Riki takes revenge on Tasha for unfairly removing him from the school newspaper by posting a strange message. The message says to call Tasha if you are an ugly creature. However, there is a complication with the message that causes Riki to start receiving weird phone calls from kids claiming to be vile creatures. The author of the book is R.L. Stine, who is known as the "Stephen King of children's literature." He was born in 1943 in Ohio and began writing stories at a young age after finding a typewriter in his attic. R.L. Stine has sold over 400 million books as of 2008.