Author: Cory Doctorow

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to take a look, and he saw that it was too big to be a garbage bag, and the dog, it looked sick, it moved wrong. He took another step closer and he must have triggered a motion sensor because the porch light switched on. He says… ”

“What?”

“He’s not very reliable. He says it wasn’t a dog, he said it was like a dried-out mummy or something, and it had its teeth sunk into the neck of this big, fat, naked guy, and it was dragging the fat guy out into the street. When the light came on, though, it gave the fat guy’s neck a hard shake, then let go and turned on this kid, walking toward him on stumpy little feet. He says it made a kind of growling noise and lifted up its hand like it was going to slap the kid, and the kid screamed and ran off. When he got to Dundas, he turned around and saw the fat guy get dragged into an alley between two of the stores on Augusta.”

“I see,” Alan said.

“It’s stupid, I know,” Kurt said.

Natalie and Link rounded the corner, carrying slices of pizza from Pizzabilities, mounded high with eggplant and cauliflower and other toppings that were never intended for use in connection with pizza. They startled on seeing Alan and Kurt, then started to walk away.

“Wait,” Alan called. “Natalie, Link, wait.” He smiled apologetically at Kurt. “My neighbors,” he said.

Natalie and Link had stopped and turned around. Alan and Kurt walked to them.

“Natalie, Link, this is Kurt,” he said. They shook hands all around.

“I wanted to apologize,” Alan said. “I didn’t mean to put you between Krishna and me. It was very unfair.”

Natalie smiled warily. Link lit a cigarette with a great show of indifference. “It’s all right,” Natalie said.

“No, it’s not,” Alan said. “I was distraught, but that’s no excuse. We’re going to be neighbors for a long time, and there’s no sense in our not getting along.”

“Really, it’s okay,” Natalie said.

“Yeah, fine,” Link said.

“Three of my brothers have gone missing,” Alan said. “That’s why I was so upset. One disappeared a couple of weeks ago, another last night, and one this morning. Krishna… ” He thought for a moment. “He taunted me about it. I really wanted to find out what he saw.”

Kurt shook his head. “Your brother went missing last night?”

“From my house.”

“So what the kid saw… ”

Alan turned to Natalie. “A friend of Kurt’s was in the park last night. He says he saw my brother being carried off.”

Kurt shook his head. “Your brother?”

“What do you mean, ‘carried off’?” Natalie said. She folded her slice in half to keep the toppings from spilling.

“Someone is stalking my brothers,” Alan said. “Someone very strong and very cunning. Three are gone that I know about. There are others, but I could be next.”

“Stalking?” Natalie said.

“My family is a little strange,” Alan said. “I grew up in the north country, and things are different there. You’ve heard of blood feuds?”

Natalie and Link exchanged a significant look.

“I know it sounds ridiculous. You don’t need to be involved. I just wanted to let you know why I acted so strangely last night.”

“We have to get back,” Natalie said. “Nice to meet you, Kurt. I hope you find your brother, Andy.”

“Brothers,” Alan said.

“Brothers,” Natalie said, and walked away briskly.

Alan was the oldest of the brothers, and that meant that he was the one who blazed all the new trails in the family.

He met a girl in the seventh grade. Her name was Marci, and she had just transferred in from Scotland. Her father was a mining engineer, and she’d led a gypsy life that put her in stark contrast to the third-generation homebodies that made up most of the rest of their class.

She had red hair and blue eyes and a way of holding her face in repose that made her look cunning at all times. No one understood her accent, but there was a wiry ferocity in her movement that warned off any kid who thought about teasing her about it.

Alan liked to play in a marshy corner of the woods that bordered the playground after school, crawling around in the weeds, catching toads and letting them go again, spying on the crickets and the secret lives of the larvae that grubbed in the milkweed. He was hunkered down on his haunches one afternoon when Marci came crunching through the tall grass. He ducked down lower, then peered out from his hiding spot as she crouched down and he heard the unmistakable patter of urine as she peed in the rushes.

His jaw dropped. He’d never seen a girl pee before, had no idea what the squatting business was all about. The wet ground sucked at his sneaker and he tipped back on his ass with a yelp. Marci straightened abruptly and crashed over to him, kicking him hard in the ribs when she reached him, leaving a muddy toeprint on his fall windbreaker.

She wound up for another kick and he hollered something wordless and scurried back, smearing marsh mud across his jeans and jacket.

“You pervert!” she said, pronouncing it Yuh peervurrt!

“I am not!” he said, still scooting back.

“Watching from the bushes!” she said.

“I wasn’t—I was already here, and you—I mean, what were you doing? I was just minding my own business and you came by, I just didn’t want to be bothered, this is my place!”

“You don’t own it,” she said, but she sounded slightly chastened. “Don’t tell anyone I had a piss here, all right?”

“I won’t,” he said.

She sat down beside him, unmindful of the mud on her denim skirt. “Promise,” she said. “It’s so embarrassing.”

“I promise,” he said.

“Swear,” she said, and poked him in the ribs with a bony finger.

He clutched his hands to his ribs. “Look,” he said, “I swear. I’m good at secrets.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Oh, aye? And I suppose you’ve lots of secrets, then?”

He said nothing, and worked at keeping the smile off the corners of his mouth.

She poked him in the ribs, then got him in the stomach as he moved to protect his chest. “Secrets, huh?”

He shook his head and clamped his lips shut. She jabbed a flurry of pokes and prods at him while he scooted back on his butt, then dug her clawed hands into his tummy and tickled him viciously. He giggled, then laughed, then started to hiccup uncontrollably. He shoved her away roughly and got up on his knees, gagging.

“Oh, I like you,” she said, “just look at that. A wee tickle and you’re ready to toss your lunch.” She tenderly stroked his hair until the hiccups subsided, then clawed at his belly again, sending him rolling through the mud.

Once he’d struggled to his feet, he looked at her, panting. “Why are you doing this?”

“You’re not serious! It’s the most fun I’ve had since we moved to this terrible place.”

“You’re a sadist!” He’d learned the word from a book he’d bought from the ten-cent pile out front of the used bookstore. It had a clipped-out recipe for liver cutlets between the pages and lots of squishy grown-up sex things that seemed improbable if not laughable. He’d looked “sadist” up in the class dictionary.

“Aye,” she said. “I’m that.” She made claws of her hands and advanced on him slowly. He giggled uncontrollably as he backed away from her. “C’mere, you, you’ve more torture comin’ to ye before I’m satisfied that you can keep a secret.”

He held his arms before him like a movie zombie and walked toward her. “Yes, mathter,” he said in a monotone. Just as he was about to reach her, he dodged to one side, then took off.

She chased him, laughing, halfway back to the mountain, then cried off. He stopped a hundred yards up the road from her, she doubled over with her hands planted on her thighs, face red, chest heaving. “You go on, then,” she called. “But it’s more torture for you at school tomorrow, and don’t you forget it!”

“Only if you catch me!” he called back.

“Oh, I’ll catch you, have no fear.”

She caught him at lunch. He was sitting in a corner of the schoolyard, eating from a paper sack of mushrooms and dried rabbit and keeping an eye on Edward-Frederick-George as he played tag with the other kindergartners. She snuck up behind him and dropped a handful of gravel down the gap of his pants and into his underpants. He sprang to his feet, sending gravel rattling out the cuffs of his jeans.

“Hey!” he said, and she popped something into his mouth. It was wet and warm from her hand and it squirmed. He spat it out and it landed on the schoolyard with a soft splat.

It was an earthworm, thick with loamy soil.

“You!” he said, casting about for a curse of sufficient vehemence. “You!”

She hopped from foot to foot in front of him, clearly delighted with this reaction. He reached out for her and she danced back. He took off after her and they were chasing around the yard, around hopscotches and tag games and sand castles and out to the marshy woods. She skidded through the puddles and he leapt over them. She ducked under a branch and he caught her by the hood of her windbreaker.

Without hesitating, she flung her arms in the air and slithered out of the windbreaker, down to a yellow T-shirt that rode up her back, exposing her pale freckles and the knobs of her spine, the fingers of her ribs. She took off again and he balled the windbreaker up in his fist and took off after her.

She stepped behind a bushy pine, and when he rounded the corner she was waiting for him, her hands clawed, digging at his tummy, leaving him giggling. He pitched back into the pine needles and she followed, straddling his waist and tickling him until he coughed and choked and gasped for air.

“Tell me!” she said. “Tell me your secrets!”

“Stop!” Alan said. “Please! I’m going to piss myself!”

“What’s that to me?” she said, tickling more vigorously.

He tried to buck her off, but she was too fast. He caught one wrist, but she pinned his other arm with her knee. He heaved and she collapsed on top of him.

Her face was inches from his, her breath moist on his face. They both panted, and he smelled her hair, which was over his face and neck. She leaned forward and closed her eyes expectantly.

He tentatively brushed his lips across hers, and she moved closer, and they kissed. It was wet and a little gross, but not altogether unpleasant.

She leaned back and opened her eyes, then grinned at him. “That’s enough torture for one day,” she said. “You’re free to go.”

She “tortured” him at morning and afternoon recess for the next two weeks, and when he left school on Friday afternoon after the last bell, she was waiting for him in the schoolyard.

“Hello,” she said, socking him in the arm.

“Hi,” he said.

“Why don’t you invite me over for supper this weekend?” she said.

“Supper?”

“Yes. I’m your girlfriend, yeah? So you should have me around to your place to meet your parents. Next weekend you can come around my place and meet my dad.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“You can’t.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a secret,” he said.

“Oooh, a secret,” she said. “What kind of secret?”

“A family secret. We don’t have people over for dinner. That’s the way it is.”

“A secret! They’re all child molesters?”

He shook his head.

“Horribly deformed?”

He shook his head.

“What, then? Give us a hint?”