Dad was weeping and moaning piteously, pounding his fists against his son’s chest and shoulders. To Jax, this was almost as upsetting as the near-miss with the train. He had never seen his father so much as sniffle with emotion, much less fall completely to pieces.
A crowd of onlookers was beginning to gather around them, but Jax barely noticed.
Braintree hustled Mrs. Opus over to her husband and son. Mom was weeping, and Dad’s face was a mask of horror.
“What’s wrong with them?” Jax asked.
“They’re experiencing what it is to give up your life,” Braintree whispered.
“But they’re fine …” Jax protested. He noticed a bloody scrape on his father’s chin. It was probably painful.
But imagine the damage if I hadn’t done it!
The train shuddered to a stop and its doors opened. Passengers got on and off, and the curious around them dispersed. One man offered to dial 9-1-1. He seemed relieved, though, when Braintree assured him there was no need.
The Opuses were still shaken, but allowed themselves to be seated side by side on a bench.
“Shouldn’t we get them out of here?” Jax intoned anxiously. “How do we know they won’t just try to jump in front of the next train?”
“They’re not in danger anymore,” the head sandman said. “They’ve complied with the suggestion.”
“Are you sure?” Jax probed. “We stopped them at the last minute.”
“That’s exactly why it had to be at the last minute. A suggestion is like a hypnotic contract. To fulfill the contract, they were required to throw themselves off the platform in front of a train. They did that. The fact that we pulled them back is irrelevant. They’re free.”
With the imminent crisis past, Jax experienced a surge of relief accompanied by a wallop of blowback that nearly knocked him over.
I guess that’s the antidote, he thought with a pained half smile. When you’re scared out of your wits, you don’t notice how miserable you are.
The other platform began to rumble and the screeching roar signaled the arrival of the uptown express. The noise seemed to startle the Opuses back to themselves. Despite Braintree’s assurances, Jax was mightily thrilled that his parents didn’t try to rush over to the opposite track for another shot at Mako’s command.
Mr. Opus shook himself like a wet dog. “What are we doing in the subway? We have a Bentley!”
“They’re cleaning it, Dad,” Jax reminded him. “The barf, remember?”
“We couldn’t find you at the hospital,” Mrs. Opus recalled. “And you met us at home with that awful man who attacked your father —”
“Farmer Ponytail!” her husband added.
Braintree stepped forward. “I’m still here.”
“His name is Axel Braintree, and he just saved your lives — both of you,” Jax informed them.
“There are a lot of things you have to know,” said the old man. “Let’s find a place we can talk.”
At a bagel shop near the subway station, the Opuses listened to the story, their expressions growing more flabbergasted and awestruck with each new detail. Jax’s power of remote hypnotism; the deadly suggestion to ensure his cooperation; the video virus; the storm of blowback that still assaulted their son; and, most appalling of all, Mako’s scheme to plant his puppet in the Oval Office.
“I — I can’t believe it,” Mr. Opus managed faintly. “Dr. Elias Mako has devoted his life to New York City education and is an inspiration to every single one of us!”
“No, he’s not,” Jax said gently. “He bent you to think that — probably while he was implanting the suggestion to make you jump in front of a train. He’s a bad guy, Dad. I mean, like, Voldemort bad.”
His mother was nearly as pale as her son, teeth chattering against her heavy coffee mug. “We have to go to the police,” she insisted. “If what you say is true, someone just tried to murder us!”
“No police!” her husband said sharply. “Maybe I’ve tried to forget my whole childhood, but if there’s one thing I remember from my parents, it’s this: Never mention hypnotism to the authorities. Too many Opuses already have spent their lives in straitjackets and rubber rooms.”
“Besides,” Jax added, “the mayor and the police commissioner are both on Mako’s wall of shame. They’re probably as much under his thumb as Senator Douglas.”
“So we just do nothing?” she demanded in outrage. “We nearly died! Our son is stumbling around like he’s got the plague! Someone is trying to hijack our entire political system!”
The fourth person at the table, the president of the Sandman’s Guild, chewed thoughtfully on a whole-wheat raisin bagel. “There is one thing we might be able to do.” The others regarded him expectantly. “Mako controls Trey Douglas through mesmerism. But the senator would be just as vulnerable to any sandman, especially one as powerful as Jax.”
Jax blinked. “You think I can out-hypnotize Mako and take Douglas away from him?”
“Well,” Braintree replied, “it’s not as simple as that —”
“You bet it’s not!” Jax exclaimed. “I tried to bend Mako once, and he wrecked me!”
“That’s to be expected,” the old man assured him. “You only learned what you can do a matter of months ago; he’s been developing and honing his skills for decades. Look no further than your ability to hypnotize remotely to understand the extent of your power. You are very large potatoes.”
Jax was bitter. “Every week, you get up in your Laundromat and preach about resisting the temptation to hypnotize, but I have to go out and bend a US senator?”
“That’s because you are unique among our kind, Jackson Opus,” Braintree replied readily. “Most sandmen your age would be mesmerizing teachers and prom dates or getting into movies without paying. But you honestly have no interest in personal gain. Your talent is unequaled, and so are you.”
“And what a rich reward I’m getting for it,” Jax added sarcastically. “Enough blowback to put me in the hospital, and an evil genius gunning for my parents.”
“Greatness is a burden,” the old man acknowledged. “I wish I could do this for you but, unlike you, I can’t be trusted with vast power. My experience with the Department of Corrections is proof of that. I can only use my skill for a limited time before the world begins to resemble a fabulous mall where all the price tags read free. If I hypnotize Trey Douglas, how do I know I could resist the temptation to be just as bad as Mako? You alone can be relied upon to do the right thing — to bend the senator and compel him to drop out of the race.”
Monica Opus had heard enough. “If Elias Mako is going to be there, I don’t want Jax anywhere near the place. That man has seen the last of our family. I don’t care if he gets a pink poodle elected president! He’s never going to have the chance to hurt us again!”
“That garbage barge is already loading in Yonkers,” the head sandman said gravely. “Mako will need Jax again for the general election in the fall, and threatening you two will still be the best way to make him cooperate. Our only hope is to put a stop to it tonight.”
“Now just one minute,” Mr. Opus spoke up. “I know a lot of these hotshot political types from the dealership. They don’t even go to the bathroom without an entourage. Now that Douglas has clinched the nomination, he’ll have Secret Service, too. No one’s going to be able to get near him.”
Braintree nodded reluctantly. “I hate to break my own rules. But this is going to take hypnotism.”
“You’re talking about a twelve-year-old kid!” Jax’s father persisted. “Even if he’s got you helping him, there’s no way he could get around all that security.”
The old man produced his cell phone and scrolled through a very full contact list. “Luckily, I happen to know a lot of very frustrated sandmen who would jump at the chance to use their talents for a worthy cause. And if a couple of wallets go missing, or the occasional Rolex, it’s a small price to pay for saving our democracy.”
Senator Douglas�
��s press conference was scheduled for nine o’clock that night. It was very big news, since his enormous win in New York State gave him more than enough delegates to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination. All TV stations were covering his speech live. The street in front of the Hotel Galaxy was a parking lot of network news trucks. Reporters spoke into microphones, setting up the mammoth event. At every entrance, dark-suited watchful men spoke into headsets, panning the crowd of thousands surrounding the building.
A half hour before, the nominee himself had arrived at the hotel in a stretch limo with bulletproof glass. Senator Douglas was accompanied by his family, his closest campaign advisors, and a tall hawk-nosed man who was recognized by few in the crowd. The TV stations identified him as the director of a New York−based institute known as Sentia. Name: Elias Mako.
“Look at him,” muttered Axel Braintree at the back of the crowd. He turned to Ivan Marcinko, the disgraced electronics salesman. “Do you see what happens when hypnotism and blind ambition are allowed to mix?”
“Doesn’t seem so bad to me,” Marcinko commented. “He’s a big shot being chauffeured around in a fancy car.”
“Not bad for a Cadillac, I guess,” Mr. Opus began. “We do an elegant stretch with —” He stopped himself abruptly. He wasn’t a Bentley representative tonight. The next few hours could very well determine the Opuses’ future, including whether they lived or died. Nothing could be more serious than that.
The high stakes were certainly getting to Monica Opus. She was a strong woman and a no-nonsense person. As a chiropractor, she was used to being able to look at an X-ray and know exactly what needed to be done — a spinal adjustment, for example. Before this roller-coaster ride, she’d never even heard of the great hypnotist bloodlines, much less realized that she was descended from one and had married into another. That her family was in danger was difficult enough; the notion that their fate was bound up in a paranormal mental power she couldn’t begin to imagine was almost impossible for her to accept.
She turned to Jax. “Where are all the sandmen? You said there was a whole guild.”
Only Marcinko and tall Evelyn Lolis, the dethroned beauty queen, had arrived so far.
“They’ll be here, Mom.” Jax wished he could be as confident as Braintree, who seemed totally unfazed by the fact that his hypnotist army hadn’t shown up yet.
One positive note: Jax was almost himself again. As soon as voting ended for the New York primary, Dr. Mako must have pulled the plug on the video virus. The flood of blowback was already down to a trickle. And while Jax still grappled with a few random images, it was a breeze compared with what he’d endured over the past week. In a couple of days, the self-erasing virus would likely disappear from the Internet, and he would be back to normal.
If there’s such a thing as normal for me after tonight.
But all things considered, he felt pretty good. Actually, what he really felt was hungry. With the headaches and nausea gone, his appetite was coming back with a vengeance.
Too bad they’re not holding this press conference in a steak house!
Jax checked his phone. There was a text from Tommy: Where are you, man? The hospital says you ran out on the bill! What gives?
It was eight forty. Security was already letting Douglas’s campaign workers into the ballroom. Where were the sandmen?
And then they began to arrive, from subway entrances, off buses, out of taxicabs. They parked their cars, chained up their bikes, and hefted skateboards under their arms. They were all ages, shapes, and sizes. Some wore business suits, others ripped jeans and faded T-shirts. One was clad in the robes and sandals of a Franciscan friar, complete with a tonsured head. As a group, there was nothing to differentiate the newcomers from anyone else in the crowd. Yet Jax would have been able to pick them out in a ninety-thousand-seat stadium. They had what could only be described as that look. It was a mixture of confidence and secrecy, with just a dash of devil-may-care. Or maybe it was the fact that they studiously avoided looking anyone straight in the eye.
The throng undulated around them as they converged on Axel Braintree. How many were there? At first, Jax counted a dozen. But, no, they kept coming. Mr. and Mrs. Opus watched as the odd assortment of characters reported in. There must have been at least thirty of them. Soon Braintree stood at the center of a motley collection of individuals waiting for his instructions.
“These are the hypnotists we’re depending on to save us?” Mrs. Opus hissed. “They’re straight out of the cantina scene in Star Wars!”
“You should have seen my parents’ wedding album,” her husband told her.
“You never showed it to me.”
He was triumphant. “Exactly.”
With a pleased expression, Braintree briefed his troops on the operation to rescue American democracy. “How about this turnout?” he boasted. “If you’d show this kind of effort coming to meetings, we’d have a lot more satisfied parole officers in this city.”
There was a half annoyed, half ashamed murmur from the sandmen, and a few of them looked at their watches. So Braintree soldiered on. “Security will be very tight. Don’t be overconfident. This is the Secret Service. If you’ve never hypnotized through sunglasses before, it can be tricky, since you can’t be sure the subject is looking at you. And remember, just because you’ve bent one agent doesn’t mean his partner won’t come after you.
“The goal is to get Jax close enough to hypnotize Trey Douglas before he makes his acceptance speech,” the old man continued. “But, obviously, any of you who gets a crack at the senator should take it. Keep the suggestion simple: I’m happy to get the nomination. Thanks but no thanks. I’m dropping out of the race. Don’t get fancy. Mako’s had his hooks in this guy for years, so who knows what mesmeric safeguards could be built in. I also want two sandmen on Ashton and Monica —”
“Sandpersons,” Lolis interrupted the guild president.
“Thanks, Evelyn. That’ll be your job, yours and — yes — Ivan’s. Mako can’t know they’re here. He’s already tried to hurt them once.”
The doors opened and security began to usher the spectators inside, passing each one through a metal detector.
“There’s not going to be room for all these people,” Jax observed nervously. “What if we don’t get in?”
Braintree smiled patiently. “Obviously, that’s not going to be a problem for us.”
It was impressive to watch the sandmen operate. As they swarmed toward the doors, regular people backed off to let them pass. When the Franciscan friar was pulled aside by one security man, a quick face-to-face changed the agent’s mind. There was no question that Braintree’s troops were hypnotizing their way inside with an almost military precision.
As Jax stepped through the metal detector, he became aware that four sandmen were surrounding him, clearing his path to the ballroom. The lobby was an atrium, soaring fourteen stories high, framed by stripes of mezzanines on three sides and, over the magnificent entrance, acres of diaphanous gold drapery covering, but not obscuring, a wall of windows. He looked around, trying to catch a glimpse of his parents. He couldn’t see them, and hoped this was because Lolis and Marcinko were keeping them safely back and out of sight.
His momentum carried him through the magnificent French doors and into the ballroom, where a jubilant crowd was celebrating the New York primary victory that had clinched the nomination for their man. Trey Douglas signs were everywhere, splashed across the walls, and waved and carried by supporters. Jax craned his neck, peering over heads, placards, flashing cameras, and microphones. The stage was wrapped with red, white, and blue bunting. It was empty at the moment, but chairs had been set up flanking a podium, complete with a teleprompter.
As they approached the front, the crowd grew louder and more raucous, tightening in density as everyone pushed forward. Progress became more difficult, and Jax’s escorts began hypnotizing audience members to step aside. Jax couldn’t help noticing sandman William Durbin removing
a fat wallet from an onlooker’s breast pocket as he advanced Jax another space. He was about to say something when he realized that the crisis of the moment far outweighed a single case of minor thievery. A few feet ahead, a woman’s gold bracelet disappeared under the friar’s rough brown robes. Okay, several cases of thievery, some of them not so minor. Braintree was watching from near the back, frowning his disapproval. The old man had been right, Jax reflected. The sandmen needed all the meetings they could get to.
There was a roar of excitement as the platform party filed onto the stage and took their seats. Jax ducked his head behind Durbin’s broad shoulders. There was Mako, right in the middle of everything. But … where was Trey Douglas? Surely the nominee-to-be wasn’t planning to sit out his own victory celebration.
Durbin read his mind. “The big cheese never comes out till the last minute. Haven’t you ever heard of a grand entrance?” He took advantage of the crowd’s distraction to help himself to another wallet.
“Cut it out!” Jax breathed.
Shamefaced, the sandman slipped the billfold back into the satchel it had come from.
Durbin was right about the program. The order of business seemed to be to rev the spectators up to fever pitch before the man of the hour showed his face. Douglas’s campaign manager got the ball rolling, before handing over the podium to a couple of government bigwigs, who passed the baton to the candidate’s wife and his two stalwart sons. By this time, the energy level in the ballroom threatened to blow the roof clean off the building. People were bouncing up and down, cheering, dancing, and waving their arms. What they weren’t doing was looking into the eyes of the sandmen who were hypnotizing their way to the front, bearing Jax with them.
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