Night of the Living Dummy by R. L. Stine Page B

thought. No one was home. Her parents were at work. Lindy was at some after-school activity.
    She arranged Mr. Wood on her lap. “Time to go to work,” she made him say, reaching into his back to move his lips. She made his eyes slide back and forth.
    A button on his plaid shirt had come unbuttoned. Kris leaned him down against the dressing table and started to fasten it.
    Something caught her eye. Something yellow inside the pocket.
    “Weird,” Kris said aloud. “I never noticed anything in there.”
    Slipping two fingers into the slender pocket, she pulled out a yellowed sheet of paper, folded up.
    Probably just the receipt for him, Kris thought.
    She unfolded the sheet of paper and held it up to read it.
    It wasn’t a receipt. The paper contained a single sentence handwritten very cleanly in bold black ink. It was in a language Kris didn’t recognize. “Did someone send you a love note, Mr. Wood?” she asked the dummy.
    It stared up at her lifelessly.
    Kris lowered her eyes to the paper and read the strange sentence out loud:
    “Karru marri odonna loma molonu karrano.”
    What language is that? Kris wondered.
    She glanced down at the dummy and uttered a low cry of surprise.
    Mr. Wood appeared to blink.
    But that wasn’t possible— was it?
    Kris took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.
    The dummy stared up at her, his painted eyes as dull and wide open as ever.
    Let’s not get paranoid, Kris scolded herself.
    “Time to work, Mr. Wood,” she told him. She folded up the piece of yellow paper and slipped it back into his shirt pocket. Then she raised him to a sitting position, searching for the eye and mouth controls with her hand.
    “How are things around your house, Mr. Wood?”
    “Not good, Kris. I’ve got termites. I need termites like I need another hole in my head! Ha-ha!”

    “Lindy! Kris! Could you come downstairs, please!” Mr. Powell called from the foot of the stairs.
    It was after dinner, and the twins were up in their room. Lindy was sprawled on her stomach on the bed, reading a book for school. Kris was in front of the dressing table mirror, rehearsing quietly with Mr. Wood for tomorrow night’s concert.
    “What do you want, Dad?” Lindy shouted down, rolling her eyes.
    “We’re kind of busy,” Kris shouted, shifting the dummy on her lap.
    “The Millers are here, and they’re dying to see your ventriloquist acts,” their father shouted up.
    Lindy and Kris both groaned. The Millers were the elderly couple who lived next door. They were very nice people, but very boring.
    The twins heard Mr. Powell’s footsteps on the stairs. A few seconds later, he poked his head into their room. “Come on, girls. Just put on a short show for the Millers. They came over for coffee, and we told them about your dummies.”
    “But I have to rehearse for tomorrow night,” Kris insisted.
    “Rehearse on them,” her father suggested. “Come on. Just do five minutes. They’ll get a real kick out of it.”
    Sighing loudly, the girls agreed. Carrying their dummies over their shoulders, they followed their father down to the living room.
    Mr. and Mrs. Miller were side by side on the couch, coffee mugs in front of them on the low coffee table. They smiled and called out cheerful greetings as the girls appeared.
    Kris was always struck by how much the Millers looked alike. They both had slender, pink faces topped with spongy white hair. They both wore silver-framed bifocals, which slipped down on nearly identical, pointy noses. They both had the same smile. Mr. Miller had a small, gray mustache. Lindy always joked that he grew it so the Millers could tell each other apart.
    Is that what happens to you when you’ve been married a long time? Kris found herself thinking. You start to look exactly alike?
    The Millers were even dressed alike, in loose-fitting tan Bermuda shorts and white cotton sports shirts.
    “Lindy and Kris took up ventriloquism a few weeks ago,” Mrs. Powell was explaining, twisting