Chapter 1: The Slumber Party

Sophomore girls are really too old for slumber parties, but it's not stopping us from having one.

The room is plastered with Halloween decorations – Jack O' Lanterns provide the only light in the room, and black bats cut out from cardboard are hanging from the ceiling. My four friends and I, still in costume, have polished off the pumpkin pie baked by my mom, so the tin has been abandoned by the door. Candy wrappers cover the floor and show no sign of having any candy left in them. Sophie's little brother Greg obviously didn't know what he was letting himself in for when he let us take our pick from his trick-or-treat sack.

Sophie's blue eyes are looking up at me through blonde curls framed by an elaborate tiara. From her sleeping bag on the floor, her scaly sea-green dress and flippers shimmer in the candlelight, as do her silver fishnet tights. For a second, I feel kind of bad sitting in my big bed while my friends are in sleeping bags all the way down there, but then I think, Hey – my bedroom, my rules.

"Hey, Mary," says Sophie, "fancy a game of Spin the Bottle?"

Psyche (yes, that's her real name) suddenly takes her nose out of her Oxford Dictionary of First Names and stares at Sophie with wide, grey eyes. Being a Yeti for a day, pretty much her whole costume is white and fluffy, from her hooded jacket and baggy trousers down to her thick boots. Even her brown hair has been streaked with white hair dye.

"I do hope we shall be playing the Truth or Dare version," she says in her posh British accent, "and not the version in which we must kiss each other."

"You dummy!" cries Linden, the ginger cat-girl. "You can't play the kissing game without boys! I thought everyone knew that."

"I didn't know that," pipes up Caprice, the plant monster in the far corner near the bookcase. She shyly wraps a strand of red hair around her leaf-green finger. "I mean, if we were lesbians, we wouldn't need-"

"Truth or Dare it is," Sophie interrupts. I sigh with relief, glad that the conversation didn't stray into an awkward topic. That's one of the reasons why Sophie is my best friend – she knows what to do to make everything okay, something which my other friends don't quite understand. Linden is too bitchy, Caprice is too shy, and Psyche's skills lie in things like quantum physics and English literature, not social interaction and knowing when to shut up.

Sophie grabs an empty Diet Coke bottle and takes the first turn. It points to Linden, who makes a small smile.

"Truth or Dare?" asks Sophie.

"Dare," says Linden, without hesitation.

Sophie thinks for a bit, and then gathers up all the candy wrappers from the floor, making a pile in front of Linden. "I dare you to go to my house next door and show Greg how much candy we've eaten."

For a moment, Linden's eyes widen in fear, which is an unusual look for the most popular (and meanest) girl in high school. Pretty soon, though, the fear disappears. She scoops up the pile of candy wrappers and sashays out the door.

When she's gone, we all rush to the window and peep out. We see Linden stride down the sidewalk, tail swinging, and up the path to Sophie's house. We don't see her knock on the door and we don't see Greg answer it – but we can hear him just fine.

Seriously, if words were rocks, Linden would be black and blue. As she faces Greg's wrath, I cover my mouth with the tentacles of my costume to stifle the giggles. Finally, Greg slams the door and Linden storms away.

"Did you notice," says Psyche, "that Greg was shouting at her for exactly four minutes?"

"You timed it?" asks Caprice.

"I did," says Psyche. She shows us the stopwatch on her cell phone. She's right – it's exactly four minutes.

That's when I surrender to the giggles. I bend over and laugh out loud, and pretty soon tears are streaming down my face and my sides hurt. Everyone else joins in – except Linden, who suddenly appears in the doorway with a face that could kill.

Slowly and deliberately, she snarls, "I. Am. Going. To. Kill. You. All."

She points at the space by my bed where all the sleeping bags are, and we rush back to our places. I quickly wipe the tears from my face before Linden sees them.

"I'm going to kill you," she repeats, "starting with-" she spins the Coke bottle violently "-you!"

The bottle is pointing to me.

I look Linden in the eyes and smile. "Hit me with your best shot," I say.

"Truth or Dare?"

Normally I'd choose Dare, but I'm feeling brave tonight. I take a deep breath and say, "Truth."

"Why are you so obsessed with monsters?"

Darn it.

I look down at my costume, hoping for answers. It's a monster costume, made of purple chair fabric with grey tentacles that probably came from a shower curtain. A lamp makes up an eye on a stalk, and the hair comes from an old mop. The costume is hooded, and I have to see out through the teeth of the mouth. This is the costume that was made for me twelve years ago – only made much bigger, of course.

This is the costume that Kitty and Uncle Mike made for me.

All I've told my friends is that Kitty is the father figure in my life who visits me a lot and that Uncle Mike is a long-lost uncle that only I know about who writes to me occasionally.

They don't know that Kitty has blue fur and purple spots.

They don't know that Uncle Mike is small and green and only has one eye – not because he lost the other eye, but because he was born that way.

They don't know that Kitty and Uncle Mike live in Monstropolis, a city in a world beyond ours.

They don't know about this world behind our closet doors full of friendly monsters.

They don't know about what I did there twelve years ago.

I grip the sides of the bed and blink a few times, trying to pull myself together. "I-" I say, but no more words will come.

Everyone is looking at me. Even Psyche has put her Dictionary aside and is waiting patiently. "Go on," she prompts.

"Well," I say, "twelve years ago, I met Kitty and Uncle Mike-"

"We know that," Linden interrupts. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"I'm getting there," I insist. "They live in a city called Monstropolis." I pause.

"Where's that?" asks Caprice.

Now for the tricky part.

"Monstropolis is-"

I'm cut off by the sound of the closet door creaking open slowly.

"Oh no!" cries Caprice, clutching her pillow to her chest. "There's something in your closet!"

Now, when I told my friends that Kitty visits me a lot, I sort of forgot to mention that he comes through my closet door just about every night.

And it seems like I forgot to tell him about my slumber party.

"Don't worry, there's nothing in the closet," I say loudly. "Even if there was, it wouldn't dare to ruin a slumber party – would it?"

The closet door slams shut.

He got the message. That was a close one.

"Okay, this is all too strange," says Linden. "What was that all about?"

Before I can think of a good excuse, something strange happens, something even I wasn't expecting.

The top drawer of my chest of drawers opens by itself.

As I slowly get up to close it, the drawer moves by itself again and slams shut. A flash of purple makes me jump, and I fall back onto the bed. A lizard-like figure has materialised in front of the chest and is now arching his back and hissing at me.

A small scream escapes my lips.

Randall's back.