“Ooops!” Harrison cried.
All around the room, kids gasped in surprise. A few started to laugh.
But the boy and girl let out deafening shrieks.
“My eyes! My eyes! It’s burning my eyes!” the boy wailed. He slapped frantically at his face, struggling to wipe the whipped cream away.
“It’s burning me!” the girl cried. She began to sob. “Make it stop! It’s burning my skin!”
Mrs. Henly hurried over. Several other parents came running out of the den. A lot of kids were crying. The boy and girl were screaming at the top of their lungs.
Mrs. Henly glared furiously at me. “What have you done to them?” she snapped.
“Must be something wrong with the trick,” I explained lamely.
She dragged the kids to the bathroom to wash their faces.
The other parents struggled to calm down the crying kids.
My heart was pounding. I felt sick. “What went wrong?” I asked Harrison.
I stuck my finger in the whipped cream. And took a tiny taste.
“Yuck!” I groaned. “It’s not whipped cream!”
“Huh?” Harrison took a tiny taste. “It’s soap!” he declared, making a face. “Shaving cream or some kind of soap! No wonder it burned their eyes!”
“I — I filled it before I left home,” I stammered. “I don’t understand — ”
I stopped. Suddenly, I knew what had happened.
The twins. Katie and Amanda.
They had done it again. They made a switch while I was getting into my costume.
“I’ll kill them!” I shrieked.
I felt Mrs. Henly’s firm hand on my shoulder. She hurried Harrison and me to the door. “You kids need to practice,” she said angrily. “I’m going to call your mother, Jillian.”
“Huh? Call my mother?” I cried.
“To explain to her why I can’t pay you. You ruined Joslyn’s birthday party. You just ruined it.”
She practically shoved us out the door.
Harrison and I stepped out under dark skies. Cold raindrops hit my face and shoulders. I knew the white clown makeup was running down my face, but I didn’t care.
I let out a sob. “What am I going to do?” I wailed. “How can I explain to my mom what happened? I’m so embarrassed!”
“Just tell her we stunk,” Harrison moaned.
We trudged sadly down to the street. Our sneakers crunched over the gravel drive. The wind changed direction, blowing the cold rain into our faces.
Harrison turned to me. His eyes flashed excitedly inside the red makeup circles.
“Jillian, I have an idea!” he cried. “Let’s bring Slappy to life!”
I stopped and stared at him. “Have you totally lost it? What are you saying?” I cried.
“Let’s do a ventriloquist act for our next party Saturday night,” he replied. He heaved the bag to the curb. “We don’t need these dumb tricks, Jillian. Let’s work up a funny act with dummies.”
“Get serious,” I muttered. The rain spattered my head and shoulders. The heavy eye makeup ran into my eyes.
“I am serious,” Harrison insisted. “You can use Slappy. I’ll get another dummy. We’ll get a bunch of joke books and put together an act for them. It’ll be great. Better than Jimmy O’James! I mean, two dummies have to be funnier than one!”
The rain came down harder. I rubbed my eyes, trying to get the makeup out. The white makeup ran down over my clown ruffle. The wet costume stuck to my skin.
“How about it?” Harrison demanded. “A whole new act. What do you say?”
“Well … okay,” I agreed, rubbing my eyes. “At least we won’t need costumes and makeup for a ventriloquist act.” I ripped the wet ruffle off and stuffed it in the bag. “I never want to be a clown again!”
* * *
It rained the whole weekend. The weather fit my gloomy mood perfectly.
When Mom asked me how the birthday party went, I snapped, “Don’t even go there.”
Mom probably got the whole ugly story from Mrs. Henly, because she never mentioned it to me again.
I cornered the twins in their room and angrily blamed them for ruining my clown act. “You could have blinded those kids with that soap!” I screamed.
“But we didn’t do it,” Katie insisted. “We didn’t touch your dumb tricks.”
“We weren’t even home,” Amanda added. “We were visiting our friend Stevie yesterday — remember?”
I gasped. She was right. The twins hadn’t been home.
But then … who had switched the soap for the whipped cream?
Who?
* * *
After school on Monday, I met Harrison. He came pedaling up to me furiously on his bike. “I called the magic store,” he reported. “They don’t have a ventriloquist dummy.”
I was bent over my bike. The front tire looked low to me. “So where are you going to get one?” I asked, studying the tire.
“I called the Little Theater,” Harrison replied. “They gave me the ventriloquist’s address.”
I squeezed the bike tire. “Why do you want that?”
“I’ll bet he has another dummy he could sell us,” Harrison said. “Or maybe he could loan us one.”
I climbed to my feet. “But when I saw him on the street that day, he acted so weird — remember? He yelled at me to get rid of Slappy. Then he ran away.”
“Maybe he was in a hurry or something,” Harrison said. He pulled a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. “I have his address here. Can you come with me to his house?”
I hesitated. I didn’t really want to go see Jimmy O’James. But I did want to ask him some questions about Slappy. And I didn’t want Harrison to go by himself.
“Okay,” I said, climbing onto my bike. “What could happen?”
“My parents don’t like me to ride my bike this far,” I told Harrison.
He was pedaling hard, holding the ventriloquist’s address in one hand. “It’s just a few blocks past Dawson, I think,” he replied, breathing hard.
We had passed through our neighborhood, through town, and then through several small neighborhoods on the other side of town. After some wooded blocks, the houses became smaller and closer together.
“We’re too far from home,” I said as my bike bumped over some railroad tracks. A scraggly dog chased us for a few blocks, barking and nipping at my legs.
We pedaled past a row of beat-up-looking mobile homes lined up in a weed-choked lot. “Harrison — are you sure you know where you’re going?” I cried.
“Well …” He stared at the address in his hand as if it were a road map. Suddenly, he braked to a squealing stop. “Hey — that must be the house. Up there.”
He pointed to a big, gray-shingled house tucked back in the trees. Nearly hidden by low tree limbs. The house stood completely dark. A rolled-up newspaper rested on the roof just above the gutter. The lawn was overgrown with tall grass and weeds.
“Yes. This is it.” Harrison crinkled up the piece of paper and shoved it into his jeans pocket.
I gazed into the deep shadows of the trees, trying to see the house clearly. “What a creepy house. Doesn’t look as if anyone is home,” I murmured.
We walked our bikes up the driveway, which was cracked and broken. The tall weeds shifted and rustled as some kind of animal scurried to get out of sight.
A squirrel? A chipmunk?
I shivered.
We set our bikes down on their sides in the tall grass that grew over the front walk. Then we made our way onto the creaking, wooden front porch.
I pressed the doorbell. But I didn’t hear it buzz.
Harrison knocked and called out. “Mr. O’James — are you home?”
We waited, then knocked again. “Anybody home? Hel-lo?”
Harrison knocked one more time — and the front door swung open.
No one standing there.
I poked my head in. Darkness inside. “Anybody home?”
“Let?
??s go in,” Harrison urged, giving me a soft push. “Maybe he’s in back or something.”
I hesitated. “Go in? Do you think we should?”
“Let’s check it out,” Harrison said.
“Well … okay.” I took a deep breath and led the way inside.
A short hallway led into a long, narrow front room. The trees over the house blocked most of the sunlight from the windows. But even in the dim light, I could see that the room was bare.
“Anybody home?” Harrison called, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Mr. O’James? Are you here?” His voice echoed off the bare walls.
We made our way quickly to the next room. Movement on the floor made me stop. “Oh, yuck,” I moaned.
Cockroaches!
Dozens of them. They scampered over my sneakers. I felt them prickling my ankles.
“Owww! Get them off! Get them off me!” I jumped up and down, slapping at the disgusting, swarming bugs.
Then I leaped over them to catch up to Harrison. “Gross,” I muttered. “The place is crawling with bugs.”
We found ourselves in a room with a long table down the center. At first I thought it was the dining room. But the shelves of tools and supplies on three walls made me realize we were in some kind of workshop.
I tugged Harrison’s sleeve. “We really don’t belong in here. We should go.”
Harrison ignored me and picked something up from a corner of the long table. “Check it out.” He pushed it in front of my face.
“Hey — ” It was a wooden dummy head. It had the same cold eyes and crooked smile as Slappy’s.
“There are body parts all over the room,” Harrison reported. He pulled a pair of slender legs off a shelf. Then he picked up another dummy head.
“He must build all of his dummies here,” I said, stepping into the next room.
“Maybe he can build one for me,” Harrison suggested. “That would be cool.”
I poked my head into the kitchen. Bare. No food. No plates or bowls or pots and pans.
“He’s gone,” I told Harrison. “I think he has moved out.”
“No way!” Harrison protested. “We need another dummy.”
“Well, it doesn’t look as if anyone lives here,” I said. I made my way into the small dining room behind the kitchen. “I mean, look around, Harrison. Do you see — ”
My words caught in my throat.
I gasped in horror. My hand shot up to my mouth.
Harrison saw it too. “Ohhhh.” A sick moan escaped his throat.
We both stared at the dining room table.
At the human head lying on its side on the table.
Jimmy O’James’s head.
We both crept forward, a step at a time. I grabbed Harrison’s arm. “Is he — ? Is it — ?”
Harrison cried out and jerked his arm away. “Sorry,” I muttered. I didn’t realize how hard I was squeezing his arm.
The ventriloquist’s head lay on its left ear. His dark eyes were wide-open, staring blankly at the wall.
I swallowed hard as we leaned over the head.
Harrison picked up the head. “A dummy head!” he cried.
“Oh, wow!” I exclaimed. I pressed a hand over my pounding heart, trying to slow it. “I don’t believe it! It looks so real! He made a dummy head of himself!”
Harrison used his other hand to move the mouth up and down. “Hello. I’m Jimmy O’James, and I’m a dummy,” he said in a hoarse voice, trying not to move his lips.
“Come on. Stop goofing and let’s go,” I pleaded. “This place is really creeping me out.”
“Whoa. Wait,” Harrison insisted.
“No. I mean it,” I told him. “I’m getting out of here — now!”
“But check this out!” Harrison cried.
I turned to him. He had set the head back on the table. And now he was flipping through a small, tattered book.
“What is that?” I demanded, moving back into the room.
“This is so cool!” Harrison exclaimed. “It’s some kind of notebook. A diary, I think.”
“Whose diary?” I asked, stepping up to him.
“Jimmy O’James’s diary,” Harrison replied. His eyes scanned the pages. “Wow. There’s all this stuff about Slappy in here.”
I pulled the book from Harrison’s hands. “Slappy? What about Slappy?”
I quickly skimmed the pages. The diary was written in a tiny, neat handwriting. The blue ink had faded. But it was still easy to read, even in the dim light of the dining room.
“Wow. This can’t be true!” I exclaimed. “The ventriloquist must have been writing a horror book or something. This can’t be real.”
“Why?” Harrison demanded eagerly. “What does it say?”
“It — it’s unbelievable!” I stammered. My eyes slid down the page.
“Jillian — what does it say?” Harrison screamed impatiently.
Squinting at the small handwriting, I began to read….
The puppet maker was not a normal man. At least that’s what I heard. This is the story as it was told to me. The puppet maker was a sorcerer who used his puppet creations for evil. His puppets and toys made people sick with strange illnesses. He built dolls that injured their owners. Toys that stole precious belongings while their owners slept.
The sorcerer loved spreading misery and evil through innocent-looking toys.
“This has to be a made-up story,” Harrison interrupted. “It sounds like a story. It can’t be true.”
I chewed my bottom lip. “I don’t know,” I replied, flipping back through the pages. “I don’t know if this is true or not.”
I continued reading out loud….
The dummy named Slappy is the sorcerer’s most evil invention. He stole a coffin for its wood. He carved the dummy from the coffin wood.
And then the sorcerer sent his own evil into the dummy. The sorcerer’s evil spirit lives inside Slappy, ready to be awakened by the reading of the evil words of magic the sorcerer wrote.
The sorcerer’s evil lives inside Slappy.
“These words are underlined in the diary,” I told Harrison. I read them again….
The sorcerer’s evil lives inside Slappy.
I continued reading….
The ancient words of sorcery to bring him alive are written on a slip of paper inside the dummy’s jacket. When the ancient words are read aloud, the dummy — and the evil — come to life.
I have managed somehow to put Slappy to sleep. I’m not sure how I did it. I only care that the dummy sleeps. I tossed the dummy in the trash, to be hauled away and crushed.
My only hope is that no one finds him. That no one reads those evil words that will bring him back to life.
“Whoa,” Harrison murmured, shaking his head. “We found that slip of paper — remember?”
A chill ran down my back. “I started to read those words. Thank goodness I never finished saying them!”
Harrison stared hard at me. “If this story is true, then Slappy really could have come alive. He really could have stuffed your lizard into his mouth.”
“And switched the whipped cream in our trick with soap,” I added.
We stared at each other in silence.
“But we didn’t finish saying the words — remember?” I cried. I took a deep breath. “Besides, this whole story is crazy. Wooden dummies can’t come to life — can they?”
A loud crash made us both jump.
The sound of the front door slamming.
I closed the little diary. Harrison shoved it into his jeans pocket.
We both froze, staring into the dim gray light.
And listened to slow, scraping footsteps coming nearer … nearer …
The sound of a dummy dragging itself over the floor.
CLICK, SCRAPE … CLICK, SCRAPE. CLICK, SCRAPE …
I pictured Slappy, his legs rubbery, his hands dragging along the floor. Pulling himself … pulling himself through the house to us.
Harrison and I both
gasped as a white-haired man in dark work overalls shuffled into the room. In his right hand, he gripped a cane, which he tapped along the floor. He walked with a limp.
His mouth opened in surprise as he saw us. He leaned heavily on the cane. “What are you kids doing in here?” he demanded. He had a breathless whistle of a voice.
“We … uh … were looking for Mr. O’James,” I finally choked out.
The man pointed behind him. “I’m the neighbor,” he explained. “I saw the front door open. Thought I’d better see if someone broke in.”
“We thought maybe Mr. O’James was home,” I told him, glancing at Harrison. “But — ”
“He’s out on tour,” the neighbor interrupted, shaking his head. “A long tour. He just took off. Didn’t even say good-bye.”
He shifted his cane from hand to hand. “Don’t know what the big hurry was. He’s an odd bird.”
“Thanks for telling us,” Harrison said. “Guess we’d better get going.”
A few seconds later, we were back on our bikes, pedaling for home. The sun was dropping behind the trees. We rode into a cold wind.
“Now what are we going to do?” Harrison demanded unhappily, pumping hard as we moved uphill. “Where am I going to get a dummy for the birthday party Saturday night?”
I shifted gears and rolled up beside him. “I have an idea,” I said. “You can be the dummy. I’ll be the ventriloquist, and we can — ”
“And I’ll sit on your lap and make my mouth go up and down?” Harrison cried. “No way! Forget it, Jillian.”
“Well … I really don’t want to do a ventriloquist act,” I confessed.
Harrison narrowed his eyes at me. “Why not?”
“I don’t want to use Slappy,” I replied. A chill rolled down my back. “I … I want to get that dummy out of my house.”
Harrison let out a shrill laugh. “You don’t really believe what it said in that little book — do you?”
“Maybe,” I replied. “Maybe I do. Maybe that dummy really is evil, Harrison. I don’t want to mess with it. I — ”
“But I’ve got an awesome idea!” he protested. We braked for a stop sign. “What about Mary-Ellen?” he asked.