Champ ignored the conversation and stuck out his hand for her to shake. She declined.
“I’m Champ, by the way,” he said cheerfully. “We’re going to the semiformal, if you want to come, and invite a friend … I don’t care what she looks like.”
But Hannah obviously wasn’t listening. She was looking past him, eyes fixed on the manuscript I’d unlocked.
“Did you …” She swallowed, hard. “Did you open that lock?”
“I may have,” I admitted. “I’ll just put it back and we’ll pretend this whole thing never happened.”
I reached around her and grabbed the manuscript. I just meant to slide it back into place, I really did. I didn’t mean to open it.
It just happened.
“No!” Hannah cried. “Don’t open it!”
Before I could ask her what the big deal was, a gale-force wind blasted us off our feet. “Nooooo!” I uttered a scream as we toppled backward into the wall.
Had I hit my head? Suddenly, I was seeing things.
I must have been seeing things, because surely there wasn’t a fifteen-foot-tall, two-ton, hairy, fanged monster standing in the middle of the study.
Right?
“Nobody move,” Hannah whispered, staring at the monster. Which meant she saw it, too. Which meant it was real.
Champ opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out.
The monster’s deafening roar made the floor tremble beneath us. The shelves shook. Manuscripts and voodoo dolls tumbled to the floor.
We backed away from the monster, back and back and back—until there was no farther back to go.
Behind us stood a huge bay window. In front of us? An abominable snowman, charging like a freight train.
“Get down!” I screamed, tugging Champ out of the way as the monster hurtled toward us—and then straight past us, blasting through the window in an explosion of broken glass.
The gigantic snowman landed on the lawn with a deafening thump and stormed into the night. I stared at the hole in the wall where the window used to be.
Hannah glared at both of us, like somehow this was our fault! “My dad’s gonna kill me,” she said, sounding more irritated than anything else. Then she snatched the manuscript away from me and ran outside—I guess, to chase after the monster.
“Too bad about her dad, but, uh, Zach?” Champ was wheezing and sputtering, having a tough time forming words. But he finally found the ones he was looking for. “What. The. Heck. Was. That?”
I thought it was pretty clear. It was a fifteen-foot-tall abominable snowman that had somehow jumped out of a book and into our town. He was probably off looking for some people to eat. And for some reason, instead of shrieking and screaming and running away like a normal person, Hannah was running toward him.
What could I do but follow her?
I figured we could track Hannah by tracking the monster, and that didn’t turn out to be too hard. He had cut a path of destruction through the neighborhood—blaring car alarms, smashed fences, crumpled garbage cans. There were dogs going nuts, their owners looking totally panicked—and there was Hannah, rounding the block and leaping gracefully over a downed tree.
“Hannah! Wait!”
“Go home, Zach!” she called over her shoulder without even slowing down. “You’re in over your head.”
I sped up and managed to catch her, jogging by her side. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Can’t explain. Gotta go.”
Then she sped up, which would have been no problem. Except suddenly Champ flung himself at me and wrapped his arms around my waist.
“Dude, get off!”
By the time I managed to shake him, Hannah was long gone.
“Listen very carefully,” Champ said. “That’s the Abominable Snowman of Pasadena. You don’t get that nickname by accident. And it just crawled out of a book. That doesn’t happen.”
Yeah, no kidding.
“I’m going after Hannah,” I told him, and took off again, following the sound of car alarms and dog howls.
“I read what he did to Pasadena!” Champ called after me. “No joke!”
I’ve got to hand it to the guy—he was clearly scared out of his mind, but he refused to leave me behind. We ran together through the deserted streets of Madison, signs of destruction everywhere we looked. It was like a tornado had ripped its way through the town. A tornado with fangs and a really bad attitude.
We tracked the monster all the way to the Madison ice rink. Of course! Where else would a snowman go but the coldest place in town? He had torn an entire section of fence off its hinges and shattered the nearest window. Hannah was already there, climbing through.
Champ grabbed me before I could join her. “I’ve been thinking about it, and—setting the monster aside—I really think we should give Hannah her space.”
I shook him off again—I was getting pretty good at that—and hoisted myself up to the window.
“My dad always says, ‘Women need their space!’ ” he shouted after me.
I squeezed through, trying to avoid the jagged glass.
The ice rink was deserted—or at least it seemed that way. But the monster had clearly been here. Smashed arcade games lay on their sides, crushed benches littered the ice, broken glass crunched beneath every footstep. Claw marks had shredded the walls. But there was no snowman—and no Hannah.
“We should call the cops,” Champ said in a low voice as we crept toward the ice.
“Have you met the cops in this town?”
Champ sighed. “Fair enough.”
I hesitated for a moment, and he walked right into me. “A little space?”
“Totally get it,” he said. “My bad.”
But when we started walking again, I could feel him back there like my shadow, just millimeters behind me.
“This is one of the top five stupidest things I’ve ever done,” he complained.
We both jumped at the sound of an explosion. I dropped to my knees and gazed frantically around. It took me a few seconds to see it was a burst soda can, fizzing with Coke.
I climbed up quickly and spotted Hannah standing dead center on the ice. She was spinning slowly in place, holding the open book in front of her like some kind of shield.
Or some kind of weapon.
Champ snorted. “What’s she gonna do? Read it a story?”
We slip-slid our way toward her, feet skidding out from under us every few steps. My breath was coming out in steamy puffs, and my toes were instantly numb. This place was cold: definitely abominable snowman territory. So where was he?
Once again, Hannah didn’t look very pleased to see us. I was starting to think she wasn’t exactly the getting-rescued type.
“What’s happening?” I asked her. “How did that thing just pop out of a book?”
“Shhh!” she hissed. “It’s in here.”
No kidding, I thought.
“We should get a gun,” Champ suggested.
“A gun? We need a tank!” I said.
“Wait. He’s made out of snow!” Champ said excitedly.
“Flamethrower?”
“Bag of salt!”
“Shhh!” Hannah said again. “It can’t be killed.”
That wasn’t the best news. In the unhappy silence that followed, something dropped on the ice with a tiny ping. I knelt, trying not to fall, and picked it up.
“An M&M?”
Another one dropped. Then another. Suddenly it was raining M&M’s.
And Snickers.
And Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
Champ snatched a 3 Musketeers. “Uh … guys?”
We all looked up—just in time to see a vending machine hurtling through the air straight down on us!
“Looook out!”
We dove in three directions, skidding across the rink as the huge machine slammed into the ice.
The gigantic snowman followed, landing with a crash on the vending machine. Then he scrabbled through the he
ap of candy like he was digging for treasure.
I felt almost hypnotized by the thing. He was so big … so powerful … so snowy.
“Come on,” I said, shaking myself out of it. “It’s distracted.”
Hannah didn’t move.
So I took one arm, Champ took the other, and we yanked.
“You don’t understand!” she protested as we dragged her to safety. “The only way to stop him is to suck him back into the book.”
“New plan,” Champ suggested, still moving away from the creature as quickly as he could. “Leave the book open, we’ll run away, it’ll suck itself back in. Job well done.”
“No!” Hannah pulled herself out of our grasp. “I’m not close enough!” She unlocked the manuscript with a loud click.
Too loud. The snowman turned in our direction, growling at the sight of the book.
Then he came for us.
Hannah didn’t back away. She held the book out in front of her, returning the snowman’s fierce glare.
“What is she doing?” Champ cried.
“Just wait,” Hannah said, in a steady voice.
“Hannah, open the book!” I urged. The monster was thudding closer and closer.
“Not yet,” Hannah murmured. “Almost there … almost … now!”
She opened the book. The wind kicked up again, this time a funnel sucking everything in toward the pages.
Yes. Yes. It was working. It was pulling the creature closer … closer …
But then the monster raised his giant, hairy arm the size of a construction girder—and smacked the book out of her hands. It went flying across the rink.
Hannah lunged for the book, and the monster lunged for Hannah. He slammed his massive fist into the ice. The rink shuddered so hard she lost her footing and stumbled.
Now there was nothing to stop the snowman from getting his hands on the book—nothing but me.
I spotted a pile of hockey sticks and grabbed the closest one. Then I skidded toward the book. SMACK! I knocked it as far across the rink as I could. The snowman leaped for it, but snagged himself on a goal net.
While the monster disentangled himself, I pulled Hannah off the ice, and we ran for the book together.
“Guys!” Champ shouted.
We turned around: Champ was sitting at the wheel of a Zamboni machine. The engine roared.
“Good idea!” I shouted.
And then the Zamboni started moving across the ice … about as fast as a turtle.
“Bad idea!” I corrected myself, as the abominable snowman shrugged off the goal net and stomped his way toward the Zamboni. “Get off that thing!”
Champ abandoned ship just as the snowman smashed it with one big, hairy punch.
Champ tumbled off the ice and into the penalty box on the sidelines. The snowman roared and turned his attention toward Hannah and me.
“Run!” I cried.
This time, she listened. We skidded across the ice, trying not to look back—but you didn’t have to look back to know the monster was close. I could feel his hot, putrid breath on my back.
“In here!” Champ shouted, waving wildly from the penalty box.
The snowman was closing in. There was no way we could outrun him. But maybe …
I yanked on Hannah’s arm, hard, and we both dropped to the ice. Momentum carried us forward in a baseball slide, and we slammed straight into the penalty box, safe behind its thick Plexiglas door.
Seconds later, the snowman crashed toward us, slamming his head into the door. He unleashed a deafening roar of pain—then passed out cold.
Not so abominable now, are you? I thought.
We were safe … for about five seconds. Then the snowman woke up.
“AAAAAAAAH!” he roared.
“AAAAAAAAH!” we screamed.
The monster pounded his fists against the Plexiglas, which couldn’t stand up to his impossible might. Tiny cracks spider-webbed their way across the door. It was only a matter of time, and we had nowhere left to run.
“Stop!” a voice boomed.
It was Shivers.
Shivers, standing in the center of the ice, holding the book wide open. A tornado of wind erupted from the pages with a giant sucking sound, pulling the snarling snowman toward it.
The monster dug his claws into the ice, desperately trying to battle the vacuum, but it was no use.
I gaped in disbelief. The closer the creature got to the book, the fuzzier he got, almost like he was melting into … ink? Fur and fangs faded out, resolving into letters, which swirled back onto the page.
And then, just like that, he was gone.
Shivers slammed the book shut.
Every muscle in my body unclenched. I let out a loud, long sigh. I’d never been so relieved.
That is, I was relieved until I saw the look Shivers was shooting at us. Then I kind of wished I could trade him for the abominable snowman.
“All of you,” Shivers growled in a murderous voice. “In the car. Now.”
I felt like a six-year-old, slumped in the backseat of Shivers’s Wagoneer, waiting to get yelled at.
Champ was fidgeting beside me, while Hannah sat up in the front, staring at the window, probably trying to pretend she was anywhere else. I know I was.
He kept us waiting a long time. The guy knew how to build suspense.
“What are you gonna do to us?” Champ finally got up the nerve to ask.
Shivers didn’t turn his eyes from the road. “Silence.”
Champ leaned toward my ear. “We can’t ask questions?” he whispered loudly. “Seems like—”
Shivers exploded.
Hannah spoke for the first time since we’d left the rink. “Dad, they were only trying to help.”
He slammed a fist down on the steering wheel, and I wondered whether maybe this was a conversation we should postpone until the car stopped moving. Or until, like, never.
Shivers’s eyes flickered toward mine in the rearview mirror. “I told you that if you didn’t stay away from us, something bad would happen. That’s the problem with kids today—they don’t listen.” He shook his head. “You had to pick The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena? Couldn’t have picked Little Shop of Hamsters?”
The pieces were all falling into place, and it was suddenly pretty obvious what was going on here. Well, maybe not the part about monsters jumping out of books and into Madison, Delaware, but the rest of it.
“You’re him, aren’t you?” I said. “You’re R.L. Stine.”
He didn’t flinch. “I don’t even know who that is.”
But I wasn’t about to let him get away with that, not after what he and his stupid monster had put us through. “Well, just as well,” I said. “Because his books stink.”
“Whose books?” Champ asked, confused.
Hannah glanced at me, finger sliding across her throat in a cut-it-out motion, but I was too close to quit. I was doing exactly what she’d tried to do earlier—catching the monster with his own books.
“I can’t decide which one I hate more,” I mused, biting back a smile, “Monster Blood or Go Eat Worms!?”
Hannah slouched in her seat, giving up on me.
“I’m so confused,” Champ said.
But Shivers—I mean, Stine—knew exactly what I was talking about. “I mean, you see the endings coming from a mile away,” I said. And then, the fatal blow. “It’s like, stop trying to be Stephen King, man.”
Bingo. Stine slammed on the brakes. The car skidded to a stop. He whipped around in the seat, fixing me with one of those killer glares of his, but he couldn’t scare me anymore.
Well, not much, anyway.
“Who are you to talk about Stephen King?” he snapped. “I—”
Hannah grabbed his arm. “Dad, please calm down.”
He muttered some words I couldn’t hear under his breath. Then he shrugged and took his foot off the brake. The car started moving again, this time way too fast.
“Dad?” Hannah said nervously. “Y
our face is doing that red thing again.”
That just made him bear down harder on the gas. His fingers squeezed the wheel so hard they turned white.
And Champ finally caught up with the rest of us. “No way,” he said, bouncing in his seat. “You’re R.L. Stine? That’s you? You’re famous! Really? Really?”
Champ was having some kind of fit, bouncing so hard that his head nearly hit the ceiling. “R.L. Stine! Oh, man! I never do this, but can I get a picture for my Instagram?” Without waiting for an answer, he pulled out his phone and shoved it in front of Stine’s face, grinning for a selfie.
The flash was blinding—and not just for me. Stine nearly swerved off the road. “What the heck are you doing!” he roared, steering back into the right lane.
“Sorry.” Champ didn’t sound sorry. And he certainly didn’t look sorry. “Just wanted to get a photo.”
“Oh, can I see it?” Stine asked, suddenly polite.
Champ handed over the phone—and Stine tossed it out the window.
That was the end of conversation.
It was an endless, silent ride back to my house. Finally, Stine pulled into my driveway, and we all climbed out.
“So what happens now?” I asked him.
His eyebrows knit together in a vicious V. “You go home, put on your pj’s, get your blankie, go nap-nap, and in the morning, tonight will just feel like a bad dream.”
For a kids book author, he really seemed to have a problem with kids.
He hustled Hannah into the house before we could even say good-bye … so we went in right after them. Stine was so angry, he didn’t even notice.
“Go upstairs and pack your bags!” he shouted at her. “We need to get out of here before people start asking questions.” He strode across the room to the flat-screen TV and swung it out from the wall. There was a giant hole in the plaster, and Stine reached inside to grab a suitcase.
Hannah paused on the stairs, spotting me and Champ in the doorway. Then she took a deep breath. “I don’t wanna go,” she told her father.
I got the feeling it was the first time she’d ever dared talk back to him.
“I like it here,” she said quietly.
His voice softened. “Honey, you have to understand—”
“I don’t have to understand anything!” she shouted. “I just want to be normal for once!”