Curse of the Wish Eater (Frightville #2) - Mike Ford Page 0,1

He handed the bag to Max. “May all your wishes come true.”

When Max and his mother got back to the house, the place was in an uproar. Max’s older twin sisters, Elfie and Elsie, had just gotten home from softball practice and had made a mess of the kitchen, fixing themselves peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches. His next-youngest brother, eight-year-old Charlie, had decided to paint a portrait of Aunt Maxine for her birthday and had gotten as much paint on the living room carpet as he had on the painting. And Max’s youngest brother, Arthur, only three years old, was running through the house with no clothes on, laughing and banging on a pot with a wooden spoon.

“Sam!” Max’s mother shouted up the stairs.

Max’s father poked his head around the corner. “I’m on a call,” he said, holding up his phone.

“You were supposed to be watching Arthur.”

“I told Charlie to do it,” Max’s father said. “It’s only five minutes. What can happen in five minutes?”

He disappeared back into his office while Max’s mother groaned. “A lot,” she said. “Okay. Max, you take Arthur upstairs and get him dressed. I have a million things to do for the party.”

“But I was going to—”

“Max, please,” his mother said. “Just do it.”

Max groaned. “I hate being the middle child,” he said as he grabbed Arthur, who giggled and banged loudly on the pot.

It only got worse from there. At dinner, Charlie was telling a story and knocked his glass of milk over, right into Max’s lap. Aunt Maxine pinched his cheeks twice. And after they cut the cake, Max left his piece on the table for a second while he went to get a fork, but Aunt Maxine’s dog jumped up and ate it, so he got none.

Later, in his room, with Charlie snoring in the other bed, Max finally took the Wish Eater out of its bag. He held it in his hands. “I really wish I was an only child,” he said aloud.

He thought about it. Was that really his wish? Even if it was, how could it possibly come true?

“It’s all just for fun anyway,” he told himself as he scrounged in his bedside table drawer for a scrap of paper and a pencil. Then he wrote his wish down, folded the paper up, and stuck it inside the Wish Eater’s mouth. He placed the teeth on his bedside table and turned out the light.

When he woke up, the first thing he noticed was how quiet it was. Normally on Saturday mornings the house was filled with the sounds of his brothers and sisters. But there was nothing. He looked over at Charlie’s bed. It was empty. Not only that, but it looked as if it had never been slept in.

Then he noticed the Wish Eater. He’d forgotten about it during the night. Now he opened its mouth and peered inside. His wish was gone. He poked around with his finger, thinking it must have fallen inside somehow, but there was no hole at the back of the mouth. It had simply vanished. Or been eaten. But that was impossible.

He got out of bed and went downstairs, fully expecting to find Charlie watching cartoons and the twins eating their third or fourth bowls of Krinkle-Os and arguing about whether to go skateboarding or swimming. Instead, he found only his mother and father in the kitchen. His mother was sitting at the table, drinking a cup of coffee and looking at the paper. His father was making pancakes.

“Hi, champ,” his father said. “You ready for some breakfast?”

“Since when do you cook?” Max asked.

His father laughed. “Every Saturday,” he said. “You know that. You want chocolate chips in yours?”

“Okay,” Max said, still unsure what was happening. He sat down across from his mother. “Where is everybody?”

“Everybody who?” his mother asked.

“The others,” said Max. “Charlie. Arthur. Elfie and Elsie.”

“Who are they, honey?” said his mother. “New neighbors? I don’t think you’ve mentioned them before.”

Max stared at her. Was she kidding? Had Charlie found the note he’d left inside the Wish Eater and they’d decided to play a joke on him?

His father brought over a plate of pancakes and set it down in front of Max. “Here you go, sport.”

“Thanks,” Max mumbled. He picked up a fork and cut off a piece of pancake. He put it in his mouth and chewed. “These are great,” he said.

“You sound surprised,” his father said, laughing. “You always like my pancakes. They’re the best in the whole