The Mystery of the Mystery Meat (5 page)

“Zibu,”
Scary replied, pointing to himself, which Freekin took to mean, “Me too.” He pointed from Freekin to the keyboard and back again.

Freekin hesitated. “You want me to surf the Afternet? Is it allowed? I mean, will I get in trouble for using the Afternet in the Land of the Living?”

Scary whistled innocently. Then he slid his glance meaningfully in Pretty’s direction.

“Right. I should risk it for Pretty,” Freekin agreed. “Um, can I do it in English?”

“Zibu!”
Scary clapped his wings together and pointed happily at the keys.
“Zibu zibu!”

Freekin sat down at the keyboard. “Okay, let me think,” he said, half to himself. “She was talking about something…terriers? Comas?”

He typed in the words. The skull on the screen whirled around in a circle, and then it stuck out its tongue.

“I guess that means no match,” Freekin said. “Hmmm…tailors?” He typed in
tailor
.

The skull stuck out its tongue again.

“Gazeekee, woodiwoodiwoodi,”
Scary suggested, perching on Freekin’s shoulder. He wrapped his left wing around Freekin’s head and pointed at the monitor with the other. Then he shuddered hard and gasped.
“Woodiwoodiwoodi.”

Freekin might not speak Phantomese, but he did know that when Scary said,
“Woodiwoodi,”
it meant that he was frightened or nervous.
Of course.
When Pretty had stared at him, Freekin had felt
terrified
.

“Terror!” he cried. “A terror…coma?” He frowned and started typing.

T-E-R-R-O-R C-O-M

Before he could finish the word, the keys clacked out:

TERROR-INDUCED COMA:

Description Of

How to Perform

Cure

“That’s got to be it, Scary!” he cried, moving his cursor to
Description Of
as Scary bounced on his shoulder and gave his temple butterfly kisses.

MOST TERROR-INDUCED COMAS INCLUDE COLD CHILLS, EXTREME TERROR, AND PASSING OUT DUE TO SHEER FRIGHT. UNDERWORLDER MONSTERS
ARE EXTREMELY ADEPT AT CREATING SUCH COMAS, ESPECIALLY IF THEY ARE OVER A MILLION YEARS OLD AND NAMED PRETTY.

“Wow, check it out,” Freekin said as he read the words on the screen. “Pretty is, like, the definition of Terror-Induced Comas! Did you know that?”

“Gazeelikiki waziliki wadiwadiwoodiwoodi,”
Scary said, very earnestly. As he talked, he gestured to Pretty, then to himself, then to Freekin, then to the computer.
“Kazeekiwalalilika.”

He went on and on, but it all sounded the same to Freekin. Freekin glazed over until Scary threw his wings around his own throat, making a strangling noise as his eyes bugged out, then he fell backward off Freekin’s shoulder, sailing through the air and landing with a thud on the floor. His eyes shut tight and all the air in his small, square body escaped in a squeal.

“Scary! What’s the matter?” Freekin cried, dropping to his knees beside him.

“Galeekiwazi boooooooo,”
Scary babbled, lifting his head and smiling at Freekin.

“You scared me to death,” Freekin said, wrapping his hand around Scary’s wing and pulling him upright. “
Please
don’t try to explain anything to me. There’s a link for a cure. Let me try that.”

He went back to the desk and scrolled to
Cure
.

He clicked it open.

TERROR-INDUCED COMAS ARE A FORM OF SPELL. IN SOME CASES THEY CAN BE CURED BY A REPETITION OF THE PROPER REMOVAL SPELL. BELOW ARE A LIST OF POSSIBLE REMOVAL SPELLS. THEY MUST BE SPOKEN WITHIN EARSHOT OF THE TERRORIZED VICTIM.

Freekin scrolled to large chunks of text in weird fonts that he couldn’t read.

“Hmmm,” he said. “Maybe I could point to the words and you could say them. You probably have a better idea how to pronounce them.” He cocked his head as Scary stared intently at him. “Do you understand me?” He pointed to the computer screen and then to Scary.

“Zibu,”
Scary said, puffing out his chest and clearing his throat. Then he raised his wings over his head. He looked like he was preparing to do jumping jacks in gym class.

“Okay, try this one,” Freekin said, highlighting the first line of wacky characters on the screen.

“Zibu,”
Scary said. He fluttered three times to the right, then three times to the left. Then he threw back his little head. What came out sounded like a cross between a wheeze and a snort.

“CANDI TAMALI DORICHEETO!”

Freekin crossed his fingers and looked over at Pretty. She jerked and quivered, shimmied and shook, then she transformed into a six-foot-long roll of what looked like jiggling, slime green jelly.

“Oh, my God!” he shouted, uncrossing his fingers so fast that his right pointer finger broke off at the base. Scary raised a brow and gave his head a little shake, as if Pretty’s bizarre appearance was no big deal.

“Quick, Scary, try the next one,” Freekin said, using his pointer finger to tap the next spell on the monitor. As Scary nodded, Freekin pushed his finger back into the knuckle. “
OTEEMCIROD ILAMAT IDNAD!
”

That
changed Pretty into a dwarflike creature about a foot tall, with a very big head covered with white hair that tumbled over a squat body. She was dressed in a green shirt and green pants, and she had legs instead of tentacles. Eight or nine of Pretty’s cats swarmed around her, yowling and meowing, and Pretty-dwarf opened two eyes framed by bushy white eyebrows. She sat up and laughed as the cats pushed her back down to the floor.

“Ach, da lina da lou!”
Pretty-dwarf said, kicking her stubby arms and legs.

“Well, at least she’s not in a coma anymore,” Freekin observed.

“Gazeeli zibu,”
Scary said.

“Da lina lina lou da lou lou,”
the dwarf jabbered happily. It burped and then it passed gas, long and low and stinky.

“Ewww!” Freekin cried as Scary morphed into a large fan and blew the odor in the opposite direction.

“Da lina, da lina lina!”
the dwarf said. It burped again and wiped its mouth with the back of its hand.

“There’s one more spell to try. Let’s go for it.
Quick
,” Freekin said.

Freekin pointed at the screen again, and Scary nodded, taking a deep breath and shaking his wings like an actor getting ready to perform a part.

“Franklin, dinnertime,” called a voice just outside his door. It was Freekin’s mom. There was a soft knock, and the door began to open.

“Coming!” Freekin cried as Scary transformed into a net. Flinging himself over the chatty little dwarf, he hoisted her into the air and carried her away to the closet. Cats trotted after him, reaching up on their hind legs and batting at the air as Pretty struggled and protested inside Scary-net, who reached the open closet and zoomed inside. Dashing behind them, Freekin slammed the closet door shut just as his mother came into the room.

The bedroom door opened, and his pretty, auburn-haired mom stood in jeans and a Christmas sweater, smiling
at him. A few of the cats gazed up at her and meowed, but the majority of them trotted over to the closet and meowed.

“Hi, honey, Dad brought a cheese pizza home from Rigortoni’s,” she said. “Come and get it while it’s hot.” She turned to go, then turned back. Her nose wrinkled. “And I think you need to clean the cat boxes.”

“I’ll get on it,” he promised.

“Dinner first,” she told him. “Be sure to wash your hands.”

She went out into the hall. Freekin turned around and tiptoed over to the closet.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Freekin whispered. “You should probably keep her in there for now.”

“Gagee,”
Scary replied.

Freekin sighed, hoping the phantom understood. He didn’t even want to think about what might happen if Pretty got loose and his parents saw—or smelled—her.

His left foot flapped as he went down the stairs. As he crouched down on one knee to push the foot back on again, Sophie, his big, furry dog, clattered on her toenails from the dining room. She chuffed at him and panted happily. He gave her a pet. Then boy and dog went into the dining room, Sophie scooting beneath the table and Freekin taking his seat across from his mom.

“Hi, Franklin,” his dad said pleasantly as he separated
a slice of pizza for Freekin and laid it on his white china plate. “I saw a flyer at Rigortoni’s advertising for workers to rebuild the Mystery Meat factory.” Mr. Ripp had gotten fired from the Mystery Meat factory when Freekin had gotten arrested for asking questions, and now he managed the town’s most popular pizza joint. “They’re going to work around the clock to get back into production.”

“So they’re not going to stop making Mystery Meat,” Freekin said dully.

“Of course not,” Ms. Ripp replied. “Mystery Meat is Snickering Willows’s main source of income. I don’t know what would happen to our town if Mystery Meat went out of business.”

“Oh,” Freekin muttered. That was bad news. He thought he had shut them down once and for all. He figured that now that they were out of the way, he could collect his kiss from Lilly and go back to being a regular kid.

A regular kid with two best friends from the Underworld, one of whom who had been turned into a white-haired, gas-passing dwarf…

Disappointed, he sat at the table and pretended to eat (since he was undead, he never ate), sneaking his dinner to his beloved dog, Sophie, who waited for each cheesy piece of pizza under the table.

“I hope you’re all right, sweetie,” his mom said, stretching her palm across his forehead. “It’s so hard to tell if you’re sick. You’re always so cold, kind of refrigerated…”

“I’m fine,” he managed. He had never told his parents what he had learned about Mystery Meat. He figured the less they knew, the safer they were from the evil people behind the plot to turn everyone into mindless drones. “It’s just been a weird day with the factory burning down and everything.”

“They said on the news that only half of it burned—mostly the processing area. The entire batch of Toasty Twinkle was lost. That’s a real shame,” his dad said. “My pizza customers were really looking forward to trying it.”

“Um, yeah,” Freekin said. “Bummer.”

“That factory has stood on the edge of town for over a century,” his dad said. “A lot of people are going to be worried about their livelihoods until Mystery Meat is back in production. It’s a lucky thing I didn’t go back.” He gestured to Freekin’s plate. “Have another slice.”

“Woof,” Sophie barked beneath the table.

But Freekin was too worried about Pretty to stick around any longer. “No thanks, I think I’m just going to hit the sack.”

“Of course. You look tired,” his dad said.

“Yeah. I guess I am,” Freekin replied. His parents
also didn’t know that he never slept because he didn’t need to.

He took his dishes into the kitchen, forced himself to walk normally upstairs, and inched open the door to his room.

The closet door was open. And so was the window, where Scary hovered, anxiously flapping his wings as he stared outside.

“Scary?” he called softly. “Where is she?”

“Woodiwoodi,”
Scary said, whirling around to face him. He jabbed both wings at the window.

Freekin joined him. He peered into the darkness to see a small white shape trundling down the sidewalk. It passed beneath a streetlight and Freekin realized it was Pretty, who had resumed her normal appearance, ponytail ears, tentacles, and all.

“Cool! Did you change her back? Is she normal again?” Freekin asked.

For an answer, Scary flew through the open window and hovered above the tree branch. He waved a wing at Freekin to follow.

“Okay, let’s catch up with her,” Freekin said, climbing out the window.

Snow fell softly as Freekin and Scary quickly caught up with Pretty. She stared straight ahead as if she didn’t see them, and Freekin figured that whatever Scary did or did not do to Pretty, she must still be partially under the spell after all.