INTRODUCTION
ILLUSTRATED BY VINCE NATALE
One night when I was a kid, a new baby-sitter came to the house. She was young and pretty, and I looked forward to a fun night.
I was wrong.
As soon as my parents left, the baby-sitter started telling me frightening stories. She told me about a two-headed kid who went to her school. And about a teacher who died but kept right on teaching.
She told me about a scientist who kept a living human brain in a fish tank and brought it to parties. And about a boy my age who had fish gills on his neck and could breathe only underwater.
She told me the stories were all true, and I believed her. By the time I went to bed, I was shaking so hard, I couldn’t sleep!
I remembered that baby-sitter when I started this story. And I tried to create a baby-sitter even more frightening than the one I had that night.
I was so glad when Mom told Larry and Maryjo they had to leave. And I could see that my sister, Courtney, was glad too. Yes, they live next door, so Mom says we have to be nice to them. Courtney and I try, but give me a break.
These kids are oinkers. I’m trying to be polite. But they are total oinkers. Oink oink.
In my room that day, Larry found a bag of potato chips I had been saving. You should have seen the way he snuffled down the whole bag—with the bag shoved over his face! Then he grinned with the grease shining on his round cheeks and chin.
And the gross burping noises he made. Come on—we’re twelve years old. Burping hasn’t been funny since we were ten.
My dog, Muttley, burst in and sniffed out the potato-chip bag Larry had tossed on the floor. Muttley dove for the bag and started chewing it up.
That big mutt will eat anything. I had to wrestle it from his mouth—and he bit me!
Ha ha. That made Larry laugh.
Later I started to show Larry my new PlayStation racing game. “Give me that, Matthew,” he said. He grabbed the controller so hard, he ripped the cord in two.
Did he say he was sorry? No. He started giggling and rolling on his back. Like it was real funny. Oink oink.
I could hear my sister arguing with Maryjo down the hall. They fight every time they are together. I don’t know what it was about this time, but I heard Courtney shout, “It’s not nice to call people names, you moron!”
Sometimes Courtney really loses it when Maryjo is around. She hates Maryjo’s scratchy voice and the way she whines all the time. And she hates the way Maryjo is constantly brushing her long blond hair, brushing, brushing—even at the dinner table.
So we were glad when Mom herded everyone together. “Sorry to break up the party, guys,” Mom said. “But Larry and Maryjo have to go home now. I’m meeting your dad at the mall. The new baby-sitter will be here any minute.”
“Can I have something to drink before I leave?” Larry asked. He always has to have a drink before he goes. Like he’ll die of thirst before he gets home.
“Me too,” his oinky sister whined.
Mom hurried to get them juice boxes. Then we sent them out into the rain. It was really coming down. I enjoyed slamming the door behind them.
“Oops, it slipped,” I told Mom.
Mom squinted at me. “Matthew, that wasn’t nice.”
“Why do we have to have a baby-sitter?” I asked, changing the subject. “I’m twelve years old. I can take care of myself.”
“Your sister is only eight,” Mom replied. “Do you really want to be responsible for her?”
I turned to Courtney. She flashed me a devilish grin. Mom was right. Courtney is trouble.
For one thing, she thinks she’s a gymnast. She’s always doing cartwheels over the couch. Or swinging herself off the banister, trying for a perfect landing.
She likes to climb things too. Like the rain gutters on the side of the house. Last spring she climbed onto the garage roof, and six firemen had to haul her down.
“Courtney doesn’t need a baby-sitter,” I grumbled. “She needs a keeper!”
“Why isn’t Mrs. Craven coming?” Courtney asked.
“She’s sick,” Mom replied. “She’s sending someone in her place.”
“Thrills and chills.” I sighed. “Probably some old lady who will want to play Uno all night.”
The doorbell rang. “There she is now,” Mom said. “At least give her a chance, Matt.”
“Yeah, sure.”
I pulled open the front door and was hit by a blast of wind and rain. Staggering back, I stared out at a girl in a purple rain slicker. “I’m Lulu,” she said. “Are you Matthew?”
She didn’t wait for me to answer. She stepped into the house, dripping pools of water onto the carpet, shaking herself dry like a dog.
“Hi, Lulu,” Mom said. “Let me take your wet things.”
Lulu handed over her umbrella and rain slicker. Mom hurried to hang them in the closet.
Lulu shook herself again. “It’s a shivery night,” she said, smiling at Courtney and me. “My favorite kind.”
She ruffled her wavy black hair with both hands. I guessed she was fifteen or sixteen. She had round, dark eyes, very pale skin, and bright-purple lipsticked lips, the same color as her rain slicker.
She pushed her hair back behind the shoulders of her black sweater. She wore tight black jeans and shiny black-leather boots. “Hey, guys,” she said, “it’s nice to meet you both.” She had a soft, whispery voice.
Wow! She is a total babe! I thought. Awesome!
Maybe a baby-sitter isn’t such a bad idea after all!
Lulu sat down on the couch. Muttley came in and nosed around the puddles near the front door. Then, when he didn’t find anything to eat, he sniffed Lulu’s boots for a while.
“Dogs like me,” Lulu said. She reached down to pet the big gray mutt’s head. “They know I can read their minds.”
She stared hard into Muttley’s eyes. “I know what he’s thinking now,” she said. “He’s thinking that he’s hungry.”
Courtney and I both laughed. “He’s always hungry,” Courtney said. “He eats everything he sees!”
Mom rushed by, wearing a long raincoat and one of Dad’s baseball caps. “See you later,” she told us. She turned to Lulu. “Make yourself at home. Don’t let them drive you crazy.”
“No problem,” Lulu said. “I know how to handle them. I’ll hypnotize them and put them in a trance.”
Mom was already halfway out the door. I don’t think she heard what Lulu said. “That’s good,” Mom called, and the door closed behind her.
I studied Lulu. She was staring deep into Muttley’s eyes again. Lulu has a funny sense of humor, I decided.
She clapped her hands together, so hard it startled Muttley. “What shall we do tonight?” she asked. Her dark eyes sparkled in the light.
“Do you like video games?” I asked. “I have PlayStation Two.”
“Bor-ring,” Courtney groaned. “Can you help me with my cheer-leader routine? I’m trying out for the third-grade squad on Monday.”
“We don’t have cheerleaders at my school,” Lulu replied in her whispery voice. “I don’t think I could be much help.”
“You just have to watch me,” Courtney said.
“Yawn yawn,” I said.
“Who were those kids I saw leaving your house?” Lulu asked.
“They’re not kids—they’re pond scum,” I replied.
“They live next door, so we have to see them,” Courtney said. “But we hate them and they hate us. They’re totally horrible.”
We told Lulu just how horrible Larry and Maryjo are.
Lulu jumped to her feet. “I have a fantastic idea. Would you like to get even with them?”
I squinted at her. “What do you mean?”
She giggled. “You know. Pay them back for being so gross?”
“Sure!” Courtney and I replied together.
“Then let’s bake some mud cookies,” Lulu said.
Courtney and I stared at her. “You mean—make cookies out of mud?” Courtney asked.
Lulu nodded. She winked at me.
“Isn’t that kind of babyish?” I said. “I’m twelve. I made mud pies when I was three.”
“You didn’t make mud pies like these,” Lulu whispered. A grin spread over her face. “These are very special. And it’s a perfect day to make them.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “It’s pouring outside.”
Lulu’s grin grew wider. “Exactly. That’s when the mud is ripe.”
Courtney and I splashed through the backyard, carrying trowels and a bucket from the garage. I ducked low, but the wind blew cold rain into my face.
“I don’t believe we’re doing this,” I grumbled, pulling up the hood on my rain slicker.
We both squatted in front of Dad’s vegetable garden. I held the bucket, and Courtney began shoveling wet mud and plopping it into the bucket.
“Hey—who let Muttley out?” Courtney cried.
The huge dog came racing through the mud and leaped at me. “Hey—down! Get down!” I cried. His big paws smeared my raincoat with wet mud.
“Take the bucket away!” Courtney yelled. “Take it away! He’s trying to eat the mud!”
A few minutes later I kicked off my muddy boots and handed the bucket to Lulu. Courtney and I peeled off our filthy rain gear.
Lulu laughed. “I told you to get some mud. I didn’t say you should swim in it!”
We carried our soaked raincoats to the laundry room. Then we joined Lulu in the kitchen. She pulled out two cookie trays. “Do you have poster paint?” she asked. “We’re going to need paint.”
Courtney ran to her room and brought back her paint set.
“Okay. Let’s get serious,” Lulu said.
She dipped her hands into the bucket, pulled out a wet chunk of mud, and slapped it onto a baking tray. “This one is for you, Courtney.”
Courtney stared down at the blob of mud. “What do I do?”
“Mold it like clay,” Lulu said. “Form it into a person. You know. Like a gingerbread man.” A smile spread over her face. “Make it look like Maryjo.”
Courtney giggled. “She’ll look great in mud!”
“Then I’ll do Larry,” I said. “I’ll give him a fat, piggy snout.” Lulu plopped a mound of mud onto my tray, and I went to work.
Using tablespoons and our fingers, we molded the mud to look like our friends. Then Lulu opened the paint jars, and we colored them. Courtney brushed yellow over Maryjo’s long hair. I poured red over Larry’s face to give him a nice piggy look.
“Now do we bake them?” Courtney asked.
Lulu shook her head. “One more step,” she said softly. “You need to add something that belongs to your friends.”
“Excuse me?” I stared at her. “Like what?”
“Like a hair or a fingernail clipping or something,” Lulu replied. “You have to bake it in the cookie.”
“Well, I have plenty of Maryjo’s hairs,” Courtney said, starting to the door. “She brushed her hair with my brush today.”
“And what about her brother, Larry?” Lulu asked me, squeezing one of my cookie legs into a better shape. “Do you have any of his hairs?”
“No. No hairs.” I thought hard. “But that creep spit potato-chip crumbs all over my floor. They’re probably still there. Would they be any good?”
Lulu thought for a moment. “They were in his mouth? Yes. Go get them.”
My sister and I raced upstairs. I hated to admit it, but making mud cookies of Larry and Maryjo was kind of fun. We hurried back to the kitchen with the hairs and the potato-chip crumbs. Lulu carefully pressed them into the centers of the cookies.
We cleaned up the kitchen while the cookies baked. The odor from the oven was really gross.
But when we pulled the cookies out, they looked great.
Maryjo had a round, lumpy green face and piles of yellow hair. Larry had tiny black eyes and a bright-red pig snout. His blue jeans were big and baggy, just like in real life.
“Good work,” Lulu said, clapping her hands. “Very good work.”
“What do we do with them now?” I asked.
“You keep them somewhere safe, and then you use them,” Lulu answered.
“Huh?” I stared hard at her. “Use them? What do you mean?”
Suddenly the kitchen door swung open and Mom and Dad came rushing in, shaking out their umbrellas. Rainwater rolled off their raincoats. “Wow! What a night!” Dad said. His glasses were completely fogged.
Mom squinted at our cookie trays. “What on earth!”
“We made mud cookies,” Lulu told her. “Sort of an arts-and-crafts project to pass the time.”
“Ugh. They smell horrible!” Mom said, holding her nose. She turned to Courtney and me. “They’re very cute. But do you think you could take them out of the kitchen?”
My sister and I carefully picked up our cookies. Then we said good night to Lulu, who was pulling on her raincoat.
“Remember, hide them away someplace safe,” she whispered. “I’ll see you again, real soon.”
“You’re wonderful! I can’t believe you got them to do an art project,” Mom told Lulu, leading her to the door. “They hate art projects.”
I carried the Larry cookie up the stairs in both hands. I looked around my room and decided to put it on my dresser top. I’ll show it to Larry the next time he’s here, I decided. And I’ll tell him it looks just like him.
I bumped the cookie against one of the dresser-drawer knobs. “Oh no!” I cried. The right hand broke off and fell to the floor.
I set the cookie down. Then I picked up the little pink hand and tried to press it back onto the arm. But the mud had dried. The hand wouldn’t stay on.
Maybe I can Krazy Glue it, I thought.
“Time for bed, guys!” Dad shouted from downstairs.
I dropped the hand onto the dresser top next to the rest of the cookie and forgot about it.
Until the next morning at school.
Larry showed up in class an hour late. When he took his seat next to mine, he shook his head unhappily and held up his right hand.
I gasped when I saw the white plaster cast on it. “Larry—what happened?” I cried.
“Broke my hand,” he muttered.
I stared at it. “How?”
He shrugged. “Beats me. I was changing into my pajamas last night, and suddenly my hand felt like it cracked. Dr. Owens couldn’t understand it. I’ve been at his office all morning.”
“Did you slam it in a door?” I asked. “Did you bang it on something?”
Larry shook his head. “No. It just broke.”
I pictured the broken mud cookie on my dresser and felt a chill run down my back. I couldn’t wait to tell Courtney about Larry’s hand.
“It’s just a coincidence,” she said when I met her after school. “That mud cookie had nothing to do with it.” She laughed. “Poor Larry. How is he going to eat left-handed? He always uses both hands!”
We walked home. It was a sunny, cold day. Fat brown leaves danced around us on the sidewalk. “What if the cookies have powers?” I asked. “What if I broke Larry’s hand?”
“No way,” Courtney replied. “The cookies are just mud. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll do something to Maryjo’s cookie. Nothing will happen. You’ll see.”
Courtney and I hurried up to her room. She pulled the Maryjo cookie from its hiding place in the dresser drawer. She set it down on her desk. “Let’s see. What should we do to it?” she asked.
She didn’t wait for me to answer. She picked up a pair of scissors, and—snip snip—cut off all the yellow hair.
I gazed at the cookie with its ragged, bald head. Then I shoved the phone into my sister’s hand. “Go ahead. Call her.”
Courtney’s eyes went wide. “Call Maryjo?”
“Yes. Call her,” I insisted. “See if anything happened.”
Courtney punched in Maryjo’s number. “Hi, Mrs. Rawlins. It’s Courtney. Is Maryjo there?” she asked.
Courtney’s mouth dropped open. She suddenly turned pale. “Oh. I see,” she said. “Well…no problem. It wasn’t important. Hope Maryjo is okay.” She clicked off the phone.
“What? What?” I asked.
Courtney slumped onto the edge of her bed. Her voice came out in a whisper. “I—I could hear Maryjo screaming. Her mom said she couldn’t come to the phone. She was having some kind of trouble with her hair.”
I gulped. “You could hear her screaming?”
Courtney nodded. “She was yelling, ‘My hair—it’s falling out! Help me! It’s all falling out!’”
I stared at the bald cookie on the desk. I suddenly felt sick. My legs were trembling. “We—we have to tell Mom,” I said.
I turned and started toward the bedroom doorway. Mom’s voice floated up from downstairs. “I’m going, kids. I’m meeting your dad for dinner in town. Lulu is here. Come down and say hi.”
Lulu?
Courtney and I both froze. “I’m not going down there,” Courtney whispered. “She’s too scary. She has powers. She made us do horrible things.”
“We have to go down,” I said. “We have to tell Lulu the truth. That we don’t want to hurt our friends.”
“I can hear you up there!” Lulu shouted. “Come down, you two.”
Courtney and I made our way down the stairs, clinging to the banister as if it were a life raft. Lulu stood in the living room, arms crossed, waiting for us.
She was dressed in black again, a black sweater pulled down over a short black skirt. A long purple scarf that matched her lipstick was curled around her neck.
“There you are!” she exclaimed, smiling.
“We know the truth about the mud cookies,” I blurted out in a trembling voice. “We don’t think it’s right to hurt people.”
A smile spread over Lulu’s face. “It’s not right—but it sure is fun, isn’t it?”
“No,” Courtney said. “It’s not fun. We’re telling. We’re telling my parents about it as soon as they get home.”
“No, you’re not,” Lulu replied softly. Her smile faded slowly. “You’re not telling anyone. Let me show you why.”
She lifted the lid off a square white box beside her on the coffee table. She pulled out two mud cookies and held them up, one in each hand.
Her eyes lit up. “See? I made Matthew and Courtney cookies!”
“Oh no!” I gasped. The Matthew cookie had black hair and a skinny body, just like me. The Courtney cookie was thin and wiry, like Courtney.
“No more talk about telling on me. Let’s get busy,” Lulu said, holding the cookies in front of her. “We need mud, guys. We’re going to bake some more special cookies today.”
“No way!” I cried. “You can’t force us—”
Lulu plucked a white feather from a couch pillow. A grin spread over her face as she slowly raised the quill of the feather to the Matthew cookie—and plunged it into the center.
“OW!” I screamed, and doubled over with a sharp pain in my stomach. “Lulu—stop!” I gasped.
She twirled the feather in the cookie.
Pain shot through my whole body. I crumpled to the floor. “Please,” I whispered. “Please—take it out.”
She pulled the feather out of the cookie and, little by little, the pain faded away.
Lulu picked up my sister’s cookie. “Do I have to teach you a lesson too?” she asked Courtney.
“No. No. I get it,” Courtney said, her voice trembling.
“Then let’s get to work,” Lulu said. “And do exactly as I say. Unless you’d like to see what happens when I dip your mud cookies in boiling water.”
Courtney and I had no choice. I climbed shakily to my feet. My stomach still ached. I couldn’t catch my breath.
To my surprise Courtney did a cartwheel. She flipped over to the couch, forcing Lulu to jump back. Then Courtney climbed to her feet and brushed herself off.
“No tricks,” Lulu warned. She had the two cookies gripped tightly in her hands. “I like torturing kids.” Lulu’s mouth broke into a crooked smile. “But I love to torture adults even more! Get moving. Today we will make mud cookies of your parents.”
Courtney and I trudged out to the backyard to dig up mud. We squatted by the vegetable garden and started to shovel.
“What was that cartwheel about?” I whispered. “Did you go totally nuts for a moment?”
Courtney glanced back at the kitchen window. Then she dug her hand into her shirt pocket. “Check this out,” she whispered.
She held up a long black hair. “I spotted it on the rug. I picked it up when I did my cartwheel.”
I began to see my sister’s plan. “You’re going to use it in a mud cookie?”
Courtney nodded. “Instead of Mom, I’m going to do Lulu.”
The plan worked. Courtney and I were a team. My sister made the Lulu cookie. And I kept Lulu busy on the other side of the kitchen. I pretended I had a splinter in my thumb. I made Lulu search and search for it.
Courtney slid the cookies into the oven to bake. When it was time for the cookies to cool, I got Lulu out of the kitchen. I took her upstairs to show her what we had done to the Larry and the Maryjo cookies.
“Nice work,” Lulu said, grinning. “You really paid them back for being so disgusting.”
When we returned to the kitchen, Courtney’s surprise was ready. Lulu stared in horror at the mud cookie on the kitchen counter. It had bright-purple lips, a purple scarf at its throat, and Lulu’s long black hair baked into its head.
“NOOOOOOO!” Lulu screamed. “You can’t do this!” She dove for the cookie.
But Courtney grabbed the cookie out of Lulu’s reach.
“Give it! Give it!” Lulu shouted. She made another frantic grab for it.
Courtney tossed the cookie to me. Startled, I caught it in one hand.
And its head fell off.
Lulu screamed again. She grabbed for the cookie with both hands.
Too late. Her head rolled off her neck and bounced onto the kitchen floor.
The head kept right on screaming. Its eyes bulged with horror as it rolled to a stop against the kitchen counter. “Give me that cookie! Give it!” the head screeched.
Lulu’s headless body lurched toward me, her arms outstretched. As she staggered forward, the purple scarf unraveled, revealing her open, cut neck.
Clawing the air, she took another step. Another.
Across the room her head screeched and cried, “Give it! Give it!”
Gripping the mud cookie, I backed against the wall.
The headless Lulu, her arms stretched in front of her, her hands grabbing, grabbing, closed in on me.
I was pressed against the wall. My heart thudded in terror.
I tried to duck away from her—and the cookie dropped out of my hand.
It hit the floor. I stared down at it, expecting it to be broken, but it wasn’t.
I dodged to the side as Lulu’s hands swiped the air in front of me. Now I was trapped. Trapped in the corner.
The headless girl swung her arms again.
Then…stopped. She froze.
I gaped in shock as her right shoulder crumbled away and vanished. Then the scarf disappeared. Then her arm crumbled away.
“Hey—Muttley!” I heard my sister’s cry from across the room.
I turned and saw the big dog, his head down, his teeth chomping hard.
Muttley was gobbling up the Lulu cookie!
A few seconds later Lulu was gone. Her head too.
Shouting, screaming for joy, Courtney and I threw our arms around Muttley and gave him a hundred hugs. “You’re a hero, boy! A real hero!” I cried.
“Thank goodness he eats anything!” Courtney exclaimed.
“We should give him a big steak dinner tonight!” I said. “He’s a hero! A hero!” And I hugged him some more.
Courtney climbed to her feet. “Let’s get the kitchen cleaned up before Mom and Dad get home,” she said.
“No. Leave it,” I replied. “Don’t touch anything. We need to show it all to them. We have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Okay,” Courtney agreed. Her eyes searched the kitchen. “Where are the two cookies Lulu brought? The cookies of you and me. Where did Lulu put them?”
“She brought them in here,” I said. “And then I think she put them—OH NO!”
Courtney and I began screaming together. “Muttley—no! Drop, boy! Drop! Muttley—DROP! PLEASE—DROP!”