The Otherworldlies

by Jennifer Anne Kogler

  The twins looked at each other for a moment without saying anything.

  “You did?”

  “I almost talked myself out of it in the last day. Like I couldn’t have seen it, but talking to you now, I know what I saw, Fern. You just vanished. Like a ghost.”

  “Maybe that’s what I am.”

  “If you were a ghost,” Sam said, “I wouldn’t be able to do this.” He grabbed her wrist and twisted his hands in opposite directions. “Indian burn!”

  “Ouch!” Fern said.

  “Shhhh,” Sam said. “I just thought of something.” He narrowed his eyes and began to focus on the computer screen in front of him. “There’s a word for it. Like in Star Trek when Captain Kirk says, ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’ Only you can do it all by yourself.” Sam began typing.

  “Since when did you start watching Star Trek?”

  “I don’t know; the reruns are always on when I’m flipping through.”

  “You’re such a closet nerd.”

  “Do you want to figure this out or not?”

  “Sorry,” Fern said, half smiling.

  Sam clicked the mouse with fervor, scanning the rapidly changing windows. “Yes! Here it is. Teleport. I bet you teleported,” Sam said, his whisper growing raspy with excitement.

  He pointed to the screen. Sam had typed ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ into Google and had come up with thousands of websites. He’d navigated through a series of links and had come up with a page explaining the “Art of Teleportation.” A man in the corner kept disappearing, than reappearing.

  “‘Although teleportation is not yet possible, it will be,’” Sam said, reading from the screen. “They’ve already done it with photons. It says here that researchers at Cal Tech did it in 1998.”

  “Photons?”

  “I think they’re like particles. See, it’s exactly like Star Trek,” he said, pointing to a sentence on the screen that mentioned Captain Kirk and Spock. “Only that was made up. And you’re real!”

  Sam looked at his sister with absolute wonderment.

  “What’s all this stuff about entanglement and destroying the object that you’re teleporting?” Fern asked, quickly scanning a paragraph of text under the question “What do people mean when they say teleport?”

  “Have you tried doing it again?” Sam said.

  “Are you kidding? No way!” Fern said, shivering at the very thought of it.

  “Why not?”

  “What if next time I do it, I get destroyed, like it says in this article?”

  “You’re not going to get destroyed.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Fern, don’t you get it?” Sam said, impassioned. “You can do something nobody in the world has been able to do before. It’s like you’re a superhero.”

  “I’m not a superhero. I’m a freak.”

  “Superheroes are freaks. They’re good freaks.”

  “Sam, there’s no such thing as a good freak.”

  “Of course there is. Star Trek is full of good freaks. Superman’s a good freak. Um,” Sam said, trying to come up with other examples, “and Lance Armstrong—I hear his heart cycles blood twice as fast as a normal person. He’s a good freak. Or Einstein—he was a good smart freak.”

  Fern let a halfhearted chuckle escape her mouth.

  “Man,” Sam continued, his face animated, “this whole thing is incredible!” He began to focus on the computer screen once more. “Now what was that word that the crazy man used?”

  “Titanomachy,” Fern said. “But I don’t know how to spell it.”

  “Maybe he made it up, but we might as well check it out.” Sam opened a new window on the computer screen and began typing.

  “Here it is,” he said, scanning. “Whoa. It’s a word for the eleven-year war between the Titans and the Olympians.”

  “The Titans and the Olympians?”

  “It’s from mythology,” Sam said, reading from the page.

  Behind them, on the ledge of a window, a large bird with a bright red head and feathers the color of midnight rustled against the window. The twins turned around to look. The large bird turned its head. Fern could’ve sworn it was staring right at them. She began to grow hot under its gaze. It turned away from the window, expanding its wings until they loomed so large, the entire window was blocked with black feathers. The wings could have gathered up both twins with one movement. It stood absolutely still. After what seemed like ten minutes, the bird took off and disappeared into the night sky.

  “What was that?” Fern said, looking aghast at her brother.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Feeeern!” Her mother was calling for her from downstairs. Sam instinctively jumped out of the chair and took a step back from his sister. He closed every open window on the computer and backed away from its glow.

  “Fern, I’ll be up in a minute to talk to you! I’d better not be hearing chatter up there!” Mrs. McAllister yelled.

  “What am I going to tell the Commander?” Fern pleaded with her brother.

  “I don’t know if there’s anything you can possibly say that will calm her down.” Sam wore a tired half smile. “Stall her until we figure all this out. We won’t tell anybody about any of it, okay?”

  The two snuck out of the office and stood in the doorway.

  “Okay,” Fern whispered.

  Sam turned toward his room with a slight frown, and waved good night. Fern waved back, retreating to her own room.

  When Fern plopped down on her bed, she was sure she was more exhausted in that moment than she had been in her entire life.

  A breeze drifted in through her open window. The bedroom walls were lined with maple-wood-framed photographs. All the photographs were of the same place— Carlsbad Caverns National Park, which was Fern’s favorite spot in the whole world. The family had traveled to New Mexico on a summer vacation and stayed there a few days. They’d toured many of the caves, walking downward into the earth. Fern couldn’t quite describe it, but there, enclosed in stone, she’d felt serene and her head had tingled with pleasure. There was something about the still coolness, the masts of limestone, and the hanging prickly stalactites that seemed as if they could crumble at any moment.

  Her brothers had left wishing they had come across a skeleton or two they could tell their friends about. Fern had left wishing she could live there.

  Tonight Fern stared at the picture hanging over her bed. It was of the Crystal Spring Dome. The Crystal Spring Dome was remarkable because it was wet, which meant it was one of the only stalagmites still growing. She wondered if she were still changing or if she were like the famous and permanent stalactite, the Sword of Damocles. That particular formation had been named by park rangers in 1928 and had remained exactly as it was back then. Would she be like she was now forever? Or was she still capable of growth?

  Knock, knock.

  “Still awake?” Her mother’s voice was unexpectedly soft and soothing. The truth was, Mrs. McAllister felt she might have been too harsh with Fern in the St. Gregory’s parking lot.

  Fern lay still. She could feel the bed sink from her mother’s weight as she sat next to Fern. Her mother had changed into silk pajamas. In them, with her hair wild around her shoulders, she looked much too young to be a mother of a sixteen-year-old son. Mrs. McAllister grabbed Lord of the Flies.

  “Ah, Lord of the Flies. The second best ‘Lord of’ book in all the land,” Mrs. McAllister said, looking at her daughter sprawled out on the bed.

  “What’s the first best?” Fern said, raising her head up on one elbow.

  “The Lord of the Rings, hands down.”

  “That’s three books, isn’t it?”

  “Tolkien wrote it as one.”

  “I haven’t read it yet,” Fern said.

  “You will.”

  Mrs. McAllister took Fern’s copy of Lord of the Flies and flipped through it. “Why does this look like it’s been through a hurricane?”

  Fern had to admit that there was
some significant water damage to the book. It kind of looked like a paper accordion.

  “I’ve been taking it into the shower with me,” she said simply.

  “To read?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?” Mrs. McAllister was shocked.

  “It’s dead time in the shower. I always want to find out what happens and I always have to go do something else, so it seemed like a shame to waste the time.”

  “Maybe you should have put it in a Ziploc first.”

  “Then I could only read the two pages on top,” Fern said.

  Mrs. McAllister paused to think for a moment. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to start allowing more shelf space for all our books. This is twice the size it used to be.” She waved the book in the air and the stiff pages crinkled.

  “It’ll look like we have more books that way.” The two smiled at each other.

  Mrs. McAllister inhaled. “Fern, sit up.” She folded her hands in her lap, looked down at them, and continued. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened yesterday. I won’t get upset, but I need to know.”

  “I told you what happened.”

  “Don’t you know that what you say happened couldn’t possibly have happened?” Mrs. McAllister looked at her daughter not with anger, but with sympathy.

  “I don’t remember. I felt the world spinning and I woke up on the beach.”

  “Why are you lying to me, Fern?”

  Fern recognized the emotion that filled her mother’s voice. It wasn’t anger. It was disappointment.

  “I don’t understand this, Fern! This is unacceptable. What are you hiding?” Mrs. McAllister was growing frustrated. She couldn’t seem to get through to Fern.

  “I’m not hiding anything.”

  “You’ve never lied to me before, Fern. I can’t understand why you’re doing it now.” Her voice was hard. If Fern didn’t give in, would there be an end to her mother’s resentment?

  “I’m sorry,” Fern said, beginning to speak as her mind worked on overdrive. She thought of the sunburned man’s advice.

  The first lie came rather easily. “I took the bus,” Fern blurted out, louder than necessary. “I walked out of St. Gregory’s and took the bus to the beach and I shouldn’t have done it!” Fern was talking fast now, trying to get through it, so it would be over. Mrs. McAllister interpreted this eagerness as Fern unburdening her guilty conscience

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” Fern said, visibly upset. “I was sick of being teased. I guess . . . I guess I wanted a break, even for the day.”

  The Commander grabbed her daughter’s arms and pulled Fern toward her, hugging her with reckless force. Fern felt like she might be squeezed into two equal halves. The hug was so fierce, it felt like an unspoken reproach.

  “I shouldn’t have left school,” Fern said. Fern’s words took the Commander back to her disciplinary stance. She pulled away from her daughter and delivered Fern a harsh look.

  “No, you certainly shouldn’t have!” The Commander’s face was hard like granite. Fern realized she would receive no sympathy from her mother. “If you ever do something like this again, there will be severe consequences. I wouldn’t try testing me.”

  Mrs. McAllister sensed that her daughter was on the verge of losing her composure once more. She placed her hands on Fern’s shoulders. “Well, we’re going to fix this, you hear me?”

  “I promise I won’t leave like that again,” Fern said, knowing full well that if things kept going the way they were going, she was offering up a promise she couldn’t keep.

  “We’ll talk more about this tomorrow. You’re still very grounded, by the way,” Mrs. McAllister said sternly, getting up from Fern’s bed. She turned back to Fern as she reached the doorway. “You can always talk to me, Fern.” As she left, she flicked off the lights.

  Although Mary Lou McAllister was somewhat relieved, she still felt slightly uneasy. She’d known from the beginning that Fern was very different, perhaps even painfully so. Deep in the recesses of her mind, Mrs. McAllister knew it was unlikely that Fern had snuck out of St. Gregory’s undetected and taken the bus to the beach. But like many people in her position, the Commander, when confronted with two realities, chose to believe the one that wouldn’t keep her up at night. For this reason, Mrs. McAllister went to bed thinking she had a child whose odd conduct could still be explained within the normal parameters of adolescent behavior.

  The moon came through the front upstairs window, bathing Fern’s room in icy light. Though Mrs. McAllister hardly showed it, Fern knew she had made her mother feel better, which in turn had made Fern feel better. Even so, the heart of the matter gnawed at her: Mary Lou McAllister would rather have a daughter who had lied to everyone, including her own mother, and ditched school to take a bus to the beach, than a daughter who defied logical explanation. What if Fern couldn’t control this teleporting thing, whatever it was? What if she disappeared again?

  Fern hated herself right then. She hated the fact that she had no power over the things that made her stick out the most. She hated that she was getting worse. But she would try harder, she resolved as she lay in her bed. If it destroyed her, she would try to be more like Eddie, more like Sam. She thought of Sam and his excitement over her ability to “teleport.” It was an easy thing to enjoy from a distance. When you were the one it was happening to, though, it was terrifying.

  A slight rustle interrupted Fern’s thoughts. She looked around her dark room. A white object fluttered in through the open window, landing at the foot of her bed. Her heart leaped as she wrestled with her comforter to get a closer look. It was a paper airplane, expertly folded. She opened it and held it up to the moonlight. A message was written on the inside of the white paper.

  I know who you are. I want to help. Please meet me at Anderson’s Grove at midnight tomorrow.

  Fern was trembling as she crept close to her window. The jacaranda tree outside was motionless, as was the street below. San Juan Capistrano was, as usual, tranquil at this hour of the night. Fern’s mind was anything but. The youngest McAllister closed her window and crawled into bed, almost paralyzed with fear. Her eyes wide open, she was almost afraid to blink. After two hours of restlessness, her stomach churning all the while, sleep finally overcame Fern.

  Chapter 4

  the strangers in the living room

  Mr. Wallace Summers had been living across the street from the McAllisters for a little over two months before he found a way to penetrate their living room. The next night he stood on the porch, anxious after knocking on the McAllister front door. Eddie answered, wearing pajama pants and a St. Gregory’s football T-shirt. His hair was disheveled.

  “Hey, Mr. Summers! What’s up?” The McAllisters had just finished dinner and the twins were in the kitchen washing the dishes.

  “Hi there, Eddie. I don’t mean to impose, but my cable just went out.”

  “Oh man, are you watching the game?” Eddie, who was not permitted to watch television of any kind during dinner, had just turned on the night’s Los Angeles Lakers game. Sometimes Kinsey Wood would come over and watch whatever game was on with him, but tonight Eddie was flying solo. He and Mr. Summers had become friendly of late. They had recently struck up a conversation about Doug Flutie’s historic extra-point dropkick against the Dolphins while Mr. Summers was on a walk and Eddie was mowing the McAllister front lawn. Since then, they had had similar discussions when they saw each other around the neighborhood. The eldest McAllister child was lonesome for anybody who was the least bit knowledgeable about sports.

  “I know it’s late and I’m probably intruding, but if I could watch the second half of the Lakers game here, I would really appreciate it,” Mr. Summers said, speaking loudly, hoping the occupants of the kitchen could hear him. Fern detected something eerie in Mr. Summer’s voice—something that made her feel as if there were a trail of fire ants climbing down her backbone.

  “I’d love some company.” Eddie invited him into
the living room. He had a habit of saying yes to people even when he lacked the jurisdiction to do so.

  Sam’s face twisted into a glower. He didn’t like Mr. Summers one bit. Any son would feel the same way after catching a man leering at his mother through her kitchen window, and Sam had spotted Mr. Summers doing this several times in the past few weeks with his gaze fixed on Mrs. McAllister, in her daisy-print apron, leaning over the sink and humming to herself while she rinsed dishes.

  Now this stranger stood in their living room. It wasn’t long before the rest of the family, still cleaning up the remains of dinner, had gathered in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. Mrs. McAllister stepped forward.

  “Eddie, are you going to introduce us to your guest?” Mrs. McAllister smiled widely. Fern could spot it immediately. Her mother was using her “manners” again—something she was always hounding Fern to acquire in the immediate future.

  “How rude of me not to come in and introduce myself,” Mr. Summers said, striding toward the trio of McAllisters gathered in the doorway. He was tall and thin, almost like a cardboard cutout of a real man. His dimples made him look much younger than he probably was. Still, he was handsome for someone older. Fern took into account his salt and pepper hair and pegged him as forty-eight—a few years older than her mother. Mary Lou was first in the greeting line. As Mr. Summers took Mrs. McAllister’s hand, he bent his head and pressed his lips firmly against the back of it.

  “Mrs. McAllister, I presume,” Mr. Summers said. Fern thought he sounded like he was imitating Professor Plum from Clue. He continued, “I’m so sorry I’ve invited myself into your beautiful home. I’m afraid that much like your son, I’m a hopeless Lakers fan. And my cable has gone out. Wallace Summers, by the way,”

  “Well, Wallace, you’re welcome anytime,” Mrs. McAllister said, staring at Mr. Summers’s soft brown eyes. “I’m Eddie’s mother, Mary Lou. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Fern was horrified. Her mother was blushing. It was the same color Sam had turned last week when she told him that she had overheard Sally White talking about “cute Sam McAllister.”