“So you think he’s a real giant-killer, too, is that it, Jack? Like son, like father? Kid Fearless and his—”
“No!” Jonathan Frederick Johnson III shouted. “Father and I are not at all alike.”
“Oh, really?” The Boogeyman’s eyes sort of glazed over, and he took a couple of steps backward and started talking softly to himself. Jonathan Frederick Johnson III made out “well, maybe,” and “worth a shot,” but that was it.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing,” the Boogeyman answered, “I was just doing some psychology homework. Hang on, kid. It’s showtime.”
The Boogeyman put his thumbs under his chin, the room spun around again. And this time when Jonathan Frederick Johnson III could tell where he was, he was in Father’s study. Father was sitting in his uncomfortable leather chair reading a paper — but not a newspaper; it had lines on it like the paper Jonathan Frederick Johnson III used in school. It was easy to see that Father was mad. He did not like this paper at all.
“Jonathan, come in here, son,” he yelled from his chair. “I want to see you right now.”
And then a boy came bounding into the room, but Jonathan Frederick Johnson III the invisible fly did not even look at Jonathan Frederick Johnson III the boy. He flew in for a closer look at Father. Something about his face didn’t look quite right. He looked older, tireder.
“Son, I’ve been reading over this paper you wrote for school about what you did over the summer vacation. It says here you climbed a mountain on the moon and went to the North Pole with Superman. Now, you know none of that is true. It’s all imaginary. And what did I tell you about imaginary things?”
Yep, that was Father, all right. Still said the word “imaginary” like it tasted bad in his mouth. Still made his life-is-real, life-is-earnest face. When was the Boogeyman going to give it to him?
The boy said nothing, and when Jonathan Frederick Johnson III the invisible fly turned to look at himself, he was surprised to see that it was not he, not Jonathan Frederick Johnson III the boy. It was a kid he had never seen before. Could this be what Father was afraid of? That his son would somehow get a new face?
“I’m waiting, son,” said Father. “What do you have to say about this disgraceful paper?”
He turned the paper around to show it to the boy.
And when he did, Jonathan Frederick Johnson III the invisible fly saw the name printed at the top of the page.
Jonathan Frederick Johnson IV.
He looked back at the man he thought was Father and then at the paper again, trying desperately to make some sense out of all this. Then in one horrifying instant he knew exactly what it was he was seeing, and from somewhere way down deep inside himself Jonathan Frederick Johnson III screamed.
The last thing he saw before he landed back in his bedroom was a red beast with horns and a pitchfork smile and wink at him.
“See you later, kid,” said the Boogeyman.
Birds of Paradise
by S. J. Rozan
The sky was dazzingly blue, the air was shirtsleeve warm for the first time this season, and as I drove up the highway beside the Hudson, I could see two hawks circling a distant hill. In the expansive early-Sunday, early-spring silence, with the hillsides yellow-green and the streams rushing with meltwater, it was easy to believe that at least some problems could be solved.
I turned off the highway onto the county road that would take me to Hanover, to the cheerful neighborhood of wood-frame houses where Pearl and Harry lived. I didn’t go through town; we’d go into town later when Harry was ready to open the store and show me the phenomenon he’d brought me up here to see.
Harry Hershkowitz sold hardware in Hanover, which he’d always said qualified him to join the 4-H club. Not that he ever had: “From the end of the horse that eats the oats, I wouldn’t know.” Hanover, a big town for this part of the state — it supports an elementary school, a synagogue, and eight churches — is a forty minute drive from the cabin I have two counties over. It was a drive I’d learned to make after the locals let me in on the secret: for three-penny nails or hacksaw blades, the Agway was fine, but when you needed just the right bracket or reverse-threaded screw, you needed Hershkowitz’s.
And now, according to Harry, Hershkowitz’s needed me.
The door to the small, neat house opened as I pulled into the driveway. Harry, bent, bald, spry, and smiling, trotted down to the car, shook my hand, tugged me through the door and into the sunny kitchen. Pearl, also wrinkled, also smiling, kissed my cheek, poured me coffee, and ordered Harry to leave me alone until I’d eaten. I surveyed the kitchen table: platters of smoked fish, tubs of cream cheese, a mound of sliced tomatoes, and a basket of seeded rye and bagels crowded together as though they had stopped jostling each other for position just before I walked in.
I turned to Pearl, feeling a little helpless. “I ate,” I said. “Before I left.”
“So?” Harry pulled out a chair. “This means you can never eat again?”
“Sit,” Pearl smiled. “Drink your coffee, nibble. Harry doesn’t open the store until noon on Sundays, and the preachers don’t come until eleven thirty the earliest, so what would be the point in rushing?”
So I sat, sipped strong coffee, and arranged tomato and smoked trout on a half bagel. “Tell me about the preachers,” I said.
Pearl made a disgusted, dismissive sound. She poured Harry coffee; he wagged his finger at me. “I’m telling you, it’s people like this who give men of the cloth a bad name.”
“I didn’t know men of the cloth had a bad name,” I said. “I think they’re pretty generally respected.”
“Of course they are,” Pearl said. “The way they should be. We’ve always gotten along so well with our neighbors, such nice people in this town. Our children went to day camp at the Y. This is why Harry doesn’t open the store until noon on Sunday, from respect for their church services. And all the customers understand we don’t open on Saturday. Never a problem, always everyone with their differences living side by side.”
“For thirty-five years.” Harry picked up the story. “Until suddenly comes this goniff, he—”
“ ‘Goniff’?”
“This thief, this fast-talking con man, Gull. The Reverend Lester Gull, you should excuse me. He could steal the words right out of your mouth, the Reverend Lester Gull. Do you know the Aerie Motel?”
“Up on Route Six? Restaurant, and a dozen little cabins? Abandoned?”
“Abandoned not any more. The Reverend Lester Gull bought the whole place last spring. Did a little bit of fixup, reopened as Heaven’s Messenger Bible School. Bible School! The man wouldn’t know from a Bible if one fell out of Heaven and hit him on the head.”
“This, of course, is not true,” Pearl interrupted. “The Reverend Gull is a very learned man. He quotes his Bible all over the place, from memory. Which only proves that learning and wisdom are not the same thing.”
“All right,” I said to Harry. “So we have the Reverend Lester teaching the word of the Lord up in the old motel. What’s the problem?”
“Up in the old motel there wouldn’t be a problem. In front of my store there’s a problem.”
“Which is?”
Harry sighed. “Hershkowitz’s sits, which of course you know, in the best spot on Main Street. Right on the corner, nobody has to walk too far, you could get there from anywhere. And shaded, for the customer’s convenience, by the old oak tree who grows on the sidewalk in front. Two hundred years old, he was in that spot when the British were here. Which I don’t by the way remember, no matter what Pearl tells you.”
Pearl patted Harry’s cheek.
“I know the tree,” I said. “The sidewalk widens there to let you walk around it.”