The Tanglewood Terror

by Kurtis Scaletta

  “Did you know it’s against state law to take motorized vehicles on these paths?”

  “No.”

  “And did you know you have to be a licensed driver at least sixteen years of age to drive a motorized vehicle of any kind?”

  “No.”

  “We’ll need to confiscate this vehicle,” he said.

  “But I’ve got to return it,” I said. “It belongs to this old woman—it’s her only means of transportation.”

  “Son, we’ll see that the vehicle is returned to the proper owner.” He really liked the word “vehicle.”

  I gave him Howard’s name, but I didn’t know her address. “She lives close to the highway,” I said, “halfway between here and Boise Township. I don’t even know if she has a phone.”

  He muttered something into the radio and waved me away. I was free to go, but without the quad. Brian was also done being interrogated, and we headed home. The mushrooms crumbled under our feet as we walked through the backyard.

  “Kids, you’re all right!” Dad said when Brian and I came in. “I didn’t have any idea what happened to you. Everything was such a scene … all the screaming, and the stampede. It was nuts. Your mother slept in her office at Alden because the radio said not to even try to drive into Tanglewood. I thought maybe you were laying low at a friend’s house, but when you didn’t call …”

  “We were killing the fungus,” said Brian.

  “What?” Dad shook his head in confusion.

  “Did you notice the mushrooms are all dead?” I asked him.

  “The TV news said it was the frost,” he said.

  Did it get cold enough for a frost? I was working too hard to notice, but I should have noticed. I would have seen my breath, felt my own sweat get icy on my skin. I didn’t remember seeing a coat of white on the lawn when we came home, either.

  “It wasn’t frost,” said Brian.

  “I’m just telling you what they said on TV,” said Dad.

  “They’re lying,” I said.

  “The weatherpeople don’t lie,” he said. “I mean, not after the weather. They have instruments.”

  “Forget the frost,” I said. “What did they say about the screaming mushrooms?”

  “Well, it’s like, uh … some people say that they think they heard the mushrooms screaming, but the TV news said—and I think so, too—they said it was feedback from the speakers and that maybe people were wound up a little tight and overreacted.”

  “I saw the mushrooms scream,” I told him. “I mean, I heard them. But I also saw them.” Brian nodded.

  “Yeah, well. You had a bad knock in the head not so long ago,” said Dad. “I’m starting to worry about both of you guys.”

  I said a bad word, right in front of him, and stormed up the stairs, Brian stomping up after me.

  Tanglewood was on the national news that night. They showed downtown—store windows that had been shattered and boarded up, broken glass and garbage scattered in the street. “A small town in Maine is recovering from a festival gone awry,” the news commentator said grimly. They went to a reporter standing in front of the Keatston Meetinghouse.

  “I’ve heard that the riot occurred during the encore of a band called the Bright Fun Guys, when some deafening feedback from the speakers sent the crowd stampeding down Main Street,” the guy said. He didn’t say one word about the mushrooms, and he got the name of the street wrong.

  The next bit was the mayor, standing in front of the post office, which is the closest thing Tanglewood has to a city hall.

  “You have to remember that we hosted an event with people from all over the state,” she said, “including a number of college students who might have had a bit more to drink than was advisable. We’re a peaceful little town, and I don’t believe anyone from Tanglewood was directly responsible for this escalation of events.”

  Disorderly college kids, that was all they talked about. I could have kicked in the TV.

  It was Halloween, but nobody went trick-or-treating that year. It was like the whole town forgot, or simply had had enough of spooky fun. I also forgot about football on Sunday. When I turned on the news later and saw the scores, it was kind of a jolt. Everywhere else around the country, football and life were going on like it was just another week. The Patriots had their bye week anyway, so I didn’t miss much.

  • • •

  We had more of the same at school on Monday. They scheduled a special morning assembly meant to tell us nothing happened.

  “Well, I hope you all REMEMBER what can happen if a number of people behave IRRESPONSIBLY,” said Ms. Brookings. There was a whole lot of “I told you so” in her voice, even though she hadn’t officially told us so.

  Somebody up front mumbled something about the mushrooms. Usually she rushed to students who had something to say and gave them the mike, like a daytime talk show host, but this time she shook her head.

  “I’m hearing a lot of PREPOSTEROUS and IMPOSSIBLE explanations for what occurred,” she said. “Let’s call these what they are: EXCUSES. There’s no EXCUSE for the terrible BEHAVIOR we witnessed this weekend.”

  “What about the screaming mushrooms?” somebody hollered.

  “I can’t. I can’t,” the counselor said, shaking her head, like it was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. She handed the microphone to the principal, who muttered that we all had to go back to class.

  I started to wonder myself when I was trying to get to sleep that night. What had happened? Was I sure about what I’d seen? Was I even sure about what I’d experienced? I knew we’d been in the woods and dug up the core, and I knew Brian had driven a shovel through it. But had it really fought back? Maybe we were overtired, overworked, and half asleep. Maybe a big hunk of cord sprang out of the ground and looked alive for a second. Maybe I’d gotten knotted up with the cords and imagined the fungus was wrestling with me.

  I could ask Brian, but he had an overactive imagination. I might have trusted Mandy’s memory a little bit better—a very little bit—but I didn’t know how to get ahold of her. I’d spent too much time with both of them—that was the problem.

  I found Allan after the assembly. He was back at school since the mushrooms had disappeared.

  “You heard the screaming, right?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It was just, like, an earsplitting noise. It was coming from everywhere.”

  He was no help at all.

  I woke up before dawn sensing that something was wrong. I pushed the curtains aside on my bedroom window. The mushrooms were back, scattering dime-sized dots of blue-green across the yard.

  I went outside to get a better look. The stems were half the height they’d been at their largest, but the fungal network had already been in place, ready to poke its million gnome-hatted heads out of the ground.

  Either the fungus didn’t really need its core or it could simply grow a new one. Either way, we were doomed.

  Mr. Davis was on his back porch, looking glum.

  “Thought we got rid of these fellas,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  “They got into the house, you know. Probably bring it down. Don’t know if my insurance will cover it if they do.” He stood up, shook his head, and went inside.

  On the other side of our house, Sparky was growling and digging into the yard, scattering a dozen caps. Ms. Fisher peeked from the back door but didn’t come outside.

  “Come on, punkin,” she hollered, but Sparky kept on digging.

  I was with Sparky. We needed to fight back. I just didn’t know what to do anymore.

  “Are the mushrooms going to blow up?” Tony asked in science class.

  “Interesting question.” Ms. Weller was better than Ms. Brookings about letting us ask questions. “Why do you think they would?”

  “Because they’re turning red,” he said. “The whole field is red now.”

  I’d forgotten about the red mushrooms. Did they disappear and come back like the green ones?
Or did they hold their own?

  “I’ve never heard of mushrooms dramatically changing color,” said Ms. Weller. “They might darken when they’re done fruiting, but that’s one way they aren’t like apples.” She was remembering my own comparison of the fungus to an apple tree, but I didn’t think she was trying to make fun of me.

  “Well, I never heard of them screaming before, either,” I said without raising my hand. There was actually a spattering of soft clapping.

  “I’m not convinced we did hear them screaming,” the teacher said. “Now, I admit I wasn’t there. But how many of you can really say where a noise comes from, especially a loud one? Have you ever been mistaken, thinking a sound came from inside that was really outside?”

  Kids looked around at each other. Sure, that happens sometimes.

  “I wonder if anyone has heard of Occam’s razor?” She wrote it on the board. Nobody raised their hand. Randy almost did but took it back.

  “It’s a theory that when you don’t know the answer, the simplest explanation is the most likely to be true,” she said. “It’s not always the right answer, but it’s the best guess. For example, if you’re missing a quarter and discover there’s a hole in your pocket, what do you think happened? Did somebody steal it?”

  “No, you probably lost it,” Randy answered.

  “Exactly,” the teacher said. “That’s the biggest secret in science. A lot of it isn’t about knowing the right answer, just making the best guess.”

  A few kids snickered.

  “Well, the simplest explanation for what happened on Friday night was that some feedback from the speakers spooked the audience and started a stampede. It’s possible the mushrooms were screaming, but that would mean a whole new species of fungus had come along that had powers beyond any fungus we’ve ever seen. It’s a lot to believe, compared to believing that people simply made a mistake, isn’t it? Especially when there was lots of chaos and confusion?”

  I raised my hand this time but didn’t wait for her to call on me. “So what is the simplest explanation for the red mushrooms on the football field, if it isn’t that some of the mushrooms changed color? Because that seems like the simplest explanation to me.”

  From across the room Tony held up his hand in a make-believe high five.

  “The simplest explanation is that the red ones are a different species of mushroom,” the teacher said, extending her hands to me like she was handing me a big ball of obviousness.

  If she was right, the red mushrooms were in a real battle for control of the football field, from end zone to end zone, sideline to sideline. The old ones were yellowish white in the daytime, but the red ones were still orangey and bright, their pointed tops looking like tongues of flame, higher and brighter than the yellow ones. The whole field looked like a lake of toasting marshmallows. If people were scared of the green ones, the red ones would really put them into a panic. It would look like a flood of fire pouring into town. That’s what the picture in the museum showed, too—red and blue mushrooms mingling, the townspeople screaming and waving their arms.

  I felt like there was something there I wasn’t seeing. It had something to do with the football field turning red and Max Bailey’s story and what my science teacher said about the razor rule. The truth was like the fungus itself, the caps appearing aboveground like separate things, but they were all connected underground and I couldn’t see how. I needed to find the dead center of the problem and dig it up, but I didn’t know where the center was.

  Dad was packing already. Boxing up his books and carrying them up the basement stairs, because this time the move was permanent.

  “Just trying to get some of this stuff taken care of now,” he said, dropping a box in the hallway.

  “Don’t forget your Max Bailey book,” I told him. “I think it’s still in the living room.”

  “Did you finish it?”

  “Nope.” I’d actually only read one Max Bailey story, and that one wasn’t even in the book.

  “Go ahead and finish it. You can pack it with your things. You’re coming with me, remember? You might want to get a head start on stuff too, you know.” He tousled my hair and went back downstairs.

  Oh, yeah. I didn’t think we were moving right away. For some reason I thought we’d wait until after the school year, even though nobody said so. But Dad was going to move back to Boston, and Bri and I were going to join him as soon as he found a place.

  Allan came down the stairs, looking a little thoughtful. He was wearing a dust mask dangling around his neck.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I’m moving,” he said. “I was just saying goodbye to Brian.”

  “He must be bummed,” I said. “I am too.” I meant it. “When do you leave?”

  “Tomorrow morning. I’m going to spend the rest of the school year in Portland living with my grandma.”

  “Wow.”

  “Allergies,” he reminded me. “The mushrooms are worse than ever.”

  “I know. That’s a drag. Hey, if you’re back this summer, let’s play HORSE.”

  “You’re moving too,” he reminded me. I’d forgotten for a second, and remembering made me feel a little lurch in my stomach.

  I noticed he had the Celtics keychain I’d seen in Brian’s drawer.

  “Going-away present?”

  “It’s mine,” he said. “I lost it in the trough and Brian kept forgetting to give it back to me.”

  “The what?”

  “I just mean I lost it and Brian found it.”

  “You lost your keys in the trough? You mean Cassie’s trough? How did that happen?”

  “It was nothing,” he said. He started for the door and turned back. “I’m really sorry about what happened to Cassie, and so is Brian.”

  “Huh? What happened to Cassie?”

  “You know.” He hung his head and told me.

  Brian was in his room, watching his hedgehogs nibble at wheat-colored nuggets.

  “No bugs?”

  “Sometimes they eat hedgehog food,” he said.

  I watched one of them pick up a pellet with its weird little hands and chisel it down with its pointy teeth. It was kind of cool to watch when it wasn’t a bug.

  “They remind me of Cassie,” I said.

  “There’s a reason they’re called hedgehogs,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah.” I waited a bit, not sure how to edge into this topic. “So are you going to miss Allan?”

  He shrugged slowly, but there was a lot of sadness in it.

  “He just told me you guys were there the night I fought with Randy.”

  “What?” He looked up at me in what I took to be completely fake astonishment. “He said that?”

  “He said you told Tom to do it.”

  “Allan’s a rat fink,” he muttered.

  “I think you’re the rat,” I said. “You didn’t stand up for Allan. He said he tried to stop them when Cassie got upset, and they threw him in the trough.”

  “They were just kidding around. He didn’t get hurt.”

  “Brian …” I didn’t think he was the kind of kid who’d just stand there while a friend was bullied. “You should have stood up for him,” I said again.

  “It wasn’t like I could stop them,” he added. His voice cracked and he started crying. “I told Allan I was sorry. I was scared. They were bigger than me and there were more of them.”

  I understood that part, but not what led up to it.

  “Why would you put yourself into that mess, Bri? You like Cassie.”

  “I know.” He sniffed and reached into the terrarium for one of the hedgies. “You can do something to Digger if you want.” He held the hedgehog out to me.

  “Brian, that’s the last thing I want to do.” I laughed at Digger’s stunned expression, like she knew she’d been offered up in sacrifice.

  “I didn’t think it would turn out like that,” he said, putting Digger back in the terrarium. “It was supposed to be a joke.” />
  “Not after they dumped Allan in the trough. Not after Cassie started freaking out.”

  “Okay. Maybe I thought you would start a fight and they would beat you up.”

  “You wanted guys to beat me up?”

  “Not bad. Just a little.”

  “Brian—” I was about to ask why, but I didn’t. I had enough pictures in my head: the make-believe piledriver, pinning him on the bed, shoving him all the time, and ordering him around. I’d put him headfirst into the laundry basket, tossed him on the couch from across the room, and a hundred other things. I’d never actually hurt him, but thinking back on it all made me want to beat myself up a little.

  “I’m sorry, buddy.”

  “You always say that.”

  “What if I let you punch me right now?” I asked. “You can hit me as hard as you can? Just not in the face or the crotch?”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Seriously. I have it coming. You can just haul off and sock me once. I won’t fight back. I deserve it.”

  “I don’t want to right now,” he said. “Can I wait until the next time I’m really mad at you?”

  “Okay,” I agreed, but maybe that was a bad idea. I’d seen the steely-eyed way Brian drove that shovel into the fungal core. I’d better not get on his bad side ever again.

  We went to see Howard on Saturday. I still had the manuscript, and I was hoping Mandy had left behind a way to contact her. Brian insisted on coming with me. We pedaled out on the highway. The woods were too overtaken with mushrooms.

  We knew Howard was home because the quad was parked in the backyard, but we had to bang on the back door for a long time before she answered.

  “Oh, it’s you two.” She opened the door so we could come in. “I thought maybe the police were back. They called me everything from a kidnapper to an accomplice.”

  “Did you get arrested?” Brian asked. “Eric got arrested a while ago!”

  “Bah, I just kept asking if they’d seen Missy Speckle Nose, and if they did see her, could they bring her home.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Missy was a cat I had about twenty-five years ago. She was a real sweetheart. But nothing scares a man like a daffy old lady talking about her cats. They cleared out of here quicker than if I’d set the place on fire. How’s Mandy?”