CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
‘Stay Away From the Tree House’ Excerpt
About R. L. Stine
1
“You have to cross your eyes, Wes.”
“No, you don’t, Wes. You just have to cross one eye.”
“That’s wrong, you jerk. Just stare at the two dots until they look like three dots, Wes. Then look at the whole picture and you’ll see it.”
The “it” everybody was talking about was a stereogram—one of those pictures with a hidden 3-D image. Mr. Gosling showed us one in our sixth-grade science class today. We’re studying optics and learning about how we see things.
It was lunchtime now, and my best friend, Lauren, and two other kids in my class were trying to give me tips on how to see stereograms. But I knew they were wasting their time.
I mushed my gravy into my mashed potatoes and slid the carrots to one side of my plate. The carrots in the school cafeteria are always soggy.
“It’s no use,” I said, pushing my glasses up. “I just can’t see 3-D.”
“You can, Wes,” Lauren insisted. “It just takes some practice. You’ll get it.”
That’s what I like about Lauren. She thinks positive. Another thing I like about her is her bright blue eyes. They look so cool under her black bangs.
“What will Wes get?” Cornelia Phillips demanded, shoving in next to me at the table.
Cornelia is one of the horrible twins who live next door to my family. Her horrible sister, Gabriella, strutted up right behind her.
Gabriella slid her tray across the table, then sat down, too. As if we’d invited them or something.
“What will you get, Wes?” Gabriella repeated. They’re both so nosy.
Then, while they waited for my answer, they both twirled their long blond ponytails. They wear them coming out of the sides of their heads, only on different sides so you can tell them apart. Otherwise they’re alike in every gross detail. They even snort alike when they laugh.
And I hear them snorting a lot because, as I said, the twins live next door to me—on Fear Street. Everyone has stories about the scary things that happen on Fear Street. But if you ask me, the twins are the scariest things on the block!
They’re worse than the ghost that everyone says plays hide-and-seek with you in the woods—and tries to steal your body. Or that ghostly substitute teacher my friend Zack had.
I call the twins Corny and Gabby. Perfect names. Corny’s always playing dumb practical jokes, mostly on me. She’ll do anything to make me look like a total idiot.
And Gabby’s always talking. She’s the biggest gossip at Shadyside Middle School. And guess who most of her stories are about? That’s right—me. Wes Parker.
“What will Wes get?” the twins demanded together, their voices growing higher and higher.
I tried to ignore them. That’s what Lauren always tells me to do. I stared down at my plate and mashed my potatoes around some more.
When no one answered, Corny finally changed the subject.
“Did you ever see anything grosser than that cow eye Mr. Gosling dissected?” she asked. Then she wrinkled her nose and gazed at everyone. Waiting for an answer.
“We’re eating lunch, Cornelia,” Lauren reminded her.
“Yeah, I thought it was going to squirt right off the table when he cut it open,” Gabby added, ignoring Lauren.
Lauren and I groaned and dropped our forks. The twins snorted together.
“Hi, Chad.” Corny waved at Chad Miller at the next table. He’s one of the cool kids. Chad didn’t even glance at her.
“Hey, he smiled at you!” Gabby said. She twirled her hair with one hand and stuffed her face full of potatoes with the other.
Lauren rolled her eyes.
“Wow. This table is bor-ring!” Corny groaned.
“Yeah,” Gabby agreed. She reached into her backpack and pulled out a poster. She spread it out on the table, practically pushing my tray off.
Oh, no, I thought. Another stereogram. The other kids leaned over to study it.
“Can you see it, Wes?” Corny asked in a fake sweet voice.
She knew I couldn’t. I never can see them. But I stared at the poster and tried hard to see the hidden image.
No use.
“Uh-uh,” I admitted. I felt really stupid. The twins can always do that to me. “I can’t see it. I just can’t see it.”
Corny leaned across my tray. She was right in my face. “Well, then, you’d better eat your carrots.”
Gabby rolled the poster up and both twins left, whispering to each other and snorting some more.
“They think they’re a riot,” I grumbled. “Eat my carrots. Very funny.”
I gazed down at my carrots.
Gasped in disbelief.
And then let out a scream that shook the room.
2
My carrots stared back at me!
An enormous eyeball poked up from the middle of them.
I shoved my chair away from the table. It caught on a loose floor tile and flipped over backward—with me in it.
Then someone started to clap—slowly. I gazed up. It was Corny. She wore a big grin on her face.
Then Gabby joined in. With the same slow, loud clap.
Lauren helped me up. “You okay?” she asked.
I nodded and straightened my chair.
The whole cafeteria was clapping and laughing now. Even the cool kids.
I tried to smile as I sat back down.
I picked up my fork and forced myself to prod the cow eye. It rolled into the mashed potatoes.
“It’s fake,” I said to Lauren through clenched teeth. “It’s only plastic.” Then I began to stand.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I am going to get up—and kill the twins,” I answered.
“Forget it,” Lauren replied, tugging me back down. “It was just another one of the twins’ stupid jokes. You have to ignore them.”
I glanced around, searching the cafeteria for them, but they had vanished. “I’m not going to ignore them. Not this time,” I said through clenched teeth. “This time I’m going to get even.”
* * *
I still felt upset when school let out. Lauren and I decided to hang around in the Old Village before heading home.
“I don’t care what you say, Lauren. This time I’m going to get back at the twins.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked. “You’re too cool to play any of their stupid jokes.”
“I don’t know . . .” I stopped short in the middle of the sidewalk. I felt as if someone had jerked me back by the hair. “Look!” I said, pointing into Sal’s Five-and-Ten.
The twins’ stereogram hung in the window. The one they showed us at lunch.
A sign over it read: MYSTERY STEREOGRAM—FIND THE HIDDEN IMAGE AND WIN A PRIZE!
“That’s it!” I cried.
“What are you talking about?” Lauren asked.
“That poster is the same one the twins had at lunch,” I explained. “So they must be trying to win the prize. If I can figure out the poster before they do, it will be the perfect revenge.”
“All right! Let’s go in!” Lauren cheered, leading the way into Sal’s.
The a
ncient wooden floor creaked under our feet as we stepped inside. “It smells funny in here,” I whispered. “Old and musty. And a little like rotting eggs.”
“Whew,” Lauren breathed. “It’s really hot, too.” She unzipped her jacket.
We wandered up and down rows of metal tables. Each was divided into sections by pieces of cardboard. None of the stuff seemed organized. Plastic dolls sat next to piles of pot holders. Tubes of lipstick leaned against a stack of pocketknives.
And everything loose. Nothing came in boxes or wrapped in plastic.
“This store is really old and really weird,” Lauren commented. She opened a lipstick to check the color. It was half used. Yuck.
We moved on.
Some old music played in the background. I recognized it. It sounded like the kind my grandfather plays when we visit him. Big band music, he calls it. It floated from a huge old radio.
I’d almost forgotten all about the Mystery Stereogram when a guy popped up from behind the back counter.
Lauren and I leaped back in surprise. He seemed to appear out of nowhere.
That must be Sal, I realized.
He dressed all in black and his hair was greased back. And he had an incredible mustache. It curled up and around to his cheeks. Really weird. But it wasn’t the weirdest thing about him.
The weirdest thing was his eyes. They were enormous and watery, like the cow eye in class. And they bulged out from his eye sockets.
I took a step back and nearly knocked over a basket full of Mystery Stereograms. I lifted one out and unrolled it. “I . . . I want one of these,” I said.
Sal blinked. “Oh. That,” he snarled.
“Uh, I was wondering—how come there’s a prize?”
“Is it a special kind of stereogram or something?” Lauren added.
Sal shook his head impatiently. “That has nothing to do with me.” Then he turned his back to us.
I cleared my throat. “But it’s in your window.”
“Yes.” He sighed, then spun around to face us again. “It is in my window. But I didn’t put it there. The poster company did. They are offering the prize. I allowed them to hang it up. I thought it might bring in customers. No one wants to shop in five-and-tens anymore. Everyone is at the mall.”
When he said “mall,” he curled his lip and rolled his huge eyes. “I can’t compete.”
Lauren spread the poster out on the dusty glass counter.
I stared hard at its billions of tiny fluorescent dots. They were yellow, green, orange, and pink. But I couldn’t see a picture inside it.
“I see only dots, Lauren,” I admitted.
Lauren moved closer to the poster, then backed away. Then she smiled. “No big deal, Wes. Neither can I.”
Sal reached out and grabbed the poster. “Good. Then that’s settled.” He started to shove it under the counter.
“But I want it,” I protested. I had to get my revenge on the two monsters of Fear Street. “I have to figure out how to see it.”
Sal frowned. “You can see it. You need only three things to see a stereogram.”
I waited, holding my breath. Finally, someone was going to tell me the secret.
“You need a right eye. A left eye. And a brain.” He smiled for the first time. He had big teeth, like a horse.
Some secret, I thought. Did he think I’d been trying to see stereograms without my brain? I handed my money over to Sal.
“You better be careful,” he warned as he rang up the sale on his noisy old-fashioned cash register.
“Be careful of what?” Lauren asked.
Sal moved around the counter to stand close to me. He placed his face right up to mine and opened his eyelids wide. His big eyes bulged out more than ever now. I could see all these tiny red veins running through his eyeballs.
I tried to back away, but the basket of rolled-up posters stood directly behind me.
Sal stared at me so hard I felt as though he had X-ray vision. “You have the power to see more than most of us,” he said in a creepy whisper.
I slid sideways to move away from him. This guy was beyond weird. “No, uh, I can’t really see well at all. That’s why I wear glasses.”
“I am not talking about twenty-twenty eyesight. I am talking about true vision. The power to see.”
He hissed the word see and his eyes bulged out even farther.
“Uh, it’s getting kind of late,” Lauren said. “We’d better get going, Wes.” She smiled nervously.
I grabbed the poster from Sal. Then Lauren and I practically jogged down the aisle to the door. I gripped the door handle and pulled the door open—but a huge hand flew over my shoulder and slammed it shut.
I spun around.
Sal stared hard at me.
“Remember,” he said again in that scary whisper. “You have the power to see. And some things are better left in two dimensions.”
Lauren and I opened the door and hurried onto the sidewalk.
What did he mean by that? I wondered.
Why was he trying to scare me?
3
I was still trying to figure out what Sal meant when I reached home. “You have the power to see.” Why did he keep saying that to me—and not to Lauren?
And why did he warn me to be careful?
I threw my jacket over one of the kitchen chairs and spread the Mystery Stereogram out on the table. I pinned it down with the salt and pepper shakers.
I stared and stared. “You have the power to see,” Sal’s words repeated in my head.
Ha! What did he know?
I couldn’t see a thing.
I rubbed my eyes, wiped my glasses on my flannel shirt, and tried again.
I gazed at the poster close up.
I stepped back and stared at it from far away.
Close up again.
Then far away.
“What on earth are you doing?” Mom asked as she walked through the kitchen door, struggling with two huge bags of groceries. “Didn’t you hear me honking the horn?”
“No. Sorry, Mom.” Boy, I must have really been concentrating!
I went out to the car for the last two bags of groceries. As I entered the kitchen, Clawd, our cat, streaked between my legs and bolted through the kitchen and into the living room. He nearly sent me flying.
Outside I could hear a dog’s annoying yipping. It was Fluffums, the twins’ nasty little dog.
Fluffums attacks Clawd every chance he gets. He hates Clawd. It figures.
“Look what I bought,” I said as Mom started unpacking the groceries. “It’s a poster. I got it at the weird five-and-ten store in the Old Village.”
Mom stopped and sniffed. “What’s that horrible smell?”
I sniffed. “I think it’s my poster. It smells like the store.”
“Sal’s Five-and-Ten?” she asked. “I haven’t been in that strange little store in years.”
“It’s strange all right,” I said. “Especially Sal.” I sat down at the table. “Take a look at the poster.”
Mom glanced at it.
“Cool, huh?” I asked.
“It really stinks,” Mom said, covering her nose.
“Yeah, I know. But look at it, Mom. It’s called a stereogram. And if you stare at it the right way, you can see a three-dimensional image hidden in it.”
Mom folded a bag and leaned over the poster. “All I can see are a bunch of colored dots.”
As Mom peered closer at it, my little sister, Vicky, ran into the kitchen. “Hey, Mom! Did you buy Froot Loops? Can I have a bowl now? Hey—is that 3-D?”
Vicky always does that. Asks a whole load of questions, one on top of the other. She doesn’t even give you time to answer.
“Yes, no, and yes,” Mom said. She’s used to Vicky and her questions.
But Vicky wasn’t even listening. She was staring at my poster. “Cool,” she said, pushing her glasses up her nose. “There’s one of these on the back of my cereal box. I’ll show you.” She reached up to the c
ounter cabinet and pulled the box down.
We all studied it. It had lots of red and blue squiggles.
“It says there’s a mouse hidden in the picture,” Vicky said, “and I can see it. It’s a big mouse.”
I stared at the box. All I could see were the squiggles. “Hey, how do you do that?” I asked. I couldn’t believe my little sister could see it and I couldn’t.
Vicky shrugged. “I kind of cross one eye, like this.” She peered up, and sure enough, behind her glasses I could see one eye gazing straight at me. The other was staring at her nose.
“Stop that, Vicky!” Mom exclaimed. “Your eyes will stay like that.”
Vicky uncrossed her eye. “It says on the cereal box there are other ways to do it, too.”
I read the directions off the back of the box. “Press your nose against the picture. Then, very slowly, pull it away. Don’t blink. As you look deeply into the picture, a 3-D image will appear!”
I tried it. No luck. Just a bunch of fat squiggles.
Mom tried it. “I feel silly.” She laughed. She slowly pulled the cereal box away from her face. “No. Wait. I’ve got it! There is a mouse! He’s eating something!”
I couldn’t believe it. They had to be teasing me.
“Here. Try it again, Wes,” Mom said to me. “It really works.”
I held the box close, pressing it against my nose. The tiny red and blue designs were a blur. I pulled the box away slowly, my eyes wide open. Not blinking.
But I could feel my eyes struggling to refocus. And that’s exactly what they did.
I was staring at squiggles.
No mouse.
No 3-D image.
I felt totally frustrated. “Okay,” I said, holding the box up in front of them. “If both of you can see it so well, what’s the mouse eating?”
Mom and Vicky peered at the picture together.
“Come on,” I said. “What’s it eating?”
“Swiss cheese,” they sang out together.
I slammed the box on the table. “I’ll do it,” I silently promised myself. “Even if it kills me.”
Clawd wandered back into the kitchen and jumped onto my lap. He tilted his head as he stared at the cereal box. Then he took a swipe at it, knocking the box over.
“I don’t believe it!” I shouted. “Even the cat can see 3-D! Wait a second. If you’re all so smart, tell me what’s in this picture,” I commanded.