Nicholas V. Landrew lived in Yelm, Washington with his family. Though, at the moment, he was home alone. Nicholas’s father, who bore a strong resemblance to a bearded John Lennon, and his mother, who bore a startling resemblance to a young and beardless Paul McCartney, formed two fourths of a Beatles Tribute/Parody group called The Beegles. They wore beagle masks and sang songs with titles like “I Wanna Shake Your Paw,” “While My Guitar Gently Barks,” and “Yellow Snow Submarine.” (If you find yourself wondering why look-alikes would wear masks, you are not alone. Mr. and Mrs. Landrew, while highly creative, fun loving, and musically talented, were not deep thinkers. They could have used a good manager.) Despite their hopes of capturing the lucrative teen market, their core base of fans were mostly not even pre-teens but pre-pre-teens in the four-to-six age range. The Beegles were currently on tour in Australia, but kept in touch with Nicholas through lengthy voicemails, to which he responded with brief texts. They rarely communicated directly, unless they were in the same room. And not always, even then. Mr. and Mrs. Landrew do not play a major role in what is to come. Beagle faces, on the other hand, do. As do managers. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
As for Nicholas’s face, he shared his parents’ dark hair, which he liked to keep cut fairly short. He had his father’s narrow nose and his mother’s soulful eyes, making him more attractive than he realized. He was one minor growth spurt away from his adult height, which would put him slightly above average. He weighed no more than ten pounds above average weight for his age, according to the height-weight chart in his doctor’s office, which seemed to be designed for assessing the health of skeletons and scarecrows.
It is just as well the elder Landrews were absent. Nicholas had been slapped with a two-week suspension for bringing a light saber to school. It wasn’t a real weapon. It was made of the sort of soft plastic that could do about as much harm to a living creature as a Whiffle bat. He’d only brought it because he thought the battery-operated whoosh it made would sound awesome in the empty gym. But the rules against bringing weapons to school were rigid. Given that the suspension ended the day before the start of spring break, Nicholas was basically facing three weeks free of the classroom. That was fine with him. He was a bit of a loner. And he was struggling a little with algebra, despite it being his favorite class of all time. Worst of all, he was flunking French, which was definitely his least favorite class of all time, past, present, and probably future. (The past, present, and future of French verbs being a huge part of his problem with that language.) While we have little interest in Nicholas’s family, or his education, Nicholas’s gerbil was another matter. Nicholas loved Henrietta. He could talk to her without being judged, and look her in the eye without feeling uncomfortable or awkward. This made her unique among his acquaintances.
Then, Henrietta vanished.
Poof! (A sound that never, in the entire history of vanishings, has ever actually been made. An authentic vanishing sound, created as air rushed in to fill the void, would be more along the lines of schwupf or fwomph.)
Had Nicholas not been there to see the laser-bright flash of purple light that accompanied Henrietta’s disappearance, he naturally would have assumed she’d flattened her body enough to escape beneath the door of her cage and then scrambled off in search of greener pastures. Or, at least, greener nuggets of gerbil chow. Nicholas might have searched and mourned. He might even have created a “lost gerbil” poster and papered the neighborhood with copies, enhancing the local suspicion among some of the more elderly residents that there was something just a little bit odd about that Landrew boy. But he never would have known Henrietta had been abducted by alien scientists.
After staring at the empty cage for a period, as if an unexplained disappearance might magically become balanced by an unexplained appearance (along with a resounding foop), Nicholas slid the door of the cage up, reached through the opening, and explored the bedding. He noticed a warmth to the cedar shavings right at the spot where he’d last seen Henrietta. Fortunately, it was a dry warmth. Though far from omniscient, Nicholas was highly intuitive. On a hunch, he went to his kitchen, extracted a four-pound family-size package of vacuum-sealed fresh-ground hamburger meat from the refrigerator, and placed it in the cage, directly on top of the warm spot.
Nicholas waited. He didn’t have to wait long. That’s fortunate, given Nicholas’s short-to-moderate-length attention span. In another moment or two, had nothing happened, he would have begun to question his intuition, and returned the meat to the refrigerator. But before doubt could lead to action, the meat disappeared in an identical laser-bright flash of purple light.
“Roach brains!” Nicholas exclaimed, blinking against the yellow after-image that had painted his field of view. The origin of this phrase as his favorite expression of surprise and/or dismay is tied to a catastrophically disastrous science-fair project he attempted in 5th grade, and is best left undescribed beyond that, for now.
“I’m coming, Henrietta,” Nicholas said. He pictured himself bravely leaping into a raging river to rescue his gerbil, or commandeering a passing motorcycle to give chase to the unmarked white van that had abducted her. (Abduction vans in Nicholas’s heroic rescue fantasies were virtually always white, and passing motorcyclists were inevitably generous about allowing unlicensed youths to borrow their wheels for reckless ventures.) Having no such river from which to pluck Henrietta, or van to pursue, Nicholas contemplated placing his hand where the gerbil and the hamburger meat had been. But the image of his hand disappearing in a flash of laser-bright purple light while the rest of him remained in his room sickened him as much as his 5th grade science-fair project had sickened numerous classmates, three teachers, two administrators, and one custodian who was definitely working in the wrong field.
Nicholas unlatched the top of the cage, lifted it up on its hinges, and stepped inside. His feet barely fit. Maybe this is a bad idea, he thought, as the handless image was replaced with a footless one. He stared down at his shoes just in time to catch the laser-bright purple flash of light enveloping his body.
STARSCAPE BOOKS BY DAVID LUBAR
Novels
Flip
Hidden Talents
True Talents
Monsterrific Tales
Hyde and Shriek
The Vanishing Vampire
The Unwilling Witch
The Wavering Werewolf
The Gloomy Ghost
The Bully Bug
Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie Series
My Rotten Life
Dead Guy Spy
Goop Soup
The Big Stink
Enter the Zombie
Story Collections
Attack of the Vampire Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
Beware the Ninja Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
Check Out the Library Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
The Curse of the Campfire Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
In the Land of the Lawn Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
Invasion of the Road Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
Strikeout of the Bleacher Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
Wipeout of the Wireless Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Lubar grew up in Morristown, New Jersey. His books include the acclaimed novels Hidden Talents, True Talents, and Flip; the popular Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie series; and the bestselling Weenies short-story collections. He lives in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. You can visit him on the web at www.davidlubar.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
How to Slay Vampires for Fun and Profit
Come Back Soon
All That Glitters
Bald Truths
Tough Crowd
Gordie’s Gonna Git Ya
Fairyland
Off the Beaten Track
The Sword in the Stew
The Doll Collector
Physics for Toons
The Heart of a Dragon
Searching for a Fart of Gold
On One Condition
Ghost Dancer
Check Out the Library Weenies
Call Me
The Running of the Hounds
A Boy and His Frog
Black Friday
Romeo, Romeo, Wherefloor Argle Roblio?
My Family History
When Death Comes Calling
2D or Not 2D
Mummy Misses You
Seeing Red
Watch Your Grammar
At Stake
Rumplecodespin
I Can’t Quite Put a Finger on It
A Word or Two about These Stories
Reading and Activity Guide
Starscape Books by David Lubar
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
CHECK OUT THE LIBRARY WEENIES: AND OTHER WARPED AND CREEPY TALES
Copyright © 2018 by David Lubar
Reader’s Guide copyright © 2018 by Tor Books
Emperor of the Universe excerpt copyright © 2018 by David Lubar
“A Boy and His Frog” originally appeared in Ribbiting Tales, edited by Nancy Springer. Story copyright © 2000 by David Lubar
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Bill Mayer
A Starscape Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10010
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-9706-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9708-9 (ebook)
eISBN 9780765397089
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First Edition: September 2018