The Curse of the Campfire Weenies (13 page)

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Authors: David Lubar

BOOK: The Curse of the Campfire Weenies
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M
orty almost walked right past the grasshopper. When he first noticed it, he wasn't even sure whether it was an insect or a small stick.
“Hey,” he said to Carl. “What's that?” Morty walked over to the side of the road and bent down to take a closer look at the insect.
“It's a cricket or something,” Carl said, joining Morty.
“That's not a cricket. It's a grasshopper.” Morty was pretty sure crickets were flatter and shaped differently. This was definitely a grasshopper. Not the big green kind but the small brown kind.
“Doesn't matter what it is,” Carl said. “It's dead.”
Morty bent closer. He was ready to spring back at any moment, just in case the grasshopper tried to jump up at his face. But the insect didn't move. “It's not dead. If it was dead, it would be on its side or something.” He took a deep breath and blew on the grasshopper.
It still didn't move.
Morty leaned even closer, looking for any sign of life.
“Dead,” Carl said. “Come on. Let's get going.”
Morty wasn't sure. He raised his foot and brought it down hard. He smacked the asphalt just behind the grasshopper.
It jumped halfway across the road.
“Cool,” Carl said, running over toward it. “My turn.” He stomped his foot next to the grasshopper.
It jumped again.
Morty laughed. This was definitely fun. He went over and stomped again. The grasshopper jumped again. “Pretty stupid bug,” Morty said.
“Yeah.” Carl stomped. His foot almost landed on the grasshopper.
“Careful,” Morty said. “You'll squish it.”
Carl gave him a disgusted look. “Don't tell me you care about a bug.”
Morty shook his head. “I don't care, but if you squish it, we'll have to find another one to play with.”
Morty stomped again. The stupid bug jumped again. After Carl stomped, Morty started trying to take two turns in a row.
“Hey, not fair,” Carl said.
“I found it,” Morty said. “And I figured it out.” It was his discovery, so he felt he should have more turns. He stomped. Then he ran to get to the bug before Carl.
The race was on.
Morty was faster than Carl, and he was better at guessing which way the grasshopper was going to jump. So
Morty got to make most of the stomps. But Carl got in plenty, too. They both stomped and pushed and ran until they could hardly breathe.
It was Carl, rushing to try to get in a turn, who made the mistake.
He stomped the grasshopper.
“Carl! You ruined it,” Morty said. But he wasn't really angry. He'd been getting tired, and his foot had started to hurt from all the stomping.
“So what? It was just a stupid bug,” Carl said. “There are lots of others. The world is full of bugs.”
Morty opened his mouth. But he didn't say anything right away. For the first time in a long time, he looked around. He'd been so busy chasing the grasshopper and stomping that he'd paid no attention to where he'd been going. He turned to his left. Nothing looked familiar. He turned to his right. Nothing looked familiar there, either.
“Stupid bug,” he said out loud.
“Where are we?” Carl asked.
“I don't know.”
They were on a road, but there weren't any houses in sight. There was nothing around them but fields filled with tall weeds. The road itself ended just ahead of them. It came to a sudden stop, as if the people building it had gotten tired and left to do something more interesting.
Carl took a sudden step back from the squished mess that had once been a grasshopper. “I think it led us here,” he said.
“That's stupid,” Morty said. He didn't like the sound of
panic in Carl's voice. “It was just a stupid bug. And why would a stupid little bug want to bring us here?”
Carl took another step back. “It led us here,” he said again. “If someone was chasing you, wouldn't you run somewhere for help?”
Morty couldn't believe Carl would say such ridiculous stuff. But he also felt it was time to find their way home. Something about this place made him nervous. “Let's go.”
A shadow fell over him from behind.
Morty turned.
It was another grasshopper. But not a little one. This was a big one. Really big. Bigger than Morty—a lot bigger than Morty.
Morty opened his mouth to scream.
The grasshopper raised one of its front legs. It stomped down. The scream caught in Morty's throat as he saw the bug squish Carl.
The leg came up again.
Stupid bug,
Morty thought.
But it was stupid Morty who got squished.
I
T. was the middle of the summer, and I was bored. My usual friends weren't around today, so I decided to go see Cody Peterson. I hadn't seen him since school let out for the summer, but we'd gotten together at my house a couple of times last year and he was a lot of fun. I knew Cody lived down near the end of Randolph Street. I wasn't sure which house, but I figured it wouldn't be hard to find him. Randolph Street isn't very long.
When I got there, it turned out that most of the houses on Randolph Street had names on the mailboxes. There were only two that didn't, and they were right next to each other.
I checked out the first house. It almost looked like nobody lived there. The windows were shut and the curtains were closed. But I figured it wouldn't do any harm to find out for sure, so I went up the porch and rang the bell.
The door flew open before my finger even left the bell.
“Hello, young lad, what can I do for you?” the man asked. He was tall and thin. Strangely enough, he was wearing sunglasses, which most people don't do when they're inside a house—especially a dark house. As he spoke to me, he kept rubbing his hands together. He was kind of leaning over, too, so his head was almost right above mine.
“I'm looking for Cody … .” I expected him to tell me I had the wrong house. He didn't look at all like he was related to Cody.
“Cody's out,” the man said. “But he should be returning any second. Why don't you go around back and wait for him.”
“I could wait here,” I said.
“Nonsense. Go back and relax. Stretch out in the hammock if you want. It's very comfortable. There's nothing like a hammock.”
“Sure. Thanks.” I walked around the side of the house and went through a gate into the backyard. The yard was surrounded by a fence—a high, solid fence of wood. There wasn't much to see there—no swing set or anything. Just the hammock, which really did look comfortable. It was made of thick ropes stretched out between two trees. What the heck—no reason not to relax while I waited for Cody. And when it came to relaxing, there really was nothing like a hammock.
I knew how to get into a hammock because my uncle
Frank had one at his house up in Maine. I pushed down at the edge and rolled in. My body sank right into the ropes. It felt so nice and relaxing. I closed my eyes.
“I'M HOME!”
I opened my eyes and lifted my head when I heard the shout. That was Cody's voice for sure. But I didn't see him. I heard more shouts. They were coming from the other side of the fence. Then I heard another voice, also on the other side of the fence.
“Cody, wipe your feet before you come in.”
“Yes, Mom,” Cody said.
I heard a door slam, on the other side of the fence.
The
other
side?
The thought hit me so hard I felt my body jerk. This wasn't Cody's yard. He lived next door. Which meant that the guy I'd talked to wasn't Cody's dad. I needed to get out of here. I started to sit up.
I couldn't.
I was stuck. I tugged and pulled. The outside ropes were fine, but the middle ones, all through the center of the hammock, were sticky, holding me trapped.
I heard another door. This one didn't slam shut. This one creaked open. And it wasn't on the other side of the fence. I looked toward the house. The man slipped out the back door. He dropped to the ground, crawling on his arms and legs. Another pair of legs came out from his sides, through slits in his shirt, and then another. Eight legs. As he crawled toward me, the sunglasses fell from his face, revealing his eyes. They weren't human eyes.
I struggled to break free.
It was no use. I wasn't in a hammock. I was in a web. And even though they might look a little alike, a web is nothing like a hammock.
C
onnie paused outside the entrance of the shop. There was no reason in the world not to go in. Everyone was doing it. Absolutely everyone in school except her had done it. Most of them had done it years ago. Nearly all of them had done it more than once.
“Well,” Nicole asked, “are you going in?”
“Sure,” Connie said. She glanced back at her mom, who smiled and nodded. “Why not?” She walked into Peggy's Piercing Palace and looked for a salesperson.
A woman came over. “Can I help you?”
“I'd like to get my ears pierced,” Connie said.
“You came to the right place,” the woman told her. “Have a seat.”
Connie's mom gave her permission, then told the girls, “I'll meet up with you at the food court. Are you sure you don't want me to stay?”
“I'm sure. Thanks.” Connie sat and waited while the
woman marked both ears with a red pen. “How's that?” she asked, handing Connie a mirror.
“Great, I guess,” Connie said. She looked up at Nicole, who nodded her approval.
“Here we go,” the woman said. She leaned over, humming, and put the piercing gun against Connie's right earlobe.
Connie gritted her teeth and waited.
Katchung!
With that, her right ear was pierced.
The pain was sudden and sharp, but it wasn't too bad.
I can take it,
Connie thought. She closed her eyes for a moment as a wave of dizziness hit her. She almost felt like she was falling. But the feeling passed quickly enough. Connie took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She was midway through the ordeal. One more
katchung
and it would be over.
That's when the woman said, “Oops.”
“What's wrong?” Connie asked.
“Nothing,” the woman said, but she stepped away from Connie, frowning.
“What is it?” Connie asked. She looked at the woman, trying to read her expression. Then she looked at Nicole.
“Oh my gosh,” Nicole said. She backed away from Connie, too, but she kept staring at Connie's head. Her eyes were open so wide it looked like her eyebrows were trying to hide under her bangs.
Connie grabbed the mirror and stared at her ear. What
she saw was so unexpected—so plain weird—that she had a hard time making sense of it. Around the pen mark and the tiny post in her ear, something was growing. It looked like the icky white fungus that grows on trees in the woods.
Must have been some crud on the gun,
Connie thought. She reached up and brushed at the thing on her ear. Her whole earlobe moved with it. The stuff didn't come off.
She looked back at the woman. “What's going on?”
“Sometimes there's an infection,” the woman said. “I'm terribly sorry.”
“Fix it,” Connie said. “Do something.”
The woman shook her head. “I can't.”
Connie stared back in the mirror. The fungus was still growing. It spread over her ear and across her neck. She dropped the mirror and grabbed at her ear, wanting to rip the fungus away.
It wouldn't pull free. As Connie removed her hand, she noticed her fingers were covered with the fungus. She tried to scream. But her mouth was covered—sealed by the growth.
She looked at her friend. Nicole was cringing back against the counter, obviously terrified. Connie reached toward Nicole. Then something grew across her eyes. She couldn't see.
She stumbled, trying to find her friend. Seconds later, Connie struggled to breathe through her nose as the fungus spread over the rest of her face.
The world grew dim. Connie felt herself falling to the floor.
She lay in darkness.
All was calm and quiet.
A sharp smell cut through the peace. Connie jolted and tried to turn her head away from the biting odor of ammonia. She heard the woman's voice. “Smelling salts. Works every time.”
Then she heard Nicole's voice: “Hey, you okay?”
Connie opened her eyes. She was on the floor. Nicole and the woman were bent over her. “Just stay still, honey,” the woman said. “You'll be fine in a minute.”
“My ear … ,” Connie said. She reached up and touched her right earlobe. Something small and cold met her fingers—an earring, just an earring.
“You should have seen yourself,” Nicole said. “The second your ear got pierced, you passed out. I tried to catch you, but you dropped right to the floor—just like one of those ladies in the old movies.”
“Ready for the other one?” the woman asked.
Ready?
Connie wasn't sure. But she didn't think she'd pass out again. She stood slowly and got back on the chair. “Okay. Go ahead.”
“Brave girl,” the woman said. She leaned over and pierced Connie's other ear, then told her, “All done.”
It was over. This time, Connie didn't faint. She paid the woman and left the store. “Glad that's finished,” she told Nicole.
Nicole didn't answer. She was staring at Connie's left ear, her face filled with a mix of fear and disgust. She pointed. She opened her mouth.
“What?” Connie asked. She reached toward her ear but was afraid to touch it.
“It's …” Nicole paused and swallowed. “It's …”
“What?” Connie dug her nails into her palm. The sharp pain told her she hadn't passed out again. Whatever the problem, it was real.
“The hole,” Nicole said. “It's not quite centered.”
“I can live with that,” Connie said. She stopped to look at her reflection in a store window. “It could be worse. It could be a whole lot worse.”

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