by Ian Rogers
It turned out the Cordovian Tattletail took on more characteristics of his diet than just its colour. One could go so far as to say that feeding on plants had turned Dennis into a vegetable. Literally. As such, Dennis was subject to certain biological requirements. Like sunlight. Without it, Dennis became slow and sluggish. The previous week’s thunderstorms hadn’t been enough to kill him, but they had sent Dennis into a coma-like state. He was also growing what appeared to be a set of branches out of his back.
Life was funny sometimes. Tad had a demon that need sunlight to live, while his sister Lizzie, who had been turned into a vampire the past summer, would be reduced to dust if she so much as stepped outside to fetch the mail. Oh yes, life was just a laugh-and-a-half.
Dennis looked like a skinless pony—a green, skinless pony—and compared to some of the demons the other kids would be bringing, that was about as scary as a game of patty-cake. If Tad was going to make Dennis scarier, he would have to feed him something a bit more exotic than ferns and ficus.
Tad checked the chains for the seventh time, confirmed that they were fastened tightly, and returned to the chopping block where a pair of boxes were stacked one on top of the other. Dennis blinked questionably at his master with his large, expressive eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Tad said. He felt bad about chaining Dennis up, but it was in lieu of adult supervision.
He opened the first box, which was full of frozen porterhouse steaks Tad’s parents had bought at the Price Club. He took one out and tapped it against the cordless phone sticking out of the waistband of his pants. The steaks were for Dennis: he needed a new diet if he was going to make an impression at the talent contest. The phone was for Tad, in case the New and Improved Dennis decided he wanted something more to eat than frozen steaks. Like Tad, for instance.
“Okay, buddy. It’s magic time.” He raised the steak high over his head, which Dennis had quickly learned was the signal for dinnertime. “Open wide!”
Tad tossed the steak and Dennis made it disappear. They repeated the process until the box was empty. As Dennis was downing the last steak, the transformation began. It’s happening faster now, Tad thought, fascinated and a little frightened, as the demon’s long limbs grew even longer. His teeth were growing, too. It looked as if knitting needles had inexplicably grown out of his gums.
Tad touched the phone with a reassuring hand, ready to punch in 911 if Dennis showed any sign of biting the hand that had fed him. But Dennis wasn’t making any such motions. In fact, he wasn’t moving at all.
“Dennis? Dennis?”
He reached out and gave him a slight shake. The demon’s skin (it had changed colour from fern-green to the pinkish-red of raw hamburger) was cool to the touch. Cold.
Frozen.
Tad bit his lip.
“Oh damn.”
On the day of the talent show, Tad and his father secured Dennis to the roof of the family station wagon with bungee cords and drove over to Blackloch. The demon was still a gruesome thing, John Smith opined, and he still smelled like dead fish set on fire, but he commended Tad on a fine job of raising Dennis and keeping him docile. Tad almost told him that if anything should be thanked it was the frozen porterhouses, but then figured his mother and father could find out about that in their own time (and if he won the talent contest and was able to replace the steaks with the prize money, they needn’t know at all).
After they had unloaded Dennis at the rear of the school gymnasium, where the contest was being held, Tad walked his dad back to the station wagon.
“Make sure you get him inside before he thaws.”
“I will, Dad. And thanks for driving us.”
“You’re sure you don’t want me to stick around?”
“No parents allowed. You remember what happened at last year’s Science Fiction Fair?”
John smiled reflectively. “Oh yes. I forgot about the no-parental-influence rule. It’s probably for the best.”
“I’ll call you after it’s over.”
“Good luck, son. And good luck to Dennis.” He stuck out his hand.
Tad shook it. “Thanks, Dad.”
The judge was Mr. Farley, one of Blackloch’s art teachers. His area of expertise was still-lifes, but he wasn’t impressed with Tad’s frozen Cordovian Tattletail.
“Master Smith,” he said in the lofty cadences that only art teachers can reach, “you should know better than to try and pass off this . . . this model as the real thing.”
A few of the other student-contestants snickered. One of them was holding a scraggly, red feline—a were-cat, as it were—with the unfortunate name of Hexxy. Its owner had trained it to fetch sticks.
“It’s not a model,” Tad protested. “Dennis is a real Tattletail. But he’s also—”
“Dennis?” Farley said. “What kind of name is that for a demon?”
It beats Hexxy, Tad almost said.
“I’m afraid the only tattletale here is you, Master Smith. But if you’d like to submit Dennis as your art final, I’m sure something could be arranged.”
This time the students laughed openly. Hexxy the were-cat hissed and took a swipe at one of the other contest entries, a Bolo Jumping Spider; it leaped up onto one of the basketball nets and glared down balefully.
“I assure you Dennis is very much alive. But he’s so ferocious I have to keep him in this frozen state or else he might . . . well, he might run amok.”
“Run amok, huh?” Farley said, grinning wryly. “So why don’t we take him outside into the sun and see what happens?”
Tad said, “I wouldn’t recommend that.”
“Come, come,” Farley said, clapping his hands for emphasis. “We can bind him to the megaliths on the grounds. Just so he doesn’t ‘run amok.’”
The students laughed again. Tad seemed to have no choice. He manoeuvred the push-cart on which Dennis stood outside, into the sun. Mr. Farley and Tad tied Dennis’s arms to a pair of the runic pillars that were scattered across the grounds of Blackloch like strange stunted tree trunks. He seemed to take great pleasure in hamming it up for the students—tiptoeing around the inert demon, binding its arms in a mincing burlesque of fright. The students snickered and laughed, but it was clear to Tad that most of them thought Farley was pouring it on a little thick. On the other hand, if this is what it took to prove that Dennis was truly a flesh and blood Tattletail, then so be it.
“So here we are,” Farley said in his rich and mellifluous voice. “Just you, me, your classmates, and your demon. Are you ready to confess, or shall we waste more of everyone’s time?”
Tad was feeling the pressure of being the subject of attention. Dennis seemed to be feeling it, too, because he appeared to be sweating buckets.
The Bolo Jumping Spider had come out with the students and hopped onto one of the pillars to which Dennis had been tied. Now it leaped onto the wide, football-shaped head of the demon and made as if to scamper down its quickly thawing body. It was skittering across Dennis’s chest when the demon regained its savoir faire and plucked the spider up in one enormous hand and deposited it in his mouth.
“Gross out!” cried a red-haired girl named Tart Williams. In her hands was something that looked like an octopus spliced with a Brillo pad.
Dennis let out a thunderous growl that heralded the fleshy explosion of another four limbs that erupted out of his sides. His voice degenerated into a loud insectile buzzing that sounded to Tad like the hum of high-tension wires cranked up to a deafening volume.
Despite Mr. Farley’s shortcomings in the personality department, he was no coward. He leapt between Dennis and the students, picking up one of the ropes that had bound the demon’s hands, and pulled it so hard the cords in his neck stood out.
“Down! Down! Hie!”
He jerked the rope, but he might as well have been trying to bring an ocean liner to heel. Dennis gave a jerk of his own and Mr. Farley was suddenly airborne.
&nbs
p; Tad watched as the art teacher landed in a crumpled heap, and thought: If I don’t get expelled for this it’ll be a miracle.
Joey Lawson, the kid who had trained his were-cat to fetch sticks, was standing a few feet away from Dennis, staring at the demon with an expression that could have been total amazement or paralyzing terror. Hexxy hissed at the demon, leaped out of Joey’s arms, and bolted into the Avebury Woods.
“Joey!” Tad called. “Get out of there!”
Joey turned to Tad, dropped the sticks in his hand, and ran screaming after Hexxy. Into the woods.
The woods.
The wood.
Tad ran over and picked up one of Joey’s sticks. Dennis had managed to free his other arm, and was now looking at the kids running helter-skelter across the school grounds. Fast food, Tad thought crazily. He had to hurry before this really did turn into a bloodbath.
He gripped the stick tightly and raised it high over his head. “Dennis! Over here, boy!”
Whatever metamorphosis the demon had undergone, it still recognized the voice of its master. Its eyes (there were eight of them now) regarded Tad with alacrity.
“Open wide!”
Dennis opened his mouth. Tad threw the stick. It tumbled through the air, end over end, and even before it had left his hand, Tad knew he had thrown too high. It went over Dennis’s still-changing head, missing his mouth completely . . . and landed in one of the demon’s extra hands.
He stuffed it into his mouth and swallowed it without fanfare.
Tad tossed the rest of the sticks and Dennis ate them as well. By the time Mr. Farley had regained consciousness, Dennis had devoured three of the trees on the edge of the woods and was halfway through his fourth.
Farley thanked Tad for saving his life and the life of Tad’s classmates. Then he disqualified Dennis for eating one of the other contestants. First prize went to Tart Williams and her oven-cleaning octopod. Tad didn’t mind much. Mr. Farley had helped him to see the positive side of not being expelled from Blackloch for bringing a dangerous demon onto its grounds. Tad saw it very well.
His parents let him keep the Tattletail. Tad didn’t tell them about the incident at the talent show, only that he had lost; he suspected it was their feeling sorry for him that prompted them to let him keep the demon.
Tad kept Dennis on a wood diet—All that you can chop, his father told him brightly—and he soon developed a smooth oaken coat. Once a week Tad polished him with Pledge.
His dad no longer complained about the smell.
CHARLOTTE’S FREQUENCY
Morris Hardy was standing in his front yard watching the delivery truck with SHARF ELECTRONICS on the side back into his driveway when Eddie Giles came over.
“Hey, neighbour. How’s it hangin’?”
Eddie was wearing a plaid bathrobe and moose-slipper ensemble that might have been stolen off a homeless person. He was holding a coffee cup with TEACHERS DO IT EIGHT MONTHS OF THE YEAR printed on the side. Eddie taught history at the community college—a fact that confirmed to Morris that education in this country was going right down the toilet.
He and Eddie had been living next to each other on Alder Lane for two years—two years that, to Morris, felt more like ten—and at some point during that time Eddie had come to the debatable conclusion that he and Morris were best friends.
“Hi, Eddie,” Morris said. “I thought you were headed up to Groverton this morning.”
“We’re leaving this aft.” Eddie scratched himself with his free hand and yawned. “Kim’s got morning classes. You can’t believe how much I miss that kid.”
Morris nodded even though he was pretty sure Eddie’s daughter didn’t reciprocate the feeling. Kim had escaped to university the previous fall, and, after landing a waitressing job at a seafood restaurant, had stayed on through the summer. She had been home to visit only twice. Watching her father openly scratching his balls through his bathrobe, Morris understood completely.
“Tell Kim that Jude and I say hello,” he said.
“Will do,” Eddie said distractedly. He was staring at the truck.
That, Morris realized, was what had lured Eddie from his fortress of suburban solitude. Here in the ’burbs, the arrival of a delivery truck was to adults what the arrival of the ice-cream truck was to kids. As if to further prove this truth, Morris spied a curtain open at the house across the street, and a face peek out.
The truck stopped and two men in brown coveralls climbed out. One of them had a clipboard with a piece of yellow flimsy attached to it.
“Mr. Hardy?”
Eddie slapped Morris on the back. “He’s your man.”
The deliveryman gave Eddie a passing look and handed the clipboard to Morris. As he signed, the other deliveryman pulled up the rear door of the truck and started shimmying out a large cardboard box—the widescreen television Morris had wanted for years but had only recently been able to afford. Jude had tried to kick up a fuss, but she couldn’t come up with any specific reasons against the purchase. Morris knew she was sore because he hadn’t consulted her before placing the order. But the way he saw it, if they had to move out of the city—against his own wishes—then he should be allowed to take the necessary measures to make himself comfortable.
Morris returned the clipboard and the deliveryman tore off his copy.
“I knew you were getting a new toy,” Eddie said slyly.
“How’d you guess?” Morris said, going along.
“The dish,” Eddie said, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Morris’s roof. The new satellite dish gleamed in the early-morning light. “That’s a hell of an antenna, too. You get Skinemax on that?”
Morris nodded even though he wasn’t really listening. He was watching the deliverymen. They were speaking in low, furtive voices. A moment later one of them came over and said, “Uh, Mr. Hardy, I’m afraid we have a bit of a problem.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Well.” The man took off his hat and raked his fingers through his greasy hair. “It appears we left the cart back at the store. And we need it to—”
“Couldn’t we just carry it in?” Eddie piped.
The deliveryman looked at Eddie, then turned to Morris with a questioning look. “Well . . . we could carry it. It’s not so much heavy as it is awkward. But . . .”
Morris understood what the other man was trying to say: Yes, it could be done. But do you really want to put your new toy in this guy’s hands?
He looked at Eddie, trying to see past the patchy robe and grungy moose slippers. He didn’t hate Eddie, but he felt something, and irritation seemed too small a word to describe his feelings for a man who punctuated his every accident with the word “oopsie.” As in, The other day I was in the front yard taking a few test swings with my new five iron and—oopsie!—now I need to replace the windshield on the Subaru.
There had been an oopsie just a month ago, in fact, on a Sunday afternoon when the couples had gotten together for a barbecue. Eddie had manoeuvred Morris’s new hibachi next to the hedge wall that separated their backyards—to give it some shade, was Eddie’s oblique explanation—and a large section of it had caught fire. Morris would never forget the expression on Eddie’s face that day, a look of complete and total perplexity that seemed to say, Damn, were those things flammable?
If Eddie helped carry the television, the odds were there would be an accident (an oopsie, if you like). But with the deliverymen helping . . . and it only had to go into the house . . .
“Okay,” Morris said finally. “Let’s do it.”
The deliverymen used the hydraulic lifter to lower the box to the driveway, and when everyone was ready, each man took a corner and lifted with an enthusiastic grunt. To his surprise, Morris found himself to be the weakest link. While Eddie and the two deliverymen hoisted their quarter of the box effortlessly, Morris struggled to keep his off the ground. His arms began to tremble, and he finally had to set his corner back down.
It wasn’t heavy, as the deliveryman had said, but he felt inexplicably drained.
“Jude keep you up last night?” Eddie chortled.
Morris couldn’t see Eddie’s face over the top of the box, but he could picture his sly grin quite easily. He took a deep, cleansing breath, shook his arms to loosen his muscles, and said, “Okay, let’s try it again.”
The box wouldn’t fit through the front door, so they brought it around to the back of the house. Walking up the short set of steps to the deck, Eddie stepped on one of Jude’s potted azaleas, pulverizing it. As he watched Eddie shake the dirt off his tacky slipper, Morris had a sudden, brief image of Godzilla wearing a plaid bathrobe and laying waste to Tokyo, punctuating each cataclysmic footfall with—
“Oopsie,” Eddie said, smiling sheepishly.
Morris closed his eyes and took another deep, steadying breath.
They carried the box through the sliding glass door and into the dining room. Eddie tracked dirt on the carpet. They passed through the kitchen, guiding the box around the refrigerator and the dishwasher, and came to a stop at the top of the stairs leading down to the basement.
Morris leaned against the doorway, breathing heavily. He looked at Eddie and thought, If you have an oopsie going down these stairs, you’ll be wearing this thing like a hat. But it was Morris who was huffing and puffing and hunched over with his hands on his knees. If anyone was going to have any oopsie, it was probably going to be him.
But there was no oopsie. It was slow moving the box down the tight confines of the stairway, but they made it without incident, setting the box on the clean patch of carpet where Morris’s old television had recently held court.
Everyone stood around catching their breath. Morris needed more time than anyone else. He leaned against the doorway that communicated between the den and the laundry room, his face as red as a cooked lobster, sweat rolling down his cheeks like tears. One of the deliverymen offered to get him a canister of oxygen from the truck, and everyone had a chuckle over that.