Billy Hooten (2 page)

She beeped the horn twice, and with a wave she was off.

Billy stood in the middle of the driveway for a few minutes thinking about all the things he could do with his day now that he was free from the clutches of Randy Kulkowski. He considered trying to fix the robot he'd built recently, but he wasn't sure if he had the parts. How about a freeze gun?
That might be cool,
he thought, remembering the broken air conditioner he'd recently found by the side of the road and hauled back to the garage on his wagon. He'd also come across some old fire extinguishers not too long ago, and thought about creating a jet pack.
So many inventions, so little time,
he mused.

He turned and walked toward the back porch. Before he did anything, he had to put away his comic
book. All his
Snake
comics were in mint condition and he wanted them to stay that way.

He had one foot on the back steps when he heard the sound. At first he thought it was a squawking bird, maybe a noisy crow, but as he stopped to listen, he realized it wasn't that at all.

It was a voice, calling for help.

Billy placed his comic on a plastic chair on the porch and stepped back into the yard.

“Help!”
cried the voice again, carried on the gentle breeze that ruffled Billy's hair. The cry was coming from somewhere inside Pine Hill Cemetery.

Billy considered running into the house to get his dad, but something told him that if he waited, it would be too late.

Too late for what?
he wondered.

“Oh, help me, please!”

Without another thought, Billy climbed up onto the stone wall and jumped down into the cemetery, running as fast as he could toward the sound of the voice.

He ran into the oldest section of the cemetery and came to a screeching halt in front of a great stone mausoleum. But it wasn't just any mausoleum. It was the largest crypt in the entire cemetery and had been built by the Sprylock family over a hundred years ago. The Sprylocks were supposed to have been warlocks
and witches, and their stone resting place was said to be haunted. Billy nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the voice again. It was coming from inside the crypt.

“Somebody please help!”

The door of the crypt was slightly ajar, and for a moment Billy entertained the idea that Randy and Mitchell might be playing a trick on him. But then he heard another voice inside. This one was low and grumbling, like somebody with a bad cold and a lot of phlegm in his throat.

“Hold still, you little creep, so's I can crush you like the bug that you are!”

Billy grabbed hold of the thick, rusted metal door and pushed it open, charging into the crypt.

Then he stopped short. It was like a scene out of one of his comic books. The Sprylock family mausoleum was in total disarray, coffins broken, bones scattered everywhere. Standing in the middle of the room were two of the strangest-looking people he had ever seen in his life.

“It
is
you!” said the smaller of the pair as if he'd been expecting Billy all along.

He was short, really short, with beady little eyes, and he was dressed in a tuxedo. Huge pointy ears stuck out from the sides of an enormous head that reminded Billy of a summer squash.

“I'm saved!” the creepy character screeched with excitement.

Billy was confused. The little guy was talking as if he knew him, but Billy had never seen him before. He'd definitely remember a guy who looked like that.

“I'll crush
him,
too!” roared the other one, and Billy nearly fainted when he got a good look at him. This guy was built like a professional wrestler, with a huge upper body, great big arms, a teeny tiny waist and spindly little legs. And if that wasn't weird enough, he had the head of a pig.
No, not a pig, a boar … tusks and all!

It was the scariest thing he had ever seen in his entire life—even scarier then Randy Kulkowski—and it was lumbering directly for him. Billy stood frozen; his eyes locked on its gross face, on the large brownish warts with little hairs sticking out of them, on the yellow, watery eyes, looking for some clue that the guy was just wearing a really cool mask, but from what he could tell, it was all real.

Billy didn't know what to do. His brain was sputtering like the old computer at the back of Mrs. Maloney's class that had to have been built when dinosaurs walked the earth.

“Wish I had some bread,” the pig-man roared, his muscular, hairy arms reaching out for Billy. “Bet you'd make a really tasty sandwich.”

That got Billy, and he did something he'd never have imagined doing in a thousand and one years. He reached down, snatching up what looked like a leg bone from the ground, and stood ready to defend himself against the advancing brute.

Billy had been in lots of fights in his twelve years. He'd never started any of them, and never won any of them, either. But this was different. This wasn't somebody knocking him down because his mother had made him wear that sweater with the dancing snowmen on it to school, or shoving his head in the toilet for an ultimate swirly because he had accidentally reminded the teacher about a homework assignment she'd forgotten to collect.

This was real, life-or-death stuff.

The monster was almost on him, his stink making Billy want to hurl.

Billy reared back with the bone, remembering what his dad had tried to teach him about hitting a baseball—to keep his eye on the ball, only in this case it was the pig.

What happened next was something Billy would never have believed if he'd read it in his comic books or seen it in his movies.

He was just about to swing the bone at the pig-man when the beast slipped on a pile of bones. A slip of
Olympic caliber, the kind of slip that if it had happened in the hallway at school would still be talked about five years later.

Remember when what's-his-name slipped that day?

Dude, that was totally outrageous! I thought for sure he was dead.

The pig-man's feet flew out from beneath him, and Billy could've sworn he heard that crazy whistling sound he always heard in the cartoons as the creature landed, the back of its big head whacking the mausoleum floor and making Billy wince.

He watched the beast for a moment, waiting for signs of movement. Nope, knocked out cold.

Talk about lucky.

Then the fact that Billy was holding something that had once been inside a human body suddenly began to sink in and he dropped the bone to the ground, wiping his hands furiously on his sweatshirt.

“I knew it,” screeched the creepy little guy with the squash-shaped head.

Billy jumped. He'd nearly forgotten about the other creature.

“I knew I would find you if I came to the world above. I knew it!” The creature smiled, showing off a set of teeth that would have made Billy's dentist drool.

Billy began to carefully back toward the mausoleum
door. “You find me?” he asked with a nervous chuckle. “I don't even know what you are, never mind who you are.”

“I am Archebold,” the weird little man in the black tuxedo and tails said. “I'm a goblin.”

“Of course you are,” Billy said, taking a right turn onto Crazy Street. “Am I supposed to know you?” he asked, hoping to keep the creature talking until he could reach the door.

Archebold shook his head. “Nope, never laid eyes on you before.”

“But you've been looking for me?” Billy questioned.

The creature nodded, his smile getting wider.

“Then who am I?” Billy challenged, feeling the cool breeze from outside on his back. He was almost there.

“Don't be silly,” Archebold said with a chuckle. He reached behind his long-tailed jacket and produced what looked like a rolled-up comic book from his back pocket.

Billy's eyes widened in horror. A comic book should never be treated like that.

“This is you,” Archebold said, shoving the comic into his hands.

The comic book was old, really old, and Billy's eyes immediately absorbed the cover image, reading the title aloud.
“Owlboy.”
Despite his surroundings,
he found himself studying the hero running toward him into action on the cover. He'd heard of Owlboy before but had never seen one of the comics. There was actually something appealing about the superhero with his brown and green costume, funky cape that sort of looked like feathers, and cool helmet with goggles.

“I don't get it,” Billy said, looking up.

“Can't think of any other way to say it.” Archebold moved to stand beside him, and Billy quickly stepped back. The goblin ignored him and jabbed at the book's title with a stubby finger. “You are the Owlboy.”

Billy vigorously shook his head as he laughed nervously. “Nope, sorry, you got the wrong guy. I … I'm just a kid.” He tried to give the comic back, but Archebold wouldn't take it.

“You're joking, right?” the goblin asked.

“Do I look like I'm joking?” Billy put on his most serious face.

“Oh my,” Archebold said in shock. “Then when you arrived to rescue me, it was just… an accident?”

Billy shrugged. “I heard somebody calling for help and decided to see what I could do.”

The goblin stroked his chin, slowly nodding. “Yes, that's it. And even though you didn't realize it, you ran straight into the arms of your destiny.”

“Whose arms?” Billy asked, wrinkling his nose, still confused.

Archebold again leaned in close, pointing a sausage-like finger at the comic Billy held. “Destiny's arms,” he repeated. “This is your destiny … to be the next Owlboy.”

“Me?” Billy asked, his voice coming out like a squawk.

Taking hold of his arm just below the elbow, Archebold started to explain. “You are to be the next protector of Monstros City.”

“Where?” Billy asked.

Archebold rolled his eyes. “Monstros City,” he said slowly. “The world beneath this one.” The goblin pointed to the floor, his shaggy eyebrows going up and down.

“There's… a world … beneath the cemetery?” Billy began to panic. This was nuts. He was standing in a mausoleum talking to a goblin about a city under the cemetery after being attacked by a pig-man.

Check, please!

“Beneath this human cemetery, there exists a fabulous place—a vast city populated by monsters of every shape and size.”

“There are monsters underneath the cemetery?” Billy asked in a whisper, nearly certain that his parents had been right. Was this what brain damage was like?

“What else would live in a place called Monstros
City?” The goblin looked a bit annoyed as it shook its oddly shaped head. “Circus clowns?” Archebold started to pull Billy toward the back of the mausoleum. “Don't tell me you've never heard of Monstros City. It's been voted scariest place to live by
NewsShriek
magazine five hundred years in a row. I can't wait for you to see it ….”

Inside his head, Billy heard the sound of screeching brakes. No way. He had zero intention of going anywhere near a place called Monstros City … especially with a goblin. Without another thought, he yanked his arm from the goblin's grip.

And bolted for the door.

This is nuts,
Billy thought, slamming through the mausoleum door, the crazy alarm going off in his head big-time.

The cool air helped to clear his mind, but it didn't make the craziness of the situation go away.

The creepy little creature dressed like he was going to a wedding had said Billy was the next Owlboy. Billy's thoughts raced as he ran down one of the winding paths through Pine Hill Cemetery, his brain going a million miles a minute. Did Archebold know Randy? Could he and Billy's mortal enemy have cooked up a plan to make Billy think he was losing his marbles? Naw, this wasn't Randy's style. Randy was more physical; he
would've preferred to beat Billy's head until the marbles just fell out, none of this subtlety stuff.

And then it hit him: what if the entire incident was just the product of his sometimes overactive imagination?

He remembered last summer, when he was certain that invaders from Mars had landed in his neighborhood during a particularly nasty thunderstorm. It was an honest mistake; in the lightning, the electric company repair trucks did look a little like Martian death cruisers.

Billy ran faster, feeling the slap of the cement path through the soles of his sneakers.

Is that it?
he wondered.
Or maybe I really did play ball with Randy and Mitchell and they hit me over the head with their bats and now I've got this horrible head injury giving me all kinds of crazy dreams.

Up ahead, just before the next bend in the path, he saw the stone wall that separated his backyard from the cemetery. If he could just get to his house, he knew he could wake up.

He pushed himself even faster, certain now that this was all just one big, crazy nightmare.

But then how did he explain the Owlboy comic book he was still holding?

He would always blame what happened next on a wet patch of slimy fall leaves, but in fact, the cause was just as likely to have been his own clumsiness born of
fear. Whatever the reason, he lost his footing and careened off the path, moving so fast he couldn't stop, until he plowed headfirst into a marble headstone.