Billy Hooten

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  His dad was fighting it; like the action hero in his movie, he was doing battle with the nefarious villain sleep, which was attempting to pull him down into its clutches.

  Billy sat tensed at the edge of the loveseat, waiting for his dad to give in. He was almost tempted to start singing a lullaby to help him along, when at last his father's eyes closed, and within seconds he was snoring.

  Springing up from his seat, Billy did a little dance of excitement, making his way from the room and bounding up the stairs to get ready.

  Tonight was the night.

  Slowly, Billy dressed.

  First it was the jumpsuit. He put it on carefully, not wanting to pop any of the new stitches. Not bad, he thought, moving around a bit. He craned his neck, trying to get a good look at his butt.

  Not bad at all. Eloise would be proud.

  The boots and gloves were next. The ones that the costume came with weren't even close to being his size, so he'd had to improvise, taking a pair of old winter boots from his closet and painting them a dark green. The gloves had proved to be a little more of a problem. He hoped his mom didn't need them to weed the garden anytime soon, but doubted that she would have remembered where she'd left the heavy green gloves anyway.

  The leather helmet and goggles were last, and his hands were shaking a little as he put the helmet over his head and then slipped the goggles on over his glasses.

  It was the moment of truth, and Billy felt himself start to break out in a sweat that had more to do with nerves than being hot. He approached his closet door and, counting to ten, swung it open to see his reflection.

  He was stunned at first, but slowly—gradually— he became used to the idea. Will you look at that? he thought as a smile crept across his face. Owlboy's in the house.

  Hands on his hips, Billy struck a heroic pose and was shocked at how cool he looked.

  “Oh, Owlboy, how will the citizens of Monstros City ever repay you?” he said in a high-pitched voice.

  “No need to thank me, my good lady … squid thing … person,” he responded in his best superhero voice, not a hundred percent sure of how to address them. That was something he'd have to ask Archebold.

  Billy looked at himself from every angle and was still impressed by what he saw.

  “You are one handsome devil, Billy Hooten,” he said to his reflection. “How'd you get to be so darn good-lookin’?”

  Finally able to pull himself away from the mirror, Billy made sure he had everything he needed. Before he was finally ready to leave the house, he had gone back multiple times to the box that Archebold had sent him.

  Billy left his room, closing the door to give the impression that he had gone to bed, just in case his mom checked on him later. Creeping down the stairs, avoiding the noisy step, he peeked into the family room to be sure that his parents were still asleep and where they were supposed to be. His mom had curled herself into the corner of the couch and had wrapped herself even more tightly into the cocoon she'd made from the comforter. His father's head was leaned back now in the recliner, his mouth agape, making a noise that was part enraged water buffalo and part clogged bathtub drain.

  Excellent, Billy thought, ready to sneak from the house, when the unthinkable happened.

  His father lifted his head, smacked his lips and blearily looked around the room.

  Billy froze, waiting for the world to come crashing down around his ears. How can I possibly explain this? he wondered feverishly. It would be impossible, even for an out-of-the-box thinker like me.

  His father looked directly at him and Billy prepared for the worst.

  “Hey, Dad,” he said, wondering if his father would recognize him all decked out in his superhero attire.

  “Thirsty,” his dad mumbled, still smacking his lips and looking around the room as if he'd never been there before.

  Billy was shocked. His father didn't seem to notice that he was standing there dressed like something out of a comic book.

  “Would you like me to get you something … some water, maybe?” Billy asked softly, certain that his dad was still in some kind of weird sleep state.

  “Water,” his father replied, struggling to keep his eyes open. “Water'd be good.”

  Billy ran from the room, his short cape flowing behind him as he went to the refrigerator and found a bottle of water. He quickly brought it back to his thirsty, semiasleep dad.

  “Here ya go,” Billy said, opening the bottle before handing it to him.

  Mr. Hooten took the bottle, smacked his lips a few more times and then started to drink. He really was thirsty: he drank more than half the bottle before handing it back to Billy.

  “That's good stuff,” he said, looking around Billy so that he could see the television.

  “Movie's pretty good, too,” he added, his head dropping back to the chair. Within seconds, he was snoring, mouth open even wider than before.

  Billy carefully set the bottle of water down on the table beside his father's chair and carefully—quietly— backed out of the room.

  Standing in the kitchen, Billy sighed with relief. That was close, he thought, but it did not deter him from what he was about to do. “Nothing can hold me back now,” he whispered, taking a deep breath before reaching for the doorknob.

  And stepping out the back door into the night.

  The night was cool, the damp, smoky smell of autumn heavy in the air, and Billy stood on his back porch, letting the chilly fall breeze pass over him.

  This was it, the moment he'd been waiting for all week. As he leaped down from the steps on his way to hop up and over the wall, he heard a tiny voice call to him.

  “Hey, Billy!”

  Billy froze midjump, slowly turning in the direction of the little-girl voice. He'd considered attempting to hide in a patch of shadow, but that trick never worked.

  She had seen him.

  “Hello, Victoria,” he said, turning to look up at the second-floor window of the house next door.

  The five-year-old had opened the window of her bedroom and was looking down at him in the yard.

  “Whatcha doin’?” she asked cheerfully.

  As much as he hated to even think about such things, the little girl had an extreme crush on him, and often wanted to hang around when he was doing important things—like building a robot. Billy strongly believed it was the five-year-old's bothersome ways that prevented him from achieving his glory.

  “Stuff,” he answered, annoyed that she was keeping him from his mission. But he could never be too careful with Victoria Grace McDevitt. All he needed was for her to alert her parents to his being in the backyard and his adventure would end before it even started.

  It was easier to play the kindergartner's game.

  “What kind of stuff?” She tilted her head like a curious puppy, playing with a lock of her curly blond hair. He could see that she was dressed in her nightgown and guessed that she should have been asleep already.

  “Why aren't you asleep?” he asked, hoping to scare her back into bed.

  She shrugged.

  “Why are you dressed like a superhero?” she asked him.

  Billy was startled by the question, looking around the yard just to be sure nobody was around to hear. “Shhhhh!” he told her, bringing a gloved finger up to his mouth. “It's a secret.”

  Victoria's eyes bugged from her round face and she smiled mischievously. “Cool,” she squeaked. “Can I be a superhero, too?”

  He was going to need to be careful with this one, he thought, scratching the top of his head as he tried to come up with an answer that didn't get her all riled up. There was nothing more dangerous than a riled-up five-year-old.

  “Not right now,” he told her. “But maybe later.”

  “When?” she demanded.

  “I don't know—some other time when it's not so late.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  He really needed to get going and was on the verge of losing his patience with the little girl.

 
; “Yeah, tomorrow you can be a superhero, too.”

  “Hurray!” Victoria squealed, throwing her tiny arms into the air. “Me and Billy are going to be superheroes tomorrow!” She started to pretend that she was flying around her room, making a racket that was sure to attract the attention of her folks.

  “Victoria, knock it off!” he called up to her. “If you want to be a superhero with me, you've got to get plenty of rest.”

  She stopped pretending to fly and looked down at him.

  “Why?”

  “Because if you're too tired, how are you going to beat up the bad guys?”

  She thought about that for a minute.

  “Good night, Billy!” she suddenly said, closing the window and disappearing into the room.

  He stood there for a moment watching the window, wanting to be sure she wasn't going to come back. Once he was certain she'd actually gone to bed, he ran toward the stone wall, desperate to get out of the yard and into the cemetery before something else came up to keep him from his destination.

  The journey to the mausoleum went off without a hitch. With not a moment's hesitation, Billy pushed the heavy metal door of the burial chamber open and went inside the crypt. He looked around the room through the goggles’ special lenses, searching for any signs of the unusual, but found nothing.

  He walked to the back of the room, to the stone coffin with the heavy lid still slightly ajar. Unzipping the front of his jumpsuit, he reached inside the costume, searching for something important he had hidden there before leaving his bedroom.

  “There you are,” he said, producing the owl-shaped whistle. He approached the stone coffin again, but not too close, remembering the last time he had been there. He hoped to enter Monstros City a little less spectacularly this time.

  He put the whistle to his mouth and gave it a forceful blow. The chamber was filled with the sound of hundreds of hooting owls, and Billy felt a wave of goose bumps—they probably should be owl bumps—spread across his arms, neck and back.

  Just like before, Billy listened to the wind outside the mausoleum pick up, rattling what was left of the leaves in the trees and moaning like a restless spirit.

  He looked toward the open coffin, waiting for Archebold to arrive … and waited and waited and waited. The goblin didn't come. Billy was starting to get a bit worried, wondering whether he had taken too long to make his decision to be Owlboy. Maybe he's already found somebody else? he thought, his brain in a tizzy. He started to panic. Maybe Archebold saw me in the costume and thought I looked stupid.

  Maybe he had blown his chance to be a real live superhero.

  Billy felt himself on the way to being completely depressed, and thought about blowing the whistle again … but what was the use?

  Not feeling much like a superhero at that moment, more like a superloser, Billy considered his options. He could jump down into the coffin and go to Monstros on his own, but that didn't seem to be the smartest idea. Something told him that Monstros could be a very dangerous place, superhero or not. Or he could just go home, take the costume off, throw it into the back of the closet and never think of this crazy business again.

  He knew the safest answer, but he wasn't sure that safe was what he wanted.

  Looking at the coffin again, he hoped for something to change his mind, but it didn't appear. Knowing then without a doubt that he had been replaced, Billy wished whoever had been chosen for the Owlboy job over him good luck and slowly turned away from the entrance to Monstros City, ready to head home.

  At first it sounded like the wind, leaves whipping around, rustling on the ground, carrying over from when he'd first blown the whistle, but then he realized that the sound was coming from behind him.

  Almost at the door to leave, Billy turned toward the stone coffin, watching as two tiny hands appeared and Archebold hauled himself up over the edge.

  “You came!” Billy cried, barely able to contain his excitement. “It's about stinkin’ time!”

  “Sorry I'm late,” the goblin said, brushing dirt and dust from the front of his tuxedo suit. “Looks like you're in for a busy night.”

  Archebold then looked at Billy, his small, animallike yellow eyes glowing in the darkness of the chamber.

  “Are you ready for this, Billy Hooten?” the goblin asked.

  Billy felt his legs begin to wobble and thought they might just start acting on their own, running with the rest of his body in tow out the door, but he made them obey.

  “Yes,” he said, nodding eagerly, the dream where he'd been turned into a sandwich suddenly replaying like a summer rerun inside his head before he wished it away.

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Archebold asked, motioning with his hand for Billy to follow him as he dove back into the darkness of the coffin.

  Billy followed, keeping his fingers crossed that Monstros City wasn't one of those places where dreams really did come true.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Watch your step,” Archebold said from in front of Billy on the curving, shadow steps.

  “Believe me, I know,” Billy said, on the verge of activating the night-vision goggles covering his glasses. He didn't want a replay of the last time he'd visited Monstros.

  Archebold stopped short, turning toward him on the step below. “You know?” the goblin asked him. “How would you know unless…”

  Billy started to explain, not wanting to get into trouble with the little guy.

  “Well, I was going to give your costume back, and I blew the whistle, and along came this wind, which made me lose my balance and …”

  “So it was you that stopped that robbery that the Monstros newspapers are all buzzing about?”

  “The newspapers are buzzing?” Billy asked excitedly. “About me?”

  Archebold stroked his chin, a smile on his homely face. “They certainly are,” he answered. “That was a great piece of publicity—good thinking.”

  “But I didn't do it on purpose,” Billy tried to explain as the goblin continued to descend. “I was just—”

  “We're getting to the really dark part here,” Archebold said, coming to a stop. “Give me a second and I'll find us a little light so we don't fall and break our heads.” He started to rummage through the inside pockets of his jacket. “I thought I brought him with me …. Ah! There you are.”

  Archebold pulled something large from inside his coat, giving it a good shake.

  “Wake up!” the goblin yelled, and suddenly the stairway was illuminated by a bright yellow light.

  “What the heck is that?” Billy asked, shielding his eyes from the glow.

  “It's just Walter,” Archebold said.

  Walter was the biggest firefly Billy had ever seen in his life.

  “Just Walter,” the bug mimicked, wings fluttering as he hovered in the air before them. “Perhaps if I should turn off my glowing posterior, I could perhaps receive a little more respect, hmmm?”

  “Oh my gosh, it talks!” Billy said, shocked.

  The bug glared at him, and Billy saw multiple representations of himself in his full superhero attire reflected in the bug's bulbous compound eyes.

  “Are you sure about this one, Archebold?” the bug asked. “He doesn't seem all that bright.”

  “Nothing to concern yourself with there, Walter,” Archebold told the bug. “You just worry about lighting the stairs so we don't fall and kill ourselves.”

  “You're the boss,” Walter said, flying ahead a bit to light their descent.

  “I didn't mean to insult him,” Billy said to Archebold as he followed. “It's just that I've never seen a giant talking firefly before.”

  The goblin smiled widely, showing off a double row of crazy picket-fence-type teeth. “Just you wait and see, yes, sir,” he said. “You ain't seen nothing yet.”

  They finally arrived at the bottom of the steps and stood within an open area of tunnel that seemed very familiar to Billy.

  “This is where I ended up before I went to the grocery and stopped
the skeletons,” Billy said, following the glowing bug and the goblin.

  “Think so?” Archebold asked.

  “Well, it looks the same,” Billy said.

  Archebold chuckled, shaking his large head from side to side. “We're nowhere near there.”

  “But it looks…”

  “Where you ended up was way back there.” Archebold pointed to a darkened area of the tunnel that looked just like the tunnel they were standing in.

  “Oh, I get it,” Billy said, humoring the goblin.

  “I know you can't see it now, but a few more visits and you'll see the difference,” the goblin explained. “These shadow tunnels can be sort of tricky. C'mon, where we're going is right up here.”

  They came to a stop in front of a door that didn't look much different from the door that had taken him into the back room of the monster grocery store, but this time Billy kept the observation to himself.

  “Are we done?” Walter the firefly asked as he hovered in front of the door.

  “Yeah, that just about does it,” Archebold told him. The goblin then opened his jacket, plucking the large bug from the air.

  “Good luck with that one,” the bug said before going into the goblin's coat pocket, its large eyes looking at Billy and then back at Archebold. “Did I mention that I don't think he's all that bright?”

  “Don't you worry about it, Walt,” Archebold told him, shoving the bug deep inside the pocket. “I've got everything under control.”

  The goblin looked back at Billy, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “I-I-I think so,” Billy stammered, the firefly's words damaging his confidence just a little.

  “Aw, don't listen to him,” Archebold said, reaching into another pocket of his tuxedo and searching for something. “He didn't think the last Owlboy was any good either.”

  Archebold pulled a large gold key from the pocket and presented it to Billy.

  “Here ya go,” he said. “I'll let you do the honors.”