Five
David understood that his father's order not to go
out onto the slope only held during hours of darkness. He waited for the
first light of dawn before slipping out into the gray morning.
He walked a half mile to a ridge of rock overlooking
the ancient volcanic valley. Clouds hid the forest within. Down the
barren exterior slope stood an isolated stand of spruce. The trees had
stood like a brightly-lit church cathedral beneath the green glass egg in
the night sky. He was still leery about going down to investigate alone,
but curiosity nibbled at his cowardice like mice.
He walked down the field of grass at a measured pace,
so filled with energy in the cool dawn that he wanted to fly with the
breeze. Experience had taught him he'd only exhaust himself and ruin the
day. He checked his fingernails often and paused whenever the pink
started to darken. Blue fingernails meant too much oxygen-poor blood
leaking past his damaged heart valves.
He sat on a flat boulder to rest when he reached the
island of trees. If he went in and looked, he supposed that he'd find
nothing. His father would insist that the thing he had seen had been
something ordinary. He’d never find the words to describe how incredible
it had really been. He tried not to fantasize his darkest desires,
although he thought that the dense underbrush would be the perfect place
for something from another world to creep and hide.
David rose to his feet to block off the thought and
avoid scaring himself. A walk around the few acres of trees would take a
half-hour at most. He'd make it home in time for breakfast. He could
imagine any spooky thing he wanted once in the safety of his own house.
He didn't get very far around the trees before he
found what he had hoped he would not find,
something strangely out of the ordinary. He paused at the edge of a bare
patch of earth and tried to make sense of exactly what it was he was
seeing.
Bugs crawled in the dirt. The ground absolutely
swarmed with bugs.
"What the heck?"
All kinds of bugs. Ants, spiders, silverfish, flies,
gnats, maggots, grubs and moths, more bugs than he had seen in one place
in his entire life. Even bugs with wings crawled back and forth along the
ground rather than flew. It hardly made any sense at all.
David sidestepped to another rock and sat down to
think.
Bugs?
A little brown mouse rushed excitedly into rodent
heaven to feed. It spun about in a frenzy and bit at everything in sight.
It failed to catch a single bug. It should have
snatched one up in an instant. The mouse vanished into the underbrush in
frustrated pursuit of bugs.
A quiet moment passed.
Mice emerged from the underbrush. Three, four, five
brown mice, each identical to the one mouse that had gone in. Behaving
much as had the first mouse, they ran about in frantic circles and missed
even the wiggling grubs that would have made the easiest targets.
Garter snakes, too, emerged into the morning's first
light. A half dozen came out all at once, and David was willing to bet
that just one snake had gone into the bushes unseen.
Hackles rose along his back. Curiosity, though,
overpowered his fear. He postponed a panicky retreat to see what would
happen next.
Toads. He should have guessed. Within fifteen
minutes or so, toads hoped from the underbrush and spread out in all
directions. A speckled starling came swooping in for the kill, attracted
by the all the creepy movement along the ground. It landed and cocked his
head to take inventory before pecking at a tasty morsel. It missed,
pecked again and again, drawn by a strange, coordinated movement of the
insects closer and closer to the wall of vegetation.
"Oh, no."
David rose to his feet. He knew what was going to
happen next. The starling hoped into the grass and vanished from view.
David held his breath.
A flock of starlings fluttered skyward from the
underbrush. A dozen maybe, all circling overhead in a tight, dizzy arc,
going nowhere as fast as their wings could carry them.
Startled, breathing hard, his heart pounding
dangerously in his chest, David ventured closer to the trees, curious as
to where the creatures lured into the bushes were going and how they
managed to multiply in number and reemerge all at once. He waded waste
deep through the weeds and bushes, came upon a small clearing, and looked
down to see the sky reflected back up at him.
At first he thought the reflection a pool of water.
He then thought it a mirror because it didn't ripple like water in the
breeze, except that bugs continued to flow in and out unimpeded. They
crawled over one another in their haste to either come or go. He thought
maybe that it might be quicksilver until he remembered that mercury was
poisonous. Nothing about a pool of quicksilver would attract so many bugs
and critters. There had to be another explanation.
Another explanation came quickly to mind, or at least
an explanation for the origin of the mystery, if not the mystery itself.
The snaky white light had deposited this thing among the trees. This was
the first of two overpowering fantasies that had ruled his entire life.
He had dreamed about it for as long as he could remember, something eerie
from the stars visiting the Earth.
Fear bloomed to unmanageable proportions. He backed
away and all too easily imagined blue blood building up in his body.
Weakened by the excitement, he turned away on rubbery legs and began the
long walk home.
His dad could deal with the mirror, or maybe Sheriff
Packerson.
"Hey, pip-squeak! Where do you think you're going?"
David looked up in horror. His two worst nightmares
came racing up the hill at the worst possible time. Tony Doran was a
sixth grader at his own school. Steven Farley was the mayor's son and a
junior high student. He had forgotten about the risk of encountering
others his own age on a Saturday morning. The two descended upon him like
vultures.
"Hey, you scrawny little bugger," Tony said with a
broad grin. "What you doing out here?"
Both boys carried BB guns. They wouldn't dare shoot
him. Hopefully. He couldn't possibly outrun them.
Tony came up to him and shoved him to the ground.
David fell back on his rump and stayed safely put. David looked to
Steven, the older of the two, for some hint of mercy.
"Don't hurt him," Steven said mildly.
"Don't kick the pip-squeak's butt? Why not? His old
man is probably soused to the gills. Betcha he can't stagger any faster
than this little creep can run."
To his everlasting humiliation, David felt tears
stain his cheeks.
"Ah, the pip-squeak is bawling. Poor little wimp.
Wuzbucket." Tony reached out with a foot to shove him down flat on his
back.
Steven caught Tony's arm. "You put a mark on the
little dude and we'll get into trouble again."
Tony wrinkled his nose in disgust. "So what? You
don't see the way he gets treated at school. Teacher's pet. Knows all
the answers. Gets out of gym. They give him anything he wants, being a
runt and all."
"What you doing out here?" Steven demanded in more
reasonable tone of voice. Steven didn't like him any better than Tony,
but they had gotten themselves in trouble punching him in the face once,
and Steven was old enough to take a hint. "You spying on us or
something?"
David wet his lips with the tip of his tongue, trying
to think up a reasonable explanation on short notice. "None of your
business," he said, knowing he'd never lie convincingly to the two older
boys.
"Whatcha got to give us today?" Tony said with a
grin. "Got any money on you?"
David felt himself trembling. He didn't see how he
could ever make it back home under his own power now. He stared defiantly
at Tony in lieu of any other strategy, wishing the two would just go away
and leave him be.
Steven, though, was curious. He looked back the way
David had come. His gaze fell on the starlings circling the trees in
silence. He cocked his BB gun. "What the hell, let's shoot some birds."
"Let's shoot pip-squeak here," Tony said, then
reached out and kicked David's shoe.
Steven punched Tony’s shoulder in a flare of sudden
anger. "I said don't screw with him!"
Tony rubbed his arm with a hurt look. "Damn, you
don't have to hit so hard."
"I don't want to catch hell from my old man again.
Leave the nerd alone and let's go shoot some fricking birds."
David opened his mouth to warn the two that something
funny was going on in the stand of trees. He closed it, not because he
wished either boy harm, but because they'd not believe him. He scrambled
to his feet, absently brushed himself off, and followed the two at a safe
distance.
Both boys cried out in amazement at all the tiny bugs
and animals crawling about the patch of ground near the trees. The two
cocked and fired their BB guns, first at the birds, then at the animals on
the ground. Over and over they fired. Not once did David see a bird
fall, and he would have bet they hit nothing on the ground either.
David had already begun to suspect the nature of the
trick. Anything lured into the silver pond reemerged to bait something
higher up the food chain. Bugs attracted mice, and mice attracted birds,
but they didn't seem to be real. "You'd better stay back!" he called out,
but the emptiness of the slope swallowed his voice.
Steven and Tony's initial excitement turned to
perplexity and then outright fear. They began cocking and popping their
BB guns in frantic earnestness.
A girl's shrill voice shrieked from directly behind
David. "What are you boys doing? You stop that this very instant! How
dare you!"
David swung around in surprise. The girl charged
him. He didn't know her name, but he had run across her once before in
school and he knew for certain that she was the nastiest girl he had ever
met. She wore a pink lacy dress that came to her knees, a pink ribbon
that held up her hair, and patent leather shoes. She had a face that
reminded him of a horse, chubby legs, and a shrill voice that grated on
David's nerves.
Both Steven and Tony looked around with irritated
frowns and then sighed with exasperation. "Go home, Jackie!" Tony called
out.
"I will do no such thing! You quit shooting those
horrid guns this very instant!"
David stepped out of her way. His eyes widened in
horror when he saw the fluffy black cat following on her heels.
"And you, you little creep," the nasty girl said,
taking notice of him for the first time. "What are you doing here?"
Confused by the pace of events, David said nothing.
She stomped her foot. "I asked you a question!
You're on my father's property! I'll have you arrested, you and your
alcoholic father both!"
She was a grade ahead of him and a lot smarter,
although she was about his own age. He had once traded insults with her
at school and had been soundly defeated. He had no intention of risking
another.
"I asked you a question, you trespasser!"
David's temper flared. He held his middle finger up
at her.
Her eyes widened. "You cripple! Don't think I
haven't heard about you and your worthless father! He's a drunkard, and
he killed his own wife!"
David lost it. He would have denied the notion that
suppressed anger was building inside him. Anger meant loss of control and
that invariably meant getting sick. But there was no stopping it once his
rage was unleashed. He charged the nasty girl with a grimace of sheer
hatred. Her eyes went wide with surprise. She screamed once, then turned
and ran.
She waddled. He would never have caught her
otherwise. He raced down the slope on the girl's heels, grabbed a blonde
curl, and pulled her over backwards. He weakly plummeted her head and
shoulders with his fists even as they fell together to the ground,
desperate to get in as many blows as he could before he was dragged away
by Tony and Steven.
They took him by the arms and laughingly threw him
aside. David rolled across the ground and had scrambled halfway to his
feet before he realized that no amount of rage could defeat the two larger
boys. Tony gestured for him to come closer. "Try a real man, you little
snot. Just try it."
Steven bellowed laughter. "Wait until old man Kahl
hears about this. Kid, your ass is grass."
Kahl? A man named Orville Kahl had recently bought
the whole of Spruce Valley. Kahl was the man who had built the big house
a quarter of the way around the rim of the valley. Putting two and two
together, the nasty girl was Jackie Kahl, Orville Kahl's daughter.
Blood ran from her nose and stained her pink dress.
She wept hysterically. David burst into tears as well, knowing he had
probably doomed himself and his father both.
The nasty girl paused in the middle of her
heart-rending tears. Her eyes rose to the morning sky. David thought at
first that she held her head up to keep the blood from running onto her
dress. But the two bullies looked up as well.
David looked up in time to see a hawk diving toward
them. Around and around it swooped with its wings tucked back and its
talons extended. It hit ground in a cloud of dust a few short yards away.
And missed the little mouse it had been after.
As David would have guessed.
The hawk flapped its wings hard and circled at low
altitude, then glided to a graceful landing and pounced again. It
followed a zigzagging rodent into the underbrush with single-minded
persistence.
"No, don't go in there!" David cried.
The hawk vanished. Oblivious to her bleeding nose,
Jackie Kahn remained quietly awestruck. The hawk reappeared dragging an
injured wing. The cat at Jackie's feet came instantly alert and then
bounded across the ground toward its own certain prey.
"No!" Jackie Kahl cried. "Kitty, don't you dare hurt
that poor birdie!"
The hawk fluttered into the air. The cat leaped and
twisted and spun about. Black fur and brown wings became a blur moving
inexorably into the underbrush.
David remained transfixed with horror, starkly aware
of what was happening. Jackie rushed toward the weeds to rescue the cat
from injury. Tony and Steven went after her with their BB guns at ready.
All three came to a sudden stop near the bushes.
Only one hawk emerged from the underbrush and flew
away, maybe even the original hawk having escaped its all but certain
fate, but more than one cat reappeared. Tony and Steven's BB guns began
popping as fast as they could be cocked. Steven Farley threw his BB gun
into the air a moment later, then wheeled about and ran off in a wild
panic. Tony fled at his heels without making a sound, dropping his own
gun at David's feet as he went by.
Jackie Kahl remained frozen in place murmuring,
"Here, kitty, kitty. Kitty?"
"Get away!" David cried. He scooped up Tony's
discarded rifle, cocked the gun on the run, and drew up alongside the
girl.
Three black cats sat staring up at her. They turned
their heads in unison as David approached. Bright yellow eyes widened in
feral rage. They arched their backs and hissed at him with sharp white
fangs lining the pink gums of their round little mouths.
David fired the gun at point blank range. He cocked
and shot again and then a third time in rapid succession.
"No! Don't kill the pussy cats!" Jackie lashed out
and knocked the gun aside.
David would not have been able to do so in any case.
The cats were not real as he had suspected was true of the bugs and mice
and toads and birds crawling and fluttering all around them. The BBs had
punched holes in leaves and kicked up dirt, but passed clean through their
solid-looking bodies without the slightest resistance. Their yellow eyes
burned with more sharply focused awareness than any cat had a right to.
Jackie Kahl reached for one of the animals. All
three mewed fetchingly and backed into the underbrush.
"No! Don't go in there!"
Jackie Kahl vanished from sight bent over with her
underwear showing and her nose still dripping blood.
The morning fell quiet. Bugs, mice, toads, snakes,
and birds all vanished without a trace. David sensed, though, that it
wasn't over. The worst of it hadn't even started yet.
"Don't fall in the mirror!" he cried out, and he
rushed forward to keep it from happening. He pushed through the bushes
again, looked around once for the girl and then down at the sky and
passing clouds reflected from the mirror.
It had grown, a puddle more than a yard wide now,
plenty large enough to have swallowed up the nasty girl. Where else could
she have gone?
Something rose from within the opaque surface. At
first, David thought that it was Jackie Kahl emerging as had bugs and
snakes and birds, and he backed away with more hackles rising along the
back of his neck.
In was only a pink corner of her bloodstained dress.
White cotton underwear peeked from beneath lace trim. More abruptly, a
pair of shiny shoes with socks still inside them popped to the surface.
David turned away on wobbling legs. He dropped to
his knees in the open. Unconcerned by the handicap, he began to crawl.
"David."
And this was the second overpowering fantasy that had
dominated his life, fear of the dead returning to life. His father called
it obsession. His mother had taken pride in his imagination. Why hadn't
they known? It had been this all along. He had foreseen the approach of
this single moment in time for as long as he had lived. And now it was
upon him at last.
"Don't go away!" she cried in a far-away
sounding voice. "Help me!"
He jammed his eyes closed, ducked his head, and
scurried away on hands and knees. When he could crawl no further, he lay
flat on his face to rest and refused to look up.
The nasty girl came up close behind him. In his
mind's eye, he saw her squat at his feet. "You silly boy," she
whispered among the privacy of his thoughts. "Where are you going?"
The only thing that kept him from panicking was
knowing that she had become a ghost like the bugs and birds and cats. He
couldn't really touch her, which meant that she couldn't touch him.
He opened his eyes and gauged the remaining distance
to the house. He certainly couldn't crawl all that way, so he pushed
himself to his feet. Focusing all of his attention on keeping his
balance, he put one foot in front of the other. A single step was
satisfactory as long as he could manage just one more.
"David?"
He sensed her confusion. She knew something
terrible had happened to her. She followed like a lost puppy, except that
she wanted something far more sinister than an innocent scratch behind the
ear.
"Come back with me," she said.
Yeah, right.
"I don't want to be alone."
David shared the sentiment, but he didn’t want to
share the moment with the likes of her.
"David, I have something to do."
David didn't want to know what.
"I can't do it all by myself. I need help. I
really do."
David believed her, except that she wasn't Jackie
Kahl any more. Like the creatures luring others of their kind into the
mirror, she had a new purpose to life.
"Please, come back with me. You'll be sorry if
you don't."
She followed like a haunting apparition. The others
followed, too. Bugs swarmed at his feet. Overhead, the hawk's shrill cry
echoed. It hadn’t, he suspected, escaped after all.
