The Dark Side of Nowhere (3 page)

I looked inside to see something metallic gray. It was a glove. A glove made of steel that went clear up to the elbow. It didn't look complicated—but it didn't look like something anyone around here had made.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked.

Grant didn't answer me. Instead he said, “There's an old barn at the north end of Old Town Billington. Near where the bridge used to be. Be there Tuesday, after school. I'll show you how to use it.”

“Old Town?” It was a long time since I heard the place even mentioned. It was a miserable corner of
Billington, low on my list of places I'd ever care to visit again.

“Can I count on you?” he asked.

I wanted to ask him more questions, and yet all I could do was nod.

“Don't tell anyone,” he said. “Don't show it to anyone.” Then he strode off without looking back.

I ducked back into the bathroom, as if I had to hide the thing from the light of day, then I reached into the bag and pulled it out. It was clumsy and heavy—an unsightly thing with bulky ridges in unexpected places. Standing in front of the mirror, I slipped it on. It felt like it was made for a hand my size, but not necessarily a hand my shape. It seemed too flat and wide, still, when I moved my fingers, the fingers of the glove moved surprisingly easily.

Lifting my hand, I flexed my fingers, spreading them out as wide as they would go. And the mirror exploded.

T
hanks for ruining my no-hitter yesterday,” said Paula, standing in my doorway. “I'd punch you,” she said, “but I don't think I could find a place left to bruise.”

After my strange meeting with Grant the day before, I felt like someone had taken an eggbeater to my brain. Paula's appearance at my front door didn't help. Although my face wasn't as swollen as it had been, I still looked like a bad mug shot, so I tried to stand back in the afternoon shadows.

“What do you mean I ruined it?” I protested.

“You broke my concentration,” she said.

“Try again—I didn't start fighting until
after
the ball got hit.”

“No,” said Paula, with the calm control of a prosecutor, “that creep was saying things about me, and you stepped on his hand.
That's
when I started throwing bad pitches.”

“What are you, an alien? Do you have eyes in the back of your head? I countered.

“No,” she said, “but a pitcher has to be observant.”

Then it occurred to me that of all the people in the stands, she chose to be observant of me. The slightest grin came to my face—I couldn't hold it back. It made her uncomfortable—I could tell, because I'm pretty observant myself.

“Well,” she said, “I just thought I'd tell you.” Then she took a step back and turned to leave.

In that instant as she was turning away, I didn't have the chance to think about what I was going to say to keep her there. So I just shut down my brain and opened my mouth—which was a well-practiced talent of mine.

“There's something I want to show you,” I said.

Paula turned back. “What?”

“Come on in.” I opened the door, and she stepped in.

I led her through the house and out the back door, thankful that my parents were still at church and I was spared the burden of an explanation. Once out back, I reached under the back porch and pulled out the grocery bag Grant had given me.

“What are you doing?” asked Paula.

“You'll see.”

Our backyard is almost an acre. You get yards that size when your town's in the boondocks. At the end of
our property, there's a useless little barbed-wire fence, blocking off our land from the fallow pasture beyond, where no cows had grazed since before I was born.

I led Paula beneath the wire and over a hill, so neither my house nor any of the other homes on the road had a clear view of us.

Then I pulled the glove out of the bag and showed it to her.

“It's weird—what is it?” she asked.

“I'll show you.”

About fifty yards away were a bunch of tin cans set up on old apple crates. I'd set them up myself the day before. I slipped the glove on my hand, which was already becoming callused from wearing the clumsy thing. Then I pointed my index finger toward one of the cans . . . and tensed the muscle.

Fffft! Ping!

The can flew off the apple box. I was surprised that I got it on the first shot. It usually took nine or ten.

Paula looked at my uncertainly. “How'd you do that?”

I grinned. “It's magic,” I said.

But she wasn't buying. “Nice try,” she said, then grabbed my arm, turning it every whichway, practically breaking it off. She examined the fine, intricate device, from the pneumatic firing mechanism to the tiny barrels
that spread across the back of my hand and to my fingertips like an exoskeleton. Then she found a catch near the elbow.

“No, don't!” I said—too late. She flipped it open, and the load of tiny ball bearings cascaded out, disappearing into the thick weeds of the meadow.

“Ha!” she announced. “I knew there was a rational explanation.”

I knelt down, trying to salvage what BB's I could from the meadow. “You didn't have to do that,” I whined—but shut up when I realized I was whining.

“So, it's a BB gun,” she said.

“Well, yeah,” I stammered, frustrated that she could reduce it to something so commonplace. “But it's a really cool BB gun. See, there are five channels—one running down the length of each finger. When you straighten your finger and tense it, it fires. You can fire in five different directions at the same time,” I told her. “I could spread out my fingers and knock down five of those cans if I wanted to.” Then, for emphasis, I raised my hand, tensed my fingers, and sent five BB's flying simultaneously toward the row of cans. I missed them all.

Paula raised an eyebrow. “Who'd want to shoot in five different directions, anyway?”

“That's not the point,” I explained, wishing she were a little more impressed. I slipped the glove off my hand
and gave it to her, letting her feel its full weight. “You wanna try it?” I asked.

She didn't answer—she just looked at it, turning it over, taking in all its different angles and ridges.

“Jason,” she finally said, “this is not normal.”

My grin stretched wide. “I know—isn't that great?”

I thought she might put it on, but she didn't. I was relieved. Just because I showed it to her didn't mean I was ready to share it.

“Where'd you get it?” she asked.

I hesitated. “I can't tell you that,” I finally said.

Her face hardened. She was always honest; I suspect she wanted nothing less in return. “What's that supposed to mean?”

I realized I had already gone too far. I was supposed to keep it to myself. Tell no one. So I shrugged and gave no further answer.

I saw a gleam in her eye then, and the trace of a grin. I should have guessed what she was about to do, but like I said, intuition wasn't my strong point.

She turned and bolted, like she was sprinting for first base.

“Hey! Give that back!” I shouted.

She kept on running. “Not until you tell me where you got it.”

I chased, barely able to keep up with her. I could
hear her laughing as she ran. At first I was laughing as well, but it got old real quick, when she didn't let me catch her.

We got farther and farther away from my house, running from field to field, climbing through wire fences, jumping over low, moss-covered stone walls. The trees got denser.

I knew the area behind my house pretty well, but there were some places that I just didn't go, and after playing this little game for ten minutes, I was so exhausted, I didn't know where I was headed.

Then we broke through a dense grove of oaks, and I saw the ruined remains of a storm-shattered house. I knew exactly where we were.

I stopped, refusing to chase Paula any farther. I put my hands on my knees, fighting to catch my breath.

Up ahead, Paula had stopped beside the abandoned house and was holding my glove over a stone opening in the ground—the entrance to an old storm cellar. Its steps led down into the mossy darkness.

“So,” she said, clearly threatening to drop it in, “tell me where you got it.”

“We shouldn't be here,” I told her. “Let's go.”

“Not until you tell me,” she said defiantly.

It made me angry to see her taunting me like that. Not wild-angry like I usually get, but angry in a way that
focused my thoughts and made me know exactly what I wanted to say.

“I don't like you messing with my head,” I told her, “and I don't like being treated like crap. If I can't tell you, then I've got good reason—and if you can't accept that, then drop it in and leave.”

She held the glove there for a second longer, then took it away from the hole.

“I thought you could take a joke,” she said.

“I can take one,” I told her, “but I won't
be
one.”

She came over to me and gently put the glove back in my arms. “You're not,” she said.

The moment could have turned uncomfortable then, if we both didn't have the good sense to look away from each other. She turned her attention to the ruined house behind us.

“I wonder who lived here.”

“C'mon, let's get back,” I said.

She looked at me, observing far more than I really wanted her to.

“You're spooked, aren't you?”

I would have denied it, but lying to Paula was still beyond my skill level. “This part of town gives me the creeps,” I told her.

Telling her that was as good as an invitation.

She walked around to the front of the ruined house,
for a moment putting aside thoughts of my BB glove, and I had no choice but to follow.

I found her standing in what was left of the front yard, staring at the street, her eyes rabbit-wide. “This is unreal!” she said.

Well, at least I had finally succeeded in impressing her.

The street before us—if you can call it a street—was weed-choked and broken into a mosaic of uneven asphalt. Trees lined the broken pavement. All dead. Skeletal hedges still clung to some of the pickets surrounding the homes. Some looked green, but the only thing living in them were the weeds that had tangled themselves up with the bushes.

Paula looked down the street, at a half dozen abandoned homes on either side and the row of stores farther down. “What is this place?”

I pushed away a shiver and took hold of this golden opportunity to gain her undivided attention. “It's Old Town Billington,” I told her. “Unluckiest place in the country.” I sat on a tree stump as I wove the tale for her. “It started with a storm, about twenty years ago. A tornado ripped through the woods and took out a few houses—you can still see the path it cut.” I pointed to the thin part of the woods. “Then, while people were still cleaning up, a bunch of 'em got the flu real bad. Some even died from it. That same year, when a blight started
eating through the trees, people just gave up. I guess some got superstitious, and others couldn't stand the bad memories. Anyway, people moved to other parts of town, and when the bridge that led from here to the highway got washed out, there was no reason to rebuild it.”

I looked around, trying to spot the old barn that Grant had mentioned. Even though the place seemed deserted, I was terrified he might be around, that he might see me flaunting my glove in front of Paula. I had to keep reminding myself that I never really promised him anything. Just because he asked me to keep it secret didn't mean I had to. Still, I slipped the glove underneath my shirt to keep it out of sight.

“So it's a real live ghost town,” said Paula as we walked down the silent street. “In my old neighborhood, you don't get deserted houses. If a place gets deserted, they tear it down and build a strip mall. This is so strange.”

Funny, but I never really thought of Old Town as being strange. I usually didn't think about it at all. It was kind of like that blind spot at the side of your eye. It's there, but who cares?

Like your appendix,
I thought, but pushed that one out of my mind real quick.

“It's nothing special,” I explained. “I mean, it wasn't exactly a center of activity. There's only this one street—
then around the bend the homes thin out. There's only maybe thirty buildings in all.”

“Do you ever come here, like, with friends, to hang out?” she asked.

“When I was a kid,” I said, “Wesley and I used to come here when we got bored. We'd throw rocks at the windows and stuff.” I didn't tell Paula why we stopped coming here. The truth is, my father found out about it. It was the only time I ever saw him furious, the only time he ever hit me. A real old-fashioned spanking. Being that I was nine, and way too old for that sort of thing, I thought it would only hurt my pride, but, man, was there power in that palm. It hurt like you couldn't believe. From what I heard, Wesley got even worse from his dad. The whole thing felt so crazy that I thought the world was falling apart. So now, although being out of line was my favored mode of operation, there were just some things I didn't do. Like hang out in Old Town.

I never thought to question why it upset my father so much. I never thought to question a lot of things.

When I glanced up at Paula, she was looking down the sharp bulge in my shirt. The glove was out of sight, but definitely not out of mind for either of us.

“You didn't get it at a store, did you?” Paula said. She wasn't asking a question. She was stating a fact.

“I guess it's not exactly something you'll find at Walmart,” I answered.

I thought she was going to keep asking questions, but this time she chose not to—the same way I chose not to ask where Grant had gotten it from. That path of questioning led to a place I didn't want to go. Much better to stay grounded in things that were easy to explain. Like Old Town.