Duck Boy

by Bill Bunn

  He returned to his most recent hiding spot, the room with the metal cabinet overlooking the hallway. People ran helter skelter through the hallway looking for escape routes. A layer of smoke floated below the ceiling tile. Screams and shouts. He scoured the metal closet where he’d been hiding. Nothing. He rifled through the coat pockets and threw his coat into the room in case he’d left the plaque underneath it.

  He fought against a growing sense of panic as he tried to remember where he’d last used his Benu stone. He hopped onto the table, popped out the ceiling tile and scanned the tiles in case it had fallen out while he’d been in the ceiling system. The hallways of the building were empty now. Smoke billowed up the hallway. Steve barely noticed. His mind retraced his steps.

  Steve followed his pathway back to the janitor’s closet and scoured his hiding spot there. He shoved cleaning supplies out of his way to get a good look. Nothing.

  The lab!

  As he hurried back to the lab, flames licked the bottoms and corners of several walls.

  He tried the lab door. It was locked.

  I used my stone on this lock!

  He peered into the window. The room was filled with smoke. He couldn’t see anyone. Pulling a fire extinguisher from its place on the wall, he drove the bottom of it through the door’s glass. He had to bash the window several times to break through the fine wires embedded in the glass before he could put his arm through and open the first door. A whoosh of air blew past Steve towards the hungry fire. He stepped between the doors.

  The smoke in the lab thickened. Across the hallway, behind him, a portion of a wall fell over and belched a ball of flame across the hallway. Steve saw the flame moving towards him and ducked. The flame poured through the door’s smashed window and over him. He stood and stepped through the room’s inner door and moved through the lab, scouring the floor for the stone. He opened a few cupboards, because he’d forgotten exactly where he’d hidden when he was in the lab room. Then a flash of memory.

  Over here.

  He rounded the corner, crouching to stay below the smoke. He pulled back the cupboard door and stuck his head inside, feeling the back of the cupboard with his hand. His frantic fingers found a smooth flat surface at the back of the cupboard. Steve scraped the object to the front of the cupboard with his fingers—it was his Benu stone.

  The smoke in the lab began to flicker into flame. He pulled up his backpack and prepared to flee to the World of Pieces. He heard the ceiling and structure around him groan. He pulled his bag in front of him and gripped his stone.

  “Ah, you little rat,” yelled a voice from behind the closed cupboard door. The sound of a human voice almost scared Steve senseless. A sneering, angry face met him nearly nose to nose. Mr. Gold. “I knew you were up to something, you stupid punk.” Mr. Gold stepped towards him. “You ruined everything.” Emotion choked most of the words from Mr. Gold’s sentence.

  Steve quickly pushed his Benu stone into his backpack, holding it with one hand and clutching anything he could find inside with the other. His hand happened to grasp the dictionary. Mr. Gold leapt towards him and grabbed his head in a headlock. Steve watched his body envelop in bright, bluish white light against the flames. He watched as his world of fire flattened, the roaring flames and searing heat fading as Steve moved to the World of Pieces. As he watched the warehouse turn into a picture, he saw the ceiling collapse, crushing the cupboard he had been sitting in. The picture grew small, fluttered to the ground in front of his feet, and disappeared in a burst of light.

  But Steve still felt the heavy hands of Mr. Gold holding him firmly.

  “You have returned, Whole One. You have come to pay your debt,” said a dark and formidable voice that sounded like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. “And who have you brought with you?”

  Steve felt the grip loosen on his head, so he straightened up and stepped away from Mr. Gold. Steve immediately wanted to run.

  “You promised us your life, and you must pay the price for stealing from our world, for corrupting that which we had made perfect.”

  Mr. Gold looked around, amazed and confused. “Where are we?” he asked, looking at Steve. Steve shrugged. The mask suddenly whooshed together before Mr. Gold.

  “Do you not know where this is?” the mask demanded of Mr. Gold.

  “I don’t think I do,” he replied. He tried to sound brave, but his, “Who are you?” came out in a wavering, fearful voice.

  “I am the representative of this world, the world of possibility, the world of perfection, the World of Pieces.”

  “This is where?” Mr. Gold asked again.

  “This is everywhere; this is nowhere,” the mask answered. “And what have you come here to seek?”

  “I don’t know,” Mr. Gold replied flatly. “What can I get?”

  “Do you want gold?” asked the Mask.

  “Yes, I do,” he replied carefully.

  “Are you an alchemist, too?” asked the mask.

  “Is that what this world is?” Mr. Gold asked again, in disbelief. “This is the world of Alchemy?”

  “It is if you say it is,” the mask answered in a warmer tone. “I can show you what this world can give you. Would you like to see it?”

  “Why, yes, I think I would,” Mr. Gold replied, looking cautiously at Steve with a sly smile. “Is this what you and your great aunt have discovered, Steve?” he asked with a twisted grin. “I have stumbled onto your secret, haven’t I?” He laughed greedily. “This adventure has turned out much better than I planned.” As Mr. Gold talked, his voice began to sound confident—smug—again.

  “I wouldn’t listen to the mask, Mr. Gold,” Steve suggested. “It will lead you to your own death.” Steve felt sick to his stomach. He hated to help Mr. Gold, but the man didn’t understand the danger.

  “My name is not Mr. Gold, you fool,” snarled the man. “I wasn’t going to tell you my real name, now was I? You can call me Mr. Dee, John Dee.”

  John looked carefully at the mask’s blank expression. “Steve, you wouldn’t be lying, would you?”

  “I’m trying to save you,” Steve replied in disbelief, verging on anger. “I’m trying to help. Don’t listen to the mask,” he said earnestly.

  Mr. Dee laughed loudly. “A convincing act, Steve, but you’ll have to do better than that.” He turned to the mask. “Let’s see what you have to offer.”

  Steve couldn’t believe his ears, and anger burned across his brow as he watched the mask lead Mr. Gold away. He listened to their discussion.

  “Would you like to eat?” asked the mask, sweetly.

  “I wouldn’t mind,” John replied. “I am rather hungry.”

  Steve studied his left hand, touching the stub where his finger had once been. He looked up and the mask and Mr. Gold had disappeared over a shiny black hill. He waited for a while, trying to decide what to do. Then he remembered his mother—she still needed his help. He turned in the direction of the Ocean of Pieces.

  “You belong to us,” said a voice. There was no mask to speak those words. The voice surrounded Steve. “You must be perfected.”

  “Perfected is just another word for dead,” Steve replied furiously. “Why would I want to die?” His voice became flat as he fought his anger.

  “This is your new home,” replied the voice. An explosion of light tore through the world from behind him. He turned to find that a copy of his house had materialized behind him. It looked just like his house at home, copied exactly to the smallest detail. The shiny black ground underneath the house wrinkled and whitened, mocking the winter snow that surrounded his real house in the real world. It looked quite out of place to see his house in the World of Pieces.

  Steve stepped towards the house. He reached for the door handle on the front door and his hand ghosted through the handle. He walked through the front door—literally.

  I have to be touching my stone.

  When he stepped into the house, an eerie silence greeted him. Perfect
silence. He swung his backpack to where he could reach inside it, grabbed his stone, and reached for a wall.

  Intruders hadn’t destroyed this version of the house. Everything was in its perfect place. Steve noticed immediately that this version of his house was clean and neat —impeccably clean and disturbingly neat.

  He moved into the living room. His mother’s chair sat underneath her lamp, just like it had the night she disappeared. There was no broken mug or coffee splattered on the floor. Steve approached his mother’s chair. The chair’s leather was worn and slightly grayed. He wandered through the house to his own bedroom. He scanned the room. On the wall hung the plaque his mother had given him—his Benu stone. He couldn’t read the words on the plaque.

  The two rows of letter-like shapes shimmered on the plaque, but didn’t form words. He lifted his hand to touch the plaque and his hand moved through it, even though he was touching his real plaque with his other hand. He reversed his hand and dragged his fingers like a paintbrush over the house’s wall. It felt solid.

  I wonder why everything else is solid except for my Benu stone.

  He stopped his hands, picked a point on the wall and punched through the drywall. The drywall crushed inwardly with his forceful fist, but the broken edges sparked as if the walls were electrified. A grid of zeros crisscrossed the hole in the wall. The numbers clicked through the digits, as if they were looking for a combination. Several of the numbers seemed to stop finally, settling on a particular sequence. The drywall slowly repaired itself until the wall looked as if Steve had never punched it. He touched the wall and it felt as good as new.

  “Where’s my mom?” Steve called out. There was no response. But minuscule pieces of her began to appear. The small pieces came together and halted in proper position, waiting for the other bits of her to arrive. After all the pieces of her had arrived, each piece hovering in its place, the pieces seemed to melt together into a whole body.

  She stood motionless. Steve waited for her to move. Nothing. She was somehow empty of some essential part, just as Aunt Shannon had been. He stared at her expressionless face, trying to record those features in his memory. He felt a warm glow burn into his heart, bathing his insides with light.

  “She’s here!” he shrieked. The lingering shadows in Steve’s world burned away instantly. “She’s here,” he sighed.

  She looks better, more rested than before she disappeared.

  The circles under her eyes were gone, and so were her glasses. Her face wasn’t wrinkled with the care she used to wear constantly. Instead of its usual tousled and unkempt appearance, her hair was perfectly neat—every hair was in its proper place.

  I need her Benu stone to wake her up.

  Steve wondered how he was going to find his mother’s stone and bring her back. He thought of his own stone, how it had ended up just being a ghostly image on the wall. His mother’s chair might have the answer. He looked for anything around her seat, anything out of place or out of the ordinary. He tried to remember what was around the chair the night she disappeared.

  Everything was in its place. Steve compared this new version of his home, the one with everything in place, with what he remembered of the earthly version. The lamp stood at attention beside the chair, but the dents in the brass weren’t there anymore. Steve scanned the bookshelf behind his mom’s chair. All the books stood in perfect, attentive rows, waiting to be pulled off the shelf. Keeping one hand on his stone, Steve slid the dictionary off the shelf and popped it open.

  There were letters all in neat rows, but the words, if they came together at all, didn’t mean anything to Steve. He dropped the book to the floor and returned to his place in front of his mother’s chair.

  Under the chair on the floor sat a book. Steve remembered that book. At home it was tattered and worn, held together by tape. It was often under her chair, along with her notebook. He whirled around to face the body of his mother as she stood there, empty, behind him.

  After he glanced at her expressionless face, he turned back to the book under her chair.

  Her Benu stone.

  That tiny, ragged book—the pieces of the book held together with tape. It had been her mother’s book before her, and her mother’s mother’s book, too.

  It was missing, too.

  Steve wasn’t sure what that book was, or what it meant to his mother. He reached out to pick up his mother’s ancient book and his hand breezed through it, just like his hand had with his own plaque.

  This must be it. But I don’t know enough about it to call it out of the ocean.

  His mother stood behind him, motionless.

  “I like this place,” she said in a robotic voice. “It is quiet here. It is clean here.” Her face remained expressionless.

  The sound of her voice shocked Steve for a few moments. He hadn’t heard that voice for a long, long time. It sounded like her voice, but those certainly weren’t her words. A fresh wave of sadness swept over him. He reminded himself that he wasn’t talking to his mom, he was talking to this World of Pieces—they were using his mom’s body and voice.

  “You aren’t talking like my mom,” Steve shouted at his mother’s expressionless face. “And this isn’t my house. Don’t think you can fool me.” Steve stomped through the house to the front door, stepped through, and slammed the door as hard as he could. The door closed with a big bang and as the door met the doorframe, the house exploded into nothingness, leaving Steve’s mom standing where the house had been.

  The shell of his mother began to follow him as he made his way towards the Ocean of Pieces.

  Steve remembered roughly where the ocean had been, so he struck out in that general direction. He heard a voice, the voice of the mask over a small hill of polished glass. He walked to the crest of the hill.

  At the bottom of the hill, on the other side, John Dee hovered near the edge of the ocean. John Dee’s body stood at effortless attention. Steve descended the hill to the ocean’s edge. John’s face stared sleepily toward Steve, almost empty of life. The mask hovered before John, gently instructing him.

  “Raise your arm,” the mask said. John raised his arm automatically above him. “Now, give your finger to us, we’ll make it perfect.” John nodded his agreement vacantly. Steve watched as John’s little finger popped off his hand and separated into infinitesimally small pieces that dove into the Ocean of Pieces.

  “John, stop! They’re killing you—you’re going to die.”

  The mask turned towards Steve. “You too will be made perfect,” he said. “Mr. Dee has already decided that he wants to join us here. Nothing you can say now will make him change his mind. He is us.” John smiled as if he were dreaming something wonderful.

  The mask returned to giving instructions to John’s body. John gave up each of his fingers, his hand, and the entire arm to the Ocean of Pieces. The mask had him raise his other arm, dismembering it in the same simple, slow way.

  “Now,” said the mask, “I want your head.” John nodded. Steve watched as John’s head lifted away from his shoulders, turned into something that looked like sand, and then, like a swarm of flies, the cloud of fragments flew towards the ocean and dove into the depths. Steve turned away, unable to watch. A wave of nausea squeezed his stomach. He despised “Mr. Gold” and all he stood for, but he did not deserve to die this way. The clinical commands of the mask continued until it dismantled the rest of the hoodlum. Then silence.

  When he turned around, both the mask and John were gone. The ocean boiled hungrily as if John had been an appetizer before the main course.

  I’m dinner. I should have been dinner a long time ago.

  The ocean boiled and bubbled, burping small bits of recognizable things to its surface: cars, furniture, and clothes, mingled with human parts. Steve saw his mother approaching him like a robot.

  “Mother, I want to save you,” Steve said through his tears. “I must save you.”

  “You cannot do this!” she said with a snarl. She moved her hands towa
rds the ocean as if to summon something from within it. A storm of demonic faces swept over him, howling and eating his breath.

  Steve was tired and angry. He closed his eyes to try and block them out, but the demons and ghosts poured towards him in his thoughts. Steve opened his eyes and shouted into them.

  “Mom, Mom!” Steve shouted. No response. She needed a breath of life from her stone. Steve turned back towards the ocean, to the torrent of apparitions pouring over and through him. “Bring me the sacred book of Mrs. Susan Best, the book that belonged to Mrs. May Pankratz before her. Bring it to me, now!”

  The book materialized on the shores beside Mrs. Best’s feet. Several demonic images attempted to pick up the book, but pulled their hands away quickly as if the book burned their fingers. Steve touched his stone, knelt down, and picked up the book carefully. This book was ragged, and nearly in pieces, just as he remembered.

  The body of Mrs. Best seemed to see what Steve was doing and tried to disassemble itself quickly before Steve was able to save her.

  Steve stepped towards her. Mrs. Best had begun to disintegrate into a cloud of fragments. He tagged the cloud of pieces with his mother’s book. The pieces of her body hesitated for a moment, as if they didn’t know whether to stay or leave.

  Steve stared at her, holding the sacred book to her disintegrated body as best he could. Suddenly, the pieces seemed to melt together. Her body returned to its whole self. The vacancy in the core of her being suddenly looked occupied, and a gentle, familiar flame returned to her eyes.

  The flow of demon ghosts stopped abruptly. She blinked several times as if she were waking up from a long nap. She turned her head slowly, scanning the surroundings with a puzzled look on her face—the wrinkled, tired look of her eyes reappeared, and her hair flopped into a disorganized lump on the side of her head.