The Psychozone Page 6

  It was at least a foot long now.

  Charlie had never heard of a centipede that big. It’s just a matter of time, he told himself. The bigger it got, the easier it would be to catch. He couldn’t keep missing forever.

  He started sitting up in bed at night, holding a rock he’d brought in from the yard, gripping it so hard it left a pattern of craters on the flesh of his palm. One good hit—that’s all he needed. But there was never any warning. It would just be there, on the wall or on the ceiling, silent as a cobweb. He never saw it crawling out from any hiding place.

  It grew bigger, but it didn’t grow slower. At two feet, it easily evaded his attacks. At three feet, it was still too fast to hit.

  Every night now it would run across his chest, then pause for an instant as if measuring him. Charlie would wake and slash his hands out. He’d miss.

  One evening Charlie woke and saw the centipede slithering across his wall like a toy train.

  “Stop!” he shouted.

  It stopped.

  “Look,” Charlie said, slowly getting out of bed. “I’m sorry about throwing that book at you. Honest. I shouldn’t have done that. Leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone.”

  The centipede didn’t move. Charlie took a step closer. “Is it a deal?” He took another step. The centipede stayed where it was. Charlie kept talking, sure now that his voice was keeping the insect frozen in place. He inched closer. “I’m sorry about the spray.” Another step. “We can stay out of each other’s way. There’s plenty of room here for both of us. Okay?” Another step. “I promise not to hurt you.”

  He was within reach. Now! he thought as he swung his hand with all his strength, smacking the wall with his palm. The impact shook the wall and stung his hand.

  The centipede had shifted. The body had moved so fast that it was, for an instant, nothing but a flexing blur. Then it fled. He’d missed. It was gone.

  That night, Charlie had the worst dream yet. The centipede lay on his chest, but he couldn’t hit it. He couldn’t move. The dream woke Charlie, but the terror remained.

  “What?” Charlie gasped, confused, only half awake. He struggled to lift his arms. Someone had tied him down. A rope was coiled around his body and across his chest.

  Not a rope …

  A centipede.

  Charlie thrashed against the mattress and tried to twist free, but the centipede tightened its grip. His vision grew blurry. The walls and ceiling of his room seemed to be rippling and moving.

  But everything else in the room was sharp and clear. Charlie looked again and realized what he was seeing. The walls weren’t blurry. The walls were covered with centipedes. Small ones, long ones; thousands of them waited on every side of his room.

  The centipedes stayed in place for a moment, as if to make sure he noticed them. Then, all at once, they moved toward the bed.

  “Stop!” Charlie cried.

  This time, they didn’t even pause to listen.

  THE BATTLE-AX

  Alex and I were digging in the woods above the creek, looking for worms, when we found it. I hadn’t even dug that deep—maybe a foot or so—when I felt this thud. My shovel hit something hard. It was like in those cartoons where the bad guy swings a bat at the good guy and he hits a brick wall instead. Then the shock waves travel up the bat and the bad guy starts shaking all over. My hands shook with the impact, and it felt like the shakes traveled right up my arms to my shoulders, and down my back to my legs.

  “Hit a rock?” Alex asked, looking up from where he was digging.

  “I don’t know.” I pushed aside a handful of dirt. “Hey, it’s some kind of metal.” I moved aside more of the dirt.

  “Maybe it’s a treasure,” Alex said, hurrying over.

  “Maybe.” I started digging a wider hole toward the edges of the object. Alex got on the other side and helped me.

  In a moment, we had uncovered enough to know what it was. At first, we just stared at it, then stared at each other. I couldn’t believe our luck. I’d bet Alex couldn’t either.

  “Whatcha doing?”

  I spun toward my little brother, Billy, who had wandered up from the house. Billy stood far enough back so he couldn’t see into the hole.

  “Nothing. Go play.”

  “Show me,” he said. “I wanna see.”

  I moved a step closer to Billy, making sure I was between him and the hole. “Get out.”

  “I’ll tell Mom.”

  “Get out,” I said again, trying to sound dangerous. “You’re not going to tell her anything.”

  “I will, too,” he said. Then he ran off.

  “Think he’ll tell?” Alex asked.

  “Nah. He wouldn’t dare. He knows I’d get him for it.” I went back to the hole and knelt, running my hand along the metal. “Hey, it’s shiny.” I’d expected it to be old and rusted, but the blade, beneath the dirt, looked bright and polished.

  I brushed off the rest of the dirt and lifted my treasure from the earth. “Wow …” I’d seen stuff like this in museums, but I couldn’t believe I was holding a battle-ax.

  “Viking?” Alex asked.

  “I don’t know.” I had no idea where it had been made, but I knew what it had been made for. This was a battle-ax. Whether it had belonged to a Viking raider or one of the knights of the Round Table, I couldn’t guess. I also had no idea how it had ended up in the woods above the river in a place that had never been visited by knights or Vikings.

  “Let me see,” Alex said, reaching out.

  “Hang on.” I wanted to study it more before handing it over. I examined the head. It looked like it had gotten a lot of use. The edge was sharp, but there were gouges and nicks in the metal. I ran my eyes down the shaft. That’s when I saw the small red jewel embedded into the wood of the handle. It was set about eight inches above the end of the shaft, right where someone might grip it to swing the ax.

  “Look,” I said to Alex, pointing at the jewel. Then I wrapped my hand around it …

  … and the battle fury grew in my heart.

  All my body was filled with hate and rage. Screaming a war cry and rushing at the enemy, I swung the ax at my hated foe. Destroy him. That was my only desire. He ducked and my blade was robbed of the chance to taste its target. The metal struck a tree and sank half a head deep into the wood.

  My enemy was shouting at me in a foreign tongue. I did not know his language. It did not matter. I knew the one thing that mattered. I knew I had to strike him. But the ax was stuck in this wretched tree. I struggled to wrench it free.

  My enemy pushed at me. I staggered back, fighting hard to hold my grip. But I failed. My hands slipped. I fell away …

  … and landed on my butt on the ground.

  “Are you crazy!” Alex shouted.

  I sat where I was and tried to understand what had happened. How could I explain? It hadn’t been me. When I’d touched the jewel, when I’d wrapped my hand around it, I’d become someone else.

  Alex turned his back on me. “I’m not letting you play with this anymore.” He reached for the ax.

  “Wait.”

  It was too late. As I watched, he changed. Strength flooded into him—strength and a purpose. I knew what that purpose was. I jumped to my feet, wondering if I had time to knock him away from the ax.

  With an awful shriek, the head tore free of the tree. Alex lunged toward me, his eyes blazing. I ran. Alex was fast, but the ax was heavy. I was sure I could stay ahead of him.

  But he had far more strength than I expected. Within seconds, he had almost caught me. I looked over my shoulder. He was staring straight ahead, his eyes marking a target on my back. There was only one chance. I swerved, running for a stretch of the woods that I knew was filled with rocks and boulders.

  Behind me, Alex swung his weapon. I heard steel slice through air and felt something pull at my shirt. The breeze flowed against my back where the cloth between my shoulders had been sliced open. I hopped over a small boulder, then dodged around anot
her. From the rear I heard a battle yell. I flinched, expecting to feel the burning slash of the ax. Then the yell turned into a cry and a thud.

  Not yet daring to slow, I glanced back again. My plan had worked. Alex had tripped on a boulder. The ax had gone flying from his hands, landing with a clatter a safe distance away. I stopped and tried to catch my breath.

  “What … ?” Alex looked around, puzzled. “I didn’t mean to …”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I know. It’s that thing,” I said, pointing toward the ax.

  “It took over,” he said, still blinking his eyes and glancing around in confusion. “I was someone else.”

  “Me, too. When you touch the jewel …” I walked over and stared down at the battle-ax where it lay on top of several small rocks and a scattering of dead leaves. “We have to get rid of it.”

  Alex looked like he was going to argue, but then he just nodded and said, “Yeah. Where?”

  “The river?”

  “Good idea.”

  I reached toward the ax, then paused and looked at Alex. “Stand back, just in case. Far back.”

  He moved away from me. I touched the wooden part cautiously with one finger. No rage came over me, so I grabbed the ax in the middle of the shaft, keeping my hand far from the jewel. For an instant, I waited, ready to let go and leap away if the feeling came over me. But nothing happened. I realized I’d been holding my breath. “I think it’s okay,” I said to Alex.

  “Yeah, but you’ll understand if I don’t get too close.”

  “Sure. Let’s take it to the gorge. That’s a good spot.”

  “Should we walk along the river?”

  “No, it’s quicker if we cut through the woods.”

  I wanted to toss the ax into the deep part of the water. That was about half a mile upriver. We’d have to climb down a small cliff if we went that way, but it would still be faster than walking along the rocky riverbank from here.

  We made it to the gorge without any trouble. I paused at the top to look down. Alex stepped past me. “I’ll go ahead,” he said.

  I waited until he was part way down, then followed. I must have been up and down the cliff a thousand times. But I’d always done it with both hands free. I never even thought that it would be a problem climbing with the ax. That is, I never thought about it until I started to slip and fall.

  I just had time to shout, “Look out!” at Alex before I went tumbling.

  The next instant was filled with a spinning world and a thousand flashes of pain. I bounced against dozens of hard things and one soft thing. I guess that was Alex. The world faded out for a while after I stopped falling.

  When the world faded in again, I was staring up at the sky. There was a real bad pain in my left leg. “Alex?”

  “I’m right here,” he said, sounding pretty weak.

  “I can’t get up,” I told him.

  “Hang on.” There was a pause. He groaned. Then he said, “I can sort of crawl. It’ll take a while, but I think I can get help.”

  I heard him moving slowly, very slowly, away from me. “What happened to the ax?” I asked.

  “I guess it hit the water,” he said. “I’m pretty sure it went in.”

  At least I’d taken care of that. “I’m sorry about falling.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be okay. I’ll get help.”

  “Thanks.” I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the pain that was starting to shoot through every part of my body. That’s when I heard Billy calling my name.

  “Over here,” I shouted, relieved that I wouldn’t have to wait for Alex to crawl up the cliff. “Careful climbing down.”

  I listened for his steps. But they weren’t coming from the top of the cliff. They were coming from down the river. Billy must have been walking along the bank.

  “Hurry,” I called. “We need help.”

  “I’m almost there,” Billy said.

  I relaxed. Billy could run home and tell our folks. I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life lying at the bottom of the cliff. I flexed my back muscles. Things didn’t seem that bad. I could feel flashes of pain in my leg. From what I knew, that was a good sign. If my back had been broken, I wouldn’t have been able to feel anything. And, unlike a back, my leg could be fixed. Maybe I’d spend a couple months in a cast, but there were worse things that could happen.

  A voice from outside floated into my thoughts.

  “Wow,” Billy said. “I found an ax.”

  The words took a second to filter through my mind. Then it took another second for my mind to tell my mouth what to shout. “Don’t touch it!”

  An instant later, I heard Alex shout the same warning.

  Billy answered us. But I couldn’t understand the words. They were in a strange and angry language. His steps grew closer. His shouts grew louder. I couldn’t understand a single word, but I knew exactly what he meant. And I knew exactly what he wanted.

  IN THE LAND OF THE LAWN WEENIES

  Ours is not a typical family. We moved to Bridgeton because, as Mom kept saying, “It’s a small town with good people and an excellent school.” She was pretty much right—the people were nice, and the school wasn’t bad.

  We could have moved wherever we wanted. My dad had written this computer program that was really popular. He sold it to some big company for a lot of money. Every three months, they’d send him another check. The more copies of the program people bought, the more money Dad got.

  I guess a bunch of people bought the program, because Dad doesn’t have to go to work. He spends a lot of time playing with his computer, but he also takes off whenever he feels like it so we can throw a ball around or go for a hike or rent a movie.

  Mom tells everyone she has two kids, but one of them is grown. She means Dad, of course. He doesn’t mind. He enjoys kid stuff. Dad’s really a lot like me. We both love games, and we’re both pretty smart, and we both wear glasses and are kind of skinny. Mom doesn’t really mind the way Dad acts, either. Anyhow, we’re not the normal Bridgeton family. I started figuring that out right after we moved here.

  Every other dad in town seems to live for his lawn. The amazing thing is that they all keep to a schedule. If it rains for a few days in a row, you could bet anything that on the first sunny day, all the dads will be out mowing the grass. If the sunny day is during the week, they’ll all be mowing as soon as they get home from work. If it’s a weekend, they’ll all be mowing by nine in the morning.

  “They’re all lawn weenies around here,” Nick said. He’s the kid who cuts our grass. I guess Dad would do it or ask me to do it, except we don’t own a lawn mower. The last place we’d lived before here was an apartment. When we moved to Bridgeton, Nick had shown up at the door and offered to mow the lawn. Dad had hired him right away.

  I liked Nick. We’d hang out sometimes. He lived on the other side of the tracks—where the houses weren’t as pretty and the lawns were mostly weeds and dirt. “It’ll happen to your dad some day,” Nick said to me one afternoon as we walked out of school.

  “What’ll happen?”

  “He’ll turn into a lawn weenie. He’ll get a mower, and he’ll be just like the rest of them. And mowing’s only the start. After that, he’ll be spraying and spreading all sorts of chemicals on the grass. And when he isn’t mowing, he’ll be washing his car, or doing something to the fence, or some other stuff that isn’t any fun at all. They all do it, but they don’t enjoy it. Watch their faces.”

  “You’re crazy,” I told him.

  “Look around, buddy,” he said. “Take a good look around where you live. Then tell me I’m crazy.”

  I did look around. That weekend, I took a long walk. Every dad in sight was washing his car. Except for my dad. He was trying to hook up a radio-controlled airplane to the computer. The next morning, all the other dads were pruning trees or trimming hedges. That afternoon, they were all patching holes in their driveways—every single one of them.

  And all their faces looked the same. They had no ex
pression. Their mouths showed no emotion—not happy, not sad, not tired. Their eyes were open but not alert. They might as well have been walking in their sleep.

  “Well?” Nick asked me on Monday when I saw him at school.

  “You’re right,” I said. “It’s almost scary.”

  “Get used to it,” he said. “Nobody escapes. When they’re not doing stuff around the house, they play golf. They never take their kids. They never do anything with their kids. It’s only a matter of time until your family is just like the others.”

  I shook my head. “Not my dad. We’re different. We’re not like the other families.”

  Nick grinned, then said, “You’ll see.”

  That afternoon, I sat in the kitchen, watching Mom make a pie. Life was good. Dad liked to do fun things. So did Mom. She played games with us. We all went for bike rides when the weather was nice. And she liked to cook. She’d gotten really good at it, too.

  Just to make sure things weren’t going to change, I hunted Dad down. He was in the living room, playing a video game.

  I got right to the point. “Dad, do you ever feel like cutting the grass?”

  “No thanks,” he said, shaking his head. “Why’d you ask?”

  “Just wondering.” I sat down next to him, picked up a joystick, and said, “Challenge you.”

  “You’re on,” Dad said, hitting RESET so we could start a two-player game.

  Life was definitely good.

  Three weeks later, Nick came up to me in the park. I’d gone there to shoot some hoops after school. “Your life is over,” he said.

  “What?” I missed my shot. The ball kicked off the rim and bounced to the other side of the court.

  “I hate to be the one to tell you this. I was at the hardware store last night. They’re delivering a riding mower to your house.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A Lawnmaster 3000 self-mulching mower,” Nick said. “Your dad must have ordered it. I heard Mr. Barklay at the store telling that guy Vito who works for him to deliver it to your house. This is the end, good buddy.”

  I shook my head. “You’ve got to be wrong.”