Tesseracts Seventeen

by Colleen Anderson

  Stupid is what I’m called in school. Kids tease the bejesus out of me. One catchy insult is Lousy Merry. That goes back to one time when they wouldn’t leave me alone, so I screamed I had lice and they’d better get clear of me. They did, the better to whip crabapples and stones. That night, the phone danced off the hook, and Mom answered to hysterics from other moms. Their brats were riddled with lice, and I was the culprit. Next day a meany public health nurse combed through my mousey brown hair three times, nearly twisting my neck three-sixty. Nada, zero, zilch bugs; I was cleared of all blame. The kids who teased me were way infested, though. Not that I care.

  So nobody plays with me, surprise surprise. Nobody real.

  By now you think I’m an itty-bitty Professor X. You’re mostly right, though I’m mighty lightweight with all the telepathy and telekinesis stuff. I shine at making imaginary people come to life. Animals too. First few times I summon them, they are see-through, hardly there. After a while, they are as solid as my dresser. I mean, Hermione and me can have actual pillow fights. Are my friends still real when I send them away? God’s honest truth, I don’t know. There is so much of me I don’t know about.

  “Hide and seek?” suggests Hermione.

  Peachy idea, but we have to check if Mom has gone to bed. If not, we have the top floor to ourselves. Well, ninety-fiver percent of it. No one hides under my bed because of Greedy Guts. He has a proper name, but I call him Double G because he whines for this and that, then more of this. Nothing suits him. Greedy has a den under my mattress, a wet, damp place where he moans and frets constantly. Not cool, but I’ve gotten used to it.

  Pretending we are scouts, Hermione and I Mohican crawl onto the staircase landing and peek through the balustrade. Sure enough, Mom is out cold on the couch, with season one of Nip and Tuck low-volume on the Dynex wall TV. Her dark splotched pillow tells me she cried herself to sleep. Dad’s best friend Johnny Walker is perched on the coffee table beside a grease-stained Domino pizza box. On the box Mom’s gold wedding ring glimmers in the glow from the wood pellet stove. She only takes it off when it’s “the last straw.”

  I tried to make money, so Mom and Dad won’t fight. But only imaginary characters or critters hold form for me. The twenty-dollar bills I tried to imagine real all quickly turned to Jell-o, all colors of the Crayola box. Minutes later, even that evaporated.

  Hermione is as real as they come, though. I give her thumbs up, and giggling she runs off to hide, penny loafers noisily clacking on cherrywood laminate.

  On my own, I fret. Daddy might leave some Friday night and never come back. Las Vegas. He thinks about that town day and night, mostly night. Ca-ching, bling and Texas hold’em. Painted ladies and a bottle of wine. What frigging color do you paint ladies? I’m just a kid, I don’t understand half of what tumbles out of his mind. I do know he itches for “Sin City.”

  After a twenty-count I tiptoe into the master bedroom, Hermione’s choice hidey-hole. Hogwart’s best student is too smart to crawl in Grandma’s wardrobe. That’s a one-way ticket to Narnia. And the double bed, well, chances are high a troll lives under there, created in the time Mom read me nursery stories in this bed. Now, Hermione is excellent at spells of concealment and deception. Her veils are hard to see through. At the foot of the bed I slowly turn full circle, intently drinking in the dark room. I catch myself in the vanity mirror, a skinny lemur-eyed kid with frizzled, dun brown hair. I turn twice more.

  “Come out of the painting, Hermione. You’re the eagle.”

  Hermione wings to the floor, transmogrifying to her human self. “I thought an owl to be a dead giveaway. How did you tweak me?” She does her best not to pout.

  “That painting is a wedding gift, and it shows the seaside cliffs near Twillingate, Mom’s home town. Any eagle in that scene would be a white-headed bald eagle. You were a golden eagle.”

  “Who taught you to be so observant?” Hermione asks admiringly.

  “None other than Sherlock Holmes.” It’s been drummed into my head, at home and school. Don’t trust strangers, especially men, because they might be sex fiends. And Holmes is a strange old duck, no mistake. But Dr. Watson, I trust. I mean, he’s an adorable old teddy bear. Watson chaperones when Holmes visits to teach me observation and deduction.

  Hermione offers a lopsided grin. “I stand warned, Miss Maidment. Play on.” And so we do, four turns each at being it. After a while, Hermione begs pause. She has an earache.

  That’s odd. “How can you be sick? You’re paper and ink, not flesh and blood.”

  “That’s true.” Hermione frowns as we return to the hallway. “But I’ve got lacewigs tap dancing in both ears.”

  Hermione is dead right. A violent sizzle, exactly like twenty skillets of fatty bacon frying on megablast, fills my mind. It’s not a real sound, for it sits between the ears.

  “Wow, what a snap, crackle, pop.” I should know better. Even as the words escape my lips, the three jokers from the Rice Krispies cereal box tumble from the hall linen closet and spill into my room. Don’t go under the bed, guys!

  Poor Hermione. It looks like she’s been zapped by a stupefying curse. I’d best send her to Hogwarts before she gets a migraine. I gesture c’mon and we return to Meredith Central.

  Then all the lights flicker and dim. The insistent, harsh buzz rises, but not enough to mask a muffled thump from out front. We rush to gawk out my bedroom window.

  Holy frig. Old Mr. Cormier backed into his garbage cans again. He hasn’t stormed out to raise hell like he usually does. His Hyundai Accent sputters and dies. Street lights are waning to dull amber, and I can just make out the terror of the neighborhood, Tiger Mangy Cat, cold chunk on the sidewalk. That old rug never sleeps, so what’s on the go?

  Then all is pitch darkness, save for a gentle gold-blue strobe that seems to be coming from behind the house. “Hurricane Leslie knocked all the power poles down on other the other side of the cemetery,” I tell Hermione. “I bet the new transformers blew like fireworks on Canada Day, and lights are from repair trucks on the scene.” Hermione nods dizzily, somewhat thankful the mind noise has muted. She meekly follows as we cross over to the master bedroom to look out the breakfast nook casement.

  Man. It’s like a pulsing sunrise in Mount Carmel boneyard. The tall “Their Name Liveth Ever More” stone cross stands in stark silhouette, and the gravestones cast long, inky shadows. The gap in our back fence is lit up like the Pearly Gates.

  “It’s rotten in Denmark,” I whisper to the wizard. “There are no transformers in Deadsville. Why should Light and Power trucks be in there?”

  “Best tell your mother.” Color is coming back into Hermione’s face. The bio-electric sizzle is down to three or four frying pans now.

  Banzai advice. I make to rush for the head of the stairs, but a little bird, a sixth sense, tells me to creep. There is a feel of bodies in the house. Taking my finger-on-lips cue, Hermione slips out of her loafers and silently tiptoes.

  Oh my… God. We don’t breathe. There are a dozen strangers milling in the living room. Bizarre creatures.

  “Little You-Know-Whos,” whispers Hermione with a tremor in her voice. For sure, they have Voldemort lips (no lips?) and slits serve as nostrils. No ears; OK, maybe keyholes for ears. Their bald heads are like oval balloons, and large tilted eyes shine like polished coal. Heads are bigger than their bodies, and spindly arms are as long as equally thin legs. They have nothing written on jumpsuits two shades greyer than their skin.

  I know these things. I’ve seen them on the Discovery Channel loads of times. Greys. They are one hundred percent real, honest-to-goodness extraterrestrial, Roswell spacemen.

  The baldy men are focused on Mom, who is now stiffly sitting up on the couch. Her eyes are Walking Dead vacant, though her face is screwed up like she’s straining on the toilet. Sweat beads her forehead. The creatures are impatiently waving
thin glassy wands, urging her to her feet. That’s not going well. Mom is a solid buffalo gal. She shops at Addition-Elle. She can arm wrestle Popeye. She’s got Irish washerwoman blood, and it shows in the square heft of her shoulders. But that doesn’t explain all her inertia. She’s bullish by nature. City Hall dreads her phone calls when the property assessments come out. She eats the cable company for breakfast. Bottom line: Mom don’t move if she don’t want to.

  But now she’s on her feet, and she shudders as she is forced into a first halting step.

  My legs turn to water. This is an alien abduction. They’re taking Mommy. Dad might never come home. I’m terrified. I’ll be alone. Abandoned!

  At least Hermione is thinking. “She’s under a confundo hex. Being taken against her will.” The muggle-wizard eases back from the stairway landing. “We need a plan.”

  “Can you fight them with your wand?”

  She shakes her head ruefully. “Not one against a dozen. And you made me young; it is my first term at Hogwarts.”

  I wince. Deathly Hallows Hermione would pack far more punch.

  Hermione continues, “The neighborhood is asleep. Why not you?”

  No state secret here. “My brain is different. It’s like we have an invisibility cloak. Their mind zing crackled right over me, didn’t take. They don’t even know I’m… we’re here.” With no earlobes, I doubt they can hear our whispers either.

  Below, Mom bangs her shins on the coffee table. She wavers, and I desperately hope the jolt will free her mind. If she gets her beefy arms swinging she’ll cream them. But the things are all around her, wands pointed at her nodding head. She’s super hypnotized. Again she shuffles along. At this pace they’ll have her out the back door in five minutes.

  “Sherlock Holmes. The Great Detective will have a plan.”

  Another negative. “Friday night is his seven-percent-solution night.” Just like its Daddy’s seven-pint-night at the Duke.

  Hermione licks her lips. “Right. No Sherlock. No master planner, just us girls. What do we do?”

  I’m only eight! Come home, Dad. Come frigging home! Darn, he’s likely face and eyes into fish an’ chips and Keith’s India Pale Ale.

  Calm down, Merry. Panic and you lose Mom.

  The creepy Roswellians have her surrounded and on the march. Mom’s awkwardly shuffling as if her joints are made of mahogany, and she teeters like a brain-dead Frankenstein monster. The silent procession passes the bottom of the steps. Fifteen feet and they’ll be out the back and into the yard. If they get her into the cemetery…!

  Now we can smell the kidnappers, and I’m not talking Old Spice. More like formaldehyde mixed with cat pee. Hermione holds her nose and whispers disgustingly, “They stink like Bulgeye Potion.”

  “Po….” Click, a vague plan flicks through my head like a sparrowhawk madly hunting through hawthorn branches. The idea settles on a branch, gels. It’d never work though, unless I cook up a Jurassic-sized diversion

  Sherlock says, one thing at a time. Priority one. “Hermione,” I urgently hiss, “dump out your duffel bag.” She does so, nodding as I sketch out my dodgy Forlorn Hope plan. Rapidly sorting her witchy doodads, she nods firmly.

  “Doable, I have the ingredients. The timing is frightful though.”

  Horrific, actually. “You’d best hit the road then. After your spell, leave by the front door and circle round back.” There is a clatter below. As Hermione darts into the master bedroom and Mom’s vanity table, I chance a sneak down several steps to see what’s happening. God, Mom’s got tangled up in Dad’s smelly hockey equipment, which he always just plops in the back entrance already clogged by boots and winter coats that never do get put away until May. The spidery limbed Roswellians are trying to hoist Mom, but it’s like setting a capsized galleon to rights.

  That buys us another minute and I’m not going to waste it. Back to that diversion. The entrance way racket covers me as I parsel-slither down the stairs and into the living room. Waning light from the wood pellet stove is but candle-bright now, but I know just where it is. The wedding ring.

  My Phys Ed teacher says I’m a quick mite, a right greyhound. Tonight I set a record on the stairs, lightly taking three at a time. Then it’s a slide on waxed laminate to my bedroom door. No time for coaxing, or pleading. I got to get close so he can whiff it. Greedy Guts, I mean.

  I hold the ring about four feet from the hem of my Pocahontas quilt. C’mon, Gutsy. Smell it. Pure gold. Shiny and pretty. You got to have it.

  There is a sudden sucking sound, like a hog pulling itself clear of a mud hole. Then I hear frantic sniffing, like a beagle getting a rabbit scent. He’s awake.

  “Goooold,” I intone temptingly, waving the ring to waft its scent into Febreeze laden air.

  From the darkness comes a gargle of pure annoyance edged with hate.

  Oh, boy. I got his attention good. Two bloodshot eyes, fiery and hostile, are locked on the ring. I crouch in a ready, set, go position. My heart’s beating so hard it hurts.

  “It glitters,” I hoarsely inform the thing-under-my-bed. “It’s precious.”

  With that Gollum explodes from underneath my mattress. I’m but an arm’s length ahead of him, his stinking breath hot on my neck. It’s a flat run to the staircase, where I risk all by sliding down the lemon-polished banister. This flummoxes Gollum, and he’s not great with stairs either. His confusion buys me the few breaths I need to dance through the mess in the back entrance and bash through the screen door.

  Now under bright moonlight, and within pulsing light from the cemetery, I take in the scene with a glance. The intruders have Mom halfway across the back lawn. They are mincing past Dad’s toolshed where he stores his lawnmower and empty beer bottles. Beyond that is the gap in the fence, and all hope of saving Mom.

  Here goes. In one fluid motion I lob the ring like a minuscule horseshoe, and I can see starlight wink on the gold as it lands fair in the middle of the reptilian big heads. It’s all I can do to pivot aside as Gollum rips by me. The once-Hobbit races on all fours, and slime green foam limes his contorted, toothy mouth. He’s hell on wheels for that ring, making steam like the Wabash Cannonball.

  Shocked, the hairless men do no more than raise wands before disaster strikes. Literally.

  Gollum’s a nuclear bowling ball hitting five pins. He’s no bigger than these guys, but he’s gristle and bone and manic greed. Half the delicate Roswellians go down like dominos. A couple more chitter like insects and skitter for the fence. Three, bolder than the rest, poke Gollum with their dinky wands and electric sparks fly. They shouldn’t be doing that. I smell ozone as I rush to grab Mom and drag her by one hand for the dogberries by Dad’s shed. Pushing her down, I plop on Mom’s belly, hoping there’s not a baby sister in there. We’re well hidden by monkshood and tall valerian.

  A howl comes from the kerfuffle Those wand pokes are nothing to Gollum’s stony hide. He’s found the ring, and he flings over a few bad guys just for spite before galloping back to the house.

  A short-lived gallop. From fifty feet above the fence, a cobalt blue light lances into the yard. It freezes Gollum in his grimy tracks. His image wavers, and suddenly my mind goes into blender mode.

  Through watering eyes, I see a saucer hovering over the maples. A blue lens on the saucer rim is shooting the tractor beam that has seized Gollum and fried my brain cells.

  I panic. I don’t summon Luke Skywalker, or James Tiberius Kirk; they don’t interest me. Even if I did, I’ve never conjured three large beings at once. It’s impossible. I don’t dare let Hermione or Gollum loose. The plan is a nanosecond away from catastrophe.

  Then a new shadow slants onto the lawn. There is a huge, lean man on our back deck. A giant stencilled in whorls that speak of sea shells, coral shards and palm leaves. He’s poised by the barbeque, like George Washington standing in the prow
of a rowboat. Only, he has a Goliath spear cradled in his muscled arms. Not a spear, a harpoon with a massive iron head!

  How is this happening? I’ve never called Queequeg, not once. And he makes three.

  All eyes fix on him; Queequeg draws back. With an audible grunt, he hurls his weapon. It gracefully cuts through the air, narrowly misses tree branches, and with pinpoint accuracy (I mean, this is Quequeeg!) crunches into the blue lens that emits the tractor beam.

  Instantly Gollum is loose. Enraged, mindless, he chases his tail like a mad dog.

  The big heads warily collect themselves. Their manner is strange, hard to read, but I think they are well and truly shaken. But, like good soldiers, they once more rally around a tall shadowy bulk and, now urgently, shepherd it to the break in the fence.

  Mom mumbles. I put my tiny hand over her mouth. Despite miracles, this scheme could fly to pieces yet.

  Incredibly tense seconds pass as the Heads wedge their charge through the gap. Then they are all through and making their way past lichen-splotched marble headstones. Now we can skedaddle. Mom is deeply confused, ninety percent asleep, but she knows my voice, hears me telling her it’s going to rain. She’s hates rain, which is crazy for a rain-drizzle-fog raised Newfoundlander. Mom lurches along, and it’s no big deal to haul her back in the house and deposit her on the couch.

  Then I dash back to the yard. Gollum is long gone, probably back to his bog under my bed. My saviour Queequeg vanished as suddenly, and as mysteriously, as he appeared.

  The strobe from the cemetery is on double beat. There is a mad hum, and an eerie vibration in the air. Maple branches start to toss, though there is no wind.

  The glowing, damaged saucer slowly rises above the stone cross, and flashes away in a nanosecond.

  One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. I close eyes, and Hermione is dispatched back to Hogwarts.