Jun 27

Jun 27 Halloween Night On Monster Island

Halloween Night On Monster Island - book excerpt

Chapter 1

Climbing The Screamer!

If I thought my first ever plane ride had been exciting, I didn’t know what was in store for me on my first real rollercoaster ride.

Oh sure, I had been on kiddy coasters. You know what I’m talking about, right? Those little ones that barely stand taller than a grown-up. The real little kids get on them and laugh or scream bloody murder as it travels no faster than you or I can run. They aren’t really any more exciting than riding over a hill with your grandma at the wheel of the car and she is driving slooooowly.

Okay, maybe riding with your grandma is scary, but you get my point.

Those kiddy coasters are nothing when compared to The Screamer!

The Screamer!—that’s the name of the first big, the first fast, the first real roller coaster I ever rode.

I wasn’t all that nervous until the coaster car started climbing up the first hill. At that point, the tips of my fingers tingled

The car jerked. Next, I not only heard, but could feel the clicking through the floor as the car lifted skyward.

Clickety...clickety...clickety...higher...higher...higher.

“Oh my gosh!” Jenny exclaimed by my side. “Jake, I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Me either,” I said, and tried gulping down the ball of fear stuck in my throat. “But at this point I don’t think we have any other option.”

I faced Jenny. Jenny is my twin sister. She looked as scared as I felt. She stared straight back at me. Her eyes were as big as plates. Her hands gripped the safety bar so tightly that her knuckles showed white.

Clickety...clickety...clickety.

“Hey, guys!” Ricky and Rebecca called. Ricky and Rebecca are cousins to Jenny and me.

Both Jenny and I looked over.

The Screamer! was a two-track roller coaster with small coaster cars on each track. There was a red car and a blue car, and basically the red and blue car raced one another.

Ricky and Rebecca were in the red car, and they didn’t seem nearly as scared as I was feeling. This surprised me, because Rebecca is a year younger than my sister and me, and Ricky is only ten.

I had always thought of Ricky as small, almost scrawny. He’d actually cheated and raised himself to his tippy-toes just to make the minimum height restriction for The Screamer! He always has to wear these thick glasses everywhere that make him appear even younger. His glasses are almost as big as his face.

Small or not, Ricky sure looked like he was having the time of his life. He wasn’t even gripping the safety bar! Instead, he belted laughter and waved his hands above his head like a mad man. My stomach flipped just watching Ricky.

“Our car is going to win!” Rebecca yelled at us.

“I don’t care about winning,” Jenny trembled over to me. “I just hope we survive.”

Higher...higher...higher.

“Look at that roller coaster over there!” Ricky called out. With my eyes, I followed to where he pointed. “That one is called The Howler! I can’t wait to ride it later tonight!”

We were just barely more than halfway up the first hill of The Screamer! Despite the heavier breeze at this height and the cold feeling at my neck, my palms were slick with sweat. The Howler!looked to be twice as tall as The Screamer! How was I ever going to gather the courage to climb aboard that roller coaster?

Clickety...clickety...clickety...higher...higher...higher.

The car seemed to momentarily slow and gather itself as it rounded up and over the hill.

My sister voiced aloud what I was thinking at that very moment.

“I think coming to Monster Island Theme Park for Halloween might have been a mistake!” she cried out.

Once again, we stared wide-eyed at each other.

The car rushed forward at an unbelievable speed. My butt actually lifted from the seat. My sister and I both screamed like we’d never screamed before.

“Aaaaahhhhh!”

Chapter 2

Riding The Screamer!

The wind created from speeding downwards pummeled my face. It swept my sister’s long, blonde hair straight back. My stomach flipped a second time as the car flew through the bottom curve and shot back almost straight up into the second hill.

Ricky and Rebecca’s car had the lead by about ten feet. Rebecca had joined her younger brother as she, too, waved her hands in the air.

To me, they both looked like mental patients.

The second hill was slightly shorter than the first, but not any less thrilling.

Jenny and I continued to scream.

“Aaaaahhhhh!”

A funny thing happened when we reached the bottom of the smaller hill. The car pitched, slanted to the side, and rounded a curve. The curve gave our car the inside track, and we sped right past our cousins.

What was so funny? Jenny and I were no longer screaming; we were laughing!

“Aaahhh.Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Halfway through the ride, both cars slowed down on a long and wide curve at the top of the track. Jenny and I were alongside our cousins.

“This is a blast!” Ricky called over to us.

“It sure is!” I answered.

“I can’t believe we get all of Monster Park to ourselves this Halloween night!” Rebecca yelled.

“Yeah! I sure am glad Uncle Victor invited us!” my sister yelled back.

With the action of the coaster momentarily slowed, I took the opportunity to take it all in from this height. Looking around, I could see countless game booths lining the main course of the amusement park. I could also see a big Ferris wheel depicting Frankenstein’s Monster on the sides, a sea-serpent ride which resembled those swinging pirate ships, hanging cable cars, and about four or five other monster roller coasters.

Best of all, there were no people! Uncle Victor had invited my two cousins, my sister, and me. He had shut down the entire park to the public on Halloween just for us. That meant there would be no lines the entire night! When we wanted to ride it, we would be able to climb righton The Howler! I was having so much fun on The Screamer! I now couldn’t wait to ride The Howler!

This is just way too cool, I thought.

“We’re going to win!” Ricky hollered, breaking my trance. The red car pitched down yet another hill, cutting Ricky’s next line off before he could finish. “Yay for HALLOWEEeeeee…”

A half-second later, my sister and I were also zipping down the hill and finishing up the final stretch of The Screamer!

By the time the cars jerked, slowed, and pulled back into the original starting positions, Rebecca and Ricky’s car was back in the lead. They had won the race.

That was okay. The ride had been fun, so much fun that I really didn’t care.

By my side, Jenny laughed so hard she snorted. This made me laugh even more.

“Stop snorting like a pig!” I said. “You’re making my sides hurt!”

Our cousins must have thought that was really funny, because they,too,began laughing uproariously.

Then we all heard a fifth person laughing.

Wait, what? There were only four of us.

No, not laughing, it was more like a witch’s cackle.

It was a witch!

She was dressed in loose-fitting, black garb. She even wore a black pointed hat. Her face was slime-green, and she had a hooked beak of a nose. She stood right at the operator’s booth, ready to pull a lever.

“You kids look like you’re having lots of fun!” the witch shrieked. “Let’s go again, but this time we’ll crank it up to...WITCH SPEEEEED!”

She cackled even more madly.

In unison, my cousins, my sister, and I all shouted, “Nooooo!”

Too late. The witch let out her evil-sounding cackle, even louder this time.

She jerked the lever down, and I knew I was in for the ride of my life.

Chapter 3

Discussing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

“I’m just kidding,” the witch said, and her cackle became a human laugh.

To my relief, the coaster cars jerked to a complete stop. The ride had been lots of fun, but I sure didn’t want to experience witch speed, whatever that was.

My heart beat so quickly and loudly I could hear it in my ears. In the next instant it slowed down, because this wasn’t a real witch at all; it was only Miss Penny dressed as one.

Miss Penny was the host my Uncle Victor had sent to the airport to pick up my cousins and my sister and me. Miss Penny had even been in costume at the airport. Being Halloween and all, there had been others dressed up, too, so she hadn’t looked all that foolish.

Miss Penny had helped us all with our packed duffel bags and then driven us to Lake Michigan.

Jenny and I are from Texas. Rebecca and Ricky live in Montana. None of us had ever been to Michigan to visit our Uncle Victor. We’d never seen a shoreline on an actual lake as large as Lake Michigan. Of course, being from Texas my sister and I have swum in the Gulf of Mexico—it’s even bigger than Lake Michigan—but the Gulf of Mexico is part of the ocean. We’d wanted to swim in Lake Michigan, but Miss Penny told us that in October the water was too cold for swimming.

Miss Penny had then guided us onto a ferry— that is just a boat that carries people to places— and we’d had a twenty-minute boat ride all the way out to Monster Island.

“Alright, kiddos,” Miss Penny said, “we really need to get a move on. Your uncle is probably wondering what is taking so long.”

Jenny and I rolled our eyes at each other. We can’t stand it when adults call us things like ‘kiddos’. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if Miss Penny should have been considered an adult.

We unbuckled and climbed out of the cars. Walking down the exit ramp for The Screamer!,I asked Miss Penny how old she was.

“I’m twenty-two,” she answered.

“It must be awesome working at an amusement park,” Ricky said.

“It’s...okay, I guess.” Miss Penny replied. “I mean it’s not my dream job or anything. I’m in college, so I work here during the summer months and on weekends until it closes for the winter.”

“Is it true that our uncle owns the entire island?” Jenny asked.

“Yes,” said Miss Penny. “The only way on or off is by one those ferries we took. Well, that and the private helicopter Mr. Victor owns.”

This was just flabbergasting to me. I knew my uncle was rich, I just didn’t know how rich.

Private helicopter rich?

I guess when you own an entire island and run one of the largest theme parks in the country on it, you can make a fortune.

“All aboard,” Miss Penny said when we reached the four-man side-by-side. A side-by-side is kind of like a big go-cart. This one had big tires, and a rather familiar, blocky face with overset eyebrows and a grimace painted on the hood. Miss Penny called it the Franken-cart. Ricky and Rebecca took the back. It was a tight fit, but Jenny and I squeezed into the front with Miss Penny.

“Is our uncle nice?” I asked Miss Penny, before she could take off.

“Nice?” She shrugged a shoulder. She turned the key, and the Franken-cart fired to life before settling to idle with a low but even growl. “He can be strict with his workers. To be honest, he wanted me to take you straight to his home before you climbed on any of the rides. He might be unhappy with me about letting you ride The Screamer! this early.”

“We’re sorry,” Jenny said.

“Yeah,” Rebecca agreed from the back. “We didn’t want to get you in trouble when we begged to rideThe Screamer!”

“I’m sure it will be okay,” Miss Penny said. We pulled away, heading down the main drag of Monster Island Theme Park. “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. Your uncle, I mean he’s nice enough to invite the four of you and let you have Monster Island to yourselves tonight. Trust me, I know from working here last year, Halloween night can make a lot of money for your uncle.”

“Then why do you seem nervous?” I asked.

“I was supposed to have you to his house fifteen minutes ago. Your uncle is nice and all, but he also has this different side to him. He’s kind of like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Have you ever heard of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?”