The Trap Read Free

punched, and generally flailed away like a panicky kid in the midst of a phobia meltdown—although it was all very Mortal Kombat in his head. But flailing didn’t help much, and now more of the Lepercons were heeding Nine Iron’s fading, wheezing shouts and leaving Jarrah and Stefan in order to come after Mack. They were all over him. The sheer weight of them made him stagger.
    But worse was the morbid terror of the goo oozing from the Lepercons’ many wounds.
    Mack suffered from twenty-one known phobias—unreasonable fears. We don’t have time to list them all, but they ran the gamut from fear of puppets to a fear of fear itself, which is called phobophobia.
    The thing with phobias is that they aren’t reasonable fears, such as a fear of clowns or brussels sprouts or reality shows. Phobias are at a whole different level. The phobia panic builds and builds until pretty soon a person just loses it altogether.
    And that’s what was happening to Mack. The grossness of the blue cheese goo—the unbelievable disgustingness of it, the football player’s armpit smell of it—was working on the scared little monkey brain buried deep down inside Mack’s otherwise pretty cool human brain.
    Of course the phobia thing wouldn’t be a problem if he were dead. In minutes, if not seconds, one of the needles would hit an artery or an eyeball or go in through Mack’s ear. He realized then that this wasn’t just a fight: it was life and death.
    There were words Mack could use, Vargran words, that could freeze time and let him escape. But it was hard to think of them when a dozen evil midgets were jabbing you with needles and when a sick fear was dumping all sorts of panic chemicals into your system.
    Then it came to him! He knew the Vargran command. It was ret click-ur .
    Not that hard to say, except that just as he was forming the words, a needle jabbed him in the gum. It wasn’t that hard a hit; it just scraped his gum. It didn’t knock out a tooth or anything, but the Lepercon wasn’t backing away. He had hold of Mack’s shirt with one hand and had hauled himself up onto Mack’s chest, and with his free hand he was trying to shove the knitting needle right down Mack’s throat.
    Mack bit down hard on the needle. He held it tight with his going-to-need-braces-in-a-few-years teeth.
    He tried to pull the Lepercon away, but the thing was swarming him. At least six of the things were on his body, hauling at him, grabbing handfuls of shirt and hair, using belt, nose, and ears as climbing grips.
    And smelling like a hobo’s sneakers.
    The needle scraped against Mack’s teeth. If he opened his mouth to say the spell, he would die.
    â€œEsk-ma belast!”
    But it wasn’t Mack who said this; it was Jarrah.
    She was a mess, hair all askew, and somewhat covered in Lepercon goo. She looked scared, wild, and furious.
    Stefan stomped a heel onto one of the Lepercons, which popped like a noxious water balloon. He yanked the needle out of his hair, laughed happily—this was Stefan’s idea of a party—and ran (finally!) to help Mack.
    But Mack didn’t need as much help anymore. The Lepercon on his shoulder fell heavily to the ground. The one on his chest—the one trying to jab a knitting needle down his throat—was changing. The small, wrinkled ShamWow face was becoming smoother, bigger, fuller. The wrinkles were filling in. Plumping.
    Mack felt the weight of the creature grow. He felt his shirt stretch farther and farther until the Lepercon lost his grip and slid, moaning ( “Agara . . . agara . . .” ), to the floor.
    Mack glanced wildly around. All the Lepercons were growing. Larger. Heavier. They were no longer the size of fat cats; they were the size of moderately full garbage bags. And still growing.
    They were not moving much.
    The needles looked tiny now in their bratwurst-sized fingers.
    Mack spit the