On the Day I Died

by Candace Fleming

  Stoked, I snapped a couple of pictures, then glanced farther upward. Something was there, watching me. A face. Peeking out from beneath the eaves. I froze, then relaxed. It was just a gargoyle, the icy, unsettling face of a gargoyle. Its fanged mouth gaped open in a malevolent grin, its wicked eyes bulging with rage.

  Awesome.

  Mindless of the strengthening wind that tugged at me, I clicked off some shots. I could almost hear Mr. Adair saying, “That’s one for your college portfolio, Scott. The admissions officers at the Art Institute are going to love it.”

  After I left Aidan’s that night, I went home and did a little online research. And let me tell you, Chicago State Asylum had a crazy history—no pun intended:

  Fact #1: In 1851, Cook County thought the still-rural northwest side of the city would be the perfect place for an insane asylum. So the county bought forty acres of farmland, built a creepy hospital that looked like a castle and started packing in the crazies. It was easy to do. Back in the day, lots of people—especially women and children—were declared insane when the county didn’t know what else to do with them. Eventually the place became a dump for orphans, unwed mothers, kids with Down syndrome or autism, sick war vets, old folks and lots of other people society cast off.

  Fact #2: By the 1880s the place had more than two thousand patients crowded onto its three floors. With that many people, living conditions were bound to suck. Chicago State was notorious for bleeding, freezing and shackling its patients. Ghostlike inmates wandered aimlessly through the wards. They went without clothes, starving and sleeping in filth-strewn hallways. And still, every day more and more patients arrived. Most came by railway, in a specially built car complete with chains and leather restraints, known around those parts as the crazy train.

  Fact #3: Chicago State was constantly making headlines. My favorites? PATIENT BOILED TO DEATH IN BATHTUB; CHILD IMPALED ON HOSPITAL FENCE WHILE TRYING TO ESCAPE; or best of all—HOSPITAL’S BEAUTY PARLOR CLOSED AFTER HEADLESS BODY FOUND.

  I planned on using the headlines as captions for my photographs. See? I told you so … epic!

  Thunder crashed even louder than before, and lightning forked across the asylum’s steeply pitched roof, leaping from tower to tower like a special effect in a Frankenstein movie. The sky had turned into an ugly purple bruise. Raindrops, cold and hard as marbles, pelted my back, soaking my T-shirt. Clicking off one last shot of the gargoyle, I pushed open the heavy door and plunged into the asylum’s main hall.

  Inside, the darkness was total, as if the place was holding blackness within itself. As I stood there, catching my breath and hoping my eyes would adjust, the door behind me swung shut. A deathly cold crept down the bleak corridors, wrapping itself around me. From deep inside the asylum came the sound of something like iron doors clanking against their frames.

  I lifted my camera and took a few careful steps forward.

  Lightning flashed, illuminating the place in both darkness and whiteness, like a photograph—one of my photographs. In that instant I made out fallen plaster and peeling walls. An old-fashioned cane-back wheelchair sat at the foot of a narrow staircase. Then all went black again, and stupid as it sounds, I had the weird feeling that someone was watching me.

  “Like who, Annabelle?” I said aloud just so I could hear my own voice.

  My words echoed in the darkness. I touched the camera hanging around my neck. Reassurance. A reminder of why I was there.

  Outside, lightning flashed again, brightening the room.

  Was it my imagination, or … had that wheelchair moved?

  I took another tentative step, my knees weak.

  It’s funny how your imagination can work on you: forcing your mind down paths your logical self would never have taken; filling your head with thoughts you know are crazy. Thoughts like—Did I just hear a footstep upstairs? Or, Who is that standing in that corner? Even if there are no ghosts, the mind creates them.

  More lightning.

  Another cautious step.

  A moaning squeak, like a rusted wheel turning, whispered somewhere in the room. A high-pitched laugh gurgled down the staircase. I felt something moving—just barely moving—around me. The wind?

  I stopped.

  What are you, an idiot, or something? You saw the TV show. You heard the stories. Are you really going to explore a supposedly haunted asylum all by yourself in the middle of a thunderstorm?

  NO WAY!

  Whirling, I ran back to the door, grasped the knob, pulled.

  “Bye-bye, Annabelle!” I shouted.

  The door opened without resistance. Why was I surprised? Had I expected something else?

  I paused beneath the arch of the doorway and took a deep breath. Outside, a curtain of rain bowed the trees and flooded the streets. Thunder growled across the storm-tossed sky. But that didn’t stop me. Senior exhibition or no senior exhibition, no way was I going back inside. Tucking my camera under my shirt to protect it from the downpour, I stepped away from the Chicago State Asylum for the Insane.

  There was an explosion of thunder. A skull-clutching crack. Like a strobe at a nightclub, lightning flashed. And flashed. And flashed again. Above me, the gargoyle tipped, rocked, seemed to lean from the eaves. Then its grinning face fell … no, leaped at me.

  Pain sliced through my head. I crumpled, my blood mingling with the rainwater, turning the puddles red. Beside me, the gargoyle lay with a stony smirk. I heard gurgling laughter, the sound of a squeaking wheel. “Don’t leave me.” Then, from beneath my twitching body, I felt my camera click.

  My final photograph.

  Overhead, the moon cleared the trees, creating a white circle of light directly in front of Carol Anne’s grave.

  It’s like a spotlight, thought Mike, like a spotlight on a stage. In it, he could see the camera’s bent frame, its smashed lens.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at last, wishing he could think of something—anything—better to say. After all, it had to be painful reliving your own death.

  Scott shrugged. “Yeah … well …”

  “Sorry?” exclaimed Johnnie with a snort. “It’s hilarious! Clocked by a stone gargoyle! Who woulda believed it?”

  “Me.” A kid sporting a crew cut moved into the circle of light. “After what happened to me, I’d believe anything.” He cleared his throat, waited until everyone was looking at him before continuing. “Have you ever seen that movie The Blob, or maybe Attack of the Crab Monsters? I bet you thought they were pure fiction, right, Mike?”

  “Aren’t they?” asked Mike.

  “Nope,” said the kid. “Those movies were based on fact, and the truth is that when I was alive, aliens from outer space were crashing in the New Mexican desert; radiation was seeping into everyone’s water, creating mutant creatures; and in my town of Rolling Meadows, Illinois, something stranger than any movie happened. I swear.”

  “I’VE SAVED A WHOLE dollar,” my kid sister, Toni, said on that fateful August day. She was perched on one of our pink kitchen countertops, licking pimento cheese off a celery stick and scanning the advertisements at the back of her Crypt of Terror comic book. “Now all I have to do is decide what to buy.”

  “Save your money,” I replied. “All that stuff is junk.”

  “Junk?” squealed Toni. “Are you kidding?” She started to read. “ ‘Hypno-Coin! Amaze your friends with fascinating hypnotic tricks of memory and mezmerization.’ ” She giggled. “Wouldn’t that be swell at Lori Beth’s next sleepover?”

  In answer, I rolled my eyes and took a bite of my own celery.

  Toni read on. “ ‘Defend the future with your very own Captain Gizmo Atomic Ray Gun. Use the patented destructive sparking action to foil Martians and monsters.’ ”

  I snorted. “Yeah, that’s real.”

  She looked up from her magazine. “When did you turn into such a sour-faced old grandpa?”

  “Since I got stuck babysitting you.”

  “Waaaa!” She rubbed her eyes, pretending to cry. �
��Poor Davey-wavey has to stay home with me instead of making time with Barbara Petersen over at Moe’s Drive-In. Waaaa!”

  I felt my temper rise. Why, I asked myself for the umpteenth time, did Mom and Dad’s wedding anniversary have to be this weekend? And why did they have to take off in Dad’s brand-new Bel Air for some fancy resort in Michigan? Couldn’t they have just gone out to dinner like other parents?

  I narrowed my eyes at my sister. “You’re a brat.”

  “Sticks and stones,” she said. She stuck out her tongue, then went back to reading. “Onion-flavored gum … shrunken heads … Insta-Pets.” She paused, and I could see her lips moving as she read the ad to herself. Then she looked up, her dark eyes twinkling with excitement. “Listen to this! ‘Enter the amazing world of man-made life with Insta-Pets—the real, live pets you grow yourself. Fun and fascinating. Just add water.’ ”

  “Like what? Insta-poodles? Insta-hamsters?” I laughed mean-spiritedly.

  “Well, I saved up my allowance, and I’m going to find out,” said Toni. Hopping off the counter, she picked up her magazine and pushed through the swinging kitchen door.

  “It’s a stupid waste of money,” I called after her.

  Her bedroom door slammed.

  Early the next morning, just as the sun was rising, the doorbell rang. Still sleepy-eyed and wearing my pajamas, I answered. A bright red box sat on the stoop. It was addressed to Antoinette Turlo.

  “They’re here! They’re here!” Slipping past me, she swooped up the box.

  “What’s here?” I asked. “What is that?”

  “My Insta-Pets,” she replied. “I ordered them yesterday.”

  I shook my head. “That’s impossible. There’s no way they could have gotten here so quickly.”

  Toni shrugged and held up the box. “But they did! See?”

  She tapped the package’s return address.

  INSTA-PETS

  A DIVISION OF GALACTIC OOZE TOYS

  “How’d that package get to us overnight?” I asked. “And who delivered it?”

  Toni shrugged again. “Who cares? All that matters is it’s here! It’s here!” She danced off to the kitchen, the red box clutched to her chest.

  Perplexed, I stepped out onto the front porch and looked up and down our wide, tree-lined street. Everything looked normal—lawn sprinklers and station wagons and pastel ranch houses standing neatly in a row. A whiff of burning charcoal from last night’s barbecue grills still hung on the morning air. It mingled with the scent of fresh-mown grass and well-tended flower beds, becoming what Mom liked to call “the sweet smell of the suburbs.”

  A summer calm laid its hand over me. I spied Mr. Kopecky bringing in his newspaper, and Mrs. Neary taking Muffin, her nasty-tempered Pekingese, out for a walk. It all seemed like a typically cheerful, unchangingly bright morning in Rolling Meadows, except … there wasn’t any sign of a mailman. No sign of a delivery truck, either.

  Strange.

  I walked back into the house.

  In the kitchen, Toni had already torn open the package and was laying out an assortment of foil envelopes on the Formica table. Each had a picture of a smiling creature with three horns, scales and a forked tail. The girl creatures had big red bows in their horns. The boys wore cowboy boots.

  “See, David?” said Toni. She handed me the first of the envelopes, labeled INSTA-PET EGGS. “All I have to do is follow the directions and poof—Insta-Pets!”

  I riffled through the other envelopes. They had names like SASSY FEAST PET CHOW and INSTA-TREATS AND SWEETS.

  Toni had already measured water into Mom’s crystal punch bowl and was now adding something labeled INSTA-PET WATER PURIFIER. It smelled like dirty feet.

  Idly, I wondered if the neighborhood ladies would notice a weird taste the next time Mom served punch at one of her card parties. I imagined Mrs. Neary taking a sip, then coughing, choking and pounding on her twinset and pearls before finally managing to sputter, “Betty, dear, did you clip this recipe from Good Housekeeping?”

  I snorted at the thought.

  “Quit daydreaming and do something, will you?” said Toni, who was now up to her elbows in measuring cups and foil envelopes. She handed me the instruction sheet. “Here, read that to me.”

  I peered at the tiny print. “Did you add the purifier to exactly sixteen cups of water?” I asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, I already did that,” she replied. “What’s next?”

  “Um … uh … add both the Grow Kwikley Growth Stimulator and the Plasma III to the purified water and stir. Add eggs.”

  Toni pawed through the envelopes until she found the right ones. Tearing open the growth stimulator, she sprinkled its powdered contents into the water. Then from a thick silver envelope marked PLASMA III, she began squeezing out a mysterious-looking green sludge.

  “ ‘Warning,’ ” I said, still reading the instructions. “ ‘DO NOT ADD ANY INGREDIENTS BUT OFFICIAL INSTA-PETS PRODUCTS TO YOUR PETS’ WATER.’ ”

  Toni stirred the ingredients together with a wooden spoon. It turned green.

  “Yum, breakfast,” I said.

  She ripped open the egg envelope. “Here goes nothing.” Two ordinary-looking, quarter-sized discs plopped into the water.

  Instantly, a silvery mist rose from the punch bowl and the water turned deep blue. The mist began to spin crazily like that teacup ride at Disneyland, spiraling higher and higher till it finally twirled into a mini-cyclone that churned and spewed across the water’s surface.

  “Wow!” gasped Toni.

  Mom’s punch bowl began to look eerily like a little ocean, with miniature whitecaps rolling and tossing and sending up spume. Then, just as fast as it had begun, the water calmed and the two eggs popped up like bobbers to the surface. Behind them stretched a trail of pink, blue, yellow and purple tendrils of color that swirled into a rainbow pattern.

  Toni clapped her hands. “Oh, I love them. I really, really love them!”

  I wished I felt the same way. But I had a creeping, bad feeling, and the things already revolted me.

  The phone rang.

  “David?” said my mother’s voice when I answered. “Is all going well?”

  “Uh … um …” I was having a hard time concentrating on the conversation. Even from across the kitchen where the wall phone was mounted, I could see that the two eggs were transforming. One of them had already sprouted a tiny forked tail. And was that a webbed foot I saw?

  “David, did you hear me? Is everything all right?”

  No, I thought, it’s really not. Maybe you should come home right now.

  But I kept my mouth shut. I knew how ridiculous that would have sounded. I mean, it was just a novelty toy from a comic book, wasn’t it?

  “We’re great, Mom.” I forced myself to sound normal. “Have a good time.”

  I hung up just as Toni squealed, “Horns! It’s got itty-bitty horns!”

  After that, things accelerated. The Insta-Pets grew … expanded … stretched, and then grew some more. Within minutes they were as long as my hand, salmon-colored and plump. Their faces peered at us through the glass, their marble eyes round, dull and flat, their mouths opening and gasping. Just minutes later, they were so big they filled the punch bowl, uncomfortably wedged inside.

  “The poor things can’t move,” said Toni.

  And still they kept growing. The little buds of their arms began stretching into tentacles. The little buds on their heads began sprouting into three knobbed horns. Their tails grew longer, fleshier.

  “They need more room,” declared Toni. “Let’s put them in the bathtub.”

  “No, absolutely not.” I gulped as a tentacle flopped over the side of the punch bowl. A webbed hand was just beginning to bloom on the end of it.

  As usual, Toni didn’t listen. She hurried down the hall to the bathroom and turned on the taps. Water splashed into the tub.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” I said, going after her. “I said no!”

  Ignoring me, s
he stuck her wrist under the running water, checking the temperature the way you would a baby’s bottle. As she adjusted the taps, a yellow rubber duck tipped off the edge of the tub. It hit the water with a squeak. But Toni didn’t bother plucking it out. She just bustled off to fetch her pets.

  Remembering the instructions’ warning about putting things in the water, I reached down to get the duck.

  That’s when Toni screamed.

  I raced into the kitchen. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  “We almost killed the poor things, that’s the matter!” cried Toni. She pointed.

  The Insta-Pets had pulled themselves out of the punch bowl and were writhing and wiggling across the pink countertops. They were as long as my forearm now, translucent and shivering like one of Mom’s Jell-O molds.

  Toni reached over and grabbed the first one.

  It wrapped its immature tentacles around her arms and clung tightly.

  “Look, it’s hugging me,” she cooed.

  It didn’t remind me of hugging so much as of a boa constrictor squeezing its prey.

  Gently, Toni carried it into the bathroom. Prying its tentacles off her arm, she lowered it into the tub. The first Insta-Pet splashed into the water. Moments later, the second one followed. Like some kind of alien squid, they swam around, using their tentacles to inspect their new place. Then they poked their heads above the water, and their mouths opened.

  Teeth sprouted like tiny white daggers from their bloodred gums. Just then, two sets of tentacles rose and slithered around the rubber duck. It gave an alarmed squeak before being pulled under. It never resurfaced.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Don’t put your hands near those things,” I warned Toni.

  She rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Davey, you’re being silly.”

  “I mean it,” I said firmly. “Don’t do anything until I get back.”

  I hurried to the front door, opened it and saw another red box. As I’d done earlier, I stepped onto the porch and looked up and down the street. It was quiet except for Mr. Mayfield washing his Oldsmobile in his driveway and Mr. Humor the ice cream man. Mr. Humor cha-chinged his chrome bicycle bell in greeting as he pedaled past.