In this second installment in thespooky and silly series that’s perfect for fans of Goosebumps and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, a girl’s dinner comes back to haunt her!
Wolver Hollow is not a normal town. The adults are too busy shuffling off to work at the old coffin factory to notice or care, but the kids know all about monsters, ghosts, and strange lights in the sky. Strange things happen in Wolver Hollow. Creepy things.
Madeline Harper does not like lima beans and she’s not afraid to make that clear. But when she gets sent to bed for not eating her vegetables, she’ll find something far worse than her mother’s frustration. A lima bean scorned is a terrible thing and it will not stop until Madeline Harper eats her vegetables!
A cold wind rattled the windows, but Madeline did not look up. She stared at the chipped, white porcelain of her plate. Not at the plate itself. Not at the smeared remnants of what had been her mashed potatoes. Not at the remaining crumbles and gristle and fat of her pork chop, or the bone pushed aside. No, Madeline stared at the small pile of pale-green lima beans in the center of her plate.
She stared at their wrinkled little skins, at the fine, bristly hairs that poked up here and there, and at their weird kidney shape.
āMadeline Harper,ā said her mother, āeat your lima beans.ā
āNo.ā
āNo?ā her mother repeated. āWhat do you mean ānoā?ā
āI mean,ā said Madeline, looking up from her plate for the first time in fifteen minutes, āthat I am not eating those disgusting lima beans.ā
āLima beans are not disgusting,ā her mother said, āand I wonāt take no for an answer.ā
āMind your mother,ā said Madelineās grandmother, pointing her fork at Madeline.
Madeline glowered. Her grandma was the one whoād bought the lima beans in the first place.
āTheyāre mushy, they taste like dog throw-up, and they make my tongue itch,ā said Madeline. She set her fork down and leaned back in her chair, arms crossed. āIām not eating them.ā
āTheyāre good for you,ā said her mother.
āDonāt you want to be healthy?ā Grandma asked. āYou are what you eat, after all.ā
āWell, I certainly donāt want to be a lima bean,ā Madeline said. āWhoād want to be a wrinkled, gross, green, pathetic excuse for a vegetable that no one likes?ā
Madelineās mother stood up and carried her own clean plate over to the sink.
āWell, you can sit there until you eat them,ā she said.
āBut, Momāā
āI wonāt hear another word about it,ā her mother said. āThe sooner you clean your plate, the sooner you can get up from the table.ā
Outside, the fierce gale hammered the shutters again and shook the house.
Madeline sat alone at the table, watching the hands of the clock slowly crawl along. Fifteen minutes, twenty, a half hour. Her mother was watching television. Somewhere in the living room, Grandma was knitting.
Madelineās dog, Tucker, lay curled at her feet under the table. He whined at the storm and looked up at her, nose sniff-sniffing what was left on her plate.
āI wouldnāt even feed these beans to you, Tuck,ā said Madeline. āAnd you eat beetles.ā
Tucker whined again.
āMadeline Harper,ā said her mother, standing in the kitchen doorway. āEat. Your. Lima beans.ā
Madeline dragged her fork across her plate. It made an awful screech.
āI. Said. No.ā
Madelineās mother pointed down the hall.
āThatās it, young lady,ā she said. āGo to your room. Now!ā
Madeline pushed her chair away from the table and stalked to her room. Tucker followed.
āAnd I am leaving these lima beans right here until you decide to eat them!ā her mother called after her.
Madeline slammed her bedroom door.
Madeline tried to read, but she couldnāt concentrate. She pushed a few pieces around her chessboard. She dusted her chess trophies and organized her bookshelf. She tried to do a crossword puzzle, but she just couldnāt stop being angry about being sent to her room for not eating lima beans.
She stared out her bedroom window, arms crossed, angrily tapping her foot. The moon was peeking through the treetops. It cast deep shadows across the backyard. Long, twisted shapes like monster claws, one that looked like a cat arching its back, and, if she wasnāt mistaken, one shadow that looked too much like a lima bean. She turned away from the window and stared at her chess set, trying to think of her next move. She was an extremely good chess player and had won those trophies to show for it. Momās move had been to send Madeline to her room. It was Madelineās move. She put on her pajamas and left her room. She needed a glass of water.
But when she entered the kitchen, she stopped. Her plate was there, but the lima beans were gone.
āOh, good, finally,ā said her mother, striding into the kitchen. āYou came to your senses. See? They werenāt that bad, right?ā
Madeline had certainly not eaten those lima beans, and apparently, neither had her mother.
āThatās a girl,ā said Grandma, rubbing Madelineās back. āI knew you could do it.ā
But I didnāt, Madeline thought. And neither did Grandma. It wasnāt Tucker; heād been in her room with her the whole time.
She rushed to the garbage can and threw open the lid. No lima beans. She pulled the refrigerator open, looking for leftovers. Not a lima bean in sight.
āOkay, this is going to sound really weird,ā Madeline began, ābutāā
A shrieking banshee of wind slammed the side of the house, and everything went dark.
The power was out.
2
The entire kitchen, the entirehouse, was pitch-black.
āOh dear,ā said Grandma.
āMaybe the breakerās tripped,ā said Mom. āItāll have to be reset.ā
The breaker was in the basement. Madeline hated the basement. The basement was full of cobwebs and spiders and thousand-leggers and camel crickets as big as her hand.
āYou have to reset the breaker, Madeline,ā said her mother. āJust like flicking a switch.ā
āOnly, that switch is in the basement,ā Madeline said.
Tucker whined again and moved closer to Madelineās leg.
āYou know I donāt do stairs,ā said her mother. āThey terrify me.ā
Madeline almost wished that she had a phobia of stairs too, so that she could have her own reason for not going down into that creepy basement. But that would mean not being able to go to Lucindaās for sleepovers. Lucinda lived in the apartments across from the school, on the third floor. That meant stairs.
āBut, Momāā
āAnd Grandma canāt do it,ā said her mother. āNot at her age.ā
āOh heavens no,ā said Grandma.
The old elm tree in front of their house swayed and rocked. Its branches seemed to reach for the window like a skeletal hand, just barely scratching the glass.
āFine,ā said Madeline. She wanted the power on. The dark was suffocating, and she had the very strange feeling that she was being watched. Goose bumps appeared on her arm, and she shivered. āWhereās the flashlight?ā
Her mother shuffled through the darkness, arms out before her to make sure she didnāt bump into anything. There was just enough moonlight to show Madeline a dim outline of her, and she thought her mother looked like a zombie, hungry for brains.
āGet a hold of yourself, Madeline,ā she said.
āAh, here we are,ā said her mother. The flashlight clicked on, and the yellow beam cut a path through the darkness. She crossed the kitchen and handed Madeline the flashlight. āBe careful.ā
Madeline shone the light on the basement door. Sheād been down there exactly three times. Once when they first moved in, to make sure there werenāt coffins, or creatures living down there. Once when her cousin slept over and dared her to stay in the basement for five whole minutes with the lights off (the longest five minutes of her life). And once to turn the breaker back on after the biggest thunderstorm theyād ever had. She made a habit of avoiding the basement.
The rusted old doorknob turned with a grinding click, and when she pulled the door open, it squeaked and squealed on grime-encrusted hinges. She pointed the flashlight at the first step and the narrow, plaster-covered walls that descended into the depths. Dust-choked cobwebs hung in the corners, and when she stepped onto the first board, it groaned.
Tucker backed away from the open doorway and growled. Madeline swung the flashlight back into the kitchen. The hair on Tuckerās back was up, and he let out another low warning growl.
There was something in the darkness, Madeline thought. Tucker sensed it too. All the more reason to get these lights back on.
She steadied herself, cast her light back down the stairs, and, with very careful steps, made her descent.
The basement reeked of stagnant water, clay, musty earth, and centipedes. It was a long, low-ceilinged room with a dirt floor and a thousand pipes and wires running across the bare-beamed ceiling.
The circuit breaker was at the far end of the base...
