The Goonies

by James Kahn

  All of a sudden a car pulled into the drive. It stopped in front of the building, and two guys got out wearing dark business suits. They walked up to the front door and went inside.

  “See,” said Data, “there's nothin' to be scared of. There's two other customers goin' in.”

  “Maybe they ain't customers,” Chunk whispered. “Maybe they're drug dealers or somethin'.”

  Data didn't buy it. “Drug dealers? Did you see their clothes? J.C. Penney polyester. Drug dealers wouldn't be caught dead in those rags.”

  I had to agree, although I should say I don't know exactly what drug dealers would be caught dead in. Probably we were all thinking along the same lines, because Mouth seemed kind of put-offish. “So what made you think nobody ever followed this map before and split with whatever's buried there?” he said.

  “They could've,” I told him. “But I never heard of anybody finding more stuff than already's in the museum. And anyway, to grown-ups this is already worth enough—you know, they dig up an old map and threw a wooden frame around it and hang it in a museum and can it art.”

  “Okay, but how're we s'posed to dig for anything?” Mouth wanted to know. “Knock on the door? Ask whoever's there? 'Scuse me, mind if we wreck your floor? Borrow a cup o' jewels, golden rules, ship of fools'?”

  They were starting to chicken out, and I was too chicken to do it alone, so I had to get 'em up for it. “Look, the place is obviously open for business. We can pretend like we're comin' in for somethin' to eat and then joint the case.” Or maybe I meant get on the case.

  “You mean case the joint,” said Data.

  “Yeah.” That's what I meant. I was just talkin' outta the wrong movie.

  We walked down the hill and parked our bikes at the base, right next to the near side of the graveyard. The clouds were almost black and rippin' by like a stormy ocean above us. Man, it was somethin' else.

  We stepped real slow between the gravestones. They were at all different angles, so you couldn't tell if you were walkin' on somebody's grave exactly or not, so we tried to go gentle wherever we put our feet. A cemetery's not a place where you want to offend anyone.

  Made me think of this Twilight Zone where on a dare this gunfighter has to stick a knife in the grave of the man he killed. So he sticks his knife in the grave, but he accidentally sticks it in his coat, too, so when he stands up, he thinks the guy's tuggin' at him from the grave, so he dies of fright.

  I checked to make sure my coat wasn't draggin' on the ground.

  Suddenly we heard a loud bang, like a firecracker, coming from the house. We stopped. Then two more: Bam! Bam!

  It seemed kind of scary, but it also seemed like here we were in this graveyard, nearly Halloween, and it was really neat scarin' ourselves at any sudden noise.

  “That sounded like gunshots,” whispered Chunk. “Not the big ones like you hear in war movies but real ones.”

  “Gunshots. Jeez, Chunk, turn off your brain,” I said.

  “No problem there,” said Mouth.

  “Somebody probably just dropped a pot in the kitchen,” I added, just for an example. I mean, I really thought it was probably somethin' like that. So I started walkin' toward the lighthouse again.

  When we got there, it was real quiet. Mouth looked through the front-door windows, but they were too dirty to see anything, he said. Me and Data went to the side of the building, but the windows were too high. Chunk walked over to the garage while I piled a couple of orange crates for me and Data to stand on. We climbed up, put our noses to the glass, and looked inside.

  It was a restaurant with a bar, but it looked shut down, and pretty ratty for sure. The kind of seafood place with shredded fishnet hanging on the ceiling, all covered with dust and cobwebs. There were stuffed fish on the walls, too, except they looked plastic, and crossed oars with rusty pins, and the whole place looked like it had been left behind somebody's refrigerator for about ten years.

  Way in the back I saw two people. Shadows of people, actually. Probably the guys we saw go in. They were dragging two long, limp sacks across the floor. I figured flour, or maybe a couple of big swordfish, so I figured these guys were makin' a food delivery, or maybe they were the off-season kitchen help, so I figured maybe they could tell us what the story was.

  So I jumped down off the orange crates and went inside. Mouth and Data followed.

  It was, like I said, real quiet. The ceiling had high beams that kind of swallowed up all the light from the few bulbs stuck along the walls. Some of the furniture was broken, some of the plaster was cracked. It seemed deserted, but at the same, time I felt watched.

  Chunk suddenly came running in, waving his arms and jumpin' around real crazy. There was this old jukebox near the bar, and in a weird way it looked like Chunk was dancing to some silent song that he could hear and we couldn't.

  That happens to me sometimes: I hear some melody, I guess it's in my head, 'cause when I say, “Did you hear that?” someone like Brand looks at me like I was crackin' up. But it's there, swear to God, just like the pictures are really there in the clouds, just like there are patterns in the jigsaw puzzle some people can see and some can't. I mean, maybe that does make me a dreamer. But don't you have dreams?

  So Chunk started gaspin', “Guys! Guys! We gotta get outta here! There's a car in the garage with—”

  But before he could finish, a slamming door cut him off. I jumped high enough to hurt myself coming down. We all turned toward the sound of the door and saw a woman standing there, and I jumped again.

  She was sort of old but looked like she could eat the four of us alive and was thinkin' about it. She had on an ugly black dress, black shoes, a black beret, and a black scowl. There was a tattoo on her left arm. Damn, she looked mean.

  “How long you boys been at that window?” she growled.

  “Long enough to see that this place needs about four hundred roach traps,” said Mouth. Only Mouth could have thought up a crack that fast to this lady. It kind of broke the tension for me, though, and I nearly laughed, especially because you could see she really had it in for Mouth now, so the heat was kind of off the rest of us.

  She pulled out a chair at one of the grungy tables and motioned us to have a seat, which we did. She called out, “Jake! We got customers!”

  We heard a loud thump in the back room, and then someone called back, “Whattaya mean, customers? This ain't no—” As he was sayin' this last part, he stuck his head out and saw us and said, “Shit, Mama,” real soft.

  The old lady snapped her fingers at him, “Now go on. Get in the kitchen. Warm up the stove.”

  Jake walked across the room to the kitchen door, giving us the eye the whole way. He was an older guy, maybe thirty, with round, wire glasses and a cool vest and a temper you could see all under everything.

  “Okay,” said Mama, “we got a specialized menu here.” She had to be kidding. The table we were at was wobbly and filthy enough to make my mom puke if she ever saw it. I tried to pick up a rusty fork, but it was half stuck down with an expired glop of chewing gum. Really gross.

  The other guys looked pretty leery, but Chunk looked like a jumpin' bean, he was squirmin' around so much.

  Mama kept talking. “We serve one thing. Fresh Fish Surprise.”

  “What kind of fish?” said Chunk. Food could take his mind off anything.

  “I said it's a surprise!” shouted Mama, crashing her hand down on the table.

  “Okay. Okay. I'll take it,” said Chunk. He looked pretty scared.

  I suddenly know she was tryin' to scare us off, so I suddenly didn't think she was really all that scary. Just kinda weird.

  And I also thought that if this ugly old lady wanted to scare us away, maybe there was gold buried here. So I was more fixed than ever to stay.

  “What about the rest of ya?” said Mama.

  “Just a glass of water for me,” I said. The other guys all ordered the same. No one knew what to make of this mess.

  “Okay, one S
urprise and four waters. That it?” she snarled.

  “I'd like-a the antipasto salad, the fettucini Alfredo, the-a veal scallopini, and a bottle of Boticelli, 1981.” This was Mouth doing his Italian imitation, which means that this was Mouth mouthing off from nervousness 'cause he just couldn't shut up.

  So he laughed nervously with his tongue flappin', and the old lady grabbed it—grabbed his damn tongue!—and pulled a pocketknife out of her dress and put the blade to that tongue in Mouth and said, “We got one more thing on the menu—tongue. You boys like tongue?”

  We shook our heads fast. That was when I realized this lady was not only trying to scare us off, she was a little nutsy.

  She let go of Mouth's tongue with a smile then, like she was just kidding all the time, and walked into the kitchen.

  Mouth put his hand to his mouth. I got up to look for a trapdoor or some other place a treasure might be hid. As soon as the kitchen door closed, Chunk started to talk, but he was interrupted by arguing in the next room.

  “But, Ma,” came Jake's voice, “this was supposed to be our dinner—”

  “Just shut up,” yelled the old woman. “Shut up and do what I told you.”

  Data whispered to me, “What about those two guys who came in before us? What happened to them?”

  Chunk finally pushed in close and told what he'd been trying to tell us since Mama first crowded us. “Guys, look, if we don't get outta here now, there's gonna be some kinda hostage crisis,” he whispered. “Out in the garage there's this truck—the same one I saw this morning—bullet holes in it the size of Big Macs—”

  Mouth cut him short, though. “Big Mac, yakkety-yak. Chunk, I'm startin' to O.D. on all your bullshit stories.” I think Mouth was feeling kind of snappish after the business with his tongue.

  Then something else bizarre happened. There was this churning, bumping, whirring noise echoing through the place like a washing machine having a nervous break-down. Then this guy started swearing, and there were feet on stairs, and another door flew open, and this guy came stormin' out, spattered all over with dark green ink, yellin' and stompin' across the room toward the kitchen, holdin' up his hand, which had the face of a president stamped on the palm, but I'm not sure which president.

  “How the hell am I supposed to finish up downstairs with that piece of Smithsonian shit I got to work with?” he shouted.

  Then he saw us. That stopped him. He just stared at us for a second, then made a fist with his hand, and another one with his face, and turned and ran back through the door and slammed it behind him.

  Before we could speak, Mama came out of the kitchen carrying a tray of glasses, which she set down on our table. The glasses were filled with this rusty-orange-colored liquid with these scuzzy little particles floating in it. It looked like something from a drainage ditch.

  She gave us each a glass.

  “This supposed to be water?” said Mouth.

  “It's wet, ain't it?” the old lady said.

  “Yeah, sure—looks great,” said Data.

  “Yeah, great mule piss,” said Mouth. He was really pushin' his luck, it seemed to me. The old lady looked at him real strange. That was Mouth, though—always doin' what he shouldn't.

  He started pouring his glass into the others, just to irritate her, I think. The sound of the water trickling sounded kind of like going to the bathroom, which gave me an idea. If I pretended I had to go to the bathroom, I could excuse myself from the table and I might get a little time and privacy to check the place out. So I started to squirm around the way I used to when I was a kid and had to go. That made me remember that this was the sort of place that had daddy longlegs in the bathroom, so I shivered, and then I really did have to go a little.

  The kitchen doors flew open, and Jake came out wearing a bloody apron and carrying a huge, steaming pot with a big ladle in it. He set it down on the table and said, “Okay, who ordered Fish Surprise?”

  Chunk raised his hand, kind of nervous. Jake ladled a mess of the stuff into Chunk's dish. It was totally gross. Kind of a jellified black soup with fish heads and parts. I think it's considered a delicacy in France or some damn place, but it just made me sick.

  “Yummy,” said Chunk. I couldn't tell if he was kidding or not. He knew a lot more about food than I did.

  Mama looked into the pot. “Is there any left?” She checked her wristwatch.

  Jake nodded.

  “Then it's time to feed your brother,” the old lady went on.

  “Let Francis do it,” said Jake. “I fed it last night.”

  “Francis is busy,” said Mama.

  “But I hate goin' down there, Ma. It—”

  “He's your brother. Now get goin' before it gets cold.” She pushed him hard.

  He walked across the room without much enthusiasm, opened a creaky old door, and walked down a lot of creaky old stairs.

  Now that we were alone with Mama again, it seemed like a good time for me to try out my plan. I stood up. “'Scuse me, ma'am,” I said, real polite. “Where's the men's room?”

  She turned to look at me. Chunk, behind her, kept motioning me to forget it, but it just looked like he was dancing to the silent jukebox again, and I was hearing my own tune now—I mean, I really knew I was in the right place at the right time.

  Mama glared at me. “Can't you hold it?”

  “Yeah, Mikey,” said Chunk, “can't you hold it?”

  Mouth, of course, couldn't help stirring things up. He poured a thin, noisy stream of water from one glass to another. What a jerk.

  It was perfect for me, though. “Lady, please!”

  She nodded kind of understandingly, like maybe she really was somebody's mama once. “Downstairs, to your right,” she said. “And stay to your right!”

  I nodded and went to the door before she changed her mind. I could hear Chunk whispering behind me, stuff like “Mikey, don't, you can't…” but I ignored him and started down the stairs.

  It was dark, too dark to see much, and twisting down, so I kept my hand against the wall to guide me. The wall was cool, damp stone. The steps were rotting wood. They creaked the whole way down.

  At the bottom was a long corridor with a few bare bulbs dangling from the ceiling. There was nobody else around, so I took out the map to see if I could find any comparisons or clues. But I didn't get much time to check, because suddenly I heard this weird growling coming from the other end of the hall. It made my hair tingle.

  I put the map away and followed the sounds. They led me, after a little turning, to a thick wooden door, open a crack. The growling was much louder inside, like a sick animal or something, and mixed in with rattling chains.

  I don't know, but somehow it wasn't exactly scary, just sort of sad and weird and pitiful.

  I pulled the door open a little wider, and I stuck my head inside.

  It was a stone room, small, like a jail cell, with heavy, old wood beams and a slatted ceiling. There was a light in the room above us, which sent stripes of light through the slats into this room. There was a thin, stained mattress on the cement floor. There was rotten food and rat turds all over everywhere. And against the far wall, sitting in a hard wooden chair, there was a large… person.

  Sort of a person. He was kind of too big, though, and not shaped exactly right—but he was hard to see, 'cause he was all in shadow.

  Jake stood beside this guy, holding the pot of food. The guy growled at Jake, not human but like a thing. Jake held the pot out and talked like he was talking to a pet dog.

  “Here, boy. You hungry? Want your supper?”

  The thing grunted and held out his arms. They were thick, with more muscles than I'd ever seen, covered with curly, dark hair and too long for his grayed old coat. Heavy metal chains wrapped around his wrists, connecting him to the stone wall. He whined like a starving child. Scared as I was, that crying sound made me want to cry tears, swear to God.

  Jake held the pot just a few inches from where the chains held the thing. “Here, f
ella—this what you want? Your Tender Vittles?”

  The big guy roared and grabbed for the bowl. Made me jump, it sounded like a wounded wolf. Jake dropped the pot, and the fish-head soup spilled all over the floor.

  The big guy cried again, more sort of like a rabbit in a trap.

  Jake was real sarcastic, though. “Oh, poor boy. Sorry, fella. Maybe tomorrow night.”

  The big thing whimpered. Jake laughed and turned for the door, which I jumped behind to hide. Jake walked right by me. He didn't see me in the dark, so he walked back upstairs. So I came out and took a step into the room.

  There was a small black-and-white TV against the wall, and it was turned on now, without the sound. It sat on bricks, near the floor, with a little rabbit-ears antenna on top of it. The reception was awful. It looked like an old movie, with a sword fight and people yelling. I think it was The Count of Monte Cristo, which I never saw, but I read the Classics Comics, so I knew this was definitely a sign, because the count got to be count because he figured out his lost treasure map and dug his way to freedom.

  Anyway, this big guy wasn't interested in any of that now. He was on his knees, eating the fish heads and tripe off the floor, sometimes mixing it in accidentally with little bits of cement or rat bones or dirt, making little satisfied grunting sounds. Then he heard me.

  He lifted his head—and there in the whitish glow of the crummy TV, I saw what he looked like. And man, I was scared.

  He was bald except for a little topknot, and his head just wasn't the right shape. High up were two partly formed ears, more like dried apricots that had gone bad. His eyes weren't the same size or color, and they were at two different levels on his face, one near where it was supposed to be and one down along the side of his nose. And his nose was all wrong, too, kind of off-center and squished, like he'd fallen on his face and it was made of clay.

  But his mouth was real sad.

  He growled at me like I was going to steal his food, though, so I didn't stick around to argue—I just took off and hoped the chains held and he'd had all his shots.