by Mark Jeffrey
Eerily, the craft made no sound as they continued on their way.
When they were far enough in the distance, Max jumped up. “Let’s go!”
Ian blinked. “Let’s go where?”
“We’re going to follow them,” Max said, like this should be obvious.
“What? Are you bloody mental? We just got lucky that they didn’t see us! I’m not—”
“Ian. We have to follow them. They’re the key to undoing the Pocket!” Max shot a nervous glance at the receding light. “And we have to go now! You coming?”
“Well, I—”
Max blasted off in a whoosh blur.
“He’s right,” Casey said to Ian. “We have to go now, before we lose them. We might not get another chance.” Ian stared like she’d lost her mind, too, as she whooshed after Max.
Ian sighed. For several moments, he stopped and pondered. If I stay here, I’m alone. But if I follow, I’m actually running toward a UFO.
“They’ve both gone starkers,” Ian muttered. “Com-pletely mental.”
Throwing his arms up, Ian followed.
The chase led to a sun-blasted farmhouse. It clung to a vast cracked plain, the only sign of civilization in this Texan furnace.
The three UFOs perched like brilliant suns on a nearby field. Yellow grass rippled slightly, but did not burn.
Several figures had disembarked. They headed out across the field, toward the farmhouse. They wore some sort of highly reflective gold clothing that looked like a cross between metal and fabric.
But they were—or at least, they seemed to be—human.
Max, Casey, and Ian lay low on the ground, hidden only by semidarkness and tall grass.
Ian whispered, “See? Human-ish. Just like I said. Although, of course, they’re not human.”
Casey shifted uncomfortably on her stomach.
“Case, quit squirming,” Max whispered. “And Ian—that doesn’t prove that Siren is an alien.”
“No, but that does.”
Max followed Ian’s pointing finger.
A man had just exited one of the UFOs. He carried a cane tipped with a bloodred ruby. His pale, crosshatch-scarred skin was instantly recognizable to Max.
Johnny Siren.
Max gasped. “It’s him! He’s actually here!”
“Yes. But why?” Ian said. “What would Siren want with an old beat-up farmhouse?”
The threesome felt a zing of panic as one of Siren’s men shouted.
“Stop! There’s something surrounding the house.”
“What is it?” Siren asked.
The man peered through a round blue gem.
“I can see writing . . . hieroglyphs . . . floating in the air. It’s definitely Niburian.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a barrier. A nam-shub.”
Siren shrank back. “You will have to disable it somehow. The Pendant may be—”
The man cut him off. “Oh, that won’t be necessary, sir. We’re perfectly safe. This particular nam-shub has been . . . tuned. It’s aimed at a specific person.”
Siren blinked. “Who?”
“I’m not sure. It’s roughly fifty years old. Whoever put it here is long gone—and probably so is whoever they were trying to keep out.”
Siren studied the house with a new intensity. “Fifty years ago, you say?”
“Yes,” the man said. “Why? Does that mean something to you?”
“Perhaps . . . ,” Siren replied, his eyes narrowing now. “Will it affect us? Can we safely enter the house?”
“Sure. We’ll be fine. It won’t touch us.”
At that, something like glee filled Siren’s face. He snapped his fingers and pointed toward the house. The men converged and entered.
“What are they doing?” Max asked.
As they watched, dark shapes darted behind the windows. Menacing silhouettes turned the place upside down, searching for something.
Ian had been right!
The minutes dragged on.
“What’s taking them so long?” Casey asked.
“Yeah,” Ian agreed. “I didn’t think you could actually stop time inside stopped time. But I think sandpaper-face has managed it.”
“Quiet!” Max whispered. “He’s coming this way!”
With a start, Ian and Casey looked up.
Max was right. Siren was strolling, deep in thought. And his feet were aimed right at them.
“What do we do?” Casey asked. “Whoosh?”
“No,” Max snapped. “He’ll see us.”
“Well, we can’t stay here,” Ian rasped. “He’s headed this way!”
Think, Max panted to himself. Painful memories of when he was homeless seeped into his mind. He knew there were valuable experiences from those days as well. For example, he knew how to hide. And the near dark conditions of the eclipse were perfect.
“Okay,” Max said. “Listen to me. We have to cover our skin. It’s the easiest thing to spot in the dark. Pull your hands up into your sleeves. And put your face down in the ground. Cover it up. If you do that, he probably won’t see you.
“You’ll be tempted to look up. But you can’t. No matter what you hear, you can’t look up.”
Ian began, “What if—”
“Just . . . trust me. I know what I’m talking about!” Max whispered, pulling his own hands into his sleeves. Then he pulled his hoodie over his head. “Casey,” Max said, motioning for her to do the same. “Your hair.”
Casey’s gaze drifted up as she realized that her blond hair was a beacon in the dark.
Max turned to Ian. “You too. Especially you, with that pale English skin.”
“Hey! You—” Max pulled Ian’s hood over his head and pushed him down. And then, after checking on Casey, Max hid his own face.
The crunch of Siren’s feet on time-frozen grass grew closer.
Max sneaked a peek through the crack between his hoodie and the ground.
It was the iron cane that Max saw first. It probed the ground a few feet ahead of Siren, as though looking for land mines. The footsteps were slow, deliberate.
Siren was just a few feet away now.
He stopped.
Max breathed slowly. The silence of the Pocket wasn’t helping.
Was Siren staring down at the three of them right now?
There was no way to know.
But Max knew that as long as they didn’t move, Siren would have a hard time spotting them. Two cops had once chased Max into a grassy field just like this one and he’d dropped and covered up, like they were doing now. The cops had almost stepped on him while swinging flashlights into the surrounding trees, but they never saw him. In the end, they’d been forced to give up.
And now, Siren did the same. His feet turned. The cane swung back toward the house.
Then: disaster. Casey sniffled.
Siren’s cane swung back, on alert.
Casey!
For a moment Max considered jumping Siren. There was a stone nearby. He could grab it, whoosh at Siren, maybe knock him out . . .
“I heard you,” Siren said, his thick accent twirling the r. “Who is there?”
Then, Siren whirled. But in the wrong direction. “Aha! There you are!” Siren stabbed his cane into the grass in several places.
Max prayed Casey and Ian were smart enough to keep silent. Siren was trying to trick them: He hadn’t seen anything—yet.
“Mr. Siren!” a voice yelled from the farmhouse.
Siren stood up straight, annoyed. Suspicion lined his frame. But he turned toward the house anyway. “Yes! What is it?”
“Sir. We didn’t find it. But we did find something else that may interest you.”
Siren snarled and started back toward the house.
As soon as he was far enough away, Max sat up.
“Okay. He’s gone.”
Casey and Ian slowly sat up as well, fear dancing in their eyes.
“That was not fun at all,” Ian whispered.
/> Casey nodded in agreement.
The man who had called Siren over handed him a book. Siren opened it and read, a look of curiosity on his mottled face.
“But to whom does this refer, Mr. Siren?” the man asked. “Do you know?”
“It doesn’t matter now.” Siren dropped the book to the ground. He took one last look around and said, “Let’s go. Get everyone into the Sky Chambers. Back to New York.”
Chapter 12
The Mystery of Mr. E
Within moments, the Sky Chambers were in the air. Beams of saturated reds, yellows, and purples blasted down from the sky. It was light so thick and heavy that it seemed capable of burning through the ground.
When the lights were mere pinpricks in the distance, Max, Casey, and Ian rose and approached the farmhouse.
“We should have a look,” Max said. “To see what’s so interesting.”
Max opened the screen door. The rusty spring groaned. Max stepped inside.
But as soon as he did this, the air buzzed tangibly. There was a humming sound, like a heavy magnet had just been switched on.
Then it stopped.
Max promptly turned around and walked out of the house. With no explanation or eye contact, he strode between Casey and Ian. He didn’t seem to notice them at all.
Ian and Casey looked at each other, puzzled.
But Max started to jog, like he was getting ready to whoosh away.
Something was wrong.
“Max!” Casey called out.
Max jumped and spun around, hand on his chest. “Casey! You gave me a heart attack. What’s up?”
Casey bounded down the stairs and walked over to him. “What’s up? What’s up? You tell us!”
“What?” Max asked, looking genuinely baffled.
“You went inside and then this—I don’t know, this buzzing sound hit you and you just started walking away! What happened?”
“Went inside? What do you mean?”
“Yeah! You went inside the house!”
“What house?”
“That house!” Casey yelled, pointing.
Max looked up at the house and it was like he was seeing it for the first time. “Whoa . . . a farmhouse.”
“Yeah, we got that part, Max. You just went inside to check it out. You don’t remember that?”
“I was? Just now?”
“Yes!” Casey and Ian said at the same time.
“Okay! Geez! Relax, will you?”
“Max,” Ian said soberly. “You just got zapped by something. It made you turn around and leave the house just as soon as you entered it. And now, you don’t even remember doing that?”
Max frowned. “Are you serious? No, I don’t remember that at all.”
Ian nodded slowly again. “We ought to figure this out, mate.”
“Should I try going inside again?” Max asked.
“No,” Ian answered. “I don’t think so. Siren’s guy said the thing around the house was tuned at one person. And after what just happened, I think that one person is you, Max.”
“Me?” Max looked doubtful. “What are you talking about? Why would—”
“You asked me to trust you,” Ian said. “Back there, when Siren was nosing around. And I did. So now you trust me, okay?”
Slowly, Max nodded.
“Okay. I think Casey or I should try going inside. And I think it should be me.”
“What?” Casey said. “Why you? Why couldn’t I—”
But Ian cut her off. “No. Someone has to keep an eye on Max. Make sure he doesn’t do anything else . . . weird.” Ian leaned in so that only Casey could hear him. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but you’ve been with him longer. He trusts you. I think he’ll listen to you more than me.”
Reluctantly, Casey nodded.
Screwing up his courage, Ian walked toward the house. “I swear to God, if I end up getting chased by bloody wolves again . . .”
He put his hand on the screen door, scrunched up his face, and walked through. He stood in the front room, waiting for the magnetic sound to whump him.
But nothing happened.
“I’m okay!” Ian yelled. “I’m going to have a look around!”
The room was filled with old furniture thrown around. Ian found a half crunched, water powered rocket toy, a baseball glove, and a strange plastic device with a compass and several lenses on it that said “TEN-IN-ONE!”
Magazines littered the floor: Life, Time, Boy’s Life, Highlights.
With a start, Ian realized that they were all June 1962 issues.
What was it Siren’s man said about the nam-shub thing? . . . it’s roughly fifty years old. Whoever put it here is long gone . . .
The dates matched. What did that mean?
A sound startled Ian and he looked up.
Casey had stepped through the door.
“Hey,” he said. “I thought you were watching—”
“Max is fine,” Casey said. “And I want to see what’s in here, too.” With that, she started exploring the house.
She wandered up the staircase. There were several family portraits along the wall, covered in a hearty layer of dust. Casey started to wipe one off, then shrieked.
Ian came running, while outside the house, Max danced around, trying to see in the windows, “What? What happened?”
Casey pointed to the picture, unable to speak.
There, in the portrait, unmistakably, was Max.
He was dressed as boys did in the early 1960s. His hair was severely parted on one side and slicked down with some sort of gel. A crisp white-collared shirt was deftly buttoned to the neck, cradling a bow tie. Over this he wore a blue blazer. The picture had faded quite a bit over time, but there was no doubt: This was Max.
For some reason, Casey thought of the impossible number of scars on Max’s rib cage and stomach.
There was an elderly couple in the portrait posing with Max as though they were his parents or grandparents.
“But . . . that can’t be Max,” Ian muttered. “That’s impossible.”
Quickly, Casey wiped off more pictures with her hoodie sleeve. And there again: Max, the same age, with the same couple.
Except the couple was younger in each successive picture.
In the earliest one, at the very top of the stairs, the couple seemed very young indeed. The black-and-white picture looked as though it had been taken in the ’30s.
But Max didn’t age at all from shot to shot. He appeared to be about twelve in all of them. In fact, he looked almost identical to how he did now.
Over a period of decades, Max did not grow older. Just like Johnny Siren.
“Hello? Ian! Casey! What’s going on? Are you all right?”
Ian and Casey looked at each other, not knowing what to say. Finally Ian yelled, “It’s okay, Max! Casey just got spooked by . . . a rat.”
As soon as he said it, he cringed at the lie.
There were no rats in the Pocket.
“What are you talking about, Ian?” Suspicion soaked Max’s words.
“We have to tell him,” Ian said to Casey. Mutely, she nodded. Of course they did.
Ian and Casey took the pictures off the wall and carried them outside.
Max waited, hands on his hips.
“Max . . . ,” Ian said. “We found these inside.”
Wordlessly, he handed the first picture to Max.
Wild-eyed, Max stared at the picture for a long moment. One after the other, he took the remaining pictures from Ian. He ran his fingers over each, hardly believing what he was seeing.
Were these people his parents?
Had he, Max Quick, once lived in this very house?
“If that is you, Max, in those pictures,” Ian said softly, “then you can’t be human. You have to be like . . . Johnny Siren. You have to be one of them. An alien. You do know that, don’t you?”
No! That couldn’t be true!
In 1912 . . . I used to be your best friend . . . when we were
kids, back in New York . . .
But how could he know that? He didn’t recall anything before being homeless in Starland . . .
Meanwhile, Casey had wandered over to the book Johnny Siren had dropped to the ground. It was old and leather bound. She picked it up and began reading. But within moments, she broke down into a full fit of sobbing.
Max wrenched himself out of his internal struggle. “Casey,” he said gently. “What is it? Did Siren really scare you that much?”
But Casey wouldn’t answer. “I don’t—want—to—talk—right now,” she choked out, throat full of tears. Instead, she thrust the book into Max’s hands. “Here,” she said without any further explanation.
“What’s this?” Max asked. A stab of foreboding filled his heart with ice.
Half in a trance, he opened the book and read from the first page:
The Dff Hess and Romey Bloom
e
April 8, 1932
Today is the happiest day of our lives. Today, we have adopted a boy, a son, into our family.
His name is Max. Max Quick. He remembers his name, but sadly, not much else. That doesn’t matter to us, though: He’s ours now.
He’s older than I would have liked, the adoption agency says he’s twelve, but there are compensations, I daresay: He is a sweetheart and very, very smart. I shouldn’t be surprised if he grows up to win the Nobel Prize. (But of course all mothers say that about their sons.) Like I said, he’s suffered a memory loss of some kind, and he’s been roaming the streets hungry for who knows how long, poor dear. Maybe it will come back to him in time. But we will give him a new home, a new life, and he will grow up proud and strong and we will love him very, very much. . . .
Max flipped forward, dumbfounded, reading snippets at random:
September 12, 1938
. . . He isn’t growing up. It’s like he isn’t getting any older. The doctors don’t know why . . . he should be past his eighteenth birthday by now, but he hasn’t grown a hair. I’m worried . . .
July 20, 1946
. . . the third time we’ve had to move. The neighbors just get too curious and start noticing him, pointing at us and him, whispering and talking about him. We don’t want someone taking him away, studying him, dissecting him. We can’t let that happen. He may be a very strange little boy in his way, but he’s ours and we love him dearly . . .