“Come on, let’s get downstairs before the news comes on. Father won’t talk to anybody after the news starts.” Jonathan Frederick Johnson III knew, of course, that it was bad manners to interrupt someone, but he was beginning to think the Boogeydile would go on talking all night long and never meet Father.
“So this is not a gag. You’re really not afraid of me.”
Jonathan thought the monster was going to cry when he said this. Then he thought the monster was going to hit him. But in the end he did neither of these things.
Instead he transformed again.
This time he turned into a man with long graying hair tied in a ponytail, bluejeans, cowboy boots, and a purple T-shirt that had “Moby Grape” written on the front. The man had only two arms, no pitchfork, no claws, no rattlesnakes.
Jonathan Frederick Johnson III, who had dashed to the door the moment the transformation began, anxious to go give Father a lesson in reality now that the Boogeyman was finally getting into the spirit of things, froze, his hand on the knob, when he saw what his formerly ferocious friend had become.
“No, don’t do that,” he said. “You look real now. Change back into—”
“What are you talking about, kid? I’m not—” The man, evidently unaware that he was no longer a crocodile, looked down at his new body.
“Oh no, God please nooo!” he screamed. “Not now — not me!” He examined his hands with disgust, then punched Jonathan Frederick Johnson III’s closet door off its hinges. “Please! Puh-leeze give me one more chance! I can scare him, just don’t do this to me now!”
Jonathan Frederick Johnson III wanted to comfort his friend — put his arm around him, tell him don’t worry, change into another monster, we’ll play some more, you don’t have to meet Father till you’re ready — but the man was pacing around so fast and kicking the furniture so hard Jonathan couldn’t get close to him.
“What are you hollering about?” he asked. “That costume you’re wearing now’s not scary at all.”
The man’s legs collapsed under him, and he sat on the floor, trying to tear his hair out with both hands.
“Just shut up, kid. You have no idea of the magnitude of the tragedy that just happened here. Damn it, I can’t believe the big guy fired me. I’m the best you ever had, you hear me?” He shook his fist at the ceiling. “What am I going to do now? Go back to waiting tables and hope for another big break? I’ve had this role for almost thirty years and I probably won’t even be able to list it on my resume. Geez, all I know is being the Boogeyman, and now I’m going to have to—”
Jonathan Frederick Johnson III clapped his hands together in spontaneous delight.
“I knew it! I knew it!” he sang. “I knew you were the Boogeyman.”
The Boogeyman stared at Jonathan for a long minute. Then he took his hands out of his hair and sat back on his heels. He looked calmer and less crazy than he had a minute ago, but he still didn’t look happy.
“Yeah, ‘were’ being the key word here, kid. I was the best and scariest Boogeyman since the late Middle Ages. I was the Boogeyman for longer than anybody else the past two centuries, and I would’ve broken Arnold Feldstein’s record in another couple of years. I was the Boogeyman who brought heart and soul back to the part; it was never just another job to me. I was the Boogeyman who scared them all on every continent, never turned down an assignment. And this is the thanks I get — fired, axed, the big booteroo. Yes, I was the Boogeyman and proud of it, too. And now I am nothing, an unemployed actor, brought down by a mere slip of a lad with a bad haircut and not enough sense to know when to be scared. Well, at least now I know how old Grizelda, the Wicked Witch of the West, felt — except, of course, that you’re not wearing ruby slippers.”
Jonathan Frederick Johnson III wasn’t sure what all the Boogeyman was talking about, but he did know what you’re supposed to do when you’re introduced to someone.
“How do you do?” he said, extending his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mister Boogeyman.”
“You still don’t get it, do you, kid? I’m not the Boogeyman any more. I’m not anything any more. You only get one mistake in this biz, and that’s it, you’re out. You meet one fearless kid, one kid you can’t scare, and bam, you’re back on the street. But what the hell, there’s no such thing as a fearless kid, right? Especially not with such a redoubtable Boogeymeister as myself on the job. Oh, I heard the rumors, all right, but—”
The grayhaired man saw that Jonathan still had his hand stuck out. He sighed heavily and shook it.
“Yeah, yeah, nice to meet you, Fearless. Don’t worry about ruining my career and my life and everything, no big deal.” He riffled through Jonathan’s stack of science and nature magazines. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to have the new Variety lying around, would you? No, I guess you wouldn’t — you don’t even have any comic books or Mads. You know, there’s something very definitely not right about you, kid.”
“I’m not allowed to read comic books at home. Father says they—”
“Right, okay, I understand. Well, you’re a lovely kid and I wish I could stay here and chat with you all evening, but if you’ll excuse me, there’s some pavements I gotta pound. Hmm, I wonder if that grandpa role on All My Children is still open.”
The ex-Boogeyman closed his eyes and placed his fingertips on his temples.
After a moment he opened his eyes, looked around Jonathan Frederick Johnson Ill’s bedroom like he didn’t know where he was, and hit himself on the knee.
“Great! Now he’s taken my teleporting abilities, too. How the hell am I supposed to get home?” he asked the ceiling. “You ungrateful, dog-faced, slave-driving — hey, kid, you got a phone, right? Mind if I use it?”
“Sure, I’ll show you where it is,” Jonathan told him. “It’s downstairs right by Father’s chair.”
“I know where it is. And listen, kid, don’t get your hopes up. The paternal one is not going to be able to see or hear me — I hope.”
He stood up and walked over to the door.
“Wait!” Jonathan said.
The Boogeyman turned around. “Yeah?”
“I am a little scared now.”
The Boogeyman smiled a sad smile. “Thanks, kid. I appreciate the thought.” And he turned and left the room.
But Jonathan Frederick Johnson III had been telling the truth. And now that the Boogeyman was gone, he was more than a little scared. He was scared of what the rest of his life was going to be like now that he had inadvertently killed the Boogeyman.
Jonathan Frederick Johnson III felt a little bit like he was going to cry. He had found proof positive that Mother and Father were wrong about the way the world worked; it wasn’t just Dan Rather and newspapers and African amphibians that were real. The Boogeyman was real — had been right here in his own room. But now he was gone. He wasn’t even the Boogeyman any more. Everything had changed. It was unquestionably Mother and Father’s world, and Jonathan Frederick Johnson III was a prisoner in it. The worst thing was that it was his own fault.