Scarecrow Gods (33 page)

What if he couldn’t return?

The doubt changed into fear and the fear took hold.

The whining stopped. Danny suddenly felt the weight of his own body as the gravity pulled him back. Within seconds it was over and Danny had become again.

He opened his eyes, jumping up. “I did it! I was right there.” Grins and frowns traded places as fast as he could make them. “You weren’t lying. Wow! I got scared though, I got real scared.”

Just then, a car horn sounded. His mother had arrived to pick him up.

Danny stared longingly at the space on the carpet where he’d created his own universe. He glanced at Maxom, who smiled and nodded.

“We’ll pick this up where we left off. Get your things. Don’t want to keep your mother waiting.”

The sound of the horn came again and Danny snatched up his backpack. As he opened the door, Maxom spoke. “You did good, boy. I knew you could do it. I knew it all along.”

Danny grinned, closed the door behind him, and sped across the yard to the car. He whipped open the door and launched himself onto the cool leather seat.

“How was your day, hon?”

Danny turned to his mother. What could he say? “It was okay.”

“Just okay?”

“Yeah. I’m hungry.”

“Just what I was thinking. How does fried chicken sound?”

He nodded, staring out the window. The trees and bushes didn’t exist for him. His attention was entirely on that one tiny universe he’d created and all the possibilities it represented.

* * *

Chattanooga, Tennessee

To say Danny couldn’t sleep would be an understatement in the extreme. Never before had the Sandman been so elusive. A hundred times he’d closed his eyes only to lay dwelling upon the possibilities of his impending super heroism. He thought of The Shadow and of all the bad people the radio star had brought to justice. He thought of the green comic book Hulk, misunderstood mutant creation who could be as soft as a kitten or as hard as a concrete block. He thought of Spiderman and Superman, and of the Green Lantern who had the potential to be more powerful than the strongest of Superheroes or weaker than the least of them.

Danny just didn’t know.

He’d taken himself right to the edge of a new universe, then backed away. There’d been something about leaving his own body that had terrified him.

It would have been easier for him to be the first person to the bottom of the sea or the first man in space. Both places had been studied and mapped. The science was a known quantity and people knew what to expect. The ocean, although terrestrial, was a little less understood, but still, people knew of its existence. They understood that the ocean had a bottom even if they’d never seen it, their beliefs anchored in science and rational thought. But where was rational thought when you were out of your body? What science governed
The Land of Inside-Out
as Maxom called it.

Danny sighed, rolled over. Everything had become so complicated. He remembered a time when things were simple. When his sister was still around. He let his eyes follow the outlines of the shadows upon the walls.

He wondered if he’d ever been up this late.

There was a starkness about his bedroom he’d never noticed before, as if all the edges had become more prominent, sharper. Even the shadows seemed deeper—three-dimensional. The moonlight brightened the empty spaces with a blue-white glow, washing out color until everything was a slate gray.

Whether it was from the cold or the strangeness of the once familiar, Danny shuddered. He didn’t like the way things looked. This was the time of night called The Witching Hour, a time where sacrifices and evil deeds were conducted. He’d read about these things. Even Tennessee had some evil—like the Bell Witch. Doug had once told him how he and two other friends had tried to invoke her.

It was at Camp Chicamauga late one night where, according to Doug who was prone to exaggeration at times, he and two other boys had left the Ghost Tale Hour around the campfire and gone to the latrine. Often, as was the case when Danny was there, the boys left the light off at night and the door open. After all, what boy didn’t know where
it
was. By turning off the lights, the mega-swarm of moths were thankfully absent from the boy’s latrine, hovering instead around the girls’ latrine.

During the day, the four screen windows lining the long walls of the boy’s latrine were open. At night, because of the possibility of mischief, the wooden latches were lowered and locked into place. This made the interior almost pitch black.

The invocation for The Bell Witch of Tennessee wasn’t hidden in some dusty old tome. There were no secret signs or sigils. No candles were needed. No sacrifices were required. All in all, one would think the Bell Witch was a frequently visited spirit.

So Doug and his two friends stood in front of the mirror. In unison, they said the words: ‘
I call upon the Bell Witch to come into this place.
’ The first sign it was working was supposed to be that a green image would appear in the mirror and get closer as the invoker chanted the invocation. Doug said that they managed to say it eight times before they bolted and ran like screaming sissies. He said the other two boys cried and were so scared they couldn’t get the door open, forgetting they’d latched it. He said that the green image appeared in the mirror after they’d chanted the invocation three times, and just like the tale said, each time they recited the chant, the eerie visage of the Bell Witch came closer until on the eighth time they saw her smile.

Goosebumps shot up along Danny’s arms as he remembered Doug’s tale and the look on his friend’s face as he told it. Danny turned and buried his face into his pillow. He hadn’t meant to think of the Bell Witch, it had just happened. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and concentrated on his breathing. He’d scared himself good. The Witching Hour was upon him and the Bell Witch was in his mind. He could almost hear her low mean voice ordering him to get up, walk into the bathroom, close the door, and call out her name.

But it was all in his imagination. He concentrated harder on his breathing, this time remembering what Maxom had said. Danny inhaled, mentally following the air through his system. He became the air. He became the blood. He became the exhalation and the next inhalation. It was a cycle and he became part of it. Almost of their own accord, his feet seemed to disappear, then his legs. Too late, Danny realized what was happening to him. Before he could even think of a reason not to do it, he found himself floating in
The Land of Inside-Out
.

Floating, because that’s what Danny was doing, like in water, but not so thick. He began to rise toward the ceiling. Danny brought his arms up to protect his head. As he turned away from the impact he saw himself lying beneath him on the bed, face buried in the pillow. His body was so still—still enough to be dead. Danny’s vision blurred slightly. Afraid of the ceiling, he craned his head around to see where it was, and in the process passed through it.

Picking up speed, he rose through and over his parent’s bed where he spied his mother sprawled across the Southwestern style comforter. She was still in her bathrobe. Beside her lay a book, her glasses open and resting on the open pages.
Must have fallen asleep reading,
thought Danny. She seemed so tiny in the bed, but then there should have been another person there.

Danny began noticing the colors and the shapes of things. What should have been dark was light, like everything was a negative image. But there was something else that was different, something else he couldn’t pinpoint. Before he passed through the roof of his house, he saw it. A small tugging at the edges of his mother’s face, warping it just enough to be wrong, as if she was made of more than three dimensions. Multi-hued eddies of swirled just beneath the surface. Like oil in a pool of water, the colors were equally beautiful and deadly. He didn’t understand how he knew it, he just did. Something was wrong with her. Something he’d have to find a way to fix.

But that was a problem he needed to save for another time, because right now he found himself rising higher and higher, his house shrinking to doll-size and smaller. Shapes of differing sizes glowed brightly from places on the ground and in the trees. Some sped across the sky leaving trails like supersonic jets.

And still he rose.

Danny stared to where he knew the moon should be. Confusion mixed with fear as an abyss appeared where the silver of the moon should have been. This thing was black, the deepest black he’d ever seen, like the maw of some great creature—a world eater from the stars.

Danny had been afraid, but the newness and wonder of it all had kept him from dwelling upon the danger. Before, the possibility of not making it back to the real world had been something nebulous, something to worry about later. He didn’t really know how to stop himself, or what dangers there were in this
Land of Inside-Out
, but how bad could it be? His worry about the strange coloration around the edges of his mother’s face was obliterated a hundred-fold by his sudden and intense terror of the black moon.

He pushed his arms out in a desperate attempt to slow down, but instead of slowing, he found himself speeding up. He tried to swing his legs around, feet first to gain some sort of traction, but this only made things worse and within seconds, Danny found himself tumbling across the sky. He arched his back and threw his arms out behind him, but found no purchase. He began to cartwheel uncontrollably toward the black moon.

He started crying. A great pit of despair opened inside him. He was going to die.

Jesus, Boy. What the hell are you trying to do?

Danny stopped sobbing. He wasn’t sure if he’d really heard a voice or if his mind was playing tricks on him.

And did you have to come naked? Jesus. Get some clothes on why don’t ya.

Maxom?

What’s with this gymnastics routine? See any judges out here? Hear any funky music to gyrate your ass to.

Is that really you?

Who do you think it is out this late at night? Hell, I thought you would’ve worked up your nerve hours ago. They sure don’t make white kids as tough as they used to.

Maxom, tell me how to stop. Please, tell me
.

That’s easy. Just think it.

What?
Danny tried desperately to see where the voice was coming from. In this place, however, sounds traveled differently and the words seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at all. It was so frustrating not to be able to control himself and Maxom wasn’t helping at all.

Where are you?

You better stop your tumbling, boy. You ain’t no Mary Lou Retton and the way you’re going, the bad old Dark Sun is gonna get you. Don’t want that. No sir, don’t want that.

From the inside out, Danny screamed for his body to stop spinning, concentrating as hard as he’d ever concentrated. He didn’t stop, but he did manage to slow a little. That was all the encouragement he needed. He concentrated harder still, remembering Maxom’s earlier lessons.

Paying attention to his feet and the muscles of his legs, he fed them power. He allowed his imagination to traverse the capillaries of parts of his body he’d only heard of and some he’d never known a name for. To each of these places, he sent one harsh command:
STOP!

Danny slowed in increments, his tumble aborting into a twisting upward fall. The black moon—the Dark Sun as Maxom called it—filled his vision from edge to edge. He felt as if he were falling into it, rather than rising towards it, the huge ebony void, a moon-sized bottomless pit.

Perspective. It was all a matter of perspective.

Danny closed his eyes. He ignored his twisting. He ignored his idea of up and down. His only thought was on the balance. If he could think it, as Maxom had said, then this must be the way. Finally it was as if he’d turned off a switch—there was no gradual slowing, no momentum. After all, he wasn’t even really here.

Danny just stopped.

He opened his eyes and smiled. Maybe he’d make it after all.

See? Wasn’t so hard. To tell you the truth, you figured it out a lot quicker than I did. Good job.

Maxom was suddenly there in front of him. At least Danny thought it was Maxom. No longer was he the scarred, single-limbed version of a man, but rather a man-shaped thing. He was featureless, the color of quicksilver.

Is that you?

A lot better than the real me, huh?

Maxom moved his arms and legs as if a puppeteer had pulled on all four strings at once.

I think you look like a doll.

You don’t know the half of it
, said Maxom. He turned side-ways and disappeared.
Lo Lo never taught this to me. I figured this one out on my own. There are things in the Land of Inside-Out that are dangerous, and I wanted a way to hide from them.

Wow
. And Danny meant it. Maxom appeared two-dimensional.