by Pete Hautman
He blinked and rubbed his eyes, then looked again.
The disk had returned.
Climbing onto the barn roof certainly qualified for Kosh’s list of forbidden activities . . . but it wouldn’t hurt to take a look. There were ladder rungs nailed to the south wall of the barn. Tucker had never climbed them, but he’d checked them out. The rungs were as old as the building itself: rusted, U-shaped, each one fastened with four nails directly onto the siding. The column of rungs reached all the way to the peak.
Tucker grabbed the lowest rung and tugged on it. A little loose. He stepped on it with one foot and bounced up and down. It wiggled, but felt like it would hold. He climbed a few more steps. The ninth rung was loose — two of the nails had rusted away — but the rungs were close enough together that he was able to climb past it. He looked down. A shame to waste all that climbing. He looked up. It wasn’t that far. Kosh would never know.
He continued climbing. The top rung was about two feet below the eave, which jutted out from the siding. Two iron rails curved down around the overhang from the top, providing handholds. Grabbing one of the rails, Tucker gave it a hard yank. It felt secure. To get onto the roof, he would have to grab both rails and pull himself up. Tucker looked down.
Whoa. He squeezed his eyes closed and willed all of his strength into his hands. It was a long way down — he hadn’t been this high since he’d tied the rope swing to the cottonwood. He waited for his heart to slow down, then moved his other hand to the rail, lifted one foot to the top rung, and pulled himself high enough to see the top of the roof.
The two rails, he was relieved to see, were fastened securely to the roof with shiny new bolts. Kosh must have been up there doing some maintenance. If it was safe for Kosh, who weighed well over two hundred pounds, it had to be safe for Tucker. Getting a new grip on the rails, Tucker pulled himself up onto the roof. He crawled on his belly along the ridge for a few feet to get away from the edge, then stood up.
About halfway along the ridge, between him and the weather vane, a shimmering, perfectly round distortion hovered four feet above the ridge. At close range, it looked like a pane of foggy, pulsing glass. Tucker edged forward, keeping one foot on either side of the ridge. He stopped ten feet short of the disk, wishing he had brought a stick or something to poke at it. He dug in his pockets and came out with his pocketknife. He moved closer, then tossed the knife at the disk.
The disk flashed orange; the knife disappeared.
Tucker got down on his hands and knees and looked at the roof on the other side of the disk. No knife. He crawled forward until his head was directly beneath the disk and looked up. Edge on, it became invisible, as if it had no third dimension. Keeping his head down, he crawled past the disk and stood up, gripping the weather vane for support. It looked exactly the same on the other side.
He was standing only three feet from the surface of the disk, close enough to feel it tugging at him, just like the one in Hopewell. His heart rate jumped from nervous and excited to flat-out scared. A voice inside his head was yelling at him to get away from the disk and off the roof, but before he could will his body to act, a prickling at the back of his ears made him turn to look behind him.
Three ghosts were floating around the weather vane, two men and a woman, all staring at him with colorless, translucent eyes. Tucker gasped and backed away from them. As he neared the surface of the disk something grabbed him and squeezed — for an instant, he felt as if he’d been compressed to the size of a pea — then, with a sound like the final slurp of a milk shake through a straw, he was falling.
TUCKER LANDED HARD, FLAT ON HIS BACK. AIR EXPLODED from his lungs — for a moment, he thought he was back at Hardy Lake, slamming into the tree. He tried to breathe, but his chest was frozen and a sharp pain stabbed at his ears. Bubbles of black crowded the edges of his vision. Just as he felt himself slipping away, his chest suddenly expanded. Air flooded his lungs and his ears popped — the relief was exquisite, but short-lived, as the need for oxygen was replaced by a sharp pain in the small of his back.
I fell off the barn, he thought. I’ve broken my back.
He moved his right leg, then his left. Except for the knot of pain in his lower back he seemed to be okay. How far had he fallen? Forty, fifty feet? Turning his head, looking for the barn, he found only clear blue sky. He sat up. He was sitting on a flat, pebbly metal surface, painted blue-gray, bordered by a metal railing. Beyond the railing was the horizon: faint and distant, a blur of water touching the sky.
This was not Kosh’s farm.
Tucker looked straight up. The wavering, not-quite-real shape of the disk hung eight feet above him, just out of reach. He climbed to his feet and noticed his folded pocketknife on the metal surface. That was what had been poking him in the back. He must have landed right on it.
He was on top of a building. He walked a few steps to the railing and looked out upon thousands of other buildings, most of them less than half as tall as the one he was standing upon. They looked like something Godzilla could crush with his great lizard feet. He looked down. His stomach lurched. Tiny cars crowded the city streets. Little dark specks — people — moved, antlike, along the sidewalks.
Turning to his left, he saw another incredibly tall building, maybe a hundred yards away, topped by the white spike of a giant antenna. The antenna alone was taller than any building in Hopewell.
To his right, beyond the sea of buildings, was a large body of water, its gray surface slashed by the white wakes of dozens of boats. He noticed an island with an oddly shaped, pointed structure jutting up from one end.
Every few yards along the railing, binocular telescopes were mounted on steel posts. Tucker tried to look through one, but saw nothing. He noticed a coin slot in the front of the telescope. He felt in his pockets, found two quarters, fed them in, heard a reassuring click, put his eyes to the scope, and aimed it at the island.
The pointy structure was a green metal statue. He had seen it before in pictures, and in movies.
The Statue of Liberty.
But the Statue of Liberty was in New York City.
How could he be in New York? He followed the railing. The city — uncountable buildings — spread out to the horizon. He noticed one building topped by a tall, graceful spire, not as tall as the building he was standing on, but taller than the rest. The Empire State Building? But there weren’t any buildings taller than the Empire State Building in New York City, so how could he be looking down at it? He moved back from the railing and sat down on a green metal bench on the other side of the platform. He closed his eyes and hugged himself. This had to be a dream. When he opened his eyes the nightmare would be over. He would be back on Kosh’s barn — unless that was part of the dream, too.
It all felt so real.
One, two, three . . . He would count to ten.
At the count of seven, Tucker became aware of a distant roar, growing rapidly louder. He opened his eyes and ran to the railing. An airplane, coming in low and astonishingly fast, was heading directly for the other building. Tucker watched it disappear behind the building. For one splinter of an instant he thought the plane had missed, then came a ripping, thudding explosion. A ball of flame blew out the side of the building. Less than a second later the shock wave hit, knocking Tucker back from the railing. The flames were followed by tremendous bloated cauliflowers of black smoke writhing and twisting skyward.
Tucker jumped up and ran, following the railing around the edge of the platform, getting as far away from the burning building as he could. The choking black cloud quickly overtook him. He stopped running, pulled the neck of his T-shirt up over his mouth, and forced himself to think. He was sure about where he was now, even though it was impossible. The World Trade Center. Nine eleven. Tucker was too young to remember that day, but he had seen the videos.
He had to get off. There had to be an elevator or a staircase someplace. Maybe he had time to get down before the second plane hit. He plunged forward, slitting h
is eyes against the stinging smoke. A clearing in the haze appeared; Tucker used the momentary respite to take several deep breaths. The platform turned to the left. He spotted an exit sign with an arrow pointing straight ahead. Another wave of dense smoke rolled over him, but he kept running, blinded — until he collided with something.
Something big. Tucker bounced off and fell back, hearing a gruff, startled exclamation.
Through the smoke, Tucker could see a large figure dressed in black standing over him. Tucker jumped up, relieved to find he was not alone.
“We have to get down!” he shouted.
“Tell me something I don’t know, kid,” the man said.
Tucker knew that voice.
“Kosh?”
The smoke thinned. Kosh Feye stood before him, his bright-blue eyes glowing in the smoke-muted sunlight.
“You know me?” Kosh grabbed the front of Tucker’s T-shirt. “Who are you?”
“You know who I am!”
Kosh stared hard at him for three heartbeats. He looked different. Younger. His nose wasn’t all pushed to the side, and his eyebrows were solid, thick, and jet black.
“I’ve seen you someplace,” Kosh said.
“Yeah, like this morning.”
Kosh let go of Tucker’s shirt and shook his head. “Yeah, right. Whatever. Listen, kid — whoever you are — the elevators are shut down, and the doors to the escalators are locked. I’ve been trying to get out of this nightmare for ten minutes.” Another cloud of oily smoke rolled over them. Tucker crouched, getting down low so he could breathe. Kosh stared at him, unaffected by the smoke. “How’d you get here?”
“I don’t know. I was on your roof —”
“My roof? What were you —?”
“And I saw this, like, fuzzy place in the air, and it slurped me up.”
“Slurped?”
“That’s what it felt like.”
“I thought it felt more like being shot out of a cannon.”
“You went through too?”
“I was putting up my new weather vane. And pow, I end up here. You know where we are, don’t you?”
“The World Trade Center?”
“Right. September eleven. But that’s impossible. The towers fell last week.”
“Last week? It was years ago.”
“Years? You got a pretty weak grasp of recent history, kid. It happened last Tuesday.”
“If it happened last Tuesday, then how can we be standing here now?”
“You got me. All I know is, if we don’t wake up from this nightmare soon, we aren’t going to wake up at all. There were two of them, you know. Two planes. The second plane hit about twenty minutes after the first one. How long you figure it’s been? Ten, fifteen minutes?”
“Maybe we’re here for a reason,” Tucker said. “Maybe we can do something. Warn everybody to get out?”
“Kid, there isn’t a single person in either of these buildings who isn’t already trying to get out.”
“But — we can’t just have come here to die.”
“Maybe we’re already dead.”
“Not yet,” Tucker said, thinking about the disk. Maybe it was still there. Maybe it worked both ways. “I might know a way off.”
“What, jump? No thanks.”
“We can go back the way we came,” Tucker said. “That thing that brought us here, if we can find it, maybe it’ll take us back.”
“Thing? I didn’t see any thing.”
“It’s like a disk. I saw it. Come on!” They followed the railing around the observation deck. The wind had shifted, blowing the smoke across the far side of the building. Tucker was walking with his head tipped back, looking for the disk. He stopped.
“There.”
“Where?”
Tucker pointed up.
“I don’t see anything,” Kosh said.
It was faint, but Tucker could see it: a disk-shaped slice of thicker, denser, fuzzier air.
Tucker grabbed Kosh’s sleeve and pulled him to a spot directly beneath it. “Reach straight up, as high as you can.”
Kosh raised his arm. The tips of his fingers came to within a few inches of the bottom of the circle.
“You’re almost touching it,” Tucker said.
“I feel —” Kosh jerked his hand back. “Something grabbed at my fingers!”
“Can you see it? You have to focus on it just right.”
Kosh backed up a few steps, squinting. “Like a big fuzzy circle?”
“That’s it.”
“And you think that’s how we got here?”
“All we got to do is get up there and go through. I think.”
Kosh was gazing off to the west, across the Hudson River, where a silver speck glittered just above the horizon.
“Flight 175, right on schedule,” he said.
“Your stepladder!” Tucker said.
“Stepladder?” Kosh’s eyes were fixed on the approaching jetliner.
“You got a stepladder in the barn, right?”
“So?”
“Lift me up. I’ll send you back a ladder so you can get up there.”
“You’re talking to a dead man,” said Kosh. “Say your prayers, kid. Once that plane hits, it won’t be long before this thing goes down.”
“How long?”
Kosh shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe half an hour?”
Tucker grabbed Kosh’s arm. “Then we don’t have much time. Boost me up!”
Kosh looked down at him.
“Come on!”
Kosh lifted Tucker onto his shoulders.
“Higher,” said Tucker. He got one foot on Kosh’s right shoulder as Kosh pushed up on his buttocks. He stood, shakily, one foot on each of Kosh’s broad shoulders, looking directly into the circle of mist.
“Here it comes,” said Kosh. “Hang on, kid.”
“Look for the ladder,” Tucker said.
There was an ear-crushing roar, the building shuddered and swayed, and Tucker dove headfirst into the disk.
TUCKER HIT THE BARN ROOF AND FELT HIMSELF start to slide. His right hand closed around something — one of the support brackets for the weather vane. He hung on, waiting a few seconds for his heart to slow. His eardrums felt as if they had been pierced by needles. Tucker swallowed, and his ears popped as the pressure equalized. He pulled himself back onto the ridge. The surface of the disk wavered and swam hungrily. The ghosts he had seen before were gone. He ducked under the disk and ran along the ridge. Seconds later, he was scrambling down the rungs.
After being on top of the World Trade Center, forty feet up the side of a barn was nothing. He hit the ground running. Kosh’s extension ladder was leaning against the south wall. That wouldn’t work — he needed the stepladder, which could stand by itself, so Kosh could use it to reach the disk. He ran inside and climbed the spiral staircase to the top floor, and found the six-foot aluminum stepladder next to a pile of studs.
The ladder wasn’t heavy, but it was awkward. He felt as if he was moving in slow motion as he dragged it down the spiral staircase. Once outside, he started up the iron rungs with the stepladder digging painfully into his shoulder. Halfway up, his leg cramped. He rested the bottom of the ladder on a rung and held it there with one hand while he shook out his leg, willing the calf muscle to relax.
Plenty of time, he told himself, not knowing if it was true. He continued up the side of the barn, the ladder clanking over the iron rungs.
Once he reached the top, he had to get the stepladder over his shoulder and onto the roof. It had seemed so light when he first picked it up; now it weighed a ton. He tried to lift it over his head one-handed but couldn’t. He needed three hands — one to hang on to the ladder, and two to pull himself onto the roof.
Tucker spewed out a string of expletives he had recently learned from Kosh. It didn’t help. He took his right foot off the rung and tried to swing the ladder between himself and the barn, his idea being to somehow hang it from one of the rungs, but the ladder slip
ped from his grip, hit his left ankle, and left him dangling by one hand as it crashed to the ground.
Grabbing the railing with his other hand, Tucker found the rungs with his feet. His heart was banging so hard, he could feel it in his throat. He tried to move, to unclench his hands from the rails. It took some time — seconds that felt like hours — but eventually he was able to climb back down.
The aluminum ladder was bent, but not too badly. It was still usable. He ran to Kosh’s workshop and located a coil of nylon rope. He tied one end to the ladder and the other to his belt, then again scaled the side of the barn — just like dragging the heavy rope up the cottonwood at Hardy Lake. When he reached the top, he pulled the stepladder up hand-over-hand, then dragged it over the edge and onto the roof. But the disk was gone.
How could it be gone? He ran along the ridge to where the disk had been. Had it moved? He looked around frantically but saw nothing.
“No!” he shouted.
As if someone had heard his cry, the air before him wavered and thickened. Tucker jumped back. He could feel it tugging at his shirt front. He backed along the ridge to where he had left the ladder. The disk shimmered and pulsed. He dragged the ladder over, set it upright, and tipped the top end toward the disk. The instant it touched the surface, there was a brilliant orange flash and the ladder was ripped from Tucker’s hands. He shouted with pain and surprise. It had been snatched away with such speed and force that strips of skin were torn from his palms.