Tells

by Scott Rhine

  “Why would someone stand in the way of progress?” he asked.

  “As you should know from reading HP Lovecraft, a dimensional rift is dangerous. Things from other places creep in. The main role of the Emergency Response Team is to seal such breaches and clean up the mess they left behind.”

  “What sort of mess?” Zak asked.

  When I floundered, Dad replied, “They call the negative side effects ‘corruption.’ It taints objects as well and people’s minds.”

  “Before I put up my wards, you were exposed to a heavy dose of black Kirilian radiation.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Google auras. It’s something Dad’s kaleidoscopes can detect.”

  Zak held up a hand. “Whoa. So everyone in this family is allowed to practice magic except me?”

  “Dad has a special license to make optical devices,” I said. “Anyone can be Sensitive or have talents, but men aren’t allowed to read the family Book. That’s a big no-no in the Colony community.”

  “Sexist.”

  “That’s what you got out of all this?” I asked, more heatedly than I intended. “My Book, my inheritance from Mom is a step away from ashes because you toyed with things you didn’t understand. I may never be a full-fledged member of the witch community or come into my abilities because of it.”

  “How was I supposed to know?”

  “The word ‘spell’ in our great-grandmother’s notes should have been a flashing neon sign. The whole block at MIT blacking out, ice on the walls, and shadow wolves sniffing the air around your building weren’t clues?”

  He lowered his eyes. “Sorry about the book I’ll pay you back.”

  “It’s not about money. With my talents, I could get rich any time I wanted.”

  “What’s the big deal? It’s just a book.”

  “It’s something Mom spent a lifetime crafting. She wrote messages to me that I’ll never read—what it meant for her to be a woman and a Sensitive, her goals, and the secrets she unlocked. It was my last and strongest connection to half a millennium of ancestors. If I ever have a daughter, she won’t know how great Mom was.”

  Zak drew back at my ferocity. “Okay. I screwed up, but you can tell this mythical daughter firsthand about your experiences with Mom.”

  “But because of you I may have missed the chance to catch Mom’s killer.” Oops. I didn’t mean to say that.

  “Oh.” His face changed to genuine regret.

  Dad intervened. “That’s spilled milk. Isa, say something positive and constructive to your brother. If it weren’t for the disaster, Zak may have earned a Nobel prize for his discovery.”

  “Reminds me of the Manhattan Project,” I muttered, “where some of the scientists weren’t sure the chain reaction would stop, but they set the bomb off anyway.”

  “Exactly,” Zak said with approval. “Progress.”

  I opened my mouth to blast him again.

  “Positive,” Dad repeated.

  While I recovered my calm, I mentally reviewed our conversation. “Does the antirandom effect increase the closer you get to the gate?”

  “Exponentially.” When I looked puzzled, he rolled his eyes and converted to small words. “Yes, a bunch.”

  “Using this discovery, could you build a detector for gates miles away?” I asked, speaking into the watch.

  “This effect is only noticeable within a hundred meters or so. Scanning for the radio distortions would be much more effective at long range, but why bother?”

  I wanted to strangle him. I was trying to demonstrate to our listeners that keeping Zak free would be a benefit to the world, not end it sooner.

  Dad caught on. “As an early-warning system for invasions. We could make a triangle of detectors around a city to find the exact location and size of a rift.”

  “Sure,” said Zak. “But I’d add a fourth to determine the height of the event, like in the first Avenger’s movie.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. “Could you make this device portable for remote scanning in wilderness areas?”

  “Trivial,” Zak said. “I could use old crystal radio sets for the ranged part, and for the close-up work, I’d wire in a couple programmable chips we used for signal processing. The whole thing could fit inside my hamster ball and run on a watch battery.”

  Holding up a finger, I said, “You are a freaking genius. This idea might save you.”

  I called Freya.

  She took four rings to answer. “Isa? Hey, I’m kind of on a date right now. Could you call me back some other time?”

  “My brother had an idea—”

  She hung up, returning my watch face to a Mickey Mouse.

  Dad seemed upset. “You weren’t going to give away his invention to the women who hate him, were you?”

  “Who else would you suggest?” I asked with maximum snark. Then the answer occurred to me—Smithsonian Special Branch. They dealt with the supernatural all the time. I was certain they’d have therapists who had the security clearance to help Zak.

  34. Creeps

  It took me over an hour of phone calls, but I managed to score the phone number for the covert US government agency from Gran-gran. Since Zak had to be checked in by nine o’clock or violate the terms of his agreement, Dad took him inside. I had to stay across the street at a bus-stop shelter, outside the range of the institution’s cell-phone blocker.

  The guy who answered my call thought I was a kid pranking him. “This number is for government use only.”

  “I participated in the cleanup of the MIT event. Flooding caused millions in damage, so your team had to be called in. Your card was passed off to a council member.” All true, but not how I obtained his phone number.

  “Jeez, that was mess. Why are you calling now?”

  “Zak Morris is a genius who’s willing to work for you. He has an invention that can detect dimensional gates anywhere in a city when they first form—before they cause damage.”

  The agent said, “That earns him an interview if you can back up the genius claims.”

  “He got a perfect score on his ACT Math exam. This summer, Homeland granted him a security clearance for one of their projects. If you need more evidence, call Dr. Francine Hauser.”

  “All this sounds on the level, but how is it an emergency?”

  I paced back and forth in front of the bench, staring at the stone steps of a brick building from last century. The bars on the windows gave me the creeps. “Check my phone’s GPS. I’m standing outside the witches’ private asylum for men. My brother is being held against his will, and I’m afraid they’re going to drug him up or zap his brain with electricity until he forgets all these new-fangled male ideas.”

  “If I could prove imminent threat, I might swing a court order to spring him. What can you give me?”

  “Check his MIT roommate of record, Peter Winthrop III. He no longer has any memory of meeting Zak. The website for the full-ride scholarship has erased all record of him. Our home in Holy Oak, the place where we stored his birth certificate and all our family photos has been burned to the ground. After his fiancée protested his kidnapping, someone shot her.” The order wasn’t exactly chronological or linked in the way I implied, but it sounded convincing.

  “Good God, they’re erasing him from the system. Stall as long as you can. I’ll start driving now. Providence is an hour away from your position. I’ll get a phone warrant on the way.” He hung up before I could ask him why the Smithsonian had a field office in Rhode Island.

  I ran across the street, through the doors, and into the lobby. The flickering bulbs on the high 1920s ceiling didn’t shed enough light. I could see plaster rosettes crumbling up there, but some of the corners below were dark. The heat in the room was stifling. No air conditioning poured from the curlicued brass vents. They had a beat-up water cooler in the corner but no cups to go with it. Dad squinted as he tried to finish the paperwork. Zak was nowhere to be seen.

  An orderly sat at a
service window, fiddling with an antenna on a tiny television. He wore a Red Sox ball cap and listened to the sportscaster through an earbud. “He dropped the ball. Run!” An extra-large Taco Bell cup sat at his elbow. The office area behind him was painted a soothing pastel aquamarine. The light switch by his door into the asylum proper appeared to be an old-fashioned push-button kind. No. It had a red label that I couldn’t read from this side of the counter. The door was propped open, and a fan blew cooler air into the office.

  Dad glanced up. “Your brother is changing into his pajamas in room 125. It’s lights-out in less than thirty minutes. I’d let you say goodbye, but visiting hours are over.”

  Beyond the locked doors leading to the ward, I could hear an old man wailing, “Help me!”

  I told the Red Sox fan behind the counter, “Somebody needs you.”

  The orderly waved my warning away. “Old man Lonsky has the memory of a goldfish. If you tell him he has Alzheimer’s, he’s forgotten two minutes later. He’s a broken record.” He interrupted his explanation to cheer for something on the screen.

  Leaning over, I told Dad. “Stall. The Smithsonian folks are going to be here to spring Zak in an hour.”

  Dad whispered, “Why would a museum care?”

  “They have a special division that wants to hire him for his gate detector. He can get therapy and protection from the feds.”

  My dad kissed me loudly on the forehead. “Normally, I’d punish you for going behind my back, but tonight, I’ll buy you ice cream.”

  “Pizza,” I replied, feeling peckish.

  “Are you done with those forms yet?” asked the orderly.

  Slipping into a dead-on imitation of Mr. Hamadi, Dad said, “I don’t understand so many of these words. I am not, how you say, from this country. What is SSN?”

  The orderly ripped his earbud out in disgust. “Damn foreigners.” Raising his voice, he said, “Social security number. Does your kid have one of those?”

  Dad looked at me, feigning confusion. “What is Zaki’s selfie phone number?”

  “No! Social security,” the orderly repeated.

  The old man in back started to recite a string of digits.

  Disgusted, the orderly barked, “Not yours, Lonsky.”

  While the desk worker was looking away, Dad hid the pages he’d already completed in the cobwebby shadows under my chair and winked. Then he began a fresh page in Arabic script. He asked me a question in the same language, to which I replied, “Slower, Papa. I don’t understand.”

  Dad made an exasperated sound and shook the paper in my face.

  “I’m trying, but you don’t let me go to the class. Education is for men, you say. Well ask your perfect son if you want to know.” I crossed my arms and turned my back on him.

  He ranted at me in Arabic before Mr. Red Sox made a disgusted noise and buzzed his way out into the lobby. “Give me that.” The orderly ripped the sole page out of Dad’s hand. “Christ on a crutch, what is this chicken scratch?”

  I answered, “My esteemed father doesn’t write English. The great and powerful Zaki is his translator. We need him back out here if you want those forms this year.”

  The orderly growled. “You tell me what to write, and I’ll put it in English.”

  I wandered over to the counter, peeking through the door on the other side. Lonsky was in room 110. Zak couldn’t be far away. While Dad provided the distraction, I hopped the counter as quietly as I could. On the way through, I accidentally snapped off the TV’s antenna. I left it for him to find on the chair and duck-walked into the hall.

  Hoping nobody noticed me, I dashed past five doors before I checked the room numbers—120. I slowed down, as I approached the corner. They had a big round mirror mounted on the ceiling to avoid collisions at the intersection, so I peeked. In the middle of the hall, I caught a glimpse of Zak’s Star Wars pajamas next to someone in an orderly’s uniform. Something felt wrong, like the moment I flew off my bicycle seat and saw the asphalt coming up to meet me. I squinted through my fake glasses and glimpsed foreign-lettering tattooed on a bicep as the huge orderly stuffed a rubber gag device into my brother’s mouth and cinched it around his neck.

  I gasped but slapped a hand over my own mouth so I wouldn’t draw attention. The bald brute looked like a white supremacist from a prison. Terror paralyzed me. As much as I had learned in my self-defense class, I knew I couldn’t take this guy with my bare hands. He slammed my brother onto a gurney like a ragdoll.

  I had to act, but how? Looking around frantically, I spotted an IV pole. I’d get one swing for free, but a blow hard enough to knock him out might kill him. I couldn’t do that.

  What else? My watch had no signal due to the cell blocker. The wall behind me had a bulletin board, a laundry bin, and a red fire-alarm box. Bingo.

  By then, Mount Baldy had my brother’s chest strapped to the gurney, ignoring his muffled pleas. When Zak tried to use his feet for leverage, the guy punched him so hard in the face that I could hear it. My brother’s head jerked to the side, and his legs went limp.

  Using a sheet from the laundry bin to avoid the marker paint, I pulled the alarm and dove into an open doorway as air-horn sounds blasted from the ceiling speakers. But Baldy didn’t run for the exit or herd patients to safety. Instead, he walked deliberately toward a door at the far end of the hall labeled “Security Wing.”

  The alarm was loud, causing patients to shout at his as he strode by.

  “Let me out of here.”

  “Take me first!”

  “Zarusthra is coming.”

  “Someone wet my bed.”

  Hunkered over, I ran the fifteen feet to the gurney. I started to tell Zak not to say anything, but he was out cold. I unlocked the wheels and pulled for all I was worth, praying for strength. Unfortunately, I should have prayed for stealth because I banged the gurney into the wall as I rounded the corner. In the mirror, I saw Baldy stop in his tracks.

  Without looking back again, I charged with all my might toward the exit. Boots pounded in my direction. I didn’t have a keycard, but Red Sox opened the door for me. I plowed into him, knocking him over the plastic plant and onto his back.

  I shouted, “They beat Zak unconscious.”

  Eyes wide, Dad pulled the gurney into the waiting room and slammed the door shut on Baldy. A picture fell off the wall when the brute smashed into the metal door.

  “What the hell?” asked Red Sox, holding the back of his head as he struggled to his feet.

  Fists thundered against the wire-reinforced glass. Baldy wasn’t too bright, or he’d have walked out the way I’d come in. He called me something I’d once heard on the school bus. “You’re going to be sorry.”

  “Call him off,” said Dad.

  “Why should I?”

  I snapped a photo of Red Sox standing over my injured and gagged brother. “Because I can get to the street and send this to the Boston Globe before you can catch me.”

  Dad smiled at my bravado until he noticed the state Zak was in. Then he become stone-cold. “I know senators who could shut this place down for abuses by morning.” Technically true, but those senators might not be on our side.

  I reached over the counter to grab the fast food cup, hoping to fill it with water and wake Zak.

  Red Sox cleared his throat. “Hunter. Shut off the alarm and tell the police it’s a false alarm.”

  Baldy grumbled more curses and wandered off. In a few moments, he was in the office, searching for an off switch. Red Sox shook his head. “Dammit. It’s beside the security cameras—the big console labeled ‘fire.’ Turn the round key.”

  Seconds later, the alarm died.

  I used the lull to toss the mondo soda at my brother’s face. Only it wasn’t soda anymore. Stale water and cigarette butts washed over him, and Zak woke up, spitting. “Sorry.”

  Baldy voiced his opinion from the service desk. “The patient must return to his room.”

  “He’s checking out now.” Dad unstrappe
d Zak.

  “Over my dead body,” said Red Sox. “Once someone’s in my charge, they don’t get out.”

  Dad grabbed the forms from the floor and ripped them in half. “You don’t have paperwork checking him, so he was never in your care.”

  Red Sox blinked. “Your English got better.”

  I backed up, opening the front door. “Outside, now.”

  Baldy was reaching under the desk for something. My intuition was screaming, “weapon.”

  My brother and father staggered out onto the steps. Red Sox followed, but Baldy stayed inside. We were still arguing when the cops arrived. Dad was more than happy to explain. Freya showed up for the local witches next.

  “Date night cut short?” I asked.

  She rubbed her eyebrow with her middle finger.

  Before we could finish recapping what we’d told the cops, she was followed by the Smithsonian agent. Agent Benchley looked like a twenty-year-old insurance salesman who spent way too much time on his hair. He flashed his badge and produced the court document, silencing all objections. Then he directed my brother to wait in his sedan with government plates parked at the curb.

  Dad got the last word in. “I want Hunter, the orderly who did this to my son, arrested.”

  “I can’t do that without evidence and a full name, sir,” said the cop. “Is that his first name or last? I also can’t go inside a private facility without a warrant. By then, any security tape will probably be erased. If we do manage to catch him outside the hospital, he’ll just claim that the patient attacked him.”

  Rounding on Freya, Dad said, “If that monster has a job in this state by tomorrow, I am publishing every negative thing I have on the Council.”

  “Whoa,” said Benchley. “Publicity is the last thing we want. Agreed?”

  Red Sox nodded vigorously. “Hunter’s out as soon as I can get someone to cover his shift. Scary SOB. I think he’s the one who’s been carving into the windowsills.”

  Benchley spread his arms. “There, everybody’s happy. Mr. Morris, let’s head to a diner and sort out the details.”

  “Pizzeria,” I said.