A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting #3 Read online

  “You’re good,” I said, huffing for breath. “Who made you?”

  Lilly May sneered, turned around, and showed me her butt.

  “Made in China” was stamped into her right cheek.

  “That’s where I was made. Where I was born is another story,” she said.

  I bumped into the oven. I tripped. Dropped my knife.

  “You win,” I said, holding up my hands. “Please don’t hurt me.”

  A warped smile spread across Lilly May’s pushed-in face.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, babysitter. I’m just going to kill you!”

  She lunged. I spun and opened the oven door. The doll roared inside. I slammed it shut.

  Pressing my shoulder against it, I cranked the heat knobs up to five hundred degrees.

  “Let me out!” screamed the doll. She banged her rubber fists against the glass.

  “What’s the matter? Can’t take the heat?” I said.

  The temperature gauge rose past a hundred.

  “If I were you, I’d start answering my questions.”

  Through the dark glass, I could see Lilly May’s panicked face as she watched the tips of her fingers melt like candle wax.

  “What do you want with the twins?” I demanded.

  “They’re naughty. And naughty children get what they deserve,” she hissed. “A special treat. Someplace fun.”

  “Sunshine Island?” I blurted out.

  The temperature rose to two hundred. Lilly May started to do a little marching dance as she began to sing.

  “There’s a place the lucky children go,

  Where fun is forever and you never get old.

  A land of cupcakes and ice cream.

  Rides and slides to make you scream.”

  Lilly May’s face started to sag and droop. Her voice was getting lower and lower.

  “Adventure, toys, and so much fun.

  Follow me to the land of sun.”

  A huge heat bubble grew to the size of a peach on Lilly May’s rubber neck. Her hands smeared against the hot glass.

  “Let me out, you monster!” she wailed until her jaw oozed down the front of her dress.

  Plastic eyeballs lazily fell from their sockets as her head collapsed onto her shoulders, and the wicked toy melted into a slimy mess.

  Coughing, I waved the black smoke away to see the Fancy Lady doll was now a pile of smoldering clothes and a charred black puddle.

  The smoke alarm screeched. I opened a window and waved the smoke out. I grabbed a dustpan and scraped the burned remains into the trash can.

  Two tiny screams rang behind me.

  The twins stood in the kitchen doorway, watching me scoop up their doll’s remains.

  “Lilly May!” cried Sabina and Ursula.

  “I’m fine, thanks for asking,” I said. “Don’t touch the knives.”

  Raw pain bit my arm. I had been cut a few times. I pulled a small first aid kit from my bag. The twins stared at me from across the countertop.

  Sabina shook her head sadly. “You didn’t have to fry her.”

  “Never was a good cook,” I said.

  Sabina scowled at me. Her right shoulder was slumped, as if part of her had been severed. She rubbed her forehead, wincing.

  “You okay?” I asked. “Got a headache?”

  “No,” she snapped. “I’m fine.”

  “Where did you get that doll?” I said, cleaning my wounds.

  “She was nice when we met her at the mall. But then she got weird,” Ursula said. “Daddy accidentally ran her over with a snowblower.”

  “Lilly May lost an arm. So we took her to the doll hospital. Three days ago.”

  “The nice doctor lady there fixed her up. But when Lilly May came home, she started talking. For real.”

  Sabina smiled. No regrets. “She was fun. She was our secret.”

  “Lilly May was mean,” said Ursula.

  “She wanted to take us somewhere fun, Ursula! Sunshine Island sounds amazing. Like better than any park in the world,” said Sabina.

  My stomach sank. “When was Lilly May going to take you there?” I asked.

  “Tonight,” Sabina said, and nodded at the trash can. “But we’ll never get to go to the most amazingest place in the world now because you melted my best friend.”

  Sabina burst into a flood of very dramatic sobs.

  “Where’s this doll hospital?” I asked.

  “Mommy and Daddy would know. They didn’t like Lilly May,” Ursula whispered.

  “And she didn’t like Mommy and Daddy,” Sabina added, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

  They both froze at exactly the same time, as if they had remembered something horrible.

  “Mommy and Daddy!”

  11

  A fluorescent light buzzed in the garage. The twins approached a bulging blue tarp.

  “They’re going to be so mad,” Ursula said.

  “Maybe we should leave them alone,” Sabina whispered.

  I pushed the girls aside and whooshed the tarp off Mrs. and Mr. Renfield. Their wrists were duct-taped together. Their faces were covered in splotchy makeup, as if they had been kidnapped in the middle of playing princess. They weren’t breathing.

  They were snoring.

  “Lilly May slipped a bunch of Mommy’s sleeping pills in their water,” Sabina said.

  “We put them down here,” Ursula said. “I gave them a pillow.”

  “They look so peaceful,” said Sabina.

  I knelt down and checked their pulses. Heartbeats were regular. I rummaged through my book bag.

  “Lilly May put them to sleep so you could run away with her?” I asked.

  Sabina nodded. “That was the plan. Until someone came along and melted her.”

  I studied the girls’ dark eyes. Ursula seemed genuinely sorry. Sabina was just sorry she got caught. If the Boogeypeople were looking for naughty children, I could see why they chose Sabina.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I can wake them up.”

  “Do we hafta?” Sabina asked.

  In my backpack I found a small case full of ingredients I had gathered from different monsters, each numbered and Velcro’ed in place.

  I hadn’t quite mastered babysitter chemistry yet, but I knew a few mixtures.

  One part stink beetle, three parts hobgoblin warts, and a moldy one-eyed sloth’s toenail.

  “Untie them,” I said.

  “Do we hafta?” Sabina repeated.

  “Yes, we hafta!” I snapped.

  The twins undid their parents’ bonds while I shook the concoction together and waved the pungent yellow smoke under the Renfields’ noses. They sputtered awake and looked around in total shock.

  They had a million questions. “Why are we asleep in the garage? Was that doll really trying to kill us?”

  I did my best to explain.

  Usually, we sitters keep mum about monsters, but in this instance, I thought the Renfields should know that something was up with their adorable twins in case the girls tried to make a break for Sunshine Island again.

  Also, I wanted to clock out before my dad came to pick me up so I could investigate the doll hospital. It was only eight o’clock. That gave me two hours to figure this all out.

  Mrs. Renfield’s trembling hands found a receipt for the doll hospital in her purse. The address was on its letterhead.

  I excused myself and called for backup.

  12

  “Makes sense to me,” said Liz LeRue as the babysitter mobile sped toward the doll hospital. “Lure kids to an awesome island with the promise of fun and games and then turn them into a monster army. Instead of snatching kids from their beds, the Boogeys have figured out a way to make the little ones come to them—with no delivery fees. Like Amazon Prime for monsters.”

  Liz rubbed the top of her shaved head. She had recently buzzed off all her hair, which made her look tougher and meaner than her usual fifteen-year-old self. Her look scared a lot of parents, but I knew Liz woul
dn’t really stomp anyone’s teeth in—without a reason.

  Liz drove the sitter mobile, a beat-up van that had been shredded and bashed but miraculously still ran. I was buckled up in the passenger seat. Kevin was stinking up the back seat. Our hobgoblin buddy and brilliant mechanic, Wugnot, had outfitted the van with a bubble window on the roof, which fit Kevin’s horns comfortably.

  “I tried getting Berna and the others to come, but they were already on other jobs,” said Liz. “Not that we need ’em with me and big Kev. Right, Kev?”

  Kevin and Liz howled together.

  “We’re investigating,” I said. “We can’t make a bunch of noise.”

  “Oh, I beg your pardon, princess,” Liz said with a smirk. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” She pointed to herself and then to her beastly brother. “We’re the pros from Pawtucket. And don’t you faw-get it.”

  Kevin barked in agreement. I shot him a look.

  “If you’re such a pro, why did you get me suspended from school today?”

  Kevin made apologetic grunts.

  “Toughen up, newb,” Liz said. “I’ve been suspended dozens of times.”

  “Victor got a concussion, too,” I said.

  Keven could barely contain his laughter.

  “It’s not funny, Kevin. He got hurt. I don’t like my friends getting hurt. Not him. Not you.”

  Liz snorted. “How does Victor think he can be a babysitter if he freaks out around monsters when he’s not even on a job?”

  “It was my fault,” I said.

  “Kev said he choked,” Liz said.

  “Kevin!” I shouted.

  Kevin guffawed.

  “Victor’s going to be a great babysitter. You’ll see.”

  “You’re only saying that because he’s your boyfriend and you love him,” Liz said.

  Kevin looked at me with puppy dog eyes. “Urv?” he yelped.

  “Urv is a big word, Kev,” I sighed.

  “What do you know about love and romance, Liz?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Gladly. I don’t believe in Valentine’s Day. It’s a scam holiday made by greeting card companies to make money off dipsticks like you who believe that giving overpriced paper and chocolate to someone actually means something.”

  Kevin grabbed Liz’s phone and opened it. He showed me a picture of a guy with a Mohawk standing beside a black Mustang.

  My eyes bugged.

  “Well, he looks like a very nice person.”

  “Stop it! Kevin!” Liz said, reaching back to try and punch her Sasquatchian sibling.

  “He better be nice to you, or Kevin might pay him a visit,” I said.

  Kevin thumped his chest and growled. I laughed.

  Liz cranked a thrashing screamo song by the Quarter Punks on the stereo. The LeRue siblings banged their heads as we drove into a small village of antique and art shops, the kind of place tourists adore in the summer. But on a cold night in February, there wasn’t a soul around.

  Liz cut the engine and turned off her headlights. The van tires crunched over gravel as we pulled up to an old, leaning house.

  Over the front door, in big red letters:

  THE DOLL HOSPITAL

  “This is a thing people do?” Liz said quietly. “Man, people are weird.”

  Kevin grumbled in total agreement.

  The lights were off. There was a sign in the window: “Dr. Wermling is out.”

  “I’m going to take a closer look,” I said.

  The van rocked as Kevin tried to get out with me. I put my hand on his chest.

  “Alone, Kevin,” I said.

  He thumped his chest and pointed at me.

  “That’s very nice of you. Just keep watch,” I said.

  Kevin reluctantly sat back in the van with Liz. I ducked under the building’s large picture window and peered inside. Hundreds of bare doll heads were haphazardly piled up against the glass. A marionette dangled from its strings. Old, dusty dolls were on display in their finest white lace. Cubbyholes were filled with eyeballs, arms, legs, and stuffed doll torsos.

  I climbed a nearby tree to its highest branch so I could see into the rear window of the doll hospital.

  In the middle of the room a doll’s body was flayed open on a small operating room table. Wires from the electrodes attached to the doll ran to a beeping monitor in the corner. Sharp needles stuck out of pincushions on a table full of cutting tools. Metal claws attached to robotic arms splashed into a boiling cauldron and removed a steaming baby doll’s head. Water poured from its mouth and eyes.

  In the shadows a blond woman raised the doll’s head to inspect it.

  Then I caught a glimpse of her face in the moonlight. Her skin was stretched and pinched behind her neck, as if she’d had multiple face-lifts. It looked like she was wearing a papery mask under a bright, bleached-blond wig. She was a very ancient person trying to make herself into a human Barbie doll, and the result was just wrong.

  From A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting

  NAME: Dr. Wermling

  OCCUPATION: Doll doctor

  LIKES: Dolls, having really puffy duck lips

  DISLIKES: Sunshine. The passage of time. Loose stitches.

  “Where is that sister of yours?” Dr. Wermling said. “She should have been here with those brats hours ago.”

  So, this is where Lilly May was going to take the twins. Why here? What’s so special about it?

  The doctor placed the freshly boiled doll’s face on a worktable and twisted it in a vise. She selected a scalpel and scraped her patient’s nose, cleaning it with care. She glanced at the clock.

  “We’ll just have to pay them a visit ourselves,” said Wermling.

  Dr. Wermling fixed the doll’s head to its body and attached electrodes to its head and feet. Then she opened a jar that glowed with an ethereal wisp of purple light. The good doctor carefully plucked the light out with tweezers and inserted it into the doll’s open chest. Then she set about threading a needle. Her puffy, fake lips sucked the ends of a red thread. Her trembling hands sewed up the patient’s cloth rib cage, trapping the slithering purple glow inside.

  Wermling pulled a lever. The electrodes buzzed with bluish light. The doll’s back arched. Its limbs sputtered to life. The doctor’s eyes flickered purple.

  The mad doctor raised her hands. “Rise, Lullu Belle. Rise!”

  The doll sat up.

  “What a pretty girl you are!” said Dr. Wermling.

  Lullu Belle’s doll head spun around 180 degrees and stared right at me.

  I lost my balance. Clawed the air like a doof and fell out of the tree.

  Whoomph! Kevin’s thick arms caught me.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He grunted. No big deal.

  “Your sister does a lousy job keeping you in check, you know that?”

  Kevin and I ran back to Liz in the van. We ducked and watched Wermling drive away from the doll hospital in a station wagon with dolls and teddy bears cluttering the back. Precious Lullu Belle was seated in the front. The doll was wearing a seat belt, glaring out of the passenger window.

  “Follow that doll ambulance!” I said.

  “On it!” Liz was happy to snap into action, but it turned out to be the world’s slowest car chase since the old doctor never drove faster than twenty miles an hour.

  “Oh come on!” Liz said. “I can walk faster than this.”

  We chased (and by “chased” I mean “crept”) behind the doctor as she drove past the Renfield house.

  I looked at my watch. In one hour my dad was going to pick me up. We did not have time for this!

  Watching from her car, Wermling banged her steering wheel. She checked her watch and slammed on the gas, speeding off at a whopping thirty miles an hour. Liz groaned, and we slowly crawled after her.

  The smell of dead fish filled the air as our shadow-ride followed the station wagon into the Innsmouth Marina. Creaking docks stretched into the green fog over the ocean. Liz pulled the van
up behind a huge stack of crusty lobster traps.

  The docks were empty except for Dr. Wermling and her doll. She stood at the edge of the ocean scratching under her blond wig.

  A strange, warm wind picked up, stirring a nearby state flag. In the distance a lonely buoy bell clanked. Kevin whimpered in the back seat. He was peering into the ocean, shuddering.

  It was one of the rare times I had ever seen him cower in fear.

  “What’s wrong, Kev?” Liz asked quietly. Her brother’s silvery eyes were fixed on the churning waves. Fog swirled, disturbed by a mountainous shadow approaching the docks.

  A masthead shaped like a giant wolf emerged from the wall of mist. I gasped and quickly covered my mouth. A tremendous wooden schooner with full sails glided along the coastline. Shouts and orders were barked on deck. An iron anchor dripping with seaweed plunged into the water. Hulking shadows set about tying the ship to the dock.

  “All aboard for Sunshine Island!” came a booming voice.

  13

  The boat suddenly came alive with red and white lights and bouncy carnival music. A gangplank slid onto the dock. Flags emblazoned with happy suns shot up the mast. Someone was wearing a giant furry frog costume. Beside them, someone else danced on the deck, dressed like a sunshine happy face.

  The ghost ship had transformed itself into the world’s happiest cruise line. But there was something off about the whole thing. The frog costume didn’t fit whoever or whatever was wearing it. The lights bulbs were dim from sea scum. The happy music was out of tune and desperate for joy.

  “Is this the ship that took you?” I asked Kevin.

  He couldn’t even speak. He nodded. Yes.

  “I’m getting a closer look,” Liz said. “Kelly, stay with Kevin.”

  Low to the ground she zigzagged around the docks. Kevin murmured into his paws, worried for his sister’s safety.

  “She’ll be okay, Kev,” I said, patting him on the arm. “She knows what she’s doing. But if this is what I think it is, we’ll need evidence to show the council.”

  I grabbed my phone and flicked on the camera. Pinch-zooming onto the ship, I saw the lurking crew bob in and out of shadows. They seemed less human and more like trained baboons.