Monday May 4, 2015
Before noon arrived, the Huffys received a call from their favorite Realtor, who informed them that a ‘Town Hall meeting’ was being held in an old tent revival area outside a local school. Peter wondered aloud why it was even called a ‘Town Hall meeting’.
“It’s more of a ‘Town Hall-style meeting’,” Peter said, when they were already half-way there, by car.
“I wonder if Rose and Derek will be there,” Alyssa wondered, behind the wheel.
“You’ll get to see your little friends, don’t worry,” Peter teased.
The Huffys pulled up to what looked like some kind of a bake sale. There were skirted tables bracketing several rows of folding chairs that had been setup for an audience. The tables were crowded with plates and tins crammed with local delicacies. Treats like caramel cake, huckleberry muffins (Huck Finns), various strawberry desserts with whipped cream, plus Sparkle’s take on baklava(with chocolate chips)and Amish whoopie pie. A big chunk of the town’s population was there, cordially stepping around one another, licking their fingers, carrying stacked plates or napkin-wrapped pastries back to their seats. Sparklians enjoyed making picnics out of mundane social obligations. It was a great way to live.
The Huffys found a spot near the back of the audience. There wasn’t a podium at the front, just an empty row through the middle of the chairs. It looked very much like some kind of a graduation ceremony. Peter guessed that the mayor was just going to walk up and down the aisles, like a teacher at some school assembly. Velma Thrawley soon approached them, snack clutched in her left hand and her mouth half-full.
“Peter! Alyssa! How do you do?” She switched her treat from her right palm to her left, then stuck her hand out. Peter took it, reluctantly. He had no choice. It was a bit sticky from what looked to be some kind of sugary glaze. “It’s so good that you can be here for this today. Sparkle only does this now and then. Mayor Anthony only gets paid a dollar a year. When there is a problem, however, he takes it very seriously.”
Peter nodded. “Looks like a pretty decent set up, though. You only get a cookie when you give blood.”
“Well, people around here just love getting together, however they can. We love to see each other happy and full.”
Alyssa shook Velma’s hand, too. “What is this all about, Velma? Are these meetings always this sudden?”
Velma shook her head. “Oh no, dear. I think the mayor is going to announce that some kind of Ad Hoc committee is being formed. I think, anyway.”
“For what?”
“I’m not sure, but there was an incident at the church yesterday morning. I think the mayor thinks it’s some sort of drug problem.”
“A drug problem? Around here?”
“Yes. Something like that. I’m not sure what he will propose be done about it. The man is very nice, but he can be a little much. He's talking the food sellers into closing for a day to self-inspect their goods for contamination. He's even promising them tax incentives. I don't think he can do that, though. No, he can't do that. Probably not. But, as you can see, most of us aren't as paranoid as he is. He wanted all the schools canceled in the county, too. A big, dramatic emergency! Some gave him a half day because he made such a noise. Even here in Sparkle, students went home only after lunch. The man loves being mayor, that's for sure. He's a decent guy, but he does love being mayor.”
At the head of the audience was Rose Windward sitting calmly, purse in her lap. Not even looking around. Derek was nowhere to be seen. The Huffys excused themselves, then came up behind her chair. “Rose, hey.”
She smiled. “Peter, nice to see you.”
“How is Derek? Is he here?” Peter’s eyes scooped the crowd, searching out the boy.
“No, he wasn’t interested in this,” she answered.
Alyssa sat down next to Rose. A man came up from behind Peter. He was portly, in his forties, with a mustache. His thinning hair was slicked back and oily. He was wearing a tuxedo and a cummerbund. He looked ludicrous.
“Excuse me!” he said, seizing Peter’s hand “Are you the new owner of the Windward mansion?”
Peter offered an awkward smile. “Peter Huffy. Yes, I am.”
“Well, now, isn’t that wonderful? We get so few new residents in these parts. Don’t know why that is.”
“It’s not the food, I know that.”
The man practically screamed with laughter and slapped Peter on the shoulder. “I’ll give you that! Yes, sir. I’ll give you that. There’s no better fed people on Earth. Maybe there’s people who got more, but certainly not better. The name is Thompson Anthony, but everyone calls me Tom, so you do that, too. I’m mayor of Sparkle.”
“Well, now,” said Peter, returning his enthusiasm. “I’m, finally, meeting someone with real clout.”
The mayor beamed. “So glad you could come, Mr. Huffy. Really.”
“Glad to be here. Hey, what’s this all gonna be about?”
The mayor scratched his sweaty neck. “Well, now, I am intending to form a specialized team to investigate an incident that occurred at the Lutheran Church on the last Sabbath. Have you heard anything about that?”
“The last Sabbath? You mean yesterday? No. I heard that there’s a specialized team being formed to investigate it, though.”
Tom nodded. “That’s right,” the Mayor extended his hands out to begin gesticulating in proper, mayoral fashion, which meant making shapes with his hands. “I believe - though I don’t seem to have a lot of support in this - that illicit substances were passed out among the children of the attendees at Mass that day.”
“Which was yesterday.”
“Yes, it was. Perhaps in the form of stickers or candy. Or possibly both. Although no evidence has turned up. I do believe that more problems will follow. More incidents. It is just a matter of time.”
Peter shook his head. “Oh, God. I mean, there could be a whole drug smuggling ring in Sparkle. There might be a French Connection here. Did you see that movie? You think it’s that bad here? Bad enough to be French?”
The mayor put up his hands. “Well, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but communities change, Peter, it’s just a fact of life. I think there could be a criminal element spilling in from other boroughs. God knows, they all have their share, don’t they?”
Peter nodded. “God knows. I know he knows.”
“You see, I think that this sort of thing can be prevented through community awareness initiatives. Prevention, education, and illustration. You see what I’m saying, Peter?” the mayor counted them off on his fingers. “Prevention, education, and illustration?”
Peter was bored. It sounded like the mayor was just talking nonsense now, which Peter was good at. “Yeah. I get you. I get you. Those are all different things, right? And every one of those things is a thing?”
Mayor Tom became serious, tapping his chin. “They certainly are, Peter. They certainly are.”
In a window on the vacant third floor of the school, a sad pair of eyes watched the bustle of people below. It was Dickon, overseeing the proceedings, his fife twirling in his fingers. No song came to mind, however. People scurrying all about, taking part in the interminable business and routines of everyday life. His head soon sunk into his hands, bored as any child at any congregation of adults.
Dickon’s legs poked out the window and dangled over the ledge, his head pressed against the glass. It was the seventh time this month that the old custodian had left the sash thrown up, the classroom wide open, inviting in Mother Nature’s curious children. Squirrels, in particular, were very fond of the place. They could be heard all times of the day, dashing back-and-forth across the attic floor, over the students’ heads. It often invoked peals of laughter. Dickon was just another one of these curious children.
He’d spent his morning sitting in on a few small classes before school let out on a half-day. The children had seemed so intelligent, so exuberant and filled with ideas. Their hands firing into the air, their fingers flickering like little candle flames at the end of their arms. He wasn’t certain that he would fit in with such children. They had heads filled up with ideas, so many that their mouths could barely contain them when they were called upon. Dickon searched his mind, but he could not recall his own school, if he had one, that is. His thoughts were as sticky as syrup. He might get along with such children, but they would not get along with him. Why would they bother? He was only Dickon.
How long had it been, he wondered, since the night before? What a strange thought. How long had it been? Did night and day still mean the same thing as they did before? And when was before? The boy pulled his legs back inside and paced around the empty room, steering around the desks. His steps made no sound when he walked, something he didn’t notice until Mr. Huffy had pointed it out. It made Dickon think on how strange his situation was. He tapped his fife against the wall, but no sound came forth. He felt it on his hand the wall push back through the instrument. Very strange. But was it? Why did he find this strange? When was it ever different? As far as he knew, it had always been like this. If he blew into the instrument, it made a sound, didn’t it? But only Mr. Huffy heard it. There were other things that he noticed. When he took off his shoes, he felt no cold. Not even at night. Not even when he dunked his feet in the stream. It was as if he…as if…
As if he wasn’t real.
The door to the room was wide open, and though he didn’t try, he knew that if he attempted to pull it shut, however hard, it would not move. It would be as obstinate as a stone slab. Nor would he feel the heat of the sun if he were standing outside, or the wind on his cheeks. Nothing was right, but he knew that. Probably, there was a time when things had been different. There just had to be. Why would he find these things strange if they had always been that way?
Dickon turned around, feeling the presence of something in the room with him. The top of his eyes caught a sharp glint of light, though he was looking down at his feet. A little, niggling mote of sun poked in his eye. He brought his head up. Standing there at the back of the room was a kind of wobbling mirror, one without a frame. It was glowing, as if reflecting light, but the light was coming from within it. It shimmered and rippled like the surface of a lake at dawn. But there was no color in it. It was the oddest thing he’d ever seen. Light without color. Like an overcast sky. All of a sudden, without any warning, the mirror flashed as if a spotlight beam had been pointed at its surface, and room little up for just a fraction of a second.
“Well, stand at the foot o’ the stairs!” Dickon exclaimed. The thing, whatever it was, did not frighten the boy. It might have startled most people, but Dickon was hardly most people. This thing was a conjurer, sort of like himself, made of the same, strange magic he was beginning to suspect he was made of.
“What ar...?” he asked, not finishing.
The mirror-like thing didn’t respond with words, but it began to shift and move, shaking and jiggling like gelatin. Then it stood up tall and straight, the front side of it flattening out, as it did, making it even more like a mirror than it had been. On the face of it a figure was being drawn. It was without color, as well, a doodle in lead pencil, and the boy watched it delineate from its center outward, the head and limbs appearing there as if being unspooled from a ball of twine. The figure was of a boy about Dickon’s age, but that’s where their similarities came to an end. They were, obviously, from a different time and place. The boy depicted on the mirror’s face was dressed to the nines, with boots and a cape fastened at his neck with a brooch. He looked like he was of royal lineage, a prince or a duke, and his face looked none too welcoming. Dickon didn’t understand what was happening
“All sorts of strange,” the boy said aloud. He knew, though, that no one could even hear it. If this shimmering being showing him this picture could see him, then, maybe it could hear him, as well. But then, as it turned out, someone could hear him, and that someone else answered him in a raspy voice on the other side of the front wall of the room. Dickon would have sworn on a bible, were there a bible in this world he could use, that the voice had said, ‘Indeed, brother’. There was a large walk-in closet at the back of the room for coats. He'd thought that it was empty. He turned now, and approached it. He was cautious as he stepped, partly, through the doorway.
He saw to his right a few jackets on a coat rack, probably unclaimed ones, and a strange pair of boots set there underneath them, pushed up against the wall. A person could have been wearing those boots, remaining unseen, if they were short enough. Before stepping fully into the coat room, Dickon turned and took a last look at the glowing thing he'd just encountered. It was gone, as he’d expected it would be. He thought he felt it leaving, or what seemed like the feeling of something leaving. In a similar fashion, he knew something was in the coatroom, its feet nestled firmly in those leather boots.
“Can ya ‘ear us?” Dickon asked the hidden figure.
“Of course, brother,” it answered.
“Why ya ‘idin?”
“I am not hiding. I am waiting, that is all.”
“None is ‘ere, but us,” the boy said.
There was a pause. “Would you be ready?”
Dickon found the question confusing. “Ready for wha’, if ya please?”
“Ready to see me. How could I know, for certain? It has been so long, brother. You may find me strange.”
Dickon nodded. “Hmm. Aye. Ready.”
The figure swatted the coats out of his way, spilling some to the floor, and stepped out from behind them with an extravagant flourish. He was quite striking, but Dickon didn’t know the boy, outside of the otherworldly sketch he'd just seen. “Ah don't fine ya so strange,” Dickon remarked, sweetly.
The new boy smiled. “Has it been so long, brother? Do you not know me, at all? I know you.”
This excited Dickon. His eyes jolted wide. “Ya knows who I am?”
The strange boy stepped up to Dickon and stood no more than a foot away. He stood perfectly strait, like a statue. His hands clasped behind his back, behind his vermilion cape. The boy smiled, again, wider this time. His teeth were strange, Dickon noticed. Some people might find them threatening. “I know who you’ve been, yes.”
Dickon considered this. “Whoa I bin? Jus' Dickon.”
Tibb tossed back his head and laughed. “Dickon! So confused, brother! So confused!” Tibb seized Dickon’s head in his hands, the boy was taken by surprise, but did not struggle. He could feel this boy's touch, and it was astounding to him. Tibb laughed, delighted in his abashment. “My brother!” Tibb let go and looked his brother up and down. “When last I saw you…how long ago that must have been? You’ve no idea?”
Dickon shook his head. Tibb laughed, but a bit more reservedly, as if he was embarrassed for his brother. “It could not be less than two millenniums, could it?”
Dickon’s eyebrows popped up slightly. “Two...millen…?”
Tibb laughed again. “Two thousand years!”
The number impressed Dickon. Two thousand years? Well, why not? These days, time couldn’t be trusted.
The strange boy walked past Dickon and stood by the window. He was, suddenly, somber. All traces of mirth had vanished. “Thought you were gone. No longer among us, brother,” said Tibb. The sadness in his voice was sloppily affected.
Dickon’s eyebrows shot up even further. As far as they could possibly go and remain part of his head. “Dead, ya mean?”
Tibb nodded. “Indeed. I watched it happen.” The boy spun around, the look on his face was pensive, even a little concerned. It was a ruse. “Kicked the bucket, you did. There in a grotto, along a river, near the gates of hell. Doesn’t that sound familiar? Who could forget such a thing? You lived beyond it, yet, cannot recall?” Tibb took a few steps toward Dickon. ”Your people, gathered about you, celebrating, as always, in the way they did - making their love and slopping their wine, hither and thither. Dancing to your tune. Never one for words, brother, but a wonder with a pipe. A wonder! I so despised the way they loved you. You don’t recollect? None of it? Not at all?”
Dickon shook his head, captivated. “Nay.”
“Such a dour time it was, brother. Why relive your demise? Why? What am I saying? You did not liaise with the reaper, as I thought. The deed was not done, it seems. Not done well, in any case.” Tibb’s face became an idol of false sympathy. “How depressed they were, those gents and their women. Thy people. How awful that must have been, to see all that they had lived for struck down ere their eyes. Struck down by my very own hand. This hand.” Tibb held that very hand up for his brother to see. “This one.” Tibb lingered on his words, his awful teeth were a macabre demonstration.
Dickon bristled, nervously, and took a small step backward. He pointed at his brother with his fife. “Ya mean...you?”
Tibb shrugged. “It was not the first time, brother. I’m sorry if I had created that impression. We never got along, did we? I thought this was all behind us. That you were behind me. Yet, here we are, once again. Fancy that. Things are not the same, it seems. I look upon you now…” Tibb indicated Dickon’s dress, then he reached up and flicked his tweed cap. The gentler boy didn’t seem to notice it. ”You have nothing. You are nothing. Nothing to be envied. Not anymore.”
Dickon was flustered. Not sure what to make of any of this. “Who…?” he asked.
The boy turned around, starting to be disgruntled. “Tibb! Your brother! I’ve said it, again and again and again! Your brother!” Tibb then snickered. “To be honest, though, I was not Tibb when last you saw me. You knew me by another name. A name you’ve doubtlessly forgotten.”
Dickon shook his head, as he’d been doing almost constantly. He stepped back. “Nay. I…”
“Oh, dear one!” Tibb was all too close. His face right in Dickon’s own. One boy leaned in further. The other edged back. Dickon thought his brother smelled like dry bones, dust, and rotten hair. His lips pursed as if tasting something sour. “You’ve been others, brother. Never good at being you. So what did it matter if it be true you were living, or it be true you were not?” Tibb turned away, again, and walked back to the window. “Even the most wondrous wept for you. A lonesome, little sir. So sick and needy. So tiny in his seat. Wept for you, Tiberius did. I so hated that gent.” Tibb raised his hands over his head, wiggling his fingers, playing at being some kind of terrifying specter. “I came unto his wife and his children. Slipped, I did, into their chambers. Pounced, I did, upon their beds! The ghost of Tiberius returned! Ha ha ha! A ghost, indeed! That was a grand time! I kept the name. It’s a good one. I lived on as Tibb, while that gent was riddled with worms. Ha!”
Tibb rested a hand on the window. There came a long silence. As one brother looked upon the other, while the other gazed out the window, a mind full of twists and turns. “They never worshiped me. Though I wished it. I never had a way to make them follow. But watch what I can make them do, brother. Watch and wonder.”
Tibb flattened his hand on the window, closed his eyes and bowed his head. Something struck Dickon, some kind of silent thunderclap rumbled throughout his body. As savage as it was, he kept to his feet. Dickon approached the window and stood next to Tibb. He looked outside and below him. People outside were all tumbling from their chairs.
Peter was a bit disappointed, Rose knew very little about the history of Moon Window. He wondered who the right person to ask was. Velma was a little evasive, but only with the truth.
Rose shrugged, a little sorry. “Whatever I knew, I’ve long forgotten,” she said, but then she did a double take. “Wait, I remember hearing something when I was a girl. What was it?”
“Okay,” Peter said. “That’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“Wait, I think I do remember something about a ghost girl, or something, who lived there. I think there was a girl who disappeared. It’s something like that. I don’t remember much about the story, though. The details.”
“Really? A girl who disappeared? When did that happen?”
“Oh, I don’t know when. I don’t even know if it really happened. But it was the kind of thing that used to have kids avoiding that place. I haven’t heard anyone mention it since I was a child, though. I guess it must have been a very long time ago.”
Peter nodded, a little surprised. “Kids avoided my house?”
“I know, I did.”
“Okay, well, thanks.” Peter wondered if Derek would know more about the history of Moon Window. He seemed like the rare kind of kid who would look into something like that. “Is Derek okay?”
“He seems to be in a mood today.”
“Okay, then.”
Peter said goodbye to Rose, then he arose twirled around, looking for Alyssa. He spotted her chatting with someone he didn’t recognize at one of the pastry tables. He’d barely taken a step in her direction when something struck him. It started out feeling like a pang of acid reflux, and he braced himself to, once again, meet the Chicken Fajita Soup he’d just enjoyed at home. But then the pang turned into something far worse. Peter’s upper body seized up, his lungs straining to breathe. A panic attack? It was a new sensation. Confusing. He didn’t know what to do. He turned to Rose, seeking help, but she was spilling forward off her chair, onto the grass. All around him, people were falling to the ground, clutching their chests and their throats. It felt to Peter like he was drowning, and the same time, he was terrified to the point of irrationality.
One person, however, was still in control of her fear. She had remained the only attendee on her feet and, except for two other smaller children, was just about the shortest. Whatever ghost was sweeping through this crowd mostly made up of useless adults, turning them into what looked to her like whining infants, it didn’t have the same success with Miranda-Julia Beatrix Cappern. Whether it was some kind of instinct kicking in, or just sheer luck, she flicked her gaze up. Above her, standing in the second-floor window, was that thing that called itself Tibb. The girl grunted with fury. She turned and pounded her way to the school, as crazy with anger as everyone else was crazy with fear.
Up in the classroom, two figures gazed out on the craziness below. One was grinning with pride, the other was frantic. Dickon, sick with shock, found himself begging his brother to stop what he was doing. Tibb shook his head. “You must learn, brother, that they don’t matter. I’ve told you this, time and time, again, but you seem to have forgotten. But for us, nothing matters.”
Dickon didn’t bother answering. He had a feeling nothing he said would make a difference. No amount of appealing to his better nature, if he had one, would stop what was happening. Suddenly, it occurred to him that he had a means of fighting back. Dickon lifted the fife to his lips and played the most callous song he knew. He heard the words in his head, as he played the melody.
"There were three men, came from the West,
Their fortunes for to try,
And these three men made a solemn vow:
John Barleycorn must die."
Tibb offered his brother a crooked look, but did nothing. Dickon’s interference did not concern him, yet. Dickon began to step along with the song, skipping his feet like a dancer.
"They’ve hired men with the scythes so sharp,
To cut him off at knee,
They’ve rolled him and tied him by the way,
Serving him most barbarously."
Tibb continued to concentrate on what he was doing, but he was clearly becoming annoyed. He leaned into the window, laying his second hand on it. Dickon responded by playing as hard as his lungs would permit him.
"They’ve hired men with the crab-tree sticks,
To cut him skin from bone,
And the miller served him worse than that,
He ground him ‘tween two stones."
“Damn you!” Tibb cried, and spun around to face his brother. He tore his influence away from the people outside and directed it at the boy. Dickon received it and sank to the floor, as if a huge burden had thumped onto his back. He kept on playing his pipe. Tibb advanced on him. Just then, the classroom door flung open. In rushed a thirteen-year-old girl in a dress decorated with festive dancing dogs, all named Snoopy.
Miranda-Julia hollered like a banshee, already angry, but when the melody of John Barleycorn hit her ears, she became something far more than a fuming child, she became a warrior filled with a righteous anger. The English language lacks a word for this particular degree of contempt. Not any nice words, anyway.
Miranda-Julia charged halfway across the room in her jelly shoes and kicked the side of a desk with all her augmented strength. The music was doing something different to her than to Tibb, making her body as mighty as her anger. Which was mighty, indeed. Tibb, being turned toward Dickon already, was struck by the desk on his left hip bone. The boy's face was drenched in utter shock. He hadn’t, for as long as he could remember, felt pain. The sensation took him by surprise, and not a good one.
“Bah!” the boy screamed, grasping his aching side. Dickon’s song continued, and so did Miranda. She leaped up on the desk, clearing the edge with an impressive jump, and flung her whole body onto Tibb’s back.
“By the blood of Christ!” yelled Tibb, swinging her side-to-side to knock her loose. Miranda-Julia was larger, and heavier, than he, and her knee strikes to his back brought him almost immediately to the floor.
“You’re nothing but a goddamn wimp! You’re just a sick, ugly freak! You freakin’ chimp!” Miranda-Julia hollered in his pale ear, her ponytails flinging wildly. Then he was gone, simply gone. Leaving nothing but an interesting, new absence where there had once been a Tibb.
Miranda-Julia lay sprawled out on the floor now, breathing like a runner. Besides the racing of her heart, everything had settled into quiet. Her shoes had been flung off, so she pushed herself up and stood there in her bare feet. One shoe lay by the open classroom door, the other one would never be found. Dickon took a step toward her. The girl, to his utter shock, looked right at him. Her face was as curious as it was furious.
“Who are you now, kid!” she hollered.