Fangboy (25 page)

“No.”

“Mrs. Calmon, our former schoolteacher?”

“No.”

“Then who? Who?”

“None other than Mortus Ranklin!”

“I don’t actually know who that is.”

“He’s a ghastly man. To look into his eyes is to know that all puppies eventually grow old and perish. His scowl could turn the happiest elf into the saddest druid. But he knows things. Dark things. Sinister things. And he might know where Penny and Mary have gone.”

“Then I shall speak to him.”

“Speak to who?” asked Jamison, rubbing his head and sitting up.

“Mortus Ranklin,” said Beverly.

“Oh, hell no.”

“If he’s the only one who can help us, then I will speak to him, no matter what,” said Nathan.

Jamison shook his head. “You don’t understand. To look into his eyes is to know that the market for freshly born infant noses is alive and well. His scowl could turn the merriest leprechaun into the most despondent sasquatch. That said, he does keep pretty good tabs on the people who were banished from our community, so he’d be an excellent resource.”

“If you knew that they were banished, why did you let me come here?” Nathan asked.

“I didn’t know they were banished until Beverly said it.”

“If you heard Beverly say it, why did you pretend to still be unconscious?”

Jamison fidgeted a bit. “I just…I’m not…look, I spent most of my life thinking I was dying, and thus need not answer for my actions.”

“How do we get out of here?” Nathan asked.

“The only way is back up the pit, the way we came,” said Beverly. “We’ll have to form a human ladder. The residents don’t enjoy it, what with their bones being so brittle and all, but they’re easy to lift and they don’t move around much once they’re in place.”

After they climbed out of the pit, Nathan said “I thank both of you for your help. I won’t ask you to put yourself in any more danger. If you wish not to accompany me on the rest of my journey, I will completely understand.”

“I’m with you,” said Jamison.

“As am I,” said Beverly.

“Is this because you’re honoring the bonds we formed as children, or because your town has become overrun by lunatics?”

“A little of both for me,” said Jamison.

“I didn’t like you until about thirty minutes ago, and I didn’t realize that the town was overrun by lunatics until you just said it. I’d assumed that the man with the baseball bat was an isolated case. I’m very uncomfortable now. So neither option was correct.”

“It doesn’t matter. Let us go to see Mortus Ranklin!”

TWENTY-THREE

There were many villains in the world of Fangboy, but his encounter with Mortus Ranklin was so terrifying that it would be irresponsible of any storyteller to share more than brief snippets.

“However dangerous this turns out to be, it can’t be worse than what has come before…”

“He lives in
there?
Nobody could live in such a place! It is not possible, or even imaginable! It looks just like a…”

“I cannot scream! I cannot scream! Until this very moment I never knew that it was possible for the human body to be so terrified that it couldn’t emit a scream sound, but that’s exactly the situation I find myself in right now…”

“So much blood…so much blood…”

“To look into his eyes is to know that because babies look so similar, hospitals give the wrong ones to parents at least fifteen percent of the time…”

“Well, it’s a relief that we lived through
that
, but can we live through
this…
?”

“Through this experience and our mutual terror, we have forged a bond that can never be broken. No matter how far apart our individual destinies take us, we shall always know that we have each other to count on…”

“Help! Help! Help! Help! Help…”

“That’s right, Mortus Ranklin, we’ve beaten you! Now tell me where Penny and Mary have gone, or we’ll do that thing again, but even worse…”

With Mortus Ranklin finally defeated, Nathan, Beverly, and Jamison walked toward the edge of town. Ranklin’s directions had been vague, but it was a start, and Nathan was determined to walk the earth until he found the sisters.

Beverly looked back at the town where she’d grown up, the town where she’d spent her entire life, the town whose borders she’d never crossed. Could she really leave? Was she truly ready to embark upon this new adventure?

As she looked at Nathan, she felt that, yes, she was ready. But she also felt that it might be wise to at least do some cursory research on the current situation with the town’s residents before she fully committed to a course of action.

It turned out that the effect of Dr. Thompson’s tainted water was intense but brief, and everybody had recovered, and the apologies were flying fast and furious.

“I always had a crush on you,” Beverly told Nathan. “And being reunited after so long stirs up those old feelings. But this is my home, and it is where I must stay.”

Nathan nodded. “I understand.”

“We cannot be together, not when I’m eighteen and you’re seven. It would be sick and wrong. But when I’m twenty-nine and you’re eighteen, the morally repugnant element will disappear. So I promise you, Nathan Pepper, if you return for me in eleven years, I will divorce whoever I have married and we shall be husband and wife.”

“And I will return for you,” said Nathan.

Beverly gave him a soft kiss on the forehead. “Best of luck. I hope you find them.”

“Thank you.”

“For what it’s worth,” said Jamison, “I’d be happy to take on the role of the placeholder husband.”

“I appreciate and decline the offer.”

“I’ll accompany Nathan, then.”

And so they walked out of town.

“I’m glad you’re here with me,” said Nathan. “I’ve spent so much of my life alone. Granted, more than half of it was spent encased in a block of ice and I wasn’t truly aware of my loneliness, but still, it’s good of you to be my friend.”

“And it’s good of you to be mine, Nathan. Don’t worry. We’ll find them. I know we will.”

As they peered ahead into the great land that stretched before them, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and they somehow felt that they were headed in the right direction.

The End

TWENTY-FOUR

The tale of Fangboy has been told many times by many different people in many different languages, and one of the most controversial aspects of certain versions is how they simply end, resolving nothing. If a formal study of such matters were ever conducted, it is estimated that nearly one out of every twenty homes contains at least one wall that has been dented by a copy of
Fangboy
(or, in this modern age, the electronic device upon which it was read) being flung at great force. However, no study of that sort has ever been conducted.

It is rumored that the original teller of the tale, Wilbur Tank, believed that he had scorpions wriggling around inside of his legs, and he feared that they might burst out at any moment. His paranoia became greater and greater with each passing day, and he began to fear that he might not see his book published before the flood of scorpions emerged. So he decided that an arbitrary, unsatisfactory ending was in order.

Before he could finish typing it, the scorpions did indeed burst out of his legs. They were small ones, but no less fierce than their full-sized counterparts, and Wilbur Tank’s demise was most messy indeed. The tale was published with only twenty-three chapters, much to the fury of readers.

Since the tale of Fangboy is entirely factual, however, it wasn’t long before another journalist, R.K. Clovis, compiled the rest of the saga using public records and interviews that he conducted with the participants.

And so the tale continues…

* * *

“Considering that our hellish encounter with Mortus Ranklin is forever burned into my psyche, I do wish we’d gotten better directions from him than ‘Go south,’” said Jamison, as they continued walking south.

“I agree with you,” said Nathan. “But when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.”

“Is that how the saying goes? I’d always heard it as ‘When life hands you lemons, squeeze lemon juice into somebody’s eyes and giggle, giggle, giggle.’”

“Despite your not dying, the years have not been kind to you, have they?”

“Not at all,” said Jamison. “There’s so much I wanted to accomplish in life. I thought I’d have a career. A family of my own.”

“At eighteen?”

“I’m ambitious, yes, but I don’t necessarily see that as a negative thing. And I would have been satisfied with merely acquiring a social life. I have nothing, Nathan. Without being the Friend of the Fang-Toothed Boy, I became so unmemorable that I might as well not have existed at all.”

Nathan spat a tooth out onto his palm.

“Is that the last of them?” Jamison asked.

“Not yet. But I’m down to two. The soreness of my gums is almost unbearable.”

“Perhaps we should rest for the night.”

They built a campfire, piled some small rocks to use as pillows, and lay out under the stars.

“Do you know any of the constellations?” Nathan asked, adding his new tooth to the necklace.

“I know most of them.” Jamison pointed to the sky. “That one is Frankenstein. That one over there is The Great Bat. Right underneath it is the Man With No Eyes.”

“I’m not sure those are accurate,” Nathan observed.

“See that one? It’s the Panda Piñata. And there we have the Vortex. That one is called the Line of Stars.”

“You’re making these up.”

“No, no, they’re all true.” Jamison laughed. “That one is called Fangboy. See how the stars look like fangs?”

“They do, actually.”

“You have to be a pretty great person for the stars to shift around to form a constellation that resembles your face. They won’t do that for me, I can tell you.”

They laughed until tears ran down their face. Finally Nathan pulled the blanket of leaves over himself. “Would you like the last piece of cheese?” he offered. The cheese was stolen, but the dairy farmer had been so rude about their act of theft that they didn’t feel guilty.

“No, it’s yours. I know you’ve been saving it.”

“But I’ve seen you eyeing it for the past couple of days, and I want you to have it, for being my friend.”

“Thank you.” Jamison gobbled down the small piece of cheese and smiled. “We’ll steal more cheese tomorrow. Perhaps some cheddar or that white kind. And we’ll get grapes to go with it. Nothing goes better with cheese than grapes, except for crackers. Though crackers might be difficult for you to eat with so few remaining teeth. We’ll stick with the cheese and grapes.”

“Goodnight, Jamison.”

“Goodnight, Nathan.”

* * *

As the sun rose over the hillside, Nathan opened his eyes, yawned, and decided that today was the day he would finally be reunited with Penny and Mary.

“Come on,” he said, brushing the leaves off of Jamison. “It’s too beautiful of a day to waste by sleeping all…”

Jamison was not asleep.

“No,” Nathan whispered. “It can’t be.”

He gently shook his friend. Jamison’s face had taken on a greenish tint, and he looked exactly the way Nathan might expect somebody to look if they’d eaten bad cheese.

“Please, no.”

Nathan’s entire body shook as he wept. He sobbed so violently that his last two teeth fell out. He didn’t pick these up. Let them decay on the ground! Nobody would ever want them!

In fact, he tore off his necklace, snapping the string. He took the individual teeth and flung them away, one by one, throwing them as far as he possibly could. Why keep mementos of his existence? He brought nothing but misery to those who were kind to him.

He threw away the last tooth and wept some more.

He should have eaten that cheese himself!

“Oh, Jamison, I’m so, so very sorry. I wish you’d stayed behind and married Beverly. Then you wouldn’t be dead. I’m so sorry.”

Nathan knew what he had to do. He searched for a few minutes for one of the teeth he’d thrown away, and then scraped it across the ground. He would bury Jamison in a grave that he dug with his own accursed tooth. That was the only way to show his best friend the proper respect.

Digging a grave with a tooth, however sharp, is a very time consuming process, but Nathan didn’t care. If it took him the rest of his life, he would dig this grave!

When the vultures arrived, he decided to cheat a bit.

* * *

“I’ll miss you, dear friend,” he said, as he set the last stone upon the grave. A marker read
Jamison. A friend to all, but especially to me.

And then he resumed his journey, alone.

* * *

His gums were particularly sore one day and even bleeding a bit, and he realized that his new teeth were finally coming in. In fact, as he poked at the spot with his tongue, one of them had started to emerge.