Beasts & Geeks Read online

  Dedication

  For Theo, my favorite monster,

  and for every kid who has ever felt

  like a lost, hairy mutant

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Acknowledgments

  Books by Joe Ballarini

  Back Ads

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  Behind me, a massive, fifteen-foot-long worm the size of a Winnebago snaked its way through the trees with frightening speed. Trees snapped under its weight.

  My book bag bobbled on my back as I ran ignoring the cold wind biting my cheeks.

  Snerff-snerff, grunted the creature’s slimy snout at my sneaker heels.

  Two things about me: I’m a Libra and I hate bugs. The smallest cockroach can send me screaming out of the room. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I can’t help it. Their skinny limbs and greasy shells send me to Willy City.

  Up ahead I could see a break in the trees. Finally, a little moonlight.

  Freedom. Safety. Sweet.

  Actually, it was a rocky gorge overlooking a rushing river.

  Doom. Death. Darn.

  I barely had time to stop. Pebbles scattered over the edge, plunking into the churning rapids a hundred feet below. With nowhere else to go, I scrambled up a tree trunk. Perched on a branch, I opened my red spiral-bound notebook.

  From Kelly Ferguson’s copy of A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting:

  NAME: Night crawler

  TYPE: Lumbricus terrestris disgustus

  LIKES: Flesh and bones

  SKILLS: Digesting humans in its belly for a period of six months

  WEAKNESSES: Sunlight. Great white sharks.

  I slapped the guide shut. “Whose weakness isn’t great white sharks?”

  Balancing on a branch, I saw the huge, plump night crawler wind its way up toward me.

  It can climb trees? That’s not in the guide!

  Long snout-feelers wrapped around the tree limb I was standing on and drew me toward its widening mouth and tiny jagged teeth. I scrambled up to the very peak of the tree. The mist-blanketed forest swept out in every direction. I let out a futile scream, even though I knew no one was close enough to hear me. The only things in my backpack were the guide, a bag of almonds, a compass, a map of the woods, and a flashlight. No weapons. No hardware. All part of tonight’s test.

  “So, Kelly, how was your weekend?” I said. “Oh, fine. Y’know, got chased through the woods by a night crawler in the hopes of passing my babysitter training exam, but I failed miserably, and now I’m going to be slowly digested in its stomach for the next six months. You?”

  The branches shook and the tree began to tilt. The weight of the killer worm was pulling the evergreen down over the edge of the cliff.

  Roots tore from the ground, and we went horizontal. Bark peeled under my fingernails. The night crawler squealed and slipped, dangling by its creepy feelers as its tail thrashed above the churning, rocky river.

  I wrapped my legs tightly around the branch. One wrong tremor would break the last tree root, sending me and the oversized earthworm falling to our deaths.

  If a girl falls to her doom in the woods and no one is around to hear her scream, does she make a sound? Answer: yes. And that sound is “Aaaaaaah—SPLAT!”

  My shaking hands grabbed the branch above me. I climbed the almost-upside-down tree. Fleshy feelers lashed at me until—

  Snap! The final root broke.

  Everything went weightless. I scaled up the rest of the tree and launched myself into the air, both hands desperately reaching for the faraway, grassy ledge. I caught a single broken root and held on. The shrill cry of the night crawler rang out as it plummeted into the rapids. Imagine dropping a water balloon off your roof. Now imagine that water balloon was filled with seven hundred pounds of yellow slime and chunks of mystery meat.

  I shuddered. Bugs are just ew.

  I climbed to safety, wiped the dirt off my jeans, and picked bits of pine needles and bark off my face. Sticky sap stuck to my hair in clumps, giving me that fresh-and-feral look.

  “Knew I should’ve brought my hair band,” I grumbled.

  The clinking of bells in the sky made me look up, and I saw a small glowing orb.

  Recon pixie.

  “I’m cool, Penelope!” I said, waving up at her. “Thanks for asking. If that is what you were asking.”

  The ball of firelight chimed.

  “I don’t speak Pixie. I was just kind of saying hi.”

  Ting-a-ting!

  “Again, no clue what you’re saying.”

  Penelope flew off, trailing glittery sparkles while I tripped over a branch and ate dirt.

  “Good talk, Penelope,” I said.

  2

  A couple of months ago I was completely oblivious to this unseen world of horrors and wonders. I was happy being miserable in middle school. Just a normal kid. Technically, I’m still just a kid. Thirteen years old. The normal part is highly questionable.

  I started babysitting because I wanted to pay for summer camp. Beautiful, sweet Camp Miskatonic. I had no idea I would be joining an ancient secret society of monster hunters sworn to protect kids (and the rest of world) from the forces of evil.

  Now, in a cruel twist of fate, I was in a bleak, cold, two-day, dead-of-winter camp, where the daily activities were weapons training, tackling obstacle courses, running for your life from man-eating creatures, bunking with strange kids, and questioning all my life choices.

  The weekend was sort of like the infamous two weeks in H-E Double Hockey Sticks that the Navy SEALs go through—only ours was jammed into one weekend, because, unlike Navy SEALs, we all have to go back to school on Monday and pretend like none of this ever happened. I’d like to see a Navy SEAL finish their training and then ace a book report on S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders.

  All around the world, from the Midwest to Mongolia, each babysitter chapter was holding their annual training exam to see who had the chops to become a babysitter. Fighting monsters is a global effort.

  Tonight’s fun-filled horror show was a competition to see who could escape a monster attack in the shortest amount of time. Earlier in the evening, I willingly gave my scent to an instructor, who gave it to the night crawler so that the lard bag would chase me through the cursed woods. The less time it took me to outrun it, the more points I would score. The more points I scored, the closer I would be to becoming an official member of the Rhode Island chapter of the Order of the Babysitters.

  Was I insane for enjoying all of this? Obvs. It sounds supes cheese, but I took pride in
my duty to protect kids from the creatures of the night.

  And no, I hadn’t yet told my mom and dad what I really did when I went out babysitting. They just thought I was a dorky go-getter. I mean, I’d tell them one day—far, far, far in the future when they couldn’t ground me for life. But for the moment, I just wanted to get through Heck Weekend in one piece.

  A mound of boulders formed a strange, lopsided skull-like face in the moonlight. A rusty, yellow “Danger: Falling Rocks” sign jutted from its side.

  I grabbed the tooth of the huge skull-like rock and twisted it three times to the left and once to the right. There was a muffled sound of gears and grinding stone as the mound slowly rolled apart, revealing a ramshackle, two-floor, ivy-covered cottage. Colored Christmas lights were draped in the windows, and a giant wreath hung on the front door. At the very peak of the Victorian-era roof, beside a jumble of high-tech antennae and satellite dishes, there was a flag with the babysitter’s crest.

  A highly secured monster stable, with locks and chains on each of the doors, stretched alongside the cabin. Cages rattled, bucked by howling creatures inside. The rocks tumbled back into place behind me, hiding the small fortress known to only a select few as the Rhode Island headquarters for the Order of the Babysitters.

  The more time I spent at the cottage, the more it felt like home.

  3

  “Fifty-shixsh minutesh and sheventeen sheconds!” Cassie McCoy lisped through her elaborate braces, clicking a stopwatch in my face.

  Of course Cassie had volunteered to be the weekend’s timekeeper.

  “Nice to see you, too, Cassie,” I said. “Am I the first one back?”

  “Not by a long shot, shishter,” she said, scribbling down my time on her clipboard.

  “Is fifty-six minutes bad?” I asked.

  “Madame Moon and Mama Vee want everyone to wait in the mesh hall,” Cassie said, walking away.

  All I wanted to do was slump on the couch, warm my tootsies by the fire, and relax under the three-headed skeleton of a sea serpent.

  “Is that a good time or what?” I asked.

  Cassie had been in a huff all weekend because Curtis Critter, the kooky boy in our RI babysitter squad, was a no-show. Cassie had a raging, not-so-secretive crush on him. I knew this because whenever Cassie was in the same room with Curtis, a long line of drool would spill down her chin and onto her shirt. She’d bark orders at him like “Come sit by me!” or “Accept my friend request!” I guess she took his absence as a sign that he didn’t feel the same way about her.

  “That’s a great time, Kelly,” said Berna Vincent.

  Berna’s pink unicorn pajamas and fluffy bunny slippers made me smile. She handed me a steaming cup of something cinnamony and delicious.

  Berna rocks. Ever since Halloween, we’ve been hanging out a lot. Turns out fighting an army of nightmares together is a great bonding experience for a blossoming friendship. But Berna and I are more than just allies against evil. I really like her. She never makes me feel dumb, even though she is a walking Wiki.

  In the mess hall, four worn-out, wannabe babysitters from around New England sat at a long wooden table. Like me, they came here in the hopes of passing the entrance exam to get into their state’s babysitter chapters. And like me, they looked like they had been chased, bitten, and hunted by monsters all night.

  My shoulders drooped. It had taken me fifty-six minutes to outrun a stupid worm, and these guys aced their monsters in less time than it takes me to burn microwave popcorn. I bit the inside of my cheek. I had a sudden need to speak with the toughest, coolest babysitter around: my associate and mentor.

  “I’m gonna go find Liz.”

  “Vee and Madame Moon shaid to wait in the mesh hall!” Cassie scolded as I walked up the creaky staircase. “Don’t come crying to me when they dock you pointsh for being abshent!”

  I walked down the second-floor hallway to a door covered in a decoupage of punk rock heroes, evil eyes, and a spray-painted sign:

  I knocked, got no answer, and slowly opened the door. A shock-top of spiky hair, half of which had been recently dyed electric pink, bobbed behind a mound of books. Liz LeRue was sitting cross-legged on the floor, headphones blasting, furiously scanning a book about—shudder—giant spiders.

  “Any luck?” I said, leaning down.

  Liz spun, tackled me, and held her ballpoint pen above my eyeball.

  “Dude!” I screamed. “It’s me! Kelly! K-Ferg!”

  Liz lowered her pen and returned to hunching over her book. “Don’t sneak up on me.”

  Plates of uneaten, rotten food were strewn all over the floor beside dozens of crushed Monster Energy drinks and cold mugs of coffee. Maps dotted with pins and crisscrossed with red strings hung on the walls.

  “Maybe it’s time you take a break,” I suggested. “Or a shower.”

  Liz flicked a page. For the past month Liz had grown obsessed with the Grand Guignol’s final words to us: Don’t ask me, darling. Ask Serena.

  The Grand Guignol was the narcissistic, goat-legged Boogeyman we defeated on Halloween (see guide entry #665). That monster took Liz’s little brother, Kevin, eight years ago. Little Kevin’s disappearance shattered Liz’s family and ruined her entire life. She confided in me that she became a babysitter as an act of vengeance, but I also knew that underneath her tough, black-leather-jacket-and-army-boot exterior, there was a soft, sad girl’s heart, clinging to the hope she would one day find her little brother and fix her broken family.

  Ask Serena.

  Like a cryptic tweet from a crazy dictator, that single sentence sent Liz spiraling.

  Serena was one of the seven deadly Boogeypeople. Sidenote: since three of them are female, I prefer the term “Boogeypeople.” It doesn’t have the same ring as Boogeymen, but I don’t care. I believe in equality even when it comes to monsters.

  No matter how much we Googled Serena, nothing came up except a bunch of pictures of spiders. Word of advice: never Google spiders.

  When we called the London Council of Babysitters for help, the only information they could provide was a portrait of Serena painted in 1793, when she married the Earl of Wanstead. The London office shipped the portrait to the Rhode Island chapter, saying that they were happy to be rid of it. When we opened the wooden crate that held the portrait, we found out why.

  Her eyes radiated an icy darkness that made me feel like I was listening to the saddest angst-ridden folk song while standing in the rain, staring at homeless kittens huddled in a soggy cardboard box. Basically, alone, hopeless, and like nothing I could ever do would make a difference. I threw the painting in the basement and haven’t looked at it since.

  “Find anything else on her?” I asked.

  “Check the guide,” Liz said.

  From Liz LeRue’s copy of A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting:

  NAME: Serena von Kessell, aka the Spider Queen, aka Red Widow, aka Princess Tarantula, aka Serena Salazar

  TYPE: Half spider, half human

  LIKES: Blood of all kinds. The younger the better.

  STRENGTHS: The most beautiful and charming of all seven Boogies (great fashion sense). Her fangs eject a deadly venom that can bewitch, paralyze, or kill her prey, depending on her mood.

  WEAPONS: A powerful, sticky web shoots from a gland above her butt, just like a spider.

  WEAKNESSES: Jewelry. Flattery. Giant ego. Eight legs means eight feet; eight feet means more toes to step on.

  Liz snapped the guide shut. “I’ve been following her tracks,” she said. “In 1793 she married the Earl of Wanstead. This guy.”

  She fished around the scattered books and held up one opened to an entry on the Earl of Wanstead. “Doesn’t look like a monster to me,” I said.

  “He wasn’t. He was just a lonely dude related to the British monarchy, and also stinking rich,” she said. “He died mysteriously three months later. Broke and penniless. My hunch is she drained him of his blood and his bank account.”

  “Mu
st have been one bad honeymoon.”

  “Then in Paris 1849,” Liz continued, “a record of a babysitter who had a brief sighting of Serena with the heir to the German Empire at an opera house. Also rich and powerful. Three months later he’s pushing daisies.”

  “I’m sensing a pattern here,” I said.

  Liz held up an old, yellowed Austrian newspaper dated 1905.

  “‘We are pleased to announce the marriage of Duke Heinrich Schönerer and his young, captivating bride, Serena Salazar.’”

  “You can read Austrian?” I asked.

  “The Berlin babysitters translated it for me. One month later . . .”

  “Let me guess. You found his obituary.”

  Liz pointed to an obituary for the dearly departed and drained duke. “He died of, get this, a lethal spider bite.”

  “So, she marries super rich guys, drains ’em of blood and money, and then goes underground in search of another victim.”

  Liz shook her head, bewildered. “And she never gets old.”

  “Love to know her beauty regimen.”

  “It’s blood. Human blood.”

  Yuck. Why couldn’t it have been a magic mud mask? Liz walked over to her wall map.

  “I did a massive search for rich guys who died of spider bites or blood loss, and I was able to follow her trail. She was in Istanbul in 1914. Germany in 1929. Israel in 1967.”

  I narrowed my eyes at the crimson web. “She seems to like places on the brink of war.”

  “Or maybe she helped drive them to it.”

  “You think she, like, used her powers to tip those countries over the edge?”

  Liz looked at me. Dead serious. “Kelly. These are the Boogeymen we’re talking about.”

  “Boogeypeople,” I corrected. Liz rolled her eyes.

  “They will do anything to destroy humanity.”

  Looking at the places and times Serena had visited filled my heart with the same cold and overwhelming darkness I felt when I gazed into the haunting eyes of her portrait.

  “So. Where is she now?” I whispered.

  On the map, Liz stretched a final red thread across the Atlantic and wrapped it around a pin stuck in New York City.