Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 13, Mid-December 1994

Jonathan Frederick Johnson III and the Boogeyman by Robert Loy

Kee-rash!

Jonathan Frederick Johnson III’s Tinkertoy tower toppled to the floor.

“Damn it!” he yelled. He had been attempting to construct a skyscraper, or more accurately a ceilingscraper, and this was the fourth time it had fallen. “Damn it! Damn it!”

Jonathan Frederick Johnson III did not know what “damn it!” meant, but he knew he was forbidden to say it — had in fact been sentenced to his room the last time Mother had heard him — and he knew Father always said it whenever something happened that he didn’t want to happen.

And that was good enough for Jonathan Frederick Johnson III. It must be a very powerful incantation even if it didn’t mean anything. He was tucking his tongue behind his two front teeth to say it again — just to hear its wondrous resonance and feel its delicious magic on his lips — when something grabbed the back of his shirt and lifted him clean off the carpet.

“Young man, don’t you never let me hear you talk like that again, you hear?” Miss Rosella Washington said to him in a voice that sounded soft but felt like a holler. “That is bad language. You know what happens to little boys what use the bad language, don’t you? The Boogeyman comes in the nighttime, grabs ’em up, and hauls ’em off. That’s what happens to those boys.”

Jonathan waited until his housekeeper returned him to the floor before asking: “Who is the Boogeyman? What does he look like?”

“Don’t you go worryin’ ’bout what he looks like. Believe you me, you do not wanna know what that ugly old Boogeyman looks like.”

Jonathan Frederick Johnson III considered this for a moment and then, because he had been taught to always tell the truth, he said, “Yes, I do.”

Miss Rosella Washington scrunched up her forehead the way she did when she wanted to pretend she hadn’t really heard what she had just heard.

“No, you don’t, young man. He’s mean and horrible. He comes and carries off bad children in the nighttime — and they never come back.”

“I don’t care. I want to see him,” Jonathan said.

It’s true that most children are terrified of the Boogeyman and will do just about anything to keep their names off his kids-to-grab-and-carry-kicking-and-screaming-into-the-nighttime-never-to-be-seen-or-heard-from-again list, but Jonathan Frederick Johnson III was not scared of the Boogeyman. He was not scared of anything.

Well, actually, he was scared of one thing, but he didn’t know he was and couldn’t have told you what this fear was even had he been aware of its existence. What Jonathan was scared of was that maybe Miss Rosella Washington was wrong and there really was no Boogeyman. He was afraid there might truly be no ghosts in his closet, no witch under his bed, that Batman and Bugs Bunny were just big fat lies and, despite his friends’ fiscal evidence to the contrary, there was no fairy interested in purchasing people’s newly detached baby teeth. He was terrified that Mother and Father were right and that life was real, life was earnest, life was magicless and mundane. There was nothing at the end of the rainbow but a puddle of mud.

When he was born, his parents — Mother, a clinical psychologist; Father, a textbook proofreader and editor — decided, with the best of intentions, of course, to isolate their only child from the nymphs and gnomes we all grow up with.

They called it not filling his impressionable young mind with the same old childhood nonsense.

FATHER: Why should we teach him all the silly balderdash children are fed about Easter bunnies, Santa Claus, and Superman and so on when he’s just going to have to unlearn it all when he grows up?

MOTHER: Not only that, but he’ll undoubtedly have deep-seated unresolved animosities and a subconscious mistrust of authority figures to work through if his principal caregivers consistently lie to him in his early years while his personal paradigm is still being formed.

FATHER: Very astute, my dear. Not to encroach upon your professional territory, but I believe this is what holds a lot of people back from reaching their full adult potential. They’re still trying to reconcile the lies they were told in the nursery with the cold hard facts they’ve learned about life on their own. We’ll be giving little Jonathan a real head start by teaching him that life is not like Oz or Wonderland — it’s real, it’s earnest, but not altogether unpleasant.

(There was only one thing wrong with Mother and Father’s plan: Santa Claus and Superman were not going to sit still for it. And they have a zealous corps of missionaries working to spread their word — grandmothers, housekeepers, Steven Spielberg, the kid on the other end of the seesaw, et cetera.)

Mother and Father did their utmost to offset the pernicious effects of unbridled fantasy. The walls in Jonathan Frederick Johnson III’s bedroom were adorned with fine art prints from the school of realism, not posters of singing purple dinosaurs or ninja reptiles. His sheets were plain white, no ducks waddling across them or rocket ships orbiting them. For breakfast he was served oatmeal or Cheerios, but nothing with silly rabbits, talking tigers, or snapping, popping elves on the box.

And they were as scrupulously careful about what went into his mind as they were about what went into his mouth.

MOTHER (Up early on Saturday morning doing damage control. Jonathan Frederick Johnson III is watching cartoons. No telling what kind of damage those bright, flashy, downright impossible images could do a developing cerebral cortex.): Jonathan, honey, listen, why don’t you turn off that obnoxious nonsense and watch the Nature Channel or CNN?

JONATHAN FREDERICK JOHNSON III (No response. He doesn’t hear her. He is trying to figure out why the roadrunner always says “Meep-meep!” whenever one of Wile E. Coyote’s schemes backfires on him. What does it mean? Is it bad language?)

MOTHER: Jonathan, you know, of course, that if a real coyote fell off a real cliff like that he would be dead, dead and in — (She was about to say coyote heaven, but she realizes she’s not sure where, if anywhere, dead coyotes go. Fortunately, she catches herself in time.) — in a smooshed-up pile of fur and bones. These cartoon things are just drawings that give the illusion of movement. You understand that, don’t you, Jonathan?

JONATHAN FREDERICK JOHNSON III: Meep-meep! (Which gets him in big trouble for backtalk-ing. From then on he is not allowed to watch anything on TV unless it is preapproved by Mother or Father.)

No matter, he could always look at books. He loved books, and his parents had procured for him an extensive library of picture books about real children doing real things like helping mom fix dinner, or going to school, where they did all sorts of fun things like sitting still, being quiet, and listening to the teacher. Once he traded his copy of My Daddy Works in the City to his friend Kenny Preston for a book about dogs who race cars and have big dog parties in the tops of trees. It was his favorite book until Father explained it to him.

FATHER: Son, real dogs simply do not behave like this. You’ve seen old Jake here, and you know what he does. He sleeps and he eats and he barks his head off whenever somebody knocks at the door — well, he doesn’t really bark his head off, that’s just an expression. But he definitely does not wear funny hats and drive a car. The dogs in this book are imaginary. Do you understand? They’re not real like Jake. They’re imaginary.

JONATHAN: Is “imaginary” bad language? (He doesn’t mean it as backtalk.)

He had to give the book back to Kenny, even though they had a no-takebacks clause in their contract.

At least he could still be friends with Kenny. Watch what happens when Father meets Toby Redboy.

FATHER: Jonathan, who are you talking to?

JONATHAN FREDERICK JOHNSON in: I’m talking to Toby Redboy, Father.

FATHER (putting on his stern, life-is-real face as he walks into his son’s room): Who is this Toby Redboy person? I don’t see anyone in here but you.

JONATHAN: He’s right there by the computer — whoa, you almost ran into him.

FATHER (making a dramatic pretense of scanning the room): I still don’t see anyone.

JONATHAN: He probably doesn’t want you to see him right now, Father. I can’t see him all the time either, but he’s—

FATHER (sighs heavily, sits down on son’s bed, lowers voice): I thought we were through the danger phase here. You know — I mean, you must know that this Toby Redboy is not real. Now, you have real friends like Kenny and Margie, don’t you? Real friends have homes and mothers and fathers. Toby Redboy is not real.

JONATHAN (considers Father’s words till they start to make him dizzy; this real-imaginary thing still seems completely arbitrary): But he is real, Father. He talks to me and everything.

FATHER: That’s just you talking to yourself, son. And that’s okay, nothing wrong with that. But it is wrong to give different parts of your personality names and converse with someone who isn’t really there. That’s what people in the crazy house do. You don’t want to wind up in the crazy house, do you? Very well, I do not want to hear any more about this Toby Redboy, do you understand?

JONATHAN (looking over Father’s shoulder to see if Toby Redboy exhibits some symptoms of imaginariness he might have overlooked, but Toby Redboy is making funny faces behind Father’s back): Toby, that’s not nice. Meep-meep! (Jonathan Frederick Johnson III and Toby Redboy have decided that “Meep-meep!” is what the roadrunner says when he laughs, and the two boys have adopted it as their own secret laugh, a way of honoring the roadrunner’s memory now that they are no longer allowed to watch his show.)

FATHER (pulling off his belt): Son, I told you this Toby Redboy is imaginary: now you leave me no choice. (Reluctantly spanks the hell out of son.)

After that Toby Redboy still came around and tried to play, but Jonathan Frederick Johnson III ignored him. After awhile Toby Redboy’s feelings got hurt badly enough that he went away and never came back.

Jonathan was thinking about — and missing — Toby Redboy and the roadrunner and the dogs with their funny party hats and other friends Father had banished, when he got bored with the PBS special about the amphibians of Africa and went upstairs to his room. He wanted to be a good boy, but sometimes living in Mother and Father’s world where everything fun and exciting was imaginary and bad, and everything dead and boring was real and good made him so sad he could hardly stand it. He knew Mother and Father were wrong; they had to be. If only there was a way to show them that everything and everybody are real — they’re all just real in different ways — or if anything it was Dan Rather and President Clinton and the amphibians of Africa that were imaginary.

But how could he prove it when Father only bestowed reality status on stuff he could see and many of Jonathan Frederick Johnson Ill’s more colorful friends were notoriously shy and apt to vanish in the presence of grownups? He tiptoed across his bedroom, opened his door a crack, and peeked out into the hall to make sure Mother and Father weren’t out there listening. Then he went back inside, sat on his bed, closed his eyes and very quietly said, “Damn it!”

He opened one eye, looked around the room, but there was no one in it but him.

“Damn it!” he said, a little louder.

Still nothing.

“Damn it!” he shouted, and this time he was angry when he said it — so angry that he kicked his bed. And he must have kicked it too hard because there was an immense crash like thunder. Just then he smelled something yucky behind him — sort of like burning hair only much, much yuckier — so he turned around to see what was causing the stench.

His eyes got big and round, and all of the saliva in his mouth dried up. Once when he was six years old, Mother and Father had taken him to see a nature film. Before it started, coming attractions of It Came from Hell, a horror movie, were shown. Mother had covered his eyes, of course, but not before Jonathan Frederick Johnson III had seen the satanic star.

Now, here in his bedroom, striding right toward him, was that celluloid creature in the flesh.

It was eight feet tall with curved horns on top of its head, hooved feet like a goat, and long sharp fangs. In one paw it held a pitchfork, and in the other a little boy’s bloody, severed head. It was growling and drooling, and every step it took toward Jonathan burned a smoky hole in the carpet.

Before he could move or even think about moving, the demon lunged, swooped him up in its claw, held his pajama-clad body over its huge gaping mouth, and licked its lips with its forked tongue.

“Got any last words, kid?” snarled the demon. “Make them fast — I’m hungry!”

Jonathan Frederick Johnson III squirmed around till he was looking right in the monster’s blood red eyes.

“You’re the Boogeyman, aren’t you?” he said.

That question only seemed to make the monster madder and meaner. It tightened its grip on his neck and shook him till his teeth rattled.

“I am going to eat you, kid, don’t you get it? Chew you up and swallow you. You are going to die a slow, horrible, agonizing death, and nobody can save you. Now, stop asking stupid questions and do like you’re supposed to do — cry! scream! beg for the mercy you’re not going to — hey, cut that out!”

Jonathan Frederick Johnson III was playing with the monster’s horns.

“Are these real?” he asked. “Can I hold your pitchfork? You are the Boogeyman, aren’t you? I mean the real Boogeyman, not one of the Boogeyman’s helpers or anything?”

Steam shot out of the monster’s ears. He threw Jonathan Frederick Johnson III down onto his bed and then changed into something even uglier — a one-eyed, six-armed ogre with writhing, hissing rattlesnakes for hair.

Whoof! The ogre conjured up a fireball out of thin air, then rared back its middle right hand and hurled the ball of fire straight at Jonathan Frederick Johnson Ill’s face.

Jonathan did not even blink. And the fireball vanished a split second before it hit him.

The ogre gnashed his teeth and squinted his one red eye. “All right, kid, you want to play tough? Fine, let’s play tough.”

The rattlesnakes on his head sprouted wings and launched an aerial attack on Jonathan Frederick Johnson III, flapping and snapping all around him.

“Ha, ha, ha, yes, my beauties, that’s it. Dig your fangs deep into his tender young — hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

Jonathan had caught one of the flying vipers and was holding it up to his cheek, nuzzling and petting and cooing to it.

The ogre roared with rage and frustration.

“Cool,” Jonathan said. “Let’s go downstairs. You gotta show that fireball trick to Father.”

“Ohh, kid, I’m going to—” The rattlesnakes disappeared, and the ogre changed shape again, this time metamorphizing into a slimy, scaly, crocodile-looking thing. He kept his six arms, however, and without warning he leapt at Jonathan and pinned him to the bed with all six of them.

“Say your prayers, kid,” the crocodile creature snarled. “You’ve made me mad now, and you’re going to pay for it with your life.”

Jonathan just smiled. He was hoping Father would come upstairs and see him playing with his new, thoroughly-real friend, the Boogeyman — er, Boogeydile.

“All right, watch this, wisen-heimer.” So fast that Jonathan could hardly see what was happening, the Boogeydile shredded the pillow next to his head till it was nothing but dust and feathers floating around the room. “And you’re next. Now you’re scared, you hear me? You’re terrified. Frightened completely out of your wits. I know you are, so no more of this—”

“Meep-meep!”

Jonathan Frederick Johnson III reached up and honked his new friend’s snout — well, tried to honk it. But when he did, the tip fell off, bounced on the bedspread, and rolled off onto the floor.

The Boogeydile flew up off the bed, balled his scaly hands into fists, and stomped both feet on the floor. It looked like he was going to throw a temper tantrum. Father would be sure to come up now.

But all of a sudden the crocmonster stopped stomping and started pacing.

“It’s all right, everything’s under control. I just gotta stay cool,” he said to himself. “I’m not out of tricks yet, not by a long shot. But — damn it! — this kid’s a tough nut to crack.”

Jonathan wondered what horrific otherworldly creature would show up when the Boogeyman himself said the magic “damn it!” word, but nothing happened except that the chunks of ceiling plaster that had started to fall while the beast was stomping continued to rain down periodically. Where was Father? He must hear all of this going on.

“All right, what’s the problem here, kid?” The Boogeydile stopped walking back and forth and turned to talk to Jonathan. “I know it’s not me; I’m doing my job — and I am one scary son-a-B, too, I know that. So it’s gotta be you. You should’ve been peeing in your pajamas and screaming for mama a long time ago. So what’s the deal? Are you deaf and blind? Are you brain-damaged in some way? Or is Allen Funt hiding in the closet?”

“Heck no, buddy.” Jonathan rolled off the bed and grabbed one of the Boogeydile’s scaly hands. “There’s nothing wrong with me. Now, come on, I’ll help you find the rest of your nose. We gotta go show Father — or no, hey, I got it — turn back into that red thing with the pitchfork and the horns and all. That was way cooler.”

The monster flung Jonathan Frederick Johnson Ill’s hand away in disgust and started pacing around the room again. First he talked to the ceiling, then he talked to the floor, all the while waving and punching the air with his six arms. It was really funny to see a crocodile talk at all, much less talk so dramatically and gesticulatively, but Jonathan could tell his new friend was upset about something, so he politely stifled his laughter.

“I do not believe this. This I simply do not believe. I mean, I know I’ve been a little off my game lately, what with this flu and everything — but this! This is just... unbelievable. Turn back into that red thing with the pitchfork, he says. Red thing with the pitchfork! That was way cooler, he says. Way cooler!”

The monster stopped pacing and knelt down in front of Jonathan.

“Okay, kid, I admit you’re the greatest actor in the world, better than — I mean way cooler than me, and I’m better than Barrymore. So that makes you the greatest. Very well, I admit it, and I take my hat off to you. Now tell me the truth — you really are scared, aren’t you? Come on, just a little bit scared. You cover it well, but it’s all right, you can tell me. Please tell me.”

Jonathan wanted to make his friend feel better, but Mother and Father had taught him never to tell a lie, so he had to shake his head.

“Not at all? Look — look at all these teeth, every one of them sharp as a brand new razor. And hey, how about all these arms and these claws? Don’t you know I’ve scared all your friends and classmates many, many times? They really hate to see me coming, let me tell you. Why, just the other night I—” the Boogeydile reached between two chest scales and whipped out a notebook, opened it, and flipped through the pages till he found the information he was looking for “—I made Wesley Haynes — Wesley Haynes, the bully who stole your shoes and made you walk through that sticker bush — I made Wesley cry like a baby. Remember when he didn’t come to school one day last week because he was sick? He wasn’t sick; he was exhausted from lying awake scared to death all night long. Now, if I can do that to Wesley Haynes, surely I can — and Jean-Claude Van Damme, I scared the merde out of him when he was your—”

“Come on, let’s get downstairs before the news comes on. Father won’t talk to anybody after the news starts.” Jonathan Frederick Johnson III knew, of course, that it was bad manners to interrupt someone, but he was beginning to think the Boogeydile would go on talking all night long and never meet Father.

“So this is not a gag. You’re really not afraid of me.”

Jonathan thought the monster was going to cry when he said this. Then he thought the monster was going to hit him. But in the end he did neither of these things.

Instead he transformed again.

This time he turned into a man with long graying hair tied in a ponytail, bluejeans, cowboy boots, and a purple T-shirt that had “Moby Grape” written on the front. The man had only two arms, no pitchfork, no claws, no rattlesnakes.

Jonathan Frederick Johnson III, who had dashed to the door the moment the transformation began, anxious to go give Father a lesson in reality now that the Boogeyman was finally getting into the spirit of things, froze, his hand on the knob, when he saw what his formerly ferocious friend had become.

“No, don’t do that,” he said. “You look real now. Change back into—”

“What are you talking about, kid? I’m not—” The man, evidently unaware that he was no longer a crocodile, looked down at his new body.

“Oh no, God please nooo!” he screamed. “Not now — not me!” He examined his hands with disgust, then punched Jonathan Frederick Johnson III’s closet door off its hinges. “Please! Puh-leeze give me one more chance! I can scare him, just don’t do this to me now!”

Jonathan Frederick Johnson III wanted to comfort his friend — put his arm around him, tell him don’t worry, change into another monster, we’ll play some more, you don’t have to meet Father till you’re ready — but the man was pacing around so fast and kicking the furniture so hard Jonathan couldn’t get close to him.

“What are you hollering about?” he asked. “That costume you’re wearing now’s not scary at all.”

The man’s legs collapsed under him, and he sat on the floor, trying to tear his hair out with both hands.

“Just shut up, kid. You have no idea of the magnitude of the tragedy that just happened here. Damn it, I can’t believe the big guy fired me. I’m the best you ever had, you hear me?” He shook his fist at the ceiling. “What am I going to do now? Go back to waiting tables and hope for another big break? I’ve had this role for almost thirty years and I probably won’t even be able to list it on my resume. Geez, all I know is being the Boogeyman, and now I’m going to have to—”

Jonathan Frederick Johnson III clapped his hands together in spontaneous delight.

“I knew it! I knew it!” he sang. “I knew you were the Boogeyman.”

The Boogeyman stared at Jonathan for a long minute. Then he took his hands out of his hair and sat back on his heels. He looked calmer and less crazy than he had a minute ago, but he still didn’t look happy.

“Yeah, ‘were’ being the key word here, kid. I was the best and scariest Boogeyman since the late Middle Ages. I was the Boogeyman for longer than anybody else the past two centuries, and I would’ve broken Arnold Feldstein’s record in another couple of years. I was the Boogeyman who brought heart and soul back to the part; it was never just another job to me. I was the Boogeyman who scared them all on every continent, never turned down an assignment. And this is the thanks I get — fired, axed, the big booteroo. Yes, I was the Boogeyman and proud of it, too. And now I am nothing, an unemployed actor, brought down by a mere slip of a lad with a bad haircut and not enough sense to know when to be scared. Well, at least now I know how old Grizelda, the Wicked Witch of the West, felt — except, of course, that you’re not wearing ruby slippers.”

Jonathan Frederick Johnson III wasn’t sure what all the Boogeyman was talking about, but he did know what you’re supposed to do when you’re introduced to someone.

“How do you do?” he said, extending his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mister Boogeyman.”

“You still don’t get it, do you, kid? I’m not the Boogeyman any more. I’m not anything any more. You only get one mistake in this biz, and that’s it, you’re out. You meet one fearless kid, one kid you can’t scare, and bam, you’re back on the street. But what the hell, there’s no such thing as a fearless kid, right? Especially not with such a redoubtable Boogeymeister as myself on the job. Oh, I heard the rumors, all right, but—”

The grayhaired man saw that Jonathan still had his hand stuck out. He sighed heavily and shook it.

“Yeah, yeah, nice to meet you, Fearless. Don’t worry about ruining my career and my life and everything, no big deal.” He riffled through Jonathan’s stack of science and nature magazines. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to have the new Variety lying around, would you? No, I guess you wouldn’t — you don’t even have any comic books or Mads. You know, there’s something very definitely not right about you, kid.”

“I’m not allowed to read comic books at home. Father says they—”

“Right, okay, I understand. Well, you’re a lovely kid and I wish I could stay here and chat with you all evening, but if you’ll excuse me, there’s some pavements I gotta pound. Hmm, I wonder if that grandpa role on All My Children is still open.”

The ex-Boogeyman closed his eyes and placed his fingertips on his temples.

After a moment he opened his eyes, looked around Jonathan Frederick Johnson Ill’s bedroom like he didn’t know where he was, and hit himself on the knee.

“Great! Now he’s taken my teleporting abilities, too. How the hell am I supposed to get home?” he asked the ceiling. “You ungrateful, dog-faced, slave-driving — hey, kid, you got a phone, right? Mind if I use it?”

“Sure, I’ll show you where it is,” Jonathan told him. “It’s downstairs right by Father’s chair.”

“I know where it is. And listen, kid, don’t get your hopes up. The paternal one is not going to be able to see or hear me — I hope.”

He stood up and walked over to the door.

“Wait!” Jonathan said.

The Boogeyman turned around. “Yeah?”

“I am a little scared now.”

The Boogeyman smiled a sad smile. “Thanks, kid. I appreciate the thought.” And he turned and left the room.

But Jonathan Frederick Johnson III had been telling the truth. And now that the Boogeyman was gone, he was more than a little scared. He was scared of what the rest of his life was going to be like now that he had inadvertently killed the Boogeyman.

Jonathan Frederick Johnson III felt a little bit like he was going to cry. He had found proof positive that Mother and Father were wrong about the way the world worked; it wasn’t just Dan Rather and newspapers and African amphibians that were real. The Boogeyman was real — had been right here in his own room. But now he was gone. He wasn’t even the Boogeyman any more. Everything had changed. It was unquestionably Mother and Father’s world, and Jonathan Frederick Johnson III was a prisoner in it. The worst thing was that it was his own fault.

Sadly, he figured he might as well get ready for bed. For as long as he could remember he had had a witch living under his bed. He had never told Father about it because he didn’t want him to kill her, make her imaginary. Usually he hopped into bed from a few feet away, out of her reach. But tonight he got down on his hands and knees to look for her. There was now nothing under his bed but dust. He was wondering if he still had his old nightlight around somewhere when—

“Boo!” The bedroom door burst open, and a man with a Moby Grape T-shirt and a paper grocery bag over his head jumped into the room. “Well? Did I scare you?”

“Boogeyman, you’re back! Cool, I’m so glad to see you. Come on in.” Then Jonathan remembered the game his friend wanted to play. “I mean — whoa, you scared me.”

“Yeah, right.” The Boogeyman pulled off the paper bag and walked over to the window. “I should’ve known that wasn’t going to work. Trying to scare this kid without my powers is like trying to stop a stegosaurus with a broken BB gun. Still, hope springs eternal — cuz hope is a damn fool.”

“I was afraid you were gone for good,” Jonathan told him, “that you weren’t ever coming back.”

“Ironic choice of words there, kid. If you were really afraid I was gone for good, then of course I would be gone — out terrifying the prepubescent population better than anybody else in the history of Boogeydom. No, you thought I was gone for good, and so did I. But the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are not done pricking me yet. Get this.” The Boogeyman sat down in the desk chair.

“I call up Santa — my old buddy Kris Kringle, right? I say hey, my friend, I’m in a bit of a bad spot here, can you come give me a lift back to L.A.? And he says sorry, BM, can’t do it, the reindeer are all getting shod tonight. Can you believe that — getting shod. What do they need shoes for? They fly, for God’s sake. No, the truth is he just doesn’t want to be seen with an unemployed loser. Nobody — not even Father Christmas — loves you when you’re down and out.”

“You know Santa Claus? He’s real?”

“Yes, yes, and no way, forget it. Yes, I know him. Yes, he’s real — for now. Someday he’s going to meet a kid somewhere who’s not overcome with joy or greed or whatever it is at the sight of him, and then he’ll be just another overweight elderly man with a loud suit, a frigid wife, and a hefty Purina Reindeer Chow bill. And no way, forget it, I’m not going to slip him your Christmas list or put in a good word for you. Not that a good word from me would help you much. I’m nobody — the big Boogeyflop. Oh, I called my agent, too, but he wasn’t taking any calls. Now there’s a big shock for ya.”

“So what are you going to do?” Jonathan asked him. “You can stay here if you want to, you know. I’ll sleep on the floor, I don’t mind. You can have the bed.”

“Thanks, kid, you’re too kind. But I’ve got a ride coming — the Tooth Fairy.” The Boogeyman laughed, but Jonathan could tell he didn’t really think it was funny. “Can you believe it? Me, the fearsome frightful Boogeyman forced to hitch a ride on the molar express. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”

“The Tooth Fairy’s coming? here? tonight?” The Tooth Fairy had never come to see Jonathan Frederick Johnson III before, even when his baby teeth fell out. He figured Mother and Father probably scared him — or her — away.

“Yeah, and I have to wait for him here if you don’t mind. He can’t go into grownups’ rooms for some reason. Tooth Fairy union rules, I guess. Listen, I need just one more favor from you, kid. I need you to go to sleep. Timothy won’t come around when a kid’s awake. It’s a real phobia with him — I think he’s afraid he’ll be mistaken for a mosquito and get swatted or something. Anyway, if you’ll go see the Sandman, I’ll try to keep my sobbing at minimum decibels, and I’ll sit way over here so the stench of rotted dreams and utter abject failure won’t disturb you.”

“Well, okay.” Jonathan Frederick Johnson III wasn’t at all sleepy, but he pulled the covers up and laid his head down on the pillow. All was quiet for about a minute and a half; then the Boogeyman started talking, softly at first, then gradually louder. Jonathan sat up in bed. There was a question he wanted to ask him.

“How come you only scare kids?”

“Are you kidding me, kid? I want you to listen carefully. In fact — here, take this.” The Boogeyman dug through Jonathan’s school supplies and tossed a notebook at him. “You can be my Boswell. Ready? I scared ’em all in my day — princes and presidents, kings and counselors, the high and the mighty, the brave and the meek, the proud and the prejudiced, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Just name somebody. If they’re alive, you can bet I’ve scared them. And if they’re dead, I probably scared them that way.”

“You mean grownups?”

“How many kid kings and kid counselors do you know? Yes, grownups. After all, grownups are just big kids — no, that’s almost a cliche. Change it to kids are just little grownups. You are getting all this down, aren’t you?”

Jonathan pulled the empty notebook back where the Boogeyman couldn’t see it. If he really expected him to write all this down, he shouldn’t be talking so fast.

“But how can you scare grownups if they can’t see or hear you?”

“Oh, they see me, all right. It’s just that they see a different kind of hobgoblin from the one you do. They see me as being late for work or short on the rent or unprepared for a presentation.”

“That doesn’t sound very scary.”

“Well, of course it doesn’t sound scary to you, Kid Fearless. But just the possibility of being late or unprepared scares the mess out of the middle-aged if you do it right — and buddy, you better believe I did it right. It’s subtler and more challenging than scaring kids. No two adults have the exact same bugaboos. You have to, as Jeeves would say, consider the psychology of the individual.”

Jonathan Frederick Johnson III quietly laid the notebook aside. There was no way he was ever going to be able to spell words like “psychology” and “individual.”

“Who is Jeeves? Is he a Boogeyman, too?”

“Never mind, I don’t know why I’m giving you these pearls of Boogey wisdom anyway.” The Boogeyman, who had been pacing around the room as he talked, now sank back down into the desk chair. “Why should I tell you — the tyke who toppled my empire — anything at all? Even if you had the maturity to appreciate the elegance and the artistry involved in frightening adults — which you don’t. Geez, where is Timothy, that damn cuspid hustler? I’m starting to feel like a doddering old fool in his anecdotage, sitting around the old Boogeys’ home telling war stories.”

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Jonathan told his friend. “Let’s go scare a grownup right now. Let’s scare Father.”

“Yeah, right. It wasn’t just my pride and my dignity the big guy stripped me of, remember? I can’t teleport. I can’t transmogrify. There is not an ounce of Boogey left in this body. I’m an impotent imp. I couldn’t even startle a deer.”

“Well, you can still turn invisible like you did when you went to use the phone, right? Father didn’t see you, so you must still have some of your powers.”

“Oh, I get it. You want another chuckle at the poor old Boogeyflop’s expense. Very well, never let it be said that I disappointed an audience.” The Boogeyman stood up, and his voice got very big as he said, “Step right up, ladies and gentlemen. For one show only, I, the great Ozymandius, shall completely debase myself for your amusement. Gaze upon my works, ye mighty, and guffaw.”

The Boogeyman closed his eyes and placed the tips of his thumbs under his chin.

“See, kid, nothing’s hap—”

All of a sudden Jonathan Frederick Johnson III and the Boogeyman were not in the bedroom any more. They were in a strange pink bathroom. A woman wearing nothing but slippers on her feet and a towel around her head was looking at herself in the mirror. She was alone.

“Oh my God!” she yelled at her reflection.

And just like that Jonathan Frederick Johnson III and the Boogeyman were back where they started from.

The whole thing happened so fast Jonathan wasn’t completely sure it really happened at all. His head was spinning, and he didn’t know if it was because of the quick Dramamineless trip or his first sight of a real live naked woman.

“Well, what do you know,” said the Boogeyman. “I do still have a little of the old razzle-dazzle left in me. Man, that felt good! Don’t know how I managed to sneak it past the big guy, but man, that felt good!”

“What happened? Who was that lady?” Jonathan asked. “Why did she yell? Did she see us?”

“That was Mrs. Cardanella over on the next block. I was scheduled to haunt her next, and I guess that’s why we zapped over there when I closed my eyes to inventory my adult-spooking abilities. And hell yeah, she saw me; that’s why she yelled. I was the new wrinkle on her forehead. Pretty impressive, eh, kid? And that was off the cuff, with no planning or preparation or anything.”

“I knew you could do it. Let’s scare Father now.”

“No, too easy. Your dear old dad’s almost entirely motivated by fear. And since I’ve only got enough juice for one, maybe two, more grownup-spookings, I want to go for something challenging and memorable. Go out in that proverbial blaze of glory. Now, do you know any adults who are hard to horrify?”

“One time Larry Watson put a toad in Miss Whipperstaff’s desk. And she didn’t jump or scream or anything. She just picked up the toad and took it outside.”

“Fine, Miss Whipperstaff it is, then. But you’re going to have to stay here, kid. It’s strictly verboten to reveal any of this backstage Boogeyman stuff. If the incisor-mobile gets here while I’m gone, tell him I’ll be right back.”

“Please take me with you,” Jonathan pleaded. “I won’t tell anybody. And hey, maybe if you scare Miss Whipperstaff good enough, it’ll scare me, too, and you’ll get your job and your powers all the way back.”

The Boogeyman rubbed the palms of his hands together. Jonathan could tell his friend was almost as excited about scaring Miss Whipperstaff as he was.

“Well, hell, I suppose I should get used to working with an audience again. And what are you going to do?” the Boogeyman asked the ceiling. “Fire me? I’m already fired. All right, kid, fasten your seat belt. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

And the Boogeyman was right. It was a bumpy ride. First the room turned upside-down, then it turned sideways, and then it started spinning so fast Jonathan Frederick Johnson III couldn’t tell which way it was turning. A bright light — like the sun coming up all at once in the middle of the night — flashed, and when his eyes had adjusted, he was in his classroom at Harbor View Elementary School — well, sort of in it, sort of above it. He could see and hear everything and everybody, but nobody could see him. It was like he was floating around the room, invisible. He looked at the third desk in the fourth row behind Angela Mazcylyk, and there he — Jonathan Frederick Johnson III — was. He was in two places at one time, flying unseen about the room and sitting at his desk reading a Flash comic book hidden in his notebook. It felt weird to be looking at himself like that, sort of like hearing your own voice on a tape recorder, only weirder.

“All right, kid, face front. I’ve got a peg on Miss Whipperstaff’s psychology, and the show is about to start.”

He could hear but not see the Boogeyman beside him. He turned to the front of the class where Miss Whipperstaff, her black hair pulled back in a bow, was pointing to a poster of two children smiling and shaking hands.

“All right, class, today we’re going to learn more about good citizenship,” she said. “Yesterday we talked about manners and how important they are. Who can give me an example of—”

A sharp knock on the door.

Mr. Lavaliere, the assistant principal, didn’t even wait for Miss Whipperstaff to say “Come in.” He poked his bald head through the door and said:

“Doris, please forgive me for interrupting your class like this, but I need to speak to you right away. It’s about us.”

“Mr. Lavaliere, not now, please.” Jonathan Frederick Johnson III was so close to Miss Whipperstaff he could see the funny way she kept cutting her eyes and rolling her head over at the kids as she talked. “I will see you at lunchtime in the supply — in our usual place.”

“I’m sorry, but this can’t wait,” Mr. Lavaliere said. “And it won’t take but a minute. I just wanted to tell you that I can’t see you any more. I’ve decided to go back to my wife.”

Miss Whipperstaff’s bottom lip started to quiver, and then there were tears in her eyes and on her cheeks. Jonathan Frederick Johnson III couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He had no idea teachers ever actually cried.

“Oh, Marcel, how could you?” The pointer stick slipped from Miss Whipperstaff’s hand and hit the floor. Tears were running off her face now, and she didn’t even try to wipe them away. “You told me you loved me. Just last night you promised me we’d be together for—”

“Lower the curtain, roll the credits, hand me the statuette,” said the Boogeyman. Jonathan looked around. They were back in his bedroom.

“Well, what did you think?” the Boogeyman asked. “A bravura performance, wouldn’t you say?”

“That never happened to Miss Whipperstaff; I would remember that for sure,” Jonathan told him. “And it can’t be happening now because school is closed.”

“No, Miss Whipperstaff has not been unceremoniously dumped yet. Nor has Mrs. Cardanella discovered that forehead furrow. I told you grownups were more complicated. Kids’ fears are usually immediate, but you’ve got to work in the fourth dimension with adults. They’re not so afraid of what is happening, but they’re terrified of what’s going to happen. And make no mistake, it will happen. If you worry about — worry is just the grownup word for Boogeyman, for fear — something long enough and strong enough, eventually it’s going to happen. Every time without fail. That’s a universal law Haggerdorn MacRooly, the legendary Boogeyman of the Dark Ages, lobbied tirelessly to get passed.”

“But when is it going to happen?” Jonathan Frederick Johnson III wanted to be sure he didn’t miss school that day.

“I don’t know. Sometime in the future. When I’m on a roll, I can scare a twenty-year-old about his retirement, a thirty-year-old about how many people are going to show up at his funeral, a forty-year-old about what he’s going to do with his time after he’s been in heaven a couple of centuries and is starting to get bored with harp concertos. Truly I am the master of fear and of time.” The Boogeyman’s chest deflated. “I mean I was the master of fear and of time. Now I’m the master of disaster, a broken Boogeyman, a dark angel dewinged.”

“Okay, scare Father now,” Jonathan Frederick Johnson III said.

“You’ve got a real one-tracker there, don’t you, kid? Just dying to see Dad come undone. Well, sorry, I already told you I’m not going to waste my last little bit of Boogeyjuice on an easy mark. Why have you got it in for your old man anyway?”

“I don’t. I just want you to scare him because... because I don’t think you can do it, that’s why.”

“So you think he’s a real giant-killer, too, is that it, Jack? Like son, like father? Kid Fearless and his—”

“No!” Jonathan Frederick Johnson III shouted. “Father and I are not at all alike.”

“Oh, really?” The Boogeyman’s eyes sort of glazed over, and he took a couple of steps backward and started talking softly to himself. Jonathan Frederick Johnson III made out “well, maybe,” and “worth a shot,” but that was it.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing,” the Boogeyman answered, “I was just doing some psychology homework. Hang on, kid. It’s showtime.”

The Boogeyman put his thumbs under his chin, the room spun around again. And this time when Jonathan Frederick Johnson III could tell where he was, he was in Father’s study. Father was sitting in his uncomfortable leather chair reading a paper — but not a newspaper; it had lines on it like the paper Jonathan Frederick Johnson III used in school. It was easy to see that Father was mad. He did not like this paper at all.

“Jonathan, come in here, son,” he yelled from his chair. “I want to see you right now.”

And then a boy came bounding into the room, but Jonathan Frederick Johnson III the invisible fly did not even look at Jonathan Frederick Johnson III the boy. He flew in for a closer look at Father. Something about his face didn’t look quite right. He looked older, tireder.

“Son, I’ve been reading over this paper you wrote for school about what you did over the summer vacation. It says here you climbed a mountain on the moon and went to the North Pole with Superman. Now, you know none of that is true. It’s all imaginary. And what did I tell you about imaginary things?”

Yep, that was Father, all right. Still said the word “imaginary” like it tasted bad in his mouth. Still made his life-is-real, life-is-earnest face. When was the Boogeyman going to give it to him?

The boy said nothing, and when Jonathan Frederick Johnson III the invisible fly turned to look at himself, he was surprised to see that it was not he, not Jonathan Frederick Johnson III the boy. It was a kid he had never seen before. Could this be what Father was afraid of? That his son would somehow get a new face?

“I’m waiting, son,” said Father. “What do you have to say about this disgraceful paper?”

He turned the paper around to show it to the boy.

And when he did, Jonathan Frederick Johnson III the invisible fly saw the name printed at the top of the page.

Jonathan Frederick Johnson IV.

He looked back at the man he thought was Father and then at the paper again, trying desperately to make some sense out of all this. Then in one horrifying instant he knew exactly what it was he was seeing, and from somewhere way down deep inside himself Jonathan Frederick Johnson III screamed.

The last thing he saw before he landed back in his bedroom was a red beast with horns and a pitchfork smile and wink at him.

“See you later, kid,” said the Boogeyman.