“You believe that crud?” Griffey said, smiling widely at Bertie.
But the others were silent, too, and nobody had taken a step onto the lot.
“They says the ground's haunted, the grass, too,” Chump said. “They says dis is da place where da first fatheads who didn't play by da rules lived. So they took 'em out back, through da woods, and turned 'em into dancing dead bodies.”
He waited a moment, then blurted out a laugh.
“I says it's the bunk,” Chump said, and without a moment of hesitation he stepped over the curb and onto the lot.
He looked back at the line of unsure faces behind him.
“Well, ya bums? Either youse is with me or you ain't—which is it?” Bertie turned and ran, yelling out behind him, “See you guys! My muddah wants me to dean my room!”
The others watched him scoot around a corner, gone, then turned to face Chump again.
“Well?” Chump said. “I stepped onto it, and I'm still alive, ain't I?” Griffey threw his shoulders back and stepped over the curb to stand next to Chump.
“Anyone who don't come is chicken,” Griffey said ominously. “Anyone who don't follow Chump ain't nothing but the chicken's egg itself.”
“It ain't like we's afraid of the lot itself,” Chaz said, and Mug and then Brudder nodded.
“What is it, then?” Griffey asked.
“Well, it's....”
“Spit it out,” Chump ordered, suddenly angry.
“It's da rules,” Mug said.
“Yeah,” Chaz continued, “you know, about the dancing bodies.”
“What about da rules?”
“You know, the part about nobody being allowed to go see da bodies, unless they're allowed to. Unless they's old enough. It's one of da rules, and all.”
“So?” Chump said. “Didn't we take a vote? And wasn't the vote that we'd go and see for ourselves, 'cause it's all the bunk?”
“Yeah, but....” Chaz said, looking at his own feet.
“Well?”
“They said Johnny Devo and his boys went to see it, and they never come back.”
“That's bunk and you know it!” Chump said. “Everybody knows Johnny and his boys run away and joined the Navy.”
“That ain't what I heard....” Chaz mumbled.
“Well, we took a vote, like I said,” Chump snapped.
'And I voted against it,” Chaz mumbled.
“And I wanted to,” Mug said. “Only I was afraid to.”
Chump turned, red-faced, to Brudder.
And what about you?”
Brudder, overwhelmed with the prospect of having to think for himself, turned to his brother, Mug.
“He don't like it neither,” Mug said.
“Go on, then,” Chump said. “Go on and run home to your muddahs, just like Bertie. But remember this, that when we comes out of that forest, after we see what there is to see, you bums is out of the club for good. Get me?”
The three of them seemed to consider the point for a moment, and then Chaz suddenly turned and bolted away.
“Chicken-crud!” Griffey yelled, and then he and Chump held the other two with their stares.
Chump said, “What about you two? You chicken-cruds, too?”
Mug fought with himself, then, head down, stepped forward, gulping, to stand by Chump and Griffey.
“And you, Brudder?”
Brudder just shrugged again, and, after giving a look behind him, stepped over the curb, too.
“Just what I thought!” Chump said, slapping Brudder on the back. “With us, like always! Buddies to the end!”
Brudder smiled sheepishly.
“Sure,” he said.
“I always knew Chaz was a chicken-crud,” Griffey said. “Yeah,” Chump said.
“Me, too,” said Mug, but as they marched into the lot, Mug gave a furtive look back the way that Chaz had run, and gulped again.
The sky had turned from bright, high blue to slate gray. The summer afternoon seemed to drain away into the tall weeds, leaving the air thick and sweaty, gray as the sky.
They passed the burned-out foundation, stopping to look in at the puddles of dirty water and scatters of charred timber within.
“Looks like the perfect place for a picnic!” Griffey laughed.
“Hey Brudder!” Chump said, “Why don't you and Mug come and live here? Then dat old man of yours can't crack you on the head no more, heh?”
Brudder seemed to consider the offer, furrowing his brow, then shook his head.
Chump slapped him on the back again, laughing.
“Just joking! I wouldn't want you to miss getting that Friday night beatin'!”
“Sure,” Brudder said.
“Come on!” Chump said, swaggering ahead of them, toward the thickening row of trees ahead.
They followed.
The afternoon darkened.
As they stepped into the tree line, it was as if someone had thrown a switch. Chump looked up, expecting the sky to be blotted out, but there were generous gaps between the tree tops, showing a blackening, cloud-roiled sky. From somewhere distant a tentative rumble of thunder sounded, a mournful drum beating a faint warning. The sky brightened momentarily, the first jolt of lightning bulbing the black clouds.
Mug swallowed hard before saying, “Maybe we better wait for better weather.”
“Baloney,” Chump said, leading them ever deeper into the trees. “But if it rains—”
“—Den we gets wet,” Griffey snapped, though he too had started to study the rumbling clouds, a look of worry clouding his face as another, closer shot of thunder rolled overhead. It was followed by a bright burst of lightning that crackled off in the deep woods to their right, sending a wash of ozone across their nostrils.
Chump said, “We keep going, and dat's dat.”
“Hey, Chump—” Griffey began but then they heard another far-off rumble, this one not thunder, which grew and grew to a roar and then dopplered gently away from their ears.
“Hear dat?” Chump said. “Know what dat is?”
The three blank faces of his companions were briefly lit by new lightning.
Chump laughed as following thunder sounded. “Don't you bums get it? We're on the right track—dat's the railroad trestle!”
“A train!” Griffey said, doubts suddenly drowned.
Above them in the trees there was the sudden slap of fat rain drops hitting leaves. A few drops fell like rifle shots around them.
“Keep goin',” Chump said, and they moved on deeper into the woods, following the barest of paths, while thunder came again following lightning, and water fell from the low angry clouds, building.
~ * ~
Soon the rain stopped them completely. The forest became more than trees and leaves and pine needles. It was now a thing of water, too. Rain fell in broken sheets, splashing high against trunks and boles, washing down in irregular waterfalls. They were soaked in no time, and, in the midst of lightning and the instantaneous booms of thunder, could not make their way forward.
“Stop!” Chump shouted above the din, and they huddled, wet to the skin, hair plastered to their skulls, against the fragrant sap-ridden thin bark of a tall pine.
Chump pushed the water out of his face, his hand like a windshield wiper.
“Maybe it's a warning to us!” Griffey said, his doubts returning in a rush, shivering partly with the coldness of the thunderstorm against his sopping wet clothes, which clung like a second skin.
“Listen, you rat!” Chump said, grabbing Griffey by his wet collar. “I'm tired of your bellyaching! You think I got rocks in my head? You think I don't know you's wanted to take over as leader for the longest time? You think I ain't seen the way you strut around and act big? The way you orders the boys around when I ain't there? Yeah, Mug told me all about you, Griffey, how you's been talking behind my back.” Chump pulled back his free hand, balling it into a fist. “I oughtta pop you right here—”
Griffey's face colored itself with fear. �
��It ain't that, Chump!” he pleaded. “It ain't that at all! I know you's da boss and all! I know it! It just that...well, maybe we shouldn't be here, is all! Maybe somebody’s giving us one last chance, with the rain and all! You know Johnny Devo didn't run away with his gang and join the Navy—we all knows it! You think a guy like dat, wearing a big ruby ring and hat like he wore, the way he wore it on his head jaunty and all, you think he run away? You think a guy like dat'd wear a Navy uniform? You seen his muddah, how she walks around in black all the time, how she cries in the market and all? She knows it and everybody knows he came in here and didn't come out!”
Chump's face flushed with anger, and now his ready fist wheeled around, striking Griffey flush on the face.
Griffey went down, making a splash when he hit the ground, and he lay there, holding his nose, which began to bleed.
“Go on then, you chicken-crud!” Chump shouted, standing over Griffey with both hands tightened to fists. “Go on and run home to your own muddah, if you's so scared!”
Griffey lay propped on one elbow, a hand cupping his nose. Chump prodded him with a toe. “Go on, then, chicken-crud! Beat it!”
A wash of emotion passed across Griffey's face. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then pushed himself back away from Chump, scrambled to his feet and ran off, back the way they had come. A bolt of lightning momentarily lit his retreat.
“You'll be sorry, Chump!” he shouted back. “Your own muddah'll be wearing black before you knows it!”
“In a pig's eye!” Chump laughed, and then he turned quickly to his two remaining gang members.
And youse guys?” he said. 'Are you wit me—or are you gonna run with your tails between your butt cheeks like Griffey?”
Mug was staring at the spot between the trees where he had last seen Griffey.
“Well?” Chump said, shoving Mug with the flat of his hand and bringing his face up close so the other boy would have to look into his eyes.
“I'm wit ya, Chump,” Mug mumbled.
“Sure,” Brudder said, nodding.
“Real men,” Chump said proudly, punching them both lightly on the arm.
“Sure,” Brudder said again.
~ * ~
As quickly as it had come, the storm retreated. The pounding sheets of rain reduced to a trickle, then stopped altogether, leaving a false shower in the woods of water falling from high leaves. Thunder and lightning were separated by time again, and pulled away overhead into the back distance. The black clouds softened to muggy gray and then, in widening holes, showed the former blue of the summer day through in bright, eye-squinting patches.
The other rumble they had heard before returned, closer now, before roaring off away.
“Another train!” Chump said.
They left their shelter and pushed their way through wet leaves and water-lined branches, which dropped new showers on them as they passed.
Suddenly, a line of something cutting from left to right, a high, man-made thing, became visible through a thin gap in the woods ahead.
Chump pushed on, put his head down to force his way through a wall of pine branches, Brudder and Mug behind him.
The wall gave way, and the three stood abruptly, startlingly, out in the open.
“Jeez!” said Mug.
And there it was.
They were now in a wide open cut in the woods, a right-of-way neatly trimmed from where they stood to a spot about a half a football field away. The grass at their feet was freshly mown, sloping gently down to a shallow gravel-filled bank that led to a creek. Water from the recent storm was draining into the stream, which chuckled with vitality.
Straddling the water, spaced as far as the eye could see from right to left, were the high, strong, inverted v's of a railroad trestle, holding a double line of track some thirty feet over the water.
And there, hanging from the span between the two trestles in front of them, were hung four rotting corpses.
“Jeez!” Mug repeated.
The hair on the back of Chump's head rose as if alive. Brudder stood beside him, mouth open, dull eyes fixed on the four things which dangled straight and unmoving in front of them, neatly separated, dead.
“They ain't dancin',” Brudder said dully, the most words he had ever strung together.
“No, they ain't,” Chump said soberly.
He recognized the bodies, the clothes; he recognized the ruby ring on a finger of the half bone, half flesh hand of Johnny Devo, and the cap with pins on it that stood at a jaunty angle on Johnny's skull, stuck to bits of peeled skin.
“They ain't dancin',” Brudder said again, and now, as they had in the woods, they heard the far off rumble of not-thunder.
“A train!” Mug said.
There to the distant left was a tiny black line pushing smoke at the horizon. Then it was barreling toward them, looking like ebony lightning, sounding like thunder that would never end. The distant trestles trembled with the mighty iron weight overhead, a shower of latent rain dropping from beneath the tracks following the engine's path.
The bodies on their ropes twitched and began to swing, and now the train roared by, punching clouds of steam at the sky, screaming iron wheels against iron tracks, the dark engine and tender tearing past like an earth-bound rocket with a line of sooted, dull-colored gondolas and hoppers filled with coal, box cars shut tight with their secrets. The trestles shook and rattled with the terrific pressure, a spray of water washed down, and the ropes were yanked like marionette strings, the boys hanging from them dancing like puppets, arms flapping, legs kicking like Rockettes, feet tapping at naked air.
“Now they's dancing,” Brudder said, mouth still open, unintelligent eyes filled with inert satisfaction.
The train flew past and onward, its dull red caboose rattling behind, taking the roar with it. The boys on the ropes settled to a gentle swing. The gash-mouth in Johnny Devo's skull regarded Chump with secret satisfaction, as the head shook mildly back and forth before settling to rest once more.
“I've had enough of this crud, I'm gettin' outta here,” Mug said. He turned to run, stopping dead in his tracks as the color drained from his face.
“Hey, Chump....” he gulped, as Chump and then Brudder turned to look.
The tree line was no longer lined with just trees. At the border of the woods, where the neatly trimmed grass began, stood a line of people stretching as far to either side of the train trestle. They were leather-hooded to their waists, with holes only for their eyes.
The three closest to Chump and his gang each held a coil of strong new rope.
Others, appearing overhead on the trestle, were already cutting down Johnny Devo and his boys, brushing the remnants of the old rope knots away as the bodies fell thumping to the ground.
And a little later, Chump, as the world dropped away, heard his nearest executioner say, one dressed in black below her hood, in a sweet, sighing voice, “And I thought he was such a good boy.”
The afternoon sun grew suddenly orange, dropped toward evening.
Are you tired, Selene?”the Toyman said Do you want to nap?”
Selene shook her head emphatically no Clutching the rim ofthe toybox, she peered in, her eyes ranging over the rows of toys. She looked deeper, deeper....
And then....
In the farthest depths of the toybox Selene found a darker place, where amber light barely reached. The toys here were hidden in shadow, furtive, twisted, sharp-angled.
Are they broken?” Selene asked.
“They're dangerous, “the Toyman answered.
Selene caught aglimpse a piggybank with red ryes, a ball of trembling fluff a misshapen head other things.
She looked up at the Toyman, who only stared back down at her “It’s your decision, he said
She reached down....
THE DUST
There was more of the dust.
The house was kept clean; Mother had cleaned it herself for a long time and then, when she had begun to get old and tir
ed and Father had finally agreed with her that she was indeed old and tired, they had retained someone to come up the hill twice a week to clean immaculately; but no matter how much cleaning was done, the dust remained. Seven of the eight floor and ceiling corners in any room might be spotless, but the eighth would have the dust, tucked neatly in and watching him. Ronnie knew why it watched him, and he hated the dust.
When Mother and Father went out, which they did four or five or sometimes—lately—even six times a week, Ronnie was left with the old lonely house to himself. In fact, Mother and Father locked him in. They went to town, Ronnie knew, to be away from him, and from the memory of the things that had happened with the dust when they lived in another town in another place thirty full years ago. When he had been called Slow Ronnie instead of just Ronnie, and had hated it. When he had begun to hate the dust because of what it did to him.
He had tried to tell Mother and Father about the dust, had been trying to tell them how the house was never really clean for thirty years, but they wouldn't listen to him. Or didn't want to. Mother just looked at him sadly out of her moon eyes, or sometimes shook her head or hid her face in her hands, and Father merely mumbled about the “problems of this boy.” Ronnie knew Mother and Father argued about him, about putting him somewhere else away from people and away from them; sometimes he heard Mother's wailings in the night and Father's muffled arguments of “Better this way” or “Cheaper in the long run for us” and he knew that someday, perhaps someday soon, they would come to him with their tearful or blank faces and tell him that they could no longer keep him, that they were too old for it. But he understood all this. He only longed to make them understand about the dust, and about how it must be cleaned away before it consumed them all.
The house was high and dark, set in the side of a wooded hill up away from the town. It was what some might call dreary, but Ronnie loved every bit of it. And knew every bit of it, from the cold deep cellar to the musty gables at each end of the attic, including the Room in the Attic and the Secret Room. He knew where every shadow was, except for the shadows of the dust which kept changing, and he knew every sharp corner and hideyhole and how many steps there were in each of the stairways. He liked the house even better at night, when the shadows were thicker, and you could hide anything, even the dust, in them, and the sixty-watt bulbs that Father preferred (because they were cheaper) barely illuminated the large spaces between them. When it was cold in the winter, and nighttime dark, like it was this night, and when Mother and Father were out, which they were, it was his favorite time because he could almost lose himself in those dark spaces and make believe that even the dust didn't exist; that nothing existed but Ronnie—not Slow Ronnie—and that the night and the sharp clear cold belonged to him alone and that whatever happened thirty years ago never happened and that he had only started existing here and now in this blackness. It was wonderful because he was here all alone.
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