Max Quick

by Mark Jeffrey

  Casey plopped herself down on a squeaky stool in the cramped kitchen with an exaggerated sigh.

  “Don’t,” her mom said.

  “What?” Casey said.

  “You know what. Be overdramatic. Just stop.”

  Her mom had the tiny television on. It was all, Blah Blah Eclipse Blah Blah. The news guy was saying that you could even go blind if you looked directly at it.

  “There’s a jelly and lemon sandwich on the counter,” her mom said. Casey retrieved it wordlessly, realizing that it was a kind of peace offering.

  Casey’s mom did not like it when she shut herself in her room. She always insisted that Casey spend some time down in the kitchen when she came home from school. But Casey was eager to get back to the book she’d been reading. Her mom would want to talk about school. And that meant talking about Liberty Johnson. Then her mom would fret and worry. She’d ask if Casey had made some new friends, and Casey would have to report that she hadn’t.

  And today was doubly bad: Casey was home early. That meant there were even more uncomfortable hours to consume. So Casey did something a little drastic, something uncharacteristic.

  “Can I see the pictures of Dad again?”

  Her mom immediately tensed up. Casey could see it along the lines of her back. Her mother hated this subject, which is exactly why Casey had brought it up. You want to talk? Fine. We’ll talk about something that you don’t like.

  “You’ve seen them before,” her mom said carefully.

  “I know, but—”

  “Not today, Casey.”

  Her father had left when she was very young. Casey barely remembered him. But her mom had pictures—lots of pictures. She loved to look at them and wonder what her dad was really like.

  He couldn’t be nearly as bad as her mom made him out to be.

  Casey thought her dad looked like a prince or a lord of some faraway country. He had that sort of commanding, regal air about him. He was not a handsome man—not at all, actually. In fact, in some pictures he was rather spectacularly ugly.

  Yet that didn’t matter to Casey. She imagined him with a beautiful voice instead. In her mind’s ear, when he spoke, his words sounded like velvet wrapped in satin.

  But to her mom, he was nothing more than a loser who had abandoned them both.

  “Mom. Please. It’s been a while since you let me.”

  But her mom just kept doing the dishes in icy silence.

  Casey watched her, feeling bad for having hurt her. Now, neither wanted to talk, each avoiding a topic painful to them. It occurred to Casey that even though they were technically in the same room, they both might as well have been alone in their own private, empty world.

  That hadn’t been what she’d wanted.

  The way all of this had backfired made her suddenly angry.

  So angry.

  Chapter 3

  Johnny Siren

  Max entered a long, musty-smelling cement hallway near the loading dock of the museum. A sign read:

  STARLAND MUSEUM!

  NEW EXHIBIT!

  ANCIENT SUMERIA!

  THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION!

  APRIL 1—APRIL 28!

  DON’T MISS IT!!!

  Gee! Max thought. Someone! Really! Likes! Exclamation points!

  And then he grinned. He loved museums. And Blister would never look for him here.

  Within moments, a panorama of ancient artifacts surrounded him.

  There was a stone obelisk, engraved with cuneiform. Next to this was an obsidian sarcophagus and great stone tablets bearing writing in Greek, Egyptian, and Akkadian. There was a worn statue of the jackal-headed Anubis, missing an arm. There were chalices and pottery and plates and jewelry.

  Even though these things were from another age altogether, to Max they seemed somehow comforting and familiar.

  Quickly, he made his way down the corridor and found what he was looking for: a storage room. He needed a place to hide and catch his breath.

  But to Max’s surprise he saw that the lock had been smashed. The door was open. And his heart stopped cold at what he saw.

  There were three men, dressed in black suits and black gloves. Broken wooden boxes, packing materials, and ancient artifacts of all sorts littered the floor.

  Had Max just walked in on a robbery?

  The three men just stared at him for a moment, barely moving. It was as though Max’s sudden presence was hardly anything that mattered at all.

  There was a fan humming in the corner, the sound of paper flapping in the breeze. And Max could hear his heart, thumping so loudly these three men could certainly hear it, too.

  But then, another man entered the room.

  He was dressed in an impeccable suit, with long black hair slicked back and pulled into a ponytail. He carried a black iron cane that terminated in a golden claw. This claw gripped a ruby the exact color of blood from a fresh cut.

  But it was the man’s face that shocked Max the most.

  It was white as salt.

  Max winced involuntarily as he realized the man’s skin was covered in scars. They crisscrossed his cheeks, his neck, and his hands as though he had once been flayed by millions of miniature whips.

  “Mr. Siren . . . ,” one of the men began, but Mr. Siren waved him silent. His inky black eyes narrowed and came to rest on Max. He looked perplexed, as though he were trying to recall something important, but hadn’t quite gotten ahold of it in his mind.

  “And then . . . there was a boy,” he said, waving his hand dramatically, an amused expression now on his mottled face.

  Max stood on the balls of his feet.

  Siren continued. “And yet . . . there is something very . . . familiar . . . about him.”

  For his part, Max was surprised to find that as Siren spoke there was actually something disturbingly familiar about him as well. Was it his voice? Siren had a clipped accent, from many places and nowhere at once . . .

  And in his mind’s eye, Max caught just a flash, a snippet of . . . something. He blinked in confusion and tried to concentrate.

  Then, unexpectedly, he had it.

  His mind erupted into vision.

  It was the dead of winter, in a European city. It was hundreds of years ago. Max was somehow positive of that. It was a world of gray skies, smoke-filled air, and brick slipshod houses.

  And then . . . a man entered the vision.

  He was dressed in a red velvet top hat and a red and black flowing cloak. As he walked, each frozen footstep crunched with unnatural loudness.

  A cane, iron, topped with a bloodred ruby, clanged on the street pebbles. The man stank of rotting, black roses. Flashes of coffins and charnel houses punctuated Max’s vision in split-second jabs. As the man approached, the brim of his hat tipped up to reveal his face. It was the same man who was in front of Max now, this Mr. Siren, with the same white face, scarred as if slashed by a hive of mad pixies.

  The vision ended. Max blinked in confusion.

  What had that been all about?

  Siren’s brow furrowed. He flipped open an antique pocket watch. He chewed a curse and snapped the timepiece shut. “Time is the thief, always the thief . . . Hold the boy. We will deal with him later.”

  A burly man grabbed Max by the back of the neck and squeezed. Max found that his entire upper body was immobilized.

  “Mr. Siren, um . . . The Whispering Stone . . . I think she’s calling you back,” said one of the other men, with a note of fear in his voice. He leaned over a large, inky black crystal ball. Cuneiform symbols were carved around the base. The artifact appeared utterly ancient. It was chipped, and deep pockmarks riddled its surface.

  Yet, despite this apparent damage, the thing was working. The insides swam with a red, watery light that grew brighter and started to form into . . . something.

  Siren stood with a look of mad anticipation gripping his sharp features.

  The entire room suddenly flooded with raw light, like a burst of halogen.

 
; The diaphanous image of a woman’s head formed inside the ball, though there was a kind of shimmering interference, like they were viewing a transmission of some sort. She had straight black hair that made her seem like a woman of the ancient world: the daughter of a pharaoh, perhaps.

  “Thou art Johnny Siren,” she said, without preamble, her voice distorting. “Thou art the one who called to me.”

  “Yes,” Siren muttered, amazement on his face. “Back in 1912, I did . . .”

  “I am Jadeth, daughter of Enlil,” she continued.

  Siren gave a slight nod. “I am . . . honored. And I thank you for this audience.”

  “We have been told of thine offer, and we are . . . intrigued. However, we wish to know what thou wantest in return.” Her voice betrayed a slight irritation.

  But Siren only smiled like a sickly rat. “You have heard of Gilgamesh.”

  “Yes, of course . . . ,” she replied with a small smile. “I understand.”

  She spoke quickly to someone who was out of the view of the ball. Then she returned her gaze to Siren.

  “Then we have a pact, thou and I.”

  Siren nodded, clearly very pleased that his offer had been accepted. “How long before I see you?”

  “Now.”

  Siren gasped in surprise. This was apparently much sooner than he had guessed.

  “Time is different for us than it is for thee,” she offered in answer to his stunned expression. “Which thou knowest.”

  Siren winced as if recalling a painful memory. He nodded slightly.

  “We must act now—or not at all.” She looked to her right and nodded to someone. “Look for our coming . . . Johnny Siren.”

  And with that, the image blurred and vanished. The crystal went dead and dark as midnight.

  The ecstatic smile on Siren’s bone white face made him look like an evil clown. He turned to Max.

  “And as for you, boy . . . you are not here by coincidence. For there is no such thing! Everything is a meaningful synchronicity. At the bottom of chaos resides sublime order. No. You and I have met today for a reason.

  “But alas! As much as I would delight in holding you here, to learn your secrets, to pry them from you . . . I am compelled to release you. The tyranny of the page is absolute, and even I am bound by its harsh strictures.”

  Max blinked. The tyranny of the . . . what?

  “So . . . it appears that you may go.” Siren made an exaggerated gesture with his red, ruby-tipped cane and bowed low. But his eyes danced with cruel mirth.

  Max couldn’t believe his luck. He didn’t argue. He didn’t bother to consider whether it was a trick of some kind. He just bolted out the door before Siren changed his mind.

  Siren’s men looked questioningly at him.

  “Unfortunate, I know,” Siren said. “But if we held him, we would only endanger ourselves. The universe would contrive to tear him from us by some means—and we would likely be killed in the process.

  “Not to worry, though—I promise, we will see him again. Quite soon.”

  At that, Siren’s white, scarred fingertips began tapping a large, ancient book resting on the table.

  Chapter 4

  The Pocket

  Max ran as hard as he could. His heart felt like it was pumping molten gold from the effort.

  He couldn’t figure out why Siren had let him go. Never mind that he’d just witnessed Siren robbing a museum. That alone was reason enough to hold Max captive—or worse. But he’d also witnessed Siren make some sort of nefarious deal.

  Time is different for us . . . back in 1912 . . .

  Whatever had just happened, Max was pretty sure this wasn’t good news for anyone but Siren.

  The tyranny of the page . . .

  And who had that woman been? Someone important. Max was pretty sure of this. Powerful. And Siren had to be offering something big to get her attention.

  None of it made any sense at all.

  Yet, there was no time to ponder this further. Max burst through the front doors of the museum and bounded down the stairs.

  But he hadn’t counted on someone being in his path.

  Before he could stop, he slammed hard into a deliveryman carrying an armful of packages. The man yelped in surprise. The packages squirted out of his grasp like greased watermelons.

  The man fell backward.

  He and Max locked gazes for a moment. Max’s heart sank. This man would probably break his neck.

  The whole thing was so horrifying that it seemed to be happening in slow motion.

  Which was when Max realized . . . it was happening in slow motion. The world was somehow turning heavy, slushy. The deliveryman’s backward plunge had become a freeze-frame of slow-motion grace, a dance along the knife-edge of the stairs.

  The packages spun like they were weightless in space.

  And then, impossibly, everything just . . . stopped.

  Max’s momentum had carried him over the stairs with the deliveryman. But now the man was simply . . . floating above the stairs.

  What the—?

  Max stared for a moment, heart pounding.

  “Hello!” Max shouted at the deliveryman. His eyes were open. But he seemed comatose. He didn’t even blink. “Hey! Wake up!”

  Nothing.

  Max gathered enough courage to peer over and look beneath the man to see what was holding him up.

  Nothing.

  There was nothing at all but air beneath him.

  Impossible!

  Casey ate her lemon and jelly sandwich in silence. The eclipse was supposedly beginning. Everyone on the television was oohing and aahing, but it didn’t seem to Casey like it was really getting that much darker.

  She checked the clock: 1:59. Yep, this was it.

  The oohs and aahs continued until the television suddenly went quiet.

  Casey looked up in mild curiosity, cheeks puckered from an unexpected jolt of sudden sour.

  The people on TV had stopped moving and talking. It was like a freeze-frame, but there was no jitter to the picture.

  Casey looked around. The entire apartment had stopped moving, as though the television freeze-frame had somehow spilled out into the real world.

  A swirl of pollen dust near the window had stopped its lazy churn.

  Water pouring from a faucet had become a clear, perfectly still column.

  Even her mom was frozen in the act of putting a dish in the dishwasher. In fact, she was so perfectly still that she didn’t even look alive.

  Casey gasped in surprise.

  “Mom?” she said. But her mother remained inert, dish in hand.

  Nobody could stay that still!

  “Mom?” she said again, starting to panic. Something was very wrong.

  Casey pulled on her mother’s arm. But it was shockingly hard, like marble. There was no give in her mom’s flesh, like there was when you touched a living person. Instead, it was more like touching metal or stone.

  Casey pulled her hand away, horrified.

  What was happening?

  Next, she tried to push her mom, but she wouldn’t budge.

  “Mom!” Casey shouted. She was startled to notice that her voice was absolutely the only sound.

  Where were the other sounds?

  The wind? The cars?

  The sheer stillness of the world was jolting.

  Okay, Casey thought. What if she touched her mom right on the eye?

  She did. No reaction.

  Okay, Casey breathed. Okay.

  This is bad.

  Maybe her mom was dead. Immediately, Casey pushed this thought away. But she had never heard of anything like this happening before.

  She went to the window and peered down at the street nine floors below.

  It was the same. The people were all stopped. The cars weren’t moving. The trees weren’t rustling. Even the birds in the air were still.

  Casey needed help.

  She went to the front door and pulled on the door handle. But jus
t like her mom, it wouldn’t budge.

  Was everything like this now?

  She twisted on the handle with all her might, and after a moment, it started to give, but sluggishly. She managed to squeeze herself through before the door was open all the way and Casey raced into the hallway, screaming for help.

  But the people there were silent and still as statues.

  There was Mrs. Orlando, their next-door neighbor, and her son Liam. The boy wore a look of utter surprise on his face. He held an ice-cream cone in one hand and apparently had just licked the vanilla scoop a little too hard, as it now hung suspended in air in mid-tumble.

  There was also Julie, the girl down the hall, who had just returned from a walk with her dog, Frankie. Both were motionless as a painting. Frankie looked like he was barking, but upon closer inspection, Casey saw that the dog was in fact snapping at a bee that floated motionless in front of his muzzle.

  Casey tried to pick Frankie up. He was a tiny dog and it ought to be easy. The dog’s fur was stiff and prickly. It felt like steel wool. Though Casey strained with all her strength, she simply could not lift the dog from the ground.

  Dejected, Casey went back to her apartment.

  She reached to pick up the phone. It didn’t seem to want to move for a moment, but as she sort of wiggled it insistently, it slowly came free, just like the door had earlier. She put it to her ear. It was dead.

  She tried dialing 911: Nothing.

  Has something happened to the world? Casey thought.

  Or has something happened to me?

  Okay, Max thought. Don’t panic. Think!

  There were other frozen people on the museum’s front stairs. There was a woman talking on a phone. There was a man eating yogurt.

  And there, just off the man’s shoulder, was an airplane. It hung silently in the sky, not moving, not falling.

  Even planes? Max thought. Really?

  What was happening?

  Was something wrong with Time?

  And if so—why was he not affected by it?

  Max walked through Starland Center in a daze. Before he realized what he was doing, he ran smack into Mr. Blister.

  Max gave an audible yelp and fell backward. But Blister was frozen in time as well. There he stood, a spindly goblin turned to stone. A little bit of spit froth was frozen in the air just in front of Blister’s nasty mouth.