Milton knew he should have stayed at Generica General and faced the music, even if that music was the sound of snare drums accompanying a firing squad. But what good could he do Marlo and Virgil locked up in a jail cell? Not only that, but his spells would only get worse. Unless he found a cure—and fast—he could be permanently out of phase.
Milton grabbed a collection of newspapers and splayed them out across the table. For the past week, he had scoured periodicals from all over the world for peculiar phenomena, bits of seemingly unrelated weirdness that could, perhaps, be attributed to Milton’s breakout from eternal darnation.
When his balloon of bad-boy’s clothing had burst somewhere over Des Moines, Iowa, the buoyant, agitated souls that had provided Milton’s lift had scatteredin each and every direction. That meant a dozen or so freed souls desperately looking to move back into their former homes, regardless of their current, dismal conditions.
Perhaps this is what Annubis, the dog god that had plucked out Milton’s soul to be weighed in the Assessment Chamber back in Limbo, had meant about breaking the Prime Defective. Souls weren’t supposed to come back, not like this. It was supernaturally unnatural. And, judging from the series of freakish accounts culled from across the globe, this new twist on “soul searching” was some sticky business indeed.
There was a Viktor Farkas from Budapest who had reunited with his body much like Milton. The only problem was that little Viktor had passed away in the seventeenth century from the plague, and his body wasn’t exactly roadworthy.
Izabella and Zofia Kaczynsk, a pair of twins from Warsaw who’d died in the mid-1930s from choking on the same kielbasa, were currently on a posthumous tour of Polish eateries.
Lastly, there was the case of Penny Selsby an Australian girl killed by her own boomerang, who had been cremated and placed upon the family’s mantel. According to an article in the Gold Coast Bulletin titled “A Penny Saved Is a Penny Urned,” Miss Selsby’s bronze vase was now menacing her family with its vibrating tirades.
Milton stopped reading. He could feel the prickle of being stared at. He peered over his stack of clippings, and sure enough, there she was: Necia Alvarado, probing Milton with her dark, shining eyes. She had just entered the library, set down her overstuffed bag, and smiled at Milton’s return gaze, waggling her tiny, rodent-like fingers in greeting.
So this is what it feels like to be stalked, thought Milton as he barely-smiled in polite reciprocation. Necia had always been one of those peripheral people in Milton’s life, sort of like an extra in his ongoing movie, a grade below him. But ever since his return, Necia had gone from supporting player to aspiring lead: In fact, she was in every other scene. It would be one thing if she just came up and talked with him, but she seemed content to simply gawk from afar. Oh well, Milton mused, that’s the -price you pay for being a living, breathing, one-boy sideshow.
Necia’s smile beamed bright and cold, like the headlights of an oncoming car with some dark secret locked away in the trunk.
Milton looked down at his calculator watch: his “counseling session” was almost over. His parents had insisted he get therapy after his return, so, to humor them, he would take their money and pretend to see his imaginary counselor, Dr. Cerebro (it was the first thing that came out of Milton’s mouth, but luckily his parents weren’t too sharp lately). Lying, taking money, accidental mercy killing … you could take the boy out of Heck, it seemed, but you couldn’t take the Heck out of the boy. But Milton needed the unsupervised time and monetary resources for his research. Every day, he’d hobble over to the library and scour the Legal Reference section for some way of shutting down Heck for good. But just when he picked up the scent of a new trail—a stray thread to possibly unraveling the supernatural mess down below—he’d succumb to one of his “spells,” shaking his mind blank and forcing him to start from scratch the next day.
Speaking of which, Milton could feel another one coming on, stirring deep in his stomach.
He scooted close to the table, clutching the side until his knuckles were white. A small ad on the border of the Pitch, Kansas City’s weekly newspaper, caught his eye:
GRAND OPENING: THE PARANOR MALL!
The Last Stop on Your Metaphysical Mystery Tour! Want the 411 on UFOs and ESP, ASAP? Then come to Lester Lobe’s Paranor Mall, in beautiful downtown Topeka. It’s a museum filled with answers to mankind’s most baffling questions! Get to the bottom of:
Life after death
Telepathy
Déjà vu
Time travel
Astral projection
Voodoo economics
Extraterrestrials
Cryptozoology
Déjà vu
and the subtle energies that hold us together!
IT’S ALL HERE … AND LES! COME TO THE PARA-NOR MALL IN TOPEKA TO PIQUE YOUR CURIOSITY! 4400 Avenue 51, at the corner of Fact and Fiction.
Sure, the ad was on the back of one of those kooky alternative newspapers, the kind hipsters read while waiting for their pizza or for their new piercing to stop throbbing, but still: It was something. Milton had always considered himself a skeptic. But as time went by, he had grown so skeptical that now he even questioned skepticism. Plus, after what he had seen … down there … his eyes had been pried open to all sorts of unbelievable things, and there was no way that they could ever shut again.
The subtle energies that hold us together …
Milton read the sentence again … and again … and …
The library began to reel and rock. Milton felt his physical and etheric energies gradually part company as the swirl in his stomach grew thicker and faster, causing a “spiritual” seizure that knocked him out of whack like a scratch on a CD. But this time, the queasy, spinning flops weren’t strictly due to a shift in “subtle” energies. They gnawed deeper than that. It was guilt that was eating away at him. He closed his eyes and laid his feverish forehead on the cool marble of the desk. Images of his sister and his best friend, Virgil—the two people he had left behind and below—filled his mind. The hushed voices of those nearby cut through the static in his head. But he didn’t care. Though slumped over a table in the Generica Main Library, Milton’s thoughts were miles away. Miles below.
7 · MALL OR NOTHiNG
“YES,” MARLO PURRED softly to herself as her trusty safety pin coaxed open yet another defenseless lock. She pressed her palms on the warm golden door and lifted it up, squeezing through the gap beneath and creeping cautiously across the Grabbit’s warren.
She was supposed to be back in her bunk, dreaming of shiny, unattainable things like a good little greedy dead girl. Yet, instead, she padded in the darkness, unable to sleep, unable to eat, unable to think of anything but Mallvana—the Happy Shopping Grounds above her blue-haired head—and the confounding cast-iron cottontail that seemed to hold her nervous system hostage.
She was nearly there, beneath the ornate grate that revealed the spectacle above. Flashes of multicolored neon exploded in the dark like fireworks. The light illuminated the motionless Grabbit’s frozen leer. It was a grin that cleaved its brightly colored rabbit-clown face in two. The eyes that never moved followed her nonetheless. Though the Grabbit was as still as a statue, the air around it crackled with invisible electricity as if—while everyone else in Rapacia slept—it was wide …
“Awake are things that never sleep,
no dreams to fill their heads.
Why is it that you sneak and creep
past Rapacia’s selfish beds?”
Marlo swallowed the thumping lump in her throat. “I—I was looking for a little inspiration,” she stammered, “for my Consumer Math class. I needed to make some observations and take … some notes. You see, I won a bet with Poker—Ms. Tubbs—and get to teach tomorrow’s class—”
“Of course I’ve heard about your bet.
Your chances were remote.
You got your teacher quite upset,
in fact, you got her goat.”
�
�Right. Very good. Nice meter,” Marlo replied. “It’s just that, I never expected to win, so I’m not really sure what to do. I was never that good in school, but I know I can teach the girls something. And I know where I want to teach them. I just don’t know what.”
The Grabbit was still, even for a mostly motionless object. It was odd, Marlo thought as she stood before her mute vice principal in the dark: She felt like she was in the presence of a higher power, something that obliterated her own sense of self, a towering contradiction that held Marlo tight in its unbearable electrical lasso. Finally, the Grabbit’s unsettling voice broke the quietude.
“Your touch is light; your nerves are steel.
There’s hustle in your flow.
They’ll take your class and learn to steal.
Just teach them what you know.”
The clouds parted inside Marlo’s head. What she needed to do shone through like the sun she hadn’t seen for weeks. She felt like she could have it all … like she should have it all. She wasn’t sure if it was this new opportunity or the deeply disturbing effect of the Grabbit that made her feel this way. Marlo stared at its painted-on eyes and white smear of a grin. The Grabbit was either the least-alive living thing or the most-alive dead thing she had ever encountered. Whatever it was (or wasn’t), it held her firmly in its electromagnetic clutches.
She had found a way to sate her hunger, a way to stuff herself at the ultimate buffet of raw, shameless materialism. There it was, above her, so close yet so far. Not anymore. Tomorrow she would take her class on a field trip, of sorts. An in-the-trenches test, in the ultimate classroom of consumerism: Mallvana.
“Thank you!” Marlo chirped. “I’ll teach them what I know!”
The Grabbit simply grinned back at her. Marlo shifted anxiously from foot to foot. “So, um … looks like I have a curriculum to write. Have a good night’s … whatever.”
Marlo squeezed beneath the door and into the hallway. She felt good, but she had a long night ahead of her. She gamboled away to her bunk, whistling “Material Girl,” yet with each progressive step, she grew heavier and hungrier. Marlo felt like she was starving, only not just in her stomach: She felt as if she were starving everywhere. She turned toward the Grabbit’s warren, thinking—hoping—she heard something. Was it the Grabbit calling after her?
She tiptoed back to the golden gate and peered inside. The warren was deathly still. Then suddenly the Grabbit’s voice—only now somewhat deeper and darker—broke the silence.
“The only thing I really need
is everything I want.
Every moment, green with greed,
its hunger is a taunt. And though I cannot leave this spot,
trapped I am, in thrall,
this Grabbit’s hatched the perfect plot,
and soon I’ll have it all.”
Marlo watched the brazen, flickering lights of the mall dance across the Grabbit’s face.
“And more.”
8 · GOiNG TO CRACKPOT
THE PARANOR MALL was less a “mall” than a crazy old mans garage sale. Except that there was no garage. And, to the best of Milton’s knowledge, nothing in the countless overflowing boxes and unruly stacks of yellowing paper was actually for sale. The crazy-old-man element, however, was spot-on.
“Of course, I don’t have to tell you about cattle mutilations,” the mall’s owner, Lester Lobe, said between coughing fits.
Milton pretended to be interested in a “life-sized” fiberglass alien statue. “Yeah, you’re right,” Milton replied. “You don’t have to tell me.”
Lester, with tufts of wild gray hair snaking out from beneath a fez, shuffled closer to Milton, who was, unsurprisingly, the only other person there. Milton noticed that, though the man was fully dressed, he wore a pair of fuzzy green Mars Attacks! slippers.
“Have you heard about the mysterious rash of dead ‘half-cats’ found in Canada?” he inquired. “Obviously a message from alien visitors.”
“Maybe the half-cats were just half-curious about something,” Milton quipped.
Lester Lobe stared at Milton blankly with eyes bloodshot with fatigue and quivering from too much caffeine. He suddenly erupted with laughter.
“Good one!” he guffawed, rubbing his gray goatee and nodding. “It’s humor that separates us from the extraterrestrials—unless you find kidnapping and human experimentation humorous.”
Milton looked glumly at the fiberglass alien’s emotionless head. “Not particularly,” he murmured.
Lester scrutinized Milton’s face.
“You’re that kid,” he whispered with awe. “The one who came back. I just finished clipping out the newspaper articles.”
Milton had hoped he’d stumble upon some cure for his out-of-body predicament without having to solicit the help of a crackpot. But the cure for this vexing condition clearly sat outside Milton’s realm of rationality … though, considering the events of the last few weeks, he worried that perhaps he himself sat outside that comforting realm.
Milton sighed. “Yes, I’m the zombie kid who shouldn’t be here but is,” he said.
Lester smiled, revealing a mouth full of crooked, nicotine-stained teeth. “Then you’ve come to the right place,” he said with frenetic energy. “The Paranor Mall is all about things that shouldn’t be here but are. I boil down all of the urban myths, hysteria, psychobabble, and weirdness that make up our culture today and inject it straight into your eyeballs. It’s a lot like watching daytime television.”
Milton eyed the mall’s Elvis Abduction Chamber. It was a photo booth—or something—covered with rhinestones and clippings from the National Midnight Star Weekly, that magazine Milton’s grandmother used to pick up at the checkout counter of the supermarket, with stories about Bigfoot’s secret daughter brawling at a New York club with E.T., or the Olsen Twins revealing that they were time travelers sent here to caution humanity about our warlike ways. That sort of thing.
Milton fondled the tarnished brass doorknob of the chamber and peered inside the dark opening. The Elvis Abduction Chamber was just a six-sided box lined with mirrors.
“I need some help with a … p-problem,” Milton stammered. It had been about twenty minutes since his last spell, so he wanted to get to the point before his train of thought derailed again. “After reading your ad, I thought that I might find some answers.”
“Yes,” Lester said, blowing the tassel of his fez out of his eyes. “Lots of people come here, all for different reasons. Drew Barrymore was here, mainly because she was kicked out of the place across the street for smoking. She did buy some T-shirts, though, and some unicorn-on-the-cob holders—”
“The ad mentioned … subtle energies,” Milton interrupted, “the ones holding us together.”
The man looked Milton up and down.
“Of course,” he said with a mad twinkle in his eye. “Someone in your situation is probably missing a little in that department. I could tell by your aura. Faint, but nearly spotless. So clean you could practically eat off it.”
A blinking flying saucer suspended overhead seemed to blur and wobble. Milton’s energy was beginning to loosen and split.
“Do you know anything about,” Milton mumbled, “etheric energy?”
“Hmm, etheric …” Lester abruptly walked away to a leaning tower of books and expertly yanked a volume from the middle without disturbing the rest. He flipped through the book, titled Everything You Know Is Wrong, and walked back to Milton, skirting stacks of junk and pop-culture debris while never once taking his eyes off the pages.
“Nothing specifically about etheric energy,” he mumbled, “but there are many accounts of missing energy at the point of death. Twenty-one grams worth, in fact.”
“Grams?” said Milton weakly. “But energy is measured by watts and volts …”
“Yes, of course,” Lester continued. “But the human body, after death, weighs exactly twenty-one grams less than it did when it was alive. Many philosophers theorize that this m
ust be the approximate weight of the human soul, which—as it is invisible when leaving the body—must be a form of vaporous energy that … are you okay, little dude?”
Milton was swaying with full-body nausea. He wiped his beaded-sweat mustache. “I’m just not … the same,” Milton whispered as Lester pulled a milk crate of old magazines close for the boy to sit on. “I may have lost some energy by coming back.”
“Interesting,” Lester replied. “You obviously still have both your body and soul, or you wouldn’t be here. Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, felt that man was composed of three aspects: reason, emotion, and appetite. Reason being the rational mind, hungering for wisdom and truth; the body hungering for, well, just about everything; and the emotional body, which acts as a sort of bridge, or glue …”
Glue, thought Milton as he fought to hold on to himself even though his world was now a spinning Tilt-A-Whirl. Ever since his return, he had begun to feel listless and strangely hollow. Perhaps that’s because his emotional, etheric energy—the spiritual glue that had been his emotional body—was now helping to power the Transdimensional Grid.
“… could probably refill it by getting some etheric juice back into your pineal gland.”
Milton shook his head. “What was that?” he managed. “Something about a gland?”
“The pineal gland,” Lester repeated. “It’s this cone-shaped part of the brain, and no scientist really knows what it’s for. Some ancient cultures, however, felt that it regulated mysterious dynamic forces within us, perhaps even the soul. In the early 1900s, Sir Edward Tylor, Oxford professor of anthropology, electroshock therapy advocate, and founder of the Subtle Energies Commission, had a theory that if one were to harness the power of other living creatures and direct that power straight to the pineal gland, then a living person could advance to the next step in human evolution. It is speculated that this technique could even reanimate the dead.”
Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck Page 5