Two Girls, a Clock, and a Crooked House

by Michael Poore

  Not just flashlights. There was another kind of light—a wild, brighter light.

  “Torches!” gasped Oliver.

  “I suppose they’re coming to burn my house down,” said Ms. Goolagong. “Lovely.”

  Tuba hunkered in the leaves, watching the hillside, nervously muttering about the phone company.

  Amy gulped and turned the hour hand to twelve. Green tendrils stroked her arm.

  “Moo,” said Ms. Goolagong. “Is your chair supposed to have some sort of bell? Something to get it moving?”

  Moo was staring at the torches up on the hill.

  “GERTRUDE!” barked Ms. Goolagong.

  Moo shook herself the way a wet dog does. She looked at Ms. Goolagong and said, A tiny bronze rabbit.

  “Please find it.”

  Oliver and the girls frantically searched among the leaves.

  Up on the hill, the voices suddenly exploded.

  “THERE SHE IS!” someone roared.

  “THERE SHE IS!” echoed a dozen more voices. “She’s got those poor kids with her!”

  “They’re under a spell!” someone shrieked.

  The torchlight brightened as a mob of shadows poured down the hill.

  Amy glimpsed spirits and symbols atop a hundred heads: hearts and smoke and shadows and fear.

  She also saw firelight reflected on metal.

  “Tools,” she said. “They have shovels and pitchforks and hammers and yard clippers and things!”

  “Weapons,” said Oliver.

  Amy’s heart WHUMPed in her chest. She had to fight to keep from running.

  The rabbit bell isn’t here! cried Moo.

  “Look with all of your senses,” urged the witch. “It will look like a note of bright, clear music.”

  Torches and flashlights flooded around the pond on both sides.

  SPLASH! Splash, SPLASH! Splash, splash, splashsplashSPLASH! Splash! Shadows came stomping through the water. Unsuitable words filled the dark.

  Ms. Goolagong turned away from the chair then. Turned to face the hundred torches and flashlights. In her hand, Amy saw, she held her long, tapering stick. Getting ready to jab and smack at them, Amy supposed, and felt more afraid than ever. How could Ms. Goolagong, amazing or not, ever hope to hold off a hundred—

  But Ms. Goolagong didn’t raise her stick to strike anyone. Instead she raised the narrow end to her lips.

  And Amy heard the strangest thing EVER in the history of her life: a peculiar, otherworldly music.

  It sounded like a bumblebee the size of a planet.

  BUUuuzzzZZ­ZZZZz­zzzzz­zZZZZ­Zzuuuuu­uuZZZZz­zzzzz…The music had legs and wings and great old fingers and eyes like moons. It was a mist. If there was a God and he had a voice, Amy thought, THIS was what he would sound like.

  Like outer space snoring.

  Like the center of the earth waking up.

  Like the sun and stars talking about what they were going to do this weekend.

  Amy felt it vibrate through her skeleton.

  The mob felt it, too, Amy could tell, the way birds and dogs can hear an earthquake coming.

  They froze. All hundred of them.

  “What…?” a single someone said.

  “What…?” whispered Amy, wonderstruck.

  “It’s a didgeridoo,” Oliver explained. “An instrument crafted by the original people of Australia. She played it for me a night or two ago, when we roasted marshmallows—”

  It’s a diversion! shouted Moo. Keep looking for the stupid rabbit!

  They kept looking, tossing up leaves.

  The bumblebee music buuUUZZZZZZzzzzzzzed and huuuuUUMMMMmmmmed and seemed to come from all over, from under rocks and out of the trees. It held the mob as if it were a giant, invisible fist.

  “IT’S WITCHCRAFT!” someone screamed.

  A rock flew through the air. It splashed harmlessly into the pond, but the spell—if that’s what it was—was broken. The shadows and voices closed in again.

  Found it! shouted Moo, brandishing the little rabbit bell.

  “Excellent, dear,” said the witch. “Would you mind twisting this wire around it, where the ears meet?”

  She sat down in the chair as she spoke, gesturing with her long, wizardly arms.

  “Smartly!” she said. “There’s no time. The rest of you, in my lap, if you please.”

  Amy and Oliver obeyed.

  “MY GOD!” someone screamed. “SHE’S EATING THEM! SHE TOOK A BITE OUT OF THE BOY JUST NOW, I SAW IT!”

  (Other voices, a very few calmer voices, disagreed with this. Amy thought she discerned the voice of Officer Byrd….)

  If they catch us, thought Amy, we’ll never get home.

  “They wouldn’t hurt us,” said Oliver. “I mean, they think they’re saving us.” But he didn’t sound sure.

  Someone in the midst of the crowd bellowed, “OUCH, dang it!”

  And someone else hollered, “OW!” and a third screamed, “Evil spirit!”

  A dark, swooping shadow darted through the mob. Something that might have been a dark angel or a demon but wasn’t. It was a Mutitjulu hearsay bird in full protective battle rage.

  Zip! The shadow got hold of someone’s hat. Zoom! The shadow pecked someone’s ear. Whoosh! The shadow bit fingers and noses.

  “Peanut butter!” screeched the bird. “Dandruff shampoo! I dare anybody to try and explain to me why I ought to shave my armpits!”

  His emoji was a thousand emoji, a blazing rain.

  Here and there, a few people broke and retreated. Others slapped at the bird. Garden tools raked the air.

  “Tuba!” shouted Oliver. “Oh no! Oh, be careful! Tuba, come back!”

  Tuba swooshed through the air and perched on Oliver’s head.

  “I hate commercials,” he rumbled. “Hate ’em!”

  A torch came spinning through the air. It landed in the dry leaves and instantly set the ground ablaze.

  “STOP that!” called one of the reasonable voices.

  “WE’RE OUTTA TIME!” bellowed one voice. Others joined in. “SHE’S DOING SOMETHING WITCHY TO THEM!”

  Dry leaves burn fast. Fire licked at the rocking chair. Amy felt her rear grow warm.

  There! said Moo, giving the wire and the bell one final twist.

  “Hurry, hurry­hurry­hurry­hurry­hurry­hurry­hurry­hurry­hurry­hurry­hurry­hurry­hurry!” chanted Amy.

  The mob wasn’t a mob now. It was individual people surging toward them in the strange, wild light. A burly man in a red T-shirt. A thin woman with big, round glasses. Two men with torches, wearing ball caps. A man with a pointy beard, wet and angry-looking.

  Another torch came whirling at them.

  Ms. Goolagong’s arm shot out, snatching it from the air.

  “SHE’S GOT A TORCH!” someone cried out, sounding terrified.

  A rock thudded on the ground, sending burning leaves flying.

  THUD! THUD! Thudthudthud! THUD! More rocks.

  A few voices hollering, “STOP! Use your heads!” (Quickly drowned out.)

  The mob had a single story, Amy saw. A single spirit-shadow. It rose over them with blind, raging eyes.

  “Gertrude,” said Ms. Goolagong, “give the bell a flick with your finger, please.”

  Moo flicked the bell. It rang out high and lovely, a one-note song.

  Nothing happened.

  The burly man was almost on them. He lifted a shovel as if it were an ax, aiming for Ms. Goolagong’s head. Or Amy’s head or Oliver’s or Moo’s…He wasn’t really aiming, Amy could see. His eyes were animal eyes.

  Hands grasped the back of the chair. Someone tugged at Amy’s elbow. Burning leaves all around, flying up into the air. The burly man swung the shovel—

  No…someone had g
rabbed the shovel. A couple of someones, struggling with Burly Man. Two surprisingly small someones, which was odd. Did they look familiar, or was it just—

  It was Kung and Foo, the brave girl and boy from the school.

  It’s those kids! cried Moo.

  Amy nodded furiously. Wow!

  It was hard to tell if the two wannabe superheroes actually knew kung fu or not. They were certainly trying hard. The girl—Kung—had a grip on the shovel and had been lifted free of the ground. The boy—Foo—had wrapped himself around Burly Man’s knees and was trying, without success, to wrestle him off balance, but—

  Wow! Success! Burly Man went down! SPLASH! In the pond! Kung threw his shovel in after him. SPLASH!

  Oliver and Amy and Moo waved at the heroes, all trying to talk and yell at once.

  Kung and Foo turned around and lunged for them! Grabbed for them!

  “Grab my hands, Oliver!” shouted Kung.

  “Jump!” bellowed Foo to Amy and Moo, pulling at their ankles. “We’ll help you!”

  Amy and Moo tried to tell their rescuers that they were just fine, thanks, and didn’t need rescuing, but they all wound up hollering at once, and there was already so much noise, so much happening.

  “Try the bell again,” said Ms. Goolagong. “Perhaps it’s slow getting started, like some cars can be.” Her arms coiled around them like warm snakes made of iron.

  But Foo now had hold of Moo’s arm.

  A bunch of feathers squeezed out of nowhere. A long, strong, magnificent beak came pecking through the air. Its aim was perfect.

  Ding! sang the little bell.

  Kung and Foo looked startled. They fell back.

  “Nothing’s happ—” Amy began.

  A great green WHOOSH whooshed them up, and the hands and torches and noise and dark all fell away and vanished.

  Cows! sang out Moo, eyes closed, totally focused.

  Ms. Goolagong squeezed them all extra tight.

  “Cows!” she shouted.

  “Cows!” yelled Amy. (Why not?)

  “Cows!” sang the wonderful, wonderful hearsay bird. “Cows, cows, cows, cows, cows!”

  Green WHOOSH and weightlessness and dizziness…

  “HOLY [unsuitable word]!” screamed Oliver. His voice whipped away on the WHOOSH, and sleep spun in on them and washed over them, and—

  SOMETHING TICKLED AMY’S NOSE.

  She opened her eyes.

  It was just a leaf.

  She brushed the leaf away and sat up.

  The clock machine wasn’t in pieces this time. It lay nearby, as if catching its breath. Perhaps the clock had gotten slightly catawampus, but mostly, this time, they seemed to have arrived across the years without getting hit by some kind of space-time baseball bat.

  “Oh,” said a leaf pile just a few feet away. The leaf pile stirred, sat, and fell away, revealing Oliver. He looked about, blinking, asking, “Are we dead? I was almost sure we’d be dead. Are we?”

  Amy said, “No.”

  More leaves rustled. Moo and Ms. Goolagong appeared, rubbing their eyes, just uphill.

  “Nasal spray,” called Tuba, way up high in a tree. He fluttered down and took a seat on Ms. Goolagong’s knee.

  “Well!” yawned Ms. Goolagong. “Wasn’t that thrilling! I hope to do it again sometime. Is everybody in one piece?”

  Everybody was.

  Amy stood. She felt a peculiar focusing of her mind and her whole entire self, turning her toward home.

  “I hate to be awfully rude,” she said, “but I think I should start home. I want to keep my parents from melting like grilled cheese out of pure worry. Plus, I also have to be there with them when the Big Duke gets there, which could be practically any moment.”

  “Peace,” said Ms. Goolagong. “Stick together. That way we can all be certain of getting out of the woods in the right direction.”

  They all walked uphill, holding hands.

  Between trees and around stones.

  The light, Amy thought, looked as it should. It had a seven o’clock look to it. Tired and reddish and on its way out for the night, but not gone yet. The air felt like seven o’clock air.

  “Well!” said Ms. Goolagong suddenly. “Look at that!”

  There, around the side of a leafy, overgrown hill, was her house.

  “Wow,” said Amy. “I thought for sure they’d burn it down!”

  But the house stood more or less as they had left it.

  “I’m not surprised, actually,” said Ms. Goolagong. “Would anyone like to know why?”

  They all agreed that they would like to know.

  “Can you imagine what happened when we left? What they saw, and how it looked, and what they thought of it and said about it?”

  They all thought and considered.

  “A tall person in a wicked-looking hat grabbed you children up and vanished in a green flash! Right out from between their fingers, literally. Now, if that had happened to you, if those were your fingers, would you be in a hurry to go find that person’s house and burn it down with your torches? Your silly torches?”

  They all shook their heads.

  I think, said Moo, that I would be tempted to run out of the woods as fast as possible, and maybe never go in there again.

  Amy shared Moo’s thoughts aloud, and Ms. Goolagong nodded.

  “After a while,” mused Oliver, “it would become a story people told. Maybe even a legend, about a witch, and some kids who disappeared.”

  “Eaten alive, no doubt,” said Ms. Goolagong. “Let’s move on.”

  They passed over more hills, and through a clearing with wildflowers in it, until the trees opened up and a field presented itself. A seven-thirty-looking field, with long shadows on it and clouds.

  And there was Moo’s house, in the middle distance. Past a familiar-looking fence, beyond the road.

  But Moo didn’t speed up, or look eager, or look nervous or pensive or any of the other things she should have looked. Instead she stopped and said, Something isn’t right.

  They stopped.

  Something’s missing.

  Turning to Amy, she said, Where are the cows?

  Ms. Goolagong was squinting around her in a suspicious kind of way.

  “Something isn’t right,” she said. “I can feel it. We haven’t…landed…where we meant to. When we meant to. Something has pulled us off course, you might say. Like accidentally taking the wrong highway exit.”

  The air cooled just a little more.

  A faint rumbling, far off. Thunder?

  No. A lone truck came growling down the road. A big truck.

  Growling more loudly than most trucks. Going faster, too.

  Ms. Goolagong stepped up between the girls, shading her eyes, watching the truck with interest.

  “Perhaps we didn’t miss,” she declared, eyes blazing. “In fact, perhaps we’ve landed exactly where we aimed for. Gertrude mentioned her cows. It seems I remember a good deal of shouting about cows as we were launching ourselves into the time stream.”

  She bent down to look straight into Moo’s eyes.

  “Gertrude June,” she said. “Amy Wood. You were thinking of your wonderful, free, wild, happy cows as we took off. Yes?”

  Moo nodded.

  “By chance,” continued Ms. Goolagong, “were you also thinking of the truck accident you told me about?”

  Moo shuffled her feet.

  I couldn’t help it, she said. I think about that a lot. It’s a big part of their history.

  “My confusion specifications have been exceeded again,” said Oliver.

  Ms. Goolagong straightened up, a knowing look in her eye.

  “In any case,” she said, “I feel that somehow we ourselves and time itself have conspired to place us
exactly where—when—we are supposed to be.”

  The big truck had vanished behind a low hill. It came into view again, much closer and traveling much faster. It began to wobble somewhat, leaning one way and then the other. Had the driver fallen asleep?

  “Oh no!” Oliver was saying. “Slow down!”

  Brakes screeeee­eeeee­eeeee­eeeeched…but it was too late.

  The truck went down like a wounded animal, pitching over sideways, digging into the earth. Amy perceived a symbolic storm cloud all around it, stabbing lightning.

  “NO!” shrieked all three children.

  “OLIVES!” crowed Tuba.

  Amy had never seen a wreck before. She wanted to cover her eyes but felt frozen.

  The truck smashed through the fence and twisted to a stop.

  Amy became aware of a new sound on the air. Not a mechanical sound at all, but something more like voices.

  “MOOOOO­OOOOO­OOOOO­OOO!” the voices were saying.

  It’s THEM! shouted Moo. It’s my cows! It’s them, it’s them, it’s THEM!

  She started across the field, but Ms. Goolagong stopped her with a long, firm hand.

  What? shouted Moo, struggling. It’s my COWS!

  “The driver might be hurt!” Amy chimed in. “We should go help!”

  “The driver’s fine,” said Ms. Goolagong. “I can sense it. So can you, if you try. Now, just wait. Just watch. Let things happen.”

  Sure enough, the driver—a skinny man with long blond hair and a baseball cap—climbed out through the passenger door as if it were a submarine hatch. He was a mess: hair wrapped all over his face and neck, glasses askew, shirt ripped. But he was alive.

  “He looks okay,” said Amy.

  There they are, said Moo, pointing.

  A cow came trotting out into the road. She looked startled and inconvenienced but unhurt.

  “MOOOOOO!” yelled Moo to this cow.

  “MOOOOOO!” the cow yelled back.

  “Tooooo­ooooo­ooooo­oba!” squawked Tuba.

  A second cow followed, with a gash across one shoulder. She hopped over the shattered remains of the fence, into the field. A third cow followed, and another, until an entire herd filled the roadside, the ditch, and the fringes of the pasture.

  Tuba flew into the air, glided across the field, and landed gracefully on the hips of the biggest, brownest cow of them all.