How I Got My Shrunken Head

HOW I GOT MY
SHRUNKEN
HEAD

R.L. STINE

Have you ever played
Jungle King?
It’s a computer game, and it’s really cool. Unless you sink into a quicksand pit or get squeezed to death by the Living Vines.

You’ve got to be fast to swing from vine to vine without letting them curl around your body. And to grab the shrunken heads that are hidden under trees and bushes.

If you collect ten shrunken heads, you get an extra life. You need a
lot
of extra lives in this game. It’s not for beginners.

My friends Eric and Joel play
Jungle King
with me. They are twelve, like me. My sister, Jessica, is eight. She hangs around, but we don’t let her play. That’s because she always dives into the quicksand pits. She likes the
thwuck thwuck thwuck
sound it makes when your body is being sucked under.

Jessica just doesn’t get it.

“Mark, why can’t we play a different game?” Joel asked me.

I knew why he wanted to quit. He had just been trampled by a red rhino, the meanest kind.

Joel, Eric, and I were up in my room during our winter break from school, huddled around my computer. Jessica was on the window seat, reading a book. Sunlight poured over her, making her red hair sparkle.

“Kah-lee-ah!” I shouted as I picked up my eighth shrunken head.
Kah-lee-ah
is my jungle cry. It’s a word that popped into my head one day. I guess I made it up.

My face was two inches from the monitor screen. I ducked as spears came flying at me from behind a leafy fern.

“Kah-lee-ah!” I let out my battle cry as I picked up another shrunken head.

“Come on, Mark,” Eric pleaded. “Don’t you have any other games?”

“Yeah. Don’t you have any sports games?” Joel demanded. “How about
March Madness Basketball?
That’s a cool game!”

“How about
Mutant Football?”
Eric asked.

“I like
this
game,” I replied, keeping my eyes on the screen.

Why do I like
Jungle King
so much? I think it’s because I love swinging from vine to vine across the sky.

You see, I’m a little chubby. Actually, I’m short and chubby. I’m built sort of like the red rhinos.
And so I guess I like being able to swing so lightly, to fly above the ground like a bird.

Also, it’s an
awesome
game.

Joel and Eric don’t like it because I always win. In our first game this afternoon, an alligator chewed Joel in half. I think that put him in a bad mood.

“Do you know what game my dad bought me?” Joel asked.
“Battle Solitaire.”

I leaned closer to the screen. I had to get past the biggest quicksand pit. One slip, and I’d be sucked into the sandy slime.

“What kind of game is that?” Eric asked Joel.

“It’s a card game,” Joel told him. “You know. Solitaire. Only the cards fight each other.”

“Cool,” Eric replied.

“Hey, guys — I’m in a tough spot here,” I said. “Give me a break, okay? I’ve got to concentrate. I’m right over the quicksand pit.”

“But we don’t want to play anymore,” Eric complained.

I grabbed a vine. Swung hard. Then reached for the next one.

And someone bumped my shoulder. “Owww!”

I saw a flash of red hair and knew it was Jessica. She bumped me again and giggled.

I watched myself tumbling down on the screen. Sucked into the bottomless slime pit.

Thwuck thwuck thwuck.
I died.

I spun around angrily. “Jessica!”

“My turn!” She grinned at me, her wide, toothy grin.

“Now we have to start all over again!” I announced.

“No way,” Eric protested. “I’m going home.”

“Me, too,” Joel said, pulling his baseball cap lower on his forehead.

“One more game!” I pleaded.

“Come on, Mark. Let’s go outside,” Joel said, pointing to the bright sunshine pouring through the bedroom window.

“Yeah. It’s a great day out. Let’s throw a Frisbee or something,” Eric suggested. “Or get our skateboards.”

“One more game. Then we’ll go outside,” I insisted.

I watched them head out the door.

I really didn’t want to leave the jungle. I don’t know why I like jungles so much. But I’ve been really into jungles since I was a teeny kid.

I like to watch all the old jungle movies on TV. And when we were little, I used to pretend I was Tarzan, King of the Jungle. Jessica always wanted to play, too. So I let her be Cheetah, my talking chimpanzee.

She was very good at it.

But after she was six or seven, Jessica refused to be a chimp anymore. She became a full-time pest instead.

“I’ll play
Jungle King
with you, Mark,” she offered, after my two friends left.

“No way,” I replied, shaking my head. “You just want to take a dive into the quicksand pit.”

“No. I’ll play it right,” she promised. “I’ll try to win this time. Really.”

I was about to let her play when the doorbell rang downstairs.

“Is Mom home?” I asked, listening for her footsteps.

“I think she’s in the backyard,” Jessica replied.

So I hurried downstairs to answer the front door.
Maybe Eric and Joel changed their minds,
I thought.
Maybe they’ve come back for another round of
Jungle King.

I pulled open the front door.

And stared at the grossest thing I ever saw in my life.

I stared at a head.

A human head, wrinkled and leathery. About the size of a tennis ball.

The pale, dry lips were pulled back in a sneer. The neck was stitched closed with heavy black string. The eyes — solid black eyes — stared up at me.

A shrunken head. A real shrunken head.

I was so shocked, so totally
amazed
to find it at my front door, that it took me a long time to see the woman who was holding it.

She was a tall woman, about my mom’s age, maybe a little older. She had short black hair with streaks of gray in it. She wore a long raincoat buttoned to the top even though it was a warm, sunny day.

She smiled at me. I couldn’t see her eyes. They were hidden behind large black-framed sunglasses.

She held the shrunken head by the hair — thick black hair. Her other hand held a small canvas suitcase.

“Are you Mark?” she asked. She had a soft, smooth voice, like someone in a TV commercial.

“Uh … yeah,” I replied, staring at the shrunken head. They never looked so
ugly
in photos I’d seen. So wrinkled and dry.

“I hope I didn’t startle you with this thing,” the woman said, smiling. “I was so eager to give it to you, I took it out of my bag.”

“Uh …
give
it to me?” I asked, not taking my eyes off it. The head stared back at me with those glassy black eyes. They looked more like teddy-bear eyes than human eyes.

“Your aunt Benna sent it for you,” the woman said. “As a present.”

She held out the head to me. But I didn’t take it. I had spent all day collecting shrunken heads in the game. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to touch this one.

“Mark — who’s here?” My mom stepped up behind me. “Oh. Hello.”

“Hello,” the woman replied pleasantly. “Did Benna write and tell you I was coming? I’m Carolyn Hawlings. I work with her. On the island.”

“Oh, my goodness!” Mom exclaimed. “Benna’s letter must have gotten lost. Come in. Come in.”
She pulled me back so that Carolyn could enter the house.

“Look what she brought for me, Mom,” I said. I pointed to the small green head dangling by the hair from Carolyn’s hand.

“Yuck!” Mom cried, raising a hand to her cheek. “That isn’t real —
is
it?”

“Of course it’s real!” I cried. “Aunt Benna wouldn’t send a
fake
— would she?”

Carolyn stepped into the living room and set down her small suitcase. I took a deep breath. Worked up my courage. And reached for the shrunken head.

But before I could take it, Jessica swooped in — and grabbed it out of Carolyn’s hand.

“Hey!” I shouted, reaching for her.

She darted away, giggling, her red hair flying behind her. Holding the head in both hands.

But then she stopped.

Her smile faded. And she stared down at the head in horror.

“It bit me!” Jessica cried. “It
bit
me!”

I gasped. Mom squeezed my shoulder.

Jessica started to giggle.

One of her dumb jokes.

She tossed the head from hand to hand. And grinned at me. “You’re dumb, Mark. You’ll believe anything.”

“Just give me back my head!” I cried angrily. I dove across the living room and grabbed for it.

She started to pull it away — but I held on tightly.

“Hey — you scratched it!” I shrieked.

She did. I held the head up close to my face to examine it. Jessica had scratched a long white line on the right earlobe.

“Jessica — please,” Mom begged, crossing her arms and lowering her voice. That’s what Mom does when she’s about to get steamed. “Shape up. We have a guest.”

Jessica crossed her arms and pouted back at Mom.

Mom turned to Carolyn. “How is my sister Benna doing?”

Carolyn pulled off her sunglasses and tucked them into a raincoat pocket. She had silvery gray eyes. She looked older without the dark glasses on. I could see hundreds of tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.

“Benna is fine,” she replied. “Working hard. Too hard. Sometimes she disappears into the jungle for days.”

Carolyn sighed and started to unbutton her raincoat. “I’m sure you know Benna’s work is her life,” she continued. “She spends every minute exploring the jungles of Baladora. She wanted to come visit. But she couldn’t leave the island. So she sent me instead.”

“Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Carolyn,” Mom said warmly. “I’m sorry we didn’t know you were coming. But any friend of Benna’s is more than welcome.”

She took Carolyn’s raincoat. Carolyn wore khaki pants and a short-sleeved khaki shirt. It looked like a real jungle-exploring suit.

“Come sit down,” Mom told her. “What can I offer you?”

“A cup of coffee would be nice,” Carolyn replied. She started to follow Mom to the kitchen. But she stopped and smiled at me. “Do you like your present?”

I gazed down at the wrinkled, leathery head in my hands. “It’s beautiful!” I declared.

That night before going to bed, I placed the head on my dresser. I brushed its thick black hair straight back. The forehead was dark green and wrinkled like a prune. The glassy black eyes stared straight ahead.

Carolyn told me that the head was over one hundred years old. I leaned against the dresser and stared at it. It was so hard to believe that it had once belonged to a real person.

Yuck.

How had the guy lost his head?
I wondered.

And who decided to shrink it? And who kept it after it was shrunk?

I wished Aunt Benna were here. She would explain everything to me.

Carolyn was sleeping in the guest room down the hall. We had sat in the living room, talking about Aunt Benna all night. Carolyn described the work Aunt Benna was doing on the jungle island. And the amazing things she was finding there on Baladora.

My aunt Benna is a pretty famous scientist. She has been on Baladora for nearly ten years. She studies the animals in the jungle. And the plant life, too.

I loved listening to Carolyn’s stories. It was
as if my
Jungle King
computer game had come to life.

Jessica kept wanting to play with my shrunken head. But I wouldn’t let her. She had already put a scratch on its ear.

“It’s not a toy. It’s a human head,” I told my sister.

“I’ll trade you two of my Koosh balls for it,” Jessica offered.

Was she
crazy?

Why would I trade a valuable treasure like this for two Koosh balls?

Sometimes I worried about Jessica.

At ten o’clock, Mom sent me up to my room. “Carolyn and I have some things to talk about,” she announced. I said good night and made my way upstairs.

I changed into my pajamas and looked at the head on my dresser. Its dark eyes appeared to flash for a second when I turned out the lights.

I climbed into bed and pulled up the covers. Silvery moonlight washed into the room from the bedroom window. In the bright moonlight, I could see the head clearly, staring at me from the dresser top, bathed in shadows.

What a horrible sneer on its face,
I thought with a shiver.
Why is it locked in such a frightening expression?

I answered my own question:
You wouldn’t smile either, Mark, if someone shrunk your head!

I fell asleep staring at the ugly little head.

I slept heavily, without any dreams.

I don’t know how long I slept. But sometime in the middle of the night, I was awakened by a terrifying whisper.

“Mark … Mark …”