poured into the street and ran at the ice cream truck. They all wore different styles of dress. Some kids looked like they were from old movies that he watched with his mom. Little boys in caps and suspenders. Little girls in poodle skirts. Some of the boys wore Amish hats. Some of the girls wore dresses like the Pilgrims. They moved to the ice cream truck, singing along to the song with their serpent tongues.
A penny for a spool of thread
A penny for a needle
That’s the way the money goes
Pop! goes the weasel.
The ice cream truck stopped. All of the children moved to it, clamoring for their treats with shouts of “Me! Me! Me!”
“Okay, kids,” the voice said. “Pay up.”
Christopher watched the children reach into their pockets and each pull out two silver dollars. All of the children lay on the bloody street and put the coins on their closed eyelids. The ice cream man reached his burnt skeleton hand down to collect the money. When all the coins were collected, the hand went back into the shadows of the truck and threw the kids Popsicles and Screwballs and Push-Ups. But they weren’t ice cream.
They were frozen deer legs.
All around the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the people
The monkey thought that it was a joke.
Pop! goes the weasel.
The music slowed down as if stuck on flypaper. The kids wrapped their tongues around the frozen treats like snakes. Some kids got Screwballs that didn’t have gum on the bottom of the ice cream. They had eyeballs. Other kids got delicious vanilla soft serve with sprinkles on top. But they weren’t sprinkles. They were little teeth. There was only one kid who didn’t have any coins to give the ice cream man.
It was David Olson.
He stood away from the group. All alone. Christopher had never seen such a sad face in all his life. David Olson walked over to the other kids and gestured for a lick of their ice cream. The kids all pushed him away. David walked over to the truck, raising his hands up to beg for free ice cream. The skeleton hand reached out and smacked David’s hand away. Then, the truck started up and moved down the street, bringing the horrible music with it.
A penny for a spool of thread
A penny for a needle
When the ice cream truck was gone, the street came alive. The other children surrounded David and started to hiss at him. Like a pack of wolves surrounding a fawn. Their teeth exposed. Their eyes glowing. Christopher could feel David’s fear. The panic moved from his stomach to his throat. The pounding in David’s chest.
But there were no words.
For the life of him, Christopher could not read David’s thoughts. Every time he tried, his nose bled, and his eyes threatened to push their way out of his skull. A fever broke out on his brow. Sweat poured like the blood rushing down the street into the sewers, dark and filled with voices.
Without warning, the streetlights turned on. The street looked like an old amusement park right when the clangs and bells of the rides wake up. The light illuminated something slithering in the shadows.
It was the hissing lady.
She was perched on the roof above David Olson’s old house like a gargoyle. Surveying her kingdom. Watching the procession. The children walked in a circle, following David like the tornado after Dorothy.
“You better pray, prey.”
The children spoke in unison. A choir of voices repeating the same phrase like a Sunday mass. David faced them and hissed back. The others backed away, frightened and jittered. The fear only adding to the pleasure of their chase. They moved around him like a carousel, pushing David down the road into the cul-de-sac. His heels reached the very edge of the street.
Don’t leave the street.
They can’t get you if you don’t leave the street.
The hissing lady followed them from the rooftops. Watching. Waiting. Christopher wondered why she didn’t intervene since David was her pet. But maybe they were all her pets. Maybe David was just the runt of the litter, and she was going to let him be torn apart or starved by the others.
Maybe this was her version of dogfighting.
Or maybe it’s all a trap.
For David. Or for me.
Christopher watched David Olson step off the street and walk through the field. The children giggling behind him. Fifty yards away, hidden in shadow, Christopher saw the hissing lady move through the backyards and enter the Mission Street Woods from another