Invasion of the Road Weenies (7 page)

I ran upstairs to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Whatever I had become—whatever form of life I was, with a face like a rotting animal and a body like a gnome, I was a form of life that had no eyelids.

I covered my eyes with my hands, but it wasn't the same. I stumbled into the wall, then tripped and tumbled down the stairs to the living room.

Nearby, my sisters howled.

I dropped my hands and sat there, seeing everything. Unable to look away from the world I had created. Unable to create a different world.

T
he air grew cooler
as a cloud drifted in front of the sun. Callie shivered in the sudden breeze that flowed around her, then looked down as a sheet of yellow paper sailed against her leg and stayed there, flapping like a snagged bird.

Litter,
she thought, grabbing the sheet.
How disgusting.
There was something printed on the front in large letters:
TOMORROW
—10
PERCENT OFF EVERYTHING
.

That's all that was there. Callie stared at the page for a moment, as if staring would reveal what was on sale or where the sale would be held. But no answer came.

Callie shrugged and released the flyer back into the wind that brought it. She didn't feel her action counted as littering, since someone else had obviously dropped the flyer in the first place.

She thought no more about it that day.

Something felt different the next morning. The world
was less bright. Callie's breakfast was less tasty.
Everything seems a little bit off,
she thought. Then her thoughts froze on an image of the flyer. “Ten percent off,” she whispered.

The breeze brought another flyer that afternoon.
TOMORROW
—
ONE DAY ONLY
—
TWO-FOR-ONE SPECIAL
. Callie spent half the night wondering what would come. In the morning, she rose to the delightful discovery that all the world was twice as nice as usual. Breakfast was doubly delicious. The weather was twice as beautiful as it had ever been.
One day only,
she thought, but what a fabulous and unforgettable day it turned out to be.

A week went by before the next flyer appeared. This one read—
EXTENDED HOURS TOMORROW
—
OPEN EARLY, CLOSE LATE
.

Sure enough, when Callie got up for school, the sun had already risen. When she went to bed, it was still light outside. As she fell asleep, she promised herself she'd find the source of the flyers.

In the morning, she stood in front of her house and tried to remember which way the wind had blown. Then she walked. She looked carefully in bushes and along the sides of buildings, following a trail of flyers. Finally, she found herself standing before a small house in the middle of an average street of small houses.

The garage door was open. Inside, she saw a machine. Callie realized it was a printing press. Another machine stood behind the press.

“Hello?” Callie called. She walked inside the garage. The
press was loaded with blank paper. The machine behind it had a series of buttons on one side. Above each button, Callie saw a sentence.

TOMORROW
—10
PERCENT OFF EVERYTHING
.

TOMORROW
—
ONE DAY ONLY
—
TWO-FOR-ONE SPECIAL
.

The whole front of the machine was filled with phrases like these—row after row of buttons. Callie saw one that made her smile.
SATISFACTION GUARANTEED
.
How nice,
she thought. It would be great if that were true. She reached out and pressed the button beneath those words.

KACHANG!

Callie jumped away as the press sprang to life. It shot forward and back, spewing out the flyers.

Callie grabbed one of the sheets as it fluttered into the air. She smiled and started to read her creation. Her smile froze, then faded. On the flyer she saw no promise of satisfaction. No guarantee of happiness.

FIRE SALE
, it read.
EVERYTHING MUST GO
.

“But . . . ?” Callie said. She looked at the machine. The line above the button had the words she wanted to print. The line below had the words she'd actually printed.

She'd pressed the wrong button. Callie curled her lip in disgust at the thought of a fire sale. She'd never been to one, but she knew that was where a store tried to get rid of merchandise that had been damaged in a fire.

Then Callie's gaze drifted out the door and up into the sky.
FIRE SALE
. Already, the sun seemed brighter. The air grew warmer.
EVERYTHING MUST GO
. In her hand, the flyer
began to curl, its edges turning brown. Wisps of smoke drifted up from the flyer. The final flyer.

The sun grew even brighter. The air grew unbearably hot.

Everything went.

T
he best part about
autumn was the piles of leaves. That's what Ted thought. He loved wading shin deep in the leaves, kicking his way through the crackling mounds that lined the curbs all around town. That was definitely the best part about autumn.

The worst part about autumn was
it.
That's what everyone called the thing that happened—
it
. “Do you think
it
will happen again?” they asked each other as autumn approached.

It
always happened in the fall. Somewhere in the state, a kid vanished. Everyone in school talked about
it
. The amazing thing, to Ted, was that the adults didn't seem to believe there was a pattern—they didn't make the connection. But the kids all knew about
it.

“Last year, it was a girl our age,” Del said at lunchtime. “She lived way over in Mahony Township.”

Kenny nodded. “That's what I heard. But the year before that, it was a boy just over in Switburg.”

“No, he was from Sterling,” Connor said.

“Somebody should do something,” Ted said. “I looked in the paper. There's nothing.”

“Yeah,” Del said. “Adults don't believe there's any pattern.”

Ted believed. So did his friends. Each afternoon, when he left school, he tried to make sure he was with other kids. But today, most of his friends had basketball practice. Ted was on his own.

As he walked home, he kept looking over his shoulder. That station wagon—hadn't it passed him once before? Ted tensed as the car cruised by. He looked around. There weren't any other kids in sight. The car seemed to slow as it went past Ted. Then it sped up again.

Ted was sure the driver had stared at him. He could feel the man's eyes studying him. Ted looked ahead. He was coming up to the corner by Hudson Street. Hudson was one way. That was good. He could turn there and the car couldn't follow. At least, not legally.

Ted hurried to the corner, then turned. He kept walking. There weren't any cars on Hudson Street.

Relax,
he told himself as he stepped off the curb and into a pile of leaves.
Maybe it's all just talk.
He realized that the whole thing was silly. Now, far away from the wild rumors of his friends, he tried to think logically about
it.
Really, how could kids disappear without a trace every year? And why did
it
only happen in the fall? Why not summer or winter or spring?

As Ted swung his leg through the deep pile of leaves, his foot hit something. For an instant, he thought his foot was
stuck. Then he felt a powerful grip tighten around his ankle. He realized he wasn't stuck—he was grabbed.

“Let go,” Ted screamed, yanking his leg.

He couldn't get free.
It
had him.

It
grabbed his other leg and pulled him beneath the leaves. As Ted disappeared from sight, he understood why
it
only happened in the fall.

A moment later, a station wagon came up Hudson Street the other way—the legal way. The driver, who was lost, scanned the sidewalks. He'd hoped to ask someone for directions. He'd seen a boy before, but he didn't want to scare him by stopping the car. He knew kids were taught to be careful about strangers. But even if he'd wanted to ask the boy, he couldn't now. There was nobody in sight. The streets were empty. It was almost as if the kid had vanished.

The driver headed down Hudson Street. Behind him, the piles of leaves swirled in the breeze of the passing car.

A
goose is about
the meanest and nastiest creature on the planet. That's how Charlie felt about those stupid, messy birds. He'd never seen anything that came close to being as unpleasant as a goose. And this goose, the one his little brother had named Honker, was no exception. If anything, it was even worse than most geese. From the moment it had wandered into their yard, Charlie hated it. He'd figured his folks would get rid of it, but Cliff had named it and claimed it.

His folks had gone along with the whole thing. After trying and failing to find out who owned the goose, they'd decided to keep it. “Well, Cliffy,” his father had said, “it looks like you and Charlie have a new pet.”

“Yippee,” Cliff had shouted, jumping up and down and clapping his hands. “You hear that, Charlie? We get to keep Honker.”

Charlie didn't say anything. Honker hissed. Then he tried to bite Charlie. Cliff laughed and squealed in delight.

And that's how Charlie found himself in the only family in town that had a goose for a pet.

Charlie never paid much attention to Honker, except to keep out of the goose's way. But one day, as he was walking through the backyard, he noticed something strange. Usually, Honker would chase him, biting at his legs as he walked past. But today, the goose was just sitting in the middle of the lawn.

Maybe it's sick,
Charlie thought, unable to keep from smiling at the idea of the goose getting ill. “Your goose is cooked,” he said out loud. Then he laughed.

Just as Charlie spoke, Honker stood for a moment, then settled back down. During that brief time, something glittered in the sunlight.
What was that?
Charlie wondered. He wandered closer to Honker, but the goose glared at him and hissed.

Charlie backed up. But he had to see what was under the goose. He waited for the bird to move. It stayed where it was.

“Whatcha doing?” Cliff asked when he wandered into the yard.

“Your goose is sitting on something,” Charlie said. He really didn't want to tell Cliff, but maybe his brother would be able to get the goose to move.

Cliff walked over and reached beneath the goose. “Wow. An egg,” he said, pulling out the object from under the bird.

Charlie just stared. It wasn't any ordinary egg—it was a golden egg.
Unbelievable.
He opened his mouth. Then he closed it.

“Look, Charlie, it's a golden egg,” Cliff said. He didn't
seem to be surprised. Charlie had noticed that about little kids—they pretty much accepted anything that came along. They didn't know that, despite what they read in books or saw on TV, dogs didn't talk, fish didn't grant wishes, frogs didn't turn into princes, and geese certainly didn't lay golden eggs.

Charlie walked over and held his hand out. Cliff gave him the egg. “We have to hide this,” Charlie said. He knew that he couldn't go around showing the egg to people. Gold made adults do funny things. He'd read stories—true stories—about people who'd done bad stuff to get gold. Charlie turned the egg slowly in his hand, then said, “We need to put it in a safe place.”

“Where?” Cliff asked.

“My bottom drawer,” Charlie said. The other drawers were for clothes. But the bottom drawer of the dresser was all Charlie's, and nobody else went there.

He hurried inside, carrying the egg upstairs to his room. “Don't tell anybody,” he warned Cliff after he put it in his drawer.

“I won't,” Cliff promised.

There was another golden egg beneath Honker the next day. And another the day after that.

“We can be kings,” Cliff said as he held up the newest egg. “Or princes.”

“I don't want to be a prince,” Charlie said, taking the egg from his brother. He brought it upstairs and hid it with the others.

Honker kept laying golden eggs. Charlie kept putting
them in his drawer. After three weeks, his drawer was almost full.

That night, as Charlie was going to bed, Cliff said, “I've been thinking about it. You'd be a good prince.”

“Whatever,” Charlie said, trying to ignore his brother. He had other things on his mind. He had to do something with the eggs. Charlie thought about it as he went to brush his teeth. Maybe he should tell his parents. It was a wonderful secret, and he hated the thought of sharing it, but he didn't know what he was going to do with all the eggs.

Cliff was still in the room when Charlie got back. “Go to bed,” Charlie told him. He watched his brother leave the room. Then he went to bed, too.

He closed his eyes and started to fall asleep.
I'll tell them about it tomorrow,
he thought as he drifted off.

His path toward sleep was disturbed by a clinking sound.

Charlie sat up, wondering what had made the strange noise.

There was another clink—like someone tapping a nickel with a spoon. Charlie stood and turned on his light.

The clink was coming from his drawer.

Charlie opened the drawer.

One of the eggs was moving—it shook with each clink. After a moment, a tiny crack appeared on the smooth, golden surface.

Why would a goose lay golden eggs?
Charlie wondered. There had to be a reason.

What would people do with golden eggs?

Charlie realized they would do exactly what he had done—hide them out of sight in a drawer or a closet. They'd bring the eggs into their houses and keep them safe. It was a perfect place for something to wait until it was ready to hatch.