Song

by Jason Lethcoe

  Zeshar is a hot, arid world. Luckily, numerous magically cooled tents have been constructed next to the “Giant’s Raceway,” the nickname for the bridge that connects Zeshar to Iona. When visiting Zeshar, it is recommended that tourists learn a few of the local expressions. A visitor watching the various vehicles that attempt to cross the bridge might be confused when a local shouts out, “Cross that crazy freen-burn, you slobby shorker!” (Translation: “Freen-burn” is a nice, wide racetrack and “slobby shorker” is a gifted mechanic with no talent for driving.1)

  The races across the bridge are exciting and filled with suspense, however travelers are advised to carry ear protection due to the tremendous roar of the engines.

  Vehicles that don’t make it across the bridge, or accidentally drive off the side, are rescued by specially trained Guardians. This troop of exceptionally strong Guardians is trained to catch vehicles that plunge over the edge of the bridge or tow vehicles with a malfunction back to the starting line.

  Surprisingly, there have been very few major accidents in Zeshar’s history.

  No trip to Zeshar would be complete without a visit to Farley’s Garage, a museum built by a mortal named Farley Farnsworth that houses some of the more spectacular vehicles invented throughout Zeshar’s history. This includes the “Feathered Funicula,” an incredible flying chair that traversed the bridge at record speeds, and the “Washburn Wonder,” a vehicle with so many wheels that they almost stretch the length of the bridge itself!

  Drivers that make it across the bridge in record time have a special honor bestowed upon them. Their names, along with drawings of their vehicles, are inscribed in the prestigious Farnsworth’s Book of Speed Records.

  The Blown Engine, a small, inexpensive diner, is attached to Farley’s Garage for those budget-conscious travelers who want a simple meal at a fair price.

  Iona

  To date, Iona has remained largely unexplored. This is partly due to most people’s desire to travel through it and get to the Higher Places as quickly as possible. However, visitors have also reported finding the terrible storms and freezing, iodine seas unpleasant.

  The last of the worlds between Earth and the Higher Places has come under much scrutiny of late. As most travelers know, the bridge between Iona and the Higher Places was stolen by the Jackal in W.R. 60. Rumors exist of a replacement bridge that only those whose hearts are pure can see. However, there has been no confirmation of these rumors. Thankfully, a clever group of Guardians have designed majestic ships to ferry visitors from the docks of Iona to the shores of the Higher Places. These boats serve as the primary source of transportation across the water, and will likely remain so until a new bridge can be built or the location of the original found.

  Unfortunately, the Afterlife Emporium offices have recently received unsettling reports of the famous ships disappearing with entire groups of passengers aboard. The Guardian Council is investigating the matter and suspects Groundling activity. Whether or not the Jackal’s influence is still felt on this remote world remains to be seen.

  If you enjoyed The Mysterious Mr. Spines,

  be sure to check out

  The Misadventures of

  Benjamin Bartholomew Piff

  Benjamin Bartholomew Piff scraped out the remains of last week’s dinner—a hideous, soupy concoction of clams, spinach, and leftover meatloaf—from inside the immense iron pot. He tried not to retch as he attacked the moldy remains, armed only with a toothbrush. The punishment had been forced upon him by the orphanage chef, who Ben feared and hated more than anyone else: a horrible and greasy old man named Solomon Roach.

  “MR. PIFF!” The crusty chef’s irritated voice echoed from somewhere above him. Ben stood, his knees dripping with grease and grime, to peer up over the edge of the giant pot.

  “Yes, Mr. Roach?”

  “When you finish that pot, I have four more that need scrubbing.” The gangly cook’s black marblelike eyes bore into Ben, a twisted leer curling his upper lip. “I want them all finished by ten o’clock, got it?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “What?” Roach’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t hear that.”

  “Yes, Mr. Roach.”

  Feeling satisfied, the cook grunted his approval and stomped from the room, banging the rusted kitchen door behind him.

  Ben looked over to the four humongous remaining pots.

  And all because I said I didn’t want seconds, Ben thought miserably. Breakfast had consisted of Mr. Roach’s usual inedible fare. This morning it was grayish oatmeal topped with boiled beets, and Ben had felt like if he had taken Roach’s offer for seconds, he would have thrown up. The consequences for not wanting to eat more of the cook’s latest creation was to report to the kitchen and endure three hours of scrubbing, a punishment that was meant to make him a “more grateful and well-mannered boy.”

  He sighed as he resumed cleaning. It seemed like Mr. Roach was always looking for opportunities to punish him, whether he had done anything wrong or not.

  Well, that’s all going to change after tonight. Ben grinned as he finished scrubbing the first pot and climbed into the second. He had plotted his escape for weeks, and tonight was the big night. If his plan worked, he would never have to set foot within a thousand miles of a stew pot for the rest of his life.

  He finally finished the gruesome job at two minutes to ten, and, without waiting for Mr. Roach to come in and check on his handiwork, he hastily returned the worn toothbrush to the chipped ceramic holder mounted on the wall next to the giant pots. Then, opening an unused bottom drawer inside one of the kitchen cabinets, he removed a small bundled bag that he had hidden earlier.

  Ben dashed out the back door of the kitchen and raced through the grass of the backyard to his secret hiding spot.

  “Hi, Rags,” Benjamin greeted the happy terrier as he crawled into the oversize doghouse. He turned the lock he had installed on the doghouse door and, with a small thud, set the tightly wrapped bundle on the dirt floor next to the shaggy pup.

  As he peered around the inside of the doghouse, Ben allowed himself a small secret smile. His drawings decorated the walls, and a plain, ragged pillow that he had secreted away from his shabby bedroom served as a seat. He plopped down upon it and opened the small package.

  Ever since the tragic accident the year before—the airplane crash that had taken his parents away—Benjamin had lived at Pinch’s Home for Wayward Boys, a dilapidated orphanage converted from a windowless industrial building that once produced dental tools. Ben hated the place and had good reasons for thinking that it was a joke that it even had the word “home” in its title, for there was nothing about it that felt welcoming at all.

  First of all, there was the boys’ sleeping quarters. Ben spent his nights in a damp cinder-block room that looked much more like a prison cell than a bedroom, and was filled end to end with rusted army cots. All of the boys at the orphanage slept in the overcrowded room, and there was hardly any space to walk without banging a knee on a piece of furniture or tripping over a pair of shoes that had been left by the edge of someone’s cot. It was hot and humid in the summer and ice cold in the winter, and Ben wasn’t allowed to hang even a single picture on any of the walls.

  Secondly, there was the smell of the place.When Ben first arrived, the overpowering stench of pine-scented ammonia had assaulted him. He had felt dizzy for days because of the poorly ventilated hallways. He soon discovered that the pine smell masked a much darker, more sinister odor, something like a mountain of mildewed socks that hadn’t been washed in months, and which seemed to emanate from some secret place in the building’s basement.

  Lastly, and most importantly, there were the two people that looked for ways to make his life in the bleak institution as difficult as possible. The first was the head of the orphanage, Ms. Eliza Pinch, a tall, skinny, elderly spinster whose perfume smelled of an old cat box. Why she had ever opened an orphanage was unfathomable to Ben, for she was very vocal about her hatred for chi
ldren and seemed to harbor a special loathing just for him.

  Mr. Roach was the self-appointed “Discipline Master” at the orphanage, and loved nothing more than to dish out punishments to any orphan who looked at him the wrong way. Ben had spent many terrible nights scrubbing the smelly kitchen under Roach’s watchful eye, and deeply resented being punished for imagined crimes that he hadn’t committed.

  Life was certainly a lot different for him now than it had been a year earlier. He’d had a room of his own with a breathtaking view of the mountains, a big television set that could play DVDs and video games . . . and two wonderful parents who loved him more than anything.

  Ben would give anything in the whole world to have his parents back for just one day.

  Looking down, he opened the bundle and examined what he had smuggled into the doghouse. Twenty dollars in quarters, his savings from helping out Mr. Kunkel, the kindly gardener who had been fired two weeks ago, was shoved inside an old tube sock.

  Ms. Pinch regularly searched Ben’s possessions, which were kept in an old shoebox underneath his cot. The old woman insisted that the reason for this was simply “routine inspection,” but she inspected Ben’s box twice as often as the other boys’, and Ben suspected that she was hoping to find something that would get him into trouble. Ben had learned from experience that it was in his best interest to hide whatever small valuables he had, or they would mysteriously disappear while being subjected to one of Ms. Pinch’s probing searches.

  After carefully placing a rusty pocketknife with a broken blade on the ground next to his concealed money, he reached inside the bag and produced his meager food stores. Next to the knife and sock, he set a tin of Vienna sausages and a small foil-wrapped package of frosted Pop-Tarts, both of which he had liberated from the school kitchen two weeks ago during a punishment from Mr. Roach.

  He would kill me if he knew. The thought of the greasy cook finding out that he had taken the food filled Ben with dread.

  He had a fleeting memory of his first week at the orphanage, when, assuming that he was allowed to eat like he had at home, he had taken a cookie from the chipped jar on the cafeteria counter. The other boys in line had let out a collective gasp when they saw what he had done, and it had taken little time for Ben to realize why they’d reacted with such alarm.

  To his surprise and horror, Ben found himself dragged by his ear into the orphanage’s filthy kitchen and was roughly forced to climb inside and scrub out Roach’s giant blackened stew vats. He soon found out that it was only the first of what would turn out to be daily visits to the horrible place.

  Later that night, one of the littlest boys at the orphanage, a five-year-old named Shane, brought Ben a small piece of leftover bread that he had saved from his own meal. It was thoughtful, since Ben hadn’t been allowed to eat dinner, but his appetite had completely disappeared after spending so much time inside the reeking filth of Roach’s pots.

  It didn’t take long after that first awful week for Ben’s thoughts to turn toward planning an escape.

  Now, if he could just make it to the bus station tonight without anybody noticing, he would be home free.

  He reached into the bag and pulled out the last of his treasures. A small cardboard frame held a photo of a smiling man and woman at the beach. Ben was perched upon his father’s shoulders and was grinning happily, his hand raised and holding a gleaming white sand dollar.

  He gazed wistfully at the photo, recalling the happy day.

  His throat tightening with emotion, he placed the photo back in the bag and gathered up his other things. Rags moved over to the bag and sniffed it curiously.

  “Not yet. You can have some sausages when we leave tonight.” Ben scratched the hungry puppy behind the ears.

  Rags had technically been Mr. Kunkel’s dog (the rules at the orphanage were clear about the students not having any pets), but Mr. Kunkel had allowed Ben to secretly care for the puppy, a stray that had wandered onto the school grounds. Rags was Ben’s best friend, and, now that Mr. Kunkel was gone, they were together whenever possible. Ben sneaked into the forbidden doghouse for comfort, when he could manage it.

  Suddenly the sound of a car engine caught Ben’s attention. He peered through the cracked wood of the doghouse at a black Oldsmobile that had pulled through the rusty gates and watched as the car wound its way up the cracked cement driveway to the main entrance of the orphanage.

  “Ms. Bloom,” he whispered. I wonder what she’s doing here?

  Ben hadn’t seen the prim, well-dressed social worker since he had first been admitted to the orphanage. She carried a small package in her arms and, opening the bent screen door, knocked crisply.

  A moment later, the lean, hawklike form of Ms. Pinch appeared in the doorway. Ben couldn’t make out what was said, but he saw Ms. Pinch nod sourly, then motion vaguely toward the backyard.

  I gotta get out of here, Ben thought, glancing around desperately.

  He had barely squeezed out of the doghouse door when he heard the raspy shout.

  “BENJAMIN PIFF!”

  1 An excellent resource on local dialects can be found in the second edition of Beezlenut’s Guide to Afterlife Slang, published in W.R. 1270.