The Mystery of the Mystery Meat (4 page)

He thought a moment, and then he looked at the gravestone she had been gnawing on. Then he smiled. “The code words will be
Sweeny Burton
.”

“Sweeny Burton,” she replied, and something about that name bothered her. She tried to think about what it was, but she was too hypnotized. “Yes, Horatio Snickering III.”

As she trundled off, something stopped her dead in her tracks.

“Horatio Snickering III?” she asked, turning to him with fear in her eyes. She was trembling.

“What is it, Pretty?” He sounded impatient.

“You so stopping the madness—bad men finished, eat their eyeballs! But then Pretty so hypnotized, forever and ever and ever and ever and ev—”

“Calm down, Pretty. Of course. I see your point.
We need an
out
word so that when our work together is finished, you can be released from my power.” He scratched his head. “Let me think for a moment. Okay, I have it. When I say the words
the end
, you will no longer be hypnotized. Okay, my dear?”

“Okay, Horatio Snickering III.”

And she left to do her master’s bidding.

Still floating off the snowy ground with love-struck happiness, Freekin came home from Lilly’s house. Scary was in his bedroom. Pretty was not.

“Where’s Pretty?” he asked the little shape-shifting phantom.

“Wazeekiwakizi,”
Scary replied. He didn’t speak English, and Freekin didn’t speak Phantomese. Scary turned into a big question mark, then changed back into himself and shook his head.

“Hey, Scary, please be careful,” Freekin admonished him. “I could get in huge trouble if anyone saw a question mark in my bedroom. Question marks are just as illegal as questions in Snickering Willows. And I don’t ever want to get in trouble again. I just want to kiss Lilly and be a regular guy.”

“Woodiwoodi,”
Scary fretted as he moved from the window to the mirror hanging on the inside of Freekin’s
open closet door and changed into a question mark again. He stared at himself—Freekin saw his little eyes blinking in the center of the floating mark—and then he giggled and changed into Pretty.

“Wow, that’s amazing,” Freekin said.

Scary swirled his brand-new tentacles in a half circle as he turned around and waved at Freekin.

“Hiya,” he said, mimicking Pretty’s voice. It was incredible; he was a dead ringer for his best friend.

The kitties went nuts, rushing and tumbling toward Scary-Pretty like a river of fur. He changed into a Welsh corgi—one of his very favorite transformations, wagging his tail and licking the first kitty who reached him—Baby Tomato, the first cat Pretty had acquired and her number-one little sweetie.

Next he morphed into a bat and flew over to the window. He babbled something in Phantomese and waved a black, leathery wing at Freekin.

“Are you going to look for Pretty?” Freekin asked him.

“Zibu,”
Scary said. Freekin knew that meant yes.

“Okay, be careful,” Freekin said. Scary blew him a little bat kiss and flapped away into the darkness.

Freekin picked up his guitar and strummed the chord progression for his new song, “Cheerleader Queen.”
Then he sang the song he had written for Pretty.

She’s a little monster, yeah,

But she’s my little monster, yeah.

Calms me when I’m feelin’ fears,

Has tentacles and ponytail ears,

She so Pretty.

He sang the next verse.

Her spinning eyes can freak you out.

Sometimes she rotates while she shouts.

Mess with my monster, I’ll knock you out!

She’s a little monster, yeah.

But she’s my little monster, yeah.

She so Pretty.

After about half an hour, Pretty’s face appeared in the window. Freekin brightened and put down his guitar. She had slithered across the branch of the old oak tree that scratched against the roof; it was the way Freekin and the monsters entered his room so his parents wouldn’t see them. The Ripps still didn’t know that Scary and Pretty lived in the house, and they also didn’t realize that the dozen or so cats in Freekin’s room belonged to a funny little monster who dressed them up and had tea parties with them. Freekin had asked if he could keep them, and his mom and dad were so glad to have their only son back from the Afterlife that they
would have let him have a dozen boa constrictors if he asked for them.

He hurried over to his desk to help her pull up the window sash.

“Hey, where’ve you been?” he asked. “We’ve been worried about you. Scary went to look for you.” He gazed past her into the darkness, through gauzy veils of gently falling snow. “Is he coming?”

She plopped onto his desk, then scooted down onto the floor in a tangle of tentacles. Her adoring kitties meowed and surrounded her, nuzzling her tentacles and chin. Usually Pretty giggled and picked up each and every one of her meowing little fur babies, giving them a nosy-nosy kiss that made them purr and bat at her ponytail ears. But now she ignored them as if they weren’t there. Moving woodenly, she stood up and stared blankly at Freekin.

“Pretty, are you okay?”

Her eyes widened. Some of them began to spin clockwise. Others spun counterclockwise.

“Terror,” she whispered. “Coma.”

Pretty glided closer to Freekin, her arms stretched straight out in front of her body, her eyes spinning. Drool hung like a teardrop on the pointed tip of one of her fangs.

“Pretty, what…are…you…do…” Freekin gasped, breaking out in goose bumps, his hair—what there was of it—standing straight up. His hands shook; his mouth worked. He had never been more afraid in his unlife.

“Pretty, stop,” he begged, taking a step backward.

“Terror,” she said again, trundling toward him. Her eyes became so wide that one of the little ones popped out
of its socket and bounced onto the hardwood floor. Two of the kitties pounced on it as it rolled beneath Freekin’s bed.

“Pretty, please.” Freekin tried to raise his hands to shield his eyes, but his arms hung limply at his sides.

“Coma,” Pretty said in a stage whisper. “Wahahaha.”

Freekin staggered backward across the room. His back hit the open closet door; his head rapped hard on the mirror he had hung so Pretty could apply her makeup and curl her ears. He tried to make himself dart into the closet and slam the door shut, but he couldn’t move. Rooted to the spot, he shook like a death’s-head moth pushing out of its cocoon.

Pretty’s six remaining eyes pulled him under the dark sea of her gaze. Wave after wave of terror washed over him as she glided forward like a spiral-eyed, multi-fanged jellyfish of destruction, padding closer, ever closer, on her tentacles.

Freekin tottered; he opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. His teeth clacked and his knees buckled, and he began to sink to the floor like a drowning victim.

“Gazeekeekiwoodiwoodi!”
someone screamed. It was Scary, flying in through the window. He took one look at Freekin, and then at Pretty, and zoomed in front of Freekin, throwing open his wings to shield his human buddy from his monster pal. He gibbered at Pretty, and then he started to whimper. He flew backward against Freekin, and the two tottered onto the floor.

Pretty’s spinning eyes stared back at her from her own reflection in the mirror.

Her fangs clacked. Another small eye popped right out of the socket, and some more of her cats began to bat it around.

“Oh, oh,” Pretty whimpered. “Me so terrifying!”

Her remaining eyes rolled back in her head and she fell backward with a crash. Her tentacles twitched once, twice, and then were still. Her kitties swarmed over her, purring and rubbing against her in sheer joy, unaware that there was anything wrong.

“Wakeekee meeka?”
Scary cried. He flew over to her and tugged gently on her hand, and when that didn’t work, he fanned her with his wings.

“Woodiwoodi,”
he fretted, giving her little butterfly kisses. She didn’t move an inch.

“Pretty, what’s wrong with you? Scary, what was she doing to us?” Freekin asked as the effects of Pretty’s spell—or whatever it was—faded and he could move around again. Scary started chattering at him as Freekin got to his feet and hurried over to his unconscious friend.

“Pretty,” he said, shaking her shoulders very gently. He took one of her small hands in his and patted it. “Pretty, talk to me.”

Her eyes remained closed. She didn’t move.

“Maybe starting the fire did something to her,” he said. “Knocked a screw loose.” He reached forward and lifted up one of her lids. All he saw was white; her eye had rolled up and her pupil was hidden. He released her lid and gave her cheek a gentle caress. Then he sat back on his knees and scratched his head. Dead skin collected beneath his fingernails.

“Woodiwoodi,”
Scary murmured, perching on Freekin’s shoulder and wrapping a wing around his head.

“I know you’re scared,” Freekin said. “I am, too. We’ve
got
to find out what’s wrong with her. She would never do anything to hurt us if she were okay.”

The e-mail in-box of Freekin’s desktop computer pinged, signaling the arrival of a message. Scary squeaked and instantly transformed into a brightly glowing lightbulb.

“You have an idea?”

“Zibu,”
Scary said, zooming over to the computer keyboard. He changed into a pair of human hands and began to type.

Freekin walked over to his study desk and looked at his computer monitor, briefly noting that the e-mail message was from his best human friend, Steve. The subject header was
FIRE!
Freekin ignored it and concentrated on Scary.

Scary had typed something in a font Freekin didn’t
know his computer even had, much less that he could read, and in a second, a big smiling skull appeared on the screen with the words
AFTER
and
NET
written in crossed diagonal lines beneath its jaw, like crossbones.

“What’s the Afternet? Is it like the Internet but for people in the Afterlife?”

Scary looked at him hopefully.
“Gazeeki walikikizu!”

“Man, I wish I spoke Phantomese,” Freekin said.