He positioned a chair at the foot of—and exactly between—the two beds. In their rush to get packed and out of the house, he had even remembered to bring the notebook that was labeled Stories for Charlotte and Emily, with its clip-on, battery-powered reading lamp. He sat down and held the notebook at reading distance.
The shotgun lay on the floor beside him.
The Beretta was on the dresser, where Paige could reach it in two seconds flat.
Marty waited for the silence to develop the proper quality of expectation.
The scene was remarkably like the one Paige had witnessed so often in the girls’ room at home, except for two differences. The queen-size beds dwarfed Charlotte and Emily, making them seem like children in a fairy tale, homeless waifs who had sneaked into a giant’s castle to steal some of his porridge and enjoy his guest rooms. And the miniature reading lamp clipped to the notebook was not the sole source of light; one of the nightstand lamps was aglow as well, and would remain so all night—the girls’ only apparent concession to fear.
Surprised to discover that she, too, was looking forward with pleasure to the continuation of the poem, Paige sat on the foot of Emily’s bed.
She wondered what it was about storytelling that made people want it almost as much as food and water, even more so in bad times than good. Movies had never drawn more patrons than during the Great Depression. Book sales often improved in a recession. The need went beyond a mere desire for entertainment and distraction from one’s troubles. It was more profound and mysterious than that.
When a hush had fallen on the room and the moment seemed just right, Marty began to read. Because Charlotte and Emily had insisted he start at the beginning, he recited the verses they had already heard on Saturday and Sunday nights, arriving at that moment when Santa’s evil twin stood at the kitchen door of the Stillwater house, intent upon breaking inside.
“With picks, loids, gwizzels, and zocks, he quickly and silently opens both locks. He enters the kitchen without a sound. Now chances for devilment truly abound. He opens the fridge and eats all the cake, pondering what sort of mess he can make. He pours the milk all over the floor, pickles, pudding, ketchup, and Coors. He scatters the bread—white and rye— and finally he spits right in the pie.”
“Oh, gross,” Charlotte said.
Emily grinned. “Hocked a greenie.”
“What kind of pie was it?” Charlotte wondered.
Paige said, “Mincemeat.”
“Yuck. Then I don’t blame him for spitting in it.”
“At the corkboard by the phone and stool, he sees drawings the kids did at school. Emily has painted a kind, smiling face. Charlotte has drawn elephants in space. The villain takes out a red felt-tip pen, taps it, uncaps it, chuckles, and then, on both pictures, scrawls the word ‘Poo!’ He always knows the worst things to do.”
“He’s a critic!” Charlotte gasped, making fists of her small hands and punching vigorously at the air above her bed.
“Critics,” Emily said exasperatedly and rolled her eyes the way she had seen her father do a few times.
“My God,” Charlotte said, covering her face with her hands, “we have a critic in our house.”
“You knew this was going to be a scary story,” Marty said.
“Mad giggles from him continue to bubble, while he gets into far greater trouble. He’s hugely more evil than he is brave, so then after he loads up the microwave with ten whole pounds of popping corn (oh, we should rue the day he was born), he turns and runs right out of the room, because that old oven is gonna go BOOM!”
“Ten pounds!” Charlotte’s imagination swept her away. She rose up on her elbows, head off the pillows, and babbled excitedly: “Wow, you’d need a forklift and a dump truck to carry it all away, once it was popped, ’cause it’d be like snowdrifts only popcorn, mountains of popcorn. We’d need a vat of caramel and maybe a zillion pounds of pecans just to make it all into popcorn balls. We’d be up to our asses in it.”
“What did you say?” Paige asked.
“I said you’d need a forklift—”
“No, that word you used.”
“What word?”
“Asses,” Paige said patiently.
Charlotte said, “That’s not a bad word.”
“Oh?”
“They say it on TV all the time.”
“Not everything on TV is intelligent and tasteful,” Paige said.
Marty lowered the story notebook. “Hardly anything, in fact.”
To Charlotte, Paige said, “On TV, I’ve seen people driving cars off cliffs, poisoning their fathers to get the family inheritance, fighting with swords, robbing banks—all sorts of things I better not catch either of you doing.”
“Especially the father-poisoning thing,” Marty said.
Charlotte said, “Okay, I won’t say ‘ass.’ ”
“Good.”
“What should I say instead? Is ‘butt’ okay?”
“How does ‘bottom’ strike you?” Paige asked.
“I guess I can live with that.”
Trying not to burst out laughing, not daring to glance at Marty, Paige said: “You say ‘bottom’ for a while, and then as you get older you can slowly work your way up to ‘butt,’ and when you’re really mature you can say ‘ass.’ ”
“Fair enough,” Charlotte agreed, settling back on her pillows.
Emily, who had been thoughtful and silent through all of this, changed the subject. “Ten pounds of unpopped corn wouldn’t fit in the microwave.”
“Of course it would,” Marty assured her.
“I don’t think so.”
“I researched this before I started writing,” he said firmly.
Emily’s face was puckered with skepticism.
“You know how I research everything,” he insisted.
“Maybe not this time,” she said doubtfully.
Marty said, “Ten pounds.”
“That’s a lot of corn.”
Turning to Charlotte, Marty said, “We have another critic in the house.”
“Okay,” Emily said, “go on, read some more.”
Marty raised one eyebrow. “You really want to hear more of this poorly researched, unconvincing claptrap?”
“A little more, anyway,” Emily acknowledged.
With an exaggerated, long-suffering sigh, Marty glanced slyly at Paige, raised the notebook again, and continued to read:
“He prowls the downstairs—wicked, mean— looking to cause yet one more bad scene. When he spies the presents under the tree, he says, ‘I’ll go on a gift-swapping spree! I’ll take out all of the really good stuff, then box up dead fish, cat poop, and fluff. In the morning, the Stillwaters will find coffee grounds, peach pits, orange rinds. Instead of nice sweaters, games, and toys, they’ll get slimy, stinky stuff that annoys.’ ”
“He won’t get away with this,” Charlotte said.
Emily said, “He might.”
“He won’t.”
“Who’s gonna stop him?”
“Charlotte and Emmy are up in their beds, dreams of Christmas filling their heads. Suddenly a sound startles these sleepers. They sit up in bed and open their peepers. Nothing should be stirring, not one mouse, but the girls sense a villain in the house. You can call it psychic, a hunch, osmosis— or maybe they smell the troll’s halitosis. They leap out of bed, forgetting slippers, two brave and foolhardy little nippers. ‘Something’s amiss,’ young Emily whispers. But they can handle it—they’re sisters!”