then Ava grabbed the can and sprayed it on me. I couldn’t squirm away. She kept her finger down on the top and covered me in a ton of the sticky stuff. Then she tossed the can to the curb.

  I started slapping at the stuff. Trying to pull it off my jacket. Courtney was still rubbing her eyes, smearing it off her cheeks. A big gob was stuck to her hair.

  “Steven, do you know how to spell revenge?” she asked through gritted teeth.

  “Do you know how to spell joke?” I shot back.

  Kids were laughing and cheering. One kid from the third grade picked up the can from the ground and tried to squirt his friend. But the can was empty.

  “Steven, you creep. You ruined my sweater!” Ava cried.

  “It comes out,” I said. “The can says it’s washable. It was just a joke, Ava.”

  “You’re a joke!” she cried angrily. She tried to punch me in the gut, but I danced away. I’m smaller and faster.

  I glanced at my phone and saw the time. “I’m late for my piano lesson,” I said.

  I started across the street. But then I turned back and called to Ava. “I’ll come to your house after my lesson, and the three of us can rehearse the magic act.”

  “Not if I see you first!” she shouted.

  Courtney waved both fists at me.

  I told you. They’re crazy about me.

  Mr. Pinker is my new piano teacher. He gives lessons from his house, which is just two blocks from the school.

  He has a big redbrick house that sits on top of a wide grassy yard that tilts sharply downhill. In the winter, he lets the neighborhood kids use the hill for sledding.

  The house is old, with ivy crawling down one wall. It has two chimneys and a long screened-in porch.

  I climbed the hill to his house. Rang the bell and let myself in the front door.

  The front hall was brightly lit, cluttered with coats and caps and umbrellas hanging on hooks. I could hear piano music from the front room. Someone was finishing a lesson. The house smelled of fresh-baked cookies.

  I set down my backpack and tossed my jacket onto one of the hooks. A short red-haired girl gave me a smile as she headed out the front door.

  “Hello, Steven. Come in,” Mr. Pinker greeted me. “That was Lisa. She got the piano keys all warmed up for you.”

  He seems like a nice guy. I guess he’s about forty or so. He’s tall and thin. Mostly bald, with a fringe of red-brown hair around his head. He wears glasses low on his nose.

  He always wears a gray suit and a red necktie. This is only my third lesson with him. He’s worn the same outfit each time.

  I followed him into the front room. It was kind of old-fashioned. Lots of old chairs and a big brown leather couch with the leather peeling off in places. A tall grandfather clock on the far wall had the minute hand missing. It didn’t work.

  Four black-and-white photographs of sailboats hung on one wall. A painting of a symphony conductor with his baton raised stood over the mantel.

  A low desk in one corner had stacks and stacks of sheet music on it. The piano stood against the other wall, facing the front window. A window seat also held tall stacks of piano sheet music.

  Outside, the gusting wind sent a tree branch tapping the front window. It sounded like drumbeats.

  “What’s that white stuff in your hair?” Mr. Pinker asked. “Are you getting dandruff?”

  I reached up. My hair was sticky. “It’s Silly String,” I said. “I had a little Silly String battle.”

  He nodded. “Make sure your fingers aren’t sticky.” Then he disappeared from the room.

  A few seconds later, he returned with a big home-baked chocolate chip cookie on a plate and a glass of milk. “I know sixth-graders are hungry after school,” he said. “That’s why I bake my special cookies for my students every day.”

  He handed me the plate and set the glass of milk down on a coaster on the piano. I wasn’t really hungry, but I didn’t want to be rude. I took a big bite of the cookie.

  It was very chewy and a gob of it stuck to the roof of my mouth. I tried to wash it down with a sip of milk.

  Mr. Pinker pushed the plate under my nose. “Go ahead. Finish it, Steven. All the kids enjoy them.”

  I forced the cookie down, sipping milk after every bite.

  As Mr. Pinker watched me eat, he got this big smile on his face. His eyes lit up and he kept grinning. He watched till I finished every last crumb.

  But there was nothing strange about that—right?

  About the Author

  R.L. Stine’s books are read all over the world. So far, his books have sold more than 300 million copies, making him one of the most popular children’s authors in history. Besides Goosebumps, R.L. Stine has written the teen series Fear Street and the funny series Rotten School, as well as the Mostly Ghostly series, The Nightmare Room series, and the two-book thriller Dangerous Girls. R.L. Stine lives in New York with his wife, Jane, and Minnie, his King Charles spaniel. You can learn more about him at www.RLStine.com.

  Copyright

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  Goosebumps book series created by Parachute Press, Inc.

  Copyright © 2011 by Scholastic Inc.

  Cover design by Steve Scott

  Cover art by Brandon Dorman

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, GOOSEBUMPS, GOOSEBUMPS HORRORLAND, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  All rights reserved u
nder International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

  First printing, March 2011

  eISBN: 978-0-545-41493-7