Chapter 3
THE ONLY THING I could hear was my own breath. It was so loud that it sounded like there were six scared people locked up in the shed.
I closed my eyes and thought real hard about making my breathing slow down. Pretty soon it sounded like the five other breathers in the shed had left. I was still scared but now it was that get-real-excited-and-want-to-move-around kind of scared.
It didn't take too long for my eyes to get used to the dark. There was a gray gas can in one corner next to a bunch of gray rakes and a pile of gray rags, and a gray tire next to some gray fishing poles. Maybe Mr. Amos had only pretended to lock the door.
I reached my hand toward the gray doorknob and quick as that I went from kind of calm to being in that stand-in-one-place-with-spit-drooling-down-the-front-of-your-shirt kind of scared.
Halfway up the door were three little flat monster heads guarding the doorknob. Each head had two little round eyes staring right at me. The eyes were the only thing in the shed that weren't gray. They were a bright yellow with a big black spot right in the middle.
I dropped my blanket and pillow and back-stepped until my legs hit the woodpile behind me. From all the fast breathing going on you'da thought the five other scared people had come back and brought a couple of scared friends with them.
Each head had a wide-open mouth with a sharp set of pointy teeth and lips smiling back ready to bite. It felt like the shed was getting smaller and smaller and the little mouths were getting closer and closer.
Then I knew what I was looking at. The doorknob guards were three dried-out fish heads that someone had nailed to the door.
I ran over to the pile of rags and poked at one of them with my shoe to make sure there weren't any rats or centipedes hiding under it, then I picked it up and hung it over the fish heads so I couldn't see them and they couldn't see me.
I picked up my blanket and pillow and had to decide what was the best way to sleep. I knew the floor was no good, I'da bet all sorts of bugs and roaches were crawling around.
I remember what happened to my best friend, Bugs, when a cockroach crawled in his ear one night at the Home. Four grown folks had held Bugs down whilst they tried to pull it out with a pair of tweezers but the only thing that that did was pull the roach's back legs off. When they were digging around in Bugs's ears with the tweezers you'd've thought they were pulling his legs off, not some cockroach's, I'd never heard a kid scream that loud.
After about fifteen minutes of Bugs screaming the joint down they said they were going to have to take him to the emergency room to get the roach out. It was almost morning when Bugs got back. Everyone was asleep except me.
I waited until they put him in his bed and turned off the lights.
I said, "Did they get it out?"
He said, "Oh, hi, Bud. Yeah, they got him."
"Did it hurt a lot?"
"Nope."
"Were you scared?"
"Nope."
"Then how come you were screaming so doggone loud?"
He said, "I didn't know I was, I probably couldn't hear me screaming 'cause that roach was so loud."
I'd seen lots of roaches but I'd never heard one of them make any sound. I said, "Loud how?"
"Well, bugs ain't so different from us as you'd think, soon as he saw those tweezers coming at him he was pretty terrified and commenced to screaming, screaming in English too, not some bug language like you'd expect from a roach."
"Yeah? What'd he say?"
"All he kept yelling was, 'My legs! My legs! Why have they done this to my legs?'"
That's the true story about how Bugs started getting called Bugs.
I'd bet a thousand dollars that there were roaches on the floor of this shed, just waiting to crawl in someone's ear. And I'd bet those Amoses wouldn't've even tried to pull the roach out, and who knows how long I'd've had to listen to some terrified roach screaming his head off right up against my eardrum?
I spread the blanket on top of the woodpile and climbed up on it. This put me so I was even with the window. I took a piece of bark and brushed all the spiderwebs from in front of the window, then I put my hand on the glass to see if the newspaper was pasted on from the inside or the outside. I touched paper. I spread my fingers and my hand looked like a yellow-jacket bumblebee, bright yellow with black stripes. This was a great place to have shadow puppets so I made my hand be a wolf and a dog and a duck.
After while that got to be pretty boring so I scraped at the paper with my fingernails so I could see outside, but I like to keep my nails bit down real low and the paper didn't budge.
I took out my jackknife and tried scraping the newspaper with it. The paper peeled away in little curly yellow strips like that stuff rich people throw on New Year's Eve. I finally got a hole big enough to look out and mashed my eye up against the glass. I could see the back of the Amos house real clear.
There was a light on. That had to be Mr. and Mrs. Amos's bedroom. The little bit of light that came through the hole in the paper made me get calm enough that I could lay my head on my pillow and take a nap.
WHEN I BLINKED my eyes open, the first thing I noticed was that the light from the Amoses' bedroom was out. The next thing I noticed made me wish I'd stayed asleep.
Up at the very top of the shed was the biggest vampire bat you'd ever see! He was hanging upside down asleep, but the smell of me rising up to him would probably wake him up at any minute!
I reached over to the window and tried to slide it open. It budged a inch.
I rolled off the woodpile and crawled toward the door with the fish head guards. I reached my hand up and the doorknob turned! Mr. Amos was trying to help me! But after the door opened a crack the padlock and chain on the outside held it tight.
I looked back up into the rafters to see if the bat had woke up. He was still sound asleep.
Just like there's a time that a smart person knows enough is enough, there's a time when you know you've got to fight. I wasn't about to let this vampire suck my blood dry without a war, he could kiss my wrist if he thought that was going to happen.
I got up off my knees and picked up the gray rake. I walked over to the woodpile cool as a cucumber. But inside, every part of my guts was shaking.
I stood up on the woodpile and held the rake like it was a Louisville Slugger. I eyed where the bat was sleeping and revved the rake like I was going to hit a four-hundred-foot home run. Just before I swung I remembered another one of Bud Caldwell's Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself.
RULES AND THINGS NUMBER 328
When You Make Up Your Mind to Do Something, Hurry Up and Do It, If You Wait You Might Talk Yourself Out of What You Wanted in the First Place.
Shucks, I couldn't remember for sure if you killed a vampire by driving a stake in its heart or by shooting it with a silver bullet!
If I was wrong and didn't kill the bat right away I was going to be trapped in the shed with a vampire who was probably going to be real upset that someone had woke him up by whacking him with a rake.
I took my jackknife out of my pocket and pulled the blade open. That way if I didn't kill him with the rake and it came down to the two of us tussling on the floor maybe a silver blade in his heart would be just as good as a silver bullet. Unless that was what you had to do with werewolves.
I raised the rake over my head again, closed my eyes and swung it like I was Paul Bunyan chopping down a tree with one blow. I felt the rake jerk a little when it hit the bat and I opened my eyes just in time to see the vampire get cut right in half. I was kind of surprised it didn't scream or cry or say, "Curses, you got me!" Instead the only sound I heard was a kind of rattling like a couple of pieces of paper rubbing together or like dry leaves blowing around in the wind.
The next sound I heard was even worse than if the vampire had said, "Aha, you doggone kid, that hurt, but now I get my revenge!"
It sounded like I'd turned on a buzz saw in the shed. All of a sudden it felt like someone had stuck a red-hot nail right into my left cheek. My hand reached up to grab my cheek and I felt something creepy and prickly there. I brought my hand back down and it was holding the biggest, maddest hornet I'd ever seen. I squeezed my hand shut to crush it but it got in another sting on my palm.
What I'd thought was a vampire bat hanging on the ceiling was really a hornets' nest and now there were about six thousand hornets flying around in the tiny shed and each and every one of them was looking for me!
Another fire-nail went into my knee and a second one went into my sock. Maybe this was why the other kid that they'd found in here had been as big as a whale, he was swole up from all the hornet stings!
I dropped my shoulder down and charged at the door with all my might. The door banged against the lock but didn't budge a inch. All that happened was the rag I'd covered the fish heads with came off and I got bounced back and landed square on the floor. I jumped up again. This time when I charged at the door I put my hand out like Paul Robeson running down the football field. This wasn't a real good idea, I forgot all about the fish-head door guards. My fingers went right into the mouth of the biggest one and his little needle teeth cut me like a razor. I pulled my hand back and screamed.
Another hornet buzzed into my ear and it felt like someone had poured hot wax right down into my brain.
The only thing I could think to do was jump on the woodpile and bust the glass out of the window. I grabbed the handles of the window and gave them one more jerk. I guess being scared gives you a lot of strength because this time the window flew open with a loud bang. Three hornets found me at the same time and all four of us fell out of the window.
As soon as we hit the ground I rolled as far away from the shed as I could go. I smacked and whacked the hornets that had taken a ride on me and just laid there until I could catch my breath.
After while the stings and the fish-guard bite quit hurting so much. I started getting madder and madder. I was mad at the Amoses, but most of all I was mad at me for believing there really was a vampire in the shed and for getting trapped like this where there wasn't anybody who cared what happened to me.
I simmered down and started thinking about getting even. I wondered how hard I'd have to pull the trigger on that double-barrel shotgun for it to go off. I sneaked up the back porch steps to get inside the house. Maybe the vampire bat didn't say it, but the only thought on my mind was, "Aha, you doggone Amoses, that hurt, but now I get my revenge!"