Dark Side of the Moon Read online

  The head.

  Sue Jean jammed the business end of the crowbar into the creature’s shiny, blood-drop eye. It roared in pain, its tail lashing the floor. Sue Jean pressed her advantage and smashed the creature in the head until it fell dead. She stood over it panting and listening to everything: her blood’s heated swish through her veins, Chickie’s efficient hammer blows beneath the porthole, even the moon’s icy skirl across the sky was audible. Everything was clearer than clear. And so when the creature lying dead at her feet began to inhale—a harsh, mucousy rasp—Sue Jean heard that too.

  It rose from the ground—its head healed and all of a piece—and towered over her, its two bright healthy bloody eyes gleaming with malice and remembrance. Staring at her.

  It attacked. Sue Jean turned to run up the stairs, but the creature slammed into her back and she went sprawling. It got her by the hair and yanked her upright and then tried to pull her head back so it could spit in her face. Sue Jean swung the crowbar blindly…and lost her grip yet again when it stuck to the creature’s slimy body.

  She reached back and grabbed the creature’s arms, to steady herself, and then threw her legs over her head in a sort of back somersault, kicking the creature in the face with the hard heels of her shoes. The crunch of the impact traveled up her legs as the creature fell backward, flipping her over completely so that she landed on top of it, pinning it to the ground. She leaped up and drove both her feet into its face again. The creature convulsed once and then was still.

  Sue Jean pulled the crowbar free of the creature’s body and waited. As soon as she saw its long, pointy head begin to heal itself, she jammed the crowbar into its mouth, skewering it. She waited again, but she must have used up all of its lives because this time, the creature stayed dead. Its chest, however, split apart and released a blinding ball of light, which rose high and disappeared through the ceiling.

  “You see how it rose upward,” said Chickie, startling Sue Jean, who had forgotten he was in the room with her. He looked beautiful, like a fairy creature. Even the scurry of rats in the walls was beautiful.

  “Upward,” he said, “like it was going to heaven. I think I’m gonna start worshipping Cthulhu.”

  “Before you go insulting God, do you mind waiting until we’re not quite as close to death?”

  “What death? You whaled on that thing.”

  She plopped down beside Chickie, who grabbed her and held her tight until she slumped against him and shivered. Sue Jean could have slept in his arms, that’s how tired she was. So tired...

  “I knew you could take that thing,” Chickie was saying. “You really are the toughest mama I know. And I’m the smartest Daddy-O you know. See?” He waggled his hand in her face, forcing her to pay attention. “I finished the key. Look.”

  She followed his pointing hand to a neat rectangle of wood nailed to the wall above the porthole. If that was the key, it didn’t look like any she’d ever seen before. He pulled her to her feet and pushed the button attached to the top of the wood, and the artfully arranged gears along the front began clicking and spinning. Warm green light—the sun was green?—spilled from the porthole and filled the room, and now the boys were able to see them as well.

  “Come on out,” Chickie said, causing a stampede as everyone tried to be the first out of the porthole. When they were free, the boys crowded around them, wanting hugs and reassurance. When Peggy’s brother Leo gave her an especially hard hug, Sue Jean realized there was no time for her to flip her wig or feel tired. And certainly no time to feel awed that Chickie had figured out in five minutes how to open a door to another dimension. Or that she had killed a creature—not once, not twice, but thrice—in the same amount of time.

  Well…maybe there was time for a little awe.

  The key over the porthole dinged as the button popped up, like a timer, and the gears stopped spinning. The green light vanished from the basement with the suddenness of a light switching off.

  “Come on, boys,” said Sue Jean. “We need to get you back home safe, so follow us, okay? And do what we say.” She steered them away from the dead creature near the stairs and toward the basement window.

  “I’m gonna go out and pull you guys up one at a time,” Chickie said. He shoved the toolbox through and followed after it, then leaned in the window and called, “Who’s first?”

  Sue Jean gave each boy a boost up to Chickie who pulled them out and directed them into the backseat of his T-bird. Leo, the fourth boy to go out, pointed and said, “What’s that?” just as he was getting into the car.

  Chickie backed away to look…and froze. “Get in the car,” he snapped at Leo, and all of you be quiet.” He hurried back to the window and said, “We need to hurry.”

  “What’s wrong?” Sue Jean asked, helping the fifth boy through.

  “That one you killed?” he whispered. “The light it left behind is hanging over the house. Like the bat signal from those old Batman and Robin serials I used to watch when I was a kid. It’s—” He paused and looked over his shoulder, signaling for her to wait. So she did, the last boy in her arms.

  Chickie disappeared for a moment—forever it seemed to Sue Jean—and then reappeared. The panic on his face was not pleasant.

  “They’re back.”

  Her stomach dropped. “With more kids?” She would take on the whole group if necessary, though the thought made her want to find a hole to crawl into.

  “They didn’t come back with more kids. They came back because of that damn signal. We gotta get outta here now!”

  Sue Jean was helping the last boy through when she heard something heavy wet slithering above her on the first floor. Chickie helped her climb through the window, but once again, her skirt was too wide. The basement door burst open behind her and a roar echoed through the basement as Chickie yanked her free, ripping her skirt in the process. A long white arm shot through the window and grabbed at her feet, but the monster was much too big to follow them.

  Chickie and Sue Jean raced to the car and sped away. Sue Jean blessed the universe for every foot of road the car put between her and that house. “Okay,” she told the boys crowding the back seat. “We’re safe now. Just—”

  A loud splintering crash silenced her as a white fist broke through the rear window and pulled it free of the car. The boys screamed, and Sue Jean wanted to scream too when she saw the nine-lived, all of them, slithering up the road. Gaining on them.

  Chickie stepped on the gas.

  “Charlie Brown” was blasting on the radio. Such a fun, silly song, but after that ride, Sue Jean would never be able to listen to it again without breaking out in a cold sweat. The nine-lived rolled alongside the car, ramming their fists into it. Spitting at it.

  “There goes my paint job,” Chickie muttered, and then turned one of the knobs on the console. Flames shot from the back of the T-bird. Several of the nine-lived caught fire and so did the forest when they slid blindly off the road and into the trees.

  But the T-bird was still being followed closely. Too closely. The car jerked as one of the nine-lived grabbed hold of the tailfin and reached through the rear window to snatch Leo by the back of the shirt. The other boys held Leo inside the car while Sue Jean grabbed a utility knife from the toolbox at her feet. She climbed into the back and slashed the blade across the creature’s eyes. It screamed and released Leo, and they left it in the dust.

  Sue Jean clambered back into the front seat as Chickie sped onward onto a bridge that spanned the creek. They were going so fast, she almost didn’t see the bridge out sign.

  “Chickie, did you see that?”

  “I saw it,” he said grimly, the gaping hole in the bridge growing closer. “Boys! Crouch down as low as you can.” He looked at Sue Jean. “You too.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “This.”

  Chickie turned the knob beneath the compass, and Sue Jean’s cheek slapped against the window as the car went sideways. The world disappeared for a moment, S
ue Jean’s brain floating weightlessly in her skull, and then the world came back, and Chickie’s T-bird squealed across a paved street and slammed into a trolley sign.

  Sue Jean gaped at Chickie. “What just happened?”

  “I told you that compass was special,” he said, petting it like it was his favorite dog. “You can use it to travel in more than one direction. But there appear to be…side effects.”

  Severe side effects.

  Sue Jean knew what street they were on—Seventh Street—but she only knew because the street sign said so. All the buildings within one hundred yards of Chickie’s car were gone, reduced to smoking rubble. But even further down the street, several buildings were on the verge of collapse, listing to and fro with an ominous groaning sound. And then, an even more ominous sound:

  “Monsters!”

  One of the boys was pointing out of the rear window at the onrushing pack of nine-lived. They were quite a ways down the street, but at the speed they moved, they wouldn’t be far away for long.

  Chickie started the car and pulled away from the trolley sign but could only limp down the street.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The tire's blown. We gotta run for it.”

  He grabbed his toolbox, and he and Sue Jean hustled the boys out of the car and ran down the dark street toward the only beacon of light—a diner called Smiley’s, willfully ignoring the whites only sign in the window.

  The few people inside the diner stood at the windows watching in awe as the buildings down the road collapsed, but not so awed they didn’t notice the arrival of eight colored children onto the premises.

  A surly woman at the window nearest them yelled, “Get outta here. You don’t belong in here.” Sue Jean could barely hear her over the jukebox blasting “Tutti Frutti”. The Pat Boone version, of course. They didn’t even allow colored music in the diner, let alone colored people.

  The boys huddled together behind Sue Jean and Chickie, scared and uncomfortable, knowing they weren’t welcome.

  “See why we need to have a sit-in?” Sue Jean hissed.

  But Chickie wasn’t paying attention. He rummaged through his toolbox for a handful of gears and then jumped onto the counter and swiped the clock hanging on the wall above it. A little boy sitting at the counter with a milkshake in front of him said, “Daddy? There’s a colored boy standing on the counter. How come you don’t ever let me stand on the counter?”

  A bespectacled man in an apron came out of the back wearing a name tag that read smiley and a shocked expression at the sight of Chickie on his counter. “What the hell’re you doing?” he yelled, as Chickie jumped to the floor with the clock already half dismantled. “Get outta here ’fore I call the sheriff.”

  “We’re being chased,” Sue Jean explained. “By monsters.”

  “Is that why the buildings’re in ruins?” asked the woman at the window. Even bigotry took a backseat to monster threats.

  “Yes,” said Sue Jean. Better they blame monsters than Chickie’s weird navigational abilities.

  “Wait.” The woman squinted. “That’s just the Klan.”

  Sue Jean said, “No, it’s not.”

  “Is so,” said Leo. “They’re white and pointy and scary. My Daddy said they were.”

  “Leo?” A colored man, a fry cook judging from his hat, came out of the kitchen. So it wasn’t really whites only. Smiley didn’t mind colored people working for him; he just didn’t want them as customers.

  “Uncle Jimmy!” Leo ran into the baffled fry cook’s arms.

  “Why aren’t you at home with Peggy?”

  “Peggy’s dead!”

  “What?” Uncle Jimmy looked to Sue Jean for confirmation so she nodded, sadly.

  “The Klan killed her,” Leo cried, “and then took me and put me in a place where the sun was green.”

  “I don’t know what y’all’re involved in,” said Smiley, “but I don’t want any trouble in this place.”

  Uncle Jimmy gave Smiley a look.

  “What do you want me to do?” Smiley exclaimed, his cheeks bright red. “If the Klan wants them, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “It’s not the Klan!” Sue Jean screamed.

  “Oh my God,” said the woman at the window. “She’s right. It’s—” She scrambled backward just as the nine-lived burst into the diner.

  They slid straight for the boys, all of them, including Smiley’s son at the counter.

  In the commotion, Sue Jean blocked the entrance with tables; the nine-lived might have the boys now, but she was damned if they’d leave with them.

  “Bash them on the heads!” she yelled. “That’s their weak spot.” She grabbed Chickie’s trusty crowbar from the toolbox and followed her own advice. “And don’t let them spit in your face!”

  The diners fought with chairs, napkin dispensers—even the salt and pepper—doing their best to wrest the boys from the monsters’ grip. But it was difficult, as Sue Jean well knew, particularly with an opponent that kept regenerating.

  “Daddy!”

  Sue Jean turned just in time to see Smiley get thrown across the diner by the creature holding his son. She ran forward to ram the crowbar into its eye, but before she could, it spat in her face.

  She dimly heard the crowbar clatter to the floor as she tried to wipe her nose and mouth clear, but the stuff had already hardened. She fell to the floor; the spit on her face like a weight, dragging her down. Her eyes were glued open; the fluorescents buzzed overhead, and “Tutti Frutti” blistered her ears. She prayed to God that she wouldn’t die listening to Pat Boone.

  And then, instead of fluorescents she saw Chickie standing over her holding the clock he’d modified, the hands spinning backward, faster and faster.

  Until she could breathe again.

  Sue Jean gasped and sucked in a huge draft of air. The slime that had been a hard suffocating mask a second ago, now hovered wetly over her face, but only for a moment before it flew back into the mouth of the creature who’d hawked it up. It dropped Smiley’s son and stood bewildered, clutching its throat and choking on its own spit.

  “Good!” said Chickie. “It works.” He wound the clock and held it over his head.

  Sue Jean got to her feet as a loud, ringing bang, one after another, silenced the diner. The nine-lived froze and watched the clock, watched the hands spinning, not backward this time, but forward, so fast that after a time the hands seemed to disappear altogether. As quickly as the clock was spinning, so were the nine-lived aging. They dropped the boys and, as one, fell over dead. And this time, they didn’t regenerate. Sue Jean waited, looking for bright, bat-signal lights to burst from their bodies, but when none did, she finally relaxed.

  When Smiley limped to his son and swept him into a bear hug, Chickie tucked the clock under his arm and said, “When we came here for help, you were willing to turn us over to our enemies. But when you and your boy were threatened, we helped you without being asked—Sue Jean, because she’s a good person, and me because if I had just walked out of here, she would have ragged me about it for the rest of my life.”

  “Shallow.”

  “Shut up,” Chickie told her. “I’m making a point.”

  “Save it, kid,” said Smiley tiredly, rocking his son in his arms. “I get preached to on Sundays.”

  “Can I have a sundae, Daddy?” asked Smiley’s son, looking no worse for wear. “A milkshake won’t cut it this time.”

  “And that,” Chickie exclaimed, “is my point. I think we could all use a sundae.” He sat at the counter and pulled Sue Jean down beside him. “What do you think, Mr. Smiley?”

  Smiley looked around his diner, at the young faces. The old ones. The dead ones. “Sundaes for everybody,” he said, sounding surprised to hear the words issuing from his mouth. “On the house.”

  And that’s how Chickie and Sue Jean and six little boys became the first colored ever served in Smiley’s. Sue Jean thought there should have been fireworks to mark the occasion, bu
t there weren’t. Just the fire spreading outside and fire trucks.

  But it would do.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Chickie and Sue Jean waited until the boys’ grownups came to claim them before going back to Chickie’s T-bird. She watched him change the tire, noting how dinged up and windowless his car had become, but for all its battle scars, it was still a sweet ride.

  After changing the tire, Chickie sat on the hood and surveyed the destruction he’d wrought: the fire coloring the sky in the distance, the wreckage of several historic buildings. “I told you everything would go to hell,” he said. “And yet, I feel kinda good. I guess sometimes God dresses heaven in hell’s clothes. Just for a laugh.”

  “Ice cream and blasphemy,” said Sue Jean, resting her head on his shoulder. “The perfect end to the perfect date.”

  “Your sense of irony pains me, Sue Jean. Wait here a sec.”

  He left the car and smashed the clock he’d modified under his shoe and kicked it into the gutter. Sue Jean had always known Chickie had a bit extra. Tonight she had learned just how much extra. When he came back to her, she said, “If you were a Martian, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course not.” He gave her a shocked look. “That’s the kind of secret you take to your grave. And for what it’s worth, humans are just as capable of destroying things as aliens. But I’m not in a destroying mood. I’m in the mood to right wrongs. To fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.”

  “The ideal if not the reality,” she said, knowing a few sundaes at Smiley’s hadn’t magically rid her town of hatred and inequality. Though it was a step in the right direction.

  “I feel like altering reality,” said Chickie rubbing his hands together as if he meant to tear the world apart and stitch it back together right then and there.

  Since he could do just that, she thought it prudent to turn his wondrous mind to other things. Odd but getting Chickie Hill to be selfish wasn’t something she thought he’d ever need help with.

  “Know what I feel like?” she asked, and then kissed him.

  “Okay, to hell with reality.” He pressed her back against the hood, right in the middle of the street, and really planted one on her. When her thighs had turned to jelly, he said, “What’s the score now?”