Peppermint Twist Read online

  “I can’t. I told you, he’s a gingerbread man!”

  “That is simply preposterous, Lucy. Now stop playing and let me speak to your father.”

  “Where did you buy the game, Grandma?”

  “I beg your pardon?

  “Peppermint Twist! Where did you buy it?”

  “It was on sale at a little place downtown. I forget the name of it.”

  Frustrated, Lucy was at a loss. “Can you please try to remember?”

  “Hmm.”

  As Lucy listened to the silence on the other end of the phone, Don came back into the kitchen, his face drained of all color.

  “No, I’m sorry, dear,” Grandma said. “The name escapes me. Is your father there?”

  “I told you-”

  “Yes, yes. You told me. He’s a gingerbread man. Very well. Do you have a sitter?”

  “Grandma! I’m being serious!”

  “Well, maybe you two should come visit me then. Ride your bikes over perhaps?”

  Lucy sighed.

  “I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Grandma continued. “I don’t get to see my only two grandchildren nearly enough. What time should I expect you?”

  “But what about Dad? We can’t just leave him here.”

  It was grandma’s turn to sigh. “Bring him along then. We can have tea and gingerbread.”

  Horrified, Lucy said, “No! We can’t eat him.”

  Her grandmother laughed again. “Whatever you want, dear. See you soon.”

  She hung up and left Lucy listening to nothing. After a minute, she hung up as well.

  Don stood nearby, his face still bleached. “Dad’s a cookie.”

  Lucy pressed her fingers to her temples. She needed to think.

  “What did Grandma say?” he asked.

  “She wants us to come over.”

  “But what about the game? What did she say about that?”

  She tried to put on a brave face. “She didn’t believe me.”

  Don didn’t look particularly surprised. He swallowed. “What about the bugs?”

  “Huh?”

  “All the bugs in the office with Dad.”

  Needles of dread stabbed Lucy in the belly. Slowly, she asked, “What bugs?”

  12.

  When she pushed open the office door, she saw that colorful creepy crawlies covered every surface.

  Translucent worms of every shade slithered and writhed over and under each other on the floor, twisting themselves into knots and figure-eights and infinity symbols.

  On the walls and furniture, the desk and computer, centipedes scuttled to and fro, moving so quickly that they were almost just flashes of red, orange, green, and yellow.

  Lucy recognized the insects for what they were: gummi candies. But very much alive.

  She stifled a scream, somehow managing to bite it back.

  The candy bugs had to number in the hundreds-maybe the thousands-and so many of them crawled on the shoulders and head of what had just recently been her father.

  Lucy frowned at the big gingerbread man. There was something different about it, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what the difference was. The eyes maybe? Were they slightly wider than they had been previously? And the mouth…it seemed…bigger?

  “We have to get rid of that game,” she told Don, who stood behind her.

  Don had never been fond of bugs, even the most harmless of them. “I feel sick.”

  She could hardly blame him. Despite all the pretty colors, it was a very disturbing sight. “Well, don’t puke here.”

  Don braced himself against the wall outside dad’s office and breathed through his nose.

  Lucy noticed that most of the gummi bugs seemed to be converging in the middle of the floor. Centipedes fell off the ceiling like rainbow kamikazes, landing on the nests of squirming, shiny worms to gather into a swirling mass of bright color.

  And then she saw what was probably most disturbing of all: gummi rats crawling out from under the desk.

  They were small, like newborns, and moved as though they were blind, but even as the twins watched, the creatures grew larger and more aware, moving faster as they left the dark safety of shadows.

  “What are we gonna do?”

  Don’s voice was smaller than she’d ever heard it, and knowing that her brother was so frightened made Lucy that much more frightened herself. She felt cold and so, so young.

  “We have to get help,” she said.

  “From who?” Don squeaked.

  “I don’t know. Someone. Anyone.”

  The gummi rats crept closer, and Lucy backed up a step, bumping into Don.

  “I think I have an idea,” Don said, surprising his sister.

  “You do?”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.”

  “What?”

  “It’s so obvious, now that I think about it.”

  “WHAT?”

  “If the game is doing all this, then all we have to do is beat the game!”

  Lucy’s face fell. “The game is broken, Einstein.”

  Running a hand through his hair, Don said, “I just want to check it anyway.”

  “Lame!” Lucy yelled. “We have to get out of here!”

  “Stay here if you want to.” He ran off and, a moment later, Lucy could hear his feet crunching across the peanut brittle.

  “Splinks and Dodie are stuck!” he yelled from the living room.

  “No duh,” she muttered, turning her attention back to the office. That pile of gummi candy was so disconcerting. Not to mention their dad, sitting there, turned into a baked good and…

  Lucy squinted at the gingerbread man.

  Its eyes were definitely wider now. She had no doubt about it. It almost looked…scared.

  Was her dad still in there, trapped somehow, and just as freaked out about all that was happening as they were?

  “Dad?” she said quietly. “Can you hear me?”

  She listened carefully, hoping to hear…she didn’t know what. Maybe a squeak of some kind? Like the Tin Man in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz movie?

  But that was absurd. Gingerbread men didn’t speak.

  Did they?

  She was still considering this when Don barreled back down the hall, jolting her from her thoughts.

  “Look!” he shouted, waving a booklet.

  “I thought you were gonna beat the game,” she said.

  “It’s broken.”

  “Umm hmm.”

  “But this is the directions and junk! We can use it, I bet.”

  Lucy was skeptical. “Use it for what?”

  “I don’t know. For…tips, I guess.”

  “You want to get tips? I thought you said you could beat any game, any time, and never get a single tip.”

  “That was different, Lucy. That was for regular games.”

  “Okay. Whatever. What does it say?”

  “What?”

  “The book!”

  “Oh.” Don leafed through the pages quickly. “Hmm. Well, it says…” He scowled, then flipped to the booklet’s back cover. “This can’t be right.”

  “What can’t be right?”

  “Right here is says ‘Copy One of One. Prototype.’ I’ve never seen that before. What do you suppose it means?”

  Lucy sank back against the wall. “I’m not sure, but it definitely doesn’t sound good.”

  13.

  But of course she knew what it meant. They both did. It was just too remarkable-too insane-to believe.

  They stared at each other, mouths hanging open.

  “We need to get out of here,” Lucy said.

  “Yeah,” Don agreed. “But where do we go?”

  “Grandma’s, I guess.”

  Their father’s office telephone rang, making them both jump. Neither one made a move to answer it. To do so would mean stepping on the moving gummi candies.

  The phone continued to ring.

  “What if it’s Mom?” Don said.
<
br />   Lucy grimaced. She hadn’t thought of that. “Should we answer it?”

  “You should.”

  “Why me?”

  “You’re older.”

  “By twenty-one minutes!”

  Don gestured at the phone. “Get it.”

  “You get it.”

  “No way!”

  She looked back at the telephone. A red centipede hurried across the receiver before disappearing from sight. Whoever it was on the other end sure was persistent. The phone rang and rang and rang.

  “Dang it!” she shouted, stepping into the room. She moved carefully, shuffling her feet and trying to make a path for herself. She was grateful they had remembered to put their shoes on earlier.

  “Hurry up,” Don urged. “What if they hang up?”

  Lucy ignored him, grimly moving forward, slow step by slow step. The bugs scurried over the tops of her shoes and she gritted her teeth. The last thing she wanted was for any of them to decide to climb up her leg.

  The phone continued to shrill urgently.

  “Hurry!” Don repeated.

  She reached the desk and snatched up the phone, which was luckily free of insects at that moment. “Hello?”

  “Lucy?”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Grandma?”

  “Why are you still at home? I thought you’d be on your way to my house by now.”

  “We…uh…we’re just getting ready to leave.”

  “Wonderful. May I speak to your father?”

  Lucy eyed the huge gingerbread man seated at the desk, mere inches from her now. “No. I told you, Grandma. He’s a-”

  “Yes, I know very well what you told me, young lady.”

  A gummi spider crept across the face of the gingerbread man and Lucy looked away quickly. Her gaze fell onto the desktop computer monitor where Dodie and Splinks were jumping around on the screen.

  Stunned, Lucy let out a squeak and leapt away from the desk, losing her balance and tumbling backwards. She crashed to the floor, landing on her butt among the gummis.

  The instant she felt them swarming over her, Lucy screamed and everything else was forgotten.

  “LUCY!” Don shouted.

  Forgetting his own fear of bugs, he rushed into the room, oblivious of the squishy, sticky things he was crushing beneath his feet. “Lucy!”

  Frantically brushing the insects from her belly and legs, Lucy tried to stand, but slipped and fell back once more. From somewhere in the center of the swelling pile of bugs, she could dimly hear her grandmother calling her name over and over. Amazingly, the woman sounded concerned.

  Don grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. A gummi rat gripped his sneaker with tiny candy claws and he screeched, stomping the thing until it stopped moving.

  But he didn’t stop with just the rat.

  The screech went on and on, and so did the stomping. Don pounded his foot down hard, stomping and stomping, the thick, gooey gummi guts sticking to the bottom of his sneaker.

  Lucy was entranced by the sight, but then remembered what had caused her fall to begin with. She glanced over at the monitor to make sure she hadn’t hallucinated what she’d seen.

  She hadn’t.

  Dodie and Splinks were still there in their little candy universe, doing what at first she thought was some kind of bizarre dance. A hopping dance, like the Native Americans did in that one documentary she saw in school.

  She peered closer at the screen and saw that, in fact, they weren’t dancing after all.

  They were stomping.

  Beside her, Don continued to stomp as well.

  On the screen, things were moving along the ground. Colorful, little scurrying things.

  Bugs?

  Yes, she thought they were bugs.

  As each character stomped another bug, a number in each corner of the screen went up. Dodie stomped, crushing a bug, and her number rose from 22 to 23. Splinks stomped, his number also rose. 10 to 11.

  “Wow,” she whispered.

  But why was the game on her dad’s computer in the first place? She decided not to think about it. At least not right now. After all, it seemed like a minor thing when compared to all the other oddities that had happened to them so far today.

  “Don,” she said, not taking her eyes off the screen. “You have to check this out.”

  “Take that!” Don shouted at the gummi he was killing. “And that! You want some too, you stupid worm? Here! Have a taste of my shoe!”

  On the screen, the pile of bugs surrounding Splinks was growing larger, as if the gummi creatures were growing not only in number but in size as well--like they were growing fatter. The little cartoon character stomped more vigorously, but he was having trouble keeping up with the bugs now. His feet could no longer be seen; the creatures he stood in were ankle high.

  Lucy watched, completely fascinated. She barely even noticed when a green centipede shambled over the screen, blocking Dodie from sight for a moment.

  Don began grunting with the effort of his constant stomping, his breathing grew heavy and fast.

  In the game, Splinks began to leap straight up into the air, but stretchy bug guts attached to his feet pulled him back to the ground like sticky glue.

  “AH!” Don yelled. “Get off me!”

  Turning, Lucy saw that her brother was enduring a similar fate to Splinks, except that he wasn’t jumping.

  Instead, the goo was slowly ascending his right leg, climbing it like a living blobby knee sock, red and green, as he tried to yank himself free.

  “Help,” he cried. “It’s got me!”

  How did this happen, Lucy wondered as she looked around. All the gummi creatures were merging, melting into each other on the floor. She looked down to see her own feet covered in the thick slime.

  On the computer, Dodie became stuck as well and began to yip like a puppy.

  Then instinct kicked in, and Lucy felt herself grow calm as she regarded the scene. She glanced down at the keyboard.

  “I can do this,” she said…and began to type.

  14.

  She tried hitting the up and down arrows, to no avail. Left and right? Also nothing.

  “Lucy!” Don shrieked. “Help!”

  “I’m trying!” Teeth clenched, she punched a few more keys and still nothing worked.

  Then a beacon of hope caught her eye in the upper left of the keyboard, and she punched it hard with the side of her fist.

  ESCAPE.

  The screen went dead and Don flung himself backwards, free of the gummi blob at last.

  “Holy crap!” he said. “What happened?”

  Lucy shook her head as she watched the goop recede under the desk and other furniture, moving much faster than it should have been able to. She breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived, as the computer screen blinked back to life and there were Splinks and Dodie once more, hopping around and stomping bugs.

  “We have to get out of this house now,” she said. “Come on!”

  She ran for the doorway, stopping briefly to snatch up the game instructions off the floor, her feet making squishy sounds in the gummi gunk.

  “Wait!” Don called. “We can’t leave Dad!”

  She turned to protest, but Don was already struggling the huge gingerbread man out of the desk chair, and she realized arguing with him would only waste time. “Hurry up!”

  Somehow Don managed to get the awkward cookie over his back, its bent legs wrapped around his hips. It was a bizarre sight-a boy giving a gingerbread man a piggyback ride-but Lucy dismissed it as just another odd event that didn’t warrant consideration. Not with all the other things going on.

  The gummi goop was doing its best to thwart their escape, but the kids were faster, jumping the colorful, squirmy puddles and making it back to the hallway without getting stuck again.

  Lucy slammed the office door behind them, hoping it would keep the gummi mess inside but not holding out much hope in that regard.

  Not that it mattered at
this point. The twins had no intention of being anywhere nearby when the goop wiggled itself under the door and then did God only knew what.

  Leading the way, Lucy raced through the house, skidding across the wet kitchen floor and almost falling. She remained upright and kept going, heading for the front door and salvation.

  “Root beer!” Don yelled. “The sink is overflowing! Dad is gonna kill us!”

  “Who cares!” She practically ripped the door off its hinges, and then they were outside, breathing in fresh air at last.

  “Wow.” Lucy stopped when she hit the lawn, closing her eyes and doubling over, hands on knees. “That was messed up.”

  “It’s still messed up,” Don said as he stopped beside her.

  “Huh?” She glanced up at him, then straightened, following his gaze with her own.

  The entire neighborhood had changed.

  Up and down the street, everywhere they looked, everything was covered in white.

  “Snow?” Lucy asked, incredulous.

  Don bent down, careful not to drop their gingerbread dad, and traced his finger through the white on the ground. “Not snow,” he said, rubbing the white between his finger and thumb. “Powder.” He put his finger to his tongue. “Powdered sugar, actually.”

  Powdered sugar covered the trees and rooftops, the cars, the sidewalks, the lamp posts. Even the fire hydrant in front of their house had a covering of fine white powder.

  “What happened?” Lucy whispered.

  Don’s answer was matter-of-fact. “Peppermint Twist happened.”

  “Let’s go see if Mr. Tolberg is home.” Mr. Tolberg was the elderly man who lived alone next door, and he was pretty much always home. He had a car, but never drove it anymore, since his son and daughter-in-law insisted his vision was going bad. The twins had known the man for years. “He’ll know what to do,” Lucy added as she began to cross the lawn.

  “How do you know?” Don followed her. “He’s old.”

  “That’s how I know,” Lucy said. “Old people know everything.”

  Don scoffed, but said nothing.

  15.

  A minute later, they were on Mr. Tolberg’s front stoop and Lucy rang the doorbell.

  While they waited, Don pointed to the empty rocker on the porch. “I wonder where Savage is.”