by Brian Harmon
The river was rising from its bed like a great, waking serpent. Millions of gallons of water had suddenly come to life. In the moonlight, with only the street lamps to illuminate it, it looked like an enormous, slimy worm looming over me.
I was too terrified to even move.
It seemed to glitter, strangely. Little flashes of silver sparkled all over it, dripping from it, so that it began to look less like a worm and more like a great, scaly dragon.
Then I realized that those little flashes were fish. Confused and panicking, they were jumping out of the water and plunging to their probable deaths far below.
“Give me the book,” he said again. His voice had dropped a little. There was no kindness in it. He was bored with my games.
I turned and looked at this man. I couldn’t believe it. He was doing all this with only his mind! And he didn’t look like he was tiring even a little, as if picking up an entire river was child’s play to him.
I felt a fat drop of water strike my shoulder. When I looked up, the living river was moving directly over us. Muddy water leaked down from its murky, swirling belly, making it rain.
Then a fat perch struck the pavement nearby with a wet slap. Smaller fish of all sizes were drizzling down by the dozens all around him. One bounced off my shoulder.
Now it was raining fish.
I didn’t even dream that part. It was just happening.
For a moment there, I couldn’t even think.
“Last chance,” he growled.
“Tell me why you want it,” I told him. I’m not even sure where the words came from. I was still staring up at the wandering river, in what I’m pretty sure was a state of shock.
“I want it because it’s mine,” he said. “Because I deserve it.”
“Is it? Do you?”
“Yes.”
“But can you read it?”
This caught him off guard. “What?”
It was raining hard now. A huge catfish slammed into the pavement in front of me. If one of those hit me, I wouldn’t need any men in gray suits to kill me. But I stood my ground.
“Can you read it?” I asked again, meeting his gaze.
This seemed to offend him. He sort of sneered at me. “Nobody can read it. The secret to translating it has been lost to time for untold ages. The book itself has power. If you know how to use it.” He glared at me then. “What’s that look for?” he demanded.
It was called a smile. A smug one. “I can read it,” I told him.
He actually laughed. “Impossible. I just finished telling you no one can read it.”
Another perch slapped against the ground behind him. A bass struck the road between us.
“Then how did I kill your partner?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed. “I’m still not sure. But I know it’s not possible for you to read that book. No one’s ever been able to read it. Not for millennia.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” I told him. “I think there’s always been people who can read it. It’s just a matter of it finding the right reader.”
Now he looked flustered. He wiped the river water rain from his brow and glared at me.
Something no bigger than a goldfish bounced off my head and flopped across the ground.
Somewhere behind me something really big hit the ground with a sickening, wet thud.
“Give me the fucking book!” he growled.
“I’ve got a better idea,” I told him. “Let’s see who has more power. You and your fish rain…or me and my book.”
That pissed him off. “Fine!” he shouted. And with that the living river came crashing down on top of us.
Like in the shed, a line from the book appeared in my mind. I could see it as clearly as if I’d opened it and looked at it. And in spite of the fact that I’d never seen any of those characters a week ago, I knew exactly how to pronounce them.
The river smashed into the bridge with the force of a runaway train. It cracked the pavement and bent the guardrails. I actually felt the whole thing lurch a little as it hit.
But every drop parted as it passed by me. For a moment I was standing in a bubble of muddy water, watching it rush past. Then, just as quickly, it was over.
When I could see again, the tall man in the gray suit was gone, washed away in his own flood.
It wasn’t so unlike what I did to his partner. Except instead of turning the power back on him, I stole his control over it. He expected to be spared while I was dashed to death by the weight of the crashing waves, when in reality, it was I who was protected, and he who would spend the rest of eternity somewhere at the bottom of the river.
I could’ve used a nice, long rest after that ordeal. I felt exhausted. My body hurt from being knocked off my bike. The inside of my body still hurt from the fat man’s torture. But it was getting late. I had to get to the high school while there was still time.
I made my way back to my bike. It was a total loss. I wasn’t getting anywhere on that. But as it happened, there was a perfectly good Chevy Impala parked right on top of it that no one was going to be using now.
It wasn’t so hard to figure it out. My dad started teaching me to drive last year. He took me out on the old farm roads and let me practice. I backed onto the road and drove away from the bridge just as a pickup truck was coming the other way.
Now there was traffic?
I found it hard to believe that we just happened to be alone all that time.
The tall man must’ve done something to keep people away.
Or maybe it was the book. He did say it had powers of its own, separate from the spells written inside it.
It didn’t matter anyway right now. All that mattered was getting to the high school.
Fortunately, the few cars I passed couldn’t see how young I was in the dark. No one gave me a second look.
Maybe I’ll keep the car when this is all over. It’s a nice looking car. Just a little banged up from when he tried to run me over.
Okay…probably not…
The tall suit was right. When I opened my backpack in the school parking lot, the book was bone dry, even though the rest of my gear was soaking wet.
Fortunately, I tried to save room when I was packing the bag by rolling up my paper and storing it inside one of the bottles. I even corked it, so I could keep my pens and matches in there. I only wanted them to stay put, since I packed extra stuff. I didn’t want to waste time digging for them when I stopped to write to you. Talk about lucky.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t luck at all. Maybe it was the book. Maybe everything I’ve done has been because of the book.
It’s almost midnight. I’m going in now to find Zachery and the others.
One way or another, I have to stop them.
All of them.
Sorry Sherry…
Chapter Fifty-Two
Eric carefully folded up the letter and slipped it into his pocket.
An agent with telekinetic powers strong enough to lift an entire river out of its bed and drop it on someone? Add that to his list of things that had no business being real.
But what continued to disturb him most about these memoirs was that book. It was changing Hector with each letter that found its way across those fifty-four years. At first, he just seemed to be taking an unhealthy interest in it. But that quickly turned into an obsession, then a delusion. Now he seemed to think that the book had been consciously aiding him in his conflict with the gray agents.
He’d become cocky, and Eric was afraid that something bad was waiting for him at the high school.
But even if he assumed that it all worked out for him in the end, what then? What if he was out there somewhere, still in possession of the book after all these years? If this was how much it was getting into his head in only a few short days, what might it have done to him over the course of half a century?
Suddenly he imagined Hector today, sixty-six years old and driven utterly mad by those mysterious pages. It wasn’t a pleasant ima
ge.
I’M WORRIED ABOUT HIM, said Isabelle.
“Yeah. Me too.”
The most troubling part about the whole thing was the letters themselves. Did the fact that Hector hadn’t shown up in person mean that he wasn’t still alive? What reason would he have for staying away?
HE DOESN’T SEEM TO KNOW WHEN YOU’RE FROM, she reminded him.
That was true. Eric knew that Hector was from 1962 because that was the date on the first letter, but in Hector’s dreams, all he could see was that he was clearly in the future. He was particularly confused by the image of his phone. As quickly as technology was advancing these days, it wasn’t surprising, when you thought about it, that he might mistake fifty-four years for a hundred and fifty-four.
He might never have realized that the letters would be found in his lifetime.
At the very least, he probably didn’t know that today was the day it all came back around. It was a very short window at the end of a very long wait.
Spooky yawned at his feet. Eric looked down at him, then at the open locker door where he found the bottle. “Here’s another question. How did this letter wind up in this school if it was unseen in 1962?”
THAT’S RIGHT, agreed Isabelle.
DID SOMEBODY MOVE IT HERE?
The gas station attendant, maybe? But then why go to the trouble? Why not just have it delivered like the other two?
He looked at Spooky, considering him. How was it that he knew where Hector’s letters were hidden, anyway?
He was distracted by a loud bang from somewhere else in the building, as if someone had dropped something heavy. He shined his light down one end of the hallway and then the other.
SOMEONE ELSE IS THERE
“Yeah. One guess who it is.”
YOU HAVE TO GO FIND HER
“I know.” He sighed and started toward the nearest flight of stairs. This wasn’t going to be fun.
He woke up on the second floor, halfway down the hallway. The steampunk monk had dragged him far enough into the building to make it difficult to know which way was which, especially in the dark. He could’ve killed him if he’d wanted him dead. He could’ve restrained him if he didn’t want him wandering freely. But he simply left him there to wake up on his own.
It seemed like the strange, little man had some kind of plan for him.
And what happened to Jay? He was nowhere to be seen. Steampunk Monk said he was taking a nap, meaning, he assumed, that he’d rendered him unconscious with one of his odd concoctions.
Perhaps he wanted Eric to confront Mistress Janet, keeping them both busy while he found out more about the mysterious young man’s ability to rise from the dead.
He hoped Jay was safe, wherever he was.
The bang sounded like it came from somewhere below him, so he began his search on the first level. Last time he was here, he’d navigated the many rooms of the school not only via the burned-out corridors but also by a series of rough holes knocked through the walls that could only be seen with a piece of the looking glass. Those unseen portals between rooms, along with some well-placed unseen doorways, were the only thing that allowed him to escape the lunatic in the pink shirt and his deadly aura plasma. This time, fortunately, no one seemed to be pursuing him. Neither Steampunk Monk nor Mistress Janet seemed to be interested in killing him. At least not at the moment. On a list of most dangerous situations he’d ever been in, this wasn’t very high. Not yet, anyway.
But it still bothered him that Steampunk Monk actually possessed a piece of the looking glass. He had full access to all the building’s secrets. He could be standing in an unseen doorway right now, watching him walk right past, completely invisible, but close enough to reach out and cut his throat.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long to find what he was looking for. The bright lights pouring out of the auditorium were visible from the adjacent hallway.
He wasn’t sure what he expected to find when he entered the room, but it wasn’t what he saw.
Several industrial-strength lights, powered by car batteries, were set up on either side of the auditorium and aimed at the stage. There were half a dozen speakers placed around the perimeter of the room and the back of the stage, all of them blaring plain static. Thin, copper wires were strung overhead, secured to the walls by adhesive hanging hooks from the hardware store.
There was no sign of Mistress Janet, but as he walked toward the stage, another speaker crackled on overhead and a strange warbling noise joined the white noise from the other speakers. The effect was not pleasant. It kind of made his head hurt.
There was a black, five-gallon bucket sitting on the floor in front of the stage. He peered into it and found it filled with what looked like chum. It was a reeking sludge of blood, fish heads and entrails that he promptly regretted taking a closer look at. He quickly took a step away from it, revolted.
There was another five-gallon bucket sitting on the stage, a white one, but he decided not to peek inside that one.
It was now, as he took a closer look at his surroundings, that he realized that the walls on either side of the room had been smeared with a strange, gelatinous, white slime that was slowly oozing down the peeling paint and collecting in congealed puddles on the floor.
What the hell was all this?
He remembered Jay’s story about the woman who murdered his best friend. She’d smeared the walls with human blood and gore in a room illuminated with photography lights and candles.
Her experiments seemed to have evolved over the last few years. From horror-cliché witchcraft to a blend of voodoo and mad science.
This was far from Holly and her sisters’ hot water divination.
He turned away from the stage and scanned the room for any other unpleasant surprises. Then he pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen.
THERE’S DEFINITELY SOME ODD ENERGY PULSING THROUGH THAT ROOM
What does that mean? “Odd energy” wasn’t very descriptive.
IT MEANS M. J. ISN’T JUST PLAYING PRETEND. THAT WOMAN’S A DANGEROUS KIND OF CRAZY. KEEP YOUR GUARD UP
He had no intention of letting it down. He returned the phone to his pocket and glanced around once more.
“You found me again,” said a familiar voice from the stage behind him. Her tall heels clacked loudly against the wood in the silence of the room. “I just love how you do that.”
He took a breath and braced himself. He wasn’t going to let her fluster him this time. He was tired of her games. It was time to end this before anything else could happen. She couldn’t catch him off guard again.
But when he turned around he found that he was wrong about that. She was standing at center stage, in the middle of all those lights, wearing her high heels and nothing more.
Eric just stood there for a moment, staring at her. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, although she was. Her body was magnificent. (And probably very expensive, he was guessing.) She was lean and tone and sexy, with magnificent curves. Her skin was damp, either with sweat or oil, and gleamed in the bright lights. She looked like a goddess, physically flawless. But he honestly didn’t care about any of that. He simply couldn’t comprehend why this woman was naked right now.
She strolled to the front of the stage and crossed her arms in front of her, lifting and compressing those impressive breasts. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Really?” he asked. “Because it looks like I might’ve caught you at an awkward time.”
She smiled. “You’re so adorable, Funnyman. Are you ready for me to change your life?”
“I’m definitely intrigued,” he lied. He glanced around the room. “What is all this?”
She looked up at her handiwork. “Call it a delivery room of sorts.”
That presented far more questions than answers. Not the least of which being, what was the chum for?
“Are we having a baby?” he asked.
She gave him a “you jest” sort of look. “We’re the ones being born tonight, lover.
This is where gods are created.”
Again, what was the chum for?
For some reason, that stuff was far more concerning to him than everything else he’d encountered on this strange day.
“You want to run through it once for me?” he asked. “Creating gods wasn’t my strong suit in college.”
She gave him that look again, like he was just the cutest, dumbest little puppy she’d ever seen. “It’s simple, really.” She walked to the far side of the stage and descended the steps to the auditorium floor. Her every move was sexy. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone who exuded so much raw confidence. “I’m going to open a door. A big one. What’s on the other side of that door is going to change the world.”
“Change it how, exactly?” asked Eric as she strolled across the floor, her sexy heels clacking on the warped tiles. He had to resist the urge to back away from her as she approached. “Solve the world’s energy crisis? Make politicians stop fighting and do their jobs? Get McDonalds to bring back the Dollar Menu?”
She walked up to him, her lips curled into a mischievous smile. “Nothing like that,” she told him. “We’re going to change things where it matters. At the root of the problem.” She bit her lip and seized two handfuls of his shirt.
“What’s the root of the problem?”
“Now you’re just toying with me,” she told him. “You know the answer to that.”
“Maybe I want to hear you say it.”
Her eyes fixed on his lips again. She licked her own in anticipation. “Fine,” she said. “People. People are the root of the problem.”
Eric felt a chill race down his back. “You’re going to kill everybody?”
“Well, not everybody. What would be the fun in that? I mean, there’s no point in being a god if there’s no one left to worship you, right?”
“Totally,” lied Eric. “And just how do you open the kind of door that can change the world like that?”
She leaned forward, as if she meant to kiss him, but then she leaned past his mouth and whispered into his ear, “It’s a secret.”
Then he felt her tongue flick against the lobe of his ear.