Some more rustling on the slope announced something else approaching. Oh no. Were there more ghoulies out here? Instead of an entire herd of monsters, a huge white dog burst free of the brush on the other side of the meadow, coming to a stop next to the dying ghoulie. I gaped in complete surprise. He was big enough for me to ride, if he was my dog, and he was all snowy white except for his ears. They looked like they were dark red or brown.
Just when I thought I couldn’t get any more surprises today, the branches of the far oak tree parted and someone stepped out into the meadow. It was a man, I think, because he wore dark green pants and a long, olive green trench coat, the kind guys in the army sometimes wear. The coat was hooded, and the man had the hood pulled over his head, so I couldn’t see his face at first. In one hand, he carried a bow, almost as tall as he was, and there was a sack of arrows flung across his back. He approached the meadow cautiously, his boots making barely any noise against the leaf litter and fallen branches. When he came within ten feet of the dead ghoulies, he held up a hand and the dog walked over to his side. The gloves he wore were the same color as the jacket, and the fingertips had been cut off.
I swallowed hard. Maybe he was one of the strangers Mom and Dad had warned me about. They told me that some people lived away from others, and that some of these people were dangerous. They had always told me that I should assume they were all dangerous, just to be safe. I scrunched up my nose, trying to decide whether this stranger was dangerous or not.
After scratching the dog behind the ears, he moved closer to the ghoulies and got down on one knee. I wanted to shout out and warn him that the ghoulies were not natural, and they might still hurt him even if they were dead. But then, an even more profound thought occurred to me: Only I could see the ghoulies. If he had shot them and was now looking at them, he could see them, too.
The man reached out and pulled one, then the other, arrow from the dead monsters. He wiped the arrow tips on the ground. Then, without even looking, returned them to the quiver on his back. As he started to stand, he reached up and pushed the hood back from his face. I couldn’t really see it from where I hid under the bushes, but his hair looked dark, and he was really tall. Taller than Dad. Taller even than Kevin, our neighbor down the street who played basketball for the high school where Mom worked. He was bigger, too, almost like a Viking from one of Bradley’s warrior encyclopedia books. I couldn’t see his eyes at all, even when he turned his head as if to survey his surroundings. Panicking a little, I buried my face in the leaves, inhaling dust and the scent of damp mildew. My heart was thundering in my ears, and my ankle began to ache a little. Had he seen me? I hoped he hadn’t. I was wearing Bradley’s old camouflage zip-up sweatshirt, but something about this stranger told me he might be able to see me even if I had buried myself under all the leaves.
Eventually, I heard a light whistle and the sound of movement across the water. Gathering up my courage, I lifted my head just enough to peek out with one eye. The stranger and his white dog were gone, and where the ghoulies used to be, there were only two black piles of ash.
Before he got the chance to come back, I squirmed around until my head faced uphill once again and, using one arm to push the basketball ahead of me, I crawled back up the hill. Once out on the horse trail again, I spun around, wincing a little because of my sore ankle. It didn’t hurt that bad, but it still bothered me a little. Besides my ankle, the tops of my hands were a little scratched from the blackberry vines, but at least I hadn’t fallen into a patch of poison oak or stinging nettles.
“Aiden!” I heard someone call out.
I jumped nearly five feet, my heart staying airborne even when I landed back onto solid ground.
“Aiden, let’s go! It’s almost dinner time, and you know Mom’s gonna make us do homework after!”
It was just Logan and Bradley, finally looking to see what had happened to me. There was no way I could tell them, even if I wanted to, about what I had seen and heard. They would just assume I had tripped and fallen, like I sometimes do. As much as I hated the way my autism often made me slow to react and unable to talk clearly, in situations like this, it was probably for the best.
I finished brushing off the dead leaves and sticky, moldy dirt and scooped up the basketball. Without glancing back down at the swamp, I turned toward home, praying that there were no more ghoulies and no more strangers with huge dogs.
Yet, while I hurried back up the trail, the events of the last several minutes spun around in my mind like a colorful pinwheel in the wind. Who had that man been, and why was he able to see the ghoulies? Where had he come from? I had never seen him in our neighborhood before, and I was good at noticing new people.
As I turned to climb up the slope leading into our back yard, I thought about one more thing that unnerved me about the Green Man, something I hadn’t even noticed at first because he was all covered up by that coat. When he had pulled his hood back to look at the ghoulies, his skin had been glowing, just like mine and Meggy’s.
Part Four
Corpse Hounds
Bradley and Logan were sitting on the fence when I got back from fetching the basketball. It wasn’t a real fence, just part of one that marked the edge of the yard. I didn’t climb on it too much because it was made out of split rails, and it was full of splinters. Logan was sitting on the top rail facing the swamp, while Bradley was on the side that ran parallel with the horse trail, throwing rocks down into the overgrown canyon below. I could hear the rocks crashing into the underbrush, and when a covey of quail was startled into taking flight, I almost jumped out of my skin. I had a feeling anything I noticed moving down in the swamp for the next several weeks would spook me.
“There you are!” Logan exclaimed. “What have you been doing all this time?”
He hopped down from the railing and crossed his arms. He was the oldest of my brothers, and therefore, thought he was in charge of the rest of us. Logan lifted one eyebrow, doing a perfect imitation of Mom when she wanted answers.
“Who cares!” Bradley whined. “Just give us the basketball already. Mom will be calling us in for dinner any minute.”
My other brother jumped down from the fence and came toward me, swiping the ball out of my hands. He could have it. That basketball brought nothing but trouble.
“You coming, Logan?” Bradley asked as he climbed back over the fence.
Logan didn’t answer right away. He was looking at me funny.
“Logan!” Bradley barked, making to throw the ball at him.
“Hang on!” Logan bit back, holding up a hand, his eyes still fixed on me.
Did I have dirt on my face? Had I torn my pants or shirt?
I tried not to feel self-conscious, but I failed miserably. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I dropped my eyes to the dirt below. I shoved my hands into my pockets, wincing a little as the rough fabric rubbed against the scratches on my skin.
“What happened, Aiden?” Logan finally said, concern overriding the haughty tone of his voice. “You’ve got scratches all over you. And mud. Did you go down to the swamp?”
I looked back up at him, his blue eyes serious. Okay. So maybe Logan wasn’t all that bad, for a brother. He might be a jerk to me most of the time, but if anyone outside of our family ever tried to make me feel bad, or if I was hurt, he was the first one, besides Mom and Meggy, to make sure I was okay.
Apparently, Bradley couldn’t take the delay any longer. Sighing dramatically, he tossed the ball at the hoop and turned back toward us, not even bothering to see if he made the shot. The ball bounced off the rim and fell back to earth, rolling out into the middle of the lawn before coming to a stop. He squeezed between the two rails of the fence, half stumbling down the short slope and coming to a skidding halt on the horse path.
“Dude. Looks like you got dragged through the woods by a pack of coyotes.”
I stiffened. Did I really look that bad? At least my ankle had stopped hurting. Both my brothers were staring at
me now, so I cast my eyes downward again, pushing around the loose dirt on the ground with my shoe. The scene from the meadow across the shallow part of the swamp kept coming back to me: the ugly ghoulies, the white dog, the stranger in the green army trench coat with the bow and arrows and glowing skin.
Taking a shallow breath and letting it out quickly, I opened my mouth and said simply, “Fell down.”
“I’ll say,” Bradley commented sarcastically. “Fell down the hill and rolled all the way to the bottom.”
Logan stepped forward, nudging Bradley out of the way. “Did you fall into a patch of blackberry bushes?”
I nodded. Technically, I hadn’t, but agreeing with their assumptions was easier than trying to tell them the truth. There were two things wrong with that. First, they wouldn’t believe me even if I could tell them the truth, and secondly, it was physically impossible for me to do that.
“Better get you inside and show Mom,” Logan said, taking charge in his big brotherly way.
He draped an arm over my shoulder and started leading me back up to the house, Bradley trailing behind grumbling about missing out on playing basketball. Despite my nervousness about the ghoulies and the strange green man, a warm feeling welled up from somewhere near my heart and spread out to my fingers and toes. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so scared anymore because I had a big brother to look out for me. Usually, I only hugged Meggy or Mom or Dad, but as we walked back into the house, I reached out my hand and grabbed onto the hem of Logan’s shirt. Okay, it wasn’t really a hug, but when I glanced up at my brother’s face, it looked like he was smiling just a little. I did my best to return the expression.
***
The look on Mom’s face when we stepped back into the kitchen was one of horror.
“Aiden! What on earth happened to you?”
“The basketball rolled down the horse trail, and Aiden went to go get it,” Bradley offered, his innocent tone spiced with just a pinch of guilt.
Bradley had mastered the art of appearing angelic when faced with possible punishment.
“By himself?” Mom asked, her voice hardening.
She stood there like an angry hen, her fists pressed against her hips, a dish towel hanging from one of them.
I scowled. Well, I tried to scowl. I couldn’t tell if it was actually working. I understood that Mom was extra protective over me because of my autism, but I should be able to go after a stray basketball without someone accompanying me and holding my hand the entire way. And then, the images of the ghoulies flashed into my mind, and I bit my lip, dropping my eyes. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t go wandering down into the swamp by myself, even with my brothers a few dozen yards away.
“He didn’t go very far, and we were watching him from the fence the whole time,” Logan insisted.
That wasn’t entirely true. If they had been, they would have seen me fall and would have come after me.
“I don’t care,” Mom said, straightening back up and reaching out to take my hand. “Who knows what’s down there. People used to dump their trash in that culvert all the time before the Land Conservancy got involved and cleaned it up. There might still be some residual toxins in the soil or rusty shards of metal hidden under the bushes.”
Mom threw the towel over her shoulder with her free hand and started tugging me down the hallway to the bathroom. She lifted me up onto the counter and ran warm water in the sink, then pulled out some hydrogen peroxide, bandages and antibiotic ointment. She cleaned my cuts with warm water, pouring hydrogen peroxide over them just to be safe, then patted them dry and added the ointment and bandages to the bad ones. There were only a few since most of the scrapes had been shallow ones from the blackberry brambles.
After patching me up and wiping away all the dirt, she took me to my room and helped me change into a clean set of clothes, grumbling the entire time about how I shouldn’t wander off by myself or let my older brothers boss me around. I simply stood there in silence as Mom tugged on a clean T-shirt and a fresh pair of sweatpants. It was embarrassing having your mom dress you when you were seven, but dinner would be ready soon, and unless I had a half an hour to get through the ordeal by myself, someone had to help me. Pushing buttons into buttonholes and tying shoes were especially hard for me, so most of my pants had elastic bands, and my shoes fastened using Velcro.
By the time we returned to the living room, Dad was home and checking on the dinner. When he turned to Mom to ask about it, he took one look at the expression on her face and clamped his mouth shut.
“Dinner will be ready in ten minutes,” she snapped. “You can wait that long, or better yet, next time you can be the one to make it for all of us.”
Dad backed away with his hands raised. “I was just going to stir the vegetables in the pan. The boys said Aiden had fallen down outside.” He cast me a quick look, probably checking for more deadly injuries than the scrapes that were now covered in bandages. “Are you okay, Aiden?”
I nodded my head vigorously. I was fine. If anything was wrong with me at all, it had nothing to do with the physical injuries, but everything to do with the mental ones from all the ghoulie sightings in the past few days.
Once everyone was convinced that I wasn’t going to drop dead anytime soon, we started getting the table ready for dinner. Mom sent Logan to tell Meghan dinner was ready, and Dad was getting the twins latched into their high chairs. To my great relief, dinner went on like it always did with Bradley telling us all about school. Apparently, one of the girls in Logan’s class had a crush on him and was always following him around the playground. Upon hearing this, Logan turned bright red and tried to jab Bradley with his fork.
Dad quickly diffused the situation, and Logan retaliated by informing Bradley that having a girl like him was better than having all the girls in his class avoid him because he still picked his nose, at which time Mom stepped in with a quick lecture about what was appropriate to talk about at the dinner table. Jack and Joey didn’t have much to say, considering they were still practically babies, but they laughed and seemed to enjoy everyone else’s conversation.
While all this was going on, I slid my eyes in my sister’s direction. Meghan was being quiet, more so than usual, only picking at her food and eating very little of it. I felt my stomach clench with unease. Her eyes were distant, and her skin wasn’t glowing as much as it usually did. Now I would have Meggy to worry about on top of everything else.
After dinner, Dad helped Mom get the twins ready for bed while Bradley and Logan reluctantly started their homework. Meggy disappeared into her room. She probably had to study, too. High school had lots of homework, she had told me once. I decided to head to my room. I didn’t feel like coloring while my brothers worked at the table, and we weren’t allowed to have the TV on if anyone was studying. Instead, I curled up in my bed and read one of my chapter books. After a while, I set it aside and turned off my lamp.
It took me a long time to fall asleep that night, what with my own busy thoughts and the garbled, sleeping sounds floating over from my twin brothers’ side of the room. Eventually, I drifted off, the undulating shadows cast by Jack and Joey’s fish tank filling up the room like dancing demons. When I opened my eyes again, I was lying on my back, the brilliant sunlight filtering through the canopy of bright green leaves above. I squinted, and lifted up a hand to rub at my eyes. To my surprise, I wasn’t clumsy or slow about it.
Taking a breath, I rolled over and got up onto my knees, surveying this unfamiliar place I’d found myself in. Tall eucalyptus trees surrounded a meadow carpeted with brown leaves and small patches of poison ivy. To my left was what appeared to be a stream bed, choked with long, lanky stems of reeds and cattails. A cool breeze shifted the silvery green, sickle-shaped leaves above, and beyond the snaking river of emerald bog plants was the slope of a hillside covered in oak and more eucalyptus. I swallowed, my mouth dry and tasting like dust. I knew this place. I was in the swamp behind my house. In the very meadow where I’d seen the Green Man kill the
ghoulies.
Suddenly, my skin prickled with anxiety, and the faint blue glow to my skin intensified. Were there more ghoulies around? Why was I here? I should have been asleep in bed, safe inside my house.
Before I could contemplate anything more, a low, rattling growl froze the blood in my veins. I stayed absolutely still, my heart galloping like a race horse.
The growl was joined by another one, and the snapping of twigs and rustling of brush answered my question. Yes. There were more ghoulies around.
Slowly, I turned my head. I shouldn’t have. Three monsters, all close to the size of that white dog I’d seen the other day, emerged from the shadows cast by the brush-clogged edge of the meadow. They were so much bigger and so much more terrifying than the other ghoulies I’d seen before. They were bone-thin, like greyhounds that had starved to death and then been buried for a few weeks. The breeze picked up again, this time blowing in my direction, and their smell hit my nose like a slap: dead animal flesh, mixed with rotting eggs and scorched hair. The ghoulie closest to me peeled back its mud-black lips and snarled. Long, wicked yellow teeth lined its jaws, and deep within its throat, a fire burned, like the throat of a dragon I’d seen in a movie once.
I gagged in reaction to their stench and forced down a sob, then stood all the way up, intending to run. But then, I realized I couldn’t run. I had a hard enough time keeping my feet in front of me while I walked.
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