Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga) (14 page)

There was a cabinet of skulls. Some were grotesque, with fierce curves of tooth and bone, but many, too many, were to all appearances human. Scott wondered what pointed ears or elegant, almond eyes might once have adorned these. One set of skulls, seven in all, were as small as dice.

Scott crossed the room like a sleepwalker, toward the skulls and heads, to stand under the unicorn. He looked up at the unicorn’s head and neck jutting out from that rosewood plaque. There was a brass plate set into the plaque, just beneath the soft fur of the throat, and an inscription. The inscription read
MIDWEST REGIONAL SALESPERSON OF THE YEAR
.

Scott blinked and read the plate again. Then he stepped over to the massive head of the giant, who had been the Roosevelt High School District Swim Champ of 1963, apparently. The eagle was either World’s Greatest Dad or else his head had been a Father’s Day gift—it wasn’t clear to Scott. Even less clear was why a row of beheaded toad-boys might be considered appropriate awards for perfect attendance, or even what sort of place you’d have to attend to be given something like that.

Haskoll sniffed behind him.

Suddenly it all came clear to Scott as he felt a headache coming on. He forced a smile and turned.

“Nice plaques. Papa sure has won a lot of awards. I really should be getting home.”

“They
are
nice, aren’t they,” said Haskoll, stepping
forward. “I think that one’s my favorite,” he added, indicating the unicorn. “Of course, not everyone can see what’s so great about them. But you and I can.”

So Haskoll was special. Special in the way Scott was special, and Haskoll knew it. He’d probably seen Mick in the park….

“Sure. Yeah, I have a soccer trophy at home myself. Well, not really a trophy, more like a ribbon for participation.”

… and Haskoll did not strike him as being one of the good guys. Scott would deny everything and get out of there as quickly as possible. It was a classic kid strategy, and he couldn’t think of a better one offhand.

“You asked about cold iron,” Haskoll intoned. “Look over here.”

“That’s okay, I really need to—”

“I insist.” Haskoll took Scott by the arm to a glass cabinet against the sidewall. Inside were three pockmarked lumps of dark metal on wooden stands. Haskoll opened the cabinet and removed the smallest piece. “A real meteor. Nickel-iron. You can hold it.”

Scott held it. A faint trill traveled through his hand and up his arm. He didn’t like it.

“Feels weird, right?” asked Haskoll, his face close, his breath hot.

Scott shrugged. “Feels like a rock. Heavy.”

“We call them coldstones. Papa and me. Watch this.”

He produced the bag of animal droppings and held them near the metal. Scott watched, but not much seemed to be happening.

“These droppings are nothing,” said Haskoll. “They’re rabbit turds. Now watch this.” He reeled Scott back to the cabinet of skulls and tapped the coldstone against the glass. At this it sparked with purple light and gave off angry flashes.

“Weird, huh?”

“I don’t see anything,” Scott lied.

Haskoll turned to face Scott fully. He stared (with the joyless smile of a boy who likes pulling the wings off things) and said nothing. Then a phone rang. Haskoll stared, and it rang again.

“Is that … is that your phone? Are you going to—”

“It’s just Papa, calling to tell me that our smallest coldstone has been in his left waist pocket all along.”

“Um … well, shouldn’t you—”

“He’s an idiot, Papa. A complete tool. I do all the hunting. All of it. Papa just shoots where I point, because he likes to shoot things.”

The phone rang a seventh time, and an eighth, and stopped.

“That backpack of yours looks about ten pounds
lighter. Why don’t you call for your little friend, and we’ll all talk about this rabbit-man that Goodco misplaced.”

Scott breathed. “Okay. Can I see that coldstone again?”

“Sure.”

Scott took it and threw it as hard as he could through the cabinet glass. Then he ran back for the front door, screaming.

“MIIIIIIIIIIICK!”

He tore through the narrow hall, slamming doors behind him, and slid to a stop on the marble floor of the foyer just as Mick emerged from the bathroom.

“Trouble, lad?” the elf asked before Scott scooped him up.

“Shh!”

Scott didn’t suppose he could outrun Haskoll to the main gate, so he pulled the front door open wide and hid the two of them behind it. He pressed his back against the inside wall and counted to give his mind some focus. He’d only counted to two before hearing the sound of a door, and the patter of feet running past, and then silence. At fifteen, Scott and Mick came around the side for a peek.

“Wore out your welcome fast, did yeh?” whispered the elf.

“Not even. I think we were about to get invited to stay permanently.”

They squinted out into the sunshine. There was no sign of Haskoll.

“I woulda gotten us free,” said Mick. “I always escape, eventually.”

“Remind me to tell you about the trophy room.”

Outside, birds were singing. Wind ruffled the tops of trees.

“We’re going to have to run for it, aren’t we?”

“On three?”

On three they ran. Scott, for his part, thought he’d never run like this before. He was a pinwheel of limbs. He remembered the president’s Physical Fitness Test at school and how he’d only earned a lousy Participant ribbon for that, too. If only the president could see him now—he just needed to be chased is all.

Mick was faster than you’d expect for someone with no real legs to speak of. He skidded right between the bars of the gate and stopped to look back.

“Mind your house, lad! He’s behind you!”

Scott made for the center of the gate where the double doors met—it was especially thick with curlicued iron that would be good for climbing—but found that it had not quite latched. Luck o’ the Irish, or whatever it was he had for being part changeling. He slipped through the gate and shut it firmly behind him, and then Haskoll was there. The gate shuddered as the man slapped against it
and glared, grinning, his fists clutching the ironwork, his face straining against the bars. Scott and Mick ran off down the hill before he had a chance to recover, or work the keypad.

“It’s been really fantastic spending time with you, Scotty!” he called after them. “I hope you’ll both come back and visit!”

Mr. Wilson was sleeping more and more lately, and hard to wake. It was like his bed exerted a lunar gravity, and for days he shuffled and sighed through rooms and conversations as though wading against its tidal pull. So that night it was a relief to find him once again his usual self, talking and joking at dinner. In fact, he was even
more
his usual self than he usually was, as though trying to make up for the past week. He seemed to have full use of the alphabet anyway, so Emily asked him about her eardrops. She’d been putting the same pink goop into her ears for years.

“I’m almost out,” she told him. “I don’t have to see the doctor, do I? You can just get more at the pharmacy?” Neither sibling was fond of their doctor. The mere mention of her gave Erno a chill.

She was the staff physician at Goodco, and Erno and Emily could see her for free, so they’d never seen anyone
else. Unless you counted the school nurse. And it was hard to count the school nurse, whose solution for everything was to have you lie down behind a curtain while she called your parents.

“You won’t have to go to the doctor anymore,” Mr. Wilson answered with a sudden plunge in disposition. “Don’t worry about it.”

“But the eardrops—”

“Forget about the eardrops,” he said abruptly, quieter. “You don’t need them anymore.” He rose from the table and moved to clear his plate.

“Just like that?” said Erno. “And she won’t get dizzy?”

Mr. Wilson turned. His hands went up, palms out, like a mime trapped in a box. Just another invisible obstacle the kids couldn’t see. In a way, he
was
trapped in a box—a box that diminished in livable space every day, every second, but so slowly that it had been impossible to react. What had once looked like the world now seemed like a coffin. But the kids didn’t understand this. They couldn’t see the great dark cloud in his mind. “She won’t get dizzy. Don’t worry,” he told them, and began loading the dishwasher.

“It’s okay. I’m okay,” Emily said quickly. “My ears don’t even hurt or anything. I can’t even
remember
the last time they hurt.”

“There. See?” Mr. Wilson said. “Trust your sister. She’s the smart one.”

Bang
, the comment landed like a firecracker on the dining room table. Erno floundered in the terrible silence that followed, though Mr. Wilson went on busing the table as though he’d said nothing out of the ordinary. Emily shook her head at Erno, a ridiculous gesture.

He pushed back his chair and left the room. Emily followed.

“I don’t know why he said that,” she told him, stumbling up the stairs in pursuit.

“Sure you do.”

“It’s not true. We both get straight As.”

“Oh, please.” Erno stopped so abruptly that Emily ran into him. “You only get As because there aren’t four extra letters at the beginning of the alphabet. Mr. Wilson doesn’t care about grades. He only cares about the games.”

“You’ve solved lots of them first. There was that one with the matchsticks … and the one with the algebra problems—”

“Right,”
Erno said, “like I really could have beaten you at
math problems?
I know you let me win one game every year for my birthday.”

Emily tried to look indignant, but it was obviously true.

“That’s obviously not true,” she said. She was getting jittery, and her eyes were rimmed with tears.

“It is,” Erno replied. “I know it is. Every year I win one game in November, and that’s it. Hey, I guess that means
I was going to win this one too.”

He was upsetting her. She was looking stiff and a little spastic, and Erno knew what usually followed that. He instinctively glanced about to make sure she wasn’t too near the top of the stairs, or anything on which she might hit her head if she fell. “Okay,” he said, “calm down.”

Emily said nothing, just swayed in the hallway, then flinched. A framed picture of the kids’ trip to Menlo Park dropped suddenly from the wall and cracked. Emily seemed to gag, then cough, and stared cross-eyed at the small pink butterfly she had apparently just produced from her mouth. It rose off her tongue, propelled by the hot puff of her cough, and flitted over the banister to the floor below.

Erno followed its flight, so he missed it when her eyelids fluttered like pink butterflies and her doll-body tumbled to the floor.

“You made a butterfly,” Erno said, scarcely a moment after her eyes reopened. “Out of your mouth. It flew downstairs, and I lost it.”

“Can you help me up?”

Erno took her hand and helped her to her room, where they both sat down on the bed.

“It must have flown in when we weren’t looking,” said Emily, “and then I coughed it back out.”

“I guess.” Erno kicked his heels against the box spring.
“Emily? Instead of letting me win, why don’t we just work on it together? I’m tired of competing against you. You’re smarter. I’m not mad at Mr. Wilson or anything. I just don’t want to do it anymore.”

Emily stared for a moment. “Erno and Emily,” she finally said.

Erno blinked. “Yeah … that’s what I’m saying: Erno and Emily, the unbeatable team. Brains and brawn. Well, not brawn exactly, but I promise I’ll start lifting weights—”

“No,” said Emily. “That’s the solution so far. To the game.
E, R
, the word
no
, the word
and
, and the letters
M-L-E.”

“M-L-E,”
Erno repeated. “Emily. I swear I would have figured that out. Well, wait—is that it? Is that the whole answer?”

“No. I think it’s just a salutation—like it’s the beginning of a letter. At the moment Dad’s avoiding commas. Erno?”

“Yeah?”

“I had a dream just now,” Emily answered, shivering. “When I was on the floor. Something terrible is going to happen.”