by Aaron Frale
Today it was cursing. There was a loud crash followed by a few shouts from his dad. Jon rushed past towards the cellar. He opened the door and flipped the light switch at the top. The stairs creaked as he made his way down.
The place was mostly boxes stacked around the furnace. The only area that wasn’t a cardboard monolith was a little alcove with a large white sink and a washer and dryer. Most of the clutter was his mother’s old junk. His dad couldn’t get rid of it just like he couldn’t remarry. It was like his dad had nothing to do but work and pester his son.
Jon rummaged through the boxes until he saw one that was labeled “Ying’s books.” If he remembered correctly, his sister had inherited his childhood book collection when he had outgrown them. Half were in Chinese, the other half in English to help him learn a second language. All the Berenstain Bears books should be in her collection, or Berenstein, if he believed the crackpot internet theory.
He used his house key to crack the tape on the box. The old musty smell of something that hadn’t been open in years assaulted his nose. He coughed and began to pull out the children’s books. There were all sorts of titles he remembered as a kid. He reminisced about reading them with his mother.
When he finally got to the Berenstain collection, he dropped the pile he had been holding in his arms. The title of the book wasn’t Berenstain at all. It was Berenstein.
“No way,” Jon said to no one. He pulled his phone from his trousers and searched the internet. Amazon, Google, and just about every shopping site all had Berenstain books. There were no Berenstein books anywhere. He typed in Berenstein misprint, hoping that it was just some rare collector’s item but got nothing. The Berenstein Bears didn’t exist. They had been spelled with an ‘a.’ According to the internet, they had always been spelled with an ‘a.’
Jon grabbed all the Berenstein Bears books he could find. He walked out of the basement loaded with books that by all accounts shouldn’t exist.
4
For the entire time Jon was grounded, he researched on the internet. His dad was so thrilled at how studious Jon had been, the sentence was commuted by two days and the skateboard returned early. Had his father known Jon was going down the rabbit hole to crazy town, there’d be more worry than commendations.
He chased down all the points in the crazy guy’s videos. The original video of the mystery girl had been deleted, but the others seemed to have a hint of truth to them. The man from Taured by all accounts really happened. The traveler pointed to a map and insisted the country called Andorra was really Taured. The man even disappeared in the middle of the night, maybe making it back to his universe. There were other stories too of a man in 1851 from a country called Laxaria on the continent of Sakria.
There was even a story about a woman who woke up one day and went to her office, but it was not her office. The people she worked for were different people, and when they found her desk, it was on a different floor with a different supervisor. It was like she woke in a parallel universe that was close to hers, but not wholly hers.
It was convincing, but Jon’s dad was an engineer and a man of science. His father taught him to be skeptical. The articles of parallel universes were all on websites that ranged from questionable to just plain crazy. There was no way to know if they fact-checked any of the stories. People could claim anything they wanted. It didn’t make it right.
So far, Jon didn’t have any proof other than the books in his basement and the woman he had witnessed. While they were pretty spooky, the books could be a printing error, and who would believe his story about what had happened at the mall? The evidence he gathered wasn’t enough to convince anyone that he wasn’t nuts.
Maybe he was making all this up from a misprinted book from his childhood. However, delusional people didn’t know they were delusional, or at least that’s what he had heard. The fact that he could question his sanity made him think he was on to something. That’s why the day he was no longer grounded, instead of meeting Rashaun, he decided to go to the mall instead and find some proof that it was real or that he was making it up. The mall had banned him from the premises, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t like they could arrest him. The mall cops could just yell at him and tell him to take a hike.
Jon skated through the mall parking lot and flipped the board into his hands when he got close to the doors. He was still listening to music via his earbuds when he went to Forever 21, where he first saw the girl, and walked over to where he saw her appear. There was a noise on his headphones. It was a weird static under the music, and he pulled out his earbuds. He looked around, and no one else had heard it. People were shopping as usual.
He put his headphones back on his ears, and the sound came again. He inspected his phone. Everything seemed normal. He turned to leave the store, and when he walked away from the spot where the girl first appeared, the noise went away.
He hopped in and out of the place where he first saw her. The static was very apparent, and then it would fade back to his regular music. A clerk must have been watching him because she asked, “Can I help you?”
Jon was too excited and shoved his earbuds into her hands. “Can you hear this?”
She took the buds and said, “Oh yeah, I love the Misfits, so retro.”
“Is there some weird static sound? Like a radio tuned to a dead station. Here, stand in this spot.”
The clerk shrugged and did what he asked. “It sounds fine to me. Maybe it was a loose connection. Hey, let me show you our punk-inspired collection. It just came in. I’m sure you’ll like it.”
“I’ve got to go,” Jon said and left the saleswoman standing there.
Jon went back to the intersection where the mystery woman had disappeared with the man. He walked down the service stairs and stood on the same spot she had blinked out of existence. The strange static noise came back. Just like before, the sound only happened when he was standing in the location of the disappearance.
He walked up the stairs, and it faded. He turned and went back down. At the bottom, it came back. When he whirled around to go up for the last time, the mall cop from earlier was standing there. His arms were folded, and he said, “I knew I recognized you. You are in big trouble. You know you can’t come back here.”
Before Jon could say a word, another man with a taser walked up behind the security guard. The new man was wearing a black hoodie shrouding his face. He thrust the taser into the cop’s side, and the pudgy mall employee dropped to the floor. The man in the hoodie stepped over the shaking body of his target and came down the stairs.
Jon didn’t know what to do, so he lifted his skateboard like a weapon. The Call of Ktulu by Metallica blasted through his earbuds. The man in the hoodie stopped just out of reach of the makeshift weapon. There was a tense moment, and then the man mimed taking off the headphones. Jon popped out the earbuds, and the music and static disappeared.
“Good,” the man said. His voice seemed very familiar. “You know that listening to music too loudly in headphones can do damage to your ears!”
Jon didn’t put the skateboard down. “Why do I think you’re not here for a PSA?”
“You’re the one who contacted me! Remember? You saw the girl in the plaid skirt.”
At first, Jon didn’t know what the guy was talking about. But then it all came back to him. He remembered the video. The man with the hoodie had the same voice as the person who was on the video. He was talking to the Berenstein Bears nut! Jon put the skateboard down. The guy was crazy but probably harmless. At least he wasn’t a mall cop.
“How did you find me?” Jon asked.
“You’re lucky I found you at all! After you wouldn’t return any of my emails—”
“Emails?”
“I sent you, like, twenty emails!”
“I don’t really check my email.”
“Don’t really check—don’t check—YOU DON’T CHECK EMAIL!” The guy was seriously wigging out. Jon looked around, and no one noticed them or the sprawle
d-out guard, but that wouldn’t last for long.
“Come on,” Jon said. “You can tell me on the way.”
“Where are we going?” the hoodie man asked.
“Anywhere but here,” Jon said.
5
Jon and the hooded figure made their way out of the mall. The parking lot took a lot longer to cross without the use of a skateboard. They dashed across the street to a shopping center with a strip mall attached. Most of the storefronts were empty except for a few specialty shops, and they sat on a planter in front of a store with a perpetual Going out of Business sign.
Before Jon could say anything, the man in the hoodie launched into a diatribe. He spoke fast as if he could barely keep up with his own thoughts. “When you wouldn’t respond to my email—who doesn’t check their email? It’s like not taking showers. It’s just something you do nowadays…I did an online search with the information I had about you. I found your Instagram account. Then I saw it—you frequent Rimrock Mall. What are the chances? I suppose the barrier is weak around Rimrock.”
“The barrier?” Jon asked incredulously.
“They don’t have a machine, so they can only go through where the barrier is weak. Though they are secretive—”
“Who?”
“The girl with the plaid skirt and her friends.”
“Is that why she had me look away?”
“You’ve talked to her!”
“I was only trying to return her phone.”
“You saw her phone? Was it all futuristic and space-age?”
“I think it was an iPhone.”
“What?” The man seemed confused.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“I thought you’d tell me. You’re the one who knows her!”
“I’ve only spoken like two words to her ever! Start from the beginning. Who is she?”
“A verser.”
“A what?”
“Verser. People from parallel universes.”
“You think she’s from a parallel universe?” Jon asked. He had just about enough of this guy and was barely willing to accept the facts himself. The books in his basement had to be a misprint.
“I know she’s from a parallel universe!” the man said.
“That’s crazy, man! How could you know that?”
“Because I’m from one!” The guy slid off his hood. Underneath, he looked like a typical suburban white guy with brown hair, glasses, and a five o’clock shadow. However, he had the star scar on his forehead, just like the person who had assaulted the girl. “My name’s Arzerius. I was meant to be a priest.”
Before Jon could ask any questions, the man’s eyes darted outward. Jon followed the gaze, but there was nothing to see. It was mostly just an empty parking lot. There was one woman walking towards the grocery store on the other end, but she didn’t seem dangerous. From the look in Azerius’s eye, Jon would have thought that a group of ninja Nazis were going to pounce.
“Run!” Azerius commanded.
“What?” Jon asked, confused.
“RUN!”
Two men appeared in the parking lot. They flashed into existence in a puff of purple light. Azerius took off running. Jon had enough of the insanity and turned the other way. He figured they would chase the other guy. However, the men split up to follow both of them.
The man racing toward Jon had the same long black coat and forehead scar like the one he had seen in the mall earlier that week. A single blade ejected from the assailant’s knuckle.
Jon wasted no time. He unhooked his skateboard from the latch on his backpack, tossed it to the ground, jumped on the board, and attempted to put some distance between them.
He made it to the end of the strip mall and hopped off the sidewalk into the parking lot. He risked a glance back and saw that the man was keeping up with him. There was no way that the guy was that fast. Jon pumped his feet and got the board going at breakneck speeds.
He swerved in front of a car, and it slammed on the breaks, honking at him. The pursuer hit the vehicle and rolled off the hood. He picked himself up and continued to chase after Jon.
Jon needed to think of something quick. The man was close. The vicious blade shimmered in the light.
There was a bus stop ahead, and a bus had just arrived to a crowd of people waiting to get onboard. Jon pumped the skateboard and aimed for the back of the public transportation vehicle. He grabbed hold of a rear vent as it pulled out into traffic. The assailant took a wild swing and cut open Jon’s backpack. Jon’s wallet, among other things, tumbled to the pavement.
The bus drove away with Jon holding precariously to the back. The skateboard wheels could barely keep up. The man with the blade hand ran out into the street, and a car swerved to miss him and slammed into a truck. The guy watched Jon recede for a moment while the vehicles began to pile up behind him. He picked up the wallet that Jon had left behind and blinked out of existence with a brief purple flash.
6
Jon practiced his calligraphy on the whiteboard his father had set up near the dinner table. His dad was always trying to shove in as much as possible about China during mealtime. The lessons and lectures were always so dull. Today, Jon was barely listening and a little sloppy in his technique. He was still shaking from the incident at the mall when he had come home.
Jon wanted to tell his father everything but knew his dad wouldn’t believe him, so he kept it all inside and decided to power through mealtime instead. By the time dinner was half over, his old man had told him that he was unfocused, distracted, and his technique was all wrong. It was a typical response from his father. Rather than asking him what was wrong, Jon got scolded for not doing it right.
It was no wonder that Jon never spoke about his feelings after his mother and sister died. His father was too concerned with having Jon turn out to be perfect and didn’t seem to care to know why when things would happen like the time he had got a B minus when some kids had jumped him during test day. Jon felt too much pressure from his dad. It was like he couldn’t do anything right. When Jon brought home a report card with the less than satisfactory grade, he was grounded for almost the whole summer, and Jon wasn’t even the one to start the fight.
“We practice this!” Jon's father said. “You holding the marker too hard. Light strokes.”
Jon threw the marker away and yelled, “I’m sick of this. When am I ever going to use Chinese calligraphy? We have computers, Dad.”
“It’s your culture. You need to preserve your culture.”
“Why? Why do you care about a place that killed Mom and Ying? Unless you’re the one who screwed it up—” Jon regretted saying this the moment after he said it.
“You are excused,” his father said, tears welling up in his eyes.
“Dad—”
“YOU ARE EXCUSED!” his father yelled.
Jon knew the conversation was over. He ran upstairs to his bedroom and slammed the door. He paced back and forth. Dealing with an overbearing father was the last thing he wanted right now. He knew the comment was out of line, but his dad had to take some responsibility too. If his father really cared about him, maybe he would have asked him questions about his day over dinner rather than shoveling knowledge down his throat. Jon slumped in the corner of the room, put on his headphones, and turned the music up to drown out everything else in existence.
Later, he was still stewing over the incident with his father when he saw something down below in the backyard. His house was a two-story house, and all the bedrooms were on the upper floor. When he saw the movement again in the yard, he walked over to the window. It had looked like a black streak across the grass.
A bench was built into the window. All his stuffed animals used to fill the space. Jon had won them over the years because he was good at carnival games. Now it was a place for his backpack and skateboard, though he hid the bag as soon as he got home. The animals collected dust in the same boxes in his basement where the Berenstein Bears books lay.
>
There were a couple of more black streaks across the lawn coming towards his house. The song on his headphones was Strawberry Fields by The Beatles. Jon had an eclectic taste of music. He didn’t really stick to one genre but had all sorts of music on his phone.
Before he could figure out the black streaks on the lawn, loud crackling and static buzzed through his earbuds. The noise was familiar. He heard the sound earlier that day. It was the same sound that he heard outside Forever 21 in the spot where the girl had disappeared.
He had a crazy thought that the static must be associated with travelers between universes. Had the realization happened a split second later, he didn’t even want to imagine what would have happened. Jon stepped back, and a man burst into the space that Jon had just occupied. The dude cried out and ejected a blade from his hand.
The assailant was dressed the same as the others except with two stars on his forehead instead of one. This guy looked more vicious with scars cut into his cheeks, like he had been at the wrong end of a knife one too many times. He wore armor that looked more like bones than metal. Another blade ejected from his other hand, and blood dripped from the tear in the skin. Jon stumbled back towards his desk. The man slashed, and Jon ducked. The other weapon came down fast, and Jon used his keyboard as a shield.
The keyboard cracked in half and softened the blow. Jon got nicked. The other blade went straight for the gut, and Jon shifted to the side at the last moment. The weapon went into the monitor, and the assailant shuddered from the electricity pulsing from the shattered screen. Jon used the momentary distraction to grab a baseball bat leaning on his desk and thwacked the guy upside the head. The man grunted and tried to pull his arm from the computer monitor. Jon cracked the bat on the man’s head several more times until he dropped.
Jon grabbed his skateboard and ran down the stairs. He heard glass shattering, and his father screamed. He dashed toward his father’s workshop and opened the door to a grisly scene. There were several more men and women in the black armor. Two were holding his father down, and the third twisted one of their blades into his gut. Blood spilled out into the workshop floor.
