30 - It Came from Beneath the Sink (3 page)

I wouldn’t find out the frightening truth about the sponge creature until the
next day.

When I learned it, I understood why there were so many accidents in our new
house.

And it made me wish that I had never opened that cabinet, never reached under
the sink, and never found the spongy…
thing.

Because now it was too late.

Too late for us all.

“Kat, it’s all set.” Mom grinned at me the next morning when I walked into
the kitchen for breakfast.

“What’s all set?” I asked sleepily.

“Your birthday party tomorrow!” Mom replied, giving me a quick hug. Mom’s
very
big on hugging.

“How could you forget?” she asked in surprise. “We’ve been planning your
birthday for weeks!”

“My party!” I breathed with delight. “Oh, I can’t wait!” I sat down at the
table for cornflakes and orange juice.

Birthday parties are a really big deal around the Merton house. Mom always
orders a big cake. And she makes all the invitations and decorations by hand.

This year, I helped with the invitations. We cut them out of purple
construction paper and used a pink sparkle pen to write the words.

I usually have a theme for my parties. Last year’s theme was “Make your own
pizza.” And it was awesome! My friends talked about it for weeks.

Now that I’m going to be twelve, I decided I’m too old for a theme. So Mom
and Dad are taking me and five of my best friends to WonderPark—for the entire
day.

WonderPark is definitely the coolest. It has two wave pools, a whole bunch of
water slides, and the Monster Masher. That’s the scariest upside-down roller
coaster I’ve ever been on!

Just how cool is it? Well, last summer, Carlo lost his lunch after a ride on
the Masher.

Pretty cool.

“This is going to be my best birthday ever!” I exclaimed, smiling across the
table at Mom. I turned to Daniel. “Sorry, you’re not invited. This is for
twelve-year-olds only.”

“No fair! Why
can’t
I come along?” he complained, banging his spoon
into his cereal and splashing milk all over the table. “I promise I won’t talk
to any of Kat’s friends. Who would
want
to? Please let me come!”

I started to feel sort of bad. I started to change my mind.

And then Daniel totally ruined his chance.

He folded his arms over his chest. “Kat gets everything around here,” he
grumbled. “She won’t even share the sponge with me!”

“That old thing Kat found under the sink?” Mom asked in surprise. “Who’d want
it?”

“Me!” yelled Daniel.

“Well, I found it, so it’s mine. And I’m bringing
my
sponge to school
today,” I informed Daniel.

“Why?” Mom asked.

“I’m going to show it to Mrs. Vanderhoff,” I explained. “Maybe she’ll know
what it is. Now I need to find a carrier for
my
sponge.”

I searched around in the kitchen cabinets. “Perfect!” I proclaimed, holding
up a plastic container labeled Deli. It still smelled faintly of potato salad.

With an old pair of scissors, I punched a few air holes in the top of the
container. Then I ran upstairs to get the sponge.

Back in the kitchen, I set the sealed container on the floor and opened the
refrigerator.

“Mom,” I called, “which lunch bag is mine?”

“The blue one, honey,” she replied.

I grabbed my lunch and shut the refrigerator.

I heard a sniffing sound coming from the kitchen floor. I looked down.

“Killer, what are you doing, boy?” I smiled at the floppy-eared dog.

Snrff. Snrff. Snrff.

He sniffed at the container.

Grrr. Grrr.

He pawed the ground and growled.

Here we go again, I thought.

Killer set his ears back, circling the container suspiciously.

And barked.

And barked. And barked.

“Killer! Get back!” I shouted.

But the dog was way too excited to listen to me.

“Mom, Daniel!” I called. “Help me get Killer away. I think he wants to eat
the sponge for breakfast!”

Mom grabbed Killer by his collar and hauled him, still growling, away from
the container. She pushed the door open and shooed the dog into the backyard.
“Go outside, boy, there you go,” she said gently.

Mom turned to me. “What’s got that dog so upset? He sure is acting strange.
Now get a move on, or you’ll be late for school. And then
I’ll
be
growling and barking!”

Throwing my backpack over my shoulder, I gave Mom a quick kiss good-bye and
followed Daniel out the door.

“Watch this!” he yelled, dashing across the street to the Johnsons’ house and
planting himself underneath their basketball hoop.

Daniel faked a dribble and a pass, and ran madly around in circles. “Bet you
can’t jump this high!” he said, pretending to sink a basket.

“Come on, Daniel,” I replied, walking quickly down the street. “Mrs.
Vanderhoff will keep me after school if I show up late.”

Daniel trotted over to me. Suddenly, his eyes bulged!

“Kat! Look out!” he screamed.

Craaack!

I heard a frightening sound above my head. A loud cracking. As if someone had
cracked about a thousand knuckles at the same time.

I glanced up in time to see a huge dead tree branch hurtling down through the
air.

I froze.

I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t move a muscle.

I was about to be crushed into Kat litter!

“Ohhhhhhh.” A terrified moan escaped my throat.

I felt someone shove me hard from behind.

The force of it sent me flying to the ground.

I lay there in shock and watched the huge tree branch crash down to the
ground, cracking and shattering.

It landed a few feet behind me.

As I struggled to pull myself up, the sponge container rolled out of my hand.
The little creature came spilling out onto the sidewalk.

“Saved your life!” cried Daniel. “Now you owe me big!”

I barely heard him.

The sponge. I could only stare at the sponge.

Whoa-ahhh, whoa-ahhh.

Breathing louder and faster and deeper than I’d ever heard before.

Whoa-ahhh, whoa-ahhh.

Throbbing its little heart out. Practically hopping around on the ground in
excitement.

Ba-boom, ba-boom.

Very weird. I’d almost been killed by the falling branch. And the sponge
seemed really excited. As if it enjoyed my near accident. As if my accident made
it really happy.

“Mrs. Vanderhoff!” I called, rushing into the classroom. “I have to show you
something!”

Mrs. Vanderhoff is a
brain.
She basically knows everything about
everything.

She’s very smart.
And
she takes us on great class trips. At Halloween,
we visited a spooky old theater that’s supposed to be haunted by the ghosts of
dead actors.

But Mrs. Vanderhoff is also really strict. Anyone who goofs off or talks out
of turn stays after school for a week!

One other problem. She has no sense of humor at all. I’ve never even seen her
crack a smile.

“Check this out, Mrs. Vanderhoff,” I blurted out, shoving the sponge under
her nose. “I found it under the kitchen sink of our new house. And when Daniel
went to grab it, he hit his head. And my Dad thought I pushed him, and—and—”

Mrs. Vanderhoff peered at me over her wire-rim glasses. “Kat, sshh,” she
ordered sharply. “Now, start over—slowly and clearly.”

I took a deep breath and began again, starting with moving day and ending
with the falling tree branch.

“And you say it throbs and breathes?” Mrs. Vanderhoff asked, staring hard at
me.

“Yes!” I exclaimed.

“Let me see it,” Mrs. Vanderhoff replied. I handed over the container.

Hesitantly, she stuck her hand in and lifted the sponge out.

“Oh, wow.” I groaned in disappointment. The sponge appeared dry and
shriveled.

It didn’t breathe. It didn’t throb.

Mrs. Vanderhoff glared at me. “Kat, what’s the meaning of this?” she huffed.
“This is an ordinary kitchen sponge.”

She made a face. “A dirty one, I might add.”

“You’re wrong!” I cried shrilly, desperate for her to believe me. “It’s much
more than a sponge. It’s alive. It has eyes—see? You’ve got to see!”

Mrs. Vanderhoff squinted at me, shaking her gray-haired head.

“Oh, all right,” she said with a sigh. She bent her head and examined the
sponge closely. She ran her fingers over its wrinkled surface.

“I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about,” she said angrily,
motioning for me to take my seat. “This thing doesn’t have eyes. And it’s not
alive. It’s a dirty, dried-up old sponge.”

Mrs. Vanderhoff glared at me. “If this is your idea of a joke, Katrina, I
don’t get it. I don’t get it at all.”

“But…” I started.

Mrs. Vanderhoff held up her hand. “Not another word,” she instructed. She
handed the sponge back—dropping it into my hand like a piece of junk.

My stomach churned with disappointment.

Couldn’t I say anything else to convince her?

The sharp rap of a ruler on her desk interrupted my thoughts. “I’m going to
pass back the papers from your math test last week,” Mrs. Vanderhoff announced.

Everyone groaned. The surprise quiz on long division had been a major
disaster for all of us.

“Settle down,” Mrs. Vanderhoff snapped.

She reached into her desk to pull out the test papers, and—
slammed her
fingers in the drawer!

With a howl of pain, she shrieked, “My fingers! Owww—I think I broke my
fingers!”

I was still standing beside her desk. Holding her hand, she turned to me.
“Help me, Katrina. I’ve got to get to the nurse’s office!”

I opened the classroom door for Mrs. Vanderhoff. Then I helped her down the
hall to the infirmary.

“What’s happened?” Mrs. Twitchell, the school nurse, jumped up from her desk
and came running up to us. Her starchy white uniform rustled as she moved. She
sat Mrs. Vanderhoff in a comfortable chair.

“My fingers,” groaned Mrs. Vanderhoff, holding up her red, swollen hand. “I smashed them in the desk drawer!”

“All right,” Mrs. Twitchell said soothingly. “We’ll put some ice on that
hand. And I’ll make sure the principal sends somebody to watch your class.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Vanderhoff moaned. “Katrina, you can go on back to class
now. You’ve been very helpful.”

Helpful?

Everywhere I went these days, I told myself, somebody seemed to get badly
hurt!

Unhappily, I shuffled my way back toward classroom 6B.

“Kat! Kat!” I heard someone shouting my name.

Daniel raced out of the library, nearly tripping over his untied shoelaces.
He crashed right into me.

“I found it!” he cried breathlessly. “I found the sponge creature! In a book!
I know what it is!”

I grabbed Daniel by the front of his shirt. “What is it? What?” I demanded.
“I have to know!”

“Whoa. Take it easy. Cool your jets.” Daniel pushed my hands off his shirt.
“I’ll
show
you,” he promised. “I have a picture in here.”

“In where?” I asked.

Daniel gazed around the hall. No one in sight.

He pulled a book out from under his shirt and handed it to me. A big black
volume.

I glanced quickly at the title:
Encyclopedia of the Weird.

“Is your picture in there?” I teased.

“Ha-ha. Very funny,” he replied. He grabbed the book away from me. “Do you
want to see your sponge?”

“Definitely!”

Daniel flipped the pages quickly, muttering to himself, “Grebles, Griffins,
Grocks. Here it is!”

He shoved the book under my nose. It smelled funny—sort of musty. I guessed it had been sitting on the library shelf a
long, long time.

Daniel pointed to a drawing on page 89. I lowered my eyes to the page.

Wrinkly skin. Tiny black eyes. “It
does
look like the sponge,” I
gasped.

I began reading the story underneath the drawing.

“This is a Grool.”

A Grool? I thought. What in the world is that? I returned to the book:

“The Grool is an ancient and mythical creature.”

“Mythical?” I cried. “That means it’s not real—that it’s made up! But it
is
real!”

“Keep reading,” Daniel urged.

“The Grool does not eat food or drink water. Instead, it gets its strength
from luck. Bad luck.”

“Daniel,” I stammered. “This is weird. Really weird.” He nodded, his eyes
wide.

“The Grool has always been known as a bad-luck charm. It feeds on the bad
luck of other people. The Grool becomes stronger each time something bad happens
around it.”

“This book is crazy,” I muttered. I eagerly read some more:

“Bad luck for
the Grool owner never ends. The Grool cannot be killed—by force or by
any violent means. And it cannot—ever—be given away or tossed
aside.”

Why not? I wondered.

The next lines gave me the answer:

“A Grool is only passed on to a new owner when an owner dies. Anyone who
gives the Grool away will DIE within one day.”

“That is so stupid!” I exclaimed. “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”

Turning to Daniel, I said in a low voice, “There is no such thing as a
creature that lives on bad luck.”

“How do
you
know, genius?” Daniel demanded.

“Everything needs food and water,” I replied. “Everything that’s alive,
anyway.”

“I don’t know,” Daniel said. “I think the book could be right.”

The drawing of a creature on another page caught my eye. “Hey, what’s this?”
I asked.

It looked like a potato—oval and brown. But it had a mouth full of sharp,
pointy teeth.