Young Scrooge Read online

  It took a struggle to climb up from the little desk-chair. “I … I’m Rick Scroogeman,” I said.

  “Rick Stoogeman,” I heard a boy in the front row say. I recognized him. Prescott.

  Most everyone laughed. Then they began to chant. “Stoogeman! Stoogeman! Stoogeman!”

  Dulwich raised both hands to get them quiet. “And where do you come from, Rick?” he asked.

  “Rockford,” I said. “It’s a little town in Illinois.”

  He squinted at me. “Indian country? You come to us from Indian country?”

  “That’s why he’s wearing moccasins!” Benjamin chimed in.

  “He’s an Indian from the Stoogeman tribe!” Prescott declared.

  And they started to chant again. “Stoogeman! Stoogeman! Stoogeman!”

  How annoying is that?

  Next to me, Emily-Ann was chanting louder than anyone and laughing. Enjoying it too much.

  On an impulse, I grabbed the back of her hair and gave it a tug. You know. Playful. Not too hard.

  Her eyes went wide in surprise. Then she opened the lid to her desk, pulled out a small black bottle, and emptied it over my head.

  It didn’t take me long to realize it was black ink. It oozed down my hair and down both sides of my face.

  That stopped the chanting. Everyone turned to stare.

  Mr. Dulwich came striding down the aisle and stopped in front of Emily-Ann’s desk. “That is no way to greet a new student,” he scolded her.

  “But it was an accident!” she cried. “My hand slipped, sir.”

  A lot of kids laughed.

  I felt like a total jerk, sitting there with black ink running down my hair and face. But I was impressed with Emily-Ann. She was a good liar, maybe as good as me.

  “Mr. Scroogeman, you will find some towels in the housekeeping cupboard,” Dulwich said. “Dry yourself as best you can.” He turned to the class. “The rest of you, take out your chapbooks. We shall have some quiet reading.”

  “Don’t you mean Chapstick?” I said.

  He frowned at me. “Was that meant to be a joke? I’m sure I don’t understand it.”

  The other kids were pulling these little books from their desks. The books didn’t seem to have covers. Just pages.

  I climbed out of the tiny desk-chair and started up the aisle to the classroom door. The ink smelled sour, and I could feel it drying in my hair. I wondered where the boys’ room was. Maybe this horrible school didn’t even have one.

  I was nearly to the front of the room when Prescott stuck his foot out and tripped me. I stumbled into the big globe. Landed on top of it. And the globe and I rolled across the floor.

  I finally managed to climb to my feet, and I set the globe back on its wooden stand. The whole class was howling with laughter. Prescott was laughing harder than anyone. He stared at me as if challenging me.

  Challenging me to a fight?

  I ignored them all and made my way into the narrow, dimly lit hall in search of the cupboard with the towels.

  I knew what was going on here. I knew it was payback time for me. That hooded ghost wanted to teach me a lesson. He knew my new classmates would play the same kind of jokes on me that I play on others.

  I got it. I’m not stupid.

  The question was, what was I going to do about it?

  The answer came to me instantly. I was going to tell the truth to these kids. Explain to them who I really am. And ask them to help me get out of here.

  14

  After school, I tugged on my heavy overcoat and followed the others outside. I saw Benjamin, Prescott, and Emily-Ann walking together along a narrow path cut into the deep snow. The bare trees rattled in a cold wind. The three kids wore long overcoats buttoned to the collar. Their heavy shoes crunched on the hard snow.

  I called to them. “Wait up!”

  They turned, shifting the straps of their leather book bags. “It’s the Stoogeman,” Prescott said, grinning.

  I ran up to them, slipping on the icy ground. “Are you walking home?” I asked.

  “We take a shortcut through the woods,” Emily-Ann said.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” I asked.

  Prescott rolled his eyes. We were standing in the shadow of a low, flat-roofed shed behind the school. It smelled really bad. I realized it was the school bathroom.

  Large blackbirds pecked at the ground all around us. Even though the afternoon sun was still high in the sky, a pale white sliver of a moon appeared low over the bare trees.

  “What do you want, Stoogeman?” Benjamin asked. He reached out and mussed up my hair with his hand. Then he turned to Emily-Ann. “Think that ink will ever come out?”

  “Probably not,” she said.

  “That was a tragic accident,” Prescott said. All three of them burst out laughing.

  “Can I have your moccasins?” Benjamin asked, pointing at them. “I’ve always wanted real Indian moccasins.”

  “They’re not moccasins, “I said. “They’re Air Jordans. Sneakers. I told you.”

  “They might fit me,” Benjamin said. “Give them to me.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “Give them to me and you can be my best friend,” he said. That made the other two laugh.

  “Listen, I know what you’re doing,” I said. “This is the kind of thing I do to kids back home. But please … you’ve got to help me.”

  “Help you out of your moccasins?” Benjamin said. He grabbed my leg and started to reach for my shoe.

  “No. Wait. Please.”

  If it came to a fight, I could probably take Benjamin, I thought. But Prescott is too big. He’ll flatten me.”

  “I need help,” I said. “You see, I don’t belong here.”

  Prescott rolled his eyes again. “We’ve been trying to tell you that.”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t understand. I don’t live here. I come from the future. See how I’m dressed? That’s how we dress in the future.”

  “Too bad,” Emily-Ann muttered.

  “People dress in funny colors in the future?” Prescott asked. “And wear cloth elf shoes?”

  I nodded. “You probably don’t believe me,” I said, “but—”

  “That’s the smartest thing you’ve said,” Benjamin interrupted. “We don’t believe you.”

  “How can I convince you?” I said. “I’ll tell you some other things we wear. We wear a lot of T-shirts.”

  Emily-Ann squinted at me. “Shirts to wear to tea? Why would you wear a special shirt to tea?”

  I let out a long sigh. I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere with these kids. All three of them stared at me with tight grins on their faces. Of course, they believed I was crazy.

  I took a deep breath and tried again. “I really need your help,” I said. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I don’t live in your time. I live in the twenty-first century.”

  “And do you come from up there?” Prescott said. He pointed up to the moon. All three of them laughed.

  “That explains why you are so strange,” Emily-Ann said. “You come from the moon. We should have guessed it. And are you going to fly back up to the moon for dinner tonight?”

  “He’s a Moon Man. He flies home to the moon every night,” Benjamin said. “That’s why we’ve never seen him in the village.”

  “Where do you live?” Emily-Ann asked.

  “I … I don’t know,” I answered.

  They laughed again.

  Where did I live? The ghost never told me. Maybe I didn’t have a place to live. Maybe he wanted me to freeze to death in the snow.

  “Please—” I begged. I know, I know. I never begged for anything in my life. Other kids begged me for things. But I couldn’t help it. I was desperate. “Please. You don’t have to believe me. But I need you to help me.”

  “Remember that crazy book I read?” Emily-Ann said to Prescott. “It was a story about how they made an enormous cannon and shot three men to the moon. Mr. Dulwich said he read i
t, too.”

  Prescott slapped me on the back. “Okay, Stoogeman. We’ll find a big gun and shoot you to the moon.”

  “Stop it,” I said. “I told you, I don’t live on the moon. I live in Illinois. In the twenty-first century.”

  “Do you have a fever?” Benjamin asked. “You could see Dr. Honeycutt in the village.”

  I sighed again. “I guess you can’t help me. I just thought maybe you could tell me how to get away from here. Maybe get to a big city. Maybe…” My voice trailed off.

  I was trapped back in the 1800s. I suddenly thought about Charlie. And Mom. Were they looking for me? Were they worried to death because I had disappeared?

  Would I ever see them again?

  And what about my Christmas presents? What would Mom do with them if I wasn’t there?

  I almost had tears in my eyes. I’d never felt so sad in my life.

  “I can help you,” Prescott said, breaking into my frightening thoughts.

  I blinked. “You can?”

  “Time travel,” he said. “That’s what you want. Time travel, like in one of those crazy novels.”

  I nodded. “Yes. That’s it. That’s what I need.”

  Emily-Ann and Benjamin exchanged glances. Prescott kept his eyes on me. “I can help you with that,” he said. “Meet me right here tonight after dinner.”

  15

  That night, I waited for Prescott on the path behind the school. Even in the heavy overcoat, I hugged myself against the cold blasts of wind that sent swirls of snow flying all around. The pale moon was high in the sky now, and the wintry bare trees rattled and shook as if they were shivering, too.

  My teeth were chattering by the time Prescott arrived, tromping over the deep snow in his knee boots. He was followed by Emily-Ann and Benjamin, both wearing tall fur hats, their heads down, bending into the wind. Silvery light washed down over all of us. No other light anywhere.

  I felt as if I were walking in a dream, a dream of silver light and purple shadows. I kept waiting for the ghost to appear. I kept thinking he would come and ask me if I’d learned my lesson about the Golden Rule. And I’d say, “Yes, of course, I have. I have learned a lot and I’m ready to go home.”

  Maybe that was a lie. But in my daydream, the ghost believed me and instantly took me home.

  Daydreams usually don’t come true. The ghost was nowhere to be seen. And here I was, shivering in the dark, squinting at the three kids in their black overcoats and fur hats. Desperate for them to help me.

  “Do you really know something about time travel?” I asked Prescott.

  He nodded. “I do. We’re going to take you to the time tunnel, Scroogeman. We’re going to send you home.”

  My chest suddenly felt tight. My heart began pounding. Should I believe him?

  I had to. I had to believe he really knew how to send me back where I belonged.

  The other two kids didn’t say a word. They kept their heads down. When they raised them, I saw the solemn expressions on their faces.

  This was serious stuff. No kidding around.

  For a moment, I felt like leaping up in the air and cheering. I had the urge to bump knuckles with all three of my new friends. But, of course, that would only confuse them. No one bumped knuckles in this time. They didn’t seem to touch at all.

  “Follow me,” Prescott said, his voice just above a whisper.

  We started to follow the path. No one spoke. The only sounds were the rattling of the trees, the howls of the swirling winds, and the crunch of our shoes on the snow.

  The path cut through a patch of trees and then over a wide, flat clearing. In the distance, I saw a small farmhouse, flickering orange light in one window. It vanished in the darkness as we kept moving.

  How far did we walk? I can’t tell you. My brain was spinning with thoughts about time travel and returning home.

  We came to a snow-covered rail fence and stopped. “Climb over,” Prescott instructed me. “This is Morgan’s farm. The time-travel tunnel is here. But no one ever dares go near it. Everyone in the village is afraid.”

  My heart started to pound even harder. I knew I was close now.

  I gripped the top rail and hoisted myself over the fence. The other three followed. As we started to walk again, a long, low building came into view, black against the gray-black sky. The building clung to the ground like a tunnel, and I knew this was it. This was my way home.

  I was breathing hard as we stepped up to one end of the long building. I could see a wooden doorway with crisscross slats in the center of the wall.

  “This is the tunnel through time,” Prescott said in a whisper. I could barely hear him above the rush of the wind.

  “Good luck,” Emily-Ann murmured. Benjamin remained silent. He hung back as if he were afraid to come too close.

  “You need to take a running start,” Prescott instructed me. “Lower your head and run full speed. I’ll swing the door open. Don’t stop. Run as hard as you can.”

  I nodded. “I will,” I said, my voice trembling. “Thank you. Thank you all for bringing me here.”

  Prescott placed a hand on my shoulder. “We wanted to send you where you belong,” he said. “Now go. Go fast.”

  He strode to the wide wooden door and signaled for me to run.

  I took a deep, shuddering breath. Lowered my head. And forced my legs to move. The door swung open and I ran into the blackness of the tunnel. Ran faster than I’d ever run in my life.

  16

  As I stormed into the building, I was hit by a blast of hot air. The ground was soft. My shoes slid in soft mud. I struggled to keep my balance as I roared forward.

  It was darker than the night in here. I couldn’t see a thing. A sharp aroma greeted me, heavy and sour. I heard soft cries, animal bleats.

  My shoes pounded the soft goo. I heard a splash—and lurched forward. My hands shot up as I lost my balance. My sneakers slapped the mud but couldn’t catch hold. I fell hard, fell face forward.

  My body hit the soft, wet ground. My head burrowed into the mud. And I slid … slid … suddenly aware of the putrid odor … the foul odor of the air, of the mud, a powerful smell that made me choke and gag.

  Stunned, I raised my head from the muck. Animal grunts and squeals surrounded me. I struggled to my feet. My clothes were covered in thick mud. The mud caked my face and my hair.

  I had landed on my hands. They throbbed and ached as I rubbed the mud off them on the front of my overcoat.

  A flickering light behind me made me spin around. I was gasping for air. But I inhaled the sick smell with each breath. My whole body shook. Where was I?

  The orange-yellow light grew brighter as a man approached. He was big and broad and stern faced, carrying a flaming torch. He wore a gray flannel shirt under a huge pair of overalls. His bulging belly bounced with each step.

  He didn’t take his gaze off me as he stepped carefully through the mud and around the deep puddles. Finally, he stopped and held the torch high, studying me in its circle of light.

  “What are you doing in my pigpen?” he demanded in a booming voice.

  I gasped. “Pigpen?”

  He looked me up and down. “You’re covered in slops. You’re going to smell for a year!”

  Suddenly, in the light from the torch, I could see the enormous hogs lined up on both sides of me. About two dozen fat pigs all staring at me, honking and bleating.

  The smell …

  Yes. The smell. The thick muck stuck to my clothes, my face, my hair. I pulled a soft, rotted corncob from under my collar.

  My stomach lurched. I was about to puke. I forced it down.

  “The other kids…,” I choked out. “They told me to run in here and—”

  He spun around. “Other kids? I didn’t see any other kids out there.”

  “The three kids from school,” I said. “They brought me here. They said—”

  I didn’t finish my sentence. I dodged the big farmer and ran to the pigpen door, my sneakers slappin
g up mud. I burst outside, shouting, “Hey! Where are you? Hey!”

  No one there.

  The frozen air hit me and made me gasp. The moon had disappeared behind clouds. I squinted into the total darkness.

  No one.

  I knew what they had done. It didn’t take long to figure it out.

  The joke was on me. I was so desperate to escape, I had fallen for it.

  Or rather, I had fallen right into it.

  A pigpen. Not a time tunnel. A filthy smelly pigpen.

  Had they taught me a lesson with their mean joke? I was too cold and mud-caked and putrid smelling to think about it.

  Torchlight washed over me. I turned to find the farmer standing behind me. “You’d better go home, son,” he said. “Where do you live?”

  I shook my head sadly. “Nowhere,” I said. “I don’t live anywhere. Can I … Can I come in your house and take a bath?”

  He squinted at me. “Afraid not. I can’t let you in my house. You smell too bad. But you can sleep here in the pigpen tonight, if you like.”

  Suddenly, the pigs all started honking and bleating. As if they didn’t want me, either.

  17

  Luckily, the farmer took pity on me and changed his mind. He let me sleep on a wood cot in his back room. I scrubbed myself at his pump in the kitchen. His wife was kind enough to lend me a nightshirt as she washed my clothes.

  Lying on the hard cot, shivering under the thin blanket they had given me, I couldn’t get to sleep. I peered out the tiny back window, up at the pale moon as it slid in and out of the clouds.

  I knew why the Ghost of Christmas Past had brought me back to this awful place. To learn about the Golden Rule and all that junk about why it’s better to be a nice boy.

  But all I could think about was revenge.

  I thought of scheme after scheme. But I decided none of them would work. It would be seriously impossible to get revenge on Prescott, Benjamin, and Emily-Ann. Because they lived here and knew everyone at school and knew the village. And I didn’t know anything about anything. I didn’t even have a place to live.

  “But maybe I can at least get them in a little trouble at school,” I told myself. I decided I’d tell Mr. Dulwich that the three of them kidnapped me and threw me into a pigpen because I’m the new kid. At least, he would give them a strong lecture about that.