Read Online On the Day I Died by Candace Fleming - Free Book Online

water. Moments later, the second one followed. Like some kind of alien squid, they swam around, using their tentacles to inspect their new place. Then they poked their heads above the water, and their mouths opened.
    Teeth sprouted like tiny white daggers from their bloodred gums. Just then, two sets of tentacles rose and slithered around the rubber duck. It gave an alarmed squeak before being pulled under. It never resurfaced.
    The doorbell rang.
    “Don’t put your hands near those things,” I warned Toni.
    She rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Davey, you’re being silly.”
    “I mean it,” I said firmly. “Don’t do anything until I get back.”
    I hurried to the front door, opened it and saw another red box. As I’d done earlier, I stepped onto the porch and looked up and down the street. It was quiet except for Mr. Mayfield washing his Oldsmobile in his driveway and Mr. Humor the ice cream man. Mr. Humor
cha-chinged
his chrome bicycle bell in greeting as he pedaled past.
    Scooping up the box, I turned.
    Toni stood in the hallway. “They’re gone,” she wailed.
    “What?” I rushed down the hall, tossing the box into Toni’s room as I went.
    “I went to get some toys for them to play with—they liked that rubber duck so much,” she explained, holding up two plastic dinosaurs. “I was only away for a minute. When I came back—” She pointed.
    The bathtub was empty except for six inches of green-tinged water. Two glistening sets of prints trailed across the linoleum floor. Slimy webbed handprints dotted the sill of the now-open window.
    “They ran … I mean, slithered away,” Toni sniffled. “Why would they slither away?”
    Before I could come up with an answer, a scream from outside pierced the summer air.
    We raced out onto the front porch.
    Mrs. Neary hobbled into the street. The left sleeve of her twinset had been ripped clean away, and she was wearing only one high-heeled shoe. “Something took Muffin,” she kept repeating like a scratched record. “Something in my backyard. Something took Muffin! Something in my backyard …”
    She bumped into the curb and just plopped down there, her legs splayed. Her one high heel now dangled drunkenly from her big toe. “Something took Muffin. Iheard my little angel howling.” Her eyes were wide open, but she stared at nothing. “Something took Muffin.”
    Beside me, Toni groaned. “Was it … do you think?”
    I whirled on her. “Of course it was!” I pulled her to the side and through clenched teeth said, “These are not cute pets like hamsters or parakeets. These are some kind of insane mutant Pekingese-chomping monsters!”
    Despite herself, Toni giggled. “Pekingese-chomping monsters.”
    But her laughter died a second later when we saw one of the creatures emerge from between the houses.
    “Where’s the other one?” she asked.
    I shook my head. “I … I don’t know, but you can bet it’s around here someplace.”
    We crouched behind the porch railing and watched, horrified, as the creature moved through the yards, using the manicured shrubs and white picket fences for cover. Toni’s “pet” was now the size of a four-door Buick and covered in translucent pink flesh. We could make out the shapes of its organs, pulsing and fluttering. It dragged itself around upright on two tree-trunk-thick legs that ended in gnarled, clawed feet. As for its webbed hands, they twitched at the ends of two tentacle-like stalks. But it wasn’t until the creature lifted its head that I felt the bile rise in my throat. On its face was fixed a smile, permanent and corrupt—a yellow-fanged gash curving under eyes as dead as eight balls.
    I sucked in my breath. “It can’t be.”
    But it was—
    Just like in those pictures on the Insta-Pet kit’s envelopes, a red bow decorated the monster’s three knobbed horns!
    Cha-ching! Cha-ching! Cha-ching!
The sound of Mr. Humor’s bicycle bell rang through the air.
    The monster dropped behind a bush,