“Who cares?” said Janice. “It’s not that carnival.”
Sydney agreed. That place had been terrifying. And totally, utterly wrong.
She took in their new surroundings. They were in a pleasant-looking meadow surrounding a peaceful little lake. The sun shone down, warming the grass (normal-looking grass rather than that soul-sucking stuff in the carnival memory) and making the normal yellowish film over everything seem a little brighter. Looking behind her, she noted that their entrance into this memory had been through a weathered old window missing its glass, which explained the short fall onto the dirt. The window belonged to a rambling old wooden shack sitting in the middle of the meadow.
“Everyone okay?” asked Zack.
The girls all mumbled in the affirmative, dusting themselves off and taking a moment to enjoy the feel of the sun on their faces—a nice change from the gloomy, oppressive darkness of the carnival. The children ambled away from the shack, unconsciously putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the entrance to the most recent memory. Soon, they found themselves at the edge of the lake. It was small, clear, and placid. Sydney was surprised to see her reflection in the water so clearly. She hoped it was somewhat distorted, because she didn’t look very good.
“Do you think we can drink this?” asked Janice.
“Probably shouldn’t,” said Zack. “And I’d say that even if this wasn’t a memory.”
Alexa, meanwhile, had removed her shoes and was carefully dipping her toes in the water. “It’s cold!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah,” said Zack, carefully grabbing her arm and pulling her out of the water. “Let’s stay dry for the moment, okay? Put your shoes back on.”
Sydney smiled to herself, observing Zack watch over Alexa. It was a refreshing, if small, slice of normal amid this impossible madness.
“Hey, guys,” said Janice. “Who’s that?”
She pointed across the lake, where a small figure could be seen waving his or her arms, trying to get their attention.
“It’s someone real,” observed Sydney. “They’re not yellow.”
“Grampy!” squealed Alexa, breaking out of Zack’s grasp and racing around the edge of the lake in her bare feet.
“Alexa! Wait!” called Zack. “We don’t know if it’s him!”
“Of course it is!” she called back.
Zack, Janice, and Sydney raced after their youngest sister (Zack first grabbing Alexa’s shoes). Across the lake, the figure stopped waving and started circling the water as well, though in more of a quickened walk than a run. Before long, it became apparent that Alexa’s hunch was correct, and the others breathed a little easier. Marcus Tulving lumbered along the shore, finally stopping and bending over to catch his breath as Alexa reached him.
“Grampy!” she cheered, jumping up into his arms. Unfortunately, he had not actually extended his arms, so she ended up knocking him over. “Oops! Sorry!”
“Breakfasting baboons, girl!” he muttered, sitting up. “You’ll give an old man a heart attack!”
“Hey, Pop-Pop,” said Sydney as she and the others arrived. “It’s good to see you.”
“Is it?” he asked. “That’s a first. Why are you here? You shouldn’t be here. The MemorySphere isn’t a play—”
“They got Mom,” said Zack.
“Charlotte?”
“And Aunt Gladys. Again,” added Sydney.
The four of them took turns filling their grandfather in on all that had happened out in the real world. When Janice told him about Dimitri’s innocence, he frowned and rubbed his chin absently.
“You’re sure?” he asked. “That’s very strange. Very strange, indeed.”
They finished bringing him up to speed with the story of their adventure in the carnival. When they were done, their grandfather stood and paced away for a moment, grumbling to himself and shaking his head. The children waited patiently for him to gather his thoughts. Finally, he gave a big harrumph and rejoined them.
“You’re certain Dimitri isn’t involved? I could have sworn…”
“He was tied to a chair when Mom and Aunt Gladys lost their memories,” assured Zack.
“Securely?”
“Double knots,” added Sydney with a modest amount of pride. Marcus grunted in approval.
“He’s actually been very helpful,” said Janice. “Without him, we wouldn’t have been able to escape Miss Guacaladilla.”
“And he’s been taking very good care of Aunt Gladys since she forgot everything,” added Zack.
“Yes, he was always fond of her,” said their grandfather, rubbing his chin. “My daughters lost their memories at the same time? That’s odd. Shouldn’t be possible.”
“A shared memory?” suggested Sydney. “Something that happened at the same time to both of them?”
“You mean like how Dimitri was in Grampa’s memory?” asked Zack.
Marcus looked up sharply. “Wait. What memory?”
“That first memory of yours that you sent us into,” explained Sydney. “The one that turned out to be a total death trap.” She glanced up at Zack for confirmation that it had been, indeed, a total death trap. He nodded.
“My university laboratory?” pressed their grandfather, suddenly narrowing his eyes and sounding almost spooky.
“Yeah.” Sydney didn’t like the look crossing her grandfather’s face. “What?”
Marcus Tulving leaned back, his face a mask of puzzlement. “Dimitri did not work for me at the university,” he said. “He should not have been in that memory.”
The kids froze.
“Huh,” said Zack.
Sydney struggled to wrap her head around what her grandfather had just announced. “You mean…” She failed.
“You’re sure it was a memory of Dimitri?” asked Marcus. “Not Dimitri himself?”
“He was yellow,” said Zack.
“As yellow as everything else,” agreed Sydney, thinking back. There had been something else, too. Something else that hadn’t been right.
“That can’t be right,” stated Marcus, shaking his head. “You must have already jumped into another memory.”
“We hadn’t left that hallway,” said Zack.
Suddenly, Sydney remembered. “Grandfather!” she shouted.
Everyone jumped, startled. “Yes?” asked Marcus.
“That’s what he said. In the memory. He called you our grandfather,” she explained. “But how could he know that? No matter which memory we were in?”
Sydney watched as everybody digested the implications of her discovery. Zack looked severely troubled. Janice was even more confused. Alexa had given up paying attention and was cautiously dipping her toes into the water.
Suddenly, their grandfather erupted excitedly. “Hibernating hedgehogs!” he cried. “Is it possible?”
“Is what possible, Pop-Pop?” asked Sydney.
Shushing her, Marcus rose to his feet and started mumbling and pacing again.
“Don’t shush me,” complained Sydney.
“Relax, Sydney,” admonished Zack. “We’re all stressed out here.”
“He shushed me!” she answered defensively, a stress-induced RAGE beginning to boil.
“A lot of good it did,” remarked Janice.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t be such a snot!” said Janice.
“A snot? Seriously?” She turned to Zack. “You’re going to let her call me a snot?”
“If the shoe fits,” he answered.
The RAGE was about ready to blow. “I am not a snot!”
And that was when Alexa screamed in terror.
Alexa had quickly gotten bored with the conversation. Grampy had been saying all kinds of nonsense and her brother and sisters had been following along like they understood what he was talking about, so Alexa had figured she might as well duck out and go play in the water.
At first, she settled for getting her toes wet, but when that failed to grab anyone’s attention, she decide
d to roll up her pant legs and wade in ankle-deep. The water felt nice and cool as it lazily lapped against her leg. Mud oozed up between her toes, giving the whole experience a nice, squishy feel. She heard the others fall into a bicker session and had been about to distract them with a good splash when she noticed they weren’t alone.
On the other side of the lake, back near that ugly, broken shack they’d come from, stood a yellow man. Normally, Alexa would have found it odd to see a yellow man on the edge of a small lake, but of course by now she knew his coloring only meant he was a memory. Since he wasn’t real, Alexa didn’t give him much more thought and again prepared to splash her siblings. But then he did something strange.
He waved.
Do I know him? she asked herself. He looks a bit familiar. Not having an answer, Alexa remained curious, watching as he pulled something about the size and shape of a flattened football out of his jacket. She was pretty sure it was not, in fact, a flattened football. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand up, and Alexa immediately felt repulsed. The memory man carefully set the flattened football down at the lake’s edge, shooed it into the water, then stood, looked directly at Alexa, and put his finger to his lips in the age-old sign for “Don’t tell Mommy.”
Alexa, being a big girl and smart enough not to listen to strange memory men when they tell you not to tell Mommy, had been about to turn and yell out to Zack (who would have done just fine as a Mommy stand-in) when she noticed ripples in the, until now, still waters of the lake.
The ripples had started close to the far shore, where the memory man had lowered the flattened football into the water, but they had very quickly expanded outward, growing in both size and intensity. Fascination had held Alexa in place as the edge of the ripples approached. She had been pretty certain about the need to say something or do something or run somewhere but had been unable to resist the oddly soothing effect of watching the ripples float atop the lake.
It wasn’t until she’d caught sight of the Nasty, Slithery Something just under the surface of the water at her feet that she broke out of the spell, and it wasn’t until the Nasty, Slithery Something had wrapped itself around her ankle that she had the presence of mind to scream.
“Alexa!” shouted Zack, diving past Sydney and Janice and into the water.
The Nasty, Slithery Something yanked Alexa’s leg out from under her, and she fell into the water with a splash. Since she was only standing in ankle-deep water, she landed on her rump with the water up to her belly button. But the Nasty, Slithery Something started to drag her out into deeper water, tugging her through the muck a few inches at a time.
“Help!” she screamed.
Zack belly flopped into the lake next to her, the shallowness of the water knocking the wind out of him as he landed. Even so, her big brother reached out and took hold of Alexa’s arms as he fell, anchoring her in place.
The Nasty, Slithery Something seemed to understand its prize was no longer such an easy claim, and its spastic tugs grew stronger in response. Alexa struggled against the pull, shoving her free foot deep into the lake bottom for leverage. The Nasty, Slithery Something was stronger, however, and try as she might, Alexa was slowly but surely drawn toward deeper water.
“Guys! Help me!” called Zack, getting to his feet and straining to keep his little sister from being dragged to her death.
The elder Rothbaum girls were at his side before he’d finished his plea, and they quickly joined his efforts to save their sister. Between them, the three children were almost able to match the sheer power of the Nasty, Slithery Something.
Almost, but not quite.
“Help!” screamed Alexa in rising terror as her body ran taut like a rope in a game of tug-of-war. The top of the Nasty, Slithery Something broke the surface of the lake as it clung to her, and it was every bit as nasty and slithery out of the water as it was submerged. It looked like a giant slug, brown and gray and disgusting and covered with tiny little slits all along its skin.
“Hold on!” commanded Zack, straining with all his might.
She tried to do as she was told, but felt her grip slipping slowly out of his hands. With a final gasp, she realized her brother and sisters were going to lose the fight.
“Nobody breathe!” hollered their all-but-forgotten grandfather, stomping his way into the water, holding something in his closed fist.
Alexa didn’t understand how not breathing could save her, but she put her faith in Grampy and quickly did as she was told. As did Zack and Janice.
“What do you mean, don’t breathe?” asked Sydney, who would very soon regret not holding her breath. “What are you—?”
With a final lunge, Grampy lurched past the three older kids and tossed whatever was in his fist toward the Nasty, Slithery Something.
A fine black powder floated down through the air onto the slimy skin of the Nasty, Slithery Something. Suddenly, dozens of the narrow slits on the creature opened up and sucked flakes of the powder into its system.
The creature sneezed.
The force of the powerful blast shot Alexa up and over her siblings, landing her on the shore of the lake. Without the Nasty, Slithery Something pulling against them, all three of Alexa’s siblings toppled backward—Zack and Janice with a gasp and Sydney with a sneeze. Meanwhile, since every action needed an equal and opposite reaction, the Nasty, Slithery Something jetted uncontrollably backward across the lake in multiple, sneezy bursts.
“What was that?” asked a semi-dazed Janice.
“The powder?” asked Grampy as Sydney continued to sneeze in fits and starts. “Pepper. The creature? I don’t have a name for it, but it doesn’t belong here.”
He quickly ushered everyone out of the water.
“You mean—achoo!—in this lake?” asked Sydney, her eyes watering.
“I mean in this memory,” replied Grampy. He bent down to a knee next to Alexa. “All good?”
“That was nasty,” she answered.
“Yes, they are,” he agreed, hauling her to her feet. “We need to leave this memory. Right away. Follow me.”
Without waiting for them to respond, he set off away from the lake in the direction of a tiny structure standing alone under a tree.
“What do you mean, it doesn’t belong in this memory?” asked Zack, hurrying to catch up. “Where’d it come from?”
“I intend to find out,” said Grampy, reaching the tiny structure.
“Is that what I think it is?” asked Janice, eyeing the little building dubiously.
“Could be,” he answered. “What do you think it is?”
“An outhouse.”
“Then you’re right.”
“Ew,” said Janice.
“What’s an outhouse?” asked Alexa.
“An outdoor potty,” answered Sydney between sneezes.
“Ew,” said Alexa.
“Luckily, whoever’s memory this is never used it,” said Grampy, opening the door wide to reveal a wall of black. “In you go.”
The children hesitated.
“That thing will continue to grow,” he explained. “Very soon it will pop out little baby things. Soon this whole memory will be swarming with them.” He sighed and took a final look around the picturesque lake. “Shame. I liked it here.”
As if in answer, a horrible, gravelly roar bellowed forth from the lake. The children quickly piled into the outhouse.
They stepped out of a storage closet and into a classroom.
Rows of desks faced a chalkboard, and a small, cramped table piled high with paper was tucked into a corner. A jiggly, matronly woman sat perched on a stool by the table, her flabbiness spilling over the top of the stool like muffins too big for the pan.
“Oooh!” she exclaimed upon seeing five strangers appear in her classroom. “Oooh! Have you come for me? I’ve always known someone would come for me.”
“No, ma’am,” said Zack, who was very practiced at being nice to teachers. “We haven’t come for you.”
&nbs
p; “One of the children, then?” asked the woman with a quiver that took an extra second to travel all the way around her body. “I can well understand. A few of them are nice and plump.”
Zack had no idea what she was talking about but was saved the bother of responding by his grandfather. “Just passing through,” spat the old man, leading the children down the aisle to the door.
“Oooh,” said the woman, a hint of disappointment in her voice. “Well, if you change your mind…” She patted her tummy and returned to her paperwork as they left the room.
Rows of full-sized lockers covered the hallway while pale industrial lighting gloomed down upon a far-too-shiny linoleum floor. Marcus carefully closed the classroom door before turning to his grandchildren and shaking his head.
“She gives me the willies,” he said, more to himself than to any of them.
“What was that thing in the water?” asked Zack, ignoring his grandfather’s musings and getting right to the point.
“And why’d—achoo!—why’d you throw pepper at it?” added Sydney.
“I said don’t breathe.” Marcus looked up and down the corridor and led them forward. “It’s a mucus creature. Lots of nasal passages. Pepper irritates it.”
“Where did it come from?” asked Janice, trying to keep up. “That’s not real. Nobody ‘remembered’ it.”
“No. It…evolved.”
“In the MemorySphere?” asked Sydney with a sniffle, her eyes puffy and red.
“In a specific memory,” he answered, frowning. “One of the first…” His voice trailed off. Zack saw a weariness in his grandfather he hadn’t noticed before. He wondered what sort of life the man must have been leading trapped inside the MemorySphere all these years.
“However,” snapped Marcus, suddenly back to his usual self, “I’ve never encountered it elsewhere.”
“How’d it find us?” asked Janice.
“The memory man brought it,” stated Alexa.
The others turned to look at the diminutive girl who, tired of all the walking, had flumped down onto the floor. As one, they waited for her to elaborate. She didn’t.
Finally, Zack cleared his throat. “What memory man, Alexa?”
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