YA chiller
"Traditional children's rhyme, Hancock County, Maine
Mumbler, Mumbler, in your bed,
Mumbler, Mumbler, take your head,
Eat your nose, gobble your toes,
And bury you where the milkweed grows."
Clara, protagonist of Gillian French's The Missing Season, is once again the new kid in school. Her father works for a construction company that sends him from job to job. This time he'll be helping to demolish the shut down mill that had probably been the source of most of the town's jobs...
...and to top that off she's starting her new school a month late, already behind.
In her previous schools she'd been pretty isolated, longing for close friends. Much to her surprise, Bree and Sage befriend her and introduce her to their crew...
...which includes a mysterious skater boy, Kincaid, who is sort of an oral historian among his peers. He tells her about a boy, Ricky, who twenty years previously had gone with his friends to the railroad bridge to smash 🎃s. His surviving friends said they'd heard an unseen entity under the bridge mumbling.
"'Next time anybody saw Ricky, he was red guacamole.' Kincaid pauses, smiling faintly, but he's not really seeing me now. 'Ever since,Mumbler's been around. Takes a bad kid every few years, always in October. Grown-ups have some bullshit excuse for what happened to the, but we know."
Clara thinks that the local kids are giving her a snow job, sure that she'll fall for it. But there are other stories of other kids.
"'Only explanation, right? Hit-and-run. She lost it somewhere between Randall Road and Wright way.' When I look blank, Landon gestures. 'Her head.'"
As it gets closer and closer to Halloween Clara is not so sure that the Mumbler narrative is a scare the new kid in town prank. Mysterious things begin to happen. Then one night Clara and her peers stuff stolen jack-o-lanterns with candy offerings and place them on the railing of the unused train bridge next to the dismal swamp in which the Mumbler is rumored to reside. One girl never makes it home. Her 🎃 is the only one knocked off the railing...
...until Clara's pumpkin follows.
This will be a great Halloween read...
...if you can wait that long.
On a purrrsonal note, next Monday I have to go to the hospital whose name I will not write for a kidney ultrasound that I don't want and probably don't need. An amazing number of procedures today are blatant attempts to get as much money as possible from patients and insurance providers. I'd say there's a 95% chance this test and my August appointment to hear my urologist interpret it fall into this category. But there's also an 100% chance that my friends who are less read 📚 up on the sorry state of American medicine, including my bestie, would have a fit. So even though I have a legal right to just say no as long as I put it in writing, I don't have the energy to fight my nearest and dearest. Anyway the morning of the ultrasound I have to drink a huge amount of liquid and hold it in my battered by three pregnancies bladder. They say 1 1/2 hours. I say 2 to allow for practically inevitable delays. Anyway I decided to spend this week practicing to build my bladder capacity. I made an hour and fifty-five minutes. Towards the end I couldn't concentrate enough for computer solitaire. (Jules)
People doctors sound worse than vetinarians. (Tobago)
A great big shout out to the friend who will give me a ride so I won't have to walk to the bus stop and ride a bumpy bus with a full bladder.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone
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