The Wednesdays

by Julie Bourbeau

  He felt Wednesday.

  Or, perhaps it was more accurate to say that he felt like a wednesday. He wasn’t certain how best to describe it. Whatever it was, he had felt it first while standing at the clock: a clear and awful calling when the clock struck twelve, as if something decidedly not Max was awakening within his body—and even more terribly, within his mind.

  At that moment, the only thing that kept Max from running away forever was the knowledge that his friends stood waiting for him, exposed and vulnerable outdoors on a Wednesday. This, and only this, persuaded him to slow his pace and head toward his home.

  His friends were waiting, wide-eyed and tense, and no one objected when Max insisted that they keep their meeting brief. “Two saw all of you, and he knows you were with me. He might try to harm one of you out of spite. You’re better off indoors.”

  Noah was anything but scared, though. “Did you all see that? Did you see the teeth on the big one? Did you smell them? Geez, Max, I hope you don’t start smelling like them. What do you think would happen if I shot one with my BB gun? Or, maybe we could dig a pit and put spikes at the bottom, or—”

  Dr. Conkle-Smoak interrupted Noah’s blabbering. “Settle down, lad. There’ll be no guns or traps. I daresay they wouldn’t work on these creatures anyway. Just look at these astral spectrometer readings—they’re quite literally off the charts!” His measurement device was smoking slightly, and it smelled of melted plastic.

  Gemma didn’t look as scared as she ought to, either. But she was uncharacteristically silent, and her pretty brow was furrowed in deep thought.

  Max wanted to send them all home as soon as possible—especially if they didn’t have the sense to fear for their own safety—but something was puzzling him. “Doctor, why did Two let that magnet you threw hit him in the head? Whenever I’ve thrown anything at a wednesday, it’s always bounced right back and hit me instead.”

  Dr. Conkle-Smoak, the one member of the group who seemed properly frightened, looked pleased beneath his terror. “I was testing a theory, dear boy, and I do believe I may have stumbled upon something. You see, I have deduced the possibility that these wednesdays of yours have what parapsychologists refer to as an advanced psychic apparatus. In Freudian terms, you might say they have a pathological enlargement of the id. That, combined with their hyper-magnetized brain wave frequencies, makes them uniquely susceptible to—”

  “Get to the point!” Max roared irritably.

  “Fine,” sniffed Dr. Conkle-Smoak, who looked hurt by Max’s interruption. “To put it in the crass terminology that seems to be preferred by your appallingly inattentive generation: you need to shock the little slimeballs. Scorch ’em. Toast their nasty little toesies and make them dance like a kite in a windstorm. Zing. Zang. Poof. Am I making myself clear?”

  Gemma arched one eyebrow as she and Max exchanged surprised glances, and even Noah was stunned into silence. The doctor now had everyone’s complete attention.

  “As I was saying,” Dr. Conkle-Smoak continued, basking slightly in the newfound spotlight, “their abnormal magnetic fields appear to make them uniquely susceptible to electroshock.”

  Max gritted his teeth with impatience. He didn’t understand half of what the doctor was rambling on about, but if the strange man had truly identified a wednesday weakness, then he had no choice but to let him continue.

  “Let me show you what I mean.” Dr. Conkle-Smoak rummaged around in his knapsack until he found what he was looking for. It was a crumpled and torn brochure that he smoothed down carefully on the patio table. Max had to squint to see it in the dim moonlight.

  “It looks like a gun!” Predictably enough, Noah’s interest was piqued.

  “It’s not a gun,” the doctor chastised. “It is a state-of-the-art psycho-magnetic catabolizer. And it might just do the trick against these savage little buggers.” He glanced apologetically at Max. “No offense to present company intended.”

  Max shrugged it off. “Where can we get one?”

  “Well”—the doctor bit his lip nervously—“there’s a slight question of legality, and it might take some time to get approved for an import license. I could ask around the occultist community, but they’re a secretive bunch and not much inclined to share equipment.”

  Gemma hadn’t said a word up until this point, but she was closely scrutinizing the brochure. “I’ve seen one of these before,” she said softly, still thinking. Suddenly, her face lit up. “Yes! I know exactly where I’ve seen one. I think that I can get you one, Max, if you need it.”

  “Of course he needs it!” Noah answered for Max.

  Just then, the lawn sprinklers turned on, instantly drenching the group with icy water. At the exact same time, Dr. Conkle-Smoak developed a vicious case of hiccups, and Gemma stubbed her toe painfully as she tried to escape the water from the sprinklers. Noah eyed Max suspiciously and took several large steps away from him.

  Max stayed where he was, barely feeling the onslaught from the sprinklers. “Sorry, everyone,” he apologized glumly, “but it is Wednesday, you know. You should all get inside before anything worse happens. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  They didn’t need to be told twice; everyone hurried off in different directions. Dr. Conkle-Smoak hesitated and turned back toward Max. “I almost forgot to tell you. I think I know where they go when it isn’t Wednesday.”

  Max sighed wearily. He was exhausted, and he didn’t have the energy to listen to another one of the doctor’s long-winded explanations. “Can you give me the quick version?”

  The parapsychologist pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket; Max recognized it as the pencil rubbing that he had made from the words that he had found etched into the base of the clock tower. “I looked it up. Psyche pannuchizein exodo is Greek. Loosely translated, it means ‘exit from soul sleep.’ ”

  Max shook his head in frustration. “That makes no sense at all—it sounds like complete nonsense. For all we know, those words have nothing to do with the wednesdays.”

  Dr. Conkle-Smoak touched his shoulder gently, ignoring the water from the sprinklers even as it dripped into his eyes. “Max, it’s a complicated concept, but it’s one with a long and meaningful history. I believe they go into a dormant, transitional state of sorts—kind of a deep sleep, or hibernation, if you will—except on Wednesdays, when they are able to temporarily exit from the clock tower.” He paused, looking as if he wanted to continue, but then stopped himself. “Speaking of sleep, young man, you look as if you need some yourself. Good night, Max.”

  As Dr. Conkle-Smoak hurried off into the night, Max crawled into his now-soggy tent. It was cold and miserable, but he didn’t want to risk going in the house and ruining his parents’ night. The sprinklers finally turned off, and Max pulled his damp sleeping bag around him, shivering slightly in the night air.

  Maxwell V. Bernard. Next. One Hundred. Wednesday. “Who am I?” Max asked aloud. But, of course, no one answered him. Pulling the sleeping bag up to his chin, Max contemplated the doctor’s theory that the wednesdays were simply asleep the rest of the week. Could it be that simple? He struggled to recall what Ninety-eight had said. “There’s Wednesday, and then there’s not-Wednesday. On not-Wednesdays, there are not wednesdays.”

  Max didn’t know what to think; he was too tired to even try. As he started to drift off, Ninety-nine’s weak voice echoed in his mind. Next week … next week … next week …

  He only had one week left.

  ax spent that Wednesday close to home. After all, he reasoned sadly, it could very well be his last Wednesday ever with his family. He spent the day playing canasta with his parents through the kitchen window. They had developed a system using sign language and note cards to communicate through the glass. When it was time to pass cards, Max’s father would open the window just enough to squeeze the cards through the crack, one at a time. They made it through the afternoon with only a few minor incidents, although his dad did wind up with his eyeglasses broken and his sweater
unraveled.

  The family cat had long since learned to spend Wednesdays in deep feline hiding, but Max’s mother assured him that its fur was growing back nicely.

  Only baby Leland seemed to sense that something was amiss. He absolutely insisted that his high chair be placed by the window so that he could press his face against the glass and watch Max’s every move with wide, curious eyes. He didn’t spit up or fuss once that afternoon, which in and of itself made it a most unusual day. Odder still, though, was the single syllable he babbled and cooed nearly constantly between his bottles and his diaper changes. “Neh, neh, neh,” he repeated all day long.

  “Listen, everyone! He’s trying to say his first word,” his mother shouted. “Say Mommy, Leland darling. Mah-meeee.”

  “Neh,” said baby Leland.

  Their voices were muted through the windowpanes, but Max could hear well enough to guess exactly what baby Leland was trying to say.

  He was trying to say “Next.”

  Oh, certainly, it could have been “neck,” or “nap,” any one of a hundred nonsense syllables that all babies utter meaninglessly, but Max knew better. He stared back at his baby brother and wished he could speak. “What do you know?” he asked softly. But no matter how strongly Max tried to will his baby brother to reveal his secrets, Leland simply continued to stare and to cheerfully repeat his lone word fragment.

  “Neh.” Baby Leland smiled adoringly at Max. “Neh, neh, neh, neh.”

  At dinnertime Max’s father moved the dining room table close to the window so that Max would feel as if he was sitting with them as he ate his meal on the back step. His mother waved at him cheerfully through the window and held up the pitcher of lemonade—her way of asking whether he wanted more.

  “No, thank you,” he mouthed.

  As he ate, he sang the wednesday song in his head:

  A wednesday’s job is never done

  As long as Wednesdays are.

  We heed the clock when it tolls twelve

  And come from near and far.

  We’re never late–we cannot be–

  For then we’d miss the door.

  Neither do we dare to leave

  Till Wednesday is no more.

  There was something important in the lyrics—he was certain of it.

  As he pondered the meaning of the song, Max’s thoughts wandered to something Ninety-nine had said. He said that Two had selected him six weeks ago. Why then? Why me? Max wondered. What happened six weeks ago?

  And then he remembered.

  It was such a minor incident that it was no wonder it hadn’t occurred to him before. He counted backward on his fingers just to be sure. Yes—that had to be it. Exactly six Wednesdays ago he had been cooped up in the house as usual, going nearly mad with boredom. It was a stormy, dreary day, so Max had been delighted when the weather worked itself up into a dramatic electrical storm. Lightning was streaking vividly across the cloud-darkened sky, and the rain was coming down nearly sideways in the stiff wind. As he stood watching the storm from his bedroom window, Max had wanted to breathe in the fresh, charged feel of the lightning-scorched wind. He’d opened his window and inhaled the stormy air for only the briefest of moments before the rain had begun to splatter into his room. As he struggled to close the window to keep his carpet from getting soaked, he had noticed some sort of animal scurrying across the street. The creature was illuminated by a bolt of lightning just long enough to draw Max’s attention, but not long enough for him to identify it. The next flash of lightning revealed only the empty street, so Max had forgotten all about it.

  He now wondered if that scampering creature in the storm had been Two. Was it possible? Could a single, careless moment standing in the open window have cost him his humanity?

  His mother startled him by tapping three times on the window—the signal that she was about to serve dessert. Max stood up and dutifully moved to the far side of the backyard long enough for her to quickly open the back door and slide a piece of banana cream pie out to him. He wrinkled his nose and then shuffled back to pick at it once the door was firmly closed; he had never much cared for cream pies. He glumly observed that the crust was burned—his fault somehow, no doubt.

  He was picking the mushy banana chunks out of the cream filling when inspiration struck. Something about the round banana slices reminded him of the round clockface. He angrily squished the pieces of fruit with his fork, wishing he could squish the clock as easily … when he realized he might, in fact, be able to do just that. Or, at least something with the same end result. If I sabotage the clock, the wednesdays will have no way to get out.

  The more he thought about it, the more it seemed possible. According to the song, the clock was the wednesdays’ door. And Dr. Conkle-Smoak had said that the words engraved into the clock tower referred to an exit of some sort. If this was true, then perhaps destroying the clock would destroy their exit!

  Max desperately wanted to share his theory with someone, but when he glanced through the window at his parents cozily feeding one another bites of pie, he just couldn’t bear the thought of getting their hopes up if his plan didn’t work.

  He would simply have to wait until Thursday to talk to anyone.

  ax hardly slept a wink that night. He tossed and turned fitfully, and during the precious few moments when he finally did manage to drift off, he was haunted by bizarre dreams involving silver lightning bolts shooting out from storm clouds made of rotten banana cream pie. It was a thoroughly unpleasant night, but at least it had given him much-needed time to think.

  By Thursday morning Max had come up with a plan that just might work. He was nearly bursting with the need to share it by the time a breathless Gemma showed up in his backyard at half past noon.

  “I know, I know—I’m late, aren’t I? Don’t be angry with me, though; it wasn’t my fault. That wretched Mrs. Trimersnide caught me sneaking off school grounds, believe it or not. I’d still be her prisoner if I hadn’t threatened to publish a story in the school paper about her nasty little habit of swiping food out of students’ lunch bags.” Gemma grinned devilishly as she pulled something out of her backpack. “Anyway, look what I’ve got.”

  Max stared in amazement. “It’s one of Dr. Conkle-Smoak’s psycho-magnet thingies!” He couldn’t even begin to imagine how Gemma had managed to find the small silver weapon, which looked like an odd sort of cross between a gun, a flashlight, and his father’s electric shaver.

  “Psycho-magnetic catabolizer,” she corrected him. “Otherwise known to the rest of the world as a stun gun. When I saw the doctor’s brochure, I was positive I had seen one before—it just took me a moment to figure out where.”

  Max reached out to touch the weapon, then hesitated. If it worked against wednesdays, then it might work against him. “Where did you get it?”

  “Since he’s the mayor, my father is also the village’s deputy constable. He doesn’t need a gun, since nothing truly dangerous ever happens here, but the chief constable gave him this, just in case.” Gemma pressed a button and the device made a loud zapping noise as a blue electrical current sizzled and arced between two probes on the end of the weapon.

  Max jumped back, startled. A burnt ozone smell wafted from the device.

  Noah burst into the backyard just in time to see Gemma’s demonstration. “Oh, cool! You got one of those wednesday zapper guns. Let me have a turn.” He grabbed at the weapon.

  Gemma, who was at least three inches taller than Noah, sighed and held the device out of reach. “All in good time,” Gemma chastised him. She turned to show Max how the stun gun worked. “So, you just press this end against the wednesday and then hit this button. He’ll get a nasty shock that he won’t soon forget.”

  Max felt his stomach sink. He shook his head slowly. “I have to be close enough to touch them with it? It’ll never work,” he said. “Two’s not about to let me get near enough to zap him.”

  “See, I told you we need a real gun,” Noah whined.


  “No!” Max and Gemma shouted him down in unison.

  But as Noah sulked, an idea snaked its way into Max’s mind. There was someone who could get close enough to the wednesdays to use the stun gun … someone who had plenty of experience with weapons.

  He hopped to his feet. “I need to go ask someone for a favor. I’ll meet up with you later.” Max refused to tell them anything else until he knew that his plan would work.

  • • •

  Thursday snapped and growled murderously from the porch as Max approached the house. The tiny dog looked uglier than ever with his crooked teeth bared and his patchy fur standing on end. A string of saliva hung suspended from his mouth, and his pinkish, rheumy eyes were focused menacingly on Max.

  Max took several nervous steps backward, certain that the snarling dog was about to attack. For such a tiny little animal, he seemed awfully vicious. Fortunately, Mr. Grimsrud pushed through the door just in the nick of time. “What’s wrong, little fella?” He struggled to restrain the dog, who seemed singularly determined to eat Max.

  “Well, now, that’s curious,” the old man said once he had wrestled the dog into the house. Thursday continued to bark wildly from behind the door. “He usually only gets like that when he smells a wednesday. Oh …” His voice trailed off as he noticed Max’s gangly arms and large, silver eyes. “I see.”

  Max hung his head in shame. “I need your help,” he whispered.

  Mr. Grimsrud began knocking on the side of his head nervously before Max was even halfway through his explanation. By the time the old man heard what Max wanted, he was tapping an anxious SOS pattern into his skull. “I’m afraid that’s simply not possible, young man. I’m truly sorry for your troubles, but I want no part of them. I have Thursday to think of, after all. You seem nice enough—at least when you’re not covered in garbage. I’m sure you have plenty of friends who’d be willing to help out.”