(A sample from Crawlspace.)
© 2009 asotir.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
Friday – May 13
7:16 AM
Bright Dayz Motel
THE MORNING was bright and cold. Only a couple clouds darkened the sky. The clouds were all stretched out by the wind that streamed down out of the middle of Canada, cold still with winter. The wind shook the branches of the gnarled old tree. Tommy walked up to the it. There were dark stains, like blood, on the roots. And something caught down between them: a book.
The Eve of St. Agnes. By John Keats.
Tommy read the inscription on the flyleaf:
To Agnes from Miss Quinn.
Beneath that was scrawled in pencil, in big girlish loops, the words
This book belongs to Agnes Renfield!
Don’t anybody steal it!
A car horn honked. On the curb where Miss Quinn had parked was now a beat-up Chevy pickup truck. Agnes stepped out. She wore a little dress with her hair loose and she looked like a total girl today. She leaned against the Chevy door. She acted nervous.
Tommy stared at her. She was real. She was really there. Somehow he worked up enough spit in his mouth to say something lame, like, ‘Hi, Agnes.’
She smiled back at him. ‘Hi.’
‘You left something.’ He held out the book.
‘Oh, you found it! Great!’
She hugged him. The awkward spell broke just like that.
‘It was under the tree.’ He laughed; her fingers were tickling him in his ribs.
‘Thank you thank you thank you! You don’t know what this means to me, to get this back! Anyway, here. For you.’
She held out a small package in gift wrapping.
‘What’s this?’
‘Birthday present. Go on, open it!’
He did. It was a book just like hers – The Eve of St. Agnes. On the flyleaf was an inscription in the big loops, but written carefully in ink:
To Tommy from Agnes
‘I told you it’s my fave, right? You can read it now. You can, you know, think of me. When you read it.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘ “Thanks” is what people usually say. Or so I’ve heard.’
‘Thanks.’
Agnes spun on her heels. She lifted her arms up to the sky. ‘You’re welcome. Hey, you haven’t met my big brother yet, have you? Andrew, this is Tommy – you know.’
A tall, rangy, arrogantly handsome boy who looked about 18 years old, climbed around out of the driver’s side, leaned against the hood. He shook hands with Tommy.
‘Hey.’
‘Hey.’
‘Andrew’s in a play tonight at school,’ Agnes said. ‘You should come see him, he’s really good. Show him, Andrewz.’
‘Cut it out, Little Aggie.’
‘You’ll have to forgive Andrewz, he’s a jerk sometimes. But look!’
Agnes showed Tommy Andrew’s hand. An thick silver ring shone on one finger.
‘Aggie likes to show off,’ Andrew said.
‘Andrewz, shut up, will you? I gave it to him. For good luck in the play tonight. He’s going to be an actor – he’s going to be a great actor.’
‘Cut it out, will you?’
‘Well? It’s true, isn’t it?’
‘Hey – wear the white dress tonight.’
‘Oh that’s too much for school!’
‘Okay. Wear it for me another time.’
Tommy glanced back at the motel. Styles was polishing the chrome of the Ford. Trickman loaded the gym bags into the trunk. The Professor stood by and watched Tommy.
Tommy said, ‘I ought to be going.’
Agnes looked back. ‘Is that the Professor staring at us?’
‘Uh-huh. Thanks for the book.’
‘Read it. And come to the play tonight! Oedipus – Andrew’s Oedipus!’
Brother and sister got back into the pickup. Andrew fired the motor and pulled out. Tommy dropped the wrapping paper and it rolled along the edge of the asphalt and a big black beetle crawled toward it.
9:23 AM
Briggsville
LATER, in the Ford, they were cruising the town. They sat in the usual seats. Papers checked a map.
‘In the past muh, month,’ he said, ‘there were incidents here, here, and, uh, here.’
The Professor pointed. ‘And last night – here.’
Tommy asked, ‘So, we’re staying here awhile?’
From the wheel, Trickman said, ‘ “Jeri’s Diner & Fresh Coffee.“ I like the sound of that.’
Papers started folding up the map. ‘Puh-plenty of work for us here, Tuh – Tommy.’
Styles combed his hair while he drove. ‘Can’t you ever think about anything else?’
Tommy looked sideways out the window. He thought about Agnes. She must be in school by now. He wondered where she was. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine her in some class, maybe Miss Quinn’s science class…
…BUT ALL he could see was darkness. Then something was moving in the dark, growing brighter, clearer…
Cockroaches. Swarming and climbing all over each other, inside glass walls. It looked like a terrarium only it was full of roaches, a hundred of them or more, crawling the sides and under the lid. Next to the terrarium was a jar with a praying mantis. Then an ant farm, a glass jar filled with a hornet’s nest, and others – a thousand insects on display. They were all sitting in a room that looked like a school science lab.
Miss Quinn was leaning over the glass with the roaches. She was saying something, but he could only see her mouth moving.
Miss Quinn was wearing more formal clothes today, a jacket and tight dark skirt. Her hair was up and she was wearing glasses. She didn’t look like a teacher like on TV. More like one of the executive women from movies. She was lecturing her science class.
He strained his ears and looked closer at Miss Quinn’s mouth, and the sound of her voice started coming through, a few words here and there:
‘Insects,’ she was saying, then he couldn’t hear her, then her voice sounded close and breathy as if she were talking right to him: ‘Bugs. Six legged, egg-bearing creatures. There are over a million distinct species of them we know of. Some entomologists speculate there could be as many as thirty million species they don’t even know about.’
IN THE FORD, Tommy shook his head and blinked. The things he imagined he could see seemed too real. They were sucking him in, and he felt like he was falling and falling.
What was happening to him these days? What was wrong with him? Something was going really bad but he couldn’t even tell the Professor about it – not since he heard what the Professor said on the phone last night. What did that mean anyway?
He squinted against the sun and fought to stay with the other guys in the car, to be part of the Team and not look back into the science lab.
He tried to keep his voice casual, careless. ‘Professor? What are the Crawlers?’
Trickman guffawed. ‘Oh, you don’t want to ask that, pal.’
Tommy wondered if he could ask Trickman for help. No. Trickman was part of the Team and the Team hung tight. If Tommy told Trickman anything, Trickman would tell the Professor. He’d have to.
Better keep quiet about it for now. Just go along and make believe nothing was wrong. ‘I mean, what are they, really?’
Trickman was saying something. All Tommy could catch was, ‘…came from the flying saucers, pal.’
‘No, no, no. They came out of the sewers,’ Styles said.
Trickman volleyed back, ‘From the atomic bomb!’
Tommy faked a laugh to go along with the other guys. But his eyes were blurring, and even with his eyes still open he started seeing the science lab again.
MISS QUINN was continuing her lecture. The students were listening from lab benches. He looked around, searching … Agnes was sitting with a girl in the back. Somehow he knew this was her best friend; anyway they were looking pretty tight. On the other girl’s lab book was a name drawn in ballpoint and markers, all flowery: Angeline. That must have been her name.
Angeline looked older than Agnes, maybe, 17 or older. She looked like a live wire. Angeline was pushing her lab book in front of Agnes – a note was written there and he craned just enough to make it out:
So he just drives around the country? No school?
Agnes was reading the note. She looked at Angeline and nodded. Agnes was writing:
!!!
Angeline wrote and pushed the lab book back:
Lucky prick!
TOMMY snapped his head back and sucked in his breath.
He stared out the window. He made his eyes focus on the buildings of the town, the sunlight, the other cars. He didn’t know if the Professor was watching or not. But he gave a big yawn just in case.
He heard Papers say, ‘Knock it off, you guh, guys. The tuh, truth is, Tommy, we don’t know what the Crawlers are. Nobody does. They’ve been chase, chasing them since 1954, but, but were they here before then?’
Tommy tried to focus on the Team. But again the dream of Miss Quinn’s science class started crowding back, pushing away the guys, filling his eyes and ears…
MISS QUINN was leaning over the specimen jars. She was smiling down on the bugs and crawling things as if they were fuzzy puppies and kittens and human babies.
‘The earliest fossilized remains of insects,’ she was saying, ‘date from 570 million years ago.’
The dream was swinging around behind Miss Quinn’s figure and looking into the back of the room. Agnes was taking the lab book back. She was reading Angeline’s note:
Is he coming to the play tonight?
Agnes was frowning. Then she was writing:
???
THE PROFESSOR’S VOICE broke the dream. Tommy was back in the Ford again.
‘Papers is right, Tommy. Someday we’ll find out. For now, all we have to know is that they burn. And we burn them and go on burning them until they’re exterminated.’
‘Extinguished,’ Trickman added.
‘Extinct,’ said Styles.
Tommy opened his book. His fingers drummed on the lines of poetry. The sound of drums got louder and louder in his ears, drowning out what the men were saying. He tried to clear his eyes and focus on his study guide but the print blurred and he saw instead the last lines from Angeline’s lab book there in the book on his lap:
Is he coming to the play tonight?
???
The sound of drums got louder until they were all he could hear.
