In heaven, we need to look for magic in the little things. Flashlights, for instance. Townies might not be awestruck when they click on a flashlight and a light beam appears before them, but when they unscrew the end of the magical metal tube and discover it contains no batteries, awestruck is how they might react.
Yes, believe it or not, our flashlights work fine without an apparent energy source. But the light comes from somewhere, does it not? What is the energy source? Maybe invisible particles float in the air to power our flashlights, desk lamps, and streetlights. One day I will turn my attention to such conundrums.
In the meantime, I have a confession: just as Esther pinched a snow globe, I stole the flashlight I hold in my hands. It comes from a do-good station at the dorm. I hope you are not disappointed in me, Mother and Father, but these are desperate times. I could have signed out a flashlight with help from Thelma, but I did not want to alert her to my antics this evening. She would have disapproved. After all, non-do-gooders are prohibited from wandering around after midnight unless there is an emergency.
I am venturing out after curfew, when the streetlamps are dark and Town seems ominous and sinister in the shadows of the night. Not that the night is itself ominous and sinister. I will not run into ghosts (or I will run only into ghosts, depending on how you view us townies, ha-ha). I have never been afraid of the dark. As you know, even as a youngster, I did not need a night-light in my room. I never lay in bed petrified by a saber-toothed tiger ready to spring from my closet. I never woke in the night screaming my head off.
While I stroll down the streets with my flashlight, I wonder if Johnny will show up for this rendezvous of portal seekers. I have good news for him: our discovery of Sandy Goldberg from Schaumburg (whom Esther has taken to calling “the nutter”). Once we track down Sandy, she might be able to provide clues about Gunboy and his real identity.
If I spot another flashlight in the distance, I will click off my own light in case the person is a night monitor checking the passes that townies out after curfew are required to carry. I see no other flashlights around, however. Nighttime here is pitchblack, especially when thick clouds cloak the moon. It is also dead quiet (ha-ha). There are no screeching ambulances, passing trains, or beeping cars. Sadly, there are no chirping crickets either. The only sound comes from rustling leaves whenever a breeze picks up.
When I draw near Buttercup Park, I check my glow-in-the-dark Casper the Friendly Ghost wristwatch (a gift from Esther). It is ten to three. A light clicks on and off in the playground, so I turn off my flashlight and make a beeline toward the light. As I cross the soccer field, I see that the light comes from atop the cubic jungle gym. Somebody is perched up there and acting as a beacon. It appears to be a boy, though not Benny. Benny is short, and this boy seems to be tall. His arm with the flashlight is stretched overhead as though he is imitating the Statue of Liberty.
I stop a few yards away. “Hello there,” I call.
“Zip it!” the boy barks.
I lower my voice. “Is Benny Baggarly around? He invited me to a haunting.”
“Just get in your f*cking cage, dog.”
A second figure climbs out from the jungle gym and moves toward me. As the beacon turns on, I see this second boy is Benny. “Come sit with me,” he whispers, patting my shoulder. “But no talking.” He holds a finger to his lips.
I follow Benny through the bars of the jungle gym, an awkward crawl in the flickering light. Once I am within the structure, I glance around. There are others here. I can hear them breathe and see them fleetingly when the beacon turns on. They sit in a cluster on the bottom bars. Everyone is too close for comfort. I want to ask the others if they have seen Johnny, but talking is forbidden. Minutes go by in silence. To kill time, I scan the park, but no other flashlights are approaching.
The boy standing over our heads—he must be the group leader, the head honcho of haunting—finally climbs down through the bars and perches in the very middle of the cube.
“Roll call,” the boy announces. “Remember we use pseudonyms here. No real names.” He passes around his flashlight, which slaps from hand to hand. Each haunter states his alias and then holds the flashlight beneath his chin, clicking it on for a second to show his face.
“Ace.”
“Doug.”
“Shelly.”
“Funk.”
“Jack Sprat.”
“Crystal.”
Benny says, “Ratface,” and a few people giggle. The group leader hisses, “Silence!”
Lit from underneath, we all look ghostly, and so when it is my turn, I give my real alias: “Boo.”
I hand the flashlight up to the leader. He says his pseudonym, “Czar,” and then he also clicks the light on and shines it toward himself. In the split second before the light turns off, I glimpse a sour-faced boy with crooked features, big ears, and messy brown hair.
The dead-or-alive poster come to life.
Gunboy! Gunboy in the flesh! A pain pierces my chest. Gunboy so close I could reach over and touch him.
I recall my promise to Johnny to be strong, but I am as petrified as a child with a saber-toothed tiger growling in his closet.
In the pitch-blackness, I hear Benny Baggarly whisper, “May I go first, Czar?”
“I told you assh*les to shut the f*ck up. You don’t speak unless spoken to. Understood?”
Nobody speaks.
“Understood?”
“Yes, Czar,” half a dozen voices whisper back.
I do not answer. I am speechless. My heart is thumping its irregular beat, but at least the sharp pain is abating. In my head, I chant, Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine.
Did Gunboy recognize me when I shone the light in my face? Maybe I was not visible long enough. Or maybe he did not get a good look at me back at Helen Keller.
“Most of you know the drill,” Gunboy says. His voice is raspy, as though he, like Johnny, yells in his sleep. “I’ll take you onto the baseball diamond one at a time and portal you back home. While you wait your turn, I don’t want to hear one peep out of you. If I do, I’m canceling this haunting, you f*ckers capisce?”
“Yes, Czar.”
Neon, sodium, magnesium, aluminum, silicon.
There is a shuffling movement in our little circle as Gunboy pushes through the haunters and climbs through the bars of the jungle gym. Now he is standing outside, and the rest of us remain in our cage. “Jack Sprat, you’re up first,” he says. He turns on his flashlight and aims it at the ground as a boy near me wiggles out of the jungle gym. Gunboy and Jack Sprat head onto the baseball diamond, and I follow the light with my eyes, expecting any moment to hear Jack Sprat’s bloodcurdling scream.
To Benny, I say, “What’s going on? What will he do to Jack Sprat?”
Benny’s hand clamps over my mouth. “Shush! Czar will have a conniption!”
I push his hand off. “I need to know. It’s life or death!”
Somebody else whacks me in the head.
“Shut up, spaz,” whispers the girl nicknamed Crystal.
I crawl through the bars of the jungle gym as someone pulls on the tail of my T-shirt, but I kick back and the person lets go. I must get away. I do not have Gunboy’s real name, but perhaps with the little information I do have, Thelma can track the boy down. I am ready to hurry back to our dorm to wake the girls when I see a beam of light flitting across the baseball diamond. Gunboy is coming back! Damnation! For a moment I am frozen in place, but I shake off my fear and put up my dukes. If he shines his light on me and launches an attack, I will fight him off. The light beam draws ever closer. My nerves steel. My heart booms. My blood races.
Just before the light falls on me, a voice calls out, “Are portal seekers meeting here tonight? I’m a little late.”
That voice is instantly familiar.
“Johnny Henzel?”
The cone of light sweeps across me. I put down my dukes.
“What the hell you doing here, Boo?”
Behind me, the portal seekers hiss, “Shush!”
I have not seen my roommate in a day and a half, but it seems longer. “Looking for you, Johnny,” I reply. “I was out looking for you.”
“Zip your mouths,” Crystal calls out.
“What’s her frigging problem?” Johnny says.
From out in the field comes a roar of frustration. Then this: “Can’t you follow one simple order, you c*cksucking, motherf*cking retards?!”
In the baseball diamond, a circle of light is growing larger and more menacing. Our killer is racing toward us.
“Dang it all to hell!” says Benny Baggarly.
“I’ll never get to Tampa now,” Crystal whines.
Our killer screams, “Imbeciles! Morons!”
Johnny says, “What the f*ck’s going on?”
“Gunboy,” I sputter.
“Huh?” Johnny says, shining his light in my eyes.
Two galaxies colliding. That is what I expect as Johnny swings his cone of light from me to the boy rushing toward us across the playground.
For a moment, nobody speaks. The portal seekers must be trembling in their cage. In the dim light, Johnny appears stunned. His mouth drops open. He takes a step back.
Gunboy comes to a stop a few feet from Johnny. The boy looks feral, furious. His eyes glow red. His hair stands on end. “I’ll murder you f*ckers,” he snarls.
“Have mercy on me, Czar,” Crystal from Tampa says. “I’m an innocent bystander.”
“Did I tell you to speak?” Gunboy says. In the instant it takes for our killer to turn toward Crystal in the jungle gym, Johnny steps forward and raises his magical flashlight high. Then he smashes it against the boy’s head.
A sharp, sickening crack.
Gunboy goes down in a heap. His own flashlight rolls across the sand and comes to a stop at my feet, partly lighting the scene of Johnny taking his revenge, screaming like a madman as he bashes his truncheon against the body of an unconscious boy.
In the darkness, the blood looks black.