Hideous Faces, Beautiful Skulls. Mark McLaughlin

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СКАЧАТЬ to play in the treehouse!

      You shimmy up the old oak behind the house and scoot into your little plywood hidey-hole. You love all your little treehouse treasures. Baseball cards, bugs stuck on pins, neat candy wrappers, an old squirrel skull, and—a bottle of whiskey? What’s that doing here? For a second the treehouse seems—Yucky. Cold. Like the inside of one of those metal boxes behind fancy restaurants. No, surely that’s not booze! That’s a bottle of Koala Kough Syrup! Kippy Kangaroo takes a swig whenever his throat gets a tricky tickle! Koala Kough Syrup—ask for it by name!

      Oh, but what’s happening? The top of the treehouse is being lifted up! A Nice Officer looks down on you and smiles.

      This must be a dream.

      Yes, you must have fallen asleep in the treehouse. What an exciting dream! The Nice Officer takes you to the station and starts talking about The Show. He says he used to watch The Show back when he was a kid. He also says your old costars are dying off and thats pretty weird ’cause they’re scattered all over the country. Gee whiz!

      Martha Fine (who’s that?) died of an overdose of heart medicine. Some people are so careless. Ronald Bain (that name rings a little bell) somehow broke his back while he was sleeping! Imagine that. Conrad Elmore (who’s that?) got his skull bashed in today while he was taking a shower. Well, most accidents do happen in the bathroom. They’ve left a message on Nancy Verrick’s answering machine—the Nice Officer reminds you that she’s the one who played Mrs. Finkle.

      The Nice Officer tells you that Ingrid Pretty (that name rings a BIG bell) was the lucky one. She died peacefully in some nursing home just before this whole mess began.

      The Nice Officer says, do you know anything? Sure, you know that vinegar and baking soda and modeling clay make a neat volcano!

      He says he’s going to let you Sleep It Off. What does that mean? You’re already asleep! He leads you to a shadowy room with a nice soft cot.

      “Little Perky! Come home this minute!”

      You find yourself hiding in the attic, eating yummy, gooey chocolate chip cookies (snatched from the cookie jar!). Oh, they’re so good, so good. You like the attic—Mommy has all her old clothes up here and they smell like perfume.

      Suddenly you remember—you’re in trouble on the double! Why did you get Mrs. Finkle all wet? Sure, she smokes an awful lot, but if you wanted to put out her cigarette, you should have filled that balloon with water—not gasoline! You’d better stay in the attic for a good long time, Little Perky!

      You look out the window. From here you can see the Smartville Cemetery. Some of those graves look mighty fresh…

      Listen!

      What was that? A creaking door? Is it the boogeyman, Little Perky?

      Listen to that soft padding on the stairs…

      Listen to this soft voice in your head…

      A shadow looms before you, but it’s not the boogeyman. It’s—it’s—

      Why, it’s me! Your loving Mommy!

      I’ve brought you a glass of milk, Little Perky. Nice and cold—just the thing to wash down those cookies. A little later, we’ll go down to the pet shop and buy that talking bird. Oh, I know Daddy said it would cause a lot of commotion, but Daddy can’t hear it from underground!

      It’s so good to be with you again, Little Perky. I was alone for so long! Forgotten by my friends, my family (my out there family), even my fans. Just another sicky in that terrible nursing home. Trapped in a cancerous old body, wasting away.

      I wrote to all my old co-stars but none of them wanted to visit. I couldn’t get in touch with you…Conrad was the one who called to tell me that—well, that your career was going poorly. The bastard (Oopsy! Pardon my French!)—he sounded so pleased.

      Oh, I despised the whole slimy lot of them. They wouldn’t visit me and they wouldn’t help you. What’s a mother to do?

      When I died and none of them came to the funeral…that was the last straw. Not all ghosts wear sheets, Little Perky. Some wear lovely lacy aprons that say KISS THE COOK. You’ve made a nice little world for yourself, Little Perky. I let you decide what to do about Daddy and Widow Prim and Mr. and Mrs. Finkle. Whatever you did to them in here, I did to them out there (my poor apron—some of these stains will never come out).

      You have no idea how much I’ve missed you. We’ll have so much fun! I’ll dress you and feed you and comb your lovely black hair (a ribbon will keep it out of your eyes). I’ll give you nice hot baths and make sure you wash behind your ears and everywhere else (little boys can get so dirty in all their little secret crannies), which reminds me, I’d better buy some cotton swabs. I’ll give you hugs and kisses morning, noon, and night. We’ll be so close. I’ll never let you out of my sight. You won’t know where you end and I begin. You and me, Little Perky, together in your mind for the rest of your days.

      You look ill…have a Koala Kough Drop. They’re eucalypti-licious! Kippy Kangaroo loves them because they pack a punch of Vitamin K to knock out those awful germs!

      Home is the loveliest word I know, Little Perky. It really is. Home. Home. Home. Home. Home.

      I’m home.

      THE FINAL BROADCAST OF SUGARVILLE’S CHANNEL 7 ACTION NEWS

      With a sweeping rush of majestic orchestra music, bright lights came up on the set of Sugarville’s CHANNEL 7 ACTION NEWS, 10 p.m. broadcast. The name of the program was emblazoned on the back wall of the set in bold italic, sans serif, purple letters edged with gold. Under the letters was a large monitor showing random scenes from the Sugarville metro area.

      The two anchorpeople chatted at the sky-blue news desk, their tanned faces set in expressions of cheery attentiveness. As the music faded, they turned simultaneously toward the camera.

      “Good evening, and welcome to Channel 7 Action News at ten! I’m Brett Bellamy!” The anchorman had green eyes, a square jaw and dark-brown hair with golden highlights.

      “And I’m Jessica Michaels!” The anchorwoman had bright blue eyes, an almond-shaped face and shoulder-length, moussed black hair with a long, ash-blonde forelock. “Tonight’s top story—Sugarville find itself locked in the icy grip of a cold snap!”

      The expressions of the anchorpeople turned deadly serious as the theme music blared, while on the monitor, a navy-blue and icy cyan logo sprang up that read, COLD SNAP! SUGARVILLE IN PERIL.

      “So far, we’ve been enjoying a fairly mild October,” Brett said, “with a daytime high of sixty-eight degrees, and a nighttime low of forty-seven. But this evening at 9 p.m., Sugarville citizens trembled as the mercury dropped to forty-four degrees! But that wasn’t the worst. Brisk winds combined with that frigid temperature to create a wind-chill factor of forty-one degrees. And since that time, the temperature has dropped even further—to an arctic thirty-nine degrees!”

      “Bone-chilling!” said Jessica, brushing her forelock, which was drooping a bit, away from her cheek. “We now have a live report from Chad Yamata, who is out in the community in our Channel 7 Action News Van, experiencing this sudden change in the weather firsthand.”

      On the monitor, a handsome Asian man in a suede СКАЧАТЬ