Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga) (16 page)

“Corn?” she said, looking back at the crowd of marshmallow men. “Are they putting
corn
in there now?”

“Of course there’s corn,” said Erno. “It says so on the front of the box. In our cupboard. ‘Made with Corn.’”

One of the men went to fetch the box. Erno glanced at Emily, slumped heavily in her chair. She would have looked like a rag doll if it wasn’t for the glassy terror in her eyes. The man returned.

“Ah, here we are,” said Not-Vivian, holding the cereal box. She pointed at a label on the front. “Made with Gorn.
Gorn
. That’s a
G
.”

Erno stared.

“And if people like ThinkDrink™ in Agent SuperCar™ Cereal,” she continued, “well, then we’ll introduce it into the whole family of Goodco cereals: Puftees™, Burlap Crisp™, Honey Frosted Snox™, Cud™…. Imagine … breakfast cereals that make you smarter! What parent
wouldn’t buy them for their child, despite the regrettable side effects.”

Emily said something too softly to hear.

“What was that, dear?” said Not-Vivian. “Speak up.”

“I said, ‘Where’s our dad?’”

Not-Vivian stood up. She looked so tall suddenly.

“We … don’t know. He was
supposed
to have brought the two of you in to the labs today. He never arrived, and, needless to say, neither did you. And his cell phone is no longer in service. But he
will
be found. His data will be found,” said Not-Vivian in a voice that was suddenly cold and low. Then, just as suddenly, she was a pony cartoon again, albeit a cartoon about very bad ponies. “Until then you two will come with us! We’ll do all sorts of fun tests. No … not tests. Games! We’ll see how well you exercise in the Exercise Room and watch you interact in the Play Room…. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? And then there’s the Sleep Observation Lab (that’s not a very good name, is it; we’ll call that the Nap Room), and the Needle Room—”

Erno flinched. “Needle Room?”

“Yes, but that’s not really a good name for it, either. It isn’t so much a
room
as it is a tank that we’ll keep you in—”

Emily flipped. She shrieked and kicked Not-Vivian in
the shin, then ran for the front door. Erno followed, but they were both quickly cornered and grabbed up by the men in pink suits. Emily continued to wail and kick, but her captor held her with arms outstretched like a bag of garbage. Erno looked around frantically for something, anything that might help him; and then suddenly, there it was. There
he
was, his head nearly touching the ceiling, though no one had heard him come in.

Erno should have remembered that it was Wednesday, the day Biggs came.

There was a brittle silence. Biggs stood in the corner, hunched over the tall Tiffany lamp, and its orange glow made a hideous mask of his wooden face. His great blue shadow sprang up the wall and folded itself crookedly onto the ceiling. The five pink-rubber men turned and looked at Biggs, and Erno thought there was a breathless, respectful quiet as each man maybe reckoned there were
too
such things as monsters.

The man holding Emily set her down quickly, as though he had been caught playing with someone else’s toy. “I … I wasn’t,” he said weakly, “I wouldn’t have…”

Biggs roared, and it wasn’t a man’s roar. He picked up a marshmallow man and hit another marshmallow man with him. He tossed a third into the chesterfield sofa. The doctor ran for the door, but not before Emily kicked her in the knee. She hobbled out with three pink men behind
her. Another pink man stood behind Biggs, beating on his back with both fists like it was a punching bag. Biggs eventually responded by picking up the man around the middle.

“Lemme go! Lemme GO!” the man squealed, so Biggs laid him on the floor and put a bookcase on top of him. Then he turned and faced the final man, the pink man still holding Erno.

“Put him down,” said Biggs. It was more like his old, dull voice, but with a hint of menace.

The man set Erno down slowly, and Erno ran to Emily, who had squeezed herself into a corner.

“You can’t take these kids from us,” the man said. “We
own
them.”

Biggs snared his leg and dangled him upside down.

“
Who
owns them?” Biggs said directly into the scuba mask face, his hot breath fogging up the plastic.

“G-Goodco,” the man stammered.

“Goodco,” Biggs repeated slowly. “Goodco. I love your cereals.”

“Um. Thanks?”

Biggs carried the pink man to the front door. “Don’t mention it,” he said, and threw him outside.

When Biggs returned to the living room, Erno and Emily still stood in the corner, uncertain what to do.

“You okay?” Biggs asked.

They nodded.

Biggs dropped to his knees. “MY BABIES!” he bawled, and scooped Erno and Emily to his chest, hugging them tight. “What if they’d
took
you?”

Pressed together against Biggs’s sturdy chest, the twins looked at each other in surprise. This was more emotion than they’d ever seen Biggs show before. This was more emotion than they’d ever seen anyone show before.

“It’s… It’s okay. We’re okay,” said Erno.

Biggs began to weep fat, sticky tears.

“Don’t know what I’d do,” said Biggs, his breath coming in hot bursts. “Never let you out of my sight.”

“We’re fine, really. You rescued us.”

This went on for some minutes before Biggs set them free and sat on the floor.

“Was so scared,” he said, scratching at his ear.

“You didn’t seem very scared,” said Erno.

“Um… Biggs,” said Emily, pointing past them.

Biggs looked. “Oh, yeah,” he said, and lifted the bookcase. The last pink man crawled out from under it and ran out the front door.

“Dad’s gone,” Emily told Biggs.

“I know. Saw the note.”

“Where did he go?”

“Dunno.”

Emily nodded, like everything was suddenly very clear.
Erno remained confused.

“Waitaminute. Mr. Wilson’s really gone? Like,
gone
gone?”

Emily nodded again. “Yes. I’m … sorry I didn’t work it out sooner. He’s sick, I think. I’m not sure why, exactly, but … I’ll figure it out. In the meantime, we’d better leave. Those G-Goodco people might come back.” She was beginning to tremble again. Erno squeezed her hand, and she stopped.

Biggs nodded and scratched his nose. “You’ll come stay with me,” he said, and got to his sizable feet.

The twins packed quickly and met back at the base of the stairs. Erno wondered what Biggs’s house might be like. High ceilings, he suspected.

As if reading his mind, Biggs said, “Muh house is comfortable. You’ll like it.”

They walked out the front doorway. Biggs scratched under his chin. “Unless of course you don’t.

“It’s at the top of a tall tree,” he added hopefully. “Kids like climbing trees.”

Erno thought this was a strange thing to say, but he grinned politely and carried on grinning for the next thirty minutes until he found out that Biggs wasn’t joking.

was founded in 1858 for the purpose of manufacturing quality breakfast cereals and attaining dominion over all the peoples of the Earth. Nathan Orbison Goode and Jack T. Harmliss started the company in their hometown of Goodborough, New Jersey, eight months after meeting on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Nathan Goode was of the
Mayflower
Goodes
¹
, a privileged son attending business classes at Penn. There he met Jack Harmliss, a penniless thug who eked out a living collecting money from privileged sons in exchange for not robbing them. When Harmliss presented Goode with
his (un)usual sales pitch in a darkened alley one night, Goode recognized in him a brilliant and original young entrepreneur.

Several drinks later they were fast friends, and found that they shared many passions. Both Goode and Harmliss bemoaned the lack of tasty, easy-to-prepare breakfast foods, and both had a secret longing for all-encompassing power over the peoples of the earth. More surprisingly, both men had been tormented by the same recurring dream since childhood: a radiant pink dragon, immensely powerful and yet trapped in darkness.

Goode would write of one of these dreams in 1882. Note the mention of the company’s top-selling cereal at that time:

Madness or no, the added tallow would make Toasted Sugar Beets the best-selling food of any kind in America, topping even such staples as milk and salt.

That their cereal company was vastly successful is a matter of common knowledge. Far less known is the influence of the secret organization within the company that they founded: the Good and Harmless Freemen of America, or Freemen for short. The list of deeds attributed to this group is long and almost certainly exaggerated. It is doubtful, for example, that they were actually responsible for the Great Fire in Chicago, the stock market crash of 1929, or the extinction of the dodo. Some enthusiasts have suggested in recent years that the Freemen are behind the Bigfoot “controversy,” but such claims are usually given as little attention as they deserve.

Suspicions linger, however, about the society’s power in national and international politics. Freeman support is unquestioningly sought by political candidates, and it is said that they have handpicked every American president from Ulysses S. Grant through the present day.

The symbology of the Freemen is complicated but consistent. Most will recognize the pink dragon as the Goode
and Harmliss Toasted Cereal Company (now Goodco) logo or as one of the marshmallow shapes in Weird-O’s “red octagons, orange moons, pink dragons, green
G
s, and purple pentagrams,” and indeed, each of these shapes plays its own role in Freemen literature and lodge decor. Many other symbols would turn up as cereal mascots in the 1940s and ’50s. There are the Triplets, who protect the Flame of Knowledge (Chip, Sparkle, and Pip—the Puftees Pixies); Lepus the Hare, who holds the Chalice of Spirits (the Snox Rabbit from Honey Frosted Snox); and El Chupacoco, who grasps the Fishing Rod of Insanity (Kookie the coconut vampire from KoKoLumps)
²
.