Tom Swift Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

by George S. Walker

It must be the damn squirrels getting in. Tom had gotten a free pickup load of shells from the hazelnut processing plant as mulch for his rose beds. The squirrels wouldn’t leave the broken shells alone. They were convinced that, somewhere in the heaps of shells, there were hazelnuts.

Tom opened the window and shouted, “There are no nuts!” The squirrels looked at him and then carried off more shells.

He’d inherited the house from his father, Mr. Swift, Senior, the famous inventor. Buildings of that era had mouse holes, and the squirrels were getting in. The evidence was in his father’s old bedroom, a hoarder’s paradise. Each night, Tom heard noises: scratching and thumping. And every morning, things had been disturbed in the bedroom. The room was packed wall to wall with boxes of his father’s cockamamie inventions, too out-of-date to sell now. There shouldn’t be anything for the squirrels to eat.

Tom was too soft-hearted to use traps or poison. So he bought rolls of chicken wire. Then he used a staple gun to fasten chicken wire over every possible opening around the base of the house. He expected to sleep soundly after that, but that very night, the same noises. And in the morning, more boxes had been disturbed in the bedroom.

Tom surveyed the room. The old family dresser was cluttered with half-finished inventions, to which Tom had added the box that once held his father’s ashes. It was empty now because the ashes were buried at the cemetery. The four-poster bed was piled to the ceiling with boxes. Pressed against the headboard, with heavy boxes stacked around it to help Tom forget, was the box from the Cryonics Institute.

Tom’s father dreamed of the future; when he died, he had himself cryogenically frozen to be reincarnated in an Optimus robot when Musk perfected human-machine interfacing. But only his head had been frozen. The Swift Bitcoin account ensured that the Cryonics Institute would take care of him... until AIs emptied the world’s cryptocurrency accounts.

There was no way Tom could afford CI’s monthly fees with his gig delivery work. So two weeks ago, CI had disconnected his father’s Dewar flask and messaged Tom to pick it up. The sealed Dewar with the head was in the box.

Tom went outside, looking for squirrel burrows near the foundation. Nothing. The next day, the same thing. Something was getting into his father’s bedroom, but only at night.

It was a mild October, the moon was full, and Tom had a sleeping bag. He decided to camp in the yard, in view of the bedroom window.

He’d nearly fallen asleep when he heard a noise. He raised his head and, in the moonlight, he saw. Not a squirrel but a man. He was raising the window so he could climb in. The figure didn’t have a head. Tom’s heart accelerated to warp speed. He scooted deep inside his sleeping bag and zipped it shut. There was no getting back to sleep after that.

The next morning, he grabbed a shovel as a weapon and warily entered the bedroom. There was no one in the room. But, in the calm of daylight, Tom figured out what was going on. He lifted the heavy boxes off the bed to get to the Cryonics Institute box. He put it in the back of his pickup truck along with the shovel. Then he drove to the cemetery. He dug down to where his father’s ashes were, dropped the Dewar flask in and covered up the grave.

That night, there were no thumps from his father’s bedroom. But there was still scratching. It seemed to be coming from the attic. In the morning, Tom went to the door leading to the attic stairs and tried to open it. It was stuck. Tom heaved on it with all his strength.

It was like a dam bursting. The hazelnut shells that the squirrels had carried in through the attic vents poured down the stairs. He lost his footing and fell.

“There are no nuts!” he shouted.