by Jon Scieszka
Clang! Bang!
Mrs. Carlson stands up, holding on to the table as she moves toward the door. I can’t tell what’s making the noise, but I have a sinking feeling when I hear some kids shouting. I think I recognize the voices.
“Free Jeremiah Denton!”
When I get outside the front door, I see I’m right. It’s Max and Pedro, and they’re beating on trash can lids with big sticks, and marching up and down in front of Mrs. Carlson’s house. “Free Jeremiah Denton!” Max yells even louder when he sees us.
“Do you know these fellows?” Mrs. Carlson asks, her voice soft. She hisses on the last s of the word fellows. I suddenly imagine a snake, coiled up, ready to strike.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’ll go ask them to stop.”
“You do that. The noise is giving me a headache.”
I can feel Mrs. Carlson’s eyes burning holes into my back. I remind myself she probably can’t see me at all this far away.
“What the heck are you two doing?” I whisper. “You’re gonna get me in trouble!”
“That’s her?” Pedro asks. Max is still banging on his trash can lid, like he’s trying out for a band.
“Yes, and I have to go.” I risk a glance behind me and see she’s standing still, her head tilted to one side like she’s listening.
“Whatever,” Pedro says. He pitches his voice a little louder and waves for Max to stop banging. “Excuse me, ma’am? We’re here for the liberation of Jeremiah Denton. Can he come to our house for a little while? It’s really important.”
Mrs. Carlson doesn’t even shake her head. She just stares, through those dark glasses, and her lips get a little bit tighter. She looks as angry as I’ve ever seen her. “Leave. Now.”
Max starts beating his lid again. “Let him go! Let him go! Let him go!”
Pedro joins in. “Let him go! Let him go!”
“Guys, stop!” I say. “You’re going to get . . .” I almost say hurt but stop myself. “In trouble,” I finish.
“Come on,” Pedro says, “We’ll wear her down.” He yells for a few more seconds, then laughs. “See? She’s gone back inside! That must mean she’s given up. Let’s go watch the race!”
“No.” I look behind me. Mrs. Carlson is gone, but it feels like she’s still watching. Listening. “I can’t. I told you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I head for the door, and the guys yell insults at my back, and keep banging. Mrs. Carlson, at the kitchen table, is rubbing her temples.
“Fetch me that box,” she says, one wrinkly hand waving toward a red shoebox on the top of a dusty stack of newspapers. My stomach feels just like it did in fourth grade when the biggest kid in school punched me in the gut because I wouldn’t give up my place in the lunch line.
“Maybe we should just keep reading Great Expectations.” My voice is weird, shaky. “I think it’s really helping my reading get better. And it’s a great story.”
“The box,” she repeats, and I feel like her covered eyes have lasers in them, mind-control lasers. I hand her the red box without meaning to. She fumbles around in it, like she really is blind, but I’m starting to have my doubts. I mean, don’t blind people use canes? I’m not here all the time, but I’ve never seen her use a cane. She must be able to get around . . . must be able to see well enough. I don’t care what my mom says, Mrs. Carlson doesn’t need me. She needs something, though. An image of a straitjacket flashes in my mind.
Her lips get super tight, like she knows what I’m thinking. “Hand me some paper now,” she orders. “And a pen.”
I find myself standing, carrying paper and pen from the table next to the phone and placing it in her hand.
“Thank you.” Her voice is even, calm, everything I’m not feeling inside. “Now, I want you to read this first.” She pushes a small booklet across the table. It’s not like the other things she’s asked me to read. It looks like one of those books you get from the doctor’s office. The kind of thing I expect to find in an old lady’s house.
I read loud enough to drown out the continued drumming from outside.
“The loss of thirty decibels or more of hearing ability per day is called sudden hearing loss. In most cases, sudden hearing loss affects one ear, although some sufferers experience rapid hearing loss in both ears. The cause can only be found in approximately fifteen percent of cases, and can be irremediable.”
I trip over the last word. “What does that mean?” I ask, my voice breathy and small.
“Unfixable,” Mrs. Carlson says, and smiles. I scoot back a little in my chair. There’s nothing in that booklet worth smiling about. “Now, let’s finish this little task.”
Task? What task does she mean? And then, I know. I’ve always known. She has been doing something—using me to do something. Using me to hurt those other kids. It seems crazy, but it feels like I’m right.
But if I’m right about what has been happening, and I’m not nuts . . . what if she’s not just an old lady, but something else, something evil?
The banging and chanting continues outside. What if, this time, it’s Max and Pedro she’s after?
I feel her cold hand on my shoulder. “Read it again, and try harder to pronounce the words correctly.” Her nails feel like knives against the side of my neck as I read, slowly, stumbling. I mess up five more times, trying to give Max and Pedro time to stop, to go home.
Mrs. Carlson’s nails press deeper into the side of my neck when I mess up again, this time on the word decibels. “You should try harder, Jeremiah. I don’t want to involve your mother in this.”
A chill goes through me. “You mean, you don’t want to have to call my mom? About my reading.”
“No,” she says. “That’s not what I mean.”
I feel a lump of terror rise up in my throat. I read the passage correctly the next time.
She hands me another scrap of paper, with only one sentence on it. “Few love to hear the sins they love to act,” I read slowly. I’d heard that before. “Shakespeare?”
“Yes,” she murmurs, thrusting a sheet of paper in my hand, the one she wrote. I don’t look down at it.
“They didn’t mean it!” The words rush out of me in a flood. I have to say something before it’s too late. “They didn’t mean to disturb you. They’re my friends. I promise, I’ll get them to quit, I’ll—”
“Enough!” Mrs. Carlson says, the word dropping like a thunderclap into the sudden silence of the room. I stop talking, stop breathing. The air in the room goes cold, like a freezer door has just swung open.
“This is a reading lesson,” she says finally. “Read.”
My lips part without me trying, and I hear myself read her poem.
“Deaf as a beetle, deaf as a post
deaf as an adder, deaf as a ghost
resound, reverberate, rumble, roar
tinnitus profundus will vex evermore.”
I’m going to be sick. I have to go warn my friends. I have to leave. “My stomach,” I say, pulling away. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”
“Down the hall,” she says. “Sharp pains again?”
“Yes, really sharp. I’ve gotta go home.”
She follows me to the front door, faster than any woman who is supposed to be blind should be able to move. “Come back tomorrow,” she calls after me, “and I’ll make you a special batch of cookies to help with that stomachache. We’re not done with our lessons.”
Yes we are, I think, racing for my front door. I don’t think I’m going to read anything, ever again. I fumble for my key, and slam the door shut behind me.
I get online and look up the word tinnitus. A ringing in the ears? That doesn’t sound too bad.
But the next day, I’m in the cafeteria when Max and Pedro get to school. Max keeps shaking his head, hard, like he’s trying to shake something loose.
“What’s up, Max?” He shrugs and sits next to me. Pedro joins him, holding his head like he has a headache.
“It’s probab
ly good you didn’t come over last night. I think I’m getting sick,” Pedro says. “My ears are ringing.”
I go cold all over.
“Me too,” Max says, rubbing his temples. “It keeps getting louder. My mom says she’ll take me to the doctor if it gets worse.”
It’s happening. I have to tell someone what I suspect about Mrs. Carlson. Even if they don’t believe me. I have to try.
“Guys . . . ,” I start, but then the morning bell for classes goes off. And goes on, longer and longer, louder and louder. Everyone in the cafeteria starts shouting. “What’s happening? There’s a malfunction!” People are covering their ears, and I am, too—until I notice Max has fallen to the floor and is rolling there, holding the sides of his head, crying. Pedro falls down a few seconds later, and I see something seeping through his hair and between his fingers. Blood?
I grab their arms and race them to the school nurse, away from the cafeteria speaker. I sit with them while they cry, while their parents are called. “You can go back to your first period class,” the nurse says, patting me on the shoulder. “They’ll be all right,” she adds, but she doesn’t look certain.
“What happened?”
The nurse frowns. “I’m not sure. From what I could see, their eardrums burst. But it’s very unusual for that to happen so quickly, and all four—” She breaks off. “Go back to class, Jeremiah.”
I am sick now, sick with guilt. I did this. Or, I helped Mrs. Carlson do . . . whatever she did.
I can’t go back.
That day, I stay in my room. I don’t answer the phone, even though it rings over and over. I don’t answer the doorbell. I don’t even turn on a light, in case Mrs. Carlson is watching.
But that means when Mom gets back from work, she doesn’t know I’m home either. Too late to stop her, I watch from my window as she goes down the street to Mrs. Carlson’s house, looking for me.
Ten minutes later, Mom is at my door, a frown on her face. “What’s wrong?”
I can’t tell her. But I start crying, begging Mom not to make me go back. When she asks why, I just say, “I can’t. I can’t do it anymore.”
To my surprise, Mom sighs and nods. “I think you might be getting sick. I haven’t seen you so upset since you were a toddler with the flu. It’s probably best not to expose Mrs. Carlson to germs anyway. Old people have fragile immune systems. I’ll explain to her.”
By Friday, Mom says I’m well enough to go back to Mrs. Carlson’s, but for the first time in a week, I’m not worried. I hand Mom my report card.
“What? An A! In English! You have to tell Mrs. Carlson!”
“But . . . I’m done, right? I don’t have to do any more lessons, do I?”
Mom looks disappointed. “Well . . . I guess not. I did say you could stop when you got your grades up. But don’t you think you might, just to keep her company? Maybe not every day . . .”
“No, never again,” I say, managing to keep my voice from shaking. “I’m done.”
Mom frowns. “Well, you have to go over at least once more to say thank you, and show her your report card.”
“Sure, Mom,” I lie. “I’ll go in a little while.”
I’ve never been a very good liar. Mom suspects something. “Go now,” she says, and watches me walk all the way to Mrs. Carlson’s house.
Before I even finish ringing the doorbell, she’s there. Like she’s been waiting, like she knew I was coming. “Ah, Jeremiah,” she says, pushing the screen door open. “Come in. I need you to read something special for me today.”
“No,” I say, stepping back. “I’m done.” I show her my report card.
“Just read one more thing,” she insists. “I’ll give you something special once you do.” She reaches behind her, then thrusts a hand toward me, a hand full of what look like tiny wiggling snakes, or worms. I jump back, away from the disgusting things, and the screen door slaps against her hand. “Ouch!” She cradles her hand to her chest. “You hurt me.”
“I’m s-sorry,” I stammer, realizing what I thought was snakes is just more of her weird licorice. But I could swear it had moved. Her hands must have been shaking. “I’m sorry,” I repeat, running away from her dark glasses, her searching hands, her angry, pinched face.
I can’t sleep at all; I keep hearing her accusing me, “You hurt me.”
The next two weeks, I go straight to Max’s or Pedro’s after school, helping them catch up on their missed homework. They’re both deaf, but the doctors are hoping surgery will help. If not, they might have to go to a different school, one for deaf kids.
Guilt eats at me every day. Bringing them their assignments is the least I can do. I can’t tell them what I think really happened. I sure can’t tell them what part I played in it. I can’t forgive myself, though. I’ll never be able to.
And I still can’t sleep. I dream of Mrs. Carlson at my door, at my window, holding out a bleeding hand full of dark candy, forcing me to read mysterious handwritten poems about myself, about my mom.
But after two months pass, the nightmares fade, and I realize it’s all over. She hasn’t called or come by. And aside from the occasional stomachaches I get, my mom and I are both fine.
I practice my reading every single night for an hour or more anyway, never taking a day off.
Then one day, on my way home from Max’s, I see someone coming out of Mrs. Carlson’s house. A kid, a little younger than me. He’s chewing on something, and stuffing a paper in his pocket. I wait until he gets on his bike and comes down the street before I wave to get his attention.
“Hey, kid! What were you doing in there?”
He parks his bike. “Hanging out with a crazy old lady,” he says. “It’s, like, a part-time job I got.”
“A job doing what?”
“You’d never guess. Reading!”
I peek down at Mrs. Carlson’s front window and see the curtain twitch, like she’s watching. I pull the kid toward me and whisper. “Listen, dude, I don’t know how much she’s paying you, but it’s not worth it. She’s messed up.”
He pulls his arm away. “I know that! I mean, I get twenty bucks for a half an hour’s work. But today, I got the money after, like, three minutes.”
Three minutes? “What did you read?”
Suddenly, a pain travels up from under my ribs, near my stomach. Like a knife is ripping at my guts, slowly tearing through them. Am I sick?
“Three random things,” he says, swinging his leg back over his bike, eager to go. “She dug ’em out of shoeboxes. Well, two of them anyway.”
“Random things? What things?” At that instant, I feel something inside me, something sharp and cold and more painful than anything I’ve ever felt.
“It was sort of gross, you know. But old ladies are gross. They smell weird.” He set his foot on the pedal.
“Just tell me,” I manage to gasp. “What did she have you read?” Who was she after this time? Who was going to end up at the hospital before they went home again? If they ever went home again?
And then, when another knife tears through my gut, I know.
“Dude, are you okay?” The kid reaches out, lays his hand on my shoulder. I almost fall down; it makes the pain double in my stomach. “You look really sick. Are you gonna hurl?”
“No,” I say, trying to speak normally. “I just—tell me, okay? Please.”
“Well, first she had me read a candy wrapper.”
“What candy wrapper?”
“It was the ingredients on some licorice she’d just given to me.”
The pains in my stomach get more intense . . . and suddenly it feels like it’s . . . moving. Up my esophagus, out through the walls of my stomach, down to my intestines.
“What else,” I pant, leaning down, trying to catch my breath.
“Something about industrial-grade steel,” he says. He’s on his bike now, riding around me, and I can’t make out all the words, but I think I hear, “Like, how to make it? It was really confusing. There were s
ome tricky words in that part for sure.”
“And then what?” I gasp, but I think I know. In fact, I’m almost sure what she wrote. Because I look down at my stomach and I can see—
“It was a poem!” His words interrupt my thoughts, the horror of what I realize is happening. “A really short one. I have it here.”
He pulls the paper out of his pocket with one hand. “Thankless bite, silver bright, flesh to steel, now reveal. Weird, right? She said it was a poem she wrote for some kid who took her candy and slammed the door on her. Crazy old lady, like I said.”
He rides off then, trailing the smell of licorice. I keep my feet until he turns the corner, and then I fall to the ground. All I can feel is pain, sharp pain, like I have a stomach full of glass.
No, not glass. I look down and see a tiny glint in the sunlight. One pinprick of bright metal, flashing silver and red. I pull on it, pull it out of my skin, out of my stomach, feeling the hundreds of other spots where the skin is beginning to bulge and pucker.
In my hand I hold a needle.
THE BLUE-BEARDED BIRD-MAN
BY ADAM GIDWITZ
Once upon a ti—
I’ll stop. You don’t even want me to finish that sentence. Now you think I’m going to tell you a fairy tale. You did not pick up this book in order to read a fairy tale. You picked up this book to read a story that would scare you; that would freak you out; that would give you nightmares; a story so scary you’d pee in your pants. That’s the kind of story you’re looking for. Right?
Well, you’re in luck. I’m going to tell you the scariest, bloodiest, most messed-up story I have ever heard. It will probably make you pee in your pants.
It also happens to be a fairy tale.
So go get an extra pair of pants. You’re gonna need them.
Once upon a time, deep in a great, wild wood, there lived three brothers and three sisters.
The three brothers were all fine hunters, while the three sisters were all very beautiful—all except the youngest sister, who was rather plain. Still, she was the bravest and cleverest of them all. Her name was Marleen, but because she was the littlest, they called her Marleenken, which means “little Marlene.”