NEAL SHUSTERMAN

Readings

Reading Of The Month

• An Excerpt From Chapter 1 From The Schwa Was Here

  I don't really remember when I first met the Schwa, he was just kind of always there, like the killer pot-holes on Avenue U, or the afghans barking out the windows above Crawley's restaurant - a whole truck load of 'em, if you believed the rumors. Old Man Crawley, by the way, was a certifiable loony-tune. A shut in, like Brooklyn's own Howard Hughes, almost as legendary as the lobsters served up in his restaurant below. See, there was this staircase that went up from the restaurant to the residence on the second floor, but with each step it got darker around you, so when you tried to climb it, you kept thinking you heard the horror audience behind you yelling, "No, don't go up the stairs!" Because who but a moron would go up to search for Old Man Crawley, who had fingernails like Ginsu knives that could dice, slice, and julienne you, then serve you up in like fourteen-thousand plastic dog bowls. Those bowls, by the way, would probably be made by my father, the vice-executive vice-vice-president of product development for Pisher Plastic Products. If you're a guy, I'm sure you already know that their most famous product is that little plastic strainer at the bottom of urinals, and you probably still laugh every time you look down while taking a leak and see PISHER® written in happy bold letters, like maybe it was to remind you why you were standing there.

  But what was I talking about?

  Oh, yeah - the Schwa. See, that was the whole point with the Schwa: you couldn't even think about him without losing track of your own thoughts - like even in your head he was somehow becoming invisible.

  Okay, so like I said, I don't remember when I met him - nobody does - but I can tell you the first time I remembered actually noticing him. It was the day Manny Bullpucky jumped from the Marine Park Bridge.

  It was a Saturday, and my friends and I were bored, as usual. I was hanging out with Howie Bogerton, whose one goal in life was not to have any goals in life, and Ira Goldfarb, who was a self-proclaimed cinematic genius. With the digital video-camera his grandparents had gotten him for his bar Mitzvah last year, Ira was determined to be Steven Spielberg by the time he got to High School. As for Manny Bullpucky, we kinda dragged him along with us to various places we went. We had to drag him around, on accounta he was a dummy. Not a dummy like Wendell Tiggor, who had to repeat the fifth grade like fourteen-thousand times, but a real dummy. More snooty people might call him a mannequin, or even a prosthetic personage, because nobody calls things what they really are anymore. But to us normal people in Sheepshead Bay, he was a dummy, plain and simple.

  As for his name, it came in the natural course of human events. Dad had brought him home from work one day. "Look at this guy," he says proudly, holding him up by the scruff of his neck. "He's made of a new ultra-high-grade lightweight plastic. Completely unbreakable."

  My older brother Frank looks up from his dinner. "Bullpucky" he says - although I'm editing out the bad word here, on accounta my mother might read this, and I don't like the taste of soap.

  As soon as Franky says it, Mom, without missing a beat, hauls off and whacks him on the top of the head in her own special way, starting low, and swinging up, like a tennis player giving a ball topspin, just grazing the thin-spot on his head that's gonna be bald someday, probably from Mom slapping him there. "You watch ya mout!" Mom says. "Mout," not "mouth." We got a problem here with the "th" sound. It's not just us - it's all a Brooklyn, maybe Queens, too. My English teacher says I also drop vowels like a bad juggler, and have an infuriating tense problem, whatever that meant. So anyway, if you put the "th" problem, and the vowel thing together, our family's Catlick, instead of Catholic, and my name's Antny instead of Anthony. Somehow that got changed into Antsy when I was little, and they've called me Antsy ever since. It don't bother me no more. Used to, but, y'know, you grow into your name.

  Anyway, Dad tosses me the dummy. "Here, take it," he says.

  "Whadaya giving it to me for?"

  "Why do you think? I want you to break it."

  "I thought you said it was unbreakable."

  "Yeah, and you're the test, capische?"

  I smile, proud to figure in my father's product development job. This was the first time in recorded history that either of my parents had singled me out to do anything.

  "Do I get to break something?" My little sister Christina asks.

  "Yeah," says Dad. "Wait a few years and you'll be breaking hearts."

  Christina must have liked the sound of that, because she flips open the journal that's practically glued to her hand, and makes a note of it.

  So Howie, Ira, and me, we started doin' unpleasant things to Manny that might break him. Ira loves this, because he can get the whole thing on film. We rode our bikes down Flatbush Avenue to the Marine Park Bridge, which is no easy task considering I gotta carry Manny on my handlebars. God forbid Frankie, who just got his license, could give us a ride in the old Toyota he just got. No, he's too busy hanging out with all the other perfect people - but don't get me started on Frankie.

  We got to the bridge, and the three of us, not including Manny, worked out our game plan.

  "I should go down to the rocks to film," Ira said. "I'll get a good view of him falling from there."

  "Nah," says Howie, "let's go to the middle of the bridge - I wanna see him hit the water."

  "If he hits the water," I reminded them, "we won't get him back."

  Howie shrugs. "There's lots of boats goin' by, maybe we can time it so he hits a boat."

  "We still wont get him back," I said, "and we might sink the boat."

  "That'd look good on film," Ira said.

  Now all this time I got this creepy feeling like we're being watched. But then of course we are being watched. Everybody driving by has got to be wondering what we're doing standing with a dummy by the guardrail of the bridge - but this feeling is more than that. Anyway, I ignore the feeling because we had important business here.

  "We'll drop him onto the rocks," I told them.

  "Yeah," says Howie. "Maximum breakage potential."

  "Great. Howie, you stay up here on the bridge to push him over; Ira and me'll go down and watch."

  We climbed down to the rocks and looked up to where Howie stood holding Manny by the scruff of the neck - it's a pretty high drop. I didn't envy Manny. Still that feeling of being watched just won't go away.

  "Should I push him or should I throw him?" Howie asks.

  "Do what comes naturally," I yelled back.

  "I don't know," he says, "this is a very unnatural thing."

  "Rolling," says Ira. " And... action."

  Howie backs up for a second and a moment later Manny Bullpucky comes hurtling over the side of the bridge, arms and legs flailing like he's really alive, and he does a swan dive headfirst toward the rocks. WHAM! He hits the jagged boulders, and it's all over for him. His bald head goes flying like a cannon ball shot straight at me. I hit the deck, narrowly miss being decapitated, and when I get up again, a headless mannequin lies with his arms strewn on the rocks, just another casualty of the fast life.

  Howie comes running down from the bridge.

  "What happened? Did he break? Did he break?"

  "Yeah," I told him picking myself off of the ground. "We're gonna have to change his name to 'Headless Joe.'"

  Ira, still behind the camera, moved in closer to the body, paused dramatically and finally stopped filming. "Where'd his head go?"

  I shrugged. "I don't know, over there somewhere. So much for unbreakable plastic."

  "Are you looking for this?" I heard another voice say. The voice was scratchy, like a kid who's screamed just a little too much. I turned, and I swear to you the first thing I see is Manny's mannequin head floating in mid-air. I only see it for a split second, but it's the creepiest thing. Then in that split second my brain does a quick retake and I see that there's a kid holding the head under his armpit. I couldn't really see the kid at first on accounta his clothes are kind of a brownish-gray, like the rocks around him, and you know how your mind can play tricks on you when the light is just right.

  "Excuse me," said Ira, "this is a closed set."

  The kid ignored him. "That was pretty cool," he said. "You should have dressed him up, though, so when he fell he looked like a person and not a dummy on film."

  Ira pursed his lips and got a little red, annoyed that he didn't think of it.

  "Don't I know you?" I asked the kid. I took a good look at him. His hair was kinda ashen blond - real wispy, like if you held a magnetized balloon over his head, all his hair would stand on end. He was about a head shorter than me; a little too thin. Other than that, there was nothing remarkable about him, nothing at all. He wasn't good-looking; he wasn't ugly; he wasn't buff and he wasn't scrawny. He was just, like, average. Like if you looked up "kid" in the dictionary, his face would be there.

  "I'm in some class with you, right?" I asked him.

  "Science," he said, "I sit next to you in science class."

  "Oh yeah, that's right, now I remember." Although, for the life of me, I have no memory of him sitting next to me.

  "I'm Calvin," he said, "Calvin Schwa."

  With that Ira gasped, "You're the kid they call the Schwa?"

  "Yeah, I guess."

  Ira took a step back.

  "I'm Anthony," I told him, "but everyone calls me Antsy. These are my friends Howie and Ira." Then I pointed to the head in his hands. "You already met Manny."

  He took Manny's head back to his body. "So what's all this for, anyway?"

  "Pisher Plastics product stress test," I told him, trying to sound professional.

  "Manny gets an F," Howie said. "He's supposed to be unbreakable."

  "Technology fails again," I said, all the while noticing how Ira still kept his distance from the Schwa, as if he were radioactive, like some of those flounder they found off the Canarsie Pier.

  The Schwa knelt next to Manny's headless body.

  "Technically he's not broken," The Schwa said.

  "If your head comes off, you're broken," says Howie. "Trust me."

  "See? Look here." He pointed to the neck. "His head is held on by a ball and socket joint. It just popped off - watch." Then the Schwa snapped Manny's head back on as if it were a giant Barbie. I was kind of both relieved and disappointed. It was good to know my dad's work was successful, but upsetting to know that I couldn't destroy it.

  "So what do we do to him next?" Howie asked.

  "Pyrotechnics," said Ira. "We try to blow him up."

  "Can I come, too?" asked The Schwa.

  "Yeah, sure why not?" I turned to him, but he's gone. "Hey, where'd ya go?"

  "I'm right here."

  I squinted to get the sun out of my eyes, and I saw him. He's waving his hands, like to get my attention or something.

  "I don't know," said Ira. "You know what they say about too many cooks."

  "No, what?" asks Howie.

  "You know - too many cooks stink up the kitchen."

  Howie still looks confused. "What, don't these cooks know from deodorant?"

  "It's an expression, Howie," I explained. Howie, you gotta understand, ain't dumb. He just doesn't think out of the box. Of course, if I ever told him that, he'd wonder what box I was talking about. He's the kinda guy who's hardwired to take everything literally. Which is why he's so good at math and science, but when it comes to anything creative - he tanks. He's about as creative as a bar code. Even when he was little, he would do real good at coloring when there were nice thick black lines in the coloring book - but give him some crayons and a blank page, and his forehead would start to bleed. So, anyways, by a 2-to-1 vote the Schwa is allowed to join us in our next attempt to bust Manny. Ira voted no, but he wouldn't look at any of us when he did.

  "So what's up with you?" I asked him.

  "It's my opinion. I got a right to an opinion."

  "Ok, ok, don't get so touchy."

  With Ira suddenly unsociable, the Schwa decided to leave rather than make any further waves.

  "See you in Science," he said.

  Only after he's gone does Ira pull me aside and say "I wish I would've gotten that on film."

  "Gotten what on film?"

  "Remember a second ago when you asked the Schwa where he went, and he practically had to jump up and down to get your attention?"

  "Yeah?"

  "He was standing right in front off you all along."

  I waved my hand like I'm shoeing away a fly. "What are you talking about? He moved behind me. That's why I couldn't see him."

  But Howie shook his head. "He never moved, Antsy."

  I scowled at them like this is some conspiracy to make me look stupid.

  "And I've heard things about him, too," Ira said. "Crazy stuff."

  "Such as?"

  Then Ira came in close enough so I could smell last night's garlic-whatever on his breath. "His eyes," Ira whispered. "They say his eyes change color to match the sky. They say his shoes are always the same color as the ground. They say if you stare at him long enough, you can read what's written on the wall behind him."

  "That's called 'persistence of vision,'" Howie says, reminding us that behind his veil of idiocy, is a keen analytical mind. "That's when your brain fills in the gaps of what it thinks ought to be there."

  "He's not a gap," I reminded him. "He's a kid."

  "He's a freak," said Ira. "Ten foot pole material."

  Well, I didn't know about Howie and Ira, but I've spent enough of my life keeping weird things at ten foot pole distance."

  "If any of this is true," I told them. "There are ways of finding out."

Readings From Previous Months

• Obsidian Sky from the "MindBenders" Short Story Collection

  "Watch," says the girl. "They'll be coming soon."

  The sun rides low on the horizon, slowly dousing the south-Texas plane into red dusk. I stand there, wondering what it is about this strange ten-year-old girl that makes me want to stay here. She bothers me. Not enough to make me want to leave, but enough to tease my curiosity into wispy strands of wonder and fear.

  "Who will be coming soon?"

  "Not who," she says calmly, "but what."

  The girl is ugly, there's no question about it. "Ugly as mud on a door," as my mom would say, but my mom's not here to say it. No, she and my dad are off on their second honeymoon, so I have to spend two weeks at my Uncle Weldon's farm.

  Now, to be clear about things, I don't usually go around playing with girls that are almost three years younger than me. But there are no boys my age in Uncle Weldon and Aunt Marion's family; their kids are grown and gone. Even though it's just my first day here, I can already sense that there are very few kids around at all. The fields reek of "maturity." There's not a ball or bike or video game between here and San Antonio. I think the ugly girl is the only other kid in ten square miles of this place. She's even got a name as weird as her. Zephyr.

  Well, I figure, it might not be so bad, on account of Zephyr knows things. She knows how to find snakes, and hold them so they won't bite. She can catch bugs in midair and never misses.

  But now she's getting weird, standing here, looking at the setting sun, like it's gonna jump up and do a dance for us.

  "Listen," I tell her, "it's been fun, but I've gotta get back for dinner."

  "Shh, Jack" says Zephyr, turning her blotchy face to me. I can't see much of her eyes because she always wears dark shades. Each lens is in the shape of a valentine heart, surrounded by a bright pink frame. "Be quiet and listen," she says.

  I listen, but I don't hear anything out of the ordinary, just the distant lowing of cattle beneath the shrilling of katydids. Then a new sound begins to swell, and overwhelms those other noises. A fluttering, like sheets on a windblown clothesline.

  Zephyr clears her throat -- a raspy clicking sound, almost like a snicker. "Yes," she says, "they're coming."

  Suddenly a swell of darkness obliterates the setting sun. The darkness rises in the distance like a black mushroom cloud. The fluttering grows more intense, and as I watch, to my amazement, I see that the cloud is not a cloud at all, but a swarm. Tiny dots of darkness fill almost every inch of sky, flitting madly in all directions. They draw closer, and I see the flapping of dark wings.

  "Are those... birds?" I ask.

  Zephyr shakes her head. "No, Jack," she tells me. "They're bats."

  In an instant the swarm is over us, turning the twilight to night. I duck -- I cover my head, expecting them to dive from the sky -- to suck my blood, to tear at my flesh.

  But Zephyr only laughs. "They won't bother you, silly," she says. "They're Mexican Free-Tails. They eat bugs."

  I dare to turn my eyes upward to see the moving mass of bats. An endless stream of sinewy wings beat past so powerfully they create a wind. The smell of bat guano is thick in the air, like a hot day at the zoo -- but Zephyr takes a deep breath and smiles. "I love their smell," she says. "It's so... different."

  The bats just keep flowing across the sky. I figure they have to stop eventually, but they don't. "How many more could there be?"

  "It will take two or three hours for all of them to leave the roost. They'll feed, then flood the sky again, on their way back home, just before dawn."

  "There must be millions of them!"

  "Twenty million," Zephyr quickly says, "but my Momma says there's many, many more -- more than anyone could ever count."

  "That's impossible," I tell her. Now they have formed a blanket of night above us, as dark as black coal. "Where do they come from?"

  Zephyr smiles. "Come back tomorrow," she says, "and I'll show you."

  * * *

  "Stay away from that one," Uncle Weldon says, when I tell him about my afternoon with Zephyr. "The girl's touched in the head. So's her mother."

  "What's so weird about them?"

  Uncle Weldon shovels his peach pie into his mouth, and takes his time in answering. His thoughts are always well-measured, even if they are opinionated. "They're not right -- that's all I'm saying. They got funny ways. The mother's a recluse and never goes out. I think they belong to some kind of cult."

  Aunt Marion serves me up another slice of pie. "Just because they got their own way of seeing things that doesn't make them a cult," she says, but I can tell she's just saying it for the sake of argument. She looks away from me, and I can tell that she doesn't like Zephyr and her mother either. "The poor thing is so homely," Aunt Marion says "You gotta have pity on a girl like that."

  "I don't have to have pity on no one," grumbles Uncle Weldon.

  "Your Uncle doesn't have a charitable bone in his body!"

  I can see that the two of them are working themselves up into a huff, so I try to change the subject.

  "So, what about the bats?"

  Uncle Weldon puts down his fork. "So? We got bats, what of it?"

  "Do they always come?"

  "Yep." says uncle Weldon. "Every night, spring through fall, before they migrate south."

  "They clear out the bugs, that's for sure," adds aunt Marion. "Don't even need to crop dust the fields. Of course there is that awful smell."

  "Zephyr likes the smell," I tell them.

  Uncle Weldon snorts. "I'm not surprised."

  "There's nothing wrong with that," says Aunt Marion, again taking whatever side Uncle Weldon isn't on. "When I was a little girl, I liked the smell of cow pies," she says. "In the winter, on the way to school, I would even stick my feet in them to keep warm."

  "Oh, gross!" The thought of sticking my feet into a steaming cow pie makes me want to hurl.

  "Now look what you've done, Marion, you've gone and made the boy ill!"

  As I think about it, I wonder which is weirder; cow pie foot baths, or a sky full of bats.

  "So," I say, "The bats are a good thing then?"

  Once again, Uncle Weldon takes his time in answering, so Aunt Marion answers for him. "Of course they are, Jack... but I do wish there weren't so many of them."

  Uncle Weldon shakes his head. "More and more every year," he says. "Can't be natural. Can't be natural at all."

  * * *

  Zephyr, heart-shaped glasses still fixed on her face, leads me across field after field the following afternoon, until I can no longer see any houses in the distance. There is nothing but cactus and scrub brush around us, and the ever-growing aroma of bat. I begin to sense something strange now -- as if Zephyr isn't strange enough -- now I sense something in the world around me. It's like a premonition without words, or thought, releasing itself on my senses instead of my brain. Gooseflesh rises on my arms and legs, sounds are hollow, and the afternoon light is somehow lessened, like a partial eclipse. The feeling is both disturbing and exciting; different -- like the smell of the bats.

  "We're here," says Zephyr.

  We've stopped at the edge of what looks like a meteor crater. In the center is a huge hole, at least twenty feet across.

  "That's it," says Zephyr, a grin of anticipation on her face. "That's the entrance to Bracken Cave!" She brushes back her brittle hair and begins to descend toward the sink-hole mouth of the cave, but I hesitate. The mouth is speckled with the droppings of bats. Zephyr turns back and takes my hand. "Don't be afraid," she says, "I come here all the time. There's nothing to worry about as long as you're quiet. The bats sleep during the day."

  I have to admit, I'm scared to go anywhere near the cave, and begin to feel humiliated -- I mean, I'm almost thirteen, and here I am afraid to go into a place that a ten-year old girl isn't even afraid of.

  But she's not just any girl, I remind myself. The truth is most other girls -- most other people wouldn't go anywhere near that cave. There are "danger" signs posted everywhere, and warnings not to disturb the bats. My brain goes into reverse, but my feet are like tires spinning in the mud -- they simply won't move me away. Then Zephyr gets close to me and whispers something in my ear that really should frighten me away, but instead it has the opposite effect.

  "I've never brought any other boy here," she whispers to me. "And I'll never bring anyone else here, but you."

  I don't know what it is about her words that get my feet moving toward that hole. Maybe the feeling of being special. Being chosen. Still holding my hand, she leads me toward the gaping mouth. "Come on, I'll show you something amazing," she whispers, and she climbs down into darkness, taking me with her.

  We reach the bottom of the cave, where I can see very little beside the fact that the walls are moving. I swallow my revulsion, and focus all of my attention on Zephyr's calmness. If she's calm, then I can be, too.

  "They're everywhere," Zephyr whispers. "500 babies in every square foot. Soon the mothers will be nursing." She clears her throat again -- that weird cackling noise -- then she leads me forward into darkness. I want to resist, but find that my fear, tired of being ignored, has finally slipped out of consciousness, leaving me numb and intoxicated by the acidic smell of bat droppings.

  Beneath our feet, something crunches like eggshells.

  "They're carnivorous dermistid beetles," she tells me, as if its something every kid should know. "They cover the floor, eating dead bats. If you stood in one place long enough, they'd eat you too, but it might take a while."

  She moves sure-footedly though the darkness, so fast that it scares me, but we don't bump into as much as a single wall. There are strange clicking sounds all around me.

  "What are those sounds?" I ask.

  "The bats are echolocating," she explains. "They make those clicks, and use sonar to 'see' in the dark, just like dolphins do."

  Every once in a while I feel a bat brush past my face. It really bothers me at first, but after a while, I become desensitized to it. I think about summer camp, and how on the first few days, I'm always freaked out by the size of the bugs and spiders -- but after a week I couldn't care less. It's funny the things you can get used to.

  Again Zephyr clears her throat, and changes directions. "This way!"

  "Where are we going?"

  "You'll see."

  We walk for what seems like hours, turning every now and then, and I think about how long the walk back will have to be, with beetles below, and bats hanging above. I wonder if my fear will suddenly wake up again, and send me off into a berserk screaming frenzy.

  Finally I see faint shades of light around us, gray on gray. "Okay. So, where are we?" I ask.

  "We're home," she says, then pushes open a wooden door to reveal something I never expected. We step into a farmhouse. Her house. We are back on the surface again! First I breathe an incredible sigh of relief that the ordeal is over. Then it occurs to me how very odd it is that her house opens up into Bracken Cave.

  "The cave leads many places," she says, as if reading my mind. "No one knows how deep it goes. My momma says it has roots that grow out the bottom of the world."

  I chuckle nervously. "Your momma says a lot of funny things, doesn't she?"

  "Would you like to meet her?"

  "Not really."

  But Zephyr has already gone to a back room -- a dark room. I try to think of an excuse to leave, so I can high-tail it across the field to my aunt and uncle's house, only a few hundred yards away. But before I can bolt, I hear a voice from the dark room.

  "What is it, Zephyr?" The woman's voice is soothing and musical. Her tone seems to coat me like sticky sap, and I can't move. I have to see who belongs to that voice.

  "He's here, Momma," says Zephyr. "I brought him, just like you said."

  "Come in, Jack," says the woman.

  Again that sense of unsettled excitement fills me -- a curiosity that buries my urge to flee. Slowly, planting one foot in front of the other, I step across the threshold of the dark room.

  The room is full of paintings -- magnificent canvases, all of the same subject: bats escaping into a twilight sky. In the center of the room, sits a woman as pale as an early frost, and with eye-lids half closed.

  "Come closer, Jack. I don't bite."

  She's dressed like some sort of hippy, or Earth mother, or something. Her long brown hair is tied into a tight rope-braid so long, it coils on the floor around her like a snake. "My name is Gaia, but you can call me Momma, too. Everyone does." The way she moves her head when she speaks, the way her small eyes don't track, makes it clear to me that she's completely blind. Yet she holds a brush, painting another black-winged portrait.

  "But... but how?..."

  I don't have to ask the question. She knows what I'm about to ask. "You don't need to see what you paint," she says in that musical voice, "if you know every in and out of it."

  She wipes the paint from her fingers with a towel, and beckons me closer. I step over the coils of her braid, and she touches my face, moving her finger tips over my nose, cheeks, eyes, and neck. It tickles, but it isn't an unpleasant feeling.

  "A strong face," she says. "Good bone structure. A fine man he'll grow to be."

  "Uh... thanks," I say, not sure what else to say when someone compliments you on your bone structure. "Listen, it's probably getting late. I gotta get back for dinner," Although the last thing I have right now is an appetite.

  "Not yet," says the strange woman. "There's something you must first see. Zephyr?" Obediently Zephyr comes to her. "Show him," the woman says, and Zephyr grabs a chair. Standing on it, she reaches up to the rafters, and pulls down a single free-tailed bat, handing it to her mother. "Here, you go, Momma."

  I shiver as I look up to see a small cluster of bats clinging to the ceiling. These people live with the bats! I tell myself. Their house opens into Bracken Cave. Uncle Weldon was right, They're weird -- worse than weird! I have to get out of here! I feel the panic welling inside me, but instead of making me run, it locks me in place, like a dear on a highway. I can't escape this now. Whatever horror is bearing down on me, I can only watch it happen.

  Gaia gently brushes the bat's fur, then stretches out its wing. "This isn't your ordinary free-tailed bat," she says. "This one comes from the new generation. The generation that will emerge at last... tonight!" The skin of its wing is as dark as crude oil.

  "Touch it, Jack," Gaia tells me. "Touch his wing."

  Her voice is gentle, but it resonates in me like a command I can't ignore. Besides, a part of me wants to touch the bat; a part of me that seems to be growing stronger the more time I spend with Gaia and her ugly daughter.

  I move my finger toward the wing. It's so dark, I can't see any texture on the thin membrane. What happens next catches me completely by surprise. I reach for the wing, moving my finger closer, and my finger passes right through it. I gasp, and draw back my finger, thinking that I've punctured the membrane of the wing. But when I look at it, I don't see any hole in the wing. That's when I realize that the wing isn't really a membrane at all. It's not flesh, but rather an absence of flesh. A hole in space, the shape of a wing. I reach forward again, and my whole hand passes through into the darkness of the wing, as if I've reached through a small window, into another place. I can feel my fingertips getting cold, and I pull my hand back, shivering.

  I peer at the bat, trying to grasp what has happened. All I can see in that wing is obsidian darkness.

  I slip to my knees, suddenly dizzy. I 'm afraid, I'm confused. "I... I don't feel so good."

  "Sit with me, then" says Gaia, "and I'll tell you a story."

  I sit beside her allowing her to comfort me. She starts to coil her heavy braid around me, and I begin to feel like a baby tightly wrapped in a warm blanket. Gaia rocks me gently.

  "Forever and forever ago," she begins, "before time had a memory, a flock of bluebirds burst from a hole in the void, and spread their mighty wings across the chaos. They filled the space from yonder to yonder, until nothing remained but the blue of their wings, which became the blue sky above a new world of light."

  Then she leans close to me; so close I can smell her breath. It smells like the depths of Bracken Cave, but somehow cleaner, as if the acid were washed away, leaving only a rich, organic aroma behind. "It's time you knew, Jack," she says, "that the time of the bluebird sky is over." That's when she touches my chin, and turns my head to look at Zephyr and for the first time, Zephyr reaches up, pulling off her dark sunglasses...

  ...to reveal that she has no eyes.

  I gasp, but it comes out as a pained wheeze. I look away, not wanting to see, but Gaia gently turns my head back, forcing me to look at her daughter.

  There are only faint indentations where Zephyr's eyes should be, covered by smooth skin. No lids, no lashes. No brow.

  "It's alright," Zephyr says brightly. "Don't worry, I can still 'see' just fine." Then she opens her mouth and clears her throat, as she's done so many times before... only now I realize that she's not clearing her throat at all. She's sending out little sonar clicks, echolocating like a bat.

  For a moment -- for a brief instant I come to my senses, to realize the depth of the trouble I'm in. I am bound in the endless coils of a massive braid, looking at a hideous mutant girl.

  All at once I hear the sound outside -- sheets flapping on a clothesline. I know that sound. It is the bats! Millions of black winged bats taking to the sky.

  I struggle to pull myself free from the braids that tie me.

  "It's no use," Gaia tells me, "and it's best you don't see. Stay here, Jack, with me and Zephyr."

  I don't even answer her. I fight to free myself from the cocoon of her hair. At last I uncoil myself, and, tripping over the knot of braid, I race out of the dark room, and toward the front door.

  "No, Jack!" cries Zephyr, but I don't care what she says anymore. I burst out the door to see the twilight sky disappearing behind a flood of obsidian-black wings. I know if I could reach up and touch each of those wings, that my hand would pass through them as well, into darkness. It's as if they are devouring the sky -- and soon I see objects falling from up above. Dead birds. Bluebirds. They fall like hail, littering the fields around us.

  "No!" I cry, "It can't be! This can't happen!"

  Zephyr stands in the doorway behind me. She won't come out. Instead she turns her face up, and clicks to the sky.

  "It's beautiful," she says.

  The light around us is fading beneath the great membrane of a million million black wings. And soon the bluebird-covered ground begins to speckle with bat droppings, as lightless as the bats themselves. They are like spots of black paint flung at a canvas, obliterating the world beneath it.

  "Don't stand there Jack," says Gaia from the door. "You must come here. You'll be safe here."

  I would run to my Aunt and Uncle's house -- but I know I would never make it. I would be buried under a fall of bluebirds, and bat droppings. I can't even see their house in the distance anymore. Maybe it's already washed away. I hurry to the doorway, terrified of being struck by black droplets, for fear they might burn right through me. The three of us watch as the sky disappears into darkness. The ground beneath dissolves and sizzles beneath the rain of black.

  "What about my parents? What about my aunt and uncle?"

  "Everyone you know will be gone" says Gaia with sympathy and compassion. "When the bats stretch from yonder to yonder, they will be no more. They will fade peacefully with the world of light." She says it as if it is a wonderful thing. I feel sick to my stomach.

  "Why won't it take us?" I ask. "Why are we spared?"

  "There must always be a seed for the next world," she tells me. "You are young, but time will help you to understand."

  And then her words come back to me. "Good bone structure... A fine man he'll grow to be." She said it as if Zephyr and I would be together for a long, long time. Me and that ugly, ugly girl with no eyes.

  "There are only the two of you now," says Gaia. Earth Mother. Mother Earth. "Only the two of you, and me to pave your way."

  Outside, the trees and fence-posts, the grass and hills crumble to nothing, dissolved by rivers of black. Gaia closes the door, closing out that world. She comes closer, dragging her endless braid behind her. I back up until I'm against the wall. There's no where for me to run. I can't get away, and if I screamed there would be no one to hear me.

  Gaia touches my cheek, feeling my tears. "You are in pain," she says to me. "'If thine eyes offend thee, pluck them out.'"

  Then both her hands shoot to my temples, I feel my head pressed between the vice-grip of her palms. She presses her thumbs against my eyes, and I feel a fiery pain. I am about to scream out, but suddenly the pain is gone, replaced by a different feeling... a draining feeling, as if my sinuses are clearing. Something opens up deep within my mind. Then she takes her fingers away.

  I reach up to feel my eyes, and find that they are gone. No blood, no holes -- it's as if I never had eyes at all. There is only a faint indentation in the bone of my face, where my eyes should be -- but no sockets beneath that -- only solid bone. Like Zephyr.

  This can't be happening! I tell myself. You can't erase a person's eyes with the touch of a finger. Everything before me now is black... no, not black... absent. Not dark, not light, but simply not there. I have no sense of sight whatsoever, or even a memory of what sight was like!

  Overwhelmed by it all, I have a sudden, uncontrollable urge to clear my throat, and when I do, it comes out in a series of hollow clicks. In a flash of echoes, everything around me becomes clear to me. It is more than sight, more than sound, but a sense that is completely new. I am blasted by a wave of incredible perception!

  My terror is extinguished like fire drowned in water. I can 'see' Zephyr, and Gaia, their shapes formed by the echo. Not just their shape, but The density of their flesh, and the exact dimensions of the room around me. I can 'see' things not just in front of me, but all around me!

  It is Zephyr's face that catches my attention. I step closer to her, and click again. It's amazing -- the way the bones and flesh of her face echo back my signal. It's such a pleasing sensation, I want to echolocate her again and again.

  "Zephyr!" I say, "You're beautiful," for she truly is. What was hideous to my sense of sight is glorious to this new sense. I don't think I've ever experienced anything so beautiful -- so perfect as the echo of Zephyr's face.

  "I'm happy you think so," she says. I can feel the smile on her face from where I stand.

  "All is in tune for a new beginning, then." Gaia puts her hand on our shoulders and slowly moves us toward the wooden door at the back of the house.

  Was I frightened a few moments ago? Was I mourning the loss of the world I knew? It's as if when Gaia took away my sight, she also took away all the bad feelings, leaving behind only the excitement, and a feverish desire to go forward into this new unknown. Gaia swings open the door to Bracken Cave. I echolocate through the door, and find a breathtaking expanse of caverns, the shape of their echo as pleasing and satisfying as a colorful landscape, although I can't even recall what color is.

  It is now that I realize that there is light here -- immense radiance all around me. It's not daylight, but the light of spirit, so much easier to see without the burden of eyes.

  I 'ping' the caverns once more. The echo shows me winding world of tunnels that stretch to... well... the bottom of the world.

  I want to go down there! I want to explore, to be a part of it, but I sense that something is missing. I raise my hand, and feel the empty space beneath my arm. Yes there is something missing. I turn to Gaia, and she cups her hand gently against my face, knowing what I'm thinking. "Some things must be earned, Jack." Then she lowers my arm to my side. "In time, both you and Zephyr will earn yours. But for now you must go on without them."

  Understanding, I take Zephyr's hand. We send our signals ahead of us into the bottomless depths of Bracken cave, they resound tegether in perfect harmony beckoning us downward into this new place. This new world.

  Sometimes change catches us off guard. We fight it with fear, and denial. We run from it, hide from it, until it envelops us, only to leave us wondering what there was to be afraid of. I'm ready for what comes now -- whatever it is. And so together, Zephyr and I race off into the endless labyrinth, holding our arms out wide as we run, hoping that soon, very soon, we will earn our wings.

• Pacific Rim from the "MindStorms" Short Story Collection

  Your escape begins here.

  The sign on the door of the travel agency screams out the words in bold, purple letters. I want to believe it, because escape is something I desperately need. So does Mom. Ever since Dad left, Mom's been going on and on about going on a real vacation Europe maybe, or an African Safari.

  "I want to do something on the edge," Mom keeps saying, "Something special."

  I'm all for it. After all, I've lived my whole life in Phoenix and the furthest away I've ever been was a vacation at Disneyland, which wasn't too adventurous, if you know what I mean. So anything that involves passports and places where they don't speak English would be the best thing in the world as far as I'm concerned.

  So Mom and I walk into the travel agency, all wide-eyed and gawking, ready to see the world. The place makes me feel like we're already on vacation. Colorful balloons are suspended everywhere, and loud Caribbean music fills the air with such a contagious beat I feel like doing the limbo. The staff are all wearing bright Hawaiian shirts, and the walls are plastered with exotic destinations so beautiful, I want to visit every single one of them.

  A woman with perfect hair, perfect teeth, and earrings much too big, steps up to greet us. "Welcome to Lifetime Travel." She purrs. "How can I help you?"

  "We want a vacation," my mom says. "Something different."

  The travel agent snaps open a drawer, and pulls out one brochure after another. "How many will be traveling?"

  My mom tries to hide the pain the question brings, but her pursed lips and sorrowful eyes tells all. "Just me and my son, right Alex?"

  I force a weak smile, and the woman looks away. She can't know all the things that happened between Mom and Dad before he left, but she knows enough not to ask any more questions. I suppose she dealt with shattered families like ours before, trying to find a vacation that will somehow, magically fix everything.

  The travel agent fans out the brochures like an oversized deck of cards, babbling on about prices and meal plans -- but I can tell Mom's not listening. Something's caught her eye. There on the corner of the desk, a brochure sticks out -- something the woman didn't seem anxious to show us. There's enough of it visible to show the bow of a boat. Mom pulls it out from beneath the pile. On the cover is a cruise ship, tall and wide with at least a dozen decks. It's a magnificent thing, with a shiny white hull, and deep green portholes.

  Bright letters across the top of the brochure read Pacific Rim Cruises. The name of the ship is "The Heavenward." The pages of the brochure are filled with happy people swimming and dancing and eating, in a kind of splendor I can barely even imagine.

  The travel agent eyes us warily. "Oh, you don't want that," she says, waving it off. "It's... uh... out of your price range."

  My mother snaps her eyes up. "How would you know what our price range is?"

  "Well... uh... I mean, I just don't recommend it," says the woman. She quickly digs into another drawer. "If it's cruises you want, I can book you on dozens of others."

  But Mom holds her ground. "Tell us about this one."

  The woman looks to Mom, then to me, then reluctantly begins to speak as Mom and I leaf through the brochure.

  "The Heavenward is a new ship," says the woman, "from a new and inexperienced cruise line."

  I raise my eyebrows. "Says here it's the largest cruise ship ever built."

  "120 tons," says the woman. "But --"

  "And where does it cruise to?" asks Mom, cutting her off.

  "Nowhere yet. Its maiden voyage isn't until next month."

  I can tell that Mom's getting frustrated by the way this woman doesn't quite answer her question, so we find the answer ourselves in the brochure. Moms eyes widen happily.

  "A cruise to the Orient!" Mom says.

  "Yes -- to the Far East," says the travel agent, as if there's a difference.

  According to the brochure, The Heavenward will depart from Honolulu and sail west across the Pacific, bound for Japan, China, and Thailand. A three week cruise with ten ports of call!

  I look up from the brochure and catch Mom's eyes. They are the same eyes she had when she saw that painting in the art gallery. The one that cost way too much... and then two days later ended up in our living-room.

  The travel agent must see that look in my Mom's eyes, too.

  "I should explain something about Pacific Rim Cruises," says the travel agent, in a calm, calculated voice, as if she's trying to talk someone in from the edge of a building. "They've built a magnificent ship...but they don't know much about world travel. This cruise that they're doing... it's going a little too far..."

  "Nothing's too far for me," says Mom. "The further the better."

  The woman pales a bit, and I realize that she isn't trying to be rude. She's trying to warn us of something... something she won't dare speak aloud...

  But Mom doesn't care much for warnings. So she pulls out a wad of credit cards the size of bar of soap. "We're taking that maiden voyage," Mom says. "Best room available. Money is no object."

  And so the travel agent has no choice but to give us what we want.

  * * *

  It begins on July fourth. A flight to Honolulu, a taxi ride to the port, and there we are -- staring at the Heavenward -- a majestic white giant, impossibly huge. The ship fills up my whole mind when I look at it, leaving me no room for other thoughts.

  Everything on board is perfect, from our stateroom filled with luxurious wood and polished brass, to the nine story atrium in the middle of the ship, where four glass elevators ride up and down. It's hard to believe this is all on a ship! There's even an entire kid deck filled with video games, pizza places, and just about anything else a kid could dream of. I now know why they named the ship The Heavenward, because as far as I'm concerned, it's like I've died and gone to heaven.

  It's during that first evening at the midnight buffet that I see the strange old man.

  He's in the kitchen -- I catch glimpses of him every few moments through the swinging kitchen door. He's not a passenger, but a member of the crew. I don't think he's a cook, because he's not dressed like the rest of the kitchen workers. He wears a rumpled Hawaiian shirt that has seen better days, and his face is covered with beard stubble so dense, even the sharpest of razors would shy away from it. He seems out of place here, with a way about him that seems too dark and brooding for a glorious cruise like this.

  I can't get his face out of my mind. And even though I pile my plate high with food, I begin to lose my appetite. The old man's eyes had seemed worn and worried, and for some strange reason, I get the very clear sense that I should be worried, too.

  * * *

  Two days out of Hawaii, with wild parties raging on every deck, I get tired of the all-you can-eat ice-cream parlor, the free video games, and the dance-till-you-drop teen club. There's only so much pleasure a person can stand. So after dinner, I decide to explore.

  Ships are great for secret exploration . They're like mazes filled with hallways and dim corners, and everywhere on the great ship, you can hear the eerie rumble of the great engine somewhere down below.

  Finding the engine room is my goal. Sure, I could take the engine room tour, but it's much more fun to find it myself, and be there when I'm not allowed.

  On the lowest passenger deck I come to a door with a sign that reads NO ADMITTANCE, and I admit myself. Suddenly the luxurious beauty of the ship gives way to a dull beige corridor lined with the crew's quarters. I push further and find a set of stairs leading down. I take it deck after deck after deck, deep into the bowels of the ship, wandering aimlessly through narrow access-ways until I finally stumble upon the engine room.

  You'd think the engine room of a great ship like The Heavenward would have a huge crew of engineers -- but a ship as sophisticated as this must practically run itself. There's only one man on shift. A man I recognize.

  It's the old man I had seen in the kitchen the night before.

  He turns his weary eyes to me. He has an intense gaze, and now that I can get a better look at him, I can tell that he's an educated man by the way he carries himself -- as if the crushing weight of some secret knowledge hunches his shoulders, like Atlas holding up the world. The shadows are deep here, and in those shadows, his face seems cragged and cracked, like the Grand Canyon seen from an airplane. I can see that he's not so much old as he is worn. Worn and tired.

  "You don't belong here, boy," he says. "Go back up. Party while you can." His words give me a shiver that rises up my spine, but I force it back down.

  Around us the engine roars, and through an iron cat-walk I can see the silver cylinder of a propeller shaft leading to the stern. Beneath that, the two sides of the hull come together, like an attic turned upside down. It reminds me that no matter how huge this thing is, it's just a boat, with miles of ocean beneath it. The thought unsettles me, and suddenly I want to be anywhere but the engine room.

  "Uh... sorry." I say; " I took a wrong turn." I spin and hurry off, fully prepared to spend the rest of my cruise playing free video games, swimming, and eating myself into blimp-dom.

  But the old engineer calls out to me.

  "Hold on there, Alex!" He says.

  The ship lurches beneath me, making my stomach feel queasy. Or maybe it's just the fact that the old man knows my name. I can't figure how he'd know it.

  I turn, and he grins mysteriously. "The name's Riley," he says. "Third engineer. C'mon, I'll take you back to the passenger decks."

  Soon the roar of the engines is far away once again. We wind down the narrow corridors and up flights of stairs, until reaching a doorway. Beyond the door I can hear the sound of distant partying; thousands of people drinking in a lifetime's worth of good times. As if there's no tomorrow.

  It's then that I realize that I'm wearing my little-league shirt, with my name plastered right across the back. Idiot! I think. That's how he knew my name. All at once, that sick feeling twisting through my gut goes away. I feel normal again.

  Until Engineer Riley puts his hand on door knob, and turns to me. "Is this your first cruise?" he asks.

  "Yes..."

  He shakes his head. "I'm so sorry for you." Then he swings the door wide into the bright lights of the Aloha Deck.

  * * *

  The next morning we're still at sea, somewhere between Hawaii and Japan... or so the map in our brochure says. The ocean stretches out around us, featureless and flat, and although there are a hundred things for me to do today, I can't get Riley's face out of my mind. I can't forget the sorrowful way he looked at me when he opened that door... and what he said.

  It takes me half the morning searching the ship, but finally I find him. Once again, I'm in a place I'm not supposed to be: the crew's recreation deck. It's a large space at the back of the ship, with a ceiling so low it feels like I'm being crushed between two decks. The large U-shaped room has wide portholes open to the sea; beyond which the white trail of the ship's wake disappears toward the horizon.

  Riley's sitting alone, drinking his coffee steaming black. He doesn't seem surprised to see me. He just nods me a weary greeting.

  "That was a lousy thing to say to me yesterday," I tell him.

  He knows exactly what I 'm taking about. "You think that now, but you won't tomorrow," he answers.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  He takes a long time to answer. "How much have you traveled?" he asks.

  "A lot," I lie. "I've been all over the world."

  "Ever known a pilot, or the captain of a ship, boy?"

  I shake my head, and he leans in closer to me and whispers. "There's things they know... that regular people aren't supposed to know."

  "Like what," I dare to ask.

  Instead of answering me, he stands up and goes to one of the huge portholes. I follow him.

  "What do you see when you look out there?" he asks.

  "Nothing. Just the horizon."

  "And what does the horizon look like to you?"

  I shrug. "A line," I tell him. "A straight line."

  He nods. "That's exactly right---And why is that?"

  I begin to get annoyed. It's as if he's giving me a test. As if he thinks I don't know the answer, which I do.

  "The curvature of the earth," I tell him. "The earth slopes off, and you can't see past the horizon."

  Then he looks at me with those yellow, weary eyes.

  "That's what they want you to believe," he says.

  His words strike me like a blast of radiation. I can tell I've been hit by something major... but I don't feel it just yet. But I know I will. Somehow I sense that his words have created some immense damage in me, that will soon get much, much worse.

  "Soon everything you know," he explains, " everything you believe in will crumble away."

  I feel panic looming inside me like a storm. By now it 's beginning to dawn on me what he is trying to tell me.

  I suddenly think of a silly drawing I once saw in history class: the world was a flat disk on the back of a giant tortoise. It was an example of an ignorant belief of people a thousand years ago. People who didn't know any better.

  "You're... you're joking right?" I ask him.

  Riley says nothing, and I begin to get mad. "I suppose now you're going to tell me that we're all on the back of a turtle, and every time the turtle move's there's an earthquake."

  Riley ponders it. I can't believe it -- he actually takes me seriously! "I don't know about a turtle," he says finally. "But anything's possible."

  As I look out over the flat immensity of the ocean, I become furious -- because no matter how impossible what he's saying sounds, there's a part of me that might actually believe him. Not the rational, sensible part of me, but the part that knows no logic. The same part that makes me check under my bed every night, even though I haven't believed in monsters since I was five. I fight to keep down the breakfast that still stuffs my stomach.

  "But if the world's not round... then how do you get to Japan and the Far-East?" I ask.

  He looks out toward the straight line of the horizon, worry coming back to his face. "Not the way we're going," he answers.

  He breaks his gaze away from the portal, as if unable to look at the ocean any more, and moves away. I have to admit I feel the same way. In my mind, the horizon, as calm as it is, seems razor sharp, and filled with terrifying unknowns.

  Riley takes a big gulp of his cooling coffee.

  "Sailors are secretive bunch," he says. "We keep the nature of the world to ourselves -- and you'd be amazed how easy it is to keep a secret when most everyone in the world already believes it..." Then he sighs, "But sometimes the secret is kept too well... and every once in a while the wrong people build ships... Like the people who run Pacific Rim Cruises. This is their first ship... and they just don't know..."

  And then he grabs me by the shoulder, forcing me to look in his eyes. Forcing me to listen.

  "When the time comes," he says. "Go to the back of the ship, no matter what they tell you."

  He downs the rest of the coffee, then abruptly tells me I should leave. But before I leave I have to ask him something.

  "Riley," I ask, "If we're not headed toward Japan, then where are we headed?"

  He looks down at his empty cup, refusing to look me in the eye. "You don't want to know."

  * * *

  For the rest of that day, I weave in and out of the happy crowds of vacationers, but can't feel like one of them. They are already ghosts.

  As the sun begins to cast long shadows across the deck, I find my mother stretched out in a lounge chair, reeking of suntan lotion and sipping an exotic drink the same color of antifreeze.

  When she sees me, she smiles and says lazily, "Let's never go back. Let's just float out here forever."

  Although I know she's kidding, her words bring my last meal swimming toward high tide.

  "Mom," I tell her; "I don't think this trip was a good idea."

  She looks at me as if I've doused her with ice water. "Aren't you having a good time, Alex? There's so much to do -- so many kids your age!

  "I look toward the pool to see dozens of kids laughing and swimming and flying down the winding slide. I wish I could join in the fun, but the old man's crazy words strangle out all hopes of enjoying myself.

  "Just wait until we get to Japan," Mom reassures me. "I promise you, this trip will be something to remember!"

  * * *

  It happens that night.

  During dinner the seas become rough -- the ship rolling and pitching so violently that Mom's lobster flies right into her lap.

  I figure we must be in a terrible storm, but when I look out of the window at the twilight sky, there are no clouds. Still the waves crash angrily against the ship with all the furious power the ocean can muster.

  It's as if something is trying to make us turn back, I think, but I swallow the thought with my dinner roll.

  I go to my cabin early, trying to sleep off my worry, but it's no use. All I can think about is the old engineer.

  What Riley had said is impossible. More than impossible, it's inconceivable -- it would mean a conspiracy too immense to be imagined. All the pilots, all the astronomers, all the astronauts -- any one who ever had the chance to truly study the earth would know. Why would all those people keep it from the rest of the world?

  Yet even as I think about it, I know the answer.

  Because everything would fall apart.

  The whole world would become a bottomless pit of fear and confusion if suddenly we realized we knew nothing about the true nature of the universe. We would be lost, and helpless if, after all we thought we knew... we suddenly discovered... that the Earth was flat.

  BAM! CRRRUNCH!

  -- I'm suddenly thrown out of bed by the ship's violent lurch. There's no mistaking the meaning of that tearing, metallic sound, and I can already see in my mind the huge gash torn in the side of ship.

  Torn by what? I think. We're out in the middle of the ocean. It can't be an iceberg -- we're too far south.

  he ship's alarms clang in my ears so violently that every thought is blasted from my mind. I can hear my mother screaming, tumbling out of her bunk, and banging her shin against the dresser.

  Then another jolt throws us to the ground as a second hole is ripped in the hull.

  We burst out into a hallway already packed with terrified, passengers, and I remembered Riley's words.

  Go to the back of the ship.

  All around us, people push toward the front of the ship, toward their muster stations, because that's what they were told in the lifeboat drill when we first came on board. That's where the closest staircase is.

  But I grab Mom's hand, and pull her against the crowd, until we join the people heading toward the stairwell at the back of the great ship.

  We stumble our way up three flights of stairs to the promenade deck, and only now, as we are pushed against the railing do we see the nature of the ship's ruin.

  The Heavenward is wedged between giant crags of rock; massive gray granite slabs that jutt up around us on either side. I know that these rocks aren't supposed to be here. We're out in the middle of nowhere, a thousand miles from Japan! I'm pretty certain there's no map in the world that shows this granite reef.

  Caught between the rocks, the back half of the boat is rocked violently by powerful waves... but the front end of the boat has a very different problem.

  I watch in helpless terror as passengers cram into a forward lifeboat. As the lifeboat is lowered into the water I hear them scream... because there is no water at the front of the ship. There is no ocean. The crowded lifeboat tumbles into an emptiness as deep as the sky is high.

  We have reached the edge of the earth.

  I instantly realize what's about to happen. I'd done enough exploring to know that two of the ships three main stairwells are toward the bow -- and only one to the stern. That means that at least two-thirds of the passengers are flooding the front half of the ship!

  It only takes a minute for the weight of the ship to shift forward, off of its delicate balance. I feel the ship tilting over the edge, and I scream. Then a hand firmly pushes me from behind. The railing before me gives way and I fall, but instead of landing in the ocean... I land in the shell of a lifeboat. People pile in on top of me. My mother, and dozens of others.

  We are lowered to the water. When I look up, I don't see the side of the ship, but instead see a propeller four times my height, churning the air uselessly.

  "Hold on!" a voice shouts. A familiar voice. I turn back to see the weathered face of the third engineer. Riley releases the lifeboat from the crane, and it drops five feet to the surface of the churning ocean. We narrowly miss being shredded by another propeller coming up through the water as the ship continues to tilt forward.

  "We're all going to drown!" shouts my mother, out of her mind with panic. Even in the rough waters of the great pacific rim, the small lifeboat manages to stay float.

  Riley starts the engine, and maneuvers us toward the granite reef that holds the ocean back. A wave deposits us on the shore.

  "We'll climb to that ledge," Riley says, pointing up to a rock plateau about ten feet above us. "The sea will be calm by morning."

  Soaked and terrified, we all climb to the plateau, but I don't stop. I keep climbing, even though Riley tries to call me back. I climb as high as I can, until I come to the top of the ridge, and can see everything.

  They say you're not supposed to look at awful sights -- that you should turn your eyes from things that shouldn't be seen. But no one has ever accused me of doing the right thing. I have to watch it happen.

  From where I am the sight is more incredible than anything I've ever seen, or ever will see again. The great granite reef of the Pacific Rim stretches as far as the eye can see in every direction. For the most part it holds back the sea, but it's filled with many cracks through which the ocean pours like massive waterfalls spilling off the world into infinity. The Heavenward is wedged in the throat of one of those waterfalls.

  I stare in numb silence as the largest cruise ship ever built teeters forward like a see saw, and finally flips off the edge of the earth.

  I keep my eyes locked on the ship as it tumbles end over end, down into a darkness speckled with stars. Soon I have to squint to see it. It seems no large than a toothpick spinning in the void And then a tiny point of light getting harder, and harder to see.

  When I turn, I see Riley standing behind me, and I pound his chest with my fists, almost slipping off the edge and into oblivion. "Why?" I scream. "Why didn't you stop the ship? Why didn't you turn us back?"

  Riley grabs my flailing hands, and looks me in the eye. "Because I didn't know if I believed it myself... until I really saw it."

  He turns and looks out over the edge, squinting his eyes into the dark sky below, but the Heavenward is gone, with no sign that it ever existed at all. "Maybe it needs to happen every now and again," says Riley. "Maybe it needs to happen so that we never completely forget..."

  * * *

  Far to the east, the dim light of the coming dawn paints the horizon a rich shade of blue, as the handful of us wait to be rescued. Below us, our lifeboat has long ago been smashed to driftwood, but Riley is certain we'll be rescued -- and sure enough as day arrives, I can see the specks of rescue ships in the distance.

  Perhaps it's just shock, but as I huddle with my Mom to keep warm, the terror of what I had witnessed slowly begins to turn to amazement. I can't help but wonder what the people on board the Heavenward saw as they fell from the world... but I suppose some secrets can never be known.

  I look at the survivors around me, and realize that we have all become inheritors of the secret. I know none of these people will ever tell, just as surely as I know that I never will -- for if we did tell, the world would see us locked up as lunatics, rather than ever consider the possibility that what we said was true.

  How long has this been going on, I wonder. How many generations, and how many shipwrecks ago? But I doubt even Riley knows those answers.

  "Are there other things," I ask Riley, "more mysteries that people don't know?"

  He smiles broadly and says "Have you ever been to Nepal?"

  I smile back at him, realizing exactly what he means -- because I know my geography.

  As I wait for the rescue ships to arrive, I think about my next great excursion. Not a trip of escape, but one of exploration. It may not be next year, or the year after that, but I know that someday, I'll travel to Nepal -- the gateway to the Himalayas-- and Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world.

  There are people who call that place "The Roof of the World."

  We'll see about that...

• An Ear For Music from the "Darkness Creeping II" Short Story Collection

  For Lee Tran, music was all there was, and all there would ever be. Nothing mattered but his music -- and he let that thought swell his head as he stepped onto the stage of the huge concert hall, to the sound of thunderous applause.

  The old woman was there.

  Although the lights shone in his face, he could see her in the private box-seat -- a place reserved for only the wealthiest patrons of the arts. He could see the pearls around her neck, and her gown, which must have once been elegant, as she herself must have once been. But now she was old. Her face was wrinkled, her teeth yellow, and her thin grey hair wound in a bun so tight, it seemed to lift her ears toward the tip of her skull.

  Lee pretended not to notice her. He knew how important she was, but he wouldn't give her the pleasure of knowing that he cared.

  The applause died down as he reached the front of the orchestra. With his bow in one hand, and his violin firmly wedged beneath his chin, he waited for the conductor to signal the beginning of the concerto -- which Lee had written himself.

  While other thirteen-year-olds played videogames, Lee wrote music. It wasn't his first concerto, but it was the first one that was actually being played by an orchestra. It was also the first time Lee would be the featured soloist in front of so many people. It would have terrified him if he weren't so completely sure of himself.

  The conductor brought down his baton, and the piece began with a thundering of brass and pounding pulse of strings. In a moment the piece was mellowed by the smooth flow of woodwinds, and finally, above it all rose a single violin, singing to the immense darkened hall. It was Lee, the fingers of his left hand flying back and forth across the strings while his right hand gently brushed the bow back and forth creating sound so perfect even the conductor was in awe.

  The piece was hard, filled with complex fingering and musical changes so grand, there were very few people in the world who could even play it. Lee was one of them. Although this was the first time he played with a major symphony, there had been rumors. Rumors that he was not only the greatest young composer in the world, but also the finest violinist. He was a fresh discovery in the world of music -- and thinking about it made him play even better.

  He became one with the violin, his passion flowing through the instrument...

  ...And as he played, the temperature in the concert hall began to rise.

  First it rose a half-degree, then a full degree, then two degrees at a time, until people began to feel uncomfortable. Why is it getting so warm, they would be thinking -- is the air-conditioning broken? Are there too many people crammed into the hall?

  Maybe these thoughts entered their minds, but they didn't linger for long -- for the music was so perfect, so brilliant that there was no room left in their minds to think of anything else.

  The piece grew to its fabulous finale. Lee's fingers began to move so fast that they became a blur. The audience sighed in ecstacy, they gasped in joy... and they screamed in terror as the carpet beneath them burst into flames.

  The fire exploded all around Lee, but he couldn't stop playing. The emergency sprinklers began to gush icy water, and the entire audience raced towards the fire exits in panic. All the other musicians ran from the stage, but Lee could not stop playing. He continued alone until the piece was over, and when it was done, the only ones left in the burning concert hall were his parents, as they tried to drag him out... and the old woman, who sat alone in her box seat applauding to the sound of approaching fire engines, as the smoke and flames rose higher.

  * * *

  She came to Lee's home the next day. She wore a molting fur coat that smelled of mothballs and smoke -- not cigarette smoke, but smoke from the fire the night before -- and Lee realized she hadn't changed her clothes since the concert.

  The old woman looked terribly out of place in the small, dingy apartment, yet she stepped in as if she belonged. Tall and intimidating, this woman somehow had a sense of royalty to her that Lee could not explain.

  "Do you know who I am," she asked his mother.

  "Of course we do, Madame Magnus," she answered. "How wonderful of you to come and visit Lee in his home." She cleared her throat nervously. "How terrible last night was..."

  "Nonsense," said Madame Magnus "The fire was put out, the concert hall was saved, and no one was hurt.

  "But the show was ruined," said Lee's Mom.

  Madame Magnus smiled. "Ah... but what we did hear -- it was heaven!" She turned to Lee. "You play like an angel, young Master Tran," she said. "More than an angel -- A god."

  Lee liked the sound of that, but decided not to let it show. He shrugged. "I just play. It's not my fault that people like it."

  Madame Magnus looked Lee over as if examining a horse. She touched his chin, and lifted it, forcing him to look at her. Lee didn't like the feel of her fingers. They were like old worn newspaper left out in the rain, then dried in the hot sun.

  "Play something for me, Lee." she said, as if it were a demand. "I would very much like to hear you again."

  Lee did not like being treated like a trained seal, performing on request. He was an artist, and artists had to be treated with some respect. Even thirteen-year-old artists.

  Most people couldn't understand what it meant to be a musician. Lee's grandfather had, but he was long dead now. It was his grandfather who had given Lee his first violin when he was four. While other kids were drooling at cartoons, Lee had begun creating music.

  There was no one else in the family who cared for music. His father was a poor man, who worked hard, and saw little in such frivolous things. As for Lee's Mom, she had a tin ear, and didn't know Rock from Rachmaninoff, but she was could tell that Lee had an inborn talent. Thanks to her, Lee got his music lessons, even if the family had to go without food to pay for them.

  Now Lee found himself inseparable from his violin. Playing it was as important as breathing.

  "No," he told Madame Magnus. "I don't feel like playing now." Instantly his mother pulled him aside, and whispered angrily into his ear. She spoke in her native Vietnamese, so the old woman couldn't understand,... although Lee suspected that Madame Magnus knew the language, and perhaps many others.

  "Lee," his mother told him. "This woman, she is rich. She gives money to musicians, and the school she runs is the best."

  "I don't care about her money," Lee said.

  But you care about your music. Study with her, and you'll become great."

  "I already am great," answered Lee, matter-of-factly. "And besides, what if she doesn't choose me?"

  "She'll choose you." his mother said, with a certainty that Lee could not deny. Turning from him, she went to the shelf, and took down his violin.

  "Play, my son," she said. "Melt this woman with your music."

  Lee opened the violin case. The instrument lay there in its velvet-lined case, a small silent creature, beautiful and powerful. But before he could play he had to have the answer to a single question. He looked up at his mother and said:

  "What cause the fire last night?"

  His mother shrugged, "Electrical wiring?" She suggested, "Or someone smoking where they should not have been?"

  Her guesses were logical, but Lee had his own idea about it... though he didn't dare speak it. The fact was, he had never played as well as he had last night. Sometimes when he played, he felt the room around him change. The lights would dim, or grow brighter -- or he might feel the air chill, or warm. It always depended on the piece he was playing. What he felt last night, however, was like nothing he had ever felt before. Did this Madame Magnus understand that?

  "Play for her, Lee," pleaded his mother.

  Finally Lee fit the violin into the nape of his neck and began to play one of his original melodies. It was brooding and foreboding. It was dark and filled with solemn tones -- and as he had done the night before, he forced his soul into the music, letting the sounds resonate in every bone of his body.

  When he was done, and his musical trance cleared, Lee saw his mother and the old woman, gaping at him. Outside, the sudden pitter patter of rain hit the windows and rattled down the drainpipe from a sky that had been clear only five minutes ago.

  The old woman smiled. "Will you come study with me, at my School?"

  Lee hesitated. Seeing the power he had in the moment, he milked it, and held that power like a long musical note. Then he asked. "How good am I... really?"

  "You are a master," whispered the old woman. "You are among the best."

  This was a good enough answer for Lee. Perhaps he would become famous. Perhaps he would become rich. He liked the idea of both -- and if one of the steps along the way to the greatness he was destined for, was studying with this ruined old woman, than he would take that step.

  "Sure, he said, "I'll come to your school."

  She clapped her hands together in joy. "We shall leave immediately," she said. "I pay all my students' expenses, and help support each of their families. Your parents shall receive Five-hundred dollars a week while you attend my school."

  His mother grabbed her heart. "You are far too generous, Madame Magnus" she said, her breath taken away.

  But the old woman only smiled through her ancient stained teeth. "Oh, but he's worth much, much more."

  * * *

  The Magnus Conservatory of Music was on an estate in Northern Vermont, far from the troubles of the big city. It was a three story mansion, completely hidden by the dense woods around it. As they stepped out of Madame Magnus' limousine, Lee took a good look at the sprawling stately structure. It seemed odd to Lee that something so huge and so finely crafted could be so far from civilization.

  "The upper floor is where I live," explained Madame Magnus. "The rest of it is filled with classrooms, and lodgings for my students." She smiled at Lee. "I have selected forty-nine students to work with. You are the fiftieth."

  Another boy, perhaps a year or two older than Lee, with small, round glasses came down the front steps to meet them.

  "This is Wilhelm," said Madame Magnus. "He is your room-mate. Wilhelm," Madame Magnus explained, "came all the way from Germany to study with me. He is a star cellist."

  Before heading into the conservatory, Lee turned to look through a patch of woods, where he saw another building hidden deep within the tall trees.

  "What's out there?" he asked.

  "The guest house," replied Madame Magnus. She said nothing more about it, but at its mention, Lee could see Wilhelm, pale as he was, grow even paler.

  * * *

  The work at the conservatory was grueling -- the hours long, the classes hard. Madame Magnus taught all the musical classes herself, and for the "lesser subjects" as Madame Magnus called everything else, she had hired the finest instructors.

  "Do you feel honored to be in my school," she asked Lee after his first week.

  Lee smiled slyly. "That depends," he said. "Do you feel honored to have me here?"

  The old woman smiled back. It was a fine thing for Lee to finally have a teacher who thought the way he did -- who knew music the way he did. Someone who he could truly learn from. He now knew that she was the greatest music teacher that ever was, and she would show him that path to greatness he so much desired. Madame Magnus knew her music; she could teach every instrument, and knew exactly what to say to her young musicians and composers to inspire them all to greatness. But her course of instruction for Lee was strange indeed. She would not let Lee play any of the pieces he knew, nor let him play anything he wrote himself. Instead, she set him to work on dull exercises -- scales and fingering practice. Then she had him play musical pieces that seemed specifically designed to be emotionless. Yet she spoke to him of passionate music, and of achieving flawless control of his instrument. If he had been flawless before, these awful exercises made him beyond perfect.

  Still she kept his great musical abilities a secret from everyone. Lee wondered why, and began to wonder what other secrets she kept.

  Like the secret guest house.

  More than once Lee had seen her personal butler go out there. Lee began to feel for that lonely house. It was like him in a way, wasn't it? Everything inside it was kept hidden and locked up by Madame Magnus, the same way his talents were kept locked and silent beneath her firm grip.

  * * *

  Once a week her students gave her a personal concert, but Lee was not even allowed to play in these -- only watch and listen.

  Fuming, Lee would sit out in the audience with Madame Magnus. The things I could do with this music," thought Lee. I could bring forth flames or frost, I could fill the room with steam or snow. Perhaps he could even drain the very air from the room. Could he do that? He would never know as long as she refused to let him play.

  During these weekly concerts, he would watch Madame Magnus. There was something unsettling about the way she listened -- the way her ears perked up at every note she heard. The way she absorbed the sounds, and the way it all seemed to flow into her ears like water into a whirlpool. It reminded Lee of something, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

  "Have you noticed," Lee asked Wilhelm one day, "That when you stand behind her at a concert, the music suddenly doesn't sound right --- as if somehow all the best notes have been sucked out of it.

  "Everyone's noticed it," Wilhelm answered, in his heavy accent. "The woman, she gives me the shivers... but she is the best teacher there is. She has told me that my cello playing will make me famous someday, and I believe her."

  Lee frowned. She had never said anything like that to him.

  It was that night, just as Lee fell asleep, that it occurred to him just what Madame Magnus reminded him of. She was like a vampire... but one that lived on something other than blood. Was that possible, Lee thought, for someone to live on music? But the thought was lost in a swift current of nightmarish dreams.

  * * *

  "Somebody lives there, you know," whispered Wilhelm, the next day, during breakfast. "No one ever sees him come out, but he's there. Everyone knows it."

  Wilhelm was talking about the guest house, of course. Through the window of their room, Lee could see its dark windows.

  "The lights never go on," said Wilhelm, "but one of Madame Magnus' her servants brings a large platter of food out there three times a day..." Then the thin, pale cellist leaned closer. "I think there's a monster in there..."

• Terrible Tannenbaum from the "MindQuakes" Short Story Collection

  Endless rows of pine trees stretched as far as the eye could see, all pruned to a perfect point. It was Christmas again, and Tammy McDaniels trekked with her parents and brothers to select this year's tree.

  "See all these trees," said Brett, Tammy's older brother. "Well in six weeks, they'll all be dead."

  Eight year old Michael, Tammy's younger brother stared at Brett with wide-eyed shock. Apparently he had never thought of such a thing -- that trees could live and die like people.

  "That's right," continued Brett. "They'll all be axed so that we can have presents under a tree." Brett gave his little brother a nasty smile "Merry Christmas."

  "Brett, kindly keep your thoughts on the subject to yourself," said Dad.

  Tammy, who was almost twelve, wasn't bothered anymore by the things Brett said. But it did bother her to see Michael tormented so.

  "Will you look at this one," said Mom as she pushed through the pine branches of the lot "this is a healthy one."

  "Too small," said Dad.

  "How about this one?" said Michael.

  "Too thin."

  "How about that one," said Tammy.

  "Too fat."

  "Gimme a break," said Brett. "What is this, Goldilocks and The Three Trees?"

  "Brett," said Mom "why don't you just go sit in the car."

  "Are you kidding," mocked Brett. "I'm having too much fun."

  For Tammy it was easy to ignore Brett. She had grown used to him and his sick sense of humor. And anyway, she had her own philosophy when it came to Christmas trees. To Tammy, the trees on the lot were grown for one purpose only: to celebrate Christmas. Naturally, it was what the trees lived for. If a Christmas tree did have a spirit, Tammy knew it wanted to be taken from the lot and brought into a warm home where it could be adorned and surrounded by love. Each Christmas, Tammy could feel the good-will breathing from those happy trees. She wondered if there were ever any Christmas trees that didn't feel that way.

  Brett, however, never got into the Christmas spirit. When the family had purchased an aluminum tree one Christmas, he had complained that it was tacky. "How silly," he had said "to have a tree made of metal." To Brett, it had been as tacky as the a pink plastic flamingo Mom maintained on the front lawn. Then when the family decided to buy a live tree, Brett complained that they were brutally killing a tree just to celebrate Christmas. As if that weren't enough, each year on Christmas morning Brett would pout that he never got what he wanted, even when he got exactly what he wanted.

  It had become a family tradition that all of them to go to the U-Cut Christmas tree lot and pick out a tree, even though everyone would rather have Brett stay home, including Brett.

  "By the way," said Brett "don't count on Santa coming this year. There`s no such thing as Santa."

  Michael's lower lip started to quiver. True, Michael was getting a little old to believe in Santa, thought Tammy, but just because he did believe, it didn't mean that Brett had to tease him about it.

  "You take that back!" screamed Michael.

  "Brett," said Dad "it's bad enough you pull the wings off of flies. Do you have to torture your poor brother, too?"

  "Make him take it back," bawled Michael.

  "Take it back Brett," warned Mom, "if you know what's good for you."

  "Fine, fine," said Brett. "I take it back. There is a Santa Claus, okay? He comes down our chimney every single year with nice gifts for all the good little boys and girls, and he does lunch with the Easter Bunny in the off-seasons. Are you happy now?"

  Michael stopped crying, and Mom sighed with relief.

  "Santa knows you're a good boy Michael," she said - but said no such thing to Brett.

  They pushed their way through hundreds of trees until they lost all sense of direction. Tammy played hide and seek with Michael, hidden in the dense forest of evenly spaced trees. Michael would occasionally get lost and cry until someone found him --but that was all part of the fun. Dad forged on holding the heavy ax by its neck until they came to a little bald spot in the tree farm. In the center of that bald spot stood what looked like a single perfect tree. It wasn't until the family got closer that they realized several unusual things. First, the tree was surrounded by a thin layer of snow, even though the first snow of the season had not yet fallen. Second, all the other trees on the edge of the bald spot were leaning away from this tree in the center. It looked like they were actually growing away from it.

  If trees had legs, thought Tammy, they might be running away.

  "Well isn't that odd," said Mom.

  "Not at all," said Dad, "trees don't always grow straight."

  It was cold inside that clearing, colder than anywhere else on the tree farm. Mom zipped up her jacket and made sure Tammy and Michael's were zipped as well.

  "Cold front coming in," said Dad.

  Brett stepped up to the tree and reached into it to see if there was any rot.

  "Ouch," he said and quickly withdrew his hand. He had pricked his finger on a pine needle.

  "I don't like this tree," said Brett "it has an attitude."

  But if any of them had reservations about the tall, lonely pine, those reservations were wiped away when they saw the price tagged onto one of its lower limbs: eight dollars. The tree was eight feet tall and any of the other eight foot trees went for at least fifty bucks.

  Dad was overjoyed. But Tammy was feeling more and more unsettled by the tree. A tree shouldn't make a person feel that way, she thought.

  "Maybe," said Tammy, "the people who run the tree farm know something we don't. Maybe that's why it's priced so low."

  "Nonsense," said Dad, hefting the heavy ax he used only once a year "they must have mis-priced it by mistake and I'm not going to pass up a bargain like that. He swung the ax low.

  THWACK. The heavy head of the ax buried itself deep in the tree's soft, wet wood. He pried it out and swung again.

  THWACK. The tree groaned and creaked, the cold wind blew stronger. The surrounding trees seemed to take on a greater tilt away.

  THWACK. At last the tree could no longer hold on.

  TIMBER! Severed from its roots, the tree collapsed down, its branches flopping to the side.

  "We're going to have a fine Christmas," said Mom.

  "The best ever," said Dad.

  "Another one bites the dust," said Brett.

  And the tree said absolutely nothing.

  * * *

  At home they sawed the base smooth and wrestled the tree onto the large stand where an iron spike dug itself deep up into the tree's trunk.

  Ten minutes later the tree had already started to tilt. No one seemed to notice since they were busy hanging ornaments. First, they hung the lights. Then went the glass ornaments. Next came the special ornaments: baby's first Christmas, first Christmas together, and the like. They adorned the tree till its outer branches were shining and beautiful...while deep within, the twisted branches remained dark.

  It was by far the tallest tree they`d ever had. Eight feet did not look that big on the lot, but here in the house, even with its vaulted ceiling, the tree seemed huge and imposing. When the family finished trimming tree, Mom sat at the piano, and they gathered 'round. As was family tradition, they sang "Oh Tannenbaum" -- which none of the kids could sing with a straight face, because this was what they always sang to tease Joey Tannenbaum, who lived across the street.

  It wasn't until after they were done that they noticed how cold it was getting in the house, although with the heater turned on full blast. Even Moby - their goldfish seemed to shiver in his bowl on the piano. They decided to have a fire, which warmed the fireplace, but didn't warm anything else.

  "It's the humidity," said Dad.

  "Bad insulation," said Mom.

  But it was Michael who was the first one to suspect the truth.

  "It`s the tree," he said.

  Tammy and the others looked over to him, as he stood next to the tree.

  "That's odd," said Mom. The tree seemed to be leaning toward Michael.

  "It doesn't like us," said Michael.

  The way Tammy saw it, the tree wasn't just leaning it was looming. Looming over Michael like a tidal wave waiting to crash.

  "Get real," said Brett.

  Tammy went over to the tree and put her hand near it. It did seem colder near the tree than anywhere else. Tammy thought to reach her hand into that tree, but then changed her mind. There should have been some light in there from all of those lights strung around the outside of the tree, she thought. Why was the inside of the tree so dark? She turned to her parents.

  "Weird," she said, but they both shrugged. Then she felt something soft and spiny like a caterpillar rub up against her arm. She gasped and slapped it away.

  But it was only a branch of pine needles.

  She was about to laugh, until she realized that she was not the one who had moved closer to the tree. It was the tree that had brushed against her!

  A red ornament jangled ominously on the branch.

  "Smile, sweetie!"

  A bright light flashed in her face as Mom snapped a picture of her beside the tree. Did the tree flinch at the flash, or was it just Tammy's imagination? She couldn't be sure - but there was one thing she was sure of; this tree, unlike any other tree she had known - had no feeling of Christmas love and good will.

  * * *

  That night, after the fire had burned out, the only light came from the multi-colored lights of the Christmas tree. They cast spiny shadows of red, blue and green on the white walls. Brett was in his room being anti-social, and before Tammy went to sleep she went into Brett's room to give him a piece of her mind.

  "What are you doing in here," challenged Brett, "I thought you were downstairs sucking in some Christmas spirit."

  "Brett," she said, "sometimes you're such a creep. Just because you don't like Christmas doesn't mean you have to ruin it for the rest of us...telling Michael there is no Santa, at all."

  "Why should you care?" said Brett. "Maybe I'm trying to protect him - maybe I don't want him to be disappointed later."

  "Maybe you just like to make people feel lousy." Tammy turned to leave but just as she reached the door, Brett said something that made her stop.

  "There is a Santa Claus."

  Tammy turned back. "What?"

  "I said, there really is a Santa Claus."

  "Shut up Brett, I don't like it when you tease me."

  "Who said I was teasing?" Brett was looking down at the video game he was playing, he paused the game for a moment and looked at Tammy.

  "He can fit down the chimney 'cause he doesn't have any collar bones. His reindeer fly because nobody told them that they can't. He gets to every kid's house 'cause he knows how to stop time and travel in between the seconds. And every once in a while when he finds a bad kid, a really bad kid, he wakes him up in the middle of the night and tells him, 'Hey son, I'm sorry, but you don't get a gift from me this year 'cause you've been way too naughty' Just like he said to me when I was nine." Brett shrugged "And I guess I've just been naughty ever since."

  Tammy stood there for a minute, almost taking it seriously, then she shook it off.

  "Ha, ha," said Tammy. "Very funny."

  "Laugh all you want," said Brett, "but that`s why I don't like Christmas, and I hope some day Santa gets his."

  Downstairs, their father unplugged the Christmas tree lights and the whole house was plunged into pine-scented darkness.

  * * *

  At three in the morning, everyone was woken by a heavy THUD and the tinkling of breaking glass. It was the kind of dead-of-night sound that brought terror to any household.

  "Daddy," Tammy wailed, "someone's breaking in!" Tammy came out of her room to see Dad racing downstairs with a baseball bat -- all set to do battle with a burglar. He flipped on the light...but there were no burglars. In an instant it became clear what had intruded into their night. The tree had fallen onto the piano leaving shattered glass ornaments all over the keys.

  The fear that had woken her up still raged inside. She kept telling herself that it was just a fallen tree, but it didn't quiet the uneasy feeling that pounded through her. There was something about the sight that was terrible -- like a car-wreck.

  Michael, who was peering down through the banister, began to cry.

  "I don't like that tree, Daddy," he whispered.

  "It's okay Michael," said Mom, "we'll fix it in the morning."

  She and Dad lifted the tree off of the piano. Broken pieces of Christmas ornaments rained to the ground. Baby's first Christmas; first Christmas together. All smashed to bits.

  "We'll have to get a new base," said Dad. The steel legs were horribly twisted out of shape. "Funny," said Dad, "they said it could hold a tree up to fifteen feet. Metal fatigue, I guess."

  Then Tammy noticed that among the fine fragments of shattered ornaments, were shards of glass much thicker than the rest.

  "Moby!" she gasped. From behind the banister, Michael began to whimper.

  "It's okay," said Dad trying to exercise a little damage-control. "We'll get a new fish tomorrow. Maybe we'll get two. Maybe a whole family - how's that?"

  Michael settled down and Tammy helped her parents clean the mess, and when they were done, Tammy stared at the tree until Dad turned out the light. Lying on its side, the tree's branches all swayed down towards the ground -- but somehow those branches seemed to be moving... squirming, and it occurred to her that they never did find Moby.

  Tammy went to bed that night dreaming of a tree whose branches were octopus tentacles and whose trunk was the scaly body of a python.

  * * *

  By the time Christmas Eve arrived, the tree had fallen a total of five times. Dad had tethered it to the light hanging from the ceiling above it, and still it pulled loose from the cord. Now it was tied to three different spots in the room -- the light above, the banister, and the upstairs railing. There was no way it was moving -- it looked like King Kong in shackles.

  As for it's trimming, they had given up on glass ornaments, since there were only two or three left. All that remained on the tree now were the unbreakable things -- silver tinsel, and popcorn chains. The walls in the corner of the living room were filled with gouges, and green marks from where the tree had fallen, as if some battle had taken place there.

  Michael wouldn't even go into the living-room anymore -- and Dad joked that they would probably have to put their presents under the tree - literally under the tree, to prop it up.

  "When's the Christmas tree burn this year Dad?" Michael asked. Everyone knew Michael hated to see the trees burn, but this was one year he was actually looking forward to it.

  Although he wouldn't admit it, even Brett steered clear of the psychotic pine as best he could.

  It was Tammy who kept a close watch on the tree, puzzling over it. She imagined that if trees truly did have personalities, then a tree could be bad, the way some people might be bad.

  She sat alone across from the tree as twilight faded into Christmas Eve. While everyone else watched "It's a Wonderful Life," in the family room, Tammy peered into it's darkness -- watching it the way a guard might watch a prisoner. It's limbs blew with the breeze, even though there was no breeze, and when she looked into it long enough, she could swear she saw faces in there, staring out at her, but she was certain it was just her imagination. Why did they have to take this tree? Why couldn't they chose a tree that wanted to be a part of the celebration, as did all the trees they had in the past. Trees that weren't selfish. Or evil.

  "I'll bet Santa will come and take it away," said Michael, peering in from the hallway. "Santa would never let a tree like that ruin Christmas."

  * * *

  It took a long time for Tammy to fall asleep that Christmas Eve. She kept thinking about what gifts the morning would bring, but mostly, she thought about the tree.

  In her dream, the tree, with it's snake trunk and octopus arms spoke to her in a slippery whisper of a voice.

  "Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas," the dream-tree told her, then wrapped its tentacles around her, and pulled her into its darkness.

  * * *

  Christmas dawn was frigid. cold drafts had blown down the open flue of the chimney, and filling the house with icy winter air, and fireplace ash.

  Tammy awoke to the sound of bells jingling somewhere outside, and met her brothers just coming out of their rooms further down the hall. Not even the icy cold could blunt the joy of Christmas morning, thought Tammy. Not even the tree. Tammy smiled as she and her brothers reached the top of stairs.

  "I know Santa brought me a new bike!" said Michael.

  "I'll bet I got a whole mess of video games," said Tammy.

  "I'll probably get stupid clothes that don't fit," said Brett.

  And with that, they clambered down the stairs.

  Brett saw it before Tammy did. He gasped, and his face became as green as the Christmas cookies they had eaten the night before.

  Santa, it turned out, had indeed come.

  Michael instantly began to cry, and buried his face in Brett's chest. Brett, who normally would just push him away held Michael tight. Tammy could only gape. Holding onto the banister, she felt as if her legs would buckle beneath her.

  The tree had fallen sometime in the dead of night. This time it didn't engulf the piano. Instead it pinned one brightly dressed, bearded old man to the hardwood floor.

  Outside the sleigh bells impatiently jangled, and deer hoofs restlessly scraped the roof.

  Where were Mom and Dad, thought Tammy? Had they drank so much egg-nog last night that they were sleeping through this?

  The man trapped beneath the tree, turned his head weakly and spoke in a raspy, wheezy voice.

  "Muh-muh-merry, Chr-Ch-Chr-"

  Tammy looked to Brett. The corners of Brett's mouth had turned up in a sinister, Grinch-like grin. He raced off into the garage, and returned moments later with their father's ax. Then he looked at the man beneath the tree.

  "I've had about enough of you," he said, as he raised the ax high above his head.

  "No!" screamed Tammy. She grabbed Michael, turning his head so he wouldn't see.

  The blade came down and sank dug deep into the dark trunk of the tree. From the tree came a hideous wailing cry.

  "Watch out!" warned Brett. He swung again. Pine sap splattered in all directions, leaving thick, sticky clumps in Tammy's hair. A third swing. THWOK! Then a fourth. THWOK! The tree shuttered, its limbs tangled around the ax, but Brett pulled it free, and raised it high above his head one last time.

  "You're sawdust!" he said, and with that brought down the blade for a final blow that split the terrible tree in two, freeing the not-so-jolly man trapped beneath.

  Michael and Tammy helped him up. Brett, dropping the ax to the ground with a thud, stared the silver haired man in the face.

  "Well," said Brett. "What am I now? Naughty or nice?"

  "Please, I'm in no mood," said Santa. He turned to look up at the closed door of their parents' room. "Tell your parents to stay away from cheap trees. You get what you pay for." And with that he turned to go.

  "Thankless old man," grumbled Brett beneath his breath -- but apparently nothing escaped the man's large, pink ears.

  Santa turned back to Brett. "Very well," he said reluctantly, tossing Brett a small box. "I suppose you've earned it. It's in the driveway."

  Inside the box Brett found a key.

  "And Brett," said Santa Claus. "Do stop being such a royal pain, or I'll have to send the tooth fairy to punch out some of those pearly-whites."

  * * *

  Once their guest had made his exit, they bundled up the remains of the tree and Tammy set it on fire in the backyard. She watched as it burned with a furious flame, its darkness completely consumed and reduced to ashes in a matter of minutes. Then, she set up the old aluminum tree.

  In the end, Tammy had to admit that Christmas morning turned out the same as always -- for by the time Mom and Dad finally dragged themselves out of bed, the house was clean and there was nothing out of the ordinary they had to explain.

  Nothing, that is, but the Porsche in the driveway.

• Dark Alley from the "MindTwisters" Short Story Collection

  A rainy Friday afternoon. My bowling bag pulls down on my arm. If my arms were rubber, my knuckles would be dragging on the ground from all those Friday afternoons lugging my ball to Grimdale Lanes. But it's something I have to do. Something I want to do.

  "Do we have to bowl today, Henry?" my sister Greta asks as we get off the bus. "My thumb hurts."

  "Maybe it wouldn't hurt if you didn't suck it."

  She pulls her thumb out of her mouth, and hands me her bowling bag. "Then you carry my ball," she says, "it's too heavy." Greta's six, although sometimes you'd think she was younger. Usually Mom can watch her after school, but she works late on Friday's -- the only weekday I get to go bowling after school.

  The skies let loose, as if the rain has waited for us to get off the bus. My waterproof Jacket isn't that waterproof. Greta's bright orange poncho makes her look like a walking traffic-cone, but at least she's dry. Finally we reach the double glass doors of the bowling alley, and they slide open automatically to admit us.

  Instantly we are hit by the familiar smell of greasy pizza and floor wax. It's a madhouse. The high-school has leagues at five, and it's already after four, so most of the lanes are taken up by big kids warming up. We wait in a slow moving line in front of the counter until we reach the attendant -- a fat man with a stubbly beard, and suspicious eyes.

  "Size?" snaps the fat man.

  "We have our own shoes," I tell him. "We just need a lane." I wonder how many years I have to keep coming here for him to know me by name. But then again, I don't know his name either. To me, he's just the Fat Guy Who Gives Out Lanes.

  "Sorry, all the lanes are full," says the fat guy. "I Just gave out the last one." I take a look down the alleys. A rainy afternoon can do that. Movie theaters and bowling alleys really clean up on days like this...but then I notice that there's a single dark alley, right next to lane 24.

  "What about lane 25," I ask.

  "We ain't got no lane 25," says the fat man. "It only goes up to 24."

  "But --"

  "Look kid, it's been a long day, alright. Why don't you give me a break, huh? You want a lane, come back tomorrow."

  Greta twirls her finger in her hair and grins at me. "Oh well, I guess we'll have to go home. Too bad."

  But then a high school guy and his girl-friend -- the ones who were in front of us and got the last lane -- turn to us. "Why don't you bowl with us," offers the girl.

  The fat man grabs my money, and we go off with the high-school couple. They've been assigned to lane twenty-four.

  The high-school guy goes first. He sticks his butt out, holds the ball against the tip of his pointy nose, and launches himself down the approach for his first throw. Uninterested, my eyes wonder to the lane beside us. It should be lane twenty-five, but unlike the other lanes, it has no number -- and unlike the others, it doesn't share a ball-return with another lane -- it has it's own ball return. The lane is dark, and its pins are in shadows.

  The high-school couple have thrown their first frames, and since I'm not paying attention, Greta seizes the opportunity to pull her light-weight pink ball out of her bag, and go ahead of me. She plods up to the foul line, drops the ball with a heavy thud, and it meanders its way down the alley, lazily taking down three pins.

  "Yaay!" she cries. On her second shot, she knocks down another one.

  The pins are reset, and I step up to the lane. As soon as I'm in place, my mind begins to clear. It's always like that. I forget the rainy day. I forget school, I forget home, I just think of the pins, and my ball. My Dad was a great bowler. He tried to teach me, but I was too young, and then one night, after a long day at his construction site he fell asleep at the wheel of his car. I think about him sometimes. I think about how I could have saved his life if I had been there, because I'm always alert in the car. But mostly I think good thoughts about him. Especially when I bowl. I imagine the way he bowled. How his ball never made a sound when it left his hand, and touched the lane, gentle as a kiss. Each time I bowl, I try to do the same.

  With the high-school couple and Greta behind me I focus all of my attention to a pinpoint, lean forward, and begin my approach. At the perfect moment, I release the ball...

  And it clunks down hard on the wood, careens a crooked path towards the pins, and plops into the gutter before it can take down a single pin.

  "Guttrrrr Balllll" says Greta, like an baseball umpire would say "Steeeerrrrike!"

  "Tough break dude," says the high-school guy.

  I don't look at anyone. I put my hands over the little air blower to keep myself busy until the ball-return spits my ball back to me. I take it and go for the second shot.

  Again I prepare to imitate my Dad's bowling form. I inherited my dad's big feet, and his bad teeth -- you'd figure I might have inherited his bowling skill, too, right? I throw the ball with all the heart and guts I can spare... and again it rolls diagonally down the alley - this time tapping the ten-pin enough to make it wobble, but not fall down.

  I stare at the pins, grinning at me like a full set of mockingly perfect teeth, before the bar comes down, and sweeps them away.

  The high-school kid snickers, flipping back a lock of tatted hair. "Not very good, are ya?"

  His girlfriend raps him in the stomach. "Shut up -- you'll hurt his feelings."

  But the fact is, he's right. I'm not very good. And how can I get any better if I can only afford to bowl, once a week? I look around me at the expert bowlers hurling strikes and spares in every frame. Then I turn to look at the dark lane beside us. I know why the attendant wouldn't give me the last lane: he didn't think I deserved it. He might be just The-Fat-Guy-Who-Gives-Out-Lanes to me, but to him, I'm probably just That-Kid-Who-Can't-Bowl.

  Then suddenly the lights flicker on, on the mysterious extra lane. I hear the ball-return crank into action. I look back to see if the attendant switched it on from behind his counter, but he's not even at his station. And no one is coming this way to claim the lane.

  "Thanks," I say to the high-school guy. "But we'll bowl over here now. C'mon Greta."

  Greta dutifully grabs her ball, and brings it over to the empty ball-stand of the numberless lane. I figure someone will eventually kick us off, but until then, I'll bowl all I want to bowl.

  It's as I put my ball down, that I begin to feel uneasy, and I don't know why. It seems a degree or two warmer over here in this lane, and yet I feel a chill set in. There's a smell here, too. An earthy, organic smell, like a wet pile of November leaves. And there's a sound. A whooshing, whispering sound. I turn my head from side to side , until I zero in on where the sound is coming from. It's the ball-return.

  "Can I go first?" asks Greta.

  "Shhh!" I get down on my knees, and lean closer to the dark opening of the ball-return. Deep within it, I can hear the groaning of belts, pulleys and rollers, but beneath all that noise there's something else. A sound just at the edge of my hearing. I put my hear closer to it, and feel against the side of my face a warm wind flowing out of it. That wet-leaf smell is stronger hear, and as I take a breath of it, that air feels strange. It feels thin and... well... unfulfilling -- like the air you get when you keep your head under your covers to long.

  Then the sound, suddenly changes, and the air-pressure flowing from the ball-return seems to change, too. There's a sudden mechanical rumble, and for an instant I see something large and white eclipsing the dark hole.

  Instinctively I launch myself back, away from the ball-return -- and its a good thing I have fast reflexes, because the second my head is out of the way, a bowling ball blasts out of the ball-return, flies down the ball stand, and smashes into Greta's bowling-ball with bone-crushing velocity.

  "Close one, huh kid," says the high-school guy with a smirk, over in the next lane. I ignore him, and look at the ball. It's shiny white -- but not just shiny, it's wet, dripping with a clear, slippery slime that puddles on the floor beneath the ball stand.

  "Gross!" says Greta. "A Bowling-Booger."

  I approach it, not sure what to make of it... and that's when I notice that the force of its impact has cracked Greta's ball in half.

  As soon as Greta notices, tears begin to pool in her eyes. She can't stand bowling, but that doesn't matter right now -- all that matters is that something of hers has been broken. That always calls for tears.

  "It's Okay, Greta. It's alright, we'll get you a new one," I say, even though I'm sure a new bowling ball won't be in the family budget until her birthday, which was a long way off.

  I turn to look down the silent, well-waxed lane, just waiting to be bowled on, then I look at the slimy white ball one more time. Suddenly I don't feel like bowling today.

  "C'mon Greta, let's go home."

  "Can we play Barbie's?" she asks.

  "Yeah, sure, whatever, lets just go."

  I put my own ball back into the bag, and leave Greta's ruined one where it is. Then I take my sister's hand, and we head out into the rain.

  When we get home, Phil is on the couch, watching the sports channel.

  "Hi squirts," he says as we enter. Phil is Mom's current boyfriend. Lately we find him over even when Mom isn't home. Phil eats our food, puffs cigarettes in our air-space, and spends Mom's money whenever he can. I'd call him a sponge to his face, if I didn't think he'd punch my face in for it.

  "You oughta get your TV fixed, everyone looks purple," he tells me, then he blows a big cloud of camel-breath in my face. I cough from the stench of the smoke. He laughs.

  "Your lungs are too sensitive, just like the rest of you," he says. "We gotta toughen you up, kiddo!"

  "Yeah, sure, toughen me up."

  Greta has already slipped off to her room to play, and since I promised I'd play with her, I follow her, prepared to endure whatever girlie nightmare she has planned. Anyway, it's better than being put-down by Phil. Since he works a swing shift, he's always gone by five -- just long enough to steal a kiss and twenty bucks from Mom, before he saunters out the door.

  Long after he's gone, and Greta's gone off to bed, I sit with Mom over hot chocolate, and ask her something I've been afraid to ask, because I've been afraid of the answer. "What do you see in Phil, anyway," I ask her. "Do you love him or something?"

  She chooses not to answer that question. Instead she says "He makes me laugh."

  "Yeah," I tell her. "So does Bozo the Clown but I don't see you dating him."

  Mom chuckles. We're both quiet for a moment, and I can hear the rain lightly hitting the rain gutters. Gutters. It reminds me of my miserable performance today at the bowling alley. And it reminds me of the strange lane with no number, and a mean ball-return. I'm about to tell Mom what happened, but think better of it. They grease those ball-returns don't they? Sure they do -- that's why the ball was so slimy. That's why it shot out so fast. Suddenly I feel mad at myself for giving up a lane that I could have bowled on all afternoon.

  Instead I say "Mom, can I have a couple of dollars... to go bowling tomorrow."

  She sees how much I want it, and so she agrees. That night I go to sleep dreaming of perfect strikes down midnight alleys.