The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 4

by Roy MacGregor

  The wind rattled the new leaves overhead, almost as if it were trying to get his attention. Travis wished Nish was with him, but he knew he couldn’t go back. Besides, Nish wouldn’t be there anyway. He would have headed down McGee Street and cut back across King to get home.

  Travis also knew that after a horror movie Nish would stay as far away as possible from the cemetery that ran along River up from Cedar Street. No way would Nish walk past a graveyard after watching The Blood Children.

  Travis, on the other hand, had no choice. He had to walk past the cemetery to get onto Cedar and home.

  He shoved his fists deeper in his jacket pockets. He wished he could wrap his right hand around a big, weighty stone. When he was younger and afraid of large dogs, he would often secretly carry a rock in his jacket pocket, though he’d never actually had to throw one. Its heft had given him an odd comfort.

  What good a rock might be against ghouls and zombies, he didn’t know. No rock at all to weigh him down might be a better idea. He could run faster then. He wondered if he should be running.

  The wind was picking up, moaning now in the high tree-tops. Up ahead, shadows flickered. A cat yowled behind one of the houses.

  In another few steps Travis would be beside the Tamarack Cemetery. He swallowed hard. His throat felt dry and his tongue swollen – strange, since he, unlike Nish, had just finished drinking a huge pop. He wondered if he could scream, if he had to scream. He could feel his heart pounding as if Muck had just put the Owls through a hard series of stops and starts.

  Someone was crying!

  It was impossible to tell exactly where the sound was coming from. It was so faint, barely audible above the rustle of the leaves. For a moment Travis thought it must be the cat, or the wind through a different type of tree – but then he heard a quick choke and the sharp intake of breath.

  He stopped, afraid to make a sound.

  He forced himself to turn to his right and look into the cemetery. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. There were no streetlights here and no lighting from the graveyard. The cemetery was bordered with dense lilacs, some still in bloom, and their sickly sweet smell was thick in the night air. The smell of a funeral parlour.

  Something was moving! He couldn’t be sure what. He thought he glimpsed a light bouncing through the branches.

  Travis felt frozen. If he ran, he would only draw attention to himself. If he stayed, his wildly pounding heart might burst. He forced himself to think: he could either bolt for the other side of the street and then double back when he came to Cedar, or he could move silently along the cemetery fence until he came to the gate, and a break in the trees, where he could see in.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He let it out and took a second, and held it.

  He began moving, each step as cautious as if he were walking along the ridge of a high roof.

  Again, the wet choking sound of someone crying!

  Travis was almost to the gate. The light was moving rapidly now, seemingly dancing on the end of a string as it moved through the branches.

  He was at the gate, free of the branches and leaves of the lilac.

  The light suddenly snapped off.

  It was dark again, pitch-black.

  It’s nothing, Travis told himself. Nothing at all. He let go the deep breath he’d been holding and gulped fresh air.

  Of course it had been nothing. It had to have been nothing. Just the sound of the wind and a flash of the moon through the branches. Or distant car lights, maybe. Or that “swamp gas” Mr. Dillinger had told them about, which people mistook for UFOs. Or just a reflection. Nothing really. Nothing at all.

  Travis turned to walk away, and felt every drop of blood and every ounce of oxygen leave his body.

  A boy was standing by the gate.

  A boy, about twelve years old.

  As pale as the sliver of the new moon just now cutting through the clouds.

  Weeping.

  Travis stared, his mouth open, unable to speak.

  The boy wiped away the tears with the back of a thin, pale hand. He smiled, weakly.

  “Help meee,” the boy said.

  And then he was gone.

  3

  “If you think of the stick as an extension of your arm,” Muck was saying, “you’ll get the knack of it a lot easier.”

  Muck was standing at centre ice in the Tamarack Memorial Arena, only it wouldn’t be quite accurate to refer to it as “centre ice,” because below his feet was concrete. The ice had been taken out weeks before. Nor was Muck in his usual track suit. Instead, he wore a torn T-shirt, worn sneakers with no socks and no laces, and an old pair of sagging white shorts with a green stripe down the sides. The long scar from the operation that had ended his dream of playing NHL hockey was clearly visible to the sixteen kids standing around him, listening.

  “And don’t aim. Think your shots in. If you picture it happening, nine times out of ten it will happen.”

  It sounded like hockey. Five a side; goalies, defence, and forwards; centres and wingers; passing, shooting, and checking; practices, scrimmages, and games. But at this time of year, with Muck Munro standing there, it could never be hockey. Muck had few rules about hockey, and the Screech Owls knew them by heart. Hockey is a game of mistakes. Keep your head up. Speed wins. They call it a game because it’s supposed to be fun. And no summer hockey, not ever – not with Muck Munro coaching.

  Yet here was Muck, at centre “ice,” surrounded by the Screech Owls.

  Several of the Screech Owls players – Nish and Travis included – had asked Muck to reconsider his rule against playing summer hockey. They wanted to spend the summer together as a team. And several of the parents had volunteered to set up car pools to get the team to the few rinks in the area that kept ice going all summer.

  “No,” Muck had replied.

  The Owls had been disappointed, and it showed on their faces.

  “But you can stick together as a team,” he’d added. “And I’ll coach.”

  The Owls now looked confused.

  “But–but,” Fahd began, “you said, ‘No summer hockey.’ ”

  “That’s correct,” Muck said. “Summer is for other games, other skills.”

  “What other skills?” Sarah had asked.

  Muck smiled. “We’ll play lacrosse.”

  Travis had been amazed at how quickly it all came together. Some of the Owls barely knew what lacrosse was, but after Muck told them how, in some places, lacrosse was even more popular than hockey, and how almost every hockey player he’d ever known – himself included – who had tried the game had fallen completely in love with it, they began to change their minds.

  What convinced them was Muck’s point that the skills learned playing lacrosse would pay off later on the ice. Wayne Gretzky was a great promoter of the game, and said it was in playing lacrosse that he learned how to use the area behind the net so brilliantly to set up passing plays. Joe Nieuwendyk, who once won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the MVP of the Stanley Cup playoffs, said his astonishing ability to tip pucks out of the air and into the goal came from playing lacrosse. Bobby Orr loved lacrosse; Adam Oates, the great playmaker, loved lacrosse; and even Nish’s idol – his “cousin” Paul Kariya – had played it while growing up in British Columbia.

  The Owls were sold.

  A few of the Screech Owls had played the game before, but never together as a team. Jesse Highboy, who pointed out the game had been invented by Natives, had an uncle who’d played on a Mann Cup championship team – “Lacrosse’s equivalent of the Stanley Cup,” Jesse had boasted – and Andy Higgins, who had moved to Tamarack from another town, had played two years of atom lacrosse before he turned peewee age.

  In a surprisingly short period, the Screech Owls peewee hockey team, one of the best peewee hockey teams around, became a passable lacrosse team. So much of the winter game translated perfectly to the summer game, and the differences, for the most part, were obvious. Concrete instead of ice.
Sneakers instead of skates. A stick with a pocket for catching and carrying the ball instead of a stick with a curved blade for taking passes and shooting a puck. Yet so many of the passing and checking patterns remained the same. And the idea of both games was exactly the same: put the round object in the other team’s net more often than they can put it in yours.

  “Goaltenders are a big difference,” Muck explained at the Owls’ second practice. “More goals are scored in lacrosse. Lots more goals.”

  “Yes!” shouted Nish, who lived to score goals.

  “And the goalie has no protection,” said Muck. “Once he leaves his crease, he’s fair game.”

  “Yes!” shouted Nish, who was forever picking up penalties for “accidentally” running over goalies.

  “Now, we need a very, very special player for this position,” Muck continued. “We need someone who’s big – someone with a great big butt that’s going to fill our net so there’s no room for anything else to get in.”

  “Yes!” shouted Sarah and Sam, both of them pointing at the only Screech Owl who could possibly fill Muck’s requirements.

  “No way!” Nish shouted. “I’m an ‘out’ player – I don’t do goal!”

  “You’re sure?” Muck asked, both eyebrows arching.

  “I score goals,” Nish protested, his face reddening and twisting. “I don’t stop goals.”

  “Well,” said Muck, “what if I told you that lacrosse goalies can carry the ball all they like.”

  “Who cares?” Nish whined.

  “What if I told you that lacrosse goalies can cross centre, unlike hockey goalies, and that they can even try to score if they have a chance.”

  “Big deal,” Nish groaned.

  “What if I told you that, in lacrosse, the goalie is the glory position?”

  Nish’s big face twisted so tight it seemed to Travis it might soon start dripping water. No one said a word. Nish opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again as if suddenly unsure.

  Muck waited patiently, flicking the new white lacrosse ball up and down in his stick pocket and staring at Nish, a small smile on his face.

  Nish twisted and sputtered and finally gave in.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Nish turned out to be a wonderful goaltender. With his double chest pad on, his big shoulder pads and pants, his flopping shin pads, and his heavy helmet and cage, he seemed two or three times larger than when he was dressed for hockey. He was large, but also quick, and he took so easily to the game that even Muck appeared surprised.

  Travis knew for certain it was Nish deep inside all that padding when, during a scrimmage, Nish blocked a shot and scooped it up in the big, wide goalie stick and headed straight up the floor towards the far net.

  At the far end, Jeremy Weathers was still trying to get used to the thicker, heavier equipment of the lacrosse goaltender. Only little Simon Milliken was back, and Nish used his weight and bulky equipment to run right over him as if he were a pile of earth and Nish a bulldozer. He came in, faked once, and ripped a hard sidearm shot that clicked in off the far post behind Jeremy.

  Anyone else would have turned and trotted back down the floor, but not Nish. He dove into Jeremy’s net, knocking the smaller goaltender aside, and grabbed the still-bouncing India rubber ball. Once he had it, he wiggled back out and, holding the ball over his head as if it were the Stanley Cup, raced around the rink boards, tipping his helmet at an imaginary, cheering crowd.

  Nish had found his natural position.

  4

  Travis loved lacrosse. It took a while to get used to the new equipment – the thick pads over his lower back, the loose gloves – but nearly half of what he wore was from his hockey bag: the same helmet, the same shoulder pads with a plastic extension tied on to give his arms more protection, the same elbow pads, even the same Screech Owls sweater, which he continued to kiss for good luck as he pulled it over his head.

  The stick was another matter. Tamarack Sports had brought in a shipment of Brines – wooden shafts, plastic heads, and nylon braid pockets – and all the Owls had been outfitted with them, each shaft carefully cut to length by Mr. Dillinger. Unlike in hockey, sticks in lacrosse were expected to last several seasons, not a few games.

  Travis’s new stick had a nice weight, but at first it seemed awkward in his hands. He could scoop up the ball so it skipped into the pocket, but as soon as he tried any of the fancy twirls or fakes that Jesse was so good at, the ball would drop or go flying off in the wrong direction.

  But he kept working at it, sometimes alone against the back wall of the house – the steady thumping almost driving his parents crazy – sometimes against the wall of the school gymnasium, and more often than not, now that they were best friends again, out in the street with Nish.

  Nish had shown up the very next morning after The Blood Children: Part VIII, behaving as if nothing at all had happened. The way Nish acted, he and Travis might have been to see the latest Walt Disney with a church group, after which they’d had a pleasant discussion and then walked home to say their prayers before bed. Not a word about the spilled Sprite, or the fight, or the two of them getting banned for life from the Bluebird Theatre by Mr. Dinsmore.

  Travis found he could not say anything about the graveyard. By the time he’d made it home that night, his heart was back in his chest and his brain was refusing to accept what he had seen. Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay had still been up when he arrived home. They had no idea what movie the two boys had gone to see. Travis’s mother had put out chewy chocolate chip cookies for him, and he found a cold root beer in the refrigerator. By the time he had started on his third cookie he’d convinced himself there had been no boy and no light and no one crying and no reason whatsoever to think that anything had happened as he passed by the graveyard. It was all his imagination, triggered by the horror movie, the shadows, and the wind.

  By morning, when his mother tapped on his bedroom door to let him know that Nish was outside, waiting for him, he’d practically forgotten about it.

  They’d tossed the ball around a bit in the yard, then walked up Church Street towards the school, where Nish began to chalk out a net on the brick wall of the gym.

  Travis knew he was starting to get a feel for the game. While Nish worked on the net, Travis fired the ball again and again against the wall, the solid thump … thump … thump so comforting in its steady repetition. He loved the way the India rubber ball smacked against the brick wall, seeming to bounce back faster than it had flown into it, and whispered to a stop in the leather cushion of his stick.

  Whip … smack … hiss …

  Whip … smack … hiss …

  Nish had almost finished drawing his net. It seemed small to Travis. He knew that the net was not as wide in lacrosse as in hockey, but this seemed narrower still, and not nearly as tall as it should be.

  Nish was, of course, giving himself every possible advantage. He stepped back, considering his art.

  “You know what I’ve decided?” Nish asked, not even looking towards Travis.

  Travis caught the ball and held, his rhythm broken, and waited for Nish to continue. “What?” he prodded.

  Nish stared at the wall, almost as if he hadn’t yet decided anything.

  “I don’t think The Blood Children: Part VIII was a very good movie.”

  “How would you know?” Travis asked. “You never even saw it.”

  “I saw enough to know it sucked,” Nish said, as if he was the world’s number-one movie critic.

  “It wasn’t bad,” argued Travis, who still resented not seeing the ending.

  “It wasn’t scary at all,” Nish said.

  Travis said nothing. He couldn’t tell Nish about the boy and the graveyard. Nish would not only laugh at him, he’d tell everybody in town.

  “I could do better than that myself,” Nish continued.

  Travis dropped the ball out of his stick. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m gonna make my own hor
ror flick, that’s what.”

  5

  Travis often wondered where Nish got his ideas. Was there a closet somewhere in the Nishikawa home that held every stupid, ridiculous, impossible thought every twelve-year-old kid had ever dared think?

  No, Travis thought, it wouldn’t be a closet. It would have to be a toilet.

  But what amazed Travis most was Nish’s ability to get other people caught up in his dumb schemes. Even people with common sense, like Data, who’d figured out how to get Nish’s bare butt up on the big Times Square television screen at New Year’s.

  The horror-flick idea proved even more popular than most.

  Fahd, of course, had the camera. Simon and Sarah thought they could write a script. Data could edit the movie on his computer. Everyone – even Travis, he finally had to admit to himself – wanted to play a part in it. Any part at all.

  Nish couldn’t decide whether he wanted to direct or be the star – and finally settled it by saying he would do both.

  “That’s not fair,” Sam had protested.

  “Lots of big stars direct themselves,” Nish had said. “Sylvester Stallone, Clint Eastwood.”

  Fahd and Data, who knew a lot more about movies than Nish did, said the whole idea wasn’t nearly as far-fetched as some of the others thought. Fahd knew about all sorts of cheap productions that had gone on to huge success. “The Blair Witch Project was a horror movie made by a bunch of students,” he told them. “It cost sixty thousand dollars to make and pulled in 140 million – so it’s not impossible.”

  Nish instantly decided that 140 million dollars would be the minimum they would make with their movie. A movie that, at the moment, had one used camera, no script, no plot – not even a title.

  No matter, Nish was already spending his millions. A new bus for the Screech Owls, of course, with complete stereo and video controls at every plush leather seat. Perhaps even a team plane to take them around the world. “I want to play in Australia,” he said, “and in China and in Africa and, for my good buddy, Wilson, in Jamaica.”