Encounters Magazine 11

This publication copyright 2014 by Black Matrix Publishing LLC andindividually copyrighted by artists and individuals who have contributed to

this issue. All stories in this magazine are fiction. Names, characters andplaces are products of the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Anyresemblance of the characters to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely

coincidental. Encounters Magazine is published bimonthly by Black MatrixPublishing LLC, 1339 Marcy Loop Rd, Grants Pass, OR 97527. Our Web site:

www.blackmatrixpub.com

ABOUT OUR COVER ARTISTCANDRA HOPE

Candra Hope is a freelance illustrator who specialises in fantasy and horror. You can find more of her art here – http://www.ipernity.com/doc/628675/album/617231.

You can also contact her at [email protected].

http://www.ipernity.com/doc/628675/album/617231

ENCOUNTERS MAGAZINEVolume 03 July/August 2014 Issue 11

Table of Contents

BLOOD SPORT by Diana Corbitt – Page 5THE BOX by T.J. Koll – Page 36

OUTSIDE THE BOX by Holly Day – Page 54WATCHING PAINT DRY by Felicia A. Lee – Page 82THE DEVIL CAME TO ME AND BID ME SERVE HIM

by Douglas Lind – Page 123

PUBLISHER: Kim KenyonEDITOR: Guy Kenyon

From the Editor's Desk

Welcome to issue #11 of Encounters. We have experiencedsome delays in producing this issue as we made changes in ourcomputer systems and software. We've also been discussingsome additional improvements to the magazine in the comingmonths... more on that next issue. Meanwhile, enjoy the storieswe've collected for you this edition.

Issue #12 will be released in about a month. We havealready started wotking on it and have accelerated the date ofpublication to put us back on our regular schedule.

Don't forget to check our Facebook page at:https://www.facebook.com/pages/EncountersMagazineSFFantasyandHorror/580919448622951. We are going tostart regularly posting some info on books we receive, somerecommended reading and news of use to readers of ourfavorite genres.

Guy KenyonEncounters Magazine07/28/2014

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Encounters-Magazine-SF-Fantasy-and-Horror/580919448622951

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Encounters-Magazine-SF-Fantasy-and-Horror/580919448622951

ENCOUNTERS MAGAZINE Issue #11

BLOOD SPORTby Diana Corbitt

I slid down into the bubbling hot tub. Like a gator, theonly parts above the waterline were my eyes and the topof my head. Finally, a moment to myself.

“Tommy!” The clubhouse manager’s words echoed inthe all but empty lockerroom. “I’m heading out. Do youneed anything fore I go?”

The only thing I wanted was a fifth of Maker’s Mark,but Buck didn’t stock hard liquor. I shouted back, “Nothanks, man. I want to spend some time in the whirlpoolbefore I go. To relax, you know?”

“Okay, sure. Maybe that’s the best thing for you. I’ll letthe security guard know you’re still in there, ‘night, Tom.”

I held my breath and slid all the way under. What aday. I couldn’t have been more embarrassed if I’d steppedout onto the pitcher’s mound and pissed myself in front ofthirty thousand people. And you know what? That waspretty much what I’d done.

The Cubs had traded me to New York in one of thebiggest deals in major league history. I was supposed tobe the next Face of the Mets, their Ace, strong, durable,and consistent. And that’s what I was, too. Especiallyconsistent. I, Tommy Lindstrom, had consistently given upno less than six runs in each of my first five games.

My lungs began to ache. I needed to exhale. This wasn’thow I wanted to die, naked in a hot tub. I could imaginethe news report. “Hasbeen pitcher found dead in Jacuzzi,

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details at eleven.” I pushed myself upwards, gasping andsputtering. My God, I couldn’t even do that right.

I climbed out of the tub. If I slipped and hurt my back, Iwouldn’t have to pitch anymore. I gave a halfheartedchuckle, grabbed a towel, and picked my way towards thelocker room. No, not today. With the way my luck wasgoing, I’d probably end up paralyzed.

In front of each locker hung a freshly launderedpinstripe jersey with the player’s name and number on itsback. Mine too, Lindstrom, number seventeen. I rolled myeyes. Last season when I was with the Cubs, their storescouldn’t keep enough Lindstrom jerseys in stock. The Metsweren’t having that problem.

After a quick towel off, I slipped on some black boxerbriefs and looked at myself in a nearby mirror. Sure, Iwasn’t one of those big, cornfed farm boys, but nobodycared if I was skinny when I was striking out a dozenplayers a game. Should I try to bulk up? Lose weight?Everyone told me different.

I checked my watch. It was almost midnight, and Iwasn’t even dressed yet. I should head home. What Ireally wanted was to hop a plane back home to Oregon,maybe get a room in Newport and fall asleep listening tothe waves. Hell, I wasn’t pitching tomorrow thank God.―I wondered how many others felt the same way, playersas well as fans.

As I pulled on my jeans, I heard the door on the otherside of the lockerroom groan shut.

“Buck, did you forget something?”Footsteps echoed against tile, then faded. “Hey,” I called out. “Who’s in here?” My voice sounded

6


smaller than I’d have liked in the huge underground hall,and I was glad Marco wasn’t around to hear me. Marcowas my best friend, my catcher, and my roommate whenwe were on the road, but if he’d heard the way those lastwords had squeaked out of me, the entire team would berolling all over the dugout floor tomorrow morning.

I stood still and listened. All I heard was the "drip, drip,drip" of a leaky faucet.

Well, somebody had come in. I padded barefoot aroundthe section of lockers that blocked my view of the door.Nothing. Just Mets blue walls and a bunch of framedbaseball jerseys. Strange, how a place that’s usually funand full of energy can feel so creepy without people in it. Idecided it was probably just the security guard andheaded back to my locker. I was wrong.

Somehow he’d gotten past me, this guy, down at theend of the locker room. I couldn’t see his face, just thebrown ponytail dangling down the back of one of thosetacky Hawaiian shirts all the teams sold. I stared,fascinated, as the guy ran his fingers across the letters ofManny Galzarga’s jersey.

I took a fighting stance, ready to interrupt his fun.“Hey, man. How’d you get in here?”

The guy squeaked and spun around, a sun grayed Metshat clutched to his chest. At no more than fivefeet,sixinches tall in his blue flipflops and matching socks, heseemed harmless enough, as well as a lousy dresser.

“Oh, maaah gosh,” he drawled. “Why you’re TahsonLindstrom.” Teeth like corn niblets grinned out at mefrom beneath chubby round cheeks.

I couldn’t help but smile back. The guy was harmless, a

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lump. The only exercise this fortysomethingyearold hickever got was moving between the sofa and the fridge.

Couch potato or not, he had no business in our lockerroom, so I narrowed my eyes and gave him a steely look.My pitching face. “Dude, I asked you a question. How’dyou get past the security guard?”

“I’m sorry, Mistah Lindstrom. I waited inside a storagecloset until the guard left his desk. Please don’t call him.I’m not dangerous. Why… I’m your biggest fan.”

I never liked southern drawls, and this guy was slowerthan a stutterer in a spelling bee, so I crossed my arms,hoping to come off tough. “That’s nice, man, but you can’tbe in here.”

His brow crinkled. Was he really going to cry?Seriously?

“Oh, paleeez. I’ve come all the way from Mississippijust to show you this.” A smug grin spread across theman’s cheeks as he drew the sleeve of his Hawaiian shirtup, exposing a doughy white bicep and the most amazingtattoo.

It was me. Dressed in Mets whites and poised in mysignature windup, you could see every feature, down tothe birthmark on my cheek. I let go a soft whistle.

“Ain’t it fine?” I didn’t know what to say. I mean, it was class work,

but that didn’t give him the right to fondle people’sjerseys, and where was that stupid security guard, Willy?He was supposed to prevent stuff like this.

The guy took a tentative step forward. “Ahh love theMets, Mr. Lindstrom. Y’all are my favorite team, and youare my favorite player. And don’t you worry about your

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performance no more. I have a strong feeling things aregoing to change for the better real soon.

My scowl softened. Finally, somebody that appreciatedmy efforts.

“Please …” The little fellow offered me his Mets hat.“I’d be honored if you would autograph this.”

Since that was the best thing to happen to me all day,like an idiot, I took it.

“Sure,” I said, completely dropping my guard. Since Ididn’t have a pen on me I said, “Why don’t you follow meback to my locker? I’ll autograph your lid and we can getout of here.” It was a decision that would change my life,as well as my career.

“Oh, that would be great, thanks, Mister Lindstrom.”I grinned. “So, what’s your name, anyway?”“Orson Robbert Honeywell the third but most folks―

call me Obby.” “Obby…That’s different.” I turned and headed toward

my locker. “Well, right this way, Ob ” ―Before I could even get the guy's name out, Obby had

grabbed my wrists and pinned both my arms behind myback. With the other hand, he grabbed hold of my hairand yanked my head backwards, exposing my throat.

Naturally, I panicked. Hell, I let loose a shriek louderthan a ten year old girl at a Justin Bieber concert. Anyonewould have. The guy had me bent backward, in a “dip,”like we’d been dancing the tango or something. And theweirdest part was… he was smiling. Not an evil smile; afriendly one. The way a guy looks at somebody he reallyadmires.

“I was serious about being your biggest fan, Tommy.

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You don’t mind if I call you that …Tommy?” My eyes must have been popping out of my head,

because Obby’s grip relaxed and he blew a loose strand ofhair from my eyes. “You need to calm down, Kid. Youcould hurt yourself.”

With blood pooling in my head, my temples throbbed.“Let me go!” I shouted. “Willy! Security!” Of course I triedto break loose, but it was like a gorilla holding a kitten.My legs were still free, though, and I kicked them out inevery direction, but all I managed to do was knock over acouple of folding chairs.

Obby glanced from side to side and shrugged. “Darn,looks like Willy’s not coming.”

Never one to give up, I filled my lungs and screamedwith everything I had.

He frowned. “Come on, Tommy, stop it.”But I wouldn’t give up, at least not until Obby cranked

up the pressure on my arms. It felt like hot lead againstmy skin. My words switched from calls for help to criesfor mercy.

Obby loosened his grip, and as I sobbed my thanks, hepetted me. “Come on, Tom. If you promise not to fight itanymore I’ll let go of your hands. Would you like that?”

Cow eyed, I nodded.He smiled, and teeth which moments ago I’d thought

were short and stubby, now seemed a tiny bit longer. I squashed my eyelids together, done with looking.“Hey,” he joked, "there’s no crying in baseball.” I felt

pudgy fingers wipe away my tears. All the while, my brainsparked and sputtered like cheap sparklers on the fourthof July.

10


Obby’s words tickled my left ear, “Tommy, for a longtime I’ve had this gift that I’ve wanted to offer one of theplayers on your team and after watching you pitch tonightI’ve decided that you need it more than anyone else.”

I was too freaked out to understand what he wastalking about, so when I didn’t jump on his offer, heshook me. “Come on, now. What I’m offering is thesolution to all of your pitching problems. Don’t you wantthat?”

My eyes were still shut, and I forced them open. I don’tknow what I expected. Madness? Evil? Except for a coupleof slightly long teeth, I saw none of that. In fact, Obbylooked like a pretty decent guy.

What could I say, No? I smiled weakly, perspirationbeading on my face. “Okay… sure.”

“Well, okay then.” Obby grinned, and the teeth I’dconsidered a tiny bit long stretched and grew pointed,catlike.

My shrieks echoed throughout the locker room as acombination of searing white heat and ecstasy pierced mythroat. Obby pulled my head even further down, archingmy back into a position I never would have thoughtpossible. Within seconds, my vision left me, along withmy hearing and all sense of pain. The throbbing pulse inmy neck became my world, and I felt the blood leave me,draining away to a trickle. This was a gift? A metallicsmell overwhelmed me, and I shuddered as I recognizedthe scent of my own death.

But instead of death, I tasted sweetness. Somethingmore delicious than any food I had ever known drippedonto my tongue, and with every drop of the coppery

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liquid my strength and senses returned.“Atta boy, drink. It’ll make you strong.” My eyes blinked open to find Obby smiling down on me

as a gaping slash in his throat rained blood into mymouth. Sure, his breath smelled like moldy hotdogs, but Ididn’t care. I drank.

With the front of my previously white tshirt nowsoaked winered, I slumped into the folding chair in frontof my locker, not sure of what I’d just experienced. Stilldazed, I watched Obby press together the flaps of raggedflesh on his neck. With a few quick touches, the gash he’dtorn open with a fingernail vanished before my eyes,leaving only bloody fingerprints, which he wiped awaywith my bath towel.

“Tommy, do you understand the gift I’ve given you?”“I’m not sure.” I raised bloody hands to my face, half

disgusted, half fascinated. “It feels dumb saying it outloud, but I think you turned me into a vampire.”

“Yup, that’s right. And as a vampire, you will nevergrow old and never lose your skills. In fact, they’ll besharpened.”

“Sounds great, Obby…” I cut my eyes at him… “But Iwish you would have explained that before you sunk yourfangs into my neck.”

Obby shuffled his feet. “You said you wanted it.”This? I tore my gaze from the stream of blood making

its way down my wrist and formed my lips into a bloodyslash. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t exactly in any position toargue, Obby. And what the hell happened to that stupid

12


southern accent? Was that all a puton too?”Obby smiled proudly. “Yeah, did you like it?” Now, he

sounded like anybody else in Brooklyn. “Thought it wouldmake me less threatening.”

I chuffed. “Oh, it was awesome, and yeah, you werecompletely nonthreatening … up until you attacked me.”

“Well, there’s no going back, and although we haveeternity to discuss this …” Obby checked his watch. “…right now we’re kind of in a hurry. Lots to do before thesunrise.” He gave his hair a tug and ponytail and all cameaway in his hand. A wig. When my jaw fell open he gaveme an embarrassed shrug and ran a hand through short,black hair.

I shook my head hard. The whole thing was crazy. “Me,a vampire? Will I have to sleep in a coffin?” I sprang frommy chair, a blur. “Whoa! That was crazy fast.”

For the next couple of minutes, I zipped from one endof the locker room to the other, practicing my new skill.Obby didn’t seem to mind, in fact, the look on his facereminded me of my dad right after he taught me how toride a bike. “Hey, Kid, you asked about the coffin.”

I lasered over to him. “Yeah, that’s right. What aboutit?”

Obby waved the idea off. “No need for it. I mean someof the elder vampires use them, but it’s more like an oldschool thing than a necessity. All you really need is a safeplace to sleep during the day, someplace dark wherenobody will bother you.”

“So, no coffins…no boxes…?”“No, none of that stuff.”“Well, that’s good. My apartment should be okay then,

13


right?”“Well, I haven’t checked it out yet, but I’m sure it’ll be

fine.”The implications flooded my mind, and once again, my

eyes grew wide. “Holy shit, I have to drink peoples’ bloodnow, don’t I?”

Obby gave my shoulder a reassuring pat. “Yeah, but I’llcoach you on everything. First, we need to clean up thismess, and you need to call your manager.”

I gazed around at the blood spattered tile floor and thechairs and jerseys I’d knocked over with my thrashing. “Iget the part about the mess, but if I call Blain Bradshaw atone o’clock in the morning to tell him I’m a vampire, he’lljust think I’m drunk.”

“Tell him you’re a vampire?” Obby chuckled. “Oh, hellno, I just want you to tell him there’s been an emergencyand that you aren’t coming in until late, say eight or so?”

Relieved, I pulled out my cell phone. Even withouthaving to tell Brad the truth, the conversation would stillbe awkward. As I waited for Brad to pick up, I pointedtowards a door on the opposite wall. “You should findeverything we need to clean this mess inside that room.”

Obby nodded, but made no move toward the storagecloset.

After I hung up, I turned to Obby. “Why didn’t you getthe stuff?”

“There’s something else we need to take care of first.”He walked in the direction of the exit door. “Hungry?”

I grinned and slipped the phone back into my pocket.“Yeah, now that you mention it, I’m starved.”

“Great, let’s go find that security guard.”

14


Willy was in the restroom, but not in the way Ienvisioned him. The linemansized guard sat slumpedover the toilet in one of the stalls. Unlike the last time Isaw him, Willy wasn’t wearing his badge. In fact, hewasn’t even wearing his shirt.

“What the hell, Obby? I’m not gay.” Obby smirked. “Oh, that. I took it off him. Being that

this is your first time, things might get a little messy.” Hiding my relief, I nodded and turned my attention to

my first victim. Barely conscious, a tiny sparkling streamthe color of ripe cherries trickled down the side of Willy’sthick, bull neck.

It was beautiful, but the scent was even better. Iwhispered, “His blood…it kind of smells like…gingerbread.”

“Yeah, isn’t it great?” Obby stepped into the stall, andwith little effort, propped Willy into an upright position.“Smells better than fresh baked cookies.”

I crossed my arms. “So…how do we do this?” Althoughthe scent of blood enticed me, the sight of the guy sittinghalf naked on a toilet was distracting to say the least.

Willy’s eyes fluttered.“Oh, man...” I slumped against the orange, metal

partition. “This is ridiculous, I can’t do this… and it stinksin here.”

“Yeah, I know. Your sense of smell has intensified too,but this is nothing. I’ve smelled gas station johns thatmake this one smell like a flower shop.” Obby waved meon. “Don’t worry, Tom. Just step in closer. You’ll figure itout.”

15


Willy’s legs stuck out in a “V”. I shuffled in betweenthem and like my first day in the majors, I had no cluewhat I was doing.

But Obby was right, and as soon as I got close enoughsomething inside my mouth clicked, and two razorsharp“vampire teeth” extended downward.

“See that?” Obby grinned. “It’s the equivalent to havingyour mouth water when you see a plate of fried chicken.”

Nodding dreamily, I ran my tongue across their tips,testing their sharpness, and the disgusting reek of themen’s room faded along with the rest of the world. BeforeI was just hungry. Now I was ravenous.

Obby stood back. “Go ahead, drink. It’s pretty much justlike the movies in that respect.”

I widened my stance and leaned in, grasping the man’sshoulders. With only a thin layer of skin to protect it, theartery on Willy’s neck throbbed, hypnotizing me with itsconstant rhythm. Blood. Blood.

I could hear it, and boy could I smell it. I licked my lips.You’d think I was looking at Tbone steak. Still, Ihesitated.

“I don’t want to kill him, Obby.” “That’s the difference between reality and movies, Kid.

Just get started. We’re in kind of a hurry, so I’ll explain asyou go.”

I bent closer, and the succulent aroma drew me in,removing all doubt. Piercing the skin like so manyneedles, my teeth slipped easily into Willy’s throat, and Igulped his blood, a hungry lion.

It was even better than drinking from Obby. Not somuch the taste, but the bond created between me and the

16


living being I held in my arms. As the man’s veryexistence poured into me, Obby’s voice kept me focused.“Okay, the flow has to be slowing now. Do you feel it?”

I opened my eyes and nodded slightly, careful not torip the hole in Willy’s throat any larger than I already had.Obby was right about the mess. Blood covered the entirebottom half of my face, and you could forget about Willy’schest.

“When you feel it slow, that’s when you need to stop.Pull out now, Tommy.”

With a sigh, I let go, and my fangs retracted. Obby nipped the tip of his finger and wiped the blood

over the gash I’d made on Willy’s neck, erasing it. “There’slesson two.”

I nodded. “Handy.”“Yeah. Oh, here’s an even better trick.” Obby turned

back to Willy and patted the man’s cheek. “Willy, wakeup.”

Willy’s eyes blinked open and he grinned up at Obby.“Heeeeeey … how you doing?”

“Pretty good, Willy. Hey, I’ve got something importantto tell you, so look at me now, okay?”

“Sure, sure.” The security guard blinked groggily.“Willy, you aren’t going to remember any of this,

okay?”“Any of what?”Obby ignored the question. “You fell asleep on the job,

Willy. Say it.”“I fell asleep on the job.” “And you feel a little bit guilty.” “Sure. I was bad.” Willy’s brow furrowed.

17


“Yeah, but that’s okay, because everything’s going to begreat.”

“It’s going to be great?” The big man’s smile returned.“Yeah, it is, so go back to sleep now, okay?”“Okay…” With Obby’s comforting words, Willy nodded

off immediately, and in a few seconds he was snoringsoftly against the tile wall.

“Hey look,” I said, amazed at how easily Obby hadinfluenced the big man. “He’s smiling.”

Obby nodded and glanced down at my bloodsoakedshirt. “You know, that thing’s already ruined. Why don’tyou take it off and wipe up this mess?”

After we’d dressed Willy and placed him back behindhis desk, we straightened up the lockerroom. Obby threwthe bloody towels and clothes in one of the washingmachines used for cleaning the team’s uniforms, and weheaded out to the field.

I sighed, still dizzy from my new reality. Life is weird.One minute I’m thinking about killing myself, and thenext, I’m a baby vampire carrying a bucket of balls downa tunnel at two o’clock in the morning.

You might not believe it, but I was actually happy aboutthe way things were going. I mean, I didn’t have agirlfriend or any real family. Besides the guys on theteam, I had no real friends either. And Obby was a coolguy. I decided to tell him.

“You know, becoming a vampire would have been adrag if I had to kill people every day, but this isn’t sobad.”

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“Vampires are good people, Kid. It’s the media that’sgiven us such a bad reputation. Folks are raised on allthat movie garbage and they think it’s all true. Willy willjust wake up sprawled across his desk and think he caughtsome flu bug. Sure, he’ll feel a little weak for a day or so,but since he wasn’t caught sleeping on the job, he’ll justcount his blessings and put it behind him.”

I drew in the night air and smiled. “I can live with that.”The ramp leading up to the Mets’ dugout came into

view at the end of the tunnel, so I stopped. “Dude, I haveno idea where the electrical panel is for the field lights.How are we going to see anything?”

Obby stood aside and waved me through. “Oh, I thinkyou’ll see all right.”

Talk about an understatement. The walk to the pitcher’smound left me breathless or at least it would have if I―still needed air.

“Whoa. Everything is like high definition … better …like Bluray!”

“Hell, Kid, what you are experiencing is just the tip ofthe iceberg. You’re going to love being a vampire.”

I stared up at the empty seats, amazed at how clearly Icould see every scratch and scrape, even up in thenosebleed section. Even though I no longer needed air tosurvive I still had my sense of smell, and I spun in circles,taking in a thousand scents. “Not only can I smell thegrass and the dirt, but other things too, like those giantpretzels they make up on the third deck, and ew! The―dumpsters out back, and they emptied those hours ago.”

Like an indulgent father, Obby smiled and nodded.“Yeah, sorry about the garbage. After a while, you’ll learn

19


to block that out.” I stared in the direction of the right field bleachers.

“Look at that, “I said, pointing. “See that red brickbuilding out there across the street? Check out the far leftwindow on the top floor.”

“What about it?”“The curtains are open. I can see inside.”“So?” Obby grinned and followed my gaze.“There, on the far wall, the bookcase with the bowling

trophy on the top shelf.” “Yeah, I see it.” Obby chuckled and squeezed my

shoulder. “That trophy has a little plaque at the bottom.Tell me what it says.”

I squinted and then grinned. “Most Improved Bowler,2008.”

“That’s my boy.” We highfived, pleased with ourachievements, then Obby headed towards home platewith the radar gun. “Now, let’s see how being a vampiretranslates into your pitching.”

I stepped onto the mound and adjusted my glove. “Oh,we forgot to bring you a catcher’s mitt.”

Obby aimed the radar gun my way. “That’s okay. Justfocus on throwing it into my hand. If you can see thetrophy, you can surely see that.”

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll get hurt? I could throw prettyfast before, so now I should ”―

“Son, I’ll be six hundred and fiftythree years old nextmonth. Nothing you can throw is going to hurt me. But…”He held up his right hand and smiled. “…I can’t say thesame for your regular catcher.”

I dug a ball out of the bucket and looked at it with my

20


new, vampire eyes. Everything about it mesmerized me: asmudge of dirt, the contrast in texture and color, even theway the red thread snaked its way through the holes,joining those two peanut shaped leather strips togetherand forming my favorite thing on Earth. A baseball. Butthis wasn’t just any old ball. The beauty of it was soinfinite, you would think I was examining it under amicroscope. I held it to my nose, and the images of adozen players came to me as clearly as if they werestanding there in front of me.

“Come on, Tommy. We’re burning moonlight.”I woke up from my little trance and grinned. “Sorry, it’s

just that ”―“You don’t have to explain it to me, Kid. After all these

years, I still catch myself doing it from time to time,especially in museums. Remind me to tell you about whenI looked at one of Van Gogh’s landscapes up close. Guardhad to drag me away.” He squatted down behind theplate. “Now put on your game face and let’s see whatyou’ve got.”

“Okay,” I told him, doing a few stretching exercises.“I’m going to throw a few easy ones, just to warm up.” AsI went into my windup, I worried that Obby might not beable to handle my throws. I mean the guy was a talker,but he’d never caught a fastball from a big leaguer before,and on my best days I’d been known to hit ninetyfive.

I threw him an easy lob, seventy tops, and my jawdropped. Watching Obby catch a ball was like watching apraying mantis snag a mosquito.

Obby ignored me and looked at the radar gun. “Not badfor starters. You hit ninetysix.”

21


“Ninetysix? Seriously? I thought I…” This vampirething was looking better and better.

And forget about pulling a muscle, Kid. You can’t do it,so let’s quit fooling around. As my old friend, SatchelPaige, used to say, put a little mustard on it.”

Okay, if he wanted mustard, I’d give him mustard. Ireached back and gave him all I had. The ball surgedforward, smacking Obby’s waiting hand into his chestwith a crack that echoed across the field and knocked himbackward into the dirt, sending the radar gun flying.

Holy shit, had I killed him? Had the ball actually goneinto his chest?

I stood there, unsure of what to do. Calling 911 didn’tseem like an option, and I didn’t know any othervampires. I trotted across the grass to find a flat on hisback Obby grinning up at the stars. He sat up, flexed hishand, and reached across the dirt for the radar gun. “Nowthat’s what I’m talking about, oneseventyfour. It put anice little tingle into my fingers, and I didn’t have to movethe glove one inch.”

“Oneseventyfour?” I slammed my glove into the dirt.“Hell, yeah! Let’s go again. I bet I can get it up tooneeighty, or maybe even two hundred.”

Looking half as pleased as I expected him to, Obbydropped the radar gun and walked over to me. “Tommy,you know you can’t throw that way in front of people.”

“Aw, man! I mean, I know you’re right, but ”―“ But you ― can throw a hundred, maybe even a

hundred and eight. Aroldis Chapman threw 106 for theReds not too long ago, so there’s no reason you can’tthrow 107. You could have the record, Kid.”

22


At the thought of owning the world’s record, Ibrightened. “Oh, man, that would be so awesome.”

“That’s the attitude I’m looking for.” Obby slapped meon the back. “Now let’s throw a few more, just to get yourspeed and accuracy down. Then we’ll call it a night.Dawn’s coming and you need your sleep.”

I’d turned my nose up at Obby’s suggestion that weboth sleep under the bed. Big mistake. After eight hoursclosed up with fiftyoddpairs of shoes, I threw open thecloset door and thrashed my way out into the bedroom,ready to admit my mistake. I bent down beside the bedand found nothing under there but my old glove andsome more baseballs.

Where was he? For a few seconds, I panicked. What ifObby had ditched me? Left me to figure out this wholevampire thing by myself? A million thoughts whirledthrough my mind, but just as I was about to scream, myvampire senses kicked in, and from all the way down thehall and half way across the living room, I heard hisfootsteps crossing the carpet on his way towards thebalcony. Compared to that, the actual sound of the bigglass door sliding open was like nails on a chalkboard.

Relieved, I grabbed my cell phone and called mydecorator. After a bit of negotiation, she promised I’dhave extra thick curtains covering my bedroom windowsin less than 48 hours. I smiled. No more closets for me.Soon I would be sleeping in my bed instead of under it.

I found Obby out on the balcony watching the final raysof sunlight drop behind the concrete horizon of Chicago.

23


It was almost eight. Once all the light had gone, we stepped back inside.

Usually, I reserved the black leather LaZBoy for myself,but I decided to leave it for Obby. Instead, I flopped downonto the sofa and searched for the baseball I kept hiddenbetween the cushions. Despite how well the wholevampire pitcher thing was working out, a few things stillbothered me.

“Hey,” I said, flipping the baseball back and forth. “Uh,do you mind if I ask you some questions?”

Obby sat forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped. “I’dbe surprised if you didn’t. Shoot.”

“First of all, what the hell am I supposed to tell peoplewhen they ask me why I can’t come out in the daylightanymore?”

“Tell them you were turned into a vampire.”Not amused, I tipped my head to the side and waited.Obby chuckled. “Okay, tell them you’ve come down

with a rare skin allergy, and sunlight gives you a rash.You’ve had it for a while, but it’s gotten worse.”

It was a believable excuse. Hopefully Obby wouldanswer all my questions as easily. “But some of the gamesare during the day. How am I going to pitch then?”

“You’re not. You’re only pitching night games. You’re ona fiveman rotation. They’ll see how phenomenal youpitch now and make concessions. In fact, there’s noreason you can’t pitch every other day, or even two orthree games in a row. It’s bizarre, but not illegal. You’llpractice at night too. When a guy throws like you do,they’ll work with him. Believe me.”

“Okay, that’s probably true, but even night games start

24


before sunset. What do we do then?” Obby pursed his lips and looked back out the window.

“Well, I…uh…”“You didn’t think about that, did you, Obby?” I sprang

to my feet, hands clenched. I was screwed. The stupidlittle man had ruined my life.

“Well, I ”―If I had a stake, I would have stabbed it through his

chest. Instead, I just yelled, “No, you just thought, ‘Hey,Tommy’s struggling with his pitching. Maybe I’ll run downthere and turn him into a vampire. That’ll make things allbetter.’”

Obby followed me as I paced the room. “Well, didn’t it?Your contract is up at the end of the season. The way youwere throwing, you’d be traded for sure, and who knowsif another team would pick you up.”

“Yeah, but who cares if I can pitch better if I can’t goout there to do it! You know, your planning sucks! I’d betmy paycheck you’ve got ADHD!”

Obby turned me around to face him. “You’re right. Ididn’t think it all through, but don’t worry, I’ll come upwith something.” He sat back down on the LaZBoy andstared at the blank screen of my sixty inch TV.

While he stared at the TV, I stared at Obby.After five minutes, he jumped up and took off down the

hall towards the bedroom, his words floating back to me.“Don’t worry, Tommy. I’ve got this.”

“Don’t worry?” I looked down at the forgotten baseballin my hand. Without knowing it, I’d squeezed the thinginto a clump of leather, yarn and cork. I carried the messinto the kitchen and tossed it in the garbage. It was my

25


career we were talking about. How could I not worry?Out of habit, I opened the door to the refrigerator.

Inside were mostly condiments... mayo, ketchup, alongwith five eggs, a package of bacon, three beers, and twoStyrofoam takeouts. From the bedroom, I could hear thesound of drawers sliding in and out, one after the other.What the hell was he doing in there?

I was still staring into the refrigerator when Obbyreturned, all smiles. He peeked over my shoulder at thefood. “You should probably clean that stuff out before itgoes bad. Keep the beer and mayo for appearances sake.”

I slammed the door shut and the refrigerator bangedinto the wall behind it. “So what am I going to do in thefirst innings, Obby when the sun is still out? Did you―find the answer in my sock drawer?”

“Actually, it was in the closet.” Obby grinned and heldup a black and green ski mask.

“You’re kidding.” I rolled my eyes.“Just till the sun goes down, then you can take it off.

This one here is temporary, like a prototype. The teamwill get one custom made for you, team colors andeverything, gloves and sunglasses too.”

“You’re serious? But I’ll look like a Mexican Wrestler.Everybody will laugh at me.”

“No, they won’t. The fans will love it. In a month they’llbe selling Tommy Lindstrom masks alongside those bigfoam hands and teeshirts. Fans will eat it up, you watch.”

I slumped against the refrigerator door. “You’d betterbe right.”

“I know I am.” Obby tossed the mask onto the counter.“We have some time before you have to be at the park.

26


Anything you want to do?”“Yeah, eat.”

It took a bit of convincing, but after some instructionsand a lot of promises, Obby let me go on my first hunt. Ichose the alley behind my apartment. A week ago therewas no way I’d have stuck a toe out there, especially afterdark. Now I belonged to it. With a black hoodie and darkglasses hiding my face, I lurked in the shadows waitingfor the right victim to cross my path. Talk about a changein lifestyles.

After a couple of minutes I heard voices, a group ofwomen out on the town. The smell of pineapple and rumreached my nose long before they passed the alley. Icrouched behind a dumpster, checked my watch, andwaited.

A few cars drove by. After a bit, the sound of footstepscame to me. I tensed, ready to pounce. It was a woman. Ilicked my lips. Not only was she alone, she was cute andsmelled like peaches. Probably some sort of businesswoman by the cut of her charcoal blazer and tight, blackskirt.

In a flash, I was on her. In less than that, I’d pulled herback into the alley, already drinking her blood. Ah, shewas yummy, better than Willy for sure. Did women tastebetter than men? What if they were good looking? Ilooked forward to testing my theories.

As this was my first solo flight, I was a little nervous. I’dnever killed anyone before and I sure wasn’t going to startnow.

27


As I drank, I ran my fingers through her long,strawberry blond hair. So pretty.

Obby’s warning came back to me, and I got back tobusiness and focused on her pulse, the power behind eachheartbeat. I would have to pull out soon…soon… but notyet.

“Hey! What the hell are you doing to that girl?” I looked up. The guy was big, at least six foot four, and

he was coming right at me. I let the girl’s head drop, andshe fell back against my arm, a ragdoll, her eyes closed.Even to me she looked dead. At least she wasn’t coveredin blood. Obby had straightened me out on that.

“Just a second, I’ll be right with you.” I pulled the girlinto a seated position against the wall. Her skirt hadridden up high on her thighs, and, nice guy that I am, Ipulled it back into position.

Using my super speed, I met him halfway down thealley, and in seconds he was mine. I watched, fascinatedas the giant strained against me, a roped calf, eyes likegolf balls, veins bulging. I controlled whether he lived ordied. The power was intoxicating. Why not drink himtoo? The girl was small, and anyway, I needed thepractice.

As I drank, I considered my theory. Sure, this guytasted fine, but not nearly as good as the girl, anddifferent from Willy, too. Did cultural background make adifference? How about blood type? Team affiliation? Thisone wore a blue Mets jersey. Did that matter? I would askObby when I got back to the apartment.

Drunk with power and engrossed by all the newquestions, I had allowed myself to drink longer than I

28


should have. I searched for a pulse. It was weak, butbetter than none at all.

What the hell was I going to do now?I reached for my cell, but stopped when I remembered

Obby and I hadn’t exchanged numbers. Shit.A deep, Hispanic voice brought me back to reality.

“Hey, asshole, let go of Ruben!” Three men had entered the alley. Like Ruben, they

were all dressed in Mets gear. One of the reasons I’dpicked my apartment was that it was only a few blocksfrom CitiField. On game days it was common for ticketholders to park their cars in one of the cheaper lots downthe street and walk to the park from there.

Handling one guy was easy, maybe even two, but threewas another story. I let Ruben slide to the ground andstraightened. Since I wasn’t sure what to do, I didnothing.

The new arrivals stepped closer, cornering me against awall. They must have stopped at more than one bar ontheir way to the yard, because they reeked of beer, chips,and two kinds of guacamole. If I’d been on my toes, I’dhave smelled them from a block away. God, I felt stupid. Iprayed the darkness would keep my identity a secret.

Not so.“Holy shit, it’s Tommy Lindstrom!” Mister Observant

was pretty big, but nothing like the one behind him, abeast at least as tall as the first guy and twice as wide.

Things were getting complicated. Moving on legs the size of telephone poles, The Beast

brushed past the other two. “Let’s kick his ass, guys.”The smallest, still bigger than me, picked up a broken

29


twobyfour. “Yeah, then we’ll take his picture and post iton YouTube.”

I readied myself for the fight, hoping my new strengthand speed would be enough for them, but just then, agust of wind blew down the alley, lifting a sheet of oldnewspaper into the air. As the three men watched thepaper flutter to the ground, Obby, moving at a speed thatonly a vampire could see, slammed one into the wall,knocking him unconscious.

The beast, he popped in the jaw, dropping him to thepavement like a massive sack of laundry. Once I got overmy shock, I took hold of the third man and whacked hisforehead against the side of the dumpster. Now I had fivebodies to deal with.

I looked at the short, ponytailed man in wide wonder.“Holy shit, Obby, sure glad to see you. You read my mind,right? Knew I needed help?”

Obby smacked me in the back of the head. “Shit, no,that’s another one of those stupid urban legends thehumans made up. I followed you. You didn’t really thinkI’d let a rookie like you hunt all by himself, did you?”

I shrugged, embarrassed at how badly things hadworked out.

Obby patted me on the back. “No worries. Just help meget these people out of sight. The last thing we need isanother Curious George coming back here to join theparty.”

Between the two of us, we soon had all four men, aswell as the pretty lady seated side by side against the wallof the building.

“Sorry for being such a pain, Obby. Should I have

30


dragged the girl further back into the alley?”“For starters. Guess you got excited, huh?”I would have blushed if I were still alive. ―“Oh, it’s my fault. I should have explained to you about

not hunting where you live. Jesus, Kid. Your apartment isright there. Couldn’t you have gone a few blocks beforeyou grabbed one?”

“I’m sorry, Obby. I feel like a dope. Now what do wedo?” I pointed. “I kind of got carried away with that guythere.”

Obby stepped closer and sniffed. “Well, at least he’s stillalive. Open up your arm.”

“What are you talking about?”“Take your finger nail and open a vein. If he’s going to

survive, he needs vampire blood.” Obby glanced down thealley and pushed me aside. “Like this, watch.”

To my surprise, instead of cutting his own arm, Obbygrabbed mine, and using his thumbnail, tore a two inchhole in my wrist.

“Hey!”“Oh, stop being a baby.” He held my arm over Hector’s

open mouth and we watched as the blood dripped slowlyinto it. In a few moments, Hector was coughing andsitting up, a dazed toddler woken from his sleep.

I licked my wrist and the gash disappeared. “So what’snext?”

“I’m not going to do anything, but you are. You’re goingto convince these people they didn’t see you. You knowhow to do it. You watched me convince Willy last night.”He pushed me forward.

I squatted down beside The Beast and whispered in his

31


ear. “Wake up.” I patted the man’s stubbly cheek. “Comeon man, wake up.” Dark eyes fluttered open, and I heldthem with my gaze. “What’s your name, big guy?”

“My name?” His breath stank of Corona and nachos. I blinked and

leaned in. “Yeah, tell me your name.”The man looked up at me with childlike awe. “My name

is Chano.”“Chano, you didn’t see me here tonight.”“No?”“No, I’m nobody. You didn’t see me. What you did see

was a very pretty girl.”Chano grinned. “I like pretty girls.” “Yes you do, Chano, and you stopped that pretty girl

with strawberry blond hair and pulled her into this alley.You and your friends said some very inappropriate thingsto her, didn’t you?”

“Yes, we did.” Chano’s head bowed. “We said badthings.”

Obby squatted down beside me, eyebrows raised.“Where are you going with this?”

I grinned back and continued. “You touched her too, allof you. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

Chano’s thick chin lowered. “I am ashamed of myself.”“And that pretty, little girl beat the crap out of all four

of you, didn’t she Chano?”Chano scowled. “Yes, she did All four of us.”―“But you don’t blame her for it, right?”“Hell, no. We were…”“Inappropriate?”“Yeah, we were inappropriate.”

32


“That’s right. You deserved it.”Obby stood up and scratched his head. “Well, that’s a

new one.”As it turned out, I was pretty good at this. “Now you

just sit there, Chano and think about that while I talk tothe others, okay?”

“Okay.”“And who am I?”“You’re nobody. I don’t see you.”“That’s right.”

As it turned out, becoming a vampire was the bestthing to happen to my career. And Blain Bradshaw, theMets Manager, had become my biggest fan.

One night, in New York, I sat slouched in the corner ofthe dugout, the sun long gone over the horizon. AndyMontoya wasn’t pitching very well, and Bradshaw calledme over.

I took the empty spot beside him. “What’s up, Brad?”“Tommy, I just want to make sure you know how proud

I am of all you’ve accomplished here lately, especiallywith your allergies and all.”

I pulled the hood of my Mets sweatshirt up over myhead and shoved my hands into my pockets. Thetemperature was in the low sixties and breezy, andalthough the cold no longer affected me, I liked to keepup appearances.

“Thanks, Brad. I really appreciate that. I’ve beenworking hard.”

“I know you have. Why, in your last five games, you

33


pitched four shutouts and only allowed one run.”I nodded and a smile crept across my lips. On the night

I’d allowed the Dodgers to have their one run, I gave it upon purpose. Not that it mattered, since by then the Metshad already scored five of their own. Like Obby said, itwasn’t smart to be perfect all the time.

Bradshaw couldn’t say enough about me, and I let himtalk. “And that’s not even counting your record, ahundred and six point three miles per hour Jesus, no―wonder they drug tested you.” Brad shook his head, awide smile crossing his face. “The way you’re pitching, Iwouldn’t mind having a few more just like you. Is thatallergy of yours contagious?” He laughed, deep andgravelly.

I smiled. Finding out they were going to drug test mehad freaked me, but unlike my little problem with thesun, Obby had actually planned for it.

He’d been right about the mask too. Even back in LA, Ispotted at least a dozen. In New York, I would expect fiftytimes that, easy.

We watched in silence as the ball passed between ourfirst baseman’s legs and the Padres scored their fifth run.It was only the third inning.

Brad sighed. “You know the Mets have only won theWorld Series twice.”

“Yup, way back in 69 and 85.”“That’s right.” Brad leaned over and pulled the blue,

white and blue mask from the pocket of my sweatshirt. “Itwould be nice if these other guys had your problems.”

I stood up. “Well, who knows? Maybe my condition iscontagious.” I walked over to the railing and looked into

34


the seats behind home plate. There, in the first row, satObby. These days, he followed the team to every gamesince I always set him up with the best tickets. It was theleast I could do. Obby still wore the Hawaiian shirt andflipflops, but at least the stupid ponytail wig was gone.

It took no more than a second before Obby looked myway, waving and smiling.

Since we weren’t allowed cell phones in the dugout, Iraised my hand to my ear, miming the sign for “call me.”

Obby nodded and turned his attention back to thegame.

Brad was right. The Mets did need more players likeme.

Diana Corbitt is a member of SCBWI and Writer’s VillageUniversity, and a member of an ongoing writers class atWriters.com. She has also been selected as a runner up in theWriterstype.com short story contest.

35


THE BOXby T. J. Koll

Turn the knob.Gaze into the screen.Find the answers you seek.Garrett chuckled as he read the instructions. Surely this

little strange whateverthehellitwas now sitting on hiskitchen table was a gag, a prank from one of his buddieswith too much time and old technology on his hands.Max, Kenny, Billany one of them could’ve heard abouthis recent layoff or the latest public blowout with his wife.This could be some dimwitted attempt at cheering himup. After all, nothing says friendship and support like anancient computer monitor with no keyboard.

Andrea, Garrett’s wife, hurried into the kitchen secondslater, late for work: heels clomping, plates clanking in thesink, sighs and scoffs and muttered swears. “Can’t evenclean a couple dishes, Garrett?” she asked, scouring offthat morning’s egg yolk. “It’s not going to be like this. I’mnot going to work and clean up your shit.”

“Sorry, babe,” he said, scarcely paying attention,focused instead on figuring out this strange device. “Whatdo you think this could be? Think one of your friends sentit?”

“Like I have time for friends.”“Your parents maybe? As a joke?”Andrea growled in frustration and abandoned the dirty

dishes. “I’m late. And I don’t care. Seen my keys?”

36


He shook his head. “What about Melissa? She mightsend out weird stuff like this, right?”

“In Alaska. Haven’t talked to her in months,” Andreasaid, digging through her purse. “You’d know that if youstopped watching so much goddamn TV and listened tome for a change.”

Garrett grunted and flipped over the device, looking fora price tag or company name, but he found none. Therewasn’t even a return address on the box in which itarrived.

Andrea stared at him. He could feel it, thatdeathraybeamingthroughhisskull glare of hers. “Anychance of you going down to the temp agency today? Likeyou promised?” she asked.

“After lunch, maybe.”“Why not right now?”“Don’t feel like it.”She at last found the keys in her purse and let them

dangle from her fingers, jingling them like a rattlesnakeshaking its tail. “My crappy salary and your littleunemployment checks won’t cut it. You need to findsomething. Soon.”

He nodded, shrugged, and returned his attention to theunusual device, a response that sent Andrea storming outthe front door. Garrett groaned, slouching in the chairand rubbing his face. He’d only been out of work for a fewweeks, but to hear Andrea you’d think he’d never helddown a job in his whole life. A useless, lazy slob. And withevery day he spent at home, her already pisspoor opinionof him just got worse.

A moment after she’d left, Garrett began fiddling with

37


the device’s single knob, and a robotic voice abruptlybuzzed from the back of the machine. “Front porch,” itsaid, the words flashing in green, blocky letters on thescreen.

Stunned, Garrett froze, doubting his eyes and ears. Heagain searched the odd little box, this time for a powercord, a battery compartment, or anything else he mighthave missed earlier. Nothing.

“Front porch,” it repeated, the voice more insistent thistime.

Incredulous, Garrett stood and looked out the kitchenwindow just as Andrea was backing their sedan down thedriveway. There on the front porch steps sat his wife’s redwallet, apparently dropped in her rush to get on the road.Scoffing, he hurried outside, grabbed the wallet, andwaved Andrea down just in time.

“Forget something?” he asked, handing it to herthrough the open window.

She took it, but such a small gesture did nothing toimprove her mood. She shot him a halfhearted grin, toldhim she’d be back by six, and drove off.

Garrett stood in the driveway for several moments,hands awkwardly stuffed in his pockets, watching her cardisappear down the road. A part of him wondered if shewould indeed bother coming home that evening, or ifshe’d just stay the night at her mother’s house again.Either way, there was little he could do about it at thispoint. Even if he did get a position with the temp agency,Andrea wouldn’t be happy. Maybe it wouldn’t payenough, maybe the hours would be crazy, or maybe she’dsimply make up something else to complain about. Of

38


course, a lousy job was certainly better than no job at all,at least in her eyes.

An hour latershowered, dressed in his only suit, andready to head out to the temp agencyGarrett stooddrinking coffee in the kitchen and again eyeing thedevice. There was some trick to it, some power source orspeaker he’d just overlooked. There must be. What elsecould he believe: A magic answer box from outer space? Amystical message machine powered by angels andstarlight? Nonsense. He smirked and headed for the frontdoor.

“Honesty,” the device droned, green letters againflashing on the screen.

Garrett paused at the door. “That’s it? That’s your greatwisdom?” he asked out loud, as if this thing could hearhim. “How about something useful like who’ll wintomorrow night’s game or where I can fine some good oldfashioned buried treasure.”

“Honesty,” the voice again buzzed. “Blunt.”He shook his head, now convinced the box was indeed

someone’s idea of a bad joke. Blunt honesty. There were ahundred business books and websites out there thatspouted the same crap. Interviews were games,performances. Garrett wasn’t certain about much in thisworld, but he had no doubts about the current economy:the right answers got you the job, and the bluntly honestanswers landed you back in the unemployment line.

39


Sitting in the temp agency’s waiting room, pretendingto enjoy a car magazine from December of 1987, Garrettsilently chided himself for taking such an interest in thebox at home. Was he thirteenyearsold again? Was hestill that hairdowntohisbutt, pimplyfaced kid whobelieved in such abracadabra bullshit? Not if he actuallywanted to stay married to Andrea. Not if he was going toprove her mother wrong and show them both he could bea man and provide a decent living.

An assistant with great legs and too much lipstick soonshowed him into the hiring manager’s office, and he satdown. The manager, a bald man with a bowtie whocould’ve easily passed for an actionmovie hitman, staredat Garrett’s resume and said nothing for several minutes.

“Mr. Lester?” the manager finally asked, not raising hiseyes.

Garrett nodded.“Looking for a clerical position? Something temporary?

Permanent?”Again, Garrett nodded.The manager looked up at him. “Temporary or

permanent?”“Either’s fine,” Garrett said at last, knowing he should

elaborate further but finding both his brain and tongueunwilling.

“How about industrial work? Machines? Cleanup?”Garrett chewed his lip and, yet again, nodded. “Fine.

All fine.”The manager smirked and folded his hands on the

desktop. “You sure? Pushbrooms, mops, scraping off little

40


bits of cow and pig from the machines in a meat packingplantyou’re okay with all that?”

“Just happy to work for such a great company,” Garrettsaid, forcing himself to keep his head still, though he wasalready sure he looked and sounded like an idiot.

The manager’s expressionthe same dulleyed,condescending look adults often give other people’skidsleft little doubt: Run along, little Garrett, his eyessaid. Run along back to your mommy now. The grownupshave to work. He grunted and glanced at the clock on hisdesk. “Well, we appreciate you coming in, but”

“I really need a job, sir,” Garrett said, interrupting,realizing the manager was about to give him the boot.

“I understand that, but”“With all due respect, if I go home tonight without a

job, my wife’s gonna leave me. I’ll lose my house,everything.”

The manager paused, again quiet, and for a momentGarrett thought he might be considering a call to security.But then a smile appeared on his face, a small butgenuine smile. “Wives can be a real pain in the ass, can’tthey?” he asked, twisting the gold band on his ring finger.

Garrett nodded.“Twentytwo years,” the manager said, reclining in his

seat. “Married that long and I still never figured out howto make that woman happy.”

Garrett was about to nod but stopped himself. “Mywife, sometimes I think she actually likes beingmiserable.”

“Like if she couldn’t complain about something she’dexplode, right?”

41


Garrett nodded yet again.Amazed by the guy’s reaction, he spent the next

halfhour trading stories about wives and jobs and womenlike the one with great legs who worked for him. At theend of their conversation, the manager told him to comein the following morning, promising to “find himsomething,” even if it might be dull or downrightrepellant. With no other options and a strange sense ofoptimism, Garrett agreed.

Argue with his wife for a few hours, get called somechoice names, and then sit outside the bathroom dooruntil midnight begging her for another chanceGarrett’susual nighttime routine quickly changed upon tellingAndrea about his day and his new job prospects. Althoughshe was initially skeptical, probing him with questions likea television detective, she eventually closed her eyes andhugged him and shared her hope that a brighter futurenow lie before them.

It was a small step, but a much needed one; and Garrettstayed up into the early morning toying with the strange,miraculous device that made it happen. In time, he fellasleep at the kitchen table, but he woke up only an houror so later.

With eyes still shut, Garrett raised his headsnorting,coughing, and finding it difficult to breath. Somethingwas clogging his nose, and in his still foggy mind hewondered if he’d caught a cold. As his hands moved towipe away any drool or snot on his face, however, hediscovered something far more horrifying: a cable,

42


connected at one end to the box, was protruding from hisleft nostril.

He jolted fully awake, panicking, and tried to yank itfrom his nose, but the cable was deep and refused tobudge. Grunting, terrified, he tried again to pull it out,but a bolt of pain through his head quickly convinced himto stop.

“Stay with me,” buzzed a voice from the device, thoughthis time it sounded feminine and was almost a whisper.

Frantic, Garrett turned the box over and scrambled tofind the cable’s other end, but it was buried and tangledamong a throng of other cords.

“Stay with me,” the voice again whispered. “I love you.”An electrical shock shot through Garrett’s body, and all

the pain and fear vanished. As in a wonderful dream,soothing images of peaceful lakes, meadows, andmountaintops floated through his mind. But they seemedlike more than just images. He could feel the coolness ofthe water, smell the grass and daffodils around him, hearhis feet crunch upon the snowcovered rocks. A beautifulwoman with blue eyes and dark hair held his hand, kissedhis lips, pressed against him.

“I love you,” she said, smoothing her fingertips downhis cheeks. “You’re mine.”

A moment later, he was back at his kitchen table,terrified and confused. Grunting and with tears forming inthe corners of his eyes, Garrett again seized the cord andpulledignoring the pain, ignoring the voice. At last, heyanked it free, and toppled from his chair to the floor,blood trickling from his nose

Groaning, he stumbled to his feet, staggered as quickly

43


as he could down the hall, and grabbed a baseball batfrom the coat closet. With his heart still racing, he hurriedback toward the kitchen, but Andrea yelled after him fromtheir bedroom doorway.

“What the hell are you doing?” she shouted.Garrett halted, trying to catch his breath, stumped as to

how he could explain what happened.“The box,” he managed, stare fixed toward the kitchen.“You scared the crap out of me,” she said, hands on her

hips. “I thought someone was robbing us, for Christ’ssake.”

Garrett glanced down at the bat still in his grip. “I wasgoing into the kitchen.”

“To do what? To start smashing up everything atthreeinthemorning?”

He shrugged, his mind still hazy. “No. I don’t know. Thebox. Something’s wrong with it.”

Andrea emerged a bit more from the hallway, rubbingher temples and sighing. “Tonight was a good night.Okay, Garrett? It was finally a good night for us. Don’truin it by suddenly freaking out on me.”

He shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, anache blooming in his head. He struggled for something tosay, but he felt like a fouryearold who’d woken from anightmare and was too flustered and fearful to explain itto his parents.

“Get in bed now or you’re sleeping on the fuckingcouch,” she said, marching back into the bedroom.

Garrett knew she didn’t mean just a single night on thecouch either. Her tone made her true meaning obvious:come to bed or sleep alone. Forever. After hesitating a few

44


secondsglare shifting from the kitchen to the bedroomand back againhe finally surrendered, returned the batto the closet, and followed Andrea to bed.

Despite the previous night’s commotion, Garrett awokeat dawn feeling incredibly confident and energetic. Infact, by the time Andrea finally got up, he’d already sweptthe floor, unloaded the dishwasher, and cooked herpoached eggs and creamcheeseslathered toast.Confusion? Gone. Fear. What fear? His mind was calm,clear, and focused.

Andrea sat slumped at the kitchen table, still in abathrobe, and stared at him as if he were glowing andcovered in polkadots. Garrett barely noticed, however, ashe was far too busy inventorying the fridge and writingdown a shopping list. Mustard. They needed mustard.Milk, too. There seemed to be a pattern, Garrett thought.Something to do with the letter “M.”

“You’re not like sniffing cocaine at night when I’masleep, are you?” she asked, her breakfast lyinguntouched before her. “You can tell me if you are. We canfind you some help or something.”

He chuckled. “I just feel good today. Better than in along time.”

“You sure? You remember Debbie’s husband, the onewho used to shoot junk into his arm every day? He wentto treatment and has been sober for a whole sixmonths.”

“I’m fine. Really.”Andrea gestured to the box across the table. “And what

about this thing? About last night?”

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“A misunderstanding.”“You were wandering the house with a club like a

maniac because of a misunderstanding?” She sniffed apiece of egg and then pushed away her plate.

He nodded, scarcely listening, scrawling another itemon his list. “Mayonnaise,” he said, now certain the patternmeant something important. “We should really look intothis.”

“Into what? Mayonnaise?”“The missing food. And each starting with the same

letter. Can’t be a coincidence.”Andrea paused and offered a crooked smile. “Okay,

mayonnaise man. You look into that, and I’ll get ready forwork.” She stood and headed for the hallway. “I’ll takethe pickup today, so you can drive the sedan, if youwant.”

“I think I’ll walk there instead,” Garrett said, astatement that stopped his wife midstep.

“But it’s almost fivemiles.”“And a beautiful day out.” Garrett peered out the

window for a moment but then returned to hisinventorying.

Andrea stammered a bit but then continued into thehall saying nothing else. Garrett paused and glanced atthe box still on the kitchen table, a twinge of anxiousnessrising in his stomach. The overwhelming sense ofoptimism and energy within him, however, soon squashedthat brief apprehension; and he then decided to bleachthe countertops before leaving for work.

46


For the first mile of his journey to the temp agency,Garrett strode along like a man who’d just won thelottery: confident, carefree, and in complete control of hislife. A hundred different ideas and plans for the futurebuzzed about in his mind: he’d prove himself aninvaluable employee, secure a management position, takeAndrea on vacations to Europe or the Caribbean, buy thathouse she wanted, earn a sixfigure salary, and eventuallymake his motherinlaw apologize for the “I knew youweren’t good enough for my daughter, you gigantic loser”speech she gave every Thanksgiving.

At about the middle of mile two, however, thatoptimism suddenly collapsed, as did his energy level. As ifcold mud were caked upon his body and brain, Garrett’slegs went heavy, his hands trembled, and his mindslowed. Fear overcame him, as it does a man gleefullyswimming in the ocean one minute who finds himselfcaught in a riptide the next. He fell to one knee, and thendown on his elbows, the once pleasant sun above now arelentless spotlight that burned his eyes and exposed hisevery weakness. Exhausted, he crawled a few feet beforeat last collapsing onto the sidewalk.

Blood dribbled from his nose.Muttering and swearing, Garrett pulled his cell phone

from his pocket and tried calling Andrea, but the batterywas strangely dead. He couldn’t call her, couldn’t call thetemp agency, couldn’t call anyone.

“Come on, dammit,” he said to himself, his shakinghands struggling to even hold the phone upright.

Certain his new job and future were now in jeopardy,

47


he then tried to standgrunting and straining and cursingeven louderbut his body refused to cooperate. Despairfollowed.

Hours passed, as did many drivers who slowed downbut never stopped to help. Two pedestrians on the otherside of the street ignored him as well. Despite hisshouting, both kept their glares glued to their phones,fingers racing across little keyboards as they shuffledahead.

Finally, well into the afternoon, an elderly coupledriving a station wagon saw him and offered assistance.The old man hurried out of his car and knelt over Garrett.

“You need an ambulance, son?” he asked, as hispresumed wife urged him to be careful and avoid gettingtoo close.

Garrett shook his head. “Home.”The old man struggled to help him up. “Holy hell. You

can’t even hardly move,” he said, draping Garrett’s armacross his shoulders and staggering to the car. “Cassie, geton that mobile phone of yours and call ahead to thehospital. Tell them we’re on our way.”

Despite Garrett’s feeble objections, the elderly coupledrove him to St. Mary’s Memorial Hospital and checkedhim in. After a dozen tests and the arrival of hislessthansympathetic wife, the doctors sent Garrett homewith a bottle of pain killers and an official “we can’t findanything wrong with you” diagnosis. By eleven o’clockthat night, he was at last slumped on his living roomcouch and struggling to keep his eyes open.

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Andrea sat beside him, still in her work clothes. Shesaid nothing for several moments, halfheartedly fluffinghis pillow and helping him sip water from a cup. “Did youtrip?”

“That’s not what happened,” he said, briefly shuttinghis eyes.

“The doctor said somebody found you lying on thesidewalk.”

Garrett sighed. “I didn’t fall. Okay? I just got reallyweak. Tired.”

“And you decided the sidewalk was a good place totake a nap?”

Garrett scoffed. “Yep. That’s it. Just curled up there onthe concrete.”

“Be serious for two seconds,” Andrea said, snatchingthe water cup from his lips. “What happened to you?Why’d you miss your meeting? Why were you”

“I don’t know,” he said, interrupting. “I think it was thebox. I think it did something to me.”

Andrea sneered. “The box?”“Yeah.”“That piece of junk on our kitchen table? It did this.

That’s what you’re telling me?”Garrett nodded. “There was a voice. And a cord.”“You think I’m an idiot or something? The box? That’s

your answer?”“You don’t understand.”Andrea stood, marched into the kitchen, and carried the

strange device back into the living room. Without a word,she set it down on the floor beside the couch, whichterrified Garrett.

49


“Show me,” she said, folding her arms. “Show me howthis made you miss that meeting. How it made you missthe one opportunity you had to finally take care of thisfamily.”

Garrett began hyperventilating. “Away. Take it away.”She refused. “I know what it feels like to be tired,

Garrett. I’m tired, too. I’m tired of your excuses, of yourbull, of waiting for the life you promised me.”

“Sweetie. Please.”“No more ‘sweetie, please.’ No more ‘honey, I promise

I’ll make it better.’ None of it.”Petrified, Garrett tried to push the box away, but there

was still no strength in his arm. He couldn’t even roll offthe couch. “I’m sorry,” he said, groaning and grunting ashe tried to move.

Andrea pulled the wedding ring from her finger andplaced it on top of the box. “I should’ve listened to mymother. She was right about you.”

Saying nothing else, she strolled into the bedroom anddidn’t come back. Alone beside the strange device, out ofbreath and allbut paralyzed, Garrett could do little butvainly call for his wife and offer more apologies.

Green letters soon appeared on the device’s screen,joined again by the feminine voice: “Help you. Love you.Stay.”

Early the next morning, as orange sunlight glowedbehind the window drapes and school buses rumbleddown Sunnyside Avenue, Garrett awoke to Andreawhispering in the back bedroom. He lay on the couch a

50


moment, listening, stare focused on the ceiling, his handsand feet and face all numb. A soft but steady buzz alsodroned from deep within his chest and brain, but he triedto concentrate on his wife’s voice.

“Still asleep,” Andrea said, obviously talking on her cellphone, undoubtedly to her mother. “Just need help withmy clothes and a few boxes. I’m leaving the rest.”

Garrett was surprised by the clarity of her voice,especially given her distance and hushed tone. Stillsomewhat weak but hoping he might convince her to stay,even just for one more night, Garrett staggered to his feet.A sudden and searing pain, however, flashed through hishead and nearly forced him to his knees.

He clutched his skull, crying out, and felt thin cordsprotruding from both of his ears. Shocked, he scoured hisbody for others: a bundle of wires jutted from his bellybutton, others from his forearms, and yet another fromhis right nostril. Just as horrifying, his skin was nowutterly gray, and his fingernails and toenails were allwhite.

“Andrea!” he shouted, hopelessly pulling at the wirescrowding his belly button.

He could hear her groan and sigh but she ignored him.Garrett staggered a few steps forward, clawing at the

cords sticking from his arms, the box dragging on thefloor behind him. “Please! Andrea! Help!”

“On the phone,” she said before quickly returning to herconversation.

Garrett continued lurching forward. The closet, andwithin it his baseball bat, was just ten or so feet away. Hepeered back at the box, blocky green words still flashing

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across its screen.Another jolt of pain hit him, shooting through his belly

and then up his spine. Images of a tropical beach soonreplaced his agony. His bare feet were nestled in the sand,toes wiggling; and he could see sailboats drifting in thedistant ocean.

The dark haired woman from his earlier experiencereappeared beside him. She straddled his lap and caressedhis cheeks with both hands. But her eyes were no longerblue and beautiful.

Two black voids replaced them.Garrett panicked and tried to flee, but he couldn’t

move. The woman clenched his face, her nails digginginto his skin, and drew even closer.

“Love you,” she said, lips close to his, her voice roboticand androgynous.

The beach and the woman vanished, as if abruptlyswitched off, and Garrett was again lurching toward thecloset in his living room. Andrea was now in front of him,screaming.

“Get the hell away from me,” she shouted, backingaway, crying. “

Garrett reached for her. “Stay with me,” he said, hisown voice now a mechanical drone.

Andrea grabbed the baseball bat from the closet behindher.

Again, a bolt of energy rushed up Garrett’s spine and hewas back on the beach with the terrifying brunette. Sheforced him down onto the sand, the screech of a faxmachine blaring from her mouth.

“Andrea!” he shouted, unable to move and barely able

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to breathe. Instantly, he was back in his living room and standing

in front of his wife, just in time to feel the sharp clunk ofthe baseball bat against his skull. He staggered and thencrumpled to the floor, his sight blurry and his earsringing. Blood poured from his ear.

Though muffled, he could still hear Andrea screamingand crying. He groaned and raised his hand toward hervoice. He tried to speak, to comfort her and apologize, butbuzzes and pings replaced his voice and words.

Weeping, Andrea threw down the bat and rushed outthe front door. Garrett inhaled one raspy, bloodfilledbreath after another.

“Stay,” he heard the box again drone, more wiresrustling and snaking toward him. “Stay.”

T.J. is a writing instructor, a published novelist and non-fictionwriter, and the father of a very spirited four-year-old who keepshim on his toes.

53


OUTSIDE THE BOXby Holly Day

The walls flickered to life seconds before the childrenfiled into the large room. The flat white surfaces werereplaced by a stand of immense conifers, while the ceilingand floor also changed to complete the scene. Tinyspeakers, invisibly set in the high corners of the cubicalroom, crackled with static before releasing a steadycacophony of buzzing, clicking insect and animal noises.

“Where are the dinosaurs?” asked one boy, hands onhis hips in practiced annoyance. He turned around andaround in the room, sighing loudly as if already bored ofhis surroundings.

Bridgett smiled patiently at the little boy and ignoredhis question. “Welcome to Inner Mongolia, China, 70million years ago. The trees you see all around you arethe ancestors of the same pine trees you might havegrowing in your own yards at home, or see at the park.”She paused, smiling brightly at the group of six andsevenyear olds, eyes scanning the walls behind them foractivity. Finding none, she continued, “You see these tiny,knobby little plants growing by your feet? In a fewmonths, they’ll start putting out little yellow flowers thatlook sort of like tiny dandelions. Does anyone know whythese types of plants don’t grow in Mongolia, or much ofthe world, anymore?” She paused and scanned the roomfor hands.

“Because the dinosaurs ate them all?” asked one little

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girl. “Because of pollution?” asked another.“Those are good guesses,” Bridgett nodded. “But the

real answer is that this whole ancient family of plantscan’t grow hardly anywhere on the planet because ofearthworms. These types of plants have almost no rootsystem and live mostly on the surface of the soil, anddepend on the soil to be hardpacked so that their tinyroots don’t get waterlogged. Earthworms make the soilloose and soft like a big sponge, which is great for modernplants with big, long roots, but not so great for these littleguys.” She peeked quickly up at the startlingly blue sky.Still nothing. The speakers continued to hum and throbwith invisible insects and faroff animals calls, none ofwhich had the decency to come within the visual range ofthe audience in the Box. “Does anyone have anyquestions?”

“Where are the dinosaurs?” asked another little boy. “Iwanna see a Gigantoraptor!” He held up a tightlyclutchedGigantoraptor toy, obviously purchased during thegroup’s stop at the gift shop, and waved it at her.

“I don’t know if we’re going to get to see any dinosaurstoday,” she confessed. “We are looking at a real forest inCretaceous Mongolia, and we just can’t predict what we’llsee when we go back. Just imagine if time travelers fromthe future went back to look at Chicago in our time, andended up in your living room while you were at schooland your parents were at work. They might bedisappointed that they didn’t get to see human beingsduring their visit, but you know what? They could stilllook at your furniture, the breakfast dishes in the sink, the

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way our world looked out through the windows—all sortsof things. If you pay attention, there are a lot of things tosee here even without dinosaurs.” She looked aroundagain, feeling a familiar sense of panic building. Shehated the days where there were no dinosaurs.

“I see a bug!” crowed one little girl in the far corner.“Ew! It’s really big!”

“Where?” shouted another child, and suddenly, all thechildren were in the corner of the room, staring at anespecially large beetle with brachiated antennaepurposefully trundling down the side of a tree. It reachedthe ground, and thankfully, instead of turning anddisappearing in the forest, began to shuffle its way acrossthe room. “I think it touched me!” yelped one of thechildren, jumping. “Is it poisonous?”

“Nothing in here can touch you,” laughed Bridgett,ridiculously thankful for the strange insect. It camestraight toward her, its bright orange mandibles clickingaudibly as it wobbled comically across the needlestrewnsoil. It disappeared beneath her feet as it passed andemerged out the other side to disappear into the forest.“It’s only the camera that went back in time.” This was theexplanation that Dr. Scheul had given her to use, and itwas an answer that worked just fine with most visitors tothe museum.

The floor screen began to flicker, then went out,replaced once more by a smooth white panel. The ceilingwent out, and then the entire room was just one large,white box. A door panel slid open in one seamless walland the hall flights came on. “I’m afraid that’s it for ourvisit to the Cretaceous Period today. I hope you enjoyed

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your visit, and I hope you come back and see us again!”Bridgett nodded at the schoolteacher in charge of thegroup, and stayed behind until she was sure that everychild had made it out of the room. When the room wasfinally empty, she stepped out herself, pressing the buttonthat made the door disappear once again.

“How did it go today?” Marty asked as she came intothe locker room. “The little brats enjoy the show?” He wasalready in his street clothes, hair wet and slicked backfrom the shower.

“No dinosaurs today,” Bridgett sighed. She pulled offher jacket and carefully hung it in her locker. “Nodinosaurs, no flying reptiles, no earthquakes, no fires. Nocool volcanoes going off in the background. If some weirdlittle bug hadn’t showed up, I would have had to give anactual lecture about the Cretaceous Period, or even worse,try to explain how the Box works to a bunch offirstgraders.”

“Brutal,” laughed Marty. “Hey, you staying on or goinghome?”

“I don’t know. Why?” “My morning group canceled, so we’ve got an extra

halfhour of Box time up for grabs. You game? The Doc’sbringing beer—and not that crap he makes at home,either,” he added. “Storebought. With a label not drawnby his daughter in crayon.”

“Count me in,” grinned Bridgett. She grabbed her streetclothes from the locker. “See you at six.”

Bridgett got to the Box about fifteen minutes early to

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find the rest of the staff already waiting in the hall.Georgia, a short, stocky girl with black hair cropped closeto her head, waved at her as she approached. “I broughteveryone sandwiches,” she said, handing Bridgett aplasticwrapped triangle. “Courtesy of Marty’skindergarten group canceling.”

“Oh, yeah,” grinned Bridgett. “PB&J?”“Nah. Too many kids with peanut allergies in that

group,” said Georgia. “It’s soy cheese and butter pickles.Tastes better than it sounds.”

Bridgett unwrapped the sandwich and ate it quickly.She had just finished the last bite when the Box’s doorsuddenly slid open. “Oh, crap,” she whispered to Georgia.“He better not have used up all our time already.”

“How long you been in here?” asked Marty loudly as hepushed his way past Bridgett and Georgia into the room.A violent thunderstorm was underway inside the room.Thick, white sheets of rain fell all around the little groupof museum guides, while lightning exploded in fierysparks far above their heads.

“Come in, come in!” waved the little man sitting in theexact center of the room, a large case of beer on the floornext to him. “For chrissakes, shut the door! You’respoiling the show!”

“How much time have we got left?” asked Bridgettpointedly, taking a seat on the floor beside Dr. Sheul.“You been in here long?”

“You kids,” he snorted. He opened the case of beer andhanded one to her. It was even cold. “You’ve got about 27minutes left. Y’all really think I’d use up all this extra timejust for myself?”

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Marty grinned. “Nah, not you,” he said. “That’s whyyou’re our favorite boss.” Behind him, a tree split in half,showering sparks. The room filled with the sound of themassive conifer crashing through the neighboring treesbefore slamming to the ground. Now the group wassitting crosslegged directly on top of the tree. Frightenedbrightcolored lizards and insects wriggled out of thewreckage, only to be swept away by the ankledeep flashfloods cutting deep, muddy swaths through the sparseundergrowth. “Anybody got any marshmallows?” jokedone of the new guides as the entire wall behind him wasengulfed in flame. Bridgett winced as she saw the samecopse of primitive plants she had pointed out just a fewhours before engulfed in the rising waters.

“I think we’re going to have to change the setting fortomorrow!” shouted Dr. Sheul over the roar of the storm.“Someplace sunny, not strewn with dead plants andanimals!” As he spoke, a pair of Gigantoraptors stumbledthrough the trees, heads whipping back and forth interror, screaming horribly every time lightning rippedacross the sky. Bridget slapped her hands over her ears toblot out the horrible noise. The rising floodwatersknocked both the clumsy beasts off their feet and draggedthem thankfully out of sight.

“I am so glad this storm didn’t happen during my tour,”said Bridgett, suddenly thankful for her boring day ofsunshine and interesting bugs and no dead dinosaurs. “Dowe have to keep the kids in here if something reallyterrible happens?”

“Just remind them that this all happened millions ofyears ago,” said the doctor nonchalantly, finishing his

59


beer and opening another one. “Compared to what I’veseen my daughter watch on TV, this is nothing.”

The floor flickered and glowed white. The speakersfilled with static and, one by one, the terrible stormdisappeared from the walls and the ceiling. “Guess thatmeans time’s up,” said the doctor, climbing to his feet andfinishing off the beer he just opened. “Don’t get to see ashow like that every night, do you?”

Bridgett got up, feeling a little shaky. It was so easy toget lost in the Box’s transmissions. After a storm like that,the real world seemed blissfully boring. “You got anyplans?” she asked Georgia as they slowly filed out of theroom, as quietly and ordered as schoolchildrenthemselves.

“I think I’m just going to go home and veg out,”answered Georgia. “I think I’ve had enough beer andentertainment for the night.”

“True,” agreed Bridgett, feeling tired herself. She hatedto admit how good the thought of curling up in front ofthe tube and passing out on the couch sounded. Threemore weeks, and she’d be back in school. Might as wellenjoy the free time while she had it.

“Welcome to Jurassic Colorado,” said Bridgett,glancing down at the note card Dr. Scheul had slippedinto her hand just as she and her first group of the dayreached the Box. She could barely make out hishandwriting. She folded up the card and put it in herpocket. She would have to wing it. “How many of youkids have been to Dinosaur National Park in Colorado?”

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Five or six little hands shot up. Bridgett smiled brightlyat the group of kindergartners trailing her, a couple ofbedraggledlooking teachers in tow. “I’ve never beenthere,” she confessed. “Did it look anything like this?” Shepushed the button for the door and stepped into the Box,praying there would be a dinosaur waiting for her thistime.

There was. A herd of five or six sauropods stoodchestdeep in water, bright green strings of pondweedhanging from their mouths. It was incredibly picturesque.“Thank goodness,” Bridgett muttered to herself as theschool group filed in behind her, shrieking and cooingwith delight. She would have to stop by the Doc’s officelater to compliment him on his selection of the site. Thegift shop would be swamped with kids looking for aplastic Barosaurus to take home with them after today.

Dr. Scheul had obviously spent a lot of valuable timetweaking the view from the Box that morning. Thebottom half of the Box rested in the shallow end of thelake itself, giving visitors an underwater view of the giantsauropods’ legs and long, elaboratelyspiked tails twistingthrough the crystalclear water. Ominouslooking fishwith heads shaped like bowling balls swam slowlythrough the water, opening and closing mouths full ofjangled teeth to the delight and terror of the children,disappearing as they passed through the area the Boxoccupied. Crocodilians crawled across the bottom of thelake, and directly underneath a few shrieking children’sfeet, snapping up smaller fish and frogs too slow or stupidto escape. The top half of the Box rose above the water,giving viewers a spectacular view of the top halves of the

61


sauropods, as well as a couple of brillianthued pterosaursdiving for fish and one enormous dragonfly buzzing alongthe sandy bank. With a view like this, the only talkingBridgett had to do was answer a few random questionsabout dinosaurs. Mostly, the kids in the Box justwandered around the room, trying to see everythingbefore their time ran out.

“Hey, how come they get to go outside?” shouted onekid angrily, disturbing Bridgett’s reverie. “That’s no fair! Iwant to go outside, too!”

“You can’t go outside,” said Bridgett calmly, shaking herhead and smiling knowingly at the haggard teachers, whojust glowered back at her. “There’s not really an Outside.These are just pictures our vidcams are picking up.”

“Well, then, what are they doing out there?” said thelittle boy, pointing. About half a mile from the lake,almost completely obscured by a dense grove of pinetrees, was a group of five or six kids standing around aman holding a clipboard. The man was pointing as hespoke, obviously giving a lecture of some sort. After a fewminutes, the entire group came out from underneath thetrees and started walking toward the lake. Bridgett’s heartpounded in her throat. They were not supposed to bethere. Their presence outside the Box was impossible.

“I want to go out, too!” the kids inside the Box beganshouting in unison, just as the floor flickered and thepictures winked out. Bridgett felt like crying. What shouldhave been a perfect start to the day was turning into atour guide’s nightmare. She watched helplessly as thegroup of disappointed children and their grimfacedteachers filed out of the room quietly, not one of them

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returning her cheerful, albeit completely inauthenticsmile.

Marty stood outside the Box with his first group of theday. “That bad, eh?” he whispered as she stepped out.“Whatcha got in there, dinosaur plague?”

“Worse,” she hissed. “We gotta go see the Doc. We can’ttake any more people in there until he sees this.”

Marty groaned. “I have to cancel? I gotta tell these kidsthey can’t go in and see the dinosaurs? That little boy justtold me his class has been on the waiting list for this foralmost three years!”

“Well, we’ll just postpone it, like we always do withcancellations. They’ll still be the next group in. We’ll makesome calls and everyone’ll get pushed back a day or two.There are people in there,” she finished, voice so low itwas almost inaudible. “I mean, people outside the Box.And kids! Like they’re on a flippin’ field trip orsomething!”

Marty snorted. “You must be high. Time travel’simpossible,” he added, almost too automatically.

“They all saw it!” she hissed, grabbing his arm andpulling him over to where she was sure no one wouldhear them. “Some kid in my group pointed it out to me!They almost walked right up to us!”

“All right,” he said, shaking his head. He took a deep,noisy breath, put on his perfect museum guide smile, andwent back to his group. “I am so sorry to report this, butwe are apparently having technical difficulties with theBox and will have to reschedule your visit. If you guys canstick around for just a little while longer, I’m going to goget Dr. Scheul to look at the machine and see what we

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can do for you. Don’t worry, kids,” he said to the moansand groans of children filling the room. “I promise youwill all get to see at least one, if not many, dinosaurs, verysoon. Here,” he added, pulling a stack of gift certificatesout of his pocket and passing them around. “Go nuts inthe gift shop. We’ll have this all straightened out in ajiffy.”

“That’s impossible,” said Dr. Scheul when Bridgettexplained why she made Marty cancel his tour. “I hopeyou’re not coming to the museum high, young lady. Thereare plenty of other college students who would mail metheir mother to get this job.”

“If I was high, then all the kindergartners in my groupwere, too. And their teachers,” said Bridgett firmly. “Everyone of them will tell you they saw a group of kids, withwhat looked like their teacher, walking around inCretaceous Colorado. They’re probably still there, if youwant to take a look for yourself,” she challenged.

“I’ll fire up the Box,” said the Doc, a tightlipped smilemarring his usually friendly face. The only surprises heliked were the ones he was responsible for. Marty andBridgett followed Dr. Scheul back to the entrance of theBox, where one of the teachers from Marty’s cancelledgroup stood, patiently waiting for Marty to return. “I’mgoing to have to ask you to step way, way back from thedoor,” ordered Dr. Scheul. “There’s a danger of blindnessfrom looking inside the Box when it’s malfunctioning.”The teacher scooted away to stand at the far end of thehall, obviously not ready to give up her post altogether.“Wouldn’t want her looking into the room just in caseyou’re right,” muttered the doctor. “Even though time

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travel is impossible.”“I think the window for containing this thing has

already passed,” said Bridgett. “By now, my kindergartengroup’s probably already told their parents and friendswhat they saw.”

“Whatever,” said the Doc. The door slid open and thethree of them stepped inside the Box. The sauropods weremaking their way slowly and clumsily out of the lake,their massive bodies looking that much heavier now thatthey weren’t buoyed by water. Great clouds of swirlingmud rose from their footsteps, obscuring most of thesubmarine view of the room. Fish scurried in haphazardescape routes to get out of the way of the behemoths’ feet,some going so far as to leap out of the water itself andflutter, briefly airborne by modified fins, several feet fromwhere they emerged. Pterosaurs dove after the flying fish,appearing at times as though about to crash right throughthe screen of the Box.

The Doc nodded briefly at the show. “Too bad your kidscouldn’t see this,” he said to Marty. “They would havegotten their money’s worth today, that’s for sure.” Heturned around and around in the room, scanning thedistant hills for signs of human life. “Hmm,” he mused, alittle pointedly.

“They really were here,” protested Bridgett. “I’ll bet ifyou called the teachers from that group up—“

“Oh, Christ,” said the Doc suddenly. “We’ve got to shutdown the rest of the tours for the day. Maybe the rest ofthe week. I’ve got some calls to make.” Without evenbothering to tell the machine to shut down, he stormedout of the room, face flushed, worry lines creasing his

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face. There, right at the bottom of the far corner screen,something glinted silver in the bright, primordial sunlight.Even though she couldn’t identify the brand, Bridgettcould tell it was a crumpledup soda can.

“So if this isn’t some elaborate hoax, why haven’t weseen these…people…on the monitors before?” shouted Dr.Fineas, a short, angry bald man from the University ofChicago. “The science behind the Boxes has been aroundfor over a decade!”

“Well, to be honest, we’ve only been able to see afraction of about 4 billion years of the planet’s existenceeven with all the trips we’ve made,” interjected Dr. Li, aquiet woman from the University of Beijing. “It’s entirelyplausible that we’ve missed thousands of these people’sphysical trips to the different eras by a matter of days,hours, minutes, even. Plus, we only open each Box to thepublic for one or two months a year, depending on publicinterest and state or national funding in each region,while the rest of the year is dedicated to researchingspecific animal groups or civilizations. I myself have spentthe better part of the past five years trying to discoverexactly when fire came into popular use with presapienhominids. I believe your own university has spentcountless months following one Tyrannosaur family unit.”

“It just seems implausible that there are peopletraipsing around in the past and we haven’t ever seen anyevidence of them,” protested Dr. Scheul. “With, of course,the exception of the pop can left in the Cretaceous period.I guess I’m also disturbed that there are people walking

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around the Cretaceous period littering.” Dr. Li laughed. “Well, there was a giant comet destined

to hit the planet just a few million years later,” she said.“I’ll bet that a single aluminum can won’t do too muchenvironmental damage in the face of that kind ofdestruction.”

“So what should we do about this?” interrupted Dr.Wick from the University of Vienna. “Should we startactively looking for these visitors, try to figure out whereand why they’re in the past? Or should we just dismiss thewhole thing as a possible hoax, since the only ones whosaw these people were a bunch of kids and their museumguide? Even with the enormity of time, I find it hard tobelieve we have never seen or heard any other evidenceof—damn it, what should we call these people? Visitors?”

“That makes it sound like they’re from outer space,”muttered Dr. Li.

“Well, we can’t rule that out, either, can we?”continued Dr. Wick. “Maybe we’ve just stumbled ontoevidence that aliens visited our planet millions of yearsago, and on a frikkin’ field trip, from the sound of it.Honestly, that sounds a lot more plausible to me than theidea that they’re time travelers.”

“Don’t even say ‘time travelers’ when you’re in the sameroom as me,” grumbled Dr. Scheul. “We all know timetravel is impossible.”

Bridgett stared at the museum brochure in her hand,trying for the millionth time to figure out how to explainhow the Box worked to someone who wasn’t a

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kindergartner. She had realized a long time ago that thebrochure had been written in an intentionally confusingway, using lots of big, scientific terms that, when ranthrough her thesaurus program, really didn’t meananything big and scientific at all. After hours and hours ofplugging phrases into her laptop, she finally decided thatthe best explanation was awfully close to what she’d beentelling the museum’s younger tourists since she first cameon: the scenes in the Box were beamed in from a camerathat could film light particles emanating from the past.Her own Dr. Scheul and his colleagues at the University ofChicago had discovered that light was only not bound bythe rules of gravity, but was also not governed by thepassage of time. With their device, they could literallypinpoint a period of time that a series of lightbasedimages were being created and capture them on film to bebeamed back to any of the twentytwo waiting Boxesaround the world.

She read her explanation back to herself and shook herhead. Nope, still didn’t make sense. But at least now herexplanation was in plain English, something she couldrattle back to any quasiintellectual she might have in hergroup determined to stump her with a mechanicalquestion. If that answer didn’t work, she could just handthem the brochure.

The thing she didn’t like about the brochure’sexplanation was that it made the whole process sound socontrolled. The real truth was that the Boxes and thescientists who ran them were more subject to whateverrandom images the cameras picked up than they’d like toadmit. While the cameras could be set to pick up a fairly

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specific location on the planet—that was apointandshoot issue—the time frame was less easy toset. The cameras could be set to pick up images fromtwenty years ago or one billion years ago, but selectingthe exact date and time of the images to be watched was,so far, impossible. The further back in time you went, theharder it was to pinpoint the exact date you were seeing.For example, it had taken weeks of tinkering to finallyshowcase the death of Abraham Lincoln, even though theexact date and time of that occurrence had beenwellknown since it had happened.

The first group filed out of the Box, and Marty presseda note card into her hand as he passed by. She looked at itquickly—“Devonian period, Baltic Sea.” She groanedinwardly. If there was some underwater scene full ofsluggish trilobites and a few angry crabs, she was going toscream. Most of the tour groups hated underwater scenes,almost as much as they hated the early mammal scenes oranything with modernlooking humans that didn’t involverecognizable figures from history. Everyone who came tothe Box wanted to see dinosaurs, and the bigger themonster, the better.

She opened the door and stepped inside a noisy forestof gigantic ferns partially unfurled and trees so tall theydisappeared into tiny points in the sky. A fly as big as acat buzzed up to the screen and disappeared, reappearingon the other wall and disappearing into the tree.“Ohmygod,” she swore to herself softly, shaking her head.Either Marty was screwing with her, or he had just told a

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bunch of eighth graders that they’d spent halfanhour ina magical, impossible Devonianera forest. “Welcome tothe Carboniferous Period, somewhere near the coast ofthe modernday Baltic Sea,” she said, recovering quickly.As if on cue, a pair of gigantic dragonflies buzzed throughthe trees and hovered steadily on one wall, their wings anoisy buzz that filled the speakers for several secondsbefore they disappeared back into the trees. “This is aworld of giant insects and even bigger amphibians, aworld where…”

When the lights finally flickered off, Bridgett hung backa couple of minutes after everyone left. “Devonianperiod?” she hissed as Marty came down the hall to greethis next group. “Please tell me that was a joke.”

“Time snob,” he whispered back. “You’re lucky I gaveyou anything at all. Dr. Scheul wasn’t even here when Icame in. Some other doctor’s running the machines today.I walked into that room with no clue at all about what I’dfind.”

“So we’re guessing about the Baltic Sea part, then?”“All I know is that it was above water when those big

bugs were around. Not my area of expertise.” He winkedand ducked into the Box with his group.

When he came out half an hour later, he was shakinghis head. “Good luck,” he said, a little angrily. “Fire burntdown the whole forest. Dead animals everywhere. Spentthe whole time talking about the high oxygen content ofthe area and why the dead bugs twitching on the groundwere so damned big. I must have some sort of jinx on meor something. Second time this month it’s happened.”

“At least they weren’t kindergartners,” Bridgett

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whispered, nodding at her own trailing group of little kidsholding hands with each other. “Thanks for theheadsup.” She steeled herself for a wasteland of smokingcorpses and felled trees and entered the Box. Instead, shewas greeted by a lush landscape of green, kneehighlycopods and branching ferns. There was evidence that afire had swept through the forest months before, as noneof the trees were over five or six feet tall, but theswiftgrowing primitive plants had already filled in theburnt areas. A gigantic cockroach scurried through theundergrowth, running in and out of shadows so much likethe roaches in Bridgett’s own kitchen. She couldn’t helpshivering.

“Ew!” screamed a couple of the girls in unison, gigglingas they shrieked. Two little girls threw their arms aroundone another as the roach ran right at them and straightunder their feet. The Box was set up so perfectly todaythat it seemed as though the group was encased in a glasscase suspended about six inches above the ground. As if itknew it was the center of attention, the roach stoppednear the middle of the room, turned around and around acouple of times, then ran straight back to where it camefrom, passing directly under the squealing girls’ feetagain.

There was enough activity in the forest that Bridgettonly had to answer a few questions for the rest of the day.Most of the insects of the era so closely resembled theirmodern counterparts that, with just a few exceptions, thekids could easily identify them. During one nocturnalscene, a pair of amphibious Eogyrini pulled themselveswith great effort out of a muggy swamp and sat on the

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bank, breathing heavily, while during the next tour, thesun shone brightly while giant spiders fell out of the treesto pounce on unsuspecting jeweltoned lizards.

As the day progressed, Bridgett noticed more and moreadults coming along on her tours. At first, she dismissedtheir presence as parent chaperones, although mostschool districts didn’t have the budget to provide fornonteacher chaperones. However, after seeing some ofthe same adults from her groups coming out of the roomwith Marty’s groups, she realized that they must be thereto either critique their performance or to look forsomething specific in the Box.

“What’s going on?” she hissed at Marty as they tradedoff for her last tour of the day. “Who are—“ she nodded atthe welldressed darkhaired woman and her spectacledcompanion that she’d seen several times already that day.

“I heard they saw more people, from the Vienna Box,”whispered Marty, smiling broadly and loudly thanking hisdispersing group for visiting the museum. “I’ll bet they’vesent someone to all the Boxes to see if they can figure outwho the Visitors are.”

“So we’re not fired?” Being a museum Box guide wasprobably the most coveted internship in every sciencedepartment in every university in the world. TheUniversity of Chicago picked two students for aonetimeonly Box internship every summer, with anotherfive or six students serving as guides to the regularexhibits. Bridgett herself had interned at the museum—and had even worked briefly at the lunch counter—foralmost three years before she was chosen to work as aBox guide.

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“Nah. But I’ll bet you get some sort of prize if you see apair of timetraveling lovebirds picnicking in thePaleozoic.”

A few weeks later, it was Marty’s group that sawanother group of Visitorsthis time, in Cretaceous SouthAmerica. Marty broke all protocol and opened the door ofthe Box while the screens were still running and shouted,“They’re here! We got people in here!”

Bridgett put her hand up at the few people who hadgathered early for her tour and said, “Wait here. I’ll beback in just a minute.” Dr. Scheul was already runningdown the hall towards them, ducking into the Boximmediately after her.

“I just wanted to make sure I’ve got an official,museumsanctioned witness to this,” whispered Marty tothe two of them, pointing at the small group of peoplehuddled in the distance, staring at a herd ofTherizinosauri swinging wildly at the forest canopy withtheir freakishlylong claws.

“You really shouldn’t open the door during a Box trip,”Dr. Scheul whispered back, somewhat automatically, eyesfixed on the people on the screen, the ones outside theBox. “It spoils the illusion for our museum guests.”

Bridgett counted twelve Visitors in the group. Eventhough they appeared to be about half a mile away fromthe area the Box would psychically be in the scene, shecould see this group was either made up of two adultsand ten elementaryschoolaged children, or two very bigindividuals and ten very small ones. “It’s a school group,”

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she said out loud, without thinking. Dr. Scheul looked ather with annoyance.

“Really,” he asked dryly. “Alien or human?”“I don’t know,” she muttered, wishing she hadn’t

spoken. “I’m guessing they’re aliens,” he continued, his

demeanor softening a bit. “We may have missed havinginterplanetary nextdoor neighbors by a hundred millionyears. It’s too bad. Can you imagine what our worldwould have been like if we’d evolved at the same time asthese Visitors? The awareness that there was intelligentlife on other planets might have been a hugely unifyingfactor among human beings on Earth. Oh, and can youjust imagine the impact on religion?” Dr. Scheul smiledhappily to himself, obviously composing some importantpaper about the Visitors in his head as he mused. Bridgettwas used to seeing his bizarre ramblings turn intoimportant scientific papers—it was because of theseramblings that the Boxes existed in the first place.

“Aliens?” snorted a tenyearold boy standing close by.“They look pretty human to me!” He laughed derisively,and Bridgett cringed inwardly out of pity for the boy.

The Doc just smiled at the boy and nodded. “They dolook pretty human, but they’re not,” he said, surprisinglycalm. “However, since time travel is impossible, they can’tbe human.”

The boy opened his mouth to ask another question, butjust then, the room began to flicker out. Audible groansfilled the Box as Marty popped open the door and usheredthe kids back out into the hall. “Do you want to stay afterand look at the footage of the trip with me?” asked Dr.

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Scheul as Bridgett followed him and Marty out of theroom.

“You got it on tape?” grinned Marty. “Awesome!”“Thanks to you, I did,” nodded Dr. Scheul. “I’ll make

sure you get credit for your quick thinking when I presentthe footage to the International Science Council nextweek.”

Bridgett watched as the two men walked down the halltowards the lunch area. Her own group was still waitingfor her, impatient to begin their tour. Bridgett smiledbrightly at them and opened the door once more. Behindher, the lights of the Box flickered on, revealing the sceneshe had just left seconds before. “Welcome to CretaceousBaja California,” she began. Two giant Quetzalcoatluslumbered toward the far screen, lurching across thegrassy meadow on the ends of their gigantic folded wings.She smiled sweetly at one small girl who was obviouslytoo frightened to come into the room with the massivebeasts. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” she said, holding her handout to the child to lead her in. “These big guys died out along time ago.”

After her last tour of the day, she made her way up toDr. Scheul’s lab to see what he’d picked up from thefootage. Marty was already seated at the Doc’s desk,trying to zoom in on the Visitors close enough to figureout what they were doing. “They do look remarkablyhuman,” Marty was saying to the Doc as Bridgett walkedin. “I think that one’s wearing one of my shirts.”

“Ha ha,” said Dr. Scheul dryly. “Grab a chair, Bridgett,”he said, waving at her. “There’s beer in the cooler.” Heturned back to the screen. “Wouldn’t it be something if we

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were somehow related to these Visitors? What ifsomehow, they turned out to be our ancestors, and thewhole chain of human evolution started with them andouter space and not from australopithecines after all?What if we’ve been looking for the origins of our speciesin the wrong place altogether?”

“Just think of all the books that’d have to be recalledfrom the libraries!” whistled Bridgett, pulling a chair up tosit next to Marty. “And this footage is from around 68million years ago, too—just imagine what sort ofcreatures the Visitors have evolved into by now! If theyare still around, that is,” she added, quietly.

“Well, they were obviously advanced enough back thento take recreational field trips to the Earth. Even if theylived as close as, say, Mars, perhaps, I imagine a speciesthat advanced has probably moved on to populate andexplore other parts of the Universe by now,” mused theDoc, sipping slowly at his bottle of homebrewed beer.

Marty wiggled the videolab joystick so that the screenjumped a little to the right. “I think there’s some sort ofwriting on that tall blond guy’s shirt,” he said, scrunchinghis face up in an effort to cleanly zoom in for a look. Thescreen blurred in a snowstorm of static dots for amoment, then cleared again. “Damn it!” Marty swore.“His clipboard’s in the way!” The picture fuzzed in andout of focus once more, then froze square on the chest ofthe Visitor.

Dr. Scheul reached over Marty’s shoulder and begantyping on the keyboard. “Good work,” he muttered as heemailed several copies of the screen shot to his homeaddress for backup. “We are going to be the first human

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beings to present a piece of alien writing to theInternational Science Academy.”

“We?” gulped Marty. Bridgett’s stomach knotted brieflywith envy. Marty was going to the conference with theDoc!

“Both of you,” nodded Dr. Scheul. “Bridgett was thefirst Box guide to report seeing the Visitors, and Martyreacted quick enough the second time around to get themon tape. You will both be coming with me to theconference. You two are going to put our museum on themap. Even more than it already is,” he added, holding hisbeer up briefly in the air as if making a toast beforedowning the last bit of liquid from the bottle.

The Conference turned out to be less than a hundredof the most important scientists in the world assembledunder one roof. Bridgett felt incredibly insignificantreading the name tags of scientists who had authoredmany of the books she had read in high school andcollege. Two seats ahead of her sat Lehigh Arnold, whohad written so accurate a description of the life cycles ofmany of the ancient amphibians and protoreptiles ofcoastal Devonianera Gondwana that there had been noneed to change most of his text even after the invention ofthe Box. Right next to him sat Garret Brown, who,because of the Box, had unfortunately had to rewrite theequivalent of decades of study on the migratory flightpatterns of the Cretaceousera Hongshanornis, whichturned out to not be migratory at all, but just a verywidespread and successful species of bird. There were

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scientists and historians responsible for translating theguttural speech of Neanderthals from the La Quinaregion, for identifying the small group of territorialdinosaurs that eventually evolved into true birds, forconfirming the existence of a single William Shakespeareresponsible for the thousands of plays and poems bearinghis name. It was a staggering assortment of some of themost brilliant minds on the planet, and Bridgett prayedthat none of them would look to the back of the room, towhere she cowered in her folding metal chair, andwonder who she was.

Marty patted her knee comfortingly. “You looknervous,” he whispered. “Don’t be. Doc’ll take all thecredit for finding the Visitors, for capturing them on film,for noticing and zooming in on the writing on the Tshirt,and probably some other stuff that we didn’t even knowwe did that was really important.” He grinned. “So relax.Do you know how many grad students would kill to be inthese seats right now?”

Bridgett smiled back at him gratefully. Just then, thelights began to dim and the floor grew quiet. The far wallof the auditorium began to glow with the recorded scenesfrom Marty’s last Box tour. The scene jerked awkwardlyas the view moved from the clumsy foraging of theTherizinosaurus to zoom in with staggered, seasick leapsto the Visitors on the cliff. A low murmur ran through theroom as the scene tilted, jerked, disintegrated into static,refocused.

“Jesus, I though he would have edited this a bit,”groaned Marty. “I just hope the credit he gives me isn’t incamera direction.”

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“I think he wanted to make sure people knew thefootage was authentic,” Bridgett whispered back. “If itlooks too clean, people might think it’s a fake.”

Suddenly, the Visitors were the only thing on thescreen, looking for all the world like ten very ordinaryelementary schoolaged children on a field trip, led bytwo men in shorts and shortsleeved shirts carrying silverclipboards. The screen wobbled a bit, then zoomed incloser to show the partial writing on the blond man’s redtshirt.

A dead hush fell over the room. Suddenly, a voice rangout. “Cherry Berry!” the voice said. “It’s for Cherry BerrySampalok!”

Heads turned to look at Dr. Li. She was grinning fromear to ear. “It’s Thai!” she explained. “The writing on theshirt’s Thai! It’s the logo for the Cherry Berry SampalokCandy Company! Time travel is possible! Time travel ispossible!” she shouted, her face bright and happy, tearsrunning down her cheeks.

“Nonsense!” screamed Dr. Scheul from behind thelecture post at the front of the room, the thick sheaf ofpapers that made up his presentation clutched in hishand. “You can’t even see the whole shirt!”

“It’s the most popular candy in Asia!” explained Dr. Li,equally impassioned, still grinning. “And perhapssomeday, the world, considering that Visitor doesn’t looklike any Thai national I’ve ever met. Trust me,” she added,no longer shouting. “It’s the Cherry Berry logo. I’ve seen iton a million billboards back home. I advise all of you togo buy stock in the Cherry Berry Sampalok CandyCompany as soon as you can.”

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“This is ridiculous,” snarled Dr. Sheul, trying to regainthe floor once more. “This is merely one more coincidencebetween our world and the world of these ancienttravelers. For all we know, the Cherry Berry logo in Thaimeans ‘Kill Whitey’ in whatever their language is!” A lowripple of laughter ran through the room.

“Too many coincidences,” said Dr. Walter from JohnsHopkins to a smattering of applause. “It’s just too many!I’m thinking we may have the first real proof that timetravel really is possible here.”

“We should get out of here,” Marty whispered toBridgett just as Dr. Fineas screamed, “Are you insane?” atDr. Walter from across the room.

“This is going to get ugly.” Marty quietly pulled hisjacket off the back of his chair and stood up. Bridgettgrabbed her purse and coat and carefully followed himtoward the back exit, grateful for the silence when theheavy door to the conference room finally swung closed.

“You want to go get a drink somewhere?” asked Marty,holding Bridgett’s coat up for her while she struggled toget her arms in the bulky sleeves. “Beats sitting in thelobby, waiting for that mess in there to die down.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Bridgett. The two of themmade their way out the imposing front doors of theInternational Science Institute and into the snowy NewYork City night. Surrounding them, the brightlylitskyscrapers stretched all the way up to the clouds, asbeautiful and imposing as any monster from the past.

Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis,Minnesota who teaches needlepoint classes for the Minneapolisschool district and writing classes at The Loft Literary Center. Her

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poetry has recently appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, Slant, andThe Tampa Review, and she is the 2011 recipient of the Sam RaganPoetry Prize from Barton College. Her most recent published booksare "Walking Twin Cities" and "Notenlesen für Dummies DasPocketbuch."

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WATCHING PAINT DRYby Felicia A. Lee

Watching Paint DryJanni’s blog about the lamest summer ever

ABOUT ME:Janni W.Hi, I am (or maybe was) a secondyear communications

major at the University of Central Florida, now trapped inthe middle of freaking nowhere for three months. This ismy chronicle of survival.

May 30OK, so here’s the deal. I WAS going to spend most of

the summer at my parents’ place in Orlando whileworking at Hardee’s, then spend a couple of weeks inMexico with Tracy and Lisa. I managed to convince Momand Dad that Mexico was some sort of educationalecotourism thing, which is kind of true – Lisa will begoing down a few weeks before us and will actually begetting units for helping with crop irrigation orsomething. And knowing her, she’s liable to blab on andon about poverty and sustainability and stuff, so it’ll beeducational, at least until Tracy and I get a fewMargaritas into her.

Well, that was the plan. But just because I missed ONEstupid final and ONE term paper this semester, UCF putsme on academic probation – can you believe it? I mean

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really, if they go around scheduling finals at 8 a.m., whatdo they expect? Who the hell even gets up that early, letalone thinks about classes?

And don’t even get me started about that term paper.Sixty freaking percent of my final grade. Seriously?? HaveYOU ever tried to write a 24page paper with perfect APAformatting in one night?

So of course Mom and Dad pitch a fit about this. Youthink we’re paying all this money for you to party? Dadsays. Actions have consequences, young lady. It’s abouttime you learned a thing or two about personalresponsibility.

And his way of showing me that “actions haveconsequences” (his favorite saying) is to take away mysummer vacation and send me to work for “Mom’speople” – her ancient aunt and uncle and my redneckcousin and his wife on their farm near Live Oak.

If you haven’t been to Live Oak, don’t bother. It sucks.Seriously, it’s in a dry county – even if you have a real IDand not a fake one, you still can’t get booze. And there’snothing to freaking do there.

And now I’m stuck here, in this ancient dump thatsmells like cows and mothballs. Well, I gotta go – Mom’speople don’t have wifi and Cousin Earl wants to check hisemail. (Yes, I’m actually writing this on their desktopcomputer, which looks like it came from the 80s.) Talk toya later.

June 2Well, this place sucks even worse than I remember. The

water from their well still smells like farts, and they STILL

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don’t have cable. But at least the food’s tasty. GreatAuntDoris and Cousin Earl’s wife Darlene make biscuits andgravy to die for. And they don’t even have to buy eggs;they get them from the chickens they keep outside –they’re really good.

Speaking of chickens, I dodged a bullet yesterday.Cousin Earl (he’s technically my cousin but he’s almost asold as my mom ) gave me a choice of summer projects:mucking the horse stalls and maintaining the chickencoops, or repainting the old wing of the house andlooking after his kid.

Hmm, tough choice. Shovel horse shit all day or plant asixyearold in front of the TV while slapping some painton the walls?

But here’s the bizarre part. It turns out there’s a wholepart of the house I didn’t even know about, and that’swhat we’re going to be painting. You can sort of see itfrom outside, but it’s mostly blocked off by trees – it’s aonestory wing that comes off the living room. But everytime I’ve been over with Mom and Dad, they’ve had thisbig old cabinet full of china and stuff in front of thedoorway leading there, so I never noticed it. GreatUncleElmer said it had been closed off since before he wasborn, and since they didn’t want to waste money heatingand lighting it, they just left it that way.

And all those billions of times we came over, Mom andDad and I had to sleep on air mattresses in the sun room.Did I mention that Uncle Elmer’s the cheapest guy in theworld?

June 3

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This is going to be even lamer than I thought.Yesterday Cousin Earl and his friend Brady moved that

big cabinet aside (after me and Darlene took all the chinaand silverware out) then tried to open the door to the oldwing. I swear, they had to squirt oil in the hinges forabout 20 minutes before the thing would budge. Andwhen the thing finally opened, it creaked like some soundeffect from the Haunted Mansion at Disneyworld. Thehallway inside was totally dark, and once Brady pointedhis flashlight in, I could see it looked like crap – totallyfilled with dust and cobwebs, scratches and dents all overthe walls.

And guess who gets to spend all summer fixing it?It’s weird that they’re doing this because Uncle Elmer

won’t have anything to do with it. Just asking for trouble,he keeps saying. I asked Cousin Earl why they’re doingthis now and he said he and Darlene wanted to rent outthe rooms there to local workers. Then I asked why UncleElmer hated this idea so much, and he looks all startledthen says that old people get stuck in their wayssometimes.

Then Brady gives him this look I couldn’t quite figureout.

Cousin Earl totally ignores him and tells me to put onsome goggles and a dust mask and start sweeping up stuffin there while he and Brady go to the hardware store, andBrady goes, Are you sure she’s going to be okay in thereby herself? and Earl just shushes him and says to stopacting like the old folk. Whatever that’s supposed tomean.

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June 5More of the same. I hate this place.Sorry to be such a bitch, people, but I seriously didn’t

get any sleep last night. For one, that stupid air mattressin the sunroom is about a million years old and lumpy ashell. And since the sunroom has just screens and not realwindows, I can hear millions of bugs buzzing right outsidethe house ALL NIGHT LONG. This is the real Florida,Mom always says when we’re in there trying to sleepthrough that racket. Yeah, if I wanted the real Florida, I’dgo to the Keys, where at least there’s beer and people talknormal.

All this stress might be giving me weird dreams, too,because last night I swear I heard noises coming from theold wing. Like bumps and creaks, then STOMP STOMPSTOMP like someone walking real slowly. I figured Earlwas in there plotting more annoying chores, but then Irealized I could still hear him snoring down the hall. (Thewalls are REALLY thin here.)

I must have fallen asleep (okay, so I did get SOMEsleep) because the next thing I remembered was wakingup and seeing that it was already light out. So I figured ithad to be a dream or something. Darlene, who alwaystries to be nice to me, asked at breakfast how I slept and Itold her I dreamt of hearing someone walking in thecorridor and she looked kind of startled. Then Earl cuts inand says it must have been mice or rats – we’d disturbed alot of critters in there, he says, so some of them might bemoving around. Darlene kind of nods.

Great. So it wasn’t a dream. The house is infested withrats. And they sound like ginormous rats too. And I get to

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sleep like six inches off the floor just a few yards fromthem. Could things possibly suck any worse?

June 6I think my hair has gone permanently gray from all the

old plaster and stuff in that dumb corridor and I’ve got somuch of it up my nose that everything I eat smells likechalk.

This morning, I was helping Cousin Earl and Brady peeloff the old wallpaper, which looked like some crazed cathad attacked it, and when they shined their light on thewall, I could see someone had written stuff on it – realoldfashioned handwriting, but big and messy. That, andthe number 4 all over the place, which was kind ofcreepy. Definitely made by a grownup, because it was toohigh up to be a little kid. I couldn’t make out any of it.Cousin Earl caught me trying and told me to stop goofingoff and get back to work. Then Brady gave him that lookagain.

I could tell he didn’t much like it in there, either.Me, I seriously hate everything about that old hallway.

How dark it is, even with Cousin Earl’s big trouble lamp.The way the air in there smells and doesn’t move, ever.Kind of like a funeral home, only worse.

Oh, and speaking of dead things, I forgot to mentionthat this whole freaking neighborhood is one big deadzone – like in zero bars on my phone. I haven’t been ableto check my texts since I got here. So no, people, I’m notdead! You’re just going to have to go oldschool and shootme an email. PLEASE. I’m bored out of my skull.

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June 7So the local grade school is officially out and now I

have another tedious task – looking after Earl andDarlene’s brat Skeeter.

Honest to God, that’s what they call him. His officialname is something like Stephen Foster J., III, but no oneever calls him that. Anyhow, Skeeter’s six with muddyblond hair, tons of freckles, grimy fingers, and a nose fullof snot. Even though he’s just six, he already talks in thatsame annoying rednecky way as everyone else in LiveOak, and he’s even harder to understand than the rest ofthem because he just lost his front teeth.

So now I’m supposed to be looking after that ugly kid atthe same time I’m working in this disaster zone filled withbugs and power tools and paint thinner and stuff.Darlene, who used to be a teacher, doesn’t let him watchTV more than an hour a day, so there goes that plan. Shewants me to “engage” him. In other words, have happymeaningful conversations with him. While working in aplace that looks like a nuclear bomb hit it. WTF?

Oh, yeah, on top of all this, Darlene says that Skeeterhas a tendency to tell tall tales. So I guess this means Idon’t really have to worry about not understandinganything he says. He’ll probably be lying anyhow.

June 8Day 1 of Skeetercare. At breakfast, Darlene tells

Skeeter that I’d be looking after him and to mind hismanners. Mom says she does all the bookkeeping for thefarm, so I could see why she’d want him out of her hair.

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So after breakfast I drag my ass back to that ugly oldpart of the house, with Skeeter close behind. Darlene gaveme a big pile of workbooks and paper and markers forhim, and told me to have him draw and do “enrichment”activities in the living room from these workbooks while Iworked. I figured he’d wander either all over the house orrun straight into Brady’s chainsaw while I wasn’t looking,but miraculously he didn’t.

But he still drove me nuts.First, he never stops talking. True, most of the time, I

can’t understand what he’s saying but it’s still annoying.But it’s even worse when I do understand him. It’s like

he’s having a really annoying conversation with someonewho’s not there. Actually, several people.

Around 10:00 – which is when Darlene says he’ssupposed to have his healthy midmorning snack – I cameout of the corridor to find him on the living room couch,staring into space and waving his hands around, goingEeny, meeny, miny mo, catch a tiger by the toe…

Except he didn’t say tiger. He said the Nword. Honestto God, I knew Mom’s people were a bit, as Dad wouldsay, “country,” but seriously? Every time we came uphere, Mom and Dad would remind me that Live Oak isn’tlike Orlando and I shouldn’t expect people here to act thesame, but this totally crossed the line. Mom’s from hereand she’d have me grounded me for life if she heard mesaying that.

So I grab him by the arm and say Skeeter, don’t say thatword – it’s not cool, and he just shrugs and goes Whatword? And I say You know what word – it’s okay to usethat rhyme but from now on you catch a TIGER by the

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toe, okay?And then he goes But that’s how Missy and Aaron do it

and I figured they were just some brats from school and Isay I don’t care – nice people don’t use words like that.And he goes But Missy and Aaron are nice and you’rehurting their feelings. Then I tell him that they’re not niceif they talk like that and besides, how can I hurt theirfeelings if they’re not here and he goes But they are andlooks like he’s about to start crying.

Brat.A few minutes later Darlene came out with a plate of

grapes and crackers for us – she was nice enough to bringenough for everyone, not just Skeeter – I pulled her asideand told her about what he said. She looked kind ofstartled but thanked me for telling him the Nword wasbad and told me to let her know if he used it again. Butshe also said that it was normal for kids his age to haveimaginary friends so not to worry.

Uh, HELLO, your kid’s imaginary friends are flamingracists, and you don’t think that’s a problem?

June 9So Skeeter’s turning out to be even weirder than I

thought. I gave him a bunch of exercises to do from oneof his workbooks while I helped Earl and Brady get rid ofthe grotty old carpet in there. After that, Earl wants to getstarted on the three bedrooms, provided we can get thedoors open. They all seem to be rusted shut, and no onehas the keys anymore.

Anyhow, back to Skeeter. He’s still having his fakeconversations with Missy and Aaron, who seem to be little

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kids like him rather than dinosaurs or other things I’dthink little kids would want to talk to. And he’s goingDon’t cry Missy, Don’t cry, you can go outside wheneveryou want. I don’t know where he gets this stuff.

To add to the weirdness, he’s picked up anotherimaginary friend today: some lady he calls Miz Ellen.Well, she’s not really a friend – he’s totally terrified of her.Like this afternoon he was all whiny and crying and goingNO! DON’T TOUCH ME! And DON’T STICK HIM WITHTHAT DON’T STICK HIM WITH THAT! And I ran back outinto the living room and there’s nobody there but him.Then he runs up to me and slams his snotcovered faceright against my gut and starts squeezing me with hissticky fingers and blubbering about how Miz Ellen wasbeing mean to Missy and Aaron and making them cry.

Darlene says imaginary friends are a normal way forlittle kids to sort out personal identity issues. This kid’sgot issues, all right.

And it turns out I’m not the only one who thinksSkeeter’s strange. This afternoon, Brady and I were on ourway to get some supplies from the storage shed, and wesaw him sitting on the couch with his drawing pad andmarkers, scribbling madly. What are you drawing there?Brady says to Skeeter and he goes This is how Miz Ellenhurt Missy.

From where I was, all I could see were two bad stickfigures and the smaller one had a bunch of red crayonlines coming out of its eyes and its mouth open like it wasscreaming. Nice.

Then Brady shakes his head and looks kind of messedup. That ain’t right, he said to me as we left the living

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room. Old man’s right – we’re just asking for trouble.I wished I’d asked him what he meant by this.

June 14Sorry I haven’t posted in a few days. I’ve been working

my ass off because Brady’s bailed on us – Earl wouldn’tsay why, but he’s really pissed about it. And whatever itwas, Brady was pissed at him too – the last I saw of Bradywas right before he left, with Earl chasing him down thedriveway yelling about him being a baby or something.Then Brady yells a bunch of stuff back I couldn’t hearthen goes really loud Well if you don’t tell her, I will! Tellwho what??

So now Earl says we have to work a couple of hoursafter dinner too, at least until he hires someone else tohelp us. He said that might not be as easy as it sounds.

Well, Skeeter’s in bed, so now it’s time to get back towork – AGAIN. Catch ya later.

June 16Another stressful day. We finally managed to get one of

the bedroom doors open – it took forever. There was anold bed in there with messedup sheets and blankets andpillows still on it, as if someone had just gotten up after areally bad night. There was more shreddedup wallpaperwith yet more 4s written on it, and an old chest ofdrawers with a broken mirror and a bunch of brokencrap– little porcelain dolls and stuff – on top. More wason the floor.

I almost wanted to gag from all the spider webs andmouse poop in there, but then Earl goes Okay put on a

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mask and goggles and let’s start moving this crap out. But of course, Skeeter managed to screw things up.We were carrying out our third load of stuff when I

looked down the corridor and noticed some whiteblotches on the walls, about three feet off the ground.Earl noticed them too, so after we dumped the stuffoutside, we went back to look closer. They were kidsizedhandprints, made in white paint. And the paint was stillwet.

There’s only one person around here with hands thatsize. And Earl was pissed.

SKEETER! He yells, running back into the living room.What have you been doing, boy? Have you lost yourmind?

Of course, I just had to check this out, so I went into theliving room too. Skeeter was standing there, looking allworried. He had white paint on his fingertips and on hispants. SO busted.

Skeeter starts blubbering It wasn’t me Daddy – it wasMissy and Aaron and Earl goes Don’t lie to me son do youthink I’m stupid and Skeeter goes I’m not lying –I helpedthem open the paint, that’s all and Earl goes You askedfor it, son and starts unbuckling his belt and pulling it out.

Then Darlene comes in and goes What’s going on here,Earl? And he waves at the corridor and goes Look at whatSkeeter did. Darlene walks over to the corridor, looks atthe wall and goes Skeeter what happened? And Skeeterstarts crying about Missy and Aaron again while Earlstarts yelling You see what he’s been doing? We have tonip this in the bud, and Darlene goes kind of pale, grabsSkeeter by the arm and goes I think it’s time for a

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timeout, young man, and Earl goes Let me handle this,Darlene, and she just glares at him. And she’s still holdingSkeeter’s arm and he’s got his belt folded over in his handand they’re just glaring at each other. And I’m juststanding there in the middle of all this. AWKWARD.

June 17So the weird thing is that after Earl made such a big

deal about how we had to work after dinner every nightto get the rooms fixed for harvest season, he suddenlychanges his mind. Actually, I think Darlene and UncleElmer and Aunt Doris changed his mind for him. They allmade a big deal about how we shouldn’t go in there afterdark anymore. Earl told me it’s because they’re worriedthe noise will keep Skeeter from sleeping.

And it turns out that Darlene’s REALLY mad at Earl.He’s more of a tanyourhide kind of parent, and she’smore a timeoutactionshaveconsequences parent.What’s weirder, Darlene totally sided with Skeeter. Ioverheard her and Earl arguing about it last night – I wasin the den, checking my email and they were in thekitchen with the door closed, but I could still hear them.Darlene goes But there’s no way a child that smallcould’ve gotten a new can of paint open by himself andEarl goes Stop indulging him, Darlene. Then she saysHow could he have made all those handprints? He onlyhad a little paint on the tips of his fingers, not all over hishands and Earl goes You underestimate him – he couldhave washed it off and Darlene goes But his hands werecompletely dry and I would have seen him if he tried togo to the bathroom or into the kitchen, besides the prints

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in the corridor weren’t the same size as his hands, theywere smaller, and Earl goes Well, who else could havemade them, then?

Then she starts to cry. Maybe Earl felt bad about this,so he decided to stop working at night so she’d calmdown again.

This morning, Darlene announced that she was takingSkeeter to the library and then to the public pool, so Iwouldn’t have to worry about him. Then Earl goes Butwhat about this week’s payroll? And she goes Isn’t yourson’s safety more important? And he kind of groans androlls his eyes.

So it’s just me and Earl in the construction zone today,thank God. We were hauling stuff out from the otherbedrooms – more broken crap, like really old wooden toysand moldy bedding and old furniture – when Earlsuddenly stops and goes Hey, I’d like to have a word withyou. And this was bizarre because usually when he wantsto tell me something he just says it.

But then he looks at me all serious and says I supposeyou’ve been wondering why everyone’s so skittish aboutthis part of the house, and I go well, yeah. And he says,Okay, you’re an adult so I’ll tell you the straight story:After the rebellion, one of the ladies who lived here –actually, your and my greatgreat well I forgot how manygreats grandaunt – had a breakdown and locked herselfinto that wing with her two kids – she went nuts after herhusband went missing in the war. Long story short – shepoisoned herself because she was nuts, and the kids diedtoo – there was a smallpox outbreak at the time. And Isaid Missy and Aaron? And he nods and says everyone

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around here knows the story – that’s how Skeeter knowsand that’s why he thinks he can use them as an excuse forhis orneriness. Yeah, it’s an ugly story but there’s nothinggoing on, no matter what you might hear folks aroundtown saying.

And I just nodded to be polite and he goes Well, thefamily just blocked off the wing after that and acted like itwasn’t there. That’s close to twelve hundred square feetof good space in there – and I think 150 years is longenough for respectful mourning, don’t you?

Then I asked how he planned to rent out the rooms ifeveryone in town was spooked of them and he said he’dget Mexicans – they don’t know the story and they knowgood value when they see it.

Yeah, good luck with THAT, dude. Not that I believe inghosts or anything, but really?

June 20Darlene and Skeeter went to the library three days in a

row –but yesterday when they got home, Earl nearly bither head off. How much longer do you think you can keepdoing this? he asks and she goes All summer if necessary– it’s not safe for him in there. Actually it’s not safe foryou or Janni either, and then Earl loses it and tells hershe’s just as bad as the rest of them and to grow up andface reality. Then he says he’s laying down the law andtomorrow both she and Skeeter will stay home. Darlenelooks like she’s about to cry, then Earl looks kind of guiltyand promises her we’d keep a close eye on Skeeter andkeep him out of the corridor. Earl’s kind of a hardass but Ican tell he really likes her.

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You’d think all this would make Skeeter finally behave.Well, you’d be wrong. He was still having his dumb fakeconversations with Missy and Aaron and he even did theexact same dumb thing that caused all this trouble in thefirst place. And this time it caused even more trouble thanbefore.

Let me explain. Earl said all the electricians in townwere either too expensive or not interested in workinghere, so he’d do the wiring himself. This means my mainduty as of late has been holding rolls of wiring andspooling them out as Earl moved the wires around behindthe walls. This also means listening to Earl swear a lot. It’spretty obvious he has no clue about wiring.

Anyhow, so this morning we were doing this and I lookdown the corridor, and there’s Skeeter, talking to himselfwhile running a crayon over the page of some workbook.Then Earl yells at me – he was up on the roof, moving thewires around through a hole up there – and I unspoolsome more wire for him. Then I look down the hall again.Skeeter’s still sitting there on the floor, but now I noticemore white blotches on the walls. Kidsized handprints.Again.

That was freaky. Skeeter moves pretty fast, but there’sno way even he could have done this so fast – I was onlylooking away a minute or so and I’m positive I wouldhave heard him come in. I’m also positive I would havenoticed those handprints if they’d been there already. Butnobody else could have done it, either. At least nobody Iwant to think about.

So I call up through the hole in the wall for Earl to

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come down and see something and he goes What? And Isaid Skeeter’s been messing with the paint again. I feltbad about starting another big scene with him andDarlene and getting Skeeter into more trouble, but it wasgoing to happen as soon as Earl saw that wall anyhow.

I hear Earl climbing down from the roof and I go intothe living room and grab Skeeter by the arm. I don’t likeratting on you but you should have known better, I toldhim. And he acts all surprised and goes What? And I saidYou know – you were fingerpainting in the hall again.And of course he goes No I wasn’t! I just opened the canfor Miz Ellen – she made me.

Now Earl was in the living room too and he was glaringat Skeeter. So you think this is a nice way to getattention? He says and Skeeter goes No sir. And he says,I’ll give you some attention you won’t soon forget andstarts taking off his belt again. Darlene must have somekind of radar for that because just then she comes in andgoes What’s going on here? And Skeeter starts crying andEarl starts yelling and that whole dumb thing from theother day just replayed itself.

Except for one thing. This time, Darlene pointed outright then and there that Skeeter had only a little bit ofpaint on him, on his right hand and Earl says See? AndDarlene says His left hand is completely clean, Earl – youknow Skeeter can’t wash his hands that well. And thereare both left and right handprints on the wall and Earlsays What are you getting at? And she says What do youthink I’m getting at? Maybe it’s time YOU faced reality.

Ooh, harsh.Weirdly Earl just stands there and doesn’t say anything.

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Then Darlene looks like she’s about to lose it, grabsSkeeter by the arm and pulls him away, and we hear theback door slam a little after that.

And now I kind of feel freaked out too.

June 21I’m writing this from my very own laptop, in the middle

of a civilized place – Starbucks! What a concept.I get to be here because of all that strange crap

yesterday. Darlene and Skeeter never came home afterthat bizarre fight. Aunt Doris said they were visitingDarlene’s parents in Valdosta.

Actually, everyone’s been acting real awkward sincethey left. I could tell that both Uncle Elmer and AuntDoris were mad at Earl, and he was mad at them andDarlene. At dinner last night, Aunt Doris kept trying tosmile at me and be all friendly, but this just made me feelworse – she and Darlene and I guess Uncle Elmer had allbeen pretty nice to me, and now I felt like I’d walked inon something totally embarrassing. And it’s not like I canjust get up and go somewhere else.

But this morning, I got a lucky break. When I saw Earl,I was surprised to see him looking kind of happy. At first Ithought it was because now we’d be able to work in peacewithout Skeeter underfoot, but instead he says to meSorry about all the crap you’ve had to put up with – Ithink you deserve a day off. And he gives me the car keysand forty bucks and says Go to town and enjoy yourself.

I guess Earl’s not so bad either, except when he’s tryingto whup the bejesus out of Skeeter. So I thanked him andtook off before he could change his mind. I remembered

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this good breakfast place where Mom and Dad used totake me so I decided to go there first. I brought my laptopalong too in case I found a place with free wifi afterwards.

So I get there, order a bunch of blueberry pancakeswith whipped cream on them, and who should walk inbut Brady. He looks all surprised when I wave at him andhe slides in across from me in my booth and tells thewaitress he’s picking up my check. He asked howeverything was going at the house and I go Fine and hesaid Did they tell you why I left? And I said No and hetells me what I’ve already sort of figured out – thatSkeeter was freaking him out with that Missy and Aaronstuff.

Then I tell him Earl told me the whole story, and afterthat I told him about Skeeter and his finger painting andhe starts looking all panicked and I say You don’t reallybelieve that ghost stuff and he says How can I not,knowing the story of that house and I go Just becausepeople died there doesn’t mean they’re ghosts and he saysSo what did Earl tell you about Miz Ellen?

So I tell him what Earl told me and he starts shaking hishead. He told you a cleanedup version of the story, hesays. The black lady who cleans up my mama’s place? Shetold me her greatgreatsomething grandmother workedat your greatuncle’s place during the war. What reallyhappened was this: Crazy Miz Ellen locked herself inthere, like Earl told you. She starts screaming and yellingall sorts of stuff about hell and the devil and stuff, and herkids were still in the main part of the house with MizEllen’s brother – your greatgreatsomethinguncle. Earldidn’t tell you that part?

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I shook my head. Maybe Earl didn’t know this version.Anyhow, Brady goes, Miz Ellen goes on screaming and

yelling for about a week –it’s a wonder she kept herstrength. Then finally she starts screaming she wants tosee her kids, but she still won’t come out or let anyoneelse in but the kids. So they send the kids in – don’t knowwhat they were thinking. Maybe they thought it wouldcalm her down. Well, it didn’t. Soon after they get inthere, she locks the door behind them and soon they’rescreaming and yelling Stop hurting me Mamma, stophurting me Mamma and stuff. Then it was all silent. Likescary silent.

So they break down the door, Brady says, and sureenough, find the poor kids dead – tortured then strangled.It was pretty ugly – among other things, she’d poked theireyes out.

Then I remembered Skeeter’s drawing. Holy crap.Yeah, and ol’ Miz Ellen poisoned herself too, Brady

goes. But here’s the worst part – wait, no, if I told youEarl would kill me. And trust, me, you’d rather not know.

Then the waitress puts my pancakes in front of me.They looked really good but now I didn’t feel like eating.God, how could that story possibly get WORSE? You’refucking kidding, I say, even though Mom and Dad warnedme that people in Live Oak don’t like women to swear.Come on, just tell me already. Please?

Sorry, no can do, Brady says. But seriously, I think youneeded to know what I just told you. Now your family,they always held to the cleanedup version Earl told you –um, smallpox and all. I think it’s just because it makes

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them feel safer. But I’d swear on my grave that what I toldyou is true – ask anyone around here. One thing’s forsure, I’m not going back in there for all the tea in China.

Then why were you helping us in the first place? I said.Then he says he and Earl went back a long ways and heowed him a big favor from the time they served togetherin Iraq, yadda yadda. At first he was trying hard to believeEarl, that it was nothing but an old story, but afterSkeeter started acting weird, he changed his mind.

So what should I do? I asked. I don’t know why Ibothered – it’s not like Brady’s some magical fairy whocan fix everything. And he says, Well you know what I’mdoing – staying the hell away from there. But you’re kin,so that makes it different. Just be careful.

That was totally unhelpful.

June 21, part 2So after that totally creepy breakfast, I escaped here to

Starbucks, so now I can finally check all my texts. Nopeople, I’m NOT making this stuff up. That place really isthis crazy. And no, I didn’t know I’d locked the commentfunction on this blog. Honest to god, I was wonderingwhy nobody was leaving any comments. I’ll fix it once Ifigure out how, promise – I’m WAY too stressed to do thatnow. Brady’s story is totally freakass scary. He swearsthat’s the version everyone in town believes except mydumbass relatives.

Oh, I forgot to mention that Brady told me some otherreally awful stuff too: That crazy Ellen not only killedherself with rat poison, she’d cut off one of her fingers –her left ring finger. Apparently she had a real bug up her

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ass about her husband cheating on her – she kept goingon and on about 4 demon women seducing him, eventhough the guy was probably just dead in the war. Andone of the other things Brady said was that Ellen keptyelling that if anyone went in there to get her out ortouched any of her stuff, she’d follow them to hell. Andthat Ellen’s brother, who went in there and found her,went crazy and died a few years later, screaming hername. And so did the one and only person besides Earland Brady and me to ever go in there later – some hiredguy my greatgrandpa told to go in there and clean thingsup, back before Uncle Elmer was born. And he worked inthere only one day before he quit.

Brady swears it’s true, and Earl keeps going on and onabout what a standup guy Brady is. (At least he did, untilBrady bailed on us.)

And there’s all those 4s on the wallpaper back there…OMFG.

God, now my brain’s totally messed up. Maybe now I’mstarting to go crazy too. But seriously – ghosts andcurses?? I don’t know who to believe anymore.

That, and I really need to pee. (Yeah, I know – TMI!!)And I need food, since I hardly touched those pancakesEarl bought for me – all his stupid fault. Maybe I’ll get acouple of those scones before that fat mom up front andher kids take them all. And a caramel frappucino – hey,I’ve still got Earl’s forty bucks.

Oh, I just thought of something else too…hang on,more on that in a bit.

June 21, part 3

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Okay, now I’m OFFICIALLY FREAKED OUT.So when I was typing at you in my last post, it occurred

to me: Hey, I’m on the effing INTERNET, I can look forstuff! So I started Googling ghosts in Live Oak – I figuredthat if Brady’s story didn’t show up, he was just pullingmy leg.

I totally wasn’t expecting to find anything – okay, I wasHOPING not to find anything – but OMFG, there areTONS of stories on a bunch of sites about Miz Ellen andMissy and Aaron. One of the sites even has a couple ofoldtimey brownish photos of the house and Miz Ellen –she still had all her fingers in those shots. And ALL thosestories match Brady’s, except for one part.

The part Brady wouldn’t tell me.He wasn’t kidding when he said it was the worst part.

Hang on to your seats, people:Okay, so after Miz Ellen went crazy and the kids went

in there and started then suddenly stopped screaming andcrying, the rest of the family broke down the door to findout what the deal was. Just like Brady told me, theyfound the kids dead and Miz Ellen dead too, holding anempty bottle of rat poison.

But that’s not the scary part. Crazy people offingthemselves isn’t scary, it’s kind of normal.

What’s not normal was that Miz Ellen was not onlydead, she was already stiff and rotting with bugs and stuffon her. So she’d already been dead for about a weekwhen the kids were sent in there. And all those sites saidit had to be her screaming and murdering her kidsbecause all these witnesses – MY relatives – recognizedher voice and heard the kids screaming DON’T HURT ME

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MOMMA and stuff like that, and from the way the houseis set up, nobody else could have gotten in there.

And as some psychic guy who was quoted on a bunchof those sites said This suggests an unusually powerfuland diabolical spirit at work – one the cursed family(a.k.a. MY family) has been wise not to reckon with.

Until now. Thanks a bunch, Earl.Well, then there was that one big long article by some

shrinks and a history guy at the University of Florida whosaid everyone fell for the story because of wartimepsychological stress and mass hysteria and Miz Ellenprobably looked that way when they found her becauseshe had leprosy or something. It was really boring withtons of footnotes, which means my profs at UCF probablywould have loved it and said it was all true. I swear toGod, I’m really hoping it is.

So I tried to call Mom to find out if she knew about this– and if she did, why she never told me. Crap, how couldshe NOT?? And she kept dragging us up here everyfreaking summer?? I was hoping maybe it was becauseshe figured it was a bunch of bull. But what if it wasn’t???

But she wasn’t home. And she wasn’t answering her celleither. Neither was Dad, and I forgot to program in hiswork number. SHIT.

I seriously don’t want to go back there. I’m so temptedright now to blow the rest of Earl’s cash on gas and driveall the way back to Orlando. But if I go back now, Dadwill kill me for sure.

What do you guys think?

June 22

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I thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse. Well,they did. When I got back to the farm yesterdayafternoon, there were a couple of cop cars in the yard.

There wasn’t any police tape up or anything, so I wentin. No, officer, like I said there was nobody else in therebut me, Earl was saying. He sounded really annoyed.Then I heard one of the cops ask Who else was in thehouse and Earl said Everyone else was out – Mom andDad went shopping in town, my wife and kid are visitingher folks and my cousin Janni, she’s up from Orlando forthe summer, well she’s gone for the day too.

Since they didn’t hear me come in and I didn’t want thecops to get surprised and shoot me or something, I saidCousin Earl, I’m home and he kind of nods at me whilethe cops look me over then they nod, kind of polite like.Then I look behind them and see why they’re here. Holyshit.

The walls in the living room were covered withhandprints. Not the corridor, where all the paint and stuffwas, the WHOLE FREAKING LIVING ROOM. Like, whereUncle Elmer and Aunt Doris like to sit and watch TV afterdinner. And these weren’t little kid handprints, but bigones. Skinny fingers but long ones – longer than mine.

And guess what? One of the fingers was missing fromthe prints. The left ring finger.

But that wasn’t the weirdest part. The handprintsweren’t made of paint like the other ones. They were thisgross shade of dark red. Like blood.

Obviously, someone came in here when I wasn’tlooking and did this – some practical joker, Earl wassaying to the cops. And why would anyone want to do

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that? one of them goes, and Earl says, To yank my chain –folks in town know I’m fixing up that old wing and somedon’t approve and one of the cops goes For good reason.And Earl just glares at him and goes So what do you boysintend to do? Someone’s been vandalizing my property.But he sounds like he doesn’t quite believe this himself.

Well, Mr. J., one of them goes, it’s hard to see howanyone could’ve gotten in here without you hearing. Allthe doors were locked, so nobody can get in without akey. Your cousin was a remote possibility, but her handsare the wrong size. And clearly, she wasn’t here when thishappened.

Now Earl’s pissed. So how else do you intend to explainthis? he yells. I can’t believe he actually yelled at a bunchof cops. They don’t get mad or anything, thank God. Theyjust stared at each other and one goes You tell me.

Then they turn around and leave.Can you believe those clowns? My taxes at work, Earl

goes. Well, let’s get scrubbing. I don’t want to have toexplain this to Mom and Dad. Hey and do me a favor anddon’t mention this to Darlene, okay? There’s another forty– no fifty – bucks in it for you.

Of course I nod. I can use the cash. But I was almost toofreaked out to get anywhere near that wall, even withEarl right next to me. And now I’m having a hard timedeciding whose ideas about this place are crazier – his orBrady’s.

June 23Well, Earl’s brilliant plan to clean the walls before

everyone got back yesterday totally failed – whatever that

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stuff was, it wasn’t coming out. Once we got close up andstarted trying to clean it, we could see it wasn’t blood. Itwas more like reddish smoke, burnt into the walls. Wescrubbed like crazy and Earl was swearing swear wordsthat even I hadn’t heard before.

Let’s give this one more shot, Earl says, but be carefulnot to damage the paint. Uh, too late dude – all ourscrubbing’s already done a number of the paint – it wasalready dull and scratchy in the places where we’d beencleaning. Earl finally notices this and starts swearingagain, just as Uncle Elmer and Aunt Doris open the frontdoor.

I can’t even begin to describe what happened next. Let’sjust say Uncle Elmer knows even more swear words thanEarl does and they were yelling while Aunt Doris wasscreaming CALL THE POLICE and Earl was yelling THEYWERE JUST HERE MOMMA and then they all startedyelling at ME. Good God, WHY?

June 25Sorry I haven’t been around in a while. Stuff has gotten

totally out of control.The other night, after I got back from Live Oak and

those handprints showed up in the living room, I wastotally freaked out. I kept thinking of Brady’s stories. Thatone guy he mentioned lost his mind and got locked awayafter working just one day in that corridor. And Earl andme, we’d been in there how many times now?

Before I came back here from town, I tried texting Moma few more times, but NOTHING. She’s usually obsessiveabout answering my texts. Just figures she’d just have to

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go on one of her “unplugged vacation days” right then.God, I hate it when she does that.

So I tried calling her from Uncle Elmer’s landline afterdinner. Landlines don’t count for Mom’s unpluggedvacation days.

But Uncle Elmer saw me and told me not to bother. Theline had been down since dinnertime. Great.

And as if I didn’t have enough to stress me out, lastnight there was all this extra noise just outside thesunroom where I sleep. Earl and Uncle Elmer spent thewhole night stomping around, back and forth, around thehouse, each with a loaded shotgun. Like that’s going tohelp. So no, I didn’t manage to get any sleep at all. So thenext day, I got up feeling even crappier than I did when Ipulled that allnighter at UCF to try to finish that stupidpaper.

I dragged myself to the breakfast room the next dayand Earl takes one look at me and says Take another dayoff, kid, you look like crap. So I go back to the sunroom –it was already light out – and collapse on the air mattress.I can smell coffee and hear the roosters going off outside,but I conk out and fall asleep anyhow.

So I felt better by afternoon, and it turns out Earl hadtaken the day off too, so I didn’t feel too guilty. Nothingelse happened that day, thank God. But that night, he andUncle Elmer start stomping around with their shotgunsagain, and since I’d slept all day, I couldn’t sleep normallyand just kept stressing out about whether I’d go crazy.When it started getting light again, I felt better and wentto sleep for real.

Big mistake. Soon after (okay, maybe it just felt like it

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was soon), I feel and hear this big BOOM and Earl startsscreaming CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT! and AuntDoris starts screaming EARL! WHAT DID YOU DO?? andthen Uncle Elmer screams WHERE’S JANNI AT? and bythen I’m already up but Earl comes and bangs on thesunroom door screaming GET UP! WE’RE GITTINGOUTTA HERE! at the top of his lungs. I’m alreadystanding, but he picks me up and throws me over hisshoulder like a bag of chicken feed and hauls ass out theback door.

I look up as Earl steps outside and hear another BOOMand see a bunch of smoke and flames coming from the oldwing and hear more screaming from inside the house. Butit wasn’t Aunt Doris’ screaming, because I know whatAunt Doris’ screaming sounds like, and it wasn’t like that.It wasn’t like anyone or anything I’d ever heard before.And Aunt Doris was already outside and wouldn’t bescreaming that she’d drive all to the fires of Hell.

I knew Aunt Doris heard it too because when it started,she started screaming again, and I could totally hear twodifferent voices screaming. Then Earl sets me down andbrings the car around and we all climb in and hightail itout of there.

So now we’re at a Motel 6 in Live Oak. Uncle Elmer andAunt Doris have pretty much stopped talking to Earl, whospent the whole drive telling them it was his fault for nothiring a proper electrician. They just glared at him.

Maybe a few weeks ago, I would have thought this waspossible. But now I really doubt it. Aunt Doris and Itotally heard that horrible woman screaming in there. Butneither of us felt like arguing with Earl about it.

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June 27Well, I’m now back in civilization, aka Orlando. When I

got up yesterday and met Earl and the others forbreakfast, Uncle Elmer said he’d phoned my parents andthey’d be here to get me by noon. This was weird – Ithought they’d just have me take a bus back.

It’s kind of embarrassing to say this, but when I sawMom’s dorky brown Volvo pull into the Motel 6 parkinglot, it made me totally happy. I honest to God neverrealized how much I wanted to see Mom and Dad and gohome. And they must have felt the same way, becauseMom was crying when she got out of the car andsqueezed me like a boa constrictor the moment she sawme. Then Dad gives me a big hug and says Time to gohome, kiddo. He hasn’t called me kiddo in ages. I used tohate it, but this time, I didn’t mind at all.

As Dad opens the door for me and I get in, I hear Momripping Earl a new one. Wow, I’d forgotten how Live Oakyshe can sound when she’s pissed off, and I’d never heardher this pissed off before. I actually felt kind of sorry forEarl. YOU DIDN’T TELL ME YOU WERE PLANNING TOGO IN THERE, EARL! WHAT IN THE HELL DO YOUTHINK YOU WERE DOING? she screams. Merri, I didn’tmean no harm, Earl says, raising his hands like he thinksMom’s going to hit him. HOW COULD YOU THINK THISWOULDN’T LEAD TO NO HARM, EARL? Now she’s totallyscreaming at him. HOW COULD YOU EVEN THINK OFSENDING MY BABY IN THERE? HOW COULD YOU GO INTHERE? DON’T YOU HAVE A STITCH OF COMMONSENSE?

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Then Dad goes and wraps his arm around her. Come onMerri, he goes, let’s try to get back to Orlando before rushhour, okay?

I slept all the way home. Then I crawled back into mybed – my real bed, in my own room – and slept somemore.

June 28When I woke up today, everything was normal again,

thank God. Actually, it was better than normal.I didn’t get up until nearly 10, but for once, Mom didn’t

give me a hard time about it. Since I’d left my suitcaseand all my clothes back at the farm (which she told meburned to the ground), she took me out to get more anddidn’t even lecture me about how trampylooking the stuffI liked was. Okay, I only got stuff I thought she’d be okaywith – I figured I’d need it to get another summer job,which I should probably look into soon.

But it turns out I didn’t even need to do that. When Dadcame home from work, he said Honey, one of my clientsis a manager at Cory Shearwater and Associates and saidhe needs someone to help with data entry for the summer– you interested? I figured there wouldn’t be a whole lotof angry ghosts hanging around a boring accountingoffice, so I said Sure and he says Great – he says you canstart July 15 – I think you’ve earned a few weeks’vacation.

This was cool. What can I say, this was the BEST DAYEVER. I’m totally serious. Yeah, I know it sounds totallylame, but seriously? It was AWESOME. Honest to god, ifyou had the last few weeks I did, you’d understand.

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Oh yeah, since I wasn’t being pursued by pissedoffdead relatives today, I actually had time to figure out howto open the comments on this thing. So fire away!

COMMENTS:[email protected] said on June 28, 10:45 p.m.:OMG Janni that’s so powerful we really should be

grateful for all we have shouldn’t we? 2bad you’re not inMexico you could do SO much to help all the poorfarmers down here (like painting lol).let’s get together formargaritas when I get back, okay?

[email protected] said on June 29, 1:04 a.m.:lol u and lisa should go join a convent your seriously

nuts girl! U and your ghost shit – I don’t believe for asecond live oak’s in a dry county bet you were drunk offyour ass on moonshine the whole time J

[email protected] said on July 1, 9:14pmOkay girl, you opened the comments on this thing and

then you don’t post anything new? Come on! Call me,okay?

Jannigrrl said on July 1, 11:20pmYeah, I’m an awful friend – decided to pick up some

extra cash sitting this kid down the street. Well, your notanswering your phone now – having fun with that hotMexican dude J ??

[email protected] said on July 2, 3:05pmwell, its probably a good thing ur not blogging since

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now everyone who reads this will die of boredom, ha ha!Hey Steve’s having a big blowout @ his place on the 4 th –U in?

Jannigrrl said on July 3, 3:54pmOk, U twisted my arm!

July 3dont know where i am exactly right now. in the Volvo

on i95 i think– don’t know which way were going, dad’sdriving. Not sure why im writing. Sorry so messy imwriting on my phone & its like 3am or something.

U know how i posted bout how great stuff was? well itwas tru til i fell asleep 2nite.

then i had this awful dream about that farm & saw allthose flames & heard that screaming I’LL FOLLOW YOUTO HELL! I’LL PLAGUE YOU FOREVER! all over again. inmy dream i even saw her face. it was awful –i don’t wantto say how. all i can say is it was the ugliest, scariest thingI’d ever seen.

that face kept coming closer & closer & felt mean & hot& stank like rotten meat & i started screaming &screaming. i thought i was screaming in my dream butthen i woke up & i was still screaming. my eyes werestinging & i felt wet stuff on my face & in my eyes &thought maybe i’d gotten stuff in my eyes.

then i remembered i wasn’t on the farm anymore butback in orlando, so i got up & reached for the light by mybed.

then i screamed some more. god, it was awful.mom came running down the hall into my room, &

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immediately started screaming. then i knew i wasn’tdreaming. i started wiping my face, & when i lookeddown at my hands, i knew why mom was screaming: itwasn’t tears.

it was blood.now mom was staring up at the ceiling & screaming,

sounding totally live oaky COLIN! I’S A’HAPPENIN! IT’SA’HAPPENIN!

then the light comes on in the hall & dad comesrunning into my room tying the belt on his bathrobe.when he comes in, he stares at me & mom, then up at theceiling too. i look at them & they both look all weird &pale. holy mother of god, dad says, all quivery.

i didn’t want to look, but i couldn’t stop. on the ceiling,way too high for me to reach, are a bunch of handprints.all in dark red, like the ones in the living room on thefarm.

with missing left ring finger prints. now all three of us are holding each other & mom’s

screaming & i’m crying & i look at dad & hope –he makesme crazy sometimes, but he always finds a way out ofstuff. always. like the time last year when my laptoptotally crashed & ate all the stuff i’d done all semester? hejust pushed me aside & said let me do this – & like fiveminutes later, it was all fixed.

but 2night? well, i looked at him & it made me screamagain. i’d never seen him look so scared before.

that’s when i realized dad couldn’t get us out of this.which meant no one could. he thought he could fix thingsby putting us in the car in our pajamas & driving to godknows where. but when mom gets in the car her cel rings

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& its darlene in freakout mode – the florida state troopershad just called her in valdosta & said they found smburned up bodies they thought might be her husband &parents in law could she come back & id them?

and mom starts screaming & dad keeps driving eventho i can tell he’s freaking too & that’s why i’m writing – igot to tell some1. Not that u can help just so u know. godi don’t think even dad can fix

4444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444

COMMENTS:[email protected] said on June 29 at 3:15 a.m.:Janni? WTF happened? Srsly, write back soon ok? Or

call?? I’m thinking of U!

[email protected] said on June 29 at 7:20 a.m..:OMG Janni! I just manage to get online now, hard to

get internet here – so what happened to you?? PLEASE fillus in, I’m freaking out now too. Even if you’re doingsomething really dumb and boring just SAY SOMETHING– please!!

[email protected] said on June 29 at 8:45 a.m.:JANNI?? WTF? So my mom calls me & says 2 turn on

the news & this Volvo crashed & burned on I95 last nite& some whackedout story about how these touristsdriving from Titusville saw this crazy lady in a long dresson top of it hitting the windshield & it catches fire andcrashes in the middle of freaking I95 & mom swears she

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heard your name & your dads. IT CAN’T BE ITS CRAZY!WHERE ARE YOU?? ANSWER YOUR PHONEDAMMIT!!!!!

[email protected] said on June 29 at 9:02 a.m.:NOOO!! Tracy just called, it can’t be true – PLEASE SAY

IT’S NOT!!!! CALL ME!!! Please…?

Felicia A. Lee is a Florida-based writer and editor. She holds a BAand MA in English from Stanford and a Ph.D. in linguistics fromUCLA, and has worked as a video-game tester, promotional writerfor the Space Shuttle program, baker and dessert cook, and, foralmost ten years, a professor of linguistics. Her passions (besidesreading and writing) include birding, cooking, and wondering ifghosts exist. Her non-fiction essays have been published in the LosAngeles Times and in Salon.com.

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THE DEVIL CAME TO ME ANDBID ME SERVE HIM

by Douglas Lind

It was always at that inbetween time; that time justbefore sleep settles over the weary, and suspicion of theunknown sows its seeds. Muffled and low, it reverberatedthrough the hills, silencing the traditional nightly chorusof insects. Dismissed by the local paper as nothing morethan a “swarm of tremors,” this proclamation was not somuch a scientific determination as an editorial statementintended to quell the growing anxieties.

And it was on one of these tremulous evenings on theovergrown outskirts of Ziondale that Wilbur Dare receivedthe calling. And it was also quite unfortunate for the townthat when the boy was found raving in the middle ofTemperance Street about the need to close the fissure hewas neither believed nor heeded.

This public response was not wholly unexpected giventhe reputations around town of both Wilbur and hismother. Sixteen years prior, Wilma Dare appeared on thesteps of the general store, penniless, shoeless andhaggard. If she had stopped with a simple appeal forassistance things might have turned out differently foreveryone. But because of the judgmental silence andhardened stares, Wilma felt obliged to explain herappearance how she wasn’t always like this, how sheused to live in a city, a city underground, but was forced

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to run. And run. And run. When this revelation changed the stares to sniggers and

smirking, she further explained that after what seemedlike several weeks of wandering through tunnels andnarrow crevices she had finally, just that morning in fact,discovered the fissure and was able to escape thePestilence.

When Wilbur was born six months later with black eyesand translucent skin just like his mamma, everyone intown thought they knew the true reason for her suddenappearance. Ziondale, being the setaside and forgottencommunity it was, didn’t care much for those who,though blessed with the miracle of life, hadn’t had thesiring sanctified through a sacramental ceremony.Relocating with the hope for some sort of scripturebasedforgiveness was the most that those in her situation couldever expect. But unfortunately for the town, not only hadWilma told the truth, so too had her son. Something waslurking beyond that rocky maw.

Indeed, Wilbur had now gone missing, but his mother’sfears were somewhat assuaged when she discovered thatso too was the pistol that was kept in the bedstanddrawer. There was nothing to do now but wait. Wait andhope that it was the Ceremony which had called for himand not the Pestilence. And though Wilma’s heart achedmightily for her only child, she remained silent.

For the most part, Wilbur’s absence among thetownsfolk went unnoticed as they went about their dailyroutines. And so too did Wilma go about town on herdaily routines scavenging for those things needed toprolong her meager existence. She did not take up her

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son’s plea for closing the fissure so much as mumblinglyrepeat his admonitions in a resigned “don’t say youweren’t warned” manner. She even yelled at the town hallwindows to inform the mayor and his staff that becausethe Pestilence seemed to have found the opening it wasonly a matter of time. But like her son, the woman wassummarily ignored with thinly veiled derision as agibbering lunatic and the sooner she followed Wilbur towherever he went the better.

Opinions, however, began to change as those thingswhich are important to the livelihood of the citizens ofZiondale (hunting dogs and livestock and such) begandisappearing sometime between when the sun went downand when it rose. And the townsfolk began to heedWilma’s revelatory preaching when six year old AngusMitchell got up during evening Bible study, informed hisclassmates that he had been summoned, and withoutlooking back bid them all farewell and walked into theevening shrouded woods. Neither his parents nor anyoneelse ever saw little Angus again.

The litany of those missing grew over the next fewdays. Some, like Edward Jessup, were seen on the pathout of town as if merely taking his evening sojourn.Others seemed to simply disappear. The numbers onlyincreased as folks began checking on the wellbeing oftheir neighbors. And when they broke down the frontdoor of old Mary Plummer’s house, all that remained ofher once familiar presence was her carefully coiffeddecorative hair next to an open bottle of bourbon and abible.

As fear bubbled and roiled, now unregulated,

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throughout the community Wilma quickly rose throughthe ranks, passing the powerful few that set the townmores, as the person whose opinion was most sought. Soit was on a crisp autumn Sunday morning that she foundherself in the somewhat enviable position of addressingthe entire populace of Ziondale which had crammedthemselves into the pews of the only building that wouldcontain them all.

Scanning the crowd, Wilma slowly puffed on her pipeuntil they all realized they were being watched from thepulpit and had the good manners to silence themselves.Having their attention, she began. “Don’t know why youall decided to meet here. It’s not as if God’s gonna saveyou.”

When the collective gasp and subsequent silence gaveway to cursing and shouting, the mayor (whose wife,Milly wasn’t lying next to him one morning when heawoke) stepped up and restored order with placatinghands, saying they ought to all just settle down a whileand let Wilma speak.

Gripping the sides of the lectern, she spoke. And shedidn’t mince words. “You ain’t getting your loved onesback. They’re gone. It takes what it wants and it nevergives back.”

With this, Lizabeth Prue who had been quietly sobbingcould no longer restrain herself. Rising and clutching theback of the pew before her she wailed, “Who? Who tookmy boy? My only baby!”

With a selfrighteous stare that can only be learnedfrom being on the receiving end so many times, Wilmacorrected the bereaved woman, “What, not Who.”

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Turning her attention to the congregation at large shedrew deeply on her pipe, exhaled and began speaking lowand clear. “I’m gonna tell you something my mamma toldme. Something her mamma told her. A story going so farback nobody knows when it began. None of you arenative to these parts. None of you. Long before you allwere ever thought about, this land carried a horror younever dreamed of. The Pestilence, as the savages came tocall it, raged for years and years. As the weekly toll of thedead rose, parents implored their children to scatterthroughout the hills in the hope that some would bespared.” Pausing to take another drag she shrugged hershoulders and continued, “But there was no place forthem to go. You can ignore the summons, but you’ll justget marked. And in Its pursuit, the Pestilence knows noboundaries.”

Having their undivided attention, Wilma continued hersermon, piercing them all with her black eyes. “The onlyapparent alternative to answering the summons wasasking others to help with a more humane departure. Andit was the family members who were faced with thegruesome task of not only putting down but also buryingtheir own.” The congregation sat in silence; spellbound,hoping hers was simply an allegorical tale that wouldsoon end with the familiar account of a trial of faithfollowed by revelation and redemption.

They were to be disappointed. Wilma continued, “But the land wouldn’t have them

days after burial, the bodies were back, as if the groundhad swelled and purged itself of the offal. Eventually thecorpses were left to putrefy where they fell. With nowhere

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else to go, the people sought shelter in the fissures andcaves, hoping to escape underground.” With a whisperthat was heard by all, she finished, “But the Pestilencefollowed.”

Amid the tense silence that anticipated the conclusion,Wilma proceeded, “There it sated its appetite and there itstayed. For years it lay dormant. But then somethingwoke it, the savages above ground had the sense to avoidthe region – ever notice that there’s no records of Injunsever settling or even hunting in these parts? Didn’t youever wonder why?”

Her audience sat agape, each silently hoping that asolution would soon be forthcoming.

“Well, with nobody left underground or immediatelyabove, the Pestilence reached out further and further.Across the land it called and finally it found an entirecolony. Having just arrived to the New World, and notknowing any better, they came. Over a long, long distancethey came. Some didn’t go all the ways in, fighting thecall they lurked in the tunnels until the Pestilence wasagain sated.”

Shaking her head as in disappointment with a smallchild’s impudence, Wilma scanned the crowed, “I tried totell you all so many years ago, but you wouldn’t have anyof it! Calling names was all you were interested in. Well,those were my people. We lived underground, lost forgenerations. We lived like livestock, drinking fromunderground rivers, eating fungus and fish when wecould find it and sometimes even feeding on thoseunfortunates sentenced to the custodial pits. We wereprisoners, unable to leave because we were tethered.

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Invisibly tethered by the summons waiting for ourinevitable turn to be called to the depths.”

After a long pause, she finished, “And now the calling’sstarting again.”

For a time, the only movements were dust motes asthey floated through the glass stained sunshine

Melton Jones, the town’s resident bully and loudmouth,broke the silence. “Horse apples! You want us to believeall that? Ha! You telling us that a town full of folks, asmuch as a hundred maybe, lived down there and…”

Wilma interrupted the diatribe, “There were hundredsand hundreds of us. Eventually we were all called. But Imade it out. I don’t know how, but I did. Now it seemsthere’s no one left down there for it.” Her voice was lowbut it carried across the vaulted room and caused theglass in the windows to vibrate.

As the significance of the old woman’s wordspenetrated his tiny brain, Melton became silent andreturned to his seat, trying to comprehend the enormity ofthe horror that was now at Ziondale’s doorstep.

Accusingly, Wilma slowly moved her twisted finger overthe crowd, “Something going on here the mining, oryour damned preaching, or just the act of you all livinghere has awakened it. It’s called for some already, soonthough it’ll be strong, and it will get tired of calling andit’ll just come on out. And when it does, well…” sheshrugged her shoulders and stared at a hundred andtwenty three open mouths.

Savoring the long silent moment she finally smiled andsaid, “But I might just be able to do something to hastenan end to all this.”

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Unbeknownst to all in that room, Wilbur hadn’t beensummoned by the Pestilence. He had run just like hismamma had hoped he would.

At first his only direction was away, but soon someinner compass, a different sort of calling than what lurkedbehind, led him out of the valley and to a nearby town.Stopping only long enough to hitch a ride, he continuedon to the college; a place to which he had never been buthad often heard described by his townsfolk in tones ofscorn and disdain.

As the setting sun cast long shadows on the marblesteps of the building that housed the library, Wilburslipped unnoticed through the enormous carved oakendoors and began ascending stairs. The public display areaof the Special Collections Room had not yet been lockedand there he now stood, transfixed by the object beforehim the object which had called to him all the way fromZiondale.

As if to confirm that what he was looking at was notimagined Wilbur cupped the sides of his eyes against theglass and read the small display card again.

Daufuskee Manuscript, 16th18th C.Vellum(?)Found in an area of southern West Virginia historically

described in Native American narratives as the “DaufuskeeRegion.”

The origins and context of this manuscript remain amystery. It may have been used by early inhabitants of theAppalachian region as part of a funeral ceremony. The

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symbolic writing system is unknown, but chemical testsindicate that the ink used is likely human blood.

It had been such a long journey, and now only a paneof glass stood between Wilbur and the siren that had beensinging for him. The need to touch it, to hold it, wasoverwhelming but his rising hand was frozen by amovement behind him.

“It means Place of Blood.” A deep voice boomedthrough the otherwise vacant room.

Dropping his hand Wilbur’s head jerked in the directionof the speaker who was now walking briskly toward thecabinet. Reminding himself that he hadn’t actually doneanything wrong – yet Wilbur composed himself as muchas he could and mumbled, “Excuse me, sir?”

“Daufuskee. It’s an Algonquin word. It means Place ofBlood.”

Wilbur stared back in amazement as if this newcomerhad been reading his mind.

“Didn’t mean to startle you, I was just heading towardmy office. We get so few visitors; I hadn’t realized anyonewas in the exhibit area. Heard you saying that word overand over, thought I’d pop in and show off a little.”

As the man smiled, Wilbur fought for something to say,finally settling on, “Umm, do you work here?”

Clearly pleased to be asked and thereby continue theimpromptu lecture, the man smiled again and said, in anofficial tone, “I’m the Archivist and Special CollectionsLibrarian.” Relaxing, he continued in a confidential voice,“Mostly I deal with those things in the library that aren’tallowed to be touched by the unwashed. I’m more of agatekeeper really. Don’t get many visitors up here.”

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Extending his hand he continued, “Professor CharlesBedard. You might say this is MY exhibit. So…are you inthe history program or anthropology?”

Ignoring the question and pointing a reproving finger atthe display case, Wilbur said, “Does that belong to you?”

Cocking his head and looking at Wilbur, the professorcautiously replied, “Well, I guess that’s one way to put it. Ifound it in an abandoned shack while on researchsabbatical out in the hill country. Haven’t seemed to wantto let it out of my sight since then. I even come by hereoccasionally to check on it, make sure it’s ok. So yes, in anodd sort of way, I guess the Dafuskee manuscript doesbelong to me.”

Not taking his eyes off the document, the boy continuedhis line of questioning, “Why do you call it that? That’snot what the words on it say.”

The professor chuckled, “Well, since it’s written in somesort of lost language, nobody’s really sure what exactly itdoes say, but that’s the name the Indians gave to thetaboo place where I found it. Not too far from here,actually. Now it’s just a hollow full of inbreds religiouszealots out in the middle of nowhere.” He shook his headas if to dislodge the memory of it. “My area of research isthe native cultures of preColonial America.” Nodding tothe manuscript he continued, “I’m working on a scholarlypiece about that. As an object, I suppose it could beclassed as funerary art, but in its time, it was probablymore than that; not just decorative, it probably served avaluable ceremonial purpose to those superstitiouspeople.” Smiling he winked and added, “Maybe it wasread aloud to ward off evil.”

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Pursing his lips, the professor continued in a seriousmanner, “An interesting thing that turned up in myresearch is there’s an old Indian legend that some earlycolonists pulled up stakes, lock stock and barrel, andmade their way far inland to this same Dafuskee area andfor whatever reason disappeared – like they were calledall the way from the coast. Some say they could even bethe lost colonists of Roanoke. Crazy, huh?”

Lost in thought, staring at the rust colored symbols,Wilbur pointed to the document, “I know what some ofthose are, they’re called crucifixes. The people where Ilive really like them.” Turning to face the man, feelingthe need to fill the silence and explain the statementfurther, he quietly added, “They like to pray a lot.”

Furrowing his brow as if debating whether to waste anymore time with this boy, the professor took a deep breathand finally said, “Well, Wilbur, those symbols are actuallycrosses, not crucifixes. Quick history lesson for you: whenreligious missionaries managed to make their way to thisarea, they tried to convert the Indians to their ways ofthinking. The natives around here never bought into theChristian message the white man was selling, but they didtake all the crucifixes they were given. According to thecosmology of some isolated indigenous groups in theseparts, groups which are now long dead, the cross symbolrepresented the meeting or the intersection of this worldand another one the spirit world if you will. For somereason those natives were very, very interested in that.”

Fixed on the manuscript, Wilber let the subject ofcrosses drop and softly said, “I remember mama used tohave one just like that with all the fancy writing but she

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lost it.” He turned toward Professor Bedard, who wastaking pains to not make eye contact, and in anaccusatory tone asked, “Why do you have it out in theopen? Mamma says things like that need to be kepthidden so’s folks don’t know you got it.”

Smirking, the man said, “Ahhh, well, I didn’t knowthose were the rules. It didn’t come with instructions yousee.” In a teasing manner designed to elicit the truthabout the boy he continued, “Are you a collector or anacademic? I don’t believe I’ve seen you at any of theconferences or auctions.”

Oblivious to the fact that the professor was poking funat him, Wilbur replied, “I don’t collect nothing. I just livewith my mamma in the woods outside of Ziondale.”

Both were silent for a moment, each transfixed by themanuscript in the case before them. Suddenly, in amotion so swift and fluid for one whose mental abilitiesseemed so sluggish, a pistol emerged from Wilbur’s pocketand became a blur as it smashed through the cabinet’sglass.

Grabbing the document and turning the gun onProfessor Bedard, Wilbur said, “Mister, you know a lotand we need to show this to Mama. And since thisbelongs to you, you need to come with me.”

Throughout the journey from the college through thewinding roads that led to Ziondale, with Wilbur and thegun at his side, the professor willingly drove on. In fact,he was quite excited by the possibility of soon having thekey to that enigmatic manuscript, a living, breathingRosetta Stone.

Genuinely intrigued, the professor broke the silence,

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“Tell me more about the ceremony Wilbur.”Rubbing his forehead as if to coax the answer out of the

recesses of his brain, Wilbur began slowly, “Well, I ain’tnever seen it done, and I can’t tell the story as good asMama, but a long, long time ago a bunch of Injuns werebeset upon by this thing – it was taking their people yousee – and then someone did this ceremony and then itwas all over. Now the ground is shaking and noises arecoming from the fissure and I think the time’s come thatwe hafta do the ceremony again.”

The professor stared ahead, lost in the thought ofactually witnessing a genuine closedcommunityceremonial ritual, one that probably existed unchangedfor hundreds of years, unknown to all but a handful. True,Wilbur had the gun but the professor was quite a willingcaptive. He wasn’t about to miss this for the world.

As they arrived, the parade of townsfolk had begun toanxiously gather in front of the crevice, with Wilmalooking on, wringing her hands with a determined lookon her face. Spying the two as they approached, shemarched up and snatched the manuscript from Wilbur’shand. Waving it in front of the professor’s face shesnarled, “Looks like you ain’t as clever as you thought youwas. Stealing from a woman when her back was turned!Shameful. But, you didn’t know that this has a way ofcalling folks, did ya? Folks like Wilbur here who’s got thegift.”

The professor’s faced flushed with embarrassment as hewas dressed down by the old woman. “Nice to see you

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again ma’am,” he replied meekly.Smiling smugly at the man she said, “Suppose I ought

to thank you for keeping this safe for me all these years.”Trying to get her to stop grinning at him he finally said,

“So when can we start the ceremony?”Suddenly reminded of her higher purpose she replied,

“Now that we’re all here, the sooner the better.”Mother and son stood in front the crevice, the rest of

the town gathered in a semicircle about twenty feet back.After some preliminary instructions from Wilma, theybegan.

Although the language was unlike anything they hadever heard, they quickly caught on. It was simply a calland response a ritual they knew well, something learnedand passed down for generations. A ritual often practicedin that stain glassed, whitewashed building the samebuilding where they had just learned that the universe asthey understood it had a few extra footnotes nevermentioned in their spiritual guidebook.

It began with a Call by mother and son.“Aiyee Quyagen Aiyee!”A Response by the townsfolk.“Subbora xi thotac, thotac quavilac!”A call.A response.A call.A responseOccasionally, Wilma would interrupt the process to

chant on her own and make cryptic movements with herhands, but soon again she would call and thecongregation behind would respond.

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After almost an hour of chanting, there begansubtle vibrations and a humming that quickly becamelouder as if heralding the arrival of something of greatpower. As the earth trembled, a rumbling welled up fromdeep beneath their feet and without warning, anenormous gust of putrid air spewed forth from the gloom.Gagging, the townsfolk stopped their calling, many ofthem falling to their knees, retching. But urged on byWilma they continued the ceremony with both motherand son calling.

And then the Pestilence came. And the sucking began. The townsfolk felt, rather than saw, a torrent of

ferocious wind with invisible teeth and claws that hadcome with one purpose.

One by one they fell. With a sniper’s military precisionit chose among the congregation. Some ran, but not far –being clustered so close together during the ceremonythey found it difficult to escape.

Melton Jones was one of the first to flee, but was pulledoff his feet, screaming as he was quickly pulled into thecavern. As realization dawned upon the others what washappening they too tried to run but soon found that therunners were quickly identified by the unseen force andsucked into the blackness. The only solution they couldpossibly see, the only one they were ever really trainedfor, was to simply drop to their knees; to kneel withbowed heads and chant. And wait.

To many, the tableau before them seemed eerily similarto the rapture they had so often been promised, butinstead of floating up to the heavens their course was

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more of a horizontal one. Sadly, for these folks there wasto be no fluffy white clouds, no pearly white gates, noharps, no angels – just a big black sucking maw andwhatever lay beyond.

Throughout all of this, Wilma and Wilbur continuedshouting into the cavern, occasionally turning back to thetownsfolk to encourage the remaining ones on so that theresponsorial chant could be heard over the din of thesucking.

And chant they did. In their minds it was their onlyhope for salvation.

Unfortunately they were as wrong as they could be, andit was Professor Bedard who eventually had the epiphany.The manuscript, the ceremony, the gathering of thetownsfolk, and the call and response, it wasn’t intended topurge the land of the Pestilence. Replaying theconversation he had with the boy he realized now thatthey were all unwitting participants in an ancient ritualintended not to ward off evil, but rather to call it forth.

He watched as mother and son raised their arms inexaltation, screaming joyfully as they shouted their calland urged the townsfolk to continue. Grabbing the oldwoman by the shoulders and turning her away from theopening, the professor screamed into her face “What…what are you having them chant!?”

With foam flecked lips the woman translated as Wilburscreamed the call, “Come, Quyagen, Forgotten One whodwells beneath our feet, Come!” And when the remainingtownsfolk chanted in reply, she could not contain hersmile as she yelled the response back at Bedard, “Mingleour blood with the blood of those before us!”

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With paralyzing horror the professor now understoodthat they were all participating in some sort of feedingceremony, one that had been used for generations bythose sent to the surface with a promise in exchange fortheir release to bring the food needed to satisfy thehunger of their deity. As Bedard worked it all out in hismind he comprehended, now too late, that his scholarlycuriosity and investigations into esoteric knowledge couldprovide no defense when confronted with the factualbasis of a ghoulish legend.

And as the howling wind swirled around him, he couldonly hope that the end would come quickly. Standingbefore the fissure and bowing his head, he raised his righthand to his forehead and slowly began forming the figureof a cross.

Douglas Lind’s fiction can also be found at Dark Fire andCemetery Moon. He can be reached at:

[email protected]

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mailto:[email protected]


Recommended Reading

PINES (Book 1 of the Wayward Pinestrilogy)

by Blake Crouch

Ethan Burke, a member of the Secret Service, is taskedwith finding two missing agents who went to the small

town of Wayward Pines,Idaho, and simply vanished.Shortly after arriving in theremote mountain location, hewakes up next to a woodlandstream on the outskirts of thetown. At first he has nomemory of who or where heis, and to make mattersworse, he has no wallet, noID and no money.

As his memories return (aviolent traffic accident, apartner who didn't survive,his original mission to findthe two missing agents) hebegins to realize that once

you enter the town of Wayward Pines, you never leave.Meanwhile, in the outside world, his wife and superiors

at the Secret Service are left seaching for another personwho has vanished without a trace.

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The book has inspired a 10 episode series on FOXnetwork this coming fall starring Matt Dillon, CarlaGugino, Terrence Howard and Juliette Lewis.

The second and third books in the trilogy are:

WaywardThe Last Town

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Encounters Magazine 11

Documents

Transcript of Encounters Magazine 11