Strikeout of the Bleacher Weenies Page 9

Avi knew that if he complained about the hike, his parents would be less likely to pay attention to him when he tried to convince them to switch to a better Internet service provider.

  Isabel knew that if she complained about the hike, she’d have a harder time arguing with her parents for a later curfew when she went out with her friends on Saturday nights.

  So they suffered, moderately, in a silence which they dotted with quiet sighs and rolling eyes. Sure, nature was grand and beautiful and majestic. But it was also highly repetitive. It might be true that no two snowflakes were alike. But it was also true that pretty much every snowflake was really really really similar to every other snowflake when viewed without the aid of a microscope or magnifying glass.

  At least it wasn’t snowing. That wasn’t a big surprise, since the family was hiking a trail in southern California. Adding to the irony, Avi and Isabel’s parents owned a flower shop, which meant they were doing a very bad job of escaping from work by heading for the great outdoors.

  “What’s that?” Avi asked as he spotted something that was not green or brown at the edge of the endless brown trail lined with an endless expanse of green plants and brown-limbed trees.

  “A feather?” Isabel suggested.

  Avi glanced ahead, to make sure his parents weren’t watching. His mom seemed to think that certain items carried enough germs to instantly sicken, cripple, or kill the healthiest kid. Bird feathers were very close to the top of that list, bested only by rat corpses, anything festering in a public trash can, and Stinky Minkowitz, their one neighbor who seemed clueless about basic hygiene and sanitation.

  His mom was talking with his dad about adult stuff involving taxes. Avi picked up the feather. It was large and red, with streaks of silver. No, not silver. As Avi looked closer, he decided the color was more like steel than silver. He swiped the feather in the direction of his sister, to see if she shared their mother’s aversion. She didn’t.

  “Peacock?” Avi guessed, naming the only large bird he could think of that had colorful feathers.

  “In the woods?” Isabel asked, giving her voice the medium-high-level tone of mockery she reserved for absurd questions that came from people she was, at times, somewhat fond of.

  “Good point.” Avi decided he didn’t need to know immediately, or maybe even ever at all, what kind of bird the feather came from.

  “What’s that?” Isabel said, a short while later. She bent and plucked something from the middle of a bush.

  Avi looked at the feather his sister held. “Same bird,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Isabel said. “Same bird.” On this, they could agree.

  They found five more feathers in the next hundred yards. Each time, Avi said, “Same bird.”

  Each time, Isabel nodded, and said, “Same bird.”

  Ahead of them, their parents hiked, talked, and cast the occasional glance back to make sure they hadn’t lost the rest of their family.

  Soon after that, Avi found an entire wing.

  It took him a moment to gather his wits and say, “Same bird.” It was a large wing. But the red and steel feathers left no doubt.

  “Let me see.” Isabel took the wing and examined it. The bit of flesh and bone she could see at the severed end also had a metallic shimmer. “Yeah, same bird.”

  They found a foot and a beak before they found the second wing.

  Eventually, guided by their basic knowledge of bird anatomy, gained mostly from the rotisserie chickens their parents bought when neither of them felt like cooking dinner, Avi and Isabel were fairly certain they’d found an entire bird. That was good since they’d reached the limits of their carrying capacity. Their arms were loaded, and both of them kept dropping pieces. In its current disassembled condition, the bird remained unidentifiable by either of the kids.

  “Let’s see if we can put it together,” Avi said.

  “You can’t put it together,” Isabel said. “That’s a really stupid suggestion.”

  Avi replied with a glare. He wasn’t stupid, and his sister knew it.

  “Sorry,” she said. She took a wing and pressed it against the side of the bird body.

  Click.

  The wing snapped into place as if the pieces were magnetized.

  “Told you,” Avi said.

  He handed Isabel the second wing. She put it on the other side of the body.

  They knelt, spread the remaining pieces in front of them, and began reassembling the bird.

  “Hey, what are you kids doing?” their dad called.

  “Stop dawdling,” their mom called.

  “Hurry,” Avi whispered, turning his back to his parents. There weren’t a lot of pieces left. He wasn’t sure what he and Isabel were going to do with the bird once it was assembled, but he knew he’d have a better chance of doing what he wanted with it if they got the whole thing together before their parents realized what it was.

  Ignoring the crunch of two pairs of hiking boots coming toward them on the trail, Avi and Isabel rushed to finish assembling the bird. Never, since the days of Hansel and Gretel, had a brother and sister exhibited such dazzling teamwork in the middle of the woods. A moment later, Avi held up the last piece, which happened to be the first feather he’d found. He scanned the bird to see where the feather belonged. The bird stood there, tall and majestic, looking like a mix between a stork and pterodactyl.

  “There,” Isabel said, pointing to a spot on the left side, above the wing.

  “Got it,” Avi said, placing the feather where it belonged. He rose from his knees and took a step back to admire the finished bird. Assembled, it was at least three feet tall.

  “Cool,” Avi said.

  “Awesome,” Isabel said.

  “What are you kids doing?” their father said.

  “Is that a bird?” their mother said.

  “Rawwwkk,” the bird said.

  It opened its eyes just as Avi and Isabel’s parents reached them.

  Then it attacked.

  There were screams and cries, but no flying feathers. The bird remained assembled. The happy hiking family did not. The great outdoors had failed to bring them together.

  * * *

  The next day, a sparrow that, like all sparrows, lacked a name, landed on the trail, along with his nameless friend.

  “What’s that?” the sparrow asked, aiming his beak in the direction of a not-soil-brown or leaf-green object lying in the middle of the trail, like a solitary mushroom.

  “Looks like a toe,” his friend said, after examining the object.

  They hopped farther along the trail.

  “There’s another one,” his friend said.

  The sparrow went closer and studied the toe. “Same kid?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” his friend said. “Same kid.”

  HAUNTING YOUR THOUGHTS

  I wish I’d figured it out sooner. I wish I’d seen the truth right after we’d moved in, or maybe even before then. That could have saved me. It could have saved all of us. But everything seemed fine at first. I guess that’s part of how it works. It needed to keep us unaware of what was happening for long enough to create the real horror.

  “Like it, Ruthie?” Mom asked, the first time I went inside.

  I shrugged and let out something along the lines of “Uh-huh.” I mean, it was a house. Big deal. We’d left one house and were moving to another. This one was older. But I didn’t connect the tiny chill that ran across my scalp when I walked through the door with anything dangerous. I hardly noticed it.

  “I like it!” my little brother, Yantzy, shouted. He dashed toward the stairs that led up to the bedrooms on the second floor, then looked back and asked, “There aren’t any ants, are there?”

  “It’s winter,” Mom said. “Of course there aren’t any ants.”

  I mouthed the words, “Giant ants,” and wriggled my fingers over my head like bug antennas.

  I guess Mom could tell Yantzy was staring at me, because she spun around fast enough to catch me in the act
. “Stop scaring your brother,” she said.

  “He’s not scared,” I said. “He’s tough.” That was actually true, for the most part. Yantzy didn’t scare easily. Except when it came to ants. But, as Mom had already pointed out to him, it was winter. And winter in Connecticut wasn’t an ant-friendly time or place.

  Mom has her own issues. Everything in her world has to be lined up perfectly before she can relax. And I do mean perfectly. Right after we moved in, she and Dad spent two whole days putting up pictures, curtains, and shelves. Dad has this laser level, so he could straighten picture frames to one-hundred-billionth of an inch, or something ridiculous like that, to keep Mom happy.

  I stayed out of their way. That wasn’t hard. I had my own room, which I liked—at first.

  Then, about a week or so after we moved in, I started to hear the scratching sound. I thought it was rats. That actually wouldn’t bother me. I like rodents. But the sound didn’t come from close to the floor. It was about the same height as my chest. Heart-high. Yeah. That’s what it was.

  I pictured some sort of rotting monster, with long, filthy claws, feeling its way around the house, staying behind the walls. I know that’s silly. Fearing monsters behind walls was just like Yantzy fearing ants in winter. This was even sillier than that, I guess. There really are ants. Maybe not in the winter, but they’re still real. There aren’t any rotting monsters with filthy claws, winter or summer.

  The next day, I heard a scream while I was eating breakfast. It was Mom. Okay—not a real scream, like you’d hear in a horror movie. It was more like a cry of frustration. I tracked the sound to the living room. Mom was staring at the wall above the fireplace. There were four framed photos there. At first, I couldn’t even tell what she was bothered about. Then, I noticed that the photo on the right was just a little bit crooked.

  Mom told me to get the ladder from the basement. That’s not my favorite place, but you don’t argue with a screamer. And the ladder is really light, so I didn’t have any trouble carrying it up the steps. But Mom wouldn’t let me straighten the picture. She made Dad come do it, with his laser level.

  As Dad tottered up there on the ladder, straightening the photo, he said, “There’s a draft.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Mom said.

  But Dad was worried. Drafts were his thing. He hated the fuel bill. He hated wasted energy. Wherever we’d lived, he was always hunting around for drafts. Twelve times a year, when the fuel bill came in the mail, he got especially angry.

  The problem is, the picture didn’t stay straight for long, no matter what Dad did to try to keep it from shifting. None of the pictures behaved. It was like someone was sneaking around the house, tilting things just slightly. And in every room, at random times, there’d be these strange drafts floating through the air, chilling us and making the heater kick in. Dad was never able to find a source for them.

  Then, about a month after we moved in, Yantzy came down from his room, screaming, “Ants! Lots of ants!”

  “I got this,” I said, before my parents could spring from the couch, where they were watching a movie. I went up to Yantzy’s room, dragging him along so he could point out where he saw the ants.

  He tugged against my grip and tried to break free, but I was a lot stronger. “Show me,” I said.

  “There.” He pointed toward his dresser. “Under it.”

  I walked over and leaned down. I couldn’t see anything in the inch or two between the bottom drawer and the floor. I went around to the side, to look from there. But as I leaned against the wall, I heard a slashing scratch, like something was trying to rip my ear off. I could picture claws shredding the wall on the other side, trying to get through and attack me.

  “No!” I shouted and backed away. My heart was hammering like it was planning to leave the room immediately, whether or not I joined it. I forced myself to calm down.

  “There aren’t any ants,” I said. “It’s winter.”

  Yantzy shook his head and fled the room. I peeked under the dresser again. I still didn’t see anything. But I didn’t want to hang out in there, near that wall.

  From then on, I stayed away from the house as much as I could. I’d go to the library or to a friend’s house. Or even the park. But I had to come home to go to sleep. And that’s when the scratching was the worst.

  Finally, about six weeks after we’d moved in, I knew I had to do something. “We should look for another house,” I said when we sat down to dinner.

  Mom and Dad stared at me, but they didn’t say anything. Yantzy, on the other hand, was immediately and loudly in favor of a move.

  After dinner, I followed Dad into the living room. Just as we got there, I saw a painting on the wall near the top of the stairs tilt. Right before my eyes, it tilted.

  There was no possible cause. I hadn’t felt any vibration, like when a heavy truck drives down the road. I hadn’t heard the creak and crack that comes when the wind hits a house with a strong gust. The paintings on either side of the tilted one remained unmoved.

  Mom came in just after that. She spotted the misaligned painting instantly. “Get the level,” she told Dad.

  He sighed and headed to the garage for his tool kit. After he returned, I saw the curtains flutter on the wall opposite the painting. A cold draft blew in, even though the window was closed. Just then, Yantzy screamed.

  This time, as he fled from his room and ran down the stairs, I saw something dark flowing after him across the white carpet, like gallons of spilled ink.

  Ants. Lots of them.

  I’m not a genius, but sometimes I can think my way through complicated problems, or put together a theory based on a series of observations. This was one of those times.

  Everyone in my family was afraid of something. Mom feared disorder and irregularity. Dad feared waste. Yantzy feared ants. The house kept hitting them with what they feared the most.

  It wasn’t their imagination. Each fear was real. I saw the ants. I felt the breeze that rippled the curtains. I saw the picture tilt.

  But those were all mild fears. Mine wasn’t.

  I was afraid of monsters. I didn’t fear just the noises I heard. I feared the things that made the noise, those dark, misshapen creatures that hid behind walls and lurked within shadows. I’d started hearing the sounds those creatures made soon after we moved to this house.

  That meant …

  I tried not to follow the thought to the inevitable conclusion, but there was no escape from it. Like the ants, the tilted pictures, and the drafts, the monsters had to be real, too.

  I spun around, wondering which wall hid them. I didn’t have to wonder for long.

  It was all the walls.

  The monsters burst into the room from all around us.

  Suddenly, I wasn’t alone in my fear. As the rotted corpselike creatures with their broken teeth and jagged nails swarmed at us, we all screamed.

  Fear gave way to pain. Pain gave way to darkness.

  I hoped the next owners of the house had safer fears.

  DIFFERNET EXPLORER

  Hector typed baldly. No, wait. That’s not right. Hector typed badly. This was not a symptom of poor spelling ability or an inadequate education. The cause was simple and obvious; he was careless and somewhat lacking in fine motor skills. He’d never make a good surgeon, or knitter. Fortunately, he’d never imagined himself chasing either of those pursuits, so he wasn’t doomed to a lifetime of disappointment, asymmetrical sweaters, or malpractice suits.

  Hector was grateful for spell-checkers. But when he was writing reports for school, he sometimes typed things so badly that even the spell-checker didn’t have a clue what word he had in mind. But we’re not here to discuss the times he completely missed the majority of letters in a word, clumsily striking adjacent keys, to produce something like dtrimf for string, or struck two letters by mistake, turning special into specvialk.

  It was one of Hector’s subtler mistakes that concerns us today. His school, having generated
an excess of funds by way of eliminating all art and music classes, invested in an extraordinarily expensive suite of software that was marketed to administrators as the perfect writing environment for students. Among its many features was a complex system of hypertext. Basically, as a student wrote words, the software relentlessly scoured the vast depths of the Internet to identify and offer supporting material, research, definitions, and an endless stream of other distractions that was so dense it made writing far more difficult than it needed to be.

  As an example of the problem, a student writing about frogs of the Amazonian rain forest would, upon typing the word “frog,” be offered links to scientific articles about frogs, audio files of frog sounds, images of frogs, and perhaps even the ancient play by Aristophanes, named The Frogs.

  With great power comes great opportunities for disaster. But we are getting ahead of the story. As noted, Hector’s mistake was subtle. It was a mistake he’d made many times before, but never in a hypertext environment.

  While working on an essay about diversity, instead of typing different, Hector typed differnet. Most links that showed up in response to properly spelled words appeared almost immediately. This one, responding to a minor typographical error, took slightly longer than half a second, which to computers must seem like eons, epochs, or perhaps even I thought you were never coming back. To the human eye, specifically Hector’s eye, conditioned to immediate underscoring and highlighting, this delay was like a flashbulb to the retina.

  “Differnet,” he said, absorbing his mistake. He hovered his cursor over the word, and checked the link text. Enter the Differnet.

  “Sure,” Hector said. He was not just careless and clumsy. He was also lazy. Any distraction from the task at hand was welcome. He clicked himself into the Differnet.

  It looked a lot like the Internet. Icons floated on the screen, offering video clips and news stories. Hector saw one with a man standing at the top of a skyscraper. Above the image, in the typically overexaggerated language of the Internet, the caption read: This BASE-jumping video will take your breath away!

  “Cool,” Hector said, clicking the image.