The Monsters Hiding in Your Closet Read online

  The Monsters Hiding in Your Closet

  Elliot Addison

  Jessica Lee Anderson

  Susan Bianculli

  Melanie Cole

  J. G. Formato

  John Linwood Grant

  Laura Keating

  Jonathan Lahr

  Hope Erica Schultz

  Lisa Timpf

  Edited by

  Madeline Smoot

  The Monsters Hiding in Your Closet

  Edited by Madeline Smoot

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  Dragon Dreams Text Copyright © 2017

  Cover Image Copyright © shutterstock.com/Danomyte

  Monster Body Parts Image Copyright © shutterstock.com/Danomyte

  Door Image Copyright © shutterstock.com/

  Andy Vinnikov

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  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without express permission of the copyright holder.

  For more information, write:

  CBAY Books

  PO Box 670296

  Dallas, TX 75367

  * * *

  Children’s Brains are Yummy Books

  Dallas, Texas

  www.cbaybooks.blog

  * * *

  ISBN: 978-1-944821-20-3

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-944821-21-0

  Kindle ISBN: 978-1-944821-22-7

  PDF ISBN: 978-1-944821-23-4

  Contents

  Dragon Dreams by Elliot Addison

  Mansion Mayhem by Jessica Lee Anderson

  Changes by Lisa Timpf

  The New Neighbors by Melanie Cole

  Cinnamon and Magic by John Linwood Grant

  Riddle Me This by Susan Bianculli

  The Office Monster by Jonathan Lahr

  The Creep by Laura Keating

  When Swamp Lily Met Swamp Thing by J.G. Formato

  The Witch in My Sister’s Closet by Hope Erica Schultz

  About the Editor

  CBAY Books

  We fundraised for weeks for this trip. I sat through more bake sales and car washes than any one person should ever have to attend. It was for a good cause, though. This year’s middle school jazz band finals were being held at Lost Worlds Mythical Beasts ResortTM, which meant a four-night vacation at the scariest place on Earth. They had better rollercoasters than the parks in Florida and better animals than the fancy California zoos.

  The story was that back in the genetics boom during the early part of the century, when most of the geneticists were working on important stuff like curing cancer and diabetes and bringing extinct animals like the polar bear back to life, this group of mad scientists decided to use their grad school educations for less noble purposes. They decided to open the world’s most insane zoo/theme park, but instead of normal animals, they genetically engineered all those crazy animals you find in myths. Admittedly, little kids find riding around on the back of a live unicorn pretty amazing, but most of the park isn’t that tame.

  The first morning there, after band rehearsal for that night’s competition, my roommates and I went straight to the European zone. I nearly peed my pants when the minotaur rounded a corner and bellowed in my face. Evan, Samir, and Jason nearly fell over, they were laughing so hard. Even the minotaur’s handler, an old white guy dressed like a Spartan warrior with the circle shield and the helmet with the horse-hair Mohawk, even that guy cracked a small smile. The minotaur didn’t find it funny. Although it had a man’s body, the minotaur had a bull’s head. It was kind of hard to tell what he was thinking, but he seemed almost as put out as me by all the laughing.

  The handler pulled out his short sword when the Minotaur looked like he might want to do more than bellow. The creature had lowered his head until his horns were level with Evan’s chest. The other guys stopped laughing then, like someone had cut the sound off on a video game.

  The minotaur’s right leg began stamping while his left fist hit his right hand. As a group, we backed up to the huge bush that made up the maze walls, but we had wandered into a dead end. The minotaur had us trapped.

  The Spartan handler stepped between us and the beast. His sword kind of glowed and even buzzed, like it was filled with bees. The minotaur turned his head away from the sword and took a step back. We followed from a safe distance as the handler and his electric sword herded the minotaur back down the passage and into a different branch. After that, we hurried, basically running, until we found the center of the maze and its elevator back down to the main park level.

  “Insane,” Evan said once we’d gotten back out into the park. “That was insane. Did you see Aaron’s face? I thought he was going to pass out when the monster yelled at him.”

  I smiled and tried to laugh, but I couldn’t quite manage it. I didn’t say anything, not even to point out that we’d all been scared when the minotaur looked like he was going to charge us. I might be staying in the same hotel room with these guys, but we weren’t friends. We got along okay, but I wasn’t the guy they texted when they needed a fourth to play video games.

  “Oh, look,” I said, trying to sound casual and disinterested and like I wasn’t changing the subject. “There’s the Aviary.” I’d been trying to get the guys to go there with me since we’d gone through the metal detectors at the front gate. So far, they’d dragged me through the Forest of Fear with its goblins and vampires, waited in line for almost an hour for a lame 4-D movie about genetic engineering, and then there was the Minotaur’s Maze. The Aviary though, that was the thing I wanted to see. Or to be more specific, it had the creature I wanted to see.

  “The Aviary?” Samir asked. “Do we have to do that today? It’s just going to be a bunch of lame birds.”

  “I kind of think it’ll be more than birds. Isn’t it supposed to have everything that flies?” I asked.

  Jason shrugged. He pointed at the map projecting out of his park wristband. “Look. On the other side of the Aviary is the Serpent’s Scale. It’s supposed to be the tallest backwards roller coaster in the world.”

  “We don’t have time for both before we have to get back to the hotel to change for tonight’s competition.” Samir started walking off towards the Serpent’s Scale. “Let’s do the roller coaster today.”

  I was torn. On the one hand, the Serpent’s Scale was supposed to be awesome. There were no less than four hundred YouTube holograms of kids throwing up all over the thing. Part of me also wanted to just go with the guys, be a part of the group for once.

  I started to follow them, but I glanced back at the Aviary with its pictures of flying silhouettes painted on the side. I could almost feel my desire to fit in with the guys flying off like the creatures in the pictures. It was like something was calling me to go inside.

  “I think I’ll pass,” I said. “I’ll meet you guys back at the room before we have to go to the band competition.”

  The guys didn’t even notice I’d stopped walking. I doubted they heard me.

  “Whatever.” I turned and got in line for the Aviary. The place was actually a huge ride that took you through the different creature exhibits. While I waited in line, I tapped on the glass at the tiny fairies until a security guard made me stop. The genetic engineers who’d made all the things here had really gone all out. They had managed to create humans about the size of my hand with huge orange, brown, and gold wings like the ones on a monarch butterfly. The little naked people flew from a bunch of different trees to some bird houses someone had built in the cen
ter of their exhibit.

  After only about 10 minutes, I sat down by myself in a row of a car with a whole family in front of me. The family could have split up, but they preferred to cram onto one seat rather than sit with me. It was almost like they were some of the kids at school.

  One of those Academy Award–winning actors, whose name I didn’t remember, narrated the ride. Some of the flying exhibits were as lame as the guys had thought they might be. The phoenix wasn’t having a burning day, so it just looked like a giant red parrot. The griffins were molting, so it was hard to see much more than a flurry of feathers as their lion paws scratched at the eagle wings. The angels were having a philosophical debate over some obscure point in Islamic theology that used a bunch of vocabulary words I didn’t know.

  Finally, we got to the main event. First they had some small flying serpents, and then there was a wyvern about the size of a grizzly bear. It flapped its wings and spit saliva at the glass as our car rode past, but it didn’t try to move from its perch in a dead tree.

  The car rounded a corner and slowed down to a crawl. We drove into what looked like a cave with fake electric torches, the old-fashioned kind from a medieval castle. The floor had been made to look like it had been covered in gold coins. I leaned over the edge of my car as far as I could without falling out. I didn’t want to miss a thing.

  In the very center of the pile of coins lay a huge green dragon the color of wilted spinach. Its head rested on its front paws with its long spiked tail wrapped around its long body, partially covering its wings. Although the creature was clearly based on a huge lizard (the dragon was bigger than a small house), it kind of resembled a cat. Two plumes of smoke drifted out of the man-sized nostrils at the end of the dragon’s snout. Both eyes were shut tight, as if the dragon was asleep.

  Our cars moved slower than a baby crawls, but the dragon didn’t move.

  “What’s the matter with it?” asked one of the girls sitting in the row in front of me. “Is it sick?”

  Bored, came the answer in my head. I jerked back, nearly knocking my chin on the side of the car. I glanced at the family, but they didn’t seem to have heard.

  “What?” I said.

  The dragon opened its eye closest to our car. The red eye with its golden pupil stared at me for a moment before the dragon winked.

  Bored, the dragon said, shutting his eye.

  My mouth moved up and down, but I couldn’t seem to make any words. The car turned the corner, and the ride’s narrator started listing a bunch of dragon facts. At no point did the ride say that dragons could talk. In people’s heads. Or that they winked.

  Somehow I got myself off the ride and back to my hotel room. I put on my suit for the competition and grabbed my trombone in a bit of a daze. I needed to snap out of it for the performance, but I kept hearing the dragon’s voice in my head. It had sounded a bit like the crackling of a fire. Even though he’d only said a few words, they had popped and snapped like wet wood does when thrown on a bonfire.

  No one noticed that I was out of it. I’d never been so grateful that my classmates seemed to find me invisible. “I heard a dragon’s voice in my head” was a one-way ticket to the school psychiatrist.

  By the time the competition was over, I had mostly convinced myself that I had imagined the whole thing. A dragon winking, or even weirder, talking to me? To me? What had I been thinking? I probably should have eaten more than popcorn and caramel apples all day.

  We finished next to last in the rankings. Ms. Bidwell, our band director, wasn’t real thrilled, but most of us weren’t upset. This meant we wouldn’t have to compete at the championship competition tomorrow or in the winners’ concert the night after. With no more rehearsals or performances, we would have two more full days for exploring the parks. I should have been excited. Instead, my insides curled in on themselves like the edges of a paper that has been singed by a flame.

  The next day I followed my roommates to the African part of the park. We saw things like the Ninki Nanka and the Sphinx. I rode the water ride even though the weather wasn’t warm enough, but I couldn’t seem to get excited like the other guys. Samir tried to push Evan out of the boat, but I barely managed to smile. Although the others thought the water was cold, I was the only one of us who spent the rest of the day shivering as if I would never be warm again. When the guys wanted to go back over to Europe to ride the Serpent Scale, I refused. I wanted nowhere near a dragon, even a fake roller coaster–shaped one. Instead, I took the shuttle tram back to our hotel.

  The warm shower helped with the shivers. With the room to myself, I ordered a pizza from the hotel cafeteria. Once it arrived, I crawled into bed with my root beer and food and watched the new vampire wizard horror movie.

  At three that morning, I finally admitted that I’d made a colossal mistake. In the movie, the vampire had used her magic to appear in the middle of a victim’s room right before she ripped out the person’s throat. With her teeth.

  Every noise in the room kept waking me up in a panic, convinced teeth hovered next to my neck. There seemed to be a lot of noises too, more noises than last night. The closet, especially, sounded like it was possessed. There were bumps and groans, and twice it had sounded like the thing had actually sighed.

  Finally, I had enough. I picked up my trombone case and crept to the closet. My three roommates slept on, without even moving. Samir snored every few minutes, but otherwise the room was now silent. It was like picking up my trombone had sent the closet back to sleep.

  I stood frozen in the darkness. Feeling more than a little silly, I hoped my roommates didn’t wake up. They probably already thought I was weird enough. I’d never be able to explain this.

  Rolling my eyes, I took another step and threw the closet door open.

  Somehow, I managed not to scream. A strangled gurgle fell out of my mouth, but it wasn’t loud enough to wake my roommates. I had expected to find an empty closet, or maybe if I was unlucky, a closet with a rat. I had not expected to see a small dragon curled up on the closet floor.

  This dragon looked exactly like the giant one from the Aviary exhibit, only it was about the size of a Great Dane. Somehow it had squished itself into our dinky closet. It even sort of managed to look comfortable. Just like the dragon at the park, it had both eyes closed and its head on its front paws with its tail wrapped around his body like a giant cat. Two plumes of smoke drifted out of its nostrils.

  “What the—?” I whispered.

  Finally, the dragon said, opening its eyes.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  Bored, said the dragon. I told you before.

  “Wait. You’re the same dragon? But that one was huge.”

  The dragon sort of shifted its shoulders as if shrugging. Glamour.

  “What does that mean?”

  The dragon looked at me for a moment as if thinking. Then it shrugged again. I put pictures in human heads. They see me big. I stay me. I’m not giving you picture now.

  My hands still holding up my trombone case sagged down until my case touched the floor. I slumped down beside it. I could not believe there was a dragon in my room. I would not believe it.

  Believe it, said the dragon. I’m here.

  And it read minds. My head dropped into my hands. I should have been excited. I had loved dragons since I was a small child. Some kids collected dinosaur fossils and facts. Other kids were excited by the different types of space shuttles that ran between Earth and the different Moon colonies. I had been obsessed with dragons. It was the whole reason I’d been focused on the Aviary that first day at the park. But that was before I had the hot breath of one breathing down my neck.

  My head snapped up, and I slid back on my butt as fast as I could until my back ran up against the bed. I hadn’t noticed the dragon leave the closet. It had been close enough to eat me.

  Bored, the dragon said again. Not hungry.

  “Why are you here?”

  Bored.

  “Y
eah, yeah,” I interrupted. “You said. But, why are you here? In this room? Right now? With me?”

  Oh. The dragon stood in front of me, its head bent down so its red eyes were level with my brown ones. It was even more terrifying than when the minotaur had threatened us with his horns. You hear me. You answer me.

  I froze. In some ways, this scared me more than the smoke coming from its nostrils, the smoke that implied the dragon could exhale fire. I froze because I understood the dragon, understood not being heard, understood no one seeing the real me even when I was right there.

  I relaxed my death grip on the blanket hanging off the bed. I hadn’t realized that I’d half tried to hide beneath it. “So,” I said, “you’re bored. How can I help?”

  The dragon’s lips parted, showing all of its teeth, sharp pointed things that looked like they should be attached to a giant sewing machine, not to a living creature. My heart started racing again until I realized that the dragon was trying to smile.

  Explore, the dragon said, its fire voice crackling in my mind. We go together.

  I bit my bottom lip, thinking. I glanced over at my roommates, the kids who hadn’t noticed tonight when I wasn’t at the movie by the pool, the kids who were just like every other kid I knew at school. I thought of my parents who hadn’t once checked up on me during this trip, the two people who hadn’t noticed when I hadn’t come home for dinner last week because they forgot to pick me up after our extra band rehearsal.

  The dragon tilted its head, listening to me think, a patient expression in its red eyes.

  Slowly, I started to smile. “Exploring, huh? So when do you want to go?”

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