The Story Plague Chapter 5: Rockin' Robin

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Behind-the-Scenes Stuff

For Those Who Came In Late: Billy and Marisa are hunting The Story Plagues unleashed upon Alliance by a mystery villain. Their latest success was returning Alice, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Dormouse to the magic book that Marisa carries.

***

The arrow almost parted my hair before striking the telephone pole beside me.

I jumped off my bicycle and ran to the pole. Marisa, who was riding close behind, nearly ran over me.

“Marisa,” I said, staring at the arrow as it quivered in its target, “I think we’ve found our next Story Plague.”

Another arrow whizzed past my ear and split the first shaft down the middle. I pulled Marisa off her bike and behind a nearby shrub.

“We’re not in any danger, if that’s who I think it is,” Marisa said. “Where do you think he’s shooting from?”

“Over there,” I answered, pointing toward Memorial Park. The treetops made a solid ring of green, and I guessed that our mystery archer was hiding in one of them. “Let’s circle around and ride up Liberty Avenue. We can surprise him there.”

Marisa and I hopped back on our bikes and rode west to the crosswalk. Another arrow sailed past Marisa’s ear. From somewhere across the street, we heard a man laugh.

The traffic light turned green, and we crossed State Street. A semi-truck traveling west temporarily blocked us from view. About half a block further north, we cut through an opening in the trees and headed down into the park.

Marisa started to speak, but I held my finger across my lips. Quiet! I pointed straight up. About twenty feet above us, a man dressed in green was perched between two branches. His back was toward us. Across it, he carried a quiver full of arrows.

The man was wearing a green hat. He held a large bow in his left hand, while his right hand held the string and a nocked arrow. Nocked was a word I learned from my dad, who liked to shoot a crossbow. It meant that the notch in the end of the arrow had been put into the bowstring and was ready to be shot.

Traffic on State Street began to move again, and the semi-truck’s air brakes hissed as the driver put his rig into gear and moved forward.

We didn’t have much time before the archer looked down and saw us. I grabbed a rock from the ground and pitched it like a baseball toward our attacker. It hit him in the ankle and threw him off balance. With a cry of surprise, he fell from the tree, crashing and thrashing through branches on his way down.

He landed on his side with an “Oomph!” and looked at us. “Hark ye,” he said, “not many a man lives who can take me by surprise, or my name be not ...”

“Robin Hood!” we both answered.

Robin sat up and ran his fingers through his short beard. Beneath him lay his bow, snapped in half from the fall. “Verily,” he said, “although I don’t remember meeting you two children here in Sherwood afore, which is why I attempted to scare you with some well-placed arrows.”

“You haven’t met us before,” replied Marisa. “And I’m afraid that this isn’t Sherwood Forest, sir.”

“In truth!” he exclaimed. I started to laugh – he talked like one of those actors in Masterpiece Theater.

“Really,” Marisa replied. “But we know you are Robin Hood, or Robin of Locksley, because we’ve read stories about you and your Merry Men.” She looked at me. “Well, I’ve read them, anyhow.”

“Hey, I know who Robin Hood is!” I exclaimed. “I’ve seen movies, you know!”

Robin looked puzzled again. “Thou speakest in a strange tongue, lad and lass,” he said. “Today is a fair and glorious day, and one that I can ill afford to waste in idleness. See, look who approaches!”

A tall stranger was walking across the park’s baseball diamond, making his way to the small stream that ran nearby.

“Come, my young friends!” Robin said, leaping up. “Watch Robin make sport of this tall villain!”

Marisa and I followed Robin as he jogged through the trees. Even his shoes were green! As we ran to keep up, Marisa went into teacher-mode again, explaining all about Robin Hood as if I were a big dummy.

“Robin’s the hero of a bunch of English legends,” she droned. “Ballads, poems, stories – and they’re all just a little bit different from one another, so it’s hard to say if anybody named Robin Hood really existed.”

“Thanks, Professor,” I said. “Let’s skip the history lesson and see what our living legend is up to, huh?”

Robin had reached the stream, which was a lot wider than I remembered it. Maybe some of the scenery from these stories is being brought to life too, I thought.

An old tree had fallen across the stream, and the tall stranger started to walk across it. Robin started to cross from our side.

The two met in the middle.

Robin smiled. “Stand back, and let the better man pass first!”

“Indeed,” said the tall stranger, “take thine own advice and step aside, as I am the better man!”

Robin pulled an arrow from his quiver. “Stand aside, sir, or I shall run you through with this good, straight arrow!”

“And shoot it with what, good sir?” asked the stranger.

Robin realized that he had no bow. His face turned red. “Then I shall teach you a lesson with a stout quarter staff, you knave!” he shouted, jumping down off the fallen log. “Wait you there!”

“I wouldn’t move for all the gold in King Henry’s castle, good man!” said the stranger. He folded his arms and waited while Robin ran to a nearby tree. There, Robin cut two branches and trimmed them with the knife he wore around his waist. When he was finished, he had two staffs, each about six feet long. He threw one to the stranger as he stepped back onto the fallen log.

“Now, we shall take your full measure with these trusty quarter staffs,” Robin shouted. I remembered the Warner Brothers cartoon where Daffy Duck, as Robin Hood, says that he has a “buck-and-a-quarter quarter staff.” I chuckled.

The two men began to fight with the staffs, swinging and blocking each other’s blows. The staffs clicked together again and again, but neither man could manage to hit the other.

“This is silly,” Marisa complained.

“Uh-uh, this is cool!” I answered. It was like a low-tech Jedi duel in Star Wars. Robin tried his best to knock the stranger off the log and into the water, but the stranger was too good.

“Go get ‘im, Robin!” I yelled.

Distracted, the stranger glanced at me. Robin saw his chance and swung his staff at the stranger, knocking him off balance. The stranger swayed back and forth, almost falling into the water.

“No, it’s not supposed to end like that!” Marisa said, and she dived into the water. Marisa is from out of town, so she had no idea that the stream in Memorial Park isn’t normally deep enough for her to do that!

I watched her swim toward the log. The stranger had regained his balance, but Robin pressed his advantage and was driving him back toward the opposite bank.

Suddenly, Marisa shot out of the water and grabbed Robin’s ankle, the sore one that I’d hit with the rock. Robin stumbled, and that was all the stranger needed. His staff connected with Robin’s chest and knocked the green archer off the log. Robin hit the water with a splash.

Marisa swam back to me as Robin headed for the other bank. The stranger still stood on the log, laughing.

“Why’d you do that?” I asked Marisa, angrily. “Robin was going to win!”

“That’s the problem,” she said, wringing the water out of her shirt. “He wasn’t supposed to win. Watch!”

On the opposite bank, the stranger was helping Robin out of the water. “My name is John Little,” he said.

“And mine is Robin Hood,” replied the wet archer.

“The Robin Hood?” said John Little, amazed. “Why, it was you I was hoping to meet! Good Robin, might I join your band of Merry Men here in Sherwood?”

“See,” said Marisa, “John Little was supposed to knock Robin off that log, to gain his respect. That’s why Robin let him join the Merry Men, and changed his name to Little John! If Robin had won, that wouldn’t have happened!”

Across the stream, we saw Robin raise a bugle to his lips and blow on it three times. Figures in green leaped from the trees all around Memorial Park. Robin’s Merry Men!

The scene began to grow hazy. By now, Marisa and I knew what that meant. By the time we walked back to our bikes, the roaring river was a tiny stream once again, and Robin, Little John and the rest of the Merry Men had vanished.

On the next blank page of Marisa’s book, we read The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle. Marisa said it was just one of many books written about Robin’s adventures. Next to the title, our next clue: Spin Control.

Marisa shook her head. She didn’t know what to make of the clue, either. We hopped on our bikes, knowing that we’d come across the next Story Plague soon enough.

What we didn’t know was how frightening it would be!

To Be Continued

The Strange Story of The Strangest Story Ever Told

One of the coolest souvenirs I brought back from a recent Alaskan vacation is a thirty-page booklet called The Strangest Story Ever Told. It came from Parnassus Books & Gifts in Ketchikan. I would assume the book's title is a riff on The Greatest Story Ever Told except that it predates that movie by a decade or so. 

The book is the equivalent of "found footage" movies like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield. These purport to be documentaries, hence the use of shaky camera angles and lots of faux-impromptu dialogue. In literature, fiction that tries to pass itself off as real goes by various names, including fake memoirs and predatory journals. I prefer "found text" because it implies that the author is not trying to commit fraud but rather to provide a sense of verisimilitude in the storytelling. Think of the story-within-a-story setup, where a character discovers a manuscript and then turns over the narrative to that manuscript. Edgar Rice Burroughs did this often with his science-fiction and fantasy novels. Even a book like Dracula, obviously a work of fiction (or is it? 😉), uses an epistolary (letter-writing) style to provide realism. (Jonathan Harker, early in the book, talks of needing to send a recipe back home, and what can be more mundane than that?)

The Strangest Story Ever Told, written by Harry D. Colp, plays its cards close to the vest, which is the most appealing aspect of the booklet. It never claims to be a work of fiction or nonfiction, a position it stakes in the Preface and never relinquishes. A note to the readers from Virginia Colp, apparently the author's daughter, says that the manuscript was written in "the early thirties" and then filed away, forgotten, until 1953. A note to the second edition, dated 1966, says that "with the advent of the Alaska Ferry system," more people became interested in this story. 

"Story" is a loaded word. It can mean something real or imaginary. I could tell you the story of my recent Alaskan travels and they would be factual. Or I could tell you a story of my recent Alaskan travels and make up a bunch of stuff. Both are still stories, right?

Similarly, the events of this booklet appear perfectly pedestrian — until they aren't.  

The unnamed narrator — are we to assume it's Colp himself? I think so — opens with the story of four prospectors, including the author, seeking gold in Alaska in 1900. One man, Charlie, has a hot lead, and the other three agree to stay behind in Wrangell while he explores the area, near Thomas Bay, forebodingly known as "the Bay of Death." 

Months later, Charlie returns, exhausted and broken, with a fantastic story, which the manuscript shares in his own words (see the story-within-a-story setup). I don't want to give too much away. Suffice it to say the tale may involve a group of hairy hominids that have stomped with their large feet into folklore and cryptozoological fame. 

Subsequently, the narrator is involved in a series of attempts to return successfully to the Bay of Death, sometimes by financing another party and once by going in person. Each journey provides more instances of strange goings-on. The account ends in 1925, leaving far more questions than answers. 

Damn, I like this sort of thing. The writing is pedestrian and uneven, which only adds to the sense of verisimilitude. The fact that the author provides no resolution also adds to the creepy factor. Is the whole thing a product of Colp's imagination, designed to fool the audience? Or a product of his daughter's imagination, using her father's name to add that extra layer of verisimilitude? 

Is Colp even a real person? Maybe the entire product is a fabrication, created by an anonymous author to raise a few hackles and sell a few souvenirs without worrying about who deserves the credit. 

I did some googling when I came back home that didn't clarify anything. This blog retells the story, seems to take its validity at face value, and provides a wild theory of its own. I found an online copy of The Strangest Story Ever Told on the Bigfoot Encounters website, where Virginia Colp's introduction has been modified to make explicit reference to "hirsute homins [sic]." 

Another big part of what makes the story fun and effective is the format. If I stumbled across this in a horror anthology, it would lose a great deal of power. But finding it in what appears to be a privately funded booklet provides an extra layer of "what if" plausibility. The provenance of the piece, if the book itself is to be trusted, dates back to an Exposition Press (New York) first edition (minus a copyright notice, apparently). Later editions—seventy-nine in all— from Pilot Publishing and Lind Publishing, all bearing a 1953 copyright by Virginia Colp, according to the verso page. On the back cover of my edition (otherwise blank) is a notice that it was printed by Commercial Signs & Printing, Juneau, Alaska. I also had the bookseller hand-stamp the back cover (see below).

I guess each reader will have to decide for themselves what's going on here. Minus any corroborating evidence, I say it's a work of fiction, albeit an effective one, made more effective by the circumstances where I found it and the way it is presented. 

If you're ever in the Juneau area, stop by and visit Parnassus Books and pick up a copy. You can also visit virtually on Facebook. Tell 'em Sasquatch sent you. 

 

The Story Plague Chapter 4: Fast Food Tea Party

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Behind-the-Scenes Stuff

For Those Who Came In Late: Hot on the trail of the Story Plagues threatening Alliance, Marisa and Billy have just solved a dilemma for Tom Sawyer and are now searching for the third plague.

***

The Golden Arches had never looked better.

Marisa and I hopped off our bikes and did a quick check for money. I had two dollars stuffed in my pocket, and Marisa had some change in hers. Together, we had just enough for a combo meal and a shake. We hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and my stomach was growling. Marisa grabbed the old book from the basket of her bike before we headed inside.

I chose a seat in the front of the restaurant, facing the highway, and started dividing the fries, pushing Marisa’s half across the tray.

“We need to review the clues we’ve gathered so far,” she said.

“Okay.” I ripped our shared hamburger in half and shoved my portion into my mouth. “We know our mystery man is a grim character and that he’s a straw man. But what do those clues mean?”

“Well, grim means harsh and serious,” she replied. “But all he did was laugh when we met him. So maybe grim means something else, too.”

“And he sure wasn’t made of straw,” I added.

“I think it’s safe to say that our mystery man is a fictional character, too, maybe even ... oh, no!” She pointed to the fenced-in playland area outside the window.

One of the tables in playland was set with saucers, teacups and a teapot. Seated at the table was a little man wearing a large, Abe Lincoln style top hat. A life-sized rabbit sat next to him, sipping from a teacup. A third creature was seated between them: a mouse, his head on the table, fast asleep. The other two were resting their elbows on his neck as they talked back and forth.

“Recognize this story?” Marisa asked as she pushed away from the table.

I stuffed the last few fries in my mouth. “Sure, from the Disney cartoon. The first guy’s The Mad Hatter. The other one is The March Hare, and that’s a mouse sleeping between them.”

“A dormouse,” Marisa corrected. “But where’s Alice?”

“Right there!” A young girl wearing a bright blue headband and a matching blue dress had just walked through the door. “I guess our job is to get her to the Tea Party on time!”

Marisa looked unsure as we headed toward Alice. “I guess...but I can’t be sure. Wonderland is a pretty strange place, after all. Who knows what we’ll need to do to get her back into the book!”

Meanwhile, poor Alice was wandering through the restaurant, staring up at the walls and ceiling. To her, a fast-food joint probably seemed as strange as anything else in Wonderland.

“H-hey, Alice,” I stammered. She was cute, and I always have a tough time talking to cute girls.

“How do you know my name?” she asked.

“You – you just look ... like an Alice,” I offered, lamely.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you!” Alice said. She made a funny little bow, holding her skirt in both hands. Marisa told me later that it was called a curtsey.

“Uh, nice to meet you, too. My name’s Billy, and this is my cousin Marisa.” I stuck out my hand for Alice to shake, just like my dad had taught me. She seemed surprised, but she switched something from her right to her left hand before shaking mine.

“What do you have there?” asked Marisa.

Alice held out the object. “It’s a mushroom,” she said. “It’s ... magic, I suppose. A caterpillar gave it to me, to help me change sizes.”

She saw my look of disbelief. “Oh, I know it’s just impossible!” she said, stuffing the mushroom into her dress pocket. “Everything here is just ... curiouser and curiouser.”

“And it’s going to get curiouser yet,” Marisa said. “Follow me.” She led Alice and me to the play area and held the door open while we went through. “Alice, meet the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Dormouse.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of you before,” Alice said. “The Cheshire-Cat told me about you.”

The Mad Hatter stood, hands on his hips. “Oh, he did, did he? And I suppose you trusted the word of that grinning, gaping, guffawing goose, did you?”

“But begging your pardon,” Alice said to him. “He was a cat, not a goose.”

The Mad Hatter considered that for a moment. “Quite so,” he replied. “Sit with us, and have some wine.”

“Yes,” said the March Hare, “it’s good for what ails you. Get it, wine, ails you?” He elbowed the Dormouse, who sat up and looked around, sleepily, then crashed back onto the table.

Alice and I sat across from the Hatter. Marisa sat next to the March Hare, but slid her chair as far away from him as she could.

“I’m afraid I don’t see any wine,” Alice said.

“There isn’t any,” said the March Hare.

“Then why offer it?” I asked. “That’s nothing but rude!”

“Rude, rood, mood, food,” said the Hatter. “And speaking of which, have some.” And he offered us a children’s hamburger meal, complete with toy, in a cardboard box. “Wherever here is, they certainly have wonderful food, don’t you think, old chap?” He elbowed the Dormouse, who lifted his head once again.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little bat,” said the Dormouse, his eyes crossing. “How I wonder where you’re at!”

“What’s he saying?” asked Marisa. “It sounds like ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.’”

“And so it is, young lady,” said the March Hare. “It’s his favorite song.”

“Then why doesn’t he know the proper words?” asked Alice.

“A very good question, my dear,” said the Hatter. “So good, I have no answer, except this!” With that, he began to drop teacups onto the concrete floor of the play area.

I looked around and for the first time noticed the other customers. They were all staring at us. From behind the counter, the restaurant manager was heading toward our table.

“Uh, Marisa,” I said. “Whatever needs to be done here, we’d better do it fast.”

“I know,” Marisa answered. “In the other plagues we’ve cured, we’ve helped the characters along the way to their goal. But these guys don’t have a goal. They’re just NUTS!”

“Well, I never!” Alice said, her cheeks puffed with anger. She stood and began to stomp away.

“Wait a minute!” I said, chasing after her. “She didn’t mean you. “She’s talking about these guys!” I flicked a thumb back toward the Hatter, the Hare and the Dormouse.

“What in heaven’s name is going on here?” the manager asked as she reached the table. “Look at this mess! You can’t come in here, break things and act this way! Out! Out! OUT! All of you!” She grabbed the March Hare and the Dormouse by their ears. “And take your silly puppets with you!”

Mad or not, the Hatter knew when he wasn’t welcome, and he marched back through the restaurant and out the door, dragging the poor Dormouse under one arm. The March Hare hopped along after him, followed by Alice, Marisa and me.

Outside, The Hatter made an even bigger scene by blocking the drive-thru lane. Cars were honking, and traffic backed up onto State Street. I could see the manager inside, dialing the telephone. Probably calling the police, I thought.

“Here’s what I want to know,” the Hatter said as he lay on his back in front of a pick-up truck. “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”

I turned to Marisa. “A riddle!” I said. “I’m great at solving riddles! I bet if I can solve this, these guys will pop back into their story and out of Alliance!”

“You can’t solve that riddle,” Marisa said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t really have an answer.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Lewis Carroll wrote that riddle back in the nineteenth century, and that people – smart people – have been trying to solve it ever since,” she said. “There isn’t an answer that makes any sense.”

“Maybe it’s not supposed to make sense,” I offered. “Watch!”

I went over to the Hatter and knelt down beside him. “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” I repeated, then answered, “Because each begins with the letter E!”

Marisa and Alice both looked at each other, confused.

“But neither one starts with an E,” Alice said. She was holding the Dormouse, who was asleep in her arms.

“Exactly!” screamed the Hatter, and he jumped up, grabbed the March Hare and began to dance a little jig. “And that’s what they have in common!”

“But ... but I don’t understand,” Alice said. She and the Dormouse were beginning to fade away. The Hatter and the Hare looked ghostly, too.

“Billy, you did it!” Marisa cried. “Look in the book!” She opened it to the blank page that followed The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. There, we could read the title, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

And written next to that, our next clue: I’m a golden boy.

The manager was heading toward us. I looked down and realized that Marisa and I were still blocking the drive-thru lane. “Come on,” I said, “we’d better get going.”

We hopped on our bikes and headed off in search of the next Story Plague. We didn’t have far to go before we found it.

To Be Continued

The Story Plague Chapter 3: The Whitewashing Affair

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Behind-the-Scenes Stuff

For Those Who Came in Late: A mysterious stranger has unleashed a Story Plague on Alliance. Thirteen-year-old Billy and his eleven-year-old cousin Marisa must find and “cure” the ten plagues while gathering clues to the stranger’s identity.

***

Except for the knickers, he looked like any other kid. He was standing in front of a tall fence on the corner of Broadway and Liberty. He held a long-handled brush in one hand and a bucket of paint in the other.

I looked at my cousin. “Marisa, what makes you think that kid has anything to do with this Story Plague we’re trying to solve?”

She looked at me smugly. Even though she was half a head shorter than I was, it always felt like she was looking down at me. “Because that’s no ordinary kid, Billy. That’s Tom Sawyer.”

“Oh, yeah. I think he played on my Hot Stove team a few years back.” He hadn’t, but I loved to torment Marisa by saying things like that.

“Not hardly,” she replied. “He’s from a book by Mark Twain that took place back in the 1840’s, I think.”

“You think?” I laughed. “You mean you don’t know? The great Marisa Kingsford, All-Star Brain of the continental United States doesn’t know everything?”

“Oh, cut it out!” She stalked away from me, heading for this Tom Sawyer character. I started to feel bad. After all, it wasn’t Marisa’s fault she was such a brain, and she had figured out what to do with that poor Ichabod Crane guy and the Headless Horseman.

“Hey, wait up!” I ran alongside her. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have given you such a hard time. We’ve gotta work together if we’re going to solve this Story Plague, or whatever it is.”

“Fair enough,” she said, and gave me a high-five. “Now, come on, let’s see what we can do for poor Tom here. I think you’ll like him – he’s a trouble-maker, just like you.”

Leave it to Marisa to always have the last word.

Tom Sawyer, meanwhile, was staring sadly at the fence in front of him. He twirled his paintbrush absently as we approached.

“Hey,” Marisa said.

“Hey, yourself,” Tom replied. “You two new around these parts?”

“Uh...no,” I said. “You’re the new one.”

Tom stood up straight. “Am not. I’ve lived here in St. Petersburgh all my life.”

“Good for you,” I said, “but this isn’t St. Petersburgh. It’s Alliance, Ohio.”

He squinted at me. “Is not.”

“Is too.”

“Is not.”

Marisa tried to step between us. “Boys, let’s not fight about it.”

“Of course not,” Tom said. “That dandy over there probably doesn’t know how to fight.”

“Just try me!” I shouted.

“Ah, I could beat you with one hand tied behind my back!” Tom boasted.

“Could not!”

“Could too!”

“Come on, guys, let’s stop all this...” Marisa gave peace one last chance, but it was too late. Tom threw a punch that hit me square in the jaw. For a fictional character, he had a mean left hook.

I jumped on him, and we rolled into the grass, punching and grabbing at one another. He had been wearing some kind of little cap, which I pulled off and smashed into the dirt. That made him mad, and he got me in a headlock and tried to flip me over. I kicked backward with my right foot and caught him in the kneecap, then spun around to face him. I was ready to try all my Bruce Lee karate moves, figuring a kid from the nineteenth century had never seen anything like that, when Marisa stepped between us.

“ENOUGH!” she screamed. “Now cut it out, both of you!” Her cheeks were red with anger.

“Boy!” Tom whistled in admiration. “If I weren’t already in love with Amy Lawrence, you’d be the one for me!”

Marisa’s cheeks went even redder, but not from anger this time. She was blushing!

“Look,” Marisa said to Tom. “You’re confused. You might think this is St. Petersburgh, but it’s not. You’re a character in a story by Mark Twain, and my cousin and I have got to get you back where you belong.”

Tom scratched his head. “Hmmm... I don’t know anything about any story, unless it’s Bible stories that my aunt tries to teach me, or pirate stories like my friend Joe Harper and I make up. All I know is it’s a beautiful day for swimming, but Aunt Polly is making me paint this whole fence instead.”

I picked up Tom’s hat, brushed it off, and handed it back to him. He paused a minute, not sure if he should accept it, but finally did.

“The whole fence?” I asked. I felt bad for him. “It’s huge.”

“Thirty yards long and nine feet high,” he said. “It’s all my brother Sid’s fault. He told Aunt Polly I skipped school to go swimmin’, and so here I am, painting on the most glorious day that God ever made.”

Marisa pulled me aside. “That’s it!” she whispered. She held out the old book she’d been carrying, the one that had contained the Story Plague before it had escaped all over Alliance. “This is how we can get Tom back into the book!”

“By helping him paint a fence?” I asked. “Marisa, we’ve only got seven and a half more hours to cure all the Story Plagues. Painting that fence could take days!”

“That’s the point,” she answered. “We don’t paint it ourselves. We get other people to paint it. Watch!”

She called Tom over and explained her plan. Halfway through the explanation, Tom started to grin. By the end, we were all grinning. It just might work!

Moments later, Tom was dipping his brush into the pail of whitewash, smiling and whistling all the while. He was quite an actor: he made painting look like the most enjoyable pastime in the world.

Soon, a small boy came walking along the sidewalk in front of Tom, carrying a fishing pole and a bucket of worms.

Marisa and I were hiding around the corner of the fence. “Now watch this!” Marisa whispered.

“Whatcha doin’, Tom Sawyer?” the boy asked. “Working?”

Tom smiled. “Working? You call this working, Ben Rodgers? Why, I’m having the time of my life!” And he dipped his brush back into the bucket and started applying another coat.

“Say, can I try it?” the boy named Ben asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Tom replied. “Aunt Polly is very particular about this fence, and I’m not sure you could do it right.”

“Sure I can, Tom!” Ben fished in his pocket. “I’ll give you this apple if you let me paint a while.”

Tom pretended to consider. “I don’t know...”

Ben was desperate now. “Oh, please, Tom!”

“Well,” Tom said slowly. “If you promise to do it carefully...” And he took the apple from Ben and handed him the brush.

A few minutes later another boy came along, just as Ben was growing tired. Tom traded him the paintbrush for a kite, and so had another new painter to work on his aunt’s fence.

He turned and winked at Marisa. “Great idea,” he whispered. “Why, there’s no shortage of suckers who’ll pay to paint a fence, if I just pretend that painting’s fun!”

Marisa smiled back. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she had a crush on the kid!

Just then, I noticed that Tom, his “volunteers,” and the fence were beginning to fade. I took the book from Marisa and, sure enough, on the next blank page I saw The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. As Tom and his crew faded, the words became darker, and by the time I could read them clearly, there was nothing left in front of me but a vacant lot where the fence had been.

“It worked!” I shouted. “And look, here’s another clue!” Next to the title, I read: I’m a Straw Man. “What do you think it means?”

But Marisa didn’t answer, and I saw a tear run down her cheek before she wiped it away. Even brains can fall in love, I guess.

“Come on,” she sniffed. “We’ve still got eight more stories to cure.”

To Be Continued

Story: Chris Schillig

Art: Steve Wiandt

The Story Plague Chapter 2: Ichabod on Main Street

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Behind-the-Scenes Stuff

For Those Who Came In Late: While playing at Glamorgan Castle, Billy and his cousin Marisa discovered an old book that unleashed ten story plagues on the city. The book’s owner, a mysterious old man, challenged them to return the ten plagues to the book and gather clues to his identity. If they fail, he will destroy the entire city.

***

Downtown Alliance shimmered in the early summer heat. Panting, Marisa and I stopped at the corner of Union and Main, in front of the bus stop. We had ridden our bikes all the way from Glamorgan Castle, hot on the trail of the first yellow light that had escaped from the old book.

“Okay, tell me what we’re looking for,” I said, wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand.

“I’m not sure,” Marisa answered. “That strange little man said something about a Headless Horseman on Main Street, but I don’t see... wait a minute! Look over there!”

She pointed across the street. A tall, skinny man wearing a black coat and wool hat was walking across the empty parking lot. His head was tilted straight up at the sky. “That scarecrow? He’s no headless horseman, Marisa!”

“Of course not,” she said, exasperated. Even though I was two years older, she had a way of making me feel dumb every time I opened my mouth. “Why, he’s...oh, no!”

The stranger started across the street and stepped right into the path of an oncoming truck. Quickly, I darted out into the road and pushed him out of the way. The truck’s driver blared his horn and swerved to the left, barely missing us! The stranger and I ended up in a tangle of arms and legs on the north side of the street.

“Jeez, mister, you act like you’ve never seen traffic before!” I said, standing up and brushing away some pebbles from my skinned knees.

The stranger was scared, and not just because he’d almost turned into a deluxe road pizza. “E-excuse me, young master, but can you tell me where I am?” he asked, pulling his hat still further down on his head. He looked like a human cartoon character: his nose and his feet were too large for the rest of his body.

“You’re in Alliance, goofball!” I said. Marisa, who had been much more careful crossing the street, helped the stranger to his feet. While he gazed in wonder at a SARTA bus that had stopped for passengers, I twirled my index finger around my ear. This guy was nuts!

“Don’t you know who he is?” Marisa whispered. She took me by the arm and led me away from the stranger. “That’s Ichabod Crane, the schoolmaster of Sleepy Hollow!”

“That geek teaches school?” I laughed. “C’mon, the kids would eat him for lunch!”

“Not in Alliance, silly,” she said, holding up the old book. “In the story ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ by Washington Irving. He must be part of the first Story Plague!”

“Excuse me, children,” Ichabod interrupted, “b-but are you g-ghosts?”

Marisa smiled, took the schoolteacher by the arm and began walking with him. “Of course not. I’d forgotten how superstitious you are!”

Obviously, Marisa had read this story before. I hadn’t, and felt left out of the conversation. By the end of the day, it would be a familiar feeling.

“But surely I’m in an enchanted kingdom,” Ichabod continued. “Why, just moments ago, I left a party at Katrina Van Tassel’s house in the middle of an autumn night, and here I am, in broad daylight -- and in the middle of the summer, based on the heat and the leaves on yonder trees!”

“Well, you see, it’s like this ...” Marisa started to explain, then stopped. How do you tell a poor guy that he’s just a made-up character in a story?

“And where is Gunpowder, my horse?” Ichabod asked. “I borrowed him from a farmer and have to return him!” He looked around fearfully. “And what about ... The Headless Horseman?”

Ichabod was so scared that he started to spook me, too. While he and Marisa walked ahead, I turned to look behind us. What I saw scared me even more.

“Uh, Marisa ...?” I whispered.

“Not now, Billy,” she said. “Mr. Crane, The Headless Horseman is just a ghost story, made up by that bully Bram Bones to scare you away from Katrina Van Tassel. He likes her, too, you know.”

“B-but, Marisa ...” I interrupted again.

“Oh, Billy, for goodness’ sake, WHAT?!” She turned around, just in time to see a black stallion galloping toward us. And riding on that black stallion was a man dressed entirely in black except for a long, red cape around his shoulders – a man who had no head!


“Ichabod, duck!” I screamed, and saved his life for the second time by pushing him to the ground. The Headless Horseman galloped past, reaching for Ichabod with a black-gloved hand.

“Run!” Marisa yelled. We darted across the street toward the SARTA bus.

Marisa and I ran up the bus steps, pushing Ichabod in front of us. I didn’t know what scared him more – The Headless Horseman, or the idea of getting on the bus. Both probably seemed like black magic to him!

“Let’s go!” I yelled to the driver as we dove into a seat.

The driver looked through the windshield, saw the black rider and his horse coming toward the bus, and took my advice. He pulled the door closed and stepped on the gas. As the bus pulled away from the curb, The Headless Horseman turned and rode alongside it. His hand stretched out and tapped outside the window where poor Ichabod sat, chewing his nails and whimpering like a lost puppy.

“Where to, kid?” the bus driver asked. The other riders on the bus had taken notice of the situation – being chased by a headless man was certainly something new on their daily commute!

“I don’t know!” I answered. “Marisa, you’ve read the story! What now?”

She stared out the window. The black horse was still galloping alongside the bus, its flaring nostrils steaming up the window. “A bridge! In the story, Ichabod thought if he could beat the horseman to a bridge, he’d be safe! Where’s the nearest bridge?”

“Keep going straight,” I told the driver. The bus roared through the intersection of Main and Arch, heading east.

“Turn right here!” I shouted. The driver took a sharp right onto Linden Avenue, then a left onto Market Street. The Headless Horseman stayed right with us, reaching for Ichabod from the other side of the window.

Two blocks later we’d reached our destination: the Martin Luther King Jr. Viaduct. It was the closest bridge I could think of on such short notice.

“Okay, Marisa, now what?” I asked.

She turned to Ichabod. “Mr. Crane, there’s the bridge. You’ve got to make it to the other side!”

“A-alone?” he stammered.

“Yes!” She led him to the front of the bus. The driver braked and opened the door. Poor Ichabod jumped out, running like mad for the overpass.

It only took The Headless Horseman seconds to figure out what had happened. For a guy with no head, he was pretty smart! He spurred his horse into a gallop and chased the schoolteacher. As he did, he pulled a pumpkin from the folds of his cape and twirled it like a basketball on one finger.

Ichabod raced up the side of the overpass, dodging cars in both directions. He looked back only once, just as the Horseman hurled the pumpkin straight at his head. Before the pumpkin hit, a bright flash of light hid both Ichabod and the Headless Horseman. When the light faded seconds later, they were both gone.

“Look!” Marisa had the old book opened on her lap. All the pages were still blank, except for one. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, it read. Beside it, written in red ink, was our first clue: “I’m A Grim Character.”

“Jeez, did Ichabod make it to the other side?” I asked. Although he was kind of a loser, he seemed like an okay guy. Marisa shook her head sadly but refused to answer.

The bus driver was kind enough to drive us back to the corner of Main and Union, where we’d left our bikes. He stopped us as we started down the steps. “Hey, kids, what the heck happened back there?”

“Mister, when we figure it out, we’ll let you know,” Marisa said.

We pedaled east through downtown, retracing the route of The Headless Horseman all the way to the viaduct. As expected, there was no sign of the schoolteacher or the spirit who had chased him.

I checked my watch: it was one o’clock. “Only eight more hours to find the other nine plagues,” I said. “Wonder where the next one will be?”

“I think I’ve found it already,” Marisa said.

To Be Continued

Story: Chris Schillig

Art: Steve Wiandt 

The Story Plague Chapter 1: "Encounter at the Castle"

The greatest adventure in my life started when my eleven-year-old cousin Marisa yelled, “Hey, Billy, check this out!”

Marisa had run up the steps of the Glamorgan Castle to retrieve the Frisbee that I’d thrown. It was the fourth time I’d thrown the Frisbee to her, and the fourth time she had missed it.

“What now?” My patience was wearing thin. Marisa had been visiting my family since the first day of summer vacation, and she was a know-it-all bookworm. Mom and Dad had put me in charge of entertaining her and had promised me a new baseball glove if we could make it until the end of her visit without fighting or killing one another.

I jumped the steps two at a time. “What’d you find now, squirt? Another rare bug for your collection?”

“Very funny,” she said, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “Look at this!” She was sitting on the top step. I could see where her foot had kicked away a loose stone. Beneath it was an old book, bound in leather and wrapped with a red silk thread.

Marisa lifted the book gingerly and placed it on her lap. The cover was so dusty and old that I couldn’t make out the title. “Should we open it, Billy?”

Without bothering to answer — little cousins, especially little girl cousins who were two years younger than you, could be so annoying! — I snatched the book from her lap and pulled the thread. It opened to the table of contents. Before I had a chance to read anything there, a strong gust of wind blew it from my hands.

The book tumbled down the steps and landed spine-down on the sidewalk. Marisa and I both stood amazed as fireworks shot from the pages, exploding in a cascade of stars and moon shapes above our heads.

“Billy?” Marisa whispered.

“I see it, I see it!” I didn’t know what it was, but I was seeing it.

I looked around. A woman was walking her German shepherd near the lakes, and a young couple was strolling hand in hand across the grass. None of them paid any attention to what was happening – it was as if only Marisa and I could see it!

The light show continued for a few more seconds, then sputtered out. The book lay open, thick smoke rising from its pages. Then ten glowing, yellow objects, like fireflies, lifted lazily to the sky and separated in all directions — north, south, east and west. Amazed, we watched as they drifted out of sight.

“What in the world was that?” I asked, mostly to myself.

“Look, Billy, the pages are blank!” Marisa was at the bottom of the steps, gingerly turning the pages of the book with a stick she’d found in the grass. She was right: there wasn’t a line of type anywhere in the book. It was as if the fireworks had burned the words away, leaving the pages untouched.

That’s when we heard laughter from behind us. Sitting on the castle steps was an old man. I was sure that he hadn’t been there a moment before. He laughed and laughed, and just when we thought he was winding down, he exploded into another fit of cackling.

“What’s so funny, mister?” Marisa asked, when the old man seemed to have gained control of himself.

“Oh, it’s just the beginning of the end, that’s all,” the old man replied, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief. He had a red scar that ran down the middle of his face, extending from his forehead all the way into his thick gray beard. He looked like he’d been split in half and patched up poorly. Something about that scar made me remember sitting on my grandma’s lap, listening as she read aloud from a storybook. The memory made no sense, and I pushed it away when the old man said: “I’ve been waiting a considerably long time for someone to find and open that book, and now it looks like someone has!”

“What do you know about the book?” I asked.

“Only that you’ve unleashed the Story Plague on all of Alliance,” he said. “Left unchecked, it’ll destroy the city before the end of the day!”

“What?” I looked at him, then down at the book. “You’re crazy!”

“Maybe, but I’m the only other person besides you two who saw the Fourth of July celebration when that book opened, so I guess that makes you crazy, too!”

“What’s a...Story Plague, mister?” I wouldn’t have taken any of his babble seriously, except that I’d seen the lightshow when the book fell open.

“A day of destruction brought on by fictional characters who’ve come to life,” he replied, still chuckling. “It’s a headless horseman on Main Street, dinosaurs at the mall, and pirates at Silver Park, for starters!”

“That — that’s terrible!” I cried. “How can we stop it?”

“Can’t be done, son.”

“But ... this is our city, mister! We’ve got to do something!”

He scratched his head and looked at us. “I’m a sporting man, so I’ll give you a chance. It’s like this: only ten Story Plagues have been unleashed so far. You find each of ‘em, one at a time, and help each character get back into that old book. Every time you do, I’ll leave you a clue as to who I am. Once you’ve gathered all ten clues, I’ll meet you back here at nine o’clock tonight. If you can guess my identity, I’ll take my book and go away. But if you can’t ... I’ll unleash the other Story Plagues on your city.”

“Other plagues?” Marisa asked. “How many more can there be?”

He opened his cupped right fist to reveal a glowing yellow ball of energy, easily fifty times the size of the ten lights that had already spread over Alliance. “One for each page of that book,” he cackled. “Two-hundred-fifty-eight different plagues!”

“Come on, Billy, one of those lights headed this way, toward downtown!” Marisa snatched the book from the grass and headed off without so much as a look back at the old man. She threw the book into the basket of her bicycle and pedaled away.

“Wait a minute!” I shouted. “Mister, how do we get all these characters back into the book?”

“Simple.” He smiled. “Just solve each of their problems, or help them move further along in their story!”

“But...but...how?” I stammered, confused. Everything was happening so fast!

“Better hurry, son!” The old man pointed to the sun. “It’s already high noon! Only nine hours until your city goes...poof!” And with that, he disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

I shook my head, turned and ran to my bike. The old man was right about one thing: if we were going to solve the mystery of these ten Story Plagues by nine o’clock tonight, we had no time to waste.

To Be Continued

Story: Chris Schillig

Art: Steve Wiandt

The Story Plague: Coming Soon (Again)!

For years, I've wanted to share on this blog The Story Plague, a feature I wrote back in 2000 for The Alliance Review, my local newspaper. This summer, I've finally made time to do it. 

Here's the story behind the story: 

Around 1996, my wife and I read Stephen King's The Green Mile, a novel originally published in six parts, released roughly one month apart. King suggested that reading each installment aloud would be a good way to experience the story, so Holly and I took him up on it. (We have continued the practice through the years and often read books together instead of watching TV. But I digress.)

King's book and its unique publishing cycle* must've been on my mind when I pitched an idea to Sarah Reed Gold, the Newspaper in Education coordinator for The Alliance Review. At the time, I was an advertising account executive for the paper—a fancy way of saying "salesperson"—but I had trouble staying in my lane. 

I told Sarah I wanted to tell a twelve-part story, in installments one week apart, about two Alliance kids dealing with famous literary characters who had come to life and were wreaking havoc around the city. One kid would be a bibliophile and the other one a non-reader. All the literary characters would be from public-domain works to avoid copyright problems. I'd work in some municipal landmarks like Glamorgan Castle and Silver Park, too. It would be like a love letter to all the books I'd devoured as a kid. 

Sarah loved the idea. It wasn't long before she had the publisher sold on it, too. 

And very quickly my colleague and friend Steve Wiandt —reporter, photographer, artist, page designer, a true renaissance man of the newspaper biz — agreed to illustrate each chapter. 

I wore two hats. I wrote the thing and had to sell advertising at the bottom of each week's page to make it profitable. I leaned pretty hard on my established customers and on my sales colleagues to make it happen. Sarah, meanwhile, shopped the story around to other papers in the chain (The Review at the time was owned by Dix Communications, which also owned several other papers). Steve drew and drew, flexing his artistic chops on characters as diverse as Alice in Wonderland and the Headless Horseman. 

The feature ran on consecutive Tuesdays starting on June 6, 2000. It was billed as a "12-Part Read Aloud Adventure for Children & Adults." When it was all over, The Review collected it as a special tabloid edition bundled with the Monday, Oct. 2, 2020 newspaper. 

The project was a lot of fun and must have been moderately successful since the paper published two more serials by Steve and me — Dog Daze and Sixty-Second Solutions. I liked them both, but not as much as The Story Plague. 

My goal is to run one installment a day here on the blog, complete with Steve's illustrations, starting Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023. Other than correcting a few typos, I won't change a thing. 

This current endeavor makes me nostalgic for the days when a local paper could pull off something like this, creating content that couldn't be found elsewhere and providing enough space—a whole page each week!—for the feature to be enjoyed. 

It also makes me miss Steve, who passed away far too young in 2019. I am so glad I knew him. He loved newspapers, comics, old movies and TV shows, Mad magazine, and TV Guide. We could talk pop culture for hours and often did. 

I was happy at the turn of the millennium when readers told me they were reading The Story Plague with their kids and grandkids. It would be great to know if anybody enjoys it this time, too. 

And feel free to share the link! 

CS 😀

*Coincidentally, it was another King novel, Fairy Tale, which Holly and I read earlier this summer, that finally spurred me to find my old copies of The Story Plague and post them here.