"You mean Dolly?" Alan glanced over his shoulder. "Yeah, she's in her room, changing."
"I think you'd better come with me," said Prunella. "I'm afraid she may have some magical way of listening in on us."
Intrigued, Alan followed Prunella out of the house and down the sidewalk.
"Mr. Winslow just called me," Prunella related. "He's lost the Cleansing Stone. I think Dolly might have taken it."
"Don't be ridiculous," Alan responded. "We all saw him put the stone in the safe. Maybe he took it out and mislaid it somewhere."
"No, Alan," Prunella insisted. "When he opened the safe, it was gone."
"Hmm..." Alan's thoughts deepened, but he could think of no explanation.
"Remember the trick Dolly did with Muffy's hair ribbon?" Prunella went on. "She made it look like she gave it back to Muffy, but she still had it. What if she used the same trick on Mr. Winslow?"
"Why would Dolly want to steal the Cleansing Stone?" asked Alan, his voice rising to an indignant pitch.
Prunella shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe she wants to suck the evil out of all the kids who were mean to her."
"I don't believe Dolly would do such a thing," said Alan, shaking his head. "I mean, she can do all those tricks, and she could easily steal stuff if she wanted to, but she hasn't."
"I think we should ask her," said Prunella.
"I think we should drop it," Alan replied.
So they did...
----
...until the next day.
"As you know, today is show-and-tell day," Mr. Wald announced to his pupils. "Binky, you're the first in alphabetical order, so..."
Dolly quickly raised her hand. "Pardon me, sir, but I would like to go first today."
The teacher looked at her quizzically as the other kids murmured and complained under their breaths. "All right, Dolly," said Mr. Wald, "but you'd better have something really impressive to show us."
"I most assuredly do," said Dolly, rising from her desk. As she stepped to the front of the room, the kids wondered what sort of freakish exhibit they would be treated to. A dead newt on a stick? A voodoo doll of someone in the class?
"I went to Salem over the weekend," Dolly recounted, "and I brought back a lovely stone, which I'll now show you." Then she pulled a square-shaped green stone from her dress pocket and waved it to and fro so that all could see.
"It's beautiful, Dolly," said Francine, the only child in the class who had much good to say about Dolly and her trinkets.
The other students were bored and uninterested...until the stone started to give off a glowing green light. What appeared to be curved beams of energy emanated from it, and surrounded everyone in the room, except for Dolly herself. For a second or two everyone, including the teacher, marveled at the unusual sight, and then the energy tendrils faded away.
Dolly was no longer looking at an unsympathetic, distrustful audience. Instead the other students wore oblivious smiles, and seemed happy to be present. Delighted with what had transpired, Dolly replaced the stone in her pocket.
Van was the first to speak up. "Gee, I'm sorry, Dolly," he said contritely. "I was afraid of you because I thought you were evil. I don't think you're evil anymore. I'd like to be your friend."
Then Beat, who had always stood at the forefront of the anti-Dolly forces, gave an apology as well. "I'm so sorry for all the cruel things I said and did."
"So am I," Muffy chimed in.
"Me too," added Binky and George.
"Dolly, I think you're the coolest," said Arthur.
"Can you ever forgive us?" asked Fern.
Dolly glanced around at the humbled schoolchildren, and a wicked grin spread across her face. "No," she said sadistically. "I'll never forgive you." As she returned to her desk, the kids noticed that the whites of her eyes had taken on a red tinge.
The class period went on, and Mr. Wald seemed more placid and cheerful than usual as he presented his lesson. As the hour neared an end, he announced to his charges, "I resolve from now on to give you twice as much homework, so you'll learn twice as fast."
"Yaaaaaay!" cheered all of the kids except for Dolly.
Alan and Prunella knew immediately that something was amiss when they saw the kids in Mr. Wald's class milling about in the center court, vapid smiles on their faces. A few of them appeared to be speaking words of praise to Dolly, who only smirked condescendingly and walked away from them. She almost knocked Prunella and Alan over as she stepped between them, grumbling, "Out of my way!"
"Well, that was rude," Prunella remarked as she watched the rat girl march single-mindedly toward an exit.
"Did you see her eyes?" Alan commented. "They were..."
Muffy cut him off, approaching him and Prunella with a friendly grin. "Hi, Alan, how are you today?"
"Uh, I'm fine," said Alan, surprised that Muffy hadn't immediately started to tell him how SHE was doing. "Say, Muffy, can I borrow fifty dollars?"
"Sure," the rich girl replied, digging her sizable wallet from her blouse pocket and pulling out a bill.
"Thanks a lot," said Alan, plucking the bill from Muffy's fingers. "I probably won't be able to pay it back. By the way, your dress is ugly."
"See you later, Alan," said Muffy, walking past him.
Prunella couldn't believe what she had just witnessed. Seeing Binky on his way over, she stopped him. "Hey, Binky, did Dolly have a green rock with her today?"
"Yeah, it was cool," the boy answered. "She made these, like, weird waves come out of it. They filled the whole room."
Alan strolled up to Binky, raising his fists and posturing threateningly. "Hey, doofus!" he bellowed. "You want a piece of me?"
"How generous of you to offer," said Binky, his warm smile not fading in the slightest.
"Cut it out, Alan," said Prunella, sticking an arm between the two boys. "Binky, tell me more about the weird waves."
Binky did his best to describe them in precise detail. "They were, like, weird and wavy." He turned his head. "Like those waves over there."
Startled, Alan and Prunella followed Binky's eyes and saw a web of glowing, undulating lines spread across one of the walls of the center court. Rattles, who was leaning on a column and looking for kids to intimidate, was caught by the strange energy net and began to smile and wave cheerfully at the students who passed by him.
Inexpressible terror filled Alan's mind. "RUN!" he shrieked, and he and Prunella dashed for the nearest exit that hadn't already been enveloped by the energy web. Curious, Binky jogged after them, wondering what had frightened them.
The web grew and spread, soon filling the entire center court and causing all children who made contact with it to appear idyllically happy. Prunella and Alan, fleeing with all their strength, glanced back and saw that the web had encased the entire school building, and was starting to pick up speed. When Binky realized he couldn't catch up with the pair, he stopped and allowed the energy lines to harmlessly encompass him.
"That way!" cried Alan, pointing. The web seemed to be moving in a circular fashion, and the only hope he and Prunella had of escape was to move closer to its center of origin.
They stopped briefly in a thicket of trees. From their vantage point they could see Dolly in an abandoned corner of the soccer field, the Cleansing Stone in her hand, and lightning-like tendrils pouring out of it.
"If she sees us, we're history," Prunella observed. "Come on!"
They began to run again, in a wide circle around Dolly's position. Alan looked over his shoulder and beheld, to his horror, that the stone's waves were arcing into the sky and reaching almost to the horizon. "She's zapping the whole city!" he exclaimed.
They ran frantically, covering what must have been three square city blocks, while Dolly turned slowly and the stone in her hand emitted the cleansing waves into one sector of the city after another. Her eyes, by this time, had become phosphorescent red.
After several minutes, they looked behind and noticed that the web had vanished. They stopped running, started to breathe heavily, and noticed that the weather was beginning to change...
A powerful gust of wind emerged from nowhere, almost bowling them over. Dark, thick rainclouds formed over their heads, as if summoned from distant regions of the previously clear sky, but no rain fell. They felt as if they were standing next to an active tornado.
Once they were confident that the web would not reappear, they struggled against the roaring wind in the direction of the soccer field. There, they witnessed an unbelievable sight.
The stormclouds seemed to be swirling about, their eye positioned immediately above Dolly. The wind-whipped rat girl, still unaware that Alan and Prunella were observing her, clutched the Cleansing Stone in her hand...and cackled insanely.
"Whatever this is, it's not good," Alan stated the obvious. He and Prunella continued toward Dolly, fearing at any moment to be seen by her.
"I just thought of something, Alan," said Prunella. "Remember when you told me about the Law of Conversation, or whatever it was?"
"The Law of Conservation," Alan corrected her. "Matter can't be created or destroyed, only moved or rearranged."
"Yeah, whatever," said Prunella. "What if evil is the same way? I think that's what happened to Dolly. She sucked the evil out of all those people, but it didn't just go away...it went into her!"
Alan grimaced, terrified by the implications of what Prunella had hypothesized.
And then another surprise hit them. Dolly raised her arms into the air, and was all at once surrounded by blazing light, causing Alan and Prunella to cover their eyes. When the light faded, Dolly had changed clothes--she no longer wore the dress that Mrs. Powers had bought for her, but a black robe and pointed hat. In one hand she held the Cleansing Stone, and the other gripped a crooked, beaten-up broomstick. She continued to laugh maniacally.
"Oh, this is just too much," Alan groaned. "We have to get that stone away from her, now!"
"Leave that to me," said Prunella. "I know a sleight-of-hand trick."
The two children tiptoed up to Dolly from behind, Prunella taking the lead. The cackling witch girl remained unaware of their presence. When Prunella had come within a foot or two, she tapped Dolly on the shoulder. "Huh?" the girl grunted, turning around.
Then Prunella drew back her fist and slugged Dolly squarely in the nose.
The blow knocked Dolly on her back, and the stone and broomstick dropped from her hands. Without a second to lose, Prunella reached down and grabbed the stone, bounded over to the edge of the soccer field, and hurled the object against the asphalt with all the strength she could muster. To her elation, it shattered into pieces.
Alan hurried to her side. "You callthat sleight-of-hand?"
"Whatever works," said Prunella, stamping on the fragments of the Cleansing Stone with the heel of her shoe.
Then the wind became almost deafening. Whirling, they saw that Dolly had risen to her feet and was glaring at them with blood-red eyes. "You struck me," she growled, and her voice was miraculously audible above the howling gale.
"We only want to help you, Dolly!" shouted Prunella, but the wind blasted her voice backwards.
"YOU STRUCK ME!" shrieked the furious Dolly.
Then she lifted her arms, and something resembling black lightning bolts shot from her fingers.
Alan suddenly felt as if a black hole had exploded only inches from where he stood. The force threw him to the asphalt, and the rough surface scratched his arm. Dolly was drawing closer to him, her arms still raised; it appeared she was not moving her feet.
Pushing himself up with his arm, he looked over to his side...and gasped. Where Prunella had stood only a second before, there was nothing but a scorched spot on the pavement...
TBC
