by Tony Ortiz
H.M.D.
HAL’S TCL CAN
Copyright © 2005 by Tony J. Ortiz
Cover illustrations copyright © 2005 by Tony J. Ortiz
Library of Congress Control Number: Pending
ISBN 10: 1469969688
ISBN 13: 9781469969688
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. This book was printed in the United States of America
CHAPTER ONE
A CAT ON DEATH ROW
Our visit to the animal clinic was a disaster. The vet acted as if my cat was possessed. I had no idea why. Duma was a perfect little thing. Well, most of the time. He did like to scare old people and bite them every once in a while. He was also known to poop on their vintage cars. Just the kind of stuff cats do sometimes. But the vet and animal control did not seem to think this was normal. Neither did they approve of us feeding Duma human food, which we understood completely. But if we did not share our breakfast, lunch and dinner with him, he would cry all night and pee on us while we were asleep. And that wasn’t the worst part. At the end of his examination, the Chief Animal Control Officer discreetly pulled my mom, Oz, aside. Apparently whatever he had to tell her would be unfit for the ears of a thirteen-year-old boy.
“. . . it’s unfortunate, but it must be done,” I overheard him say outside the clinic. “You see, after the number of complaints we received and the number of violent attacks this month, we have no choice.”
What troubled me the most was that Oz did not want to tell me a thing when we got back to the house. She went straight to her bedroom and shut the door. I decided to leave her alone and wandered off to my own room, stumbling as Duma frantically shot in between my legs and entered the room just before me. Beating me to it was a big deal for him.
Duma was pure black, with tangerine eyes and large pointy ears. He was well built, but slender. Some intern vet thought he was a mix of an Abyssinian and some unidentified wild animal. I had been thinking that for years. I had wondered if Duma’s mom had actually been bred with a bobcat. Or maybe it was a tiger. Even better, what if Duma was half-turtle? His life expectancy would be at least a hundred years!
A familiar voice brought me back to reality. It was my mom. I must have spaced out for a while. “Jesse, this is no time to daydream,” she said, sitting down on my bed and nearly crushing my feet. Her name was Becky, but I liked calling her Oz – short for Aussie. She was tall and thin like me, with green eyes. I had also inherited her reddish-orange hair. Mine, however, poofed out like I'd just been electrocuted.
“Oz, what’s wrong?” I asked from under the bedcovers. “What did the officer say?”
“You need to train Duma.”
“Why?” I turned to Duma, who was playing with his private parts.
Oz nudged him so he would stop. “The neighbors have been calling in about him.”
“So?” They always called in about him.
“Jess, tomorrow morning at seven he’s scheduled to be put to sleep.”
“Put to – what?” I shot out of bed, feeling sick to my stomach, and started pacing around the room. “But you just said I needed to train him—”
“Jess, I need you to listen to me. You know he goes wandering into our neighbors' homes. And you know he has bitten eight kids this month–”
“They can’t kill him!” I glanced at the collection of clocks and watches on my desk. My favorite digital watch read: 8:49 AM.
“Jesse! He can still be okay.”
I waited for her to explain. Duma sat calmly at her feet, watching me, as though I was the one in trouble.
“Jess, sit down, please. They’re going to bring in a few renowned vets tomorrow to run some more tests on him. If they feel that he’s harmless, he won’t be euthanized or sent to the animal shelter. They’ll leave him be. Meanwhile, you’re going to have to train him as best as you can.”
“That’s impossible!”
“I know. But it’s all you can do at this point. I’m going to go talk to the neighbors who filed the complaints. I’ll be back soon.”
Oz planted a kiss on each of us before leaving. Duma jetted across the floor, clenching a stale fruit snack in his teeth.
“Stop eating those, Duma! Do you want them to put you to sleep?” Duma halted and lifted his head at the word “sleep,” as if that meant something to him. “You are so stupid. Come on. We’re going to Katie’s.”
Hoping my best friend was not at school yet, I sprinted to her house, a quarter of a mile down the hill. It was a half-painted home, with a dozen small crates stacked up into a pyramid under her second-story bedroom window. She had built to get in and out without going downstairs, for the fear of running into her foster mom.
“What you doing here?” said Katie, sticking her head out of the window. "It's nine a.m."
“I need . . . I need your help,” I panted. "When do you have to go to school?”
“I don't know.” She disappeared inside for a moment and came back with a wooden box to complete the pyramid so the stack reached the windowsill. Duma jumped up easily. I fumbled my way up after him.
“Hey, ballerina,” she greeted me when I stepped inside. She was breathing a little heavily, too.
“Did Sandy hurt you?” I asked.
“No, ballerina.”
I scowled. “I - am - not - a - ballerina.”
“Then what are those?”
“Soccer shoes! Katie, they are not ballet slippers. The soles are just worn down.”
She didn't respond, already busy playing with Duma on her grubby mattress. She was the type who could be girly and gangster all at once. Her coffee-brown face glowed with a hint of pink. She was a flawless Bolivian, even with the few bruises and scars visible here and there on her body. Her long black hair seemed to always flow perfectly with the wind, but today it was tied back in a ponytail. She wore a baggy brown sweater and red board-shorts that looked three sizes too big for her—
Katie pushed me. “What you thinking about this time? Crow migration?”
“What?”
“See, you say what all the time. That means you were thinking. You wanna go to your house?”
“What about school?”
“I’m not going.”
“But won't Sandy get mad?”
“I don’t care. She’s not my real mamá. So why you want my help?”
“Because . . . they want to euthanize Duma.”
“Do what?”
“They’re going to kill Duma! They’re going to put him to sleep.”
Duma’s ears shot up again.
Katie looked as shocked as I had earlier. “They can’t do that! Crapper! Who said they would?”
“Why?”
“I wanna know.”
“Are you going to go after them?”
“Well, they’re not killing Duma.”
“Well, they won’t if I can make him act like a normal cat.”
“Like a house cat?” She watched Duma scurry by and smash into a wall.
“Yes.”
She laughed. “Yeah, right.”
Katie was right: Duma would not listen to any of our commands. If we told him to sit, he would try to poop. If we told him to stay, he would attack us like he wanted to kill us. But he was not stupid. We took him to a local park once, and he fi
gured out that a kite, one of his favorite things to chew on and rip to pieces, would only fall if its owner reeled it in or made a mistake. He hated waiting around so he went for plan C and just bit the kid. The kite came down right away.
As the stressful day wore on, it just got worse. Duma hissed at every old couple that walked by, chased a handicapped person, went after a pregnant woman, disemboweled a rat and placed it on the neighbors’ freshly plastered brick porch. One day of training was not going to change Duma. It was truly impossible, and the vets should have given us more time. Was this even legal?
We gave up on Duma at about ten o'clock at night. He was acting fussy, and I had to take my geometry test. I got a perfect score, as always. I wasn't sure why Oz tested me every other day. She knew I had a photographic memory. If I hadn't gotten every question right, she would have had me make my own dinner. In a way, that would have been a good thing. Her cooking was awful.
“Thanks for the dinner, Oz. It was really good,” I said as I placed my empty plate in the kitchen sink.
“You’re welcome. Sorry I was so late making it.”
Oz kissed me goodnight, and then I headed to my bedroom, which was cold and dark. The window had been left cracked open, and one of the two ceiling bulbs was out. I had recently replaced it, but the new one turned out to be a dud. Duma had been crouching under the bed the whole time, sensing the grim ambience. What he did not know was that I knew the reason for it, and it was not about tomorrow's showdown with the vet.
CHAPTER TWO
The howling monster
I sat up in my bed, sweating in my dinosaur pajamas and listening to the busy ticking of all the clocks on my desk. What I needed to do in a few minutes completely terrified me. I had done the most horrible thing. It was so horrible that I had gone window-shopping for a bulletproof vest yesterday.
“It’s time to go,” I said to Duma, hanging off the side of my bed and looking at him upside down. “This is extremely important. No more funny business or I will leave you behind.”
Of course Duma didn’t know what I was saying, and I certainly was not about to leave without him. It was too scary outside. I stuffed my backpack with a sharp piece of glass, a butter knife, a hammer, a switchblade and a bottle of aspirin.
“Okay, Duma, if we can’t find it, she’ll never let us back in the house. She’ll board up the windows and the cat doors. She might even buy a gun. She’ll put both of us to sleep.”
Duma ran crazily around the room.
“No! Asleep, as in, you’ll never wake up,” I corrected. “Don’t be stupid!”
I threw the stuffed backpack over my shoulder and tightened the straps, all the while thinking about my mom’s jacket. It was a green leather jacket, which she had inherited from her parents. It was the only thing that could make her remember her parents after they were killed and she got amnesia from a tragic car accident eighteen years ago. It was possible that she loved it even more than she loved Duma and me. So what was this terrible predicament I was in only a year after Oz had given me the jacket? I had lost it.
It took me three tries to get the window opened, only to be greeted by Oz, standing right outside of it in her checkered nightgown, pale as a ghost.
“Oz!” I said anxiously. “What – what are you doing outside?”
“Hand it over,” she said sternly.
I handed my backpack to her and bowed my head.
“What are all of these for, Jess?” I heard her say.
I slowly lifted my head to see her pull out Katie’s switchblade from the backpack.
“Hmm . . . for protection.”
“Protection? From what? Jesse, where are you going so late at night? This is the second time this week. I can’t stand outside your window every night afraid that you’ll decide to sneak out again. Sitting outside for two nights in a row is exhausting enough. And this?” She was holding up the bottle of aspirin.
I wasn’t sure what to tell her, but I chose to tell the truth. “It’s for the pain.”
“What pain?”
“What if I run into that man and he hurts me? I don’t want to be in pain.”
“Jess, stop it. I’m tired. That man hasn’t shown up since you were six, and you said all he did back then was take your school I.D. card, right? That's what you told me.”
“I know. What if I forgot a small detail and he actually wanted to hurt me or kidnap me?”
“Jess, you don't forget. Neither of us do.”
“I know. But they never found him, Oz.”
“No more, Jess. I’m grounding you.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out an orange envelope. It looked old, with corners faded and bent and dust embedded along the edges. “You see this? It’s very special to me.”
She moved away from the window without another word and walked along the front of the house. I could not believe that she was blackmailing me with some envelope. I stuck my head out of the window and called out after her.
“Are you going to tell me what it is?” She didn’t answer. I ran out of my room and met her in the kitchen. “Oz, what’s inside that envelope?”
“Jess, when you show me that you’re ready, I’ll tell you.” She dropped the envelope into a safety box, locked it, and placed it in the cupboard that always had a padlock fastened to it.
“Can you give me a clue? Oz, please! Pretty please! Why do you always have to do this to me? This is not normal for a parent. Tell me what’s inside.”
“Someday.”
“Someday? I can’t wait that long.”
“I have to punish you somehow, Jess. And I want my jacket back.”
“What? No.”
“Yes.”
“But . . . uhmm . . . it’s at Katie’s. I left it there – I let her have – borrow it for school.”
“Jess, you know what that jacket means to me. I gave the jacket to you, not Katie.” Oz paused for a second and then said, “Please go to bed.”
I went into my bedroom and flopped on my bed, thinking I was done for. I had to find her jacket. Katie would never lie to Oz about something so serious. I got right back up and re-packed my backpack with my new arsenal of tools and weapons and once more tightened the straps. I peeked out of the window just in case, eyeing light fog outside, then stepped over the windowsill and hurried across the wet grass. Duma was already moving down the sidewalk, glowering at his surroundings.
“Duma, wait up! Where are you—” Duma stuck his head into a patch of mud. “Stop messing around!” I scolded him quietly. I ran over and picked him up. “Why must you make everything so difficult? We’re searching for Oz’s jacket! Not rodents! Okay? Look, if you stay with me, I’ll make you lots and lots of coffee when we get back.”
Both of us hurried stiffly through the chilly fog, which was thickening before our eyes, so we could only see twenty feet in front of us. There was no way we could find the jacket in this weather.
“L-let’s g-go home,” I trembled. Duma was up ahead, staring into the wall of fog. “We can look for it to-tomorrow–”
My voiced croaked. Something touched my leg.
“Who are you?” said a woman sitting cross-legged on a grassless dirt lawn. She slowly picked herself up. She was short, chubby, dirty and smelled like eggs. She was wearing three or four layers of clothes.
“Duma!” I shouted.
“No, no, don’t shout,” she ordered, snatching my arm. “There’s nothing down that block. Hey, you want to see something scary? I know you boys like scary stuff.”
I shook my head.
“What you doing out here at this hour if you ain’t looking for adventure?”
“I’m–”
“Is that a black cat? And it’s almost Halloween. That’s bad luck for the both of us.” The woman shuffled away, disappearing into the swirling fog. “Come here,” I heard her say somewhere further down the street. “Come on, boy. . . . You want to see magic?”
As soon as she uttered that one word, magic, I forgot all my fears. What did
she mean by magic? Did she mean real magic? I caught up to her and waited at her side, keeping a five-foot gap between us.
“It’s almost time,” she huffed, raising her eyes to the hazy night sky. “Wind’s still. Many clouds. Round moon. And the fog’s creeping all over. Yes, the fog is here, and so will they be. Two minutes from now. Just over there.”
The woman waddled through the damp mist to a red house at the corner. The front porch was lined with a dozen of jack-o’-lanterns, none carved even remotely scary. I kept close to the woman and followed her to a window off to the right of the porch. We peered in through the wet glass. The living room was to the right and had a few couches, a dim lamp and a crackling fireplace. The kitchen was to the left, but it was too dark to see into. I turned back to the street, where Duma was eyeing a cawing crow perched on a telephone pole.
“What you see here, you’ll never forget,” said the woman in a hushed voice. “Stay quiet now. A world you’ve never known will be revealed to you. The tale is no tale at all.”
“What tale?” I asked.
“Fifteen seconds,” announced the woman, holding a pocket watch in her hand.
I could hardly stand the suspense. I didn’t know what to expect, but I somehow knew I was meant to be there.
“Ten, nine, eight,” the woman counted. I started counting with her in my head. “. . . seven, six, five, four, three, two . . .”
The wind howled, and the air swiftly changed from cold to warm, then back to cold. A few dogs barked frantically blocks away, and the crow flew off the telephone pole, but I heard nothing unusual until …
A doleful wolf’s howl broke the silence of the house, carrying on until it reached an eerie high pitch. I pressed my face into the wet windowpane, desperately trying to get a better peek into the living room, where the howling was coming from. A hall light flickered on as a tall elderly woman, as dark as the night sky and as old as a great-great-grandma, came into view.
“Charles, what did I tell you?” she grumbled sleepily at someone hidden from view in the far corner of the room. “I told you not to do that when you come in. You’d better hope you didn’t wake your grandnephews.” Her tone softened a bit. “I’m sorry for snapping at you, but I’m still your mother.”
