Case File 13 #3 (2 page)

“Here's the thing I don't get,” Nick said as his dad steered up the winding Highway 17 through the Santa Cruz Mountains. They'd been driving for just over an hour and were less than thirty minutes from the beach. “If a vampire bit a mummy, would the mummy turn into a vampire, stay a mummy, or form some weird combination?”

“Definitely stay a mummy,” Angelo answered without even stopping to think about it. “Mummies don't have any blood for the vampire to infect.”

“Sure. I get that. But does it have to infect the blood? I mean, couldn't the vampire just inject his venom into the mummy's flesh and turn its mummy cells into vampire cells?”

Angelo shook his head. “Assuming we're talking about a sanguivore—the kind of vampire that feeds off blood, not energy—vampires suck in blood from the victim, mix it with their venom, and kind of spit it back out. The blood is how the venom mixes into the rest of the victim's body. Sort of like what Carter does with food. Except he never spits out anything he eats.”

Carter gave him a dirty look. “I'm right here, you know.”

Nick considered Angelo's words for a minute, staring out the window at the dense forest passing by outside. “Then if a mummy and a vampire got into a fight, I would totally bet on the mummy. They have supernatural strength and excellent endurance. Plus, they are immune to pain and have all kinds of cool curses.”

“Not all mummies have curses,” Angelo said, flipping through his monster notebook. “And even if they do, the curses might not work on vampires. More importantly, vampires can fly, and they are much smarter than mummies.”

Nick smirked. “How can you possibly know that?”

“Simple.” Angelo pointed to a picture of a long hook in his notebook. “Mummies don't have any brains. When the embalmers prepare the body, they shove this through his nose and—”

“That's disgusting,” Mom said, spinning around to glare at the boys from the front seat of the car. “Can't you think of something fun to do until we get to the campsite? When I was a girl we used to sing songs while we drove.”

Dad grinned back at them in the rearview mirror. “‘Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall' was one of my favorites.”

Nick wrinkled his nose. “So you'd rather have us sing a repetitive verse about an alcoholic beverage we won't even be able to legally drink for ten more years ninety-nine times?”

“No!” Mom exploded, giving Dad the evil eye. “Why don't you play a game? You can look for the letters of the alphabet on license plates.”

“No offense,” Nick said, “but I think I'd rather watch my fingernails grow.”

Mom frowned. “All right. How about I Spy?”

“That could be fun,” Angelo said. He looked out the window for a minute. “I spy something with sharp fangs and snakes for hair.”

“A gorgon,” Nick said. “That was easy.” He looked out his window. “I spy something with four legs and the head and wings of an eagle.”

“Trick question. If all four legs are lion legs, it's an opinicus. But if the front legs are aquiline, like an eagle's, it's a griffin. Of course if the back legs are . . .”

Mom turned away with a sigh, muttering something that sounded like “Why couldn't I have given birth to a girl?”

Carter, who had been going through snacks as if he hadn't eaten in a week, looked up from the mermaid book he'd been reading and wiped his forehead. “Are we going to be on this curvy road for long?”

“Do you feel sick?” Mom asked.

“A little,” Carter said. His stomach gurgled so loudly it sounded like a milk shake in a blender.

Nick studied his friend's face. “You do look sort of pale.”

“Look straight ahead,” Dad said. “You don't want to throw up. Once, when I was a kid, my dad drove us up this majorly curvy road. That made my stomach feel sort of queasy. But then he fed us these smelly meat chunks that turned out to be eel jerky, and—”

Carter's face turned from white to green. “Pull over,” he said, clutching his hands to his mouth.

Nick's father pulled the car off the highway, and before Nick could even get his seat belt off, Carter was scrambling over him and clawing for the door handle.

“Eel jerky?
Really
?” Mom groaned, shaking her head. “You tell a sick boy about the time your sadistic father fed you
eel jerky
?”

Dad held out his hands. “He didn't let me get to the end of my story. It turned out that even though the eel jerky smelled terrible it made my stomach feel much better. Or was that the Pepto-Bismol my mom gave me? Come to think of it, the eel might have . . .” He glanced out the window to where Carter was gagging on the side of the road. “Maybe you better go help Carter. I think he just threw up an armchair.”

“You. Are. Impossible,” Mom said before getting out of the car.

Dad looked back at Nick and Angelo. “There was another song we used to sing about a kid who eats a bad peanut and dies. But that might not be the best song either.”

A few minutes later, Carter climbed into his seat, sipping from a bottle of water Nick's mom had given him.

Mom got back into the car, slamming her door so hard it rattled the drink in her cup holder. She looked at the boys. “Until we get to the campground, no food, no reading, and no disgusting stories. Clear?”

“Yes,” the boys answered together.

“Roll down both of your windows a little so Carter can get some fresh air. And you,” she said, looking at Dad. “Drive slower, stop suggesting inappropriate songs, and no more stories of any kind.”

Dad opened his mouth as if he was going to argue, but then he thought better of it and restarted the car.

“Feeling better?” Nick asked as they pulled onto the freeway.

“I guess,” Carter said. “Man, it felt like my gut was trying to turn inside out.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Actually I feel pretty good now.”

“Not surprising.” Angelo glanced up at Nick's mom before whispering, “Getting sick to your stomach feels gross because your body is telling you not to do whatever made you sick in the first place. Throwing up releases endorphins that make you feel better so the vomiting doesn't seem as bad.”

Nick groaned. “Who knows stuff like that? What do you do, study books about puking?”

“I study books about everything,” Angelo said in a tone of voice that made it clear he
couldn't understand why everyone didn't do the same. “You never know when something will come in handy. Say an alien abducts you and makes you eat poison. Knowing when to puke and when not to could make all the difference.”

Mom started to turn around and the boys quieted down.

“Speaking of aliens,” Carter whispered. “When I was, you know, yakking, something weird happened.”

“Please don't tell me your puke formed the shape of a flying saucer,” Nick said. A couple of years before, Carter had gotten on a kick where everything formed some kind of symbol. Clouds looked like werewolves, trees looked like dragons. Nick and Angelo finally put a stop to it when he wanted to describe the shapes of things that really shouldn't be discussed.

“No,” Carter said. “Although now that you mention it . . .”

Angelo held up a finger. “Don't go there.”

“Fine,” Carter said. “Besides, that's not what I wanted to tell you.”

“What
did
you want to tell us?” Angelo asked, twirling one hand impatiently.

Carter waved Nick and Angelo closer. “Okay. When I was throwing up—which actually looked more like a pepperoni pizza than a flying saucer—I think something was watching me from just inside the woods.”

“An animal?” Nick asked, hoping it was a raccoon and not a bear. True, they were going to be camping near the beach. But if there were bears in the woods, and they smelled something tasty like beef stew—or a kid—they might come exploring.

“I don't think so. I heard a branch crack when I first got out of the car. But I wasn't paying much attention because I was . . .”

“We know what you were doing,” Angelo said. “Get on with the story.”

Carter started to take a bag of M&M's out of his pocket, but Nick put a hand over the bag. “Better not.”

“Yeah.” Carter reluctantly put the bag back. “Anyway, I heard this branch crack and I thought I saw something in the shadows. When I looked in its direction, it disappeared into the trees.”

“It probably
was
an animal,” Angelo said. “When Nick's dad pulled the car over, it came to see what was going on. Then, when you got out, you scared it. There are lots of animals in these woods. Squirrels, raccoons, deer, mountain lions. Even bears.”

Nick bit the inside of his cheek.
So there
are
bears. Great.

“It wasn't an animal,” Carter said, his eyes wide.

“How could you tell?” Nick asked. “Did you see it?”

Carter shook his head. “I didn't see it. I
heard
it.”

Angelo ran his fingers across the pages of his notebook, his eyes intense. “What did you hear?”

“I heard it . . .” Carter swallowed and his hand went to the bag of candy in his pocket. “I heard it say something.”

Nick felt the back of his neck grow cold. “You mean like words?”

“Uh-huh. I heard it say . . .” Carter lowered his voice so that Nick and Angelo had to lean close to make out what he whispered. “I heard it say my name.”

Nick couldn't help snickering a little. “A bear called your name?”

Carter glowered. “I didn't say it was a bear.”

“Did it say Scooby-Dooby-Doo?”

“Actually Scooby-Doo was a dog,” Angelo said. “Yogi was a bear. He did talk, but he said things like ‘Is that a picnic basket?' and ‘I'm smarter than the average bear.'”

Carter ground his teeth together. “It wasn't a bear or a dog. And it didn't say anything except my name.”

Realizing Carter was upset, Nick tried to stop smiling, but it wasn't easy. “Maybe it was some kind of sugar rush.”

“You guys make all the food jokes you want. But I'm telling you, someone—in the woods—said my name. I heard it as clearly as I'm hearing you now. It sounded kind of like a kid.”

Angelo pulled a ballpoint pen from his notebook and chewed on the end. “Technically, it's possible there could have been someone hiding in the woods. And they could have overheard one of us say your name. But why would they repeat it?
Especially if they were hiding?”

If Carter had an answer, they didn't get to hear it, because at that moment Dad called out, “Here we are!”

Nick looked out the window at a big wooden sign with the words S
ANTA
C
RUZ
B
EACH
S
TATE
C
AMPGROUND
stenciled on the front. A bulletin board below the sign was covered in papers that read things like “Don't feed the animals,” “No open campfires,” and “No loud music after 11:00 p.m.”

“Look,” Mom said, pointing to a grove of eucalyptus trees. Thousands of monarch butterflies fluttered about, filling the air with clouds of black and orange. Even Nick, who didn't care much about insects of any kind, was impressed.

“Sure are a lot of old people,” Carter said, craning his neck to look out the window.

Nick's gaze shifted from the butterflies to the nearest campsites as his father pulled the car behind a long line of motor homes making their way to the entrance. Carter was right. There were nearly as many old folks as there were butterflies. Old men in baseball caps and flip-flops. Old women in bathing suits and wraparound skirts. Nick couldn't see anyone who looked younger than seventy.

“The last time I saw this much white hair was at a polar bear convention,” Nick's dad said with a chuckle.

Mom looked worried. “Maybe it's some kind of event.” She turned to Dad. “You
did
make a reservation, didn't you?”

Dad acted offended. “Of course I did.” He pulled a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. “Got it right here.”

As the line of motor homes crept slowly toward a small booth where a man in a ranger's hat was checking papers and giving directions, Carter whispered, “I bet the local grocery store is completely sold out of prune juice and denture cream.”

“That's a total stereotype,” Angelo said. “Some of those guys look pretty tough. I'll bet at least half of those men could beat you in arm wrestling.”

“And at least that many of the women,” Nick added.

“Who said anything about arm wrestling?” Carter asked. “I'm just hoping they all go inside their motor homes at seven thirty and sleep so we can go mermaid hunting. My book says the best time to catch them is just after sunset.”

As the vehicle in front of them pulled through the entrance, Nick's father drove up to the ranger's booth. “Name?” asked a tired-looking man holding a clipboard.