Maps by Nash Summers Page B

wondering if you’d come help me catch a raccoon so I can shove it down their chimney.”
    Benji laughed, but Maps didn’t understand what was so funny. It was a great idea.
    “Maybe they won’t be so bad, Maps.”
    “They’re going to be bad—worse than bad, probably. They’re going to be terrible. Worse than terrible, they’ll be awful. Worse than awful, they’ll be dreadful.”
    Maps heard Benji whispering to someone else there with him. “Hey, can you call me back in like, twenty minutes? My brother needs to use the phone and apparently it’s life or death.”
    “And you agreed?”
    “My mom is making me.”
    “Shame. I’ll call you back,” Maps said, then hung up.
    Feeling a prickling sense on the back of his neck, Maps spun around in his computer chair and glanced at the doorway. Something flashed before his eyes, just a blur, and for barely a second, but he’d seen it. Something had been standing in his bedroom doorway and just like magic, had vanished.
    “What. The. Shit.”
    His eyes were huge, probably bugging out of his skull. He stared at the now vacant space in the doorway, too petrified—not that he’d ever admit that out loud—to move.
    “H—hello?” he called out.
    Silence.
    “Oh god, oh god. Oh god.” Maps grabbed the phone off his computer desk and quickly dialed Benji’s number. Unfortunately, it was Benji’s older brother who answered.
    “What?” Assface said.
    “Rude!” Maps squawked then hung up the phone, appalled. Some people had no manners at all, and no social etiquette. Maps’ mom would have a fit if Maps answered a telephone like that.
    While Maps sat in his chair and bristled for a few seconds, he forgot what he’d been doing. Then suddenly, the very distinct tune of his mother’s musical jewelry box came to life.
    Maps froze.
    The tune floated down the hallway like a song of imminent death.
    “Okay, I can do this. I can do this.” Maps stood up on wobbly legs. “I can’t do this.” Maps sat down on wobbly legs. “No, I can. I can do this.” Maps stood up again and rolled his chair away.
    He looked around for something to grab.
    Ah hah! Perfect! He picked up an umbrella.
    He set down the umbrella. What am I going to do with this? If the monster is a rain cloud, I’ll really have foiled its plans.
    Maps took two steps toward the door, stopped, took two back, and grabbed the umbrella. At least it was something.
    He stood in the doorway and held his new weapon out at his side like a baseball bat and squatted down. “Hello?”
    Silence.
    “I have an umbrella and the end is extremely pointy!” It was duller than his family’s Thanksgiving dinner. “Makes for good, uh, stabbage, and such!”
    Still no one answered. He crept forward toward his parents’ room at the other end of the hall. Everything was quiet except for his footsteps and the song coming from the jewelry box of death. Half way there, the jewelry box slammed shut and the music stopped.
    Maps resigned himself to the fact; he was going to die.
    Still, like the brave soldier he was, he pushed forward, stopping only just outside of his parents’ door. He stuck the umbrella out in front of him as though the monster would impale itself on it for him and he’d save the day.
    “Okay,” Maps pep-talked himself, “you can do this. You’ve seen The Karate Kid . You know some shit.”
    Maps counted to three. On three, he jumped out into the doorway, thrust the umbrella out in front of him, slid his thumb along the handle, popping it open, and began to spin it wildly in circles as though he were Penguin from Tim Burton’s Batman Returns .
    And that’s when he heard it.
    A giggle.
    From a child.
    “Nope!” he yelled into his parents’ bedroom, turned on his heel, and booked it back to his own bedroom down the hall.
    He power-slid—for some reason—along the carpeted floor, grabbed the telephone off the cradle in one swift motion, then sat in the corner with his umbrella still opened, held out