I stared out the car window. We’d been riding on highways all day. Now we were driving on a narrow road through the swamp.

It was late afternoon. And the cypress trees began to cast long shadows over the marshy grass.

I stuck my head out the window. A blast of hot, humid air hit my face. I ducked back in and turned to Clark. His nose was buried in a comic book.

Clark is twelve—like me. He’s much shorter than I am. Much shorter. And he has curly brown hair, brown eyes, and tons of freckles. He looks exactly like Mom.

I’m kind of tall for my age. I have long, straight blond hair and green eyes. I look like Dad.

My parents divorced when I turned two years old. The same thing happened to Clark. My dad and his mom married each other right after our third birthdays, and we all moved into a new house together.

I like my stepmother. And Clark and I get along okay, I guess. He acts like a jerk sometimes. Even my friends say so. But I think their brothers act like jerks, too.

I stared at Clark.

Watched him read.

His glasses slid down his nose.

He pushed them up.

“Clark …” I started.

“Shhhh.” He waved his hand at me. “I’m at the good part.”

Clark loves comic books. Scary ones. But he’s not brave—so he’s always terrified by the time he finishes.

I glanced out the window again.

I stared at the trees. At the branches, all draped in long gray webs. They dangled from every tree—curtains of gray. They made the swamp look really gloomy.

Mom told me about the gray webs when we were packing this morning. She knows a lot about swamps. She thinks swamps are pretty—in a spooky sort of way.

Mom said the gray webs were actually a swamp plant that grew right on the trees.

A plant that grows on a plant. Weird, I thought. Definitely weird.

Almost as weird as Grandma and Grandpa.

“Dad, how come Grandma and Grandpa never visit us?” I asked. “We haven’t seen them since we were four.”

“Well, they’re a little strange.” Dad peered at me through the rearview mirror. “They don’t like to travel. They almost never leave their house. And they live so far back in the swamp, it’s very hard to visit them.”

“Oh, wow!” I said. “A sleepover with two strange old hermits.”

“Smelly, strange old hermits,” Clark mumbled, glancing up from his comic.

“Clark! Gretchen!” Mom scolded. “Don’t talk about your grandparents that way.”

“They’re not my grandparents. They’re hers.” Clark jerked his head toward me. “And they do smell. I can still remember it.”

I punched my stepbrother in the arm. But he was right. Grandma and Grandpa did smell. Like a combination of mildew and mothballs.

I sank deep into my seat and let out a loud yawn.

It seemed as if we’d been riding in the car for weeks. And it was really crowded back there—with me, Clark, and Charley kind of squished together. Charley is our dog—a golden retriever.

I pushed Charley out of the way and stretched out.

“Quit shoving him onto me!” Clark complained. His comic book dropped to the floor.

“Sit still, Gretchen,” Mom muttered. “I knew we should have boarded Charley.”

“I tried to find a kennel for him,” Dad said. “But no one could take him at the last minute.”

Clark pushed Charley off his lap and reached down for his comic. But I grabbed it first.

“Oh, brother,” I moaned when I read the title. “Creatures from the Muck? How can you read this garbage?”

“It’s not garbage,” Clark shot back. “It’s really cool. Better than those stupid nature magazines you read.”

“What’s it about?” I asked, flipping through the pages.

“It’s about some totally gross monsters. Half-human. Half-beast. They set traps to catch people. Then they hide under the mud. Near the surface,” Clark explained. He grabbed the comic from my hand.

“Then what happens?” I asked.

“They wait. They wait as long as it takes—for the humans to fall in their traps.” Clark’s voice started to quiver. “Then they force them deep into the swamp. And make them their slaves!”

Clark shuddered. He glanced out the window. Out at the eerie cypress trees with their long beards of gray.

It was growing dark now. The trees’ shadows shifted over the tall grass.

Clark lowered himself in his seat. He has a wild imagination. He really believes the stuff he reads. Then he gets scared—like now.

“Do they do anything else?” I asked. I wanted Clark to tell me more. He was really scaring himself good.

“Well, at night, the monsters rise up from the mud,” he went on, sliding down in his seat some more. “And they drag kids from their beds. They drag them into the swamp. They drag them down into the mud. No one ever sees the kids again. Ever.”

Clark was totally freaked now.

“There really are creatures like that in the swamp. I read about them in school,” I lied. “Horrible monsters. Half-alligator, half-human. Covered with mud. With spiky scales underneath, hidden. If you just brush against one, the scales rip the flesh right off your bones.”

“Gretchen, stop,” Mom warned.

Clark hugged Charley close to him.

“Hey! Clark!” I pointed out the window to an old narrow bridge up ahead. Its wooden planks sagged. It looked ready to crumble. “I bet a swamp monster is waiting for us under that bridge.”