Chris Grabenstein - The Crossroads

Sweat pouring down his face, the old man finally cut a smooth edge across the top of the stump.

“Pop?”

He could hear his son off in the distance, near the house, but didn’t answer.

A young man in blue jeans and a leather jacket appeared in the small clearing near the stump. A man with slicked-back hair. Pasty flesh. Cold and evil eyes. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The old man dropped his chain saw and clutched his chest. Tried to breathe. The saw’s razor-sharp blade chewed through the toe of his work boot.

Mr. Mandica toppled sideways.

Clint Eberhart laughed and vanished into the soft night air.

The next day, Zack and Zipper went out into the woods ringing the backyard to check out the stump.

Judy said maintaining the memorial was even more important now that Mr. Mandica had died so close to the old tree. So Zack had a claw hammer looped through his belt and a pocketful of nails scratching against his thigh as he set off to make the repairs.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said to Zipper. “I don’t think the Wicked Witch will be back here today. Not on a Sunday.”

Zack examined the stump. It was gigantic. At least ten feet across. The ground around it had heaved up some, but the rooted base was still intact. Zack saw the white cross and rusty bucket lying on the ground.

“Come on. We’d better fix it.”

While Zack hammered, he studied the depression Mr. Mandica’s body had made in the damp dirt when he died. It looked exactly like the indentation his mother had left in her hospital-bed mattress.

Zack straightened the cross and pushed a new nail through an old hole near its top. Next he nailed in the bucket.

“Okay. Where are the stupid flowers?”

Zack looked around on the ground.

“Make ready the way of the Lord!” cried a stern voice behind him.

Zack spun around and saw an angry man in a sweltering black suit. The man was tall and pencil thin and wore a black hat the size and shape of a pizza pan. Some sleepy-eyed kids stood behind him in single-file lines. They looked miserable.

“Why dost thou undo what the Lord hath done?” the man shouted. He held a black book with colored ribbons streaming out from gold-edged pages. A Bible.

The children behind the man looked weird. The boys all wore identical short-sleeve shirts. The girls had on dresses that swung out like bells. The boys had buzz cuts. The girls, pigtails. All their lips were tiny O’s—like they breathed only through their mouths or were posing to be Pilgrim candles for Thanksgiving.

“Heed my words! Clear away this stump!”

“Howdy, folks!” someone yelled from off to the right.

Zack spied a boy about his own age dressed in bib overalls but with no shirt on underneath the shoulder straps. The boy was barefoot and held a slingshot aimed at the man in black. He let loose a small stone that whacked the skinny man in his shin.

“Gotcha!”

Zipper wagged his tail. He liked this boy with the slingshot.

The man in the pizza hat shook his fist. “Scallywag!”

“Sir, I think it’s time you and the kiddies headed back to camp. So make like a tree and leaf.”

Zack smiled. Nodded at the boy.

“Galdern Bible campers,” the boy said, shaking his head.

“Yeah.” Zack acted like he knew what the boy was talking about. He turned back to face the man in black.

But he was gone. So were the children.

“Where’d they all go?”

“Back to where they come from, I reckon.” The boy tucked his slingshot into the front flap of his overalls. “I’m Davy. Davy Wilcox.”

“I’m Zack. Zack Jennings.”

“Pleased to meet ya. Where d’ya live?”

“Right here.”

“The new house?”

“Yep.”

“Swell!”

“You live around here?”

“Sure do. Moved up from Kentucky a few years back.”

That explained why he talked so funny.

“We’re right across the highway. See? On the farm over yonder.”

Zack looked across the highway and saw patches of a brown field filled with dead cornstalks.

“That’s our field. We keep the cows out back.”

“In the barn?” Zack asked.

“That’s right. You ever work on a farm, Zack?”

“No. But I had this Old McDonald farm set once.”

“With plastic animals and such like that?”

“Yeah,” Zack said, immediately wondering why he felt compelled to tell this boy about his baby toys.

Tell him about your G.I. Joes, too, why don’t you? Then he can make fun of you for playing with dolls just like all your other new neighbors.

“I had me one of them toy farm sets, too,” Davy said. “I thought it was all kinds of swell. Did you have the tractor?”

“Yeah. I chased the cows with it.”

“Hey, that sounds neat. Chasing cows with a tractor? Sounds real neat. So you and your folks just moved in?”

“Yep. Last Monday.”

“Swell. Not many cool kids live around here. Just a couple jerks. Didja meet Kyle Snertz yet?”

“Yeah. Kind of.”

“What a dipstick. He can’t play baseball, neither. Swings that bat like a galdern girl.”

“Really?”

“Does he ever!”

Davy flung his arms around in crazy circles like a blindfolded baboon swatting at a piñata.

“He’s all show and no blow!”

“He doesn’t scare you?”

“Snotty Snertz? Heck no.”

Zack spun around in circles, imitating Davy Wilcox imitating Snertz. Zipper sprang up on his hind legs and spun around in circles, too.

When they saw that, the two boys started laughing.

“Dang! Even your dog swings better than Snertz!”

Zack laughed even harder and realized he might’ve just found his first real friend.

That night, Clint Eberhart sought out the plumber.

The one to do all the things I can’t do myself.

Eberhart was slowly adjusting to his new “condition.” By day, he was vapor invisible to all except children with very vivid imaginations. By night, he could freely roam the earth in his former body and car. But in both instances his physical abilities were severely limited.

In fact, he couldn’t do anything.

He couldn’t eat.

He couldn’t fight.

All he could do was materialize, prowl in the shadows, and make noises.

Of course, at night he could scare the pants off just about anybody. Why, he could give an old man with a chain saw a heart attack if he timed his fade-in just so.

But if he wanted to take care of any unfinished business, Clint Eberhart would need a good pair of human hands.

So he picked the plumber.

The pickup truck was parked on the soft shoulder of the highway near the crossroads.

Billy O’Claire sat up front, staring at the blinking red light. Listening to the crickets. Swatting the mosquitoes nibbling at his neck. After a solid smack and a squish, he checked his watch.

It was almost exactly the same time as it had been that night when he’d seen the motorcycle cop standing in the crossroads. Billy took a sip from a two-liter bottle of soda. He wanted to be wide awake when the mystery man reappeared.

He knotted his eyes and stared straight ahead. “I double-dog dare you to show your face again!”

Well, not his face. He hadn’t really shown it that first time, since the cop didn’t have a face. Billy wondered how he kept his sunglasses in place without a nose for them to sit on. He also wondered why he wore sunglasses in the middle of the night.