Weird Kid

by Greg Van Eekhout

  A moment of tense stillness hangs in the air.

  With one magnificent sploosh, the sound of a mammoth toilet flushing, the great blob loses shape and sinks back into the ground.

  I revert to my Jake shape, spilling Agnes onto the parking lot surface. We lie there, exhausted and panting.

  “What happened?” Agnes says, her voice a frog croak. “Is it gone?”

  “How should I know?”

  And yet . . . I do.

  I can feel it.

  The blob is part of me. I’m part of the blob.

  It’s not gone.

  It’s only fled underground.

  And it’s on the move.

  I think about my dad, driving to school to pick me up.

  We need to get back home.

  Chapter 17

  HERE ARE SOME OF THE things Agnes and I witness while pedaling home:

  A guy on his hands and knees, munching his front lawn. He smiles at us with grass-stained teeth.

  Cupcakes with hummingbird wings flitting about a cactus.

  A chicken crossing the road that turns to us and meows with disdain.

  A girl on the corner singing, which would be okay if she only had one mouth instead of six. Her harmonies actually sound pretty good.

  Agnes and I agree to check out our houses and make sure our parents are okay. Agnes’s place is the first on our route. As we lay our bikes on the porch, she pauses at the front door.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do if my mom’s an imblobster.”

  “How about run?”

  “But what if she gets on the phone and tries to do real estate stuff? What if she sells a house to a dog for two dollars?”

  That’s not what Agnes is really worried about.

  She’s already lost her dad. I won’t let her lose anyone else.

  “Remember when Tool Man replaced Night Kite’s butler with a robot that had meat cleavers for arms?” I ask her.

  “Issue 17, ‘The Cutler.’ Night Kite blew its head off.”

  “Right, but then she found her real butler alive and it was all okay. No matter what, it’s going to be okay, Agnes.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” she repeats to herself.

  Instead of using her key, she picks the door lock, because she’s Agnes.

  Her face is a tense stone as she slowly pushes open the door. We stand on the doorstep and peer inside.

  Her mom is at her desk in the living room corner, talking on the phone. Her computer screen displays a house, and I can see a lot of zeroes in the price. She is not attempting to sell a house for two bucks.

  Her mom glares at us. “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “I was on a mission, Mom.”

  “Edna, will you please excuse me, I have to attend to something. Yes, yes, I know there are sinkholes all over town, but I’m sure property values will recover. I’ll call you back as soon as possible. Thank you.”

  It doesn’t sound like she’s talking to a dog. Another good sign.

  “What do you mean ‘a mission’?” she bellows. “Your ‘mission’ is to be in school.”

  “She’s normal,” Agnes says to me, her face relaxing.

  She shuts the door, and we get on our bikes with Agnes’s mom screaming “AGNES OAKES, YOU GET BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!” so loud the windows shake.

  “Totally normal,” Agnes says.

  Seeing Agnes’s mom being normal gives me hope that not everything in town is imblobstered. But hope fades when we get to my house.

  The saguaro cactus in the front yard blinks at us.

  Because it has eyes.

  Big, blinking green eyes.

  We step around it and approach the front door. I crack it open but remain on the porch. Inside, xenogel pools on the carpet. It drips from the ceiling. It runs down the walls.

  The TV is on, tuned to the local news.

  “All is well,” says a smiling newscaster with stiff hair. “There is no news. Eat milk.”

  Mom cradles a bar of soap as though it’s a baby bunny. She kisses it. “Did you know soap is congealed fat? Hello, Jake. Would you like to say hello to your congealed baby brother?”

  Oh, no.

  They got Mom.

  Growler stares blankly at the wall, not growling.

  “Is . . . Dad here?”

  He steps out of the kitchen. “I am here, baby soap! And I could use your opinion on something. How many butts do you think I need?”

  He turns around.

  He has four butts.

  “AAAAAAUGH,” is my response.

  These aren’t my parents. That’s not Growler. They’re imblobsters, no different than fake Mr. Brown. No different than the cactus in the front yard that blinks at us as we leap on our bikes and flee down the road. Leaving them behind feels like ripping hair from my scalp, but we ride away as fast as we can.

  “Where to?” Agnes says, breathless.

  “Dale’s Guitar Shed.”

  “Your cousin? Isn’t he already weird? How will you tell if he’s an imblobster or not?”

  That’s a fair question, but Dale is family, and I won’t let him face an imblobster invasion alone. Also, he has something I need.

  Downtown is even more imblobstered than my neighborhood. A postal worker happily stuffs mail into a storm drain while a Chihuahua leaps from palm tree to palm tree like a flying squirrel. A fire hydrant sprays a gusher of what looks like blood but I really hope is not blood. Parked cars chuckle as we ride past.

  My hand hesitates on the door when we get to Dale’s. The guitar shop has always been a safe place for me. It’s a refuge where I don’t have to watch what I say. I don’t have to follow rules. I don’t have to be careful. I can just play my heart out, and Dale’s always been here to listen.

  With a deep breath, I lead the way inside.

  Things look okay. The weathered carpet is made of carpet, not fish scales. The guitars on the wall are still guitars, not jellyfish. And, like normal, I have to say Dale’s name four times before he looks up from his workbench.

  “Dude! Check it out!” he says with a happy grin. He plugs Basszilla into a towering amp and the air buzzes. When he plucks the lowest string, the floor vibrates with an impossibly deep, low note. “Gnarly, right?”

  I squeeze my eyes shut against the sound waves. He’s still Dale.

  Agnes goes straight into interrogation mode. “Have you noticed anything strange? Any unusual customers? Talking animals? Plants with eyes?”

  “Nah, you’re the first ones through the door today.”

  I kind of love how Dale takes Agnes’s questions in stride. I just hope he does the same with what I’m about to tell him.

  My stomach flutters, like I’m standing on the edge of the high diving board at the pool. Here goes nothing.

  “Dale, I have something to tell you. I’m an alien made of goo from a long-dead planet and after crossing millions of miles I hard-plopped in the desert where my mom and dad found me and then I assumed human form and now the rest of the alien blob is bubbling up all over town and replacing everything it touches with weird imblobster versions and we don’t know what happens to the original people and animals and things it takes over and it already got Growler and Mom and Dad and you should probably try to get out of Cedar Creek View before you get imblobstered.” I refill my lungs. “Also, I need to borrow Basszilla.”

  “Gnarly,” Dale says. He holds Basszilla out for me.

  “Dale, I just told you I’m an alien goo boy.”

  “Yeah, I figured it was something like that. I can always see sound waves rippling through you when you play loud. I’m really attuned to vibes. Because I’m a musician.”

  “But . . . you never said anything.”

  “I thought I was just seeing things. I see things, you know. What about Agnes? Is she an alien, too?”

  “Pfff, I wish,” Agnes says.

  “Cool. So, you wanna try the bass?”

  I love Dale.

  The bell hanging fr
om the door jingles and a man enters.

  He looks normal, a big guy in a long-sleeved blue shirt tucked neatly into khaki pants. The name tag pinned on his shirt is from the bank across the street. It says PHIL. His smile is so unnaturally friendly that I instantly recognize him as an imblobster. Also, he’s wearing his shoes on his hands.

  “Hello, people of the guitar. I wish to purchase a musical noise screamer.”

  Agnes and I brace for action, but Dale doesn’t get it. “Sure, what kind of music do you like? Electric or acoustic? What’s your budget?”

  I stare hard at Dale and wiggle my fingers in a way that’s supposed to somehow communicate, “IT’S A GOO PERSON!”

  But Dale just thinks I’m waving at him. He returns my finger wiggle and goes back to talking to the imblobster.

  “Are you an experienced player or are you just starting out?”

  “I am just starting out,” Goo Phil says. Face noodles shoot out from his cheeks, twitching through the air for Dale.

  My arm stretches in a way only possible for another creature made of goo. I crank the volume knob of Dale’s amp. “Dale, pluck a note!”

  Dale hits the fattest string on his monster bass. The amp emits an explosive rumble that blenderizes my chest. The floor shudders. Dust falls from the ceiling. Pain thunders through my insides.

  This is exactly what I hoped would happen. Basszilla can mimic the Hum, at least on a small scale.

  “I feel funny,” Fake Phil says.

  “Do it again!” I wheeze through clenched teeth.

  This time Dale hits the string with more precision and more force. I feel myself losing shape, sagging like a rotten pumpkin three months after Halloween. But I will ride out the storm. I will remain Jake-shaped. I will.

  Fake Phil makes a gargling noise, like his throat is made of Vaseline. He loses form and collapses into a splash of xenogel on the floor.

  Dale’s feelings are hurt. “Why did you try to attack me like that? I was just trying to sell you a guitar.”

  The puddle pools and glides across the shop, under the door, and away.

  “I’m not sure it was an attack,” Agnes says, wearing her thinking face. “Imblobstering is an adaptive behavior, an instinct to take on the form of things in an organism’s environment. Like a chameleon changing to the color of its background, only way more sophisticated. Maybe the Blast has Phil feeling freaked out and vulnerable.”

  It makes sense, kind of. “But why don’t I have that instinct? Even when I was a baby blob right after I splash-landed, I didn’t imblobster my dad. I just took on human form.”

  “Maybe because you weren’t freaking out,” Dale suggests. “Your mom and dad are nice people, so if the first thing you saw when you arrived on Earth was someone loving you, then maybe love is a vibration. The love vibe keeps you from wanting to grab people with your face.”

  “We are not calling it the love vibe.”

  Agnes frowns like she’s working on a complicated math problem. “That would even explain Dairy and Gravy. They don’t go around imblobstering everyone they meet or touch because they have a mother who loves them. Or at least a mom who keeps them safe so they don’t feel threatened and freaked out all the time. I think Dale is right! The love vibe is the key!”

  “We are not calling it the love vibe!”

  Agnes gives me a stubborn look. She is totally going to keep on calling it the love vibe.

  I can only sigh. “You and Dale have to get out of here before the gel turns you two into cauliflower with bat wings.”

  Agnes says “ha ha” without laughing. “Obviously I’m not going anywhere without you. So what’s the scheme, Jake?”

  “I’m going to take Basszilla and blast every imblobster to jelly.”

  Dale winces. “That sounds . . . mean.”

  “I don’t know what else to do, guys! The blob took Mom and Dad. If I don’t do something, there’ll be nothing left in Cedar Creek View that isn’t an imblobster. And from there the blob will expand. It’ll take Carefree and Gila Bend. It’ll take Phoenix and the Superstition Mountains. It’ll take all of Arizona. It could take over the entire world. I have to stop it.”

  “Music isn’t supposed to hurt people,” Dale says. “I never would have taught you guitar if I thought you were going to use it as a weapon. Music is supposed to be about communicating. About expressing thoughts and feelings there aren’t even words for.”

  “Dale—”

  “No, wait,” Agnes says. “I have an idea. What if . . .” She pauses, working out details in her head. “What if instead of using Basszilla to blast the gel, you used it to play the love vibe.”

  “We are not calling it that.”

  Excited, Agnes starts walking around the shop. “Dale, do you have a tone phaser and a frequency modulator?”

  Dale points to a display case of guitar effects pedals. “I have several. What kind of music do you like? And what’s your budget?”

  I ignore him and turn to Agnes. “You think you can adjust Basszilla so instead of simulating the Blast it emits . . .”

  “Say it, Jake.”

  I grit my teeth. “The love vibe?”

  “Yes. But we can’t do it here in town. The gel is too scattered. And we need a bigger sound system.”

  I know where to find one.

  I can’t help but grin.

  I’m going to live my dream.

  I’m going to play Desert Sky Pavilion.

  Chapter 18

  THE SINKING SUN PAINTS THE sky with desert purples and pinks and oranges glittering with the first evening stars. There’s no concert scheduled at Desert Sky Pavilion tonight. Rows of empty seats spread out before us. Beyond them stretches a lawn where people sit on blankets or dance during shows. But right now it’s just an empty amphitheater.

  The venue will be full soon enough, and my first-ever public performance will have to be spectacular.

  Dale wanders the stage in a bit of a Dale haze while I unload our gear: Basszilla, a big bass amplifier, effects pedals, and Stringy, which Dale insisted I take along in case I need my best horse. Whatever that means.

  I roll the amp up on stage while Agnes emerges from a storage room with armfuls of coiled cables. She plops them on the stage floor in front of Dale. “Okay, Dale, your turn. Plug us into the sound system.”

  Dale just stares into open space. “Dude.”

  “Dude,” Agnes says. “Plug us into the sound system.”

  Dale licks his dry lips. The drive out from town was a bit much for him. “There was a lady whose entire head was just one big strawberry. She was trying to eat ice cream. There were monkeys with chainsaw hands. Or were they chainsaws with monkey bodies? And you want to bring them here?”

  I guess it’s one thing to learn the cousin you’ve been giving guitar lessons to is an alien made of goo, but monkeys with chainsaw hands might have been too much for poor Dale. He sits on the stage. “I need to breathe. Dude.”

  Agnes sighs and picks up a cable. It’s up to her. “This is like Night Kite issue 103 when she had to assemble a proton beam cannon to stop a tsunami from wiping out Grimm City.”

  “How did I miss that one? Does she save Grimm City?”

  “I don’t know, it just came out last week and it ends on a cliffhanger.”

  “Obviously she’s going to succeed.”

  “Night Kite sales aren’t doing great, and she might get canceled.”

  “Oh.”

  Agnes looks at her phone. “‘How to Set Up a Concert Venue Sound System.’ Let’s see. Digital signal processor, impedance levels, direct input box, XLR cables . . . Okay, I think I can do this.” She starts plugging things into complicated-looking wall sockets and connects the tone phaser and the frequency modulator and the Hum-o-Tron in a daisy chain of cables to the amp.

  She throws some switches. Huge speakers overhead hum to life. Basszilla vibrates in my hands.

  I place a finger over the lowest string and pluck as hard as I can. My kneecaps vibr
ate and soften.

  “Are you okay? I have a cold compress.”

  “I’m okay,” I grunt.”

  Simulating the Hum with Basszilla is painful but necessary. We have to prove that we can make a big, awful noise that affects xenogel. But the goal isn’t to hurt the imblobsters. We need to change the sound so it attracts xenogel like a bug light draws flies.

  Agnes turns some knobs. “Hit it again.”

  I strike another note. It’s even louder and bigger, and my body buzzes violently, as if my blood is made of bees.

  For all I know, my blood is made of bees.

  But with some more adjustments, the notes I play start to hurt less, and I feel less like cake batter in a mixer.

  I give Agnes a thumbs-up.

  “Okay, pied piper, keep playing. With any luck, we’ll be swarmed with imblobsters before long.”

  “How is that luck?” Dale moans. “The monkeys had chainsaws.”

  I keep playing, nothing in particular, just scales and rhythms, just making noise. But I’m sending out a signal, like a whistle only dogs can hear. In this case, it’s a vibration only xenogel can feel.

  “Try not to rush those eighth notes, dude.” Even while freaking out, Dale still manages to coach me.

  Something moves in the dark behind the fence at the back of the amphitheater. A shadow, gathering, accumulating, growing. It writhes and jiggles, a gelatinous wall of half-formed imblobsters and raw xenogel. Giant turtles and insect-motorcycles and flying cupcakes and the monkeys with the chainsaw hands and dogs with human faces and a shark on tank treads and palm trees slithering on their bellies like snakes and hundreds of other imblobsters.

  We did it. We brought the blob here.

  That was the easy part.

  We attracted the blob but that doesn’t mean I can control it. Maybe instead of drawing it out of town, I only made it mad. I have to reach it somehow. Get it to stop making more imblobsters. See if I can communicate with those electrical-chemical patterns Woll told us about, the memories and personalities—the essence—of the people and creatures the blob took over.

  The imblobster blob spills over the back seats, merging together in a wave of arms and legs and wings and wheels. It’s louder than the speakers, louder than Dale’s endless refrain of “Dudes, I am freaking out.”