Return of the Masked Kid

By Dan Neiser

Things were just getting started in Who Was That Masked Kid?. The kid may have taken off the mask, but now he’s got a new goal: become a boy genius like Tom Swift. Be with his parents as they run from noxious gases emanating from his room and horrific, weird biological experiments. Discover the secret of the red button and find out why the kid almost killed himself getting to his first job. Be ready. The masked kid has returned, and nobody is safe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984558985

Dan Neiser

Dan Neiser is the author of 'Who Was That Masked Kid', and 'Return of the Masked Kid'. He lives in Southern California with his wife.

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Copyright © 2018 by Dan Neiser.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 10/27/2018

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CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1 Fear and Loathing in the Eighth Grade

Chapter 2 Fighting Your Way through the Nightmare

Chapter 3 Men to Match My Misery

Chapter 4 An Astounding Salute

Chapter 5 Educating the Physical

Chapter 6 Enemies in Victory

Chapter 7 The Creationist Side

Chapter 8 Showdown at the Evolutionary Corral

Chapter 9 The Old Maid’s Handbook and the Mysteries of X

Chapter 10 The New Neighbors and the Dead Rabbit

Chapter 11 To Pith a Frog

Chapter 12 The Boy Genius and His Camera

Chapter 13 The Summer of ’59

Chapter 14 Singing the Blues

Chapter 15 Shoot ’Em While They’re Sitting (or Running), or Don’t Shoot Them at All

Chapter 16 The Joys of HOO-HA

Chapter 17 The Yawning Pit

Chapter 18 Hot Water

Chapter 19 Easy Crossing

Chapter 20 Into the Storm

Chapter 21 Off to Church Again

Chapter 22 Return of the PE Nightmare

Chapter 23 A Semibrilliant Idea

Chapter 24 Heading for the Epiphany

Chapter 25 Return of the Living PE

Chapter 26 Summer and the Shop

Chapter 27 The Shop

Chapter 28 First Launch

Chapter 29 Marooned

Chapter 30 Adventures in Time, Space, and Zaps

Chapter 31 Connecting with God

Chapter 32 Wheels, Photos, and Hallelujah

Chapter 33 Backlash

Chapter 34 The Massive Mess-Up

Chapter 35 High School through a Viewfinder

Chapter 36 Martin

Chapter 37 Marty and Paula

Chapter 38 Bringing in the Sheaves

Chapter 39 Revenge of the Sheaves

Chapter 40 Whacking the Rebel

Chapter 41 Terrorizing the English Teacher

Chapter 42 Too Many Stamps

Chapter 43 Fights and Nonfights

Chapter 44 The Girls in the Church

Chapter 45 Her Face Rings a Bell

Epilogue

PROLOGUE

Him growing up, kemo sabe.

Yes, Tonto, he is more distant. We are losing him.

The Masked Man and his faithful Indian companion set their horses on a hill above their camp and looked down on their nephew fixing breakfast.

The kid had ridden into camp and was sitting down to a plate of buffalo steak that was Dan’s specialty.

Him no longer listening to radio programs about us.

The age of radio was almost over, and the Masked Man had been appearing on television in glorious black-and-white. The story was now visual, and it should have been better, but it wasn’t. What had been left to the imagination was now depicted on the screen, and not well.

Sound stages echoed when horses walked across them, and the daring Masked Rider of the Plains now met with his Indian companion beside a large rock that looked like it was made from papier-mâché.

The kid had long since rid himself of his black eye mask and had taken on and discarded other heroes. But the image and ideal of the Masked Man still lingered as he had had sought other fantasies.

Him in outer space now.

Yes, Tonto, I know. And he is venturing into dangerous territory he can’t face and is trying to escape from.

Him need to hide.

Yes, Tonto. He needs to find something better than us to face the road ahead.

They did not go into the camp that day but watched until the kid had finished eating and had said goodbye to Dan for the last time.

He was off on his new adventure…

And the Masked Man and the Indian couldn’t follow.

CHAPTER 1

Fear and Loathing in the Eighth Grade

Part 1

Fear

Honk!

Who did that?

Mrs. Wormchestor, English teacher and victim, took a belligerent five-foot-one stance in front of a junior high class comprised mostly of athletic boys that towered over her even while seated in their battered oak and wrought iron desks.

She had one hand on her hip to emphasize her strict displeasure. With thick lenses set in wire frames and a graying perm clinging tightly to a small head, she was a picture of matronly outrage. Slowly she perused the room, searching for the malefactor.

Silence.

After another threatening look, she turned to write a sentence on the blackboard. Now the subject of this sentence is—

Honk!

The rude noise came from another the corner of the room. Mrs. Wormchestor dropped her chalk and stalked to the end of the aisle and stood over Ike Strutz, glaring down at him as he hunkered over his English book, his face flushed as he tried to hold in his mirth.

Did you do that? Mrs. Wormchestor said.

Honk!

This time it was Terry Briggs, sitting two rows over from me. Both Ike and Terry stood over six feet (and were maybe a year older than I was, now at a whopping five foot six) and made life miserable for everybody they could possibly make life miserable for.

Mrs. Wormchestor whirled around, just as Lloyd Niven knocked the books off my desk. Lloyd laughed as I scrambled to pick them up along with the scattered papers across the floor.

I saw that! she shouted, running across the room and down the aisle to where Lloyd was now hunkered down, his shoulders shaking with silent mirth.

You all think this is pretty funny, don’t you?

Mrs. Wormchestor and the rest of the eighth-grade English class didn’t stand a chance. Ike, Terry, and Lloyd were all top athletes, fast and tough. Kids bigger than they were and outweighed them by many pounds were afraid to cross them.

Part 2

Elmer Blundt

All right, she said, still brandishing her twelve-inch ruler. I’m going to get the principal.

This elicited derisive laughter, and as soon as she left the room, Lloyd shoved the books off my desk again.

Terry sauntered over from his desk in the middle of the room and sat on top of the kid’s desk behind Lloyd. Neiser, I’m going to knock you on your backside while she’s gone.

I said nothing and picked up my books—again.

Since my parents had started me while I was still four years old rather than waiting until I was five, I was small for my age and essentially one year chronologically behind my classmates.

Terry was getting out of his seat when Elmer Blundt came in, followed by Mrs. Wormchestor.

Mr. Blundt was armed with a paddle that to my eyes looked about twelve feet long.

Terry settled back in his seat, and the expression on Lloyd’s face became marginally soberer.

So, we’re having trouble in here again, Mr. Blundt said in his gruff, scratchy voice, which probably owed its hoarseness to too many Chesterfields.

Mr. Blundt was a little taller than Mrs. Wormchestor, maybe five feet six or so, but he was considerably more, uh, rotund. A fringe of graying hair encircled his almost-bald head, the baldness relieved by a few strings of black hair pasted across it.

His hairbrush mustache and black-rimmed glasses magnifying his eyes gave Blundt the look of dead-end tramp who belonged hanging out in front of a cigar shop just across the street from the flophouse where he stayed for the night.

This appearance was hardly relieved by his dark suit and tie, the shoulders of which provided a backdrop for heavy dandruff that looked like snow on coal. Considering his lack of hair, one was forced to wonder where it came from.

However, silence reigned while he carried the twelve-foot—I mean, two-foot—paddle and glared around the room.

Now, if anybody wants to feel this paddle applied to their rear end, and if you want to feel what it is like to get kicked out of school, you just keep it up. You smart alecks think you can get away with your shenanigans, but if you find yourself in my office, you’ll discover what you can and can’t get away with.

Silence, no honks.

Mr. Blundt and Mrs. Wormchestor looked at each other, and the former gave a slight nod. With one more baleful look at the class, Elmer Blundt retreated, no doubt to find an out-of-the-way hideout to take a swig of Jack Daniel’s accompanied by a couple of puffs on a cigar.

The bell rang mercifully as Mrs. Wormchestor returned to the blackboard and scrawled out tomorrow’s assignment.

Tomorrow, class, I want … But she was drowned out by the slamming of books and twenty pairs of boots hitting the floor as kids pushed and shoved each other (after Ike, Terry, and Lloyd exited) to leave the class, not necessarily to encounter better things.

Part 3

Loathing

The next class was PE, where the nightmare, begun in English at 8:00 a.m., continued and escalated.

Fortunately, the terrible three—Ike, Terry, and Lloyd—weren’t in the same physical education class with me.

But they were replaced by others, like Arnie Hoodville, who was just as lean, quick, and athletic, whose locker was next to mine, and who had about a foot in height and twenty pounds on me. I had to be careful not to annoy him while changing clothes.

Another kid worthy of note was Nothead Crumb, who started calling me an obscene name. I put up with this as long as I could but, as you will soon see, had to finally do something about it.

CHAPTER 2

Fighting Your Way through the Nightmare

Part 1

The Fight That Wasn’t

All right, Crumb! I yelled across the mass of boys in various stages of undress. If you want it, you’ve got it. Meet me in Fighting Alley.

Fighting Alley was a place you didn’t want to go—ever. It was across the street from the bus stop, where yellow school buses picked us up. While we milled around waiting for our buses to come, we tried not to watch the bullies and their buddies beating up on hapless kids over there.

Trust me, it took a lot of guts to call him out to Fighting Alley. There were some hairy fights in Fighting Alley, and there was genuine blood on the pavement from some gnarly beatings that I myself had witnessed from a safe distance across the street.

I knew enough not to wait over there, so after school, I watched it from the school side of the street to see if he would show.

He didn’t show, and the name-calling stopped. It didn’t surprise me. He was brave when he thought he had the protection of his friends.

Not so much without them.

Part 2

The Fight on the Gym Steps

Whack!

The towel made a satisfying pop as I snapped it at Ted Nutcase’s behind, and he turned around as expected and wrapped his towel around my torso.

I responded with a towel to the face, and Ted came back with a set of knuckles to my jaw.

Okay, Nutcase, I said. We take this outside.

Yeah, out on the front steps.

I put the rest of my clothes back on, got my books out of the locker, and headed for the front steps of the PE building with Nutcase behind me.

That was a mistake, because a blow to my posterior sent me staggering forward. I turned around in time to get a kick to my leg from Nutcase, who had decided to turn the fistfight into what many considered a girl kick fight.

The collision of his foot with my upper leg sent me stumbling down the steps with him after me. At the base of the steps, we started exchanging kicks.

My face must have started to get red, because Nutcase started shouting, Yeah, baby, cry! Go ahead and cry!

This time I decided I wasn’t going to. I’d done enough of that. I got control of myself and stared at him, my fists up.

Monty Dominguez, a tough kid who was to become a lettered wrestler, moved up to Nutcase and whispered something in his ear. Whatever Monty said, Nutcase thought it was a good idea, because he lowered his head and charged like a bull.

Well, he started this kick first, I had time to think, and the next thing to do was just too obvious. I raised my knee into his face as he came in.

There’s a lot of power behind a knee coming up like that.

There came a satisfying thump, and Nutcase turned away, holding his hands over his face as the coaches showed up, running down the gym steps.

Neither one of you boys looked too enthusiastic about that fight, Coach Moron said. But if you do, we’ll give you each a pair of boxing gloves and time to finish it.

Of course, I hadn’t want to fight until I’d been hit in the mouth and kicked several times in the rear.

And Nutcase, with his nose bleeding like that, didn’t seem want to finish it either.

Part 3

The Fight on the Bus

One of the really big things you didn’t want to do was miss your bus. That put you on the grounds longer into the afternoon than you wanted to be and subjected you to God knows what—including God knows which bully.

Somehow, I missed T-17 (hotrod queen, coolest bus you’ve ever seen), and somehow, I knew that T-38 would still get me out onto Plateau Mesa, maybe not letting me off at Patton Drive but close enough still to walk.

T-38 pulled up, and I was ready to board. There were a few kids ahead of me, innocuous-looking ones like that girl with the red hair and the pink lunch pail, or the one ahead of me with the pale complexion, crewcut, and dark rimmed glasses of a class nerd.

Exuberantly, I ran to the back of the bus and took the last seat, throwing my books and lunch pail down next to me.

This will work, I thought. A short walk and I’ll be right on my doorstep.

My ebullience was quickly turned to horror as some big guys with ducktail haircuts and black leather jackets with their collars turned up, a la James Dean, crowded onto the bus and quickly approached me. They took seats in front of me and on the side, all staring at me with vacant eyes.

Well, look what’s here? a big guy with red hair and pale-blue eyes said between gum chews.

Who does he think he is, taking over our turf? said the hatchet face with the thin lips and a black ducktail.

A Negro lover, I’d guess. (Now of course he didn’t say Negro, but rather a related racial slur not to be repeated here.)

You think you can get away with sitting here, Negro lover?

I don’t have anything against Negros, I said, and I didn’t. I didn’t even know one.

They all laughed. What a little slimeball, Redhead said.

Okay, Negro-loving slimeball, Brown Hair, with a pair of close-set blue eyes and thin lips, sitting in front of me, said. We’re the Dipshirt gang, and you are on our turf. You heard of us?

Nope.

There was silence for a moment while they looked at each other.

He needs to fight one of us.

Yeah, he’s kind of small though. Who should he fight, Harvey?

I was to find out later that Harvey Dipshirt was the leader of the gang, from whom it derived its name.

He can fight my brother Tiny. They’re about the same size. Get in there, Tiny.

A kid sat down beside me. Blond and blue eyed, Tiny Dipshirt looked like a smaller version of Harvey the Ducktail with the vacant blue eyes.

He was about my size but more muscular and filled out. I guessed he was around my age.

Yeah, fight Tiny. Let’s see what Negro lover can do.

I raised my lunch pail as a weapon.

Yeah, go ahead, Tiny said. You can use that.

They all looked at me expectantly, and my bluff was called. I decided it wasn’t too good an idea, so I passed my books and lunch pail up to a kid who wasn’t part of the gang and who sat in a seat kitty-corner on the other side of the aisle. Somebody slapped my lunch pail as it went past, but it held together. Nothing spilled out.

Tiny stood up and lifted a leg, like he was going to kick me. I turned so both feet were facing him and gripped the rails on the backrests of the seat in front of me and my own. I was doubled up like a spring with heels aimed at his groin.

Kick me, and I’ll put you right through that bus wall.

We stood there in a Mexican kick standoff, but he must have heard of my kicking reputation with Ted Nutcase, so he hesitated and then put his foot down. I dropped my feet to the floor, pleased I had won that bluff, and got my fists up.

I don’t know who went for the first blow, but we were soon into it. We traded blow for blow, and at one point, he got a fist through and hit me in the right eye.

Who knows how long it went on, and I can’t remember much of it except that suddenly I found that I had grabbed his hair with my left hand and was hammering his face with my right fist.

A pair of hands grabbed me by the lapels and dragged me off. I was looking at another fist, owned by Brown Duck Tail in the seat in front of me.

Unclench your fists.

I had a hard time understanding what he was saying.

Unclench your fists.

I looked at him and at his fist and, for a moment, considered going over the seat after him. Sanity returned, and I looked down at my own fists, slowly unclenching them.

Tiny was hanging onto the backseat railing, his chest heaving.

What the heck! I thought stupidly. What’s wrong with him?"

I grew up being bullied by Len Trefzgher and couldn’t conceive of the notion of actually winning a fight.

Let him rest up, and we’ll give Tiny another shot at it at the next bus stop.

Well, I’d had it. He’d had his shot, and that was it.

Hey, Bus Driver! I yelled.

The bus driver turned around and pointed an outraged finger at the Dipshirts. I saw that!

I couldn’t believe that he saw it but hadn’t done anything about it until I yelled at him.

The Dipshirts let me go. I grabbed my books and lunch pail and headed for the front of the bus, just as it was pulling over to the curb.

I had a shiner for quite a while after that, and I wish I could say that I felt good after the fight, but I didn’t. In fact, I lost my nerve. After that, I started hiding from Tiny Dipshirt and his gang. At one point, he caught me just as I was trying to board T-17 and kicked me in the rear as I was trying to pick up my books.

I turned around just as he was taking a defensive position, but I didn’t fight him. I’d had enough of missed buses and their consequences.

I grabbed my books, jumped on the bus, and tried to forget the Dipshirts, and eventually Tiny forgot about me.

So what’s the jury verdict? Should I have kept fighting him or did what I did? I’ve got a feeling that violence begets violence. If you fight, you get into more and more fights until all you do is fight.

And I had better things in life to do.

Part 4

Run for Your Life

After that, though, I completely lost my nerve. School was an endless experience in terror, from one end to the other.

A hood sat in front of me in Mrs. Harassment’s math class. He was, as usual, bigger than me—tough-looking guy with his hair slicked back on either side.

His furrowed brow was sprinkled with red pimples, and there was a tough look in his washed-out blue eyes.

He wore biker jeans and boots, and no doubt had a switchblade stashed somewhere on his person.

(Note: A musical that came out in later in the ’80s called gangbangers greasers, because they used hair grease to comb their hair back in ducktails. I never heard that term.)

While Mrs. Harassment was running up and down the aisles, shrieking unintelligibly like a demented harpy and whacking kids on the head with a ruler, Duck Tail turned around and shoved a set of knuckles in my face, each sporting wicked-looking jagged rings.

You could really tear a guy up with those, I commented.

That’s the idea, he said and went back to doing whatever he was doing, which didn’t seem to include math.

From trying to stay out of the sights of the Honking Three in Mrs. Wormchestor’s Period-One English insane asylum, to dodging hoods in the school corridors as I made my way between classes, to trying to get my books out of my locker, which just happened to be placed off the main drag in the vestibule of the boys’ bathroom, life became a run for your life daily episode.

And being used to taking my problems to my parents, I finally told my dad how scared I was of the kids bigger than I was at school.

Well, if it were me, he said, I’d knock all of them into the middle of next week.

I can’t do that, Dad. They’re bigger and faster than I am.

Well, I’d never let that bother me. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Just stand up to them and don’t back down.

I can’t do that! I shouted. They’re bigger than I am.

Yes, you can! His face was getting red. You just have to …

I had never had an argument with my dad before in my life, and it was too much for me. Feeling like my life was falling apart, I ran out of the living room, taking refuge in my bedroom from a concept I couldn’t handle. The door banged open, and my dad stood in the doorway, his face flushed.

I should have known he wouldn’t understand. He was six feet four, lean, with hard muscles like a football quarterback. He had grown up with four brothers on a Nebraska farm and had learned how to handle himself confidently in any fight from early childhood.

I, on the other hand, took after my mother’s side of the family. My mother was a mere five foot one, delicate in build and artistic in temperament.

Anybody that walks out on me when I’m talking to them, I’m going put through the wall! he shouted.

By this time, all I could do was bawl.

He took one more look at me and slammed the door.

As far as I was concerned, it now looked like not only was the whole school out to beat me up, but my dad would too if they did.

I was fourteen, and life had changed radically from when I was five, running around wearing a black mask, ready to fight the bad guys and put them in jail.

The mask had come off and gone in the trash, along with any sense of being a hero.

CHAPTER 3

Men to Match My Misery

Part 1

Spaceships and Covered Wagons

"And so, mountain men such as Jim Bridger explored the Colorado Rockies and encountered the Ute Indians. Have any of you read Men to Match My Mountains"?

Mrs. Hannibal stood at the front of the state history class, holding up a dog-eared copy of the book she was talking about. Behind her was a painted panorama of the Front Range of the Rockies, which stretched from one end of the room to the other.

It was a subject that normally, had I encountered it in some of the Western novels I was reading, would have been very interesting, but it proved to be excruciatingly boring the way she taught it, which consisted of piling one miserable, forgettable fact on top of another miserable, forgettable fact, faceless names parading across the mountains with no reason or purpose—that I could discern, anyway.

Meanwhile, I fingered the library book in my satchel entitled The Stars, Like Dust by Isaac Asimov.

Now here was history—exciting and challenging. It was a novel about the future of an evil, despotic empire that spanned the entire galaxy and ruled it with an iron hand.

Basically, it was a murder mystery that took place on a starship traveling between worlds in interstellar space.

A starship? Interstellar space? An empire spanning the galaxy?

This was science fiction, a genre that, in 1958, was at best ridiculed as outlandish and not worthy to be taken seriously.

All anybody knew about science fiction came from B-grade movies featuring bug-eyed monsters menacing half-naked women, and bulbous-headed aliens gaining control of the human race.

In Mrs. Wormchestor’s class, Terry Briggs had spotted my book, which I had unwisely left out on my desk, just as he was about to call out another honk to help her move around the classroom a little faster.

The night before, The Life of Riley had featured a woman who was an astrologer. She spent the entire half-hour episode repeating the sentence My mind is in the stars to the accompaniment of insipid canned background laughter.

My mind is in the stars, Terry said, demonstrating he had watched the show instead of doing his homework. He laughed uproariously and knocked the book off my desk.

Terry’s comment relieved