A Giant Problem Read online

  “Let me out,” said the little creature beseechingly.

  Nick regarded it for a moment and then shook his head.

  “Pleeeeeease.” Its voice was a thin whine. “You are big and powerful, but I am tiny and useless. Let me go.”

  “Why were you even hanging around here? Eating our trash? Don’t you have someplace better to be?”

  “So many giants. All their territory is big and I am small. Nowhere left to come but here. Too many!”

  “How many?” Nick asked nervously.

  But the little creature yowled instead of answering. “Please! Please! Please! LET GO!”

  “I think Laurie just wants to feed you lots of cookies and dress you up in doll clothes,” Nick said. “I don’t think it’ll be that bad.”

  Laurie came in at that moment, toweling off her hair.

  “Does it ever bother you?” Nick asked. “Lying like you do?”

  “I wasn’t lying to my mom,” she said.

  Nick sighed. “Fine. Whatever. You didn’t technically lie that time, okay?”

  Laurie looked at her chipped toenail polish and leaned down to pick at it. “I like making things up. I’m good at it.”

  Nick didn’t say anything. After all, most of the lies she’d told had been to get both of them out of trouble.

  “At the last place we lived I used to tell people that I spent all these weekends with my dad. Even though all I have is the picture I showed you; I haven’t seen him or heard his voice in years. I would say that he took me all these places. Disneyland. Antarctica. That he had bought me a pony named Rosie and kept it at a stable near his place so I could ride her when I stayed over. The hardest thing was remembering all the lies I told.”

  Nick had no idea how to respond. He had figured that Laurie had been lucky her whole life and he was the unlucky one, but now he wasn’t sure.

  “After a while, I could tell that they didn’t believe me. Even my friends. But then your dad picked me up from school, and he’s got a fancy car just like I said, and he takes me places. Just like I said. Like my lies came true.”

  “That’s why you were okay with taking our last name? Because you wanted my dad to be your dad.” Nick narrowed his eyes at her.

  Laurie shrugged her shoulders. “I guess I keep thinking that after everything, lying worked. Lying works.”

  The smell of smoke was the first thing Nick noticed. He was watching Laurie try to get the hobgoblin—because that was what she’d decided he was—to eat. She had somehow gotten him into the cat harness and set out an array of foods on a plate. First she stabbed a wedge of cheese with a chopstick and put it up to his mouth. Then she tried a dripping blob of peanut butter. The hobgoblin turned up his nose at each of the offerings. The only thing Sandspur seemed interested in chewing on was his leash.

  “Did you leave the oven on?” Nick asked. “Are you cooking pizza bites for this thing?”

  “That’s a great idea,” she said, standing up.

  Then he heard a massive crack and a boom so physical that it seemed sonic. The room shook. They raced to the window in time to see one of the half-built houses in the development collapse. The development that Nick’s dad had planned on their kitchen table. The development where they were standing. The smell of smoke was overwhelming now.

  The hobgoblin howled.

  “What do we do?” Laurie shouted.

  Out the window Nick watched as two giants crashed together through the houses, blowing hot breaths of flame. He recognized one and felt cold dread settle at the pit of his stomach. He had a scar under his eye. It was the one they had left alive.

  “The whole house will come down on us! We have to move!” Laurie shouted.

  They ran out into the hallway and saw Jules stumble up the stairs, wiping his eyes.

  “What’s going on?” Jules sounded panicked.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” said Nick.

  With Laurie cradling the hobgoblin to her chest, they ran down. Jules threw open the front door.

  One of the giants had fallen into a row of houses. Their faux chimneys were still raining bricks and their siding shredding under his weight. Sparks had caught on wood and were starting to burn. A cloud of dust choked Nicholas.

  “Come on! “

  “Come on!” Nick shouted, grabbing Laurie’s arm and racing out into the street.

  “We need a plan,” she yelled.

  “This is my plan!” he shouted back. The hobgoblin was still howling, sliding around in her arms and clawing at her shirt.

  Then, screeching into reverse, his brother’s car, surfboards on top, came to a halt in front of them.

  “Get in, idiots!” Jules shouted, and Laurie scrambled inside while Nick stared at Jules. What did Jules see? How could they explain what was happening?

  Laurie pulled on Nick’s arm, and he sprang to life, throwing himself onto the backseat and holding on as Jules stepped on the gas so hard the door slammed closed all by itself.

  A load of lumber and cement blocks rained down near the car, several boards and a chunk of cement slamming onto the roof and trunk of the car. The ceiling dented hard enough that it pocked down at Nick and Laurie. He screamed and Laurie gasped.

  Jules looked back at him in the rearview mirror. “I think you have a lot to explain.”

  “Us? You mean you can see them?” Nick asked.

  “What?” Jules asked. “Those megamonsters? Of course I can see them. They’re like a hundred feet tall!”

  As Nick tried to absorb the shock of that, he glanced back. Through the rear windshield, his whole world was on fire.

  “I saw this thing underwater today.”

  Chapter Five

  IN WHICH Noseeum Jack Is Seen

  They swerved off the road and screeched into the parking lot of a strip mall. Nick looked out the windshield at the steaming hood and then down at his shaking hands. People walked past to their cars as though nothing was wrong. A few turned toward the cloud of black smoke in the sky, but most didn’t even seem to notice.

  “Are you okay?” Jules asked, not looking at either of them. He seemed to be staring at nothing.

  “Yeah,” Nick and Laurie said softly.

  “And that thing you have with you? It’s fine too?”

  “It’s fine,” Laurie said, cuddling Sandspur. He made a small noise but didn’t struggle to get away from her.

  Jules opened the door and got out, walking down the side of his car, his fingers trailing numbly over the surface. Nick climbed out too, Laurie shuffling out behind him.

  The whole back bumper was missing and the trunk had been crushed on one end, the metal low enough to drag and spark when the car moved. Jules’s surfboard was gone.

  “Is that what you two have been so secretive about?” Jules asked, his voice sounding like their dad’s. “You two knew about this? About those monsters? How?”

  For a moment the three of them just looked at one another, breathing hard.

  “One of her books. It’s about faeries and how to see them. Like the giants. And other stuff,” Nick finished lamely, since Jules was staring at him like he’d grown a second head.

  “I saw this thing underwater today,” Jules said. “It had a tail like a fish and claws and sharp teeth. As soon as it saw me looking at it, it grabbed me and pulled me down underwater. I started thrashing around, not being able to breathe, and finally I kicked free. Did that have to do with—”

  “I don’t understand,” Nick said. “How did you get the Sight?”

  “The sight? What’s the sight? Do you mean seeing? Because I’m pretty sure I could always do that,” said Jules.

  Nick shook his head. “The Sight is the ability to see all kinds of weird stuff that actually exists but you wish didn’t.”

  “It’s magic,” said Laurie.

  “Okay, explain that better. What am I seeing and why am I seeing it?”

  “Were you swimming in the pond here in the development?”

  “That mud h
ole? No way.”

  “Well, did you do anything differently? Find anything odd? What did you have on you?”

  “Nothing. I was surfing. Keys, I guess.”

  “Keys?”

  “I keep them on a lanyard in my trunks. The area’s too sketchy to just shove them up under the hood. And then I can lock my cell in the car.”

  Nick felt a prickle of dread. “Let me see.”

  Jules shrugged and held out his key chain. It had a cork heart attached to it, with clear plastic in the center. Laurie had given it to Jules the day before. And as Nick held it up to the light, he saw that it held a perfect four-leaf clover in the center.

  “This,” Nick said. “This is why.”

  Nick looked over at Laurie and noticed something. Her locket was around her neck. The one she’d lost. The one that had the clover he’d found inside of it. “How could you?” His voice sounded rough.

  Laurie’s eyes went wide and frightened. “You agreed that we should let people know.”

  “Not like this.” Nick took a step toward her, not sure what he was going to say or do.

  At that moment Jules’s phone rang.

  “Dad,” Jules said, flipping it open. “The house. The houses—Oh, you know? Yeah. We’re okay. We got out in time. No, we’re in front of Big Bad Pizza. You know, by the video store.

  “Yeah, okay.

  “No, I don’t know where Charlene is.” His voice rose in panic and he looked toward Nick and Laurie.

  Nick shook his head and mouthed “store” at the same time Laurie nodded.

  “She’s okay,” Jules said into the phone. “She wasn’t at the house.”

  “Me too. Bye, Dad.” He hung up. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this was going on?”

  “Why didn’t you tell Dad?” Nick asked. “It’s not so easy, is it?”

  Jules sighed and ran a hand over his face. “He wants us to come over to Sunpalm Hotel by the library. He says not to worry.”

  Laurie frowned. “That’s because he has no idea what he should worry about.”

  Their two rooms in the Sunpalm Hotel were next to each other, with a door joining them. As usual, Laurie got a whole bed to herself in the kid’s room, while Jules and Nick were going to have to fight over the covers in the other double bed.

  Nick’s dad was already in the parent’s room, pacing and making phone calls. He had barely noticed them when they’d knocked, opening the door, pointing to their room, unlocking it with a key card, and then putting the key card in Jules’s hand.

  They flung themselves down on the beds, and Laurie tied Sandspur’s leash to the exposed pipe under the sink in their bathroom. The hobgoblin immediately started teething on his tether.

  Charlene opened the door between the rooms about a half hour later, holding a bag of groceries. She looked pale and tired. Nick’s dad was getting up to leave. He gave her a hug, pressing his face into her neck, and then headed out.

  “Where’s he going?” Nick asked.

  “The police want to talk to him,” Charlene said softly.

  Nick’s dad didn’t come back until late afternoon. When he did, he picked up a piece of cold chicken and sat down on the bed next to Nick and Laurie. His untucked shirt was smeared with grime and his eyes were redrimmed. Dirt streaked his cheekbone.

  “You didn’t see anyone hanging around, right? That level of destruction—I just can’t believe it. The houses are still burning, and one of the fire engines somehow got crushed. From debris. I’m not sure.”

  Nick shook his head, but he didn’t know how to answer. He looked at Laurie.

  “That old guy?” Nick’s dad held up his hands in mock surrender. “I know you said you knew him, Laurie, but he looked homeless to me. I said something about him to the police, and they said they’ve heard some weird stories about him too. Now, that doesn’t mean anything, but if you know something, you have to tell me, okay?”

  “We don’t know anything,” Laurie said, but her voice hitched when she said it.

  “Paul,” Charlene said. “Come have some more food.”

  He turned toward Charlene, and Nick braced himself for his dad to ask the right question, or for Charlene to realize that she didn’t know Noseeum Jack and for Laurie’s lie to start unraveling, but Nick’s dad said nothing. He just held out his hand for the plate.

  They watched television with the door between the two rooms closed for about an hour. Finally Laurie stood up as though she’d been thinking about it for a while. “We have to sneak out,” she said. “We have to find Noseeum Jack. Jack will know what to do.”

  “Noseeum Jack?” Jules asked. “What kind of name is that?”

  “He used to slay giants.”

  “Used to?”

  “He’s blind now. But he had the Sight and knows how to kill them. He’ll know what to do about this.”

  “He hurt his leg recently too,” Nick put in with a glare in Laurie’s direction. She should never have given Jules the Sight.

  Jules looked at them both skeptically but picked up his keys off the dresser. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go. Quick. Before Dad and your mom start thinking about dinner.”

  “What about Sandspur?” Nick asked.

  Laurie looked in the bathroom. “It’s okay. We can leave him. He’s asleep on the bath mat.”

  A black man leaned against a gunmetal gray sedan in the driveway, one gloved hand picking at a speck of lint on his suit. He looked like a lawyer, and Nick felt guilty, thinking about the kind of trouble that would make Jack hire one who was so fancy.

  Was it about the development? Did the police really think that Jack had something to do with it? Who wore leather gloves in Florida? Maybe he was with the FBI? CIA? Maybe he was even a member of a paranormal investigation squad. Then they could take all of this out of his hands.

  “I’ll be right back,” Nick told Jules and Laurie as he climbed out of the car.

  “Hey!” Jules said. “I’m going with you.”

  “Please,” Nick said. “I can’t explain everything right now.” He looked at Laurie, who must have sensed what he was going to say because she was already scowling. “She can tell you lots while I’m gone.”

  “You better get back before she’s done,” Jules said as Nick shut the door.

  The man saw Nick crossing toward the house and smiled. “You looking for my dad?” he asked.

  “Your … dad?” For a moment Nick couldn’t understand what the man meant. Then he realized. Jack. Jack had a son who wore pinstriped suits and shiny shoes. Jack had a son who looked like an FBI agent.

  “Yeah,” Nick said finally. “Is he home?”

  The man smiled again. “He’s been getting you pulled into his stories, hasn’t he? Got you stabbing rocks and hills, telling you they’re giants. I remember how magical it all seemed. Like we were heroes. You feel something like that?”

  “But there are giants,” Nick said, dumb-founded. How could Noseeum Jack’s own son not have the Sight?

  The man tousled Nick’s hair. “It all seems really real when he describes it, doesn’t it?”

  He looked up into the man’s kind brown eyes and felt a chill pass through him. “How come you’re here? Where’s Jack?”

  “You probably noticed Dad can’t see too well anymore. He’s been insisting that he does all right on his own, but we—my wife and I—well, we don’t think he’s managing as well as he says. He’s coming to live with us.”

  “But the giants,” Nick sputtered. “They’re waking up. All of them.”

  “I heard. Like cicadas, right?”

  “You don’t understand.” Nick wanted to scream in the man’s face, but he kept his voice as polite as he could make it. “It’s true. I’ve seen them.”

  The front door of the house opened and Jack walked out, leaning heavily on a cane. Seeing him look so frail filled Nick with despair.

  Jack’s son shook his head. “You need to go back home. Especially if you believe his stories. Imagine how dangerous giants wo
uld really be? You can’t do anything about something like that.”

  Scowling, Nick ran over to where Jack was shuffling across the lawn. “You were right,” he said. “The giant. We should have stopped it. It came back and it set fire to everything. All the houses. And now we don’t know what to do.”

  Jack blinked his cloudy eyes a few times. “I’m glad you and your sister are all right. I left something for you in the back. Something you were thinkin’ on.

  “Tried to do some research, too, after our last talk. About how long giants stay awake. There seems to be something that they’re here to do, something that they can’t rest until they accomplish. At first I thought they had to kill each other, take over all the territory, but I don’t think it’s that. Jared took some of the notes I needed, and I can barely see the rest even with the biggest magnifying glass I got, but it looks like there’s something they hunt. Here.” He thrust a few sheets of paper into Nicholas’s hands.

  “There’s something they hunt.”

  Nick looked down and saw a drawing of giants blowing flames at dark pools of mud. Some of the pools seemed to have lizard heads in them. Maybe they were alligators? “Wait. Aren’t you going to be helping us?”

  “I’m sorry, Nick.”

  “No. Wait. We’ll do whatever you say. We’ll learn!”

  “I’m too old,” Jack said. “And you’re too young. I’m sorry about your house, but I think that maybe it’s the best thing. Lie low. Get as far away from here as you can.”

  “Jack!” Nick said, his voice cracking with anguish. But Jack was walking toward his son, and Nick had no more words with which to call him back.

  Not sure what to expect

  Chapter Six

  IN WHICH Nick Finds Hope in Wreckage

  Nick turned the corner to the back of Jack’s house, not sure what to expect. All he saw, though, was a kiddie pool, its surface covered in a thick layer of slime. Nick looked down into the green sludge as though he could figure out some kind of answer there.