Terrors Page 2

  He took his medicine and ate some breakfast, part of a pancake and a slice of bacon. Then Dr. Goldsmith arrived and examined Arlie the way he did every day. He didn’t smile exactly the way he did most days. He did say, “Keep it up and you’ll be playing halfback one of these days,” but when he left Arlie’s room with Aunt Cora he wasn’t even humming “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

  Dr. Goldsmith and Aunt Cora talked for a long time, mostly in Old Country language, before Dr. Goldsmith left. Aunt Cora opened the door of Arlie’s room partway and looked in at him. He lifted his hand and waved to her. She didn’t say anything, she just closed the door. Arlie thought that was odd.

  Even with light coming from outside around the window shade, it seemed that the dark place on Arlie’s wall near the radiator was especially dark today. Arlie looked into the dark place as hard as he could. He wasn’t sure if he could see the tunnel. He knew there were no lights inside. Still, this was the first time he’d even thought he might see the tunnel in the daytime.

  He reached over and turned on the radio but he fell asleep before he could hear the news.

  When Arlie woke up Aunt Cora was sitting on a wooden chair next to his bed watching him. He could tell it was afternoon by the way the light came around the window shade. He asked Aunt Cora if it was lunch time and she said that it was, yes, and what would he like for lunch?

  He said a cheeseburger on a roll and French fries and Aunt Cora said she would make that for him and he heard her for a while in the kitchen. He could smell the food cooking and while Aunt Cora made his lunch Arlie tried to see the dark place again and see if he could make out anything inside the tunnel but there was too much light in the room.

  A train went by, though, and he was able to make believe it was taking him to the Black Forest where he would ride in his father’s tank and blow up Nazis. Then Aunt Cora brought his lunch and he ate part of it. He asked his Aunt Cora what she was having for lunch and she said the same thing he was, he didn’t eat so much and there was enough left for her.

  In the afternoon he made believe that he was in a Crimson Wizard story with the Crimson Wizard. The Crimson Wizard wore a big hat with a point on top and a wide brim that hid his face from his enemies so they wouldn’t learn his secret identity and attack him when he wasn’t in his Crimson Wizard identity. Nobody ever saw the Crimson Wizard’s face because he could never tell when an enemy might be lurking nearby, even when he was at home or in his secret lair working on a new and more potent potion or spell.

  Arlie imagined that the Crimson Wizard needed an assistant and that he asked Arlie to be his assistant. They might even change the name of the comic book from Crimson Wizard Comics to The Crimson Wizard and Arlie, and Arlie would get to share the Crimson Wizard’s adventures in the comics and on the radio, too.

  He had his nap and when he woke up he could tell that it was getting dark outside. He turned on the radio and listened to Ace Larson Space Explorer and to The Crimson Wizard.

  Ace Larson managed to unlock the emergency equipment kit on board the Isis and get out oxygen masks for himself and for Betty Blanton. Once they had their oxygen masks in place Ace Larson Space Explorer was able to land the Isis safely on the surface of the Poison Planetoid.

  But that was just the beginning of Ace Larson and Betty Blanton’s latest and most exciting adventure. Ace Larson asked Betty Blanton to look outside and see what kind of place the Isis had come down in. Ace Larson meant that Betty should look outside through one of the Isis’s portholes but Betty didn’t understand and she opened the hatch. A dozen scaly monsters rushed through the doorway, ray-rifles blazing, just as the day’s episode came to an end.

  The Crimson Wizard was facing his arch foe the fiendish Dr. Mephisto. Not only was Dr. Mephisto a powerful master of the dark arts, he knew the secret that it took to summon up all the Demon Horde of Hades. It wasn’t easy for him, he could only do it when the stars of the Pleiades were in perfect alignment and the forces of good were at a low ebb. But as the Crimson Wizard himself was all too aware, the forces of good were busily engaged in defeating the Axis powers in Europe and Asia, so they were not available to aid the Crimson Wizard in holding off Dr. Mephisto and the Horde of Hades.

  Arlie knew that the Horde of Hades were shown in one of the stories in his newest Crimson Wizard comic book. The radio dial gave off a little light and Arlie turned the pages, looking for the Horde of Hades. He found the story and lay in bed studying the drawings while he listened to the radio. He knew how the story came out in the comic book but it might be different on the radio. He liked the Crimson Wizard’s voice on the radio. Whenever the Crimson Wizard spoke there was an echo in his voice. It sounded like the Crimson Wizard was far away and up close at the same time.

  When the story ended on the radio Arlie lay in bed trying to see into the tunnel in the corner but all he could see was a black place.

  Soon he heard a key in the doorway of the apartment. He remembered when he was stronger and could go out of the apartment. He played stickball with some other kids in the cement courtyard outside the building, the same courtyard where you could see the trains when they went past.

  He used to walk to school, too. He walked with his best friend. His best friend was named Buddy Bill McIlhenny.

  The McIlhennys lived upstairs in another apartment. Buddy Bill lived there with his mom and dad and two sisters. Arlie wished he could live with his own mom and dad and sisters instead of his Aunt Cora and his Uncle Mort and Aunt Mary but he knew that could never be. He didn’t have any brothers or sisters and his mom was dead so he knew he would never have any but at least he knew his dad was in the Black Forest fighting Nazis and when he came back from the war Arlie would live with him.

  When Arlie first got sick and couldn’t go to school or play in the courtyard Buddy Bill visited him almost every day. They traded comic books and talked about school and the war and Buddy Bill’s sisters and their other friends. But Arlie got sicker and Buddy Bill didn’t visit him as often as he did at first and then he stopped visiting him.

  It was wintertime now. Last winter Arlie and Buddy Bill had made a snowman in the courtyard but this winter Arlie had not been able to go outside at all. He couldn’t even get to the window and look down into the courtyard to see if Buddy Bill had made a snowman without him.

  He knew what the hallway looked like and he remembered the smell in the hallway and on the stairs. Some apartment houses had elevators in them but Arlie’s house didn’t have an elevator so you had to walk up and down flights of stairs when you went out or got home. But Arlie hadn’t been out of the apartment in a long time.

  He heard the door open and he knew that Uncle Mort and Aunt Mary were home. He heard their voices and Aunt Cora’s talking in the Old Country language.

  The door of his own room opened and Uncle Mort and Aunt Mary came in together. Aunt Mary knelt next to Arlie’s bed and put her hand on his forehead and her cheek against his cheek. Her hand and her face felt cool and smooth and her cheek was soft.

  He could see her dark lips even in his room. The radio was still turned on and the light from the dial made Aunt Mary’s face show up clearly.

  He could smell her, too. There were different smells on her. He could smell her hair and her perfume. He liked the way Aunt Mary smelled. His Aunt Cora sometimes smelled of cooking and his Uncle Mort didn’t seem to have a smell, but Aunt Mary smelled like sweet flowers. He tried to remember if his mom had smelled like sweet flowers but he couldn’t remember. Maybe old ladies like Aunt Cora smelled of cooking and other ladies like Aunt Mary smelled like sweet flowers. Arlie thought that he would grow up and marry a lady someday and he could smell her whenever he wanted to, not just when she came and put her cheek next to his.

  Aunt Mary stood up and went out of the room and Arlie could hear her voice and Aunt Cora’s together. Uncle Mort came over and sat on Arlie’s bed. That was nice. Uncle Mort was still wearing his overcoat and Arlie could see a few specks of snow on the shoulders
of Uncle Mort’s coat. There were big pockets in Uncle Mort’s coat. He reached into one and pulled out a folded newspaper. He unfolded the newspaper and took something out and handed it to Arlie.

  It looked a lot like a comic book but it was thicker than any comic book Arlie had ever seen. Arlie looked at the cover. There was a picture of a castle on the front, with a full moon shining behind it. In front of the castle a big white animal sat with its head thrown back and its mouth wide open. It looked like a giant dog but Arlie knew that it was really a wolf, maybe even a werewolf.

  Arlie smiled. He liked the picture.

  Uncle Mort asked if he could read the name of the magazine.

  Arlie was annoyed. He was a good reader. He’d learned to read even before he started school, and he was one of the best readers in his class before he got sick and had to stop going to school. He looked at the name of the magazine. It was printed in big yellow letters right over the dark sky in the picture. Arlie made a face. “It says Haunted Adventures. January 1945. In this issue Hounds from the Hills by Eduardo del Lobo, Marcus Billingham, Joseph Lester, Clarissa Norman, twenty five cents.”

  Uncle Mort grinned. “You’re right, Arlie. You’re a terrific reader. You want to keep Haunted Adventures?”

  Arlie opened Haunted Adventures. Unlike his comic books it was printed all in black words on white pages. There were some pictures but they were in black, too. He liked comics a lot and he wasn’t sure that he liked Haunted Adventures but he could tell that Uncle Mort wanted him to say that he liked it and he wanted to please his uncle.

  “It looks great, Uncle Mort.”

  “Think you can read the whole magazine, Arlie?”

  Arlie wasn’t sure about that so he didn’t say anything.

  “Well, you try one story and see how you do. You might want to try that Billingham. He’s a good writer. Don’t worry, Arlie, if you don’t like it we’ll go back to comics tomorrow.”

  Uncle Mort ruffled Arlie’s hair and walked out of the room.

  That night after dinner of spaghetti and meatballs Arlie sat in his chair with the lamp over it. He could see the dark place on the wall, but the funny thing was, the lighter the room was the less he could see of the dark place. He wasn’t sure he could see the opening or the tunnel at all, and certainly not Homicide Sergeant Jack Martin or the lovely Marguerite Moran or the Crimson Wizard.

  But he was able to read the story that Uncle Mort said he would enjoy. It was called “Orchids for the Bride of the Spectre.” Arlie didn’t know what a Spectre was but clearly it was something scary. In fact the whole story was scary but still Arlie liked it and he was proud of himself for reading the whole story.

  It was better than anything he’d ever read in school books, and in a way it was better than stories on the radio or in the comics. That was strange, because the comic books had bright, exciting pictures in them and the radio stories had real voices and sounds like spaceships blasting off or gunshots or the hoof beats of magnificent stallions. The stories in Haunted Adventures magazine only had words. Why were they so good, then?

  Suddenly Arlie understood. The stories in the comic books or on the radio happened outside your head and you only saw them or heard them, but the stories in Haunted Adventures happened inside your head.

  Arlie realized that he liked the idea that Marcus Billingham wrote the story, too. He’d never thought about that before. Comic book stories and radio stories were just there, somehow. The stories were there and the pictures were there, the way the sky was just there and the world was just there. You didn’t think about it, or if you did some grownup would say, “God made the sky,” or “God made the world.”

  But Arlie didn’t think that God made Haunted Adventures and wrote the stories in it. Arlie realized with a shock that it wasn’t that way at all. Eduardo del Lobo, Marcus Billingham, Joseph Lester, and Clarissa Norman wrote the stories in Haunted Adventures. Somebody drew the pictures in the magazine, too, and somebody made the wonderful picture of the wolf on the cover, and somebody wrote the stories in Arlie’s comic books and drew the pictures there, too, and somebody wrote the stories about Ace Larson Space Explorer and Homicide Sergeant Jack Martin and even the Crimson Wizard that Arlie heard on the radio.

  Suddenly Arlie felt something inside his chest, something that he had never felt before. It was warm and it seemed to be filling him up and almost pushing out of him. He knew something that he hadn’t known before. He didn’t know where it came from but he knew it with all his heart. He blinked and told himself that when he grew up he would not only marry a lady who wore lipstick and smelled like flowers like his Aunt Mary, he would write stories for Haunted Adventures magazine.

  He closed the magazine and waited for his Uncle Mort to come and carry him to the bathroom and then put him in his bed. He waited for a train to come but he didn’t hear a distant whistle or the click of the wheels on the tracks.

  That night he woke up when a train went past. He listened for its whistle and the click of its wheels. He could tell the exact moment that the locomotive rushed past the apartment house. He imagined himself sitting in the train as it rushed past his house and carried him to the land that the picture on the cover of Haunted Adventures showed. He was running through the woods. The big castle rose up, he could see its towers against the bright full moon, and he could hear the rustle of creatures in the dark woods and the distant howling of wolves.

  He wondered where the dark woods were. Maybe they were part of the Black Forest and he would hear the sounds of battle. There would be American tanks with big white stars painted on them and Nazi tanks with ugly swastikas and he would see his dad.

  He pushed himself up in his bed.

  The clock said it was after three o’clock in the morning. It must have been cloudy outside. Arlie could see just a little bit around the edges of the window shade and he could see that it was snowing. Inside Arlie’s room it was the darkest he could ever remember.

  He looked at the dark place on his wall and the tunnel was there and the entrance to it was wide open. Arlie leaned forward and looked into the tunnel as hard as he could.

  He could see different colored lights inside. There was a bright yellow light and he could see Tex Wilson and his mighty stallion Pharaoh. There was a dark purple light and he could see Ace Larson Space Explorer and his companion Betty Blanton standing on the surface of the poison planetoid next to their spaceship the Isis. There was a blue light and he could see Homicide Detective Jack Martin and the lovely Marguerite Moran; Detective Martin was wounded and he was leaning on the lovely Marguerite Moran who had a gun in her hand and was shooting at a crook. And there was a crimson light, the strongest light of all, a beautiful crimson light and there was the Crimson Wizard and Arlie could see a little under the edge of the Crimson Wizard’s hat and he was almost sure that the Crimson Wizard’s face was his father’s face.

  The Crimson Wizard was looking right at Arlie. He spoke to Arlie and his voice was a lot like Arlie’s dad’s voice, but it was also a lot like your announcer Larry Thorson. He was gesturing to Arlie, too, and he was telling him that he could come into the tunnel and they would have an adventure together. The insidious Dr. Mephisto was up to his old tricks again and Arlie could help the Crimson Wizard defeat the Demon Horde of Hades.

  Arlie couldn’t get out of bed to go to the tunnel. He couldn’t get out of bed at all without somebody picking him up, his Aunt Cora or his Uncle Mort or some other grownup. He tried, though, and all of a sudden he could move. His arms and legs didn’t exactly work right, it felt more as if he was leaving his body right in the bed, right under the comforter, and he could kind of float toward the tunnel.

  The Crimson Wizard was gesturing to him and Arlie was moving slowly toward the tunnel. He was near the end of his bed now, and then even though his room was really dark he could see the copy of Haunted Adventures there, with the picture of the wolf and the castle on the cover and the stories inside it by Eduardo del Lobo, Marcus Billingham, Joseph
Lester, and Clarissa Norman. Somehow Arlie knew that if he went into the tunnel with the Crimson Wizard and his other heroes he would never come back. He would never get to grow up and marry a lady who smelled like flowers or write a story that they would print in Haunted Adventures.

  He said, “I can’t come with you, Crimson Wizard.”

  He turned around and he saw himself lying in bed, his head on the pillow, the comforter over him. His eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving. It felt almost as if he was swimming through the air. He got back to his body and got back inside it. He pushed himself upright against the pillow and reached over and turned on the radio on his night table.

  When the light behind the radio dial came on the tunnel in Arlie’s wall disappeared. They were playing music on the radio. In a minute Arlie’s Aunt Cora came into his room. She was wearing a nightgown and her hair wasn’t in a bun, it was in a braid. He’d never seen Aunt Cora’s hair like that before. Uncle Mort and Aunt Mary were behind her. They were both wearing bathrobes.

  Aunt Cora ran over to Arlie and put her arms around him and he put his arms around her and hugged her and she started to cry. Uncle Mort and Aunt Mary started talking in the Old Country language. Uncle Mort went out of Arlie’s room and in a minute Arlie could hear his voice, he was talking on the telephone in a voice that he always used to talk on the telephone.

  Without letting go of Arlie, Aunt Cora said something to Aunt Mary in the Old Country language and Aunt Mary went out of the room and soon she came back with a tray and a glass for Arlie. Aunt Cora held it for him and he sipped at it. It was hot milk with honey mixed in it. It tasted good, Aunt Cora had made it for him before when he felt cold or couldn’t sleep and he always liked it.

  When Aunt Cora finally let Arlie go, he crawled to the end of his bed for his copy of Haunted Adventures and brought it back with him and got back under the comforter. Aunt Cora and Aunt Mary talked to each other very fast in the Old Country language.