A hushed but unmistakable wail echoed down the empty street behind me. It was the same stuttered cry I’d heard on the bike trail.
I ran the rest of the way home.
Chapter 5
By the time I made it upstairs, my breathing had returned to almost normal. I blundered into my bedroom, and papers flew everywhere.
“Hey, come on, spaz!” Steve barked.
“Sorry.” I navigated the minefield of notes scattered around the room and made it successfully to my bed without stepping on a single one of them. Plopping down, I stared out the bedroom window. All was still and silent as the grave. I checked the window and blew out a sigh of relief when I found it locked tight.
“What the heck are you doing?” Steve scowled as he gathered his papers and began organizing them into separate stacks.
My mouth opened, but the words turned sideways and wedged in my throat. I wanted to tell him about White Marsh and the thing lurking in the Colberts’ bushes, but I couldn’t. I knew it would take more than a pile of bones and a warning about a window for my brother to believe me, so I decided to switch subjects. “Just messing around. What about you?”
Steve removed his horn-rimmed glasses and wiped the lenses with a shirt sleeve. Before putting them back on, he shoved his fingers in his hair and ran his hand through it. “Right now I’m cleaning up your mess. What I was doing was putting the final touches on the script for The Jungle of Doctor Dubois.”
Steve’s movies were a big deal in the neighborhood. If Tracy was the Queen of Spindle, Steve was the Spielberg. All of us neighborhood kids wanted to be in his films, and our parents got a giant kick out of watching the finished product. With his Super 8 millimeter camera, my brother made epic adventures, exciting whodunits, and—most recently—a history of the world project for school. Everyone enjoyed the spectacle tied to each cinematic venture, but I got something extra out of every movie. It was an opportunity to hang out with my brother and have some fun, like we did in the old days before he became such a big-headed wanker.
“When do you want to start filming?”
“By the end of the week, when Perry and Paul get back. I’ll need them, you, Brian and Mark Johnson, and maybe one more.”
“How about Kevin?”
“Who’s Kevin?”
“He’s the new kid over on Spiral. He’s pretty cool and has a sweet collection of D and D stuff.”
“You think he’d want to be in the movie?”
“Yeah, I think so. I’ll talk to him tomorrow. What’s this one about anyway?”
“It’s science fiction. A mad doctor experiments on people, turning them into half-men, half-animal monsters.”
“Oh, kind of like The Island of Doctor Moreau.”
Steve frowned. “A little, but mine’s way cooler. The movie takes the hero to the jungles of Africa where the doctor’s compound is located. I was thinking we could set up the backyard to look like a jungle, maybe use the shed as one of the doctor’s laboratories. It’s not perfect, but –”
The thought struck me like a lightning bolt. Without thinking I blurted, “What about the bike trail?”
Steve stopped sorting his papers and looked back at me. “The bike trail?”
I inched my way to the foot of the bed, moving closer to where my brother sat on the floor. “Sure, White Marsh. Think about it. It’s got a lot of big trees, some streams. Heck, it even has vines. It would make the perfect jungle.”
“Hmm. You may actually be on to something. The whole crew could bike up there, and we could do most of the shooting in an hour or two. You know, Chris, you’re actually a little smarter than you look.”
That was the closest thing to a compliment Steve had given me in a long time. “Gee, thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
With seven or eight kids stomping around, I was sure we would all be safe. Having a decent idea of how long it usually took Steve to find the perfect shot and organize, I figured Paul, Kevin, and I would have plenty of time to snoop around. Exactly what we would be looking for was another question entirely.
Leaving Steve to fuss over his screenplay, I flopped back in bed, kicked off my shoes, and opened the Player’s Handbook. After a few minutes of paging through magic user spells, my thoughts drifted back to the bushes. I suppose it could have been someone wearing a costume, maybe one of the neighborhood kids yanking my chain. But still…
“Hey, Steve?”
“What?”
“Ever heard of the Goatman?”
“Of course. Everyone has.”
“Do you believe he’s real?”
“Doubt it. They’ve been telling stories about him for years, but there have been no pictures or evidence to show he exists. I think he’s more or less a myth.”
“Perry says he’s real.”
“Hah! Let me guess. He told you and Paul he was real when you slept over.”
“Maybe. Why? What difference does that make?”
“He was trying to scare you, doofus—you and Paul. I bet it worked too.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“Sure it did. You two suckers probably stayed up all night hugging each other and praying that the big bad Goatman wouldn’t drop by and hack you to pieces. Classic!”
Before I could mount a protest, Steve pointed to the book in my hands and said, “Someone like you probably shouldn’t be reading that stuff.”
“What do you mean, someone like me?”
“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe I mean someone who thinks the closet is alive and staring at him.”
Only a month ago, I swore a pair of bulging eyes was peering out at me from our bedroom closet doors. My scream woke the whole household that night, and it wasn’t until my parents showed me what I was actually seeing was just the reflection of headlights off the porcelain knobs of the closet doors that I finally settled down. The most embarrassing part was even after I knew there was nothing to be afraid of, I couldn’t fall back to sleep. Buried somewhere deep in the back of my brain, I was convinced the knobs were eyes, and as soon as everyone else fell asleep, those huge, unblinking peepers were bound to turn my way. It was a favorite subject of both Steve’s and Perry’s and something I wasn’t going to live down anytime in the near future.
Steve smirked. “What about someone who believes vampires are roaming the streets of Bowie or—my personal favorite—someone who thinks your stomach will blow up if you eat Pop Rocks and drink soda? You, dear brother, are hopeless.”
“Whatever. Mom and Dad say having imagination is a good thing.”
“They say that to your face because they don’t want to hurt your feelings. Keep it up, and one of these days they’ll end up wrapping you in a straitjacket and putting you in a rubber room somewhere.”
What Steve said touched a nerve because there was truth in his words whether he knew it or not. Just a few weeks earlier, I overheard my folks discussing the possibility of sending me to see a shrink. It was hard to make out most of the conversation from the top of the stairs, but words like hyperactive imagination, anxiety, and worrier came up several times. In the end they agreed to wait to see if I grew out of it—whatever it was. To an insecure fifteen-year-old already prone to thoughts of doom and gloom, the implications were terrifying. For the next several weeks, I’d break out into a cold sweat every day I came home from school, convinced that eventually I would return only to be met by a couple of no-neck strangers