Mr. Fahrenheit

For my grandparents

Mr. Fahrenheit
is a work of fiction containing some nonfiction elements that have been altered slightly to fit the story. For instance, Captain Thomas Mantell really did die tragically in pursuit of a UFO in 1948, but the conversation between him and the control tower in
Mr. Fahrenheit
is my invention. Similarly, some details about the “Roswell Incident” have been rearranged and may not match the real-life accounts of the events . . . though whether those accounts are “fiction” themselves is a matter of opinion, I guess.

The bands and lyrics featured in
Mr. Fahrenheit
are also made up. If you're interested in learning more about the history of early rock 'n' roll, particularly doo-wop, I highly recommend
Doo Wop: The Music, the Times, the Era
by Bruce Morrow and Rich Maloof.

The world is nearly all parceled out, and

what there is left of it is being divided up, conquered, and

colonized. To think of these stars that you see overhead at

night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would

annex the planets if I could; I often think of that.

It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far.

—Cecil Rhodes,
The Last Will and Testament

of Cecil John Rhodes

But the true voyagers are those who leave

For the sake of leaving; hearts light, like balloons,

They never swerve from their destinies,

And without knowing why, they say always,“We must go!”

—Charles Baudelaire, “The Voyage”

Without something to wonder at

we should find life scarcely worth living.

—Harry Houdini

H
e is just a boy, that's all, just a child walking through the firelight of the vanishing summer's last sunset. He walks with his nerve endings ignited like constellations. The air tastes dark and electric on the back of his mouth; sweat molds his hair into sharp broomstraw points on his brow; a wind slips by and the witchgrass hisses, and dead leaves grasp his naked calves, like hands begging him to go back.
No
, he tells himself. But it doesn't quite steel him, so he adds:
Ellie
. And when the boy feels his hands still shaking, he slips them into his deep hip pockets, where he carries magic in the same fashion a gunslinger hauls his iron firepower. The boy won't be held back. Not tonight, and never again.

He steps into the shadow of the haunted home.

His name is Benji Lightman. He is eleven years old. He lives in Bedford Falls, Indiana. And he is walking toward this ancient front door so he can perform his ultimate trick:

On the night before middle school begins, Benji will make himself disappear.

The house—which is “the House,” capital
H
, like Hell—has loomed on this hill forever. Benji cranes his neck to take it
in, dwarfed by the ghost fortress, which shoots skyward like a jagged arrow fired into the brighter heavens. Benji knows the legends: A crazy hook-handed doctor lives inside the House; Satanic warlocks meet here every full moon to sacrifice stray dogs. The stories aren't true, though. (They
almost definitely
aren't true.) He asked Papaw (who has loomed above Benji forever, too), and Papaw said the stories were “comprised of the same material that falls out of a bull's ass.” Which sounded more convincing this morning, at home. In the sunlight. With Froot Loops.

Now Benji pauses before the porch step, steals a last glance over his shoulder, and sees his friends a world away across the wild yard. Zeeko, the shorter of them, scrunches his dark face toward the sky, glasses flashing, shoulders hitching with each breath, lips moving with prayer. He is nervous and does not want to throw up (which he will, in fact, soon do). A few eighth-grade giants stand beside him, long-shadowed and stubbled like cacti, and epic in every way Benji is not.

But that is not what Benji will remember most.

What he will remember is this: Christopher Robin Noland, looking back at him in that blazing August light . . . and bursting into applause.

Christopher Robin Noland, the new kid next door; Christopher Robin, rail skinny and homeschooled; Christopher, who always looks like an unmade bed but is the only real friend Benji has ever made since meeting Zeeko in preschool.

“YEAH, BENJI! AW-RIGHT! LET'S DOOO THIS, BAY-BUH!” he crows. “WAHOO, BANJO! WAHOOOO!”

The eighth graders, who brought them here, stare at Christopher as if he's an alien.

But there is something in that admittedly awkward shout that Benji loves with his whole heart: an unembarrassed joy. It is the sound of someone who is certain something astonishing is coming.

Ellie
, Benji thinks. He'd hoped she would be here, and maybe she'll still show up.

Shaun Spinney, most gigantic of the older kids, shouts, “What, Lightman, you forget your tampon?” Benji has no clue what that is. He doesn't let on. “Don't you wanna join our frat? Hey, if you don't, we can go back!”

Benji steps onto the porch, feeling the old wood shudder and cry out through the sole of his sneaker.

But he won't be held back.

Because he knows that behind this red and rotting door, destiny is waiting. From his pocket Benji draws out his black wand, the great one with the glowing LED tip, and he wants to say “
Lumos,
” the way Harry Potter does when he ignites his own wand.
Those stories are comprised of the same material that falls out of a bull's ass.

“
Lumos,
” Benji whispers.

The wand lights the brass doorknob with a hundred star points, and when Benji's palm meets the metal, the door opens a shrieking inch, almost all by itself. The smell of the House is like darkness and decay and bad memories, but it does not frighten him. He's dreamed every night this summer—almost every night of his
life
—of something coming for him, something from beyond the rusting silos and gas-mining equipment and cornfields on Bedford Falls's horizon, some flawless moment in this perfect summer that will make him disappear (
presto!
), undergo a metamorphosis, and vanish any memory of the “weird kid” he's always been.

In this dusk light, at the nexus of his life, Benji is about to do it.

He really believes that. With his whole heart.

Benji Lightman opens the door.

And the ghosts begin to scream.