by Lamar Giles
“Would you?” Mr. Flux’s unshadowed eye took on a puppy-dog quality. “Would you honor me by taking a picture?”
“Of you?” Otto asked.
He twisted away slightly. “No! Of Fry maybe. This view of the city is spectacular.”
Hefting the camera, Otto tested the weight. Heavy, almost uncomfortably so. Somehow, that made it feel more valuable. How could he not honor the request of the man who gave it to them? “Sure. Why not?”
“Otto?” Sheed said, uncertain, but without a good solid reason. When he didn’t go on, Otto shrugged and raised the camera’s viewfinder to eye level.
The lens was amazing! So clear, almost clearer than looking at Fry with his own two eyes. With his index finger, he found the shutter release. “Press here?”
“Yes,” Mr. Flux said, joyful, “just like that.”
Otto nodded and pressed the button.
Click. There was a flash in the viewfinder. A blinding white light, visible for a second, then a motorized whir from inside the camera.
Otto lowered it, confused. Sheed was next to him in an instant, hearing it, too. A stiff plastic square—white border, black center—unspooled from the slit along the camera’s front. Sheed pulled the filmy paper free. Already, the black center had lightened, familiar images of county landmarks brightening into view.
“That photo,” Mr. Flux said, “will be an eternal keepsake of the day. Would you two like a similar photo of yourselves?”
Sheed stared at the photo in his hand, saw no reason to object. Otto gave the camera to Mr. Flux.
“Excellent,” he said. “Squeeze in tight. I want to get all of you.”
Otto beamed and twisted to his right side—his good side. He looped an arm over Sheed’s shoulder, hoping his cousin didn’t have his usual awkward smile. Their picture had been in the Logan County Gazette a bunch of times, and Sheed always looked like he was trying to suck broccoli from his teeth.
Mr. Flux raised the camera. “On three. One, two . . .”
Another flash. Not from the camera, from the sky.
A blinding, electric-blue hole ripped the very air next to Mr. Flux, and a man ejected from it feet first, as if from the end of a steep waterslide. He kicked Mr. Flux, knocking the camera free.
Before Mr. Flux recovered, the stranger scrambled to his feet, whipping his head around, startled and confused. He was brown, like the boys, wore dark goggles cinched tight through a mane of coiled dreadlocks that whipped about as he got his bearings.
“Did it work? Is this the right day?” he said, his eyes resting on Otto, and then Sheed. For a moment, his face flickered, the confusion replaced by a slight smile. Then he glanced sideways, at the man he’d kicked over. “Flux?”
Mr. Flux began to rouse, but the stranger leapt on him, pinning him, or trying to. The pair rolled in the grass. The way they grappled, it didn’t seem like the stranger would be able to hold Mr. Flux very long. His dark goggles angled in their direction, he yelled, “Take the camera and run! Whatever you do, don’t take any more pictures!”
3
Problematic Itch
The portal the stranger had come through blinked away, leaving undisturbed air and sky in its place. Otto and Sheed eyed the space it had occupied. They understood portals were doors, and the stranger was now on their side. So what was on the other side? Where had he come from?
Why was he attacking Mr. Flux?
The two men kept rolling; broken blades of grass clung to their clothes like green lint. The stranger drew back his left fist to punch Mr. Flux, and a silver band on his ring finger gleamed.
Otto lurched forward, intending to break up the fight, but Sheed gripped his arm hard.
“No, Otto! Look!”
Mr. Flux twisted beneath the stranger in ways a normal person could never manage, stretching like he was made of taffy. He dodged the punch easily by bending his neck into a sideways U shape, then coiled his leg around the stranger’s waist the way Sheed wrapped licorice around his pinky before eating it.
“Boys!” the stranger said, his voice strained as he fended off Mr. Flux’s weirdly bendy limbs. “Get back to the house. I got this!”
Got . . . what?
At first Otto had thought Mr. Flux was the weaker man in this fight. Now he didn’t think Mr. Flux was a man at all.
Otto grabbed his backpack from the grass and retrieved the camera, looping the strap over his neck. The gift he’d been so eager to take. If Mr. Flux wasn’t really a man, was his present really a camera?
Otto’s feet felt rooted to the ground, so it was a good thing Sheed was there to scream directly into his face and yank him off Harkness Hill.
“Maneuver #1!”
Maneuver #1 meant run.
* * *
They got back to Grandma’s house in no time, gasping and winded. Not from the run—their typical speed was sprint; they rarely got tired—but from the weird. What was all that about?
They rushed through the screen door, or tried to. Otto tugged the handle first, and it didn’t budge. Strange. Grandma never locked this door.
Sheed said, “I told you to start doing pushups.”
He grabbed the handle along with Otto. The door shimmered when they pulled together, a vibration that traveled all the way up their arms, then it opened so suddenly with an unsticking feel—like tearing loose a strip of silent Velcro.
Not thinking much of it, they ran inside. Neither of them kept the door from banging shut behind them, so both tensed for Grandma’s inevitable “Y’all know better than to be slamming doors in my house!”
Except it didn’t come.
Sheed got worried.
Otto too. He yelled, “Grandma!”
They were breathing too loud, and their pulses thumped in their ears, so Grandma’s response was hard to hear. It wasn’t the yelling they expected (and often deserved), but her calm, soothing voice. What they’d come to think of as the bad news voice.
“Boys, come in the kitchen and try not to panic. All right, now?”
“Grandma?” Sheed called, nervous as he turned the corner.
She stood still at the stove with her back to them like she always did when making her banging macaroni and cheese, and also-banging-but-in-a-lesser-way collard greens. Usually when she cooked, the food had the house smelling some-kind-of-good, and they’d scheme ways to get an early spoonful of banana pudding or sneak a slice of sweet potato pie. At that moment, they didn’t smell a thing.
Sheed knew Grandma had “ailments,” and his stomach twisted thinking she must be having a spell to be standing so stiff and talking so low. “Grandma, what’s wrong? Is it your sugar?”
“No, baby. Grandma took her insulin.”
“What about your blood pressure?”
“Naw, I don’t believe it’s that.”
Neither did Otto. His stomach twisted for different reasons, taking in all the little things that just weren’t right about this scene.
“Boys, I’m so glad that you two are still able to move. Thank the Lord,” Grandma said, “I think the county acting up somehow. Though it ain’t never done something like this before.”
Sheed circled to Grandma’s left, Otto to her right, until they saw her pouring broth into a soup pot. The stream of brownish liquid in her clear measuring cup was not moving, even though the cup tipped well past the point where gravity should’ve emptied it. Instead, it looked like something solid was connecting the measuring cup to the pot. The only time Otto ever saw liquid look like that was in—
He gulped.
It was in pictures of waterfalls. A snapshot where the water was frozen forever.
The flames under the pot weren’t flickering; they were still, like paintings of flames. Sheed watched grandma’s unblinking eyes and unmoving lips. He snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Grandma?”
“Don’t put your hands in people faces, boy,” she said. “It’s rude.”
He snatched his hand back. It was her vo
ice, but her slightly parted lips didn’t move. “Grandma, why are you talking like a ventriloquist?”
The sound of the word ventriloquist sent an additional shiver down Otto’s spine. Bad memories of their ninth adventure that summer, when they took down the Dastardly Dummy of Denos. But Sheed was right, Grandma spoke like she was throwing her voice. It appeared that was the only way she could speak.
Sheed asked Otto, “What’s happening here?”
Otto could only think of the camera dangling from his neck. He removed his pad from his back pocket, scribbled some thoughts:
Otto’s Legendary Log, Volume 19
Entry #34
Today was normal (as normal as days could be in Logan County) until Mr. Flux and the stranger showed up. The stranger was very clear we weren’t to take any more pictures, but didn’t explain WHY. Now Grandma can’t move.
DEDUCTION: This can’t be coincidence . . . but HOW does it all relate?
Otto said, “I have a hunch, but we should go into town to confirm.”
Sheed said, “Shouldn’t we do something about Grandma?”
“Something like what?” Ventriloquist Grandma said, alarmed.
They tried tipping her backwards, Otto pushing, Sheed catching. It was like trying to push down a tree. They each grabbed an arm and tried to lift her. They’d have had better luck lifting the house.
“She’s really stuck,” said Sheed, sweating from the strain. “Can we move anything?”
Otto thought about the way the screen door had been stuck, then unstuck when they first arrived home. “Let’s find out.”
He tried sliding one of the chairs from beneath the kitchen table. At first it wouldn’t budge, but slowly it gave . . . like coming loose from strong glue. Otto continued the experiment. He could pick up forks, spoons, and knives easily. When he tried his Frosty Loops cereal, it was tough for a second or two, but eventually peeled away from the counter. Sheed struggled with the refrigerator door, but got it after a few good yanks. Cabinets opened fine with a little extra tug, and they could lift Grandma’s biggest, heaviest pot from beneath the counter when they worked together.
They sat on the floor panting from the effort. Otto scribbled.
Entry #35
Small things = easy to move
Medium things = a little tougher, teamwork helps
But we couldn’t move Grandma, even when we worked together. Why?
DEDUCTION: Grandma is too big to move.
He showed Sheed, and his cousin nodded. “Sounds about right.”
Otto scribbled more notes, spoke to himself. “If Grandma’s too big to move under the current conditions, does that mean all people are?”
“Don’t call me big, boy,” Grandma said.
“Sorry.”
Sheed said, “You try the phone?” Then checked it himself. A little sticky, but he lifted the handset easy enough. No dial tone, though. He dropped it back into the cradle. “The camera. Mr. Flux said it was supposed to capture the best time of our lives. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Otto stood, unable to look his cousin in the eye. “Let’s go to town. Then we’ll know. Once we know, we can fix it.” He almost said, Like we always do, but couldn’t muster the confidence.
Grandma said, “Please hurry, boys. I’ve got an itch.”
4
Welcome to Fry
The boys worked together unsticking their bikes from the corner of Grandma’s porch, and at first, the pedals and wheels wouldn’t turn. They kept at it, though, balancing on the unmoving wheels, falling sideways. After a few false starts, the spokes spun, and the chains whizzed, and they began their ride into town like they did when it was time to buy new comic books, or when the mayor called them to wrangle a peeved-off jackalope.
Immediately the differences in that day’s ride were noticeable. There were none of the usual sounds. No breeze rustling the poplar trees. No crickets chirping. Only the thwump-thwump-thwump of their bike tires rotating on frozen, unmoving gravel.
“I bet you wish we’d stayed in bed now.” Sheed pumped his pedals faster.
“I kind of wish you had.”
Gravel turned to pale gray asphalt as they came to the main road and sped past the fancy wooden WELCOME TO FRY, VIRGINIA sign. They passed the Logan County Gazette office, where the newspaper editor, Ms. Turner, hunched over her keyboard, index fingers in pecking position. Outside Dr. Medina’s Wild Animal Hospital, Mr. Reynolds, the mailman, was frozen in midair, both knees raised like he was leaping a fence and his mouth stretched in a yell. The boys slowed.
The hospital’s door was ajar. Dr. Medina hunched forward, her hands grabbing for something. Otto and Sheed came to a full stop, then walked their bikes closer for a better view.
“Ohhh!” both boys said.
A large python had slipped from its cage. Its triangular, speckled head angled up, jaws wide, stuck mid-hiss just inches from Mr. Reynolds’s toes. So, a typical day at Dr. Medina’s. The boys moved along.
Their path took them past frozen everything: cars and people and birds above, hung in permanent V-formation.
They rode on to Town Square, where they parked their bikes next to the bronze statue of Fry’s founder, Fullerton French Fryer. Craning their necks, they peered up at the dusty orange bricks of city hall, to the tall clock tower that marked the time at exactly 10:04. There were a few townsfolk stuck in the square with them.
All held cell phones to their ears or extended in front of them while they tapped at some app or another. Sheed pried one from a guy who said, “Hey!”
Sheed checked it, no service—or really any functions at all, the screen was black. He returned it to the man’s hand. The phone’s owner said, “Thank you.”
Sheed’s gaze bounced from Otto to the clock, back to Otto again.
Otto sighed. Might as well get this over with. “Go ahead.”
“Here’s what I think.” Sheed was growly and grumpy. “I think you had to go tempting whatever it is about this county that keeps us so fricking busy. You got your wish. We froze time.”
“Yes, we did.” Just as he’d suspected. He would not give Sheed the satisfaction of agreeing with any of those other observations, though he did note the confirmation in his pad.
Entry #36
We froze time.
Sheed said, “This should definitely get us another one of those stupid keys.”
Given the magnitude of this event, Otto wondered if solving the problem might actually be worth two keys? No need for another tie with the Ellisons.
“What did I say after the were-bear in the Gnarled Forest?” Sheed barked. “Or when we had to walk that tightrope over that nether whirlpool?”
“I don’t know, Sheed. What did you say?” Otto consulted his pad. Trying to figure what to do next.
Sheed ranted. He waved his hands in the air, stomped around their bikes, and leapt up and down in a full-on tantrum. “I said, Otto, let’s just relax today. I said, Otto, there is absolutely no reason to go looking for trouble after the summer we’ve had. But noooooooo. We have to take advantage of the last day, Sheed. We have to adventure some more.”
Otto let him get it out of his system. Time was frozen, so it wasn’t like he was wasting any of it.
With his cheeks puffed and fists clenched, Sheed said, “Are you listening to anything I’m saying?”
“Sure.” Otto’s pencil waggled.
Entry #37
Sheed might be upset.
“It’s that picture we took, right?” Sheed said. “Give it to me. I’ll tear it up right now.”
Otto glanced from his notebook, having already considered that move. “Bad idea.”
“How?”
Otto pulled the floppy square from his back pocket, held it between them, explained his theory. “If the picture, or the camera, froze the county, what if messing with one of them did stuff to the county, too? What if we tore the picture, and that ripped the county in half?”
Sheed was quick to c
all out nonsense, but quiet when he couldn’t argue. Otto was not the only one who didn’t like to admit when his cousin was right. “So what do we do?”
“I think we need to capture Mr. Flux. He’ll probably know how to fix this.”
“Of course we need to capture Mr. Flux! Maybe that stranger, too.” Sheed was still yelling, but less so. He stomped away again, shouted at the unmoving clouds, came back in a more reasonable state of mind. “You thinking a net, or a spring snare?”
“We used the spring snare to snag that chimera last month. I don’t really like repeating ourselves. Makes us look less innovative than—” He stopped himself. He’d almost brought up the Epic Ellisons. That probably wouldn’t go over well.
Sheed spoke through clenched teeth. “What you like doesn’t matter. What’s going to work?”
“Fine, I don’t want to fight about it.” Fighting with Sheed was so annoying. “Maybe we use both since we gotta get two of them. We’ll need supplies.”
“Then let’s go!” Sheed mounted his bike, stood on his pedals, pumping with all his strength. Otto followed him to the next block, where Archie’s Hardware store was located.
Dropping their bikes on the curb, they stepped inside the brightly lit store, where endless junky shelves were crammed with all the stuff you never knew you needed.
Mr. Archie didn’t believe in neat and orderly. He placed his goods on shelves that felt right. One hammer might be placed with one piece of plywood and twenty nails, for boarding up a window before a storm, while another hammer might be next to a pail, in case you needed to pull nails out of something and you had no place to put them. It wasn’t the most efficient system, but Mr. Archie and his daughter, Anna, were always there to help you find what you needed. When they weren’t stuck.
“Mr. Archie?” Otto said.