“Behhhh-uthhh!” Dill called.
“You go that way, I’ll go this way,” Peter suggested.
He started to walk towards the house, calling out his sister’s name every few steps. His first feelings of shock and disbelief had now given way to fear. Peter had seen some very bad things in the past couple of weeks…but they had all happened at night. How could this be? It was the middle of the afternoon, in broad daylight – how could she just disappear?
He turned back to Dill. “Hey, do you see any footpri – ”
Before he got the entire sentence out, Peter stopped cold.
4
There she was right where they had last seen her, except now Beth was sitting on the ground with a placid look on her face.
We walked right past her! We couldn’t have missed her…could we?
But how?
“Hey, Dill, there she is!”
Dill turned around and literally staggered back in surprise. “How’d she get there?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. Where’d you go, Beth?”
Beth just shrugged.
Peter walked over. She was sitting in the middle of a patch of lawn that was ringed by an almost perfect circle of mushrooms. And her Strawberry Shortcake bathing suit (not to mention her pants on underneath it) was getting soaked by the dewy grass.
“Beth, get up, you’re getting wet!”
She stood up without any sort of complaint and watched Peter with the same peaceful expression on her face.
“Did you hide anywhere?” Peter asked.
Beth shook her head ‘no.’
“How’d you do that?” Dill asked.
Beth frowned like, What do you mean?
“How’d you hide from us?”
Beth just shrugged again.
“What are you, playing the quiet game?” Peter asked, getting annoyed now.
“Dude, shhh, it’s better than the screaming game,” Dill warned.
“Come on, we gotta get back in the house…your pants are soaking wet.”
Beth stepped out of the circle of mushrooms and started walking towards the house. Peter and Dill followed behind her.
“This is weird,” Dill whispered.
“I know,” Peter agreed quietly. “Where’d she go when she disappeared?”
“That’s not what’s weird.”
“What’s weird, then?”
“She’s being good.” Dill said it like he had just seen a mountain sprout legs and walk off over the horizon.
“She can be good,” Peter said defensively.
“Dude, when has she ever been good in your entire life?”
Peter had to think about that. Then, when he finally had an answer –
“Being asleep doesn’t count,” Dill interrupted.
He was stumped, then. “Okay, that is weird,” Peter admitted.
“Maybe she ate one of the mushrooms.”
Panic rose in him again. “You think it made her sick?”
“No, I think it made her good. We should, like, go pick every single mushroom in the whole freakin’ field.” Dill looked at Peter sternly. “For her. I’m never gonna eat one.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think you would.”
Dill nodded. “I like me just the way I am.”
“Uh huh.”
“And I like her just the way she is right now, dude, so we really gotta go pick those mushrooms.”
“Later. First we have to make sure she doesn’t get sick. And we have to get her to change her clothes.”
Dill made a face. “And take off the Strawberry Shortcake bathing suit?”
“Yeah, I know,” Peter said. “Say goodbye to the quiet game.”
Dill sighed. “Great. Hello screaming game.”
5
But she didn’t make a peep. In fact, when Peter asked her to remove the bathing suit, she did so without even a hint of hesitation.
Dill and Peter stared at each other.
Looking quite peaceful, Beth sat on the floor in her still-wet corduroy pants and long-sleeve shirt.
“Dude, I’m gonna go pick some of those mushrooms RIGHT NOW,” Dill said.
“Do whatever you want, you have to get out anyways. I gotta get her changed into something else.”
“Fine – I don’t wanna change her diapers. Enjoy the stank.”
“She’s getting potty trained,” Peter corrected him.
“Yeaaaah, I’ll bet she is.”
“Just cuz you still wet your pants – ”
“HEY!” Dill shouted and pointed angrily before stomping out of the room.
Peter pulled off Beth’s shoes, socks, shirt and pants, leaving her only in her plastic potty-training undies.
“Because you’re being such a good girl, we’ll put you in a pretty rainbow shirt…how about that? Is that good? Good Beth…” Peter cooed.
She lifted her arms and allowed Peter to slip the pink t-shirt over her head without complaint. But when he tried to put pants on her, she shook her head ‘no.’
“Come on, Beth, you’ll get cold without them. Here, just give me a foot – ”
Beth stared at Peter from under her eyebrows and shook her head very, veeeery slowly. She looked like some old Godfather dude from a mobster movie silently telling an enemy not to reach for his gun.
Peter was a little taken back, but he tried again. “Beth, you gotta wear pants, what’ll Mom say if she comes back home and – ”
“GRRRRRRRRRR.” Beth bared her teeth and growled like a pitbull guarding its dinner. Except scarier.
“Okay, okay,” Peter said nervously, and dropped the tiny pair of blue jeans on the floor. “Well, you’ve been such a good girl, you can, uh, go around like that if you want.”
Beth’s face reverted back to serene, and she just sat there, seemingly waiting for something else to happen.
“Uhhh…you hungry? You want an apple?”
She nodded slowly, once.
“Okaaaay…come on, let’s take you to the kitchen.”
Peter carried her down the stairs at arm’s length, a little worried that she might start growling again.
Dill was already in the kitchen eating another ice cream sandwich.
“Dude!” Peter said, annoyed.
“Dude,” Dill answered. “Your mom said if I helped you, I got more ice cream sandwiches.” He put out his arms in a motion that said, Here I am doing what I’m supposed to be doing and What’s your problem? all at once. He looked a lot like Chandler from the television show FRIENDS.
“I thought you were going to go get some mushrooms.”
Dill snorted. “I thought you were going to dress her. What, you got tired halfway through?”
Peter sat Beth in her highchair and snapped the tray on in front of her. “She, uh…she kind of growled at me.”
“Oh, so she’s back to normal then.”
“No, it was a little freaky…kind of scary.”
Dill licked his ice cream sandwich. “Like I said, she’s back to normal.”
Peter got out an apple and washed it. “No, man – if she was back to normal, she would’ve just screamed. She growled like an alligator or something. I’ve never heard her make that noise before.”
While Peter sliced the apple into fourths and cut out the middle parts full of seeds, Dill grabbed a wooden cooking spoon and walked over to Beth’s highchair. He looked at her from the front, then the side, then from the other side. The whole time, Beth kept her head perfectly still and just followed Dill with her eyes.
Dill gently prodded her shoulder with the spoon.
Beth’s shoulder moved back without any resistance. She watched everything with her eyes, but never moved her head.
When Dill stopped pushing with the spoon, her shoulder moved back into place.
Peter was getting a jar of peanut butter out of the cabinet as Dill conducted his experiments. “Don’t do that,” Peter reprimanded him.
Dill turned around towards Peter and gestured in the air with the s
poon. “She seems…different.”
“How?”
“She doesn’t seem crazy.”
With blinding speed, Beth leaned out of the highchair, grabbed the spoon from Dill’s hand, and started whapping him with it on his head.
WHAP-WHAP-WHAP!
“OW! OW! OWWW!” Dill shrieked as he ran over to Peter at the sink.
Beth stood up in her highchair and threw the wooden spoon.
THUNK! It smacked Dill right in the forehead.
“OOOOOOWWWWWW!” he screeched.
“Beth, don’t do that!” Peter shouted.
Beth slumped back down in her highchair and sat, waiting serenely. All the time she had been attacking Dill, her expression had never changed from Zen-like peacefulness.
Peter had to stifle a laugh. It was pretty funny to see Beth looking so totally unconcerned as Dill rubbed his scalp and watched her warily.
“Well, she’s back to normal,” Dill muttered.
“I don’t know if I’d call it normal,” Peter said as he stacked the apples on a plastic dish.
“She’s hitting me and acting like a brat,” Dill snarled. “She’s back to normal.”
6
Peter put the plate of apples and the jar of peanut butter on her high chair tray. Then he turned around to face Dill. “But she’s not making any noise. If she was back to normal, she’d have been screaming her head off the whole time. Look at her, she’s – ”
Peter turned around and stopped speaking.
Beth was sucking on her teeth, like she was trying to get the last morsel out of her gums. Though the peanut butter was untouched, the plate in front of her was completely empty.
“Oh my gosh.”
“What’s the – holy COW,” Dill said as he leaned over and realized what had happened.
“Is that even possible?” Peter asked. “To eat a whole apple that fast?”
“Well, obviously, unless you think she stuck it up her butt,” Dill replied.
“She ate a whole apple in, like, three seconds! And we never heard her! That’s impossible!”
“Better check her butt, then,” Dill advised.
“Shut up, Dill. You must’ve been hungry, huh?” he asked Beth. He retrieved another apple out of the fridge, washed it, and reached for the knife to cut it up.
Dill held up a hand without taking his eyes off Beth. “Dude, wait.”
“What?”
“Gimme the apple.”
“Why?”
“Just gimme the apple.”
Peter handed it over. Dill placed it on Beth’s tray, whole and uncut.
Beth regarded them both peacefully, then looked down at the fruit.
“What’d you think she was going to do,” Peter scoffed, “eat it in one – ”
Beth grabbed the apple and stuffed it whole into her mouth. Her cheeks puffed out like the world’s largest chipmunk. Then she CRUNCHED it twice with her teeth, and GULP it was gone.
“WHOOOOAAAA!” Peter and Dill both yelled at once.
“Oh my GOSH did you see that?” Dill howled.
“That was crazy!” Peter yelled. “That was – that doesn’t happen!”
Beth opened her mouth in a window-rattling BUUURRRRRP and spat the stem out on the tray in front of her.
“That was COOL!” Dill shouted happily.
Beth looked over at the jar of peanut butter and sniffed it. Then she opened her mouth, stuck out her tongue, and scooped out a large dollop of peanut butter with a SLURP.
“Ewww, that WASN’T cool,” Dill said disapprovingly. “She’s even weirder now than she was before.”
As though she heard him and wanted to up the ante, Beth wrapped her lips around the edge of the plastic jar and bit into it with her teeth.
Peter waved his arms in a panic. “Beth, don’t do that, you’ll hurt yourself!”
Beth jerked her head sideways and tore off a huge hunk of plastic from the container. As she chewed, it made a crinkly, crackly noise in her mouth.
“Dude, that is NOT right. That is NOT right!” Dill shouted, his voice back to gleeful.
“Babies can’t do that!” Peter said, not even believing what he was seeing.
Beth shoved some more of the container in her mouth and started chomping. It sounded like somebody was jumping up and down on empty two-liter Coke bottles. The weirdest thing was, she looked no more concerned than if she were sucking on a pacifier.
“Dude, that is messed UP – it is MESSED UP!”
“I know it’s messed up!” Peter yelled back. “You don’t have to repeat it twice! Why are you repeating it twice?”
“Dude, I am just telling you that THIS IS THE BEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN!” Dill shook his head in admiration. “She could totally beat that Japanese guy with the world record for eating hot dogs.”
“Would you shut UP for a second so I can think?!”
“What’s there to think about? We’re gonna be rich, man! You think they have the Guinness Book of World Records telephone number on the internet?”
“Stop talking about world records and hot dogs and – ”
CRUNCH. Beth had picked up the plastic plate and taken a giant chomp out of it. A bite-shaped chunk was missing, and tiny shards of plastic shot out of her mouth as she chewed.
“DUUUUUDE!” Dill howled with glee. “We’re gonna be on TV! I call shotgun, I’m her manager, I get half of everything she makes!”
Suddenly, Beth made a strangled sound, like something was caught in her throat. She wheezed and started to turn pink.
Peter gasped. “Oh my gosh, she’s going to choke!”
“Smack her on the back!” Dill yelled in alarm. “Hurry, she’s valuable!”
Peter rushed around the high chair and thumped Beth between the shoulder blades. It took a couple of whacks, but she finally opened her mouth and gave a horrendous, hacking cough. A slime-covered hunk of plastic shavings shot across the room, hit the cabinet under the sink, and splattered goop everywhere.
“Aagh! YUCK, she got me!” Dill wailed as he danced around, a few dots of mucus wetting his shirt.
Peter checked to make sure Beth was okay (she looked completely unconcerned), then ran across the room to take a look at the upchucked blockage. It was the size of a tennis ball, with jagged pieces of plastic sticking out at all angles. Peter was pretty sure that if a Great White Shark swallowed the thing, the clump of plastic would kill it. Plus, the snot covering it all was thick, green, ungodly smelly, and utterly revolting.
Dill gagged. “Dude, I’m gonna puke.”
Peter covered his nose and mouth with his t-shirt collar and tried to block out the smell. “I didn’t know loogies could smell that bad,” he said, his voice muffled by his shirt.
“Dude, loogies don’t smell at all. That’s a loogie from hell,” Dill whispered.
“Give me a break, it’s not – ”
“From HELL,” Dill repeated.
“Don’t use that kind of language around her,” Peter said, and turned back to his sister. “If she starts saying it around my mom – ”
Peter’s voice caught in his throat.
Beth wasn’t in her high chair.
7
“Dill,” Peter hissed.
Dill turned around from the loogie from hell. “Wh – WHAT? Where’d she GO?”
“Dill, something’s seriously wrong with my sister,” Peter said nervously.
“Dude, something’s been seriously wrong with your sister for a loooong time. It just got wronger today, that’s all.”
Peter held up a finger. “Shh.”
They listened carefully. From the next room over came the sounds of baby babbling, the first normal noise Beth had made since coming back in the house.
“Let’s go,” Peter said. They ran across the kitchen and into the den – but Beth was nowhere to be found.
They searched room to room, behind chairs, beneath sofas, even under pillows – but no Beth. They continued their way all through the first floor, looking ever
ywhere they could think of, but wound up without a single lead.
Peter threw his hands up in frustration. “Where did she go? We heard her – ”
Peter and Dill both froze as they walked into the kitchen.
Beth was back in her high chair.
Fear yanked on Peter’s insides. He looked slowly and carefully around the kitchen.
“Dude,” Dill whispered. “Do you think someone else is in here?”
Peter shook his head. “I don’t know,” he whispered back.
They both approached the high chair tentatively, as though waiting for a burnt-up hobo to come jumping out of the pantry, or a fourth-grade vampire to suddenly swoop through the air. But there was nobody but Beth.
They approached from the side and stood in front of her. She was sitting calmly, her hands folded, her eyes staring out into space.
Dill frowned. “Dude…does she look a little green to you?”
Peter ignored him. “Beth…how did you just do that?”
Beth turned her head sloooowly towards them. Her eyes gradually shifted from their thousand-yard stare and focused on their faces. For the first time since the backyard, she smiled.
It was terrible.
The smile was far bigger than her face should have been able to hold. In fact, her cheeks reached several inches past her ears. Inside her lips, the teeth were long and yellow and dagger-like, as though they belonged in the mouth of some ancient, horrible creature.
Peter and Dill grabbed each other in fear.
“OH MY GOD, SHE’S THE JOKER!” Dill shrieked.
Beth threw her half-eaten plate across the room with a clatter, stood up in her high chair, leaned forward, and ROARED. Not ‘roared’ as in yelled, or shouted, or shrieked or screamed like a normal human being might. No. She ROARED the way a lion would, deep and rumbling and full of bass – an impossible sound coming out of any human body, much less a two-foot tall one.
Peter and Dill screamed at the same time.
Beth jumped up out of her high chair – literally jumped three feet in the air – and landed BANG! on the food tray with her legs shoulder-width apart. Then she opened her mouth again and her tongue – not the little pink tongue they had seen scoop out peanut butter just a few minutes ago, but a horse-sized tongue bigger than what was possible for any human being – rolled out and waggled back and forth over her jagged teeth.
Probably more things happened after that, but Peter didn’t see them because he and Dill were running out of the kitchen, screaming at the top of their lungs.
Behind them they heard the highchair crash to the ground. Then came the sounds of toenails scrabbling and scratching on linoleum, like the world’s largest puppy rushing across the floor.