The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 1

by Roy MacGregor

  “Okay,” Nish countered. “You got all the answers, Fahd. What’re we going to do?”

  “There’re two lockers in each one of those rooms we’re using to store the equipment, right?” Fahd asked.

  Derek agreed. He would know. “One for sticks,” he said. “One for whatever.”

  “We don’t have our sticks there any more,” Gordie said, as if settling the point Fahd was heading for.

  “Exactly,” Fahd said. “It’s empty. It’s got air holes. It would hold a player.”

  “Have to be awfully small, wouldn’t he?” a sceptical Nish pointed out.

  “Exactly,” Fahd said.

  He was staring directly at Travis.

  “Too bad, sucker. You’re going to miss the show!”

  Nish was in his element: giggling, surrounded by wires, the back of the television in front of him. He was teasing Travis. They had to wait for Mr. Dillinger to come back from the rink so Derek could “borrow” the keys again and, in the meantime, several of the players had come up to Nish’s room to see the promised spectacle: adult movies.

  Nish had the protective coupler off again and was reconnecting the cable wires. Satisfied, he swung the television around and began playing with the channel switch.

  There was a light knock at the door. The boys all jumped: had the motel figured out what Nish was doing?

  “It’s Sarah,” a voice called. “And Sareen.”

  Nish began to glow like a goal light. Travis immediately jumped up to let the girls in. Some of the other boys began giggling.

  “Come on, Nish,” Wilson teased. “You promised.”

  “Promised what?” Sarah wanted to know.

  “Nothing,” Nish said, a bit too quickly.

  “Nothing?” Wilson said with astonishment.

  Sarah and Sareen looked at each other, then suspiciously at Nish.

  “What’s going on here?” Sareen asked.

  “You keeping secrets from us, Nish?” Sarah added.

  Nish gave up. “I’m trying to fix the TV so we can get free movies,” he admitted.

  “Come on, Nish, it’s more than that,” Wilson said.

  Nish turned on him, scowling. “Thanks a lot.”

  Sarah giggled. “You’re trying to see a dirty movie, aren’t you, Nish?”

  Nish was crimson now, shaking his head. “I just wanted to see if it works,” he protested.

  “And does it?” Sareen asked.

  Nish turned, startled. “What?”

  “Can you get them?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well,” Sareen said, “why don’t you show us?”

  Nish seemed completely baffled. “Not with you here!”

  “Why not?” Sarah wanted to know.

  “You’re a girl!” Nish practically shouted, pointing out the obvious.

  “Why, so I am!” Sarah exclaimed, faking shock. She looked at Sareen, pretending to jump back with surprise. “Why, look, you’re one, too, Sareen!”

  Sareen stared, surprised, at herself. “I am? I am! How does Nish manage to pick up these things?”

  For once, Nish hated being centred out. “It’s not funny!” he protested.

  “It is, too,” Sarah scolded. “You want to watch men and women but you don’t think it’s right for women to watch, too. Isn’t that it?”

  “I just want to check. I don’t really want to watch.” This statement threw the rest of the room into howls of laughter.

  “Put it on,” Sareen told Nish. “We want to see, too.”

  “We’re on the team, aren’t we?” Sarah said, teasing Nish.

  Nish seemed surprised. “You really want to watch?”

  “‘Check,’” Sarah corrected him.

  Nish looked around the room for support. He was getting none. “Go ahead,” Data said. “Everybody here but Nish already knows how we got here. He may as well finally find out.” Everyone laughed. Nish shrugged his shoulders and went back to fiddling with the television, his colour fading from bright red to pink.

  He flew through the channels on the manual selector, some of the regular television channels coming in instantly, some of the pay movies as well. Data tried to get them to stick with a “Star Trek” re-run, but no one else was interested. A Western flicked on. And a thriller that some of the players recognized and wanted to watch again. But Nish was determined.

  His hands fiddled and, suddenly, he came upon a channel with no picture, but sound. The sound was grunting.

  “That’s it!” shouted Data. “Hljol!” (“Beam me aboard!”)

  Everyone laughed, Nish included, delighted that the focus was shifting off of him.

  “Bring in the picture,” Sarah said.

  “I’m trying, I’m trying,” Nish said. His chubby hands flew as they worked on the horizontal and vertical hold. He had the adjustment box open and was working every possible dial, desperately trying to pull in the picture to go with the alarming sound.

  An image caught and flew by, too quick to catch. “That’s it!” shouted Wilson. “Go back!”

  Frantically, Nish fiddled the dial back. The picture flickered twice and then came into full, glorious colour.

  A wagon train was stuck in the mud. A team of mules was braying as they pulled, hopelessly. Two young cowboys were behind the wagon, up to their waists in mud, pushing and grunting. It was another Western.

  “So that’s how you make babies, Nish,” teased Sarah. “Now you know the big secret.”

  Nish’s colour went back to goal-light red.

  There was another quick rap on the door. Nish punched off the set, panicking.

  “Who is it?” Travis called.

  “Me–Derek.”

  He had the keys. It was time to go. Travis could feel his heart stop dead, then start up again twice as fast.

  Travis’s heart was now pounding so hard he couldn’t believe the rest couldn’t hear it. Derek, with his dad’s keys, and a few other Screech Owls–Nish, Sarah, Dmitri, Fahd, and Travis–had come up to the rink just before curfew and just as the last game of the evening was coming to an end. Unnoticed, they had slipped down into the dressing-room area and, with Dmitri on watch, were setting up Fahd’s guard.

  The empty locker easily held Travis. Closed, it had enough airholes, probably for airing out figure skaters’ outfits, that he could see out easily and even sit down and relax, the locker was so deep. But comfort was hardly Travis’s first concern. He was petrified of what would happen when the lights went out! Petrified, and unable to tell anyone.

  “I can fit here,” Sarah said. “I should be the one staying. It’s my stuff they’ve been after.”

  Fahd spoke for the others, Travis excepted. “You’re our most valuable player,” he said. “And you’re still short of sleep from that first night.”

  Travis had wanted to beg her–anyone–to replace him, but didn’t dare. No one knew about his dread of the dark, and now here he was about to be placed in a box–in a coffin!–and be buried alive in an arena dressing room.

  “You try it, Nish,” Travis suggested. “I bet even you can fit.”

  “No way,” Nish said. “I’d get stuck in there and die.”

  Travis felt he was going to die himself. No one else was offering. Not Fahd, who was hardly as important to the team as Travis. Not Dmitri, whose scoring was possibly a bit more important. And certainly not Nish, who was also probably as important. He wished they’d asked little Guy Boucher to do it, or Sareen, who wasn’t playing anyway but was desperate to do something, anything, to help her team.

  But it was too late. Travis was assistant captain and he was expected to take responsibility. The others were completely caught up with enthusiasm for Fahd’s idea and Travis had simply been carried along with them as they hurried to put the plan into action.

  “You’ll be all right?” Nish asked.

  Travis had to lie: “Yeah.”

  “You’re a braver man than me,” said Nish. He had no idea, Travis thought.
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  “That’s stupid talk,” Fahd said. “You got some chocolate bars, an apple in this bag. There’s a can over there if you need it, but you’d better use it before they shut down things or someone hanging around might get suspicious.”

  “What if they catch him?” Nish asked. Nish wasn’t being in the least helpful.

  Fahd was getting impatient with Nish raising the alarm. “No one’s going to catch anyone,” he said. “Travis stays put and doesn’t move.”

  “What if they open up the locker?” Sarah asked.

  Fahd had thought of this. “Travis can bolt it from the inside with this.” He had a small penknife and showed them how it would lock in the latch so no one could move it from outside. “They’ll think it’s locked if they try it.”

  “You okay, then?” Sarah asked.

  Travis looked up from the locker. She was looking at him like he was the greatest friend in the world. He felt as if he was doing something important, something vital.

  “Fine,” he lied.

  Travis thought he was going to throw up. He had settled into the locker and they had closed the door and he had tried the knife bolt and tested it, and, satisfied, they had said their farewells to him from the other side of the airholes and left.

  Derek wanted to get the key back into the hotel room in case his father noticed it was gone. He would sneak the key out again first thing in the morning, and they would, they promised, have him out of there by 7:30 a.m., in time for either the first serving of breakfast or a quick cat nap, whichever Travis felt he needed more.

  When they left, Fahd turned out the lights.

  Total, unbelievable, suffocating, frightening, snake-filled dark!

  Travis felt himself begin to panic. His heart was thundering, his chest bouncing like a parade drum. He had his eyes wide open and it seemed he could see strange lights, reds and greens and flashes of orange, and then it seemed as if he could hear sounds, movement.

  Rats!

  No, it was nothing. Just his imagination. Water running through the pipes. The heat coming on. Doors slamming on other rooms as the rink closed down for the night.

  Travis tried to think about the games he had played and the game they would play tomorrow against the Panthers. Slowly, gradually, his heart settled and the colours seemed to leave his eyes. Instead, as his pupils slowly adjusted, he began to make out shadows and forms beyond the airholes. There were still lights on in the corridor, and some of them were making it through the narrow little window in the door and around the corner of the entrance way. He could see!

  Well, he could see a bit. But a bit was better than nothing. He figured in a coffin he would see nothing. And breathe nothing. This was bad, this was terrible, but it was not death.

  He waited for what seemed like hours. To pass the time he began sorting through his hockey card collection in his mind, trying to think of ways to organize cards that weren’t by year or whatever company had manufactured them. He put all his cards worth over twenty dollars–well, according to the book, anyway–together. He put all his Europeans together. All his Russians. He put all his good centres together and liked that. Then all his good left-wingers, and imagined himself included.

  He thought about all his autographed cards–Pavel Bure, Jaromir Jagr, Teemu Selanne, Paul Kariya, Adam Graves, Mike Modano, Gretzky–and he wondered how many times Gretzky had signed his name since the first kid asked for one. A hundred thousand? A million? He wondered how many hours, how many days, how many months, Gretzky had spent signing over his career.

  He wondered if Wayne Gretzky had ever sat, as Travis Lindsay had sat, at the kitchen table endlessly practising a signature. A printed “T,” a looping “L,” a huge, exaggerated “T,” an “L” that rolled off into his number “7” just as Gretzky would place that little “99” at the bottom of his name. He wondered if Wayne Gretzky’s sister had ever teased him about practising his autograph the way his sister had teased him, and he wondered if a few times Gretzky, like Travis himself, had wondered if there was any sense in practising something no one wanted, at least for the moment…

  He had fallen asleep. He was down on his haunches, slumped, his head lolling and his hands between his knees. When he woke he did not know where he was, but then it came back, not as a memory, but as a sound.

  His heart pounding through his chest!

  There was a sound at the door. The scratch of a key being worked in and turned, first one way, then the other, and then the pop of air as the door opened. Beyond, in the pale light from whatever light was still burning, Travis could barely make out a hulking silhouette. Form but no identity.

  The lights went on. Not welcome, but blinding. Even to Travis hidden in the locker. He moved closer to the lower air-holes and blinked, waiting for his vision to return. The room seemed impossibly bright. His heart seemed impossibly afraid. He was shaking, sweating. He was terrified!

  The hulk moved across the room, keys jangling as they went back into a pocket. The hulk moved, opened up the latches on the skate sharpening box.

  It was Mr. Dillinger!

  He had come to do skates. He had his keys out and was undoing the big footlocker that held the team’s skates and was rooting around for those he needed to sharpen. Good old Mr. Dillinger. Travis wanted to burst from the locker and hug him, so glad was he to see that the invader was neither a Panther nor Mr. Brown nor some unknown murderer with a grizzled beard and tobacco spit running down his chin and a long sharp knife in his boot. But he knew he couldn’t call out. Knew he couldn’t explain.

  He also knew there was now no danger of being found in the locker. Mr. Dillinger knew better than anyone that it was empty and why it was empty. He wouldn’t look in.

  Travis felt a fool sitting there watching Mr. Dillinger work. It seemed so, well, sneaky of Travis to be doing this. But he couldn’t help but watch. And the more he watched, the funnier he felt.

  What was Mr. Dillinger doing?

  Mr. Dillinger had the skate sharpener open, and he had Sarah Cuthbertson’s skates out. Travis could make out the little number “98” Sarah had painted in white on the heel–the number chosen to honour the year, 1998, when women’s hockey would become an official Olympic sport.

  But Mr. Dillinger also had a hammer out, the hammer he sometimes had to use to straighten out a crooked blade. Travis couldn’t remember Sarah complaining about her blades.

  Travis was unable to see Mr. Dillinger’s face. He could only see his hands, and what they were doing with Sarah’s skates.

  Mr. Dillinger set the skates in the skate holder normally used for sharpening, but the machine was neither set up nor plugged in. He took the hammer then, and very carefully, very slowly, worked it along the blade, hammering hard at times, and then pulling the skate off and eyeing it down the blade.

  It seemed he was fixing something. Perhaps, Travis wondered, Mr. Dillinger had noticed something that Sarah hadn’t mentioned. Or perhaps Muck had noticed something. Whatever, Mr. Dillinger worked over the skates for the better part of ten minutes before he made one final check of the blade line, seemed satisfied, and then put everything back in its place, including Sarah’s skates.

  He then locked everything back up again, checked the room one last time, never even coming near the locker, and then went to the door, where he turned out the light, plunging Travis back into his coffin panic, and eased silently out the door. The key scratched quietly again, turned, and the door was once more locked solid.

  It took another ten minutes or so for Travis’s heart to settle and some of his sight to return. It seemed strange to him: Mr. Dillinger coming up here late at night–Travis checked his watch, the digital numbers glowing 12:45–just to straighten out Sarah’s blades. That was dedication.

  Travis was wide awake when the kids returned to let him out. He had heard the rink attendants arrive before 7:00 a.m. and he knew then that his ordeal was over. He had survived the dark! He had been buried alive and was still alive! He felt prouder of himself than if he
had scored a hat-trick in the final game. Well, maybe not quite that proud, but…

  The key scratched again and Travis knew it would be Derek and the others. He was already out of the locker and waiting for them when they burst in, their faces so uncertain that he wondered if perhaps they were expecting to find a body hacked to pieces by a chainsaw instead of their friend who had just proved something important to himself, but couldn’t tell anyone about it.

  “You okay?” Sarah asked.

  “Fine.”

  “No goblins,” Nish giggled. Travis ignored him.

  “Anything?” Fahd asked.

  “I don’t know,” Travis said. “I’m not sure. Derek, you got a key on that ring for the skate box?”

  Derek fiddled with the keys. “I guess so. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just want to look at something.”

  Derek found the right key on the third try. The padlock came off, the lid up, and Travis, without explaining, reached in for the skates with number 98 painted on the heel.

  “What’re you doing with my skates?” Sarah demanded.

  “Just checking.”

  Travis held the skates up to the light and turned first one, then the other, upside-down. With his eye, he traced the line of the blade and saw what he had been afraid he might see: the blades were badly curved. Deliberately bent by a hammer. Sarah wouldn’t be able to skate the length of the ice on them. If she tried to turn, she’d either dig in and fall flat or slip away and crash into the boards.

  “What’s wrong?” Sarah asked.

  Travis handed her one of the skates. The other he gave to Nish.

  “They’re crooked!” Sarah shouted.

  “Somebody’s bent them!” Nish added.

  “Who would do something like that?” Derek asked.

  Travis had no idea how he would tell him.

  “I have to talk to you, Muck.”

  It would be wrong to suggest that Travis had never done anything so difficult before in his life. He had, barely an hour earlier.