The Mad Scientists of New Jersey (Volume 1)

by Chris Sorensen

  Eddie swerved, barely missing the Lake Mohawk sign at the top of the hill leading down to the water. Men busy painting new lines on the road scattered as Eddie sped toward the boardwalk.

  “Aren’t you going to slow down?” Jimmy’s temporary bravery was evaporating.

  The car vaulted onto the boardwalk, taking out a mailbox. Startled tourists leapt aside.

  “Eddie,” Roxie warned.

  “Eddie?” Jimmy shrieked.

  Eddie knew he had to time this just right. He turned to Roxie. “Hold the wheel!”

  Roxie grabbed the wheel, jerking the car toward traffic. “Hold it steady!” Eddie said as he bent down and twisted two final wires together. He felt a short shock and every bit of metal in the car began to hum.

  He sat back up and took the wheel. “Jimmy! When I say three, I want you to jump. Can you do that, Jimmy?”

  “Wha…?” Jimmy went white.

  Eddie had no time to wait – he floored it. “One...” The car zoomed straight for the wooden railing. “Two...” The car struck the railing, shattering it and flew out over the water. “Three!”

  Jimmy jumped, his momentum sending him skipping across the water like a stone. Eddie and Roxie braced for impact as the car plunged into Lake Mohawk.

  The car groaned as it hit the water, threatening to break apart. The black depths swallowed the vehicle as it plummeted downward. The sunlight grew dimmer and dimmer as Eddie and Roxie sank. The air bubble that had enveloped the sports car held, though Eddie feared that it would burst at any second.

  “Remarkable,” Roxie whispered as they sank. “Just remarkable.”

  When the wheels hit the rocky lakebed, Eddie realized that he had been holding his breath. He let it out with a whoosh so powerful that it set the air bubble wobbling all around them.

  “Easy, Breathy McBreatherson,” Roxie scolded.

  “Sorry.”

  The makeshift device Eddie had fashioned to create the bubble was crudely cobbled together. No telling how long it would keep the water at bay. He would have to move fast. He fumbled around for the headlights and switched them on just in time to catch a startled turtle swimming past. It ducked its head and veered off into the shadows.

  “Which way?” Roxie asked.

  “We went into the water heading south,” said Eddie, “and the car didn’t turn while we sank. I think if we go straight, we’ll be driving toward the deepest part of the lake. If there really is an old town down here, that’s where it would be.”

  “And if it’s not down here?” Roxie clicked her fingernails together nervously.

  Eddie couldn’t even consider that. “It’s got to be.” He pressed down on the gas, and the car lurched forward. The way was rocky. The car bumped and jolted as it drove on.

  “What do you get when you cross a frog and a bunny?” Roxie asked.

  “What?”

  “I said, what do you get…”

  Eddie shook his head. “Are you seriously telling jokes right now?”

  Roxie shrugged. “I thought it might calm you down.”

  “I’m calm!” Eddie said as the car hit a particularly large rock. The force of it lifted the car’s left side up off its wheels, and the two of them braced for disaster. After teetering for what seemed like forever, the car slowly sank back onto all four tires and continued forward.

  “No more jokes,” Eddie ordered.

  Roxie held her tongue for as long she could. “A ribbit. You get a ribbit.”

  The view ahead was murky. Eddie couldn’t see more than twenty feet ahead of him. They passed a sunken canoe, a rusted outboard motor, an artificial Christmas tree that the wind must have stolen from someone’s dock.

  Eddie was beginning to despair of finding anything but junk at the bottom of the lake when they came upon a lamppost. It jutted up out of the muck — an old, gas-powered light, ornate in design.

  As they drove on, they passed another. And another. Then, the remains of some sort of shop appeared on their left. No, not big enough for a shop. It was a small seller’s stand, a place where he could imagine someone peddling newspapers, fruit or the like. A weathered sign swung back and forth with the current.

  “Dr. Lipsing’s Lamps and Levers,” Roxie read aloud. “There’s Carter’s Chemicals. And Prof. Parnell’s Pistons and Pumps.”

  “I guess in a town filled with Mad Scientists, spare parts would be pretty popular,” Eddie said.

  “Yeah, that and alliteration.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing,” Roxie sighed.

  The car gave one final thump and leveled off. “I think we’re on a street,” said Eddie. “An actual street.”

  Houses peered at them from the shadows. Big structures that bent this way and that, twisted under the deep water currents of the lake.

  Eddie could imagine what this place must have looked like back before Sly had flooded the valley, wiping the Mad Scientists from memory. He saw men in top hats sporting canes, women in fancy dresses, like in those old movies his mother liked to watch after a long day recording diet pill commercials. All of them smiling, discussing their latest inventions, debating scientific theories.

  All gone. Nothing but their dilapidated homes to show they were ever here.

  The car coughed.

  “What are you doing?” Roxie asked. “Don’t slow down.”

  “I’m not doing anything,” Eddie snapped, but he quickly realized that he had been pressing down on the accelerator too hard — a nervous reaction to the thought of all those long-dead ancestors. He eased off, but just a bit. The effort it took the car to slog through the water must be taxing its engine.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “As long as we don’t run out of gas, we’re fine.”

  Roxie leaned in front of him, blocking his view as she checked the gas gauge. His face was instantly buried in her tangle of red hair.

  “Roxie!”

  She shifted back to her seat, her face pale. Eddie looked at the dashboard, eyes searching for the gas gauge. Speedometer, temperature gauge, turn signals... ah! There it was.

  Eddie’s heart skipped a beat. The arrow was quivering just above E. That cough had been a warning – the gas tank was almost empty.

  “Lance, you cheap...!” Eddie sputtered, but he had to quickly turn the wheel to avoid the remains of a statue that loomed up in their path, sprawled in the middle of the street.

  Eddie couldn’t see the thing very clearly as they swerved past, but he saw enough. It was a statue of a man wearing a coat and vest, his arm upraised, a light bulb in his hand.

  “That’s…” Roxie whispered.

  “Thomas Edison.”

  The engine coughed again, and sparks lit up the dashboard. The scent of burning metal filled the car’s interior. The car shuddered and came to stop, the engine gasping for fuel while Thomas Edison’s sculpted face peered in at Eddie through his window.

  The air bubble retracted a good three inches all around them. Eddie froze. “No sudden movements,” he warned.

  “No problem,” Roxie said.

  Curious fish, no doubt attracted by the jerky movements of the soon-to-be-dead sports car, clustered around the flickering headlights.

  Eddie started to panic. If the engine died, his device would fail. If the device failed, the bubble would burst. If the bubble burst...

  There was no getting around it. This was the end of the road. The end of everything – school, friends, the hope of ever seeing his mother again, the hope of ever finding his father. Cooper. What was that lunk of a dog going to do without him? For some reason it was the thought of Cooper waiting patiently at the door for him that brought tears to his eyes.

  “No, no, no,” Roxie said, shaking him. “Don’t you clock out. Fix it. Do that thing you do and fix it!”

  Eddie didn’t respond. He leaned for
ward and looked up through the windshield at the surface of the lake high above. How far away was it? Forty, fifty feet? When the water came rushing into the car, would they be able to withstand its onslaught, open a window, wriggle free and make it to the surface before their lungs ran out of air?

  “Fix it!” Roxie pleaded.

  Outside the bubble, the fish continued to stare into the headlights, like gawkers at the scene of an accident.

  “Go on. Git! Git!” he shouted. The fish remained.

  In the midst of his fear and terror of being swallowed up by Lake Mohawk, his annoyance at the fish welled up inside him. It was one thing to fail, but to fail with an audience?

  Eddie reached for the light switch and toggled it, flashing the car’s brights into the fish’s eyes. It worked. The fish scattered, no doubt in search of dimmer surroundings.

  “Wait! What was that?” Roxie asked.

  Eddie squinted. He flicked the brights on again and there it was, barely visible in the distance. A towering brick smokestack. Eddie’s mind raced. What exactly was it that Mesmer had told him?

  “Big, hulking place with smokestacks on either end. You can’t miss it.”

  “The old lab!” Eddie shouted. “We found it! And it can’t be more than thirty yards ahead.”

  The car hiccupped. More sparks spat from beneath the dash landing on Eddie’s shoes. The air bubble buckled on Roxie’s side, water trickling down the window.

  “I know this is a terrible time to say this,” Roxie blurted out, “but I failed every single swim class I ever took.”

  Eddie caught his reflection in the rearview mirror and saw the fear in his eyes. “Come on!” he barked at himself. “Think, Eddie. Think! THINK!”

  Crack! Suddenly, it felt like a miniature bolt of lightning struck the center of his brain, splitting it in half. The shock was unlike anything Eddie had ever experienced. The electrical jolt he’d gotten from the metal nut was a playful tap compared with the wallop his mind received in that instant.

  “Look!” cried Roxie.

  Outside the car, the light bulb in the statue’s hand began to glow. Dim at first but getting brighter and brighter, until it promised to illuminate the entire lake.

  A question leapt into Eddie’s mind. Not in a voice he could hear or in words he could see but simply a calmly formed thought. “Where are you?”

  “Where am I?” Eddie shook his head. “I’m at the bottom of the lake, where do you think I am?”

  “What’d you say?” asked Roxie.

  Just as dispassionately, a second question popped into his head. “Where specifically are you?”

  Who or what was asking these questions? The sound of glass cracking as the passenger side window pressed inward convinced him he had no choice but to answer.

  “I’m sitting behind the wheel of a convertible trapped in an artificially created air bubble stalled on a street at the bottom of Lake Mohawk about thirty yards from the old lab.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know!” Roxie shouted.

  Eddie waited. As the seconds ticked by with no response, no further questions, he began to panic. The trickle of water had grown into a torrent. Soon the water would rise up into the makeshift wiring of the device and the bubble would pop...

  The light bulb in the statue’s hand pulsed. “How will you get from where you are to where you want to be without drowning?”

  Eddie was dumbfounded. “If I knew that, what would I need all these questions for?”

  And then... just as soon as he had asked the question, he knew the answer. The answer trotted into his head like a friendly dog.

  Pressure!

  His mind leapt back to a Christmas morning when he was much, much younger. Cooper, only a puppy then, was sniffing around in the pile of presents under the tree, a bright red bow around his neck. Eddie’s father, a towering figure to one so young, leaned down and handed him a gift.

  “Open it up, Sport,” he said.

  Eddie’s tiny hands ripped at the wrapping paper and pulled out an object made of wood.

  The memory began to fade, and Eddie concentrated. Concentrate. The thing in his hands sharpened, took form. He could see it now. It was a...

  Pop gun. A wooden pop gun. He saw himself draw the handle back from the shaft and press back down. Pop! The cap at the end went flying.

  The light bulb in the statue’s hand dimmed and went dark, and Eddie jolted back to the present.

  “That’s it!”

  “What’s it?” Roxie howled. She had crawled up onto her seat to avoid the rising water, her hair pressing dangerously against the surface of the bubble.

  “There’s tons of water pressure pushing down on this air bubble,” Eddie said. “If I can redirect that pressure in one direction, lining it up behind us, it could shoot this car forward. Maybe even enough to reach the old lab.”

  “How in the world would you do that… Ah!” A minnow leapt from the water below and landed in her hair. “Fish!”

  Ignoring Roxie’s flailing efforts to extract the little fish, Eddie scrunched down to examine the makeshift device he had fashioned below the dash. It was lighting up like a sparkler, but if he reversed the black and red wires, threw the car into neutral before grounding the electrical net with the car’s key...

  “I’m only going to have one shot at this,” he thought. He reached back, grabbed the belt and buckled it about his waist. If this was going to work, he’d better be ready.

  Launching into action, he let his fingers obey his brain, twisting, reconfiguring. He shifted the car into neutral. Immediately, the air bubble collapsed. The water had the car in its grip.

  But not all of the car. One paltry air pocket remained wrapped around both Eddie and Roxie. They were inside a bubble inside the car.

  Roxie was trying to say something, but every time she opened her mouth, the inner surface of the bubble threatened to burst. She opted for silence.

  Eddie was making his last adjustments when an odd sound from the rear of the car caught his attention and he whirled around. The rear edge of the bubble was, well, bubbling. Like when you blow air into a soda. A flurry of froth fizzed, ready to...

  Boom! An explosion of bubbles propelled the car forward. Instantly, it began to veer off course. Eddie had to grip the wheel tight to get the thing back on track. He zeroed in on the smokestack and held on for all he was worth.

  The initial thrust sent the car hurtling toward the old lab, and Eddie was happy for that. What didn’t make him so happy was when the car began to slowly crawl to a stop.

  They were five feet from the old lab when the bubble burst. Five feet away when the weight of Lake Mohawk settled down onto the car. Like the rest of the debris scattered across the lakebed, it was never to see the light of day again.

  Luckily for Eddie, he was two steps ahead of the game. In the moments before the water rushed in, he yanked his device from under the dashboard and, with a speed that surprised even him, wired it to the last remaining energized pack on the belt. Suddenly, he was safe and sound inside his own mini-bubble.

  He reached for Roxie’s arm, but all his hand found was her hair. The bubble retracted around him, leaving just his arm outside its protective shell. His arm… and Roxie.

  For a second, their eyes locked. Eddie watched helplessly as Roxie thrashed about, her expression wild with fear as she struggled to hold her breath. In moments, she lost the fight, and the last of her air escaped, rising up to the surface. Abandoning her.

  No! I killed her!

  When the water had swallowed the car, it also swallowed its battery. The headlights blinked out. The only light Eddie had to navigate by was the dim glow from the belt. Nevertheless, he stepped forward, hauling his friend’s limp body along with him.

  Holding tight to Roxie’s hair kept Eddie from floating upward but also made moving forward a b
attle. His heart was pounding in his ears by the time he reached the outer brick wall of the lab. He looked up. Towering over him stood the smokestack silhouetted against the surface above. He’d made it.

  Now what? A door. There had to be a door somewhere. He sidestepped, careful not to run his feet into any stray rocks, and accidentally knocked Roxie’s head against a sunken log. He knew that, should he trip and go tumbling, the improvised contraption keeping the bubble about him would likely fail, releasing his precious air.

  He thrust his free arm out of the bubble as well and ran his hand along the brick, his fingers searching out any sign of an entrance. Finally, his hand lit upon a metal slab set into the masonry. He judged its width and was quite certain he had found the door he was looking for.

  His suspicions were confirmed, but where one would normally find a doorknob, there was nothing.

  “It must only open from the inside!” Eddie despaired. How long had Roxie gone without air? Too long.

  He pounded his fist against the door again and again, more out of frustration than any hope that his actions would accomplish anything.

  To his surprise and delight, the door began to move. It pivoted in the middle, and as it did so, a wall of water slammed him forward. Eddie rushed forward in a swirl of water, tumbling and turning, his protective air bubble scattered, Roxie’s limp body pulled from his grip.

  In a flash, it was over. The door thudded closed. The water that had carried them into the place was quickly draining away into the grated floor beneath him. Eddie was weak, slopping wet and had no clue as to how he ever hoped to get back up to the surface in one piece.

  Eddie looked down at Roxie. Her skin was blue.

  “Roxie!” he shouted. Then, as he’d learned in summer camp (or was it something Mesmer had stuck in his head?), he cleared Roxie’s airway, pinched her nose, tilted her head back and breathed into her mouth.

  After five enormous lungsful of air, Eddie was starting to fear the worst when a gurgling spurt of air and water burst from her mouth along with a very surprised minnow. The little fish hit the floor, flipped about and disappeared down the grate.

  “You’re alive!” Eddie cheered.