Two-Thousand-Pound Goldfish

by Betsy Byars

  The Two-Thousand-Pound Goldfish

  Betsy Byars

  For Charles Duffey

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  A Biography of Betsy Byars

  “If the cloud hits Los Angeles, it will reduce the entire population to the size of Barbie dolls within ten minutes!”

  “Yes, Professor, unless …”

  WARREN SAT IN THE second row of the theater, staring up at the screen. A piece of cold popcorn was in his hand, halfway to his mouth, forgotten.

  —We’ve tried everything. Everything! Nothing can stop the monster.

  —Wait! There’s one thing we haven’t tried.

  —What?

  —The S-F-342 Photo-Atomic cloud.

  —But that’s never been tested, Professor. There’s no guarantee it will work.

  —It’s our one hope. Tell Doctor Barronni to ready the machine.

  —But Professor—

  “Warren Otis.” The theater manager was coming down the aisle. “Is there a Warren Otis in the theater? Warren Otis!”

  When his name was called for the third time, Warren straightened. “Oh, that’s me. I’m Warren Otis. What do you want?”

  “Your grandmother called. You’re supposed to go home.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “She just said you’re supposed to go home.”

  Warren got up out of his seat. Walking backward so he could watch the pink haze of the S-F-342 Photo-Atomic cloud encircle the monster, he moved slowly, reluctantly, up the aisle.

  The monster inhaled some of the S-F-342 and began clawing at the sky. He threw back his head and roared. Drool came out of his mouth.

  A poor effect, Warren decided, walking slower. You could see it was a man in a reptile suit now, standing in a pond made up to look like the Pacific Ocean. Economy drool, too—probably corn syrup.

  —It’s taking effect, Professor. The monster is shrinking.

  —Wait! The wind is changing!

  —Yes, Professor, the cloud is shifting. It’s heading for Los Angeles!

  Warren stopped. In the crook of his arm was his half-eaten box of popcorn. It had been there for six hours. Warren ate between features.

  “Excuse me,” a voice said.

  “Sure.” Warren shifted to let two girls pass. Eyes on the screen, he felt his way into an aisle seat in the last row.

  —We’ve got to stop it!

  —Professor! Look at the monster! It’s still shrinking! The cloud works!

  —Yes, this means—

  —This means that if the cloud hits Los Angeles, it will reduce the entire population to the size of Barbie dolls within ten minutes!

  —Yes, Professor, unless …

  This was the third time Warren had heard that prediction this afternoon, but it was still awesome. His eyes gleamed. He envisioned millions of Barbies and Kens running helplessly around Los Angeles, trying to climb up into house-sized beds, making human ladders up to doorknobs, squeaking like mice as they scurried through the streets.

  “Excuse me.”

  “Sure.” A fat boy crawled over Warren’s knees. He shifted impatiently to keep the screen in sight.

  —There may be time enough if—

  Warren’s lips were moving with the actor’s now, forming the words. “If,” he and the actor said together, “we can send the cloud back out to—”

  “Warren Otis!” It was the manager again. “Is Warren Otis still in the theater?”

  Warren sighed aloud. He got up, head down, and ducked quickly into the lobby. He went around the refreshment center and out into the street, where he stood for a moment under the marquee.

  He never came out of a theater without sensing all over again the cold drabness of the real world. The same dull line of traffic was in the street, the same dull sky overhead. Even the shadows seemed empty, nothing lurking inside.

  Warren zipped up his jacket and pulled his aviator sunglasses down from on top of his head. Frowning slightly, he started down the sidewalk. He felt as dissatisfied as if he had been interrupted in the middle of a dream. He began to eat his cold popcorn.

  He stepped off the curb at the light and waited for it to change. He glanced down at his feet.

  —What lives in the sewer beneath the city, weighs two thousand pounds, and is coming out tonight to get you?

  That had been the advertisement for next Saturday’s main feature. Warren looked down at the drain to see if he could catch the gleam of a two-thousand-pound alligator’s eyes in the sewer below. All he saw were old candy wrappers and dead leaves.

  The light changed, and Warren crossed the street slowly. Could there really be alligators under the city, he wondered, alligators bought by tourists in Florida years ago and then flushed down the toilet when they got big enough to snap at the family poodle?

  It really could happen, he thought. His excitement rose. His sister had done that once with a goldfish—flushed it down the toilet.

  Warren walked slower and then stopped in front of Walgreen’s. Could his sister’s goldfish—what was its name? Bubbles! Could Bubbles still be down there? A two-thousand-pound goldfish?

  —What swims in the sewers below the city, weighs two thousand pounds, and wants to slurp you to death?

  The movie would start with a picture of Bubbles. Her mouth would be opening and closing.

  Warren broke off, frowning slightly. It was going to be hard to make Bubbles look scary, but with the right special effects man, anything was possible.

  Warren’s friend Eddie claimed he had once seen a horror movie about a giant tomato. A tomato! And all the tomato had done was roll around squashing people. And a girl in Warren’s science class said she had seen a movie about giant, sixty-foot-tall rabbits that terrified the world, but Warren wasn’t sure he believed that.

  Tomatoes, bunny rabbits—it was pitiful. It was as bad as a horror movie about a cow, something Warren had once envisioned. At least his cow, Bossy, had gone around squirting radioactive milk on people, but still Warren had never been able to make the idea work. As soon as Bossy would lift her leg (and how else was she going to squirt milk?), well, as soon as she would lift her leg, some low-minded people in the audience would be sure to snicker. Warren didn’t care much for comedy science fiction.

  A woman bumped into Warren, and he mumbled, “Sorry,” and started walking again.

  It would be one of those goldfish with the big, bulging eyes, he decided, and because of some chemical in the sewer water—say a chemical company had been getting rid of dangerous waste material by illegally dumping it into the sewer—this dangerous waste material, say, XX-109, which had been developed to make beef cattle bigger, had turned the unsuspecting Bubbles into an enormous flesh-eating creature with a special craving for human beings. (See, that was why they had to stop giving XX-109 to the cattle. As an unpleasant side effect, they ate the cowboys.)

  In the opening scene, before the credits, there would be two sewer workers having lunch in the depths of the sewer.

  There would be dim lights, slapping of water against concrete, dripping pipes, oozing walls, scurrying of rats. Then silence.

  “Things are quiet,” one sewer worker would say while he unwrapped his hoagie.

  “Yeah, too quiet,” his co-worker would answer.

  These were Warren’s fav
orite lines. It had been impossible to work them into his cow horror movie because cows moo so often.

  “Things are quiet.”

  “Yeah, too quiet.”

  “Moooooooooooooooo.”

  It just wouldn’t work. Here, it was perfect. Because as the co-worker said, “Yeah, too quiet,” a ripple would appear in the dark waters below, the sliver of a golden fin would be seen curling ominously back and forth, swirling closer with each turn.

  The two men would be so intent on their conversation they would not see the ripple or sense their approaching doom. “Hey, did you see Legs Madden on Bowling for Dollars last night?” one would be saying.

  And Bubbles—Bubbles wouldn’t have teeth, of course, but her mouth would have a sort of vacuum cleaner effect. She would ingest people. (Warren loved the word “ingest.”) The only sign of warning would be one bubble.

  In the deep ominous silence, it would come. BLOOOOP! And then a terrible churning of waters, flashes of gold, an enormous slurping sound, two fading screams, and then, again, silence. The camera would zoom in on the half-eaten hoagie at the water’s edge.

  Then the title would explode onto the screen.

  GOLDFISH!

  Warren smiled to himself. And a close-up of the goldfish’s mouth. A kind of pulsating sound would fill the theater, ominous, pounding … slurp … slurp … slurp … slurp …

  “Are you all right?” a woman asked, touching his arm. Warren started.

  He realized he had been standing in the middle of the sidewalk, making goldfish mouths. “Oh yes, I’m fine.” He swallowed. He felt he had to give an explanation for his strange behavior. “I was choking on a piece of popcorn.”

  “You should be more careful.”

  “I will.”

  The woman gave him one last look, shook her head, and moved on down the street.

  Warren glanced around, startled to find that the street was dark, that the day had turned to night. He stuffed his popcorn box in a nearby trash can and crossed the street, running. Horns blew and drivers cursed as he zigzagged through the lines of cars.

  “Same to you,” he muttered beneath his breath.

  “Snails! Millions of snails, man-eating snails. It’s the slime of centuries!”

  “I know. Don’t slip.”

  “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” His grandmother stood in the hall, blocking Warren’s way.

  “I’ve been to the movies, Grandma. You know that.” He glanced on either side of his grandmother to see if he could slip past. His grandmother seemed to have the ability to swell when she needed to. Now she filled the entire hallway.

  “I’m not going through this every Saturday,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Calling the theater and having you paged. Now you are either going to learn to come home on time or you are not going to the movies ever again. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes!”

  She shifted so that he could pass into the living room. “Your supper’s on the table,” she called after him. “It may be cold.”

  “May be,” he muttered. He went into the kitchen. The faded baskets of food on the old wallpaper always reminded him of the food on the table—it was faded and tasteless too.

  He sat down. His grandmother served everybody’s plate at the same time, whether they were there or not. On the plate in front of him were cold, hardened mashed potatoes, limp beans, greasy Spam.

  There was another plate beside his. The food on that one had not been eaten either.

  “Where’s Weezie?” he called.

  “How would I know?” His grandmother was in the doorway now, watching him. “I am the last person to know where my grandchildren are. No one tells me anything!” She turned and went into her bedroom and slammed the door.

  His grandmother loved to slam doors. It was the only reason she had gone into the bedroom. Warren knew this. He knew too that she would wait just inside the door for a count of about thirty and then come out again.

  He speared a bean on his fork. He was used to cold food, but his sister Weezie was usually on time. He felt a sudden chill of excitement.

  Weezie was missing—Warren considered anyone who was five minutes late “missing.” She had been on her way home from the library and … He lowered his fork, bean untouched. And on the way home from the library—what? She had fallen into the sewer?

  How could Weezie fall into the sewer? They had grates over them, didn’t they? And Weezie wasn’t the type to pry up a grate.

  Suddenly his head jerked up. A kitten! He smiled. Weezie was a pushover for stray kittens. She would hear a faint meow and look down into the grate—No, no, there would be a big pipe, an aqueduct that led into the sewer. And Weezie would walk in, her footsteps echoing hollowly down the walls. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

  Beyond her, in the dark water, there would appear a golden ripple, the flash of a swirling fin, the swish of deep, disturbed currents, the glint of an enormous eye, the whirl of primeval forces.

  “Kitty, kitty, kitty.”

  Weezie would peer into the darkness. Then she would move slowly, deeper into the sewer. Weezie wasn’t the kind to give up on a kitten.

  “Kitty?”

  A sudden stillness would fall in the sewer. Things are quiet around here, Weezie would think. In her mind a voice would answer, Too quiet.

  But before she could heed the warning, it would come. BLOOOOOP! The warning bubble, and then the water would churn furiously, a golden form would rise up from the water, majestic and terrible, and then the awesome slurping noise, the fading scream of a young girl, and then, silence.

  Warren sighed. He felt a pang of guilt. He always did when he allowed his relatives to be the victims in his horror movies. After he had allowed Bossy to squirt radioactive milk on Grandma, he had not slept well for two nights.

  He got himself back to normal by reminding himself that he had warned her. “Don’t go out, Grandma, please” had been his exact words. “The cow may squirt tonight.”

  “I’d like to see any cow squirt me!”

  Well, she had.

  Anyway, he would make up for letting Weezie be ingested by going out when his Grandma asked him to search for her. His grandma did that all the time. “Warren, go find Weezie” was a nightly order.

  He heard his grandmother come out of her bedroom, and he waited, his face turned away. He opened his mouth at the same time she did, and he mouthed with her the words, “Warren, go find Weezie.”

  “Why do I always have to go find Weezie?” he asked. He turned, frowning. He was going to go, but it never hurt to put up a struggle.

  “You want me to do it? Sixty years old and legs like balloons?”

  “Why does anybody have to do it? Weezie can get home by herself. Nobody’s going to mug her, if that’s what you’re afraid of. Weezie’s big. Muggers only go after weak, pitiful targets—like me.”

  “Go.”

  “Well, I haven’t finished eating yet.”

  “So eat.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do.” He put the cold bean in his mouth.

  “Now go.”

  “One bean is eating? Oh, all right!” He got up slowly, as if he were as old as his grandmother. “Why don’t you just call the library?” he asked. “You know that’s where she is.”

  She watched him without speaking.

  “That’s what you’d do to me. ‘Is Warren Otis in the theater? Warren Otis, go home.’ How do you think that makes me feel?”

  “It should make you want to be home on time.”

  “Well, it doesn’t.”

  “And when you find her, you two come straight home.”

  He left the apartment, slipped down the stairs and out into the night. He zipped his jacket up against the cold.

  Now that he was outside, he walked slower. The only person who had never been a victim in one of his horror movies was his mother. Even he, himself, had been carried off by rabid bats.

  And in The Revenge of the Snails, a budg
et horror movie he had created for television, he had narrowly missed being slimed to death, which had to be one of the least pleasant ways to die he could imagine.

  He and his friend Eddie had gone to the old fishing hole and had been drawn by curiosity to the odd crust on top and the slime around the sides. They had stepped closer.

  “Snails! Millions of snails, man-eating snails,” he had said. “It’s the slime of centuries.”

  “I know. Don’t slip.”

  At that very moment Warren’s foot had slid out from under him. “Aaaaaaa—” He had fallen into the pond. If he hadn’t been quick-witted, if he hadn’t scrambled up as soon as he heard the dreaded crunch of shells, if Eddie hadn’t extended a hand and pulled him up, well, then he would have been done for.

  But his mother—nothing bad happened to her. He wouldn’t let it. Maybe that was because, of them all, his mother was the most likely to have something happen to her in real life. She had enough danger without radioactive cows and man-eating snails.

  He rounded the corner. The library was just ahead. Warren slowed down. He was planning to enter the sewer himself and discover that Weezie was missing. Her books would be there, her name written carefully inside them, and he would—

  Suddenly Warren stopped. He saw that Weezie was in the phone booth in front of the library. She was talking to somebody on the phone. Warren moved closer.

  He was curious. Weezie was not the type to talk on the phone unless there was a reason. Suddenly he wanted to know what that reason was. It might be something secret, and he could hold it over her, make her do things for him. Keeping close to the buildings, out of the streetlight, he moved toward the phone booth.

  As he got closer he saw that Weezie was listening, not talking. She was so intent, he felt she would not have noticed him even if he had rapped on the glass door.

  He went closer. There were tears on Weezie’s cheeks. He was stunned. He had never known Weezie to cry, had never been aware she could cry. It was like learning that Muhammad Ali cries.

  He stood in the shadows, staring in awe at his sister. She hung up the phone and waited with her head bowed. To Warren it was like the moment in a horror movie when the werewolf has changed back into human form and needs a moment to compose himself before going back to the world.