Billy Balzac Meets
The Martian Brain Boy

by Michael R. Warren © 2003

The sign said, ‘Tucker, Ohio: population 6000. Since entertainment options for the local teenagers were sparse, the sign had a dozen bullet holes in it, mostly centered about the zeroes. The local young men prized their marksmanship and kept rifles in their trucks in case sudden opportunities for demonstrating their skills--like jack rabbits, empty bottles, or road signs--came up.

Today there was a poster stapled to the sign’s base, announcing the imminent arrival of of Professor Malavick’s Carnival of Human Oddities. The sign featured a kid with a humongous head.

"Brain Boy, gee." Billy Balzac, twelve, read aloud as he paused his bike to examine the poster. Billy didn’t much care for this end of town, but a dollar was a dollar. So, a couple of times a week he trekked four miles to deliver packages to Dr. Khonifer’s place.

At the barber shop, Billy had heard Judge Clark tell someone that Dr. Kohnifer was a former exobiologist who left NASA under a cloud of suspicion–some genetic material from the 2007 Mars mission had gone missing. Dr. Khonifer lived with his lab assistant, the Colonel, a local who had suffered a stroke–limiting his conversational ability to the expressive use of the word "yes." Most people talked too much anyway, Billy thought.

Once the Colonel had spent most of his time standing on the platform at the old train station–starring down the rusted tracks toward the west as faded and tattered time schedules flapped in the wind. Some claimed that on stormy nights you could make out the mournful whistle of a distant train, just under the sound of the thunder. When the Colonel heard it, rumor had it, he would start crying, "Yes. Yes. Yessss."

Some folks said Dr. Khonifer took the Colonel in because he was good hearted. The less generous, of which there were more than a few about, said it was because the Colonel couldn’t tell secrets.

Billy slowed when he came to a house surrounded by a picket fence, paint chipped and faded, some planks askew, others missing. This was the edge of local civilization. Beyond this was Buford’s Hill, then a cow call or so beyond, the cemetery. A gray cat was perched on the porch bannister, eyeing Billy suspiciously. Behind the feline guardian, in the shadows just beyond the sun’s grasp, sat the Widow Eversall.

"G’ morning, Mrs. Eversall."

"Morning, Billy." Goose bumps rose on Billy’s forearms. Sometimes she knew him, sometimes she didn’t. He liked it better when she didn’t.

"I saw Deacon Smith dancing in the graveyard the other night," she said.

How was that possible, Billy wondered, since she never left her front porch?

"And they where ghosts dancing in the tavern again."

There was no tavern, only a fruit stand where it used to be. Fifty years ago the tavern had been deliberately burned down–along with the drunken revelers inside, including the late Mr. Eversall. That had been the biggest excitement in the county–until the crop circle appeared in Old man Miller’s corn field.

Billy heard a car, turned to see it pass. The driver, dressed in un-summery black, honked; the horn made a sound like a calliope. Sitting on the passenger side was a boy with a humongous head.

"Dang," Billy said, and left Widow Eversall facing the direction of the cemetery, awaiting the day when the congregation of Tucker First Baptist would pick her up, plop a bouquet of lilies in her age-spotted hands, and plant her along side her late, perpetually-toasted husband.

"Don’t become no dancing ghost. You hear me, boy? " she called after him.

When Billy arrived, near breathless from pedaling hard, the calliope car was in Dr. Khonifer’s driveway, parked between the house and the doc’s lab, which had as much scientific stuff in it as Mercer Hospital did, plus a lot vaguely-human shaped things in frosted bottles.

Billy dismounted his bike and hit the kick stand with the swift motions of a pro. The lab door was open. Billy paused, just outside.

"My God, you fool," Billy heard Dr. Khonifer exclaim. "Why didn’t you bring him to me sooner? The receptors are already starting to extrude from his ears."

"Yes, yes" the Colonel agreed.

Billy peeked around the door. Brain Boy’s head was pumpkin sized, even larger than it appeared on the poster, and there were little red wiggly things dangling from his ears. His eyes looked darn near ready to pop out.

"I hid him in plain sight as you requested, dear brother. I won’t broach recriminations.."

No sooner was this said than two more tentacle-like objects plopped from Brain Boy’s nostrils.

"Good heavens!" shouted. Mr. Malavick.

"How interesting," Dr. Khonifer said.

One of the tentacles touched the Colonel on the forehead.

"YES!" shouted the Colonel. "The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two legs . . . In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a . . . " then the reddest blood Billy had ever seen gushed from the Colonel’s nose--streaking his white lab coat down the front; his eyeballs rolled up in his head and he dropped to the floor, deader than week-old road kill.

"Gosh," Billy said.

With a bang like a popcorn bag exploding, Brain Boy’s head split open, revealing a mucous-covered mass and a profusion of writhing tentacles, each reaching blindly about. Before anyone could react, the thing lifted from the ruined head and flew straight toward Billy. Billy felt the tentacles garb him and he was suddenly flying through the air, over the lab, over the crop circle in Miller’s field, and above Groover’s Lake, where he could make out several figures on the ground.

Billy hollered. The figures looked up, then scrambled to their pick-up trucks for their guns. There were popping noises, but Billy’s captor rose out of gun range with no effort.

Billy looked up and saw a parrot-like beak. As the tentacles lifted him headfirst toward the waiting maw, Billy said, "Dang. . ." and wondered if he’d become a dancing ghost.

x x x




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