The Tanglewood Terror (24 page)

I’ve come to doubt my memory of what happened next. I mean, I do remember it, but when I play it out, none of it seems believable.

First there was another tremor, and I heard a deep grinding noise, like a tectonic plate sliding deep in the earth. I could see Mandy’s mouth open and close without a sound, while Brian shouted from somewhere behind me. The ground shook beneath us, and loose soil started to dance around the edge of the hole. I stumbled and dropped the ax. The blunt side glanced off my knee and sent a spasm of pain radiating up my body.

I saw Mandy stumble too, the ground quaking beneath her. The cord we’d been hacking at lashed out like a tentacle, whipping over my head and slapping the edge of the hole. I grabbed the ax, reached over, and gave it a few whacks. It must have come loose, flopping out like a giant spring and making the ground shift under us.

“Come on!” Brian shouted. “Let’s go!” He was on the edge of the hole, holding out a hand to help me out. I shook my head no. We were here to fight this thing.

The grinding noise became louder and the ground erupted. Mandy lost the saw in a jumble of cords, kicked at a big fungal tentacle, and turned around, tripping as her foot got caught in a snarl. I pulled her free, striking at the tentacle with the ax even as the fungus rose up from the ground and rained dirt around our heads and shoulders.

I felt a loop come around my waist. I dropped the ax and tried to pry the thing off me, but it picked me up and
flipped me upside down like it was going to administer the piledriver, Undertaker-style.

I could see the core beneath me, a ball of pink among the green. It was not as big as I expected—no bigger than a football, actually. There was a gaping wound in it where we’d cut off the major cord, and it was now connected only by some smaller, stringier cords radiating around it. I wondered if I could take it away, like I was forcing a fumble. I needed to free myself for one second.

Something whizzed by, I heard a splintering crunch, and the shovel tumbled past my head, nearly taking my ear with it. Brian must have hurled it like a spear into the cord around my waist. The grasp on me loosened, and I dived toward the heart of the monster. I grabbed the corners with my hands and twisted, letting my falling body weight do the work. There was a series of snaps as the strings holding the core broke. I dug my fingernails into the spongy ball so I wouldn’t lose it. I was whapped and walloped by hard-hitting weights piling up on me, but I’d been there before—a dog pile after a fumble—and knew what to do, which was protect the ball. I felt the fingers of the fungus poke and prod at my arms as they tried to work the core free, but I held on tight and waited as they gave a last desperate grab, then twitched and were still.

At least I remember it that way. The more I try to re-create it, exactly as it happened, the more it feels like a vivid nightmare I had long ago.

Mandy pulled the cords off me until a little window of morning light opened above my head. I crawled out, still
holding the heart. Brian helped each of us out of the hole, grabbing our hands so we could clamber up the side.

The fungus looked like nothing now—a twisted mess of thick twine and ropes, dead on the ground. In the trees past the clearing, I saw the mushrooms dimming. I still held the core, which was now white and felt as lifeless as a hunk of wood.

“That’s all?” said Mandy.

“I guess so.”

Brian took it from me and drove the shovel into it, dead center. It split open like a big potato. There was no blood and not so much as a whimper. I’d forgotten it was just a fungus.

“I thought it would be harder,” he said.

“Me too.” I almost felt sorry for it.

We heard voices and saw flashlights slashing through the trees, and a moment later some police came stomping into the clearing. One of them got on the radio and barked into it: “Three seventy-two niner five a zero.” I don’t remember exactly.

“Let’s go,” he said to Mandy. She went. There were no handcuffs and no threats.

“What is the nature of this vehicle?” another officer asked me, pointing at the quad.

“Mostly a Royal Enfield quadricycle,” I told him, looking around to make sure Brian was okay. He was talking to another cop and pointing back at me.

“It’s got a newer motor and some odds and ends from other things,” I told the cop.

“Is the vehicle yours?”

“No, but I borrowed it from somebody. Well, she borrowed it.” I gestured at the space where Mandy had been standing a few minutes ago. “The owner knows we have it. She’s a friend of ours.”

“Did you know it’s against state law to take motorized vehicles on these paths?”

“No.”

“And did you know you have to be a licensed driver at least sixteen years of age to drive a motorized vehicle of any kind?”

“No.”

“We’ll need to confiscate this vehicle,” he said.

“But I’ve got to return it,” I said. “It belongs to this old woman—it’s her only means of transportation.”

“Son, we’ll see that the vehicle is returned to the proper owner.” He really liked the word “vehicle.”

I gave him Howard’s name, but I didn’t know her address. “She lives close to the highway,” I said, “halfway between here and Boise Township. I don’t even know if she has a phone.”

He muttered something into the radio and waved me away. I was free to go, but without the quad. Brian was also done being interrogated, and we headed home. The mushrooms crumbled under our feet as we walked through the backyard.

“Kids, you’re all right!” Dad said when Brian and I came in. “I didn’t have any idea what happened to you. Everything was such a scene … all the screaming, and the stampede. It was nuts. Your mother slept in her office at Alden because the radio said not to even try to drive into Tanglewood. I thought maybe you were laying low at a friend’s house, but when you didn’t call …”

“We were killing the fungus,” said Brian.

“What?” Dad shook his head in confusion.

“Did you notice the mushrooms are all dead?” I asked him.

“The TV news said it was the frost,” he said.

Did it get cold enough for a frost? I was working too hard to notice, but I should have noticed. I would have seen my breath, felt my own sweat get icy on my skin. I didn’t remember seeing a coat of white on the lawn when we came home, either.

“It wasn’t frost,” said Brian.

“I’m just telling you what they said on TV,” said Dad.

“They’re lying,” I said.

“The weatherpeople don’t lie,” he said. “I mean, not
after
the weather. They have instruments.”

“Forget the frost,” I said. “What did they say about the screaming mushrooms?”

“Well, it’s like, uh … some people say that they think they heard the
mushrooms
screaming, but the TV news said—and I think so, too—they said it was feedback from the speakers and that maybe people were wound up a little tight and overreacted.”

“I saw the mushrooms scream,” I told him. “I mean, I heard them. But I also
saw
them.” Brian nodded.

“Yeah, well. You had a bad knock in the head not so long ago,” said Dad. “I’m starting to worry about both of you guys.”

I said a bad word, right in front of him, and stormed up the stairs, Brian stomping up after me.

Tanglewood was on the national news that night. They showed downtown—store windows that had been shattered
and boarded up, broken glass and garbage scattered in the street. “A small town in Maine is recovering from a festival gone awry,” the news commentator said grimly. They went to a reporter standing in front of the Keatston Meetinghouse.

“I’ve heard that the riot occurred during the encore of a band called the Bright Fun Guys, when some deafening feedback from the speakers sent the crowd stampeding down Main Street,” the guy said. He didn’t say one word about the mushrooms, and he got the name of the street wrong.

The next bit was the mayor, standing in front of the post office, which is the closest thing Tanglewood has to a city hall.

“You have to remember that we hosted an event with people from all over the state,” she said, “including a number of college students who might have had a bit more to drink than was advisable. We’re a peaceful little town, and I don’t believe anyone from Tanglewood was directly responsible for this escalation of events.”

Disorderly college kids, that was all they talked about. I could have kicked in the TV.

It was Halloween, but nobody went trick-or-treating that year. It was like the whole town forgot, or simply had had enough of spooky fun. I also forgot about football on Sunday. When I turned on the news later and saw the scores, it was kind of a jolt. Everywhere else around the country, football and life were going on like it was just another week. The Patriots had their bye week anyway, so I didn’t miss much.

•   •   •

We had more of the same at school on Monday. They scheduled a special morning assembly meant to tell us nothing happened.

“Well, I hope you all REMEMBER what can happen if a number of people behave IRRESPONSIBLY,” said Ms. Brookings. There was a whole lot of “I told you so” in her voice, even though she hadn’t officially told us so.

Somebody up front mumbled something about the mushrooms. Usually she rushed to students who had something to say and gave them the mike, like a daytime talk show host, but this time she shook her head.

“I’m hearing a lot of PREPOSTEROUS and IMPOSSIBLE explanations for what occurred,” she said. “Let’s call these what they are: EXCUSES. There’s no EXCUSE for the terrible BEHAVIOR we witnessed this weekend.”

“What about the screaming mushrooms?” somebody hollered.

“I can’t. I can’t,” the counselor said, shaking her head, like it was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. She handed the microphone to the principal, who muttered that we all had to go back to class.

I started to wonder myself when I was trying to get to sleep that night. What had happened? Was I sure about what I’d seen? Was I even sure about what I’d experienced? I knew we’d been in the woods and dug up the core, and I knew Brian had driven a shovel through it. But had it really fought back? Maybe we were overtired, overworked, and half asleep. Maybe a big hunk of cord sprang out of the ground
and looked alive for a second. Maybe I’d gotten knotted up with the cords and imagined the fungus was wrestling with me.

I could ask Brian, but he had an overactive imagination. I might have trusted Mandy’s memory a little bit better—a very little bit—but I didn’t know how to get ahold of her. I’d spent too much time with both of them—that was the problem.

I found Allan after the assembly. He was back at school since the mushrooms had disappeared.

“You heard the screaming, right?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It was just, like, an earsplitting noise. It was coming from everywhere.”

He was no help at all.

I woke up before dawn sensing that something was wrong. I pushed the curtains aside on my bedroom window. The mushrooms were back, scattering dime-sized dots of blue-green across the yard.

I went outside to get a better look. The stems were half the height they’d been at their largest, but the fungal network had already been in place, ready to poke its million gnome-hatted heads out of the ground.

Either the fungus didn’t really need its core or it could simply grow a new one. Either way, we were doomed.

Mr. Davis was on his back porch, looking glum.

“Thought we got rid of these fellas,” he said.

“Me too.”

“They got into the house, you know. Probably bring it
down. Don’t know if my insurance will cover it if they do.” He stood up, shook his head, and went inside.

On the other side of our house, Sparky was growling and digging into the yard, scattering a dozen caps. Ms. Fisher peeked from the back door but didn’t come outside.

“Come on, punkin,” she hollered, but Sparky kept on digging.

I was with Sparky. We needed to fight back. I just didn’t know what to do anymore.

“Are the mushrooms going to blow up?” Tony asked in science class.

“Interesting question.” Ms. Weller was better than Ms. Brookings about letting us ask questions. “Why do you think they would?”

“Because they’re turning red,” he said. “The whole field is red now.”

I’d forgotten about the red mushrooms. Did they disappear and come back like the green ones? Or did they hold their own?

“I’ve never heard of mushrooms dramatically changing color,” said Ms. Weller. “They might darken when they’re done fruiting, but that’s one way they
aren’t
like apples.” She was remembering my own comparison of the fungus to an apple tree, but I didn’t think she was trying to make fun of me.

“Well, I never heard of them screaming before, either,” I said without raising my hand. There was actually a spattering of soft clapping.

“I’m not convinced we did hear them screaming,” the
teacher said. “Now, I admit I wasn’t there. But how many of you can really say where a noise comes from, especially a loud one? Have you ever been mistaken, thinking a sound came from inside that was really outside?”

Kids looked around at each other. Sure, that happens sometimes.