03 - Monster Blood by R.L. Stine - (ebook by Undead) Page B

careful,” she had called to him after handing the blue can back. “Be
careful.”
    It was a real warning.
    A warning against her spell.
    “You did this!” Evan shouted in a voice he didn’t recognize. The words burst
out of him. He had no control over them.
    “You did this! You cast a spell!” he repeated, pointing an accusing finger at
his aunt.
    He saw her blue eyes shimmer as they read his lips. Then her eyes filled with
tears, tears that overflowed onto her pale cheeks.
    “No!” she cried. “No!”
    “You did something to the can! You did this, Aunt Kathryn!”
    “No!” she cried, shouting over the sickening grunts and plops of the mountainous ball that nearly hid her from
view.
    “No!” Kathryn cried, her back pressed tightly against the mantelpiece. “I
didn’t do it! She did!”
    And she pointed an accusing finger at Andy.

 
 
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    Andy?
    Was Aunt Kathryn accusing Andy?
    Evan spun around to confront Andy.
    But Andy turned, too.
    And Evan realized immediately that his aunt wasn’t pointing at Andy. She was
pointing past Andy to Sarabeth.
    Standing in the doorway to the living room, the black cat hissed and arched
her back, her yellow eyes flaring at Kathryn.
    “She did it! She’s the one!” Kathryn declared, pointing frantically.
    The enormous glob of green Monster Blood bounced back, retreated a step, as
if stung by Kathryn’s words. Shadows shifted inside the glob as it quivered,
catching the light filtering in through the living room window.
    Evan stared at the cat, then turned his eyes to Andy. She shrugged, her face
frozen in horror and bewilderment.
    Aunt Kathryn is crazy, Evan thought sadly.
    She’s totally lost it.
    She isn’t making any sense.
    None of this makes sense.
    “She’s the one!” Kathryn repeated.
    The cat hissed in response.
    The glob bounced in place, carrying the unmoving Beymer brothers inside.
    “Oh—look!” Evan cried to Andy as the black cat suddenly raised up on its
hind legs.
    Andy gasped and squeezed Evan’s arm. Her hand was as cold as ice.
    Still hissing, the cat grew like a shadow against the wall. It raised its
claws, swiping the air. Its eyes closed, and it became consumed in darkness.
    No one moved.
    The only sounds Evan could hear were the bubbling of the green glob and the
pounding of his own heart.
    All eyes were on the cat as it rose up, stretched, and grew. And as it grew,
it changed its shape.
    Became human.
    With shadowy arms and legs in the eerie darkness.
    And then the shadow stepped away from the darkness.
    And Sarabeth was now a young woman with fiery red hair and pale skin and
yellow eyes, the same yellow cat eyes that had haunted Evan since he’d arrived.
The young woman was dressed in a swirling black gown down to her ankles.
    She stood blocking the doorway, staring accusingly at Kathryn.
    “You see? She’s the one,” Kathryn said, quietly now. And the next words were
intended only for Sarabeth: “Your spell over me is broken. I will do no more
work for you.”
    Sarabeth tossed her red hair behind a black-cloaked shoulder and laughed.
“I’ll decide what you will do, Kathryn.”
    “No,” Kathryn insisted. “For twenty years, you have used me, Sarabeth. For
twenty years you have imprisoned me here, held me in your spell. But now I will
use this Monster Blood to escape.”
    Sarabeth laughed again. “There is no escape, fool. All of you must die now. All of you.”

 
 
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    “All of you must die,” Sarabeth repeated. Her smile revealed that she enjoyed
saying those words.
    Kathryn turned to Evan, her eyes reflecting her fear. “Twenty years ago, I
thought she was my friend. I was all alone here. I thought I could trust her.
But she cast a spell on me. And then another. Her dark magic made me deaf. She
refused to let me lip-read or learn to sign. That was one way she kept me her
prisoner.”
    “But, Aunt Kathryn—” Evan started.
    She raised a finger to her lips to silence him.
    “Sarabeth