Trollhunters (29 page)

Jack banged through the unlocked front door, took one whiff of acrid air, and ran to my room, where he pushed the remains of my bed to the perimeter. Blinky then spread his
tentacles so that the entire floor was carpeted with his mucoid flesh. I climbed on top of my dresser to get out of the way. The tip of each tentacle crinkled as if sniffing out a varmint.

“ARRRGH!!!’s nose is better suited for this task,” Blinky apologized. “On the upside, though, I do have seventy-four of them.”

This gave me hope until the tentacles ripped away like tape. Blinky backpedaled to the safety of the closet, hacking up fizzing troll phlegm that began to eat away at several items of my
discarded clothing.

“The scoundrels are piping up the vilest of odors to throw us off the scent! Strawberries! Vanilla! Azaleas! Coffee! I fear I shall faint like a corseted maiden! Or vomit most forcefully!
Or both in impressive concurrence!”

“We attack,” Jack said. “Right now. But we need a different door.”

“Anywhere but here!” Blinky moaned. “Or regurgitation will be the evening’s sport!”

“I know the place,” Jack said. “But we need to
move
.”

There was no argument. Jack strapped on his armor, the metal parts snapping and ringing, harbingers of combat. I kicked aside the clothes sodden with troll puke and chose a shirt and pants that
I wouldn’t mind dying in. Blinky handed me Cat #6 and Claireblade, and they felt heavier than ever before.

We swept through the living room, and I grabbed the doorknob. It turned but the door didn’t open. All ten locks had been thrown. I began the unlocking regimen before realizing what this
meant. I turned around and there was Dad, clutching his battered briefcase, his face patched with stubble, his clothes matted, his unbuttoned left cuff link stained from whatever fast food
he’d been living off for the past day.

Dad’s reaction to seeing an actual troll was so subdued that I worried his brain might politely explode inside his skull. To minimize his size, Blinky folded as many of his appendages
behind him as he could. Jack, meanwhile, kneaded the mask in his hand, clearly wishing he could put it on to avoid this encounter. Dad exhaled and inhaled as if both were being done at gunpoint,
and reached out to the shelf above the electric fireplace for stability. Various pieces of the Jack Sturges Collection were toppled.

Dad gazed at his brother’s school photos while he spoke.

“Jack,” he said. “Why did you come back?”

“I had to,” Jack whispered.

“Then don’t leave.” Dad’s voice broke. “Stay here with me. I still have boxes of your clothes. I can buy bikes for the both of us, the best they sell, red for you
and yellow for me. I’ve still got your radio. We can ride and listen to music, Jack. We can shoot our lasers. We can pedal so fast we won’t have time to remember any of the bad things
that happened. We can grow up together after all! Doesn’t that sound like a dream?”

“I can’t grow up, Jimbo. Not with you. Not with anyone.”

Dad slammed his fist onto the shelf. It shook and the framed milk carton picture fell to the floor, where the glass shattered upon the hearth. Jack jumped and Blinky gasped. Dad whirled around,
his face streaming with tears.

“I’m lonely up here, Jack! Stay with me. Or take me with you.”

“Jimbo…”

“Wherever you go, I’ll go; it’s what I should’ve done years ago!”

“I can’t—”

“Take me! I’m ready!”

“You’re not—”

“I’m the big brother now, Jack! You have to do what I say!”

“You’re too old!”

Jack’s shout rattled the locks upon the door and made the steel shutters hum. We stood there as the cruel echo made its excruciating exit. Dad’s taut expression of shock reshaped
into folds of grief. He lifted a hand dotted with the first liver spots of old age and touched the jowls that in recent years had elongated his cheeks. The hand continued up past the worry lines
carved into his forehead to the scalp that had long before given up its hair.

“Then I’m overdue,” Dad said.

Jack’s hand clenched his mask.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

We hitched up our weapons and turned toward the door.

“You’re taking Jimmy?” Dad asked. “You’re leaving me and taking my son?”

“Dad,” I said. “I have to go.”

“I forbid it,” Dad said, emboldened with the concept. “There’s danger—have you seen the news? Danger everywhere!”

“I’ll bring him back,” Jack said.

“And if you don’t? What then? You’d be tearing apart what’s left of this family. When it’s in your power to put it all back together!”

Jack paused with his tack-edged glove on the doorknob. He looked at his boots for a moment and I could see him measure the truth of what Dad was saying. That night’s mission might be one
of suicide, and even if that meant a troll invasion and the destruction of the entire continent one city at a time, perhaps it was still unfair to rob a father and son of those precious last
days.

“This isn’t up for debate,” I snapped. “I’m going.”

“Jim,” Jack said. “You need to think what we’re about to—”

“I don’t have to think. That bridge will be finished tomorrow. Kids will die. Kids I know. And we’re sitting here discussing it? Look, it’s like what Tub said, except I
didn’t believe him when he said it. This is what I’m here to do, Dad. This is the only thing I’m good at. There are times when you have to do the right thing, no matter how scary.
Both of you should know that more than anyone! If I don’t fight now,
right
now, when am I supposed to fight?”

Jack was staring at me. It was a look of warning, then of questioning.

I did not budge.

Slowly a sad smile crept across his lips. He nodded, once.

“We fight,” he said.

“Fight?” Blinky laughed. “Too humble a word for our despoilings and devastations!”

Dad collapsed onto the sofa with mannequin stiffness.

“Your Shakespeare,” he monotoned. “What about your play?”

With practiced fingers I undid all the rest of the locks. Then I saw the keys to the San Bernardino Electronics van hanging on a hook beside the door. We were behind schedule and wheels would
sure help us catch up. I took them before I could think better of it.

“I’m heading over to the field tomorrow to give it a final mowing,” Dad continued. “Make it all look nice for your play.”

I ushered Blinky into the night, then Jack, who threw a final, regretful look at his brother. I put my hand upon the die-cast vehicles that covered his torso and pushed him down the steps. I
took the doorknob and swung the door behind me, pausing for just a moment to watch my dad stare blankly at the dead TV. This could be the last time I saw him. I wanted him to turn around and tell
me that he believed that I could do it.

“I’ll come back, Dad,” I said. “I’ll try. I’ll try really hard.”

“Yes, of course.” He did not look at me. “See you tomorrow night at the play. I know you’ll be fantastic.”

It hurt to leave. But hurting was something every family that had lost a child knew about, and if the trollhunters had one job above all others, it was the ending of that hurt
one way or the other before it became something that could never be salved.

That night Jack fulfilled a long-held fantasy: he drove. Ripping the keys from me and saying that he knew as much about driving as I did, he leapt into the driver’s seat while I loaded
Blinky into the cargo area that usually held Dad’s mower. Once I was strapped into the passenger seat, Jack lurched the van forward, punching a nice, neat hole into the garage door.

“Mistake,” he said. “My mistake.”

He reversed through the lawn and kept going until the tires had munched up a flowerbed across the street. By this point, though, Jack was having a blast, his eyes sparkling with the kind of
intensity I’d only seen in battle. He shoved the gear into drive and stomped on the gas. Once the spinning wheels grabbed hold of the pavement, we accelerated through a cloud of burning
rubber, Jack whooping with uncharacteristic glee.

He drove the same way he rode his bike back in 1969: headlong, at top speed, and improvising every step of the way. By the time we heaved to a halt in Tub’s driveway, we’d only
dented three cars, demolished one topiary light, and snapped a sapling in half. Jack honked the horn and Blinky used a tentacle to throw open the side door. The van chugged; every fiber in my body
was in motion.

We saw movement at the back of the house. Jack gunned the engine, ready to roll. ARRRGH!!! hulked her cautious way along the side of the house, blotting out the yard lights as she approached the
van. Once more, it seemed there was no way she’d fit, and yet she did, turning the entire back compartment into a stinking lounge of black fur upon which Blinky sat. She seemed to find being
inside a human’s vehicle almost as novel as Jack did. I adjusted my mirror and noticed something glinting from ARRRGH!!!’s mouth. I turned around in my chair.

Proudly she pulled back her furry lips and grinned. Wrapped around each gigantic, lethal tooth was the same chicken wire I’d helped Tub pull through his bedroom window four days before,
expertly tightened by metal screws.

“Braces,” Tub said.

He stood on the driveway decked out in his best approximation of a ninja: black tennis shoes, black sweatpants, a black hoodie, a belt made from a red curtain sash, and an oversize fanny pack
holding his gear, probably not throwing stars and nunchakus but who really knew. It was unfortunate that the fanny pack was lime green, but I still was impressed. Tub pointed at his own braces.

“She liked mine.” There was no disguising the satisfaction in his voice. “She’s actually more aware of her looks than you’d think. So I hooked her up. Not bad, huh?
She’ll have the best choppers around in just, you know, maybe a couple hundred more treatments. But that’s nothing in troll years, right?”

ARRRGH!!! extended her muzzle from the side door and rested it upon Tub’s shoulder. Her blasts of breath wobbled his mountain of frizzed hair. Absently he patted her on the nose like
he’d done it a thousand times, which I realized, he probably had. At once I felt terrible and inspired: this friend whom I’d left to deal with this frightening creature had performed so
much better than I’d thought possible.