by Bill Bunn
The Bests’ house had been thoroughly wrecked, too. The kitchen was destroyed and lay in pieces: food, dry goods, and fragmented dishes lay across the smooth linoleum. Steve tuned his ear to the house noises, straining to hear anything that sounded out of place. He felt the toothed edges of fear close in around him and squeeze.
Duck Boy. Duck Boy.
“Stay here,” he ordered, speaking to himself. The urge to run, at that moment, was overwhelming—to run away from his house, his problems, his life. He forced himself to stand still in the kitchen.
Steve imagined the house bathed in a warm yellow light, and conjured his mother sitting in the living room in her chair. His dad, laughing along with the laugh track of some lame TV rerun. The warmth of memory helped to loosen his feet. Steve stepped through the kitchen towards the living room. He removed both of his gloves and jammed them in his pockets. Through the sheer curtains in the front window he could see the red glow of car taillights. He watched for a while as the storm slowly revealed the shape of the vehicle: it was probably a police cruiser. Steve was certain that the officers wouldn’t bother checking on the house unless they saw movement. It meant he had to work in the dark.
He edged his way down the hallway, stepping over bits of things plundered or pitched by the intruders. The fragments, as he stepped around them, chipped away at the control he held over his fear. He worked hard to remember a golden summer night with his mom and dad sitting on the porch swing, teasing each other over a glass of lemonade.
His room. Though his room was bathed in the late night darkness, he could tell from misplaced shadows on the wall that his own room was a disaster. There were several huge holes in the drywall where someone’s foot or fist had gone through the wall looking for anything hidden there. It was going to be difficult, especially in the flat darkness of the house in this storm, to find anything to experiment with at all.
Instinctively, Steve went over to where his desk lay on the floor. Each drawer had been removed and turned upside down. The contents lay scattered all over the floor. Steve felt a lump build in the back of his throat. Hot tears of anger dribbled down his cheeks as he met the dark piles of mayhem. He knelt in the rubble and, on his hands and knees, began to crawl over and search the drawers’ contents. The house was barely warmer than the outside. Steve could still see the ghost of his breath hovering in the dark air. He scrambled through the objects on the floor until he found his alarm clock. He gripped it firmly in his left hand as he searched for other objects with his right. He found a photo album, filled with family shots.
“Clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock,” he whispered into the darkness. Nothing. He repeated the transforming words. Still nothing. He tossed the photo album to the far corner of his room, near his overturned bed and slashed mattress. Steve’s hand patted the floor sifting through debris looking for another object to test. He had a small idea of what he was looking for. He found a small die-cast car and experimented with it. Nothing. He crawled around on the floor experimenting with anything he could find for what felt like hours. Finally, he decided to take a break.
He stopped and walked into his dad’s bedroom to check on the police car. It still sat there. He could barely see the car with the blowing snow, but the car’s marker lights somehow burned holes through the storm.
After his short tour through the house, he returned to his room, dropped to his knees and began his search and experiment again. Item after item.
What else could it be?
He stood and wiped his sweaty forehead. The room was cold, but Steve’s body burned with energy. He took off his hat, put the hat in the pocket. He glanced over to the far corner of his room. A mirrored plaque hung over his bed. His mother had given it to him a few years ago. He crossed the room to read the familiar words: Fear thou not, for I am with thee.
He remembered the day she had given it to him. It had been hers when she was a little girl. That day when she had placed that plaque in his hands his mind had connected with all that his life had been and all that his life was going to be. For a short moment, when he held it that first time, he could see everything.
Steve knew in an instant what was his greatest fear. His mind buzzed with excitement as he removed the plaque from the wall and held it in his hand.
“Clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock.” The little alarm clock shook in his hand. He felt his arms go numb and vibrate as if he were gripping a high-voltage wire. The energy throbbed from the hand holding the mirrored plaque to the hand holding the clock.
The power. There’s so much power.
The clock flattened into what looked like a transparent piece of paper, a picture of a clock. Despite Steve’s best efforts the clock dropped from his hand onto the floor. A giant ripping sound filled the room, followed by a brilliant kaleidoscope of light. A tight vortex of wind swirled around room. And then it all stopped. That familiar earthy smell filled the now-warm room as Steve stood staring at the dark floor. He bent into the darkness and groped the floor and found a metal lump. He lifted it into the storm’s weak shimmer—it was a lock.
The light.
Steve rushed to his dad’s room to check on the police car. The police lights now flashed. He couldn’t make out whether the doors to the car were open or whether either police officer still sat in the car. But they’d seen the light thrown from the clock as it transformed, and they knew someone was in the house.
Steve ran for the back door. He needed to find some place where he had access to a dictionary. There weren’t any left at his house—both had disappeared, one with his mom, the other with Aunt Shannon. He tore through the kitchen and tripped over a burst bag of flour, and the plaque dropped out of his hands and slid across the darkness and debris covering the floor. Steve scrambled up and chased it down. His hands fumbled through the wreckage on the floor.
He heard someone’s fist pounding on the front door, which probably meant that someone was coming around the back to make sure he couldn’t escape through the back door. His hands felt the smooth polish of the glass plaque. He scooped it up and headed back into the depths of the house.
The attic. I can get out from one of the attic windows.
He grabbed the spring-loaded ladder from underneath the attic entrance and pulled it down—it unfolded automatically. Up the ladder he moved, pushing the attic cover away from the opening. He crawled inside, pulled the ladder up into place behind him, and slid the cover back into place. The mirrored surface of the plaque shimmered faintly with the storm’s pale glow .
I’d better put this in my bag if I’m making a run for it.
He placed it inside and tied the mouth of his backpack closed, then re-shouldered the pack.
Where do I go now?
One of the attic dormer windows—his escape. He inspected it, opened the latch. But he didn’t want to be on the roof when the police constables were still in the front yard. They would catch him too easily. He had to make sure they were inside the house.
He waited noiselessly, listening for clues to where they were. He could hear nothing but the muffled howling of the winter wind. He returned to the window and cracked it open, and a knife of frigid air jabbed his hands. He heard a set of feet on the floor below him. He backed away from the window.
Suddenly he felt an arm in a heavy wool coat grab him around the neck, lifting him off the floor.
“You will want to come with us, if you want to see your uncle and your girlfriend alive again. Mr. Gold wants to see you,” said a hoarse whisper. The arm was thick and steely—no chance of escape. It clamped down on his throat, making Steve gasp for breath. Down below, there were sounds of police officers scuffling through the house.
“Let me get my Benu stone,” Steve rasped. “I will come with you after I get it.”
The man loosened his grip on Steve’s throat and that was all Steve needed. He slid under the man’s arm and ran towards the window, slammed it open, and dove onto th
e snowy roof. He tobogganed over the snow-covered shingles and off the roof, tumbling on a snowdrift under the eaves on the front lawn.
He struggled to his feet in the deep snow. Then he ran for all he was worth. He heard some kind of commotion behind him, but he didn’t bother to check it out. He just ran.
Up the street and down another alley. It took him a minute or two of careful looking to get his bearings again. The storm was burying all that was familiar, and it took a good hard look to find anything recognizable.
He ran for about two blocks. It was hard to say for sure because the blowing snow boxed him in on all sides like a prison cell. His fear of being captured kept him running into the snowy maze, with no way to know where he was going.
Steve ran for half an hour, ignoring his draining energy. He hadn’t had anything to eat for hours. He slowed to a walk and began to trudge through the snow.
His thoughts labored as if they were stuck in a storm, too. The white pixels were merciless, shapes and faces appearing to him as he trudged. His mother’s face appeared and winked and blew away. Aunt Shannon, looking around nervously, drifted before him. Then a worried, stressed man. Dad.
Snow blustered down the collar of his coat and stung him with sparks of cold pain. As he trudged, he lost his sense of direction entirely. He couldn’t see a fence, a house, or a light. He tripped over a wire cable, strung around some kind of park or parking lot.
I’ve heard of people dying in storms like this.
Steve focused and cursed the wire as he stood, kicking it with snow-filled shoes. His feet were so numb with cold that he couldn’t feel the pain from kicking the post. Sleep. Sleep was all he wanted. He stood and trudged on. His coat hung open and he staggered on through the storm, not knowing or caring where he was.
“How do I find another transformation?” His head felt light, like it was slowly turning. “Lob blob. Gag bag. Ring gring.” he said to himself, his mind trying to pair words that might work the same way as lock and clock. “Snow knows?”
Steve watched his thoughts fly apart and lose their direction.
Very entertaining.
Steve almost laughed aloud.
Pieces don’t make any sense.
It was about that time that he realized he was in trouble. In a lucid moment he realized his body was very cold and that he probably had hypothermia, or was close to it. He couldn’t see any lights from any buildings or cars. There were no buildings or landmarks, just snow. Snow on the ground, snow in the air—snow everywhere. With his last remaining bits of consciousness, Steve did up his coat, pulled Walter’s hat out of his pocket and put it on his head, and donned his gloves.
He wandered without sense for quite a while, until he almost hit the side of the some kind of building. He was no more than a few feet away from it before he could see it at all. As he moved closer to the building, he recognized it. The odd brickwork on the outside meant he had somehow found his school. He put a gloved hand on the wall and began to walk around the outside.
Not much time.
He found a window he could reach, and smashed it with a gloved hand. It shattered. He almost climbed through the window.
The shards.
Around the edges were sharp glass teeth. He pulled a few out, so he could enter the building without cutting himself and bleeding to death.
He lay on the floor, frozen and exhausted. The occasional gust of snow through the shattered window melted on his face.
He may have dozed. Or slept. He came to some time later, feeling a little more like himself. He rolled from his side and crawled further away from the window.
I need heat.
The radiator at the back of the room nearly scalded his fingers when he touched it. He lay on his side with his back against it. Another little nap. When he awoke again, he felt much better.
The brightness of his walk in the snow made the shadows of the schoolhouse extremely dark. It was quiet, too.
He could hear the wind moaning outside, begging him to step into the storm again. Sometimes snow whispered and rattled against the windows. He walked hesitantly up the hallway. His footsteps echoed up the corridor. All the classroom doors were closed.
He walked to Mr. Pollock’s room and opened the door, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. His stomach growled, echoing inside. He checked the clock above the chalkboard: 2:15 a.m.
Steve removed his backpack, pulled his notebook and plaque from inside. Stepping through the shadowed shapes of desks, he moved towards the classroom’s windows to catch some of the storm’s pale light on his notepad. He struggled to angle the pages in just the right way. The handwriting looked like chicken scratches, unreadable.
A fist of wind rattled the windows. The hiss of snow against the glass grew louder. The storm wanted in. But the school defied the winter storm.
Though the shadows wouldn’t let him read, he wrote. He recorded, as best he could, the experiment he conducted that led him to discovering his Benu stone. He set his notebook with the others in his bag and swung it onto his shoulders. He held the plaque and moved towards the front of the classroom.
Steve stepped up to Mr. Pollock’s desk. He swept his arm over the top of the desk to clear the desktop entirely, pushing the items on the desk onto the floor, including the picture of Mr. Pollock’s wife. Steve grinned.
Sorry, Frown. Owed you.
He moved behind the desk and sat in Mr. Pollock’s chair. He placed the plaque down on the center of the desk. The plaque’s blue-mirrored face winked with the pale glow of the storm. His heart began to hammer in his chest as though it would break through.
Steve swiveled the chair around to face the bookcase. Mr. Pollock kept a large dictionary in his shelves, and a pocket one.
“Pocket dictionary, please and thank you,” he said to the shelves.
He selected the dictionary from the middle shelf and placed it carefully on the desk. He then swung his backpack to the desktop and slipped the large dictionary inside.
Might need backup.
Steve replayed the transformation he had caused earlier at his house, and remembered that he had a hard time holding the clock as he changed it into the lock. So, to be cautious, he removed his Benu stone from the center of the desk and placed it in his bag, too. Then, gingerly, the pocket dictionary, too.
This might be the last thing I ever see.
The blue of the storm bathed the room in shadow and a cold glow.
How depressing.
“Dad,” he said to the silence, “I’m going to try to help us.” Not that his dad would ever hear those words.
He looked around the classroom slowly, for perhaps the last time. He looped the strap of his backpack firmly around his left arm. After a deep breath, he plunged his hands into his backpack, grabbing the plaque and the dictionary at the same time.
A powerful numbing shot up both arms and into his body, causing him to yelp. He struggled with the numb feeling, fighting to keep a hold on his plaque and the dictionary. A blinding spiral of light exploded in the dark classroom. Steve could see everything with absolute clarity. The room seemed to flatten into a photograph. The photograph shrank and shrank until it was the size of a regular snapshot. The wind blew papers and dust around the classroom, but Steve only watched the wind—he couldn’t hear or feel it. Finally, the picture of the classroom began to fall, like a photograph, landing on the ground where he was standing. When it hit the ground, it vanished.
Steve stood in another place.
“It worked,” he whispered, while exhaling. Then inhaled.
Breathing is good.
The sky radiated a subdued gray light, like an early morning sky an hour before the sun rises. Steve stood on some kind of surface; he was still holding his plaque and the dictionary inside of his backpack. He let go of both items, allowing them to fall to the bottom of the pack, and slipped it onto his back. His arms still felt odd, as if they had lost circulation. Darts of feeling shot up his arms as he regained control of his
hands.
This place was neither warm nor cold. The sun was just coming up or going down, so it was neither light nor dark. It wasn’t snowing. In fact, it hadn’t snowed.
Is this another time zone?
Steve had left night behind at the school. He left winter as well, it seemed. He didn’t feel as if he were outdoors anymore: this place was too warm. Though it didn’t feel like indoors either: it wasn’t quite warm enough. No sound—no birds, no traffic, no planes. No breeze, though the air carried an earthy, primal smell, like the smell of freshly turned soil in the spring.
He scanned the horizon, looking for a recognizable object that might clue him as to where he was, but he could see nothing familiar. No buildings. He couldn’t even really see what he was standing on. He bent down to feel the surface. His fingers slid over a completely smooth surface—like linoleum or a marble floor, perfectly smooth and dark.
The weak lighting prevented Steve from putting a name to the color of the ground. Perhaps black. The land looked flat, as though it stretched on for miles, like some great plain.
This place feels empty.
He took a step, carefully, setting down a foot in front of him.
Maybe this is all mud, or water.
But it held. He took another step. And another. His feet clicked on the ground as on a hard floor. So he began to walk.
Am I the only human here?
He fought the urge to yell a “hello,” to see if anyone would answer.
But that might bring on more trouble than I can handle.
Each step he took tick-tacked loudly in this place.
“Hello, Whole One,” said a voice behind him.
Steve whirled around to find a sort of a mask, depicting a hollow human face, floating in front of him. He couldn’t tell if it was male or female, old or young, beautiful or ugly.
Steve shivered at the sight of this hovering mask of a face. “Um… hello.”
I’m dreaming. Maybe I did die.
“What is it you seek?”
“Where am I?”
“There are many names for this place. There are too many names for this place, I couldn’t begin to tell you, nor could you begin to understand.” The mask paused. “You are a Whole One,” said the mask as if the words “whole one” somehow explained Steve’s lack of ability to comprehend. Steve decided to change the subject.