Norton, Andre - Anthology Read Free Page B

tucked his shirt inside his faded
blue denim jeans. "I changed them. They got—messed up."
                   His rumpled hair stood up like tufts of brown
yarn. The shirt he had on was the patchwork one their grandmother had given him
for his birthday. Molly hadn't ever noticed before that one of the patches was
a triangle of blue gingham on the left shoulder. Or that at the throat there
was a square of yellow the exact same shade as Jason's pajamas.
                   "What happened to you? How did you get up
here?" She was groping behind her for the stair rail, but she couldn't
find it.
                   "Don't you know?" Jason stretched
out a hand still half-covered in a pink candy-striped cuff. "Come on. I'll
show you."
                   "No." Molly raised her arm to ward
him off. "Stay there. Stop it. Stop fooling."
                   He started toward her, his smile growing wider
and thinner until it was a red line of yarn across his flat face. He laughed in
a silly falsetto that wasn't Jason's laugh at all. "I'm not fooling,"
the monkey said.
                   Molly shrank away from the blazing yellow of
his eyes.
                   The bells around his neck jingled as he moved
closer. "No," she cried once more. "I don't believe you. You're
not real."
                   And she stepped backward off the stairstep —into space. . ..
     
     

The Yamadan
     
by LYNNE GESSNER
     
                 The digital clock on
the nightstand showed exactly midnight when Steve Glimson sat up in bed, wondering what had wakened him. He couldn't remember hearing a
noise.
                 He didn't have a
stomachache. And nobody had turned on a light. Yet here he was, sitting bolt
upright in a pitch-dark room—waiting. For what?
                 Though the summer
night air was balmy, he shivered.
                 As though
sleepwalking, he slid from the upper bunk and dropped silently to the floor.
Beyond the open window only blackness met his gaze. Yet he knew something was
out there.
                 "Phew!" he
gasped, clapping his hand over his nose and mouth as he caught a whiff of a
musty odor—like rotten garbage.
                 At the sound of his
low exclamation, two lights flickered in the darkness just outside his window.
He felt his skin crawl as he stared, convinced somehow that these
    two glowing lights were eyes staring at him.
Yet how could they be? He had seen many wild animals in the woods surrounding
the farm, but always their eyes reflected light, they never generated the light
themselves. But on this moonless night there was no light to be reflected, and
the house was in total darkness.
                   "What's up, Steve?" came a sleepy
voice from the lower bunk.
                   "Nothing," he managed to say without
a quiver. When he slammed shut the window, the two points of light disappeared.
Only then did he turn to face his younger brother, Irwin. "Just
closing the window because of the stink."
                   "What stink?" Irwin mumbled. "I
don't smell anything."
                   "You couldn't smell cow dung if you fell
in it."
                   "Sorry," Irwin said into his pillow,
and immediately Steve regretted snapping at his brother. It wasn't fun having
stopped-up sinuses like Irwin did, and the kid was sensitive about his allergy.
                   Steve climbed back into bed, but sleep was a
long time coming. He kept seeing those two glowing lights. Finally he fell into
restless sleep.
                   The sound of Irwin opening the window woke
him, and he struggled off the bunk bed, feeling strangely tired. He looked at
the eight-year-old boy, five years younger than himself. Maybe it was because
Irwin was small for his age, or because he was a slow learner—not really
mentally retarded, Steve