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Authors: Patrick F. McManus

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BOOK: The Grasshopper Trap
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We didn't know that the gas in the reservoir had long ago been used up and that somewhere along the way the fuel pump had started functioning again. Finley had discarded the empty container, an unconscionable act of littering, and was now merely crouched under the hood trying to thaw his hands over the engine block. This no doubt surprised some oncoming motorists, or so we assumed from the erratic swerves the vehicles made as they passed. Many
people have never seen a man crouched in the engine compartment of a truck speeding through a blizzard, and the few who have may choose not to believe it anyway.
Even the boys at Pete's Gas Station apparently had never before seen such a spectacle, judging from the way they gathered around and stared slack-jawed at Finley.
“D-don't anybody s-say anything,” Al growled, “not a w-w-word!”
Someone commented later that the older Finley gets the more crotchety he becomes, and it's true. As I often tell him, he is indeed becoming old beyond his years. Otherwise, how explain his spending most of the following day in bed? Since Finley was too feeble to answer the door, his wife was kind enough to loan me his snow blower to clear my driveway. When I was almost finished, I noticed Finley glaring down at me from his upstairs bedroom window. I guess he had been awakened by the ‘punkity punkity punkity' sound of his new snow blower. Old age tends to turn people into light sleepers, no question about it.
B
ack during my single-digit ages, I often thought about running away and joining the French Foreign Legion. The uniform was nice, and I liked the idea of riding horses and camels across the desert. Only one thing bothered me. I wondered if the Legionnaires were issued night lights. My love of adventure had its limits. I could easily imagine a battle-hardened Legionnaire sergeant reporting to his company commander, “Looks grim, sir. We've run out of food and water and the ammunition's nearly gone. Worse yet, we're short on fuel for the men's night lights.” With my luck, I'd be the one whose night light ran out of fuel first.
I realized, of course, that fear of darkness was a serious flaw in my character. Since my character was riddled with flaws anyway, I didn't worry much about one more. Nevertheless, I didn't want my friends to find out I was afraid of the dark, and I went to great lengths to keep my secret from
them. Take, for instance, the time Ronnie Ditmire came out to our farm to spend the night with me.
Ronnie had no sooner set foot in the house than he came up with the suggestion that he and I sleep out in the backyard. He said he'd had a lot of experience sleeping out in backyards in town, but this was his first opportunity to do so in the country.
“Yeah, well,” I said. “Sure. In the dark, you mean. Sleep out. That would be fun. You don't mind a lot of black widow spiders crawling all over you, do you, Ronnie?”
“You got black widow spiders in your yard?”
Patting my hair back down, I retracted a few premature goosebumps. Unfortunately, my evil sister, the Troll, overheard our conversation and rushed to put in her oar and roil the waters. “What are you telling Ronnie? There are no black widow spiders in our yard, you silly!”
“There are too,” I said nervously.
“Ma!” the Troll roared. “Are there any black widow spiders in the yard?”
Mom, ever ready to rush to my defense, stuck her head out of the kitchen. “No, of course not. Where did you ever get a dumb idea like that?”
“See?” the Troll said.
“I thought there were,” I said, smiling weakly at Ronnie.
“Good,” he said. “Then we can sleep out in the yard tonight, after all.”
“I can't think of any reason why not,” I said. “Unless you happen to be bothered by poisonous snakes. Ever seen anybody get snakebit? First they swell up into a great big horrible ball, and then they turn blue and green and yellow and then it starts to get real bad.”
“My dad says there ain't any poisonous snakes around
here,” Ronnie said. “So we don't have to worry about snakes.”
“I thought we did,” I said.
“Of course not,” the Troll put in. “There aren't any poisonous snakes around here—not even when it's
dark
!” She cackled trollishly.
“Ma!” I yelled. “The Troll is bothering us. Tell her to leave us alone!”
“Don't refer to your sister as the Troll,” my mother said. “Now, Trudy, get out of there and leave the boys alone.”
The Troll backed slowly out of the room, grinning evilly. “Hope you have a good time sleeping out-in-the-dark. The weather report in the paper says there's going to be heavy darkness all night tonight
cackle cackle
!
”
Just my luck—heavy darkness. And here was Ronnie, pressing ahead with his plan for sleeping out. This was getting out of hand. We were actually getting some old blankets and quilts down out of the attic to make a bed in the yard. What madness! I considered asking Ronnie to take an oath of secrecy and then confessing to him my disgusting fear of darkness. He would probably understand.
“I'll tell you something weird,” Ronnie said. “I tried to get Fred Phelps to sleep out with me one night, and he said he couldn't, he was afraid of the dark. A big guy like Fred, you wouldn't expect him to be yellow-bellied chicken, would ya? He even made me take a secret oath not to tell anybody.”
“Fred's dumb, too,” I said. So much for that idea …
Darkness was already coming down off the mountain, crawling out of the woods, and oozing up from the creek bottom. Down in the swamp, a chorus of frogs welcomed the coming of night. Stupid frogs.
Several times in my young life, through some monumental miscalculation, I had been surprised by darkness while playing with friends at a neighboring farm. Galloping along at the head of a column of French Legionnaires, I would yell over my shoulder, “Watch out for an ambush, men. It's getting dark and …”
Whoa, hoss.
I take a look around. Hannnnnhhh! My deadly enemy, darkness, has slipped in between me and my house! “Uh-oh,” I tell the other Legionnaires. “I'm late for supper.” And then I fire myself into the darkness. I can feel its long, bony fingers clutching at me, its grisly jaws nipping at my heels, and I streak,
streak
I say, through the silent, creepy blackness until, at last, I burst into the benevolent, life-saving light of my kitchen. Startled by the bang and whoosh of my sudden arrival, the womenfolk emit small shrieks and bound about in a mist of hairpins. Ah! Once again I have defeated the enemy! I slide into my chair and ask, “What's for supper?”
The Troll detected my fear of darkness early on, and used it for her own amusement. Once, walking home with her through the woods in winter, I noticed that the shadows of the trees had lengthened and were now blending together into great patches of—darkness. The last of the daylight slid up the barren birches as if being sucked through giant straws into the gaping maw of night.
“It's getting dark!” I warned.
“So what?” the Troll said, crunching on ahead through the snow.
“We'd better run,” I said. “We don't want to get caught out here after dark.”
The Troll stopped, turned around, and studied me thoughtfully.
“We can't run,” she said. “If we run, the wolves will attack.”
I looked around, as one is wont to do after such an announcement. “What wolves?”
“The wolves that have been following us,” she said. “Don't tell me you haven't seen them!”
Well, now that she mentioned it, I did indeed see the wolves, slipping along through the shadows to the left and right of us.
The Troll calmly studied my reaction. “Why are you twisting yourself all up like that, you silly?”
Apparently she had never before seen anybody wind up the mainspring. Not run! I would have laughed if I'd had the time and the inclination, but I had neither.
Sprannnnnnngg
! And I was gone.
At the time, I knew nothing about the infectious nature of panic. Otherwise I wouldn't have been so surprised when, upon reaching my top cruising speed, I noticed the Troll passing me on the left and still accelerating, her braids snapping like bullwhips as she cut in front of me. Maybe she thought there actually were some wolves following us, I don't know. More than likely it was simply that panic loves company. For my part, I couldn't have cared less about a mere pack of wolves. A pack of wolves wasn't even in the same league as a pack of darkness.
But now here were Ronnie and I, engaged in the insanity of actually spreading quilts and blankets on top of an old hay tarp in preparation for spending the night outdoors. If I even relaxed my feigned enthusiasm for the undertaking—good word that, undertaking—Ronnie would become suspicious. Then
both
Fred Phelps and I would become outcasts at school next fall, when Ronnie spread the word that we
two yellow-bellied chickens were scared of the dark. Poor ol' Fred's reputation was already shot; mine hung in precarious balance.
Of course, all I needed was a tiny little night light. Something the size of a birthday-cake candle would do—a fifteen-foot birthday-cake candle. Any obvious night light, though, would cause Ronnie to put some tough questions to me, like, “What you doing with that flashlight and the big stack of batteries?” Even if I'd had a big stack of batteries, I couldn't have risked it.
“What say we turn in?” Ronnie asked. “It's already dark.”
“I noticed,” I said.
I glanced longingly up at our house, the lights of which were being flicked off one by one as my mother made her final rounds. She opened the back door and called out, “I'm going to bed now. You boys all right?”
“Yep,” Ronnie said.
“Yaup,” I said.
Mom went back inside, and minutes later the last light on our side of the house flicked off. Ronnie and I were in
TOTAL DARKNESS
! Not just the well-defined cube of darkness that filled a bedroom, but a great shapeless ocean of night!
“You ever hear the story about the stranger who got himself hung for claim-jumping, and his ghost still wanders these parts looking for revenge?” Ronnie said.
“Yeah, I heard it.”
“Well, my pa seen that ghost crossing a field right out this way one night. Foggy it was, he said, and …”
Idea! Why hadn't I thought of it before! I leaped out of the covers and told Ronnie I'd be right back. “I forgot to brush my teeth,” I said, rushing toward the house. In the
bathroom, I jerked the string on the overhead light, waited an appropriate length of time, and then sauntered back outside. Perfect! The light from the bathroom window cast a nice rectangular patch of light right next to my side of the hay tarp.
“You left the bathroom light on,” Ronnie said.
“Dang,” I said. “If that doesn't beat all! Oh, well, a little light won't hurt anything.”
“This ghost story is better if it's plumb dark,” Ronnie said. “But anyway, this ghost …” He droned on about the ghost and its horrible doings. I smiled sleepily, starting to drift off as I secretly stroked the grassy patch of protective light, occasionally turning to admire it in all its loveliness.
Without warning, an ominous shadow suddenly appeared in my patch of light. Wha? I turned and looked up at the bathroom window. No! There, framed in the window, stood the Troll! She was in silhouette, so I couldn't see her face, but I knew she was grinning her evil grin as she stared down in my direction. Slowly her hand reached for the light string. NO! DON'T DO IT! She made several teasing motions with the light string, then—Zap! The light was gone. Faintly, off in the darkness, I could hear the hollow sound of trollish laughter. She would have already locked all the doors to the house. Trolls are nothing if not thorough.
So now there was nothing to do but suffer the night away. For me, the Troll had murdered any hope of sleep. Under my breath I put a curse on her: May a garter snake turn up in your underwear drawer! (And a garter snake would, which shows you can't discount the power of curses.)
A friendly wind swept back the clouds and a few stars appeared. Starlight was better than nothing. I noticed several little black shapes flitting about among the stars.
“And after the ghost got done with the two boys …” Ronnie was saying. “Hey, what are those black shapes flitting about among the stars?”
“Just some bats,” I said.
“Bats!” cried Ronnie. “I can't stand bats! Quick, let's go inside!”
“Too late,” I said. “The Troll has locked all the doors.”
“Aaaaiiiiigh!” Ronnie said. “What'll we do?”
“I don't mind bats, myself,” I said. “But if they scare you, maybe you can hide under the covers. Sometimes bats like to crawl under the covers, but if I see any try it, I'll drive them off.” I studied the quivering lump under the blanket. “I'm going to be awake anyway.”
BOOK: The Grasshopper Trap
5.48Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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