by Tom Leveen
“Isn’t there something in your dad’s book, maybe?”
“We can look. I don’t think he knew this was coming, though. I think he just got as far as figuring he could find the pit, that’s all. I didn’t think we’d go much farther than the first few chambers of the cave, myself.”
I hesitate, rocking on my feet. Selby’s bloodstains mark my jeans in awful five-fingered streaks.
“The thing with Selby,”I say. “Stabbing herself. You’re talking about that being some kind of blood thing, aren’t you. Like a sacrifice.”
“Crossed my mind. Humanity’s history is filled with that kind of thing.”
“It wanted blood? The ark, or the pit, or whatever the hell it is?”
“Maybe. Does it make any less sense than anything else so far?”
“Fair enough.”
A choked, exhausted laugh coughs out of me when I say it. Maybe I’ve already gone crazy, but honestly, it feels like laughing is all there is left to do. Charlie gets caught up in my black comedy, and we both laugh for . . . well, not very long. A couple seconds at most. Still. It’s a small blessing.
I sit down on the edge of the walkway, and Charlie joins me. At some point, our hands have become disentangled. He doesn’t point out that it even happened, so neither do I.
“Get your phone,”I say. “Let’s see what’s going on out there.”
We scan the web for news. It doesn’t take long. Our laughter suddenly feels a million years past.
In just a few minutes, we gather all the bad news we can handle. Parts of Phoenix are being evacuated due to the power plant meltdown. Hospitals in Tucson are being attacked. The local news page we’re on has a live feed going. Police are surrounding the outside of a hospital building, and I catch a glimpse of a stone sign outside of it that reads MATERNITY.
As the horror of that word sinks in, I see, live on TV with I’m sure millions of others, three police cars get razed by green flame and explode, taking several cops with them.
Charlie’s face contracts as we watch the footage. My eyes lose focus as I gaze into middle space and wonder how we could possibly ever make this right.
“Charlie . . . they’re just kids. Children and—”
Charlie stands up fast, almost knocking me off my seat. “I’m going to see Riley. I understand if you don’t want to come. But he’s all we got.”
I rise to my feet too, but slower. Every muscle in my body feels twisted an inch to the left. I’m a lot older than sixteen right then.
“Will you come with me?”Charlie says.
“Wh-what about Selby?”
“What about her? She’s safest here.”
That stuns me. “She’s your girlfriend.”
“Which means I want her to be safe, and it’s safer here.”
“No, I can’t,”I say. “I can’t leave her here, Charlie, I can’t, I won’t do it. She’s coming with us. Those things are headed this way. You saw them going after hospitals. They’ll get here, too.”
Charlie wrestles with my logic for a moment, although I’m not sure “logic”is the right word. But I do know I’m not leaving anyone behind. Not anyone else, I should say.
“Okay,”Charlie says. “Yeah. Let’s get her.”
We go inside and ask the nurse if we can see Selby. She starts explaining that we can’t go in the back, but then Selby and Dr. Kay come out from the side door. Selby moves with stiff, wooden legs and her teeth tightly clenched.
“Let’s go,”she says.
“How is she?”I ask the doctor.
“I explained her options,”Dr. Kay says, clearly not agreeing with the one Selby has chosen. “I strongly recommend getting to a hospital.”
“That’s the plan,”Charlie says. I have the sense to not look surprised at his easy lie.
“Thank you so much,”I say, moving to Selby and slipping her arm over my shoulder.
“Watch for swelling in the abdomen,”Dr. Kay says. “If you push gently anywhere on her stomach area and it hurts when you let go, that’s called rebound pain, and she’ll need immediate care. Keep an eye on her vital signs. She’s got a few pain pills and antibiotics, but they’re not going to last. She needs to get checked out at a hospital as soon as possible. All right?”
“Got it,”I say.
We haven’t even gotten clear of the door before Dr. Kay has joined the nurse at her desk, watching whatever fresh horror plays on the laptop. Charlie and I get Selby into the RV and settled in the bedroom with much huffing and groaning. Her face seems pale, but her breathing is regular.
“How do you feel?”I ask, pulling a sheet over her.
“Like I fucking got stabbed.”
I choose to take her tone as a good sign. I kneel beside the bed.
“I’m not letting anything else happen to you, okay?”
Selby turns her head to look at me, bunching her hair up beneath her on the pillow so it sticks up in the back. I regret saying it, because now that it’s too late, it strikes me as condescending. I brace myself for a Selby trademark insult, maybe something to do with me being a Girl Scout.
“I don’t want to die,”Selby says.
All her characteristic snark is absent. She looks five years younger. Instinctively, I take one of her hands.
“Me either,”I say. “So let’s not.”
The RV engine starts. Charlie pulls out of the parking lot and gets us aimed at the small two-lane highway that will take us toward Dr. Riley’s.
16
Then
* * *
I managed to get Dad out the door and off to the library to start looking for jobs again on Friday morning—a major feat. He promised to let me drag him back to the library next Monday and Wednesday for free career workshops and résumé writing classes. Those were some big improvements, and his job hunt that morning helped settle a lot of the lingering doubts I had about the trip. Now I could focus almost exclusively on not being jealous over Selby Lovecraft.
A big brown and tan RV that looked more like a band’s tour bus showed up at eight a.m. sharp. Charlie climbed out of the side door as the RV idled, and I met him on the front porch.
“Morning,”he said, and smiled. I liked it.
“Howdy. That’s quite a ride.”
“Adventure in style. Are you ready?”
“Yeah. Let me just grab my bags.”
“I’ll do it,”Charlie said, taking a step closer.
“It’s okay.”I grabbed my suitcase and backpack from inside the front door. I didn’t want him to see inside my house. I locked the door behind me.
Charlie opened the side door to the RV and ushered me in. I climbed two short steps and met the cast of whatever insane reality show this was about to become.
“Hi!”said a guy in the driver’s seat. He looked college-aged, with long blond bangs squirting out from under a yellow USC cap. “I’m Alex. You’re Abigail Booth?”
“Yeah. Abby. Hi.”
“Hi!”he said again.
I thought his smile could power half the Vegas strip. Alex struck me as being an athlete of some kind: broad shoulders and muscled calves, making it easy to picture him playing tennis or swimming laps.
“My mom was a big fan of yours,”Alex said. The smile stayed on his face, but dimmed. “Fan of your mom’s, I mean. Sorry we’re meeting like this.”
The person sitting in the shotgun captain’s chair snorted. Alex glanced that way, and his smile turned wry.
“This is Selby Lovecraft,”he said, gesturing. “Sells, can you say hello?”
“Hello,”Selby said without turning the chair. All I could see of her were ankle-high blue Doc Martens and tight black jeans, since her feet were kicked up on the dashboard.
“She’s very happy to meet you,”Alex said.
Charlie said, “Abby, have a seat. Relax.”
I sat down on the couch behind the driver’s seat, and Selby whirled in her chair like some cinematic evil mastermind. Her first order of business was to scowl at me, apparently
for the great sin of sitting beside Charlie, who’d joined me on the couch. She dressed as if she’d seen what I was wearing that day—jeans, Converse, and a short-sleeved top—and put on the exact same thing except dyed black.
“Okay!”Alex said. “Get the party started! We’re moving out, Big C.”
“Uh, ‘big C’ is slang for cancer, you hemorrhoid,”Selby said to Alex over her shoulder, her eyes still lasering me in half.
One minute with Selby convinced me to rethink this trip. Charlie shook his head a little, sending me a Don’t mind her type of look.
“Gosh, you’re charming,”Alex said as he got the big van moving.
I looked through the window and saw Mrs. Brower standing in her front doorway, waving and smiling. I waved back as a million warnings and suggestions for her flew through my head—things she needed to know about Dad, what to look out for, how often she should check in on him.
But I didn’t tell Alex to stop. I’d only be gone a couple days. Dad could survive that long, and Mrs. Brower already had a keen idea of how things were going at our house. If anything strange happened, she’d take care of it. A nurse and psychologist—I couldn’t ask for much more.
So I just waved again, then turned to assess the RV as Alex revved up the engine.
“This is plush,”I said as Alex urged the van toward the freeway.
“I know, right?”Alex said. I hadn’t been talking to him, exactly, but I didn’t mind that he assumed. He made a nice counter to good old Selby.
When I’d compared the RV to a tour bus, I didn’t realize how close I was to the truth. The RV had everything, and everything done nice. Thick beige carpet, oak cabinets, double sink with a purified-water spigot, long white leather couch along the driver’s side, a table for four behind that, bathroom with a shower and tub, and what looked like a queen-size bed in the back. The bedroom even had a ceiling fan. The inside of this thing was more high-end than any given room of my house.
“First time to Arizona?”Alex asked.
“Yeah,”I said. “My dad went when . . . you know. But he had to stay awhile, so he had me stay with a neighbor. Mrs. Brower. She’s great. She makes us cookies. And dinner.”
“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”Charlie asked.
“Sure, yeah, why?”
“You sound nervous.”
I closed my mouth. He was right.
“Yeah,”I said. “I guess I’m a little scared. Not sure of what.”
“Same here,”Alex said. “Hey, we can listen to music or something if you want. Or there’s some audio books.”
“I’m okay,”I said. “I mean, unless you want to.”
Charlie touched my knee. Briefly. Casually. My response inside was anything but. Online classes and Arby’s cashiering didn’t provide a whole lot of romantic possibilities, or at least not the kind I was interested in. Plus, crushing on Charlie long-distance over five years . . . I guess I was more excited to be spending time with him than I’d realized. Selby notwithstanding.
“Let’s get you caught up,”Charlie said. He seemed to not realize the effect his quick touch had had on me. “That way we’re all on the same page when we get to Dr. Riley’s place.”
“Sure, yeah,”I said quickly. “How long’s the drive?”
“Shouldn’t be more than eight hours. We’ll try to push through to Phoenix before stopping, so that’s five. Then it’s another couple hours or so to Riley’s.”
“Are we sleeping in the RV?”
“We could if we had to,”Charlie said. “But we’ve got a hotel near Riley’s house.”
“When do we go to the cave?”
“First thing tomorrow.”Charlie reached over the built-in seats surrounding the table, and picked up a backpack. He pulled his father’s book from it and set it on his lap. “So I’ve been going through this. Where’d you find it?”
Selby lifted her chin, trying to see what we were looking at without actually getting up from her chair. Alex cast a quick glance back at us too.
“In my mom’s dresser. I don’t know when he gave it to her.”
“That was a good book,”Selby said. “A little pedestrian sometimes. Solid research, though.”
Charlie and I both looked at her. Selby smirked right back, unfazed.
“What is it?”Alex called back. “What’s going on, what’d I miss?”
“It’s the book my dad wrote before they went missing,”Charlie said, dismissing Selby’s snark. “Basically it’s about how things we consider supernatural are really part of thousands of years of brain evolution. It explains the science behind our belief in mythology and legend. Except something happened.”
Selby’s eyes narrowed. “Charlie, come on.”
“Alex didn’t get a chance to hear this,”Charlie said—a bit too patiently, I thought. “Dad changed his mind. Or was in the process of changing it.”
My eyes darted to the cover, to the big black letters Dr. Prinn had scrawled across the crossed-out title. Wrong.
“I talked to some people at the network, and they said Dad found something. Or thought he found something.”
“Something supernatural, you mean,”Alex said.
“Oh Jesus, here we go,”Selby said with a monumental eye roll. She could have powered the other half of Vegas with it.
Personally, my skepticism faded around the edges as Charlie spoke. It was a dizzying tension to live with—what Mom has always taught me versus my deepest fears about what had happened to her. “Work the problem,”she’d say when I had a tough word problem in math. “What’s the logical thing?”she’d say when I asked her about things like ghosts or the power of prayer. When her mother had a heart attack a few years before the show began, she’d reacted with calm, purposeful steps while Dad and I freaked. I tried hard to be more like her these days.
Charlie turned more pages in the book, examining his father’s handwriting as he narrated. “Dad’s theory was that religious faiths, from the Greek and Roman pantheons to modern-day cults, were an evolutionary meme, with all the same features you’d find in the evolution of an animal. Mutations, variations, that kind of thing. He wasn’t the first person to come up with it, but his approach was based in religious anthropology, all the things he’d been studying his whole career. Basically, it tries to disprove every belief out there.”
“Not that that’s a challenge,”Selby said, swinging her chair left and right.
I thought I saw Charlie tense a bit as he said, “Yeah, well, he was really good at it. Okay?”
Selby sighed theatrically and began smacking a wrapped pack of cigarettes on her hand.
Just how long had this relationship been going on? They were either on the verge of a breakup, or were like some old married couple. I couldn’t tell which. I only knew which one I hoped for.
“Do not smoke in here,”Alex warned Selby.
“I’m not,”Selby said. “God.”Then she muttered, “Should’ve had one when we stopped.”
“So what’s the book got to do with the cave?”I asked. “I mean, Charlie . . . you don’t actually think they’re alive, do you?”
Charlie’s face went in twelve different directions, like I’d asked him if God could make a rock so big he couldn’t lift it.
“Probably not,”he said.
“Probably not?”
“I’ll be honest. If I had some kind of tangible proof, I’d obviously be taking it to the cops. But what I’ve got and what I think we’ll find isn’t the sort of thing that gets the attention of detectives.”
“Oh, God,”Selby said, missing her own irony. “They’re not alive, just say it. It’s certifiably insane. Charlie’s dad went crazy, no offense, and it got your families killed, the end.”
Neatly ignoring Selby, Charlie said, “When I talked to some of Dad’s friends at the university, a couple said that Dad had a . . . an experience, I guess.”
“On the road to Damascus,”Selby said, rolling her eyes so hard that her entire head rolled with them.
&n
bsp; “The what?”I said.
“It’s a Biblical reference,”Alex said. I really preferred his voice to Selby’s. “It’s where Saul became the apostle Paul in the New Testament. In Acts.”
To Selby, I said, “You read the Bible?”
Alex laughed and said, “Right? Surprised she wasn’t hit by lightning!”
Selby, though, merely punctuated her response with one last smack of the cigarettes against her palm and said, “It is wise to know the ways of one’s enemies.”
Wow. That was brutal. To Charlie, I said, “So he, what, found God or something?”
“Something,”Charlie said. “I’m not sure what to make of it all. I’m hoping Dr. Riley can clear some of it up for us.”
“What do you think happened, Abby?”Alex asked. “To our parents. Just out of curiosity.”
Charlie and Selby both turned to watch me. It felt like a trial. I took my time before answering.
“I think our parents are dead. But sometimes, I also . . . I feel like it’s not that simple. I don’t believe there’s any more to it than that . . . but I’m afraid there is. I don’t know what that might be. But it’s something bad. I know my mom didn’t get to ride off into the sunset, if that means what I think it does.”
“A happy ending,”Charlie said. “The bad guys lose, the good guys win, and there’s always tomorrow.”
“Yeah. She didn’t get that.”I turned to Alex. “What about you? What’s your theory?”
Alex drew his shoulders up for a long moment before letting them drop. “I’m not sure either. I know that I’m looking for a lot of things, not just my mom. And . . . that I guess I’m hoping to find some of them on this trip.”
“You won’t find any of them in a mythology book,”Selby grumbled, kicking her feet up on the center console. “Whether that’s Charlie’s dad’s, or any other, by which, of course, I mean the Bible, the Torah, the—”
“You know, Sells,”Alex interrupted, “you say you’re a humanist—”
“Damn right!”
“But you don’t treat people like human beings. It weakens your case. Just an FYI.”
That settled Selby down for a second, and I liked Alex more and more.