Nowhere Blvd.

by Ryan Notch

  “Suzie, we’re going to let Spencer watch what he wants today,” said his mom from the kitchen before he could make up his mind on it.

  “Mom, Dora,” said Suzie looking sullen.

  “Come in here and help me make breakfast Suzie,” said his mom with faked enthusiasm. Suzie followed obediently.

  Spencer flipped through the channels, trying to find if there were any new action packed cartoons he’d missed while away. Before he could find the Cartoon Channel though he stumbled upon a show about a man demonstrating how to survive in the woods by putting himself in dangerous situations.

  This guy doesn’t know the first thing about how to survive in the woods, Spencer thought disdainfully. I could show you how to really survive in the woods. Those aren’t even real woods he’s in.

  But after a few minutes he realized to his surprise that he was wrong on both counts. These were real woods. Actual green woods with real animals in them. If anything the woods in Nowhere Blvd were the fake ones, locked in perpetual Autumn as they were. And beyond that, whoever this guy was he was using a series of survival tricks that Spencer (who thought he had living in the woods mastered) had never even thought of. He watched in fascination how the man made fishing tools and animal traps and shelters, almost entirely out of things at hand.

  It was a revelation. All this time he had thought himself so clever, and yet now he saw how stagnant his thinking had been. He had never thought much beyond basic survival, had never tried new things after finding the first thing that worked. And yet this guy was showing the audience so many survival techniques that Spencer could hardly keep up. It was a bit humbling, but he guessed it made sense that one kid wasn’t going to be able to figure out more than all the survival experts in the world sharing their knowledge with each other.

  He was hooked. He watched the rest of the show, and the one after that on surviving in the desert, and the one after that on surviving in the arctic. He barely paid attention to the blueberry pancakes his mom had brought him to eat on the couch. There was no question about it, television was better than the real world. Or any other world he’d been too, for that matter.

  * * *

  Despite his hopes, even after the last of the children that had come over with Spencer were gone, they did not stop searching for him. He heard the patrols of the Hollow Men (sometimes lead by Smiling Jack or Mr. Buttons) from his hiding spot in the amusement park. He shivered quietly with the cold, venturing out only rarely for brownish water from an old rusty tap, presumably used for cleaning. And never in the daytime, during which he grew parched in the heat of his cramped quarters. He waited and waited, lonely and missing his parents. He waited and wondered why they hadn’t looked in the closet for him. He had fantasies of his dad showing up with a gun and shooting Jack, of the police coming and calling for him and him running out of his hiding place to meet them. He thought how he would cry with happiness as his dad picked him up, and cried for real when he thought about it.

  More than lonely, he was afraid. And more than fantasies of being rescued, against his will he daydreamed about what would happen when Jack finally caught him. Had the twins survived their operation, he was sure they’d be far from “perfect” by any standards. He had nightmares both sleeping and waking of Jack pulling him apart limb by limb like a fly. All the while staring up at Jack’s true face, the hook smile pulling back the dead flesh till it bled.

  But even more than cold and loneliness and even fear, he was hungry. He had heard that a person could survive a month without food, and so was amazed at how hungry he could get in just a few days. The thought of food consumed him. The stomach pains were like knives, he legs and arms were getting weak. He would have been happy to eat rats, or even bugs, but Nowhere Blvd didn’t seem to have either. He thought about going to Nanny Gurdy both for food and for help. Thought maybe she would hide him from Jack in her house. Except what if she didn’t? Adults always kept secrets from kids, and when there was a secret they were usually all in it together. Still, some nights it was a close fight between his caution and his hunger.

  Like any animal, it was that same hunger that finally drove him out of the safety of his hiding place.

  Despite everything, he’d had the presence of mind to notice a few things about the Hollow Men. They made noise when they moved, squeaking and clanking. Sharp spines for legs clicking along the concrete. They moved loud, while Spencer could move very very quiet. Smiling Jack’s hard shoes normally made a pretty distinct sound as he walked, but Spencer was sure Jack had the gracefulness to move quietly if he wanted to. In fact he was pretty convinced he could walk right up behind you in the dark and you’d never know he was there. But he always seemed to stay with the Hollow Men, fortunately.

  It was very dark at night in Nowhere Blvd. The moon’s never moving aspect had lead Spencer to decide early on that it was only painted onto a high ceiling up there. The sun maybe too, since it didn’t move either (but it did cast heat so he hadn’t really made up his mind on it). Both just faded in and out at dawn and dusk. On top of that the air was always stale, never a breeze. Not like a real town in the woods, more like a place called Mammoth Cave his family had visited once. Much bigger, but still like a cave. He imagined if a helicopter flew up into that sky it would crash right into it, chipping off the beautiful bright blue paint in the process.

  He thought that the Hollow Men might have some kind of night vision, or maybe super smell like a police dog. But if they had either they would have found him already, as close as they had come. So mostly they had to just see and hear, same as Spencer. If he was careful he could avoid them in the dark, unless he turned a corner and ran right into one. If that happened, he’d find out whether those metal manipulators were cold and dead or hot and hungry.

  Nanny Gurdy’s house was an obvious choice for food, thinking back to all the delicious meals they’d had from her kitchen. But besides the fairly heavy Hollow Men patrols, Gurdy lived there. And as nice as she seemed, there was no question she worked for Jack and knew what he did. This place was the embodiment of the “adults vs. kids” ideology that every kid had always expected ran the world. Them vs. us and the “them” were winning one hundred percent.

  The snack shop was the better bet. Spencer couldn’t remember if there had been locks on the door, but he couldn’t think of any reason why they would bother locking the shops. No kid would dare wander at night here. Just him. And if it was locked, the whole front was made of glass. Anything could break glass.

  Finding his way in the dark proved more difficult than he thought at first. Everything looked different at night, especially the kind of night he’d only seen on camping trips to the deep woods. You had to get pretty close to things to know what they were, to plan each move. It required paying a lot more attention than he was used to, but was doable if he tried hard to remember where things were. Across from his hiding spot was the Ferris wheel. Across from there the bumper cars. From there across the field to the eastern most shop, then shop by shop from there.

  At first he stuck to the shadows, slinking crouched over from wall to wall on tiptoes. After a while he grew bolder and walked upright, steady but still careful. Not for the first time he was glad Smiling Jack provided socks and tennis shoes to his guests, instead of leaving them barefoot in pajamas like they’d arrived.

  To his surprise and relief he didn’t see any patrols the whole way there. When he finally got there he prepared to rush in then paused, thinking for the first time of the possibility of a trap. His dad left out food in the woods to trap bears, and here he was at the honey pot itself. He looked around and through the windows, wishing his eyes could pierce the darkness. All he could see was the candy on display, and only barely. His mouth watered so much he kept having to swallow. He had to go for it, and did. Opened the door slowly, cautiously.

  Slowly, but not slowly enough. The tiniest ting sound came from above the door.

  The BELL! he thought frantically. He had forgotten about the silver
bell that hung above all the shop doors. Spencer froze. Had anyone else heard it? He waited, watching the darkness and listening intently. His nightmares came true as a sound echoed down the lane.

  Tap tap, tap tap. A Hollow Man was coming.

  In or out, in or out?! he asked himself. He was too afraid to think clearly. If he moved that bell would ring again, if he stayed like this it would see him. He made an impulse decision, one he would regret. He ran into the store, letting the door close behind him. The bell rang even louder this time, there was no question the Hollow Man heard it. He had to hide.

  Behind the counter? Under the desk in the office? In the bathroom?

  No, the back door, every place had a back door! He ran to it, finding it in the only place it could have been, at the end of the short hall past the bathrooms. He twisted the knob, knowing it would be unlocked.

  It wasn’t.

  It wouldn’t even turn. Maybe wasn’t even a real door, he couldn’t tell in the near pitch dark. He froze again for a moment, despairing of the short time to find another spot. Wanting to curl up in a ball and just hope the monster ignored him. Then he thought of Jack and his workshop and ran into the storage room instead, praying to find a real hiding spot in there.

  He did, and fighting claustrophobia wedged himself in as tight and deep as he could. He would have gone deeper to make sure no part of him showed, but didn’t have the time. He heard the bell ring again, and knew he had to hold perfectly still and perfectly quiet.

  Tap tap, tap tap it went from room to room. He could see the creature in his mind’s eye as it searched behind the counter, under the desk in the office, in the bathroom. Finally it came to the storage room where he hid. He was sweating and painfully cramped where he had wedged himself in. He was running out of air in the pocket made by his hunched over body. Worst of all he started itching, right in the back of his neck. The itch grew and grew, till it was worse than pain. He listened as the Hollow Man searched behind the shelves and took the lid off each box and barrel to peek inside. Close it came, inches away. He would have smelled its oil if he had access to air. And all the while his hands twitched to just scratch that itch, to take the chance.

  And then, just like that, it left. Tap tap, tap tap out the door with a twinkling of bells. Spencer knew it could be a trap, but it didn’t matter, he couldn’t wait any longer. He stood up, pushing past all the candy he had burrowed beneath inside the barrel. He gasped for air, reaching for the back of his neck to scratch an itch that wasn’t even that bad anymore. He reached down and grabbed one of the candies in the dark, tossing it into his mouth to find out what it was that had saved him.

  A sour cherry, his favorite. He thought nothing had ever tasted so good, and swallowed it almost without chewing.

  Before he would allow himself any more he went to the front of the store as quiet as he could, to be sure he was really alone. Finding that he was he went back to the storeroom and gorged himself on candy from the crates, so they wouldn’t notice it missing from the shelves. It wasn’t long before he became very ill and had to throw up in the bathroom. Then, once his stomach calmed down, he ate some more. He was filled with a sugar high and happiness at his daring. He grabbed a bag and took a bunch with him back into his hiding spot, even daring to explore the amusement park for a bit before going to sleep.

  In the morning he was hungrier than ever.

  After a couple weeks of candy, Spence didn’t need to be a nutritionist to know that there was a reason parents only let their kids have so much of it. He was getting weaker, and was sick all the time. He craved meat and bread and never wanted to see another sweet thing in all his life. Worse yet, Jack and his Hollow Men were ferreting out his hiding spots. They would do a circuit of all the ones they had found each night, and again in the day. He’d seen them at it, having taken to spying on them whenever he could using an old brass and wooden telescope he’d found in the toy shop one night.

  Spencer imagined himself as an Indian Scout, collecting information on the enemy camp. It wasn’t just Jack and the Hollow Men he watched, he explored as much as he could. He watched the Perfects, who never ever left their houses at night. Jack sometimes watched them play on the playground on days when no “real-world” kids were around.

  He watched in despair as the group he came with ran out (none became Perfects, and with Jack’s surgery techniques Spencer was surprised any of them ever had). And even more despair as another group arrived a few days later. Too heavily guarded now for him to even hope to warn them. It was terrible, but watching it all through the telescope was a bit like watching it on TV. Like it didn’t involve him, that it was all make-believe.

  There was no question of what happened to his brief friends that came over with him. To his horror he’d seen the bodies carried from Jack’s lab to Nanny Gurdy’s house and into a cellar door on the outside, like in the old farm houses. He wasn’t sure what Gurdy did with them, but he’d seen behind her house since that first visit. Out past the tall hedges that blocked the view from her kitchen. A bone pit, as big as a swimming pool and almost full. He wondered if Nanny Gurdy had some beast in the basement she fed the children too. Certainly they weren’t fed to Jack, although that was his first thought. Jack never went down there, in fact he’d never seen Jack eat at all, or Mr. Buttons or even Nanny for that matter.

  Although Nanny certainly looked like she liked to eat. Her generous mouth that opened so wide when she watched the children eating. The way she smiled at the kids, didn’t take her eyes off them. He remembered that strange habit she had of rubbing her hands together as she watched them fill up on pies and pastries. At the time he had thought she looked silly, like a cartoon. Now he thought that a lot of cartoon things would look horrible in real life.

  He’d thought about taking to the woods, knowing that the Hollow Men never searched there. Jack didn’t either, though twice he’d seen Mr. Buttons go off into the woods alone, he didn’t know why.

  The problem was that whatever lies Nanny and Jack had told them, the warning about the woods was true. There were monsters in them. Spencer had seen them vaguely at night, shadows slinking around. They didn’t move like men, and didn’t move like beasts. No two seemed alike, even in the shadows. But Jack hadn’t told the whole truth, because they didn’t come into town, not even at night.

  Until one day he saw one in the light. Jack and two Hollow Men were searching the edge of the woods behind Mr. Buttons’ shack, presumably for him. Spencer watched them from a rooftop a ways away, trying to ignore the grumbling in his stomach as usual, loathing to eat any of the candy in his pocket. Through the telescope he saw them look as a group to the north, maybe having heard something. Jack sent the Hollow Men off alone, investigating something nearby. Once they were out of sight the thing came for him. A surprise attack from the trees.

  It had four arms, but only three seemed to work. Naked and hairless, and strangely off balance. Like the extra arms were attached wrong. It didn’t look natural, except that it did kind of look human. It kind of looked like a kid.

  Whatever it was, it clearly wanted Smiling Jack dead. It had the jump on Jack, and knocked him off his feet. It clawed at Jack’s face, tearing the fake face-mask to shreds. Jack kept trying to get to his feet, but the thing kept knocking him off balance. Spencer watched the silent battle of monsters in fascination, praying that the Hollow Men wouldn’t get back in time to save Jack. But soon he saw it was in vain. As savage as the attack was, the thing wasn’t doing any major harm to Jack. Finally Jack did regain his footing. The thing jumped at him and with an acrobats nimbleness Jack sidestepped it, grabbing it by a leg on the pass. With incredible strength Jack swung the thing into a tree trunk. Spencer heard the crack of its skull echo even from his hiding spot. And the one after, and the one after that.

  There was no longer any question in Spencer’s mind of his ability to kill Jack through a surprise attack. Jack was the king of the monsters here.

  * * *

  As the week wor
e on back home with his parents, Spencer couldn’t shake the feeling that he was an unwelcome guest in the house. He figured out after a while that both his parents still had jobs, jobs they weren’t going to because of him. Baby Suzie apparently had a day care place to go to. But him…well he just sat on the couch and watched TV all day.

  They just can’t seem to figure out what the fuck to do with me, he thought.

  Mother had suggested a party, for Spencer’s old friends to come over and see him. Spencer was as surprised at the idea as he was horrified. He’d never even thought about the fact that he had old friends still around. Somehow in his mind it was like they had all died or disappeared or something. The idea of seeing them again was so terrible that he considered talking just to tell her not to do it. Fortunately he didn’t have to. His father immediately put the kibosh on the idea.

  “He’s just not ready,” said his father. “We have to give him time.”

  It didn’t take much to convince his mother this was the truth, though he didn’t think this was why his dad didn’t like the idea. In truth they hadn’t had anyone over at all since Spencer got home, nor did they make him go to a psychologist like he had felt sure they would. He remembered how it had been before with his father. Spencer always had to be the perfect son. Brave, tough, good at sports, good at school. When Spencer didn’t live up to expectations, his dad always was angry about how it reflected on him.

  He saw how as the days wore on they looked at him with some kind of mix between confusion and disappointment in their eyes, like he was supposed to be something he wasn’t. Looking in the mirror he wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t entirely clear on what he had looked like before he left, but now he looked like one of the escaped mental patients he’d seen on an afternoon TV show. Eyes red and sunken, cheeks hollow, hair wild. There was a jagged scar on his forehead from the cave incident not so long ago, which had also left his nose crooked. Not the image of the perfect son anymore, Spencer guessed he wouldn’t reflect very well on his father at all now. His father was still the business mogul, and appearances were everything. His father may have looked older, but Spencer guessed he was mostly still the same. Except Spencer didn’t remember his father drinking near as much as he did now.