Billy Hooten (3 page)

Billy had never dreamed that nightmares could be quite so painful.

CHAPTER 2

“Y
ou are the Owlboy,” the tiny creature screeched, waving the old comic book.

Billy awoke with a start to find himself lying facedown in the grass atop a grave.

“What the … ?” he began, pushing himself up to his knees. He felt a bit dizzy, swaying slightly as he brought his hand up to touch the front of his aching head.

He winced, feeling a good-sized bump as well as some sticky wetness. “Oh no,” he said, looking at his fingers where a little blood had stained them.

Then, noticing that the cemetery around him was a little out of focus, he looked about for his glasses. He could just make them out lying on the ground near him
and picked them up. Checking them first to be sure they weren't broken, he breathed a sigh of relief as he returned them to his face. At least he wouldn't have to explain that to his parents.

As the world came back into focus, he saw the comic book lying on the ground next to him and slowly picked it up. He glanced back down the path toward the Sprylock mausoleum.

Had it really been some kind of waking nightmare? A hallucination? But again, how did that explain this?

Billy stared at the cover of the comic book for a moment, then finally got to his feet, brushing stray blades of grass from the front of his sweatshirt. The sun was starting to go down, and he wondered how long he had been lying there. He was considering going back to the mausoleum, just to prove he wasn't crazy, when he heard his mother's voice.

“Billy! Time for supper!”

He felt a rumbling ache in his stomach and realized he hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast.
I can always check tomorrow,
he told himself, and trudged toward home.

“Coming, Mom!” he yelled.

By the time he'd climbed over the wall and into his backyard, he'd almost convinced himself that the events at the mausoleum had just been some strange,
out-of-control daydream. But that still didn't explain the comic book.

He could just hear it now:
Hey, Billy, where'd you get the wicked old comic book?

A goblin gave it to me in a mausoleum!
Maybe he'd be finishing up sixth grade at the Happydale Insane Asylum.

He opened the back door to the kitchen, pondering this disturbing thought, and his mother started to scream.

Billy jumped, whipping around to see if the pig-man, or maybe Archebold, had followed him home, but he saw nothing.

“What?” he screamed back, looking at his mother's wide-eyed face as she stood near the stove, hand clutching her mouth.

“What happened to your head?” she shrieked.

“I fell down in the cemetery,” he answered in an equally shrill voice.

“You hit your head?” Mrs. Hooten's eyes bulged and her voice dropped to a troubled whisper.

Billy nodded quickly, afraid to answer. He looked at his dad, whose face was hidden by the newspaper he was reading at the kitchen table. No help there.

“You stay right where you are, young man,” his mother ordered, racing out of the kitchen. “Who knows what kind of damage you could've caused!” Billy caught
the sounds of her rummaging through the bookcase in the family room.

He knew exactly what she was looking for. Whenever he had a health issue, his mother would break out
Doctor Mellman's Encyclopedia of Old-Timey Cures,
a book she'd picked up at a garage sale before he was even born.

With a sigh, he pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down. He wondered if the cure for this injury would involve rubbing bacon fat over the affected area or drinking a glass of lemon juice while holding his breath and standing on one foot. Those were just some of the old-fashioned remedies that Billy's mother thought worked wonders.

“What happened again?” his dad asked from behind the newspaper.

“Slipped on some leaves and whacked my head on a tombstone,” Billy replied.

“You all right?” his father asked, turning the page.

“Yeah,” Billy said, shrugging. “Got a cut on my head, but it didn't bleed much. I feel fine.”

“Good,” his dad said. “Why don't you go get washed up for supper?”

Billy opened his mouth to tell his father about the events at the mausoleum, then thought better of it.
Hey, Dad, you were right, your only son really is insane.
Instead, he headed for the upstairs bathroom. As he climbed the steps, he could hear his mother return to the kitchen, asking his father where he had gone. And whether they still had any bacon fat left in the fridge.

That night, no matter how hard he tried, Billy could not fall asleep.

Neither of his old standbys worked: counting the number of things his collection of
Transmogrifier
robots could transmogrify into, or how many unusual ways the Mongoose had tried to kill the Snake. No matter what, Billy couldn't get the bizarre memory of what he had seen that afternoon to leave his head.

The cut on his forehead throbbed, yet another reminder of the most bizarre day ever, and he reached a hand out from beneath the covers to wipe away the excess bacon fat from his mother's—and Dr. Mellman's— remedy. He rubbed his hand on the solar system comforter that covered his bed and turned over, trying to get comfortable.

Was it a hallucination or not?
asked a tiny voice in his head, a voice that sounded an awful lot like him doing his mad-scientist imitation.

He sat up, his thoughts racing. He could straighten
his room; he could pull out some back issues of
Snake
and reread them; he could watch some late-night television. But deep down he knew that none of that would silence the question that still rattled around inside his head.

What really happened today?

Billy looked toward his dresser. He had shoved the Owlboy comic book into his underwear drawer on his way to the bathroom to wash up for dinner. Since then, he had avoided his bureau as though it would give him that flesh-eating bacteria. But if he got up right now and took a look, would the book still be there? Or would it have faded away like the bad dream he was praying the mausoleum incident really was?

There was only one thing to do. Billy tossed back the covers, got out of bed and turned on the light. Slowly— carefully—he reached for the knobs of his dresser. Then, holding his breath, he pulled open the drawer.

He smiled, looking down into the drawer at a sea of underwear and socks, and breathed a sigh of relief. It really had been just his mind playing tricks on him. Feeling much better, and almost certain that he could fall asleep now, he started to push the drawer closed.

And that was when his eyes caught a glimpse of something bright yellow peeking out from beneath a navy blue sock.

Billy wanted so badly to simply shut the drawer and jump back into bed, pulling the covers up over his head, but instead he reached into the drawer and flipped over the sock to reveal…

The Owlboy comic book.

Strangely enough, a part of him was actually relieved to find it there, because that meant he wasn't losing his marbles. He knew that everything that had happened to him in the mausoleum …

Was real.

He slid the comic out from beneath his underwear. Again he found himself pulled into the artwork on the cover. Even though the book was old, the colors were bright and exciting, and Billy felt his heartbeat quicken just the way it did when he visited Hero's Hovel and picked up the latest issue of
Snake.

It was almost as if the old comic book was speaking to him.

Read me,
it seemed to say in a voice that hinted of something incredible.

And Billy did exactly that, dropping to the floor and opening to the first page.

The cover might have been great, but the inside was absolutely amazing. Within seconds, Billy was sucked
into Owlboy's fabulously exciting adventures in Monstros City.

The old issue was much bigger than comic books today, with lots more pages and three stories instead of one. And what stories they were.

Preston Peters was by day a star reporter for the
Big City News
—but once he traveled through that magical doorway into the world of Monstros City, he became Owlboy, hero, protector, fighting evil wherever it threatened. And what about Monstros City, the most exciting place in the world, where every kind of creeping, crawling, swimming or flying monster lived?

Owlboy was forced to match wits with the devilish Dr. Disease and his weapons of infection; Garko, the beast that walked like a man; and an invasion of killer robots from the future that wanted to turn Monstros City into their new junkyard kingdom.

By the time Billy finished the comic—and read it again—he was absolutely exhausted. Never in his twelve years had he read a comic book as totally awesome as this one.

And then he remembered the goblin's words.
You are the Owlboy.

Billy picked himself up from the floor and returned to his bed. He placed the comic on the nightstand, turned off the light and squirmed beneath the covers.

I'm Owlboy, all right,
he thought.
I'm the guy who can defeat Dr. Disease by giving him cramps, beat Garko in an ultimate thumb-wrestling competition and thwart the invasion of a fleet of killer robots with the help of my own fleet of Owlbots.

Yeah, I do that kind of stuff every day.

But as he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, the germ of a crazy idea was planted.

What if the goblin was right?

What if he could be Owlboy?

What if?

Billy awoke early Sunday morning, thoughts of old-time superheroes on his mind. He took his glasses from the nightstand, grabbed the old comic book and immediately started to read it again.

It was even better this time.

But even before he'd finished rereading the last story, nagging questions had begun to develop inside his brain.

What exactly did Archebold mean by saying I'm Owlboy? Why would he say something like that? I'm just a kid who gets his gym shorts pulled down around his ankles at least once a month. How could I ever be as cool as Owlboy?

Questions on top of questions, and before his head
exploded, Billy decided there was only one thing he could do. Tossing back the covers, he got out of bed and slipped on his clothes.

He tiptoed to his door and, as quietly as he could, crept down the hallway, hearing his parents’ rumbling snores drifting from their room. Once downstairs, he put on the sneakers he had left on a mat beside the back door and slipped outside.

Standing for a moment on the back steps, he listened to the September wind rustling the leaves on the big old oak tree in the yard, amazed at how strangely peaceful it was this early in the morning. Then he took a deep breath of the smoky fall air and headed toward the stone wall. Even with the early-morning sun, it was still creepy in the cemetery, but that just made it more exciting. Billy imagined himself as the hero in one of the old-time scary movies he loved to watch, heading out to kick the butt of some disgusting monster who had been terrifying the countryside.

He smiled.
Wouldn't that be something?
he thought.
To be a real live hero?

But the closer he got to the Sprylock mausoleum, the tighter the knot in his belly became. Finally he was standing before the great stone structure, a nasty sensation in his back as if somebody was running an ice cube up and down his spine.

He took a deep breath, gathered his courage and pushed the mausoleum door, hearing the screeching whine of the rusty hinges as the door slowly swung inward. The chamber was filled with a dim, flickering light.

“Hello?” he called quietly. Getting no response, he held his breath and entered the crypt, like a bug drawn to a candle's warm glow.

Billy felt a jolt like the zap of a static shock running through his body as his gaze fell upon the goblin lying on the floor of the mausoleum, sound asleep in front of a tiny fire. Slowly, Billy approached the sleeping creature, then started as he noticed that lying beside the fire, its scaled skin a bright red, was a little dragon, its snores producing small gouts of flame that shot from its nostrils to keep the fire burning.