Nightmare at the Book Fair

1: The Book Fair

2: Horror
Sugar Shock

3: Sports Fiction
The Game on the Line

4: Adventure
Sixty Seconds to Live

5: Science Fiction
The Good Samaritans

6: Humor
The Continuing Adventures of Captain Obvious and the Exaggerator

7: Mystery
Who Was the Killer of Principal Miller?

Intermission 1: Reference
Find the Secret Hidden Message!

8: Historical Fiction
Houston, We Have a Problem

Intermission 2: Easy Reader
The Legend of Reed McReedy

9: Animal Fiction
A Day in the Life of Uncle Miltie and Lucy

10: Fantasy
The Quest for the Gold-Plated Knick-Knack

11: Fiction for Girls
The Friends 4 Life Club

12: Awakening

“Hey Dinkleman!”

I turned around. Lionel Jordan slammed his locker shut and slung his backpack over his shoulder. The three o’clock bell had just rung and the hallway was filling up with kids. Lionel and I have been best friends since I don’t know when.

“You tryin’ out for lacrosse, Dink?” Lionel asked.

“No doubt,” I told him. “I’ll meet you over at the field.”

In most towns, middle school starts in sixth grade. But they had some overcrowding problem in the elementary schools, so they had to put the fifth grade into the middle school in our town. That meant we got lockers, and we didn’t have to sit in one room staring at the same teacher all day. It also meant we could go out for sports for the first time. I thought about trying out for football, because I’m pretty big for my age. But I’m not very good. Me and Lionel decided we’d have the best chance of making the lacrosse team because all their best players moved up to high school this year.

“I hope you make the team, Trip,” my social studies teacher, Mrs. Babcock, said as she walked by my locker. “Don’t forget to study for the quiz tomorrow.”

“Oh, I’ll know everything about the three branches of government, Mrs. Babcock,” I promised.

The media center is right around the corner from my locker. There was a big sign on the wall—
THIS WAY TO THE BOOK FAIR
!

Ugh. I make it a point not to set foot in the media center if I can help it. I don’t like to read. Never did. I mean, I read okay, I guess. I read when I have to. It’s just kind of boring to sit there looking at words on a page. I’d rather run around.

One time the media specialist, Miss Durkin, told me that if I like sports so much, I would probably enjoy reading sports books. But why read about kids running around playing sports when I can be running around playing sports myself?

“Excuse me, is your name Trip Dinkleman?”

It was Mrs. Pontoon, president of the PTA. She was standing outside the media center. I guess she knew my name because her daughter Lauren is in a few of my classes.

“Yes?”

“We need a big strong boy to help us move some crates,” Mrs. Pontoon said. “Can you help us out?”

“I’m kind of on my way to lacrosse tryouts,” I told her.

“Oh, this will only take a few minutes.”

Snagged! I followed her into the media center. Mrs. Pontoon talks really fast.

“The PTA wants to buy the school one of those super high-tech whiteboards, you know, the kind that hook up to a computer and you can print things out?” Mrs. Pontoon said, barely stopping to take a breath. “But they’re very expensive so we had to raise the money, and my original plan was to hold a fund raiser where we’d have the students sell gift wrapping paper, but Principal Miller didn’t like the idea of kids knocking on strangers’ doors so he said we could have a book fair instead and we need some help because Mr. Dunn the custodian told me he had to mop the cafeteria so it will dry in time for the chorus to come in so it’s very nice of you to help….”

Mrs. Pontoon is one of those ladies who never stops talking. My mom says that if you asked Mrs. Pontoon what time it is, she would tell you how to build a clock.

The book fair wasn’t set up yet in the media center. They had these giant crates—taller than me—scattered around. There must have been ten of them. Mrs. Pontoon told me that all the books for the book fair were in the crates. She needed help opening them and sliding them into a line along the wall. I pushed against one of the crates. It was really heavy. This was going to be a big job.

If I had finished at my locker a few seconds earlier, it occurred to me, I would be at lacrosse tryouts instead of helping set up the book fair.

Miss Durkin came over with a plate full of cookies. I have a total sweet tooth, and I pounced on it.

“Since you’re nice enough to help, Trip, the least I can do is offer you a treat.”

I feel sorry for Miss Durkin. She’s always really busy because she’s also the media specialist at my old elementary school. She works there three days a week and comes to our school for two days. And she doesn’t even have an assistant. She always seems stressed out.

I opened the latch on one of the big crates and pushed the two sides apart. When the crate was opened up, it was like a big set of bookshelves. It was filled with picture books for little kids. The books were all lined up and organized, ready for kids to buy them. Maybe it wouldn’t take too long after all.

I struggled to push open the next crate, which was even heavier. When I finally got it open, I could see why it was so heavy. It was filled with dictionaries and encyclopedias. Ugh. Who would want to buy one of
them
?

The crate was too heavy to slide. I had to rock it back and forth to get it to move across the floor. That’s what I was doing when, suddenly, I don’t know what happened, I guess I rocked it too much or, I don’t know, but some of those fat ones on the top shelf must have leaned or something, and the next thing I knew the whole shelfful of them was coming down, and I tried to get my hands up, but…

Bam!
Oh, my head!

Sugar Shock

Oh, my head!

When I opened my eyes, a reflection in a mirror was staring at me. I shrank back in terror. My face was bent and distorted into a tortured, grotesque mask of disfigurement! Somehow, sometime, somewhere, I had been turned into a horrible, disgusting, hideous-looking monster!

But no.

As it turned out, the reflection was in a curvy fun-house mirror, the kind you see at carnivals and science museums. When I squatted down a few inches, the mirror compressed my body into a funny-looking Humpty Dumpty shape. When I stood on my tiptoes, it appeared that my head had separated from the rest of my body and was floating a few inches above it.

Whew! What a relief!

“Hey kid,” mumbled a female voice behind me. “You want a free ticket to the haunted house?”

I turned around to see a punky-looking teenage girl, with short black hair and a tattoo of a tiger on her neck. There were scars on her face, as if she had been in an accident and needed a lot of stitches. She held out a ticket for me.

“I’ve already been inside,” she added.

“Is it scary?” I asked.

“Dude,” she replied, “this is the scariest haunted house you’ll ever visit.”

I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not.

Looking over her shoulder, I could see that I was standing on a boardwalk, one of those honky-tonk strips down the shore crammed with T-shirt shops, saltwater taffy vendors, and cheesy carnival rides. I could feel the breeze, smell the ocean. Right next to the haunted house was a booth with a college kid trying to talk people into shooting a basketball at a hoop to win stuffed animals. Clearly, it was a rip-off. The rim was hardly any bigger than the ball.

On the other side of the haunted house was a booth selling funnel cake. Ummm. Good smell. I could almost taste it.

What am I doing here? What happened to the book fair? Is this a dream? Is this heaven? Am I in a coma? Is this what it feels like to be unconscious? Or am I on some dumb reality TV show?

I didn’t know. And you know what? I didn’t care, either. Whatever it was, I decided, I was going to enjoy it.

“Sure, yeah, why not?” I said, taking the ticket. The girl snickered and walked away.

Haunted house. Yeah, right! I’ve been to dozens of these places. They’re always the same. Bored actors in cheap zombie costumes jump out at you from behind corners and scream. Eyes on portraits follow you as you walk by. Fake bats. Disembodied limbs nailed to the walls. Weak-looking holographic ghosts. Spooky voices and howling wolves come out of cheap speakers. They’re always lame.

I slipped the ticket into a slot, which made the gate in front of me swing open. It also made another gate come down behind me. I turned around and pushed against that one. It wouldn’t budge. There was no way to go backward.

Hmmm.

I thought about climbing over the fence and getting out of there. But then I saw the small sign:
DO NOT TOUCH
! 50,000
VOLTS
. Maybe it was just a prop, another part of the “terrifying” experience. But maybe it was real. Maybe if I touched it, 50,000 volts would shoot through my body. It wasn’t a chance I was willing to take.

The steps creaked eerily as I climbed them. Nice effect. It didn’t even sound computer generated. The front door opened before I could put my hand on the doorknob and closed behind me as soon as I went inside.

I wasn’t scared. Not yet.

“Hello?” I called out, as I walked down the hallway. “Anybody home?”

Nobody was around. The hallway was lit by dim lightbulbs so I could hardly see anything at all. The wallpaper was old and faded. Not bad. They had done a pretty good job on the place. It really looked like an old house.

You couldn’t hear the sounds of the boardwalk in the distance. There was no carnival music playing, no happy shrieks from the kids on the roller coaster. Good soundproofing. Impressive.

Then I heard something like a series of clicks on the wood floor. A moment later, a black cat jumped out right in front of me, hissing and spitting. It wasn’t some fake animatronic cat. This was a
real
cat. How did they get that cat to perform on command? My cat at home won’t do
anything
. Just then, a strobe light flashed and I looked into the cat’s eyes.

The cat had the face of a
dog
!

I screamed as I backed up against the wall behind me. Okay,
now
I was scared. More than scared. They had scared the crap out of me.

This was a big mistake on my part, I realized. What had I gotten myself into? I never should have taken the ticket from that girl. Now I had to find my way out of the place.

All the doors on the first floor were locked. I ran upstairs, searching desperately for a red exit sign. Aren’t they required by law to have them in places like this? What if there’s a fire? No time to worry about that now.

There was a kitchen on the second floor with a round table in the middle of it. And in the middle of the table was a round plate. And in the middle of the round plate was one of the few things in the world that I truly loved.

A funnel cake.

Have you ever had funnel cake? If you’ve never had it, you’re missing one of the great joys of life. One of the main reasons we were put on this earth. Without funnel cake, life would hardly be worth living.

A funnel cake doesn’t look like a funnel. It’s more like a big waffle with powdered sugar sprinkled on top. I’ll tell you, if you put powdered sugar on
anything
, it will taste good. They should put powdered sugar on broccoli and asparagus and other stuff that kids don’t want to eat. But when you put powdered sugar on something that is already incredible tasting to begin with, you’re about to eat perfection.

I looked at the funnel cake. It was just sitting there. It looked so good. I wanted to get out of there, but I wanted the funnel cake too. I broke off a little piece and popped it into my mouth. Oh, man! I couldn’t stop myself. I grabbed the thing and stuffed the rest of it into my mouth. Never in my life had I tasted a funnel cake as good as this one.

“What a nice face you have,” spoke a low voice from the shadowy corner of the room.

“Ahhhhh!”

The guy took a step forward into the dim light. I could see he was wearing a checked bathrobe and slippers. In one hand was a twisted cane. He must have been standing there the whole time, watching me.

“Don’t be worried,” he said. “I wouldn’t hurt a fly. They’re too small.”

“I…I’m sorry!” I stammered, my mouth still full of funnel cake. “I didn’t know this was yours.”

“No worries. Do you like it?”

“Very much,” I said.

“Must be my secret ingredient,” the guy said.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Brains.”

Maybe he was making a joke. Maybe not. In any case, I spit the stuff out, choking on what was still in my throat.

“Yes,” he continued, “brains are quite a sought-after delicacy in many parts of the world. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Eating brains should make you smarter. Too bad you weren’t smart enough to not eat them. Because those who eat the brains must in turn have
their
brains eaten.”

He took another step toward me.

“But I don’t want my brains eaten!” I shouted, shrinking into the corner. “I just want to go home! I’ll be late for lacrosse tryouts!” I wished Lionel was with me. He would know what to do.

“I’m sorry,” the guy said, stopping suddenly. “How rude of me. I neglected to introduce myself. Professor Psycho, at your service.”

He extended his hand, but I didn’t shake it.

“Your name is
Professor Psycho
?!” I asked.

“Well, it’s more of a nickname, actually,” he said. “My real name is Milo DeVenus. I’ve been expecting you.”

“You have?”

“You
are
Trip Dinkleman, right?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“You signed up to be part of my experiment, didn’t you?”

“No,” I told him. “I was just at the book fair and this stack of books fell and—”

“No matter,” Professor Psycho said. “There was a form that came home in your backpack last week. Your mother must have filled it out. Mothers do that. Always looking out for their children. Perhaps if
my
mother had done that for
me
, things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did.”

“What did your mother do to you?”

“She gave me nothing but funnel cake to eat for eight years,” he said, a faraway look in his eye. “I went into an advanced state of sugar shock. It was quite horrible, actually. How ironic it is that so much of a good thing can be so bad for you. Everything in moderation, that’s what they always say.”

“I really need to go home,” I said.

“Don’t you want to hear my psychotic plan?” Professor Psycho asked.

“Maybe some other time,” I said, backing toward the door.

“The human body is much like an automobile,” he explained, ignoring me. “Both are made up of many separate parts that work together. When a car breaks down, we can simply order a new part to fix it. Presumably, we can just keep replacing parts as they wear out, and the car will run indefinitely. Why can’t we do the same with human beings?”

“That’s really interesting,” I said, moving toward where I thought I had come in. The door was gone. “But I really need to get home.”

“We already have heart transplants and liver transplants,” he went on, “why not a complete set of interchangeable body parts? It would allow us to live
forever
!”

I looked for a door, a hallway, anything that would get me out of there.

“Forget about cosmetic surgery,” he continued. “You want a nose job? Just drop in and get an entirely new nose! You’ll be able to order it from a catalog! I’ll open a chain of human parts stores. It will be bigger than McDonald’s. We’ll have drive-through windows. Billions and billions served! Ahahahahahahaha!”

His evil cackling laugh reverberated off the walls of the old house.
This is just a bad dream
, I tried to convince myself.

“You’re not real,” I told him, as I took a few hesitant steps forward. “You’re some kind of special effect. If you were real, I could just reach out and touch you.”

“Go ahead then.”

I reached my hand toward him, expecting to be able to poke my finger right through him. But I didn’t get the chance. He grabbed my finger with his hand.

“I could use one of these,” he said, and then he did that evil cackling laugh again before he let go of my finger.

“You’re insane!” I shouted.

“Was Edison insane?” Professor Psycho shouted gleefully. “How about Einstein? Some call it insanity. I prefer to think of myself as…a divergent thinker.”

“Look, mister,” I yelled, “what you are is crazy, and I’m getting out of here.”

I bolted past him into the same hallway I had come in from, but I wasn’t more than a yard past the door when somebody tackled me. He was a horrible, disgusting, hideous-looking monster, his face bent and distorted in a tortured, grotesque mask of disfigurement. And I wasn’t looking in any fun-house mirror this time.

“Arghhhhhhhh!” the thing grunted, as it picked me up like a feather and slammed me down in one of the kitchen chairs.

“This is my assistant, Ivan,” Professor Psycho said. “He fled Estonia before the fall of the Soviet Union. Say hello to our guest, Ivan.”

It didn’t look as if Ivan was capable of human speech.

“Ivan was one of my early experiments,” Professor Psycho continued. “Sadly, his face transplant didn’t turn out exactly as planned.”

“Let me go!” I screamed, as Ivan stretched a rope around my chest and tied it to the chair.

“The problem is that it’s so hard to find attractive donors,” Professor Psycho said.

“You’ll never get away with this!” I yelled. “My parents will be here any minute!”

“That’s what they all say,” he said, chuckling. “Relax, Mr. Dinkleman. This won’t take long. Ivan will be carrying out the actual procedure. I prefer to watch on my Webcam. Things can get…uh, messy, and I detest the sight of blood. Good luck, Trip.”

With that, he hobbled away with his cane. I struggled to get out of the ropes, but Ivan had tied me up tightly. He opened the kitchen drawer, but instead of knives and forks and spoons, he took out all kinds of weird medical instruments and put them on the kitchen table.

“Look, Ivan,” I said to him. “I’m sorry about your botched face transplant. That Professor Psycho guy is nuts. You don’t need to stay with him. Let’s get out of here! What do you say? You and me, together.”

“Arghhhhhhhh!” Ivan grunted. He picked up a long sharp thing from the table and held it over my face. I shrank back in the chair.

He was about to cut me when a door slammed. The next thing I knew, a girl burst into the kitchen. This was no ordinary girl. She was beautiful, with long blond hair and blue eyes.