20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill Page B

Francis wanted something sweet. Ding-Dongs. Twinkies. His stomach rumbled dangerously.
    In the next moment, Francis heard—no, sensed —his father entering the living room. Each step Buddy Kay took set off a subtle vibration Francis could feel in the iron frame of his cot, and humming in the dry hot air around his head. The stucco walls of the filling station were relatively thick, and absorbed sounds well. He had never before been able to clearly hear a conversation going on in the next room. Now, though, he felt , rather than heard, what Ella was saying and how his father answered her; felt their voices as a series of low reverberations, which stirred the exquisitely sensitive antennae at the top of his head. Their voices were distorted, and deeper than normal—as if their conversation were taking place underwater—but perfectly understandable.
    She said, "You know he never went to school."
    "What are you talking about?" Buddy asked.
    "He never went to school is what. He's been in there all mornin'."
    "Is he awake?"
    "I don't know."
    "Din't you look?"
    "You know I don't like to put no weight on my laig."
    "You fuckin' lazy cow," his father said, and began to stride towards Francis's door. Each step sent another shivering jolt of pleasure and alarm through Francis's antennae.
    By then, Francis had reached the edge of the bed. The skin of his old body, however, hadn't come along with him, and lay in a knotted mess in the center of the mattress, a boneless canoe filled with blood. Francis balanced on the iron rail that ran along the outside of his cot. He tried to shuffle another inch or two closer to the side, not sure yet how to get down, and turned over. His old skin yanked at his limbs, the weight of it pulling him back. He heard his father's boot heels ringing on the other side of the door, and he heaved himself forward, alarmed at the thought of being found helpless on his back. His father might not recognize him and go for the gun—which was on the wall in the living room, only a few steps away—and blow open his segmented belly in a whitish-green gush of bug innards.
    When Francis threw himself at the edge of the bed, the rags of his old flesh came apart, with a ripping sound like someone tearing a bedsheet; he fell; flipped at the same time; and landed with a springy lightness on all six feet, with a grace he had never known in his days as a human.
    His back was to the bedroom door. He didn't have time to think, and for that reason, perhaps, his legs did just what they were supposed to. He spun around, his rear legs running to the right while his front legs scrabbled to the left, turning the low, narrow five-foot length of him. He felt the microthin plates or shields on his back flutter strangely, and had just an instant to wonder again what they were. Then his father was braying at the door.
    "What the fuck you doin' in there, you asshole? Get the fuck to school—"
    The door banged open. Francis reared back, lifting his front two legs off the floor. His mandibles made a rapid clattering sound, like a fast typist giving a manual typewriter a workout. Buddy hung in the open door, one hand still gripping the doorknob. His gaze fell upon the crouched figure of his transformed son. The color drained from his starved, whiskery face, until he looked like a waxwork of himself.
    Then he shrieked, a shrill piercing sound that sent a white electric throb of pure stimulation shooting down Francis's antennae. Francis shrieked himself, although what came out in no way resembled a human cry. It was the sound instead of someone shaking a thin sheet of aluminum, an undulating, inhuman warble.
    He looked for a way out. There were windows high in the wall above his bed, but they weren't big enough, just a series of wide slots barely a foot tall. His glance fell upon his bed and held there for a startled instant. He had thrown his sheets off in the night, kicking them to the far end of the mattress. Now they were lathered in some kind of