by Barry Lyga
“Three Basketeers,” Dr. Bookman mumbled, and shook the melon again.
“Zak stayed—” Khalid broke off, realizing somehow that he didn’t need to speak the memories; he only needed to have them. Zak had stayed over at Khalid’s house the day his parents divvied up the belongings in their apartment, deciding what would stay, what would go, who could lay claim to what. Together, Khalid and Zak had watched the most horrifying horror movies they could find, speaking not at all, cramming their mouths with popcorn and corn chips and cheese puffs as geysers of blood and mountains of body parts accumulated on the screen. In the morning, they’d both taken turns throwing up, and Zak had seemed better after that, as though he’d gorged himself on bad thoughts and bad memories, then purged them right into the Shamoons’ toilet.
“I don’t ever want to be alone,” Zak had said a few days later. His father had moved out of the apartment, and Zak had come home to a house that felt too empty.
“You’re not alone, man. I’m there even when I’m not there.”
Khalid squeezed his eyes shut further, crimping down the tears. The air around him had gone cold and stale. Wicked lights flashed and spiraled against his eyelids.
“He’s coming…,” Dr. Bookman whispered. The melon rattled again and again, louder, faster, and then abruptly stopped. “He’s here.”
Khalid opened his eyes. Nothing in the room had changed. How could that be possible? How could nothing be different?
Dr. Bookman gritted his teeth; cords stood out along his neck. “Impossible. Too strong. Come to me! I command you!”
“Hey, what’s going—”
“I invoke you and I summon you!” Dr. Bookman shouted to the empty air. “You cannot resist me!”
“What’s happening?”
“He’s resisting.” Sweat beaded along Dr. Bookman’s brow and slid down his face like rain on a window. “Never happened before,” he grunted. “He’s strong.”
“Who…” Khalid began, and then stopped talking at the sight before him.
The air around Dr. Bookman seemed to smear, as though greased. Reds and blues and golds warped the space between them. Khalid blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision, but the problem wasn’t with his eyes; it was with the world itself. The blur intensified, and Dr. Bookman went rigid, dropping the melon to the floor, his arms held out stiffly before him, his entire body ramrod straight, as if he’d been electrocuted.
The sound of wind—far-off wind—filled the room, and Khalid thought he could hear something cracking in the distance.
The colors around Dr. Bookman tightened, sharpened, shrank down into him, and then the wild scientist sucked in a breath that seemed endless, and his shape flickered for an instant, replaced for the space of a blink by a smaller form. He jerked his head back, staring open-mouthed at the ceiling.
“Speak to me!” Dr. Bookman said commandingly. “Speak now!”
And then, garbled: “No, no, no, no, leave me alone.…”
“I compel you to speak through me!”
“No.” A strangled whisper this time.
“Should I do something?” Khalid asked. He felt completely helpless, useless. A paralyzed appendage.
Dr. Bookman’s throat worked, and then he spoke with Zak’s voice: “Khalid!”
“Zak!” It took everything in Khalid not to hurl himself over the desk at the sound of his friend’s voice.
“No. Not Zak.” Dr. Bookman’s face twisted and contorted in pain, but the voice sounded calm.
“Tommy?”
“You have to—”
And the air smeared again. Khalid leaned forward.
“The electroleum,” Tommy said. “Lots of it. It’s the only way—”
“Right, but Zak’s hurt. I have to get to him first.”
“No. Nothing else matters. If you can’t do that, then you won’t—”
Dr. Bookman’s brow furrowed, and he shook his head. His body—still stiffened—began to vibrate.
“Speak!” he shouted in his own voice. “Speak true!”
“—rescue us, Khalid!” Tommy said through Dr. Bookman. “Godfrey and me! You have to do it now! It’s the only thing that matters!”
“Speak!” Dr. Bookman cried. A trickle of blood began to leak from his left ear. Khalid stood rooted to his spot, horrified and mesmerized by the back-and-forth. “Speak! I command it!”
“It’s the only way!” Tommy said with Dr. Bookman’s mouth. “You have to—”
“Too … much!” With a painful, creaking effort, Dr. Bookman moved his right arm an inch, then another, reaching out for something on the desk.
And then Bookman’s body spasmed, lashing forward, bent at the waist, then back, and the man screamed a pitiable and horrid scream that nearly made Khalid piss his pants for the first time since that embarrassing day in kindergarten. The smear intensified—blue, gold, red, a vicious turmoil of bleeding colors—and Dr. Bookman danced as if zapped with live current, his body a marionette in the hands of a demented puppeteer. Khalid couldn’t move, frozen, watching as the man stumbled backward until he collided with the window. For a terrifying second, Khalid thought he’d hit hard enough to smash the glass and tumble three stories to the street below, but the glass held, and now Dr. Bookman was splayed spread-eagled against the window, his eyes wide and unseeing, his neck decorated with the thread of blood from his ear, a thread that now speckled the shoulder of his jacket.
“So … powerful…” Dr. Bookman grunted. “Cut loose…”
The smear in the air coalesced into a turbulent knot of clashing colors and then flattened out and became a ripple that slowly expanded from its origin at Dr. Bookman’s midsection. Khalid watched in awe as gravity stopped working.
Gravity just stopped working.
Dr. Bookman began to slide up the window, toward the ceiling, his dreadlocks floating above him. Khalid thought quickly—only Dr. Bookman was drifting up, not any of the furniture, and he began to feel himself becoming unmoored from the floor—
Living things it’s affecting living things
—and he grabbed hold of the desk before the wave of no-gravity hit him full force. His feet left the floor, and soon he was nearly upside down, clinging to the desk, his neck craned to see Dr. Bookman floating above him.
“Blow it up!” screamed a new voice from the same lips. “Find a way! It’s the only thing that matters! Break down the wall! Tear it down! That’s all that matters!”
Godfrey. The new voice. It could only be Godfrey.
“But—”
“Just do it, Khalid!” Godfrey yelled. “If you care about Zak and Tommy and yourself, you’ll do it! There’s too much at stake! There’s no time to think about it! Do it!”
Godfrey’s voice caught on the t at the end of it, clacking out the letter over and over again, like a cog turning: t t t t t t t t t t t t. Dr. Bookman’s hands clenched and unclenched. He spoke in his own voice for just a syllable: “Dis—”
A wind started to howl in the room, and Khalid could swear he felt something wet splash against his cheek. Rain? Was it raining inside?
Dr. Bookman screamed again, high-pitched and abjectly terrified. Khalid thought he heard another word: discon. Discon? That wasn’t even a real word.
Out of the corner of his eye, Khalid caught something happening in the cockroach aquarium. Something was flashing—
“Destroy it all!” Godfrey bellowed, yanking his attention back. Dr. Bookman’s mouth strained with the exertion of Godfrey’s voice, so much that a small fissure split open at the corner of his mouth. Blood welled up there. “Use the electroleum to bring down the wall! Bring down the wall and restore me to life!”
“I want to talk to Tommy!” Khalid yelled. “Let me talk to Tommy again!”
“Tommy’s too weak!” Godfrey roared through Dr. Bookman’s lips. “Listen to me, Khalid! Too much is happening! We’re fading! You have to save us! Do it … or I will find someone who will!”
Dr. Bookman’s throat bobbed and his
lips moved, but no sound came out. Dis … con, Khalid lip-read, and then smelled something burning and realized that Dr. Bookman’s hair was on fire. The very tips of his dreadlocks were smoldering, smoke peeling off from them.
He’s gonna die. He’s gonna burn up.
Struggling to maintain his grip on the desk as his body hung toward the ceiling was like hanging on to the edge of a cliff while wind whipped down the canyon. Khalid focused on his fingers, willing them not to slip.
And in staring at them, he couldn’t help looking at the desk. With its powder and its papers arranged just so …
Dis. Con. Discon.
Disconnect!
Khalid let go of the desk with one hand. His body lurched upward—it felt as though he was falling, and he immediately grabbed the edge of the desk again. It wasn’t far to fall “up” to the ceiling, but it was far enough that he thought it would hurt. And he would be stranded up there on the ceiling.
Speaking of the ceiling—way up there, Dr. Bookman’s hair was now burning like a profusion of lit fuses, the flames sparking and crackling as they made their way along the length of the dreadlocks. Halfway now, and soon they would engulf his head. Godfrey was still yelling, exhorting Khalid, screaming at him, and Khalid once again let go with one hand, reaching out to the papers on the desk.
He couldn’t make it. They were just beyond his grasp.
Come on, Khalid. You never used to think things through. Just do it!
And he did. He let go with the other hand. His gut clenched as he dropped away from the floor, plunging up with sickening velocity toward the ceiling. But letting go allowed him to twist and stretch out just right.
He had one chance.
His hand brushed against the papers, knocking them out of Dr. Bookman’s careful alignment.
Halfway to the ceiling, Khalid hung suspended for a rare instant as gravity rearranged itself. He floated there just long enough to marvel at the sensation, and then the earth was tugging at him again and he fell again, this time down, not up. The sudden and repeated interference with his inner ear churned his stomach, and as he crashed to the floor, he puked up the bagel he’d eaten.
Dr. Bookman slid down the wall and collapsed in a heap, the ends of his dreadlocks still burning as if his head was a keg of dynamite and his hair a profusion of fuses.
Khalid’s stomach ached and protested when he unfolded himself from the floor, and not just from throwing up. He’d forgotten about the cop’s stun stick tucked into his waistband and covered with his shirt; he’d landed on it when he hit the floor. A bruise already stood out in alarming purplish black on his skin. He pulled out the stun stick and tossed it aside. Then, dancing around the puddle of his own vomit, he dashed to Bookman’s side. The carpet squished and he nearly slipped, but he caught himself at the last instant, grabbing a curtain for balance.
Bookman was slumped on the floor, out cold, his head a set of sparklers.
Khalid jerked at the curtain and it popped free from its rod. He wielded the fabric like a matador, smacking at Bookman’s head, smothering the flames one by one until nothing remained but charred, crumbling ash, wisps of smoke, and the smell of burning hair.
Fortunately, there was nothing left in Khalid’s stomach for him to throw up.
“Dr. Bookman!” He hunkered down and snapped his fingers in front of the wild scientist’s face repeatedly. “Wake up! Come on, man!”
Nothing. He grabbed the man’s wrist the way he’d seen paramedics do on TV, then realized he had no idea why they did that. With a groan, he put an ear to the man’s chest. Bookman’s heart lub-dubbed reliably, and Khalid could hear the scientist’s breathing, deep and sure.
Maybe he was just knocked out, is all. Maybe he’ll be okay when he wakes up.
Khalid rocked back on his heels and realized as he shifted his weight that the carpet was wet beneath him. As he took notice of the area around him, he saw that everything was wet—the carpet was soaked, and puddles covered the surface of the desk. Water had come from nowhere.
Did Tommy bring it? Godfrey? Is it part of the Secret Sea?
He ran two fingers along the top of the desk, then sniffed them. Salt water. From the ocean.
Which was easily a mile away.
Man, I would really like to spend, say, an hour without something freaky happening to me. I’ve hit my freaky quotient, like, for life.
Depressingly, he realized he was more likely, not less likely, to experience freaky doings in his near future.
He dimly remembered from a school health class that moving someone who was injured was a bad idea, but Dr. Bookman appeared exceedingly uncomfortable, half-propped against the wall, his head lolling forward on his chest. With much grunting and curses muttered in both English and Farsi (the English ones were more fun, truthfully), Khalid hooked Bookman under the armpits and managed to drag him over to the sofa. There, more curses and some sweaty efforts saw the wild scientist arranged facedown on the cushions, arms and legs flung out haphazardly, one hand dipping down onto the carpet. It didn’t look comfortable, but it had to be better than the floor.
Khalid inhaled deep and slow. He was out of breath. Next step: 911. Call the paramedics, right?
The desk phone was useless, dripping with salt water and shorted out. The whole office was a mess: rancid with salt water, furniture tipped over, the smell and haze of smoke still lingering. Khalid scrounged around for a cell phone. He checked drawers and shelves. As he did so, he came across the cockroach aquarium. He glanced inside, then kept looking for a cell phone …
And then went back to the aquarium.
He stared, not believing his eyes. Then, licking his lips, he counted the roaches, whispering each number.
Nine.
There were only nine roaches in the aquarium. There had been a dozen before.
And there was no way out. The aquarium had sturdily withstood the voodoo eruption. No cracks that Khalid could see, and the lid was still firmly in place.
That was odd, sure, but it wasn’t what had caught his attention. Not really. What had caught his attention was that …
Was that …
Some of the blue roaches were dead. Fine.
But some of the red ones were alive. The few still stuck on their backs kicked their legs and twitched their antennae, but a couple were staggering around the aquarium as though drunk.
“Oh, man, zombie cockroaches. It gets weirder and weirder.…”
He shook himself and pulled away from the aquarium. He had more important things to worry about. He did what he should have done from the beginning: crouched down near the doctor and frisked him. Khalid found in Bookman’s inner jacket pocket something that looked like a smaller version of the Wonder Glass III he’d used at the Apple store. But when he tapped and swiped at it, it only lit up with the familiar line-through-a-circle icon and the words UNAUTHORIZED USER.
Figures. I get the one guy in the world who actually puts a passcode on his phone.
Dr. Bookman groaned and flailed with the hand that was not pinned under his body. Khalid, crouching, lost his balance and fell backward on his butt. Squish.
“Back and forth…,” Bookman moaned. His eyes fluttered open, then closed, then open again, the eyelids twitching. Beneath, his eyes looked but did not see. Khalid waved a hand before them to confirm; Bookman didn’t even blink.
“Traveling … too much…,” Bookman said. “Back and forth.”
“Back and forth?”
“The walls … are weak.…”
Khalid looked back and forth and all around. The office’s walls seemed stable enough.
“Godfrey … spirit … too…”
“Hey, Doc? Doc, can you hear me?” Khalid snapped his fingers in front of Bookman’s face again, even though it hadn’t worked before. Never had he felt so utterly helpless, so powerless. He should be running for help. Or—even better—he should actually be doing something helpful. But all he could do in that moment was stay rooted to the spot, leaning in, s
napping his fingers like a moron. A moron with rhythm, sure, but still a moron.
“Stop him … Don’t let…”
“Dr. Bookman? Can you hear me? You gotta help me out, man. I need to know what to do. I mean, do I go after this electroleum stuff? Is that my play? Or do I keep looking for Zak?” He stood up and wiped his hands on his shirt, which did nothing to dry them. “Oh, man, you’re not listening. You can’t hear me.”
Khalid dropped to his knees next to the sofa. “Zak and Moira are gone and you’re unconscious and … and…” He groaned and threw his hands in the air in frustration. “And I think even your cockroach experiment has gone off the rails, FYI.”
And Dr. Bookman’s eyes, which had fluttered and danced between open and closed the whole time, suddenly snapped opened long enough to stare into Khalid’s for a fixed, terrifying moment.
“It’s. Gone,” said Dr. Bookman, his voice strong and clear. “Get. Help.”
And then he immediately passed out.
FORTY-SEVEN
The clinch lasted longer than they had time for but at the same time not nearly long enough.
“You’re alive,” Moira babbled, then hated herself for saying it, then figured it didn’t matter because he was. Zak was alive and looking great.
“Dr. White-eagle helped me,” he said, finally breaking the embrace, holding her at arm’s length. “I think I’m cured.”
“Are you kidding me?” Moira looked over at the woman who’d opened the door, dressed in what appeared to be some kind of medical garb. “Dr. White-eagle?”
“Yeah, over there.” Zak jerked a thumb toward a newcomer, a stooped figure ambling into the room.
As soon as Moira saw Dr. White-eagle, her stomach clenched, and her inner voice screamed, Run!
Roughly twenty-four hours in this world was all it had taken to make her terrified at the sight of a man. That’s all it took.
She grabbed Zak’s hand and dragged him toward the door. “We’re going. Now. Hurry.”
Zak pulled away. “Wait a sec, Moira. I don’t even have my shoes—”