by William Hawk
Miss Camilla responded, “My young friend is down there, working on a project. I’d rather not disturb him.”
“Your young friend, eh? His name wouldn’t be William, would it?”
“You told me who you’re looking for. Of course that isn’t him. That’s Arthur.”
That explanation apparently was not sufficient to satisfy the chief of police. “We can do this one of two ways. The first way is for me to look around freely inside the house, disturbing things as little as possible. The second is to inconvenience me by forcing me to go to the courthouse and get a search warrant. Which would make a frustrated individual even more frustrated.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Miss Camilla. She was playing dumb.
“The detectives that will enforce the search warrant may not be as careful looking around,” he said.
“So they’re going to leave my home in a shambles.”
“Possibly.”
“You win, tough guy. Help yourself.”
The hair on my arms stood up. I was safely hidden, but to say that I was alarmed was an understatement.
I heard the police chief’s boots clack on the floor above my head. I pictured him strutting around like the big rooster in the henhouse, but then I heard his footsteps coming down the steps, reaching the basement, pausing near me. I could feel his presence, something I was getting better at as I grew into being a C.A 3. I held my breath and shut my eyes, not daring to twitch a single muscle fiber.
“Good evening, son,” he said.
“Hi,” I heard Arthur respond. His voice sounded quavery.
“What’s your name?”
“Arthur.”
“Last name?”
“Chernow.”
“What’re you doing here?”
“Miss Camilla asked me to build some experimental helmets.”
“For what?”
“Telepathic discussions.”
“What discussions?”
I heard Miss Camilla coming down the steps, walking over beside the police chief. “I have a passion for the spiritual realm, officer. Do you have any experiences with the other side? Those who once lived among us, who still do, but we can’t see them?”
The chief was moving around the room, no doubt poking his fat nose in everything.
“I saw that old movie Ghost,” he said. “It was stupid. Oh, and I saw Ghostbusters.” To Arthur, “Have you spoken with William recently?”
“No,” he lied.
“Are you positive?”
“Yes sir.”
“You’re across the street from his family’s house.”
“I know.”
“And he’s your buddy.”
“Was my buddy.”
“Was your buddy? You mean he’s dead?”
“Don’t know what or where he is. But haven’t seen him lately, so…”
“You have no idea where he might’ve gone?”
“No sir. Have you asked your daughter? She would know better than me.”
I heard the police chief grunt. Then fingers rapped on the closet, mere inches from my face. “What’s in here?”
“Some old clothing,” Miss Camilla said. “See for yourself if you like.”
“Hmm,” he said. I could see him, in my mind’s eye, or in my C.A. 3 eye.
I heard the door open, then the rustling of clothing and the scrape of hangers. Then he knocked—right on the wood, not an inch from my head! I flinched and inhaled sharply, but luckily I didn’t bump anything or stumble backward. Man! He was right there. I was about to get busted and spend my life in prison—after this guy beat me to a bloody pulp with a nightstick.
“Can I show you the upstairs now?” said Miss Camilla.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I heard the closet door close and their footsteps go up the stairs and echo through the rest of the house, and I caught a breath. A few minutes later, the front door slammed.
Arthur opened the closet door. “That was a close one, man. I think I peed my shorts a little.”
“I told you to wait ten minutes, Arthur!” I said. “In case he doubles back.”
“Oh, yeah!”
Arthur closed the door again, and I realized that I was the one who needed a bathroom.
Later that night, after Arthur had left, I sat on the sofa looking at Grace. We’d returned her to the mattress and cleaned the bits of rust from the water heater out of her hair.
Then she found me again.
Kiss me.
I felt myself stiffen. That was asking a lot. You’re in a coma.
I need to know that you love me.
I didn’t know what to say to that. There were a thousand words in my mind all at once. Instead, I crossed the room and sat next to her on the floor and put my hand awkwardly upon hers.
William.
What?
I love you.
I felt my pulse quicken. Okay.
You’re in my mind, but I want you to feel my body.
Are you sure?
Yes.
Cautiously, my hands began to rove over the contours of her body. I felt the softness of her neck, the flat plain of her stomach, the swell of her hips. It seemed wrong, considering that she was unconscious, but she wasn’t, not really, and she was telling me to do it.
Now kiss me.
Carefully positioning myself, I slowly lowered my head until my lips touched hers.
Grace’s eyes opened.
I yelped and scrambled backward. Her eyes followed me as I stumbled backward against the wall. It was like Sleeping freaking Beauty.
“You’re … you’re awake,” I stammered.
Her eyes took in the room. Her mouth opened slightly, and her tongue wetted her lips. Then she spoke, in a voice that sounded surprisingly young for such a old soul, her wisdom transcended the apparent age of the body she occupied.
“He … will find me now.”
“Who?”
She didn’t answer. “Can you … help me up?”
I rushed back to her, slipped my arms beneath her body, and helped her to a sitting position.
For the next two days, with my help, Grace slowly came back to her body. It was an amazing thing to watch. She looked like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, her first movements stiff and restricted. Then, almost miraculously, she would somehow channel the energy that existed around her to do its task. With each increase of range of motion, she was extremely thankful, to Miss Camilla and me. Miss Camilla had taken over the task of feeding and physical therapy.
By the end of her second day, Grace could sit up without assistance and even stand, albeit wobbly.
“Who is coming for you?” I said.
“Him.”
“Who is ‘him’?”
She wouldn’t look at me. “I don’t like to say his name, William. But he is more evil than you can imagine. All evil. He is here to oppose us, destroy us, and take everyone and everything with him.”
Some evil, other-worldly bastard is after us and, it sounded like, out to ... destroy ... what? Civilization? Bad news, worse news. It just kept coming.
“Have you met him?”
Grace nodded.
“How far away is he?”
“Not far. He’s going to find me soon.”
“How soon?”
“Days.”
Days? Did she expect me to help? I was a C.A 3, apparently, but I felt like a novice, and I sure as hell didn’t feel up to taking down “pure evil.”
We both grew quiet and sat there a while.
Then I turned my attention to Grace, someone I had known, yet never met, someone new to me, yet someone I felt I loved, someone new to me, yet familiar.
I grew bolder. “Grace, ever since my birthday last month, nothing has been the same for me. I’m taking care of you because you called me to find you. And if we have days before this person is going to find you, you need to tell me everything.”
Her eyes found mine. “Okay, William. I will tell you everythin
g. But help me outside. I want to see the stars. It’s been so long.”
I helped her to her uncertain feet, and we went out the rear entrance of the basement and emerged in Miss Camilla’s backyard. A thick wall of bushes bordered the yard, so nobody could see us.
I found a pair of outdoor chairs, unfolded them, and positioned them opposite one another in the grass. Then I seated Grace in one of them and threw a blanket over her shoulders. I sat in the other chair.
“Now,” I said, “tell me why you were calling for me.”
“Because you are the only one who can help us.”
I sincerely doubted that, but Cy had told me I was a C.A. 3. I decided to start acting like one. “What do you need from me?”
“We have to stop him.”
“Who is him?”
She looked up at the stars for a long moment, as though searching for something. When her voice came out, it was like a whisper.
“Roivas.”
Roivas. I said the name to myself. It was strange, not unlike most things in my life these days.
“He goes by many names,” she continued. “He is continually reborn. But to me, he is just Roland.”
“Why do you know him as Roland?”
As her answer came out, it looked like it physically pained her. “Because he is my brother.”
That stopped me in my tracks. “He’s your brother?”
“He is very powerful, both in this world and the spirit realm. In this world, he senses people who have been given power. And he tries to destroy them before they can oppose him.”
I pointed across the street toward my house. “Could he have been the one who killed my family?”
Her eyes found mine, and the sadness in them told me that it was true. I stood up from my chair and paced through the grass, my hands clenching my hair. Thinking about how they must have died. I wasn’t a coward, but I was no superhero, either, and I did not want to die like that.
“I don’t want anything to do with this,” I said. “My family is dead because of this guy. I say we let the police handle him…”
Grace shook her head sadly. “He is beyond the police. This is beyond the power of most humans.”
She must’ve seen the grief in my eyes.
“William, your parents and brother are not gone, not really.”
Not gone? I had heard of the “afterlife” in church when I was a kid, but never put much stock in it.
Grace stood up and came over to me. She was wobbly but gaining strength by the hour, it seemed. “We can do this, but we can only do this together. You have a special gift that we need to develop. You felt it earlier.”
“I did. With Julia’s cousin.”
“It was a shock, wasn’t it?”
I nodded. She was touching on some of the stuff that I hadn’t wanted to face, mostly because I did not know how to control it.
“You’ll learn to control it,” she said, sharing my thoughts again. “And we’ll defeat him. Are you going to be with me?”
“Yes,” I said, gathering my wits and my strength, if not my courage. “I want to stop him. I want to stop the person who killed my family and stop him from hurting others.”
“In this terrestrial world, we must work this together,” she said. “Roivas is too powerful for any one person to stand up to. If we can defeat him…”
She let the sentence go unfinished, and I suddenly knew what to say. “If we can defeat him, then we have a chance to reach Final Ignition. All of us.”
Grace turned her head, perplexed. “What’s that?”
I explained to her what I’d learned in the Hall of Knowledge, about the ten brothers. How three of our civilizations weren’t altruistic enough, and once we learned to work together, and once we reached ten billion, we could reach ignition.
As I described it, the light of recognition dawned in Grace’s eyes. “I remember now. That’s our mission, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Can you take me to this Hall of Knowledge?”
Doing that made sense to me. Going back to the reservation was safer than remaining here, or at least it would be freer. Cy may or may not have been released from the hospital. At least, he hadn’t tried to contact me.
“When do you want to leave?” I said.
“As soon as I’m strong enough.”
That was a point. She could hardly be expected to go crawling through tunnels quite yet. I turned my chair to sit alongside hers. We took our seats and, as we looked up into the sky, I found Grace’s hand and held it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A day later, we determined that Grace was strong enough to leave. During the last twenty-four hours, she had grown healthy, like a wilting weed that had been watered. I phoned Arthur on Miss Camilla’s house line.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Are you interested in going on an adventure?” I said.
“To where?”
“I’m going back to the reservation. Grace is awake and she wants to see the Hall of Knowledge.”
“Do you think I can get in? You said the tunnel was really small.”
“Just those monkey arms.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Honestly, no,” I replied, “but I still need your help. Those helmets aren’t finishing themselves.”
“Yeah, I’ve been learning more about how the paranormal investigators are using these crazy tools. So, electrostatics is, like, my favorite field now.”
“All right,” I said, “I’ll pick you up at noon.”
“Um, William, maybe you’ve been gone too long, but I don’t get out of lab until 2:30.”
School. I’d forgotten about that. It was September again, and everybody I knew was back in classes. “All right, I’ll pick you up from school at 2:30. Pack some clothes and a sleeping bag. Look for the old truck.”
“If you want me to keep working on the helmets, be sure you bring all those tools from your dad’s garage.”
“Yup,” I said.
We disconnected, and I turned to Grace. “We leave tomorrow at 2:30. Let’s get ready.”
The next afternoon, Miss Camilla gave us a going-away gift—a home-packed lunch. I unwrapped it and saw sandwiches, potato chips, pickles.
“I owe you my life, Miss Camilla,” I said.
“Don’t mention it, baby,” she said. “I know you didn’t trust me before, but now that’s all changed. You needed support.”
“I promise to come back and see you, but it’s dangerous for us to be here.”
She took me by the hand and gazed into my eyes. “You have to take care of yourself. You could be getting in over your head.”
I squeezed her hand. “I don’t have a choice.”
We embraced, and Grace thanked her. Then we slipped out of the basement, hoodies over our heads, and hustled across the yards toward the truck. I’d have to drive, even though I had no license, but I knew that getting ticketed for that was the least of my worries.
Ten minutes later, I pulled the truck into the parking lot of my high school. I parked near the rear of the asphalted area, baseball cap and sunglasses pulled low over my face. Grace wasn’t known here, so she sat next to me, face uncovered.
“So, Arthur is a good guy,” I explained. “You can trust him with your life, and he would do anything for me. I mean, he made the helmets that I used to try to communicate with you.”
“Where did you get that idea?” she said, smiling.
“They came to me in a dream or vision or something like that. Kind of weird. It was right after I saw this strange dude with cold eyes do this whacked-out wink. I think his name was Hunter.”
Her mouth fell open. “You know him?”
“He came to me in a dream. Do you know him?”
She waved off the question and turned away. “We have enough going on right now. We can talk about it later.”
I didn’t have a chance to try getting more out of Grace because Arthur came walking up. He had a book bag in one hand and a duffle
bag in the other. He threw both in the bed of the truck, opened the passenger door and got inside as she slid over.
“Arthur, this is Grace.”
“We already met,” he said, eyes wide as he took her in, “but you were unconscious, so you know, you probably don’t remember.”
I started the engine and headed back the way we came. “You can’t go that way,” said Arthur. “They’re stopping anybody who doesn’t follow the arrows now.”
“But the arrows lead right in front of the school doors.”
“Yeah, but if they stop you, you’re screwed.”
Frowning, I wheeled around and followed the arrows on the asphalt around the parking lot. We got stopped in a line of cars waiting to get out. Students poured around the car on their way out of school.
“Keep your head down,” said Arthur.
“I am.”
We inched forward. The main road was only a hundred feet ahead, but it was taking the cars forever to turn because of traffic. Suddenly a figure stepped in front of my hood. It took me a second to recognize her.
It was Julia.
She came around the truck, dressed all in black like some Ninja, maintaining laser eye contact with me with those huge brown eyes. I rolled down my window.
“Look…”
“What the hell are you doing? Seriously? I thought you were dead, too!”
“No, I had… some trouble.”
“We need to talk…”
“I’m leaving town, right now.”
“I want to know what happened to you!”
Her voice rose, almost to a shriek. This was the last thing I wanted—Julia making a scene. I had already noticed the security guard peering over at us, and with a quick glance I saw that he still was. I grabbed Julia’s hand, yanked off my sunglasses with my other hand and smiled for the guard’s sake, as I looked deep into her eyes.
“Julia, there’s no time. Let me summarize. I discovered I have some special gift, and the people in the truck could help save human civilization. Sounds crazy? I know, but it’s not. I’m not. Now, you need to decide. If you want to come with us, good. If you want to stay here, then you never saw me. Which is it? Please!”
She stared at me, her mouth opening and closing like a gasping fish.