Billy Hooten Read Free

life—even scarier then Randy Kulkowski—and it was lumbering directly for him. Billy stood frozen; his eyes locked on its gross face, on the large brownish warts with little hairs sticking out of them, on the yellow, watery eyes, looking for some clue that the guy was just wearing a really cool mask, but from what he could tell, it was all real.
    Billy didn't know what to do. His brain was sputtering like the old computer at the back of Mrs. Maloney's class that had to have been built when dinosaurs walked the earth.
    “Wish I had some bread,” the pig-man roared, his muscular, hairy arms reaching out for Billy. “Bet you'd make a really tasty sandwich.”

    That got Billy, and he did something he'd never have imagined doing in a thousand and one years. He reached down, snatching up what looked like a leg bone from the ground, and stood ready to defend himself against the advancing brute.
    Billy had been in lots of fights in his twelve years. He'd never started any of them, and never won any of them, either. But this was different. This wasn't somebody knocking him down because his mother had made him wear that sweater with the dancing snowmen on it to school, or shoving his head in the toilet for an ultimate swirly because he had accidentally reminded the teacher about a homework assignment she'd forgotten to collect.
    This was real, life-or-death stuff.
    The monster was almost on him, his stink making Billy want to hurl.
    Billy reared back with the bone, remembering what his dad had tried to teach him about hitting a baseball—to keep his eye on the ball, only in this case it was the pig.
    What happened next was something Billy would never have believed if he'd read it in his comic books or seen it in his movies.
    He was just about to swing the bone at the pig-man when the beast slipped on a pile of bones. A slip ofOlympic caliber, the kind of slip that if it had happened in the hallway at school would still be talked about five years later.
    Remember when what's-his-name slipped that day?
    Dude, that was totally outrageous! I thought for sure he was dead.
    The pig-man's feet flew out from beneath him, and Billy could've sworn he heard that crazy whistling sound he always heard in the cartoons as the creature landed, the back of its big head whacking the mausoleum floor and making Billy wince.
    He watched the beast for a moment, waiting for signs of movement. Nope, knocked out cold.
    Talk about lucky.
    Then the fact that Billy was holding something that had once been inside a human body suddenly began to sink in and he dropped the bone to the ground, wiping his hands furiously on his sweatshirt.
    “I knew it,” screeched the creepy little guy with the squash-shaped head.
    Billy jumped. He'd nearly forgotten about the other creature.
    “I knew I would find you if I came to the world above. I knew it!” The creature smiled, showing off a set of teeth that would have made Billy's dentist drool.
    Billy began to carefully back toward the mausoleumdoor. “You find me?” he asked with a nervous chuckle. “I don't even know what you are, never mind who you are.”
    “I am Archebold,” the weird little man in the black tuxedo and tails said. “I'm a goblin.”
    “Of course you are,” Billy said, taking a right turn onto Crazy Street. “Am I supposed to know you?” he asked, hoping to keep the creature talking until he could reach the door.
    Archebold shook his head. “Nope, never laid eyes on you before.”
    “But you've been looking for me?” Billy questioned.
    The creature nodded, his smile getting wider.
    “Then who am I?” Billy challenged, feeling the cool breeze from outside on his back. He was almost there.
    “Don't be silly,” Archebold said with a chuckle. He reached behind his long-tailed jacket and produced what looked like a rolled-up comic book from his back pocket.
    Billy's eyes widened in horror. A comic book should never be treated like that.
    “This is you,” Archebold said, shoving the