Shadowland

    'As for your second remark,' said Jakob, 'do the two of you know the mouse's song to the rabbit?'

    They shook their heads.

    'Listen.' The brothers moved together in front of their desks, crouched slightly at the knees, tilted back their heads and sang:

Way way way way down in the dump

I found a tin can and I found a sugar lump.

I ate the one and I kicked the other,

And I had a real good time.

Way way way way down in the dump . . .

The lights suddenly died: a half-second later came the boom of an enormous explosion. Tom felt dirt showering down on his head. The whole room shook, and he momentarily lost his balance. A pair of rough hands shoved at his chest, knocking him back into Del.

    He smelled sausage, smoke, sour breath beneath brandy: someone was whispering in his ear. 'Did the mouse put a hurtin' on the sugar lump, boyo? Or did the mouse put a hurtin' on the rabbit?' The hands pressed him back. Del, stumbling behind him, kicked his shins. Rattling and banging: things were falling off the walls, the hails shredding out of the dirt. The hands, Jakob's or Wilhelm's, continued to push him back. The man's face must have been only inches from Tom's. 'Way way way way down in the dump, I found a little boy . . . and nobody ever saw either one of us again.'

    Vacancy felt more than seen opened up before him: he heard a confusion of retreating footsteps.

    'I'm getting out of here,' Del said, sounding panicky.

    Then the door was open and he was backing through it. Tom reached for the knob, but Del caught his elbow: the door slammed shut.

    'You crazy?' Del said. His face was as green as an army blanket.

    'I wanted to see,' Tom said. 'That's what this is all about. For once, I wanted to see more than he wanted us to.'

    'You can't fight him,' Del said. 'You're not supposed to.'

    'Oh, Del.'

    'Well, I don't want him to see us out here.'

    Tom thought that he too did not want Collins to see him outside the door. Del already was lost: fright glinted in his eyes. 'All right. Let's go upstairs.'

    'I don't need your permission.'

7

In the corridor outside their rooms, they looked out the big windows to see Coleman Collins just now reaching the top of the iron staircase. The lights pulled a long shadow out behind him on the flagstones.

    'At least he was down there all the time,' Del said.

    'He knew where we were. He set off the sound effects, didn't he?'

    'Then it was a mistake to go into that room. And I'm sorry I did.' Del looked ferociously up at him, and Tom mentally braced himself for an attack. 'You used to be my best friend, but I think he was right about you. You're jealous. You want to get me in trouble with him.'

    'No . . . ' Tom started to utter some general shocked denial, but his dismay was overwhelming. Coming so soon after the threat from one of the 'Brothers Grimm,' Del's assault left him wordless. 'Not now,' was all he managed to get out.

    Del spun away from him. 'You sound like a girl.' When he reached the door, Del turned to glare at him again. 'And you act like you own this place. I should be showing you things, not the other way around.'

    'Del,' Tom pleaded, and the smaller boy grimaced as if he had struck him.

    'You want to know something, pal? Something I never told you? I guess you remember those times my uncle showed up in Arizona — at the football game and at Ventnor. Well, you wanted to know why I never talked about it with you.'

    'Because he confused you,' Tom said, happy to be back on ground more or less solid. 'Because I didn't ask about him enough. And he was here, not there, and — '

    'Shut up. Just shut up. I saw you with him, dummy. You were right next to him — you were walking along with him, like something that was going to happen. I saw you, damn you. Now I know why. You always wanted him for your own. And he was trying to show me what you're really like.' Del shook his balled fists at him, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes, and disappeared inside his door. A second later Tom heard the slam of the sliding doors.

    Glumly Tom went into his own room.

8

His dreams were instant, vivid, and worse than any that had appeared on the Carson School notice board. He was operating on a dead man in an impromptu theater, knowing that the man was dead but unable to admit it to the others around the table; he was supposed to be a surgeon, but he had no idea of what had killed the man or how to proceed. The instruments in his hands were impassively foreign. Way way way way down in his guts, whispered a nurse with blond hair and passive eyes. . . . Collected. Wasn't he? Wasn't he? Something stirred beneath his bloody hands, and the head of a vulture popped up like a toy, clean and bald, from within the open chest cavity. Great wings stirred in the mire. 'I want to see,' Tom wailed to the nurse, knowing that above all, he did not want to see. . . .

    Coleman Collins, wearing a red velvet smoking jacket, bent toward him. 'Come with me, my little boy, come along, come along . . . ' and Skeleton Ridpath, no age at all, leaned forward in a chair and watched with a vacant avid face. He held a glass owl in his hands and bled from the eyes . . .

    and a black man with a square, serious, elegant magician's face was standing in a corridor of light, holding out a real owl with both hands. The owl's eyes beamed brilliantly toward him. Let him in, said the magician; let me in, commanded the owl. . . .

    He stirred, finally aware that a voice at his door was saying, 'Let me in. Let me in.' He remembered, in an unhappy flash of memory, that the man holding the owl had been Bud Copeland.

    'Please,' said the voice at the door.

    'All right, all right,' Tom said. 'Who is it?'

    'Please.'

Tom switched on his bedside light, stepped into his jeans, and pulled a shirt over his arms. He padded to the door and opened it.

    Rose Armstrong was standing in the dark hall. 'I wanted to see you,' she said. 'This place is no good for you.'

    'You're telling me,' Tom said, aware of his rumpled hair and bared chest. His face felt numb with sleep. Rose stepped around him and went into his room.

    'Poor grumpy Tom,' she said. 'I want to get out of here, and I want you and Del to help me.'

9

Now Tom was fully awake: his nightmares blew away like fluff, and he was aware only of this pretty girl with her half-adult face standing before him in a yellow blouse and green skirt. The Carson colors, he dimly noted. 'I don't mean right away, because we couldn't,' she explained. 'But soon. As soon as we could. Would you help?'

    'Would Del?' he asked. He knew the strongest reason for Del's refusal. 'I don't know much about Coleman Collins, but I bet if Del sneaked out of here, he'd never be able to come back:'

    'Maybe he shouldn't ever want to come back. May I sit down?'

    'Uh, yeah, sorry.' He watched her go to the chair and neatly sit, looking at him all the while: she was relieved, he saw — or was that just her face again, meaninglessly recording the expectation of rejection? Having this girl in his room made him nervous; she seemed far more poised than he. And she had spoken the idea which should have been his, which he had been too anchored in Shadowland to have — the simple idea of escape.