Stine suddenly froze when his gaze landed on a fallen book manuscript with the title Night of the living dummy. And his skin turned a chalky white.
"Oh no, not him." He mumbled in fear.
"What?"
"Who?"
They soon had their answer.
"Hello, papa."
Everyone glanced over to the big black leather chair seated in it was none other than one of R.L. Stine's most notorious villains: Slappy the dummy.
It was only two feet tall at least, but when you've been in the adventure and magic business like the girls, you learn that looks can be deceiving. Brown hair and eyes. His lips are painted bright red which curl in a sinister smile. There is also a chip on his lower lip. He wears a grey suit over a white collar and red bow tie. The collar has been stapled as his body is just painted white.
"Z, please tell me you're throwing your voice." Kylie pleaded uncertainly.
"I'm not that good at illusions." Zaira replied having stopped in place.
"How long's it been? Feels like forever." The wooden jaws clacking with every word it spoke. He eyed the group behind the Author and Hannah, looking from face to face. "Who are your new friends?"
"We're not friends." Zach said a little too quickly.
"Barely know him." Champ added.
"Neighbors." Zaira said curtly, rolling her eyes.
"Oh no, we all just met." Kylie explained with a sheepish smile holding up her hands.
Beth was unimpressed. "A puppet without strings?"
"Puppet without strings, that's a new one on me." Slappy shrugged off her sarcastic remark.
Little Dana just holds up her cellphone in speechless amazement to take a picture of the infamous dummy without flash.
"Slappy, it's so nice to see you again." Stine smiled stiffly.
"Didja miss me?"
"Of course I missed you."
Lightning flashed when it stopped the chair was empty, causing them to peer over to the edge of Stine's desk where Slappy was now seated holding up the key.
"So, what's the plan, friend? You must've brought me out for something fun." The dummy said. "Terrorize the locals? Destroy the town? Let's get silly!"
Stine's eyes darted from the fallen book manuscript to Night of the living Dummy and to Slappy. "You guessed it, Slappy. I'm going to destroy Madison, and I... And I couldn't do it without you."
"Aw, shucks. You're giving me... Oh, what's the word? Goosebumps?" Slappy said before laughing madly.
"Oh my god, he's so creepy." Champ whispered to the others.
Kylie shuffled uncomfortably as she mumbled. "You obviously never met anyone who worked for Intracom."
"Compared to the powerpuff girls' scariest enemy: HIM?" Dana whispered back.
"What about Cipher?" Beth whispered darkly.
Just a few more steps.
"Oh, he is such a crack-up. Such a clever dummy." Stine murmured.
However that was the wrong thing to say.
"Who are you calling 'dummy,' dummy?" Slappy spat then noticed the fallen book. "You're trying to put me back in?" His voice reached in a higher pitch when he said this.
"No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't be silly." Stine tried to backtrack verbally.
"I know when you're lying to me, Papa." Slappy replied darkly.
The lights flashed again now the dummy was leaning on a broken board by the giant hole in the wall of the study holding up his manuscript in his left hand and a lit match in the other causing the girls except for Hannah gasp.
"You've made Slappy very unhappy. He's not going back on the shelf ever again." Slappy rasped.
"Slappy, no, wait!"
"I think it's time I started pulling the strings in this relationship. Tonight is gonna be the best story you've ever written. All of your children are coming out to play."
There was a flash of lightning and the lights went out once more, and when it stopped, Slappy was gone but his unsettling laughter, echoed through the house.
Champ sighed with relief. "Thank god he's gone."
"Come back and fight like a man – uhm, I mean mannequin!" Dana yelled, shaking her small fist.
Stine was horrified. "Oh no, he's gone and he's taken all the books."
The girls' eyes widened with horror at this.
"Crud! Tony and the other girls!" exclaimed Beth. She'd just remembered they were still out there and now a crazy wooden doll was going to unleash chaos on the town!
"Beth, Kylie, Dana, Beth, Kylie, Dana, Beth, Kylie, Dana!" Dr. Jenna Pantheon, biological mother to Beth and Dana and adopted mother to Kylie, had her window rolled down. She was calling out the names of her daughters. "Jenna, you have to leave a little room between your girls' names or you won't be able to hear them yell back." Nema pointed out.
"I'm sorry, I'm just a little nervous. I don't have as much experience with my children sneaking out in a town they're not familiar with."
"If it makes you feel any better I'm worried, too."
"We're all concerned."
"We tried calling the neighbors but they weren't home. What about that fellow – Shivers?" Jenna mused.
Fitz checked up his information. "Well, let's see. He moved in last year. He's single. Keeps to himself. Always recycles and never misses a "Fried Chicken Friday" at Ray's Diner. But the phone line was out for some reason."
Back in Stine's house, everyone hurried downstairs, thinking maybe they could catch Slappy. He was a three-foot-tall dummy, after all. How fast could he go? Fast enough, apparently.
Stine stopped at the door and buried his head in his hands. "Congratulations. You just released a cruel, destructive, vicious, brilliant ventriloquist dummy with a serious Napoleon complex."
"For the record, I only opened one book," Zach reminded him. And now I see that was a big mistake
"The snowman knocked a few books to the ground when he got out," Hannah said. "The lock must have broken."
"I'm still blaming him," Stine said, jabbing a finger at Zach. "I don't like you, boy."
Hey, if I'm reading this right, lover boy here wouldn't even have done that if someone had just showed the girl was safe rather than yelling a bunch of vague threats about bad things and doom!" Beth snapped.
"I haven't forgotten the three of you!" Stine pointed a finger at the other girls. "You think I didn't see the van with the fancy surveillance equipment stationed out the end of the lane for the past two days?"
Beth, Zaira and Kylie soured as Hannah, Zach and Champ stared at them bewilderedly. Of course, he'd notice that – the van was a decoy. Courtesy of Agent Fitz, for the actual surveillance equipment had been set up in the basement.
Dana piped up. "Maybe if we can get back to the house, we can get something we can use against Slappy and whatever else comes our way."
Stine tried to storm out, but the door stuck, which kind of ruined the effect. "It's locked from the outside."
Zaira tried a window-no luck. "Locked too."
Something shimmied past them in the dark. A hulking shadow appeared on the wall behind them. It was enough to put them all on edge.
"Out the kitchen door," Stine urged. "Go. Now!"
They stopped dead in the kitchen entryway. The back door had a small doggy flap at the bottom, and it swung open. Standing before it stood…a lawn gnome?
Dana blinked. "Was that always there?"
All that panic for a lawn gnome? Beth stepped in front of the group. "This one's mine." But before she could toss the gnome out of the house, the dishwasher door popped open, issuing a billow of steam-and two more gnomes.
The little porcelain figures began appearing everywhere. One popped out of the trash can. Another peeked out of the cupboard door. Five more leaped out of the drawers, and some beady eyes blinked at me from beneath the sink. Before they knew it, they were surrounded.
Zach shrugged. "Gnomes? Maybe, they're friendly."
Kylie shook her head. "No, these aren't the sentient woodland ones. They'd be smaller and live further out where there's more trees and wildlife."
"How do you know?" Zach said skeptically.
Before Kylie can answer, a knife flew past Zach's ear, stabbing the wooden cabinet behind him. This sight greatly alarmed the others.
"Alright, not friendly! Definitely not friendly!" Zach yelped.
"Goosebumps book 34, Revenge of the lawn gnomes." Zaira stated. "It's more than obvious that these are not."
The gnome closest to me pulled out another shining blade. The porcelain eyebrows became a cruel, cold scowl on his bearded face.
One of the gnomes launched itself at Stine, wrapping its little arms around his head and swatting his ears.
"Abbb!" Stine whacked at them, to no effect. "Get them off me!"
From the top of the cupboards a couple of lawn gnomes had tied several towels together and tried to hang Zach.
Some lawn gnomes had started tugging and tearing at the older girls' skirts.
"Oh no, you don't!" Beth snapped. "I bought this at Neiman Marcus specifically for this night, and I'm not about to let you little pests wreck it!" And she began stomping down hard on the lawn gnomes.
Kylie kicks one away from her, Zaira grabbed a broom and began striking at them. Dana took a rolling pin and hit the gnomes as though she were at a whack-a-mole game. "Take that!"
"He's stuck to my face. Definitely not friendly." Stine protested.
"Dad! Aah!" Hannah attempted to help him only for one gnome to pull her back by her ponytail.
"Hold on, I'll save you." Champ grabbed a frying pan and slammed it at the gnome on Stine's face.
The caused the man to fall over with a pained grunt.
Champ was taken aback. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Before Stine could climb to his feet, a group of gnomes dragged in a garden hose and started tying up his legs. A battalion grabbed his ankles and started dragging him toward the kitchen oven. Tiny hands spun the heat up to 500 degrees. Stine squirmed and screamed.
Hannah hit one gnome off her. Zach and the girls struggled to fight their way toward Stine.
Zach grabbed a Swiffer which he swung like a golf club, cracking every porcelain head he could find. Beth and Zaira kept stomping or kicking the gnomes away.
Hannah and Champ tossed a few of the lawn gnomes into the oven then closed it, while Dana and Kylie hurried to untie Stine.
Finally the gnomes were done away with.
"I imagined something different." Champ whined as he got up. "Come over to my house. There will be girls. I'm your wingman."
"Calm down, we just need to contact Star team." Kylie said.
"You sure you can handle it?" Hannah asked, she remembered the other girls mentioning they'd snuck out while grounded.
"At this rate prolonged grounding sounds like the least of our problems." Zaira replied.
"Maybe we can show them what's going on, and Mom will have to give the antidote for the binding potion so we can use our powers full blast for this-!" Dana rambled before her mouth was covered by Beth and Zaira.
"Binding potion?" Hannah frowned.
"Antidote?" Zach squinted.
"I distinctly heard the word 'powers' in that same sentence." Stine said suspiciously.
However, before any of the girls could explain themselves, there was a scratching sound. The sound of porcelain pieces rattling back to life.
Slowly at first, then faster and faster, the pieces skidded toward one another like magnets, re-forming into gnomes. They were chipped and dented-and they were angry.
"Nooooo," Champ moaned. "No, no, nononono!"
"Well it just gets better and better doesn't it?" Zaira said sarcastically with a frustrated scowl.
"We have to get out of here!" Zach said, though that was pretty obvious. "We need to get to the basement."
"It's locked," Stine said.
"I picked it," Zach admitted.
"That's breaking and entering!"
Zach was already racing for the cellar door. "Send me a bill!"
The gnomes chased the group across the house as we headed for the basement, nearly trampling one another on our way down the stairs.
"Watch out for the bear traps!" Stine cried, just in time.
They all hopscotched across the traps. The herd of gnomes stampeded down the stairs. It seemed like there were more of them than ever. But unlike the group, they didn't know about the traps. One gnome after another stepped in between those iron jaws and exploded into a cloud of porcelain shards.
It wouldn't stop them but it would slow them down enough for the group to escape.
The group raced up the stairs to the outside and burst through the cellar door. Gasping for air, Stine slammed the door behind us and fastened the padlock.
They stood there on the lawn for a moment, sucking air into our lungs and wondering what to do next.
"Why couldn't you have written stories about rainbows and unicorns?" Zach asked Stine, once he recovered the power of speech.
"Because that doesn't sell four hundred million copies!"
"Domestic?" Champ asked.
Stine looked away. "No, worldwide. Still very impressive. Shut up."
There was only a sliver of moon, and the snowman had knocked out all the streetlights, but there was enough light to see everyone's faces pretty clearly. And the air around them was swarming with millions of tiny lights, like fireflies.
On any other night, it might have been beautiful. On that night? It could only mean that something else was going
wrong.
Curious, they followed the glowing cloud to its source-a smoldering pile of what had once been leather-bound manuscripts. Stine's jaw dropped open.
"He's burning the books," Hannah said.
"Why is he doing that?" Zach asked.
"So there's no way to put the monsters back inside," Stine said "It's Slappy's revenge," Then, just for a moment, he brightened. "Slappy's Revenge-hey, that's a good title."
"Yeah, less brainstorming more getting a move on before that psycho doll pulverizes our friends and my mother!" Beth urged.
The man bent over his bike, pedaling hard into the wind. He didn't even hear the car approaching behind him...not until it pulled close enough for him to smell its exhaust. Its head- lights lit the road stretching ahead of him. Its engine roared. "Go around!" the man shouted, waving his arm. "Cyclists' rights!"
The car didn't speed up or swerve around him. It kept shadowing him, its lights blazing brighter against the night.
The cyclist glanced over his shoulder, nearly blinded by flashing high beams.
The man raised a fist. "I'm a lawyer and I will sue!" The car swerved abruptly, running him off the road, straight into a ditch. The cyclist lay silent and motionless.
Inside the car, wooden hands gripped the steering wheel. Wooden teeth clattered together.
Slappy laughed. "I'm sorry; I cut you off. Someday I should take a driving lesson! But why bother? My feet don't reach the pedals! Ha-ha-ha!"
Slappy drove on. He liked this town. He had big plans for it.
The car window rolled down, and a burning manuscript flew through it, flames showering blazing tracks through the night.
The road was deserted-there was no one to see the green tendrils sprouting from its pages, each one lined with razor-sharp, man-eating teeth. The tendrils grew with breathtaking speed. Soon they were climbing their way up cell towers, snaking their way through and around the town, slowly but Surely cutting off Madison from the outside world and whatever help it could provide.
Slappy drove on. Manuscripts burned and fireballs danced across the highway, each of them unleashing a great and terrible beast on the unsuspecting town.
In the distance, a woman screamed. Slappy giggled. There would be plenty to laugh about once this night was over. And plenty of delicious screams.
Slappy was just getting started.
At the same time, miles up ahead in the meeting place the girls had intended to meet up. The second group was pacing and wondering what was taking them so long.
Haruna wore a blue square-Neck Puff-Sleeve Metallic Dress. Yui was in a strapless midi pink bubble dress. Sara was in a short periwinkle tulle dress. Her twin brother Tony was in a simple suit he'd improvised. Theo wore a short red party dress with one ruffled sleeve.
"Heads up!" Tony suddenly yelped.
They jump out of the way as a car went speeding down the road and as a result it splashed water from a puddle onto the girls' skirts.
"Oh no, my dress!"
"Just look at it!"
"That was a terrible thing to do!" Haruna cried indignantly after the car.
"Yeah, why don't you watch where you're driving, blockhead?!" Theo shouted at the driver. "Hey!" Something just missed her face by a few inches.
"Don't lose your pretty little heads about it!" The driver had yelled back before laughing maniacally.
Tony glared in the direction the vehicle had raced away. "What was that?!"
"Some crazy driver with a license." Yui grumbled, "What'd he just throw?"
Haruna glanced down at the burning object by Theo's feet. "A book? How odd."
Sara approached. "A night in terror tower. R.L. Stine." she read before brightening, "Wow! This is a Goosebumps book! I haven't read these since I was eight or nine years old."
But why was it on fire? They heard of book burning but this was ridiculous.
Eagerly, Sara reached to pick it up, holding the book by the cover. But then a blast of hurricane force wind hurled them off their feet and onto their sides on the sidewalk. The startled teens looked up to see the book's pages glowing white and the words…they were rising up as ink, and starting form...
First a hand, then a meaty arm and finally a body, that was definitely man shaped.
When the gale settled, before their eyes stood the infamous Lord High executioner himself, axe and all. And he wasn't looking too neighborly.
"This...is not a good thing is it?" Yui asked rhetorically, eyeing the axe in growing fear.
To be continued…