In this original short story from the New York Times bestselling thriller anthology Face Off, bestselling authors Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child team up with R.L. Stine for the first time ever, pitting enigmatic FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast against the most unusual villain he's ever faced - Stine's classic creation: Slappy the Ventriloquist Dummy.

First introduced in R.L. Stine's 400 million-copy bestselling Goosebumps series, Slappy is a dummy carved from coffin wood who boasts enormous strength and a sarcastic, sadistic personality. In contrast, Agent Pendergast is an elegant, intelligent man who never lets himself be ruffled by the particulars of an investigation. Yet when these two meet for the first time - at Stony Mountain Sanatorium - Pendergast is quite clearly out of his element and nothing is as it seems...

For more exciting short story pairings, don't miss all eleven short stories in Face Off!