by Jack Dann
“From your tone of voice, I suspect you’re about to say, ‘No fair’!”
“Well, why should you get to do it, and I can’t!”
“Oh, you can—if you’re stupid enough to reach into the throat of the worm and get sucked through and pooped out into a world where you’re like a kind of atmospheric diarrhea.”
“So what does that make you, interplanetary constipation or something?”
“It makes me sick of talking to you. I’ve got work to accomplish.” The elf started walking away.
“Hey!” called Todd.
The elf didn’t pause.
“What’s your name!” Todd yelled.
The elf turned around. “You don’t need my name!”
Why not? Did it give Todd some kind of magical power? Todd remembered a fairy tale about secret names that his mother used to read to them. “Then I’ll call you Rumpelstiltskin!”
To his surprise, the elf came back, looking very angry. “What did you call me?”
“Rumpelstiltskin?” said Todd, remembering the heart-grabbing threat.
“Don’t you ever call me that again.”
Which almost made Todd call him that twenty times in a row. But no, he had to have this guy’s cooperation if he was going to get his mother back. “Then tell me your name.”
The elf stood there, irritably considering. “Eggo,” he finally said.
Of all things. “Like the waffles?”
“Like me. My name is Eggo. And yes, your mother already explained about frozen toaster waffles. In my language it doesn’t mean anything of the kind.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means me, I told you! Just like Todd means you. It’s a name, not a word.”
The elf—Eggo—turned around and headed out across the backyard. Todd almost laughed, his gait was so ducklike as he swung those big shoes around each other so he didn’t trip on his own feet. But it wasn’t funny. Eggo was doing what he had to in order not to sink into the Earth; what was mother doing, to keep from dissolving into mist on the other side?
Todd went back into the house, determined to do something. He didn’t know what, yet, but he had to act, stir things up, change things so that somehow Mom would come back and life would get back to normal. Or maybe it would get even worse, maybe people would die, but isn’t that what they already believed happened to Mom? They’d already been through a death and now there was a chance to undo it.
And Todd knew that it was going to be him who did the undoing. Not because he was the smartest or strongest one in the family but because he had decided to. Because he was going to go through the worm and get Mom home. He was going to travel to another world. It’s what he was born for.
He couldn’t say that to anybody or they’d think he was crazy.
Not like seeing elves materialize in the backyard . . .
Dad was still asleep, as usual on a Saturday morning. Jared was up, but he hadn’t left his room yet. Todd went in and sat beside the little sorted-out piles of LEGOs that Todd was drawing from to build his . . . what?
“It’s like an amusement park ride,” said Jared.
“It looks like a skyscraper.”
“I put little LEGO guys into this hole at the top and they bounce around inside and pop out here.”
“That’s not an amusement park, it’s a machine for killing people.”
“It’s not for killing people,” Jared said vehemently—but quietly, so Dad wouldn’t wake up. “People are perfectly OK when they come through the other side. They are alive."
He’s building the stupid worm, thought Todd. “You’re right,” said Todd. “They’re perfectly all right when they come out the other end.”
Jared looked up at him suspiciously.
“I met your elf,” said Todd.
“There’s no elf,” said Jared.
“All my stuff you put through the mouth in the closet,” said Todd. “By the way, thanks for stealing my Hot Wheels and all my other crap.”
“I didn’t steal anything.”
“Mother’s alive,” said Todd. “I know it now.”
But Jared didn’t look relieved or happy or anything. In fact, he looked panicky. Only when he felt a strong hand on his shoulder did he realize that Dad must have come into the room and heard him.
Dad had never handled Todd roughly before, not like this. The grip on his shoulder was harsh—it hurt. And he dragged Todd so quickly out of the room that he could barely keep his feet under him. “Hey!” Todd yelled. “Hey, hey, what’re you—”
But by then they were in Dad’s room and the door slammed shut behind them. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” said Dad. He practically threw Todd onto the bed. Then he leaned over him, one hand on either side of him, his face angry and only about a foot away from Todd’s. “Do you think it’s funny to try to make your brother believe that all his childhood fantasies are true?”
“Dad,” said Todd.
“It’s all a joke to you, is that it?” Dad said, his voice a harsh whisper. “All that I’ve done, trying to make life normal again, you think it’s really clever to undo it and make your brother think that your mother is still alive somewhere. Do you know what that would mean? That your mother wants to be away from us, that she chose to leave us like that. You think that’s better than believing she’s dead? Well you’re wrong.”
“It’s not about believing anything,” said Todd quietly, reasonably, trying to calm Father down.
And it worked, at least a little. Dad stopped looming over him and sat on the bed beside him. “What is it, then, Todd? Why are you telling your brother that he should believe his mother is alive?”
“Because she is, Dad,” said Todd.
Dad turned away from him, slumped over, leaning on his knees. “It never ends.”
“Dad,” said Todd, “I didn’t believe it either. I thought she was dead until this very exact morning when I found out the truth. Something I saw with my own eyes. Dad, I’m not crazy and I’m not joking.”
Dad was now leaning his forehead on his hands. “What do you think crazy people say, Todd ? ”
“They say there’s a worm that passes between two worlds, and the mouth of it is in Jared’s closet and it sucks things out of our world and drops them into another. And mother’s there, only she can’t get back because the rules of physics are different in that place, and she’s not as dense as we are here, so she can’t hold onto things and she doesn’t know how to find the mouth on the other side and the jerk who’s studying the thing, the guy who moved the mouth of the worm into Jared’s closet, he doesn’t care about anything except his stupid science. And I can’t go there myself and get Mom back if you don’t help.”
By the time Todd was through, Dad had sat up and was staring at him. “Yes, Todd,” he finally said. “That’s exactly what crazy people say.”
“But I can prove it,” said Todd.
Dad buried his face in his hands again. “God help us,” he murmured.
“Dad, what if there’s one chance in a million that I’m not crazy. Do you love me enough to give me that chance? Will you come and look?”
Dad nodded behind his hands. “Yeah, I’ll look.” He stood up. “Show me whatever you’ve got to show me, Todd.”
Todd knew perfectly well that Dad still thought he was crazy. But he was at least willing to give him a chance. So Todd led the way back into Jared’s room.
Jared was sitting on his bed, pressed into the corner of the room, holding a little LEGO guy in one hand and gnawing on a finger. Not the nail, the whole finger in his mouth, chewing on it like it was gum.
“Get your hand out of your mouth, Jared, and come over here and help me,” said Todd.
Jared didn’t move.
“I’ve got to show Dad the worm’s mouth,” said Todd. “And you’re the one who knows exactly where it is.”
Jared didn’t move.
“I can’t believe you’d do this, Todd,” said Dad. His voice was full of
grief. “Jared’s made so much progress, and now look.”
“Listen to me, both of you! Mom’s still alive on the other end of this thing! Stop trying to solve things, Dad, stop trying to make sense of it and just watch.”
Todd picked up Jared’s LEGO thing, his representation of the worm, and took it to the closet and flung open the door.
He couldn't see anything at all like that slice of air out in the backyard. He walked back and forth in front of the closet, trying to get the right angle. Then he went to the drapes and opened them, letting sunlight flood in. It didn’t help.
“Todd,” said Dad.
“Jared,” said Todd angrily, “if you don’t help me, Dad’s going to think we’re both crazy and we’ll never get Mom back. Now get off your butt and help me find it!”
Jared didn’t move.
Todd took the LEGO thing and stepped right into the closet and began waving his hand around, thrusting here and there, trying to accidentally find the hole in the air.
“Stop it,” said Jared.
“What do you care whether I fall in or not?” said Todd. “Of course, if you guys aren’t helping, I’ll fall through just like Mom did, and I’ll be just as helpless as she is on the other side, and then you’ll lose us both, but at least Dad will know I’m not crazy!” Todd stopped and looked at his father. “Only now things will get really ugly, because the cops will want to know what happened to your son Todd, and they’ll begin to get curious about how two people from the same family both disappeared under mysterious circumstances. I watch Law & Order, Dad. You’ll be the prime suspect. And then they’ll think you’re crazy, unless you fall through the hole to prove it to them. And then Jared will be an orphan and there’ll be some cops who are thrown out of the police force because they insist that they saw this man—this mass murder suspect—disappear into thin air in his son’s closet. Is that how you want this to go?”
Father was looking halfway between grief-stricken and terrified. But Jared had gotten off his bed and was padding across the floor, stepping over LEGO piles. He took the LEGO structure out of Todd’s hands. Todd let him.
“Give me something,” said Jared.
“Like what?”
“Your shoe.”
“Why can’t you use something of your own for once?” said Todd.
“I can’t use my own stuff, because then it grabs hold of my hand and sucks me in.”
“You mean it knows who owns things?”
“When I throw your crap in, it doesn’t grab my hand,” said Jared.
“Then let me throw -your crap in.”
“Do you want Dad to see this or not?” demanded Jared.
Todd peeled his shoe off, but he didn’t give it to Jared. “Shoes are expensive, in case you didn’t know,” he said. He rolled his dirty white sock off. “Socks are cheap.”
“They also stink,” said Jared. “You’re such a pig, you never wash your clothes, you just wear them forever.” But he took the sock and ducked into the closet—ducked under something—and then shoved Todd out. “Both of you watch,” he said.
Then he held the sock out between his fingers and began swinging it back and forth like a floppy pendulum.
And then, on one of the outward swings, it stopped and didn’t come back. It just hung there in the air, Jared holding onto the top of the sock, and something else holding onto the toe end.
“Now it’s got it,” said Jared. “Watch close because it’s quick.”
Jared let go. The sock disappeared.
But Todd had indeed been watching closely, and even though it happened fast, he saw that the sock was sucked into something by the toe.
Jared was pressed up against the closet door frame. He was still scared of the thing. Smart kid.
“Get out of the closet, Jared,” said Dad. His voice was soft. He was scared, too.
Jared sidled out.
Dad looked from Jared to Todd, back and forth. Then he settled on Todd. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because up till this morning I thought the kid was wacked-out.”
“Thanks,” said Jared.
“You mean you never saw him do this?” said Dad.
“Did it look like I knew where the thing was?” asked Todd. “I’ve put things in that closet hundreds of times,” said Dad.
“You have to come at it from the side,” said Jared. “And kind of slow.”
“And Mother did that?”
“She was trying to prove to me that there-was nothing there. I told her how it worked, and so she was going to prove to me that it was just a nightmare. I begged her not to do it. I cried, I screamed at her, I threw things at her to get her to stop.”
“Jared,” said Dad, “that would just convince her that it was all the more important to prove it to you.”
“It got her,” said Jared. “I tried to pull her back but it got her whole arm and shoulder and her head so she couldn’t even talk to me and then it just grabbed the rest of her, all at once, and ripped her leg right out of my hands.” Jared was crying now. “I told you and told you but you didn’t believe me and Todd finally said to stop talking about it because you’d think I was crazy.”
Dad held Jared against him, patting his shoulder, letting him have his cry. He looked at Todd. “What happened this morning? What convinced you that it was real?”
So Todd told Dad all about Eggo the superdense scientist elf with duckfoot shoes, which sounded crazier the more he talked. He had to keep stopping and reminding Dad about the sock that disappeared, and half the time he was really reminding himself that this insane thing was real.
“I don’t know what to make of all this,” said Dad. “I don’t know what to do. We can’t tell this to the cops.”
“We could,” said Todd. “We could demonstrate it just like Jared did. I’ve got a lot of socks. But I don’t think it would help. They’d just take over, they’d throw us out of the house and bring in a bunch of scientists but then we’d never get Mom back. ’Cause I don’t care about studying this thing, I just want to go through it and get Mom.”
“Not a chance,” said Dad. “If anyone goes, I go.”
“Dad,” said Todd. “Think about it a minute. If you go, then there’s no adult here in the house. Just me and Jared. Somebody’s going to notice when you don’t show up at work. They’ll come here and find out you’re gone.”
“I’ll come right back.”
“Did Mom come right back?” said Todd. “No, because time flows differently there, it’s only been a week for her, the guy said. So if you’re gone even a few hours, that’s days and weeks for us. So you’re just as stuck as Mom is, and Jared and I are in foster homes somewhere far away from here while the cops try to figure out who murdered you and Mom because there’s no chance they’ll listen to two crazy kids, right?”
“So there’s nothing we can do.”
“I can go,” said Todd.
“Not a chance,” said Dad. “What can you do that I can't do?”
“You can cover up my absence,” said Todd. “You can say I’m visiting Aunt Heather and Uncle Peace on their hippie commune which doesn’t have a phone. You can say it’s therapy because I’m still so messed up about Mom’s death.”
“That still doesn’t get you or Mom back from . . . that other place.”
“Right,” said Todd. “But as long as you’re here, at the house, you can help us. Because what is Mom’s problem? She can’t find the mouth on the other side so she can come through it. Eggo knows where it is, he comes through it all the time. So maybe it’s in some place where she can’t go. Maybe it’s inside some building or in a public street where Eggo doesn’t want her to be seen. Or maybe he wants to keep her captive so he just won’t tell her.”
“And you think you can find it?” asked Dad.
“No,” said Todd. “I think you can move it and then show us where it’s at.”
“Move it?”
“Eggo moved the worm’s anus on his side, and it moved t
he mouth of it into Jared’s closet. So if you move the anus on this side, the mouth on that side should move, too.”
“Then neither you nor Mom nor this Eggo person will know where it is,” said Dad. “I can’t believe I’m talking about moving some interstellar worm’s ass.”
“It’s right out there by the garden hose,” said Todd. “You give the thing an enema.”
“What?” asked Dad?
“You stick the garden hose in and turn it on full blast.”
“What makes you think that will work? It only digests in one direction.”
“Eggo threatened to stuff my heart into the anus,” said Todd. “You must be able to jam things through that way.”
“Unless he was just making a stupid threat that wasn’t actually possible.”
“Then let’s test it,” said Todd.
A few minutes later, Dad was in his gym clothes instead of his pajamas and they stood in the backyard. Todd was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to find the spot again, but by standing exactly where he had been when Eggo came through, he could see the very, very slight shimmering in the air. He made both Dad and Jared stand in that spot so they could find it. Then he went and got the garden hose and turned it on, just a trickle, and held the hose up so the water was running back down the green shaft of it.
He took it to the shimmering slice of air and tried to push it through. But it was just like waving it around in the air. It met no resistance, it found no aperture. He was just watering the lawn.
Then he remembered that Jared said you had to approach it from exactly the right angle. He tried to remember which direction Eggo’s naked body had come through, and moved so he was standing at exactly the same angle from the hole. Then, very slowly, he extended the hose, holding it just behind the metal end where the water came out.
He felt just a little resistance, just there, but when he pushed harder, the hose slid aside and it was just air again.
Exact angle of approach. How much was Eggo’s body tilted when it came through?
Todd brought his hand down and pushed the hose upward toward the spot where he had met resistance before. Now it felt solid. Real resistance. “I’m there,” he said.