The Last Last-Day-of-Summer

by Lamar Giles

  “Hey, boys!” He was frozen halfway up his stepladder, placing a new case of mousetraps next to a ceiling fan. “I think something’s wrong with my body. Can’t move it.”

  “Yes, Mr. Archie,” said Sheed. “We know. We’re working on it.”

  “That’s awesome!” It was a slightly louder, much more enthusiastic whisper from one aisle over. The boys circled around to find blond and perky Anna Archie on one knee, aiming her price gun at a stack of electrical outlets sitting next to a box of massaging showerheads. Her face happened to be angled their way, stuck in a wide friendly smile, but it would’ve been that way even if time weren’t frozen.

  “Hey, Anna!” the boys said.

  “Otto, you got a camera!”

  “Um, yeah. It was a gift.” He was hesitant to say more than that.

  “I’m a bit of a photographer myself, you know. Maybe we can compare photos sometime. I mean, when I’m mobile.”

  Otto simply nodded.

  “Hi there, fellas.” This was a third voice, more dour than the Archies’, but just as familiar. Toward the back of the store, in his paint-splattered apron, holding his trusty broom, was Mr. Archie’s longtime clerk, Petey.

  “Hey, Petey!” said the boys.

  “This another one of your adventures?” he asked through a barely parted frown. Unlike Anna, Petey always seemed a little sad.

  “It is. Sorry,” said Sheed, shooting a pointed look Otto’s way.

  Mr. Archie said, “How can we help you boys? I don’t think we can actually help, since we’re unable to move, but we can still point you in the right direction.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Otto consulted his notes. “We need . . .”

  As he rattled off the items on his list, Mr. Archie yelled directions that had the boys running all over, like a scavenger hunt. Big fishing nets on aisle six by the light switches. A length of rope from aisle four, right by the machine that made spare keys. Otto and Sheed bounced about, filling a cart with everything they needed to make two big ole traps.

  Sheed, who was pushing the cart, skidded to a stop. “We’re making human traps.”

  “Yeah?”

  He looked over their supplies, and they were good human-trap-making supplies, but . . . “The way Mr. Flux twisted and stretched when he was fighting the stranger. That seem human to you?”

  No. It did not. Otto knew what Sheed was getting at. “The human trap . . .”

  “Might not work,” Sheed finished.

  That was a problem. Before Otto could consult his pad for a possible solution, a mighty racket sounded outside.

  “What now?” Sheed asked.

  Otto had no clue, and that startled him. Since time had frozen, one consistent thing he’d noted was there’d been no true noise. Now there was shouting—​a bunch of it. The sound of a lot of feet, like the marching band in the annual Fry Peanut Festival parade. Only fast, and coming closer.

  The boys faced the store window, watched as a bunch of strange-looking people stampeded by. Some waved their hands frantically, shouting in horror. Some looked over their shoulders instead of in front of them and ran smack into the frozen cars. They rebounded off, adjusted their course, and kept going. There were men, and women, and people who seemed the height of little kids but had flat stubby heads and wore pastel suits in various colors, so they looked like short, running sticks of chalk. Some of the odd people were in rumpled pajamas with matching floppy hats. Some were in suspenders, neckties, and . . . football pads?

  One particularly creepy lady had dingy dark hair and sharp fangs, and instead of running appeared to be riding a bed of fog that zoomed around all the others like a hoverboard.

  The only thing all of them seemed to have in common was fear.

  Who were they? Why weren’t they stuck in time like everyone else? What were they so scared of?

  The sprinting crowd thinned, then passed completely. There was a moment of silence before the ground started shaking again. This tremor was more extreme, caused by something bigger than a strange stampede. Something that had frightened all those people.

  Something that was coming toward the store.

  “Boys,” Mr. Archie said, a slight crack in his voice, “that don’t sound good.”

  Mr. Archie’s neck was turned so he could not see the window, could not see what the boys saw beyond it. Mr. Archie was lucky.

  “Otto,” said Sheed.

  “Sheed,” said Otto.

  That’s all they said.

  The giant, furry leg dropped slowly into view, as thick as an elephant’s. It extended up beyond the frame of Mr. Archie’s display window, attached to some ginormous body they couldn’t see, or imagine. Yet.

  Whatever the creature was, it had stolen their words without much effort at all.

  5

  The Word Is Platypus!

  Bushy, coarse hair fluffed from the maybe-a-leg. Another long something lowered into view. It was hairless and twitched like a puppy’s nose. Warm air puffed from what must be a snout, fogging the window. The cloudy glass cleared quickly, revealing more of the thing’s head, including the circular edge of an eye that was as big as a manhole cover.

  “Freeze.” Sheed became a mannequin posed in a bad dance move.

  Fighting the urge to argue, Otto did as told and took on a stiff pose, like a robot about to go jogging. They stared bravely into the creature’s eye without blinking, and it stared back.

  Whatever this beast was, it seemed to ignore all the frozen things and people spread around town. If it only went after things that moved, then they’d be safe if they remained stone still. Hopefully.

  Staying stone still was easier said than done.

  Otto hadn’t thought his freeze pose through, having put more weight on his left leg than his right, as if he was getting set to run a race. Now that left leg was growing tired and felt moments from quivering. His eyes watered from no blinking. His nose itched. The tag on his T-shirt tickled the back of his neck.

  Otto focused on the creature, which was large enough to be a monster, but not really gruesome like a monster. Its eyes were a soft brown like fall leaves, its steam-puffing snout something like a duck’s beak. A strange and funny word—​platypus!—​came to mind. It almost made him giggle. That would’ve been bad.

  Sweat dampened Otto’s forehead. A bead ran toward his eye.

  The Platypus-Thing puffed one last gout of steam, then turned away, continuing slowly down the street in the same direction as the mysterious mob.

  Sheed and Otto maintained their stances for a few moments after the creature was no longer visible. They waited until the vibrations of its lumbering footsteps ceased before daring to move. When they finally relaxed their muscles, they found themselves gasping, more exhausted by stillness than running a hundred-yard dash. Sometimes waiting was the hardest thing of all.

  “What was that?” Otto knew deep down the word platypus wasn’t exactly right.

  “I don’t know,” said Sheed, “but we’re going to need a bigger net.”

  6

  Elephants It Is

  “Hey there, fellas,” Mr. Archie said. “Was that an earthquake?”

  The boys exchanged glances. Neither wanted to lie to Mr. Archie, but they also didn’t want to frighten him by telling him there was a big strange beast in Fry that he couldn’t run away from, even if he wanted to. Otto gave Sheed an I-don’t-know-what-to-do shrug. Sheed slapped his forehead, then stepped forward, mumbling, “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Mr. Archie,” he began, “it wasn’t an earthquake. It was more like an elephant, but not an elephant.”

  “Really?”

  Sheed felt terrible, thinking he’d scared Mr. Archie. But then . . .

  “I love elephants. Don’t you love elephants, Anna?”

  From her aisle, Anna said, “Sure do! Especially when they spray water from their trunks. What about you, Petey?”

  “They poop real big, but other than that, they’re all right,” Petey said from th
e back of the store. “I guess.”

  Sheed said, “Actually—”

  Otto grabbed Sheed’s arm, shook his head, whispered, “I think grownups hear what they need to sometimes.”

  Sheed stroked his chin, considering. Then agreed. “Actually, Mr. Archie, I think we’re done shopping.”

  “Well, that was fast! I’ll just add it to the tab. When I can move again, I mean.”

  Since the last time they’d saved the city (those Laughing Locusts were a pretty big deal), Mayor Ahmed had opened an account in Otto’s and Sheed’s names for emergencies. Good thing, too. Because being legendary didn’t pay well. Or at all.

  “Thanks, Mr. Archie!” they said together, gathering all their goods into a couple of canvas bags they could hang from their handlebars.

  “Bye, Anna,” said Sheed.

  “Bye, boys! Good luck.”

  Otto said, “See you later, Petey.”

  “I suppose.”

  With supplies in hand, the cousins stepped to the glass double doors separating them from the bright day and paused. Sheed’s palms were sweaty. Otto’s tummy did flip-flops. They were afraid.

  Logan County was nothing if not surprising. They’d faced many scary things, but nothing like a bendy man, giant platypus, or frozen time.

  Otto swallowed a lump in his throat. “Grandma says there’s nothing wrong with being afraid.”

  “You can’t be brave without fear.” Sheed recited one of Grandma’s many wise sayings. They thought about her words a lot when facing the strange things in their world. Now she needed their help. They would be brave for Grandma, and everyone else in Fry. It was what legends did.

  They each pressed a palm against the door and pushed on.

  7

  Pausing the Best Part

  The Legendary Alston Boys’ agreed-upon bravery got them as far as the sidewalk outside of Mr. Archie’s Hardware. Their next course of action had seemed like a no-brainer—​find and capture Mr. Flux, possibly the stranger from the portal, too. Until they saw the street.

  You might expect a stampeding mob, particularly one chased by a giant, furry, duck-billed “elephant,” to leave a bit of disarray in its path. An overturned trash can would not be surprising. Perhaps a toppled bench. One might understand a trampled bush or two. Indeed, all of those things were left as evidence of the event. There was more, though. So. Much. More.

  “That car”—​Sheed pointed a shaky finger at the vehicle several dozen yards away—​“should not do that.”

  It was a way-back-in-the-day car that belonged to Mr. Green, the local back-in-the-day car expert. Big and red and maybe as old as Grandma. Also, it was upside down.

  Not sitting on its roof like a normal upside-down car would be, but flipped tires-to-the-sky, in midair, high enough to roll a basketball beneath it. It wasn’t touching the ground at all.

  Other objects were positioned in unusually impossible ways. A lamppost had been broken in half like a pretzel stick. Instead of toppling to the ground next to the base it was once connected to, it hung diagonally in the air, as if on strings. The back window of another car was shattered, but the glass shards had not fallen; they hovered like ice chunks floating in still water.

  Slowly, carefully, the boys approached the scene of suspended destruction, where things that were crushed, thrown, or knocked over took their sweet time hitting the ground.

  No, Otto thought, it’s not taking any time at all.

  He squinted at a chunk of broken asphalt that had sprung from a pothole in the center of the street before fixing itself in the air, as stationary as a brick set in the center of a longstanding wall.

  Sheed examined other hanging debris. “It’s like when we pause a movie.”

  “Yes!” Otto agreed in a flash of understanding. He snatched his pad from his pocket, jotted down his deduction while waiting for his cousin to catch up. “A giant monster movie. See?”

  He swept an arm toward the end of the street, along the path of destruction. “The mob came from that way. All of them running into things.” He pointed to tilted (not fallen) trash cans, tipped (and angled precariously) newspaper boxes, and benches, and merchant signs, and other small messes. “Then the creature came.” Otto motioned to the larger objects, the lamppost, and the flipped car.

  Sheed’s eyes widened, getting it. “Oh! When they touched this stuff, they unfroze it like we did with Grandma’s forks and our bikes, but just for a second.”

  “Right. The moment they weren’t touching it”—​he motioned to that piece of asphalt hovering at chest level—​“it refroze in time wherever they left it. Even if they left it in the air.”

  Entry #38

  The rules are different for the mob and that creature than they are for us.

  We can unstick little stuff, with some effort, but our stuff stays unstuck.

  They seem to unstick stuff easy—​just by running into things—​but their stuff becomes stuck again right after.

  Why?

  DEDUCTION: Unclear. More experimentation is in order.

  Sheed stepped closer, gently poked the hunk of suspended road. There was a delay, no more than a second, and it fell to their feet with a solid thunk.

  They leapt backwards and said, “Whoa!”

  Otto knelt and picked up the chunk easily, even though it was kind of heavy. It had none of the stickiness of other frozen stuff they’d tried to move before. He scribbled furiously in his notepad. “We should try some of the other suspended items.”

  Before he finished the sentence, Sheed jogged over to the upside-down car. “I got you.”

  “Be careful.” A car suddenly falling to the ground might be way more destructive—​and dangerous—​than a chunk of asphalt.

  Sheed judged the farthest distance his long and scrawny arms could stretch and still touch the vehicle. Settled in that position, he flattened his palm against the back-in-the-day car’s door.

  It didn’t fall, as Otto had suspected, given its size. Though something was happening.

  “It’s vibrating,” Sheed said, his teeth chattering from the tremor running up his arm. “I can feel it.”

  “I can see it.” The air around the car shimmered, like road heat on the hottest days.

  Sheed pulled his hand from the car, and the shimmering stopped.

  “Are you okay?” Otto asked.

  He looked at his hand, curled and uncurled his fingers. “I’m good. My hand’s a little tingly.”

  Otto said, “Let’s both try it.”

  They took a deep breath together, as they always did before trying some big new thing, like creating their Legendary Maneuvers. After a silent countdown from three, they each thrust a hand forward, smacking the side of the car. There was the same vibration as before—​Otto thought it felt like holding the handle of Grandma’s vacuum that time he tried sucking up her curtains. Then the car unstuck and crashed to the ground with a groan of metal as its roof pancaked under its weight. The boys leapt backward, grinning.

  “What do you think it means?” asked Sheed, circling the car, examining it for any other strange clues.

  Otto was slow answering, returning to notes, his tiny pencil flying across the page.

  Entry #39

  PREVIOUS DEDUCTION: Grandma is too big to move. (Maybe all people are?)

  The back-in-the-day car is huge. Since me and Sheed were able to unstick it when we worked together, size can’t be the reason we couldn’t unstick Grandma. She’s way smaller than a car.

  Otto stopped writing. “Everything we’ve been able to move so far has been something not alive. Forks. Pots. The stuff we got from the hardware store.”

  Sheed caught on quickly, his expression grave. “That’s why we couldn’t move Grandma. She’s a person. Not a thing.”

  Otto continued his notation.

  We can move stuff, but not people, because . . .

  DEDUCTION: People aren’t things.

  Sheed kept examining the flipped car. Kneeling, squinting
through its broken windows, so he saw Otto’s stout legs on the other side. “We really need to find Flux and that stranger fast. If we can’t unstick people on our own, we’ll make them do it.”

  “Noooooooo.”

  Sheed sprang to his feet, stared at Otto over the car’s back tires. “Okay, genius. You don’t like the plan all of a sudden, what else you got?”

  Otto gazed down the street, and he was worried. “That wasn’t me.”

  “Noooooooo.” There it was again. Not Otto, not Sheed. The low-pitched moan came from the direction the stampeding mob had taken.

  There was nothing for them to argue about this time. They’d been around each other too long, knew each other too well to make another sound. They tiptoed back to their bikes, where they’d left the supplies from Mr. Archie’s. Sheed opened his sack, and Otto went to work uncoiling the length of rope inside. It was time for Maneuver #16.

  Corner and capture.

  8

  Shiny Unhappy People

  “Nooooooo.”

  There it was again. A sound of pain and anguish. Otto recalled a similar cry from the mailman, Mr. Reynolds, when Dr. Medina’s hospital lost track of its one and only vampire bat and it bit him on the neck.

  Otto worked the loose end of his rope into a lasso while Sheed carried the slack. They moved in a crouch, hunched low under the window frames of the businesses they passed. Dampino’s Dry Cleaning. Knit ’n Needles Yarn Store. The Lopsided Furniture Company (Lopsided is the name of one of Fry’s Founding Families; the furniture is level).

  “Nooooooo.”

  The boys stopped. From this close, it was clear that the anguished voice—​or voices—​came from around the corner, beyond the newest, and possibly oddest, business in Fry. The Rorrim Mirror Emporium.