by Neil Smith
How many days will Johnny remain cross with me?
After I eat my sandwich, dried apricots, and wheat crackers, I make a display of picking up litter in the park and dropping it in a trash bin. In reality, I am looking for a portal. I even move the bin aside to see if a portal is hidden beneath. I find nothing.
The afternoon is spent on a wild-goose chase in search of Sandy Goldberg. Using her zip code, we track her down to her assigned dorm, where her roommate tells us she is taking a still-life painting class at the Charlie Gordon School, but at the school, the teacher tells us she dropped the class in favor of a badminton workshop at the Marcy Lewis Gymnasium. At the Marcy, a gym teacher tells us Sandy excels at the vertical jump smash and was sent on tour with the local badminton team. She will be back later in the week.
During all these travels, my bicycle chain falls off twice. Now I really miss Johnny, because he is an expert with bicycles, whereas I end up with grease smeared over my hands and T-shirt.
That night in my room at the dorm, I try to do a drawing of my friend, a wanted alive poster, to show to the portal seekers attending tonight’s haunting. I am no portraitist, so my sketches in my notebook look amateurish. They look like any brown-haired boy. They could even be Gunboy.
It is frustrating that the image I see in my head is not recreated on the page. I crumple up drawing after drawing and then go into the hallway to pitch them all down the garbage chute.
It is now a quarter after midnight. In two hours, I leave for the haunting, and I will not sleep tonight. No matter. I have done without sleep countless times in my life, and I will make do this time as well. Yet when I lie on my bed and look up at the twirling ceiling fan, I feel a kick of anxiety in my stomach. Though I do not believe that Zig is watching over me, I find myself repeating Thelma’s words: “Zig give me strength.”
In heaven, we need to look for magic in the little things. Flashlights, for instance. Townies might not be awestruck when they click on a flashlight and a light beam appears before them, but when they unscrew the end of the magical metal tube and discover it contains no batteries, awestruck is how they might react.
Yes, believe it or not, our flashlights work fine without an apparent energy source. But the light comes from somewhere, does it not? What is the energy source? Maybe invisible particles float in the air to power our flashlights, desk lamps, and streetlights. One day I will turn my attention to such conundrums.
In the meantime, I have a confession: just as Esther pinched a snow globe, I stole the flashlight I hold in my hands. It comes from a do-good station at the dorm. I hope you are not disappointed in me, Mother and Father, but these are desperate times. I could have signed out a flashlight with help from Thelma, but I did not want to alert her to my antics this evening. She would have disapproved. After all, non-do-gooders are prohibited from wandering around after midnight unless there is an emergency.
I am venturing out after curfew, when the streetlamps are dark and Town seems ominous and sinister in the shadows of the night. Not that the night is itself ominous and sinister. I will not run into ghosts (or I will run only into ghosts, depending on how you view us townies, ha-ha). I have never been afraid of the dark. As you know, even as a youngster, I did not need a night-light in my room. I never lay in bed petrified by a saber-toothed tiger ready to spring from my closet. I never woke in the night screaming my head off.
While I stroll down the streets with my flashlight, I wonder if Johnny will show up for this rendezvous of portal seekers. I have good news for him: our discovery of Sandy Goldberg from Schaumburg (whom Esther has taken to calling “the nutter”). Once we track down Sandy, she might be able to provide clues about Gunboy and his real identity.
If I spot another flashlight in the distance, I will click off my own light in case the person is a night monitor checking the passes that townies out after curfew are required to carry. I see no other flashlights around, however. Nighttime here is pitchblack, especially when thick clouds cloak the moon. It is also dead quiet (ha-ha). There are no screeching ambulances, passing trains, or beeping cars. Sadly, there are no chirping crickets either. The only sound comes from rustling leaves whenever a breeze picks up.
When I draw near Buttercup Park, I check my glow-in-the-dark Casper the Friendly Ghost wristwatch (a gift from Esther). It is ten to three. A light clicks on and off in the playground, so I turn off my flashlight and make a beeline toward the light. As I cross the soccer field, I see that the light comes from atop the cubic jungle gym. Somebody is perched up there and acting as a beacon. It appears to be a boy, though not Benny. Benny is short, and this boy seems to be tall. His arm with the flashlight is stretched overhead as though he is imitating the Statue of Liberty.
I stop a few yards away. “Hello there,” I call.
“Zip it!” the boy barks.
I lower my voice. “Is Benny Baggarly around? He invited me to a haunting.”
“Just get in your f*cking cage, dog.”
A second figure climbs out from the jungle gym and moves toward me. As the beacon turns on, I see this second boy is Benny. “Come sit with me,” he whispers, patting my shoulder. “But no talking.” He holds a finger to his lips.
I follow Benny through the bars of the jungle gym, an awkward crawl in the flickering light. Once I am within the structure, I glance around. There are others here. I can hear them breathe and see them fleetingly when the beacon turns on. They sit in a cluster on the bottom bars. Everyone is too close for comfort. I want to ask the others if they have seen Johnny, but talking is forbidden. Minutes go by in silence. To kill time, I scan the park, but no other flashlights are approaching.
The boy standing over our heads—he must be the group leader, the head honcho of haunting—finally climbs down through the bars and perches in the very middle of the cube.
“Roll call,” the boy announces. “Remember we use pseudonyms here. No real names.” He passes around his flashlight, which slaps from hand to hand. Each haunter states his alias and then holds the flashlight beneath his chin, clicking it on for a second to show his face.
“Ace.”
“Doug.”
“Shelly.”
“Funk.”
“Jack Sprat.”
“Crystal.”
Benny says, “Ratface,” and a few people giggle. The group leader hisses, “Silence!”
Lit from underneath, we all look ghostly, and so when it is my turn, I give my real alias: “Boo.”
I hand the flashlight up to the leader. He says his pseudonym, “Czar,” and then he also clicks the light on and shines it toward himself. In the split second before the light turns off, I glimpse a sour-faced boy with crooked features, big ears, and messy brown hair.
The dead-or-alive poster come to life.
Gunboy! Gunboy in the flesh! A pain pierces my chest. Gunboy so close I could reach over and touch him.
I recall my promise to Johnny to be strong, but I am as petrified as a child with a saber-toothed tiger growling in his closet.
In the pitch-blackness, I hear Benny Baggarly whisper, “May I go first, Czar?”
“I told you assh*les to shut the f*ck up. You don’t speak unless spoken to. Understood?”
Nobody speaks.
“Understood?”
“Yes, Czar,” half a dozen voices whisper back.
I do not answer. I am speechless. My heart is thumping its irregular beat, but at least the sharp pain is abating. In my head, I chant, Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine.
Did Gunboy recognize me when I shone the light in my face? Maybe I was not visible long enough. Or maybe he did not get a good look at me back at Helen Keller.
“Most of you know the drill,” Gunboy says. His voice is raspy, as though he, like Johnny, yells in his sleep. “I’ll take you onto the baseball diamond one at a time and portal you back home. While you wait your turn, I don’t want to hear one peep out of you. If I do, I’m canceling this haunting,
you f*ckers capisce?”
“Yes, Czar.”
Neon, sodium, magnesium, aluminum, silicon.
There is a shuffling movement in our little circle as Gunboy pushes through the haunters and climbs through the bars of the jungle gym. Now he is standing outside, and the rest of us remain in our cage. “Jack Sprat, you’re up first,” he says. He turns on his flashlight and aims it at the ground as a boy near me wiggles out of the jungle gym. Gunboy and Jack Sprat head onto the baseball diamond, and I follow the light with my eyes, expecting any moment to hear Jack Sprat’s bloodcurdling scream.
To Benny, I say, “What’s going on? What will he do to Jack Sprat?”
Benny’s hand clamps over my mouth. “Shush! Czar will have a conniption!”
I push his hand off. “I need to know. It’s life or death!”
Somebody else whacks me in the head.
“Shut up, spaz,” whispers the girl nicknamed Crystal.
I crawl through the bars of the jungle gym as someone pulls on the tail of my T-shirt, but I kick back and the person lets go. I must get away. I do not have Gunboy’s real name, but perhaps with the little information I do have, Thelma can track the boy down. I am ready to hurry back to our dorm to wake the girls when I see a beam of light flitting across the baseball diamond. Gunboy is coming back! Damnation! For a moment I am frozen in place, but I shake off my fear and put up my dukes. If he shines his light on me and launches an attack, I will fight him off. The light beam draws ever closer. My nerves steel. My heart booms. My blood races.
Just before the light falls on me, a voice calls out, “Are portal seekers meeting here tonight? I’m a little late.”
That voice is instantly familiar.
“Johnny Henzel?”
The cone of light sweeps across me. I put down my dukes.
“What the hell you doing here, Boo?”
Behind me, the portal seekers hiss, “Shush!”
I have not seen my roommate in a day and a half, but it seems longer. “Looking for you, Johnny,” I reply. “I was out looking for you.”
“Zip your mouths,” Crystal calls out.
“What’s her frigging problem?” Johnny says.
From out in the field comes a roar of frustration. Then this: “Can’t you follow one simple order, you c*cksucking, motherf*cking retards?!”
In the baseball diamond, a circle of light is growing larger and more menacing. Our killer is racing toward us.
“Dang it all to hell!” says Benny Baggarly.
“I’ll never get to Tampa now,” Crystal whines.
Our killer screams, “Imbeciles! Morons!”
Johnny says, “What the f*ck’s going on?”
“Gunboy,” I sputter.
“Huh?” Johnny says, shining his light in my eyes.
Two galaxies colliding. That is what I expect as Johnny swings his cone of light from me to the boy rushing toward us across the playground.
For a moment, nobody speaks. The portal seekers must be trembling in their cage. In the dim light, Johnny appears stunned. His mouth drops open. He takes a step back.
Gunboy comes to a stop a few feet from Johnny. The boy looks feral, furious. His eyes glow red. His hair stands on end. “I’ll murder you f*ckers,” he snarls.
“Have mercy on me, Czar,” Crystal from Tampa says. “I’m an innocent bystander.”
“Did I tell you to speak?” Gunboy says. In the instant it takes for our killer to turn toward Crystal in the jungle gym, Johnny steps forward and raises his magical flashlight high. Then he smashes it against the boy’s head.
A sharp, sickening crack.
Gunboy goes down in a heap. His own flashlight rolls across the sand and comes to a stop at my feet, partly lighting the scene of Johnny taking his revenge, screaming like a madman as he bashes his truncheon against the body of an unconscious boy.
In the darkness, the blood looks black.
We race through the night, Johnny and I, the beams of our flashlights crisscrossing, the panting of our breath overlapping, the thumping of our feet synchronizing.
We are speed demons, frantic, scared, and trying to outrun a terrible act I fear may cost us our afterlives.
Czar’s real name is Charles Lindblom. Does the name not sound innocent? Like the name of an upright bank manager or a gallant aviation hero making a transatlantic flight. When I shared this thought with Johnny, he said that to him the name Charles Lindblom sounded no more innocent than the name Charles Manson.
I am visiting Czar at the Sal Paradise Infirmary. I come in disguise, if a baseball cap can be considered a disguise. Johnny and I found it in our hideout. We have been holed up in an unused janitor’s office in the basement of the Marcy Lewis Gymnasium next to the West Wall in Five. All day long, we hear the bouncing of basketballs overhead. The sound would drive us crazy, Johnny half-joked, were we not already so.
Another item found in our hideout is a Hardy Boys novel, in fact The Flickering Torch Mystery. I am pretending to read the book during my visit. The title is oddly fitting. After all, a kind of torch—a flashlight—led to Czar’s stay at the Sal.
The patients here are all recovering in the same room, a long hall with cubicles separated by curtains that can be drawn for privacy. From what I have overheard, seven patients were injured in bicycle accidents and one patient, a cafeteria worker, suffered burns from an overturned pot of linguini.
Though I am telling you I am visiting Czar, Mother and Father, I am actually seated beside the bed of a girl named Nilaya Singh. I am pretending to be a friend. When a real friend of hers dropped by yesterday and asked who I was, I lied that I was one of Nilaya’s skating pals. Nilaya is the girl who was skating on a rooftop, lost control of her board, and sailed off the roof. She is in a coma and not expected to wake for another week.
This is my third visit to Nilaya’s bedside. Each time, I stay for about twenty minutes. Today I brought her a bouquet of wildflowers I picked outside our gymnasium hideout. Her face is puffy and bruised, and her dark hair is bound atop her head. Her arms are covered in scratches from the branches of the bushes she fell into. I sit watching her and jotting down her healing times on the bookmark inside my Hardy Boys mystery. I wish I were in fact her skating pal and had no ulterior motive. Instead, my ulterior motive lies in the next bed: Charles Lindblom. He is also in a coma, as Johnny was back in Illinois. “An eye for an eye,” Johnny said about that.
Two security guards sit on either side of Czar’s bed to protect him in case the person or persons who beat the patient to a pulp return to finish the job (say, smother him with a pillow).
The boy lying there is no longer recognizable from Johnny’s dead-or-alive poster. His face is so battered he looks more dead than alive. His skull is fractured, his cheekbones are shattered, and his eyes are bandit-ringed with the infinity symbol. His swollen lips puff out grotesquely.
Do you wonder how a simple flashlight did such harm—especially one without batteries? Rocks. Johnny filled the empty body of his flashlight with rocks. He had a hunch he would need a weapon on the night of the haunting.
Johnny insists I visit the infirmary daily to check if Czar has passed. But despite his severe injuries, he will not. The boy is slowly healing. I do not tell Johnny this, however. “Odds are Gunboy will die and disappear,” I lie. That is the outcome Johnny hopes for. Yet each day, the bruising fades and the swelling goes down a little more. Each day, Czar comes closer to waking up.
A nurse named Miss Heidi arrives to wash Czar and change his bandages. She tells the guards to take a break and then tugs the curtains partway around the bed, but I can still steal peeks through a gap. The nurse cleans Czar’s wounds with cotton pads dunked in a basin of warm water that is slowly turning pink. She is a big girl, heavier even than Thelma. She is also a chatterbox. She must suppose that the comatose hear and understand voices around them (just as Johnny heard his sister and parents during his coma).
“I know what you were doing, Chucky boy,” she says, ru
nning a washcloth over his limbs. “You were hypnotizing townies and messing with their heads. You convinced them a pitcher’s mound was a portal they could travel through back to America. Well, I’d lay off those hauntings of yours. No good can come of them, as you learned the hard way.”
One rumor going around is that Czar failed to hypnotize a townie, who grew enraged and clobbered him. A second rumor is that a demented killer is roaming Town. Yesterday I overheard other nurses at the infirmary mention both possibilities.
“Never pretend to be as magical as Zig,” Miss Heidi advises. “His magic ain’t perfect, and if you pretend you’re him, you’re bound to make a heap load of mistakes.”
Miss Heidi balls up her washcloth and scrubs Czar’s armpit. “Don’t you fret,” she says. “You’ll be up and at ’em in no time, old boy.”
Old boy? Why would she call Czar that?
As soon as Miss Heidi leaves with her basin of water, I slip between the curtains and hurry to the end of Czar’s bed. Hung there is a clipboard with a sheet of paper that lists the patient’s particulars. I grab the sheet and scan down it.
Holy moly! Charles Lindlom died on July 11, 1933!
Before heading back to our hideout, I stop by a local school to pick up take-out supper from the cafeteria. I ask the server to fill plastic containers with sweet potato stew and a salad of corn and black beans.
“Portions for two, please,” I say.
I am wearing my baseball cap as well as sunglasses. The server says, “Nice glasses, honey. The style suits you.”
This is true irony. The sunglasses are pink and have rhinestones embedded in their frames. Johnny found the glasses in the janitor’s office, and he insists I wear them outside our hideout so nobody recognizes me. I do not wear them at the infirmary, however, because I fear looking suspicious.
While I am preparing to leave, a do-gooder in a purple armband stands at the cafeteria podium, a bullhorn in one hand and a written announcement in the other. “Your attention, please,” he calls out. “Given recent events, many of you have voiced concerns about being outside after dark.”