Monstrous Affections

by David Nickle

  I thought about my conversation with Fezkul just a few minutes earlier: Burn down the grill, he’d said. Kill Natch.

  “Something pretty serious,” I said. “Do you have any idea why he’s doing it?”

  “According to Natch,” said Officer Tom, “he just hates people with the gumption to succeed. He just hates America.”

  “So, no idea.”

  Officer Tom smiled. “No idea.”

  “Why doesn’t Natch just shut down? It’s just for one day. He could open up again on Tuesday.”

  “You met him,” said Officer Tom. “You think Oliver Natch is the kind of guy to back down? He just hires more security every year. It’s like a holy war for him.”

  “That’s just whacked.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  We sat there quiet again. Officer Tom peeled some lichen off the rock and sniffed it. “So you really don’t have any parents, Stan?”

  “Sam — that’s my real name. Not Stan. And I do have parents. I’m just not here with them. I’m here with my sister and — ”

  I stopped.

  I was here with my sister Lenore and her boyfriend Nick. They were waiting at the picnic table for me to come back from the washroom.

  And they had been waiting a very long time, and I’d barely spared them a thought since I got hauled into Mr. Natch’s basement office, and with everything that was going on at the Fun-Park, who knew what kind of trouble they were in.

  “Crap!” I said. “I completely forgot about them!” I turned to Officer Tom, desperate. “Are they okay?”

  He dabbed at his cheek. “Should have told me about them. Should have told me your real name. I could have saved you a whole lot of trouble.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just after I left Mr. Natch’s office, this girl stopped me. She was pretty, yay high, kind of light brown hair down to here, wearing low-slung jeans and an Up With People T-shirt. Sound familiar?”

  “Yeah, that’s Lenore. You nailed everything but pretty.”

  “Well,” said Officer Tom, “she was looking for a kid called Sam. Not Stan. When I told her I’d picked up a kid called Stan she just threw up her hands and ran off.”

  I slumped against the rock, feeling like a first-class jerk. Who knew what kind of trouble she was in?

  “We have to find her,” I said. “And Nick. Come on.”

  Officer Tom held up his hands. “No way. I got an injury.” He tapped his cheek. “And there’s no way I’m going back there. We should stay here. Wait for things to settle down.”

  I looked at him. “You know,” I said, “Sam and Stan sound alike. You could have figured out that a missing kid you thought was Stan could have been called Sam. Then you could have told my sister what happened, and I’d be safe with her.”

  He glared at me. “You saying that this is my fault?”

  It was some glare Officer Tom could muster. But I wasn’t about to back down.

  “It sure is your fault,” I said, “if you just sit here staunching your wound when there’s trouble that you could have prevented.” He didn’t say anything, so I went on: “A real gamer wouldn’t spend the whole adventure hiding behind a rock. That wound’s not more than one hit point’s worth if that — ”

  Officer Tom held up his hands one more time. “All right,” he said. “Don’t pull that Lawful Good guilt trip on me. I get. I get.” He sighed, and cautiously stuck his head up over the edge of the boulder. “Okay, hero boy. Looks clear. Let’s go.”

  It wasn’t much farther to Natch’s. But it seemed like we’d travelled to another country when we got there: the Sovereign Nation of Junior Kindergarten.

  The place was a sea of little kids . . . if that sea were being kicked up by a monster big hurricane — the kind of hurricane that knocked over garbage cans and turned big picnic tables on their sides. The little kids ran this way and that, they screamed in high-pitched voices, and they tore at each other and property like wild beasts.

  But inside that country, there was another nation that the hurricane didn’t touch. A proud, oblivious nation: the Country of Parents. They sat around what tables hadn’t been overturned, drinking their lattes and munching on their curly fries, talking to each other about the things that parents talked to each other about: getting back to work on Tuesday and the start of school and do you remember last summer when there was too much rain or it was so hot or as bad as this one, and hopefully winter wouldn’t be too long this year so they could get going on another summer soon . . .

  We were crouched low on the top of the rise, and had a pretty good view of it all. But it wasn’t good enough to spot Nick or Lenore. It didn’t seem as though they were in either country.

  “They wouldn’t leave, would they?”

  “Your sister?” Officer Tom shook his head. “She seemed very responsible.”

  “Responsible.” I huffed. “That’s my sister all right.”

  “Don’t give her a hard time,” said Officer Tom.

  “You just think she’s pre-tty.”

  “Shut up,” he snapped.

  I swallowed and looked around. “That,” I said, “wasn’t me.” Officer Tom looked at me, then drew a breath and put a hand on his stun wand. “Where?” he whispered.

  “I don’t know where,” I said, “but I think I know who.” That sing-song, high-pitched taunt was unmistakable.

  “Fezkul,” I said. “Quit dicking around.”

  “Who’s dicking around?” Some ferns rustled about a dozen feet away. “I’m just saying. Officer Tom there just thinks she’s pretty. It’s all pretty pervy, you ask me.”

  “Hey!” said Tom, aghast. “I didn’t — ”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said to him, still looking for Fezkul. “Where are you?”

  “Where am I? Why, right in front of you, Poindexter.” There was a chuckle at my ear. “Whatsamatter? Can’t see me?”

  I squinted. Nothing. I couldn’t see him — no matter how much I wanted to, there was nothing.

  Then he laughed. “Of course you can’t see me. You’re losing it — growing up. Becoming dull. Right before my eyes. Already, you can’t see me any better than Officer Tom here. Soon as you give up Dungeons and Dragons for bridge or canasta or something, you won’t be able to hear me either. Oh, I’m tearing up at the thought of it.” Somewhere, Fezkul sniffed loudly. “You had such potential, kid. Such potential.”

  “Where — ” I said, but he went on:

  “Ah well. Maybe you can go on that Up With People tour with your loser sister. Know any good show tunes, Sammy?”

  As he spoke, I thought I could see a shimmering, on top of a boulder that was shaped like a curled-over rabbit. I started toward it.

  “Or should I say, Samuel. That sounds — so much more — adult. Samuel.”

  “I’m not Samuel,” I said, and as I did, the shimmering started to resolve itself, and I felt another kind of shimmering in my belly. It was the feeling I got the first time I went to the end of the dock at the cottage, looked into the cold water that was deep over my head and thought: There is no way I can jump into that; younger, when my mom told me it was time to unplug the night light; and today, when I thought about the prospect of going into Grade Nine, friendless but for Neil and the rest of the William Howard Taft Elementary School Dungeons and Dragons gang who wouldn’t be in high school for one more year . . .

  “I’m Sammy.”

  And with the words, the shimmering came into focus: on the top of the rock, into the form of a kid: first, wearing something right out of a Dungeons and Dragons game — what looked like a doublet and hose, and for a second, with wings coming out of his back, and then in the baggy jeans, baseball cap and shark-teeth of Fezkul.

  Fezkul clapped twice and grinned, teeth fanning out like a deck of cards.

  It was not one of my proudest moments. I leaned over to Officer Tom and whispered: “I think I see him,” and I put out my hand and whispered: “Give me the wand. I’ll zap him,” and Offic
er Tom fell for it. Why wouldn’t he? After all, I’d just saved his life from the crew of psycho toddlers. And hadn’t we just bonded over our mutual love of Dungeons and Dragons?

  So he was completely surprised when I flipped the switch and jammed it into his thigh. With barely a qualm at having tricked poor old Officer Tom, I switched the wand off, stuffed it in my back pocket and said to Fezkul: “I am ready, oh master.”

  Or at least I think that’s what I said. I felt like I’d just eaten a whole birthday cake: the kind that little kids get, with the white sugar icing that’s about two inches thick and the soft sugary cake underneath. All my nerves were humming; the world seemed to be vibrating; I felt like I had to pee except that I didn’t have to pee at all. So it is possible that what I said was “Glar worngo. Foo.” However it came out, Fezkul seemed pleased. He held up his hands, shook them in the air and laughed like a midget mountain man.

  Okay — it wasn’t just “not one of my proudest moments.” It was, up until that point in my life, the hands-down worst moment yet. I’d just betrayed my new friend Officer Tom’s trust. I’d pocketed a weapon that was, if not illegal, then certainly restricted. And I’d thrown in with Fezkul, the demon-child who had told me to set fire to a restaurant and murder its owner.

  And that wasn’t the worst of it.

  The worst of it was how good I felt about it all. Really good. The idea of arson and killing didn’t strike me as anything more than a lot of fun. I tumbled down the slope to the Fun-Park, an overgrown maniacal toddler with mayhem on his mind.

  The little kids gathered around me almost as soon as I’d stepped onto the grass. This, I remember thinking, must have been what Honorius felt like when he made his Leadership roll and convinced those elves to follow him into the troll cave — like one bad-ass paladin, that’s what.

  Oh, what to do? There were a few things that came to mind. If we could find more propane, we could just set it off in the grill’s kitchen. Although I wasn’t sure how to make it blow up without making me blow up too. We could fill a paper cup with root beer, put a lid on, then toss it into the deep fryer. The cold liquid in the hot oil would certainly be catastrophic — but would it go off, or just send hot oil everywhere? Dave Rigby had once tried to convince our dungeon master Neil that if you threw a sack of flour into a room, tossed in a torch after it and shut the door, everything would go up in a colossal flour explosion that could clear a whole dungeon level. Neil had said no way that would work, but who knew? It wasn’t like we’d gone down to his condo’s parking garage and tried it or anything . . .

  “You’re thinking too much,” said the little pigtailed girl Blair. She pushed her way through the crowd and handed me a long barbecue lighter. “Fezkul said give it to you.” Her brother, whose french fries she’d ruined just a little while ago, nodded encouragingly from behind her as I flicked the lighter and looked at the little flame that popped out of the end. It was a happy flame and it filled me with gratitude that she would bestow such a gift on me. Having nothing else to give in return, I handed Blair the stun wand. She flicked it on. Her brother lurched and fell, and she squealed appreciatively.

  And we were off.

  At first, we moved like a well-coordinated Marine unit — or a company of elvish archers led by one totally wicked champion of good, maybe — wending through the tables and the still-oblivious parents toward the prize of the Grill. A bunch of older kids broke off to go play video games, but when I told them to stick to the plan, they came back like I was a drill sergeant, or Honorius the Paladin. Soon, we had the Grill House surrounded.

  We were met by four security guards, who waved their arms and threatened to call our parents, but like Officer Tom, they didn’t have the stomach for a fight and they soon succumbed to Blair’s stun wand. We tied their shoelaces together, and then headed inside. In my head, I could hear Fezkul’s voice but I couldn’t understand the words anymore. Just the encouraging tone.

  So in we went.

  We tore through the washrooms, stuffing the toilets with all the tissue we could find and turning over the garbage cans; we pulled down fire extinguishers and turned the no-slip rugs upside down; we tried to break the fluorescent lights up above but even I was too short for that. Finally, we came out in the front, where there was a counter and a soft-drink dispenser and some grills.

  It was magnificent. I could, I think, have taken it all the way. I could have found a sack of flour, burst it open, tossed a Jumbo-Sized root beer into the deep fryer, set off a tank of propane with the barbecue lighter.

  God knows the kids were waiting for me to do it; in the back of my head, Fezkul was telling me, in a language that I was beginning now to understand, to do just that: “Blow it up. Destroy the old wizard. Kill him. Kill his minions. Blow it up, boy! You are the champion! Get it! Blow it up!” Something like sugar was itching through my veins and I was ready for anything.

  Anything but what I saw, coming around the cash register with Blair at my side.

  “It’s for the best,” said Nick. He was sitting on one of the little plastic chairs next to the window. Lenore was sitting opposite him, her hands in her lap. Her eyes were blank.

  “I can’t believe it,” she mumbled.

  Nick looked down and then up at her again. “You can’t say you didn’t see this coming.”

  I moved closer. Lenore and Nick were as oblivious as any of the other adults — and as much a target. Blair raised the stun wand, aiming for Lenore’s belt-line. I put a hand on her arm, and she frowned at me but held off. I looked at my sister. Her eyes were blank, but I could see her mouth twitching, as she tried to think of some answer.

  “What are they doing?” said Blair beside me.

  “They’re breaking up,” I said. “Oh man.”

  “I didn’t see it coming,” said Lenore. Her voice was low, a monotone. I’d never seen her like this. “Particularly not now — when we can’t even find my brother.”

  Nick shrugged. “I know. It’s not the best timing. But Lenore — we’re just different people, you know? We want different things. And hey — your brother’ll turn up. He’s just goofing, I bet.”

  Lenore nodded, not looking at him. She crossed her arms, covering the Up With People logo on her shirt and hunching her back like an old woman’s.

  Nick leaned back and put his fingers in his front pockets and looked out the window. His head bobbed up and down, like he was listening to some tune inside his head. It was like Lenore wasn’t even in the room. It struck me then: Nick may have been Lenore’s coolest boyfriend yet, but that wasn’t the same thing as saying he was cool. He was lame. Totally, completely lame.

  And Lenore was alone. She may have been a real dork in a lot of ways, but she was my sister, and she was alone, and she didn’t deserve that.

  “I’m bored,” said Blair and she sulked. “You said we could start a fire.”

  “No.”

  “I’m gonna,” said Blair, and at that, I turned to her. She was such a little brat. She raised the wand at me, and I looked her in the eye.

  “Stop!” I shouted it, and she stepped back, like I’d slapped her. At the same time, the rest of the kids looked at me.

  “Stop,” I said again. “Just stop.”

  I stepped over to Lenore and put my hand on her shoulder, and she jumped, then looked at me. She smiled, in a happy-sad way that broke my heart. “Sammy,” she said. Her voice was broken. Nick blinked and looked over. “Whoa!” he said. “There you are. We been looking for you all over, bro.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I said flatly, and Nick held up his hands.

  “Whatever,” he said.

  “You guys should get out of here,” I said to Lenore.

  She blinked. “Why?”

  I was about to say: look around! But as I looked around, I saw that wouldn’t do anything to motivate her. The place, as far as I could tell, was completely empty. There was just us, and a girl behind the counter in one of the orange uniforms who looked like she was swatting at
bugs or something.

  I didn’t see the little kids; they weren’t a part of this awful, adult world I’d stepped into. And I didn’t want to see the kids; I didn’t want to go back to that other world.

  There were more important things here.

  I gave Lenore a squeeze. “Let’s just go,” I said.

  We met Oliver Natch in the middle of the bridge. He was leaning against the handrail, looking over the slowing traffic heading south to Carlingsburg. He didn’t look as sad or as terrible as he might have before. He looked up as we came and gave me a little smile.

  “Come again soon,” he whispered as I passed near, and I said: “Not likely,” and he just shrugged.

  “I can’t blame you, Stanley,” he said.

  “Sam,” I said and he nodded.

  Lenore stopped beside me. Nick had kept walking, and stood at the far end of the bridge, waiting for us. Clearly, he wanted to get the rest of the drive over as soon as possible. You couldn’t blame him — but of course we did.

  Natch looked at Lenore. “Your sister?”

  Lenore introduced herself.

  “Lenore.” Mr. Natch gave a little bow — a courtly bow, as if from another age. “Oliver Natch. I am charmed.” And with that, he gave me a little wink. “Unlike your brother, I think.”

  Lenore gave a puzzled frown.

  “What are you doing up here?” I asked.

  “What? I am doing what I do every year this day and time when I fail to convince Fezkul’s little champion to spill the beans. Waiting — waiting for the storm to pass.” He reached into his pocket, and pulled out an old-fashioned pocket watch. “Which, I think, should be nearly finished.” He craned his neck over my shoulder, and nodded. “Yes.”

  At the base of the stairs, the door to the Grill and Fun-Park opened, and conversation wafted up: “Come on, honey, up the stairs — ” “ — museum was cool!” “ — how much longer to home?”

  “So everything’s okay?”

  Mr. Natch shrugged. “Reasonably,” he said. “There will be some cleaning to do. Perhaps a repair or two.” Then he looked at me levelly. “It might have been worse, if little Stanley had chosen differently.”