by Неизвестный
“It was orange.”
“Sure, it was.” Khan left the kitchen and went back to the living room to continue scanning.
Eli lingered in the kitchen, his annoyance simmering. He was tempted to tell Khan about the microchip, so his employer would know he wasn’t lying, but revealing that secret was just too large of a sacrifice. There was a good chance it would also get him fired, and he didn’t want to get fired.
At least not until he knew what hexapods were.
After five minutes of waiting for the ghost to show again, Eli gave up and went to water the plants. They perked up with the moisture, but didn’t do anything unusual.
Khan was still scanning toys. Specifically, he was playing with the miniature cash register, which made sense. A person would have to be made of stone to resist pushing those little buttons.
Eli went over to the sofa and lifted up the cushion. He found a quarter and two dimes, just as he’d seen when the Ray-gun had flashed. He left the coins and put the cushions back.
Khan held up a teddy bear in one hand, scanning it with the tool held in his other hand. “Does that tickle?” he asked the bear.
“If you were just going to scan everything anyway, why did you have me go through that stuff by hand?”
Khan moved on to the next toy. “Beginner pilots don’t start off using the fancy software that flies commercial jets. They learn how to actually, you know, fly.”
Eli looked down at his hands. Even if he could find the object a poltergeist was hiding inside like a paranormal hermit crab, what good were his bare hands after that? The memory of fighting for his life against the cat wraith was still vivid. Eli’s hands had passed right through the thing, even though it could touch him. How was that even possible?
“Khan, I need to tell you something. The person that I know who has a cat wraith, well, it’s my girlfriend. That means that I have a cat wraith. I believe it slept at the foot of my bed last night. There were some little hairs on the covers. I would have brought them in for you, but they sort of evaporated.”
“Figures. Cat wraiths like to play their games.”
Eli got a bad feeling in his stomach, on top of the pain he was already experiencing from eating so much cheese.
“You don’t seem surprised that I have a cat wraith.”
Khan kept scanning toys. “Nothing surprises me anymore. I’m un-surprise-able.”
“I believe you had something to do with me getting a cat wraith.”
Khan shrugged. “Believe whatever you want.” He turned and offered Eli the scanner. “Here. Press the button only when you’re scanning. Don’t just hold it down the whole time, or you’ll waste the battery.”
Eli accepted the device with a smile. A devious idea bubbled up in the scheming area of Eli’s brain. Khan had seemingly softened toward him at the mention of the cat wraith. Perhaps he had some guilt over sending a nearly-lethal paranormal entity home with an innocent person. Eli could use this guilt to his advantage, if he was careful.
He pushed these schemes aside for the moment and tried out the scanner on a pail of Legos.
Upon closer inspection, the scanner appeared to be a modified remote control. Eli pressed the button marked SCAN. With no warning, the device vibrated in his hand.
“Gah!” Eli dropped the vibrating scanner on his foot.
Khan snatched the device from the floor, cursing a streak of nasty words.
Eli apologized. He’d been apologizing a lot that day, which didn’t make him feel good at all.
“It’s fine,” Khan growled. “That’s enough touching stuff for one day, though.”
Eli quietly retreated to a safe distance and took a seat on the couch with his hands folded on his lap. He sat there for the next hour, as Khan scanned and re-scanned all the toys and the other objects in the room, including everything on the mantle.
“Nothing,” Khan said glumly. He took a seat in the reclining chair across from Eli and put his feet up on the coffee table.
“What if we had found the right vessel? Do you burn it, or bury it, or what?”
“A good exterminator doesn’t catch vermin and release them next door.”
Eli whispered, “You kill them?”
Khan raised one dark eyebrow and ran his hand through his spiked white hair. “You can’t kill what’s not alive. But you can re-home the little pests, sort of. Stay there, I’ll show you.”
Khan stood up, and Eli braced himself to be tasered, shocked, blasted, burned, jolted, or electrocuted in some way.
But Khan wasn’t using some scary device on him after all. He jogged off to grab one of the gear bags. He returned and set some objects on the coffee table between them.
“These are the hexapods,” he explained.
He arranged six black objects the size of small stereo speakers, or large soup cans, in a circular formation. The tops were domed. He flicked a switch at the bottom of each one. A soft hum filled the room. The hum was soothing, like one of those relaxation recordings—the ones with the glass bowls, not whale sounds. Whale sounds gave Eli the heebie jeebies.
Khan used the spray bottle Eli had seen earlier to spritz the area above them. The air misted up, and now there were narrow beams of light visible, emanating from the hexapods. Next, Khan adjusted the hexapods so the beams of light converged in a single spot.
These were not like any lasers Eli had ever seen. The light defied the laws of physics—or at least the more basic ones Eli understood. Where the beams met, the light seemed to spin apart, like sparks showering off a metal grinder—miniature fireworks.
Eli took in a deep breath. The mist smelled of lavender, and also tea tree oil. He joked, “Between the humming of those things and that aromatherapy stuff, this place is turning into a yoga studio.”
Khan didn’t even glance up from his adjustments. “What humming?”
Eli leaned over the hexapods. The sound was definitely emanating from them. And the sound was… beautiful. So beautiful. It was like the song a blue sky would sing to the ocean. And underneath the prominent hum were more songs. The grass calling to butterflies. The moon crying over a broken heart. The sun fusing hydrogen atoms into helium while whistling.
“Watch your face,” Khan warned, jolting Eli out of a daze.
Eli pulled back and sat up straight. He held himself still, resisting the urge to get closer to the pods and their dancing light show.
“Pop quiz,” Khan said. “Do you know what a D6 is?”
“A six-sided dice. I mean die, singular.”
“Point for Eli.” Khan tossed a silver D6 onto the coffee table and gestured for Eli to pick it up. “Notice anything else?”
Eli picked up the D6. Other than being made of metal, it resembled the dice that might be found in any copy of Monopoly, such as the mangled game box sitting not five feet away from them, next to the toy box. He looked more closely at the die. Something didn’t feel right.
The weight.
Even if it were made of the lightest type of metal, the die should have weighed more than this. This die would float on water.
“It’s hollow,” Eli guessed.
Khan nodded, seemingly pleased that Eli was using his senses to figure things out. Gold star on Eli’s report card! Eli has really applied himself today!
Khan reached into the front of his shirt and pulled out a thin, silver chain. Hanging on the chain were two rectangular pendants, like the dog tags soldiers wear. Between the tags was a smaller pendant, in the shape of a key—but not a full-sized house key—more like a charm for a bracelet.
Eli watched, fascinated, as Khan pushed the key into one of the pips on the D6, then gave it a twist. He handed the cube back to Eli, who stared in amazement. The die was hollow, and now all the pips were holes.
The inside of the die had a delicious smell, like every kind of delicious home baking rolled up into one aroma. Eli stared at the hollow die, and got a very strange urge. He wanted to shrink down to a grain of salt and climb inside this wonder
ful contraption. He wanted to see the gears and sliding plates at work inside.
“Careful.” Khan swiped the metal box from Eli’s hands. “Don’t drool on the thing, or it’ll snap shut. You’re an unusual guy, Eli, but I still don’t want your saliva for my trophy wall.” He paused. “No offense.”
“None taken.” Eli wiped his lower lip, horrified that he actually had been drooling.
Khan rolled the hollow metal cube across the coffee table, as though he was taking a turn in a game. It stopped in the center of the hexapods, directly underneath the sparking light.
“The rest is obvious,” Khan said. “You hold the possessed object in the para-light, and BAM! The poltergeist drops down, into the D6. Once the element is inside there, the doors slam shut, and it’s nighty-night time forever.”
“Forever?” A sadness gripped Eli. He felt bad for the poltergeists. Forever was a long time.
Khan leaned over, flicked the switches on the six hexapods, and shut the whole thing down. The beautiful humming music disappeared. Now the street noise of old cars driving by outside intruded upon the peaceful calm of the living room.
Khan used the key on his chain to close the D6 trap. He reached into one of his pockets and pulled out an identical die, which he tossed to Eli.
This one was heavy, as if it were made of lead.
“Heavy duty trap?” Eli asked.
“More like a soggy diaper.” Khan grinned. “You used to babysit, so you should be able to figure that one out.”
Soggy diaper? Eli pondered this as he rolled the die in his hand. He had babysat some infants in his teenage years. A used diaper was always heavy, because it was full.
Eli gasped and dropped the heavy die on the coffee table. It rolled, but not like a regular D6. The metallic die rolled in a spiral, until it came back around to Eli and stopped, the top side displaying six pips.
“It likes you,” Khan said.
Eli gave him a dirty look. “You said that about the plant, too. It’s not good for supernatural stuff to like you, is it?”
Khan held up his hand for quiet and tipped his head. “Do you hear that scratching?”
This wasn’t one of Khan’s jokes. There was scratching, a skittering sound coming from the floor above them. Eli’s first guess was that the raccoon he’d seen under the house, or her mate, had come inside the house.
The skittering continued, punctuated by a thump.
“That could be a raccoon,” Eli said. “Right?”
“Raccoons are nocturnal, and they don’t skitter. That’s definitely a skitter.”
The sound got even more skitter-like, removing any doubt it was a raccoon. The skitter seemed to be inviting them to come upstairs. Really, it had perfect timing, now that the hexapods demonstration had been completed.
“This feels like a trap,” Eli said.
“It sure does.” Khan’s eyebrows danced with excitement.
The skittering kept going, getting quieter and then louder, taunting them.
“Definitely a trap,” Eli said.
Khan leapt to his feet and yelled up at the ceiling, “It’s about time! Don’t hold back, baby!” He looked down at Eli, his dark green eyes gleaming. “What do you think it is?”
“Uh… the thing in the kitchen was orange. What’s orange? Prison jumpsuits. Prisoners on death row. Oh, no.” As excited as he was that paranormal things were finally happening, the idea of encountering a murderer made Eli’s crack flood with sweat.
Khan was already running toward the stairs. Eli jumped to his feet and followed, because walking into a murderous ghost’s trap together was better than being left out.
Chapter Ten
Khan and Eli climbed the wooden staircase, moving toward the scratching sound.
When they reached the top, Khan nodded for Eli to turn left. “You do a visual check the bathroom.”
“Visual? Check it for what?”
“Poltergeists, Eli.”
“Let’s say I find one. What next? Call for you?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t understand. In horror movies, bad things happen when the people split up and go separate directions. I should go with you.”
“Then you’ll never develop your skills.”
The skittering had stopped, almost as though the paranormal entity were standing there, listening to them argue.
“Fine,” Eli said reluctantly. “I’ll go look on my own. But if I do see something, what next?”
“Look at me. Can you do this?” Khan widened his eyes and stared at Eli with a very watchful expression. The stare was so intense, Eli had to look down at his socked feet for a moment. When he looked back up, Khan was still staring, his dark green eyes wide and recriminating.
Eli couldn’t take it anymore and said, “Stop staring. You’re creeping me out more than the ghosts.”
Khan kept staring, not blinking. His eyes were watering now, and still he didn’t blink or look away.
Eli made a guess. “I’m supposed to stare at the ghost?”
Khan’s dark eyebrows lifted ever so slightly, encouraging Eli to keep going.
“I stare at the ghost and make it feel awkward? Then… I wait for it to hide inside an object? I check the temperature of the object with my hands, then we put it on the hexapod doohickeys and zap-zap?”
Khan blinked and softened his expression. “That’s exactly what you do.” Then he turned to the right and went down the hall toward the first door.
Eli felt so happy with himself for figuring out the plan of action, he forgot to feel nervous as he entered the potentially-haunted bathroom. A shower curtain was drawn across the interior of a restored claw-foot tub. Eli walked right up to the curtain and whipped it open in one sweep.
No ghost.
With his eyes wide open and ready, he yanked open cupboard doors and checked inside all the cabinets and then the drawers. He found spare toilet paper, bath toys, and waterproof picture books. He paused in thought. Waterproof picture books were a thing? Would wonders never cease.
He turned around, faced the toilet, and carefully lifted the padded toilet seat lid. He wanted to find the ghost, but not here. Please, no, not here. If poltergeists hid inside toilets, he didn’t know what he would do. Surely there were some boundaries, like the secret gangster code that criminals follow, and ghosts respected the sanctity of toilets. Haunting churches would be fine, but please, not the toilets.
Eli held his breath and gave it a test flush.
No ghost.
He checked behind the shower curtain again, felt all the objects on the counter, then left the bathroom.
He could hear Khan talking in the other room, but figured he was just talking to himself. Eli moved on to the next room, a home office. There was a computer desk, a set of golf clubs, and a stack of cardboard filing boxes. He stood at the doorway and took a calming breath. So far, so good.
Eli’s sweat glands had calmed down. His skin felt sticky, and he needed a shower, but his state of mind felt good. The fear had made him alert, and he liked this feeling. It was the same feeling he got playing video games. Some people would call it engaged. Eli thought of this state of mind as not-bored. He enjoyed being not-bored.
Bring on the poltergeists, Eli thought.
He crept around the home office, eyes wide, whipping his head from side to side at the slightest hint of a sound. He felt himself smiling. Hunting for ghosts was like playing hide-n-seek.
Eli had been an only child, but the younger kids in his apartment building had been happy to play with him. They also appreciated the fact he didn’t lie to them, like most adults did. Eli was the guy everyone went to for the truth about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
Now that Eli was whipping open closet doors looking for poltergeists, he thought of the times he’d assured little kids there were no monsters under their beds or in their closets. He could never say that now. If a child asked him, he’d have to say he had his own monster under his bed, and its name was Monty
.
Eli finished the visual inspection of the office and then let his intuition guide him. He stretched his arms out and touched various objects at random, feeling for temperature shifts. Nothing struck him as odd.
From behind him, someone whispered, “I’m watching you.”
Eli replied to who he thought was Khan, “How am I doing?”
“You’re terrible at this. You both are.”
Both?
Eli whipped around, eyes wide. Something bright orange flashed like a supernova. Eli’s eyelids clamped shut in reflex. When he opened them again, he had blue and purple splotches across his vision. He tried to chase the splotches down, but they were like floaters, inside his eyes and not out in the world.
Eli’s heart was racing, but he was still smiling. Engaged. Not-bored.
He was getting warmer. If there was one thing he’d learned from video games, it was that enemies popped up when you were on the right track.
He went into the next room, which was a little kid’s room. He guessed the room belonged to a boy, because it wasn’t entirely pink and purple, but he did keep an open mind, because not every little girl loves purple. With all his senses on high alert, he looked high and low, triple-checking the closet and the space under the bed.
No ghost.
No whispering voice telling him he sucked, either.
“Show yourself,” Eli said to the quiet room.
The room seemed to get even more quiet—the kind of absence of noise that makes your ears ring. Eli breathed in deeply. The air had a new scent. Ozone. Like the edge of the ocean.
More boldly, Eli repeated his words. “Show yourself.”
The air seemed to thicken around him, like a breathable gel.
A breathable gel.
Something that felt like a warm wave of water moved up Eli’s back and slid over him like a blanket.
He remembered something that was his own memory—a memory from the time before his life began, before he was found wandering the ruins of the Zone.
He was in that thick air, that breathable gel. He grew, and he lived without living, and he watched. People talked around him, their words like shapes. Triangles and squares. They opened their mouths and geometry came out, only it was just code. Code Eli didn’t understand yet.