The Horrible Bag of Terrible Things #1 (The Horrible Bag Series, Band 1) - Hardcover

Buch 1 von 3: The Horrible Bag Series

Renzetti, Rob

 
9780593519523: The Horrible Bag of Terrible Things #1 (The Horrible Bag Series, Band 1)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593519523 ISBN 13: 9780593519523
Verlag: Penguin Workshop, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

From the creator of My Life As a Teenage Robot comes a middle-grade horror story about a horrible bag, the spine-chilling world hidden within it, and a terrifying adventure into the world of GrahBhag.

Perfect for fans of Coraline, the Spiderwick Chronicles, and Small Spaces.

When Zenith finds a strange, unsettling bag at his front door, he's not sure where it came from or who sent it to him. He knows better than to expect his overprotective older sister Apogee to help him figure it out, because ever since she became a teenager, she's been acting more like a parent to him than a sibling. But he certainly did not expect for a horrifying spiderlike creature to emerge from the bag, kidnap Apogee, and drag her inside to the equally horrifying and unsettling world of GrahBhag. 

Zenith sets off into the bag to bring her back but soon finds a bizarre realm where malicious forests, a trio of blood-drinking mouths, and a sentient sawdust-stuffed giant are lurking within the seams. And from every corner of the world come whispers of the Great Wurm, an eldritch horror with a godlike hold over the creatures of GrahBhag, who seems to have a dark, insidious purpose for Apogee. With the help of a greedy, earwax-nibbling gargoyle, Zenith will have to save Apogee from the Great Wurm and help them both escape the horrible bag before it's too late. 

With a combination of dry, absurdist humor and no-holds-barred horror, Rob Renzetti has crafted a delightfully imaginative fantasy world that will hook readers as surely as it will send chills down their spines.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rob Renzetti is a veteran of TV animation whose work on Cartoon Network’s Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends earned him an Emmy. He created the Nickelodeon show My Life as a Teenage Robot, acted as the supervising producer for Disney’s Gravity Falls, and served as executive producer on the first two seasons of Disney’s Big City Greens, among other projects. Recently, he has published four books for Disney Publishing, including the New York Times #1 Best Seller Gravity Falls: Journal 3 and Onward: Quests of Yore. 
 

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The Horrible Bag

The bag groaned. When he lifted it off the front porch, he could have sworn that it groaned. He dropped the bag to the entryway floor and took a step back.

He listened closely for any further sounds. None came. He leaned closer to the bag. Still nothing. No more groans. Also, no shipping label. No name or address. Who’d delivered it to their house? Was it something his parents had ordered? There was no way to find out till they got home from work, and that wouldn’t be for hours.

In the meantime, he was stuck inside the house with his big sister. Did she know something about this? He doubted it. And if there was any fun to be had with the bag, she would surely put an end to it. Sometimes she treated her baby brother like he was an actual baby.

Zenith Maelstrom was eleven going on twelve. And the “going on” couldn’t go fast enough for him. He could not wait to grow up so everyone would stop bossing him around, especially his sister, Apogee. What he wouldn’t give to be the older sibling.

Zenith took a step closer to the bag. It was the size of a small suitcase, but shaped like an old-­fashioned doctor’s satchel. It felt old. It looked exhausted. It slouched there on the floor, unable to stand upright. The bag had bad posture.

The bag had bad skin as well. Or more accurately, bad skins. It was made of several types of animal hide. Some patches had the smooth appearance of finished leather, while others looked as though they’d been stripped directly off some exotic beast, bristled hair and all. One section sported rough reptilian scales. The various pelts were sewn together with heavy, haphazard stitches. This rough-­hewn exterior was adorned with an improbably elegant, but tarnished, brass clasp that ran the length of the bag’s opening. It had been fashioned to resemble the vines of a rosebush. A few rosebuds nestled among many sharp thorns.

Bad skin. Bad posture. General air of hostility. The bag reminded him of Kevin Churl, neighborhood braggart and one of Zenith’s least favorite people. Had Kevin sent the bag to him? Was this some sort of revenge for what’d happened on the pond in Kalikov Park? Delivered almost a year and a half later? It was a long time to hold a grudge, but still . . . Zenith scratched the scar hidden under the hair above his left ear, then caught himself and stopped. He decided this wasn’t Churl’s style. If Kevin were going to leave something on his doorstep, it would probably be a dog turd inside a flaming paper sack.

A heavy moan sounded from the bag as its metal-­rimmed mouth opened wide. Zenith grabbed his baseball bat from the corner and brandished it at the bag, waiting for whatever was inside to leap out.

Nothing leapt out. Whatever moaned must have been too tired to do any leaping. Or too hurt. Or too clever? Perhaps it was waiting for Zenith to stick his head into the opening so it could jump up and latch on to his face.

He decided to toss the bag back out the front door. Just as soon as he’d taken a quick look inside. He had to look inside. No doubt about that. His sister always said that Zenith was “as curious as a killed cat.” Apogee was clever, and unbeatable at most games and puzzles, but idioms often got the better of her.

Holding the bat in front of him, Zenith inched his way closer to the bag, leaned forward, and peered down inside. It was dark. He retreated and turned on the overhead light. He inched up on the bag again. Still dark. Darker than it should be with the light on. He stuck the bat into the bag and poked around, trying to rouse whatever might be lying coiled inside. All he found was the bottom and the four corners. He used the bat’s knob to hook the bag’s handle and shook it. Nothing. Doing exactly what he swore he wouldn’t, he stuck his head into the opening. Nothing latched on to his face. Nothing happened. Because there was nothing in the bag.

He dropped it to the floor and returned his bat to the corner. He was relieved. And disappointed. It was a pretty poor practical joke, whoever had pulled it. Absentmindedly, Zenith went to close the clasp and nicked his finger on one of the thorns. Just a pinprick, but deep enough to draw blood, a single drop of which fell into the bag’s open mouth.

Zenith let out a cry of pain.

The bag responded with a sigh of pleasure.

Zenith’s eyes went wide. He scrambled backward till he hit the wall.

The bag snapped shut, straightened up, and shivered with delight. A change of color rippled across its various skins. The bag’s entire surface became brighter. Awake was the word that popped into Zenith’s head.

Slowly, the bag’s mouth opened into a wide grin, and a terrible thing came crawling out.


The Terrible Thing

Zenith sat stupefied as one spindly black leg rose up from inside the bag and settled onto the floor. Then a second spindly black leg emerged. Then a third. A fourth. And then a fifth. And although Zenith thought to himself, Yes, I get the picture. You can stop right there, out came legs six through nine.

Mercifully, the legs stopped multiplying. They held still for a moment. But then all nine of them lifted a loathsome body out of the bag’s dark interior.

The creature looked like a coughed-­up hairball come to life. Its black body was the size of a large, misshapen melon. There was no identifiable head. The tangled hair that covered its body was coated in thick, sticky-­looking goo. Each leg consisted of a twisted black braid of this same stringy hair, with white flecks woven sporadically throughout. A larger group of the flecks had gathered at the bottom of each leg, where the hair was at its thinnest. Zenith thought they looked like square white pebbles in the toe of a threadbare sock, and only then realized what they actually were. The white flecks were toenails. Whole human toenails.

The thing took one tentative step forward, the toenails clicking as its leg touched the wood floor. Another more confident step followed, then another, and then—­skitter, skitter, skitter—­the creature ran toward Zenith at a frightening pace.

Zenith wanted it nowhere near him but was unable to move. His two legs (a pitiful number by comparison) were unable or unwilling to help him escape.

If the creature’s aim was to attack him, it was wide of the mark. It slammed into the wall a foot to Zenith’s right and stuck there, like a suction cup. It lifted two legs and pushed hard to free itself. The body slowly came away from the wall with a sickening shluuuurrp . . . pop! The creature was unprepared for its success, and stumbled backward toward the opposite wall. Wham! It hit and became stuck again. Shluuuurp . . . Pop! It came free and stumbled away, but this time it gained control of itself and stopped in the center of the front hall.

Zenith tensed, anticipating another attack. But the creature scuttled away from him and down the long hallway, deeper into the house.

This was enough to get Zenith’s own legs working again. He got up off the ground, grabbed the horrible bag, and ran down the hall in pursuit. He launched himself through the air, his arms and the upside-­down bag leading the way. The bag came down on top of the thing as he landed with a loud thud and a long slide across the wood floor. Zenith came to rest in the large archway that opened onto the living room, in full view of his big sister.


Big Sister

Luckily, Apogee was too immersed in the game on her phone to look up. She tapped furiously at the screen, scowling....

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Verlag
Penguin Workshop
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593519523
ISBN 13 
9780593519523
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
224
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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Softcover