Nancy was impressed.
“They’re for you,” said Jerry, extending his tray toward her.
Nancy was even more impressed.
“Why for me?” she asked.
“Because I think you and I are the only people at school who haven’t been brainwashed by Dr. Fell,” replied Jerry, “which means we may have to work together to fix all this.”
Nancy dropped her guard. “You didn’t have to give me cookies for that,” she said, absently grabbing all three cookies off his tray. “I’m just as worried as you are.”
Jerry set the cookie-free tray down on a table and leaned into Nancy conspiratorially. “I think it has something to do with Dr. Fell,” he whispered.
A dozen snarky replies tap-danced through Nancy’s mind in response, but she fought back the urge to be evil in the name of the greater good. “I think you’re right,” she said instead.
The bell rang, alerting any and all children that the time for lunch was over, the time for learning was about to begin, and they really should make their way to the proper classrooms as soon as possible.
As one, the students of McKinley Grant Fillmore Elementary School calmly stood, returned their trays to the counter, and walked blissfully out of the cafeteria.
It was spooky.
“I have an idea,” said Jerry, backing away in his hurry to get to class. “Bring Gail to your house after school.”
“What?” she asked, confused. “Why?”
“Just do it!” commanded the third grader as the tide of children swept him out of the room.
Nancy frowned. She didn’t like taking orders from a third grader.
But she liked what had happened to her best friend even less.
—
“Why can’t we go straight to Dr. Fell’s playground?” asked Gail as Nancy led her up the street toward her house.
“We will, I promise,” answered Nancy. “I just need to…I wanted to…” Usually she could pull a perfectly good lie out of thin air, but the one time she was trying to lie for a good cause, she was drawing a blank.
“Whatever it is, it can’t be more important than playing on Dr. Fell’s playground,” Gail insisted.
Nancy mentally scrolled through her playlist of excuses. It would have helped if she’d had the slightest idea what Jerry was planning. Unfortunately, she was as much in the dark as Gail—though admittedly Gail was not aware that she was in the dark.
“I need to change my clothes,” Nancy finally blurted. “I don’t want to get these pants dirty when I’m playing on Dr. Fell’s playground.”
It was a lame excuse, she knew, but her dazed friend seemed satisfied.
Approaching her front steps, she wondered how long she would need to keep Gail inside. Jerry hadn’t been on the bus, so she half assumed the plan—whatever it was—was dead on arrival. But not knowing what else to do, she’d dragged her friend over, hoping against hope.
“Why don’t I wait for you over at Dr. Fell’s playground?” suggested Gail once they reached Nancy’s front porch. The telltale siren songs of glee had begun to filter down the street as children, freed from the confines of the school bus, reached the joyful nirvana of the playground.
“No!” yelped Nancy, slightly more loudly than necessary. “No. I need your advice. On what to wear.”
Nancy turned away, rolling her eyes at her own ridiculousness, and grabbed the handle of the front door with one hand while digging out the key she wore on a chain around her neck with the other.
Except the door was open.
“Whoa!” Nancy stumbled gracelessly into her house, surprised to find it unlocked.
“Is your mom home?” asked Gail, following her inside.
Instead of answering, Nancy crept into the living room, her nerves on full alert. There had been no car in the driveway, so her mother was not home. Also, the curtains had been pulled shut, blocking any and all sunlight and giving the room an undeniably ominous feel.
Something was wrong.
“On second thought, maybe we should just go to the playground,” muttered Nancy, eyes searching the dark room for answers. “How does that sound?”
She was answered by a loud bang as the front door was slammed shut.
Standing behind them was Jerry Bloom, his hands behind his back and a serious look on his face.
“Not good,” he said.
“Jerry!” exclaimed a startled Nancy, both surprised to find him in her house and annoyed at his having snuck up on her again. “What are you doing? How’d you get in here?”
“Do you want to play on Dr. Fell’s playground too?” Gail asked innocently.
“No, Gail, I do not,” said Jerry, stepping forward and holding out the rope he’d been hiding behind his back. “I have something else in mind.”
“Oh?” asked Gail, still surprisingly innocent.
The eight-year-old boy raised an eyebrow, looking about as menacing as an eight-year-old can look. “We’re going to have an exorcism.”
NANCY BURST OUT LAUGHING. “An exorcism?” she asked. “Really, Dorknose?”
Jerry visibly deflated in response to Nancy’s reaction, losing all traces of menace in the process. “Ah, come on! We’re supposed to be partners.”
“Not if you’re going to be a total goober.”
“I’m not a total goober!”
“I dunno. That idea sounds really gooberish.”
“When are we going to Dr. Fell’s playground?” interrupted Gail.
Jerry and Nancy looked from each other to their friend and sister. Nancy sighed.
“All right,” she said. “What do we do?”
What they did was take Gail down into Nancy’s unfinished basement, tie the surprisingly willing subject to an old metal folding chair, and stand around wondering how one conducts an exorcism.
“Aren’t we supposed to sprinkle her with holy water?” asked Nancy carefully.
“That’s for demons,” answered Jerry equally carefully. “Is Dr. Fell a demon?”
That neither of them could truly answer this question gave them both a severe case of the willies. To be safe, Nancy filled a glass with water, waved the family Bible over it a few times, and poured it on top of Gail’s head.
“What else?” she asked.
Though not an expert on exorcisms, Jerry had come prepared. He and Nancy proceeded to sprinkle salt (“Holy salt,” said Jerry) on Gail’s head, light candles (“Holy candles,” said Jerry) and waft the smoke into Gail’s face, flick specks of vegetable oil (“Holy oil,” said Jerry) onto Gail’s shirt, and drape a necklace of plastic craft beads (“Holy rosary beads,” said Jerry) around Gail’s neck.
For her part, Gail took everything in stride, not so much complaining as continually asking when this was going to be over so they could all go and play on Dr. Fell’s playground.
“It’s not working,” remarked Nancy.
“Yeah, I know,” admitted Jerry. “Maybe we should chant. There’s usually a lot of chanting involved.”
“What should we chant?”
This was a stumper, and the two went back and forth for a time with ideas until settling on what they hoped was the perfect mantra.
“Dr. Fell is not a nice man!” they said in unison. “Dr. Fell is not a nice man!”
“What a horrible thing to say!” exclaimed a shocked Gail. “He’s the nicest, most wonderful, most loving, most giving, most wonderful, most kind, most incredible, most wonderful man on the face of the Earth!”
Jerry and Nancy jerked back, as if Gail were a wasp and her outburst her sting. “Now, I’ve been very patient while you two tied me up and played your little game,” she said. “I let you dump water on me, rub salt in my hair, and ruin my blouse with that oil, but the day is slipping away and we still haven’t gone to Dr. Fell’s playground!”
It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Or it would have been had Nancy been a camel. “Will you stop talking about that stupid playground!” she roared.
Jer
ry could only gasp in astonishment at the strength of Nancy’s rage (relieved it was not directed at him). She jumped onto her friend’s lap, sending them both toppling over—Gail backward and Nancy frontward—as the chair tipped and fell to the ground.
“Hey!” complained Gail as best she could from her now-horizontal position.
“Dr. Fell is evil!” screamed Nancy, grabbing her friend’s ears to punctuate her point. “Do you hear me? Evil! Evil! Evil!”
“Nancy! Stop!”
Jerry’s outburst speared its way through Nancy’s fog of war, and she blinked her eyes to find herself clutching Gail’s head between her sweaty hands, as if to smash it repeatedly on the ground. Of course she did no such thing, but the mere fact that she found herself astride her best friend in such a manner filled her with shame. A sob bubbled from her lips, quickly followed by a second. Then a third.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out while climbing off her friend. “I’m so sorry, Gail. I just…I just don’t want to lose you. I don’t know what to do.”
“I’d like to be untied now,” said Gail in a surprisingly near-cheery tone.
“Of course,” answered Nancy. “Right. Hold on.”
“Wait!” yelled Jerry, as inspiration struck him with the savage jolt of a lightning bolt.
“What?” asked Nancy and Gail together.
“Do you still think Dr. Fell is a nice man?” he asked.
“Of course!” answered Gail. “What a nice man is Dr. Fell.”
Jerry snapped his fingers. It was not a very strong snap, as Jerry did not have very strong fingers, but he was unconcerned. “Dr. Fell has everyone thinking upside down,” he said, this time to Nancy.
“Yes?” said Nancy, more to urge him to continue his line of thought than due to any agreement with his rather silly hypothesis.
“So let’s turn her right side up.”
He smiled. Gail smiled. Nancy stared.
“Huh?” she asked.
In answer, Jerry approached the chair to which poor Gail, now lying on her back, was still bound. “Right side up,” he repeated, grabbing two of the chair legs. Wordlessly, Nancy grabbed the other two, and together they lifted the chair up by its legs, with Gail, still tied to it, hanging upside down.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” observed Gail.
But Jerry was not to be deterred. With Nancy’s help, he began shaking the chair up and down as if he expected loose change to pour out of Gail’s pockets. Gail screamed. Nancy screamed. Jerry screamed. Children at the end of Hardscrabble Street screamed—though their screams were ones of joy brought on by their frolic upon the play structure rather than ones of horror brought on by the torment of a young girl at the hands of the two individuals she trusted most in the entire world.
“Get out, Dr. Fell! Out!” yelled Jerry. “Get out of my sister’s head!”
“Get out, Dr. Fell! Out!” yelled Nancy. “Get out of my best friend’s head!”
“Stop shaking me upside down, you idiots!” yelled Gail. “This is not fun!”
Something had to give. Not surprisingly, it was the knots holding Gail to the chair. With a crash, she tumbled to the floor in a heap, the sudden lack of her weight on the chair causing Jerry and Nancy to fly backward in midshake. They, too, tumbled to the ground in heaps.
All was silence.
After a moment, the three children stirred, carefully poking their heads up like wary puppies that had just gone on the dining room rug and expected to be scolded.
“Is everybody OK?” asked Jerry. “Does anyone have a concussion?”
“I’m good,” answered Nancy. “Gail?”
Gail groaned and rubbed her head where a slight bump was beginning to form. “No, I’m not OK,” she grumbled. “You guys could have killed me! What were you trying to do?”
“We’re trying to save you from Dr. Fell!” screamed Nancy in a sudden burst. “He’s got his claws into you and turned you into one of the pod people!”
“Don’t be stupid! I told you, I won’t let him do anything to me. I’ll go to my appointment and case the joint, then report back to—”
Gail stopped.
Nancy and Jerry also stopped, though in truth they had little to stop as they were currently staring at Gail in confusion. Which they did not stop doing. But they stopped everything else.
Somewhere outside, a dog barked.
“Wait a minute,” said a suddenly uneasy Gail. “Why are we in your basement?”
Too stunned to respond, Nancy and Jerry held their breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“What time is it?” continued Gail. “Why aren’t you guys at school? What’s going on?”
What was going on was that Gail was back.
The exorcism had worked.
IT QUICKLY BECAME APPARENT that Gail Bloom had no memory of anything that had occurred during the past two days. The shocking dark cloud of amnesia covered a period of time that began, unshockingly, the instant she had stepped into the office of Dr. Fell for her routine physical. She recalled looking back and seeing her mother sink down into Dr. Fell’s purple couch to bury herself in the surprisingly convenient copy of Blimp Enthusiast, then placing her hand upon the handle of the heavy oak door.
Then nothing.
“Do you even remember opening the door?” asked Jerry.
To which Gail could only shake her head.
“Really? The whole rest of the week?” asked Nancy. “What about Bud Fetidsky’s broken leg?”
To which Gail could only shake her head.
Jerry and Nancy did their best to bring their sister and friend up to speed; then the three of them climbed out of the Pinkblossom basement and stepped outside into the oppressive light of day.
No closer to understanding the mystery of Dr. Fell.
Or the danger.
—
Days passed, as they tend to do when left to themselves. The three children continued to witness blissful emptiness creep into the eyes of children at school, as well as all adults in the area. The fact that Gail, once she had been brought back from the depths, held no memory of her time spent under the spell of Dr. Fell caused the three friends a great deal of concern. What had the ominous man done to Gail while he’d had her under his control? How was his influence spreading so quickly through the neighborhood?
Where would it end?
By now the playground in front of the home of Dr. Fell was littered with children twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The children of McKinley Grant Fillmore Elementary School were now joined by the students of Washington Madison Hoover Elementary School, Lincoln Adams Coolidge Elementary School, and even the far-off private elementary school of Southeast North Northwestern Academy, which began running regular bus routes to and from the end of Hardscrabble Street to better serve the needs of its students.
With so many children playing on the structure, the number of accidental injuries naturally increased, as did the number of swift remedies administered by Dr. Fell, as did the number of children mindlessly muttering, “What a nice man is Dr. Fell.”
That no parent, teacher, principal, or other adult authority figure had any problem with so many children skipping class, skipping meals, or skipping sleep to play at Dr. Fell’s bothered no one at all.
Except for Jerry, Nancy, and Gail.
For the life of them, they could not understand why they, and they alone, had proven more or less immune to Dr. Fell’s spell. Certainly, Gail had succumbed for a time, but that had been after receiving personal, one-on-one attention from the so-called good doctor. Many of the children blathering on about the greatness of Dr. Fell nonstop had yet to so much as glimpse the man.
What was it that allowed the three of them to withstand the call? wondered Gail, Nancy, and Jerry.
Gail thought it might have something to do with their tight bonds of friendship. Jerry and Nancy disagreed.
Nancy thought it might have something to do with their general disregard for authority. Gail and
Jerry disagreed.
Jerry thought it might have something to do with the molecular resonation of their bodies’ atoms. Gail and Nancy had no idea what he was talking about.
All three of them were wrong.
Just under a week after shaking reality back into her best friend’s head, Nancy Pinkblossom found herself stomping a few feet behind her mother in the grocery store on a boring Thursday afternoon. She had not wanted to accompany her mother on the mind-numbingly dull errand, but had agreed to go after Cecilia Pinkblossom had promised to take her to the mall afterward and buy her the new shirt Nancy had set her sights upon. It was in the window of Nancy’s favorite store, DarkDoom Design, and consisted of a series of Chinese characters advertised to say “Peace to all mankind” but which, she’d been told by the smug clerk in utmost confidence, actually stated, “I’m better than you.”
Nancy had to have it.
Mrs. Pinkblossom had not really wanted to bring her daughter along on the errand either, but she had felt a nagging need to try to spend time with Nancy, since she’d read somewhere that that was what parents did with their children. So she’d bribed Nancy with the promise of an inappropriate shirt.
Nancy shuffled her feet as she passed a pyramid of overripe bananas, a display of fresh-baked muffins, and finally Old Lady Witherton, who could not be bothered to get out of the way. She followed doggedly behind her mother, rolling her eyes at no one in particular simply for the practice.
“Do we need cucumbers, Nancy?” asked her mother, as she had asked regarding seemingly each and every item she passed in the store.
“Yes,” answered Nancy, who had been saying “yes” every time the question was posed for no other reason than that it was easier than actually considering the question.
“What about red pepper?”
“Yes.”
“Avocados?”
“Yes.”
“My goodness, do we have anything left in the fridge?”
“Yes.”
“Oh? What?”
Dr. Fell and the Playground of Doom Page 5
