This appears in a pre-2010 issue
of Down in the Dirt magazine.
Saddle-stitched issues are no longer
printed, but you can requesting it
“re-released” through amazon sale
as a 6" x 9" ISBN# book! Email us for re-release to order.
Darkness was falling fast as the four boys hurried for home. All of them wore breeches, knee socks, and newsboy caps. A horse-drawn wagon clopped down the street, oil lanterns fixed to the side of the coach.
The boys stopped to stare at it. Horse-drawn carriages were becoming an increasing rarity. Electric trolleys had dealt the first blow, and Ford’s Model T had sounded the death knell. More and more people in the tenements they lived in were getting flivvers, and Henry Ford kept cutting the cost of his cars.
However, the boys’s minds were on more immediate concerns. “I want to get home. I don’t want to get eaten by the monsters,” Davy said. He was the youngest and shortest of the group.
Tommy crossed his arms over his chest, and said, “Don’t worry. I won’t let the monsters get you.”
He was the oldest of the group at eight, and he boasted not only smoking a cigarette, but also having drunk some of his dad’s whiskey.
All the other boys looked up to him.
Davy’s eyes went wide. “Really?”
Tommy nodded. “Really. Do you think the monsters would mess with me?”
Tony wished he could have the others’s confidence. He had the curly black hair and olive complexion of his Mediterranean ancestry, which made him suspect in the other boys’s eyes.
Added to that Tommy had expressed skepticism that the fact that he had been born with his head in a caul was significant. His gramma told him it meant he had the second sight. He would be able to see things his fiends wouldn’t.
Tony was a quiet, introspective child, so he was tolerated as part of their gang. He had a sense that something was about to happen, but he didn’t know what. It would be pointless to challenge Tommy anyway.
They walked by a woman who was hanging laundry up on a clothesline. “Why, if I saw a monster...”
A drilling shriek made them turn around. What they saw made their blood run cold. A large white shape was fluttering after them. There was no discernable head, but they could see the monster’s gaping mouth in the top of the torso. A pair of tentacles waved in the air, reaching out for the boys.
Tommy’s eyes went wide, and he screamed, “Run, run!”
The other boys needed no encouragement. They ran as if their lives depended on it, because they were sure it did. The cool evening air was like knives in their heaving lungs. A cold breeze, like monster breath, urged them on.
They were panting from fear and exertion, and a burning feeling began to creep up their arms and legs. None of them dared slow down though, because a quick check over their shoulders showed the monster was gaining.
Meanwhile, Davy was falling behind. He couldn’t yell for the fellers to slow down, because he didn’t have the breath. He knew it was a pointless exercise anyway. The specter of his own impending death made him want to cry, but that would be babyish.
Then the form engulfed him, and he went down in a heap of arms and legs. He found enough breath for a howl of pure terror. Tony stopped, and pivoted around. What he saw turned his blood to ice.
Davy’s head had been smashed, like a melon that had been dropped from the roof. He was covered with mud and blood, and shards of white could be seen poking through his lacerated skin.
Tony felt cold and hot at once, and he couldn’t draw enough air into his lungs. He was rooted to the spot, while a storm of complex and unfamiliar emotions raged throughout him. Though he had a dim idea what they were, he had no name for them. The word CALLING CARD was branded on his mind with styluses of fire.
Then his paralysis broke, the vision faded, and a force seemed to impel him forward. He saw his hand reaching out for the monster, but it was like it belonged to somebody else. He was fascinated by this. He didn’t think of himself as being brave in any real sense. His emotions were anesthetized.
As soon as his fingers touched the monster, the truth dawned on him. Ralphy began laughing like a hyena. He whacked the smaller boy on the back. “Davy, you wet end! That’s a shirt!”
He scowled, and crossed his arms over his chest. “I am not a wet end!”
Tommy hooked his thumbs into his belt loops, and scoffed, “Aw, I knew it was an old shirt. I was just seeing if you guys would fall for it.”
Despite his protests, it was clear he had fallen in status. They all turned toward Tony. He felt their eyes on him, and a death glower from Tommy. If he wanted to, in that moment, he could take over the gang.
A second premonition came to him at that moment. It came as a gentle wave this time, instead of a violent lightning bolt. A feeling of futility came over him. He would never quite supplant Tommy. His gift made him different, and sooner or later, the fellers would turn on him.
He wouldn’t be able to save Davy anyway. He was foreordained to die. He heard himself saying, “Excuse me, fellers. I have to give Mrs. Raoczy her shirt back.”
Until that moment, he hadn’t known the woman’s name. Yet, as soon as he said it, he knew it was correct. He walked away, feeling their eyes on him, like a leaden weight. He knew he would never be part of their circle again.
Six months later, the boys were running home for dinner. The heat of summer was giving way to the balmier temperatures and bright leaves of fall. Tony hadn’t been seen since the fateful shirt incident, which nobody brought up anymore.
Tommy had regained the fellers’s esteem by teaching them a couple new swear words. A couple new guys were allowed to join the gang. They only knew of Tony by reputation. The only one who had talked to him since then was Davy, who had pestered him to know what he had seen.
At first, he had refused, saying it didn’t bear repeating. However, under Davy’s relentless badgering, Tony had given in, and told him.
When Davy repeated it to the rest of the fellers, they thought it was uproariously funny. He had become quiet and sullen, though. Tommy was laughing and joking as he told the new guys about it. They laughed on cue, as expected.
Soon, school would begin, but they were enjoying their freedom to the fullest right now. They were approaching the intersection, when the toot of a car’s horn alerted them an automobile was coming. Tommy’s arm shot up at a right angle, to signal them to stop. All of them did, except Davy.
His eyes were glazed, and his legs were pumping. They screamed, and tried to grab him. Of course, their hands were unable to find any purchase on his clothing. He stumbled, his arms windmilling, and he landed on the street. The Tin Lizzie didn’t even slow. It ran over his ribcage with a series of twiglike snaps.
He writhed like a bug stuck on a pin. His feet drummed on the cobbled street. Blood poured out of his mouth. He tried to scream, but all he could force out was a liquid mewling sound. All pretenses of humanity were gone. All that was left was a struggling organism, seeking release from its agony.
A demented response to its prayer came when a truck came barreling around the corner. There was no time to stop. It crushed Davy’s head with its left front tire.
When it passed by, they saw his head lying on the road, to the left. It had taken on an oddly deflated look, his brains having burst out of the top of his head. A fan of yellow cerebrospinal fluid surrounded it, like a gruesome halo.
They stood, staring in horror a moment. Then Tommy shouted, “Run! Run!” In that moment, they were glad Tony was gone. Nobody wanted to know what horrible fate he would predict for them.
