by Dan Poblocki
As Timothy followed the tour, though, he found himself staring more at Abigail than at the artwork on the walls or in the cases. She was strange and quiet, walking as if in a dream or a daze, as if she was seeing the world in a way the rest of them couldn’t.
Eventually, in one small dark room, he came upon a large poster on the wall that read, Magic and Religion in Prehistoric Scandinavia. Magic? Maybe, Timothy figured, they could choose one of these artifacts for their project. Glancing into a glass case nearby, he read a small placard that was supposed to mark an ancient “magical” jawbone with a “primitive artificial tooth.” The placard explained that the jawbone was connected with a dark goddess called the Daughter of Chaos. The bone was actually used as a tool during revenge rituals. The description continued, “The myths explain that a member of the tribe would hold the jawbone in his fist, name the person he wanted revenge upon, and a curse would be placed. The tribe believed that this curse made the victim see all his worst fears come true. Whoever held the bone could read the victim’s mind and use the victim’s fear to force him to betray an ally, attack a family member, or even destroy himself.”
This artifact sounded totally amazing.
“Too bad,” said a voice next to Timothy. To his surprise, he found that Abigail had been standing beside him, reading along.
“Too bad what?” said Timothy.
She nodded at the case, where the jawbone was supposed to be. In its place was a piece of paper that read:
ITEM REMOVED FOR CLEANING
“Would have been a good one. Don’t you think?”
The woman in the tweed jacket led the class to one particularly cavernous room on the fourth floor. While the group listened to the tour guide’s speech on the far side of the room, Timothy and Abigail stopped in the opposite corner and stared at a large dark canvas.
“Many of the most recent acquisitions were brought to the museum by our new director,” said the woman. “We’re quite lucky to have such a distinguished—”
Someone in the group made a farting sound, and the class burst into laughter.
But Timothy barely registered the noise. His mind was elsewhere.
The painting on the wall in the far corner was an enormous landscape. In the sky, at the canvas edges, clouds roiled, blacker than night. Below the clouds, a stone temple, which resembled the museum’s own classical façade, trembled on the precipice of a deep chasm from which spewed brilliant red flames. On the cliff’s edge, a man stood, dressed in black robes, arms raised, face turned in anguish toward the sky. In the center of the painting, just above the burning pit, the clouds glowed yellow, as if answering him. The title of the painting, noted on a small placard to the right of the canvas, was The Edge of Doom.
Abigail pointed at the painting, then, almost smiling, she said, “That’s the one. It’s so amazing.” She turned to look at him.
“Yeah,” said Timothy. “Really cool.” He pointed at the man in the center of the painting. “What do you think that guy’s saying?” He made his voice really low and grunted, “Um, I could use a little help here? Hello? Anyone?”
Mr. Crane interrupted from across the room. “You may break into your pairs for one last wander around the museum. Meet in the coatroom in an hour, and don’t be late. The bus leaves promptly at noon.”
Timothy turned back to find Abigail now glaring at him.
“What?” he asked. “What did I say?”
“Are you making fun of me?” Abigail said.
“About what?”
“Because I actually like the painting.” Her eyes were filled with fire. For some reason, Timothy remembered her socks. Even though it was a stupid thought, he couldn’t help but laugh a little bit. This only made the fire in her eyes grow brighter. “You’re laughing at me?”
“No, I’m not laughing at you,” Timothy tried to explain, pointing at the painting. “I’m laughing because …” You keep trying to light yourself on fire, his brain finished the sentence silently. But he couldn’t say that to her, at least not now, while she looked like she wanted to kill him.
“You know what?” said Abigail. “Just forget it. Do the project by your stupid self. I don’t care.” She turned around to face The Edge of Doom.
After a few seconds, Timothy tried again. “I said it was really cool. How is that making fun of you?”
Abigail continued to stare at the painting, her arms hugging her torso. Timothy took a deep breath. This wasn’t what he’d expected to happen.
“I’m sorry you thought I was making fun of you.”
Without turning around, Abigail said, “You’re sorry for making fun of me or you’re sorry I thought you were making fun of me?”
“I wasn’t making fun of you,” Timothy answered as simply as he could. “I was just being a … butt-munch.”
Finally, Abigail turned around, amused. After a few moments, she said, “A butt-munch? No. I’d say more of a … fart-slap.”
Timothy laughed. Fart-slap was funnier than anything Stuart had ever come up with. Abigail chuckled too, then stepped closer to the painting. “What do we have to do? Make a chart or a graph or something?”
“I have no clue.”
“I actually wasn’t paying attention in class at all.”
“I noticed,” said Timothy. He could almost hear the click of her little lighter in his memory. “I mean, none of us were.”
“Hey, Abigail!” a voice called into the room, resonating off the walls.
What happened next, happened so quickly, it took Timothy several seconds to even realize he was soaking wet. Abigail screamed. Timothy jumped and nearly slipped as his feet slid across the now-slick marble floor. When he spun around, he saw Abigail holding out her arms helplessly in front of herself. Her T-shirt was drenched. Her face was dripping with water, and her long red hair was plastered to her head.
“What the heck just happened?” Timothy heard himself say.
Some of the class had gathered and were staring and pointing. Laughter echoed throughout the cavernous room. Other museum guests had stopped to watch the commotion too. Timothy felt his face turning red as he noticed a small blue dot on the floor next to his foot. It looked like a thin piece of peeled paint, or maybe rubber. He kicked at it, almost unconsciously, and the answer came to him.
A water balloon.
Someone had thrown a water balloon at Abigail.
Stuart.
Timothy wanted to scream. Carla, Stuart’s partner, stood next to Mandy and Karen in the doorway, but the culprit was gone.
“Are you okay?” he said to Abigail instead. She only stood there, dangling her arms, looking like a wet cat. She shook her head slightly, but Timothy couldn’t tell if she was just trying to dry off.
Through the crowd of his classmates, Timothy watched a couple of security guards push their way toward him. He glanced at The Edge of Doom. Droplets of water clung to the black clouds and the open chasm, as if the painting itself had started to precipitate.
Oops.
Before the two large men in uniform could make their way to him, Timothy felt Abigail rush past him, through the door on the far side of the room. “Wait,” Timothy called, running after her, trying not to slip on the wet floor. Peeking over his shoulder, he noticed that one security guard had stopped to examine the wet painting. The other guard, however, was coming after them.
7.
Through the doorway, Timothy went to the large staircase spiraling into the lower levels of the museum. Pausing briefly to peer over the brass railing, he noticed a quickly moving shadow descending, fluttering against the white marble steps, already one flight down. “Abigail!” he called. Footsteps were coming up close behind him. Timothy hurried toward the top step.
He ran so fast that the stairs seemed to disappear beneath his feet. He descended into the bowels of the building, aware that he’d finally breached the ground level and was now chasing Abigail into the basement. When he ran out of stairs, a darkened hallway stretched before him. The
shadows at the far end of the hallway seemed to shiver, or maybe that was just Timothy, cold and winded and wet.
Timothy listened. He could still hear footsteps, but he wasn’t entirely certain whether they were in front of him or above him. He kept going. Halfway down the hall, Timothy noticed movement in a lighted doorway. This room was long and thin with a low ceiling. On the opposite wall was another doorway. A red velvet rope hung across it. A small sign, perched in the center on a silver pole, read: ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICES—CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC.
Timothy entered the room. He wandered past small luminescent gold objects, Aztec creations, which were crowded onto the shelves of several display cases. A few small idols with wide, toothy smiles looked ready to laugh … or bite.
Halfway through the room, Timothy heard a sniff. Looking down, he could see Abigail’s foot sticking out from behind one of the cases. “Abigail, are you okay?” he asked.
Her foot disappeared behind the case. She peered at him. Her face was blotchy with tears. Her shirt was still soaking wet, and her hair was a tangled mess. “Hell,” she said. “Just … go away.”
Timothy bent down anyway. “Stuart got me pretty good too,” he said. He pointed at his darkened shirt.
“Wow,” said Abigail. She looked at Timothy and seemed to really see him. Her face changed, and in her fiery eyes, he noticed recognition, as if she had suddenly stumbled upon a mirror. “You’re totally drenched.”
“Freakin’ Stuart Chen.” Timothy chuckled. “He’s the freakin’ fart-slap. Better watch himself at swim practice tonight. His towel might just end up in the pool.”
They stared at each other for several seconds, surrounded by the grinning golden idols, before Timothy felt laughter creeping up from the bottom of his stomach. Before he knew it, they were both giggling. It felt good to laugh. The laughter grew the more he tried to contain it. He tried to be quiet. But soon, it was impossible to stop. Abigail appeared to have the same problem. Her shoulders hitched and quaked, but a few seconds later, as their laughter began to die down, she covered her face in her hands. Now she was crying.
Timothy didn’t know what to do. When he’d come after her, he hadn’t thought about what might happen next. He reached out and touched her shoulder. “Abigail, don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s not worth it. People are just … stupid and mean.”
Through her hands, she said, “It’s your fault.”
It took a few seconds for him to register her statement. “My fault?”
Her voice was muffled through her fingers, but he could hear her say, “If you hadn’t picked me for a partner, this wouldn’t have happened. No one would have noticed me, and everything would have been fine.”
“What do you mean, no one would have noticed you?”
Finally, she took her hands away from her face. Her eyes were red rimmed and swollen. “You don’t understand.”
“Well then, tell me.”
“When no one notices you, stuff like this doesn’t happen.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Timothy could see something moving. It stood beyond the dark door on his left, behind the red velvet rope in front of the administrative offices. When Timothy looked at it straight on, it quickly moved backward into the soupy black shadows. Whatever was there had been watching them for some time. Timothy thought he could hear it whispering something to itself.
“Just … go back to the rest of the class,” said Abigail. If she noticed the shape in the hallway, she didn’t want Timothy to know. “I’ll come find you later. I want to be by myself right now.” She turned away from him, hiding her face again.
Before he could respond, the room seemed to grow darker. At the same time, the light reflecting off the gold pieces in the cases appeared to grow brighter. Timothy stared into the face of a small, ghastly gold skull sitting on the shelf to the left of Abigail’s shoulder.
“I’ll be fine,” he heard Abigail say, as if from far away.
He could not answer her. The rest of the room faded. Soon, only the glowing gold pieces were left. The skull stared at him, its eyes widening like dark whirlpools. When he looked away, to his horror, every other artifact on the shelves was facing him too. The mouths of the idols slowly opened and closed, as if chanting silent prayers.
Timothy covered his mouth and closed his eyes.
Last night’s dream rushed back at him—Ben gasping for breath inside the jar. Timothy let out a whimper and opened his eyes again. The idols continued to stare at him. He was tempted to run, but he couldn’t leave Abigail here alone. Instinctively, he grasped her shoulder and spun her around to demand that they go, when he realized that half-hidden underneath Abigail’s tangled mess of red hair was a horrible skull-like grimace, grinning like the golden idols in the glass cases.
The Abigail-thing simply reached up, touched his cheek with bony fingertips, and forced him to look into the darkness near the administrative offices hallway. “Get out of here,” she whispered. But Timothy couldn’t move.
Lit dimly by the golden idols’ unnatural glow was a tall man. He appeared to be cloaked in a long coat, a brimmed hat perched on his head, shiny black wingtip shoes on his feet. Timothy could not make out any other features, but the sight of these simple few shrank his skin to his bones. The man appeared to be staring at him. However, as Timothy stared back, unable now to turn away or even contemplate what might be happening, he slowly understood that the shadow man was not in fact staring at him, but at something beyond him, behind him, in the doorway on the opposite side of this strange room.
“Abigail?”
The voice seemed to throw the horror world of this room into tumult, and before Timothy could even blink, the shadows had disappeared, the gold idols had become lifeless, and Abigail had become herself again.
She turned toward the voice, which had come from the entry opposite the velvet rope, and this time it was her turn to wear an expression of shock. There stood an old woman.
Her voice wavering, Abigail replied, “Gramma? What are you doing here?”
8.
The old woman was tall. She wore a knee-length navy pea-coat, a floral blouse, and polyester pants. Tufts of dark gray hair curled out from underneath a floppy houndstooth hat, the brim of which fell in waves around the edge of her face like the petals of a flower. She had a long, regal nose and large, wide-set brown eyes. She seemed truly surprised, almost shocked, to find Timothy and Abigail in the basement of the museum.
“What am I doing here?” said the woman addressed as “Gramma.” “My dear, I feel I should ask you the same thing. Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” She sounded more confused than concerned, as if she were worried that she might be seeing things. Timothy knew the feeling.
The sight of the woman in the entrance had been enough to make Timothy momentarily forget about the shadowy figure in the other door. But when he heard brisk footsteps scuffing away, he turned his head once more to look. The tall man in the long overcoat was gone, but a small book lay on the floor where he had stood.
Had he imagined the whole thing? Was he imagining still?
“My class is here on a field trip today,” said Abigail. “Mom signed the permission slip last week. Remember?” She ran to meet the woman in the doorway, leaving Timothy alone among the glass cases and wide-eyed artifacts.
He could not take his eyes off the book on the floor beyond the rope. He cautiously moved toward it. It lay on the ground a few feet past the door.
“Why, you’re all wet, Abigail,” said her grandmother. “Didn’t you think to bring an umbrella? It’s been raining to end the world for the past few days.”
Abigail stammered as Timothy ducked underneath the velvet rope, “I—I forgot.”
“Well, you can take mine with you when you go. My old raincoat does quite well in weather like this. Of course, the cab picked me up in front of the apartment building, so I didn’t have to walk to the bus stop like you did. Regardless …”
Timothy crawled into the dark admi
nistrative hallway. The book lay just out of reach. Beyond it was cold, unblinking darkness. Timothy was terrified to go any farther.
He could make out the cover—something about a corpse. The hallway seemed to close in as he inched forward, his fingers reaching the book.
“Timothy? What are you doing?”
He nearly screamed as he spun around to find Mr. Crane and one of the security guards standing in the doorway next to Abigail and her grandmother. He slid back underneath the velvet rope and struggled to rise, clutching the book behind his back. Slipping it underneath his shirt and into the lip of his pants, he said, “I dropped a penny.”
“Please … come away from there,” said Mr. Crane to Timothy, before noticing the stranger beside Abigail. “Are you …? You’re not a chaperone.”
The old woman shook her head. “Thank you for letting me know.”
“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Crane, flustered.
“Please don’t be,” she replied. “I’m Abigail’s grandmother. Zilpha Kindred. Funny coincidence meeting like this. If I’d remembered you were planning a trip to the museum, I would have tagged along for the ride. As it is, I took a cab. I have particular business to attend …” She glanced at Abigail, who seemed to have taken an interest in picking a piece of dirt out from underneath her fingernail. “Never mind. Carry on. Pretend I’m invisible.”
Mr. Crane turned his attention to Timothy instead. “I think you’ve got some explaining to do, young man.”
“Me?” said Timothy.
“You’re lucky you didn’t damage that beautiful painting upstairs. Throwing water like that. What could you possibly have been thinking?”
“But I didn’t …”
“It wasn’t Timothy, Mr. Crane,” said Abigail quietly. “It was … someone else.”
“Who?” said Mr. Crane.
The fire in Abigail’s eyes seemed to spark at that. “Not Timothy!” Timothy felt a pang of triumph that she was standing up for him.