Dr. Fell and the Playground of Doom Read online

  Nearly all the adults of Hardscrabble Street, Vexington Avenue, Von Burden Lane, and Turnabout Road (Old Lady Witherton could not be bothered) became accustomed to the medical capabilities of Dr. Fell. In fact, PTA Co-President Candice Gloomfellow approached Dr. Fell less than a week after poor little Ethel Pusster’s scrape and asked if he would perform her son Christian’s yearly physical.

  “Normally I wouldn’t bother you, as I’m sure you are retired and well deserving of your rest,” she said on a bright, sunny afternoon as they stood on Dr. Fell’s porch and watched the horde of children scuttle and dither about the playground. “It’s just that Christian’s regular physician is all the way out in Plainsboro, and it seems a waste to drive all that way when a perfectly wonderful doctor is right down the street.”

  The corners of Dr. Fell’s mouth rose just the slightest bit, though one could see his entire face tiring from the effort. He slowly lowered a blue glass from which he’d been sipping a yellow liquid through a red straw to reply.

  “My dearest Madam Gloomfellow,” he said, “I am without words to express the rapture I feel within my thankfully still-beating heart at your faith in me. That you would entrust the well-being of your offspring to my aged, knobby hands fills me with exultation.”

  PTA Co-President Candice Gloomfellow continued smiling, but her slightly furrowed brow led Dr. Fell to add, “What I mean to say is…I’d be delighted.”

  At this, PTA Co-President Candice Gloomfellow exhaled with relief. “Oh, thank you! Thank you, Dr. Fell!” she cried vigorously. “Do you take insurance?”

  It turned out that Dr. Fell did indeed accept all forms of health insurance, though many marveled that his prices were so low, they needn’t bother with insurance at all. Thus it was that Dr. Fell’s calendar was soon full as appointment after appointment was made for every child on Hardscrabble Street, Vexington Avenue, Von Burden Lane, and Turnabout Road, as well as a great many other places.

  For the most part, the children were thrilled to learn they had an impending appointment with Dr. Fell.

  For the most part.

  “I had a physical two months ago!” complained Gail Bloom.

  “Yes, dear, but you’re growing so quickly these days,” replied her mother, Stephanie Bloom. “We just want to make sure everything’s where it should be.”

  “If your pituitary gland isn’t making enough growth hormone, it could stunt your growth,” agreed Jerry.

  Gail tossed her little brother a withering glare before returning her attention to her parents. “I’m fine! I don’t need to see Dr. Fell!”

  “You’re not qualified to diagnose yourself, Gail Bird. You’re not a trained physician,” noted her father, Jonathan Bloom, using the pet name he’d had for her since she was a baby and which she’d hated for almost as long. “That’s why we want you to see Dr. Fell.”

  Despite the utter ridiculousness of her parents’ argument, Gail choked down her defiance. She knew nothing she said would change their minds. Once her mother and father came to a decision, it might as well be written in quick-drying cement.

  “But tomorrow?” she asked plaintively, grasping at one final straw. “In the middle of the school day?”

  “We’re lucky he had an opening,” remarked Stephanie Bloom.

  “You’ll stay home from school tomorrow,” decided Jonathan Bloom. “To make sure you’re not late for your appointment.”

  The Bloom parents nodded at each other in agreement, convinced that keeping a child home from school for an unnecessary medical exam was an example of good parenting.

  Gail dropped her head and closed her eyes in defeat.

  “Chin up, Gail Bird. There’s probably nothing wrong with you,” said Jonathan Bloom, incorrectly assessing the reason for his daughter’s anxiety about her forthcoming medical appointment. “And if there is anything wrong, why you’ll already be in Dr. Fell’s office! He’ll fix you up right as rain!”

  “What a nice man is Dr. Fell,” agreed Stephanie Bloom.

  “Now, there’s at least fifteen minutes before your bedtime,” said a grinning Jonathan Bloom. “Why don’t the two of you go play on Dr. Fell’s playground?”

  Brother and sister looked first at their parents, then at each other, then out the window at the sliver of moon that utterly failed to provide even a suggestion of light up and down the darkened sidewalks of Hardscrabble Street.

  “You want us to go play outside now?” asked Jerry. “In the dark?”

  “Your eyes will adjust,” reasoned Stephanie Bloom.

  “Go on,” agreed Jonathan Bloom. “Go play.”

  Gail and Jerry each had the uncomfortable feeling that their father’s words weren’t so much a suggestion as a command.

  “Do you want to walk over to that playground?” asked Jerry as he and his sister stood outside on their porch, each silently noting just how very dark it truly was outside.

  Gail carefully peered through the blackness down the length of Hardscrabble Street before shaking her head.

  Jerry let out a medium-sized sigh of relief. “Me neither,” he said.

  “It just doesn’t make any sense,” said Gail.

  “I know,” responded Jerry. “We can’t even see a foot in front of our faces—how are we supposed to play on that thing without getting hurt?”

  “It’s not just that. Why are Mom and Dad so determined to make me see Dr. Fell all of a sudden?”

  “Maybe they’re suffering from heavy metal poisoning. It can confuse the nervous system and make you mentally unstable.”

  Gail shot her brother a raised eyebrow in response to this factual explanation.

  “Well, it can,” mumbled Jerry in defense.

  “They’re acting strange,” declared Gail.

  “It’s like they’re not themselves,” agreed Jerry.

  “Like they’re under a spell.”

  “These days everyone on Hardscrabble Street, Vexington Avenue, Von Burden Lane, and Turnabout Road seems to be under a spell,” lamented Jerry. “Except Old Lady Witherton, who really can’t be bothered.”

  “Right. They’re all obsessed with Dr. Fell,” decided Gail. “What is it about him that has everybody acting so weird?”

  “Maybe he’s a witch?” suggested Jerry. “Well, not a witch, since witches are all women. But he’s a…what’s the male equivalent of a witch?”

  “A wizard?”

  “That doesn’t sound nasty enough.”

  “An evil wizard.”

  “That’s better.”

  They paused their conversation to allow time for proper reflection upon the possibility that Dr. Fell was an evil wizard. It made the tiniest bit of sense and explained some of the odd things that had happened since his arrival.

  Except…

  “Why aren’t we under his spell?” asked a very astute Jerry.

  Gail just shrugged.

  A cloud drifted across the meager hint of moon, erasing the last source of light in the night sky.

  “So what are you going to do about your appointment tomorrow?” asked Jerry finally.

  “Go, I guess. I don’t really have a good reason not to.”

  “You could pretend to be sick,” suggested Jerry.

  Gail tossed him yet another raised eyebrow.

  “Oh, right. You’re going to the doctor,” finished Jerry.

  A sudden crack split the night, as if someone or something prowling the darkness had accidentally stepped on a brittle twig. Both brother and sister flinched, then looked around.

  “What was that?” asked Gail.

  “It could be a coyote,” answered Jerry unconvincingly. “Or maybe a raccoon.”

  “That was much bigger than a raccoon.”

  Without their noticing, Gail and Jerry’s hands found each other as the siblings strained their eyes to peer into the black. Finally, Gail broke the silence. “We must have been out here long enough. Come on, let’s go back inside.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Jerry. “I think that’s a
good idea.”

  Just then, the cloud covering the thin crescent moon slid away, allowing the natural world around them to be bathed in a soft blue glow, which momentarily chased away the pitch-black darkness.

  Jerry stared in shock.

  Gail stared in confusion.

  “I don’t remember walking here,” whispered Jerry.

  “I don’t remember walking anywhere,” whispered Gail.

  Less than a foot away from them stood the playground of Dr. Fell.

  They ran home as quickly as possible.

  THE NEXT MORNING, GAIL joined her brother at the bus stop. She told her mother she just wanted to make sure the easily distracted eight-year-old actually got on the bus, but the truth was, she wanted to tell Nancy about her appointment with Dr. Fell later in the day.

  “Are you scared?” asked her best friend.

  “It’s just a physical,” answered Gail automatically, though without much conviction.

  “I know,” said Nancy. “But still…you know…”

  “Yeah,” agreed Gail. “I know.”

  Nothing more needed to be said. Gail promised Nancy (and the overly nosey Jerry) that she’d give a full report on her appointment when she returned to school later that day, then waved good-bye as the school bus coughed up a mechanical lungful of toxic exhaust with a grinding wheeze and puttered away down Hardscrabble Street. Nancy and Jerry, sitting in the back of the bus, waved at Gail through the windows of the rear emergency door until the dingy yellow vehicle turned the corner and drove out of sight.

  Later that morning, Stephanie Bloom ducked her head into her daughter’s room. “Are you ready to see Dr. Fell?” she asked.

  Gail sighed and set aside the book she’d been reading. Though truth be told, she hadn’t so much been reading as staring blankly at it for the past hour without turning a page. “I guess,” she answered.

  “You don’t sound excited, sweetie,” noticed her mother.

  “Why should I be excited to get a physical?”

  “It’s not just any physical, sweetie. It’s a physical from Dr. Fell.”

  Stephanie Bloom beamed proudly at Gail, as if her daughter had worked hard and overcome countless obstacles to earn the amazing prize of a yearly physical. For her part, Gail moaned, groaned, and rolled her eyes in response.

  Inwardly.

  Outwardly she nodded her head and got to her feet like a good girl.

  “Let me just get my shoes on,” she said.

  “Great idea, sweetie. I’ll get mine on and we can wait by the door until it’s time for your appointment.”

  “What do you mean? When’s the appointment?”

  “Eleven o’clock. Sharp.”

  Gail glanced at her clock, then, deciding a glance wasn’t enough, turned her entire head to get a good look and make sure she’d read the clock correctly.

  “Mom, it’s barely nine-thirty.”

  “We don’t want to be late,” chimed Stephanie Bloom.

  “Dr. Fell lives, like, four houses down from us!”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure we have plenty of time for the trip. Now grab your shoes and meet me by the front door.”

  With that, her mother’s head ducked back out of the room, leaving Gail the privacy she needed to safely moan, groan, and roll her eyes. For real this time.

  After almost a solid hour of sitting by the front door in two chairs her mother had dragged over from the living room, it was time to go. While her mother quickly touched up her makeup and smoothed her new red paisley dress, Gail stood and tried not to gawk at the sight of Stephanie Bloom in a dress. It wasn’t that Gail had never seen her mother in a dress before—she was pretty sure her mom had worn one to at least the first half of Aunt Anita’s wedding the year before; it was just that Gail found the idea of her mother wearing a dress to her daughter’s physical incredibly disturbing.

  Once Stephanie Bloom was satisfied she looked her best and that Gail looked as good as she was ever going to look, mother ushered daughter out the door.

  It was ten-thirty in the morning.

  The walk down Hardscrabble Street was excruciatingly slow. Gail’s mother moved in spurts and stops, torn between the fear of arriving late and the embarrassment of arriving early. In the end, even stretching the five-minute walk out to twelve minutes, the Bloom women arrived on the porch of Dr. Fell with well over fifteen minutes to spare.

  As her mother straightened her hair and knocked on the door, Gail’s eyes found themselves taking in the majestic playground beckoning a few yards away. Even now, in the middle of a school day, easily a dozen children clambered all over it, their giggles of merriment echoing off the structure and bouncing around in her ear.

  What was it about that playground that had everybody so obsessed? It was a nice playground, to be sure, and there were a lot of really cool-looking platforms and gizmos and whatnots. And yes, she admitted to herself, it looked like there were some great places from which to jump to the ground. And there supposedly was an awesome rope swing in there somewhere, according to Hannah Festerworth. And Gail had to admit she was curious to explore the hollowed-out tomb Gabby Plaugestein had mentioned in passing the other day. And hadn’t somebody talked about a zero-G section? That sounded totally—

  “Ah, Madam Bloom,” croaked Dr. Fell in a froglike whisper. “I am invigorated to find your ever-pleasing beauty upon the threshold of my domicile. I yearn to verify the physical well-being of your sprightly little cherub.”

  Gail spun her attention back to the door, annoyed at herself for thinking…for thinking…What had she just been thinking?

  “Oh!” responded a suddenly flustered Stephanie Bloom. “Oh! Well! I…that is…I…”

  Dr. Fell’s mouth struggled to transform into a smile beneath his purple top hat. “What I mean to say is…good morning.”

  “Yes,” agreed Stephanie Bloom. “Yes, it is a very good morning.”

  The goodness of the morning agreed upon, Dr. Fell took a sip of yellow liquid from an orange glass through a chartreuse-colored straw and turned his rickety neck to look down at his patient—though for some reason, Gail felt it wasn’t quite as rickety as it had been the other day. “Are you ready for your physical, my dear urchin?”

  He pulled his door wide, inviting the Blooms to enter. Mother stepped aside to make room for daughter, but daughter hesitated. Gail did not want to go inside the home of Dr. Fell. Her feet did not want to step over the threshold, her legs did not want to walk into the beckoning darkness, and her arms did not want to let go of the porch railing she hadn’t even known she was clutching. Every muscle in her body twitched with the desire to turn and run from the kindly old man dressed all in black. It was as if Dr. Fell were the negative electrical charge to Gail’s positive one, pushing her away with invisible force.

  “Sweetie?” asked her mother.

  A stronger-willed child might have fled. A stronger-willed child might have listened to the drumbeat of intuition and refused point-blank to enter the ominous home of the equally ominous Dr. Fell.

  Unfortunately for Gail, she was not particularly strong willed.

  “Yes, Mother,” she said, silently telling her intuition to stuff it.

  Defeated, she trudged forth.

  Gail had no idea what she’d find upon entering the living room of Dr. Fell. She certainly knew the layout of the room from her time cavorting through the house before Dr. Fell had moved in, but she had no idea how he might have furnished and decorated it. A white, sterile examination room? A dusty, junk-filled room that smelled like old people? A torture chamber? The possibilities were so vast, she didn’t think anything could surprise her.

  She was wrong.

  “Do you have cats, Dr. Fell?” asked her mother.

  “I do not,” replied Dr. Fell with effort. “I have never been one to fraternize with family Felidae. I find them eternally boorish and judgmental.”

  Once again, Stephanie Bloom seemed utterly lost by the words of Dr. Fell. However, before
she could ask for clarification, her daughter (who had at least figured out that Dr. Fell did not like cats) interrupted.

  “If you don’t like them, then why…?” She gestured to the walls of the living room.

  “Ah, yes, my patients find them soothing,” explained Dr. Fell.

  Soothing was not a word Gail would have used. Disturbing, perhaps. Obsessive, certainly. Creepy, quite possibly.

  The walls of the living room were covered with photographs of kittens. There were kittens sitting on chairs, kittens lying on beds, kittens playing with balls, kittens chasing mice, kittens peeking out from under pillows, kittens drinking milk, kittens wrestling with other kittens, kittens jumping out of windows, kittens driving cars, kittens dressed as mailmen, kittens dueling with light sabers, and—in a picture hanging above the fireplace—a kitten made up to look like a clown.

  Definitely creepy.

  In addition to the abundance of kittens, the room boasted an additional peculiarity—the color purple. The couch was purple, the chairs were purple, the curtains were purple, the desk was purple. The coffee table was not purple but so keenly shined that it acted as a mirror, reflecting the vomit of purple surrounding it.

  Beyond creepy.

  A hacking cough pulled both Gail’s and Stephanie’s attention away from the startling decor and back to Dr. Fell, who wiped the spittle from his lips with a lavender handkerchief monogrammed with a trio of very ornate letter Fs. “Now then, my fine young specimen,” said Dr. Fell, attempting to stuff the handkerchief into a jacket pocket with one trembling hand while placing his glass on a side table with the other. “Shall we commence with your rudimentary physical examination?”

  Gail’s face flushed with sudden panic. “Right here?” she asked.

  Dr. Fell tried unsuccessfully to laugh at Gail’s outburst, turning what had been intended as a display of good-natured amusement into a slightly diabolical cackle. “Heavens, no! I do not well believe the state board of medicine would look fondly upon my performing even the smallest of medical procedures within such a stuffy, dingy, unclean environment,” he said. “I have…a room.”

  Dr. Fell pointed, and Gail followed the crooked line of his finger toward a dark, stout oak door (which Gail did not recall being there when the house had been vacant) bearing a photograph of two kittens performing The Nutcracker.