As the Lakewood gang returned from helping to mulch trees at the park, they saw
a young man and woman holding hands and standing in front of the Tibble house.
They were dressed in tie-dyed shirts and ragged jeans, and both had long hair;
the man sported a shaggy beard. A "For Sale" sign was sticking out of the
house's front yard.
"Those look like nice people," said Muffy. "Let's go talk to them." She headed in their direction, followed by Arthur, Francine, Fern, Alan, Buster, Binky, George, Beat, and Mavis.
"Peace," the young man and woman saluted them, making victory signs with their hands.
"We've got plenty of that here," Muffy told them. "It's gotten so you have to leave town if you want to find two people who don't get along. If you want to buy a car, on the other hand, you won't find better deals than the ones at Crosswire Motors. My dad has slashed prices on all his cars. He's practically giving them away."
"We're, like, thinking of moving here," said the hippie man.
"We think Elwood City is, like, a nexus of cosmic energy or, like, something like that," the hippie woman added.
"Do you, like, know anything about this, like, house?" asked the hippie man, gesturing toward the Tibble residence.
"I found a ghost in the cellar once," Fern recounted.
"It's, like, haunted," mused the hippie woman. "Groovy."
"We'd love to have you in our city," said Arthur.
"Tell all your friends about it," George added.
Alan and Buster looked at each other and rolled their eyes, certain that the city's unnatural condition was about to be compounded by an influx of hippie types.
"Whoa, check it out." The hippie man pointed toward the rear of the crowd. "It's, like, Halloween already."
All the kids turned, wondering what the man was referring to. Alan's heart nearly shot out of his mouth when he saw...
...the red-eyed Dolly Proctor standing calmly behind them, still wearing her black witch costume and clutching her broomstick.
"Dolly's back!" exclaimed Binky.
"We missed you," said Francine. "Where have you been?"
"What's wrong with your eyes?" inquired Mavis.
Dolly didn't say a word, but simply snapped her fingers, and a burst of white light surrounded the two hippies. When it faded, the kids were astonished to see a pair of bullfrogs squatting on the sidewalk. Alan and Buster wailed in terror, fearing they might be transformed next...
The two bullfrogs eyed each other. "She, like, turned us into frogs," observed the female frog.
"Trippy, man," responded the male frog.
"I didn't know she could do that," said Binky nervously.
"She's come to punish us for being mean to her," Beat imagined. "We deserve it."
While Buster stared wide-eyed at the croaking hippie frogs, Alan turned to face Dolly and mustered up courage and anger. "You won't get away with this!" he bellowed.
"Oh, please, Alan," said Dolly condescendingly. "That line's older than I am."
"What do you want?" Alan asked her, hoping he might somehow forestall his doom by keeping Dolly busy with questions.
"I want Winslow." Dolly scowled menacingly, and an aura of darkness started to form around her. "And you had better hope he's somewhere nearby, because I'm going to pour out my wrath upon the city until he appears."
That was all Alan needed to hear. "Everybody run!" he cried out. "Take cover!"
As the kids fled in all directions, the ground seemed to shake beneath their feet. Those who glanced over their shoulders were treated to the fearsome sight of Dolly floating into the air, mounted on her broomstick, a swirling cloud of dark vapor surrounding her. She pointed down at the street and fired a black bolt from her finger, which ripped open a crater and sent chunks of asphalt and concrete raining down on the neighboring houses.
Alan could only think of saving himself, and he seriously doubted whether he could even do that. Then he recalled a month-old memory...and something that might give him a fighting chance. Changing course, he ran at full speed toward Prunella's house.
Ascending higher and higher on her broom, Dolly scanned the region and saw that some of the children had hidden themselves behind bushes or walls of houses, while others were racing along the sidewalk. Among the latter was Muffy...
...who stopped pumping her legs and let out a frightened squeal when Dolly swooped down ahead of her. "I never liked you," snarled the young witch. "You and your fancy house and your vaults full of money."
"Please don't hurt me," pleaded Muffy, wringing one of her braids in her quivering hands.
"I'm not going to hurt you," said Dolly, who then waved her hand at Muffy. The girl froze solid, and her clothes, skin, and hair turned the color of gold. "There, now, that didn't hurt a bit." Dolly tapped her heels together and rose into the air, leaving the golden statue of Muffy alone.
Cowering behind a shrub, Binky was alarmed to discover that his legs were becoming thick and heavy, and his arms were involuntarily rising...and getting longer. Within moments there was a new apple tree in the yard, with a knot in its trunk that remarkably resembled Binky's face.
Dolly chose as her next target Beat, who was scurrying toward the entrance to her apartment building. Suddenly bowled over by a mystical blast, she leaped to her feet and patted her torso with her hands, relieved to find nothing amiss...or so she thought. A strange girl had appeared in front of her--a confused rabbit girl who was wearing a gray sweatsuit exactly like her own, and whose hair was arranged in an identical fashion. From the rabbit girl's point of view, she was facing a twin of herself, one who was fully aardvark...
"Two Beats, or not two Beats," gloated Dolly, hovering on her broomstick above the befuddled rabbit girl and aardvark girl. "That is the question."
"Wh-who are you?" stammered Rabbit Beat as she ran her fingers along the bridge of her new nose.
"I'm Beat," replied Aardvark Beat, who was curiously exploring her altered ears.
"I'm Beat too," said Rabbit Beat in wonder. "Will you be my friend?"
Arthur had reached the front yard of his house, and was affectionately greeted by his trusty pooch, Pal. Then he felt a powerful shock course through his body. When he recovered, he found that his head was much closer to the ground than before, his glasses had disappeared, and Pal had started to bark fiercely at him. "Calm down, boy! It's me!" he urged gently, but to no avail. It occurred to him that Pal only reacted in such an angry manner when he was confronted by a...cat...
As Arthur scampered away on all fours, Buster followed Fern into her house, where they hoped to find refuge. When they had reached the living room, Buster had a disturbing realization. "You forgot to lock the door!" he chided Fern.
"Why should I?" asked Fern incredulously. "There's no more crime."
The door flew open, and into the house soared Dolly astride her broom. She made a figure-eight in the kitchen, flicked a magical bolt at Fern and Buster, and exited the same way she had come.
Once they became aware again, the first thing Buster and Fern noticed was that their heads were abnormally close together. Looking downward, they gasped in terror to find that they were sharing the same body. Turning toward a nearby mirror, they beheld the reflection of a two-headed monstrosity--a creature that was Buster on the left side and Fern on the right. Fern's blouse and skirt flowed seamlessly into Buster's sweater and pants down the middle.
"Cool!" exclaimed Buster's head with glee. "I'm half girl!"
"I don't even want to think about how this works," Fern's head muttered.
Concealing herself in the shade of a wall, Mavis watched Dolly whip past and thought she had been spared. Then she heard a hissing noise...several hissing noises...
Dozens of snakes of every color were crawling through the grass toward her feet. Panicking and screaming, Mavis bolted away from the house, through the fence, and into the street. To her dismay, hordes of slithering creatures were emerging from every lot and taking up residence on the asphalt. No matter which way she fled, they matched her movements. "Mommy!" she shrieked, running frantically toward her house and squashing three or four serpents with every step.
As George cautiously hopped over the snakes, Dolly cut him off from the side, still levitating on her broom. "I have a solution to your bully problem," she offered, then snapped her fingers and floated away.
At first George noticed nothing strange about himself. There was, however, something wrong with the surrounding houses. They were getting smaller...
George glanced down at his feet, and saw that the snakes infesting the sidewalk were dwindling to the size of worms. In addition, he was starting to experience difficulty breathing and supporting his own weight. His knees buckled, and he collapsed onto his stomach and face with an earth-rattling thud.
Francine, considering herself lucky to have reached her apartment alive, took a peek through the window at the bizarre scene below. George filled the entire street, measuring half a block from antlers to toes, unable to move a muscle. On either side of him crowds of snakes slithered past, directed by some unseen hand to persecute Mavis. Next to the solid-gold Muffy statue sat an anxious-looking tabby cat, glancing about and occasionally licking its paw. The rabbit and aardvark Beats were gazing in admiration at George's gigantic face, while the two-headed Fern-Buster creature lurched clumsily past the apple tree that had once been Binky.
"Remember, Buster," said Fern, "you control my half of the body, and I control yours."
"I get the side with the dress," Buster gloated.
"Can't...move...can't...breathe..." rasped the helpless, oversized George.
Above it all, Dolly and her broomstick spun around in lazy circles. Francine followed the cackling witch girl with her eyes, wondering why she herself hadn't yet fallen victim to a dire enchantment. Was it because she had been friendly with Dolly before?
The next thing she noticed was Alan bursting out of Prunella's house and charging into the street, with an unidentifiable object partially hidden in one of his rear pockets. The boy shook his fist up at Dolly and shouted defiantly, "Come and get me, too!"
Unable to resist, Dolly slowly descended toward Alan's position. She raised an arm, then a finger...
"Dolly!"
She knew the voice, even before she swiveled on her broom and saw Angus Winslow climbing out of a white sedan at the side of the street. On the passenger side, Maria Harris was opening her door to exit the vehicle.
Ignoring Alan's challenge, Dolly lowered herself until she reached Winslow's position. "You got here sooner than I expected," she remarked.
"We've been following you ever since you changed course for Elwood City," Winslow replied. "I have a device that can track large concentrations of evil. That's how we were able to clear everything out of the lab before you destroyed it."
Dolly floated closer to Winslow and stared directly into his eyes. "You know what I want," she said firmly.
"Yes, I do." Winslow reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a marbled-green, square-shaped stone. "And here it is."
TBC
"Those look like nice people," said Muffy. "Let's go talk to them." She headed in their direction, followed by Arthur, Francine, Fern, Alan, Buster, Binky, George, Beat, and Mavis.
"Peace," the young man and woman saluted them, making victory signs with their hands.
"We've got plenty of that here," Muffy told them. "It's gotten so you have to leave town if you want to find two people who don't get along. If you want to buy a car, on the other hand, you won't find better deals than the ones at Crosswire Motors. My dad has slashed prices on all his cars. He's practically giving them away."
"We're, like, thinking of moving here," said the hippie man.
"We think Elwood City is, like, a nexus of cosmic energy or, like, something like that," the hippie woman added.
"Do you, like, know anything about this, like, house?" asked the hippie man, gesturing toward the Tibble residence.
"I found a ghost in the cellar once," Fern recounted.
"It's, like, haunted," mused the hippie woman. "Groovy."
"We'd love to have you in our city," said Arthur.
"Tell all your friends about it," George added.
Alan and Buster looked at each other and rolled their eyes, certain that the city's unnatural condition was about to be compounded by an influx of hippie types.
"Whoa, check it out." The hippie man pointed toward the rear of the crowd. "It's, like, Halloween already."
All the kids turned, wondering what the man was referring to. Alan's heart nearly shot out of his mouth when he saw...
...the red-eyed Dolly Proctor standing calmly behind them, still wearing her black witch costume and clutching her broomstick.
"Dolly's back!" exclaimed Binky.
"We missed you," said Francine. "Where have you been?"
"What's wrong with your eyes?" inquired Mavis.
Dolly didn't say a word, but simply snapped her fingers, and a burst of white light surrounded the two hippies. When it faded, the kids were astonished to see a pair of bullfrogs squatting on the sidewalk. Alan and Buster wailed in terror, fearing they might be transformed next...
The two bullfrogs eyed each other. "She, like, turned us into frogs," observed the female frog.
"Trippy, man," responded the male frog.
"I didn't know she could do that," said Binky nervously.
"She's come to punish us for being mean to her," Beat imagined. "We deserve it."
While Buster stared wide-eyed at the croaking hippie frogs, Alan turned to face Dolly and mustered up courage and anger. "You won't get away with this!" he bellowed.
"Oh, please, Alan," said Dolly condescendingly. "That line's older than I am."
"What do you want?" Alan asked her, hoping he might somehow forestall his doom by keeping Dolly busy with questions.
"I want Winslow." Dolly scowled menacingly, and an aura of darkness started to form around her. "And you had better hope he's somewhere nearby, because I'm going to pour out my wrath upon the city until he appears."
That was all Alan needed to hear. "Everybody run!" he cried out. "Take cover!"
As the kids fled in all directions, the ground seemed to shake beneath their feet. Those who glanced over their shoulders were treated to the fearsome sight of Dolly floating into the air, mounted on her broomstick, a swirling cloud of dark vapor surrounding her. She pointed down at the street and fired a black bolt from her finger, which ripped open a crater and sent chunks of asphalt and concrete raining down on the neighboring houses.
Alan could only think of saving himself, and he seriously doubted whether he could even do that. Then he recalled a month-old memory...and something that might give him a fighting chance. Changing course, he ran at full speed toward Prunella's house.
Ascending higher and higher on her broom, Dolly scanned the region and saw that some of the children had hidden themselves behind bushes or walls of houses, while others were racing along the sidewalk. Among the latter was Muffy...
...who stopped pumping her legs and let out a frightened squeal when Dolly swooped down ahead of her. "I never liked you," snarled the young witch. "You and your fancy house and your vaults full of money."
"Please don't hurt me," pleaded Muffy, wringing one of her braids in her quivering hands.
"I'm not going to hurt you," said Dolly, who then waved her hand at Muffy. The girl froze solid, and her clothes, skin, and hair turned the color of gold. "There, now, that didn't hurt a bit." Dolly tapped her heels together and rose into the air, leaving the golden statue of Muffy alone.
Cowering behind a shrub, Binky was alarmed to discover that his legs were becoming thick and heavy, and his arms were involuntarily rising...and getting longer. Within moments there was a new apple tree in the yard, with a knot in its trunk that remarkably resembled Binky's face.
Dolly chose as her next target Beat, who was scurrying toward the entrance to her apartment building. Suddenly bowled over by a mystical blast, she leaped to her feet and patted her torso with her hands, relieved to find nothing amiss...or so she thought. A strange girl had appeared in front of her--a confused rabbit girl who was wearing a gray sweatsuit exactly like her own, and whose hair was arranged in an identical fashion. From the rabbit girl's point of view, she was facing a twin of herself, one who was fully aardvark...
"Two Beats, or not two Beats," gloated Dolly, hovering on her broomstick above the befuddled rabbit girl and aardvark girl. "That is the question."
"Wh-who are you?" stammered Rabbit Beat as she ran her fingers along the bridge of her new nose.
"I'm Beat," replied Aardvark Beat, who was curiously exploring her altered ears.
"I'm Beat too," said Rabbit Beat in wonder. "Will you be my friend?"
Arthur had reached the front yard of his house, and was affectionately greeted by his trusty pooch, Pal. Then he felt a powerful shock course through his body. When he recovered, he found that his head was much closer to the ground than before, his glasses had disappeared, and Pal had started to bark fiercely at him. "Calm down, boy! It's me!" he urged gently, but to no avail. It occurred to him that Pal only reacted in such an angry manner when he was confronted by a...cat...
As Arthur scampered away on all fours, Buster followed Fern into her house, where they hoped to find refuge. When they had reached the living room, Buster had a disturbing realization. "You forgot to lock the door!" he chided Fern.
"Why should I?" asked Fern incredulously. "There's no more crime."
The door flew open, and into the house soared Dolly astride her broom. She made a figure-eight in the kitchen, flicked a magical bolt at Fern and Buster, and exited the same way she had come.
Once they became aware again, the first thing Buster and Fern noticed was that their heads were abnormally close together. Looking downward, they gasped in terror to find that they were sharing the same body. Turning toward a nearby mirror, they beheld the reflection of a two-headed monstrosity--a creature that was Buster on the left side and Fern on the right. Fern's blouse and skirt flowed seamlessly into Buster's sweater and pants down the middle.
"Cool!" exclaimed Buster's head with glee. "I'm half girl!"
"I don't even want to think about how this works," Fern's head muttered.
Concealing herself in the shade of a wall, Mavis watched Dolly whip past and thought she had been spared. Then she heard a hissing noise...several hissing noises...
Dozens of snakes of every color were crawling through the grass toward her feet. Panicking and screaming, Mavis bolted away from the house, through the fence, and into the street. To her dismay, hordes of slithering creatures were emerging from every lot and taking up residence on the asphalt. No matter which way she fled, they matched her movements. "Mommy!" she shrieked, running frantically toward her house and squashing three or four serpents with every step.
As George cautiously hopped over the snakes, Dolly cut him off from the side, still levitating on her broom. "I have a solution to your bully problem," she offered, then snapped her fingers and floated away.
At first George noticed nothing strange about himself. There was, however, something wrong with the surrounding houses. They were getting smaller...
George glanced down at his feet, and saw that the snakes infesting the sidewalk were dwindling to the size of worms. In addition, he was starting to experience difficulty breathing and supporting his own weight. His knees buckled, and he collapsed onto his stomach and face with an earth-rattling thud.
Francine, considering herself lucky to have reached her apartment alive, took a peek through the window at the bizarre scene below. George filled the entire street, measuring half a block from antlers to toes, unable to move a muscle. On either side of him crowds of snakes slithered past, directed by some unseen hand to persecute Mavis. Next to the solid-gold Muffy statue sat an anxious-looking tabby cat, glancing about and occasionally licking its paw. The rabbit and aardvark Beats were gazing in admiration at George's gigantic face, while the two-headed Fern-Buster creature lurched clumsily past the apple tree that had once been Binky.
"Remember, Buster," said Fern, "you control my half of the body, and I control yours."
"I get the side with the dress," Buster gloated.
"Can't...move...can't...breathe..." rasped the helpless, oversized George.
Above it all, Dolly and her broomstick spun around in lazy circles. Francine followed the cackling witch girl with her eyes, wondering why she herself hadn't yet fallen victim to a dire enchantment. Was it because she had been friendly with Dolly before?
The next thing she noticed was Alan bursting out of Prunella's house and charging into the street, with an unidentifiable object partially hidden in one of his rear pockets. The boy shook his fist up at Dolly and shouted defiantly, "Come and get me, too!"
Unable to resist, Dolly slowly descended toward Alan's position. She raised an arm, then a finger...
"Dolly!"
She knew the voice, even before she swiveled on her broom and saw Angus Winslow climbing out of a white sedan at the side of the street. On the passenger side, Maria Harris was opening her door to exit the vehicle.
Ignoring Alan's challenge, Dolly lowered herself until she reached Winslow's position. "You got here sooner than I expected," she remarked.
"We've been following you ever since you changed course for Elwood City," Winslow replied. "I have a device that can track large concentrations of evil. That's how we were able to clear everything out of the lab before you destroyed it."
Dolly floated closer to Winslow and stared directly into his eyes. "You know what I want," she said firmly.
"Yes, I do." Winslow reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a marbled-green, square-shaped stone. "And here it is."
TBC
