Tales From Beyond the Brain Page 7

  It was like watching one of those TV documentaries about quality control in a factory, his parents stooped over the table, plucking out suspicious tidbits and eyeing them under the kitchen light above. “Nope,” Dad said, tossing a loosely wrapped chocolate into the Bad pile.

  “Not this one either,” Mom echoed a second later, flinging a toffee with a slight bend in it.

  “Those will stick to your molars. I bet a dentist handed it out.”

  “I read a study saying this brand of potato chip causes brain damage.”

  “And the preservative coating on this candy wrapper has been shown to cause disobedience in laboratory mice.”

  This went on for nearly half an hour. Mom and Dad had already gone through Jacqueline’s treats. His kid sister had lost a third of her haul. All Alain could do was look on as his haul was whittled away piece by piece.

  “What’s this?” Mom asked, picking out a tightly wrapped object. It was round, maybe a chocolate or a gumball. The packaging was some sort of bright foil, a mixture of every color you could think of. As Mom rolled it in her open palm, the wrapper caught the kitchen light and reflected it into Alain’s eyes. It was mesmerizing to stare at. It made the kitchen start to spin so delightfully.

  Alain reached out, not to eat it, but to touch it.

  Mom snatched it away. “Not this one either, I’m afraid.” She closed her palm.

  Alain blinked once. Twice. His head cleared. “Why not?”

  “I don’t like the look of it.”

  Alain jabbed a finger at her. “You don’t like the look of anything!” he snapped. “You ruin Halloween, that’s what you do!”

  “Alain,” his dad said sternly, “we’re only doing this to keep you safe. Haven’t you heard what happens if you don’t check your candy?”

  “Yeah, you enjoy it!”

  “That’s it. Go to your room.”

  But Alain was already thumping up the stairs. He slammed the door and sat down on his bed, fuming.

  Later that night, when his parents were asleep, Alain’s eyes snapped open.

  He’d been dreaming, but not the usual sort of dream. This one was only colors, like the kind he’d seen on that amazing wrapper.

  Alain slipped out of bed and tiptoed downstairs. A bright shaft of moonlight slanting in through the window meant he didn’t even have to turn on the lights. He didn’t even need to eat the candy—he just wanted to see that wrapper again.

  Once he got to the kitchen, Alain pulled open the drawer underneath the sink and peered into the garbage. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small flashlight he’d brought from his room. He shone it into the garbage. It was a disgusting mix of candies and table scraps.

  Alain plunged his hand in and stirred the garbage around. He pulled his slimy hand out, wiped it off on his pajamas and then shone the light back into the bag. A burst of color shimmered back at him. Alain smiled as the world around him dimmed. It was so pretty.

  Alain plucked the round candy out of the stinky mess. The colors shifted like the skin of a chameleon.

  He sat down at the table and peeled a corner off, revealing a dull white candy underneath. He took extra-special care to peel the foil without tearing it. Once he got it off, he spread it into a square. Then he noticed the smell.

  It was coming from the candy. Like the wrapper’s colors, the smell of the candy kept changing. First, he caught a whiff of cotton candy. Next, licorice. After that, a marshmallow odor. Alain was already salivating.

  He knew better than to put things in his mouth that had been in the garbage. But it had been tightly wrapped in foil. There was no way any germs were on it, right? Besides, what could one little candy do?

  Alain popped it into his mouth.

  At once his tongue went into taste spasms. The candy danced from flavor to flavor. His senses had never experienced anything like this. Alain chomped down.

  It was so chewy. Almost like a piece of gum. And the chewy ones were the best.

  Each bite made him salivate more, and each swallow was a different delicious flavor.

  It was almost too much, in fact. Soon Alain’s sense of smell and taste were overpowered by the chewy morsel. He stood up and paced to the kitchen window. Pushing it open, Alain took a deep breath and stared into the night sky.

  A stretch of clouds blanketed the full moon. There were other things in the sky as well. Birds, most likely, but they were so high up that to Alain they looked like flying ants.

  Alain kept chewing. The taste was amazing, but it really was getting to be too intense. He opened his mouth to spit out the candy.

  But it wouldn’t leave.

  Alain formed his lips into an O and tried to force the candy out.

  It wouldn’t budge.

  The more he strained, the more the candy resisted. Alain took a deep breath and blew hard. But the candy changed form. It thinned into a balloon-like substance that bubbled out of his mouth.

  Alain tried to pop the bubble. Although very thin, it was strong. Alain grabbed a knife from the cutlery drawer and tried to stab it. He jabbed and jabbed, but the bubble would not pop.

  Alain began to panic. He started to hyperventilate. This just made the bubble grow. That gave him an idea. He put the knife down and started to deliberately fill the bubble with more air, hoping it would stretch and burst.

  Instead, Alain felt his feet lift away from the floor. He was floating.

  He dog-paddled with his arms, the way he’d learned in swimming lessons, but a gust of wind swept in through the open window. It twirled him about and then sucked him outside.

  The current of air was strong. Helpless, Alain floated up past the roof, past the big old tree in the backyard. Soon he had a bird’s-eye view of the neighborhood. How was he going to get down?

  Alain kept floating. He thought about trying to suck the air back into his lungs to deflate the bubble and hopefully float back down. But he could barely breathe out his nose. He’d already pumped way too much air into the thing.

  As he continued to rise, Alain got closer to the objects he’d seen flying around earlier. His brain struggled to process what he was seeing. The sky appeared to be dotted with a dozen or more other kid-like shapes. Each one had a large bubble sticking out of its mouth.

  He shivered, and not just because of the changing temperature of the air as he rose.

  Hovering above the floating kids were several other shapes. They were also human, but they were astride broomsticks, and they whizzed about the night sky like gleeful fireflies. They all had pointed hats and warty noses, and as they zoomed in closer, Alain could see that they were all smiling at him.

  A few of the witches had spread a big weblike object between them. Alain watched in horror as some of the kids floated right into the net. They waved their arms wildly. He could hear their muffled screams through the big candy bubbles coming from their mouths.

  Alain tried to paddle away, but eventually he, too, was caught in the net.

  As he looked up at the big, bright moon, one of Alain’s captors pointed at him. “Oh, look!” she said with obvious delight. “I bet that one’s chewy! Don’t you know the chewy ones are the best?”

  LAST OF THE DAVES

  At first, I didn’t think it was such a huge deal that Dave Anders had been away from class for four days.

  Who didn’t get sick for a day or two? One of those super-bugs could knock you out for the whole week. I figured that’s what had happened with Dave. His seat was empty, and after the first day, Ms. Spector, our homeroom teacher, skipped his name while she took attendance. He was the first one on the list, alphabetically speaking.

  I was last on the list, since my surname is Ziegler. Today Ms. Spector scanned the attendance sheet as she paced the rows of desks like she usually did. But when she got to my name, instead of calling out here, like we’d been trained to do, I raised my hand.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Spector, but what about Dave A.?”

  Because my first name is David too,
Ms. Spector uses our surname initials to tell us apart.

  My teacher looked up from the attendance list and blinked. “Dave A.? Who’s Dave A.?”

  “Dave Anders. He’s in our class. He’s the first on the list.”

  Ms. Spector looked at me as if I’d spoken to her in a foreign language. She stepped toward me and shook her head. “There’s no Dave Anders on the list, David.”

  Nervous laughter rippled through the classroom.

  I narrowed my eyes. Was this some kind of joke? “But he’s been here since September,” I said. I turned to the other students. “Right?”

  All I got was strange looks and more laughter. That and a spitball that came perilously close to my mouth, which was hanging open in amazement.

  Ms. Spector held her gaze on me. “There is no Dave Anders on the list,” she said again, slowly and deliberately like she was speaking to a small child.

  I honestly didn’t know how to respond to that. What the heck was going on? Either Ms. Spector was pranking me and had involved the rest of the class, including Dave Anders, or…

  Or I’d lost my mind.

  I poked my head over her shoulder to stare at the list of names on the clipboard in her hand.

  I knew I wasn’t crazy, but neither was Ms. Spector.

  I scanned the first few names on the list. Allison Andrews. Theo Akhigbe. Tyrone Brown. No Dave Anders.

  Had he moved schools and not told anyone?

  It was the only explanation that made sense. But why keep it a secret? And why did Ms. Spector have to treat me like some kind of idiot?

  Come to think of it, why would the rest of the kids in my class be in on the whole thing too?

  I stared at the sea of faces around me. Clearly, I was thinking about this too hard. I lowered my head, picked up a pencil and started doodling zombies and weird alien dudes in my notebook, hoping my classmates would all move on to other things.

  A couple of days later I was cutting across the park on the way home from school when I spotted Dave Anders. He hadn’t been back to school. In fact, I’d almost forgotten about him altogether, like I had gotten used to the fact that he’d been taken off the attendance list.

  Dave was sitting on a park bench, holding a skateboard in his hand and staring at a pile of clothes on the bench beside him.

  “Dave!” I called out. “What’s going on? Where you have been?”

  I marched over to the bench and pushed the pile of clothes aside. They didn’t look like Dave’s clothes. They looked like they belonged to a much smaller boy.

  Dave kept staring at the clothes. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came. So I kept talking.

  “Hey, it’s me, Dave Ziegler. What’s going on? Did you change schools? You’re not on the class list, and everyone’s being weird about it.”

  Finally Dave looked at me. His hair was a mess. He had dark circles under his eyes, like he’d been awake for days. He was breathing funny, too, as if he’d just finished a long race. And then he spoke, his tone very serious.

  “It’s not Dave anymore.”

  “What?”

  “You can call me Mike now.”

  I shook my head. “What are you talking about?”

  Dave grabbed me by the shoulder. He leaned in close and then whispered, with great urgency, “You’ve still got time, I think.”

  “Huh?”

  He gave me another long look. “You haven’t noticed it yet, have you?”

  “I don’t know what the heck you’re talking about, Dave—”

  “I told you. I’m Mike now. You should do the same.”

  “Do what?”

  “Change your name. But you can’t just call yourself something else. You’ve got to make it legal.”

  Dave, I mean “Mike,” looked over his shoulder, scanning the park like he was worried we were being watched.

  I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. There were kids hanging off monkey bars, some adults walking their dogs, and a group of teenagers pushing each other around and laughing.

  “Mike” whispered in my ear. “It’s moving alphabetically.”

  “What is?”

  “I can’t tell you anything more. If you haven’t noticed it yet, you will soon.”

  “Notice what?” I stammered.

  “Mike” looked genuinely terrified of something. Terrified enough to quit school and change his name. But whatever it was, why couldn’t he tell me? And what did he mean, alphabetically?

  “David?” a motherly voice called out.

  I turned, thinking it might be my mom. But no. It was a woman of about my mom’s age, walking through the park with purpose. She was near the playground, searching the horizon. She approached a couple of the adults. Her hands waved wildly as she spoke.

  She walked past us, her face lined with worry. “David?” she called out again. Then she suddenly stopped.

  She turned to us and froze. She was clearly terrified. But she wasn’t looking at either of us.

  She was staring at the pile of clothes. Then her mouth dropped open, and her lower lip began to quiver like she was trying to make a sound, or a scream even, but instead this low, raspy noise escaped her throat.

  She dropped to her knees, reaching out to grab the shirt on the top of the pile of clothes. She clutched it to her chest, and then she began to panic. “Did you see him?” she asked me.

  I just shrugged. “Are those his clothes?” I asked.

  Dave Anders had also been freaked out by the pile of clothes. I turned to ask him if knew anything, only to find that he had left, taking his skateboard with him. He hadn’t even said goodbye.

  He’d really seemed spooked. Did he honestly believe that having the name Dave was some kind of curse?

  I thought about it for a minute. What if Dave Anders wasn’t crazy, and what he was saying, although it seemed ridiculous, was actually true? Wouldn’t there be some kind of evidence somewhere that something was happening to the Daves of the world?

  Determined to solve the mystery, I did what anyone would have done. I went home and got on the internet.

  I typed David into the search engine. I expected I would get hits for all the famous Davids in history. There was that guy from the Bible, the one who fought Goliath and won. And that famous marble statue by Michelangelo we learned about in art class. Or that guy—

  I blinked at the words on the screen.

  There was nothing on a boy fighting a giant with a slingshot. No naked statue. Nothing.

  The word David didn’t even appear to be recognized on the search string. A line of text asked me, Did you mean dove? Below it was a list of suggested websites and a series of pictures of white birds.

  “No, not dove. Dave!” I couldn’t believe I was screaming at a machine.

  I opened another search engine and typed in the word David again.

  Nothing but pictures of white birds. Dove. Dove. Dove.

  I felt sweat begin to bead on my forehead and the back of my neck. Maybe it was all in how you phrased your search. I typed in the words Michelangelo and statue. Surely that would get me at least a picture of the famous sculpture.

  “Aha!”

  There it was. I knew this had all been a mistake. Or maybe even just a weird hoax, like—

  I leaned in closer.

  The text under the picture of the famous Italian marble dude with his junk hanging out read Michelangelo’s Bob.

  I was starting to think that maybe I shouldn’t be trusting the internet.

  I looked over at my bookshelf and the huge set of encyclopedia my grandma had given me. I didn’t know the last time I had even looked at them, but I pulled out the volume marked M and flipped through the pages to find the entry for Michelangelo. As I expected, there was a picture of the famous sculpture next to his name.

  No!

  Michelangelo’s Bob.

  There it was! But this encyclopedia had been sitting on my shelf for years!

  Whatever was happening to the Daves had gone be
yond the internet. But why was only I noticing it? Was it because I was also a Dave? Did I and the other Daves have some strange power now?

  “I didn’t know you were interested in art,” said someone behind me.

  I nearly jumped out of my seat. I whirled around. “Mom!” I snapped. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

  “Sorry, I just wanted to let you know it’s time for dinner, that’s all. Why are you looking at the Bob?”

  I wrinkled my brow. “The what?”

  “Michelangelo’s Bob. Is that for a school project?”

  “Mom, it’s the David. It’s always been the David.”

  My mom stopped. She tilted her head to one side and narrowed her eyes, like she was thinking really hard about what I had said. I could see her hands and arms tense. “I think it’s always been the Bob,” she said, in a tone that suggested either I was making a joke or was completely out of the loop.

  I began to breathe heavily and in quick bursts.

  “It’s all right, honey,” she said, putting her arm on my shoulder. “It’s only a work of art.”

  I needed to get to the bottom of this Dave situation, and fast. The next day I made a plan to seek out some real people named David. But as it turned out, I didn’t know any. Or did I? Had they also dropped off the face of the planet?

  Surely there had to be others.

  And the best way to find out?

  I picked up the phone and dialed the operator.

  “Directory assistance, how can I help you?” said a mechanical-sounding voice.

  I paused, thinking about where to start.

  “Hello? How can I help you?” the operator repeated.

  “I’d like the number for…” I paused, remembering what Dave Anders had said about the phenomenon moving alphabetically. I made up a name on the spot. “David Morris.”

  There was a pause. “I’m sorry. I don’t have anyone by that name,” said the operator.

  I tried again. “How about David Price?”

  Another pause. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  I blurted out the most common surname I could think of. “How about David Smith? I’ve been trying to reach him for ages!”