Peter looked back at his closed bedroom door. If Mom or Grandfather came in, he was busted for sure.
Dill must’ve known what he was thinking. “Lock the door, dude, and let’s rock and roll.”
“I could get in a LOT of trouble for this.”
Dill shrugged. “It wouldn’t be worth it, otherwise.”
Peter took a big breath.
Peas, beets, and sauerkraut…bedtime at 9:45…and not being able to go anywhere or do anything.
Forget that.
Peter pulled on his pants, shirt and shoes, and locked the bedroom door.
Dill grinned and gave him a thumbs up. “You da man.”
7
The climb out on the roof was terrifying. Thirty feet down, the grass seemed to spin slightly in the moonlight. Peter started to get dizzy, but Dill held onto his arm the whole time. “Don’t look down, just grab the branch.”
Once he reached the limb, Peter hung on for dear life. Dill shimmied his way down like an expert until he reached the tree trunk, then hopped from branch to branch until he dangled only four feet off the ground. He let go, dropped, and rolled.
Peter took considerably longer, but he finally made it. His ankles and heels stung a little when he landed, but he was safely on the ground.
Dill slapped him on the shoulder. “I take it all back, you’re no wussy weenie.”
“How do we get back up there?”
Dill rolled his eyes and pointed to a hole in the tree that made a perfect foothold. “Don’t be such a granny, I got you covered.”
They kept to the shadows as much as possible, then bolted for the rose bushes and raced to the other side.
The air was perfumed with the smell of flowers and a touch of salt from the ocean. There was no breeze, though, and Peter couldn’t hear a single wave – only the chirping of crickets all around.
They walked about halfway between the rose bushes and the garden before Dill stopped him.
“Okay, this is far enough,” Dill whispered and sat down.
“But the garden’s still like fifty feet away,” Peter said.
“Trust me, man. If there’s something in there, we wanna get a good head start. Gummy bear?”
Dill produced a crinkled package. Peter took a couple of pieces and popped them in his mouth.
“Thas’ good,” he smacked. “I had beets for dinner.”
“Ugh. So was I right? Is he crazy, or what?”
“You were right. He told me never to come out here, ON PAIN OF DEATH,” Peter said, imitating his grandfather’s booming voice. Then he squinted. “Or was that the door under the stairs?”
“Yeah, well, he was maaaa-AAAAD when I blew up the watermelons. Jeez, you would think he could spare a couple.”
“The weird thing is, he doesn’t eat any of it.”
“What?!”
“Yeah. My mom told me she got in trouble when she was a kid for picking some tomatoes. She said she thinks that a bunch of hobos keep the garden and eat it all up.”
“Hobos?”
“Homeless guys who ride trains.”
“Oh, bums,” Dill nodded. “I don’t know, man. I guess the stuff I saw could’ve been a hobo, but…it was a messed-up hobo, then.”
“So you don’t see it all the time?”
“Naw…only once in awhile, mostly in the summer and the fall…weird shapes out here at night, and plants moving around ‘n stuff.”
“That’s why you lit the fire?”
“Actually, it really was an accident,” Dill admitted. “It was the fall, everything in the garden was dry and kind of dead, but the watermelons weren’t all gone yet. I couldn’t find a flashlight, so I took my dad’s zippo lighter and I was out there lookin’ around when somethin’, I don’t know what, scared the bejeezus out of me. I dropped the lighter and ran, and the next thing I know, the watermelons are exploding and the fire trucks are all racin’ up the street. Your grandfather about screamed his head off outside of my house. A cop came and talked to my parents, and I told him what had happened, and then he yelled at me and then he left. I thought my dad was going to whip me good, but he just laughed and told me anything that made that old fart mad made him happy, and nothing else happened to me. I just can’t let your granddad see me out here, that’s all.” Dill scoffed. “Getting’ mad at me…he’s a big hippo crib.”
Peter cocked his head to the side. “A what?”
Grandfather looked far more like a scarecrow than a hippopotamus, and Peter had no idea where the baby bed part came from.
“A hippo crib. A guy who says ‘No, you’re bad for starting a fire,’ and then he goes and starts a fire himself.”
“A hypocrite,” Peter suggested.
“Yeah, that’s what I said. The very next night he’s out with his truck and he rolls some big thing off the back onto the ground and lights it on fire till it’s all burned up. Hippo crib,” Dill muttered bitterly.
“I wonder why he did – ”
“Hey, shhh – did you see that?”
Peter peered out into the darkness, into the green stalks and vines barely visible in the starlight. “I don’t see anything.”
“Wait.”
There was a rustling somewhere out in the middle part of the garden, maybe fifty feet inside the corn. The leaves shook a little.
Peter gulped. “It was the wind.”
Dill licked his finger and held it up. “There isn’t any wind.”
Some vines shuddered and the movement continued to the right. There was the sound of leaves shaking and twigs snapping underfoot.
“What should we do?” Peter whispered.
“Let’s go take a look,” Dill answered.
“What, and burn down the garden again?”
“Dude, I came prepared this time.”
Dill pulled out two small, keychain-sized flashlights from his shorts pocket.
Peter looked at the offered flashlight, then out at the garden. The rustling started again, then stopped.
“I don’t know…my grandfather said not to come out here.”
Dill smirked. “You do everything your grandfather tells you to?”
“Well – ”
“You’re down here, aren’t you? So no, you don’t do everything he tells you to. Come on, don’t wuss out now. It’s probably a raccoon. Raccoons are cool.”
“What if it’s a hobo?”
“You and me, we can take him.”
“I thought you said we could only beat up a sixteen year-old.”
Dill thought for a second. “All we have to do is kick him, then we’ll run away.”
“What makes you so brave? Last time you got scared to death and burned down the garden, right?”
Dill slapped Peter on the shoulder. “Yeah, but now I got you to go with me.”
Peter hesitated.
Beets and peas. 9:45 bedtimes. Two weeks of lost vacation.
He relented and grabbed the flashlight. “All right.”
“Yeaaaaaaahhhh.” Dill grinned and headed into the garden.
8
Peter snapped on the tiny little flashlight, which gave off a beam that was barely any better for seeing than the moon. He sighed and followed Dill into the garden.
The dirt was soft and gave way beneath Peter’s feet. Low-lying plants – cucumbers? Zucchinis? – brushed against his legs as the boys moved through the rows. Coming up were the tomato plants, which twirled high above Peter on six-foot stakes.
Up ahead, Dill crouched over and disappeared into the tangle of vines. His flashlight bobbed behind the tomato plants like a glowing fairy from a storybook.
Peter looked over his shoulder, back to the safety of the giant house with its dim lights showing through the windows. Then he peered forward into the darkness and twisted ropes of green.
He took a deep breath and plunged on through.
It was a jungle in there. A fresh, green, pungent smell filled his nose. The plants crinkled against his body, occasionally tugging against
his jeans or shirt. The little flashlight illuminated only the closest vines to him, no more than a foot or two away.
In less than a minute he had reached the corn stalks. He paused and whispered, “Dill?”
Dill answered from somewhere off to the right. “What?”
“You in the corn?”
“Yeah. Come on in.”
Peter pushed into the giant green plants. It was even harder to see now – the big leaves slapped his face and towered so high above him that they blocked out any light from the moon or stars. It was just Peter, the dim beam from the flashlight, and the shhh shhh shhh of the corn all around him.
Peter stopped to get his bearings. He was about to call out for Dill again when a noise came from up ahead. The shhh shhh shhh of someone else moving in the corn.
“Dill?” he croaked, his throat dry.
No answer. But the corn stopped moving.
“Dill?” Peter whispered again.
There was the sound of something dropping to the ground, a series of light thumps. A gentle pressure touched Peter’s foot.
He gasped, stepped back, and shone his light on the ground.
A tomato. It must have rolled across the ground and bumped his foot.
Anger flared inside Peter where fear had once been. He picked up the tomato and forged ahead, pushing apart corn stalks.
“Dill, we’re out here to find raccoons, not pick – ”
He meant to say ‘vegetables,’ but the word stuck in his throat.
There was a man right in front of him.
He was kneeling on the ground, picking up the tomatoes and zucchinis and corn he had dropped. He was dressed all in black – black pants, black shirt, long black jacket. His head was bent, and he had on a black hat that hid his face.
A hobo.
Something smelled wrong, though. Literally. The scent of green plants was gone. Instead, the odor of burned leaves filled the air.
Peter gasped. “I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to – ”
He stopped speaking.
In the dim glow of the flashlight, Peter saw the hand that was picking up the last tomato. The hand was black, too.
But not African-American. Back in California, Peter had lots of friends at school who were black. Next door in his apartment building, there had lived a friendly man from Nigeria who was darker than anybody else Peter had ever seen in his life.
But even he wasn’t this dark.
Black, like ink. Like outer space, between the stars.
And the hand was too skinny for a grown man. It looked like a claw or a skeleton’s hand, but charred and cracked. Like the ashes of a log after the fire has died out. That’s when he realized the clothes and the hat weren’t black, either. Not originally.
They were burned. The man had been burned to a crisp.
He must’ve died. No human being could look like that and still be alive.
But he was moving. His arm was moving.
No no no no no no no no
The blackened claw gripped the last tomato…then paused.
The hat tilted up and the face looked into the light.
What was left of a face.
No ears, no nose, no hair.
No eyes. Just gaping holes.
It was more of a skull than a face, but black and charred. There was skin still left that covered most of the head and hid a lot of the teeth. But the skin looked like leather that somebody had roasted on a fire until it was shriveled as a burned raisin. The lips were gone, and had pulled away from the yellowed teeth in a permanent sneer.
The thing looked at Peter with its empty sockets.
Then it lunged at him.
9
Peter screamed, stumbled back through the corn, and ran fast as he could.
“DILL! DILL, GET OUT! GET OUT OF HERE!”
Dill’s voice piped up from somewhere off to the side.
“What? What is it?”
“GET OUT OF THE GARDEN! RUUUUUUUUN!”
Peter tore through the corn and into the tomatoes, flailing his arms and ripping apart the vines. His feet smushed vegetables underfoot, his head smacked into stakes. He spun around dizzily like a drowning man trying to find his way to the surface of a lake.
Behind him, he felt a tug on the bottom of his t-shirt. A tug that didn’t feel like it was snagged by a vine or a plant.
He screamed and ran faster, plowing through anything and everything in his way.
If I could only see the house again…
And then it was there, the dim lights from the windows. Safety.
Peter stumbled in the cucumbers but managed to keep upright, one foot flying in front of the other. For the first time since he started running, he looked over his shoulder.
Nothing was behind him, just the ever-receding garden patch.
Peter stopped and whirled around. “DILL!” he screamed.
Silence.
“DILLLLL!” he screamed again and prayed that he hadn’t left his friend behind to die in the clutches of a monster.
There was a giant shaking and shuddering in the tomato plants.
Peter’s heart froze in his chest.
And then Dill came tumbling out, batting away vines from his face, sputtering and spitting pieces of leaves from his lips. “Jeez, man, why’d you go and scare me like that?! I peed my pants, I was – I mean, I almost peed my pants, you scared me so bad. I think I lost my flashlight.”
Peter ran up to the edge of the garden and urged Dill forward, yet kept his eyes glued to the vines and stalks.
“Dill, I saw a hobo!”
“Really?” Dill gasped. “Did you talk to him?”
“No, he was burned to a crisp!”
Dill stopped in his tracks. His lower lip trembled. “He was…he was burned up?”
Peter grabbed Dill’s arm and pulled him over to the rose bushes. “Yeah, he didn’t have any eyes or nose or anything, and his hand was like this – ”
Peter contorted his own hand into the shape of a claw.
“ – except it looked like a branch after a fire, and his clothes were black and burned and everything.”
Dill looked into the field. “Do you…do you think I…” he whispered.
“And then it came after me!”
Dill frowned and looked at Peter. “It came after you?”
“Yeah, it chased me!”
From out of nowhere, Dill hauled off and hit Peter in the arm. “You stupid jerk!”
“OW!” Peter backed away. “Hey, what’s your problem?”
Dill was still coming, arms swinging. “I should kick your ass, making fun of me like that!”
“I’m not making it up!”
Dill stopped swinging. His chest heaved up and down as he panted. “Swear to me.”
“I swear!”
In the moonlight, it looked like Dill’s cheeks might be wet with tears. “So I…I didn’t kill anybody when I accidentally set that fire?”
Peter’s eyes widened with shock. “No, no, I don’t think so. Whatever it was, you sure didn’t kill it, cuz it came running after me.”
Both the boys gazed back at the garden. Nothing was moving within its shadows. The vines and stalks were completely still.
“Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?” Dill asked, in the same tone of voice he might say gimme a break, dude.
“I SWEAR. It came running after me. I think it grabbed my shirt.”
Dill frowned, and circled around Peter. He gasped. “Oh my gosh.”
“What? WHAT?”
Peter tried to turn to see whatever Dill was looking at. He tugged the edge of the shirt around to the front, but with the wrinkles and the nighttime darkness, he couldn’t see anything.
“Take off your shirt,” Dill whispered.
Peter yanked it off his body like it was on fire, then shone the flashlight on it. When he saw what Dill was talking about, he dropped the shirt like it was a live rattlesnake.
On the back, right where Peter had felt the tug,
was the clear outline of very thin fingers, smudged in black soot.
Both boys looked back at the garden.
Nothing.
Somewhere in the forest, an owl hooted and fell silent.
10
Peter paused at the base of the tree, three stories below his bedroom window, and looked at Dill. “You sure you’re okay walking back in the dark?”
“I think you mean running back in the dark.” Dill looked over his shoulder. “I’ll be okay…I still think you’re funnin’ me.”
“Funnin’ you?”
“Puttin’ me on. Pullin’ my leg.”
Peter pointed at the back of his shirt. “You think that’s fake?”
Dill expelled a big burst of air. “I don’t know what that is. All I hope is that guy didn’t get burned up because of me.”
“I don’t think so. I mean, he was alive…”
Dill squinted. “Maybe he’s a killer hobo back from the grave to get revenge and kill me.”
“I doubt that. He was picking vegetables.”
“Huh.” Dill pondered for a second. “Maybe he’s a killer hobo vegetarian.”
“I kind of doubt that, too. You sure you don’t want to climb up and spend the night in my room?”
“Dude, the only thing I’m more scared of than killer hobo vegetarians is your grandpa. I’ll be fine.”
“Here.” Peter handed Dill the flashlight. “You need it more than me.”
“Thanks, dude. See you tomorrow morning.” Dill trotted back towards his own house, keeping a wary eye on the darkness in Peter’s backyard.
“What’s tomorrow morning?” Peter whispered after him.
“That’s when we check it out,” Dill whispered back.
* * *
It was a long and scary climb back up to his bedroom, but no killer hobo vegetarians burst out of the darkness to menace him. Still, Peter checked the latch on the window six times and put his heaviest suitcase in front of it before he finally settled down in bed. Even then he lay awake for hours, looking out into the night sky and wondering what it was he had seen.
Sleep came long before any answers did.
* * *
In his dreams, he was walking out in the backyard, which seemed to stretch in all directions forever. There was a giant bonfire raging in front of him. Sparks flew up into the night sky and settled there amongst the stars.
Then the fire ended in one giant burst like a bomb going off. Peter stepped into the ashes, a whole acre of them, which scattered on a silent wind.