Doug was a solidly built 13-year-old Japanese American boy endowed with good looks, a solid build and girls constantly lusting after him. Things always seemed to come easy for Doug–except the voice change, which snuck up on him like a ton of bats.

During the summer, seven of us would get together and play softball in a church parking lot the size of a football field. We expertly hopped the parking curbs for fly balls and played bank-shots off them on grounders.

We had to play in the parking lot, several blocks away, because old lady Olsen always complained when we played in the street. She was a spinster with fading brown hair in curlers who spent most of her time finding fault with us. We would be having a great time, not bothering anybody, and she would come along acting shocked, and for no reason blurt out we were all going to the devil.

The best time to play was at dusk. We found we could play into the night aided by surrounding streetlights and a full moon. Thus batball was invented.

One night Doug hit a fly ball, and as I squinted to find it in the moonlight, I received an unexpected bonus. A winged black silhouette followed the ball right into my mitt. The split second the ball touched my glove, I threw off the mitt and nonchalantly backed up a few paces.

"What's the ma...tter? Why did you climb up that telephone pole?" Doug hollered across the parking lot in his now all too familiar high-pitched voice.

No one made fun of Doug's high-pitched screeches. To do so meant a sudden punch in the face. No one laughed either-if they could help it.

I tried to act cool, like this black hallucination on the ball never happened, while also stifling an urgent need to burst out with a bad case of the giggles at Doug's indiscretion. "Nothing's wrong man," I said climbing down. "I just wanted to see the ball better, that's all."

I picked up my mitt and giggled into it, thinking of how silly Dave had been when his voice cracked. Then I approached the ball and lifted it, checking for cooties. Nothing. Had to be my imagination. I threw a high arching ball back to Doug and it was followed by another black silhouette. Doug suddenly jumped away and waved his bat like a madman directing traffic.

"What's the matter, Doug?"

"Nothing, just got something in my eye," he cracked again mid-word. The awful thing was, Doug's high-pitched voice would sneak up on you resulting in riffles of uncontrolled laughter and the ubiquitous punch in the face.

All of us went around with at least two of Doug's personal fist impressions on our face because of our inability to stifle a giggle, snort or outright guffaw. That's why we liked playing at night. It was difficult for him to pinpoint the source of the laughter.

Doug hit another high fly, followed closely by another winged black shadow, to Scaredy Pants Jay, who ran from it-- as always. But this time he kept on running-off the lot and all the way home.

For the rest of the night we played a new game-where it was considered bad form to catch the ball before it bounced off the pavement. The rules involved elongated dancing, shrill whoops and high pitched screeching.

Eventually we realized we weren't hallucinating. Bats from the adjoining orchard circled our impromptu baseball field looking for food. When the ball went up, a bat locked it in its radar and followed it downward.

"Hey look at th...is," Doug said, his voice cracking. "He tossed the ball straight up into the air. It came down followed by one of the black rodents. Doug, baseball bat in hand, took a swing at the other bat and whiffed it.

We all took turns trying to slam a 'bat ball' home run. But each time the shadowy bird came within reach, its radar detected the Louisville Slugger and evaded it.

Doug had the best chance of tagging one. He would call to them. "Batta Batta, Batta..." and they would come down behind the ball three and four at a time. They seemed to like his girly voice.

A few nights later we had been playing bat ball again, and we were about to quit for the night when Doug took one last shot. He untucked his sweatshirt from his jeans and fired the ball at least 100 feet into the air. Picking up the bat he called, "Batta, Batta, Batta... Come to daddy, Batta, Batta, Batta..."

The ball went up so high that we lost sight of it as the moon shone overhead. We saw it coming down though, with about 100 bats in close pursuit. Five boys dove for cover. Scaredy Pants Jay, already watching from 200 feet away, also dove for cover.

Doug stood tall in the batter's box and swung ferociously-- screaming at the top of his lungs. "Agggh," he squealed. "AAAggghhhh!" he screeched again.

At the time, we didn't know what had happened. All we knew was Doug took off squealing down the parking lot toward the street with about 300 bats in hot pursuit. The more he screamed, the more the bats seemed attracted to him. He stopped at the street and appeared to be doing some type of breakdance. He spun on his back for a bit, jumped 20 feet into the air and took off like the devil was after him -- followed by the bats and his five friends.

"EEEP! EEEP!" Doug squawked as he took evasive maneuvers to ditch the flying rodents. "SQUEEK, SQUEEK," the bats responded to the boy's sweet mating calls.

Doug snuck into old lady Smith's back yard and tried to hide in her laundry on the clothesline. But he must have been emitting some kind of musk scent because the bats weren't fooled for a moment. He dove into Mr. Smith's red long johns, rolled onto the ground and jumped up running.

The long johns were on upside down over his head. The bats blinked, apparently not believing their radar. But as soon as Doug took off again, they shook their little heads and scurried off after him.

Doug shot down the street like a lightening bolt, but he was starting to slow down. The five of us were only three blocks behind him now. I cut through three back yards to head him off at old lady Olsen's house.

The menacing menagerie was approaching old lady Olsen's when I ran out the Boatwright's front door. The red spook-like apparition, with legs seemingly running upside down in the air as Doug flailed his arms, was still followed by hundreds of bats screeching at the top of their little lovestruck lungs.

I ran across the street and banged on old lady Olsen's door. "Come quick Miss Olsen, come quick and tell us we're all going to the devil again," I hollered. Now, old lady Olsen could have been in the bathtub, and she still would have raced to the front door for an opportunity to tell us we were going to the devil.

"What in the blazes are you miscreants up to now," she fumed at the screen door.

"Come out and see, quick," I urged.

She followed me out to the sidewalk, dressed in a flowery flannel nightgown, and gasped at the scene before her. Doug was doing another impromptu breakdance trying to get that bat from under his sweatshirt, just as five gasping boys rounded the corner.

"See, we went to the devil just like you said," I chuckled. "Now he's coming out of the ground. He wants to meet you."

On cue, Doug was back on his feet and running right at us. All old lady Olsen saw was a red devil with horns flapping in the wind, followed by at least 500 bats screeching their mating calls.

"Don't be afraid, Miss Olsen, it's only..." I paused. Old lady Olsen was gone. It occurred to me I might have gone too far. I looked toward her front door, but it was gone too. So was her back door.

I would have to worry about that later. I had more immediate problems. Doug and the 500 bats were still running me. I lit off, trying to escape the devil, but his radar was honed in on me.

I led him and his friends to Mr. Johnson's wooden rowboat, which I flipped over on Doug and me, and we decided to wait the bats out. "Shouldn't be too long," Doug said. "Only eight hours till daylight."

The bats must have gotten hungry because they left about 30 minutes later. We evaded some mysterious multi-colored lights bouncing off the neighboring houses by climbing in through a basement window in my backyard. We figured that the last thing we needed was a UFO encounter. After our hearts slowed down to about 200 beats a minute, we got hungry. I found some chocolate chip cookies where my mother had hidden them, and we settled in front of the television just in time for the 11 o'clock news. My mother and brother were peeping out the window apparently at the UFO's.

"It's 11:01 and KBAT is bringing you a late breaking news story. We switch to our stringer, Paula Batfield, in Northeast Portland. Paula, what's going on out there."

"We are at the scene of an unexplained phenomena," the reporter chirped. "A flurry of phone calls from residents prompted police and rescue units to race to this Portland neighborhood." I looked out the front window to see blue and red lights illuminating the street.

"Our crew caught these brief pictures..." Film rolled and we saw a clip of Doug in Mr. Smith's red long johns running up the street followed by hundreds of bats. "That's the only clip we have of this rare occurrence." Paula said. "I've talked with bat specialists and they say this time of year is the mating season for bats and they sometimes swarm in large numbers, but he has never seen this many bats swarming at one time."

"Paula, do you have any idea what the red object was that they were swarming around?"

"No, Dick, it was moving too fast. In fact, our truck couldn't keep up with them."

"Thanks, Paula. In an unrelated story, police were involved in a high speed chase tonight, but finally managed to pull over a middle-aged spinster who was running up Stark Street at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour . . ."

Don lives in Portland, Oregon, and has written several short stories (mysteries). He's also working on a humor mystery novel. This is his second Appearance in Laughter Loaf.