The Merchant of Death

by D. J. MacHale

  “I’m not really sure why I’m telling you this now,” she went on. “But I have this weird feeling that if I didn’t, I might never get the chance again. And I wanted to tell you how I felt…and do this.”

  That’s when it happened. The kiss. She stepped forward, hesitated a second to see if I’d stop her, (yeah right, like there was danger ofthat happening), and we kissed. I won’t rehash the details, but suffice it to say I was a happy guy. It was the most amazing thirty seconds of my life.

  It was the thirty-first second when it all came crashing down.

  My eyes were closed, but I could see a whole future full of Courtney and Courtney’s kisses. I don’t know if it’s possible to kiss and smile at the same time, but if it is, I did. And then I opened my eyes, and it was over.

  “Hi, Bobby.”

  Uncle Press was standing there! Where didhe come from? I pulled away from Courtney so fast that she still had her eyes closed. Actually, she looked kind of goofy for a second like she was kissing air, but she recovered fast and believe me, I didn’t laugh.

  “Uncle Press! Hi!” I probably should have said, “Yo!” that’s how stupid I felt. I’m not sure why, either. We weren’t doing anything wrong. We were just kissing. Granted, it was the big-league kiss of all time, but it was still just a kiss. Once Courtney realized what was happening, she went from zero to full-tilt embarrassed. She wanted to be anywhere but there, and I wanted to be there with her. She backed toward the door.

  “I…uh…I better go,” she stammered.

  “No, don’t go.” I didn’t want to take the heat alone, but Uncle Press had other things on his mind.

  “Yes. You should go.” Short, blunt, simple as that. Something about the way he said it made a red flag go up in my head. This didn’t sound like Uncle Press. Normally he’s the kind of guy who would think catching his nephew macking was pretty funny. In fact, that’s exactly what happened when he caught me making out with Nancy Kilgore on the back porch. He just laughed. I was embarrassed as hell, but he got a real charge out of it. He’d bring it up every once in a while, just to jazz me. But not in front of anybody else, which made it okay. This time was different though. This time he wasn’t laughing.

  “Good luck tonight. I’ll be cheering,” said Courtney as she took a step…and walked square into the door. Ouch. Uncle Press leaned over and opened it for her. She gave him a quick, embarrassed nod of thanks, then shot me a look with the slightest hint of a sly smile. Then she was gone. Uncle Press closed the door and looked at me.

  “I’m sorry, Bobby, but I need your help. I want you to come with me.”

  Again, this didn’t sound like Uncle Press. He was a loose kind of guy. My guess was he was in his fifties, but he didn’t act like a geezer. He was always goofing around, never seemed to take things all that seriously. But tonight, he was dead serious. In fact, it almost seemed as if he looked a little…scared.

  “But, I got a game. County semis. I’m already late.”

  “You didn’t seem too concerned about that a few seconds ago,” he shot back.

  Good point. But I really was late, and it was a big game.

  “Mom and Dad are already there with Shannon. If I don’t show up—”

  “They’ll understand. I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t think it was more important than a basketball game…or kissing that beautiful girl who just left.”

  I was prepared to argue on that last point, but man, he was acting pretty intense. It was weird. Then, as if he were reading my mind he said, “Bobby, you’ve known me all your life. Have you ever seen me like this?”

  I didn’t need to answer. Something was definitely up.

  “Then you know how serious this is,” he said with absolute finality.

  I didn’t know what to do. At that very minute there was a team waiting for me to help them win a county title. Not to mention a family, friends, and an almost-girlfriend who would be expecting me to trot out onto the court. But standing in front of me was a guy who was my own flesh and blood who needed my help. Uncle Press did a lot for me as I was growing up and never asked for a single thing in return. Until now. How could I turn him down?

  “You promise to explain things to my coach, Mom and Dad, and Courtney Chetwynde?”

  Uncle Press actually gave a small smile, just like he used to, and said, “They’ll understand.”

  I tried to think of any other reason why I shouldn’t go with him, but came up empty. So with a sigh I said, “All right then, let’s go.”

  Instantly Uncle Press opened the front door. I shrugged and started out.

  “You won’t need that bag,” he said, referring to my pack. I’m not sure why, but that sounded strange, and a touch ominous.

  “What’s this all about Uncle Press?”

  If he had answered the question truthfully, I would have run upstairs to my room and hid under the bed. But he didn’t. All he said was, “You’ll find out.”

  He was my uncle. I trusted the guy. So I let my pack fall to the floor and headed for the door. Uncle Press didn’t follow right away. I looked back and saw that he was looking around the house. Maybe I imagined this, but he seemed a little sad, as if this was the last time he was going to be here. After a few seconds he said, “You love this place, don’t you? And your family?”

  “Well…yeah. Of course,” I answered. What a dumb question.

  He took one more wistful look around, then turned to face me. The sad look was gone. In its place was the determined look of a guy who had business elsewhere.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  He walked past me and headed down the front walk to the street. Uncle Press always dressed the same way, in jeans, boots, and a dark brown work shirt. Over this he wore a long, tan, leather coat that reached down to his knees. It flapped in the wind as he walked. I’d seen that look many times before, but for some reason, this time it gave him the air of someone for whom time has stood still. In another time and place he could have been a dusty cowboy striding into town, or a military emissary carrying vital documents. Uncle Press was indeed a unique character.

  Parked in front of my house was the sweetest looking motorcycle I ever saw. It looked like one of those multicolored Matchbox racers that I had played with not too long ago. But this bike was very big and very real. Uncle Press always did things in style. He grabbed the extra helmet from the seat and tossed it to me. I buckled up and he did the same. He then gunned the engine and I was surprised to hear that it wasn’t very loud. I was expecting some growling, gut-churning hog sound. But this bike was almost quiet. It sounded like, well, a rocket that’s about to ignite. I hopped on the seat behind him and he glanced back to me.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied honestly.

  “Good. I’d be surprised if you were,” he shot back. He then kicked the bike into gear, hit the gas, and the two of us flew down the quiet, suburban street that had been my home for fourteen years.

  I hope I’ll see it again someday.

  Second Earth

  …I hope I’ll see it again someday.

  Mark Dimond looked up from the stack of parchment papers in his hand and took a deep breath. His heart was racing. The words on the pages before him seemed as if they were written by his best friend, Bobby Pendragon, but the story they contained was impossible. Yet there it was. He glanced at the pages again. What he saw was frantic writing. Bobby’s writing in smudged black ink on some kind of old-fashioned yellow parchment. It looked real, it felt real, but so much of the story these pages contained felt about as close to reality as a fevered dream.

  Mark sat safely locked in the second stall from the door of the third floor boys’ bathroom at Stony Brook Junior High. It was a rarely used bathroom because it was at the far end of the building, near the art department, way off the beaten track. He’d often come here to think. Occasionally he even used the toilet for its intended purpose, but mostly he came here to get away. At his feet were a pile of carrot ends. He�
��d been nervously gnawing on them as he scanned the pages. Mark had read somewhere that carrots improved your vision. But after months of almost constant carrot intake, he still had to wear glasses and only had a mouthful of yellow teeth to show for his efforts.

  Mark knew he wasn’t a full-on nerd, but he wasn’t running with the cool kids, either. His only contact with the world of “the accepted” was Bobby. They grew up together and were about as tight as two friends could be. As Bobby started to grow up and become popular, Mark kept one foot firmly planted in kid-world. He still read comics; he still kept action figures on his desk. He didn’t really know popular music, and his clothes were, well, functional. But that didn’t matter to Bobby. Mark made him laugh. And Mark made him think. The two would spend hours debating issues as diverse as First Amendment rights and the relative merits of Pamela Anderson before and after cosmetic surgery.

  A lot of Bobby’s jock friends would dump on Mark, but never in front of Bobby. They knew better. Mess with Mark and you’d be messing with Bobby, and nobody messed with Bobby. But now, somebody was indeed messing with Bobby. Mark held the proof right there in his hands. He didn’t want to believe what the pages told him. Under normal circumstances he would have thought it was some goofy joke that Bobby thought up. But some things had happened that made Mark think this might not be a joke. He leaned back against the cool tile wall and his thoughts brought him back to something that had happened the night before.

  Mark always slept with a night-light. He was afraid of the dark. This was his secret. Even Bobby didn’t know. Though sometimes Mark thought the night-light was worse than no light at all, because a night-light made shadows. Like the dark jacket hanging on the back of a door that looked like the Grim Reaper. That nasty vision happened more than once. It didn’t help that without his glasses, Mark could barely see things clearly beyond the end of his bed. Still, the occasional rude awakening was much better than sleeping in the dark.

  The night before, it had happened again. Mark was lying in bed, drifting in and out of sleep. He opened one groggy eye and in his stupor he thought he saw someone standing at the foot of his bed. His mind tried to tell him it was just the shadow cast by a passing car, but his gut told him to wake up. Fast. A surge of adrenaline shot through him and his brain went on full alert. He tried to focus his nearsighted eyes on the interloper to confirm it was just his backpack. No go. He couldn’t tell what it was. So he groped his bedside table, knocked over a mug full of pens and his Game Boy, but managed to grab his glasses. When he finally jammed them onto his nose, he looked to the end of his bed…and froze in fear.

  Standing there, lit by soft moonlight streaming in through the window, was a woman. She was tall and dark-skinned. She wore a colorful wrap that draped off one shoulder, revealing an incredibly taut, muscular arm. She looked to Mark to be a beautiful African queen. Mark dug his heels in and pushed his back against the wall behind his bed in the futile hope that he’d crash through and escape out the other side.

  The woman simply raised a finger to her lips and gave a soft “shhh” sound. Mark froze in absolute, paralyzing fear. He looked into the woman’s eyes and something strange happened. He grew calm. As he thought back on this moment, he wasn’t sure if she was hypnotizing him or casting some kind of spell because, oddly, his fear slipped away. The woman had soft, friendly eyes that told Mark he had nothing to be afraid of.

  “Shaaa zaa shuu saaa,” she said softly. Her voice sounded like warm wind through the trees. It was pleasant and soothing, but it made no sense. The woman then walked around the bed and sat next to Mark. Mark didn’t jump away because, for some reason, this all felt…right. A leather pouch hung from a cord around her neck. She reached into it and pulled out a ring. It looked to Mark like one of those school rings you see on college kids. It was silver with a slate-colored stone mounted in the center. There was some sort of inscription engraved around the stone, but it was written in no language Mark had ever seen before.

  “This is from Bobby,” she said softly.

  Bobby? Bobby Pendragon? Mark had no idea what was happening, but the last thing he expected was to hear that this strange woman who appeared in his bedroom in the middle of the night had something to do with his best friend.

  “Who are you? How do you know Bobby?”

  She gently picked up Mark’s right hand and slipped the ring onto his finger. It fit perfectly. Mark looked at the strange ring, then back at the woman.

  “Why? What’s this?” he asked.

  The woman touched a gentle finger to Mark’s lips to quiet him. Mark immediately felt his eyes grow heavy. A second before he had been about as wide awake as anyone can be, but now he felt weary enough to fall asleep on the spot. He felt the world slipping away. In an instant, he was out.

  The next morning Mark woke up at the usual 6:15 with the alarm clock blaring. His first thought was that he hated alarm clocks. His second thought was that he had had the strangest dream. He chuckled to himself, thinking he should cut down on the raw vegetables before bedtime. He then reached over to hit the snooze button…and saw it.

  There, on his finger was the ring the woman had given him. Mark sat up in bed quickly and stared at it with its gray stone and strange inscriptions. It was real. He could feel it. It had weight. It wasn’t a dream. What was going on?

  He dressed quickly and left the house without telling his parents what had happened. There was only one person who could explain this to him. Bobby Pendragon. But something had already happened with Bobby that gave him a queasy feeling. Last night was the county semifinal basketball game…and Bobby hadn’t shown up. His parents were there, his sister was there, but not Bobby. After the first half he went over to ask the Pendragons where Bobby was, but they had already left. Very strange.

  And Stony Brook lost. Bad. Everybody at the game was buzzing, wanting to know what happened to their star. Nobody knew. When Mark got home he called Bobby’s house, but there was no answer. He figured he’d see him in school the next day and get the story. Then he went to sleep and had his strange night visitor. Now Mark wanted to know a lot more from Bobby than why he hadn’t shown for a basketball game.

  When Mark got into the school building, the number one topic of conversation was The Game.

  “Hey Dimond? Where’s your superstar pal?”

  “He blew it!”

  “This better be good, Dimond!”

  “What’s the story?”

  Everyone was yelling at him about Bobby. That could only mean one thing. Bobby hadn’t gotten there yet. Of course, Mark didn’t have any answers, so he shrugged and kept walking. He went to Bobby’s locker, but Bobby wasn’t there. Instead there were more angry kids waiting to ambush him.

  “He chickened out, didn’t he?”

  “Couldn’t take the heat!”

  Mark dodged them and went to Bobby’s homeroom. Bobby wasn’t there, either. Where was he? Something was definitely wrong.

  And then it happened. It started as a twitch at first, but quickly grew. It was the ring. It was moving. It felt like it was squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing.

  “Dimond! Hey, Dimond! Where is he?” More kids were closing in. This was not a good time. Mark didn’t know what to do, so he grabbed the ring with his other hand and ran. He blasted through kids, bumping into more than he dodged. A couple of older guys pushed him back, nearly sending him sprawling, but Mark somehow stayed on his feet. The bell rang and everyone headed for homeroom, but Mark didn’t stop until he reached his own personal Fortress of Solitude—the boys’ bathroom on the third floor.

  He ran to the center of the room and held his hand out as if it didn’t belong to him. The ring was still moving, squeezing and releasing like a heartbeat. Then the gray stone started to sparkle. An instant before it had been a solid gray mass; now it sprang to life like a brilliant diamond. Beams of light shot from the ring and filled the room.

  Mark couldn’t take it anymore. He yanked off the strange ring and threw it. It h
it the tiled wall and bounced to a stop in the center of the bathroom. The beams of light continued to shoot from the stone and dance across the ceiling and the walls, making the room look as if it were alive with beautiful, dazzling stars.

  Then Mark watched in awe as the circular band started to grow larger. It slowly got bigger and bigger until it was about the size of a Frisbee, and in the center of the now impossibly large band was a black hole where the floor should have been. The ring had opened up a dark portal to…somewhere. From deep within this portal, Mark could hear the faint sound of musical notes. It wasn’t a melody; it was a jumble of sweet sounding tones that grew louder and louder.

  Mark backed away from the strange ring, not sure if he should turn and run or stay and watch the show. He was fascinated and terrified at the same time. The musical notes coming from the portal got so loud that Mark had to cover his ears. Whatever was happening, he didn’t want any part of it anymore. So he turned and ran for the door. He was just about to throw it open when…