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harlie threw a book at the centipede. He didn't even think, he just reacted. Across the room, halfway up the wall opposite his bed, was one of those disgusting creatures with the fuzzy body and countless rippling legs. It was the motion that had caught Charlie's eyeâthat smooth, flowing motion like a living piece of liquid rope. Now, under his full gaze, the bug froze, as if waiting for him to make his move. He made that move with the nearest thing at handâtwo pounds of dead weight called
Fun with Verbs and Nouns.
The book missed by less than an inch. It slammed against the wall, then dropped to the floor, lying open with its pages slowly turning.
The centipede slipped under Charlie's desk, vanishing like a slurped strand of spaghetti. Charlie rolled off the bed, dashed across the room, and
peered beneath the desk. He found dust and scattered bits of junk, but no sign of insect life. Part of him was relieved that he had missed. The thought of that thing squished and deadâor worse, squished and dying-made him feel sick.
But at least it was gone. Charlie figured he'd scared it off for good.
He saw the centipede again that evening. Just as he was about to switch off his lamp, he saw a slithering intrusion on the ceiling. The bug was right over his bedâdirectly above his head. Charlie jumped to his feet and searched for something that could smash the life from the centipede. He grabbed his pants from the floor, thinking he could swipe at the ceiling and knock the insect down. Then he could crush it and be done with it. He looked up.
The centipede was gone.
Charlie slept poorly that night. In his dreams, a million tiny legs brushed his face.
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“Mom,” he asked the next morning, “do we have any bug spray?”
“Why?” she asked.
“There's a big bug in my room.”
“Leave it alone,” she said. “It won't hurt you.”
“Mom, it's a really big bug. It's huge.”
His mom sighed. Charlie could tell she wasn't going to argue further. “Look in the garage,” she said.
“Thanks.” Charlie found a can. The label said it was for ants and other crawling insects.
This should do the trick
, he thought as he went back to
his room. He figured anything with that many legs pretty much had to crawl. But it wouldn't be crawling much longer. Charlie followed the directions, spraying all along the baseboards. Then he stuck his arm under his desk and held the nozzle down for a long time. The room filled with an interesting smell, an almost sweet smell.
“The line of death ⦔ Charlie said aloud as he finished spraying. He imagined the bug falling to the ground, dropping from whatever wall it hid upon like a toy dart when the suction cup gives out. He imagined it squirming in agony as the spray destroyed its tiny brain and turned its nervous system into mush. Charlie caught his reflection in the mirror as he left the room. He hadn't realized he was smiling.
He checked his room later, eager for any sign that he had won. There were several dead bugs on the floor, but they were all spiders. That was fine with Charlieâhe didn't particularly like spiders either. It was their tough luck if they got in the way of the spray.
That evening, as Charlie trudged through his homework, the centipede ran across the wall above his desk. Charlie rushed to the garage for the spray can. By the time he returned, the bug was nowhere in sight. He sprayed the wall, leaving a large, wet blotch. As he finished, he wondered if this was the same bug. It seemed longer than before.
The next day, it looked even longer as it raced across a different part of the wall.
Charlie didn't know whether there were several
centipedes or if there was one that just kept growing. The first time he'd seen it, it couldn't have been more than three inches long. Now, it looked more like five.
It kept getting longer.
And it kept refusing to die. Day after day, Charlie sprayed, until the can was empty. The bug didn't seem to be bothered by the chemical fog.
Night after night, Charlie threw books and balls and hard toys at it. He always missed. The wall was chipped and cracked in half a dozen spots. The centipede was untouched. Charlie tried hitting it with a flyswatter, a yardstick, and a dozen other weapons. Once, Charlie even took a swipe with his bare hand, not caring what the mess might feel like. He didn't come close.
The centipede grew bolder. One night, it crawled across Charlie as he slept. Each night after that, he'd wake up startled as the centipede brushed against his hand or leg or face. And each night, he'd swat at it in terror, slapping blindly at his body, then striking against the bed as he searched for the centipede in the rumpled sheets. But he always missed.
It was at least a foot long now.
Charlie had never heard of a centipede that big.
It's just a matter of time
, he told himself. The bigger it got, the easier it would be to catch. He couldn't keep missing forever.
He started sitting up in bed at night, holding a rock he'd brought in from the yard, gripping it so hard it left a pattern of craters on the flesh of his palm. One good hit-that's all he needed. But
there was never any warning. It would just be there, on the wall or on the ceiling, silent as a cobweb. He never saw it crawling out from any hiding place.
It grew bigger, but it didn't grow slower. At two feet, it easily evaded his attacks. At three feet, it was still too fast to hit.
Every night now it would run across his chest, then pause for an instant as if measuring him. Charlie would wake and slash his hands out. He'd miss.
One evening Charlie woke and saw the centipede slithering across his wall like a toy train.
“Stop!” he shouted.
It stopped.
“Look,” Charlie said, slowly getting out of bed. “I'm sorry about throwing that book at you. Honest. I shouldn't have done that. Leave me alone and I'll leave you alone.”
The centipede didn't move. Charlie took a step closer. “Is it a deal?” He took another step. The centipede stayed where it was. Charlie kept talking, sure now that his voice was keeping the insect frozen in place. He inched closer. “I'm sorry about the spray.” Another step. “We can stay out of each other's way. There's plenty of room here for both of us. Okay?” Another step. “I promise not to hurt you.”
He was within reach.
Now!
he thought as he swung his hand with all his strength, smacking the wall with his palm. The impact shook the wall and stung his hand.
The centipede had shifted. The body had moved
so fast that it was, for an instant, nothing but a flexing blur. Then it fled. He'd missed. It was gone.
That night, Charlie had the worst dream yet. The centipede lay on his chest, but he couldn't hit it. He couldn't move. The dream woke Charlie, but the terror remained.
“What?” Charlie gasped, confused, only half awake. He struggled to lift his arms. Someone had tied him down. A rope was coiled around his body and across his chest.
Not a rope â¦
A centipede.
Charlie thrashed against the mattress and tried to twist free, but the centipede tightened its grip. His vision grew blurry. The walls and ceiling of his room seemed to be rippling and moving.
But everything else in the room was sharp and clear. Charlie looked again and realized what he was seeing. The walls weren't blurry. The walls were covered with centipedes. Small ones, long ones; thousands of them waited on every side of his room.
The centipedes stayed in place for a moment, as if to make sure he noticed them. Then, all at once, they moved toward the bed.
“Stop!” Charlie cried.
This time, they didn't even pause to listen.
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lex and I were digging in the woods above the creek, looking for worms, when we found it. I hadn't even dug that deepâmaybe a foot or soâwhen I felt this thud. My shovel hit something hard. It was like in those cartoons where the bad guy swings a bat at the good guy and he hits a brick wall instead. Then the shock waves travel up the bat and the bad guy starts shaking all over. My hands shook with the impact, and it felt like the shakes traveled right up my arms to my shoulders, and down my back to my legs.
“Hit a rock?” Alex asked, looking up from where he was digging.
“I don't know.” I pushed aside a handful of dirt. “Hey, it's some kind of metal.” I moved aside more of the dirt.
“Maybe it's a treasure,” Alex said, hurrying over.
“Maybe.” I started digging a wider hole toward the edges of the object. Alex got on the other side and helped me.
In a moment, we had uncovered enough to know what it was. At first, we just stared at it, then stared at each other. I couldn't believe our luck. I'd bet Alex couldn't either.
“Whatcha doing?”
I spun toward my little brother, Billy, who had wandered up from the house. Billy stood far enough back so he couldn't see into the hole.
“Nothing. Go play.”
“Show me,” he said. “I wanna see.”
I moved a step closer to Billy, making sure I was between him and the hole. “Get out.”
“I'll tell Mom.”
“Get out,” I said again, trying to sound dangerous. “You're not going to tell her anything.”
“I will, too,” he said. Then he ran off.
“Think he'll tell?” Alex asked.
“Nah. He wouldn't dare. He knows I'd get him for it.” I went back to the hole and knelt, running my hand along the metal. “Hey, it's shiny.” I'd expected it to be old and rusted, but the blade, beneath the dirt, looked bright and polished.
I brushed off the rest of the dirt and lifted my treasure from the earth. “Wow ⦔ I'd seen stuff like this in museums, but I couldn't believe I was holding a battle-ax.
“Viking?” Alex asked.
“I don't know.” I had no idea where it had been made, but I knew what it had been made for. This
was a battle-ax. Whether it had belonged to a Viking raider or one of the knights of the Round Table, I couldn't guess. I also had no idea how it had ended up in the woods above the river in a place that had never been visited by knights or Vikings.
“Let me see,” Alex said, reaching out.
“Hang on.” I wanted to study it more before handing it over. I examined the head. It looked like it had gotten a lot of use. The edge was sharp, but there were gouges and nicks in the metal. I ran my eyes down the shaft. That's when I saw the small red jewel embedded into the wood of the handle. It was set about eight inches above the end of the shaft, right where someone might grip it to swing the ax.
“Look,” I said to Alex, pointing at the jewel. Then I wrapped my hand around it â¦
⦠and the battle fury grew in my heart.
All my body was filled with hate and rage. Screaming a war cry and rushing at the enemy, I swung the ax at my hated foe. Destroy him. That was my only desire. He ducked and my blade was robbed of the chance to taste its target. The metal struck a tree and sank half a head deep into the wood.
My enemy was shouting at me in a foreign tongue. I did not know his language. It did not matter. I knew the one thing that mattered. I knew I had to strike him. But the ax was stuck in this wretched tree. I struggled to wrench it free.
My enemy pushed at me. I staggered back,
fighting hard to hold my grip. But I failed. My hands slipped. I fell away â¦
⦠and landed on my butt on the ground.
“Are you crazy!” Alex shouted.
I sat where I was and tried to understand what had happened. How could I explain? It hadn't been me. When I'd touched the jewel, when I'd wrapped my hand around it, I'd become someone else.
Alex turned his back on me. “I'm not letting you play with this anymore.” He reached for the ax.
“Wait.”
It was too late. As I watched, he changed. Strength flooded into himâstrength and a purpose. I knew what that purpose was. I jumped to my feet, wondering if I had time to knock him away from the ax.
With an awful shriek, the head tore free of the tree. Alex lunged toward me, his eyes blazing. I ran. Alex was fast, but the ax was heavy. I was sure I could stay ahead of him.
But he had far more strength than I expected. Within seconds, he had almost caught me. I looked over my shoulder. He was staring straight ahead, his eyes marking a target on my back. There was only one chance. I swerved, running for a stretch of the woods that I knew was filled with rocks and boulders.
Behind me, Alex swung his weapon. I heard steel slice through air and felt something pull at my shirt. The breeze flowed against my back where the cloth between my shoulders had been sliced open. I hopped over a small boulder, then
dodged around another. From the rear I heard a battle yell. I flinched, expecting to feel the burning slash of the ax. Then the yell turned into a cry and a thud.
Not yet daring to slow, I glanced back again. My plan had worked. Alex had tripped on a boulder. The ax had gone flying from his hands, landing with a clatter a safe distance away. I stopped and tried to catch my breath.
“What ⦠?” Alex looked around, puzzled. “I didn't mean to ⦔
I nodded. “Yeah. I know. It's that thing,” I said, pointing toward the ax.
“It took over,” he said, still blinking his eyes and glancing around in confusion. “I was someone else.”
“Me, too. When you touch the jewel ⦔ I walked over and stared down at the battle-ax where it lay on top of several small rocks and a scattering of dead leaves. “We have to get rid of it.”
Alex looked like he was going to argue, but then he just nodded and said, “Yeah. Where?”
“The river?”
“Good idea.”
I reached toward the ax, then paused and looked at Alex. “Stand back, just in case. Far back.”
He moved away from me. I touched the wooden part cautiously with one finger. No rage came over me, so I grabbed the ax in the middle of the shaft, keeping my hand far from the jewel. For an instant, I waited, ready to let go and leap away if
the feeling came over me. But nothing happened. I realized I'd been holding my breath. “I think it's okay,” I said to Alex.
“Yeah, but you'll understand if I don't get too close.”
“Sure. Let's take it to the gorge. That's a good spot.”
“Should we walk along the river?”
“No, it's quicker if we cut through the woods.”
I wanted to toss the ax into the deep part of the water. That was about half a mile upriver. We'd have to climb down a small cliff if we went that way, but it would still be faster than walking along the rocky riverbank from here.
We made it to the gorge without any trouble. I paused at the top to look down. Alex stepped past me. “I'll go ahead,” he said.
I waited until he was part way down, then followed. I must have been up and down the cliff a thousand times. But I'd always done it with both hands free. I never even thought that it would be a problem climbing with the ax. That is, I never thought about it until I started to slip and fall.
I just had time to shout, “Look out!” at Alex before I went tumbling.
The next instant was filled with a spinning world and a thousand flashes of pain. I bounced against dozens of hard things and one soft thing. I guess that was Alex. The world faded out for a while after I stopped falling.
When the world faded in again, I was staring up at the sky. There was a real bad pain in my left leg. “Alex?”
“I'm right here,” he said, sounding pretty weak.
“I can't get up,” I told him.
“Hang on.” There was a pause. He groaned. Then he said, “I can sort of crawl. It'll take a while, but I think I can get help.”
I heard him moving slowly, very slowly, away from me. “What happened to the ax?” I asked.
“I guess it hit the water,” he said. “I'm pretty sure it went in.”
At least I'd taken care of that. “I'm sorry about falling.”
“Don't worry. We'll be okay. I'll get help.”
“Thanks.” I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the pain that was starting to shoot through every part of my body. That's when I heard Billy calling my name.
“Over here,” I shouted, relieved that I wouldn't have to wait for Alex to crawl up the cliff. “Careful climbing down.”
I listened for his steps. But they weren't coming from the top of the cliff. They were coming from down the river. Billy must have been walking along the bank.
“Hurry,” I called. “We need help.”
“I'm almost there,” Billy said.
I relaxed. Billy could run home and tell our folks. I wouldn't have to spend the rest of my life lying at the bottom of the cliff. I flexed my back muscles. Things didn't seem that bad. I could feel flashes of pain in my leg. From what I knew, that was a good sign. If my back had been broken, I wouldn't have been able to feel anything. And, unlike a back, my leg could be fixed. Maybe I'd
spend a couple months in a cast, but there were worse things that could happen.
A voice from outside floated into my thoughts.
“Wow,” Billy said. “I found an ax.”
The words took a second to filter through my mind. Then it took another second for my mind to tell my mouth what to shout. “Don't touch it!”
An instant later, I heard Alex shout the same warning.
Billy answered us. But I couldn't understand the words. They were in a strange and angry language. His steps grew closer. His shouts grew louder. I couldn't understand a single word, but I knew exactly what he meant. And I knew exactly what he wanted.