Haffling (The Haffling series)

by Caleb James

Nimby dove back and forth from my shoulder to in front of my face. The patchouli smell was stronger than ever.

  “Go home!” Nimby wailed.

  If I’d had the patience, I would have blocked her out. I pushed my hands further into the thick mesh. The deadwood snapped and scratched my hands and wrists. Little twigs fell to the ground. Yup, someone had been here before, and not that long ago. Let it be Mom. “Please let her be here.” The fingers of my right hand broke through to the other side. I moved my left to meet it. “Mom,” I called out. “Mom, it’s Alex. If you’re in there, please say something.”

  There was no reply, the only sound the snapping of branches and Nimby’s screams.

  “Leave here. Please, please, please, Alex, go home!”

  I inched my hands together, the fingers touching inside the wall of branches. Then slowly, like one of my Wing Chung moves where the hands move strong from the body’s center, I pushed them apart, creating a window.

  I peered into the dark. “Mom?” My voice echoed.

  Like the whoosh of a soda bottle, I caught a strong pulse of patchouli. Other smells rushed through the opening. Weird! Cookies out of the oven, ripe strawberries, and chocolate. Saliva rushed into my mouth. “What the….”

  I breathed deep. The patchouli was now an undertone in a symphony of smells. I thought briefly of the Chinatown bakery and pictured Alice conning that woman into giving us cookies. Although she hadn’t done anything dishonest. Just being Alice with her irresistible smile and luminous eyes.

  “Go home!” Nimby screamed. “This place is bad! You mustn’t be here. Bad, bad, bad.”

  I shook my head. Confused. What am I doing here? My hands plunged deep inside a tree, like a veterinarian about to pull a calf from its mother. “I need to find Mom.”

  I angled my right shoulder into the hole between my hands. Then I twisted my body to follow. I backed into the branches, protecting my face from the scratch and the scrape.

  I expected resistance as I sunk my weight into the dense tangle. But suddenly, like I’d hit some tipping point, the mesh of branches gave way. I wasn’t expecting it. I lost my balance. I fell back.

  Nimby screamed, “Nooooooooo!” Her words blurred. “Ask no questions. Neither a borrower nor a lender be. Stay away from May!” The branches shut her out. Why didn’t she follow me? She always follows me.

  I grabbed at thin air, and before I hit my head, had the thought, Who bakes cookies in the middle of the park?

  Five

  THE back of my head throbbed from where it’d hit the ground. My fingers played over a tender lump where Alex met… what, a rock? I tried to move, but couldn’t. Give yourself a second, you’re winded. My eyes were shut. And that smell…. I salivated as I cracked my lids. I expected to be in the dark center of the weeping mulberry tree.

  “Wha…?” Bright lights forced my eyes shut. Okay, clearly this is a dream. That’s why I’m having trouble moving. I reminded myself of facts from physiology. That when we dream, the brainstem is shut off. So we’re essentially paralyzed while asleep. In response to that, I again felt the lump on the back of my head with my very mobile fingers. So much for that hypothesis.

  Regardless, this had to be a dream. I eased my eyes open, letting them adjust to the glare. Blinking back tears, I stared up at a domed ceiling dotted with rows of theatrical lights. The one directly overhead warmed my body; it felt nice, like that first step into a hot tub. Goose flesh traveled down my arms and across my face.

  I heard a woman’s musical voice and deeper grunted responses from somewhere in the distance. My other hand played at what should have been the forest floor. Only it was hard and smooth… and clean. I tried to move again, and this time my feet responded. My hands pushed against the floor—the tile floor. My fingers played across the surface, not perfectly smooth, but tiny pieces of…. I rolled onto my side. So pretty, squares of colored glass, none bigger than an inch, inset between a spiderweb of dark grout. My eyes played across the mosaic surface. It was like a stained glass window, only on the floor, and lit from below. It was an intricate woodland scene, and I’d never seen anything like it. I couldn’t imagine the cost, but more than that, it was a masterpiece, like the Tiffany windows at the Metropolitan Museum… only more intricate.

  Again, I heard the woman’s voice, and pulled my eyes from the glowing floor. “Okay,” I said aloud. “This is a dream.” There could be no other explanation for the scene before me. I was in a TV studio—of sorts. Some kind of cooking show in a kitchen that would have made Martha Stewart weep with envy. From the magnificent floor that merged seamlessly to cabinets made of colored glass. Not just a single color, but hundreds—maybe thousands—of shades. The last color of the floor was continued in the cabinets, and from there it was picked up by the stone countertop. To say the effect was beautiful is like saying Starry Night is a pretty picture. My analytic mind searched for the wires and bulbs that would make it all possible—I couldn’t see them.

  It was lovely and seamless. Ignoring the throb in the back of my head, I turned toward the woman’s voice. Every moment or two I reminded myself, It’s a dream. Has to be a dream. That helped as I stared at the source of the voice.

  She was perfect, with skin the color of cream and a wave of blonde hair held off her face with a white silk ribbon. She reminded me of a housewife from a 1950s TV show. Her red-and-white dress flared out like a bell at her tiny waist and came in tight around her full breasts. She was posed with one hand on the glowing countertop and the other holding a cupcake covered with cherries. Her red-lipped smile was dazzling as she looked into….

  What the hell was that? About two feet away from the perfectly coiffed and made-up hostess stood an eight-foot, mottled green-and-brown… ogre, dressed in khakis and a striped polo shirt. It’s a dream, Alex. You’ve hit your head, and you’re unconscious in the middle of Fort Tyron Park dreaming about… Gork, the ogre in one of Mom’s pill pictures. I gaped at the green-faced, red-eyed ogre holding what wasn’t a camera but a sort of mirror in front of the hostess. Because this was a dream, I figured the mosaic floor was my unconscious reinterpreting Mom’s paintings. Yup, things were pulling together. All I had to do was wake up. But I couldn’t.

  What I could do was stare at Gork. The mirror he held reflected the beautiful blonde and her delicious-looking cupcake. The mirror’s surface shimmered. Not glass, but water. Which, how does water stay upright like that without falling off?

  The woman studied her reflection, and as she did I noticed subtle changes. The ends of her hair curled up, and then down, finally growing a few inches to where they lay neatly on her bare shoulders. She held the cupcake in front of her glistening lips, as though searching for the best angle. First she held the treat out, then near the corner of her mouth. Her lip color changed, matched first to a dark, almost purple bing cherry, and then to a maraschino red. Her smile vanished. She glared at the ogre. “It’s no good. It’s dull. It’s boring. It’s been done to death. This is the best I get!”

  The ogre shrugged, and I heard gasps behind him. Someone in the shadows murmured, “Oh no.” I glimpsed a darkened area with several creatures on wood and canvas director’s chairs.

  Keeping with my—this is a dream theme—I put names to the barely visible audience. A couple of the little squat guys were probably trolls, although based on their muscular arms and chests—trolls who spent time in the gym. There were two slender, fairly human-looking women with curved, pointy ears like Nimby’s. Only they were full-sized, and I couldn’t see if they had wings. One’s face was green and the other a powder blue. Their skin reminded me of those chalky pastel mints they have in bowls next to the cash register in diners.

  The latter, who had a pencil wedged behind her ear, offered, “Cupcakes have been done to death. They’re not sexy anymore.”

  The hostess’s smile returned. The corners of her lips pulled back over sparkling teeth. In a flash, the cupcake flew from her hand and splattered in the pointy-eared woman’s face. The impact
dislodged the pencil. “Useless!” the hostess shrieked.

  She snapped her fingers and pointed over the heads of her shadowed crew. Lights popped on, and with the bell of her skirt swirling, she advanced on them. Her head twisted to the side with a crack, as she gracefully dipped at the knees and picked up the fallen pencil. She examined it briefly before stabbing it into the forehead of the pointy-eared woman.

  A dark green fluid swelled around the entry wound. The creature gasped and fell back. Her fall was cushioned by two pairs of spasming wings.

  “I don’t mean to be a bitch,” the hostess said in a sweet voice. “But clearly the importance of what we’re doing has not been fully communicated. Cupcakes are garbage! And not even today’s garbage. Last week’s. Last year’s! I need tomorrow, next week, and next year. I need the hot new thing for ten years from now. Nothing less. Little cherries on sweet cupcakes are not going to bring the fey back. Now….” She made slow eye contact with each of the trolls, a badger with a human face, and a thin man with snow-white hair that fell to his waist. “Give me the new, the next. And give it to me now!”

  Her glares were met with silence.

  From my spot on the floor, I saw the blue woman’s twitching wings. The movement was getting less, so either she was passing out or was dying… over a cupcake. Which—all I could think was how delicious that cupcake had looked. I would have eaten it.

  But this was absurd. Alex, wake up. I remembered my cell phone and reached into my pocket. I pulled it out and clicked it on. The app for the GPS flashed onto the screen, and sure enough, the “X” for Mom’s phone lined up with the “X” for my phone. So where is she?

  Slowly, I pushed up from the floor. I didn’t want to think how, if this were a dream, things should be shifting. But the gorgeous floor was even better viewed from above. Dream or no, I wasn’t ready to face the murderous hostess; I just wanted to find Mom and get back home.

  Gork, the mirror-holding ogre, broke the silence with two grunted words. “Guest spot.”

  “Yes.” And the hostess’s smile returned. Her eyes swept the room and landed on me.

  Hell no, I thought, wondering what guest spot entailed. Scared, but fascinated, I caught the color of her eyes—a vivid green-gold, like a cat.

  She winked at me. “I see you,” she sang. She glanced at the ogre and his mirror made of water. “So pleased,” she said. She stared into the mirror, and the color of her hair shifted, now more honey blonde than ash.

  I felt drugged. Like I knew I should be doing something, but all I could think about was how nice it might be to change your face, your hair. Today I’ll be blond, tomorrow a redhead. I flashed on a pair of brown eyes, but that was another dream, and a walk to school… or maybe that was the dream and this was reality. And for all the activity in this crazy kitchen/TV studio, it was quiet save for the hostess. I looked at my cell and pressed the app for my contacts. Mom’s number was right under Alice’s. I touched the number to send a call. “Find Mom,” I said aloud. “Go home, wake up. Just do it.”

  Time passed, and I listened to the hostess. “So excited, so pleased, our next guest is an innovator and an excavator. She is the conduit and the keeper, and most importantly, the woman who will make the world mine. So pleased, so excited, as I know you will be too…. I give you the one, the only, the fabulously fertile… Marilyn Nevus.”

  My jaw dropped. I stared across the studio, and I heard Mom’s phone ring.

  Six

  THE jury was still out on whether this was a dream or maybe I’d fallen, hit my head, and was in a coma. Kind of a Wizard of Oz scenario. But waltzing—literally—across the glowing kitchen floor came my mother, Marilyn Nevus, in the arms of a tall blond man who could have been the younger brother of the guy with the silvery hair watching from the shadows. This dude in his pirate shirt and skintight britches was gorgeous—like off the cover of a romance novel. He smiled at Mom, holding her gaze. He whispered as they swooped in graceful circles toward the hostess. Mom was in a red silk gown, her arms and shoulders bare. Her hair, raven black like mine, was pinned up with tiny red roses. Her lips were parted; she was laughing. It was weird.

  My mom didn’t laugh, at least not the way regular people do. Her laugh was wooden and short and came at the wrong times. It was the laugh of a person who thinks something is funny but isn’t sure, so they fake laugh to try and pass for normal. Only it did the opposite.

  I’d never seen her like this, graceful and lovely. And who the hell was that man?

  A soft green spotlight shone on a raised platform next to a wall of ovens. On top of it a group of frogs and brightly plumed birds—with instruments—played a waltz. A pair of birds, one a muted blue, the other a brilliant scarlet with a marigold beak, twittered harmonies back and forth. Behind their plaintive song—I assumed something about love—the frogs kept a croaking beat.

  In Intro to Psych, which I took last year, I read about dreams… and schizophrenia, and why teenage boys shouldn’t be hearing and seeing fairies. Especially boys with mothers who had schizophrenia. Anyway, why I figured this had to be a dream was that all the pieces made a weird sense. There were rules here—and I was the king of those. Something about fragments of the day or week you’d just gone through show up in twisted ways in your dreams. Ashley had been talking about the prom—and here was my mom in a prom dress. I found my voice. “Wake up, Alex.”

  Against the pulse of the music and the twirling pair on the illuminated floor, I strained to hear Mom’s phone. I held my cell, and like another duet, hers answered from off to my right. It was behind the counter.

  “And here she is!” the hostess exclaimed as the frogs and birds came to a sudden stop. The hostess reached out her arm.

  Marilyn eased from her partner’s embrace, her movements fluid as a ballerina’s. She took the hostess’s hand. “Your highness.”

  “Marilyn, my pet, it is so nice of you to join us.” The lights grew bright along their stretch of counter. “I beg you… show us something new.”

  I stared as Mom, graceful and assured, let go of the hostess’s hand. She turned toward the ogre with the mirror and smiled. Her expression faltered as she caught me in the periphery. “What are you doing here?”

  As she said that, there was a croaking of frogs and a giant numeral one flashed on a screen over a bank of glass cabinets.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked.

  As the words left my mouth, another round of croaks and a second numeral one appeared. I looked at Mom and then at the giant illuminated numbers. Over the first was a picture of her, and over the second, there I was. And then I heard her phone. “Just wake up,” I told myself.

  The hostess’s expression was radiant, her eyes a glittery gold. “Sweetheart.” She was talking to me. “You are awake. Wide awake.” She stared at my mother. There was hardness beneath her smile. “It’s time for you to give us something new. It is what you do.”

  “Of course,” Mom said. She glanced in my direction and shook her head. “Ask no questions, Alex. The cost is too high.” She seemed at home in this unreal reality show. Her movements were unhurried as she glanced at the ogre with the mirror and directed his focus to a stretch of counter bathed in white light. “Today,” she began, “we’re going to take medication.” She laughed. It sent my thoughts skittering back, back before the McGuires’ house of horrors, back before I’d ever heard the word schizophrenia. “Yes,” she repeated, “we’re going to take medication, and find a real use for it.”

  She waved her hands like a game show hostess over the countertop where dozens of pill bottles and a pile of capsules and tablets awaited.

  “All it takes,” she continued, “is some brightly colored pills, a glue gun, and your imagination.”

  As she continued with her demonstration, her cell phone clicked over to voice mail. I couldn’t figure out where it was, and for some reason that seemed important. Leary of leaving the periphery, I sidled toward the edge of the cabinets. As I inched across the mosai
c floor, lights from underneath shot colors up my legs. I held out my hand, and I could see the patterns and pictures from the floor like tattoos on my skin.

  I glanced at Mom. She was brightly lit, talking to the mirror while her fingers pressed pills onto a Masonite artist’s board. If this were a dream, the images would shift, and one scene would flow to the next. That wasn’t happening. And if this wasn’t a dream… then the number one bet was I was mad as a hatter. Number two… and that was a distant second… this was real. That thought scared me, like that first day in the McGuires’, not knowing what to do, knowing we were in danger and having no clue how to get out of it.

  I glanced at my right shoulder… no Nimby. The one time in my life I could actually use her, and she’d abandoned me. Why? I’d have thought she’d be right at home. I remembered how frightened she’d been. She’d told me not to ask questions. Neither a borrower nor a lender be, and stay away from May, which I was guessing had to be the blonde running this tea party. Okay, there are rules here. You’re good with those. Yeah, and you’ve already broken two of them. I remembered one of Sifu’s sayings. “All of your senses are open, this is how you learn.” I focused on the scene before me, letting the information rush in. Mom, more normal than I’d ever seen her—that was important. And her dance partner, now standing off to one side, his gaze fixed on her, and then he turned toward me, a smile on his lips. He winked. What the hell?

  The hostess gushed. “You are such a talented woman, Marilyn…. This is what I’m talking about. Something new.” She glared at the audience. “Something that hasn’t been done to death.”

  I flicked the GPS app on my cell, and keeping to the edge of the stage, I cleared the counter. There, behind a soaring glass cabinet, was a towering tree sculpture. It revolved slowly, and its branches swayed as though there were a breeze inside the cupboard. On the tip of each limb hung a cell phone. Mom’s was high up in the branches, its screen illuminated with my picture and name.