77 Shadow Street

After ten minutes, he had felt maybe the TV was watching him. Well, not the TV but someone using the TV somehow to spy on people. That sounded fully whacko, just the kind of thing that would land him on a nut-doctor’s couch, in a custody battle, and in a new home in Nashville with his manly, musical dad.

So he had pulled the plug, and the TV had gone dark.

Later Wednesday, when he had come back to his room, the TV was plugged in again. Mrs. Dorfman, the housekeeper, must have done it. She was nice enough, but she just couldn’t leave anything alone. When she cleaned, she always moved things around, like Winny’s Dragon World action figures, arranging them ways that she liked. She was full-time but she was a live-out housekeeper, not live-in. If she was a live-in, by now she would have worn out all the carpets with her endless sweeping.

Anyway, the TV had been plugged in again yesterday—Wednesday—evening. And not long after Winny settled down to read, the set had switched on. Like before, rings of light throbbed outward from the center of the screen. They reminded him of the light on sonar scopes in old submarine movies, except they were blue instead of green.

Again he had felt that he was being watched.

Then a deep voice had spoken a single word from the throbbing rings of light: “Boy.”

Maybe a word leaked into the dead channel from a program on a nearby live channel. Maybe it was just a coincidence that Winny was a boy and that the TV, which seemed to be watching him, said “boy,” instead of “banana” or something else.

“Boy,” it said again, and Winny pulled the plug.

Wednesday night, he had difficulty sleeping soundly. He kept waking up, expecting the TV to be pulsing with blue light even though it was unplugged.

Of course on this gloomy Thursday, while Winny was at Mrs. Grace Lyman’s School for Wrestlers, Mrs. Dorfman had plugged the set in yet again, when she sterilized his room for the day. He thought about unplugging it before anything could happen. But part of him wanted to know what this was all about. It was weird, the interesting kind of weird, not the scary kind that might give you a stroke or make you pee your pants, just creepy.

So maybe half an hour after his mom said, “Love you, my little man,” and left his room, while gusts of wind rattled rain against the window, it happened. From the corner of his eye, Winny saw the TV fill with throbbing rings of blue light. He looked up from his book, and the voice said again, “Boy.”

Winny never knew what to say to most people when they tried to drag him into a conversation. He found it even harder to figure out what to reply to a TV that seemed to be watching him and saying hello, or whatever it meant by that one word.

“Boy,” it repeated.

Talking back to a TV set seemed a little screwy, like talking to furniture. Putting his book aside, Winny said, “Who are you?” Although the question sounded stupid, he couldn’t think of anything smarter.

The voice was deep but kind of flat, like someone on a public-address system reading a boring announcement: “Boy. Aboveground. Second floor. West wing.”

The TV seemed to be telling Winny where he was in the Pendleton. He already knew where he was. He didn’t need to be told. If there was a guy watching through the TV, he seemed even worse at conversation than was Winny.

But of course there couldn’t be anyone watching. TV worked only one way. A television received. It didn’t broadcast. Something else was going on here, a little mystery that would be solved if he just thought about it long enough. He wasn’t supersmart, but he wasn’t stupid, either, not half as stupid as the boy characters in some of the books he read.

“Boy. Black hair. Blue eyes.”

Winny shot up from the armchair.

“Aboveground. Second floor. West wing.”

Black hair, blue eyes: Someone somewhere could see him through the TV. No doubt about it. The little mystery was suddenly big.

Winny didn’t like the way his voice trembled when he said, “What do you want?”

“Boy. Black hair. Blue eyes. Aboveground. Second floor. West wing. Exterminate. Exterminate.”

Because he was somewhat short for his age and scrawny, still waiting for his biceps to appear, Winny figured that if he ever did the slightest wimpy thing, people would be sure he was a gutless sissy. Once people thought you were a sissy, they would never unthink it except maybe if you saved a hundred little kids from a burning orphanage or disarmed a terrorist and beat him up until he cried for his mommy. Winny wouldn’t be big enough to beat up anyone for at least ten years, if ever. He didn’t know an orphanage anywhere, and even if he did know one, he might wait around the rest of his life for a fire that never happened, unless he started it himself. So he tried never to do or say anything sissyish. He never showed fear in a scary movie. When he accidentally cut himself, he didn’t cry or appear to be alarmed at the sight of blood. Bugs spooked him, all those legs and antennas, so he forced himself to pick up beetles and things that were gross but didn’t sting, to study them in the palm of his hand.

When the TV said “Exterminate,” lots of fourth-grade boys from the Grace Lyman School would have been scared, and at least a few might have run away in panic to hide. Instead, Winny stayed calm and walked—didn’t run—to the kitchen, where the warm air smelled cinnamony. His mom was looking at something through the window in the upper oven door.

Winny said, “You better come see what’s on my TV.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t explain it. You’ve gotta see.”