The Suburb Beyond the Stars (3 page)

Gregory walked out the front door first. He looked around carefully before he stepped away and let Brian out into the light of the street. He walked with Brian to the Thatzes’ apartment building, and left Brian there. Throughout the evening, they exchanged nervous messages to check on each other.

Even at home, Brian didn’t feel safe. His family’s apartment was always noisy. It was right over a main road, so all night, there were cars and the upshifting of trucks. The noise of the traffic meant that Brian’s parents always had to yell, which they would have done anyway, since they were those kind of people: friendly and loud.

Usually the grinding wash of the graveyard-shift commute put Brian to sleep as if it were some familiar river. The shouting of his parents from room to room (“Hey! Have you read this article on greens? Why don’t we eat more greens?”) was usually reassuring.

But now Brian heard only the sounds masked by the traffic. He heard things creak and tick. He heard what might be footsteps in the early hours of the morning. He was sure that something was out to get him.

He thought of the monsters he’d encountered in the Vermont woods — the Basement Lurker, like a childhood nightmare, hardly glimpsed save for the red jaws, the claws that snatched; the blind ogre Snarth, who fumbled through subterranean depths; and, most horrifying of all, Gelt the Winnower (haunter of Brian’s dreams for almost a year now), some production of the Thusser, a body like a man’s with spikes driven through it and, where each spike hit flesh, a long, silver cord that snaked out, sentient. Gelt felt through those cords — and could use them to snare, strangle, and dismember.

The little ticks of the building settling … the trickle of water through pipes as neighbors flushed … the grunt of flexing floorboards … all of these sounded to Brian like Gelt or one of his awful brethren feeling his way through the dark apartment, lips moving, eyes blank. The clock glowed. It shifted from 3:31 to 3:32.

Brian lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. He did not have the courage to turn onto his side.

Gregory walked the rest of the way home, peering anxiously into bushes. He hoped he wasn’t monster bait. Brian had won the Game, after all — Gregory hadn’t.

At home, he couldn’t concentrate on his homework. He kept texting Brian to make sure nothing had happened — nothing had kicked through a window or clambered up the fire escape.

Gregory cycled through Prudence’s recent e-mails. No hint of a trip. No mention that she was shipping out to Turkey for a few weeks of sunshine and döner kebab. Nothing but bright, cheery reports of cooking triumphs and plumbing disasters. A few rude barbs about Gregory hitting puberty “like a stinkbug on a windshield.”

Gregory tried her again on the phone. No answer. He talked to his parents. They hadn’t heard anything from her.

If something had happened to her, he realized with a sinking heart, it had happened without her seeing that it was coming.

He sank down onto his desk chair and crossed his arms. Prudence was Gregory’s favorite family member. Most of the fam came from Connecticut; they spent their Thanksgivings comparing the first-class cabins of international airlines and trading tips about where to buy swordfish steaks or boar butter in “the City,” by which they meant New York. Prudence was the only one with a sense of humor. Well, she was the only one who’d laughed when Gregory rigged the roast turkey to scream.

When Gregory pictured himself older — an old man — sitting at the head of the table with his own children and grandchildren cowering in front of his own screaming turkey, he pictured their Auntie Prude at the same table, after a lifetime of ribbing each other at weddings and irritating the cousins. They’d have jokes, passwords, stories they could tell.

Weeks often went by without her calling. So maybe nothing was wrong. Maybe she just wasn’t answering her
phone. But maybe something awful
had
happened, and it had fallen upon her so quickly and so savagely she didn’t have time to call for help.

Gregory sat at his desk and played with pennies. The night outside his windows got thicker.

Brian was exhausted the next day. He’d hardly slept. At Newbury Comics, where kids tended to gather, Brian watched as Gregory held court like usual, surrounded by friends. Crowds were Gregory’s natural element. When some new bud made a crack about Brian Thatz looking like he was about to nod off, Brian just stood blinking and feeling ashamed and not knowing what to say. Gregory came to his rescue. “Cut Bri-Bri some slack. He had a rough day yesterday.”

“Playing his
cello
?”

“No,” said Gregory. “Fighting off a two-headed monster in the subway. It’s a tough neighborhood.”

“He’s chubby for a master of the martial arts.”

“He used his cunning wiles,” said Gregory, tapping his forehead. “He electrocuted the monster on the third rail. Three rails, two heads, one winner.” He yanked up Brian’s hand in victory.

And everyone grinned. They thought Gregory was a card.

Brian blushed. He was grateful. He didn’t know why it was that he could take care of himself when clawed by a
two-headed monster, but he was helpless when it came to crowds of Gregory’s other friends — one head each.

Regardless, Brian could tell that Gregory was worried about him — he even got seconds for Brian at lunch, like he thought his friend needed to keep up his strength.

Just after lunch, they headed over to their headquarters to try to get Sniggleping or Prudence on the two-way mirror.

The two boys clanked through the broken-down foyer of the building and trudged up the stairs. Light fell in through the huge windows and lit the dust in the air.

“I told my parents we might go up and see Prudence this weekend,” Gregory told Brian. “They said that was cool with them. I lied and told them she’d invited us.”

“I have to ask my parents,” Brian replied. “As long as we’re back by Sunday night, I don’t think it will be a problem.”

Gregory asked soberly,
“Will
we be back by Sunday night?”

“I hope we don’t have to go at all,” said Brian. He turned the key in the lock of the office and they walked in.

“Howdy, Minnie, love of my life,” Gregory greeted the automaton, saluting her with one hand and blowing a kiss with his other.

“Why, hi there, boys,” said Minnie, winking slyly, as she always did. “Mr. Flockton ain’t in. You want I should take a message, or you okay just cooling your heels ‘til he gets back from whatever filthy joint he’s sunk in today?”

“Thanks, Minnie,” said Brian, heading for the inner office, Gregory close behind him.

Minnie smiled, picked up her letter opener, and stabbed at Brian.

Gregory yelled,
“Brian!”
and leaped — grabbing her arm.

Minnie fought, rocking Gregory back and forth as he gripped the flesh of her wrist. He could feel the beams and cogs beneath the skin. “Why, hi there, boys,” she said. “Mr. Flockton ain’t — Why, hi there, boys, Mr. Flockton ain’t — Why, hi there, boys, the Game is over. Why, hi there, boys, the Game is over, boys. Why, boys, the Game —”

She jabbed. Brian gripped her upper shoulder. He and Gregory yanked, and with a jolt, they pulled off their secretary’s arm.

In their hands, still wired, it kept bending and writhing, trying to stab but without purchase. Her fingers, dolled up, were wrapped around the letter opener’s hilt, white with tension.

“Why, hi there, boys. Why, hi there, boys. Why, hi there, boys. Here’s a message for you. Here’s a message for you.”

“From who?” Brian shouted. “Who’s it from, Minnie?”

“Here’s a message. Here’s a message. Here’s a message.”

“What’s the message?” Brian screamed. The arm bucked in his hands. “What is it?”

“The knife. The Game is over, boys. Why, hi there, boys. Why, hi. Why, hi there. The knife. The Game is over. Why …”

Her eyes went blank. The arm stopped struggling.

Brian stepped quickly behind her and felt for the plate in Minnie’s back where her windup key would be inserted.

“Be careful,” Gregory warned.

“Get me a screwdriver,” said Brian.

“I mean be careful because that’s my own true love you’re pawing up.”

“How did she get reprogrammed?” Brian demanded. No one answered.

Gregory went to the inner office and returned with a screwdriver.

Brian took off the plate in Minnie’s back. Inside were gears and springs. Brian didn’t know much about how the magical automatons worked, but he knew that if he snapped the spring that the key wound, she couldn’t start up again on her own. She’d have to be fixed first by Sniggleping.

He yanked her spring.

“Let’s call up Sniggleping on the mirror,” said Gregory. “He made her. He’ll know how someone could reprogram her.”

“Something’s going very wrong,” said Brian. “None of this should be happening. We’re not competing right now.”

They went into the inner office, where their communications mirror hung, an old 1920s thing in a glamorous Bakelite frame. Brian touched it and said the Cantrip of Activation. Then he said Sniggleping’s name.

“Come on, Sniggleping,” Brian said. “Be there today.”

Prudence had taught Brian a few simple spells he’d
need to run the Game. The Cantrip of Activation was one of them. It acted as a toggle switch for many Norumbegan artifacts, turning them on or off.

The mirror was crowded with the boys’ faces. As the Cantrip took hold, the mirror image faded; the glass slowly frosted. The faces turned white and eyeless. Brian’s glasses were dim loops of gray. As the boys watched and waited for Sniggleping to appear, Gregory said, “I’m going to get Prudence to teach me the Cantrip of Activation, too.”

“I can try to teach you again,” Brian offered. “Anytime.”

“It’s just one word, right? Come on. How hard can it be?”

“Well, yeah … but … no, it’s not just one word, exactly,” said Brian. “It’s a set of things you have to think about, too.”

“We tried before. I got the spoken part right.”

“You have to clear your mind and think about the right things. Otherwise, you’re just saying stuff.”

Gregory looked miffed. “Why does Prudence teach you all these things and not me?”

“She — I’m sure she’d teach you, too. You said you didn’t want to learn. You said it was boring.”

“Now I don’t think it’s boring.”

“Last time I tried to teach you, you got all … you got mad.”

“Maybe I’m dumb.”

“You’re not dumb.”

“Never mind. It’s just that Prude pays more attention to you just because you won the Game.”

Brian’s washed-out face creased with concern in the fading mirror. “She doesn’t pay more attention —”

“Yeah, yeah. Where’s Snig?” said Gregory irritably.

Brian and Gregory looked through themselves, and dimly saw Sniggleping’s workshop in the mountains of Vermont.

And abruptly, their little spat was forgotten.

For this is what they saw: Sniggleping’s workshop was empty. Not a thing remained. It had always been crammed with plans and tools and half-built heads and entrails spun on spools. Now there was nothing but an expanse of floor, an empty balcony.

“What happened?” Gregory gasped.

“He’s gone. He took everything with him.”

“No,” said Gregory. “He didn’t leave by choice. Look at the floor. The strip of light.”

“What do you mean?”

“His door must be open. He left his door just flapping open. He wouldn’t have left the place unlocked. Not if he left by himself.”

“You’re right,” said Brian, unbelieving. “Someone’s taken him. They must have. Someone broke in and dragged him off.”

“Okay,” said Gregory, pressing his fingers together. “Wee Snig’s gone. Prudence is missing.”

“Someone programmed Minnie to kill. And I was attacked by a monster on the T.”

“Something’s
seriously
gone wrong. What are we going to do?”

Brian exhaled heavily. They knew what needed to be done. And it scared them both.

“Let’s get packing,” Brian said. “We’re going to Vermont.”

A
s the train crossed iron bridges, Brian gazed out the window at the millponds and sumac thickets below.

“I’m looking forward to seeing the mountains again,” Gregory said.

“And Kalgrash,” said Brian. “He’ll be there.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. Great.” Gregory sounded sarcastic.

Brian smiled. “I like Kalgrash.”

“I like the little guy fine. Of all the people who have ever attacked me with a battle-ax, he’s my favorite.”

“It was his job.”

“I’m not sure you should forgive someone for trying to ax you just because they were programmed to.”

“He didn’t try to ax us. He just blocked us.”

“With an ax.”

Brian pressed his lips together. “And can you please not remind him about the programming? When we see him? No one likes to hear they’re just clockwork. Remember: Sniggleping built him to feel stuff.”

“All right. Okay. Fine.” Gregory took a bite of some kind of fruit leather so tough that his face warped when he chewed. “You know, it’s a little weird to say this, but overall, I’m actually ready to go back. I mean, because of the adventure. It really was kind of cool, with the forest and the mountains and, yeah, the troll, even. It felt like we were actually
doing
something.”

“It was like we’d been waiting for it all our lives,” Brian agreed. He looked out the window at passing burbs. He wished that he actually felt that way — that he didn’t just feel like they were galloping into a trap.

“We’re going to do this,” said Gregory. “We’re going to find Prudence and sort this all out. Right?”

“Right,” said Brian. He wasn’t convinced. “I hope so.”

“Don’t say ‘I hope so.’ Think positive. Say ‘Yes.’ Come on. Through your megaphone:
‘Why, certainly, my good sir!’
It’s an adventure, dude.”

Gregory’s enthusiasm was infectious. They were both swept up by the feeling of the task to be completed. They talked about the places they’d visited in the forest … the paths through dark glades, the interdimensional clock keeping time for some other world, Kalgrash’s cozy burrow underneath the old stone bridge, and the Haunted Hunting Grounds, where specters of the Norumbegan court still sought their prey.

They had stood on top of the mountain, looking out over that forest — looking past Grendle Manor and the steeples of distant churches, far-flung fields, the trees in their last brown leaves before the coming of snow from the North — and they had vowed that they would never
forget any of it, they would never give in to suits and company coffee mugs and nine-to-five. Nothing could be the same after the magical wood.

Brian said, “Anything can happen in that forest.”

“Yeah. Who knows — we might even survive.”

Brian allowed himself to smile. “It’s possible.”

They got off the train in Gerenford, Vermont, Gregory dragging his luggage behind him on wheels. Brian was carrying only a backpack.

The town green looked much the same as it had the year before: same church, same plain nineteenth-century houses, same statue of the same founder holding up the same skinned rabbit. It was busier, though. In the fall, he and Gregory had been picked up here by horse and carriage. It didn’t look the same in the summer, with parents tipping back their strollers to hop sidewalks and girls straggling past eating Chipwiches. It didn’t look like a mad-uncle-in-a-buggy town anymore.

In the absence of a carriage, they had called ahead and arranged for a taxi to take them to Prudence’s house. It was waiting for them when they arrived. It was a station wagon with the word
Taxi
Scotch-taped to its window.

It drove them out of town. They couldn’t speak freely about magic and skulduggery in front of the driver.

“I hope she’s all right,” said Gregory. He was clearly getting more nervous as they got closer. Trees passed the windows.

Brian looked at his friend with concern. “She’s your favorite relative, isn’t she?” he asked.

“Of course. She laughed at my screaming turkey.” He
murmured, “She can’t be gone. There’s got to be some normal explanation we haven’t thought of yet.”

They were not headed to Grendle Manor. That house had been some kind of magical construction, built as carefully as a wedding cake especially for the Game, and it had disintegrated when it was no longer needed. After the round was won, Prudence had moved back into her old house, a sixties ranch-style home on a dirt road at the base of Norumbega Mountain.

That was where they were headed when they drove through the gates of a new suburban development. The car passed streets of replicated, generous houses. “Wow,” said Gregory. “She said there were some new streets near her, but this is a lot of houses.”

“It’s only been here for a little while,” the taxi driver offered from the front seat. “Kind of a new development. Rumbling Elk Haven. My sister lives here.”

“We camped here when it was woods,” said Brian.

“It was creepy when it was woods,” said the driver. “I hated it. There was always a lot of people disappearing or having stuff grow on their faces if they slept there. You know, puff balls or stuff. Or another eye. This guy from Dellisburg, he camped here for a week and he got this itch in his cheek, and after a few weeks, he developed another eye. I mean a cheek eye. I hate that stuff. I grew up near here. I was always: ‘No way I’m camping there. I already wear glasses. I don’t want to have to wear glasses and a monocle, too.’”

“Another
eye
?” said Brian.

“Yeah. It saw stuff his normal eyes didn’t see. This was back in the day.”

“Did you ever actually see this guy?” Gregory asked. “Or is this just hearsay and rumor?”

The driver laughed. “Hearsay and rumor,” he said. “What else? Doesn’t matter now, anyhow. It’s great they have this community here. It really takes away the creepiness.”

The wagon soared without sound over the broad, richly laid tarmac.

The driver added, “Except people say the creepiness is coming back.”

“Here?” said Brian.

“From the storm drains and stuff. From up on the mountain. Kind of invading the neighborhood. Like they shouldn’t have built anything here. Not so fast. Without being careful, you know, of what they disturbed.”

“Great,” said Gregory.

When they got to Prudence’s house, Brian didn’t recognize it at first. He remembered it being sunk in the gloom of white-pine woods and dense firs. Now it was surrounded by houses.

Brian looked up and down the street. They might have been put up too quickly, but he was thankful for the new homes. He was kind of scared, and he liked the look of neighbors. People were just getting home from work, turning down their freshly paved driveways and calling hello to each other across their lawns.

“Witnesses,” said Gregory.

Brian nodded.

Gregory said, “Much harder for us to be torn apart by ogres if people are playing Wiffle ball in our backyard.”

They thanked the driver. Brian calculated the tip. Gregory paid him.

The whole time, they were watching Prudence’s house. No sign of motion. No sign anyone had been home for some days. The lawn looked like it hadn’t been mowed in a while. There were newsprint circulars stuffed in between the screen door and the front door.

Gregory rang the bell. As they expected, there was no answer.

Then Gregory knocked. They waited.

Up the street, little kids were riding bikes with training wheels. They cheered and spun in circles.

Gregory said, “I don’t have a real good feeling about this.”

Brian shook his head. “Do you have the key?”

Gregory nodded and took it out of his pocket.

He rang the bell again. They knocked again. Gregory leaned toward the glass panels of the door and shouted, “Prudence? Prudence, it’s Gregory.”

No answer.

Gregory turned the key in the lock. He opened the door. A foul smell issued out.

Together, they entered the house.