You probably don't know me, and that's probably for the better. A whole lot of the people I know are dead now, but I reckon I should have been one of the first to go. I've been in car crashes, elevator crashes, hell, I've even been shot a few times, but I've never gotten hurt. It's all because of them. Those goddamned aliens and their goddamned lasers turned me into this freak. I should probably back up a bit before I go on some long-winded, bitter rant.
You see, I had an average childhood. I lived with my parents and my siblings in an average house in an average town. I was the middle child – Billy was older by four or five years and Susan was younger by the same. It was a really dull life, but a comfortable one. We were in that awkward place between poor and middle class where you could afford food and rent, but you never got anything quite new. All our clothes were second-hand, the house leaked, and daddy drove a beat-up old truck with enough dents to be mistaken for the moon. It wasn't the best life, but it could have been much, much worse.
My favorite thing about back then was the summer. It would be so very stuffy in that old house at night that momma would let us sleep outside. The breeze was a life saver in those dog days, even if the bugs ate us to shreds. The three of us kids would lie in a circle out in the backyard and stare up at the stars until ungodly hours, creating all new constellations. My favorite was Billy's Babe Ruth. It was hard to make out at first, but once you saw the moon as a fly-ball, you couldn't miss it. To this day I still think of the moon as a baseball in the sky. But you aren't here for any of this wistful nostalgia, are you? Well, I won't bore you with any of that stuff any longer than I have to.
Things started to get weird when daddy died. The coroner's report listed it as "mysterious circumstances" but one of my friends had a father who worked in the morgue. That boy told me his father had said that it looked like someone sliced open his skull and stole his brain. Do you know what it's like thinking your father's brain is just floating around the country? It's damn scary. I never told a soul about what I had heard.
Well, momma took up drinking after daddy died, so she wasn't much use to us. Billy took up Daddy's duties and I took up momma's. I remember making breakfast one morning – eggs and toast for Billy, cereal for Susan – when momma stumbled in. It was strange to see her up so early. Usually she was passed out on the sofa by now, stinking of gin. She sat down at the table with her head in her hands and mumbled something. I put Billy's plate on the table and Susie's bowl and called them down to eat.
"Do you want something to eat, momma?" I asked as sweet as a peach. The last thing I wanted to do was get her in a state this early in the morning.
"Do you remember your uncle?" she slurred. I figured she was just going to start one of her long-winded stories about the old days, or rant about some long standing grudge. I asked her which uncle she meant. "We're moving," she replied.
"What?"
"He lives up in Denton. It's a nice town filled with good, God-fearing people, much better than this cesspool."
Now, our town wasn't dangerous at all. Daddy's death was the only thing that had happened in more than fifty years, and he was found in the next town over. Before that, it was a string of robberies. Nothing bad ever happened here. All of the people went to the same church on Main Street. We had a population of only a few hundred. You knew everybody. It was far from a cesspool. As I balked at my mother, Billy and Susan came down and sat. "What?" I asked again.
"Make sure you help Susie pack up; we leave tomorrow. It'll be good for you kids," she stood up and walked out of the room. I just stood at the stove, my mouth hanging open. After a minute, Billy pushed me out of the way and thrust the pan into the sink. The eggs were burning.
"What are you thinking?" I remember him shouting. I was still trying to absorb what momma had said. Billy clapped his hands in front of my face a few times until I focused. I told him what she had said and he just stood there, probably more confused than I was.
By the end of the day, we had all of our stuff packed into the bed of the truck. I don't think Susan really understood the concept of moving. She thought we were going on a trip. She was only six back then. But Billy and I knew, and we were livid. We had to leave all our friends and memories behind without the least bit of warning. When momma got back home, Billy got into a big fight with her and they yelled for hours. It made the trip even worse than it could have been.
The way it worked, I was sitting between momma, hung-over and irritable, and Billy, who refused to talk. Susan had to sit on my lap and she fidgeted the whole way down. It was a two day trip with very few stops. Momma wouldn't even shell out for a hotel room. We slept on the side of the highway, off in this grassy ditch. The sound of the cars rushing by kept me from getting a wink of sleep. By the time we got to the new place, we were all wobbly and touchy.
I don't remember much of the first weeks at that new house. It's all a blur of arguments and unpacking when I think of it now. I can tell you this, though – I hated the new house. It was small and the backyard was all dirt. I had to share one small room with Billy and Susan. There was no breathing room and you were never alone. I guess that's why we all ended up leaving the moment we could. It was never a house to us, just a place to sleep.
Anyways, we didn't get to meet this mysterious uncle until a few weeks had passed. Momma had us walk the few miles to his house and by the time we got there, the sky was a quiet shade of lilac. It was a brick house, the kind of place you could tell was owned by a doctor or something similar. We walked up to the door and there was this great big brass knocker. Momma lifted it and let it slam against the wooden door a few times.
The man who answered that door would be the cause of all my troubles, not that I knew it then. It was all because of him and his stupid books.