Darkness Creeping: Twenty Twisted Tales

CATCHING COLD

We have a psychotically impatient ice-cream man in our neighborhood. He comes down the street, playing his happy little tune, my daughters come screaming downstairs in a panic asking for a dollar each. By the time they get out the door, however, the ice-cream man is gone, and all the little kids on the street are crying, because not a single kid got ice cream. I had never seen the guy stop. In fact I had never seen him. I just heard his stupid little song.

One day we decided we were not going to stand for it anymore. We all piled into the car, we chased him down, and we cut him off, blocking traffic. Everyone who saw it applauded. He was forced to sell us ice cream. It was lousy ice cream, but to us, it tasted like victory. So you could say this story was inspired by reality. Sort of.

CATCHING COLD

History tells of a man named Pavlov.

Pavlov was a scientist who did a famous experiment with dogs. Each day he would ring a bell, then feed the dogs, ring a bell, then feed the dogs, over and over, until the dogs knew the bell meant food. Then one day he just rang the bell. The dogs, who were trained to expect the food after the bell, all began to salivate, drooling all over themselves expecting food that didn’t come. They developed a physiological response to the sound of the bell. It’s called classical conditioning.

The same can often be said of kids when they hear a certain sound wafting over the treetops in their neighborhood. A pleasant sound. A song. The song is different in every neighborhood, and in every town across the nation, but the song always means the same thing.

Are you listening?

Can you hear it now?

The music is out there, stealing through your window, echoing between closely packed rows of homes. It seems to come from the left, then from the right. It grows louder, then fades, louder and fades, until you’re not sure whether the song is coming or going—and, like Pavlov’s dogs, you’re drooling. You’re scrambling for spare change, begging your parents for a dollar—because a dollar is all it costs to pay the ice-cream man. Just one dollar, and you can have sherbet on a stick in the shape of your favorite cartoon character, with a gum-ball nose. Hurry out that door! The ice-cream man is here!

Like you, Marty Zybeck was a victim of classical conditioning; however, no one had it worse than Marty. He kept his window open, every afternoon when the weather got warm, and kept his sizable ears tuned to that high frequency on which the tune would come.

His particular ice-cream truck played Pop Goes the Weasel. It was one of the more annoying ice-cream truck tunes, but for Marty, it was a call to arms.

Whenever he heard it, Marty was prepared. He already had a dollar in his pocket, to give to the Creamy-Cold ice-cream man. The moment he heard the song, he would bound down the stairs and burst out the front door. His ears, like radar dishes, would triangulate the direction of the music, and he would take off, his feet pounding heavily, desperately on the pavement . . . but each day the result was exactly the same. First he would hear the music in front of him. Then he would hear it to his right. Then he would hear it passing on another street behind the row of houses to his left.

He would run until he was out of breath, and practically out of his mind, but the end result was always the same. The music would fade. The Creamy-Cold truck would leave, and he’d be left panting in the street with a dollar and no ice cream.

If only I were a little faster, he would think—but speed was not one of Marty’s strong points. He came in last in everything. He was, in fact, the very definition of last. Not only was his the last name on any school roster, but he was also the last to finish every race, the last to turn in every test, the last to be done with dinner, and the last kid on the school bus. It only seems to follow that no matter how much he tried to get to the Creamy-Cold truck, he would be the last kid in the neighborhood out the door.

He’s an impatient one, that ice-cream man, his mother would say. Never hangs around long. And then she’d remind Marty that maybe it was best he didn’t have the ice cream anyway, as he tended toward being a husky child. Well, it’s not a total loss. All that running will do you good!

He would sneer at his mother when she said things like that. His mother was as slender as could be—but Marty took after his father, who was not.

I’ll bet his ice cream stinks! Marty would grumble, but deep down, he didn’t believe it. In his heart of hearts, he believed that Creamy-Cold ice cream was the tastiest, most heavenly frozen treat ever devised by man—and the only way to get it was to buy it from the truck. Marty Zybeck did not have many goals in life—but at the top of that short list was catching the Creamy-Cold man.

Legend tells of a boy named Jim-Jim Jeffries.

Jim-Jim, as the neighborhood legend goes, was the fastest kid in little league. He could run faster than any player could throw a ball to a base, and so when he got a hit, he rarely got tagged out. He was a winner, and did not accept defeat easily. One day, long before anyone can remember, Jim-Jim went chasing after the Creamy-Cold ice-cream truck, refusing to accept that it was already leaving the neighborhood. He turned the corner, waving his dollar bill, and was never seen again.

Marty Zybeck knew the story of Jim-Jim. Children whispered it in hushed tones, but Marty had a logical, practical view of it. Fact: there was no one in the neighborhood with the last name of Jeffries. Fact: no one seemed to remember where he lived, or what he looked like. Fact: if anyone could confirm the story, it would be Marty’s father, who was a well-respected detective with the local police force, and he flatly denied the existence of Jim-Jim Jeffries. Marty was convinced it was just a made-up story, designed to keep small children from crossing dangerous streets to get ice cream. Well, he wasn’t a small child anymore. He didn’t believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or Jim-Jim Jeffries.

Still, the rumors went round and round every summer, when the music came in on the wind, and children scraped together their change.

This was the summer, however, that Marty discovered a great universal truth that every kid in the neighborhood already knew. Marty would have known it, too, had he been just a little more observant.

It was as he sat playing video games with his friend Tyler CoyoteMoon-O’Callahan that the truth began to emerge. The school year had just ended a few days earlier, and the two boys were filling their time playing interdimensional kickboxer. Five minutes into their third game, Marty heard the faint sounds of Pop Goes the Weasel through the open living-room window. Although leaving the game would allow Tyler to completely kick him into a parallel dimension, and thus win the match, he put down the video controller and stood up. He was mature enough to know that some things, like ice cream, were just more important than video games.

Don’t bother, said Tyler calmly. He won’t stop for you.

He stops for other kids—he’ll stop for me.

Who says he stops for other kids?

That gave Marty pause for thought. Other kids always get ice cream from him.

How do you know?

Because, said Marty, I always see them running for the ice-cream man.

"Yeah—but did you ever actually see someone eating a Creamy-Cold bar?"

Marty racked his brain, trying to flip through images to find an actual memory of someone walking down the street, eating something they bought from the ice-cream man, but his memory held no such image.

Well . . . you’ve eaten Creamy-Cold bars, haven’t you?

Never, said Tyler. Not once. Sure, I used to run after him like you do, but I never caught him, so I gave up.

They looked at each other, the only sound the music coming from somewhere outside, and Tyler said, Everyone hears the music, but have you ever actually seen the truck?

Of course I have! Marty said. But as he thought about it, he realized that the image of the ice-cream truck was only in his head. He had imagined what it would look like if he ever actually got out onto the street in time to catch it—but he never actually saw it.

You know what I think? said Tyler. I think it’s a ghost truck from the spirit world of our ancestors. Tyler, being half Navajo and half Irish, had a powerful belief in the ancestral spirit world and leprechauns.

I think you’re nuts, said Marty.

Tyler responded by turning to their game and kicking Marty into another dimension.

Fairy tales speak of a Pied Piper.

As the story goes, the piper’s tune was so entrancing it lured all the rats from the town of Hamlin. Then, when the towns-folk refused to pay his price, the piper used his tune to lure away all the children into a mountain, where, presumably, they either lived happily ever after or died horrible painful deaths. Fairy tales can go either way.

Such a thing could never happen to large groups of children in modern times, however, because as everyone knows, large groups of modern children are much too smart for that. Between movies, sitcoms, and the colorful language of older siblings, kids know everything, or at least they think they do. Thinking they do, however, is enough to prevent an entire mob of them from being lured by the music of a Pied Piper. More than likely they would just laugh at his funny green suit and pointed shoes, then walk the other way. No, when it comes to kids these days, there is safety in numbers, and the only ones who find themselves following the piper are the stragglers.

Stragglers like Marty.

Marty was not like Tyler. He was not satisfied to treat the Creamy-Cold man as a mystery best left alone. After all, being a detective was in his genes, and so at dinner that night, Marty tried to learn some technique from the greatest detective he knew.

Dad, where do you begin an investigation?

Usually at the scene of the crime.

What if there is no scene?

Then why investigate?

Because it’s important?

Is there a paycheck involved?

No.

Then it’s not important.

His father was very good at deflecting any and all questions Marty ever asked him with logic that was so circular, it often left Marty forgetting what the question was.

Uh . . . I want to investigate the ice-cream man, Marty said.

Why? Did he run someone over?

No, he’s just never there.

You can’t investigate something that isn’t there—just something that is.

"What about something that was there, but isn’t anymore?"

That’s called a cold case. Not my field of expertise.

Marty thanked his father and decided he was on his own. He spent the evening pondering the problem, starting with the things he knew for sure. Fact: the music comes from somewhere. Fact: the sound rises and it falls, which suggests that it’s moving. Fact: if it’s moving through their neighborhood, it has to pass by Fillmore Savings Bank around the corner, right?

That’s when he came up with the big idea. He approached his father again the following morning.

Dad, do you think you could get me some surveillance videos from Fillmore Savings for a school project?

No, his father said. What’s the project?

We’re doing a mathematical study of how many people use the ATM machine. Can you get those tapes for me?

No. Why don’t I just get you the bank’s statistics?

We’re supposed to write up the statistics ourselves. Can’t you get me some videos?

No, said Mr. Zybeck. I’ll ask around.

Mr. Zybeck had so many strings he could pull around town, he was often getting tangled up in them. Getting the tapes was fairly easy—certainly easier than having to listen to Marty nag about them—which is exactly what Marty was counting on.

With a determination he rarely showed, Marty settled in to watch the surveillance tapes. The thing about the Creamy-Cold man is that he didn’t come every day, and he always came at a different time. You could never predict when you’d hear that maddening Pop Goes the Weasel tune. Marty had no way of knowing when he might pass by in the background. He watched hour after hour of tape, amazed at how many people at the ATM made faces at the camera, figuring no one would actually watch it. He saw one mugging, which his father claimed to already know about, but no ice-cream truck. He was about to give up when a white blur zoomed past in the background—a blur that was somehow different from all the other cars, trucks, and buses that zipped by. Marty hit the pause button so hard, the remote flew out of his hand. He picked it up and played the last few seconds frame by frame.

It was there in the tenth frame.

It was blurry, it was faint, but it was there: a speeding white truck with pictures of ice-cream selections on the side, and there was a big sign over the service window that said CREAMY-COLD.

Success! Proof positive! There actually was a Creamy-Cold truck. Tyler had been wrong—it was real. Maybe he was right in saying that it never stopped—but that could just be because it was driven by a psychotic ice-cream man. Sure—that was it—some lunatic who got his kicks taunting people with the promise of ice cream never delivered—but this was no ghost truck!

Then Marty let the video go one more frame—and what he saw in the next frame really got his attention.

The truck had progressed farther into the image. Its front end was already out of the picture, but now the entire sign above the service window could be read. It said CREAMY-COLD. CATCH MEIF YOU DARE.

Marty smiled. This was a challenge if ever there was one. He would catch the Creamy-Cold man—not just for himself but for all the kids who had ever run out into the street only to be denied the ice cream they so rightfully deserved. The Creamy-Cold man was going down!

Literature tells of a captain, name of Ahab.

Ahab had an unhealthy obsession with a great white whale that led to the destruction of his ship, and to his own untimely end. He had a first mate named Starbuck. I know what you’re thinking, but Starbuck had absolutely nothing to do with making coffee. If he had, perhaps Captain Ahab might have kicked the whale habit and pursued the white-chocolate latte instead of the white whale. Unfortunately, as Ahab discovered, obsessions are rarely reasonable, and quite often will lead to one’s personal doom. Although few involve the death of a sea mammal.

Marty’s great white whale had four wheels and played a painfully annoying tune. He had no Starbuck to help him, since his first mate, Tyler, was off at the tribal casino, which, thanks to the luck of the Irish, was raking in big bucks. Therefore, in this obsession, Marty was alone.

Catching the ice-cream truck on film was different from catching it in person. It required a plan. He drew a map of the neighborhood, marking the entry and exit points. He labeled the sight lines from various key vantage spots. Then Marty took stock of the tools at his disposal. There were lots of them, because Mr. Zybeck often brought home things from the office that wouldn’t be missed. Things like paper clips, or police tape, which was good for wrapping presents if you ran out of ribbon. Mr. Zybeck brought home a few body bags once. Mrs. Zybeck found them wonderful for storing linens, although they did give Grandma quite a scare.

The various items Mr. Zybeck made off with from the police station were stockpiled in the garage. Marty systematically went through them, searching for things that he could use. There was a stun gun, but it was missing its charger. There was an entire case of pepper spray. There were batons and police lights, but none of them could be retooled for Marty’s big scheme . . . until he saw the spike strip rolled up in the corner. Marty had seen spike strips before. In a police pursuit, they were rolled out in front of a speeding car to pop the tires and bring the chase to an end. Mom and Dad had used the strip once to stop Marty’s older sister from sneaking out at night—but it was only effective the first time. This is exactly what he needed! Maybe he couldn’t stop the ice-cream man, but four flat tires would slow him down to a crawl! With surprising stealth and cunning, Marty set his trap, and waited until he could spring it.

Fables tell of a tortoise who manages to beat a hare in a race.

The hare started out in the lead, but he was so sure of his victory that he took a nap as he neared the finish line, and slept while the tortoise slowly but surely took the gold. Of course, in reality, the hare was probably eaten by a pack of wolves, and that’s why the tortoise won the race, because, after all, nature is cruel, but it doesn’t lessen the moral of the story: slow and steady (and a really hard, fang-proof shell) wins the race.

This was a lesson Marty always took to heart. He was always last. He was always behind—but in the end Marty always reached his goal—and he had a tough enough shell to ignore the bites and pecks of others who would much rather see him fail.

Marty waited with uncommon patience until July Fourth, when at 8:40 in the evening, he heard a familiar tune piercing the twilight. He wasted no time—he started his stopwatch and ran into the street.

The streets were deserted, as everyone had gone down to the lake to watch the fireworks that would be starting at any moment. It would be perfect! There was no one to get in Marty’s way!

Instead of following the music, as he usually did, he ran across the street, through two backyards, until he came out onto another street. His neighborhood was like a maze—streets that wound back and forth. It was easy to get lost if you didn’t know where you were going.There were only two entrances into Marty’s subdivision. A vehicle moving at the breakneck speed of sixty miles per hour could wind through the streets from one entrance to another in exactly one minute and forty-five seconds.

By cutting through backyards, he got to the first entrance in fifty seconds. Sitting there, on the sloped street, was his sister’s car. His sister had recently gotten her license, and was forced, in spite of the utter embarrassment of it, to drive their mother’s old Buick station wagon. Marty had promised her his dessert for three weeks if she would just park her car in this exact spot.

Now he pulled open the door, put the car in neutral, and moved away from it. It began to roll backward, where it hit a plastic trash bin resting in the gutter across the street. Marty had positioned that trash bin there, and filled it with bricks, so it would stop the rolling car. It did the job. Now the station wagon was blocking all traffic in and out of the neighborhood.

As for the Creamy-Cold truck, it had come in from the other entrance. It would try to get out this way in exactly twenty-five seconds. When it couldn’t, it would have to turn around to go out the way it came. Even as he ran from the station wagon, he could hear the truck drawing nearer. But he didn’t wait for it. Not here.

He took off again, stumbled over a picket fence, then crossed through more backyards, until he emerged on the other end of the subdivision. By now the ice-cream truck had tried to escape, but the station wagon would have blocked its path. It would be heading this way now. In fact, he could hear the music growing louder.

He pulled out the spike strip, which he had hidden under a hedge, and rolled it out so that it spanned the entire width of the street.

His timing was perfect,