Read Sleepside: The Collected Fantasies for Free Online

they did to your brother... and just look at him! Living in sin, writing for those hell-spawned girlie magazines.”
    â€œHe ain’t living in sin, he’s living alone in an apartment in New York City. And he writes for all kinds of places.”
    â€œThey tried to do it to you, too! Just thank God your aunt saved you.”
    â€œMargie, I hope you don’t intend—”
    â€œCertainly do. She knows all about them kind of people. She chased them off once, she can sure do it again!”
    All hell had broken loose. I didn’t understand half of it, but I could feel the presence of Great Aunt Sybil Danser. I could almost hear her crackling voice and the shustle of her satchel of Billy Grahams and Zondervans and little tiny pamphlets with shining light in blue offset on their covers.
    I knew there was no way to get the full story from the folks short of listening in, but they’d stopped talking and were sitting in that stony kind of silence that indicated Dad’s disgust and Mom’s determination. I was mad that nobody was blaming me, as if I were some idiot child not capable of being bad on my own. I was mad at Michael for precipitating the whole mess.
    And I was curious. Were the man and woman more than a hundred years old? Why hadn’t I seen them before, in town, or heard about them from other kids? Surely I wasn’t the only one they’d seen on the road and told stories to. I decided to get to the source. I walked up to the louvered doors and leaned my cheek against them. “Can I go play at George’s?”
    â€œYes,” Mom said. “Be back for evening chores.”
    George lived on the next farm, a mile and a half east. I took my bike and rode down the old dirt road going south.
    They were both under the tree, eating a picnic lunch from a wicker basket. I pulled my bike over and leaned it against the gray rock, shading my eyes to see them more clearly.
    â€œHello, boy,” the old man said. “Ain’t seen you in a while.”
    I couldn’t think of anything to say. The woman offered me a cookie, and I refused with a muttered, “No, thank you, ma’am.”
    â€œWell then, perhaps you’d like to tell us your story.”
    â€œNo, ma’am.”
    â€œNo story to tell us? That’s odd. Meg was sure you had a story in you someplace. Peeking out from behind your ears maybe, thumbing its nose at us.”
    The woman smiled ingratiatingly. “Tea?”
    â€œThere’s going to be trouble,” I said.
    â€œAlready?” The woman smoothed the skirt in her lap and set a plate of nut bread into it. “Well, it comes sooner or later, this time sooner. What do you think of it, boy?”
    â€œI think I got into a lot of trouble for not much being bad,” I said. “I don’t know why.”
    â€œSit down, then,” the old man said. “Listen to a tale, then tell us what’s going on.”
    I sat down, not too keen about hearing another story but out of politeness. I took a piece of nut bread and nibbled on it as the woman sipped her tea and cleared her throat. “Once there was a city on the shore of a broad blue sea. In the city lived five hundred children and nobody else, because the wind from the sea wouldn’t let anyone grow old. Well, children don’t have kids of their own, of course, so when the wind came up in the first year the city never grew any larger.”
    â€œWhere’d all the grown-ups go?” I asked. The old man held his fingers to his lips and shook his head.
    â€œThe children tried to play all day, but it wasn’t enough. They became frightened at night and had bad dreams. There was nobody to comfort them because only grown-ups are really good at making nightmares go away. Now, sometimes nightmares are white horses that come out of the sea, so they set up guards along the beaches and fought them back with wands made of blackthorn. But there was another