To dat Crust ye noids
does scurry, Where up der comes dat
big Crystal In blusts o’ wind and
mighty flurry.
Den grabs it good an’
off ye cops it. ’Cause moves it does
we Hoidenall. So makes be sure ya
doesn’t drops it. The Book of Nuldoid
Contentions
13:3
ARREN WORST WAS sitting at his kitchen table grading
school papers in the late afternoon of October 17, 1989. His orange cat,
Howard, was dozing peacefully on a dirty blue pillow in the corner, his body
twisted as though mangled in a car accident, head upside down, left paw
outstretched to the kitchen floor. A light breeze lifted the plaid curtain that
hung over the sink, and then gently floated it back down. This was pretty much
the scenario that played out every afternoon in Warren’s kitchen, although, on
this particular day, the radio was on and bleating baseball stats in the
moments before the third game of the World Series over at Candlestick Park.
Other than that, it was a normal typical ordinary Tuesday afternoon and Warren
had no reason whatsoever to suspect that everything in his world—everything in theworld—was about to change.
Warren Worst, as you’ve probably already guessed,
was Grampa’s father—which would make him the children’s great-grandfather. At
six feet and change, he was fairly tall, thin, some would say lanky. His hair
was straight black and fell loosely to either side of his head. His nose was
sharp, pointed, and, for some reason, reminded people of Abe Lincoln. Having
rounded thirty a couple of years earlier, his face was decidedly a
man’s—square, firm, serious—yet here and there, remnants of the boy he once was
peeked through.
He’d been teaching sixth grade social studies for
ten years, which he was no longer excited about. When he was younger, he had
wanted to be a teacher because he wanted to teach young people new things—unlike
the bored and boring teachers who’d taught him. He wanted to show kids how to
look at the world in different ways. He wanted them to question the system that
was in place. He thought that if kids did that, they could find the best
answers, the best solutions to the problems they would face. What he found, was
that there were a great many regulations and rules, rigid guidelines and dull
textbooks—all very irksome, very tedious—that had to be strictly and
specifically followed. It seemed that everything taught in the past had to be
taught in the future, the same way it had always been taught in the past.
Despite the rules, he brought in magazine articles
about ridiculous goings-on in society, and commented on TV shows that his
students had never seen, made fun of Presidents Nixon and then Carter and even
made fun of Alexander Hamilton—for which he was reprimanded by the school. He
persisted for a time, but he didn’t like being reprimanded and eventually
decided to just teach what he was supposed to teach. Though he didn't know it
yet, he’d become exactly the kind of bored and boring teacher he’d set out not
to be.
HAT HE ALSO didn’t know, couldn’t know, was that at
the very moment he was grading school papers at his kitchen table, two very
small, very unusual creatures were emerging from a crevice on a hillside
nearby. They would change everything for Warren Worst.
They were each not quite two feet tall, and while
they both wore faded and scuffed denim overalls, one of them, the older one,
seemed to fill his at the belly much more snugly than did his companion. They
wore solid work boots for their oversized feet, and stood, the both of them,
like stalwart fireplugs. The pudgy one had a significant beard, generously
speckled with gray and white. He had white caterpillar eyebrows that ended
abruptly and pointed at the stark lines that creased his forehead. The younger
creature was clean-shaven, though he would have benefited greatly from a beard,
not having much of a chin to speak of, which, with his large nose and generous
ears, made him look somewhat like a mosquito. But what was perhaps most significant about these
creatures was their attitude. It was sour. Very sour. They didn’t seem to like
much of anything, seemed mostly to enjoy complaining about everything,
including each other, and they especially liked complaining about the weather.
Which might seem kind of pointless—as Mark Twain once brought up—unless you
intend to do something about it. But these two did not seem to appreciate
weather of anysort: not wind or rain certainly, not snow or hail, not
fog, not cold, but neither did they care much for sunshine. All of it annoyed
them tremendously.
They had traveled a great distance to be where they
were, but neither seemed to care since they were, at the moment, busy
quarreling over something that apparently happened hundreds of years earlier.
There were several other small creatures traveling with them, but they had not
yet emerged from the opening in the ground. These other creatures were male and
female and, well, one was neither male nor female.
But these other creatures never emerged from the
opening. They almost did, but just as they climbed to the lip of the crevice
and were about to hoist themselves up and out, the earth itself began to shift
and move and then, most unfortunately, the sides of the crevice collapsed and
slammed together with a deafening roar, crushing all the creatures inside like
so many pancakes. Or crepes, which are very thin pancakes. At any rate, it was
horrific.
Amidst the thunderous collision of the tunnel’s
walls and the violence of the earth’s tectonic plates in motion, the two
surviving creatures were knocked to the ground like wobbly bowling pins. When
they managed to get to their feet again—no small task for the chubbier of the
two—they looked down at the opening and saw that it was no longer an opening at
all. It was instead just a thin jagged crack where only a small, pitiful,
peculiar-looking hand protruded as it reached up to the sky like some pathetic
twig that a child might have jabbed into the dirt.
The two creatures stood on the hillside looking at
the crack in the ground where their companions had been killed. The younger of
the two survivors suddenly grew angry. “Well, murk fuddle!” he grumbled. Which
you’d have to assume was, if you’d been there to actually hear it, a swear
word.
“Yup for dat,” said the older one. Both of them
nodded in agreement, possibly for the first time ever. Then they shouted that
peculiar phrase, “Hib nobb del noid,” into the crack where the crevice once
was. They did this several times, and each time, they seemed disappointed that
their words did not cause the crevice to reopen. They stood on either side of
it, looking defeated and drawn, like waifs over a sidewalk grate where their
only nickel had fallen. Finally, the creature with the beard turned to the
mosquito-looking one. “It doesn’t gonna open, Kyle. Is all busted fromma
noodge.”
The younger one especially had reason to be upset
since, of those below who were now smashed and dead, one was his brother,
another his aunt. But that wasn’t what was mostly bothering him as he looked
down at the tomb of their companions and friends and family. He shook his head
sadly. “Ach,” he said, “they had alls we beer.”
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Chapter Two
“Yup for dat,” said the older one. 
