Read an Excerpt

The Horrible Bag

The bag groaned. When he lifted it off the front porch, he could have sworn that it groaned. He dropped the bag to the entryway floor and took a step back.

He listened closely for any further sounds. None came. He leaned closer to the bag. Still nothing. No more groans. Also, no shipping label. No name or address. Who’d delivered it to their house? Was it something his parents had ordered? There was no way to find out till they got home from work, and that wouldn’t be for hours.

In the meantime, he was stuck inside the house with his big sister. Did she know something about this? He doubted it. And if there was any fun to be had with the bag, she would surely put an end to it. Sometimes she treated her baby brother like he was an actual baby.

Zenith Maelstrom was eleven going on twelve. And the “going on” couldn’t go fast enough for him. He could not wait to grow up so everyone would stop bossing him around, especially his sister, Apogee. What he wouldn’t give to be the older sibling.

Zenith took a step closer to the bag. It was the size of a small suitcase, but shaped like an old-­fashioned doctor’s satchel. It felt old. It looked exhausted. It slouched there on the floor, unable to stand upright. The bag had bad posture.

The bag had bad skin as well. Or more accurately, bad skins. It was made of several types of animal hide. Some patches had the smooth appearance of finished leather, while others looked as though they’d been stripped directly off some exotic beast, bristled hair and all. One section sported rough reptilian scales. The various pelts were sewn together with heavy, haphazard stitches. This rough-­hewn exterior was adorned with an improbably elegant, but tarnished, brass clasp that ran the length of the bag’s opening. It had been fashioned to resemble the vines of a rosebush. A few rosebuds nestled among many sharp thorns.

Bad skin. Bad posture. General air of hostility. The bag reminded him of Kevin Churl, neighborhood braggart and one of Zenith’s least favorite people. Had Kevin sent the bag to him? Was this some sort of revenge for what’d happened on the pond in Kalikov Park? Delivered almost a year and a half later? It was a long time to hold a grudge, but still . . . Zenith scratched the scar hidden under the hair above his left ear, then caught himself and stopped. He decided this wasn’t Churl’s style. If Kevin were going to leave something on his doorstep, it would probably be a dog turd inside a flaming paper sack.

A heavy moan sounded from the bag as its metal-­rimmed mouth opened wide. Zenith grabbed his baseball bat from the corner and brandished it at the bag, waiting for whatever was inside to leap out.

Nothing leapt out. Whatever moaned must have been too tired to do any leaping. Or too hurt. Or too clever? Perhaps it was waiting for Zenith to stick his head into the opening so it could jump up and latch on to his face.

He decided to toss the bag back out the front door. Just as soon as he’d taken a quick look inside. He had to look inside. No doubt about that. His sister always said that Zenith was “as curious as a killed cat.” Apogee was clever, and unbeatable at most games and puzzles, but idioms often got the better of her.

Holding the bat in front of him, Zenith inched his way closer to the bag, leaned forward, and peered down inside. It was dark. He retreated and turned on the overhead light. He inched up on the bag again. Still dark. Darker than it should be with the light on. He stuck the bat into the bag and poked around, trying to rouse whatever might be lying coiled inside. All he found was the bottom and the four corners. He used the bat’s knob to hook the bag’s handle and shook it. Nothing. Doing exactly what he swore he wouldn’t, he stuck his head into the opening. Nothing latched on to his face. Nothing happened. Because there was nothing in the bag.

He dropped it to the floor and returned his bat to the corner. He was relieved. And disappointed. It was a pretty poor practical joke, whoever had pulled it. Absentmindedly, Zenith went to close the clasp and nicked his finger on one of the thorns. Just a pinprick, but deep enough to draw blood, a single drop of which fell into the bag’s open mouth.

Zenith let out a cry of pain.

The bag responded with a sigh of pleasure.

Zenith’s eyes went wide. He scrambled backward till he hit the wall.

The bag snapped shut, straightened up, and shivered with delight. A change of color rippled across its various skins. The bag’s entire surface became brighter. Awake was the word that popped into Zenith’s head.

Slowly, the bag’s mouth opened into a wide grin, and a terrible thing came crawling out.


The Terrible Thing

Zenith sat stupefied as one spindly black leg rose up from inside the bag and settled onto the floor. Then a second spindly black leg emerged. Then a third. A fourth. And then a fifth. And although Zenith thought to himself, Yes, I get the picture. You can stop right there, out came legs six through nine.

Mercifully, the legs stopped multiplying. They held still for a moment. But then all nine of them lifted a loathsome body out of the bag’s dark interior.

The creature looked like a coughed-­up hairball come to life. Its black body was the size of a large, misshapen melon. There was no identifiable head. The tangled hair that covered its body was coated in thick, sticky-­looking goo. Each leg consisted of a twisted black braid of this same stringy hair, with white flecks woven sporadically throughout. A larger group of the flecks had gathered at the bottom of each leg, where the hair was at its thinnest. Zenith thought they looked like square white pebbles in the toe of a threadbare sock, and only then realized what they actually were. The white flecks were toenails. Whole human toenails.

The thing took one tentative step forward, the toenails clicking as its leg touched the wood floor. Another more confident step followed, then another, and then—­skitter, skitter, skitter—the creature ran toward Zenith at a frightening pace.

Zenith wanted it nowhere near him but was unable to move. His two legs (a pitiful number by comparison) were unable or unwilling to help him escape.

If the creature’s aim was to attack him, it was wide of the mark. It slammed into the wall a foot to Zenith’s right and stuck there, like a suction cup. It lifted two legs and pushed hard to free itself. The body slowly came away from the wall with a sickening shluuuurrp . . . pop! The creature was unprepared for its success, and stumbled backward toward the opposite wall. Wham! It hit and became stuck again. Shluuuurp . . . Pop! It came free and stumbled away, but this time it gained control of itself and stopped in the center of the front hall.

Zenith tensed, anticipating another attack. But the creature scuttled away from him and down the long hallway, deeper into the house.

This was enough to get Zenith’s own legs working again. He got up off the ground, grabbed the horrible bag, and ran down the hall in pursuit. He launched himself through the air, his arms and the upside-­down bag leading the way. The bag came down on top of the thing as he landed with a loud thud and a long slide across the wood floor. Zenith came to rest in the large archway that opened onto the living room, in full view of his big sister.


Big Sister

Luckily, Apogee was too immersed in the game on her phone to look up. She tapped furiously at the screen, scowling. The tip of her tongue protruded from between her lips. She hunkered down on the sofa with her shoes propped on the edge of the coffee table, her gangly legs bent at the knees and jittering with nervous energy. Apogee had always been short for her age, and although Zenith was two years younger, he’d been as tall as his sister until an annoying growth spurt a year and a half ago had added six inches to her height. Almost all of it had occurred in her legs, and Apogee still didn’t know what to do with them.

Zenith quickly slid the upended bag up against the wall separating the hall from the living room so that it would be out of his sister’s line of sight and got to his feet. Apogee shifted and sighed. “You’re making a lot of noise out there, Nit. Should I be taking my ‘guard’ duties more seriously?”

Two things instantly rankled Zenith. The nickname Nit, which he hated, and the fact that his sister had been assigned to keep an eye on him while he was grounded.

His spring semester had ended with a literal bang when Zenith’s enthusiasm for chemistry had inspired a kitchen experiment with explosive results. His mother returned home from work at the vet’s one Friday to discover black smoke wafting from the blender and putrid blue goo splattered across the cabinets. His efforts to clean up the mess before her return had only made matters worse; it turns out you can stain a stainless-­steel oven. Despite all this, Zenith argued that his extracurricular project displayed initiative and intellectual curiosity, admirable traits that should be encouraged, if not rewarded. Instead, his exasperated parents grounded him for the first two weeks of summer vacation, appointing Apogee as his guardian and minder while they were both away at work.

His confinement was almost over, but if his parents found out that he’d released a nine-­legged monster inside the house? He might be grounded for the rest of the summer.

Apogee spoke again and looked up at him this time. “What sort of trouble are you getting into out there? You’ve got a face with guilt written all over it.” She paused, and her voice softened. “Seriously, do you need my help?”

There was a time when he would’ve told her everything. A time when they would’ve solved this problem together. When they were “thick thieves” as Apogee had awkwardly put it. But then Apogee had turned thirteen, and in the year and a half since, she’d been thwarting his schemes instead of helping come up with them. And when she couldn’t stop him, she would rat on him. Zenith had been hurt and confused. Weren’t you supposed to get more rebellious in your teen years? Not Apogee. In place of his old co-­conspirator, Zenith now had a third parent. The idea that Apogee would actually lend a hand in the midst of this monstrous crisis seemed impossible.

“Help with what?” Zenith responded in as innocent a voice as he could muster.

“With whatever’s making your scar itch.” Apogee looked at the space above his left ear, where Zenith was nervously scratching. He cursed under his breath and stopped fidgeting. He’d hurt his head during the accident on the pond, needing seven stitches to close it back up. It was fully healed, but the scar still itched when he was stressed or feeling guilty, something his sharp-­eyed sister had helpfully pointed out to their parents. Now it had roused Apogee’s suspicion enough to get her off the couch and headed for the hall.

Zenith’s eyes darted down to where he’d hidden the bag. It wasn’t there. He detected movement in his peripheral vision, but he didn’t dare turn his head. Instead, he lifted his eyes and stared straight ahead as his sister approached. He opened his mouth, hoping that his brain would get the hint and come up with something to stop her from entering the hallway and spotting the creature in the bag.

But Apogee let his brain off the hook. Instead of walking out into the hall, she leaned against the archway and launched into a lecture that he’d heard many times over the past couple of weeks. This was the speech where she started by sympathizing with him about being grounded at the start of the summer, and then segued quickly into how he deserved it for being so reckless. Neither of them was really listening. Apogee because she knew this speech by heart, and Zenith because he was panicked.

After scrutinizing his face rather intently for a few moments, Apogee’s eyes were drawn back down to her phone, and Zenith decided to chance a glance down the hallway.

The bag was about halfway down the corridor. As he watched, the thing inside pushed the upside-­down bag up off the ground and propelled it forward for a few feet before it dropped to the hardwood floor. After a short rest, it was up again. It went a little farther and dropped a little harder. As it rose for a third time, Zenith rooted silently for the thing to make it around the corner of the L-­shaped hallway before Apogee realized what was going on. Instead, it smacked against the far wall, then collapsed again, still in full view.

Zenith took two furtive steps to his left. Apogee wrapped up her lecture, looked up from her phone, and turned to face him, away from the thing at the end of the hall.

There was an awkward silence as Apogee waited for a response to the speech they both had ignored. “Look, I’m sorry, okay,” Zenith said, not sounding sorry at all. He cleared his throat and tried to sound more sincere. “I’m sorry if I’m making too much noise. I’ll try to keep it down, I promise.”

Apogee glared at him, eyebrows raised. “Yeah, you’re definitely up to something.” She turned back toward the living room and gestured for him to follow. “Come in here where I can keep an eye over you.” Apogee walked back to the couch, but instead of following, Zenith took another look down the corridor.

“What’s so interesting out there?” asked Apogee. Zenith turned to see his sister standing in front of the couch with her arms crossed; her eyes fixed him with a withering gaze.

“Nothing.” He came into the living room and collapsed onto the couch.

Apogee apparently bought this answer, and why not? It had the advantage of being true. There was nothing in the hallway. The bag and the terrible thing inside it were gone.