Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9 STARGAZER'S POINT WAS A VERY stinky place. The villagers put all their garbage in bins and boxes, and then Boris and the rats brought that garbage here, piling it into one big, towering heap of rubbish: moldy banana peels, dirty socks, tin cans, and fish bones. Rusted springs, coffee grounds, fuzzy cheese, and sour milk. Do you want to know how bad it smelled? Take a pair of your shoes that you wore all day, maybe ones that you wore without socks. Now put your nose in your shoe. Take a big, deep breath! Gross! You just smelled your stinky shoe! But at least now you might

have an idea of how smelly the garbage heap was. The flies loved it. The rats treasured it. And the Trash Heap ate it. She was very good at keeping it all contained on Stargazer's Point, and now she had babies to feed. That's right! The Trash Heap had made a home on Stargazer's Point, and the villagers had given her so much trash since then that she had little trash babies… several little Trash Heap babies that were always hungry for more smelly trash!

But when Wolfy and his friends arrived, Madame Trash Heap did not shuffle forward to say hello. The babies did not open their mouths wide and cry for more gross garbage. The rats didn't put on a show-and-tell of the things they found in the villagers' tossed-out trash. Because as you have probably guessed, Madame Trash Heap, and the babies, and the rats were all turned to stone. "We're running out of places to check," said Franky. "We've been to the village, to the Gloomy Woods, to the lake and river, and now here." "Look," said Neveen, "what's on that old boot?" "It's another beetle," said Vampyra. "Cleo must have left us another riddle." "I'm not sure how many riddles I can handle," said Wolfy. "My brain hurts!"

"Go ahead, Vampyra," Franky said. "Use your lucky scarab." Vampyra placed her gold beetle against the image on the boot, and just like the tree, and the stone, there was a glow and a POP! Another stone tablet with hieroglyphics appeared. "Tall and old and made of stone," Neveen read, "the opposite of day might call me home. What am I?" Do you know what the answer is? Can you figure it out? I'll give you a minute to think about it.… "The opposite of day is night," said Franky. "What does night call home?" "The sky?" Vampyra asked. "Yeah," said Wolfy. "That's where the moon lives." "We howl at the moon all the time," said Spike. He began to howl, and the rest of the

Little Junior Monster Scouts howled with him. "But that doesn't have anything to do with stone," said Neveen. "What's tall, and old, and made of stone?" Franky scratched his bolts again. You know what that means—he was puzzling things out. Franky was a very good puzzler. "What if it's not 'night,'" he said, "but 'knight,' with a k?" "And everyone knows where knights live," said Wolfy. "In a castle!" said Vampyra. "Cleo has gone to the castle!" "You didn't even need a clue for that one," said Neveen. "You're becoming pretty good at solving riddles." "We have to," said Franky. "We can't let everyone stay statues forever." "I know," said Neveen.

"And if we don't solve them and find Cleo soon," said Wolfy, "everyone at Castle Dracula might get turned to stone next." "Good point," said Vampyra. "Follow me!" She spun in a circle one time… two times… three times, and POOF! Vampyra turned into a bat. She flapped and flittered off toward Castle Dracula, and everyone quickly followed.