Goosebumps the Movie

  Stine didn’t seem all that bothered that he was in sync with a criminally insane dummy.

  “He’s cutting us off,” Stine went on. “Isolating us.”

  There was a loud thud on the hood of the car.

  “What was that?” Champ asked in a trembling voice.

  We all peered through the windshield into darkness: Nothing.

  A second later, two handprints appeared on the windshield.

  Stine gulped. “It’s the Invisible Boy! He’s a menace!”

  Whatever was out there scampered onto the roof. We could hear him dancing around up there.

  Then Champ jerked back, as if something had reached through the open window and slapped him hard. “Ow!” he yelped.

  Suddenly, he was yanked off the seat by his tie. His head ricocheted back with one invisible slap after another. He swatted the air uselessly. It would have been hilarious if it hadn’t been so terrifying. “Help!” he screamed, whacking at empty space. “Help me! Help!”

  Stine slammed on the brakes, and whatever was clinging to the car landed hard on the grass, grunting at the impact.

  “I think we’re safe now,” Stine said, then pushed the pedal to the floor. Better not to take any chances.

  Above us, there was a thud.

  Then another.

  “Probably just some debris we can’t see,” Stine suggested.

  “For sure,” Hannah agreed.

  “Definitely not the invisible kid,” Champ said.

  Before we could worry about the noises on the roof that were definitely, hopefully, possibly not the Invisible Boy coming to rip our heads off, we turned into the town square—and stopped.

  Hannah gasped. “What the—”

  “Hannah, language,” Stine said automatically, but you knew he was thinking the same thing. We all were.

  Main Street was a frozen ruin. Downed telephone lines sizzled on the concrete. Shattered streetlights bent at crazy angles over silent streets. Fire hydrants spewed water. Something had taken a giant bite out of the statue of the town founder.

  The square wasn’t empty … not quite. There were about a dozen people scattered around—but none of them were moving, not even a little. Not even to breathe.

  Something had turned them into statues.

  Champ leaped out of the car and raced toward one of the frozen figures. “Oh my god, Dad! Dad! What have they—oh.” He laughed, then patted the frozen man on the shoulder. “Oops. That’s not my dad.”

  I wondered whether the people were alive or dead, whether they were watching us through terrified, frozen eyes, waiting for us to do something—to save them.

  “What are we going to do?” Hannah said, reaching out to one of the women, stopping just before her finger came to rest on the woman’s frozen tear.

  I’d never felt so helpless.

  Stine must have felt even worse. He was the one who’d written all these monsters into existence. Whatever they did, he must have felt like it was his fault. He sighed. “Without those manuscripts, there’s nothing I can do.”

  Suddenly, I had an idea. “If you wrote the monsters off the page, then maybe there’s a way you could write them back on the page.”

  He shook his head. “Do you know how many stories I’d have to write to capture every monster I ever created? I already have carpal tunnel in both hands—and my neck!”

  He didn’t get it. “Just one,” I explained. “One story to capture them all!”

  “Oh, just one?” he said, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “One story with every creature I’ve ever created? Great plan!”

  “You have a better idea?”

  I waited for him to propose one.

  But Stine was obviously out of ideas—everyone was. It was try mine, or give up, go home, and wait to get eaten by a carnivorous frog or whatever else Stine and Slappy had in store for us.

  So I made the decision for him. For all of us.

  “We need to get you to a computer so you can start writing. Here, we’ll break into that computer store.”

  Champ looked excited at the idea of getting his hands on some shiny new tech, but Stine shook his head again. “No, I need my typewriter. All my stories were written on that Smith Corona! It’s not just me. That typewriter … It’s special. It has a soul of its own. If I write on anything else, it won’t matter.”

  At least he was on board. Was it possible we actually had the beginnings of a real plan?

  “Where’s the typewriter?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry,” Stine assured us. “It’s in a safe place.”

  Just one problem: That night, there were no safe places left.

  Turned out the typewriter was in a display case down at the high school. Apparently, we were going to the dance after all. Which was fine with me—if there were monsters tearing the town apart, I needed to make sure my mom was okay.

  We sped toward the school, none of us much in the mood to chat. It’s tough to make small talk when you’re pretty sure a horde of monsters is tearing apart your town and you’re the only people with any hope of stopping them, even if it means you’ll probably die trying.

  I was trying not to dwell too much on that last part, though, so I figured I’d try to lighten the mood.

  “So, Hannah,” I said, all casual. She twisted around in her seat, probably expecting me to have something earth-shattering, or at least monster-related, to say. “Not sure how the rest of your night looks, but we might hit up this dance.”

  It was small, but it was a smile. “Hmm … I’ll have to check my schedule.”

  Suddenly, there was a hand between us—a thick, calloused hand that looked extremely Stine-like. He waved it in between us until Hannah turned around to face front.

  Stine took his eyes off the road just long enough to glare at me. “Stop talking to my daughter, or I’ll lock you in the trunk. Don’t think I won’t—”

  “Look out!” Champ pointed at two people standing in the middle of the street—right in front of our car. Stine swerved hard to the left, but it was too late. We rammed straight into them … and straight through them, into a telephone pole.

  We screamed as metal crunched and squealed. The car’s hood crumpled around the pole.

  The people we’d swerved to avoid were glowing and transparent in the moonlight. Ghosts.

  “Is everyone okay?” Stine asked. Gingerly, I tested my arms and legs. Shaking and shuddery, but all in one piece.

  Too bad we couldn’t say the same for the car.

  “What’s a telephone pole doing in the middle of the street?” I complained.

  “Uh …” Champ pointed up through the sunroof. “I don’t think that’s a telephone pole.”

  We looked up—and up, and up. The pole stretched at least thirty feet high.

  Champ was right: It wasn’t a pole at all.

  It was a leg … attached to a giant insect torso … attached to a fifty-foot-tall praying mantis!

  A praying mantis that was bowing its head in our direction, jaws gaping wide.

  “I don’t remember writing about a giant praying mantis,” Stine mused as the rest of us screamed our heads off.

  The mantis spit out a splatter of green mucus the size of an elephant. Mantis gunk plastered the windshield, encasing us in the dark.

  Outside, we could hear a primal hiss, low and crackly, like an egg sizzling on the world’s biggest frying pan.

  “Right.” Stine nodded sharply. “Now I remember.”

  “Get us out of here,” I suggested. “Now!”

  He turned on the windshield wipers. Seriously?

  “What are you doing?” I screeched.

  “Well, I can’t drive if I can’t see!”

  While the wiper smeared green slime back and forth across the windshield, Stine threw the car into reverse, and then into drive. We sped away from the mantis. We could hear it pounding concrete behind us, the road cracking beneath its massive weight. Stine swerved back and forth between its gigantic legs.

&
nbsp; “They’ve all turned against me!” he complained. “It’s like Frankenstein’s monster turning on Frankenstein!”

  “It’s above us!” Hannah cried as the mantis hissed again.

  Thick splats of mantis mucus rained down on the sunroof.

  “And behind us!” I shouted as another leg stomped down inches from the car’s trunk.

  “It’s everywhere!” Champ whispered in despair.

  “Everyone shut up, or I will pull this car over right now!” Stine warned.

  Instead of pulling over, he sped up, bouncing over a curb and into a supermarket parking lot, faster and faster until we barreled hard into a parked car. Only my seat belt kept me from flying through the windshield.

  Air bags exploded into our faces, and the car filled with smoke. We piled out, fast as we could, as the mantis closed in.

  “In here!” Hannah cried.

  We threw ourselves through the supermarket door just as the mantis snatched the car by its hood and tore off the roof. It screeched in frustration when it discovered we weren’t inside, then tossed the car across the parking lot.

  I closed my eyes and ducked beneath the checkout counter, thinking: Could have been us.

  “Why’d you have to come up with something so bizarre?” Champ whined. “Why, Stine? Why?!”

  “Just have a knack for it, I guess.” He sounded almost proud.

  The mantis leaped toward the overturned car and stomped on it, crushing it to a pancake.

  “My Wagoneer!” Stine cried. He seemed more dismayed by this than anything that had happened all night. “It had such low mileage!”

  Fortunately, the praying mantis had a taste for cars, and the parking lot was full of them. It hopped from car to car, having fun shaking them in the air and then crushing them flat.

  It might have been playing—or it might just have been looking for us.

  The supermarket lights were on and its Muzak was playing full blast, but the place was deserted. Everyone sane was probably at home, hiding under their beds.

  “How far are we from the high school?” I asked.

  “Not too far,” Hannah said. “We can cut through the cemetery.”

  A cemetery? “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  She shrugged. “The high school is just past the woods on the other side.”

  Stine narrowed his eyes. “How do you know that?”

  “Well …” Hannah looked like she’d said something she hadn’t meant to. “Sometimes I get a little stir-crazy and go exploring.”

  “When?”

  “At night,” she admitted. “After you go to bed.”

  It didn’t seem like such a big deal, especially after everything that had happened, but to Stine, it was a big deal.

  “You’re grounded!” he shouted.

  “That is so unfair!” Hannah shouted back.

  I rolled my eyes. “Um, you guys are both bringing up good points, but let’s keep moving while you argue.”

  As long we were in the market, I figured we might as well grab some supplies. Stine snagged a bag of chips. Champ gazed at a towering display of soda bottles.

  “Hey, you got a dollar I could borrow?” he asked Stine.

  “What? No. Why?”

  “I’m really thirsty! I need a soda.”

  Stine sighed. “Just take one. It’s an emergency. They’ll understand.”

  “Really?” You could see Champ weighing it in his mind. “I kinda want a Coke. Maybe a Gatorade, though …”

  Stine snatched a Pepsi off the rack and shoved it at Champ. “For god’s sake, here.”

  Hannah giggled and wandered toward the granola bars. I followed her.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said, smiling at her. I mean, sure, we were hiding out in a supermarket while a giant praying mantis waited outside to crush our heads, and we were about to go traipsing through a cemetery, but in the meantime, wasn’t I kind of, sort of on a date? “There’s way more going on here than New York.”

  Hannah stopped, turned to me, and—very gently—brushed some hair off my forehead. My skin buzzed at her touch.

  “What?” I said, quietly, afraid to do anything to startle her, ruin the moment. I’d never been this close to a girl before.

  “You cut yourself,” she said, and then went off in search of a first-aid kit.

  “Is it bad?” I asked, once she’d started dabbing at my forehead with a cotton swab. The sting of antiseptic brought tears to my eyes, but I blinked them back. No way did I want her to think I was crying over some little cut.

  “Yeah, it’s really bad.”

  “Is my face messed up?” I asked, trying not to panic.

  “Big-time.” She grinned. “It looks exactly the same.”

  Okay, maybe not the world’s most traditional date, but there we were, alone in the supermarket aisle, fluorescents flickering like candlelight, romantic Muzak, her face so close to mine, and in the background, the sound of something growling and gnawing at a bone—

  Wait a second.

  Hannah looked at me. I looked at her. Then we both turned to look at the meat section … where a giant, shaggy werewolf was gnawing on a side of prime rib!

  Stine and Champ joined us just as the wolf tossed the rib aside and started gnawing away at a bloody flank steak.

  Champ opened his mouth, but I pressed my finger to my lips. Maybe if we were very quiet and backed away very slowly, we could get out of there before the wolf sniffed out some über-fresh meat.

  Champ nodded okay, then twisted open the cap of his Pepsi.

  Hisssssssss.

  The werewolf swiveled its head toward us. We ran.

  Champ and Hannah raced toward the frozen-food section. I headed toward the pet aisle and Stine followed, but he got waylaid in personal hygiene.

  “The Werewolf of Fever Swamp can pick up my scent,” he explained, smearing himself with Purell. “I need to hide!”

  It didn’t work. I’d squeezed myself into a cardboard doghouse when I heard Stine whimpering. The wolf was coming straight for him. I didn’t stop to think—I just wiggled out of the cardboard house, grabbed a rubber steak from the nearest shelf, and waggled it at the wolf.

  “Here, doggy,” I called, then threw the steak as far as I could.

  Yesss! The werewolf yelped happily and went racing after the rubber steak.

  Hannah and Champ dragged Stine to his feet, and then we were off, racing toward the glowing EMERGENCY EXIT lights, trying to ignore the footsteps pounding behind us as the werewolf realized his meat was getting away.

  I kicked over a mop bucket, and soapy water went sloshing everywhere. The werewolf slipped and slid, and we ran, throwing ourselves through the back door and into the alleyway.

  Stine slammed the steel door shut behind us. “Let’s see him get through that!”

  About five seconds later, we did. The wolf exploded through the door.

  We turned and kept running, down the alley, into the back parking lot—straight into a dead end!

  The werewolf unleashed a set of short, halting barks, almost like he was laughing at us. Then he bared his fangs, lowered his head, and prepared to charge.

  I couldn’t believe it was all going to end here, cornered in a supermarket alley. Chomped to death by a fictional werewolf. “Well, guys, it’s been—”

  Headlights flooded the alley. A car engine roared. The werewolf turned from us toward the car—just as it steamrolled toward him and battered him straight into a brick wall.

  We gaped at the strange car, at the flattened werewolf, and at the driver, who leaned out her window and waved hello.

  “I’m okay!” she cried—just as the driver’s side airbag popped and knocked her back into the seat.

  “Who is that?” Hannah asked.

  I shook my head. I was confused, shocked, and more than a little impressed. “That is my aunt Lorraine.”

  Aunt Lorraine finally fought her way out of the airbag and climbed out of the car. I’d never seen her with
out perfect hair and makeup, but now she was a total mess. Her hair was standing straight out from her head, and her dress was coated with what looked like … poodle fur?

  Maybe we weren’t the only ones who’d had a strange night.

  “Oh my god!” she said, examining the coarse fur crumpled at the side of the car. “I just killed a bear?!”

  “It was actually a werewolf,” Hannah informed her, sounding as if this sort of thing happened to her every day.

  Aunt Lorraine didn’t seem surprised.

  “Uh, Aunt Lorraine, what are you doing here?” I asked.

  “This is the back of my store,” she said, pointing to the sign above the alleyway: “Be Dazzled by Lorraine.”

  “I didn’t know where else to go. I can’t get hold of your mother or the police or anyone!”

  That’s when she noticed that Stine was with us. She started patting down her wild hair and gave him a crooked smile, batting her eyelashes. “I don’t think we’ve officially met. My name’s Lorraine.”

  Uh-oh. I knew that smile. I knew those eyelashes. I didn’t know whom to be more afraid for—my aunt or Stine. Neither of them knew what they were getting into.

  “R.L. Stine,” he said, shaking her hand. “We owe you a debt of gratitude. Your reckless driving saved our lives.”

  “Thanks!” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “So, Stine, Shivers, whatever … you can call me Lorraine or Rainey or—”

  “Lorraine!” I cut in. “We don’t have time. I need you to drive to the police station and tell them to meet us at the high school. Can you do that?”

  She didn’t look very happy about it, but she said, “I can do that.” Then she whistled in appreciation. “What a night. My horoscope predicted all of this.”

  Hannah crinkled her forehead. “Your horoscope predicted a monster invasion?”

  She shrugged. “Pretty much. It said, ‘Prepare yourself for unexpected surprises.’ ”

  None of us could argue with that.

  The police headquarters were dark and vacant. A wall of TV monitors revealed the scope of the monstrous destruction: mummies, evil clowns, vampires, a colossal praying mantis with a thing for parked cars.