“Dora, Dora,” said Baby Suzie, walking in front of him a moment later and poking at the remote. Spencer actually remembered Dora the Explorer from before he left, and wasn’t any more interested in it now than he had been then. He considered hitting her with the remote to get her to shut up.
“Suzie, we’re going to let Spencer watch what he wants today,” said his mom from the kitchen before he could make up his mind on it.
“Mom, Dora,” said Suzie looking sullen.
“Come in here and help me make breakfast Suzie,” said his mom with faked enthusiasm. Suzie followed obediently.
Spencer flipped through the channels, trying to find if there were any new action packed cartoons he’d missed while away. Before he could find the Cartoon Channel though he stumbled upon a show about a man demonstrating how to survive in the woods by putting himself in dangerous situations.
This guy doesn’t know the first thing about how to survive in the woods, Spencer thought disdainfully. I could show you how to really survive in the woods. Those aren’t even real woods he’s in.
But after a few minutes he realized to his surprise that he was wrong on both counts. These were real woods. Actual green woods with real animals in them. If anything the woods in Nowhere Blvd were the fake ones, locked in perpetual Autumn as they were. And beyond that, whoever this guy was he was using a series of survival tricks that Spencer (who thought he had living in the woods mastered) had never even thought of. He watched in fascination how the man made fishing tools and animal traps and shelters, almost entirely out of things at hand.
It was a revelation. All this time he had thought himself so clever, and yet now he saw how stagnant his thinking had been. He had never thought much beyond basic survival, had never tried new things after finding the first thing that worked. And yet this guy was showing the audience so many survival techniques that Spencer could hardly keep up. It was a bit humbling, but he guessed it made sense that one kid wasn’t going to be able to figure out more than all the survival experts in the world sharing their knowledge with each other.
He was hooked. He watched the rest of the show, and the one after that on surviving in the desert, and the one after that on surviving in the arctic. He barely paid attention to the blueberry pancakes his mom had brought him to eat on the couch. There was no question about it, television was better than the real world. Or any other world he’d been too, for that matter.
Despite his hopes, even after the last of the children that had come over with Spencer were gone, they did not stop searching for him. He heard the patrols of the Hollow Men (sometimes lead by Smiling Jack or Mr. Buttons) from his hiding spot in the amusement park. He shivered quietly with the cold, venturing out only rarely for brownish water from an old rusty tap, presumably used for cleaning. And never in the daytime, during which he grew parched in the heat of his cramped quarters. He waited and waited, lonely and missing his parents. He waited and wondered why they hadn’t looked in the closet for him. He had fantasies of his dad showing up with a gun and shooting Jack, of the police coming and calling for him and him running out of his hiding place to meet them. He thought how he would cry with happiness as his dad picked him up, and cried for real when he thought about it.
More than lonely, he was afraid. And more than fantasies of being rescued, against his will he daydreamed about what would happen when Jack finally caught him. Had the twins survived their operation, he was sure they’d be far from “perfect” by any standards. He had nightmares both sleeping and waking of Jack pulling him apart limb by limb like a fly. All the while staring up at Jack’s true face, the hook smile pulling back the dead flesh till it bled.
But even more than cold and loneliness and even fear, he was hungry. He had heard that a person could survive a month without food, and so was amazed at how hungry he could get in just a few days. The thought of food consumed him. The stomach pains were like knives, he legs and arms were getting weak. He would have been happy to eat rats, or even bugs, but Nowhere Blvd didn’t seem to have either. He thought about going to Nanny Gurdy both for food and for help. Thought maybe she would hide him from Jack in her house. Except what if she didn’t? Adults always kept secrets from kids, and when there was a secret they were usually all in it together. Still, some nights it was a close fight between his caution and his hunger.
Like any animal, it was that same hunger that finally drove him out of the safety of his hiding place.
Despite everything, he’d had the presence of mind to notice a few things about the Hollow Men. They made noise when they moved, squeaking and clanking. Sharp spines for legs clicking along the concrete. They moved loud, while Spencer could move very very quiet. Smiling Jack’s hard shoes normally made a pretty distinct sound as he walked, but Spencer was sure Jack had the gracefulness to move quietly if he wanted to. In fact he was pretty convinced he could walk right up behind you in the dark and you’d never know he was there. But he always seemed to stay with the Hollow Men, fortunately.
It was very dark at night in Nowhere Blvd. The moon’s never moving aspect had lead Spencer to decide early on that it was only painted onto a high ceiling up there. The sun maybe too, since it didn’t move either (but it did cast heat so he hadn’t really made up his mind on it). Both just faded in and out at dawn and dusk. On top of that the air was always stale, never a breeze. Not like a real town in the woods, more like a place called Mammoth Cave his family had visited once. Much bigger, but still like a cave. He imagined if a helicopter flew up into that sky it would crash right into it, chipping off the beautiful bright blue paint in the process.
He thought that the Hollow Men might have some kind of night vision, or maybe super smell like a police dog. But if they had either they would have found him already, as close as they had come. So mostly they had to just see and hear, same as Spencer. If he was careful he could avoid them in the dark, unless he turned a corner and ran right into one. If that happened, he’d find out whether those metal manipulators were cold and dead or hot and hungry.
Nanny Gurdy’s house was an obvious choice for food, thinking back to all the delicious meals they’d had from her kitchen. But besides the fairly heavy Hollow Men patrols, Gurdy lived there. And as nice as she seemed, there was no question she worked for Jack and knew what he did. This place was the embodiment of the “adults vs. kids” ideology that every kid had always expected ran the world. Them vs. us and the “them” were winning one hundred percent.
The snack shop was the better bet. Spencer couldn’t remember if there had been locks on the door, but he couldn’t think of any reason why they would bother locking the shops. No kid would dare wander at night here. Just him. And if it was locked, the whole front was made of glass. Anything could break glass.
Finding his way in the dark proved more difficult than he thought at first. Everything looked different at night, especially the kind of night he’d only seen on camping trips to the deep woods. You had to get pretty close to things to know what they were, to plan each move. It required paying a lot more attention than he was used to, but was doable if he tried hard to remember where things were. Across from his hiding spot was the Ferris wheel. Across from there the bumper cars. From there across the field to the eastern most shop, then shop by shop from there.
At first he stuck to the shadows, slinking crouched over from wall to wall on tiptoes. After a while he grew bolder and walked upright, steady but still careful. Not for the first time he was glad Smiling Jack provided socks and tennis shoes to his guests, instead of leaving them barefoot in pajamas like they’d arrived.