ALVIN SULLENGER part 2

Copyright (c) 2015 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

ALVIN SULLENGER

Part 2

                                                  By R. Peterson                          

Alvin lay on the sick-bed inside the principal’s office. Getting hit by a speeding baseball with that enlarged-head could have been fatal, his teacher, Mrs. Dern thought. Thankfully, there didn’t appear to be any critical damage. The school-nurse patted his cheeks with a wet cloth and checked for bruising. The nine year-old was hallucinating. He sat-up with his glasses askew and stammered “I see them … I see the dark threads!” Mrs. Dern shook her head and thought that was probably typical behavior for any genius. Backing out of the office, she hurried along the corridor, just as Chloe O’Brian emerged from the classroom, clutching her backpack. ‘I’ll walk Alvin home,’ she said firmly.

Mrs. Dern smiled gratefully and then blurted: “How did this poor child happen to run into a baseball?”

Chloe thought about telling her teacher that she thought Terrell Adams had hit Alvin on purpose, but decided to keep quiet at least for now. It might have been an accident, but she didn’t think so. “I guess Terrell’s throw must have gone wild,” she said.

Mrs. Dern sighed, “That’s the price you pay for being a boy.”

            “Will he be okay?” Chloe asked, as she shrugged her backpack over her shoulders. Mrs. Dern could not imagine how the school’s most popular girl could be friends with a nerd like Sullenger. She remembered her own pre-teen years. If she’d had Chloe’s stunning good looks, she would have hung out with the popular kids and gone to boy-girl parties or went roller-skating instead of spending Saturday nights with the stupid Cloverdale Elementary Foreign Language Club.

            “I think he will be fine,” Mrs. Dern said. “He’s lucky to have you as a friend. She paused as she looked at the beautiful auburn-haired girl. “It’s Marsha Hick’s birthday today. We’re having cup-cakes in the afternoon. Are you sure you want to miss that?”

Chloe laughed. “My mother won’t let me eat cup-cakes at home … she says they’re made by the Devil!”

            “Your mother must be on a diet,” Mrs. Dern sneered. “I didn’t think Margie O’Brian needed to lose even one pound!”

            “She doesn’t,” Chloe said with a grin. “Because she stays away from cup-cakes.”

Mrs. Dern and the school nurse helped Alvin to his feet. “Chloe volunteered to walk you home,” she told him. “We’ve phoned your mother, and she’ll call and check on you later.”

            “I’m okay,” Alvin said. “I just have a lot of strange thoughts going through my head.”

With a head that size I’m sure there’s room for a ton of them … Mrs. Dern thought. “Get some rest,” she said, “and we hope to see you in class tomorrow!”

Brains and beauty Mrs. Dern mused as she watched them walk down the hall toward the large front entrance. What a strange pair they make.

-------2-------

Another pair of eyes watched Chloe and Alvin from behind the just cracked-open door of the boy’s bathroom. Droll ran from the corners of Terrell Adam’s mouth like a rabid dog. He didn’t think the O’Brian girl had told about him trying to kill Alvin and he was determined to make sure she didn’t. The children’s story Mrs. Dern read just before recess kept playing over and over in his head along with the strange fragrance of almonds. The goats had no right to go trip tripping across the Troll’s bridge. They lied to the troll and tricked him. Terrell’s rubbed his red eyes as he watched the pair leave the building. It must be the damn odor from the almonds … it was everywhere. He wasn’t about to have someone destroy his future as a major league baseball player. He knew two bridges that both of them had to cross on their way home. When he left school without permission he doubted that even the principal would call his parents, it had happened so many times before. His father was mean when he was drunk and his mother was that way even when Lester wasn’t. No school official was watching as he crept out the back door.

Terrell put a hand on the switch-blade knife in his pocket. He knew a short-cut to the bridge. This time the story of the Troll and the Goats would have a new ending.

-------3-------

“I’m sorry you’re going to miss Marsha Hick’s party,” Alvin hung his head as they crossed the city park. “Everyone likes cup-cakes.”

Chloe laughed. “You’re my cup-cake Alvin,” she told him. “I like being with boys who talk about things other than fishing and hunting and whether or not the Yankees are going to win the World Series.”

“But I’ll never be your boyfriend,” Alvin looked at her sadly. The thick-lens glasses askew on his nose made his eyes appear to bulge like a fish. “I’m smart enough to know that.”

“We’ll always be friends,” Chloe held his hand as they crossed an icy place in the street, “and you’re the only boy-friend I’ve got.”

Alvin’s laugh sounded like the bubbles coming from the water cooler in the school cafeteria. “If only we could make things happen with our imaginations!”

            “I can imagine lots of things,” Chloe said. “But walking down a sidewalk in my hometown with the smartest kid in the world is hard to beat!”

            “I think being smart is mostly a curse,” Alvin told her. “I’d trade it all to be athletic or someone popular like you … or Clark Jensen.” His voice cracked when he said the tall boy’s name.

            “Clark thinks he’s God’s gift to girls,” Chloe told him. “Being popular isn’t everything.”

-------4-------

            Terrell Adams was jumping fences and running through back yards on his way to the Cloverdale Canal Bridge. It was a perfect location for an ambush. The canal had been empty for over a month and the bottom had been recently scraped with a grader. The sides were eight feet high and if you found yourself in the bottom without a ladder or a rope hidden and tied to a tree you had to walk along the canal bottom for three blocks to the Wallace Avenue pumping station to climb out. Terrell always thought of the area under the bridge as his own special place. He kept cigarettes there (stolen from his father) and smoked them after school or when he skipped school altogether. The only other person who knew about his hideout was Mike Lee and that poor sap was right now probably sweating through one of Mrs. Dern’s math lessons.

            Terrell was surprised to see the rope dangling into the canal. He was sure he’d put it away. The smell of almonds was thick in the air as he lowered himself down.

Mike Lee smiled as he watched Terrell shimmy down the rope. “Skipping school, huh?” The smell of almonds lingered in the air, plus the smell of cigarette smoke. Of course Mike knew that the cigarettes were hidden at the top of the cement embankment they’d both smoked under the bridge many times before. From the butts on the ground it looked like Lee had smoked almost half a pack. Terrell raised both arms in the air and let out with a thunderous bellow that made his best friend take two steps back. “Hey! Chill out man! What are you so pissed about?”

“Those belong to the troll … they ain’t for goats!”

“What the hell are you talking about … goats?”

“Always there is someone wanting to go trip tripping across my bridge.” Terrell reached inside his pocket.

 Lee’s mouth gaped open for just a minute and then he laughed. “You’re talking about that stupid story Mrs. Dern reads every year to her fourth-grade class. She thinks we are all still in kindergarten.” He was still laughing when Terrell pulled out the knife. With a click the blade flashed open in the dim light.

“This has gone too far … damn it!” Lee dropped the cigarette and began to stumble backwards. “Are you crazy?”

Terrell lunged forward driving the blade into Lee’s chest just above his abdomen. Mike Lee took three gasping breaths before the blood began to trickle from his mouth and he collapsed on the ground. He stared at the huge boy walking toward him. “Help me.” His voice sounded like air escaping from a balloon, then with frantic force. “Help me somebody pleeeeeese!

Terrell raised the knife to stab him again. The goat was yelling so loud Terrell thought someone crossing the bridge might hear … then he had an idea.

            “I’ll let you go,” Terrell said as he loomed over the bleeding boy. “If you don’t tell anyone I’m down here!”

            “I won’t tell … I promise.” Mike’s voice sounded like he was blowing bubbles.

Terrell climbed the rope until he could see the street. “They’re coming!” he told Lee. “I want you to cry for help when they get right over the bridge.” He knelt and flicked the knife blade across to his best friend’s throat. “But so help me God, if you tell on the Troll I’ll cut your #%$@# head off!”

-------5--------

            Alvin and Chloe were almost at the bridge. Alvin was feeling better despite the headache. Still he sat his backpack down and needed to rest. “Did you ever wonder,” he said. “That there might be another force in the universe, like the unknown power that makes scientific abnormalities like acupuncture work?”

            “Ewwww … you’re talking about how Chinese doctors stick needles all over in people’s bodies to cure them from pain?” Chloe stuck out her tongue. “Yuck! I’d rather do like the TV commercial says and trust Bayer Aspirin.”

            “I know it looks gross,” Alvin told her, “but it works.” He stopped and took a folded paper from a science book that was not from the school. “Qi is Chinese word meaning life energy. That’s what they say makes acupuncture work.” He looked at her hoping she would believe him. “When I got hit with the baseball, I was in another place, a dark place without form but I could see the threads …”

            “I heard you mumbling about seeing dark threads,” Chloe said. “I thought you were hallucinating.”

            “I guess that’s possible,” Alvin told her. “But I swear I could see the strings that bind the universe together. They surround all matter and weave the fabric of space time. These fibers have substance, although with a negative weight. They produce a kind of Dark energy that is the opposite of gravity and they push things apart.”
            “You lost me when you started talking about tying the universe up with string,” Chloe told him. “I have a hard time remembering when water boils and freezes on the Celsius scale.”

            “That’s easy,” Alvin said. “Just remember one-hundred and zero.”

            “Anyway what good is this … Dark energy?”

            “Since it’s the opposite of our energy,” Alvin said. “You should be able to use it without releasing it.”

            “How is that possible?”

            “Heat is a type of energy, that you release when you burn wood … right?”

            “Sure everyone knows that.”

            “And it’s a physical reaction … right?”

            “Sure … wood burns … and people get warm … you can’t get more physical than that.”

            “Dark energy has to be intangible … a type of spiritual force!”

Chloe laughed. “Alvin, I think you’ve just solved the mysteries of heaven and Earth and we now have a scientific reason for why prayer works.” She picked up both bags, put an arm around him and they started walking again. “Do us both a favor my friend and don’t tell Reverend White or any of his snooty parishioners about this. They don’t burn witches in Europe or America anymore, but that doesn’t mean the religious community in Cloverdale won’t burn a Devil.”

-------6-------

             Terrell twisted Mike’s arm when he heard footsteps on the bridge overhead. Mike was already in agony from the knife wound and he made a feeble cry. “Tell them you’ve fallen and you need help!” Terrell twisted the arm harder this time nearly pulling it from the socket. “Help me … My God! Someone help me!” Mike screamed.

Chloe was the first to hear the cry for help. “It sounds like someone is under the bridge and they’re hurt,” she said.

Alvin looked over the bridge railing. “If they’ve fallen in, they probably can’t get out,” he said. “This canal has been recently scooped-out and the sides must be eight feet deep.”

             “That’s how he climbed down!”  Chloe found the rope tied to the tree. “Whoever it is must have slipped and broken his leg.”

            “Someone has to stay up here and pull you both up,” Chloe told him as she tied the rope around his waist. “And that looks like me. As long as this guy is not as big as an elephant I should be able to pull him out. Just drag him out from under the bridge and tie the rope around his waist like I’m doing to you and I’ll do the rest.”

Alvin gulped as Chloe lowered him into the dry canal. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he whimpered.

-------7-------

Alvin was still trying to see in the dim light under the bridge when Terrell grabbed him from behind and held his hand over his mouth. “You tell that nanny goat you’re with that you need some help and she’ll have to come down … understand?” He relaxed his hand just a bit so Alvin could answer. “Go to hell you bastard,” Alvin snarled. Terrell quickly put his hand back and twisted Alvin’s head as he dragged him farther under the bridge. This wasn’t going as planned but it still might work out. He struck Alvin once with his fist and the nerd was out cold. “She’ll come looking for him,” Terrell whispered to himself, “and when she does they’ll be no more trip trapping on my bridge. Terrell sat on the ground next to Alvin’s limp body and played with his father’s stolen knife. He could almost taste the almonds.

Chloe leaned over the bridge railing and yelled for the third time … there was no answer. “What the hell is going on down there?” she muttered as she began to descend the rope.

-------8-------

Terrell Adams could see the girl as a dark silhouette just before she walked under the bridge. Her eyes would take a minute to adjust to the light … now was the time to strike! Something grabbed his pant-leg. It was the nerd; he was awake. “Leave her alone,” Alvin sobbed. “She’s my best friend.”

Terrell laughed and kicked Alvin with his boot. “It’s too late … she’s mine!” he thundered.

            “It’s never too late!” Chloe said. When Terrell turned she spayed his eyes with something that made them feel like they were on fire.

            “I’ll kill you … I’ll kill you all he screamed as he thrashed on the ground.

            “Come on Alvin.” She helped him to his feet. “My dad always makes me carry pepper-spray with me where ever I go. There was only one charge and he’ll be able to see in about a minute.”

            “Don’t leave me down here,” Alvin begged.

            “I won’t … I promise,” Chloe assured him as she dragged him to the rope. “Hang on! I think I can haul us both out.”

Alvin put his arms around Chloe’s neck and she began to pull them both up the steep sides. They were almost to the top when the rope broke. They both crashed into the bottom of the canal. Chloe could hear Terrell howling from under the bridge. “I see both you goats now!” he thundered.

            “Take my hand we have to try to get to the pumping station,” Chloe told Alvin. Then she ran dragging her friend.

Terrell smiled as he followed them with an easy pace. He’d been in the pump buildings many times. They were three converted grain silos connected by short hallways. You could enter from the canal through the large intake pipes but the doors were all locked. Terrell began to whistle. He had the goats trapped and he could smell the almonds.

-------9-------

                Chloe tried the last door in the last building and it was locked too.  Her voice echoed in the tall metal structure. “I know you’re exhausted, but we have to get back in the canal and keep going. He’s out of his mind and he has us trapped in here.”

            “I think it’s too late,” Alvin told her. They heard Terrell beating his fists on the sides of the metal building and bellowing as he entered the first building. “I’m the big ugly Troll … and I’m going to eat till I’m full!”

            “We have to fight him,” Chloe said.

            “He’s too big and he has a knife,” Alvin whispered.

Terrell had searched the first building and was moving into the second. Chloe and Alvin were crouched behind a huge water pump. “There just isn’t any place to hide in here,” Chloe moaned.

Terrell was raging again and pounding on the walls as he came. “I’ll cut of your hoofs to make my stew … I’d be scared if I were you!”

            “Close your eyes and make your mind blank,” Alvin told her.

            “What? Are you trying to teach me meditation at a time like this?” Chloe was frantic.

Terrell Adams was scraping the knife-blade along the metal sides.  Chloe heard him enter the room but he seemed somehow distant. “I’ll cut off your heads,” he promised.”

            “Just close your eyes and clear your mind of all thoughts,” Alvin said. She felt him take her hand in his. “Please … just trust me.”

Terrell Adams was scraping the knife-blade along the metal sides.  Chloe heard him enter the room but he seemed somehow distant. “I’ll cut off your heads,” he promised.”

Chloe thought she could hear a siren from an ambulance or a police car … but it seemed very far away. She felt at peace … warm and a kind of floating feeling.  Had they both already been stabbed? Is this what it feels like to die?

Chloe opened her eyes once and saw Terrell Adams struggling with police officers as she and Alvin floated next to the ceiling. She closed her eyes again and heard the officers and others talking long after the police had dragged Terrell away. Mike Lee had clawed his way up the steep embankment and crawled out onto the road.  It’s amazing what people can do, when they want to save their lives.

It was only minutes after the investigators left, that she felt her and Alvin begin to descend.

            “Why didn’t anyone see us?” she asked when they were safe on the ground.

            “I wrapped us in the dark matter threads,” Alvin told her. “They‘re invisible … and also anti-gravity.”

            “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a genius?” Chloe kissed him so hard his pop-bottle lenses fell off and bounced off an old rusty water-pump motor.

Alvin laughed as he picked up his broken glasses. “Love really is blind,” he said.

THE END?

ALVIN SULLENGER

Copyright (c) 2015 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

ALVIN SULLENGER

By R. Peterson

A stream of smoke rose from the toaster just as Ellen Sullenger finished buttering the first two Wonder bread slices. Jan hurried past and grabbed a buttered one, tearing off chunks and stuffing them into her mouth so she wouldn’t smear her lipstick. Ellen handed the other buttered-slice to Alvin. He stared at it with a dismal expression, then his face crumpled. Ellen sighed and opened the fridge. Her youngest child demanded exactly one and a half spoonful’s of strawberry-jam on his toast … always. “I put tuna-fish sandwiches in your lunchbox along with cookies and a dime to buy fresh milk. No chocolate!” Keith walked past and grabbed a burnt slice from the toaster ignoring the charcoal as he chewed it dry. She spread jam on Alvin’s toast “Don’t you want me to scrape the burned bits from that?”

“No time.” Keith left mumbled crumbs on her cheek when he kissed her. “Rudford says everyone has to come in early all week. The mill has a new order and the processed lumber has to be finished by Friday.” He was already out the door. “Love you!”

“Daddy’s driving me. Love you Momma!” Jan was skipping through leaves on a front lawn as she headed toward the Nash.

 “Keep your coat buttoned until you get to school.” It was cold in September 1958 and Ellen worried about her youngest. Alvin was extremely smart and did well academically. It was the other fourth-graders that had her concerned. Alvin had been born with water on the brain and severe coordination problems. After a half-dozen operations, the scars on his head made him look like a pint-sized Frankenstein. Alvin had wobbled home on his spindly legs several times last year with a bleeding nose. He said he’d tripped, but Ellen didn’t think so. Children could be cruel to anyone labeled different, and Alvin certainly was.

Ellen grabbed his new jacket, the one the Sears man said everyone would be wearing, but Alvin shook his head. “No mama! The hood! I want the hood-coat.”

“You don’t want this new one? It’s your favorite color … red!” When Alvin set his mind to something he would not be detoured.

“No Mama. I want socking and hood-coat!” Ellen sighed and pulled a stocking cap from the shelf in the hallway closet and tugged it over his extra-large head, then pulled out last year’s ragged coat. “My you’re certainly bundled up!” She said as she helped him with the zipper. His ear-to-ear grin made her smile. She turned on the radio and watched Alvin wobble down the sidewalk as she scraped the last piece of burnt toast over the sink. After a commercial for Dash soap, Perry Como sang Catch a Falling Star.

-------2-------

Voices came from the other side of a large house when Alvin was almost to the corner. Terrell Adams and Mike Lee spotted him before he could duck behind Mrs. Descombey’s snowball bushes. “Hey Egghead! What do you eat for breakfast?” They were running toward him. Mike Lee laughed at his friend’s joke.

“I like toast with strawberry jam,” Alvin said, as if this information would satisfy the bullies. Terrell Adams, who’d skipped three years of school for medical reasons and was thirteen, always gave off a smell of almonds that Alvin associated with State Hospital North, Cloverdale’s mental health facility.

“You can’t eat eggs,” Terrell continued. “That would make you a cannibal … Egghead, Egghead, Egghead!” he taunted. Mike Lee snickered.

“My name is not Egghead,” Alvin stammered. “It’s Alvin … Alvin Sullenger.”

“I heard your name is Frankie …” Mike Lee pushed forward enjoying the look of confusion and fear on the younger child’s face, “…Frankie Stein!” Mike Lee laughed and looked at Terrell, but the older boy was rubbing his neck, perhaps he had another headache. Mike shoved Alvin into the bushes and Alvin’s lunch-box spilled on the sidewalk.

“Egghead likes tuna-fish!” Terrell shook his head and then stomped on the Saran-wrapped sandwich. Tuna, pickles and mayonnaise spattered onto the concrete and the bottom of Terrell’s boot. “Yuck!” He wiped his heel on Alvin’s pants and put the cookies in his pocket.

“Look a dime!” Mike Lee held up the milk money.

“Dib’s!” Terrell snatched the coin, and then knelt beside a sobbing Alvin. His eyes were evil. “You tell a parent, a teacher, or anyone …” Alvin pulled down the stocking cap and twisted the hood over his face as the bully began to batter his head, “… and you’ll cry a lot more!”

Terrell picked up the lunch box with a masked and caped Guy Williams riding a rearing black stallion on the front. “Just so you remember …” Terrell used a switch-blade knife to scratch a large jagged “Z” in the thin metal. “That stands for zero not Zorro,” he said. “That’s the number of people you are going to blab to!”

By the time Alvin wiggled from the bushes, he was the last one to board the bus. Lucky his glasses hadn’t been broken. “You need to get here quicker,” Mr. Cranston complained. “I almost left you!” Alvin sat in the first seat next to the driver. He rubbed his swollen face and nose. “I like socking and hood-coat,” Alvin jabbered as he looked at his clean hand. This time there was no blood.

Mr. Cranston shook his head as the bus rumbled away. Why did they make retards go to school?

-------3-------

            Alvin was the last one to totter into Mrs. Dern’s fourth-grade classroom. He had to wait for the crowds to thin-out in the halls or he would get knocked down in the bustle. Chloe O’Brian’s pigtailed and ribbon-tied hair tickled his nose as he sat in the assigned seat behind her. Alvin closed his eyes and imagined he was Clark Jensen. He had watched the tallest kid in the elementary kiss Chloe on the playground. Her light-brown hair always smelled like Halo shampoo and her voice sounded like Bridgett Bardot.

            “We will do our science lessons first …” the students moaned and Mrs. Dern slapped her desktop with a yardstick, “Does anyone remember who Sir. Isaac Newton was?”

            “Yeah,” Terrell Adams raised his hand and spoke without being called on. “He’s the man who invented gravity.”

            “That’s not quite correct,” Mrs. Dern said. “He experimented with gravity and discovered some interesting things. Who can tell me what some of them are?”

            “That an apple will fall on your head if you sit under a tree,” Ben Hicks blurted and the class laughed.

Alvin waved his thin arm. Mrs. Dern looked around the classroom but his was the only raised hand. She reluctantly chose him. “Yes, Alvin.”

“Every object in the Universe attracts every other object with a force directed along the line of centers for the two objects …” Alvin spoke like a talking encyclopedia. “…that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the separation between the two objects.”

“That’s more than correct Alvin.” Mrs. Durn turned and drew two circles with chalk on the blackboard- one large and one small. “Objects attract each other!”

Terrell Adams, leering on the back row, took the opportunity to hit the back of Alvin’s head with a spitball. “Your head is big enough to have its own gravity, Egghead!” he hissed. Several girls in the classroom giggled. Chloe turned and looked, but she wasn’t laughing. Alvin didn’t raise his hand again, even though he knew all the answers to Mrs. Dern’s questions.

Later, Mrs. Dern had just finished reading Three Billy Goats Gruff when the bell rang for morning recess. Terrell Adams stood up as if in a trance, foam ran from the corner of his mouth but no-one saw before he swiped it away with his tongue.  Alvin could almost taste the almonds lingering around Adams. He lingered in his seat but Mrs. Dern insisted he follow the other children out to play.

Finally Terrell stumbled outside holding his head and Alvin could breathe easier. The girls jumped rope on one side of the school while the boys played baseball on the other side. Terrell Adams and Brian Hicks were taking turns choosing teams. “Whoever ends up with Alvin bats first,” Hicks suggested. Alvin would much rather have played on the swing-set or on the old Merry-go-round, the one he’d gotten a finger caught in last year, than listen to the jeers and taunts of the other boys in his class. He listened as each boy in his class was selected. When he was the last child standing, the team captains didn’t even bother to call his name, Brian Hicks just shouted, “We bat first!”

Terrell Adams struck-out two batters and walked one before Hicks slammed the ball across the back-fence for a home run. Two other boys hit singles. The bases were loaded when it came time for Alvin to walk to the plate. “It’s not fair!” Hicks shouted. “This happens every time we play because we get stuck with this loser!” He kicked dirt on the boy with the big head picking up a bat and wobbling on thin legs toward home plate.

            “Easy out! Easy out!” The outfielders began to chant. Alvin had always been afraid of the fast moving hard-ball. His arms were trembling and he had a hard time holding the bat in the correct position.

            “Come on Egghead! Hit the ball for once,” one of Alvin’s teammates shouted.

Terrell Adams seemed out of focus as he threw the first ball low and inside. Alvin was so terrified he closed his eyes and waved the bat. The reaction was just as he expected. He heard his own teammates groan and the opposing team laugh. Someone on his own team yelled “You dork!” When Alvin opened his eyes the catcher was throwing the ball back to Adams.

The second pitch was at least a foot over his head. Alvin swung anyway. Both teams laughed.

            Alvin tried to remember all the things he’d read about baseball: The velocity of the ball, the angle at which it struck a fast-moving object and the opposing force behind the bat. He knew all the geometry and physics involved in playing the game, he just didn’t have the physical ability. Alvin squinted at the pitcher through his thick pop-bottle glasses. Terrell Adams liked to play ball, but he also had a sadistic side to him. He often threw the ball inside because he liked to see fear in others. Was there any way to defeat him? Alvin tottered a step back from the plate and choked–up (gripped it higher on the handle) to stop it from shaking. Every object in the Universe attracts every other object …

Adams grunted and stomped on the pitcher’s mound. “This little goat thinks he’s going to get past me!” The resident bully of Cloverdale Elementary wound-up like his hero New York Yankees pitcher Don Larsen and threw the ball viciously toward the plate but Alvin didn’t swing, instead he focused on the ball and stuck out the bat, holding it as firmly as he could along the line of centers for the two objects. The bat and the ball connected with a sound like a rifle shot. Alvin felt the force of the collision tear the wooden-bat from his hands. His team all seemed to be shouting at once. Alvin squinted at the ball bouncing high on the grass toward Mrs. Fowler’s fence. Brian Hicks grabbed Alvin spinning him around and shoving him toward first-base, just as the runner on third came charging into home. “Run you idiot,” he screamed.

The ball would have bounced over the fence if Kurt Smith hadn’t leaped into the air and caught it. He was too far out to throw to first, so he threw the ball to the pitcher.

            Alvin looked like a toddler as he stumbled toward first-base. A million thoughts ran through his over-large head. What if he made it? Did he have to stand on the base? He’s seen lots of other boys run past. Was it okay if you just stepped on it?

Terrell Adams caught the ball and spun around looking toward first base furious that the goat had somehow got a hit off from him. What should have been at least a triple now looked like it might even be a base hit for the biggest-loser in the school. This wasn’t the way life was supposed to work. If Alvin Sullenger made it to first-base his reputation as a ball player might be forever tarnished. The little goat was trip-tripping along, less than two yards from the base. What if first baseman Dan Reed missed the throw? Adams hurtled the baseball with all the venom and force he could muster.

Alvin’s wobbly legs were just a half-dozen tottering steps from success when the baseball slammed into his head. The world spun for only a second before he fell, but to Alvin it was eternity … the sound of children playing turned soft … and then became black.

-------4-------

            Alvin’s mind moved through a vast emptiness pushed by a heavy shadow from a place of less. There was no sight, sound, smell, touch or taste … only awareness of awareness. He was cognizant of the force from which all things are created … the God Power; the ultimate power of nothing.  Without matter and energy, and their negative counterparts, the fabric of space-time does not exist. He reached out with his mind and felt what scientists would later call dark matter and he was awe-struck at the implications. He knew the universe was in exacting balance. In order to have more than nothing, he realized you must also have less. Those who search for anything always stop when they find nothing, but Alvin now realized that you must keep looking … or you will never find the less that makes up 68% of the cosmos … dark energy the anti-gravity force that expands the universe.

Alvin became aware of something appearing just beyond the event horizon he had been pushed from.  Had it been energy, the change would have been millions of light years away. But without light he still had eons to search for the less … but still he must hurry.  He became aware of various size holes in the nothing and he found he could differentiate them … He thought about the one-hundred eighteen known elements and looked for the opposite properties. The something was moving closer at a very high rate of speed. The first dark element he found, the opposite of hydrogen he named Melantha after the Greek female name for dark flower. Instead of a single electron orbiting a proton and neutron, Melantha had a brace spanning a single hole to keep it from closing. The second element he called Adelphé, the sister with two holes and two braces at right angles to each other. He discovered the more holes the dark element had, the more braces it took to keep the dark energy flowing.

Alvin had identified and named eighty-six dark elements, dark sisters, before the something moving toward him arrived … and there was light!

-------5-------

            “We thought we’d lost you for a moment!” Mrs. Dern bent over Alvin on the playground.

            “Alvin ran right into the ball!” Terrill Adams was throwing his mitt on the ground, picking it up and throwing it down again. “Why does that damn goat always try to cross my bridge?”

            “Alvin Sullenger is a valuable member of society too,” Mrs. Dern said as she picked up and carried the now conscious boy toward the school. “I’d be happy to walk Alvin home,” Chloe O’Brian called. “I know his mother is always without a car.”

A group of girls had crowded around the baseball diamond. “What if Alvin dies?” one of the girls gasped.

            “So what if he does?” Terrill Adams smirked. “It’s his own fault he ran into the ball.”
            “I saw you throw that baseball right at him,” Chloe O’Brian stepped from the crowd and spoke up. “Alvin wasn’t anywhere near first-base. You hit him on purpose. If Alvin dies, that’s going to make it murder.”

Just then the bell rang. Terrell Adams was still glaring at Chloe as he followed the crowd into the building. Foam ran from the corners of his mouth. Adams knew one thing. Even if Alvin didn’t die, he wasn’t going to have someone trip-tripping on his future as a professional baseball player because of what Alvin, Mrs. Dern or that damn girl said.

Someone had placed a pan of almonds on a stove somewhere and the smell was sickly delicious. Terrell took a deep breath … and then many more. He smiled. Chloe usually walked home from school and so did Alvin. He’d watched them many times, and they had to cross several bridges before they arrived. Terrell thrust a hand deep in his pocket. The switch-blade knife he’d swiped from his father’s workroom drawer at home felt warm in his hand. There just might be a Great Ugly Troll waiting for one or more of the three goats when they got to a good place.

To be continued …

            

NIGHT FARM part 2

Copyright (c) 2015 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

NIGHT FARM

Part 2

By R. Peterson

Stephen hurled a burning oil-lamp at the two figures looming over his mother’s coffin. The demons burst into flames, twisting and screaming as they sent lumps of charred and rotted flesh flying about the parlor. The white-haired hag on the ancient stairs hissed a warning as Stephen covered Camille’s face with his jacket and they crashed through a glass window onto a sagging porch. “Run,” he shouted.

“No, we should go back inside and politely thank our lovely host,” Camille snickered. Stephen’s prom date was already three steps ahead of him. “We don’t want to appear rude,” she yelled over her shoulder.

A large combine, sending cut, translucent, pod-shaped vegetables up a conveyor belt and into a truck-bed, stopped at the end of a row. The shadowy driver leaped from the harvester and scuttled forward on rotted legs that clacked as it jumped rows.  Fleshless skull eye-sockets tracked them from under a black hood. Stephen gripped Camille’s hand as they fled around the side of the decrepit house and sprinted toward a straw-stack. The wretched old woman crooned from the doorway. Her carefully constructed English words were now being distorted by her anger. “Run Johnny-cakes run. I’ll fetch my furcă and a mic of butter … and then we’ll have cina.”

Stephen and Camille covered themselves with loose straw, seconds before a group of hooded workers carrying scythes and pitchforks, searched everywhere for them. “We can’t delay a harvest of souls for two delicioase bites that show up neinvitate,” the old woman complained to the largest. “Back to work you skags! I’ll have Bluthund nose-out their locuri de ascundere (hiding places).”

“As you desire, Teroare,” the largest monster bowed, then led the others away.

“Do you really want to stay for dinner?” Stephen whispered under the straw. Camille’s fingernails digging into his flesh was answer enough. They listened as the searchers moved away and Stephen dared a peek. Teroare appeared across from the straw stack moments later clutching a curved horn from some unknown animal. She clambered up a mound of mossy field-rocks, placed the end of the horn in her wrinkled mouth, and blew three shrill blasts that sounded like ice breaking on a frozen lake. “Come to me Blunthund,” she screeched. "Vino la mine!"

Teroare lurched through an apple-orchard toward a well with a thick rope dangling from a hand crank. The old hag stuck her head inside the rock-lined shaft and her raspy voice echoed inside. “Come out Johnnycakes and we’ll have us a quick nibble …” Her voice spewed hate and venom. “Stay! and you’ll ripen like goat cheese.”

“We have to move!” Stephen nudged Camille.

“What?” Camille sputtered. “She hasn’t found us.”

“But she will,” Stephen told her. “I’ve a feeling whatever creature she summoned is very good at sniffing-out … Johnnycakes.”

Stephen and Camille ran to the shed the old woman had just vacated.

The small out-building was filled with farm-tools, bones and fertilizer. A skull, placed on a workbench, held down a stack of papers at one end of the room. Camille lifted the bone and read from a notebook. “Isn’t your mother’s name Louise?”

“Yes,” Stephen shivered as he thought about the body the horrible creatures had carried into the house.

“Well, according to this, your mother isn’t dead, and she won’t be until after she’s been planted and then harvested.”

Stephen snatched the notebook and scanned down a list of names. “You’re right,” he gasped as he comprehended the book-keeping. “Here is a listing for Lavar Hicks. His soul was planted on July third and harvested on July fourth of last year. That’s the day he got ran over by a freight-train at Townsend railway crossing. People in Cloverdale had a double-reason to celebrate Independence Day. Hicks was a dirty bastard, he’d shoot any animal that wandered onto his property. It was rumored that he kept kittens in a cage to lure curious dogs to their deaths.”

-------2-------

          Camille cracked open the shed-door and peered out. Her gasp made Stephen drop the notebook. “What is it?” He moved beside her.

Teroare stood on a wooden barrel fastening a rusted chain to a towering two-legged brute that looked as if it might be a cross between a bear and a bull. Shaggy, filthy, matted-hair sprawled over a black wrinkled snout with flaring nostrils that sniffed the air in all directions. A pair of upward curving horns looked as sharp as pitchfork tines.  Blunthund opened his mouth and roared, showing rows of enormous teeth.  Nested birds flew in all directions from the orchard. “Where’s Lavar Hicks when you need him?” Camille moaned.

            “She’s already looked here once,” Stephen said. “But that doesn’t mean her pet won’t poke his ugly snout inside.” He dragged a bag of steer manure from a stack and opened it. “You look so pretty,” Stephen grimaced. “I hate to do this.”

            “You certainly are different,” Camille mused as she smeared handfuls of the sterilized cow-poo on her dress and arms. “Most of my prom dates just give me a corsage.”

Stephen glanced outside. The beast was rampaging through the straw-stack throwing clumps of straw with its claws. Stephen poured the rest of the fertilizer around Camille as she sat on the floor and then dumped another over them both as he sat beside her. He let the empty sacks fall on top as if the fertilizer had spilled of its own accord.

Blunthund’s enormous head squeezed through the doorway moments later. Nostrils as large as gopher holes sniffed the air and dripped moldy ick on the wood plank floor. Teroare tugged on the chain trying to pull the beast back. “I’ve already looked in there,” she spat. “I’ll not have you dripping snot on my record books.” The creature crinkled its long nose in distaste, and peered around the room with dark murderous eyes for a long moment. The homicidal gaze of the brute lingered for what seemed an eternity on the piled fertilizer before the creature backed out.

Camille’s head popped up from the dried dung a second before Stephen’s. “Feelin' down and dirty, feelin' kind of mean..” Camille sang the words to the Foreigner hit-song with whispered falsetto as she brushed away the gunk.”

“I've been from one to another extreme,” Stephen laughed as he added the next line and then rose and staggered toward the door. He didn’t make it. He slipped in a puddle of Blunthund’s gooey slime and landed on his back.

Camille stood over him and giggled. She could tell he wasn’t seriously hurt. “Most guys don’t fall for me until after we’ve had our first kiss-” she lifted him to his feet. Her cheeks were smudged with grime but her eyes were as bright as sapphires glistening in water. Stephen brushed a clump of dust from her chin and then his lips touched hers.

-------3-------

            “My God! It’s the Axegoon Murderer!” Camille later gasped as she and Stephen watched the demonic farm workers from behind a group of trees. The giant harvester had finished reaping the field only an hour before and already an enormous machine towing a trailer filled with coffins was moving up and down the rows digging enormous round holes in the soil and dropping black boxes, like the one Stephen’s mother had lain in, vertically into the ground with a loud thump as each one was covered and compacted. The hooded figure that had startled Camille, was dragging a large axe as he lurched up and down the freshly furrowed fields ahead of the planter obviously making sure the rows were planted straight.

            “That’s my mother!” Stephen and Camille watched as a slightly charred coffin with Transport Des Morts carved on the side was inserted into the ground.

            “We can’t help her now,” Camille told him. “We have to leave while we can.”

The two hadn’t walked far when they heard the sound of an engine running. They watched from behind a clump of bushes as one of the large trucks that had been receiving produce from the harvester backed up to a moon-lit pond. Giant hydraulics lifted the truck-bed and began to empty thousands of human-shaped translucent pods between the gaping jaws of an enormous fish that had wiggled half-way out of the water. The green monster grinned as it displayed rows of spear-like teeth from a mouth as large as a railroad tunnel.

“So that’s what is going to happen to my mother after she’s harvested?” Stephen turned and started back.

“We can’t go back!” Camille protested. “We’ve narrowly escaped getting caught twice. It will be morning soon. The fog is lifting. I’m sure we can find our way out of this hellish part of Comanche County and bring back the police!”

Stephen pointed to several rows that had already been planted. Leafy stems were sprouting from the ground under the moonlight. A few already were developing the strange seed-pods that resembled the humans from which they spawned. “The time from planting to the harvest must be less than an hour this time of year,” he said. “That’s my mother out there. If I don’t put a stop to this, her soul will grow into nothing more than a few nibbles for a gluttonous fish.”

            “Alright, I’m with you,” Camille gulped as she followed. “But we can’t just go running out in the fields. I think these dead land farmers must do something to the people before they plant them, make them sick or something. That’s what will happen to us if we get caught.”

            “Do you have any ideas about how we’re going to get my mother out of there?” Stephen was confused and frustrated and he knew Camille had a better mind for figuring things out.

            “I think I might have,” she told him. “Do you still have that lighter?”

-------4-------

“It’s disgusting how many people have been planted and harvested in Comanche County in just the past year,” Camille said as she tore pages from the notebook. They were both inside the shed the old woman had retrieved the horn from; the shed where she kept her records. Stephen was dragging everything he could find, that would burn, into a pile next to the doorway.

Camille noticed several stacks of similar notebooks under the workbench as she blew dust off from a cover and looked for more paper. “This has been going on for years,” she gasped. “The date on this harvest entry is April nineteenth, seventeen thirty-four!”

            “That’s impossible,” Stephen said as he smashed a wooden pallet and broke the boards into kindling. “There were only Sioux, Blackfoot and Crow Indians and maybe a few snow-bound trappers living in this part of Montana in the eighteenth century.”

            “You’re right about that,” Camille gasped. She began to read some of the entry names out loud: Running Fox, Laughing Buffalo, Sky Spirit, Afraid of Bears … these aren’t your typical Irish potato-famine immigrants that these ghouls have been planting for hundreds of years.”

Stephen twisted one of the empty fertilizer bags around a broken rake handle and made a crude torch. “I hope this plan works,” he said as he lit the dry paper.

            ‘It should,” Camille told him as she tore pages from an even older record book that looked like it had been written with a faded brown liquid; perhaps blood. “You remember how all the workers came running when we escaped from the farm house. What do you think is going to happen when one of their buildings catches fire?”

            “Get ready to run,” Stephen said as he pulled Camille to the doorway. “We don’t want to be here to find out.

The pile of kindling caught fire quickly, too quickly! Seconds later the small fire was a roaring inferno and beginning to spread. Stephen heard Camille scream just as he started to turn.

Teroare, the white-haired hag from the house had Camille gripped tightly by the neck with her bony fingers. ‘I’ve never had this much probleme with a meal before,” she hissed as she reached for Stephen. “The bodies we receive here are but vessels for the soul without form or substanţă. I have hungered for fresh umane flesh for many long centuries.”

            “I’ll bet you have!” Stephen wiggled free from her claws, stepped back and then thrust the burning torch into the woman’s face. Camille jerked free.

Teroare screamed as she twisted and danced in the flames. A smell like rotted apples left in a pile by a lazy farmer and finally set ablaze filled the air.

Strangely, Teroare softly sang a child’s lullaby as she began to be consumed.

My  rulouri are ten for a penny.

Any less … and I haven’t any.

The pret you pay for anything.

Is equal to all durere you bring.

-------5-------

Stephen and Camille were watching from the trees when the first workers started to arrive at the fire. Several of the hooded workers tried to stomp out the flames and were sent running in all directions when the black robes they wore caught fire. Teroare was nothing more than a large glowing ember as she floated toward the stars. Still her lingering song could be heard on a gentle night breeze:

“I lăsaţi you now but I’ll be back.

Sun go backward, day turn black.

Sleep in pat with open eye.

To see me vin before you die.

Blunthund, the hairy beast Teoare used as a tracking animal, hoisted a massive dripping, three-hundred gallon livestock water-tank, that must have weighed over a ton, into the air and carried it in his bulging arms to the inferno. Undercover of the resulting blast of steam, Stephen and Camille dashed into the fields.

            “I don’t see your mother!” Camille moaned as she searched up and down the rows. Most of the fast growing plants were already producing pods, tiny growing faces that resembled the people who were going to die when the harvest came.

            “Here she is!” Stephen shouted. The commotion of the workers trying to put out the fire on the other side of the steam curtain concealed his voice. Stephen gasped. “All three of her!”

Three, three-dimensional figures growing from what looked like a strange Okra plant captured Louise Richards’ facial features in exacting detail, two younger but the last looking pretty much the same as when Stephen had last seen her only hours before.

            “It’s too late to dig up her soul vessel,” Camille said remembering how the old woman had described Stephen’s mother lying in the box. “I think her essence now resides in these pods.”

The steam was lifting; the workers almost had the fire under control. Several of the demons were beginning to look toward the fields. Stephen closed his eyes for a moment afraid that he would make a mistake. A look of grim determination came into his eyes. He picked all three pods and put them in his jacket pocket … and then they ran.

-------6-------

It was growing light on the eastern horizon as Stephen and Camille made their way through the trees. “I must say you really know how to treat a girl on a first date,” Camille giggled.

            “I’m so sorry,” Stephen apologized. “What on Earth are your parents going to say?”

            “I think they will be sad for a while, but nothing in this world lasts forever, not even grief.”

            “What are you talking about?” Stephen was beginning to get nervous. Camille linked her arm with his.

            “This whole night has been strange,” Camille said. “Too damn strange!” She leaned over and kissed Stephen. “I’ve felt like I was in a dream the whole time and I still do but it’s the kind of dream that I’m sure we are not going to wake up from.”

            “I’ve felt kind of the same way,” Stephen stammered. “But more nightmare than dream!”

            “How often in your dreams do you watch the sun rise?” Camille asked him.

            “It takes a lot more than sleep to make that happen,” Stephen agreed.

A vivid spot of illumination appeared on the dark horizon. It grew in intensity and magnitude until the entire eastern sky was glowing brilliant white. Stephen’s favorite songs filled the air with unbelievable stereo ambiance and so did Camille’s. Each listened to the special harmonies of angels singing along to the rhythm of their own heartbeats and desires.

            “Thank you for a wonderful evening,” Camille said.

And then they walked into the light.

-------7-------

“You found them?” Louise Richards’ hopeful expression turned to fear when she saw the look on the policemen’s faces.

The first officer removed his hat and stepped respectfully into the kitchen without being asked. The other followed a few steps behind. “We found your car on Canyon Road,” he stammered. “It appears your son …” He gulped as he looked at a tiny notebook in his hand. “And a Miss Camille Foster failed to negotiate a turn, probably because of the heavy fog last night and crashed through a barbed wire fence.”

            “Are they all right?” Louise felt like putting a hand over the officer’s mouth … she didn’t want to hear what it was that he didn’t want to say. She felt as if she might faint and felt the other officer support her arms as he led her to a chair.

            “The car they were riding in struck a concrete irrigation-canal levy…” tears flooded from the policeman’s eyes, “…and they were both pronounced … dead at the scene.

Hours later, Louise sat in her kitchen staring out the window. On A Cloud Garden, Cloverdale’s only funeral home, had just delivered Stephen’s blood-soaked suit in a plastic bag along with his other belongings. Louise forced herself to remove the clothing from the bag. She was so weary now, when earlier in the night she’d miraculously recovered from her illness and felt like she had the energy of three women. The blood would have to be cold-water soaked from the jacket and pants before they could be laundered. There was just not enough money to bury her son in anything else.

            She felt a lump in the jacket pocket as she opened the lid to her washing machine. Three chunks of Okra and a Bic lighter appeared in her hand. Stephen was always lighting the old gas burners, but she wondered where the odd vegetables come from. “What a strange thing for Stephen to have in his pocket,” Louise said as she held the seed pods up to a dim light bulb.

THE END?