by B. B. Ullman
“Mr. Wagner, is Mrs. Wagner in the house?” Lars called.
“Yes, she’s sleeping!” he hissed. “And I want her to keep sleeping.”
“Where’s Albert?” I asked.
“I haven’t seen him since you called your mom,” Brit said.
There was a flash of a memo that appeared in my head. For a half second I saw red spiders swarming on a dirty plaid hat. The sense that came with it was one of danger, and something like . . . tragedy. Now it was panic that twisted my gut.
“Albert?” I called. I ran to his room. “He’s not in here!”
“Check the bathroom,” Brit said.
BOOM! It was a gunshot, all right. It came from the woods, I was sure.
“He’s not in the bathroom!”
I hurried through Meemaw’s room and hurtled off the back porch, slogging through the deep snow that filled our backyard. I was running as fast as I could.
“Albert!” I called.
BOOM! The gun cracked again.
Night had fallen, clear and crisp. The light from the porch was reflecting off the snow. It looked like a Christmas card, but it didn’t feel that way. I entered the woods, straining my eyes to find Mr. Shinn. I yelled out even though I couldn’t see him. “Mr. Shinn, quit shooting! You’ve got neighbors, for Chrissake!”
“Stay away!” the old man bellowed. “Albert, you get your butt back home and don’t you come out here again.” He sounded angry, desperate.
I saw Albert’s unmoving silhouette on the trail, and I realized with dreadful clarity that the reason I could see my brother so well was because of the backdrop of glowing, red mist. The dangerous cloud had grown from a basketball shape to the size of a car, and whatever bad vibe the mist was spewing was already making me sick.
“Mr. Shinn, please quit shooting,” I begged. “You might hurt Albert!”
Albert memoed for me to GO HOME.
Right, like I would leave him. He looked so small standing there, backlit by the broiling red.
“I know where I’m aiming,” Mr. Shinn shouted—“at that devil mist. It’s bad, I tell you. It’s evil.”
BOOM! Another shot resounded. The car-size sphere of mist wobbled and grew larger.
“You are making it worse!” I cried.
“I’ll give that thing what for.” Mr. Shinn crossed the wire and ran crazily right toward the blood-red cloud.
Albert ran after him. He made a clumsy interception, tackling Mr. Shinn by lunging at his leg. The old man stumbled and went face-down in the snow. They were too close—far too close to the anomaly. They must have been paralyzed with horrible thoughts. Mr. Shinn kicked Albert away and managed to right himself.
To our horror, the old man raised the gun to his head, and pulled the trigger as he leapt into the mist. He vanished, and the atmosphere made a sickening wave, like airborne vertigo. Now the angry mist was the size of a house.
Lars was trying to push past me to grab Albert. But something told me that Lars couldn’t handle this. The bad thoughts would ruin him, just like they ruined poor Mr. Shinn. I could do it, I was sure. I just had to keep my mind clean and sparse like a quiet yard surrounded by a tidy wall of snow.
“It’s got to be me, Lars. I can handle it. I’ve had lots of practice with Albert.”
“But I’ve had lots of practice with rotten people,” Lars said.
“That won’t protect you, Lars.”
Albert was maybe twenty feet ahead of me on the trail, sprawled in the snow where he’d fallen. He wasn’t moving. I could feel the mean thoughts trying to sting me, scrambling around my mind like busy, scratching spiders. They wanted in.
I halted Lars in his tracks with my hand. “Back up,” I commanded, as if he were a big dog. He stumbled back, away from the mist.
I took a deep breath, filling my mind with a clean bubble of snow-white silence, and I moved forward to get my brother. Down the trail, around a log, stomping through the deep snow into the cloud of red. I stooped and got a good grip on Albert’s hand, and I began to drag him away from the vile mist. I tried to keep my mind full of icy calm, so full there’d be no room for anything else. There was just my thought-bubble of clean, white snow, frozen in my mind’s eye—until a lone red spider scuttled through.
23
Come back!
In a smoky red haze, I pictured the triad; the monsters with no eyes. They had tricked me into all this, and who knew what their motives were? Evil aliens from an evil galaxy. And Albert . . . he’d gone along with their conspiracy. He’d communicated with the half-constant before he was even born. What kind of monster was he?
I felt sick and disgusted with everyone around me. Brit probably thought she was so much smarter than I was, but look where she lived. Look at her pitiful mom, and look at Lars with his lame job and his slacker friends. What a bunch of losers. Even Ma—still angry at her crazy, dead husband after eight long years, and making the worst wage ever at the school district! And why was her mother still living with us? Meemaw acting like a dumb, foul-mouthed hick living in our stupid laundry room. Four people in that tiny dump with a leaky roof. What a pathetic life!
When I thought about myself, it was with this sinking feeling, like I was drowning in insecurity about how I looked, and how stupid I was—like I could try and try with all my might, and I would never dig out of this pit. And why dig out, anyhow? The world was a rotten place, inhabited by rotten people, and I was just one more.
Stop it! I screamed inside my mind. I forced the clean bubble into place; as cool and clean as snow, like a sigh, like a breeze from the mountains. It was too cold in my mind for the spiders, and far too calm for their liking.
I realized I’d dragged Albert all the way back to the front door. Lars and Brit had been trying to help, but I hadn’t even noticed. Albert was sending me a message. It was faint, but it was growing: Good thoughts, Pearl. Come back! I saw a picture in my head: an iridescent pearl shining to the farthest edges of space.
I began to cry and I think I was slapping my head with my hands. I think I was clawing my hair until Brit stopped me. She and Lars held my arms so I couldn’t hurt myself. I’d gone to such a horrible place.
Oh, God, I was so grateful to be home.
Lars was sitting on the rug contemplating the last triangle of pizza. Brit brought me another glass of water. “Thanks, Brit,” I mumbled.
I was sitting on the footstool next to the woodstove. Under my feet was the nubby hook rug with antique roses on it. Ma loved that rug. She’d found it at a yard sale and was so happy to get it for five bucks. “See?” she’d said excitedly. “You don’t have to be rich to surround yourself with beauty.” Ma was so right.
Over there was our lumpy brown sofa, next to the recliner that Meemaw always sat in. We kept a cover on it because the arm was duct-taped. It was sort of a piece of crap, but I loved it. It smelled like Meemaw and her awful cigarettes. Meemaw, with her sharp wisdom and her loyalty that was absolute.
The amber glow from the little stove was pretty on the hardwood floor. It made the room seem warmer than it was—way warmer than outside where snow swirled around an evil mist. My house was good and solid, and the wood box was full because Lars had thought to fill it. And I had a glass of water, here, because Brit had thought to bring it. You don’t have to be rich to surround yourself with beauty.
I stared at the glass of water in my hand.
“It was awful,” I said in a dry, little voice. “The way the mist made me feel . . . I was so hopeless and mean.”
“I got a taste of it,” Brit said. “I don’t know how you escaped.”
“I could feel it trying to get me,” Lars said. “I shouldn’t have let you go, Mary. I was chicken.”
“No! It would have wrecked you. There’s a mind trick to keeping it out, but I couldn’t do it for very long, even with Albert’s memos.”
Some of the sickening thoughts came back to me and I was ashamed; the mean stuff I’d thought about my Ma and Meemaw, about Brit and Lars
and Albert. . . .
“I wish I could scrub out my brain!” I squeezed my head and ran my fingers through my hair. “Then I wouldn’t have to think about what a jerk-wad I am.”
“That’s not who you are,” Brit said. “You are nice, and don’t you forget it. It was the mist that filled your head with bad and negative stuff.”
“I don’t know—it was like the mist brought out the worst possible me. I mean everyone has happy and good thoughts, and everyone has gloomy and bummer thoughts, but the mist wrecked all that was good, and it triggered all that was bad. Like it was hungry for good stuff, only when it found it, it changed it.”
What I didn’t tell Brit and Lars was that I could picture what the mist might do to a big group of people. It would be the worst kind of craziness—like angry zombies in real life. I shuddered.
“This is bad,” Lars said. “If we call the police or the army or something, then those people would be in danger—and anyhow, activity just makes it worse. I mean even the snowballs revved it up, and then when Shinn killed himself. . . . ”
“Where do you suppose he went?” Brit said. “The SMHRs said the half-constant couldn’t support human life.”
“Well, he was a dead duck,” I pointed out. “But you know what? I think he was trying to protect us. And I think maybe that’s what happened to my dad. I think he was infected eight years ago, and he could feel it getting to him. Maybe he ran his car into that bulkhead on purpose because in a crazy way he was trying to protect us, just like poor old Mr. Shinn.”
“That sort of breaks my heart,” Brit said.
There was a sad pause while we thought about the sacrifices of others—but the sadness morphed into an overwhelming sense of the terrible trouble we were in.
“What do we do now?” I asked. “I mean, this is huge.”
“We need to do what the Commodore told us to do,” Lars said firmly, like he was trying to be calm and logical. “We need to follow Albert’s lead.”
The three of us turned to look at my brother. He was curled up on the couch, eyes open, thinking.
Brit shivered all over. “Either I’m nervous or it’s cold in here.”
“It’s cold,” I confirmed. “I think I left the back door open—” when all of a sudden I got a tense memo from Albert that said Complications, coupled with what looked like a shiny, black shoe.
There was an assertive bang-bang-bang on the front door.
Lars walked over and stood there. “Who is it?” he demanded.
“FBI,” a man’s voice said.
24
The men from BETI
Lars turned the front porch light on and we peered out the window. There were two men standing there in black police-type jackets with matching caps.
“What do you want?” Lars asked.
“We’d like to ask you some questions,” the taller man said.
Lars looked back at me with his hands open.
“Albert, what do you think?” I asked. After all, we were supposed to be following Albert’s lead.
He memoed a combo-message involving the black shoe and a feeling that the shoe was necessary—LET THEM IN was the conclusion.
I shrugged. “Let them in.”
Lars opened the door, and the two men stepped into our living room. One was very tall and trim—the other was short and muscular. The short guy smiled and seemed friendly. His tall partner was all business.
“I’m Agent Saunders,” the tall one said. He was a clean-shaven black man with close-cropped hair. The whites of his eyes, and his teeth, and his crisp, white collar were all gleaming with health and cleanliness. I found it hard to pull my eyes away. He flipped a badge too quickly for me to really see it. Then he tipped his head toward the other man. “This is my partner, Agent Guy.”
Brit and I couldn’t help it. We found each other’s eyes and raised our brows. I knew she was thinking, “Secret Agent Guy.” I tried not to smile.
Albert sent me a memo that said Not FBI. They are BETI.
I stared at Albert, willing him to tell me more.
Albert elaborated with a picture of a blipping screen and a noise like radar from an old movie. Bureau—blip. Extra—blip. Terrestrial—blip. Investigation.
“We’ve gotten some complaints about suspicious activity in your neighborhood,” Agent Saunders said. “Perhaps you saw an unusual—uh—vehicle? And of course those gunshots.”
I figured I’d stay close to the truth. “Yes, there was a strange car parked at the turnaround, an old V-Dub Bug. And not too long ago we heard gunshots.”
“Where’d they come from?” he asked.
“It’s hard to say. The snow makes things all muffled,” I answered.
Agent Guy interrupted. “Saunders, I’m going to take a look around the house and check the backyard. You talk to the kids—and don’t scare them.” He winked at us, which was reassuring. “When I come back, maybe you could rustle me up a cup of coffee—I didn’t get my usual because Saunders here wouldn’t stop.” He grinned like this was just hilarious. “This partner of mine refuses to go through the drive-through.”
“I know how to make coffee, Agent Guy. I could make you some,” I offered.
Agent Guy was smiling like he didn’t have a care in the world—unlike grumpy Saunders. “I’ll take you up on that,” the short agent said. His face was pink from the cold, and he looked very young, like he was fresh from the academy, or maybe he just had a baby face. Agent Guy flipped his collar higher and scrunched his hat down, preparing to go back outside. He gave Saunders a tiny nod, and then he left, closing the door behind him.
Saunders stood there awkwardly. It seemed to me that Saunders didn’t really like kids, yet he was the one who stayed behind to talk to us. It was like they chose the wrong guy for the interview—or maybe they were trying to psych us out, like a mean cop versus nice cop head game. That’s how they did it in the movies.
“Are you Mary Day?” Agent Saunders finally asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“And is that your brother, Albert?” He gestured toward the couch.
“Yes, that’s him.”
“And what are your names?” he said, turning to Brit and Lars.
“I’m Brit Stickle,” Brit answered.
“And I’m her brother, Lars. We live nearby.”
“I’d like to speak to your parents.” Agent Saunders was looking at me.
“Well, my dad is dead, but you probably know that because you already know our names. And my mom’s not here. She’s stuck in Adeline. They closed the road.”
“So it’s just you kids here alone?”
The fact that Agent Saunders said he was FBI when he wasn’t, and he knew our names when he shouldn’t, and now he was pointing out how alone we were—well, it all gave me the creeps.
“Of course we’re not alone,” I lied. “Our uncle is staying with us. He just went out to check the neighborhood after hearing those gunshots. Agent Guy will probably run into him.”
“And who is your uncle?”
“Uncle Commodore,” I said, trying to sound sincere. “He’ll be back any minute.”
“Uncle Commodore, huh?” Agent Saunders suppressed a smirk. Then he froze and cocked his head slightly, concentrating. From this new angle, I spied the device in his ear; he was wearing an earpiece.
“What do you mean a mist?” he said, talking into the air.
“Copy that,” he snapped. “You kids wait here.” Saunders turned toward the door.
It was then that the realization slammed me—Agent Guy had gone into the woods! If he was close enough to see the mist, he was already in trouble. Why didn’t I stop him?
“Don’t go outside,” I blurted. “It’s not safe!”
“I’ll decide what is safe, Miss Day. Now I suggest you lock your doors and wait here. And maybe give your Uncle Commodore a call and tell him to get his tail back here.”
At that very moment—at the end of “get his tail back here”—the landline rang.
<
br /> 25
The bad was getting worse
Agent Sanders narrowed his eyes. “I’ll get it,” he said.
“Hello? Yes, this is Saunders. And how do you know that—who is this?”
Agent Saunders listened a little longer. Then he hung up the phone.
“Who was it?” I asked.
“Apparently it was your Uncle Commodore. Do you have an attic?”
“Yeah, but it’s tiny.” I tipped my head to the ceiling in the hall. “And we have to pull the ladder thingy down.”
“Let’s go,” Saunders said, heading for the hall. He jumped and easily grabbed the handle that opened the hinged trap door, and then he pulled down the folding ladder. “Come on, kids. Hustle.”
“Are you serious? Why should we go up there?” I asked.
“Because your Uncle Commodore said so.”
Albert went first, moving unusually fast. I followed Albert, and Brit followed me. Lars was stepping up, but he hesitated and turned around.
“Are you coming?” he asked Saunders.
Agent Saunders didn’t answer right away. It was like he couldn’t decide.
Albert sent me a memo that said Hurry, Saunders, life is good—there was a happy sun and a warm feeling that went with it. The Commodore knows, Albert added.
“We need you up here,” I said in a whiny voice. I figured if I sounded pathetic he’d be stoked to protect us.
That seemed to help him come to a decision. He scurried up the ladder and closed the hatch.
A pale light filtered in from the small window at the gable. I could see the silhouettes of Lars and Agent Saunders hunching way over because even at its peak the ceiling was less than five feet. Agent Saunders accidentally kicked a bucket that had been placed to catch leaks. It made a metallic clankity racket; luckily it had no water inside.
We stood there in the darkness, balanced on the two-by-sixes—in between the joists was just insulation and plaster and anybody’s foot could have gone through the ceiling. Albert sent me a cottony memo that said HUSH.
“Shh,” I whispered, and just as I did, an odd sound came from the porch—pew-pew-pew!