Monster Catchers

Chapter #3 The Dummy's Plan

Nicole's POV

The next morning I woke up and stretched. Upon opening my eyes I let out a scream. There, sitting on the edge of my bed, was a ventriloquist dummy.

He had dark hair, brown eyes, and a smile that was almost haunting. He wore a gray suit with a red bowtie and flower, and brown loafer shoes. He was creepy...

I slowly got out of bed, my eyes never leaving the dummy's. That's when my mom came running into my room.

"Nicole, are you ok?" She asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just kind of wondering how a ventriloquist dummy got on my bed....probably one of my friends playing a joke on me." I answered, suddenly remembering the book.

"Well ok. Look I'm heading to work, so I'll see you later." Mom said.

"Bye mom." I called.

When she was gone I got dressed. Dark jeans, black leather jacket with a white undershirt, and my combat boots. I'll admit it felt really weird changing with the dummy right there.

I stepped closer to the it.

"Why would my friends go to all that trouble of wasting their money on some dummy just to play a joke on me?" I wondered out loud.

Suddenly the dummy moved. Twisting it's head towards me and it's eyebrows pointed downwards in an angry glare. My eyes widened.

"Who you calling dummy, DUMMY?" It said it a hoarse, angry voice.

I backed up and screamed.

"Who are you? What are you?" I demanded.

"The name's Slappy. I'm one of R.L. Stine's children, his creations. Speaking of which....where is he?" Slappy explained.

"W-Where's who?" I stuttered.

"My papa!! Stine! Where is he?! I've got a bone to pick with him about keeping me and the others locked up in our books for so long!!" Slappy raged furiously.

"You came out of the book?" I questioned cautiously.

"Yeah. I figured papa wanted to play, or destroy the town! Where is he?" Slappy demanded angrily.

"I-I-I don't know where he is...." I tried.

"Then how did I get out? You?" Slappy asked.

Suddenly I realized how it happened.

".....A rock fell off of my shelf last night. It must've hit your book and broke the lock....but I never opened it up..." I replied.

"I opened it myself. Once the lock is gone, I can get out on my own." Slappy explained.

"Oh..." I answered weakly.

"You never told me who you were. You freed me. So who are you?" Slappy asked.

"I'm Nicole..." I said.

"Well Nicole, I appreciate you letting me out of my paper prison, but I've got to go free my brothers and sisters! Since Stine isn't here, we can get silly!" Slappy stated, before letting out a wicked laugh.

He got off of my bed and ran out of my room. Down the stairs and out the front door. Slappy ran next door to the empty house where I'd taken his book from and entered through the basement door. I quietly followed him inside. He went up to the study where his book originally was. I followed him inside and stood by the door watching him. Slappy stood in front of the bookcase with his hands on his hips, looking at all of the books.

Slappy then took a metal figurine off of one of the tables and hurled it at the bookshelf, breaking it, causing all of the books to come falling to the floor. Slappy picked up one of the books and then realized that I was in the room. He slowly turned his head towards me and smiled maniacally.

"You ready to see a show?" He asked.

".....What show.....?" I asked, suddenly nervous.

"The reunion of me with all of my brothers and sisters. All of Stine's creations. I'm letting them all out so that we can play!" Slappy explained, his eyes and mouth twisting in a wicked smile.

I didn't have time to question what he meant, because he then unlocked and opened the first book titled: 'Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes'. There was a whirlpool of blue smoke coming from the book as tons of tiny little gnomes crawled out of the book and into the room.

"Hello my friends, I've let you out for some fun. Now help me free the others!" Slappy greeted.

The gnomes did as he said. One after another they unlocked and opened the books. All sorts of monsters came out. Scarecrows, a bunch of sickly pale people saying that they needed to feed, a werewolf, and an abominable snowman were just some of the creatures that came out of the books. I watched in horror. These were monsters created by some famous author. Why were they real? Why were they able to just jump off of the pages they were written into?

That's when I realized that all of the monsters were staring at me....giving me looks of confusion at why I wasn't screaming, or if they should attack or not.

"Not her everyone, she's the one who freed me. Let her be." Slappy started.

He really just told the monsters to leave me alone? I guess that's not a bad thing.

"Well babe we'd love to stay and chat, but we've got to go have some fun with the town, and release the rest of our friends while we're at it." Slappy explained before all of the monsters began shuffling out of the room. The abominable snowman made a hole through the wall on his way out.

I couldn't believe this. Monsters. Monsters were now going to run amuck. They were going to terrorize and destroy the town. And it was my fault. All because I took one book. Why did I have to choose the leader of all of the monsters? An evil ventriloquist dummy. I still didn't fully understand the situation.

There was a computer in the study so I tried switching it on. It buzzed to life surprisingly. Quickly I looked up the name R.L. Stine. There was an article on all of his famous books, the first one ever written being Welcome to Dead House in 1992. The article said that his most famous creation was Slappy the evil ventriloquist dummy.

That's when I found an article about a curse that R.L. Stine had. A curse of his creativity skills, that whatever monster he wrote about, came to life with the help of his magic Smith Corona typewriter. The story mentioned something else as well. The only way to defeat the monsters was to suck them back into the books in which they came from.

I stared over at the pile of open books on the floor. Jumping to my feet I started to grab every single one of them. I carried them back to my house and threw them in my bookbag. Lastly, I picked up Slappy's book off my bedroom floor and put it with the rest. This was going to be interesting......