Monster Problems by Victor Pineiro

Author:Victor Pineiro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

“Guys, this is really weird.” Brady said it calmly, as if it wasn’t strange in the slightest that we practically bashed down the door knocking so hard. When she opened it we fell inside, and she stood looking at us, tapping her nose like she was solving a mystery. “Come on, check this out.”

We knew exactly where she was taking us. We sprinted to the dining room, and the mess was even worse than we expected. Half of the chairs were pushed over, there were muddy footprints everywhere, and a slime trail led into the kitchen. One of our bookshelves was completely knocked over, books spilling into the dining room. But what overpowered all of that mess was the absolutely vomitous smell. It smelled like someone had tipped over a fridge full of rotting food and meat, and then a garbage truck had dumped a week’s worth of hot garbage on top of it. We held our noses and tried not to hurl as we took in the disaster.

“What exactly happened?” Wiki asked Brady before he kneeled down to look more closely at the mud and slime.

“Nothing happened. That’s what’s so super weird. Mr. Dragon stopped by to pick up his cake plate. We were chatting on the couches for a little bit, I taught him how to perfect his coqui whistle, and suddenly he just vanished. And then I noticed this.”

Wiki got quiet and examined the scene like he was a professional detective. He tested the chairs out, examined the footprints, ran his finger through the slime (ew), smelled it (double ew), and walked around Andy dozens of times. I watched Brady’s patience wear down, down, down until finally—

“Wiki! Speak! You know something I don’t, but you’re doing that thing where you keep it to yourself because you’re so dramatic. Just spit it out, bub. I’m tired of waiting.”

Wiki stood up calmly, walked over to Brady, and nodded. “When you whistled back and forth to each other like that little frog…”

“Coqui,” I said.

“That one. When you did that, did it feel similar to the night Mr. Dragon came with cake and whistled with your dad? Did you feel tired or a little out of it, or like time skipped a beat?”

“Actually, yeah, there was a moment where it felt like I’d hit fast-forward and the shadows jumped.”

“Yeah,” Wiki said, then let out a long sigh. “What if I told you that you were hypnotized by Dracula, and while you were hypnotized he summoned a crew of infamous monsters to help him with whatever evil plan he’s concocted?”

Brady stamped her foot. “I would say that’s idiotic. Dracula can’t hypnotize people. I’m pretty sure I’ve watched all the major Dracula movies.”

“Read! The! Book! How many times do I have to tell you guys? Read the book. Always read the book. Movies change so much about an original story and the characters, and Andy only summons the original version of fictional characters. So unless you’ve read the book, you don’t know who we’re dealing with.

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