“Game’s been canceled!” a newspaper seller shouted at us. He was a fat man, with hair poking out at the neck of his collar.
“Oh, no,” Willard moaned. He snapped his fingers. “Dang it.”
“Due to the emergency.” The newspaper seller pointed at the stadium. “They set up a sixteen-point event instead.”
Willard and me looked at each other and shrugged.
“What’s a sixteen-point event?” Willard asked.
The newspaperman frowned at us, then noticed the steel bracelets we were wearing. “Oh. Never mind. City business.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing a sixteen-point event,” I said.
The newspaperman laughed. “Trust me, you don’t. Anyway, they won’t admit you.” He gestured at the bracelet.
I looked down at the danged bracelet, then at the gate into Yankee Stadium. “I’ll take one of them newspapers, if you don’t mind.” I pulled a nickel out of my pocket. Then I moved Willard out of range of the newspaper seller’s ears. “I’m gonna see what’s going on in there.”
“Now why would you want to go and do that? The man just said you’d be sorry if you did.”
“Never mind.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll be back in no time.”
I put the newspaper over my hand to hide my wrist and stepped into line. There was no admission, we just waltzed right in, no tickets or nothing. I wanted a seat up high so I could see everything. Even if there wasn’t gonna be a ballgame, I was still at Yankee Stadium.
It sure seemed like a game was about to get started—boys were climbing up and down the rows selling hot dogs and sodas from steel boxes strapped around their necks, and music was piping from loudspeakers set all around. “You Oughta Be in Pictures” was giving way to “Moonglow” as I grabbed the railing and headed up.
I picked a row, scooted sideways past people already sitting, my feet crunching peanut shells on the floor. The whole place smelled like old hot dogs. I hiked up my trousers and took a seat, wondering what this was all about.
There was a commotion twenty rows below. People were standing and pointing, grabbing their friends by the shoulder. I bent left and right, trying to get a look, and then I saw what the commotion was about, and I plopped down in my seat, my mouth hanging wide open.
There was no mistaking the man making his way up the stairs. It was the old Bambino himself, now the Yankees’ manager. Babe Ruth was dressed in his pinstripes, smiling and waving, a bigger man than I’d’ve guessed from the pictures I’d seen, with skinny legs but a big middle. Two men in dark suits were with him, and as they made their way up to my level one of them gestured for the Babe to sit, just one row in front of me and a mite to my left.
“I guess this spot is as good as any,” Babe said. “Seems like I shouldn’t have to come to one of these things. I do enough for this city.” The Babe looked uneasy; there was sweat in his eyebrows, and that bulldog face of his was twitching. Now that I thought about it, a good helping of the crowd looked nervous.
One of his companions leaned his head close to the Babe’s. “If it wasn’t at the stadium I could’ve gotten you out of it, but for something held here, in place of a game, it would’ve looked bad.”
The music went out and everyone got real quiet. Babe looked at the man beside him and whispered, “I sure hope your hunch about picking a random seat is right.”
Now I spotted the New York Yankees ballplayers. They were sitting in the front row along the first-base line, all in a neat line in their crisp white uniforms.
“Here it comes,” someone said.
“What?” I asked, looking around. Everyone was looking at the field. I squinted; the dirt between the pitcher’s mound and second base was swirling like there was a little tornado on the field. A dark hole opened up, right there in the field. I stood, wanting to see better.
“Sit down, you idiot!” someone shouted. “You want to draw its attention this way?”
I sat. Draw its attention? I shook my head. I was confused as could be, and didn’t want to draw too much attention to my own self. I didn’t know if I could get into trouble for crashing a city folk party, and I didn’t want to find out. I was mighty curious about what was going on, though. Mighty curious.
Something floated up out of the hole.
“Jesus Lord,” I whispered.
I could hear it more than see it. The sound went straight to my guts, not touching my ears at all. It was a scraping sound, only too deep and low to sound like anything anybody might scrape. There was a musical quality to it—the worst, scariest music I ever heard.
It rose out of the dark hole. I couldn’t quite focus my eyes on it. It was shifting, sliding—an oily mess of tangled black tubes that flapped here and there, and pointed silver teeth that cranked open and snapped closed. As it moved, it left a trail of black bubbles that drifted toward the stands. When the bubbles popped they sprayed the crowd underneath with black goo that made them shout and twist.
I wasn’t so curious no more. I wanted out. I looked around: No one was moving from their seats. I had a hunch it would be a bad idea to leave mine and draw “its” attention.
The thing floated around the stadium, getting closer to the seats until it floated right over the low wall and stopped in front of a woman in a flowery dress with a bow on the collar. She covered her face with both arms and screamed. The thing hissed at her; she screamed louder. I leaned forward, trying to see. There were spiny things stuck in the woman’s face, like porcupine quills, only black. She was making no move to pluck them out. Maybe she didn’t want to make the thing angry.
It moved on. The crowd leaned from side to side, ducking, avoiding, praying. Every so often it stopped in front of someone and hissed, or wagged black tubes at them, scaring the bejesus out of them.
I kept walking back through how this all began, trying to remember if I’d seen anyone with guns forcing people inside. There hadn’t been no guns, everyone had strolled in like this was some sort of garden party.
The thing rose into the upper deck.
“Oh, no. Get outta here, go on,” the Babe said. He shooed at it with four fingers without lifting his hand off the armrest.
It kept on drifting around the horseshoe of the upper deck until it was in my section. I didn’t look at it; I thought it might be less likely to notice me if I pretended I didn’t notice it.
“Please, not me. Don’t let it choose me,” a man nearby said. I thought it was the same man who’d told me to sit down.
What did he mean, choose him? It was gonna choose someone? I was so confused, and I was so scared my hands and knees were trembling. I turned toward the woman sitting a seat away on my left and whispered, “What’s going on?”
Her eyes opened real wide; she gave me a sidewise glance and she shook her head ever so slightly.
The thing shifted its direction and moved right toward me. I’d never been so scared. This was no game; I was sure of that now. It changed directions again, and my knotted shoulders relaxed.
Then it reversed itself and moved right toward me again.
I thought maybe I should pray, but I was too scared to think of any words. The thing just kept coming until it was right in my face, then it stopped. It was so close I could have touched it. I looked at my shoes as its music shook my insides. When I glanced up for just a second I could see that its skin was moving—swirling and crawling and twitching. Tubes snaked out to my left and right. They wrapped around me, curling tighter until I couldn’t exhale or I would touch them. It hissed at me furiously; the stink was horrible, like rotten fish and sewer water. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying hard not to scream because I didn’t want to make it any angrier than it already was.