“Not mean it!” ARRRGH!!! cried.
“Tell me what you saw.” Jack pet the damp fur. “Before you forget.”
“Nullhuller go to Gunmar. Gunmar send more. Gumm-Gumms find fuel. Fuel for Machine.”
Even in the dim light I could see the paling of Jack’s face.
“The Machine? We destroyed the Machine. I was there, I saw it.”
“Gumm-Gumms work hard. Gumm-Gumms fix. Boy humans right. Killaheed make strong. Much sad. Much sad is ARRRGH!!!.”
From my seat in the grass I forced out a question.
“What’s the Machine?”
Jack’s expression of dread unnerved me. He shrugged away my query.
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. What’s important is that ARRRGH!!! confirmed everything. And none of it’s good. Trolls like these tonight? That’s nothing. Gunmar will keep sending them, every night, to occupy us while he waits for the Killaheed to be finished. It’s a perfect plan and we have to deal with it. If these Gumm-Gumms are out gathering fuel for the Machine—”
Jack cut himself off. He searched for solace in the lines of houses, the fences, the roads, all of the comforting right angles of the suburbs. But at last he drove both swords into the lawn with the red-faced frustration of a thirteen-year-old.
“Why does everything have to be so hard?”
The subsequent quiet would have been unbearable if Blinky hadn’t chosen that moment to slither back to us. He used a single tentacle to lift Tub and I to standing positions as he passed. With curt movements, he plucked the Eye of Malevolence from the grass, gathered the cardboard box, and then put the former in the latter so as to save us from its blinkless stare. He tucked the box into ARRRGH!!!’s fur and began his jovial report.
“The nursery is as dandy as ever. Even dandier if you want the truth. I could not resist rearranging a few elements so that the room had a better flow. You wouldn’t believe the wonders that can be achieved by a more cunning placement of a nightstand! I do believe I missed my calling.”
Blinky waited for adulations. Instead he was met with a fatigued foursome rendered voiceless by a night of defeat. He sighed and looked to the east, where a line of orange razored the horizon.
“We’ve had worse days,” he said softly. “Come, come. Let’s take these boys home.”
It was with some effort that Jack dislodged his swords from the dirt. Following this signal, ARRRGH!!! raised herself to her feet, favoring her left calf just a little. Blinky took the lead back toward the bridge, and the other warriors began shambling after. I lagged behind just enough so that I could grab Jack’s arm. The web of notebook spirals swallowed my fingers.
Jack looked at me with bloodshot eyes.
“Why?” I asked. “Why are you dragging me into this?”
Jack’s reply was as hushed as branches blowing in the night breeze.
“It’s a terrible thing, isn’t it? To be dragged under?”
I awoke before Tub. Leaving him spread-eagled on my bed alongside Jim Sturges Jr. 2: The Decoy, I stashed my ruined clothes in a gym bag and tiptoed to the shower. The medallion tapped against my chest as I soaped; I tried to ignore it. The water swirled at my feet in currents of mud black and blood orange, and I watched it slip through the drain on its way to another world.
The thought of cereal made me sick. Instead of flakes growing soggy with milk at the bottom of a bowl, I visualized coiled white Nullhuller intestines. I avoided the kitchen altogether, undid the ten door locks, and dove into the daylight, gulping down fresh air in the hopes that it would calm my stomach. My arms hung at my sides as if they each clutched an iron horseshoe. I sunk to the steps beneath the security camera, folded my arms across my knees, and wondered how long I could sit here before I ran back inside and double-checked each lock.
Dad came around the corner, surprising me. He was dressed for mowing in his work gloves, stained shirt, old pants, and steel-toed boots. Thankfully, the most ridiculous parts of his wardrobe—the goggles, face mask, and hair net—were still stashed, allowing me a rare opportunity to take him seriously. He hesitated as though equally surprised to see me, then took off his work gloves, stuck them in his back pocket, and took a seat next to me on the stairs.
His brother, I thought. His brother is alive.
It was something I couldn’t say, because how could it really be true? How could that lean and fearless kid from the underworld be related to this man of the hairless pate, collection of worry lines, and Band-Aid glasses?
“A bit late today,” he said.
“Sorry.”
“Not you. Me. My trimmer was clogged. Just spent two hours hacking at it with a screwdriver. But we’re good to go. You want to come along? I’m doing Joseph A. Kearney Park. Good chance to put in some time piloting the big guy.”
“I don’t know. I’m pretty tired.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I figured.”
We sat in silence for a minute. I kept an eye on his profile as he watched life going on as usual. Little girls on bikes rode by ringing their bells. A teenager washed his car a few driveways down. Across the block, there was hammering—a new deck, maybe a tree house if some kids were lucky.
“I suppose we should have a talk,” Dad said.
Such a sentence would have terrified me had I not been wrung dry.
“About what?”
“Jimmy.” He gestured over his shoulder. “The kitchen.”
It was a lifetime ago that Tub and I had come upon the trolls in the kitchen. I tried to recall the damage, but there was too much: the obliterated ceiling fan, the scorched microwave, the piles of broken dishes.
“Dad,” I said. “I…”
“It was bound to happen. How long could I expect you to run around like a trapped rat before you tried to break out? You know, I originally wanted more kids. Four was the number I decided on. Two girls, two boys, so nobody ever had to be lonely. Even when things got bad at the end there, I kept making my case to your mother. Can’t blame her for saying no, I guess. Having more kids is no way to save a marriage. I suppose at that point I wasn’t trying to save the marriage, I was trying to save you. I’ve had it both ways, you know? I had a brother. And then I was an only child. I know the difference between the two. And I kind of feel like I robbed you of that. Having someone for when I can’t be there. Which is often. I know that.”
“Dad.” I knew no other words beyond that.
“With a brother? Hell, there’d be messes worse than that kitchen. You can’t have two boys and not have things break. Catch fire. Explode, even.” He turned his glasses to the clouds and laughed. “You wouldn’t believe the trouble Jack and I used to get into. You honestly wouldn’t believe it. They had these chemistry sets marketed to kids back then, rockets that you ignited with fire. They should have been sold with tourniquets and directions to the nearest hospital. There weren’t bicycle helmets back then. Or locks on doors.” His smile died out. “I don’t know. Maybe there should’ve been.”
“I’ll clean it up.” This promise came out with startling ferocity. I would clean it up, cleaner than it’d ever been, and I’d ride my bike to the store, get replacement dishes, a new mop, some cleaning products, and a new ceiling fan, which I’d buy on layaway along with a serviceman to install it, and when Dad got back from mowing, soppy with perspiration and dotted with grass shrapnel, he’d light up with renewed energy when he saw what a success his son could be when he set his mind to it.
Dad brushed it all away with a shrug.
“Already cleaned,” he said. “Don’t give it another thought. It’s festival week. I want you to enjoy yourself. I ran into Mrs. Leach at the hardware store this morning. Why didn’t you tell me you’d gotten the lead in the play? I mean, I know why. Late-night rehearsals. You were afraid I wouldn’t let you do it. Well, I am letting you do it. I’m not going to lie, it makes me nervous. Practically sliced my hand off in the trimmer this morning thinking about it. But that’s my hand. Yours is yours.”
For the
first time that morning he faced me. A fresh dotted line of scabs trailed down from the left corner of his lips, the tracks of the schmoof that had spent the previous night snoozing inside his stomach: Sluuuurp. Sluuuurp. Sluuuurp. Sluuuurp. It was my fault that Dad had been subjected to that. I felt on my back the full weight of what I knew.
“I want you to be great in that play, Jimmy. I want you to be great at something. Or, heck, if that’s too much pressure, I just want you to have fun.” His smile faltered, but he tried to make it work. “Don’t stay out too late. I mean, no later than you need to. I won’t give you grief about it. Not this week. Maybe not next. What I’m saying, Jimmy, is that I’m trying. All right? I am beginning to try.”
I looked into the sun, hoping my fresh tears would tip back into my eyes rather than streak down my cheeks. Posed in that way, I managed a nod. From my peripheral vision, I saw Dad’s hand raise as though he was going to pat my back. Part of me prayed that he wouldn’t—the tears would roll from my eyes as easily as marbles. Part of me wished that he would.
He stood, taking the gloves from his back pocket and slapping them across his thighs to knock free the adhered grass. He adjusted his glasses and I thought, in its own way, the Band-Aid around the temple had a sort of courage—it clung to the glasses with the same tenacity that Dad clung to his responsibilities in the face of a lifetime of fear.
A minute later he was pulling out of the driveway in the San Bernardino Electronics van. He gave me a toot of the horn as he backed into the street. It was only as he pulled away, observing the posted speed limit, of course, that the screen door behind me opened with a crow squawk.
Tub clomped down the steps as if he had been sewn together from corpse parts. He staggered past me, stood in a wide stance upon the lawn, and stretched his arms in a yawn. The pink-smeared shirt pulled taut across his wide back.
“You—ow. You have a nice—ow. A nice talk with your—so sore! Talk with your dad?”
I shrugged. He looked from me to the step I sat on, but seemed dubious that his leg muscles could take the pressure of lowering his bulk. Instead he just stood in place like an overstuffed scarecrow, teetering in the mild breeze. I waited for the spill of expletives that would mirror my own feelings: we needed to screw irons bars to the floor beneath my bed, whatever it took to stop the trollhunters from returning.
Instead, his puffy, pillow-scarred face cracked into a lopsided grin.
“Crazy night, huh? I mean, no girls were involved, but still, I’ve been waiting fifteen years to be able to use that phrase and mean it. Crazy night, am I right?”
I shook my head miserably.
“I can’t do this, Tub.”
“Yes, you can. You did. We both did. Sure, we didn’t ace it, but how could we? I mean, graduating from a baseball bat and hockey stick to a couple of gnarly swords is going to take more than one night. You think they’d give me one if I practiced? You know, showed them what I could do?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Huh? Nothing’s wrong with me. You’re the one who looks all freaked out.”
“Tub. Wake up. We can’t do what they asked us to do.”
“Jim.” He smiled, but it died when he saw my cold expression. “Jim, don’t do this to me.”
“To you? I’m doing something to you?”
“They’re coming back tonight. They said. And we’re going to help them.”
“It’s not your decision.”
“It’s not?”
“You heard them. You’re not a trollhunter.”
Tub’s metal mouth snapped shut. A red color began to creep up his neck.
“That’s crappy of you, Jim. To treat me like that.”
“What do you want me to say? ‘Yahoo, let’s go get ourselves killed’? Didn’t I translate enough for you last night? They’re talking about war. Real war. Something called the Machine. You and me weren’t meant to do this, Tub. We’re in way over our heads.”
“Our heads? Who’s ever cared about our heads before this? Jim, you’re wrong. We were meant to do this. This is exactly what we’ve been waiting for. They’ve chosen us. Of all people! Us!”
“Not us. Me.”
“This means that all those times I told you we weren’t worth anything—”
“I never said that. Don’t include me in that.”
“Fine!” His face was scarlet now. “Then just me! I’m the one who isn’t worth anything! Jesus, Jim, take a look at my life! You know what I’m worth? To anyone? Zero! Nothing! I’m a fat loser and will always be a fat loser. Until this. This is like a present. Full of, man, I don’t know. Hope? I know how cheesy that sounds, but I swear that’s what it feels like.”
“That’s easy for you to say. I’m the one being asked to risk his neck.”
Tub’s voice cracked.
“They won’t take me without you!”
Over his shoulder on the other side of the road, I saw a man with a stapler and a handful of flyers look up at the noise. He had been about to attach one of the flyers to a phone pole but instead started walking toward us. I groaned. A salesman was the last thing we needed right now. The idiot didn’t even look for traffic before he crossed the pavement.
“Sorry to interrupt, boys,” he said, “but—”
“Not a good time,” Tub muttered.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to ask if you’ve seen my little girl.”
“We just got up,” Tub said. “We haven’t seen anyone.”
“Last night, maybe. Maybe you were out last night and saw—”
“Listen, man—”
Tub whirled around to give the guy a mouthful, but it died on his tongue. The man was around forty, with a dyed black goatee and eyes that were red and exhausted. Dog poop was smeared on the side of his shoe and he didn’t seem to care. Every sign suggested he’d been out for hours canvassing the neighborhood.
The man held out a flyer with a trembling hand. On it was the color-photocopied face of an eight-year-old girl with purple glasses, a sweet face, and a grin missing at least three baby teeth. The seven block letters above her head must have been pure hell to type:
MISSING
“There’s a reward.” The rise in the man’s voice conveyed that he didn’t believe in the inherent goodness of kids, just their perennial need for cash.
Tub took the flyer.
“We’ll let you know if we see her,” he mumbled.
The man forced a rumpled smile and nodded. He backed away, still nodding, the pictures of his daughter crinkling in his grip. His shoulders relaxed when he returned to the telephone pole across the street. It was easier, it seemed, pinning his hopes on inanimate wood rather than on the whims of self-involved, shiftless teens.
Tub stared at his feet for a few seconds before lifting his eyes in a glare.
“Don’t let us down, Jim. Don’t you goddamn do it.”
He shoved the little girl’s face into my palm and charged away.
The Ğräçæĵøĭvőd’ñůý were a race of trolls so nefarious that even their name was an assault, hard enough to write and impossible to say, an umpteen-letter monstrosity that would tie the most eloquent of troll scholars in such knots of quivering failure that they were slain before the first clash of battle had sounded. But the trait of which I’d been most warned during that night’s journey through floorboards and sewers and bridges was their sense of smell, unparalleled in the history of the world. One sniff and they’d forever imprint your scent signature upon their temporal lobes. That was why Ğräçæĵøĭvőd’ñůý, more than any other troll, needed to be completely eradicated in battle. If a single specimen escaped, it would share your odor with others back at its hive, and your home would be overrun in hours.
Ğräçæĵøĭvőd’ñůý were attracted to areas of spoil, and that night we were meeting them upon the soon-to-be battlefield of Keavy’s Junk Emporium. It wasn’t just physical decay that attracted Ğräçæĵøĭvőd’ñůý. They sought out homeless shanties, orphanages, menta
l hospitals, old folks’ homes, hospice care facilities, anywhere they could snuggle within the invigorating chill of discarded dreams.
Keavy’s was a double whammy: not only was it the most sprawling concentration of decomposition in all of San Bernardino, it also bordered Sunny Smiles for Friends, a budget retirement home of infamous reputation. Ambulances made trips to Sunny Smiles multiple times per night, and it was widely believed to be a front for meth sales. Ğräçæĵøĭvőd’ñůý operated by infecting weak or elderly lungs with airborne poisons and couldn’t be allowed to squat in any one location for long, lest everyone there become polluted.
Blinky completed these warnings as we made our way up the side of a dirt hill at the edge of the junkyard. It was after midnight, and the two of us lagged behind Jack and ARRRGH!!!. Tub was not with us. I had not heard from him since that morning, and as the day dwindled I had resisted calling or texting. He had no business with us. I felt terrible thinking it, but it was bad enough that I was being bullied into attendance.
Blinky and I joined Jack and ARRRGH!!! at the crest of the hill. Before us spread a labyrinth. Compacted vehicles, everything from motorcycles to trailer homes, made up the walls of the treacherous maze, while brambles of metal wire blocked easy exits.
“Behold,” Blinky said, unspooling a tentacle over the vista. “The Ğräçæĵ…the Ğräçæĵøĭv…” He emitted a locust-flutter sound of irritation. If anyone was going to pronounce the unpronounceable, certainly it would be the self-proclaimed greatest living troll historian! But that achievement would have to wait for another day. The tentacle snapped with frustration.
“Behold the rust trolls,” he mumbled.
Other trolls, I’d gathered, had tried to rob power from the Ğräçæĵøĭvőd’ñůý, pinning them with this simpler moniker. Right away I saw why it was fitting. They were the color of dried blood, equal parts orange, brown, and red. Each one was scaled with plates the exact shape and weight of rust flakes. Most chilling of all, the rust trolls were as flat as hammered tin, and they slithered across dilapidated car parts, barely distinguishable from corroded chrome detailing.