The wallpaper came off after awhile, although he had to tear it with both hands--it was thick, and it came off like price tags, in torn triangles. He dug into the surface of the plaster, which scraped nastily as he tried to cut through it. Close to an hour later he’d made one small notch in the plaster. It was time to admit it: he wasn’t going to get the rats out in time.
John resignedly went back to bed, hearing terrified squeaks all night in his dreams.
The exterminators came the next day. They told John and his parents to stay out of the upstairs for a few hours while the air cleared. Feeling queasy, John sat on the front stoop in the easy spring air, watching the odd car go by and wondering whether he’d done something wrong.
That was when the rat-king’s spirit appeared.
"You betrayed us," squeaked a small but terrible voice.
"I didn’t mean to," John said to the thin air. "I did my best."
"Do you hear them?" the voice of the rat king said. "All of them?"
"I don’t hear anyth--" but John heard it. Faintly at first, then louder.
Screaming.
Hundreds of rats, crying out as they died, poisoned by gas.
"Make them stop!" John shouted. The voices only strengthened.
"Now that you’ve failed to save my kingdom," the rat king said, "we have nothing left to do in the world but to haunt you to death."
"Don’t haunt me, haunt the exterminators!" John said.
But the screaming of the rats only grew louder and louder.
Flicking shapes appeared at the corner of his vision. They were coming, coming to get him. There always seemed to be a crowd of rats just behind him, their eyes shining red. The stoop and the fresh air faded. Soon there was nothing he could see except the eyes of rats and their shadows, and nothing to hear except the screaming, the endless high-pitched screaming.
All through the day, John sat shivering as the spirits of the rats advanced on him, step by step. The sun went down, and the exterminators packed up their fumigators and big fans and drove away.
"John, honey! It’s safe to go back into your room now!"
Feeling like a ghost himself, John felt his way up the stairs and found the doorhandle of his room. The only things he could see in any direction were the spirits of the rats, and the only thing he could hear was their screaming. Deaf and blind, he climbed into his bed, smelling the faint trace of poison chemicals. Shivering, he drifted away to sleep.
In his dreams there was a strange taste in his mouth.
Waking with a start, he found himself squashed under the weight of hundreds of rat spirits, heavier in death than they were in life. One was crouched over his mouth, and two more sat over his nostrils, their eyes blazing dark red. Their faces were as still as death.
He struggled, but they were so heavy.
They waited for him to inhale.
When he did, they breathed the spirit of the poison gas into his nose and mouth, and John felt the poison filling his lungs. Then the three rat spirits traded places with three others.
No matter how much John struggled, he couldn’t get free. He couldn’t move his arms or legs. And he found his screams drowned out by the screams of the rats.
Gradually, by the end of the night, his lungs were filled with the spirit of the deadly gas, and the poison took him.
Maria
Maria talked to God.
Every night before bed, she knelt on the oval throw rug and told God all the troubles she had during the day. The teasing, the scolding from her parents, her siblings being bossy, everything. Maria was so glad to have one person who would listen to all her problems.
Maria was secretly religious. She talked to God. Nobody else knew. It was a secret.
But it was only this last week when God started talking to her in return.
"Hello, Maria," the deep voice said to her. "I’m God."
Maria practically burst with pride. God was talking to her! That meant she was doing really good at religion.
That night she and God chatted all night long about all the Bible stuff Maria had been reading, about school, about life, about everything. God was great. He was exactly the way she dreamed Him to be: wise and kind and a great listener.
The next night it was exactly the same. It was her special secret.
And the next night.
On the fourth night, God said: "Maria, what would you do for My love?"
This was a puzzling and complicated question.
"You know what I asked the first believer to do, right?" God asked.
She didn’t.
"Kill his firstborn baby," God said.
"I don’t have a baby," Maria said quickly.
"Your parents do," God told her. "Get a carving knife and go to your little brother’s room, and when I say ‘now,’ stab him through the heart."
Maria’s own heart was pounding as she pushed the door to her room open and tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen. Her mother was in the pantry, putting supper away, and her dad was in the living room watching his comedy shows.
The wooden knifeholder block was totally unguarded. Maria crept past where her mom was humming and slid the biggest, sharpest knife out of its slot.
"Is that you, sweetie?" her mother said absently.
Maria hugged the knife behind her back.
"Could I have a glass of water?" she said, holding the heavy knife in both hands.
Her mother poured her a glass of water and handed it to her.
She had to let go of the knife with one hand to take the water. The knife was too heavy to hold behind her back with one hand. It was too heavy.
It dropped, landing right between her feet with a thunk.
Her mom saw.
"I--" Maria said instantly. "I needed to do a . . . school project."
Her mother gave the big knife a look. "Why didn’t you just ask for help, sweetie?" she said sweetly.
"I also need a hard-boiled egg and, uh, a paperclip," she said. That sounded likely.
"Why did you save the project for so late? This isn’t like you, Maria."
"NevermindIalreadydidit," Maria announced and ran back to bed.
She lay in bed and stared at the ceiling.
God’s voice came to her: "You failed."
"I didn’t mean to!" she said aloud, then clapped a hand over her mouth. In a distant room, her little brother started crying.
"Perhaps we need to start smaller," God said. "Tomorrow, after school, I want you to shoplift something small. Do it for me. Remember I have a Plan for you."
Maria slept badly. In the morning she got a funny look from her mom, got through a day of school and went to the pharmacy, where she put a lipstick in her back pocket and sidled out without anyone seeing. She ran home and lay in bed.
"Excellent. You’ve proved a piece of faith. Tomorrow, take a lunch fork and stab someone in the hand hard enough to break the skin. Do it for God."
Maria didn’t have the sort of friends you could stab in the hand and get away with it, but she thought about it and formed a plan.
At lunch the next day, she thought about God, gripped her lunch fork, raised it, put her hand on the red table and stabbed.
It hurt. It hurt a lot. But it was part of God’s Plan for her.
When she got home, her mom sat her down at the kitchen table.
"Honey, I got the strangest phone call from the school nurse. Sweetie, are you . . . cutting yourself? On purpose?"
Maria felt hunted. But it was part of the Plan.
"Mom, I was just . . . trying it out," she lied. "To see what it felt like. All my friends are doing it. But I didn’t like it."
"Good," her mother said concernedly. "You know you can always talk to us about everything."
But Maria knew she couldn’t.
She lay in bed and told God what happened.
"You proved a lot more faith," God said. "There’s just one more task."
Maria squeezed her hands together in a big prayer.
&nbs
p; * * *
The next day, when school got out, Maria did exactly as she was told: she climbed the ladder of the hundred-foot-tall radio tower on the school’s outer lawn and stood at the very top, looking out over the flat roof of the school and over the windy, precipitous drop below her.
Her hands clasped together.
"Now," God said to her.
There were some kids gathering below, pointing up at her.
"You--you really want me to--"
"Do it for God," the voice repeated.
She jumped.
"One last secret," God whispered as she plummeted toward the concrete base of the radio tower. "I’m not God."
Thump.
Jake
Jake loved to tie up girls. It was his favorite game. He was a year older than everyone in school, because his parents had sent him to kindergarten a year later than they were supposed to, and he was accordingly bigger and stronger than everyone else. But the thing was, pushing other boys around was only fun for awhile.
There was something about girls that made Jake feel especially good about pushing them around.
There was just something about them.
They made all sorts of nasty fun sounds, and they cried really good, and they always liked to make threats they couldn’t carry out. They never went and told, for example, and they didn’t fight back the way they said they would. If you had a spare shoelace, you could tie a girl up and leave her places. You could stick a sock in her mouth, and then she couldn’t even call for help. It made Jake feel like a king, making people do what he told them.
For awhile, Jake had a group of friends who’d go around the neighborhood, capturing girls and making them promise to hand over their lunch money, or their favorite doll, or their brother’s Hot Wheels collection in exchange for being untied from the treebranch or signpost. But Jake’s friends seemed to grow less and less enthusiastic about it. They found other things to do on weekends, like Xbox 360.
And then it was just Jake, wandering through the neighborhood.
He always carried a bag of toys. In his special collection were:
Shoelaces and ropes.
A special dirty sock for a gag.
A lobster claw to pinch with.
A metal fork to poke with.
Rubber bands to thwack with.
He even had a knife, which he was never brave enough to use, but everyone did anything he wanted when he held it up. He always saved the knife for last.
Sarah and Emily and Abby and Megan all ran when they saw him. Luckily he was bigger and faster. What was more, they never seemed to spread the word. He wasn’t infamous. Every one of his victim-toys was too scared to tell on him. Finding new victims was easy.
No one ever suspected him.
* * *
This year there was a new girl in school.
She had dark hair and always wore dark clothes and looked angry at everyone, as if she had some rotten secret she didn’t want to share. All the other girls teased her, and she had no friends.
She was a perfect victim.
It was late autumn when Jake decided to tie her up. The leaves were all gone. In his neighborhood wanderings, Jake had spotted her walking alone regularly in the graveyard late at night.
It couldn’t be more perfect.
Jake got into the habit of taking a walk in the evening with his toy bag, past the graveyard, under the lowing, clawing trees and along the metal guardrail that marked the end of the road. He watched the new girl stomp between the gravestones, looking sad.
Finally one Saturday he was ready.
Even though he was tall and strong, Jake could walk very quietly. The maple trees had dropped bright leaves that he could avoid, and the wind was low, not too scratchy or howly, so she wouldn’t hear him coming up behind her.
The new girl sat under a yew tree. In her hands was a small leather book. She was studying it like a schoolbook.
Jake grabbed the book out of her hands. She shrieked.
"Give it back!" she shouted, reaching up. But he pushed her down.
"Let’s play a game," Jake said as nastily as he could manage. He saw that in a movie once.
"No. Give it back!"
Jake had his shoelaces ready, and he grabbed both her hands. The yew tree’s trunk wasn’t very thick, and he got her hands behind her and tied them around the tree trunk. She glared at him and didn’t say anything.
"So," he said, sauntering in front of her, holding the book. Her eyes were cold, and she was smiling faintly, but Jake hardly noticed, he was having so much fun. "If you want your book back, you have to . . . give me your lunch money."
"No," she replied in a slightly different tone than he was expecting.
"Okay," Jake said, "then I’ll have to tear pages out of your book. Right in front of you." He cracked the binding and dogeared a bunch of pages, like he was about to rip them.
"No!" she shouted, suddenly straining at the shoelace rope. "Just give it back!"
Jake grinned, feeling great. "Nuh-uh," he said, and tore a nick in a sheaf of pages.
"I’m going to give you one more chance," the new girl said.
Jake tore a handful of pages out of the book and watched them float away like snowflakes. They seemed to be covered with strange geometric drawings.
"My journal! Oh, you asked for this," the new girl screamed.
With the toe of her black boot the new girl drew a shape in the dirt. It was a shape Jake had never seen before. Then the girl spoke several words in a language that sounded like it hadn’t been spoken in a thousand years, and in a flash of light Jake found himself sitting under the yew tree with his hands tied behind him. The girl stood over him. His bag of toys dropped onto the turf beside her. The geometric shape faded.
The new girl ran off and collected her pages, then came back and scowled at Jake.
"I’m going to have to tape them back in," she said.
Jake’s wrists were tied really well. He couldn’t get at the knot no matter how he twisted.
"How’d you--" he said. "How’d--"
"Don’t you know you only tie people up after you ask permission?" the new girl told him, adding a kick with her heavy boot.
"Oof," Jake replied.
"But instead you decided to sneak up and attack me," she yelled, kicking him again.
"Hey, you’re not allowed to fight back," Jake whimpered. His ribs were aching from the kicks.
"I’m not . . . allowed?" she said, mocking him.
A creeping sensation began to grow. Jake felt like he wasn’t just playing a game with a new girl at school. It felt like this girl was a lot . . . older than he was. She seemed to know magic, too, and she had a lot of un-girl-like ideas.
"I’m not allowed to fight you?" she whispered, not at all sweetly or innocently. "You know who else isn’t allowed to fight? Dead people. Not unless I break the laws of reality."
And she drew another septagram in the dirt with her toe, said more magic words, and then walked away, carrying her book.
It took nearly half an hour for the first skeleton to break out of its coffin and through the topsoil. During that time, Jake had a lot of room to think about what she’d said. Some people ask for permission? But wouldn’t that spoil the fun?
There were dark groans under the earth, and before too long all the skeletons were stirring. The skeletons didn’t ask for permission before shambling up to him and pinching him with bones that felt like lobster claws, scraping his skin with fingertips that felt like metal fork tines, and snapping him with ribs that thwacked like rubber bands. And they didn’t make any demands before their knife-like teeth started tearing his flesh, and eating his skin off, and pulling all his guts out through his belly. They didn’t say anything at all.
Brian
There was a castle in back of Brian’s house.
People said it was built in the time of the Old West by a very rich and strange and eccentric oilman who nobody could remember the name of. It was built out of the lo
cal stone, which was pinkish-red, and it had one tall tower with a single narrow window. The entrance of the castle had been boarded up for years. All around the castle was just empty fields for more than a mile in every direction.
Of course Brian’s best friend Lucy dared him to break in. "Everyone has to break into an abandoned building at least once," she told him. "C’mon. Nobody’ll see you."
"Okay," Brian told her. "But you have to come too."
Lucy found a crowbar in her garage. As the sun set, they set out together to break into the castle.
The boards over the entrance were extremely dusty and brittle; they worked to pry off four boards at the bottom, only on one side, so it looked like it hadn’t been broken into. Brian pulled the boards open partway and they crept in.
The smell was stale and completely dry. A few pieces of very nice rosewood furniture sat in the entrance hall. Beyond that it was dark.
Brian took out a flashlight and switched it on.
"Do you think there’s anything cool in here?" he asked Lucy.
"Let’s at least see what’s up in the tower," she replied.
Only a small bright circle showed up at a time, mostly lighting on more stone walls, but as they got past the entryway things began to look very . . . unusual.
The first bad sign, Brian thought, was the line of mummified Native American heads, complete with strange hairdos and face paint, attached to wooden plaques on the walls like antler trophies. Lucy nearly jumped out of her skin when the light first illuminated the shrivelled faces, their eyes replaced by glass eyes. She hid behind Brian but said, "Keep going," under her breath.
On the other side of the room was a kitchen with a few too many big Bowie knives for Brian to really feel comfortable there.
"I bet there’s nasty stuff in the fridge," he said, half-joking.
"They didn’t have fridges. It’s an icebox," she whispered back. Then: "Open it."
He looked at her, but she was bossy, and he hesitantly went to the big rectangular box and opened the door.
A mummified pair of left hands slid out. They fell with a thwop, as if filled with jelly.
"Omigosh let’s get out of here," Brian yelped, his heart racing. But Lucy grabbed his hand and held on.
"They’re all dead," she said, patting his arm. "There hasn’t been anything alive in here since the Civil War. At least." She leaned forward. "They can’t get you, silly."
"Why are the dead Indians’ hands in the kitchen?" Brian asked.