The Chocolate Touch Read online

  “Hmm,” said Mr. Midas, frowning anxiously at John. “I think we’d better pay a visit to Dr. Cranium before we go home.”

  “That’s where the store was, though,” John protested, beginning to cry again. He had shed more tears in that one day, it seemed, and certainly eaten more chocolate, than in all the other days of his life put together. “I know it was.”

  Dr. Cranium was a busy man. As luck would have it, however, he was able to see Mr. Midas and John almost at once.

  “Well, well, well, well, well!” said Dr. Cranium. “And how are we getting along now, John? Have we cut down on our candy, eh?”

  “How do you do?” John responded dully.

  “Apparently he’s had a bad day, Dr. Cranium,” Mr. Midas said. “Trouble at school, you know. And a little accident at a birthday party. What I’m worried about is that he keeps saying that everything he puts into his mouth turns to chocolate.”

  “No more than a nursery fantasy, I’m sure,” Dr. Cranium said to Mr. Midas. “Well, John,” he went on, looking down with a smile, “suppose you tell me in your own words what the matter seems to be.”

  “Everything I put into my mouth turns to chocolate,” John explained. “Everything I eat and everything I drink changes into chocolate. I’m thirsty. And I’m getting a pain. A bad one, I think.”

  Dr. Cranium sighed patiently and invited John to open his mouth and say ah.

  “Ah,” John said.

  Dr. Cranium peered into John’s mouth briefly and gave a low whistle of surprise. “This chocolate eating simply must stop.” He went to a supply cabinet. “I don’t think there’s any time to be lost,” he told Mr. Midas. “I’m going to give the boy some of my own special compound—Dr. Cranium’s Elixir, I call it. Never fails.”

  Dr. Cranium selected a large bottle from one of the cabinet’s crowded shelves. He removed the top from the bottle. He got a spoon from another shelf. He filled the spoon with an oily greenish-yellowish medicine that had yellowish-reddish lights glinting in it. “It doesn’t taste very pleasant,” Dr. Cranium warned John in a pleasant tone of voice. “But I’m sure it’ll do the trick. Clear the stomach and you clear the mind. That’s what I always say.”

  Dr. Cranium offered John the brimful spoon.

  “Must I?” John asked his father. “I know it’ll turn into chocolate.”

  “Go on.” Mr. Midas nodded encouragingly. “Drink it down.”

  John took the spoon between his lips. The medicine turned to chocolate. The spoon turned to chocolate. John choked and spluttered, and chocolate syrup spurted from his mouth.

  Dr. Cranium dropped the spoon in alarm. When it struck the white-tiled floor, the chocolate handle snapped into several pieces. “Mercy!” said Dr. Cranium. “I’ve never seen anything like it! The boy’s whole system seems to be so chocolatified that it chocolatifies everything it touches.”

  After he had recovered somewhat, the doctor went on. “I believe that this must be an unprecedented case of . . . er . . . chocolatitis. I shall call it Cranium’s Disease. I shall want to make an exhaustive study of the child. I—”

  “I think John has had enough excitement for one day,” Mr. Midas said.

  11

  Mrs. Midas was much upset when Mr. Midas told her that John had Dr. Cranium’s Disease.

  “He said it was chocolatitis,” Mr. Midas explained, a worried frown on his face. “But he’s calling it Cranium’s Disease, because it was his discovery.”

  “Dr. Cranium didn’t do it,” John said. “It’s magic. It all started after I ate that chocolate. . . . I’m scared,” he added.

  Mrs. Midas sat down and dabbed her eyes with a lace handkerchief. She was crying.

  Mr. Midas blew his nose, said he had to attend to something, and abruptly left the room.

  John had been so busy feeling sorry for himself that he had not realized how his mother and father would feel about his chocolate disease. “Never mind, Mother,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “It’s all right.” Really, nothing was all right, but he couldn’t bear to see his mother’s tears.

  He kissed her wet cheek. His eyes were shut as his lips softly touched her, so he didn’t see the change right away. Then his lips began to feel sticky. He opened his eyes. His mother had turned into a lifeless statue of chocolate!

  John ran wildly out of the house without thinking where he was going or what he was going to do. All he knew was that somehow he must get help. For the first time in a long while he forgot about himself altogether. Now he didn’t care about anything but bringing his mother back to life. Without quite knowing how he got there, John found himself at the corner where he had bought the chocolate box. The lot was no longer an untidy rubbish dump. The neat red-brick building with two show windows was exactly where it had been in the first place. But the display of candy he had previously seen in the windows was no longer there. In one window John saw a chocolate trumpet, a chocolate pencil, and a silver dollar with a piece bitten out of it. In the other window he saw a cafeteria tray littered with chocolate utensils and the remains of a chocolate lunch. Clearly, this place was the right one. Clearly, the proprietor must know a lot about John’s hateful chocolate touch. John rushed into the store.

  The proprietor was standing behind the counter, carefully polishing something small and round and flat and silver. “I was just thinking of you,” he said.

  John had no time to waste on pleasantries. “Remember-the-old-coin-I-found-and-gave-you-and-you-gave-me-a-magic-chocolate?” he demanded. Without waiting for a reply, he babbled on. “I-ate-it-and-it-made-everything-that-touches-my-mouth-turn-to-chocolate-and-I-kissed-my-mother-and-now-she’s-chocolate-and-I’ve-got-to-change-her-back!”

  “Easy now,” murmured the storekeeper. “Calm yourself.” There was an expression of satisfaction in the old man’s eyes.

  “It’s all your fault,” John declared. “If my mother isn’t made better again, I’ll fight you till you’re dead!”

  “My goodness!” the storekeeper exclaimed. “Whose fault, did you say?”

  “Yours!” John said. “If you hadn’t taken that money, I wouldn’t have—”

  “Now, John,” the storekeeper interrupted, “I must insist on honesty. I’m glad to hear that you’re thinking about your mother for a change. Unselfishness is important. But honesty is also important. If you’ll be truthful, perhaps I can help you.”

  John’s ears reddened. It was becoming unmistakably evident to him that he had only himself to blame for all this unhappiness. He looked straight into the storekeeper’s eyes. “I’ll do anything. I’ll work for you all my life for nothing, if you’ll turn my mother back. You can turn me to chocolate, instead, if you want. You—”

  The storekeeper apparently ignored John’s offers. “You were right, John,” he said, “when you guessed that I had something to do with your acquiring the chocolate touch. But you yourself earned the coin that bought the chocolate touch. Only greedy people can even see that kind of money. Dr. Cranium was right, up to a point. I suppose that one could say that you had chocolatitis. But it was just an outward sign of selfishness.”

  “My mother!” John reminded the storekeeper frantically. “My mother’s turned to chocolate! Do something about it! Oh, please do something about it!”

  “I’m glad that you are concerned,” the storekeeper commented unhurriedly. “Part of your cure is to be concerned about other people. You have been so greedy that you didn’t care what happened to other people.”

  “Oh, I know, I know,” John admitted woefully. “But please decide about me later. And please make my mother better now.”

  “Well, John,” the storekeeper said, “if you had to choose between getting rid of your chocolate touch and restoring your mother to life, which would it be?”

  For one moment John couldn’t help imagining a future of all-chocolate meals. The thought was terrible. But then he thought of his mother as she had been when he had left her, a motionless chocolate statue, unable to
speak, her chocolate hand still holding her lace handkerchief. Without further hesitation, John said, “Help my mother.”

  “Well, John,” the storekeeper said, “I am going to give you another chance. When next you go to school, your chocolate pencil will be a real wooden pencil with lead in it.”

  “But—” John began to protest. What did the pencil matter?

  “The chocolate knife and fork and spoon you left on your tray in the cafeteria will have turned back to metal. Your chocolate trumpet will be a shiny golden one again.”

  “But—” John said.

  “Don’t worry about Dr. Cranium’s spoon. He will find a whole silver one on the floor, where the broken chocolate one lay.”

  “But how about—?” John said.

  “Susan Buttercup will discover that the chocolate stains on her party dress and her party shoes were nothing but water, after all. Her silver dollar will be all right.”

  John could stand the suspense no longer. “My mother!” he shouted. “What about my mother? Will she be all right?”

  The storekeeper smiled. “Why don’t you run along home and find out?” he suggested.

  John turned without even saying good-bye and ran out of the store.

  The storekeeper went back to the disk that he had been polishing, a disk the size of a quarter. It had to be polished smooth, ready for a new set of initials in case the need for them should arise.

  12

  The front door was open and John rushed into the living room, where he had left his mother. She was not there now, but on the chair was a small, wet lace handkerchief. John ran into the dining room and on to the kitchen. As he came to the kitchen door, he heard the ring of silver against crockery. Then he saw a wonderful sight—his mother arranging the coffee things on a tray!

  He dashed into the kitchen and flung his arms around his mother’s waist, sobbing and laughing with relief and joy.

  “There, there,” said Mrs. Midas, stroking the hair from John’s forehead. “You’ve had a very disturbing day, dear. But in a few minutes we’re all going to have supper and everything will be fine again. Goodness! I do believe I need some coffee myself. I felt so strange just then in the other room. I really don’t know what came over me.”

  The door from the garden opened, and Mr. Midas came in.

  “Before we settle down,” Mrs. Midas said to John, “have a glass of good, cold milk. You look so hot.”

  So they didn’t know what had happened to her! Well, John thought, he certainly wouldn’t scare them by telling them. He watched gratefully as his mother took a frosty blue jug from the refrigerator and poured from it a glassful of icy, creamy milk.

  Trembling with nervousness, John tilted the glass against his open mouth. The liquid flowed in and down his throat—and remained purely milky, deliciously milky, tasting of nothing but fresh, clean milk.

  After the first long, wonderful gulps, he suddenly recalled that he had not thanked the storekeeper for saving his mother. “Mother,” he said, “may I go out for a minute? I’ll be right back.”

  “All right, John,” she said, “but supper will be ready in ten minutes. Don’t keep us waiting.”

  John ran briskly down the street until he came to the corner where he always turned right when he was going to Susan’s house. There he turned left instead and started along the two blocks of unfamiliar street leading to the candy store. Soon he came to the corner where the red-brick building had been.

  But there was no building and no store and, of course, no storekeeper. In the corner lot there was nothing to be seen but a heap of rusty tin cans and broken bottles surrounding a signboard with new lettering that said—Sold.

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Born in London, PATRICK SKENE CATLING was educated there and at Oberlin College. As a Royal Canadian Air Force navigator and as a journalist, he has traveled extensively. He now lives in Ireland.

  After receiving her B.F.A. from the Pratt Institute, MARGOT APPLE attended the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina and subsequently established herself as a freelance illustrator in the fields of publishing, advertising, and greeting card design. She lives in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Credits

  Cover art © 2006 by David Merrell

  Cover design by Amy Ryan

  Copyright

  THE CHOCOLATE TOUCH

  Copyright © 1952, 1979 by Patrick Skene Catling

  Illustrations copyright © 1979 by Margot Apple

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

  www.harperchildrens.com

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Catling, Patrick Skene.

  The chocolate touch.

  Published in 1952 under title: The chocolate touch.

  Summary: A boy acquires a magical gift that turns everything his

  lips touch into chocolate.

  ISBN-10: 0-688-16133-2 — ISBN-13: 978-0-688-16133-0

  [1. Chocolate—Fiction.] I. Apple, Margot. II. Title.

  PZ7.C2696Ne 1979 78-31100

  [Fic]

  * * *

  EPub Edition © JUNE 2013 ISBN: 9780062283610

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