Peppermint Twist Read online

“We need to pay more attention to stuff,” Lucy said when she was able. “It’s just like a regular game. Try to notice everything.”

  Don considered this for a while. “We’ve never met a game we couldn’t beat.”

  “Yeah, but we’ve never died so much trying either. According to the manual, we get three new lives on every level, but we have to be careful.”

  Scoffing, Don said, “That’s plenty. We never need more than that.”

  “Yeah, but Peppermint Twist is for real. I mean, what happens when we lose all three lives?”

  He raised an eyebrow and guessed. “Game over?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That might be a good thing. Maybe it means we can go back to our real lives and forget this ever happened.”

  “Maybe. But I have a feeling it means we die. Like, for real.”

  “No way!” He shook his head. “That’s nuts.”

  She looked away. Savage had come out of hiding to join them again, and though she wanted to pet the cat, the fact that he had no fur dissuaded her.

  To change the subject, she said, “Man, we stink. I’m taking a shower the second we get to Grandma’s.”

  “Yeah. I feel funky.”

  Savage meowed, either agreeing with them or telling them it was time to move on. Probably both.

  19.

  Following Savage out of the junk yard was surprisingly easy once they’d defeated the volcano, but where they came out was not where they’d expected to be.

  “Isn’t this Mom’s gym?” Lucy asked incredulously.

  They stood before a long, squat building with many windows and a huge sign above the door reading 24/7 FITNESS.

  Don sighed loudly. “Man, this is gonna suck.”

  “Yep,” Lucy agreed. “Big time. But we don’t have a choice. Come on.”

  She opened the door, and the three of them found themselves inside a pool room with another door on the far side. Various pieces of sports equipment were scattered around the floor: a baseball bat, a hockey stick, two tennis rackets, and various kinds of balls.

  Even odder was the fact that the pool was not empty.

  It appeared to be full of molasses, and little blob-shaped creatures swam about making happy chirping sounds as they splashed and played. Roughly the size of footballs, some of them were a bright sunny yellow, while others were cherry-red. The things had huge bulging white eyes and bulbous noses. One was paddling around the pool on a mini surf board, while another sat inside a toy sail boat, just floating wherever the current took it.

  One of the red ones stood by the side of the pool, wearing pink and orange swimming trunks, and it appeared to be about to dive in. Next to it, a red one sprawled on a beach towel. It wore black sunglasses and a baseball cap turned around backwards.

  “Nerds,” Don said.

  Lucy slapped his arm. “Shh!”

  “No, that’s what they are. Nerds. You know those candies that come in a box?”

  At the sound of their voices, all the Nerds turned to look at them. Their playful demeanor instantly evaporated as they bared vicious-looking needle teeth and hissed like angry wasps.

  “Uh oh,” Don said. “Did we just screw up?”

  “Yeah. I think so,” Lucy said slowly. She turned back to the door through which they’d entered and yanked on it, but of course it was locked now. When she faced front again, she was dismayed to see the Nerds bouncing out of the pool and bouncing towards them with big, floppy feet. Bouncing was apparently all they could do, as they had no arms that she could see. “I’m getting really sick of this game.”

  “You and me both,” Don said. “What are we gonna do?”

  “Remember that it is a game. That makes us Splinks and Dodie. What would they do?”

  “Umm…” Don tried to think, but the creatures jumping at them were too distracting. “Run?”

  “Where?”

  “Through that door on the other side of the pool!”

  “But the Nerds are blocking the way!”

  “You got a better idea?”

  She shook her head, her focus never leaving the little monsters hop, hop, hopping around.

  “Go!” Don ordered.

  They started to run, but had to stop almost immediately. The Nerds presented an outstanding defense, and were clearly not about to let them go by without a fight.

  Due to their lack of arms, the Nerds weren’t as dangerous as they might have been, but they moved fast, and their teeth made horrible gnashing sounds as they snapped at the children.

  Several times, the twins had to pause, fake going one way and then dart the other, but there was always another Nerd there to thwart them from getting by.

  Don snatched up a baseball bat and prepared to knock the nearest Nerd into the pool, swinging it like a golf club. The yellow Nerd leapt away and the boy slipped in a puddle of molasses and went headfirst into the pool.

  “No!” Lucy shouted. Her brother couldn’t swim and would surely drown in there, but she couldn’t swim either, so diving in to save him would only kill them both.

  That’s when she remembered they were in the game and relaxed a bit. She backed away from the Nerds, which seemed to calm them down somewhat. They stood by the pool, hopping from foot to foot, but not advancing on her.

  Grabbing the nearest hockey stick, Lucy watched the creatures with trepidation and waited for her brother to return, minus one life for this level.

  She smacked a red Nerd when it came too close; it hopped backwards with an enraged hiss.

  Holding the Nerds at bay, Lucy began to worry that Don had drowned for real. Was that even possible? Was there something about this level that they didn’t know? Did they only get one life?

  She glanced around quickly, not wanting to take her attention off the Nerds, but hoping to catch a glimpse of Savage. The cat was nowhere to be seen.

  Maybe Don had popped back up in the room at the far side of the pool? But if that were true, wouldn’t he have called to her or something?

  Stomach now roiling with nervousness, Lucy shouted her brother’s name.

  The Nerds chattered loudly, perturbed by the volume of her voice, but that didn’t stop her from yelling again. And again.

  No response.

  “This is bull,” she murmured and charged forward like a professional hockey player, swinging the stick back and forth in an attempt to clear a path to the other side of the pool.

  Unfortunately, the same fate that befell her brother was her fate as well, but instead of slipping in a puddle of molasses, she tripped over one of the Nerds.

  She dropped the hockey stick, arms pinwheeling madly as she teetered on the edge of the pool.

  The chance of her recovering and regaining her balance was quite good, until a yellow Nerd lunged forward and bit down hard into her calf muscle.

  Lucy howled in pain and toppled sideways, landing in the pool with a muted splash.

  The last thing she saw was those weird creatures with their huge bulging eyes gaping at her, and then her vision filled up with brown, sticky goop as she sank like a stone.

  20.

  Lucy landed on her butt on a soft, spongy surface and heard her brother shouting her name.

  She coughed and sputtered molasses out of her lungs and wiped it from her face, flicking it off her hands, thoroughly disgusted.

  “Don? Where are we? What happened?”

  “I don’t know.” He helped her to her feet, his hair matted to his scalp with the congealing molasses. “Some kind of cave. But Lucy-I dropped Dad up there by the pool. We have to go back.”

  Lucy nodded, looking around. She didn’t like the looks of this place at all. Though it was dim, she could see that they were inside a cave or some kind of tunnel; the walls and ceiling were a dark red and glistening wetly. Behind them, yellow-white boulders blocked the way, while ahead of them lay nothing but blackness. Boulders also sat against the walls on either side, lined up in a more or less straight line. More still appeared to be stuck to the ceilin
g somehow, defying gravity in two separate rows.

  The ground was also wet, pinkish-white and yielding, as if they were standing on a big pillow.

  Grunting, Lucy pinched her nose closed. “What’s that awful smell?”

  “I don’t know. I was too scared to check out what’s down there.” He gestured towards the darker end of the tunnel.

  “Man, I hope that’s not where we’re supposed to go.”

  “Of course it is,” he said. “Where else? We fell through that pool and look-there’s no hole in the ceiling or anything.”

  Lucy looked up and saw that he was right. “So, we can’t get back up there?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then why did the pool room have that other door on the side? Why were the Nerds guarding it?”

  “Maybe they weren’t. Maybe they were guarding the pool.”

  “But why?”

  “I think it was kind of like an Easter Egg. A way to skip that level and come to this one instead.”

  Still holding her nose, she replied, “I think I liked the one with the Nerds better.”

  Don shrugged. “We probably would have ended up here anyway.”

  “But what if we weren’t supposed to be here? What if this is some kind of…I don’t know…dungeon or trap or something?”

  “We probably would have lost a life if it was. Besides, games never put you in a place you can’t get out of.”

  Lucy had to admit that what Don was saying made sense, but it sure didn’t mean she had to like it.

  She liked it even less when they heard a low rumbling rolling towards them from the dark end of the cave. They exchanged a glance, and were hit by a cloud of noxious, rancid gas that left them both gagging for several seconds after.

  Pulling the collar of his T-shirt up so that it covered his mouth and nose, Don said, “That’s the second time that’s happened.”

  “What is it?” Lucy said through the hands cupping the lower half of her face. “Man, that’s rank.”

  “Sounded like a…burp.”

  She nodded. “There has to be another way out of here.”

  “Nope.” Don pointed into the darkness. “That’s it.”

  They both hesitated, waiting for the foul stench to subside a bit before cautiously moving forward. They’d only gone a few steps when Don said, “I wish we had a flashlight or a torch. Even a match would work.”

  “It’s like we’ve been swallowed by a whale,” Lucy said.

  Don froze mid-step, eyes going wide. He poked one finger into the soft, wet wall and made a disgusted face. “Maybe we were.” He pointed to the whitish rocks on the ceiling. “Do those look like regular stalactites to you?”

  After studying the boulders, Lucy said, “Not as pointy as they look in books and stuff, but who cares? It’s just a game.”

  “I don’t know,” Don replied. “Something is weird.”

  “Everything is weird. Come on. We need to find a way out of here before the stink kills us.”

  “And why is this one black? And that one too?”

  Now that he mentioned it, there were a few black ones here and there, but Lucy had no patience for sightseeing right now. She grabbed Don by the wrist and tugged him forward. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go before I puke.”

  He pulled free and crouched by the black boulder, peering at it closely. “There’s…things on it.”

  “Things?”

  “Bugs.”

  Lucy took a step closer to the rock and saw strange little insects crawling all over it, black themselves, and, therefore, hard to see.

  The bugs looked familiar for some reason, and it didn’t take her long to figure out why.

  “Sugar bugs,” she said.

  Don looked up. “Huh?”

  “Those are sugar bugs. Remember that picture book Mom read to us when we were little? It was called The Sugar Bugs and it was all about brushing your tee-”

  “YAY AY AY!”

  21.

  The singing/shouting voice came from the dark end of the tunnel, and the kids squinted in that direction, waiting to see what sort of monster was going to come lurching out at them.

  A minute passed. Then another.

  Lucy turned back to her brother. “Anyway, the book was pretty scary. I remember you almost cried the first time she read it.”

  “That’s bull!” Don protested.

  “Nope. You were paranoid you had bugs all over your tee-”

  “ROUND AND ROUND AND UP AND DOWN!”

  Frowning, Lucy said, “Teeth!”

  “ONE! TWO! THREE! PULL!”

  Angry, Don stood up and yelled, “Well, come on, if you’re gonna come!”

  “DO THE PEPPERMINT TWIST!” the voice replied.

  The twins braced themselves, but still nothing came.

  Don said, “I just had a thought.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe this level has a bug in it.”

  “Ha. Cute, Don.”

  “No, you know, a game bug. Where you have to go online and download a patch.”

  Behind Don, Lucy saw the sugar bugs crawling off the black tooth-yes, it was definitely a cartoonish tooth-and onto its neighboring white one on the left.

  Against the white, they were much more visible, their details easier to make out, and Lucy shivered. “Gross. They’re like a cross between spiders and cockroaches.”

  They watched as more bugs abandoned the black tooth for the white one on the right, and soon it became apparent that they weren’t just crawling around. They were boring into the healthy teeth, creating tiny holes which turned as black as the bad teeth were.

  And even worse-the blackness spread quickly to places where no bugs had reached yet.

  “Those things are creepy,” Don said.

  Lucy felt nauseous, watching the cavities spread like a virus. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  “To where? Where the voice is coming from?”

  “It can’t be much worse than this.”

  Don clearly didn’t agree with that statement, but started walking just the same. “We’re in a mouth,” he said. “A big mouth.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So gross.”

  “Yeah.”

  “No wonder it smells so bad.”

  Another rumble came from up ahead, and the ground-the tongue-rolled. Both kids lost their balance but remained upright.

  “We need to hurry,” Lucy said when the roll had ended.

  “Check the manual,” Don said.

  Lucy nodded and pulled it out of her back pocket, struggling to read in the dim light. After a moment, she read aloud, “Beware of the acid pit.”

  “ONE! TWO! THREE! PULL!”

  22.

  They moved carefully around a pit in the center of the cave. There was barely enough room to walk, and they each had to hug the outer walls to make it safely around it.

  Deep in the pit, white acid bubbled and churned.

  Lucy didn’t want to think about what that acid actually was or what would happen to them if they missed their footing and fell in. Game or not, that was one thing she wasn’t about to experience if she could help it.

  Once they were clear of the pit, they found themselves in a space exactly like the one they’d just left—a row of teeth on either side and a barrier of teeth blocking the exit.

  Worse still, the sugar bugs were busily rotting away the teeth on this side as well.

  A tooth turned black as they watched, and Lucy wondered aloud, “What happens when they all turn black?”

  “DO THE PEPPERMINT TWIST!”

  The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, but it was clear that, on this level, there was no monster to attack them. They’d been from one end of the cave mouth to the other and only the sugar bugs were in here with them.

  “Oh, crap,” Don said.

  Lucy looked at him. “What?”

  “Those bugs are giving the teeth cavities.”

  “Yeah? So?”r />
  “So, remember when I had that really bad cavity last year?”

  “You got a filling?”

  “I got five fillings, but that wasn’t the really bad one in the back. That one had to be pulled.”

  Thoughtfully, she whispered, “One, two, three, pull.”

  Don nodded solemnly.

  “Oh, this is gonna be nasty! We don’t have any…tools.”

  Going over to the nearest black tooth, Don gave it a kick with his sneaker. Loose, the tooth rocked in its gum, and a stinky yellow liquid oozed out from under its base.

  Lucy gagged. “Is that…pus?”

  “I hate this game,” Don said for about the hundredth time.

  “YAY AY AY!” the voice replied maniacally.

  “I hate it more,” Lucy said.

  Studying the teeth, Don said, “We have to hurry. I don’t know what will happen if all the teeth turn black, but it probably won’t be good. At the very least, we’ll probably have to start all over again.”

  Another belch rumbled up from the acid pit, filling the mouth cave with the most repulsive odor they’d ever experienced.

  When he released the breath he’d been holding, Don said, “We each have to take a side. You want this one or the other one?”

  Lucy shook her head, unable to respond.

  “You stay here then.” He started back to the other side of the mouth. “Just don’t think about it and hold your breath as much as possible.”

  A moment later he was gone, and Lucy was in her side alone. The sugar bugs burrowed into the white teeth all around her and she wanted to cry.

  Slowly, she went to a black tooth and gave it a careful shake. It was very loose, and would pop right out of the gum with little effort. She tried to ignore the pus pooling at her feet as she bent over and wrapped her arms around the tooth as best she could and pulled.

  It came out with a wet, sloppy sound, the roots dripping with blood and pus. A black socket remained where the tooth had been.

  There was a loud splash behind her and Lucy yelped, whirling around. “Don?”

  “Throw them in the pit,” he yelled from the dark. “Hurry!”

  Lucy did as she was told.

  There were a few times when she had to pause, fighting not to throw up, but she did as her brother said, and each tooth she yanked out was a little easier to take than the last.