Mind over Monsters, page 16
“They’re the fast ones in the other dimension,” Owen said.
Catherine kicked his ankle.
“There’s a storage area under the stage,” said Ava. “If we open the doors, maybe these slow guys will ooze their way in there, and we can trap them.”
“I personally love a good trap,” said Sofie.
They hopped down from the stage and opened the two chest-high doors set into its front. Then, when the slug and the sponge got close, using their lacrosse sticks and tennis rackets as shepherd crooks, they managed to herd the creatures into the space. The fears didn’t put up any resistance—they seemed to have been headed in that direction anyway.
“There,” said Sam, who had averted his eyes from the sponge during the procedure. “That’s done. Simple.”
“So those fears are going to live under there now?” Lena asked.
“Why not?” Sofie asked. “They’ve got a roof over their heads.”
The Worriers got back onstage and strained to peer into the shadowy corners of the auditorium for whatever might come next.
“Over there,” Owen announced quietly. He pointed at something taking shape at the top of the left aisle. An enormous domed germ, sporting sinister waggling flagella and an arrangement of organelles that made it look like a face frozen mid-scream, slid toward them.
“Why do you think they all head this way?” Sofie asked.
“Gravity?” Tom offered. “The floor slopes toward the stage.”
The monstrous germ wasn’t nearly as cooperative as its predecessors. As Sofie reached with her lacrosse stick to guide it through the doors beneath the stage, it ducked and whipped at her with one of its flagella. It caught her across the side of her leg with a sound like a slap.
That slap knocked Sofie over. Her stick clattered to the floor. Then the germ closed in, engulfing her feet, her calves, her knees. Sofie yelped, and Lena and Catherine, who were closest, rushed over and started beating at the creature with their sticks. The germ grabbed the sticks with its flagella, winding around them like vines and pulling them into its ever-expanding body. The sticks were visible floating inside it like driftwood.
“Help!” Lena cried as she and Catherine each grabbed one of Sofie’s arms and tried to pull her away from the germ. Sofie kicked viciously as they did, but the germ was unbothered. It was up to her waist, and for some reason Lena was thinking about that camp song about being swallowed by a boa constrictor.
“How do you kill a germ?” Lena yelled desperately.
It seemed obvious as soon as she’d yelled it. Almost every product under anyone’s kitchen sink claimed to kill germs.
“On it!” Ava said, vaulting onto the stage and running behind the curtain to her backpack. She returned with a half dozen tiny bottles of hand sanitizer in various floral scents.
“That’s not going to be enough,” said Owen.
“All we need to do is distract it,” said Ava, handing out the bottles.
They managed to position themselves strategically around the germ even though their battle tactician was up to her chest in protoplasm. Sofie had grabbed Tom’s ankles and was hanging on to them as he leaned back and braced against the pull of the germ.
Lena didn’t even have to yell “Worriers, squirt!” They squeezed blobs of gel onto the germ. It bucked and flopped as it if had been stung by wasps.
“It’s working!” said Ava. “Go around to where Sofie’s sticking out and let the nasty have it.”
But they were out of ammunition. They threw the empty bottles at the germ in a last useless gesture of defiance.
“Hang on, Sofie!” Sam urged.
Lena was so frustrated she started kicking the germ.
Kicking something out of frustration is never a good idea. The kicker is almost always the one to get hurt. Lena knew this from experience, but it can be hard to remember nuggets of wisdom when your friend is being engulfed by an interdimensional germ.
With a wet whack, a flagellum caught her around a calf and yanked her kicking leg. She fell and felt herself being sucked inside the germ. Lena could swim, but she’d never tried it in freezing-cold, partially congealed Jell-O, which is what the germ felt like. She couldn’t even flail.
“Worrier down!” Sam cried. He ran to Lena. “Grab my ankles!” he said.
“It’ll get you, too,” Lena gasped. “Save yourself!”
“Oh, it can try to get me, but it’s not going to like how I taste,” said Sam.
“Why not?” Lena asked, mainly to keep her mind off being ingested.
But Sam didn’t have time to answer, because that was when Catherine asked, “Where’s Owen?”
CHAPTER 40
Those who were able to look away from the germ scanned the auditorium for Owen. Catherine looked ready to race around in a panic, when he appeared, out of breath and with his arms full of bottles and cans.
“From Ms. McArthur’s office,” Owen explained.
Ms. McArthur was the school nurse, and she didn’t fool around when it came to germ-killing substances. Owen handed out economy-size squirt bottles of hand sanitizer and jumbo cans of disinfectant spray.
The hand sanitizer annoyed the germ as it had before, but when Ava hit it with a blast of disinfectant, it recoiled, and Lena was able to squirm free of it entirely. She lay on the floor, panting and shivering, as Tom managed to pull Sofie halfway out.
“Ha!” Ava yelled as she sprayed without mercy. “Eat germicide, germ!”
A few kids in the front row had become aware of the ruckus. Three girls and a boy were standing, eyes wide, mouths open.
“What is even going on here?” one of the girls managed to squeak.
Sofie, still half-enveloped in germ and clinging to Tom’s forearms, glared up at them. “You’re having a dream,” she said. “Which means you fell asleep during assembly.”
“But…,” the boy tried.
“And even if you’re not asleep, do you want to be caught with your eyes open?” Sofie asked. “You heard Barb: Anyone caught with their eyes open gets an automatic detention.”
“I don’t remember that,” the boy said.
Sofie let out a sigh that rippled the nearby protoplasm. “Okay, then,” she said, “this is real, and I’m being swallowed by a giant germ. Do you like that option better?” All four kids shook their heads. “Then sit down and shut your eyes.”
The gawkers dropped into their seats and squeezed their eyes closed.
Meanwhile, Sam and Owen had opened one of the storage area doors. Ava and Catherine kept the spray aimed where Sofie was stuck, and as soon as the germ let go of her completely, they ran around to the other end and hit it with blast after blast of Summer Linen–scented spray until it took cover in the storage space.
Sam and Owen slammed the door and stood with their backs against it. Sofie was shivering so hard Tom gave her his picture day sweater. She wrung out her braid like a sodden towel.
“Are you okay?” Lena asked.
“I think so,” Sofie said, her teeth chattering. “You?”
“Yeah. It only got up to my waist.”
“Oh heck,” Sofie said with a weak grin, “it got up to my neck.” She turned to Owen. “How did you explain needing all this stuff to Ms. McArthur?” she asked.
“She wasn’t in the nurse’s office,” Owen said. “There’s nobody anywhere.”
Several things of equal importance happened as he was saying this.
First, an enormous sheet of paper printed with rows of ovals, some of which had been haphazardly filled in, unfurled at the back of the auditorium.
“A standardized test,” said Tom. “We should have expected this.”
The ovals, and the numbers beside them, kept shifting around on the page—no one stood a chance of passing that diabolical test.
“Why does everyone put unnecessary demon claws on their fears?” said Ava. “It’s getting really clichéd.”
The test did indeed have demon claws, attached to demon arms and legs, which made it not only quick, but also resistant to the downward-sloping floor. It clutched a huge number two pencil with a lethally sharp point. Bouncing around behind the last row of seats like a cocky fighter taunting its opponent, it didn’t seem as if it was going to allow itself to be shoved into a closet anytime soon.
Definitely headed toward the stage were a writhing ball of snakes in one aisle and a writhing ball of rats in the other. Both were rolling at a good clip, the snakes hissing and the rats snarling. As the Worriers picked up their sporting equipment and prepared to deal with these horrors, a giant blue-gloved hand holding a proportionately giant syringe with a glinting needle the length of a sword sprang up toward the back, near the test.
The glove managed to creep on its ring and pinkie fingers while holding the shot aloft in its other three fingers. It didn’t have a face, but it managed to look gleeful anyway as it tip-fingered toward the group, liquid squirting from the needle as it did.
“Um,” said Lena, and every head swiveled toward her.
“Whatever it is, don’t say it,” said Ava. “We have enough to deal with already.”
“I don’t know whether this is bad or good,” said Lena. “But it looks like the app session is over. Everyone is opening their eyes.”
* * *
The kids in the audience were removing their earbuds. There was a lot of junk from individual fears at their feet, but they didn’t seem to register this, due to the sight of the rat ball, the snake ball, and the shot hand in the aisles, not to mention the Worriers and their weapons braced for action in front of the stage. In the time the students of Cranberry Bog Middle School had been facing their fears, the world seemed to have turned into an absurd horror movie with very convincing effects.
For a few seconds, they blinked in disbelief. Some rubbed their eyes. A few cleaned their glasses and put them back on, probably hoping everything would go back to normal. It didn’t. The horrors just came into better focus.
Many of them screamed after this, and almost all scrambled to run out the doors behind them, clambering over seat backs in their rush to escape. Which was when they saw the giant test prancing around at the back of the auditorium and decided against that route. The kids in the last rows scrambled over the seats to get farther in.
Tom jumped onto the stage and grabbed the microphone. “Don’t panic!” he said. Which helped not at all. “Duck down between the rows,” he instructed them. “These creatures aren’t very coordinated. They’ll probably trip over the seats.”
Everyone in the auditorium was sadly familiar with lockdown drills, and they did as they were told.
“Now what?” someone yelled from between the rows.
Tom looked at the Worriers. “I got nothing,” he admitted off mic.
Sofie vaulted up beside him and stepped to the mic. “If anyone plays tennis or lacrosse or baseball, you can come to the front and help herd these things into the space under the stage.”
“What good would playing a sport do?” someone asked.
They had a point. “Okay, well, anyone who likes to whack things, then,” Sofie improvised. “Come up and grab something to whack with.”
“What even are they?” someone else wailed.
“They’re your fears come to life,” said Sofie. “We think.”
“Who’s afraid of a tumbleweed made of rats?” cried the voice.
There were guilt-ridden mutters from several parts of the auditorium in response.
But then a familiar voice called, “On it!” And Kenni and most of the girls’ lacrosse team crawled over the seat backs toward the stage, keeping well away from the monsters in the aisles. Some heads were kicked during this maneuver. Each girl picked up a stick and assembled in a line in front of the stage.
“Do you have any lacrosse balls?” Kenni asked Lena.
“Uh,” said Lena, “we’re not planning to play….”
“I realize that,” said Kenni. “But those balls are hard, and they sting like heck if you get hit with one. Just saying.”
“We’ll get some,” said Catherine, speaking for herself and her brother.
The appearance of the girls’ lacrosse team up front had shamed the boys’ team, and they clambered over seats and other kids to volunteer. More heads were kicked as they did this. The boys quickly doled out the remaining stick supply and lined up with the girls. Various baseball, tennis, field hockey, and softball players followed quickly, grabbing their preferred equipment. Some general whacking enthusiasts joined them.
“We’re not trying to hurt them,” Lena said to the group. “Just get them into the storage space.”
“Don’t hurt them?” said Liam Aldrich, captain of the baseball team. “They seem to be hurting each other pretty well.”
He was right. The rat and snake balls had clashed near the stage and were going at it, literally tooth and claw. Everyone in front of the stage hopped onto it to get out of the way. The rats were yanking individual snakes from the ball and flinging them aside. The snakes were biting individual rat heads off, and the severed heads bounced disturbingly when they hit the floor.
“I say we let them fight it out,” said Sam as they watched. Even the shot hand and the test seemed to have paused to look, which was strange, given that neither had eyes.
“That sounds smart,” said Tom as one of the severed rat heads rebounded off the floor and somehow reattached itself to a neck stub—its own or another rat’s, it was impossible to tell. “If these guys destroy each other, I think we have a chance against the shot and the test. Right?”
CHAPTER 41
Lena trotted over to where Kenni stood onstage. “Where’s Regina?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Kenni. “We didn’t sit together. I think she’s with Jared and his crew.”
A rat flung a snake from its teeth and sent it airborne toward the stage. Andrea Yang, CBMS’s lone tennis star, caught the snake with a smooth backhand, sending it soaring into the audience. Screams erupted as it landed with a loud thwap.
“Oops,” said Andrea. “My bad!” she yelled.
Seconds later, the snake flew from between a row of seats and thwapped back to the floor in front of the stage.
“And stay out!” someone yelled after it.
“Where did these things come from?” Kenni asked Lena. “What are they made of? What do they want?” The knuckles of the hand gripping her lacrosse stick were white.
“I don’t know,” Lena said. “They want to scare us, I guess. That’s what fears do, right? That’s their main goal.”
“Why isn’t there one for each of us?” Kenni asked, logically.
“We think they come to life when more than one person pictures them while they’re facing their fears. The more people who picture the same fear, the more powerful the fear is. Or something like that. The individual fears don’t come to life all the way—they just make clutter.”
“Clutter is my mom’s biggest fear,” said Kenni.
They watched as the shot hand broke into a klutzy Riverdance-like routine on its two finger-legs.
“These fears seem kind of ridiculous, though,” said Kenni.
“You should see the ones under the stage,” said Lena. “There’s a giant slug wearing a sailor hat.”
Kenni clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh no!” she said from behind the hand. “That one’s mine!”
“Seriously?” said Lena.
“It’s complicated,” said Kenni. “But…”
“But what?”
“Two people afraid of slugs in hats means my soul mate’s around here somewhere,” said Kenni. “Doesn’t it?”
Lena didn’t think it did.
Catherine and Owen were back, each straining to manage the weight of a bucket of balls.
“Sweet,” said Kenni, grabbing a lacrosse ball and fitting it into her stick’s net. She held the stick back over her shoulder and flicked the ball at the shot hand. The ball made contact with the thumb, which stopped the Riverdancing, at least.
“That got its attention,” said Lena. “But we don’t want to send it out into the hall. We need to drive it under the stage.”
“Right,” said Kenni. She huddled with the other lacrosse players for a moment, then they jumped off the stage, avoiding the rat and snake balls. They couldn’t go all the way to the back of the room with the test lurking there, so they crawled across seats to get behind the shot hand. Only a few heads were kicked this time.
“Hold your fire!” Sofie yelled to Kenni’s group. “We need to get in position to open the doors.”
This would have been simple to do if it weren’t for the rat-snake situation in front of the stage.
“We need to get rid of these bitey guys first,” said Sam.
“What if we use these?” Catherine asked triumphantly.
She and Owen each held up a soccer goal net.
“That might work,” said Sofie.
* * *
Lena felt both stupid and brave as she and Sofie held a soccer net stretched between them like a sheet they were folding. They inched toward the lip of the stage above the snakes and the rats, which never seemed to get discouraged or decide to take a breather.
Sam and Ava approached with the other net.
“I, for one, am not willing to get down there and try to, I don’t know, ensnare them,” said Sam.
“I, for two, feel exactly the same way,” said Ava.
“I don’t think we need to get down there,” said Lena. “It looks like if we drop the nets onto them, they might ensnare themselves.”
She was right. They took turns throwing their nets, and the swirling creatures instantly entangled themselves. Lena was reminded of getting her swirling finger tangled in her hair.
“Can we get some field hockey sticks over here?” Sofie called.
Four forwards leapt onto the floor, hooked the nets with their sticks, and hauled the captive rats and snakes toward the storage space.
Lena and Sofie jumped down and opened the doors wide enough for the hockey players to shove the writhing balls inside.
