The After-Room

by Maile Meloy; Illustrated by Ian Schoenherr

  “Benjamin!” she said, to stop him. There was a humming feeling inside her chest: an odd, anxious buzzing. “My notebook wasn’t in my pocket.”

  Benjamin turned back, looking confused.

  “My dress doesn’t have any pockets,” she said. “So I thought about the notebook, when he said to think of something. But the notebook was in my jacket pocket, under a pile of coats on a bed, on the other side of the house.”

  “You’re sure?” Benjamin said.

  She nodded. “The jacket was still there, under all the coats, when I went to get it. So he knew exactly what I was thinking. And then he got the notebook from the other room. How did he do that?”

  Benjamin frowned down at the planks of the porch. “Maybe the twins helped him. They’ve seen your notebook.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think it was them. Nat was annoyed about the license. And Valentina was changing clothes, and then she was in the box. I think he can move things and he can read minds.”

  Benjamin nodded. “The two skills could be linked,” he said. “They’re both a kind of mental . . . extension. But there must be an explanation. We can do things that seem incredible, too.”

  The anxious feeling in Janie’s chest grew stronger. “No, we can make things that are incredible,” she said. “It’s different. He’s not using any potions, or elixirs. He can read the minds of a whole room at once, without any help.”

  Benjamin’s mouth tightened. “That’s even more reason to go see him. He might be able to help me talk to my father.” He turned back to the door.

  “He scares me, Benjamin,” she said. “I don’t think we should go there.”

  “We have to know what he can do,” he said.

  • • •

  After school the next day, they stood in front of the address the Doyle twins had given them: a bar called The Mermaid, with peeling paint on the sign. The mermaid herself looked kind of sickly, with a pale green tail and long faded hair. Janie was terrified. But she’d followed Benjamin to Nova Zembla, and he’d followed her to an island in Malaya. This was only Ann Arbor. Not the nicest part, but still: Ann Arbor! She kept telling herself that.

  They went around to the side of the building, following the twins’ instructions, and saw a weathered staircase leading up to the second floor. The wooden steps groaned beneath their weight as they climbed. Before Benjamin could knock, the door swung open.

  Doyle the Magnificent squinted at them against the daylight. His hair blazed orange in the sun, and his pale eyes were rimmed with red. His dress shirt was unbuttoned at the throat. “I thought we’d finished our conversation,” he said.

  “We didn’t even start it,” Benjamin said.

  “I have a birthday party to get to.”

  “Then let us in,” Benjamin said. “We’re not going away.”

  Doyle sighed and stepped back from the door.

  The apartment had a stale, sour smell. The carpet was gray, and there were dishes in a small sink. Doyle slipped one limber arm under his suspenders. His shirt was bright white and beautifully ironed, out of place in the drab apartment. Janie guessed he took care of his shirts because they were part of his act.

  “It’s just one of those things that professionals do better,” Doyle said. “Like—making croissants.”

  “Sorry?” Janie said.

  “Ironing shirts,” he said. “I never learned how to do it. A laundry in Germantown does a first-rate job. Just the right amount of starch.” He turned to Benjamin. “Listen, kid, since you came all this way, I’ll give you some advice. Death is not to be trifled with.”

  Janie struggled to control her thoughts, to keep them from Doyle.

  “I was gonna tell you that when I gave your skull back,” Doyle said. “I was tired last night, and I didn’t want to start something. But here we are.”

  “What do you mean—trifled with?” Benjamin asked.

  Doyle rolled his eyes. “Don’t play around with me,” he said. “I know you’re looking for your dad.”

  Janie touched Benjamin’s arm. She wanted to leave, and get out of the apartment where this man could read their thoughts.

  “It’s a bad idea, to go visiting dead guys,” Doyle said. “You have to let him go.”

  “I can’t,” Benjamin said. “I need you to help me.”

  “Oh, no!” Doyle said, holding up his long, thin fingers. “You dabble in black magic if you want, traipse around on the dark side, but leave me out of it.”

  “How do you know so much?” Benjamin said. “Is it just from reading our minds?”

  “Just from reading your minds?” the magician said. “You think that’s a contemptible little party trick?”

  “Well, we’re right in the room with you,” Benjamin said. “How hard could it be?”

  The magician grabbed Benjamin’s jacket and pulled him close. “You show up at my door uninvited, and you ignore my good advice, and you’re rude. I don’t like it.”

  Benjamin wrinkled his nose. “You smell like whiskey.”

  “Two drinks!” Doyle said, but he pushed Benjamin away. “I’ve only had two drinks!”

  “It’s ten in the morning,” Benjamin said, shaking his clothes straight.

  Doyle looked sulky. “It’s not easy knowing what everyone’s thinking all the time,” he said. “You might find yourself wanting a cocktail at breakfast, too.”

  Janie remembered boiling an herb called the Smell of Truth in London, to see if it would work as a truth serum. She had blurted out, under its influence, that she had a crush on Benjamin, and he had admitted to a crush on the beautiful and rich Sarah Pennington. It had been agony. She could see how knowing what other people were thinking could be painful.

  “Can’t you turn it off?” she asked.

  Doyle shook his head. “Loud music masks it, a little.”

  “Does it run in families?” Janie asked. “Is that how the twins are so good at doubles? They know what the other is thinking?”

  Doyle puffed out his cheeks. “No, the twins are just excellent tennis players,” he said. “And twins. That’s its own special weirdness.”

  “Maybe they have a version of it.”

  Doyle shrugged. “I never asked. And I wouldn’t wish it on them. They’re nice kids, who have enough to deal with.”

  “What about the telekinesis?” Benjamin asked.

  “What about it?”

  “How do you do it?”

  “I just do.”

  “Look, you’re the only person we know who can do real magic,” Benjamin said. “I want to know more about it.”

  The magician considered them both wearily for a long moment.

  Then he held up his hand and an orange flew into it, making a thwap as it hit his palm. Janie looked to see where it had come from, and saw two more oranges in a metal bowl on the table. The magician held up his hand again and the oranges flew across the room: Thwap, thwap. Then he began to juggle the three.

  “It first started happening when I was a kid,” he said. “I didn’t understand it. I played baseball, and I always knew what the pitcher was going to pitch. In the field, balls would veer toward me a little.” He angled his shoulders to demonstrate. “I could catch anything. I could have been a pro—except I couldn’t hit the damn ball. Never figured out how to do that.”

  He walked away from the oranges and left them juggling themselves, circling in graceful parabolas past each other in the air. Janie stared at them. The buzzing feeling was back, but now it seemed like—recognition. And longing.

  “Can you teach us to do that?” she whispered. The oranges went around and around.

  “You can do it or you can’t,” he said. “And then it takes practice.”

  “So does baseball,” Benjamin said.

  “Look, you don’t get to decide what interests you,” Doy
le said. “You’ll discover that, in life. I was more interested in girls than in baseball. So when I got a little older, and wanted to know if girls liked me, I started to concentrate on their thoughts. It was like tuning a radio, getting the signal. I had access to their minds! But after a while, I couldn’t turn the radio off. And that was no fun, believe me.”

  They were all silent for a long moment, confronting the magician’s burden. He lost interest in the circulating oranges and let them drop—thud, thud, thud, they hit the floor. One rolled toward Janie’s feet. She wanted to pick it up and inspect it, but she thought she should say something.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “But I already know you’re sorry,” he said. “So what do you want, exactly? You might as well tell me, and stop trying to confuse me with a lot of scattered thoughts about orange juice on the carpet and the Smell of Truth, whatever that is. And yes, you have to know how to juggle in the usual way first.”

  Janie flushed, and tried harder to hide her thoughts.

  “Don’t bother, sweetheart,” Doyle said. “You have an especially readable mind.”

  “I need to talk to my father,” Benjamin said. “And I need to do it without getting sick.”

  “Well, he’s dead,” the magician said. “People die. Get used to it. That’s what makes life so precious, right? Tempus fugit. Now, I have a gig to get to.” He opened the door to shoo them out.

  “I can help you,” Benjamin said. “To screen out people’s minds.”

  The magician eyed him. “You’re just a kid.”

  “I’ve done harder things,” Benjamin said. “You know I have, because you’ve read my mind.”

  Janie saw a glimmer of interest on Doyle’s face. He closed the door. “How would you do it?”

  “I’d make a filter,” Benjamin said. “Just a damper, on the part of your brain that receives the signals. I designed a mind-connection powder once, and if I reverse the principles I used for that, it might work.”

  Doyle sat down on a sagging couch, his eyes glued to Benjamin’s. “You’re improvising so I won’t kick you out,” he said. “You think it would be hard, to make this filter, and you’re hoping I’ll believe you can do it. But you’re also thinking that it’s possible, and might even be kind of fun. A challenge. You haven’t been interested in anything lately, except your dead dad. And you feel sorry for me, old two-drinks-for-breakfast Doyle.”

  Janie looked at the two of them with wonder. She wished she had just a little bit of Doyle’s power to get inside Benjamin’s head.

  “I’ll only do it if you’ll help me,” Benjamin said.

  “Yeah, I got that part, too,” the magician said. He leaned back on the couch. “You have no idea how exhausting it is. It would change my life, to have a filter. People are critical and nasty, you know? I’m too tall, I’m too skinny, my hair is too orange, my nose is too big, my jacket’s out of fashion. So many niggling thoughts. And Janie, I know you’re thinking that all those things are true.”

  “Sorry!” she said.

  Doyle studied Benjamin. “You stopped breathing when you contacted your father.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Doyle considered. “What you’re really doing is accessing his mind, right? Which is a lot like what I do. I used to have a physical response to what other people were thinking. I would hyperventilate in the halls at school. It was awful.”

  “So what did you do?” Benjamin asked.

  “There are ways to control the mental connection to other people. Your problem is that you have no control over your sympathetic nervous system when you contact your father. Your body gets flooded with adrenaline, and your breathing gets shallow, so you aren’t getting enough air. You get dizzy, you feel sick.”

  “He stopped breathing completely,” Janie said.

  “If it is a similar process to what I’m doing,” the magician said, “then I can show you how to control your breathing and your heartbeat while you do it.” He narrowed his pale eyes at Benjamin. “But you can’t chase your mother. She’s too far gone. You can’t follow her without dying. You understand me?”

  Benjamin nodded.

  “All right,” the magician said. “So I’ll teach you. But first you make me a filter.”

  Benjamin held out his hand. “Deal,” he said.

  Chapter 10

  Malingering

  In the morning, Benjamin told Mrs. Scott he had a cold. She sat down on the edge of his bed and rested the back of her hand against his forehead. “You seem all right,” she said.

  “I feel terrible,” he croaked.

  She frowned. “Okay. You can stay home, with or without a cold. But just for today.”

  After she went downstairs, Janie, dressed for school, appeared in the doorway of Benjamin’s bedroom. “You could have told me,” she said in a fierce whisper. “I would have stayed home, too!”

  “We can’t both have a cold,” he said.

  “Why not? I could’ve gotten it from you.”

  “Your parents wouldn’t buy it. They’d think we were staying home for—other reasons.”

  “But I want to help!”

  “Okay,” he said. “I need a triple-necked boiling flask from the chemistry lab. You can bring it home at lunch.”

  “You mean steal it?”

  “Just borrow.”

  She frowned. “You won’t go to the After-room while I’m gone.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “Not until I learn how to do it right.”

  She looked doubtful. “Okay.”

  While the Scotts ate breakfast downstairs, dishes clanking like cymbals, Benjamin lay in bed and practiced breathing deeply and slowly, paying attention to the shape and size of each intake of air. He had to control his sympathetic nervous system, the magician had said. Because it was overly sympathetic. He inhaled and his lungs expanded, exhaled and his chest sank back again.

  When he finally heard Janie and her parents leave the house, he swung himself out of bed. The Scotts had an office at the university, but you never knew when they might pop home to check on him, or to get lunch. He might not have much time.

  He’d made a false bottom in one of his drawers with a piece of thin plywood from the school wood shop, and from beneath it he took out his father’s leather-bound book, the Pharmacopoeia, with the embossed Azoth of the Philosophers on the front: a circle inside a star made of seven pointed triangles, with an upside down triangle inside the circle. The Pharmacopoeia had been passed down in his family for generations. Its pages were full of alchemical symbols and diagrams, with handwritten notations in the margins about problems or side effects. His father had written in a few notes himself.

  Next he took out a cardboard box full of jars and packets. A few were things he’d brought from Malaya in his suitcase: his father’s last belongings. But some were new, ordered from a mail-order apothecary in Philadelphia. He’d met the postman on the street before the Scotts could see the box and ask questions.

  He carried the book and the box downstairs to the kitchen, where he paged through the Pharmacopoeia’s entries on telepathy and clairvoyance. He’d spent two years with the Pharmacopoeia as his only textbook, and his Latin had gotten much stronger. He didn’t have to laboriously translate the pages anymore. He could just read and think.

  On one page there was a drawing of the insulae, one in each hemisphere of the brain, deep in the cerebral cortex. Below the picture was written: Perception. Empathy. Music. Digestion. Disgust (especially smells). Awareness of other minds.

  If there was a part of the brain that allowed you to read minds, then the insula was the best candidate. It was interesting that it also processed disgust, and regulated digestion. Benjamin’s father had once said that thinking about other people’s thoughts—imagining their experience—might have begun as an awareness of the state of other people’s sto
machs. It would have been useful knowledge, in early humans, as a way to avoid poisoning: If that person feels awful, I will not eat what he eats. If cavemen spent a lot of time thinking about other people’s digestion, that must have led to their thinking about other people’s state of mind.

  So maybe the magician had an overactive insula—or two, one in each hemisphere of his brain. But how did his insulae become so powerful and refined that he could read exact thoughts—the thoughts of an entire room full of people? Had he been born with the ability, or had it arisen on the baseball field, as he watched the pitcher and wondered about his plans? Were there other telepaths like him? Could Benjamin learn to do it, with practice? Uncontrolled, it was making the magician’s life miserable. But if he could turn it on and off, it would be a useful tool.

  There were no specific instructions in the Pharmacopoeia for what Benjamin wanted, so he would have to improvise. He closed the book and began to work. He should really wait for Janie and the boiling flask, but he was impatient. He was the vessel, his father had said so—he didn’t need Janie. He had made the powder by himself. He hauled out the Scotts’ deepest stockpot, filled the bottom of it with water, and arranged his materials on the counter.

  He thought about the insula’s connection to the stomach, and reached for a packet of Mandragora officinarum, ground into powder. He poured some of it into the stockpot.

  Then he thought about what might dull pain. It would help if the magician didn’t mind so much what people thought. Benjamin poured in some oil of clove. He was working intuitively, measuring things out, setting the stockpot to boil.

  It felt good to be working. This was what he was supposed to do. It wasn’t just losing his father that had made him plunge into despair—it was losing his sense of purpose. He felt cautiously excited. Almost happy.

  Then something went wrong. A white foam started to spill out of the stockpot. Benjamin turned off the heat but the foam kept billowing out. He clamped the lid on and still it was spilling everywhere. The pot made gurgling noises and jumped on the stove. He heard the front door open and close. Light footsteps, just one pair.