The Psychozone Page 7

  “No mistake,” Nick said. “And the minute your dad hops on, starts it up, drops the blade, and begins cutting a path across your yard, he’s going to be hooked. He’s going to be sucked into the life of a lawn weenie. Then there’ll be the chemicals and the car washing and all that other stuff. Your life is over.”

  It couldn’t be. I wanted to hit Nick. I wanted to punch him and tell him what a liar he was. But Nick would have taken the punch without blinking and then broken me in half. Instead, I ran from the park. I didn’t even go after my ball. I had to get home and stop Dad. He’d listen if I explained. The evidence was all around. I could show him. He’d believe me.

  As I ran through town, I could see dozens of dads opening up garages. All around, mowers were roaring to life, getting set to eat the grass and spit out clippings. I ran. There was a dad to my right, riding across his lawn on a mower. Another to my left. They were all over.

  I ran. I stumbled. My glasses went flying. There was no time to stop and search for them. I had to get home.

  I ran. My breath was almost gone. Why did we have to live at the top of a hill? I forced myself up the street, pulling my body toward the house. Ahead, too far off, I could see our garage door sliding open. I squinted. There was something large and red inside. The mower. There was someone sitting on it.

  “Stop!” I yelled.

  I got closer. I could barely breathe. Maybe I could reach him in time. “Don’t!” I shouted.

  The mower pulled onto the driveway, then turned toward the lawn. I heard the blade drop. The mower reached the edge of the grass, jolted, slowed, then started across the lawn.

  “Dad! Stop!”

  I raced past the edge of the yard. The world was a blur without my glasses. Drops of sweat stung my eyes. I ran in front of the mower, waving my arms. “Stop!”

  The mower stopped. “What’s wrong?”

  I froze. I squinted. The voice. It wasn’t Dad.

  “What’s the matter?” Mom asked from her seat on the mower. “Do you want a turn? Is that it? I don’t mean to hog it to myself, but gosh, this is fun. I’ll probably need all evening to get the lawn looking right. It’s a shame we haven’t been taking better care of it. That’ll change. Guess I won’t have time to cook dinner. But we can heat up something from a can. That would be fine. Well, I’d better get back to it.”

  Mom started up the mower again and continued cutting the grass. I stepped aside and let her pass. Her face was blank, her eyes empty.

  Ours is not a typical family.

  SUNBURN

  Stacy and I had spent half the summer wondering about the girl on the hill. We knew she was there—sometimes we’d catch a glimpse of her through the trees—but we’d never seen her close up.

  “I think she’s our age,” Stacy said as we sat on my front porch and looked up the hill at the house behind the trees.

  “We’ll find out when school starts,” I said.

  “Maybe. Unless she goes to private school. That’s a big house. Her folks probably have a ton of money.”

  I hadn’t thought about the possibility that she wouldn’t go to our school. I couldn’t stand the idea that the mystery might remain unsolved. Suddenly, I had an urgent need to meet her. It had to be now. I couldn’t wait. “Hey,” I said, turning toward Stacy as the idea hit me, “I know. Let’s stroll up there and say hi.”

  “What? Just like that?”

  “Sure. Why not?” I stood and walked down the porch steps. Behind me, I heard Stacy following. We went along the block to the driveway in front of the house on the hill. I’d never seen any cars come in or out. A month ago, a moving van had gone up the driveway. A few hours later, it had come back down. And that had been the only traffic.

  As we started up the slope, I called out, “Hello. Anyone home?” I didn’t want her to think we were sneaking around.

  There was no answer. We reached the top of the driveway and I climbed the porch steps and knocked on the door. Nobody came.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Stacy said.

  “Maybe she’s around back,” I said.

  “We can’t just go walking through her property.”

  I could. I was sure she was in the back. I went around the side of the house, along a path that led through high bushes. She was there in the yard behind the house.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She was lying in a lounge chair, wearing a two-piece bathing suit, her eyes closed, soaking up the sun. She didn’t move. The thing that really caught my attention was the chair. It was metal—maybe aluminum or steel. I wasn’t sure. But it must have been hot. There were a couple other chairs of the same kind on either side of her. I couldn’t imagine lying on something like that in the sun. I touched the edge of the closest chair, then jerked my hand back from the scorching heat.

  “Hi,” I said a bit louder, stepping closer. Stacy stayed a few feet behind me.

  The girl’s eyes opened, but just the slightest bit. She didn’t seem surprised or startled to see us. “I love the sun,” she said.

  She closed her eyes again.

  “I’m Kelly,” I told her. “This is my friend Stacy. We live at the bottom of the hill.”

  The girl just lay there with her eyes closed. I decided to give it another try. “We wanted to come up and say hi. And, uh, see if you wanted to play sometime.”

  She said nothing. I stood, not sure what to do. If I left, I knew I’d feel like I’d lost some sort of strange game. But if I stayed, I also felt I’d be losing.

  The voice from behind startled me.

  “Hey, aren’t you afraid you’ll get a sunburn?” Stacy said. She stepped forward and pointed at the chair.

  To my surprise, the girl opened her eyes again. They still didn’t open very wide—they were barely more than slits. “I never burn,” she said. Then she closed her eyes.

  “Everyone burns,” Stacy said.

  The girl didn’t answer.

  “Everyone burns,” Stacy said again.

  Oh boy. I could hear it in her voice. Stacy was probably about to lose her temper. She didn’t like being ignored. I was pretty sure something would happen, but I didn’t know what.

  “I said, everyone burns!” Stacy shouted. She kicked the leg of the chair, jolting it.

  The girl didn’t open her eyes. For an instant, her tongue flicked over her lips, but her face remained emotionless.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you.” Stacy kicked the chair again. Sunlight flashed off of it as it shook, cutting streaks through my eyes. But the girl didn’t seem to notice or care about the disturbance.

  Normally, I try to calm Stacy down when she gets like this. But I was angry, too. The girl was rude. She had no right to treat us this way. We were just trying to be friendly.

  I waited to see what Stacy would do next. Motioning for me to be quiet, she took another of the metal chairs and set it so the sunlight was reflecting on the girl. Then she went over and did the same thing on the other side. Both chairs bounced the harsh sunlight against the girl.

  “Well,” Stacy said as she stepped away from the chairs, “I guess we’ll be on our way now. Bye-bye.”

  She walked off.

  I watched the girl for another moment. She was bathed in light. She must have felt the increase in heat. Still, she didn’t open her eyes. Unbelievable. I turned and followed Stacy back down the hill.

  “Was she for real?” Stacy asked when we reached my porch.

  “Who knows. I sure hope she doesn’t go to our school.”

  “Maybe she just sleeps all winter,” Stacy said. Then she giggled.

  I laughed, to. And we said some more nasty and funny things about the girl on the hill. But later, as the sun was moving well past its highest and hottest position, I started to worry.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have done that,” I told Stacy. “She might get a bad burn.” I imagined her sizzling like a strip of bacon, slowly curling up in a pan.

  “Hey, you heard her. She never burns.”

  �
�Still …” I felt bad. “Look, she wasn’t nice to us, but that doesn’t mean we should let her get hurt.” I knew I had to go back and make sure she was okay.

  “Coming?” I asked Stacy.

  “No thanks.”

  So I went up the hill by myself this time. As I walked, I kept getting images of a slab of burned meat lying on a metal chair. Despite the heat, I started to jog, then run. I had a feeling something terrible had happened.

  I made noise and called out, like before, just to make sure nobody thought I was sneaking around.

  She wasn’t in front. She wasn’t inside.

  She was still in the back. It looked like she hadn’t moved. It looked like not one single hair had shifted.

  She was exactly as she had been before—except that her skin had turned red. For a moment, I couldn’t even speak. From the times I’d been sunburned, I knew that this was the start of something awful.

  “Hey, wake up. Come on. You got burned.” I reached to shake her shoulder, but stopped. I was afraid to touch her—afraid of the agony it would bring. Her shoulder was worse than just red. There were blisters and small cracks with black edges. How could she just lie there?

  She opened her eyes. Then she smiled. “I told you, I never burn.”

  She reached up and grabbed my wrist. Her whole arm was red and cracked. “But look at you,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I don’t burn,” she told me again.

  Something was happening to her skin. First along her arm, then all over her body, her skin was crinkling and curling and flaking off.

  “None of us burns,” she said.

  There was something underneath her skin, just beginning to show itself.

  “But if I get too much sun, I do shed,” she said as the flesh dropped from her body and her face. Beneath, there were soft scales, not yet hardened by exposure to the sun.

  I tried to pull away. She was too strong.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” she said. “Shedding doesn’t hurt at all.”

  Her eyes locked with mine. I couldn’t move.

  “But it really builds up an appetite.”

  She must have squeezed my wrist harder, because I heard a crunch. But I didn’t feel anything. I just looked at those eyes, and the tongue, split and slithery, that flickered out from between her lips.

  Her eyes, now fully opened, gleamed in the sunlight.

  THIN SILK

  Steven had been in the vacation cabin for a week, and he’d finally run out of things to do. It wouldn’t have been so bad if this was the last day, but his parents had rented the place for a month—a whole, incredibly mind-numbing, endless month.

  “I’m bored, Mom,” Steven said.

  “But there’s so much out here,” his mother told him. “Why don’t you go fishing with your father?”

  Steven just stared at his mother. His father wasn’t any fun when he fished. He was so intent on catching a stupid fish that he never stayed in one spot for more than a minute or two. He’d stop the boat, cast out, then reel in his line right away if he didn’t get a bite. Then he’d zoom the boat over to another spot that seemed exactly like the spot he’d just left. Needless to say, he never caught anything. Steven didn’t think he could stand a dose of that kind of excitement.

  “Well,” his mother said, looking around the cabin, “maybe you could do some sort of outdoor craft.”

  “What?” Steven asked.

  “You know. A Scout thing. Make a tepee. Trap a beaver. I don’t know, Steven. You’re smart. You’ll think of something.”

  At that moment, Steven did think of something. He thought how wonderful it would be to go back home. Yeah, home sounded perfect. There was a key hidden under the mat by the front door Steven could just see himself going home and hanging out with a bowl of ice cream and three weeks of uninterrupted television. It would be just like that movie where the kid was left home by his parents. “Maybe I’ll take a walk,” he said.

  “Now that’s a wonderful idea,” his mother said. “Go enjoy the woods.”

  Steven stepped out of the cabin and glanced around. As far as he could remember, the dirt road in front of the cabin ran for miles, twisting and turning and then finally reaching a gravel road that eventually went to the highway. That was too long a trip. Steven was pretty sure he could get to the highway a lot faster by cutting through the forest.

  He hadn’t gone more than five steps into the woods when something thin and fine fell across his face, touching him so lightly that it almost wasn’t there at all.

  “Yuck,” Steven said, wiping at the strand of spider’s silk. “I hate that stuff.”

  A few more steps and he ran into another strand. “I hope this messes up your stupid web,” he said as he rubbed his face. He smiled as he thought of himself crashing like a giant through the world of the tiny spiders, wiping out hours of their work with a single step.

  Steven managed to avoid the next strand. It was part of a larger web. He ducked under it, then paused for a moment to watch a trapped beetle struggling against the sticky threads. “Tough luck,” he said as he walked on—right into another unseen piece.

  This place must be lousy with spiders, Steven thought, wiping at his face again. Good thing I’m not a little bug. He kept walking.

  Every two or three steps, he felt another strand break across his face or arms. It was starting to annoy him, but he knew it would all be worth the effort once he got out of the wilderness and made his way back home.

  The bushes rustled far behind him. Steven spun around and scanned the woods. There was nothing in sight. He walked on, breaking through more strands.

  He heard the sound again—louder and closer. Steven picked up his pace, walking faster. At this higher speed, he ran into more strands. He didn’t even bother wiping all of them away now. He just wanted to get to the road.

  The sound grew closer. Steven glanced back. Something large was scurrying along the forest floor. He started to run. The thing behind him scurried faster.

  “Leave me alone!” he said.

  He ran.

  It followed.

  Steven glanced back again. He almost stumbled as he caught sight of the spider. It was huge—as big as a dog. “Get away from me!” he screamed, recoiling from the sight. He ran full out. Behind, the scurrying seemed to drop back.

  He was whipping through the woods now, hitting fine strands of silk with almost every stride. With one hand, he kept wiping at his face. The sounds were growing dimmer. I beat it, he thought. I’m faster.

  He shuddered at the idea of being anywhere near such an unnatural insect. But he knew now that he’d be able to escape.

  Without slowing, Steven risked a look back. He’d gained some distance. The spider was nearly out of sight. He stared at it for an instant. It was an instant too long. As Steven looked ahead again, he stumbled toward a tree.

  He thrust a hand out to protect himself. It stuck.

  His shirt, covered with thousands of thin strands, was glued to the tree. Steven pushed with his other hand. It stuck, too.

  He tried to turn to see the spider. He couldn’t get his head around far enough. But that didn’t matter. Steven knew exactly where the spider was. He could hear it. And it wasn’t rushing anymore. It was coming slowly, taking its time. There was no hurry. Steven wasn’t going anywhere.

  THE WITCH’S MONKEY

  I’ve always loved monkeys. I don’t mean chimps—everyone likes chimps. I mean monkeys. All of them. I love the cute ones with their little paws and adorable faces. And I love the ugly ones, the ones that look like nature made a mistake or was playing a joke. I’ve got all kinds of toy monkeys; stuffed, wood, plastic, even ceramic. I’ve got a whole shelf of monkey books. I watch The Wizard of Oz every single time it’s on TV, just for those fabulous flying monkeys. My parents seem to be amused by all this, though I suspect it’s their hope that I’ll outgrow my fascination sooner or later. I won’t.

  The nearest zoo is pretty far from here, so I don’t get to
see live monkeys very often. I’m lucky if I get there twice a year. That’s why my ears perked up when I overheard Sarah Morton on the playground saying, “She’s got a monkey in a cage.”

  “Who?” I asked, feeling my pulse grow faster as I pushed into the ring of girls clustered around Sarah.

  She glared at me for interrupting her. I was afraid she wasn’t going to answer my question. But I guess she couldn’t resist showing off her knowledge. “The Crow Lady,” Sarah said.

  “No way.” I shook my head, feeling a tingle like someone had brushed a feather across my shoulder blades.

  “It’s true,” Sarah said. “Tommy Lucas told me. His brother saw it. He went up on her porch on a bet. He looked in the window and saw a monkey in a cage.” She stared down at me, daring me to call her a liar.

  I walked away. Behind my back, I heard Sarah making monkey sounds. They all liked to make fun of me. I didn’t care. They’re jealous because I have something I really cherish. Maybe they’d be nicer to me if I didn’t talk so much about monkeys and wear earrings shaped like monkeys and T-shirts with pictures of monkeys, but I’m not going to change just because of them. I have a passion. All they have is toys and dolls and dressup and stupid stuff like that. All they have for pets are cats or dogs. Those aren’t any good. Cats and dogs are always running off and disappearing. I wouldn’t want one even if someone gave it to me.

  I thought about Sarah’s words. The Crow Lady. Could she really have a monkey? It was possible. But there were so many stories—all kinds of stories. She lived by herself in a spooky old house. No one ever saw her in town. There were crows all over the property. Hundreds of crows hung out there—it was like a mall for birds. The house was falling apart, the yard was a mess of weeds, and the whole place was decorated with crow droppings.

  Kids said lots of different things about her. So did our parents. I’d heard that she’d shot her husband. I’d also heard that she’d poisoned him. I’d heard that she’d had five children and they’d all vanished. Other kids claimed she’d always lived alone.

  But if she really had a monkey, none of that mattered. I had to see it. Chores and homework kept me from going there right after school. I guess I needed time to work up the courage, too. But tomorrow was Saturday. I promised myself I would visit the Crow Lady’s house in the morning.