Gremlins Page 17

  “Stop!” she shrieked. “Stop emptying your cesspool into my ears!”

  The young carolers, shaken but determined to win over Mrs. Deagle, continued:

  “The Lord is come.

  Let earth receive her King . . .”

  “Go away! I hate carolers!” Mrs. Deagle shouted. “Get off my front lawn! Take your whiny voices somewhere else! To the sanitary landfill! Go-o-o!”

  Her shrillness caused the carolers to lose their concentration and place in the music. The melody began to disintegrate in an untidy fugato of overlapping sounds.

  “That’s better,” Mrs. Deagle declared, smiling at the silent group. “If you just stand in the snow and keep your mouths shut, it’s much more enjoyable.”

  She wheeled around and the door slammed behind her. Confused and hurt, the youngsters looked at one another for comfort. No one said anything for a long moment.

  “Let’s try the houses in that new development,” one of them finally offered. “They’re young people, real nice, not like this old . . .”

  “Woman,” another added charitably.

  As the group trudged across the field, they one by one became aware of a member who had not started out with them. Much shorter than the others, he or she was hidden by stature and what seemed to be a heavy scarf at first, and then each assumed the new member was one or another caroler’s younger sister or brother who had dressed up in a Halloween outfit and become part of the group. Eventually, when it joined in the caroling, the newcomer’s voice generated more attention than its size, shape, or color. Rather like someone singing with the teeth firmly clenched, the words came out blurred and high-pitched, somewhere between the twang of a Jew’s harp and the indistinct falsetto of a chipmunk who didn’t know the words.

  “Maybe,” one of the carolers now suggested, “it’s that kid who’s causing the problem.”

  “Nah,” another replied. “It’s just Mrs. Deagle. She hates everything.”

  “But have you heard how he sings?”

  “Sure, but so what? We’re not supposed to be the church choir. This is just to make people feel good.”

  “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

  Despite agreement that the new kid was not to be criticized because of his—or its—singing, one young man decided he wanted to at least find out who their free-lance caroler was. Walking closer to the newcomer, he was surprised when it moved quickly away from him.

  “Hey,” the boy said. “Don’t you want to talk? I just wanted to find out who you are.”

  The small person didn’t answer.

  “That’s a neat costume you got, but it’s the wrong holiday. This is Christmas, not Halloween.”

  Still no reply.

  “I’ll bet I know who you are—Eric Wallman. Right?”

  The little person didn’t answer.

  A list of approximately a dozen names of area girls and boys produced a similar lack of reaction.

  “Hey, come here. I want to talk to you.”

  The interloper did not advance, so the young man took off after it. Although the costumed kid moved with surprising speed and agility through the snow, the longer strides of the older pursuer eventually brought them within inches of each other. As the young man reached out to grab the mysterious visitor, he was suddenly met with an unseasonably hostile snarl, and a sharp pain slashed into his arm.

  “Ow!” he cried out.

  Looking down, he saw blood seeping through the slashed sleeve of his jacket. More angry than hurt, he cupped his hands to yell after the departing delinquent.

  “You’re a lousy singer anyway! We don’t need you! Your voice stinks!”

  They had walked for nearly an hour, going from one clear trail of tri-pronged Gremlin footprints to a jumbled patch and then—usually via luck rather than skill—onto a clear trail again. To keep both their spirits up and his mind active, Billy continued to talk aloud to Gizmo and himself, planning their next move as they trudged along together.

  “Giz, I just thought of something,” Billy said. “Water makes you guys reproduce, right? And snow is just frozen water. But snow must not have had any effect on Stripe. Otherwise, this whole area would be crawling with those things. What are they called, anyway? They’re sure not Mogwai. They’re more like those things Mr. Futterman told me about. What did he call them? Grebblies? Gremlins? Yeah, that’s it. And to think, I thought he was crazy. Anyway, for water to make you reproduce it must have to be a warmer temperature. Stripe won’t find any water outside like that, so luck is with us.”

  Billy knew he was rambling on as a means of bolstering his confidence, but presenting his thoughts out loud, even to Gizmo, helped him get them in better order.

  He remembered once in high school when he had written a report on Sherlock Holmes and been quite impressed with the legendary detective’s ratiocinative powers. For the most part—at least in those adventures Billy recalled most vividly—Holmes was able to predict his villain’s next move by the simple process of putting himself in his opponent’s place. This Billy now proceeded to do with reference to Stripe.

  “Let’s see now, Giz,” he said. “Where would we go if we were Stripe?”

  Considering the rather narrow parameters within which Stripe could operate, the question was not really a very difficult one.

  “Outside, it’s dark and he’s free to move about as he pleases, but apparently the snow is too cold to use for reproduction,” Billy reasoned. “Inside, there’s the thing he’s probably looking for—warmer water. But most of these houses are brightly lit now. Then there’s the problem of getting in. How can he do that? Well, he could curl into a ball and throw himself through a glass window, the way he did back home. But that would attract a lot of attention and he could get caught . . . Unless he picked a house with nobody home . . . Or . . . he could try to sneak in, say, when somebody else went inside a house . . . or if the door was left open a minute . . .”

  He had been subliminally aware of the carolers’ singing in the distance for perhaps a quarter hour before it struck him that there might be a connection.

  Breaking into a faster pace, he headed toward the sound of the voices. “This may be a long shot,” he said to Gizmo, “but if we were Stripe, I think we’d try hanging around those carolers. At the worst, they’d help hide our tracks. And if somebody left a door open while the group was singing, maybe there’d be a chance to slip inside . . . Anyway, it won’t hurt to ask. Maybe they’ve seen him during their travels.”

  Having convinced himself that he had an excellent case, Billy pulled the knapsack cover down tighter to shield Gizmo from the cold and started to run at a brisk pace. A quarter mile down the road he caught up with the singers.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m looking for a little fella about this high.”

  He held his palm about two and a half feet off the ground.

  The response was immediate.

  “Yeah,” one of the carolers said. “We saw him. Is he your kid brother or something?”

  “Not exactly. Why?”

  “Because he’s a creep. Neil tried to find out his name and he ran away. Then when Neil caught up to him, he pulled a knife on him.”

  Billy looked around.

  “Is Neil here?” he asked.

  “No,” another fellow said. “He went home when he saw how bad his coat was ripped. His arm was bleedin’, too.”

  “Why you looking for the creepy midget?” another caroler asked.

  “Because he’s supposed to be home now,” Billy replied. He saw no reason to alarm them by telling the truth. “Which way did he go, anyway?”

  Several pointed toward a darkened building, which loomed as a heavy shadow between two smaller, brightly illuminated homes. It was the YMCA.

  “Don’t know why he went that way,” one of the carolers said. “It’s closed tighter’n a clam.”

  “Maybe he was just afraid,” another offered.

  “Thanks,” Billy said. “And tell Neil I’m sorry if the little
guy hurt him.”

  As he started to move off, three or four of the young people simultaneously spotted Gizmo peeking out from beneath the knapsack cover and trotted after him.

  “Hey,” one of them asked. “What kind of animal is that? He’s cute.”

  “It’s a Mogwai,” Billy replied.

  “Where do they come from?”

  “Nowhere around here. Look, I gotta go. Thanks a lot for your help.”

  Waving a quick goodbye, he trotted toward the darkened building, picking up the familiar tri-pronged trail of Stripe less than a minute later. Running faster, he followed the fresh tracks nearly all the way around the building until they ended.

  Directly below a broken window.

  “This must be the place, Giz,” Billy said, his voice a blend of anticipation and anxiety.

  As he picked the remaining shards of glass from the ledge so that he could boost himself through the broken window, Billy recalled the uproar of a few months ago, when a typewriter had been stolen from the YMCA office. Some aroused citizens, perhaps overreacting, had proposed that every public building in the entire town be wired with the best anti-burglary’ devices and patrolled around the clock by armed guards. Others, proud of Kingston Falls’s reputation as a safe place to live, took the view that until the theft proved to be more than a solitary aberration, a continuation of normal prudence should suffice. Several invitingly weak locks at the high school and YMCA were replaced, as were broken windows on the ground levels. Now, as Billy pushed himself through the opening, he remembered one highlight of last summer’s great security debate among Kingston Falls’s town leaders.

  “I’m all for spending the money to provide the office areas of these buildings with burglar devices,” one councilman had said, “but I don’t see why we should waste money making the ground floor of the YMCA burglarproof. The only things there are a bunch of nailed-down metal lockers, a basketball court, and other nonportable facilities. What are they gonna steal? Anyway, the cops patrol that area closely and the neighbors watch the place.”

  Now, as he balanced himself precariously on the ledge, Billy wondered if, despite the weather and poor visibility, someone had already spotted him. If so, he knew it wouldn’t be long before he heard sirens, for the people of Kingston Falls prided themselves on their respect for law and order and were not inclined to look the other way when confronted with criminal activity. Criminal activity, he thought, is that what I’m involved in? He knew such was not the case, but he had to admit that to an outsider his actions certainly appeared illegal. What would he say if the authorities caught him inside? No excuse being logical under the circumstances, he would be arrested for breaking and entering—it was as simple as that. He wondered if he would be allowed to receive his Christmas presents in jail.

  “So back out, then,” he said aloud. “It’s last call for chickens . . .”

  Accepting his own challenge, he gave himself a strong push into the building. Landing on his side in the darkness, he quickly located the flashlight, which had rolled out of his pocket, and started to get to his feet. As he did so, an unearthly treble giggle reverberated through the lower floor area. It sounded close by, but because the hall was so spacious and empty, Billy knew Stripe could be fifty or a hundred feet away.

  Pausing, he decided to give his eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness before moving ahead. A minute passed. No sound could be heard except the floppy chains of a car passing near the center. Another minute crawled by. Billy could feel Gizmo’s warm breath on the back of his neck, hear the slight rustle of material as his arm shifted position against his side. Other than that, nothing . . . No clawed feet clattering over metal lockers, no more giggling, nothing.

  Finally a sound shattered the ghostly silence. Not a soft or subtle betrayal of its maker’s whereabouts, but a definite and distinct sound one would expect to hear in a facility such as this.

  A dribbling basketball.

  Blep . . . Blep . . . Blep-blep-blep . . .

  Not a basketball being dribbled, Billy amended, but a basketball that had been dropped or fallen and was even now coming to rest.

  Orienting himself, he moved as quickly as the darkness permitted in the direction of the equipment cage, a part of the ground floor the councilman had forgotten when he’d claimed there was nothing worth stealing here. But the cage was always locked, Billy recalled, and not with some hang-on job that could be sawed or broken off. Arriving at the door, he reached out to touch the bronze square lock, which had always reminded him of the type one sees in prison movies. He pushed gently, then with more force. The door was still locked.

  Then how, he began to ask himself—

  A hard object striking him on the head provided the answer. It was followed immediately by a hysterical giggle, very loud and directly above him.

  Swinging the flashlight upward, Billy heard the giggle segue to a shriek of pain and then something that sounded very much like an extended curse in Mogwai language. For a moment he saw the flashlight beam striking Stripe’s red eyes, and as the Gremlin’s head jerked convulsively backward, he could see that there was a six- or eight-inch space between the ceiling and the top bar of the cage. Too narrow for a human to slide through, it had obviously been an easy maneuver for Stripe.

  Now that he had broken the darkness, Billy decided to keep the flashlight beam trained on the Gremlin, for if it got away again—

  He had little time to think about the consequences of another mistake. A shower of debris made up of every small object in the cage rained down on him. It consisted, as nearly as he could tell while dodging the pieces, of baseballs, nails, screwdrivers, a wrench, an old sneaker, hunks of wood, and everything metallic Stripe could handle. Avoiding the objects as best he could while shielding his head and Gizmo from the barrage, Billy somehow managed to keep the flashlight on Stripe throughout the angry shower. He had no strategy other than to see if he could flush the creature out of the cage and attack it with his sword, a strategy that depended largely on how long the flashlight batteries—

  Suddenly the light was gone, a sharp object having struck Billy’s hand, causing him to drop it. As the flashlight hit the floor, the plastic front flew off, sending the batteries and bulb assembly clattering in different directions.

  Billy’s groan blended with Stripe’s giggle in the abrupt and total darkness.

  Falling to his knees, Billy spread his palms and began feeling for the component parts of the flashlight. He located the batteries quickly, then the bulb assembly, and finally the top. While he tried putting the thing together in the black void, he could hear Stripe making his escape down the side of the cage, the clawed feet landing with a metallic thump only a yard or two away. Had he not been busy with the flashlight, Billy would have started swinging the sword blindly, so close did he feel to the Gremlin. A moment later, with the flashlight operating again, he swung it down the hallway just in time to see Stripe turn the corner.

  He was headed across the basketball court, his sharp claws scratching noisily on the smooth wooden surface, toward a corner with some small utility rooms and the door leading to the large room containing—

  “Oh, no!” Billy breathed as he broke into a run. “The swimming pool! We gotta beat him to that door!”

  Racing at full speed, the light bouncing ahead of him, he noted with a grunt of satisfaction that Stripe had veered off in the direction of the utility rooms. Good, Billy thought, now we’ve got a chance at least.

  Having reached the swimming pool doorway first, they could now prevent Stripe from making it to the pool—until their batteries gave out. But in the meantime Billy could try to locate the main switches.

  “Here,” he said, as he shrugged off the knapsack. He put the flashlight in Gizmo’s paws so that it shone away from his face but directly outward from the door. “You hold it just like this. Don’t move, O.K.?”

  Gizmo held the light firmly in his paws, gulping thickly as Billy disappeared into the darkness.

 
As he stumbled off, Billy worried what Gizmo would do if and when the main lights were located. The pain would hurt him as much as Stripe, possibly kill him as it had the Mogwai that died on the back porch in the sunlight. He hesitated briefly, debating whether to go back or not. Then he plunged ahead. If the lights go on, he reasoned, Gizmo will be able to fall back into the knapsack and avoid the pain. Stripe will be immobilized with pain and I’ll be able to finish him off.

  Sword in hand, he groped his way along the wall, wondering which he would encounter first—Stripe or the light switches. A minute later, after encountering nothing but smooth cold squares of tile with his groping fingers, he began to think the search for either or both was endless.

  “Where are the light switches?” he murmured helplessly, looking back over his shoulder to make sure the flashlight was still guarding the door. Although the batteries had waned visibly, Billy reckoned they had a few more minutes’ worth of life. Realizing that and despairing of locating the switches—if they existed—in this corner of the gymnasium, he started for the opposite wall.

  He had gone perhaps fifty feet when, looking back toward the pool door to see how much weaker his batteries had gotten, he saw the last act of Stripe’s clever strategy. Obviously having figured out that Gizmo was holding the light while Billy tried to outflank him or locate the overhead switches, Stripe had hugged the wall near Gizmo, creeping slowly toward him while shielding himself from the direct rays of the light. Now, too late, Billy saw the Gremlin’s unmistakable form, black except for the chiaroscuro outline created by the light. In diabolically slow motion the figure rose high in the air next to Gizmo, a cobra ready to strike its prey.

  “Look out!” Billy shouted across the court. “Look out, Gizmo! He’s—”

  The flashlight fell noisily to the floor and rolled away as a series of growls and tiny yelps echoed through the gymnasium. Heading toward the dim outline of the pool door, Billy literally threw himself into the tangle of bodies. Two simultaneous bolts of pain struck him in the shoulder and side. Swinging his fist in a wild backhanded arc, Billy felt it strike a solid object, heard Stripe whine.