by Dia Reeves
“So you’re Miss Bravery, huh?” he was saying as he popped the cap off a soda. “Ma’s always asking me to kill spiders. I can’t stand spiders and she knows that, but she always wants me to kill ’em when they get in the house. Here’s to brave chicks.” He lifted his soda bottle and drank.
“You’re the brave one,” Chickie told him. “Driving around in that skuzz bucket. Want I should jazz it up for you? Just say the word. Got my tools in the trunk.”
Nate gave him the finger. “Climb it, Tarzan. Not only is this baby a classic, it’s a chick magnet. You know how much action I get cruising in this—” He looked at Sue Jean’s disapproving face. “I mean, how much action I got before I started going steady with Peggy.”
“Obviously the car’s not the only skuzz bucket,” Sue Jean said, turning the knob on the console that raised the windows.
“Don’t let him spoil the mood, mama.”
“It’s not spoiled.”
And it wasn’t. They were alone now and it was dark and “There’s a Moon Out Tonight” was playing on the radio, one of her favorite songs. As far as Sue Jean was concerned, the mood was finally set.
“Let’s get in the back, okay?”
She followed Chickie into the backseat where they could cuddle without the console getting in the way.
She put her face in his neck and inhaled his warm scent. “You should really change your mind about doing a sit-in with me.”
Chickie groaned. “Not that again.”
“It would be just like this.” She squeezed him tight. “We’ll sit on the floor of Ducane’s and cuddle and sing songs of protest.”
“Until they sic the dogs on us.”
“Are you afraid of dogs, too, you big coward?”
“No. I’m afraid of being eaten by dogs. I never showed you my glove box, did I? Whyn’t you check it out.”
“I’m sick of gushing over your car, Chickie.”
“There’s something in there for you. A present.”
Sue Jean leaned forward and rummaged around in the glove box while Chickie attempted to caress her rear end through her many layers of crinoline. She sat back against him, heart racing as she opened the beribboned gift she had found.
“What’s this?” she asked disappointed, staring at the ring in the box. She had been expecting his class ring, a sign that they were going steady—an even better sign than wearing his letter sweater—but this wasn’t a class ring.
The band was cobalt-blue glass, and above it spun a dime-sized replica of the planet Earth. Sue Jean had seen satellite photos of the Earth on the news, but all anyone could see on TV were grainy black-and-white images. Chickie’s Earth, though, was shockingly detailed. Colorful and gorgeous.
“Amazing.” Sue Jean held the ring to her face and tapped it. And the Earth moved. Not the one spinning over the ring, but the real Earth beneath her. She felt a rumble like someone was beating a dozen timpani in her belly. Even the moon, visible through the sunroof, seemed to shiver.
“Did you feel that?” Sue Jean fisted her hand in Chickie’s T-shirt. “Was that an earthquake?”
“Maybe a small one.” His heart wasn’t even beating fast.
“You did that?”
“Just to remind you how powerful you are.” He removed her hand from his shirt, and slid the ring on her finger. “I know sometimes you feel helpless, which I don’t get at all because…you’re the strongest person I know. You could wrap the whole universe around your finger if you wanted. You can do anything.”
Sue Jean melted against him. “You know how you’ve been wanting to get to third base?” she murmured. “Batter up, Chickie.”
“Really?”
She smiled. Now his heart was beating fast. “I guess I’m not that strong. Say nice things to me and I turn into mush.”
“I like mush.”
Sue Jean studied the blue orb spinning over her finger. “But I’m scared of this. What if I break it and the whole world breaks?”
“Touch it again.”
She prodded it with her finger, but nothing happened.
“That initial quake was just me showing off.”
Only he would think creating a ring that could jostle the Earth was “just showing off.”
“You’re very unusual, Chickie Hill.”
“I’ll say. You just gave me the all clear to head for third base, and I’m sitting here like a wet firecracker. Come here.”
He pulled her close and—
“Nate!”
They jerked apart, startled; not by the sound of Peggy’s voice, but by the tone.
Peggy raced to Nate’s Studebaker and clawed open the driver’s side door. “Leo’s been kidnapped!”
Nate leaped out of the car and grabbed her. “By who?”
“The Ku Klux Klan!”
The name brought the other couples out of their cars in a way even the earthquake hadn’t been able to. Sue Jean pulled Chickie out of the T-bird to join the disheveled crowd.
“Peggy?” Nate was saying. “Are you sure?”
“Yes! I was walking Leo around the ruins, showing him how safe it was.” Her sudden hysterical laughter made Sue Jean’s skin crawl. “And then he told me he had to whiz. So I waited while he left the ruins and went into some bushes near the forest. A minute later Leo screamed my name, and I saw them coming out of the trees—a whole crowd of them. The Klan!”
“That doesn’t sound right,” Chickie said. “If you’d said they burned down your house and hung your brother from a tree, that I’d believe. But kidnapping?”
“I know what I saw!” Peggy shrieked, as Sue Jean elbowed Chickie in the side. “Those horrible white costumes, the long pointy hats. They stole my brother!”
“Call the sheriff,” someone suggested, a boy originally from up north judging by the accent and the naïveté.
Nate gave a grim laugh. “Sheriff Ramsey’s in the Klan.” He pulled a rifle from the trunk of his Studebaker. “I’ll get Leo back.”
Peggy took his arm. “I’m coming with you.”
“So are we,” Sue Jean added.
“No.” Nate blocked Sue Jean’s way. “This is personal. But if something happens, get help.”
Peggy and Nate ran off, and as they disappeared through the ruins, the northern boy said, “A full moon, an earthquake, and now the Klan? I say we split while the splitting’s good.”
“You’re not even going to try to help?” exclaimed Sue Jean when everyone headed back to their cars.
“Help how?” The headlights of the exiting cars illuminated a girl with lipstick smeared across her cheek. “With what? You got rifles in your car?”
“Nope,” said Chickie.
“Well you can bet the Klan does. Nate—he’s delusional going after them with a peashooter.”
“What he is,” said Chickie, “is vengeful. The KKK burned down his uncle’s store last summer, remember? Nate obviously thinks it’s payback time.
“Well, leave me out of it,” said the girl as her guy dragged her away. “If my dad finds out I was up here tonight, he’ll kill me a lot worse than the Klan ever could.”
In less than a minute, Sue Jean and Chickie were the only ones left at the make-out spot.
“Cowards!”
“They’re not cowards for not wanting to get lynched.”
“But it’s 1961 not 1861. Remember? Why would anyone be afraid of getting lynched in this glorious day and age?”
Chickie sighed. “Again with the irony.”
A gun shot sent the two of them leaping into each other’s arms. At least temporarily. Sue Jean broke free of Chickie’s embrace just as another shot was fired and ran toward the sound.
“Sue Jean!” Chickie chased after her into the ruins, past broken stone and teetering archways, past the bushes and then finally into the woods.
It was very dark beneath the trees with no moonlight to brighten the way, and several times, Sue Jean ran face-first into low-hanging branches and slipped in what felt like slime. Th
e darkness, however, was unexpectedly broken by the light of a campfire.
“Peggy? Nate?”
At the campsite, instead of her schoolmates, she found two other people, a man and a woman near the fire. Both dead. A clear substance coated their faces, like a beauty mask, only there was nothing beautiful about their expressions, which were frozen in terror.
Sue Jean heard Chickie curse beside her. She turned and saw him kneeling on a sleeping bag next to Nate’s body. His rifle had been wrapped around his broken neck like a bowtie. And less than a foot from Nate lay Peggy, who was still alive and tugging frantically at the hard clear mask that covered her face, blocking her nose and mouth and any ability whatsoever to draw a single breath. Sue Jean fell next to her and broke her fingernails on the mask trying to pull it off. But it was as hard and unyielding as concrete.
Chickie shoved her aside and smashed a branch against the mask to break it, but the branch broke instead, shattering into a million splinters. Peggy’s eyes glazed over, and she went limp, her struggles over.
Sue Jean shot to her feet, hands over her mouth to keep the screams in.
Chickie was more in control, studying all of the bodies with a cool detachment. “Peggy was wrong,” he said. “This wasn’t the Klan. The nine-lived did this. They steal boys, young ones like Leo, and drain their lives. It’s how they survive.” He stood and brushed the dirt off his jeans.
“My cousin’s son was stolen by them years ago. When she tried to fight them off, they spat on her face. She suffocated just like Peggy did.” He nodded toward the man and woman. “And like they did. Notice how there’s three sleeping bags? I’m guessing they had a son out here with them. The nine-lived have him now—him and Leo. Sue Jean, we gotta go and warn people.”
“I’m not leaving those boys in the clutches of some monster.”
“Monsters. Plural. There’s only the two of us against who knows how many of them. And remember what I said about consequences? If we save those boys, the creatures’ll just search for other boys, maybe killing more people along the way.”
“You can reason your way out of this if you want, Chickie Hill, but I’m staying. I’m tired of being told I can’t make a difference—”
“Sue Jean—”
“—and if the world explodes as a result, then so be it! God, don’t you see? This is our freedom ride. Our chance to charge into battle and save the day.” She watched Chickie struggling with himself, and couldn’t begin to guess what he was struggling with. When people needed help, you helped them; when things were wrong, you righted them. It could not have been more clear-cut. “Is there nothing you won’t take a stand against?”
Chickie stared at Sue Jean for a long moment, the firelight snaking across his unhappy expression. He said, “The slime trail leads that way. Let’s follow it.” As Sue Jean hurried past him, he grabbed her arm. “But when everything goes to hell,” he said, “remember that I tried to warn you.”
✽ ✽ ✽
They traveled a short way through the woods and came out onto a smaller clearing just big enough for the large, weathered house sitting on the property.
“Look.” Chickie pointed to a green light glowing in the basement window of the house and the misshapen shadows passing before it. As they watched, the light changed to a more normal yellow color and then dimmed. Moments later, the nine-lived exited through the front door of the house.
Maybe from a great distance if you needed glasses they looked Klannish, as Peggy had thought, but they were worse. What looked like long white costumes were their bodies; the long, pointy “hats” were their heads, and their eerie, ghostlike glide was definitely inhuman.
“Where’re they going?”
“I’d guess to find more boys,” said Chickie. “That road leads into town.”
When the nine-lived had disappeared down the dirt road, Chickie and Sue Jean ran across the yard to the basement window and peered inside the dimly lit space.
“I don’t see the boys. Do you think—”
Chickie shook his head. “No, they’re inside there somewhere. Nine-lived keep the boys they steal sometimes for years, the way farmers keep cows. When the last boy’s life is drained, they go out and round up some more. I need to get my car so we don’t have to make our getaway on foot in the dark with who knows how many kids. Stay here.”
“No way! Splitting up is stupid. In the movies that’s how people end up dead.”
And so they both double-timed it back to Chickie’s T-bird and then drove to the house up the same narrow dirt road the nine-lived had traveled down. Chickie drove the car up to the house, out of sight of the road and as close to the basement window as he could get.
The damp East Texas climate had eroded the wood of the house, and rusted the screen that screamed as Chickie used his tools from the trunk to remove it and then pry open the window. He slipped inside and Sue Jean handed him the toolbox before crawling through the window herself. At least, she tried to crawl through.
“Come on,” Chickie said, reaching up and taking her by the waist.
“You try crawling around in a girdle,” she said breathlessly. “Besides, my skirt is too wide for this window. If only my folks would take me shopping for those new, straight skirts, I wouldn’t need all these petticoats.”
Chickie finally pulled her through, despite her petticoats; she felt like a cork being yanked from a wine bottle.
“Why are you wearing a girdle?” he asked, as she caught her breath.
“It’s a shaper. It trains your body to conform to a proper womanly shape.”
“Underclothes can’t alter genetics. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with your shape.”
“Don’t flirt with me now, Chickie Hill; I’m trying to be a hero.”
They hadn’t gone two feet into the basement when Sue Jean found the boys. A porthole, like the kind used on ships only much larger, was set in the middle of the cinderblock wall. The boys, six in all, were inside of it. Or rather, on the other side of it sitting glumly together like sheep in a pen.
“Hello?” Sue Jean beat against the glass…only it wasn’t glass. It felt like a cinderblock wall, only she could see through it. The boys, however, didn’t seem able to see or hear her. “Is that the sun?” she asked, gawking at the boys’ surroundings.
“Yep.”
“Why is it sunny where they are and nighttime where we are?”
“Because,” said Chickie, “they ain’t in Kansas anymore.”
Sue Jean turned away from the porthole before her mind cracked from the weirdness overload. “I don’t care where they are. We need to get through the barrier. You got an ax in that toolbox?”
“Nope. But I don’t need one. I’m the kinda guy who likes to keep things simple. So all this is”—he slapped the porthole—“is a locked door. The only thing I need to unlock a door is a key.” He rummaged in the toolbox, inside a small compartment full of gears and cogs and wires and screws. “See if you can find a piece of wood around here,” he said absently, already absorbed in his task.
Sue Jean didn’t like that Chickie was doing all the work to save the day, and so she was glad to have a way to contribute, even a very small way. So she searched the basement.
A single naked light bulb hung from a chain a foot overhead and did little to chase away the shadows. Sue Jean wandered toward the stairway and peeked into the darkness beneath it. An old crate with the word fragile stenciled across it caught her eye.
She reached for it…and heavy, warm breath swooshed against her bare arm. Two red dots, like twin drops of blood, peeped at her, hovering high in the nothingness. Sue Jean backed away on legs she could no longer feel. A giant white blob followed her, oozing out from under the stairs, gliding along on its snake-like lower body, its pointy head scraped the ceiling. It had long, upsettingly human arms that it used to grab her. It pulled her up to its face, to its slimy hole of a mouth, and hissed something. It kept hissing at her, like it was trying to speak. But Sue Jean didn’t want
to be spoken to.
All Porterenes understood that they lived next door to monsters, but understanding hadn’t prepared Sue Jean to come, literally, face to face with a creature straight out of the depths of a nightmare.
She smashed the crate she was still holding against the creature’s head, and before she knew it, she was sailing across the room. She hit the ground hard next to Chickie who was squatting below the porthole.
“The hell?” Chickie looked down at Sue Jean and then up at the creature. And up and up. “Damn.” He rose to his feet.
“No!” Sue Jean jumped up and waved Chickie back down to his gears and tools and tossed the remaining bits of crate at him. “Work on the door. I’ll handle this part.”
Any other boy would have shoved her aside and shouted, “No! This is man’s work!” and then launched himself at the creature. But, though Chickie had many fine qualities, bravery wasn’t one of them.
“I just need five minutes,” he said, and then settled back to his arcane work.
Five minutes, thought Sue Jean grabbing a crowbar from the toolbox. That’s nothing. Surely she could outlast a monster for five—
The creature sped towards her, so fast she almost didn’t have time to dive out of the way. It hit the wall near the basement window, pivoted, and then sped back toward her. Sue Jean was ready this time and waited until the last minute to dodge aside, swinging the crowbar at the creature’s midsection as she did so.
But it jerked away, taking her crowbar with it, stuck in the deep layer of slime protecting its body. It wheeled on her and made that sound disgusting boys made right before they hawked loogies onto the sidewalk. She ducked just as a wad of slime came flying at her.
Sue Jean dashed behind the creature, leaping over its tail, and pulled the crowbar free with a squish; she hadn’t even made a dent in the creature’s hide. It grabbed at her, but she feinted left and then right. As it whipped its head around, trying to keep her in sight, it came into contact with the naked light bulb dangling from the ceiling. The sound it made as the bulb scorched its flesh black could have peeled the paint off the walls. Maybe the creature’s hide was thick with slime, but its head was—