Cold Cereal Page 10

  “Okay,” he said. “Happy birthday. I promise never to hate you.”

  Emily smiled.

  After a few seconds Erno added, “I also got you a gift certificate.”

  On the way home there were five different pay phones, and each of the first four rang as the twins passed. Erno supposed the phone company must be testing them or something, but still he had to suppress an urge to shout “I’ll get it!” and answer one. He might have, as a joke to cheer Emily, but then he noticed the way she flinched at each and every ring.

  They walked past the tennis courts and the Wall Street Taco Exchange, and the fifth pay phone drew near. Emily walked stiffly, increasingly tense, and the phone rang. Here there was a man standing nearby waiting for the bus. He walked over to the pay phone and lifted the receiver.

  “Hello?” the man said. “This is a pay phone. You must have dialed the wrong ….what? Yeah, there are some kids here.”

  The man looked over at the twins, and Emily began to walk faster.

  “Hey,” the man said, the receiver against his chest. “Is one of you named Erno?”

  “… Yeah…”

  “Phone for you.”

  Erno stood there, uncertain. He watched Emily, who had now broken into a run, vanishing over the hill.

  “Emily! Wait!”

  The man with the phone thrust it forward. “C’mon, kid,” he said. “I’m not your secretary.”

  Erno set down his birthday cake on the sidewalk and took the phone, and put the receiver to his ear. “H-hello?”

  “Good-bye,” said a familiar voice. Then the line went dead with a click.

  CHAPTER 15

  Erno ran the rest of the way home, too, the cake forgotten. He ran down three streets and up the concrete steps to their house, crunched through the dead leaves, and crossed the porch and dashed through the front door, which was standing open, and stopped suddenly in the foyer in front of a great piece of butcher paper tacked to the wall, the same thing Emily must have seen when she had first arrived. It read:

  ERNO AND EMILY,

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

  GOOD-BYE.

  Erno mouthed the last word and frowned. He had barely the time to take it in before he heard a great deal of creaking floorboards in the living room and a woman’s voice.

  “Come in, Erno.”

  Then a groaning noise made Erno whirl around, and he was startled to see a six-foot-tall, pink-marshmallow man pushing the door shut behind him. Given a moment, he realized it was only a regular man, dressed from head to toe in the same sort of rubber suit he’d seen Mr. Wilson wear at the Goodco factory. It was the color of stomach medicine. It was the color of ear medicine, come to think of it. The man stared out at Erno through a clear plastic oval and grabbed his arm with a white glove.

  “Hey! Leggo. Emily! Where are you?”

  “She’s here,” said the woman around the corner, and when Erno was hustled into the living room, he saw that it was their doctor. She was a tall woman in a deep blue outfit with a jacket like origami, and she was surrounded by four more men in identical pink suits.

  Erno had always been strangely worried by the doctor’s appearance. Her dark and sloping eyes, her striking, predatory face. Her brow was topped by precision bangs and curtained with straight, waist-length hair of such dissolving blackness that it resembled liquid, like ink. If you watched carefully you would swear her hair did not seem to quite sync with the movements of her body, or the air, but rather shivered at the ends as if caught in the hot vapors of her temper. And you did watch the doctor carefully, or else you stared at your feet.

  Emily was trembling and staring at her feet in a chair in the center of the room. There was an empty chair beside her.

  “Have a seat, Erno,” the doctor said, “and tell us where your father is.”

  Erno didn’t move right away, so he was pushed into place by the pink man behind him.

  “You’re our doctor,” he said slowly. “From Goodco.”

  “Very good, Erno,” she said. “Shows you’ve been paying attention. I am your doctor. But I am also your father’s supervisor, and I demand to know where he is.”

  Erno just stared, wordlessly, at the strangeness of it all. The doctor changed tactics. She crouched down beside them, and her voice became suddenly soft, lilting, the sort of voice adults think will soothe children. This voice could have narrated a cartoon about ponies.

  “See, the thing is, Erno, we need your help! And you and your, ah … sister have already been sooo helpful to us all these years. Yes, you have!”

  Emily, who out of fear had not so much as looked at Erno when he arrived, now whispered something she may have never said before.

  “I don’t understand.”

  The doctor smiled in an unpleasant way. “Oh, I rather doubt that, dear,” she said, and a pink-suit man chuckled.

  “You see,” the doctor continued, “for several years we’ve been testing out a special chemical on you: Milk-7. We’d like to put it in our cereals. It’s a very, very special chemical that makes you smarter! And now we are finishing our tests, and we need your father’s notes. They … seem to have disappeared, like magic! As has your father.”

  Erno said, “Um, ma’am…”

  “Oh, ‘ma’am’ is so formal,” the woman said. “Call me something else. Vivian is nice. Would you like to call me Vivian?”

  “Is that your name?” Erno asked.

  “No.”

  “Ah. Um, so …. Mr. Wilson …. worked for you?”

  “In Research and Development, yes.”

  “And he’s been giving Emily and me—”

  “Oh no, no,” she said. “Not you. Just Emily. You were in the control group.”

  Emily shuddered.

  “Okay,” Erno said slowly, “so … Emily’s been given that … Milk—”

  “Oh, don’t call it Milk-7,” said the woman who wasn’t named Vivian. “That sounds so clinical, doesn’t it? We call it IntelliJuice™.”

  One of the pink men cleared his throat. “Actually, I believe Marketing is now calling it ThinkDrink™.”

  Not-Vivian smiled a thin smile.

  “ThinkDrink™ then. Fine. Regardless, soon it will be just one of the tasty chemicals that go into making Agent SuperCar™ Cereal so Naturally Good™.”

  Erno fidgeted in his chair and frowned. “I thought corn was what made Agent SuperCar™ cereal so ‘Naturally Good.’”

  Not-Vivian looked alarmed, as though Erno had said something you clearly could not make a cereal out of. Sofa cushions. Astronauts.

  “Corn?” she said, looking back at the crowd of marshmallow men. “Are they putting corn in there now?”

  “Of course there’s corn,” said Erno. “It says so on the front of the box. In our cupboard. ‘Made with Corn.’”

  One of the men went to fetch the box. Erno glanced at Emily, slumped heavily in her chair. She would have looked like a rag doll if it wasn’t for the glassy terror in her eyes. The man returned.

  “Ah, here we are,” said Not-Vivian, holding the cereal box. She pointed at a label on the front. “Made with Gorn. Gorn. That’s a G.”

  Erno stared.

  “And if people like ThinkDrink™ in Agent SuperCar™ Cereal,” she continued, “well, then we’ll introduce it into the whole family of Goodco cereals: Puftees™, Burlap Crisp™, Honey Frosted Snox™, Cud™…. Imagine … breakfast cereals that make you smarter! What parent wouldn’t buy them for their child, despite the regrettable side effects.”

  Emily said something too softly to hear.

  “What was that, dear?” said Not-Vivian. “Speak up.”

  “I said, ‘Where’s our dad?’”

  Not-Vivian stood up. She looked so tall suddenly.

  “We … don’t know. He was supposed to have brought the two of you in to the labs today. He never arrived, and, needless to say, neither did you. And his cell phone is no longer in service. But he will be found. His data will be found,” said Not-Vivian in a
voice that was suddenly cold and low. Then, just as suddenly, she was a pony cartoon again, albeit a cartoon about very bad ponies. “Until then you two will come with us! We’ll do all sorts of fun tests. No … not tests. Games! We’ll see how well you exercise in the Exercise Room and watch you interact in the Play Room…. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? And then there’s the Sleep Observation Lab (that’s not a very good name, is it; we’ll call that the Nap Room), and the Needle Room—”

  Erno flinched. “Needle Room?”

  “Yes, but that’s not really a good name for it, either. It isn’t so much a room as it is a tank that we’ll keep you in—”

  Emily flipped. She shrieked and kicked Not-Vivian in the shin, then ran for the front door. Erno followed, but they were both quickly cornered and grabbed up by the men in pink suits. Emily continued to wail and kick, but her captor held her with arms outstretched like a bag of garbage. Erno looked around frantically for something, anything that might help him; and then suddenly, there it was. There he was, his head nearly touching the ceiling, though no one had heard him come in.

  Erno should have remembered that it was Wednesday, the day Biggs came.

  CHAPTER 16

  There was a brittle silence. Biggs stood in the corner, hunched over the tall Tiffany lamp, and its orange glow made a hideous mask of his wooden face. His great blue shadow sprang up the wall and folded itself crookedly onto the ceiling. The five pink-rubber men turned and looked at Biggs, and Erno thought there was a breathless, respectful quiet as each man maybe reckoned there were too such things as monsters.

  The man holding Emily set her down quickly, as though he had been caught playing with someone else’s toy. “I … I wasn’t,” he said weakly, “I wouldn’t have…”

  Biggs roared, and it wasn’t a man’s roar. He picked up a marshmallow man and hit another marshmallow man with him. He tossed a third into the chesterfield sofa. The doctor ran for the door, but not before Emily kicked her in the knee. She hobbled out with three pink men behind her. Another pink man stood behind Biggs, beating on his back with both fists like it was a punching bag. Biggs eventually responded by picking up the man around the middle.

  “Lemme go! Lemme GO!” the man squealed, so Biggs laid him on the floor and put a bookcase on top of him. Then he turned and faced the final man, the pink man still holding Erno.

  “Put him down,” said Biggs. It was more like his old, dull voice, but with a hint of menace.

  The man set Erno down slowly, and Erno ran to Emily, who had squeezed herself into a corner.

  “You can’t take these kids from us,” the man said. “We own them.”

  Biggs snared his leg and dangled him upside down.

  “Who owns them?” Biggs said directly into the scuba mask face, his hot breath fogging up the plastic.

  “G-Goodco,” the man stammered.

  “Goodco,” Biggs repeated slowly. “Goodco. I love your cereals.”

  “Um. Thanks?”

  Biggs carried the pink man to the front door. “Don’t mention it,” he said, and threw him outside.

  When Biggs returned to the living room, Erno and Emily still stood in the corner, uncertain what to do.

  “You okay?” Biggs asked.

  They nodded.

  Biggs dropped to his knees. “MY BABIES!” he bawled, and scooped Erno and Emily to his chest, hugging them tight. “What if they’d took you?”

  Pressed together against Biggs’s sturdy chest, the twins looked at each other in surprise. This was more emotion than they’d ever seen Biggs show before. This was more emotion than they’d ever seen anyone show before.

  “It’s… It’s okay. We’re okay,” said Erno.

  Biggs began to weep fat, sticky tears.

  “Don’t know what I’d do,” said Biggs, his breath coming in hot bursts. “Never let you out of my sight.”

  “We’re fine, really. You rescued us.”

  This went on for some minutes before Biggs set them free and sat on the floor.

  “Was so scared,” he said, scratching at his ear.

  “You didn’t seem very scared,” said Erno.

  “Um… Biggs,” said Emily, pointing past them.

  Biggs looked. “Oh, yeah,” he said, and lifted the bookcase. The last pink man crawled out from under it and ran out the front door.

  “Dad’s gone,” Emily told Biggs.

  “I know. Saw the note.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Dunno.”

  Emily nodded, like everything was suddenly very clear. Erno remained confused.

  “Waitaminute. Mr. Wilson’s really gone? Like, gone gone?”

  Emily nodded again. “Yes. I’m … sorry I didn’t work it out sooner. He’s sick, I think. I’m not sure why, exactly, but … I’ll figure it out. In the meantime, we’d better leave. Those G-Goodco people might come back.” She was beginning to tremble again. Erno squeezed her hand, and she stopped.

  Biggs nodded and scratched his nose. “You’ll come stay with me,” he said, and got to his sizable feet.

  The twins packed quickly and met back at the base of the stairs. Erno wondered what Biggs’s house might be like. High ceilings, he suspected.

  As if reading his mind, Biggs said, “Muh house is comfortable. You’ll like it.”

  They walked out the front doorway. Biggs scratched under his chin. “Unless of course you don’t.

  “It’s at the top of a tall tree,” he added hopefully. “Kids like climbing trees.”

  Erno thought this was a strange thing to say, but he grinned politely and carried on grinning for the next thirty minutes until he found out that Biggs wasn’t joking.

  THE GOODE AND HARMLISS

  TOASTED CEREAL COMPANY

  was founded in 1858 for the purpose of manufacturing quality breakfast cereals and attaining dominion over all the peoples of the Earth. Nathan Orbison Goode and Jack T. Harmliss started the company in their hometown of Goodborough, New Jersey, eight months after meeting on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

  Nathan Goode was of the Mayflower Goodes1, a privileged son attending business classes at Penn. There he met Jack Harmliss, a penniless thug who eked out a living collecting money from privileged sons in exchange for not robbing them. When Harmliss presented Goode with his (un)usual sales pitch in a darkened alley one night, Goode recognized in him a brilliant and original young entrepreneur.

  Several drinks later they were fast friends, and found that they shared many passions. Both Goode and Harmliss bemoaned the lack of tasty, easy-to-prepare breakfast foods, and both had a secret longing for all-encompassing power over the peoples of the earth. More surprisingly, both men had been tormented by the same recurring dream since childhood: a radiant pink dragon, immensely powerful and yet trapped in darkness.

  Goode would write of one of these dreams in 1882. Note the mention of the company’s top-selling cereal at that time:

  I dreamed it again last night, and it colors my day. The awesome, blazing dragon gazed down on me like a disapproving mother, and bellowed that I should lose weight and put more tallow in the Toasted Sugar Beets.

  The cereal is three-fifths tallow already! Any more and I shall have to stick wicks in the boxes and sell them as candles. What madness is this?

  Madness or no, the added tallow would make Toasted Sugar Beets the best-selling food of any kind in America, topping even such staples as milk and salt.

  That their cereal company was vastly successful is a matter of common knowledge. Far less known is the influence of the secret organization within the company that they founded: the Good and Harmless Freemen of America, or Freemen for short. The list of deeds attributed to this group is long and almost certainly exaggerated. It is doubtful, for example, that they were actually responsible for the Great Fire in Chicago, the stock market crash of 1929, or the extinction of the dodo. Some enthusiasts have suggested in recent years that the Freemen are behind the Bigfoot “controversy,” but such
claims are usually given as little attention as they deserve.

  Suspicions linger, however, about the society’s power in national and international politics. Freeman support is unquestioningly sought by political candidates, and it is said that they have handpicked every American president from Ulysses S. Grant through the present day.

  The symbology of the Freemen is complicated but consistent. Most will recognize the pink dragon as the Goode and Harmliss Toasted Cereal Company (now Goodco) logo or as one of the marshmallow shapes in Weird-O’s “red octagons, orange moons, pink dragons, green Gs, and purple pentagrams,” and indeed, each of these shapes plays its own role in Freemen literature and lodge decor. Many other symbols would turn up as cereal mascots in the 1940s and ’50s. There are the Triplets, who protect the Flame of Knowledge (Chip, Sparkle, and Pip—the Puftees Pixies); Lepus the Hare, who holds the Chalice of Spirits (the Snox Rabbit from Honey Frosted Snox); and El Chupacoco, who grasps the Fishing Rod of Insanity (Kookie the coconut vampire from KoKoLumps)2.

  CHAPTER 17

  Harvey was in Avalon Park. He’d made his way there slowly over the course of a few days and hunkered down in a damp and thickly shaded glen. He’d dug himself a hole to sit in. He was sitting in it now.

  For the first time in his long life, sitting in a dank hole in the ground felt a lot like sitting in a dank hole in the ground. And now nature was calling.

  He’d heard the Goodco guards use this expression on occasion. “Nature calls,” one would say, and he’d step out of the room to do his business. Harvey had scoffed at this—Nature did not call these children of men. He supposed she probably had called them in the distant past—called them again and again, left messages, but eventually gave up trying. Nature should want nothing to do with the human being.

  But now, in his dank hole, Harvey realized two things about himself that made Nature seem very far away: that he had just, without thinking, made an analogy about telephone answering machines, and that he was once again about to walk halfway across the park to visit those Porta-Potties by the merry-go-round. Fifty years of confinement meant that he wouldn’t have given a second thought to doing his business on a toilet in front of two armed guards; but he could no longer, gods help him, do it in the woods.