He realized that he hadn’t thought about his mother in weeks. He sat at the edge of the bathtub, staring at his clothes, and he wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he finally got up and put them back on.
He left the bathroom. Anna and Paul were sitting next to each other, holding hands. There was a stack of pizza boxes sitting on the bed.
“You’ve learned a lot already, and if we lied to you now, you’d probably figure it out,” Paul said.
“So have a seat and listen up.”
#
“Thomas called them gorgons, he has a thing for mythology. Anyway, full grown gorgons are really fucking big. Thomas used to spend afternoons in the basement writing equations on a dryboard, trying to figure out how big they are. They can do basically anything they want when they’re like that. Before that, though, there’s a stage where they have to come into our world. It’s like frogs planting eggs in the water. They turn into tadpoles and sprout legs and eventually return to dry land.
“Now usually these little baby tadpole gorgons go through this whole process in little caves with a bunch of other little baby tadpole gorgons where Mommy and Daddy gorgon can keep an eye on them and rip apart anything that tries to mess with them. But if you can get Baby gorgon away from Mommy and Daddy, then you have something that’s omnipotent and formless at the same time, and if you can figure out how to make it do what you want, then you’re whispering in God’s ear. There’s no limit to what you could do.”
The words came faster and faster as he kept on talking. Anna looked skeptical, and waited for him to notice her expression. He stopped, and she nodded her head silently. He nodded back and started again, slower this time. Andrew immediately got the sense that this was how it went with the two of them.
“I had all the theory worked out before I left Thomas’, but I didn’t know how to influence the gorgon then, so I grabbed the youngest one Thomas had when I left and stashed it with some supplies to make a body out of. I figured that I could come back for it later when I had a better idea what I was doing.
“The plan had been to use the gorgon against the guys who are trying to kill me and I was kind of running out of options, so that was why I was kind of upset when I found out that you gave it a name. It made it much harder for me to influence it. That’s why I got mad, it wasn’t really at you. Do you understand?”
He waited for Andrew to answer, but for a moment the room was still.
“Who are they?” he finally said. “The ones trying to kill you.”
Paul cleared his throat.
“We have no idea,” Anna said.
“Yeah,” Paul said. “A bunch of guys with guns I’ve never seen before who keep finding me wherever I go.”
There was a knock on the door.
#
Paul twisted the top off of each of the two bottles and took a pill from each one. He swallowed them both with one gulp and sat down on the bed.
He watched the door open, and for a moment he was confused. Nobody was there. He scanned down and saw a kid about Andrew’s age wearing glasses.
He let go of the gun.
“Are you looking for somebody?”
The kid was scared to death. Paul waited.
“I’m looking for Andrew,” the kid finally said.
Paul slowly reached back under the pillow. The bathroom door opened.
“Josh?” Andrew said.
“Fuck,” Paul whispered under his breath. He stood up, holding the gun in his left hand, not trying to hide it now.
“Get in here.”
He grabbed Josh by the shoulder and pulled him into the room. He closed the door, turned around and pulled down on the blinds with the pointer finger of his left hand so that he could look out. He could hear Anna talking to Andrew as he looked out the window.
Anna crouched down next to Andrew.
“Andrew, who is this and how do you know him?”
“This is Josh. We’re friends from school.”
“How did you get here, Josh?”
“The messenger,” Josh answered, not sure if he needed to explain any more.
Paul reached for the switch by the door and killed the lights. He could see it, fading away and almost gone now, a blue sphere floating in the middle of the room. He looked back out the window. There were two men wearing dark coats, whispering to each other by the bushes about a hundred feet away with their hands stuffed in their pockets.
“Somebody followed you, kid. Or at least saw the messenger.”
He turned back towards the interior of the room. The kid looked like he was trying to say something, but no words came out. Paul lowered the gun to his hip. Andrew stepped in between the two of them.
“He didn’t do anything,” Andrew said. “He probably was just worried about me. He didn’t lead anybody here.”
Paul hadn’t been angry until that moment. When he looked down at Andrew he expected him to get out of the way, or at least flinch. But Andrew didn’t move; he looked right back up at him with glass eyes, perfectly still, like a statue.
Paul glanced over at Anna. She stayed where she was, sitting on the bed, relaxed except for her eyes. Telling him to relax. Finally, slowly, he turned back towards the window.
He wondered for a moment if he would’ve hit Andrew again, if Anna hadn’t been there. He hoped not. He didn’t like the idea that he’d turn out to be that kind of person around kids.
He saw a flash of blue light on the other side of the bushes. He smiled. He opened the blinds the rest of the way and made a gesture with his hands.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He left the room.
Outside, a man in a dark coat squinted as he talked into his cell phone.
“All right, I think they’re still there. I think so.”
He listened.
“All right. See you in a few minutes.”
He closed the phone and put it back in his pocket. He turned to his partner.
“They want us to wait for backup.”
Suddenly both men rose up into the air. They tried to pull out their weapons, but their arms were quickly pinned to their sides.
They spun slowly in the air. Paul was standing behind them.
#
Jeremiah closed the door to their hotel room. The conference had been a bust, nobody had anything worth trading for. Not exactly a waste of time— you can't win if you don't play— but nothing to be excited about.
The lock clicked, and Jeremiah felt Chris' hand on his shoulder.
"Another day in paradise," Chris said.
It was the kind of thing Chris said a lot, but something happened when they were alone. He sounded different. Jeremiah could hear it. It was like an instrument suddenly coming into tune. He wondered if anybody else would even know the difference, if they heard it, but he knew it didn't matter, because they never would.
He reached up and touched Chris' hand. The world stopped, just for a little while.
#
Jeremiah fell.
Jeremiah opened his eyes, stopped remembering, looked and saw the man standing over him. Not his face, that was still a blur. Jeremiah breathed in, and the dam burst and he gasped for air. He was empty. He needed to be full.
Jeremiah found his way to his feet, looked again, and this time he saw the man's face. He tried to move.
"Don't move."
Jeremiah stopped without thinking, and tried again to take a step backwards. He felt like a screw was drilling down through the very top of his skull.
He stopped moving. He stayed very, very still.
"You work for us now, Jeremiah. I wish we had more time to talk about this, but we don't. You're going back to Branville. There's a few things you're going to help us take care of."
CHAPTER 19
#
Paul came back into the room and announced that they were leaving. Nobody argued. They didn’t bother checking out, and they didn’t have
any luggage; they just got in the car and left. Paul drove and Anna rode shotgun. Josh and Andrew sat in back.
They reached a highway ramp.
“What did you do to those guys with the guns?” Andrew asked.
“I got rid of them.”
It was dark, and it was hard to see the expression on the two boys’ faces, but Paul could see Andrew shift in his seat.
“Look, I didn’t kill them. We’re trying to lay low, the last thing I want to do is start leaving bodies around. I just asked them a few questions, took their guns, and had the familiar dump them by the train tracks a couple of miles away.”
He got off the highway and pulled into a gas station parking lot.
“Sit tight, guys.”
He and Anna both got out of the car, leaving Josh and Andrew in the back seat. There was a canopy surrounding the station that shined hard white light directly down on everything around it, but it was still dark inside the car.
“Are you all right?” Josh asked.
Andrew nodded. “Yeah, are you?”
Josh pulled his knees up to his chest. “Yeah, I’m fine. Are these the people who wrote the books you found in your attic?”
Andrew looked out the window. Paul and Anna had left the pump hanging from the tank and were inside the station talking each other.
“I guess so,” Andrew said.
“Are they related to you or something?”
Andrew nodded his head yes. “Paul says that he’s my uncle.”
Paul and Anna spent another moment talking next to the cash register and left the gas station.
“Are you scared, Josh?” Andrew asked.
Josh shook his head back and forth several times.
“Of course not.” He was shaking.
Paul and Anna got back into the car, Paul started the engine, and they got back on the highway towards town. As soon as the road was empty, Paul pulled over.
“Come on out, guys. We all need to talk.”
They all got out of the car and arranged themselves in a circle on the side of the road. Anna, Josh, and Andrew were all standing on the shoulder. Paul was on the grass. He was about to speak when a semi-truck rolled by, drowning out every other sound with engine noise and blinding him with its headlights. He closed his eyes, waited until the inside of his eyelids turned black again, opened them, and started again. Andrew and Josh watched him as he spoke; Anna watched Andrew and Josh.
“The two guys at the hotel followed Josh from his house. They’re keeping an eye on people who’ve asked too many questions or might be a problem when they go ahead with the cover-up, and I guess your mom is on the list. Those two were pretty low on the totem pole and they didn’t know much of anything for sure, but there’s a really good chance that there’s going to be a shooting at your house.”
Josh didn’t move or say anything. He just made a quiet sound, like a word had begun to form in his throat and suddenly died.
“So we’re going to do something about it,” Paul said. “Josh, you’re going back to your place with Anna to make sure nothing happens. Andrew, I need you to come with me.
“That’s it. Let’s go.”
#
Paul and Andrew watched as Anna and Josh drove away.
“You’re probably wondering what the hell we’re going to do without the car.”
He gave Andrew one of the pill bottles.
“Take one.”
Andrew twisted off the top and swallowed one of the pills. He closed his eyes and opened them again. The familiar’s legs surrounded them like the bars of a birdcage. Paul pointed at the ground with both hands, then up at the sky. Two sets of tentacles reached down for Andrew and Paul and scooped them up.
The familiar started walking. It moved like a spider, with giant strides, and held Paul and Andrew more than fifty feet up in the air as it moved, above the trees and the houses. There was nothing to block the wind; it ran through Andrew’s hair and blew it around.
Paul pointed at Andrew, and the familiar moved them closer together.
“Cool, huh?”
Andrew didn’t even look at him, he just looked down, watching the ground rush by underneath them. Paul licked his lips, took a deep breath, and tried again, talking louder in case Andrew just hadn’t heard him the last time.
“Thanks for taking care of this thing while I was out of it. Don’t take it personally that it isn’t doing what you say anymore. I can show you how to summon your own if you want, after things have calmed down.”
Andrew glanced back up, only for a second, but Paul saw it. He smiled. That was something, anyway.
The familiar lowered them gently to the ground as soon as the houses started getting closer together, and followed Andrew and Paul to the park.
“I told you before,” Andrew said. “Shadow isn’t here anymore.”
They walked across park towards the gazebo, slightly downhill into the dark space in the middle of the valley.
“Maybe not, but this is the last place you saw her. So this is where we’re going to start looking.”
Paul pressed his hand against each one of the sideboards, finally yanking one of them loose. He threw it on the ground and started on the next one. Soon he had a hole big enough to crawl through.
He looked into the open space under the gazebo, and he was completely still. Andrew was standing behind him and could not see the look on Paul’s face, but he thought he heard something, a sound like an animal breathing.
He heard a familiar voice.
#
It was only a twenty-minute drive back to Josh’s house.
“So magician is the right word?”
“Magician is fine.” Anna said. “It’s a bad idea to use anything fancier than that. If you’re talking about a magician and you notice somebody listening in, all you have to do is talk about pulling rabbits out of hats and you don’t have any more explaining to do.”
Josh nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense.” He looked out the window. “Where are we going to go after all this is done?”
“Probably Chicago.” She turned into Josh’s neighborhood. A raccoon was sitting in the middle of the road. It looked up and ran out of the way as they approached it.
Josh looked out the window. He recognized the street he lived on. They approached the house.
“This is it.”
Anna slowed down slightly as she went past.
“We’ll just drive around the block for a little while. These guys aren’t smart. If they’re coming, we’ll see them.”
They passed the house and turned a corner.
“So how do you feel about getting caught up in all of this, Josh?” In a weird way she reminded Josh of his mother, of how his mother was on the rare occasions that she relaxed. She could be asking him how his day at school had been. It was amazing how relaxed she was, it made him feel silly for ever having gotten worked up about anything.
He took a deep breath and shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m all right. I’m worried about my family, that’s all. Once I know they’re okay I’ll be better.”
“But you’re not worried about yourself.”
“No.” He took a deep breath, shook his head back and forth absentmindedly, and repeated himself. “No.”
She waited for him to keep talking, but that was it. They kept driving.
Anna yawned. “Thirsty?”
“Yeah.”
“You want a soda?”
She reached under her seat and pulled out a can of pop. Josh nodded his head. She slid the can into the cup holder and cracked it open. He picked it up and took a sip. They passed his house again.
“One thing, Josh,” she said. “They might also be looking for information. Did you get any books from Andrew, anything like that?”
Josh took a sip and swallowed. “Yeah.”
“And that’s all in the house?”
“Yeah, in my room. The window’s by the side of
the house, we’ll see if anybody tries to crawl in that way.”
“You thought about this already, didn’t you?”
“I guess.”
“It’s not a bad idea. You’ve been going over some pretty dangerous stuff. A lot of people would probably love to get ahold of what you’ve got in there. That’s really the reason I keep asking if you’re worried. Once you’ve gotten mixed up in all this, you don’t always have the option of getting out again. I just want to make sure you don’t regret getting involved.”
She waited for him to answer, but he was quiet. She reached over and snapped her fingers three times, right in front of his face, but he didn’t stir. His eyes were closed and his face was smeared up against the window. They passed the house again. Anna parked the car.
She got out, walked around to the passenger side, and opened the door. Josh fell right into her arms. He was pretty skinny; the dose was meant for someone full grown, but he only got halfway through the can, so she hoped it would be all right. She left the car door open, walked up to the front door, and laid his body down on the welcome mat as gently as she could.
She walked around to the side of the house. She found Josh’s window, undid the latch with her driver’s license and climbed inside. There were two books under the mattress, another one in his closet, and another in his school backpack. She took everything and climbed back outside. She was halfway back to her car when a minivan pulled into the driveway.
Her first thought was to run but she reached into her jacket for her gun instead. The headlights were shining right in her eyes. A car door opened and slammed shut.
The lights went out. There was a couple standing in front of her, a stocky man wearing a black coat with streaks of white in his hair and a skinny woman about a foot shorter than he was clutching his arm.
The gun was still in Anna’s pocket. She let go of it and put her hands up in the air.
“Your son is over there on the porch,” she said.
The woman looked up at her husband; the man in the black coat looked over at Josh, then back at Anna. She took a long step to the side, moved towards the car with careful backwards steps.
They didn’t say anything. Anna got in her car and drove away.
White Rabbit Society Part One Page 17