Book of Names

by Slater, David Michael

  Daphna now looked back to Quinn, who looked at her. “Do you have what you wrote down?” It was a long shot, but if it was handy…

  Quinn nodded. Sitting right under the laptop was a pile of ragged notebook paper. He pulled the pile free while giving the uncooperative computer a nasty look. Then he handed the pages to Daphna. She only had to read half a dozen names before her eyes lit up.

  “Hey!” she cried. “Penelope Posey! I read that name in the paper this morning!” She turned to Dexter now. “The birth announcement! And there are others I’ve read! Lots!”

  “The pictures are coming up,” Quinn said, but then Daphna’s words seemed to sink in for him. “It is everyone in the world?” he asked, turning to her. “When you’re born, you’re added in. And when you—” He didn’t have to finish the thought. Quinn sat down again and dropped his head into his hands. “That means—” he choked. “That means I—I—” He couldn’t say it.

  “Wren,” Daphna gasped. “Did we kill her?” If they’d killed someone, that was it. Game over.

  “Heaven!” Quinn cried, jerking his head back up. He looked frantically between the twins with wide, beseeching eyes. “You’ve been there! And you came back! Can we—?” He leapt to his feet and took Daphna’s hands once again. Her heart leapt, too, despite her cursing it.

  “Help me!” Quinn begged. “Take me there so I can—”

  The thunder crashed outside, making them all jump. All but Quinn. It didn’t seem to bother him.

  “Quinn,” Daphna said, once again removing her hands from his. Did he not notice that he reached for her only when he was desperate for her help? “The Book that took us there was destroyed. If there is any possible way to get back, we have no idea what it is.”

  “Those towers!”

  “They’re useless,” Dex said, and not kindly. “Decoys.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Nora said, making everyone turn to her.

  “What?” Daphna asked, snarled, really. “Who are you anyway, and what do you have to do with any of this!”

  “Shut up!” Dex shouted.

  Daphna looked at him in disbelief.

  Nora was pointing at the television, so everyone reluctantly moved to see again. It was still the news. Some sort of disaster. Smoke was pouring out of a collapsed metal structure. Emergency vehicles were all around. People were running through smoke.

  “That’s one of the towers!” Daphna exclaimed. “What happened?”

  “Someone blew it up,” said Nora. “Someone blew them all up, at pretty much the same time. This is the one in Utah.” Then she said, “There might be a war over the ones in the Middle East.”

  All four kids watched in silence as clips of smoking ruins came on from Jerusalem and Mecca. These were followed by shots of military planes rolling out of hangers.

  There was nothing to say, so no one said anything. Finally, Daphna turned the set off.

  “Could this be fake, too?” Nora asked.

  Daphna wasn’t interested in discussing that bit of wishful thinking anymore, especially with this helpless girl. Pretty as she was, she seemed to be one of those types who could render themselves invisible by the sheer force of their shyness, the type who’d shatter like glass if you looked at them too hard. The type who didn’t know the first thing about anything.

  “Seriously, who are you?” Daphna asked. Then, turning to her brother, she said, “Who is she, Dexter?” Then to Nora again, “Why did you scream at that pastor this morning?”

  Nora didn’t answer, so Dex said, “Nora, this is my sister, Daphna, and Quinn, I guess.” Turning back to Daphna, he added, “That crazy pastor was going off about all that fire and brimstone stuff in the halls. She got kind of freaked out and almost got trampled.”

  “But, Dex—” Daphna said, hoping that in just those two words he heard her telling him that this was hardly the time to look after frightened strays.

  The thunder boomed again outside. The windows rattled in their frames.

  No one commented on it, but Nora was shaking like she was freezing cold. Her face, already pale, looked like chalk. Her wild hair seemed almost limp, as if in sympathy with her face. She was getting that absent look.

  “I know all that stuff Daphna said made us sound crazier than that crazy pastor,” Dex said, thinking Nora looked a bit crazy herself right now, “but actually, it’s all true. It’s all completely true.”

  “Dex,” Daphna said again.

  “I’ve spent my whole life waiting for the Rapture,” Nora said, coming back into her eyes. “Every day, every hour I’ve been afraid it would come, so I had to be ready for it. I had to be absolutely perfect, just in case. And I have been perfect!” she cried. Blood was rushing to her cheeks. “I have been perfect! Completely perfect! Until today. Today! It was too much today—I don’t know why—I hate that thunder so much, and hearing him go on about it was more than I could bear. He says the same thing every day—morning, noon, and night! I snapped, and I went to show him I didn’t care about being perfect, that I didn’t care about the stupid Rapture. That’s why I shouted at him, and that’s why I pulled the alarm!”

  Nora dropped to her knees, sobbing. “I’m sorry, Daddy!” she blubbered, and then began mumbling something incoherent.

  Dex approached and put a hand on Nora’s back again. “Pastor Jons—” he said, “He’s your father? I’m sorry about that stuff I said. I wouln’t’ve—Is that why you thought you were going to hell?”

  She’s as crazy as her dad, Daphna thought.

  “But he was right! He was right all along! I can never face him again.”

  “Of course you can,” Daphna sighed. This girl was way over the top. “He’ll forgive you. There are a lot worse things than interrupting a speech and pulling a stupid fire alarm. Why don’t you go home? He’s probably worried sick.”

  “Ah,” Dex said again, “he seemed pretty upset. Biblically upset, I guess you could say.”

  “He will never speak to me again,” Nora moaned.

  “Nora,” Dex said, as encouragingly as he could. He helped her to her feet, unable to bear seeing her crumpled like that. “You heard our story, right?” he asked. When she nodded, he went on. “You heard about our ribs. The Secret Keeper of the Church, the guy also secretly in charge of everyone building all those towers—He wants to kill us because we can tell the world that Jesus wasn’t the son of God, at least not in the way they say, because he was born from one of us, a Lamed Vavnik, with a special rib.”

  “Are—are you saying Jesus was a fake?”

  “No,” Daphna said, failing to suppress a sigh. “Not at all. Or not exactly. We’re saying that the stories we know are not—they don’t ever seem to be—the whole truth.”

  “So what you know about the Rapture or whatever it’s called,” Dex put in, “might not be exactly right either.”

  The thunder crashed again outside, as if to mock Dexter’s feeble claims.

  “We need to find out what’s really going on,” Daphna said, refusing to waste any more time on this girl. While Dex got Nora to sit on the futon, she walked back to the computer and started scanning the screen. There were an awful lot of pictures.

  “What’s all this?” she asked.

  Quinn came over taking long, slow breaths.

  “Oh, okay,” he said. “Good.” He didn’t look good, though. He didn’t seem to be holding himself together much better than Nora was.

  “Good,” he repeated. “Here we go. Yeah, so, like I said, I’ve been kind of paranoid thinking people were following me when I went out, like some bad horror movie. So I took pictures all around in case something happened to me. You know, evidence, I guess.”

  “Click this,” Daphna said. She was leaning in close to the screen, touching one of the images. Quinn complied.

  “That’s at the hospital,” Daphna said when it enlarged, “when you were on the bench. “Hey! Those cops! That’s—!”

  “Richards and Madden,�
� Dex guessed. He wasn’t even looking at the screen. He was keeping an eye on Nora, who seemed lost in thought.

  “The cops that took the book?” Quinn asked.

  “They’ve been following you,” Dex concluded, knowing he was right. “That’s why they were on the scene of the accident so quickly this morning. And that’s why they left it so soon. They left when you left. They followed you to school.”

  “They were waiting for a chance to take the book,” Daphna said, scrolling slowly through the other pictures now. “They must have believed you when you called. Or someone did. And in all that chaos at school—the book falling on the ground, the gunshot—they saw their opportunity, and they took it.”

  “Look,” Dex said. “I’m sorry I—”

  “Just forget it, Dex.”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have called the cops,” Quinn groaned. “That’s standard stuff!”

  Daphna was leaning in to get a closer look at another picture. It was of Richards or Madden—she didn’t know which—shaking hands through the window of the white car at school.

  “Can you make this bigger?” she asked. “Maybe we can see who’s in the car.”

  Quinn clicked a few things, and the image filed the screen. The man in the passenger seat was not visible, only his hand shaking the cop’s.

  But that shake.

  “Look, Dex!” Daphna nearly screamed. “Look how they’re shaking hands!”

  Dex came over and looked at the image. He squinted. He nodded.

  “What?” Quinn asked. “What?”

  Daphna turned to him. “See how they have their thumbs on each other’s knuckles? We saw the same thing! The murders—the killings around the world—the other Lamed Vavniks. We saw one of the murder scenes! The cops investigating it—They shook like that!”

  “What does it mean?” Quinn asked.

  “He was right,” Nora moaned. She was standing there now, too, looking at the image. “He was right about everything.”

  “What now?” Daphna asked, making no effort to mask her impatience. “Are you going to tell me you know something about this?”

  “They’re Freemasons.”

  Dex, Daphna, and Quinn all said, “They’re what?”

  “Freemasons,” Nora repeated, grimly. “My father despises them worse than anyone in the world. It’s his calling to fight them.”

  “But who are they?” Daphna demanded.

  “Only the most infamous secret society in the history of the world.”

  CHAPTER 14

  out with it

  No one responded to this at first. Everyone waited for Nora to explain. But all she did was start to fall apart again.

  “Actually,” Dex said, “I think he called me a Mason. I thought he said ‘Jason.’ Was that who your father was going to tell everyone was responsible for—for everything? In the auditorium?”

  Nora nodded.

  “Well, he’s not right about that,” Daphna said, trying not to sound harsh now. “We told you how the plague started.”

  This seemed to help.

  “Who are the Freemasons?” Dex gently prodded. “Do you know anything specific?”

  Nora nodded. Then she surprised everyone with a burst of information.

  “They go back to the Pyramids,” she said. “No one knows exactly how they originated, but they have Lodges in just about every major city in the world and thousands of members. Mozart was a Mason. So was Ben Franklin and Harry Houdini. George Washington was sworn in on a Freemason Bible. A bunch of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Masons. President Roosevelt, President Ford, the first President Bush—they were all Masons.

  “Tons of Supreme Court justices were Masons. So were the Wright Brothers, Louis Armstrong, Henry Ford, Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, and many of the men who started Hollywood. Also Ty Cobb, Benedict Arnold, Paul Revere, Arnold Palmer, Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut, and tons more.

  “My father says they have shadow governments poised to take over countries all over the world—when they finally get the chance to, anyway. Supposedly the members don’t even know who each other are because they wear masks and disguise their voices. Though obviously it gets out who some of them are.”

  “Ahhh,” Dex said. “Are you serious?” Far be it from him to doubt the existence of secret mask-wearing organizations, but one with that many members? And members like those? He couldn’t help but consider the possibility that Nora was as big a loon as her father. The looks on Daphna’s and Quinn’s faces told him they were pretty sure she was.

  “The layout of Washington DC,” Nora continued, “depicts a Masonic symbol, a—”

  “Wait a minute,” Quinn interrupted. “You’re talking about the group in all the books and movies?”

  “Yes,” Nora said.

  “Then,” he challenged, voicing Dexter’s thoughts exactly, “if everyone knows about them, how is it some big secret?”

  “The group isn’t a secret,” Nora explained. “What they really want is the secret—Well, that’s only partly a secret. Everyone knows they want the Key to Power, something to let them step out of the shadows and rule openly. But no one knows what that is or how they go about searching for it. That’s why all the stories.”

  Everyone took this in. It was somewhat more reasonable now.

  “How do you know all this?” Daphna asked, her tone still mostly skeptical.

  “My father is an international expert on the Masons,” Nora told her. “The international expert. Only,” she added, “no one listens to him anymore. They think he’s crazy because he says the Masons are responsible for everything bad in the world. He says they’ve assassinated Presidents and that they blew up the space shuttle. He says they blew up the Twin Towers. It’s why our church forced him to retire.”

  “Is that why Mr. Haslam looked so nervous when he started speaking?”

  Nora nodded. “Yes. Dad promised he wouldn’t say anything about the Masons. He was going to, though. He just didn’t get the chance. He says they infiltrated our church, and that’s why they retired him. He wanted to tell everyone that Masons have been all over the neighborhood for weeks. He thinks you two are Masons, or infected by them to spread the plague.”

  “Sure, why not?” Daphna said.

  “But they have been around,” Quinn confirmed, “since I called the cops. So I wasn’t paranoid after all. And neither is your dad.”

  Everyone processed this for a moment. Then Daphna said, “Does your father know what they want? This Key to Power?”

  Nora shook her head. “No, he’s never been able to figure it out. He says Stalin was a Mason, and he was after it. And Hitler, too.”

  Dex and Daphna looked at each other, now taking this in. As was so often the case, they had the same thought. Dexter expressed it by asking, “Do you know of any other connections between the Masons and the Jews?”

  After a moment of thought, Nora nodded.

  “Well,” she said, “my father says the Masons invented anti-Semitism, that they invented all forms of bigotry and racism and hate. Oh, and if you draw a Jewish Star using the pyramid as one of the triangles on the back of the dollar bill, the six points touch the letters M-A-S-O-N. I don’t know what that means, though. I think my father once said it means they want something from the Jews, and that it’s some kind of coded threat.”

  Daphna pulled a dollar out of her back pocket, grabbed a pen that was resting against the laptop, and drew the star. Though some of what she’d heard so far had given her pause, she wanted to show how silly this oddball was and to get rid of her once and for all. But lo and behold, the star pointed to the letters exactly as Nora said it would.

  “It’s true!” Daphna admitted holding the bill up for Quinn and Dex. “Look—”

  “That’s—that’s amazing,” Quinn said. Dex didn’t try to look, but he had no doubt it was true.

  The skepticism in the room slowly drained away. It was replaced by pure anxiety.

  “Do you know anything mor
e?” Daphna asked, her tone now entirely converted.

  “No,” Nora admitted. “I don’t think so. But my father has, well, a lot of books on the Masons. He collects book by Masons, too. Both identified and secret.”

  “We need to get a look at your father’s books,” Daphna declared. “Do you think he’s home? Oh, my gosh! Dr. Fludd!” she suddenly cried. “I forgot all about her!” Daphna scrambled her phone out again and clicked the number. A moment later, she lowered it and said, “That does it. I’m calling OHSU.”

  “What’s going on?” Quinn asked as Daphna searched for the number.

  “Not sure,” Dex said. “We—”

  “Hello, this is Daphna Wax,” Daphna said. “Yes, yes—may I please talk to Dr. Fludd? She isn’t answering her—She what? Not at all? Okay, thank you. No, no—just a miscommunication is all.” Daphna hung up, paling.

  “What?” Dex asked.

  “She never came in to work, Dex!”

  “Did something happen to her?” Quinn asked. “Did the assassins—?”

  “She left the house in the middle of the night,” Daphna explained. “We thought she went to the hospital because she works 24/7. We found a note near the garage this morning, but her car was still—”

  Quinn turned gray. “The black Cadillac SUV?” he croaked.

  “Oh, my God.” Daphna knew. She already knew.

  “What?” Dex asked. “What?” But then he got it. “She was coming back in to leave the note! You killed her!”

  “I—I—” Quinn spluttered.

  There was no plan of attack. Dexter just flew at Quinn, bowling into him with a lowered shoulder. Quinn stumbled backwards and fell over the box of books Daphna had pulled out from under the table. The box tumbled over, spilling its contents. Quinn went over too, but he grabbled hold of Dexter. Together they crashed to the floor.

  “Dexter!” Daphna screamed. She leapt over and grabbed his arm before his fist could fly. “Dexter! He saved our lives!” But her heart—the same heart that nearly burst when Quinn kissed her—was going cold and sinking like a stone.

  “I—I—” Quinn kept stuttering, trying to get out from under Dexter, who was trying to wrench his arm free from Daphna. “I got there after midnight, after I finally got someone at the hospital to tell me you’d gone there and tracked down the address on-line. And I—when I got there, someone got out of the SUV. And they—it was dark. I thought they were trying to break in! I thought it was someone else trying to kill you! It will be okay!”