Skipstone’s silver eyes looked intently up at him from the cover of his book. “Luke,” he said patiently, “I am the last founding father.”

  Luke felt his head swim at the news, and he was forced to clutch the edge of the desk. “You can’t be,” he gasped. “The last founding father was a werewolf!”

  “You are correct,” agreed the face on the book. “I was — am — a werewolf, just like you. And just like you I struggled to control my transformations whenever I grew angry, and was occasionally a threat to the people I loved.” The author sighed heavily. “Finally leaving my body was something of a relief. But now I must return.”

  “Return?” exclaimed Resus, staring at what was left of the corpse. “Into that?”

  “It has to be done,” said Skipstone. “I must leave behind my life’s work and transform one last time. That is why my body was not buried.”

  “Wait,” said Cleo, her voice trembling. “You once said you had transferred your spirit to the book as you were dying. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think I want to hear this…” began Luke.

  “Hear it or not, it remains the truth,” said Skipstone firmly. “When the spell is reversed, I shall return to my body as it was, on the verge of death.”

  “That’s OK,” Luke said thoughtfully. “We can just put you back in the book once I have the claw.”

  “I fear that will not be possible,” replied the author. “Once I leave this book, it will be destroyed. I shall die.”

  “Then we’ll find another one!” insisted Luke.

  Skipstone sighed. “Tales of Scream Street was my only book.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” cried Luke. “You’re an author! There’s no way you only wrote one book.” And dashing across the room to a creaking bookshelf, he began to pull out book after book, checking the covers for Samuel Skipstone’s name.

  Resus sighed. “Luke, we understand that you’re upset…”

  “No!” snapped Luke, flinging more and more volumes to the floor. “You don’t understand, Resus. All I wanted to do was take my mum and dad home — and now, after all we’ve been through, I find I have to kill someone in order to do it!”

  “You would not be killing me, Luke,” Skipstone interrupted. “I cheated death to begin with by becoming part of this book. All we would be doing is putting everything back to rights.”

  “Won’t you just become a zombie, Mr Skipstone, like Doug or Berry?” asked Cleo.

  “Sadly, no,” replied the author. “For that process to occur, a body must be buried and rise from its grave soon afterwards. I was never buried — and I fear it would be too late to do so now.”

  “So we’re just supposed to be happy that you’re about to pop your clogs?” snapped Luke, yanking open the top drawer of an antique filing cabinet and beginning to rifle through it.

  “No one is happy about it, Luke,” said Skipstone. “I always knew this would happen one day — that I would assist someone in finding the relics and then return to my body to die. I am just pleased it was you I was able to help.”

  Luke shook his head. “It can’t happen like that — there has to be a way we can—”

  He stopped, pulling a handwritten manuscript from the back of the drawer. “Here we go!” he announced triumphantly. “I’d know this handwriting anywhere.”

  “Luke, don’t…” began Skipstone.

  “Once I’ve got your claw,” said Luke excitedly, waving the manuscript, “we can use the spell to put you in this, and you can live on!”

  “Please…”

  “I know it hasn’t got a cover yet,” Luke added, “but once your spirit is in the pages, we can make one and it’ll look just like a real book.”

  “I really don’t think…”

  Luke continued to ignore the author. “It might not be as grand as Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street,” he said, flipping over the first page of the manuscript, “but I’m sure you’ll soon get used to being—”

  He stopped when he saw the title, then slowly he read aloud: “‘Bandages of Doom’ by M.T. Graves.” The room fell silent.

  Cleo was the first to speak. “You’re M.T. Graves?” she asked. “You wrote those kids’ books about mummies and vampires?”

  “They were my first published books,” Skipstone admitted awkwardly. “I wrote them when I lived in Luke’s world, before the Movers brought me to Scream Street. Before I knew what vampires and mummies were really like.”

  “Why ‘M.T. Graves’?” asked Resus. “Why not use your real name?”

  “G.H.O.U.L. was after me,” explained the author. “We Skipstones were known to be werewolves. I couldn’t let them track me down, or I’d end up …”

  “…here,” Luke finished, still marvelling to think that Samuel Skipstone came from Luke’s own world.

  “Exactly,” said Skipstone. “After he got married, my son even dropped a few letters from our last name in an effort to throw G.H.O.U.L. off the scent.”

  “How did they find you in the end?” asked Resus.

  “Some other authors made fun of my books,” replied Skipstone. “They said that what I was writing was ridiculous. It made me so angry, I transformed and destroyed half my local library.”

  “I can see how that might have attracted G.H.O.U.L.’s attention!” grinned Cleo. “So, you and your son were brought to Scream Street…”

  Skipstone shook his silvery head. “Just me,” he said. “I wouldn’t tell them where to find my wife and son, and mercifully they remained free. I never saw them again,” he added sadly.

  “Well, you’ll be seeing us again,” said Luke. “Once I’ve got the final relic I can save you in this M.T. Graves manuscript.”

  “Are you sure it will work?” asked Cleo.

  “Technically, there is no reason why it would not,” said Skipstone, a hopeful tone creeping into his voice. “The spell should still be active both ways after all these years.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” beamed Luke. “What’s the spell?”

  “You should find it on the desk,” said Skipstone. “It was the last thing I wrote. Place the book near my body, then write out the spell in reverse. It will only work if the words are written down.”

  Resus found a folded piece of paper by the author’s quill and, unfolding it, read out the words written there:

  Rats live on no evil star

  “Rats live on no evil star?” repeated Cleo. “What does that mean?”

  “Probably nothing,” said Resus. “It’s just words that make up a spell.”

  “OK,” said Luke, laying Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street on the floor in front of the body and pulling a pencil from his pocket. “Let’s write it backwards.” Grabbing a nearby piece of paper, he began to copy out the sentence in reverse. “R-a-t-s-l-i—” He stopped. “The spell reads the same backwards as it does forwards! Rats live on no evil star!”

  The face on the cover of the silver book smiled. “To realize the power of words — that is the true magic!”

  As Luke finished writing, a shimmering light rose up from Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street, flickering like a flame. It hovered there for a moment and then slipped into the mouth of the dead body and disappeared.

  With a gasp, the decayed body of Samuel Skipstone opened its eyes and blinked. “Did it work?” he asked hoarsely. “Am I back?”

  Luke smiled. “You are!”

  Chapter Six

  The Claw

  Samuel Skipstone pushed his hands against the sides of his chair and tried to stand, but the effort was too great and he collapsed down again, coughing.

  “Are you OK?” asked Cleo.

  Skipstone nodded slowly. “These old muscles have wasted considerably,” he said. “There is not much movement left in them, I fear.”

  “Look at the book!” exclaimed Resus. They all turned to see Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street, its cover now a plain expanse of silver, shudder slightly, then suddenly dissolve into a pile of ash on the floor.

  “My life’s work — gone!” The author gave a weak smile. “I guess that having me as a lodger must have been quite a burden for it,” he said.

  “It was a wonderful book, Mr Skipstone,” said Luke. “It helped me to find the relics I need to take my parents away from Scream Street.”

  “Not all of them,” Resus reminded him. “You still need the werewolf’s claw.”

  “And for that, I shall have to transform,” said Skipstone, coughing again. “I am unpractised at controlling my transformations, however, so it might take a while for my hands to change.”

  Cleo put her arm around the frail old man. “Are you sure you can manage it?”

  Before Skipstone could reply, Luke had snatched up the bottle of ink from the desk, pulled out the stopper and poured it over the carpet.

  “What did you do that for?” asked Skipstone.

  “To make you angry,” said Luke. “To make you transform!”

  Skipstone shrugged feebly. “That won’t do it. I never liked this carpet.”

  Luke grunted in frustration. “Come on,” he said to Resus. “Help me!”

  “OK,” said the vampire. “Er… Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street was full of utter nonsense.”

  “What better place to hide the clues to the founding fathers’ relics?”

  “This is ridiculous,” snapped Luke. “There must be something that will make you as angry as that bad review did!” A smile spread across his face as a thought occurred. “Cleo hated Bandages of Doom, you know…”

  Skipstone’s expression darkened. “What?”

  “Luke, what are you doing?” exclaimed Cleo.

  “It’s true,” agreed Resus, catching on. “She said that mummies would never behave that way, and that the curse you wrote in it was like baby talk.”

  Skipstone spun his chair around to glare at Cleo.

  “I really don’t think this is a good idea…” she began.

  “In fact,” continued Luke, “she said that Horror Heights was the worst series of children’s books she had ever read!”

  With a deep-throated growl, Samuel Skipstone’s eyes flashed red and he began to transform into a werewolf. His decomposed skin flushed with silver fur, and the rotting muscles swelled.

  “Er, I don’t think this is going to be a partial transformation, guys,” warned Resus. “This looks like the full thing to me!”

  Its powerful teeth gnashing, the wolf leapt from its chair, straight for Cleo. As the mummy dived under the desk, the old wolf snapped at her ankles and she could feel its hot breath on her bandages. She screamed.

  “Mr Skipstone!” roared Luke, grabbing the chair and swinging it round, catching the werewolf in the side of its head and knocking it off balance. “Don’t do this!” The silver wolf shook its head to clear the blow and spun to face him.

  Gripped by terror, Luke stood rooted to the spot as Skipstone’s wolf gave a roar and lunged for him, fangs bared — only to find a flame thrust in front of its snout.

  “Good job I had one of these handy,” said Resus, patting his cloak affectionately as he jabbed the burning torch in the wolf’s face. Skipstone growled and pulled back.

  Luke dashed around the desk to help Cleo to her feet. “How do we stop this thing?” he asked.

  “That’s the question we ask ourselves every time you transform,” retorted Cleo.

  Keeping the wolf at bay with one hand, Resus slid a pair of gardening shears from the folds of his cape with the other and tossed them onto the desk with a clatter. “I’ll keep the werewolf occupied here,” he shouted. “You creep round behind him and snip off one of his claws!”

  Luke stared at the shears. “You want me to cut off Mr Skipstone’s finger?”

  “How else do you suppose we get it?” asked Resus, giving a sudden stab with the torch as the wolf tried to run along the edge of the room and escape. “If we wait for him to change back, it won’t be a werewolf’s claw any more!”

  Luke reached for the shears, then quickly pulled his hand away. “I… I didn’t know I’d have to… None of the other relics had to be collected like this!”

  “I agree,” said Cleo. “We had to search quite hard for some of them. This one’s right in front of us.”

  “No, I’m talking about having to hurt Mr Skipstone to get it!”

  “Then let me do it,” she exclaimed, snatching up the shears.

  Luke took them from her and sighed deeply. “No,” he said firmly, “it should be me. This is for my mum and dad—”

  The werewolf gave a sudden roar and darted forward, jaws snapping and saliva spraying. Cleo squealed. “Well, get on and do it before we have to send you back to your world in pieces!”

  Grasping the handles of the shears tightly, Luke slid round to the far side of the room, out of the werewolf’s line of sight. Cleo jumped up and down behind Resus to create a distraction.

  Once behind the wolf, Luke crept forward, the shears shaking in his trembling hands. Ducking to avoid the creature’s furiously lashing tail and closing his eyes tightly, he slid the parted blades around one of its front paws — and slammed them shut.

  When the expected scream of agony never came, Luke opened his eyes to discover the tip of one of the werewolf’s talons on the floor before him. “Nice going, numb-nuggets!” shouted Resus. “You were supposed to cut off a claw, not trim his nails for him.”

  “He moved!” retorted Luke, then clamped his hand over his mouth as he realized he’d given away his position. The werewolf spun in a flash and leapt towards him, fangs glistening with hot spittle. Luke fell backwards and the wolf advanced until it stood right over him. He pushed hard against its throat to keep the snapping teeth at bay.

  Resus raced across the room towards his friend and leapt onto the werewolf’s back. Furious, it spun round, launching the young vampire across the room and into the desk. The flaming torch fell from his hands and onto the aged M.T. Graves manuscript, setting it alight.

  As Resus tried frantically to put out the flames, Luke’s hand scrabbled across the carpet and grasped the largest book he could find. Swinging it up with all the force he could muster, Luke smashed it into the wolf’s face.

  The werewolf crashed to the ground, stunned. Luke struggled to catch his breath for a moment, then yelled, “Let’s get out of here!”

  The trio dragged the unconscious werewolf out into the garden of 1 Scream Street and collapsed, exhausted. Luke pressed his face into the cool grass and struggled to slow his pounding heart. Beside him, the silver werewolf growled deep in its throat as the first waves of consciousness began to return.

  Still breathing hard, Resus grabbed the shears from Cleo and pushed them towards Luke. “Do it,” he said.

  Taking them, Luke carefully placed the blades around one of the claws on the werewolf’s left front paw. He looked away and then snapped them shut. The werewolf gave a semi-conscious whimper and Cleo pulled a strip of bandage from her waist to stem the flow of blood.

  As Luke picked up the werewolf’s claw, the creature itself began to shrink in size. “I think Mr Skipstone’s coming back to us…”

  “The problem is, the book’s gone,” said Resus. “The manuscript of Bandages of Doom that we were going to use to hold his spirit — it went up in flames.”

  Luke sat up suddenly. “There’s a copy of the book in my bedroom!” he exclaimed. “We can use that.”

  Just then, a hand burst through the lawn, quickly followed by the green, diseased head of Doug, one of Scream Street’s resident zombies. “Dudes!” he proclaimed. “What’s the scoop?”

  “Perfect timing,” said Cleo. She helped Doug out of his tunnel and led him over to the now human but barely conscious figure of Samuel Skipstone, lying on the grass, his hand bloodied and bandaged. “Doug, could you please take Mr Skipstone to my house?” she asked. “My dad will look after him until we get back.”

  “No problemo, little lady!” said Doug, lifting Skipstone into his arms and lurching unsteadily out of the garden.

  Luke squeezed the author’s good hand as he was carried away. “Stay with us, Mr Skipstone,” he pleaded. “I’ll be with you as soon as I’ve got the book.”

  As the trio raced away towards Luke’s house, Resus turned and called over his shoulder to the zombie, “If he wakes up, Doug, whatever you do — don’t make him angry!”

  Chapter Seven

  The Doorway

  Luke, Resus and Cleo rushed back into Luke’s bedroom, just as — “WACHOO!” — a bright orange flash transformed Luke’s duvet into a roll of striped wallpaper.

  “I see that Tress is still suffering with her flu,” said Resus.

  Luke slid the golden casket from under his bed and opened it to check that the relics were still OK. He sighed with relief when he saw that they were. “We can send her a get well card once we’ve found an M.T. Graves book for Mr Skipstone,” he said, dropping the werewolf’s claw in with the other founding fathers’ gifts.

  “Which box did you put the Horror Heights books into?” asked Cleo, rummaging through a collection of computer games.

  “I think most of them are in these,” replied Luke, opening up one of the ones by the wardrobe. As he did so — “WACHOO!” — another flash filled it with teddy bears.

  “We’d better find them quickly before Tress’s sneezes zap them into something unusable,” said Resus. “I doubt we can transfer Mr Skipstone’s spirit into a cuddly pyjama case!” He, Luke and Cleo grabbed a box each and began to rifle through in search of a Horror Heights book.

  Luke lifted a handful of CDs out of his box and found himself looking at a familiar image: the terrifying vampire on the cover of Fangs of Destiny. “Got one!” he shouted triumphantly, snatching up the book. As Resus and Cleo turned to see, the trio were suddenly bathed in a rainbow of light.

  “What’s Tress changed now?” demanded Cleo, shielding her eyes.

  “This one doesn’t seem quite the same…” said Resus.

  Hanging over the casket of relics was a shimmering, rainbow-coloured archway. As Luke approached it, shielding his eyes with one hand, he began to make out a room on the other side.