Book of Names

by Slater, David Michael

  The conversation was over.

  Daphna bowed her head. It seemed like she’d just been taught critical things, yet she still didn’t know what to do. How could she risk leaving Dexter alone? How could she even consider doing that to him? How could she risk making him the last Lamed Vavnik on Earth? How could she do that to the world? Could a more selfish act be conceivable? But how could she let Quinn do this for her when it was far more likely she would succeed? She needed that book every bit as much as he did. He could die!

  Daphna looked up to share her frustration with Mr. Brown and Quinn.

  But they were gone.

  “No!” Daphna cried, scrambling to her feet. She ran back into the hall and crashed through the door of the operating room.

  When she saw Quinn laid out on the table, she screamed.

  CHAPTER 32

  the bench

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” Red Mask growled from his throne. “How do you properly remove a name from this book? We are loathe to damage the pages in any way until we know the book’s full power.”

  Dexter did not bother struggling with the straps fastening his arms and legs to the chair. He was simultaneously trying not to look at the rabbi on his left and to see if Nora was still on the floor. She seemed to be in her usual fetal position.

  He cursed himself for the arrogance of coming with no plan, for the unforgivable stupidity of bringing Nora here even if he’d had one. He didn’t know what to say, so he said what he felt like saying: “I guess that’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  “As you wish,” Red Mask said. He nodded, and the two giants swung a second metal contraption around to Dexter’s face. They forced his head onto the chinrest and fastened a strap around his forehead.

  Dex clenched his teeth as hard as he could, but one of them punched him in the stomach. He gasped for air, and when his mouth opened, a clamp on a hinge swung into it, grasping his tongue.

  “The rabbi here is still considering his words,” Red Mask said. “Why don’t you do the same? In the meantime, perhaps we can loosen your tongue a bit.”

  He nodded, and one of the giants twisted a knob.

  The clamp retracted a bit.

  Dexter screamed.

  CHAPTER 33

  standstill

  “Do not interfere,” Mr. Brown said, grabbing Daphna roughly by the arm. “Or you will jeopardize his life.”

  Quinn was unconscious, draped under blue cloth. An IV ran to his arm. Two other tubes ran from his chest and thigh to the large steel cart with all the monitors and attachments. Yet another tube was down his throat.

  Daphna wavered on her feet, but Mr. Brown steadied her. He slid a chair behind her and helped her sit down. Then he sat down in a chair next to her.

  “Remain calm, young lady,” said Dr. Lewis while he affixed electrodes to Quinn’s head. “This is a delicate operation. The boy has been given complete instructions on what to do on the other side. Now sit there calmly while I finish the prepping.”

  “Oh, God,” Daphna groaned. This was her fault for being indecisive. She was now going to have to answer for this, too. “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.”

  Daphna tried the breathing thing again. She did better this time, and it helped a bit, especially when she managed to take air all the way into her stomach through her throat. She lost track of time for a while.

  When she came back, Daphna saw Quinn’s eyes had been taped shut. Dr. Lewis was inserting something into his ears. She turned away, looking for anything to distract her, and something did, something odd and out-of-place on the giant desk at the far end of the room. Sitting next to the computer was a colorful sculpture made of—gumdrops?

  Daphna got up and approached the desk. She recognized the double helix now. It was a model of DNA. She’d done a similar project when she was in elementary school. Dr. Lewis must have grandchildren. The thought struck her as odd.

  Daphna took the model back with her to her seat.

  “We have three ways of determining brain death,” Dr. Lewis said when Daphna sat back down, as though someone had asked. “One: a cessation of functioning in the cerebral cortex, as indicated by a flatline on the EEG here.” He pointed to a monitor. “Two: lack of brain stem response to auditory stimuli—hence the speakers in the boy’s ears. They will emit clicks. And three: a lack of blood flowing through the brain, which we’ll take care of soon enough.

  “Now, this device here—” Dr. Lewis pointed to the large machine hooked into Quinn— “is called a Heart-Lung machine. It will provide circulation and oxygenation while the heart is stopped. It is cooling the blood as we speak.”

  “Here, now,” he continued, sounding as if he were simply explaining how equipment worked rather than how he was killing a human being. “The boy’s temperature has reached 75 degrees. The ECG—” He pointed to another monitor— “indicates cardiac malfunction.”

  “Please stop this!” Daphna cried, leaping to her feet. The gumdrop model fell to the floor. “I’ll do it! I’ll go!”

  “Daphna,” warned Mr. Brown, standing up in case she did something stupid, “you risk his life with this behavior.”

  Daphna forced herself to sit back down. She tried to take in long, deep breaths, but couldn’t control them. She gulped for air like a drowning victim.

  Dr. Lewis was giving Quinn a shot now. “A massive dose of potassium chloride,” he said.

  A moment later, he pointed to the EEG: a flatline. Then he pointed to another monitor and said, “Brain stem response to the speakers is growing weaker. There,” he added a moment later. “It’s gone.”

  Next Dr. Lewis turned off the Heart-Lung machine. Then he reached below the table and pushed a button, raising Quinn’s head. “To drain the blood,” he said.

  Once Quinn was partially upright, Dr. Lewis stepped back from the table and looked at Mr. Brown. He gave a satisfied smile and said, “Success! The boy is dead.”

  “Bring him back!” Daphna cried, again on her feet, but Dr. Lewis looked only at Mr. Brown.

  “Bring him back! Time is disconnected in Heaven! You can bring him back now!”

  Mr. Brown looked at his doctor with no expression at all. He said nothing for an excruciatingly long few moments, but then finally nodded. Dr. Lewis switched on the Heart-Lung machine. The readouts on all the monitors immediately jumped back to life.

  “That’s good, right?” Daphna cried. “He’s going to be okay?”

  “It will take a few minutes for his blood to warm up,” Dr. Lewis said. “Have patience.”

  Quinn’s eyes began to flutter.

  “Mr. Brown,” said Dr. Lewis.

  “Quinn!” Daphna pleaded.

  All three rushed to the operating table.

  The moment they reached it, Quinn’s eyes burst open. He screamed, dislodging the tube in his throat. Then he began to thrash, threatening to loose the others still in his chest and thigh.

  “Hold him!” Dr. Lewis cried. Together they held down Quinn’s shoulders and arms.

  “His legs! Hold his legs!”

  Daphna lurched to Quinn’s feet and clutched his ankles.

  “Fire!” Quinn rasped. His voice was awful, ragged like Asterius Rash’s used to be. “The fire!”

  “Quinn!” Daphna cried. “What did you see? Are your parents there—in Purgatory? Did you see the book?”

  “Fire!” Quinn cried, his eyes rolling in his head. “Books on fire! Everywhere—books on fire!” He thrashed again. “Heaven!” he moaned. “No one—nothing but the fire! The Dragon is burning the books! It’s trying to get out!”

  “He’s still there!” Mr. Brown cried. He threw himself over Quinn’s flailing body to hold it down. “Do it now!”

  Dr. Lewis, who’d let go of Quinn, took a needle out of a long silver box. It was already full of a clear liquid.

  Daphna smelled something sweet, a hint of licorice and lemon—tarragon?

  “What is that?” she begged. “What are you doing?”

&
nbsp; “It will help,” was all Dr. Lewis said. He injected Quinn in the arm.

  Quinn seized violently. Now the tubes jerked out of his body and his blood began to spill. Then he collapsed, and the monitors went berserk.

  Daphna staggered back as Dr. Lewis spun round, frantically reinserting the tubes. Then he grabbed those paddles she’d only seen on TV and shocked Quinn with them. Mr. Brown had also backed away. He sat down again.

  The crazy beeping machines settled down.

  “Is—is he okay?” Daphna asked, crying now. If Quinn—

  “Is he back?” Mr. Brown asked. “Is he coming back?”

  “Coma, I fear,” said Dr. Lewis. He didn’t sound panicked at all, which was both disturbing and reassuring.

  “Coma?” Daphna whined. “He’s in a—?” She moved to take Quinn’s hand, but felt her foot squish something—those gumdrops. She reached down and pried the hunk off her shoe, but instead of tossing it away, she looked at it.

  Then she looked at it closer.

  Each gumdrop had a letter on it. There were four in her clump: A, T, C, and G.

  Daphna squatted down and sorted through the others scattered on the floor. They were all A’s, T’s, C’s and G’s.

  She got up, white as a sheet, her mind spinning.

  Mr. Brown looked at her.

  Suddenly, Daphna understood. She knew exactly why she’d been attracted to a single Book in the Light, why she knew in her very soul that it was hers.

  It was hers.

  “Quinn didn’t go to Purgatory,” she said, her voice hitching, “he went to Heaven. The Books in Heaven—They contain the formulas for our DNA. We come from those Books, and we return to them when we die. Those Books contain people’s souls—and they’re burning!”

  Daphna didn’t have time to observe how this was received because her phone rang. She ripped it out of her pocket.

  It was a one word text message from her brother.

  The word was ‘Help.’

  CHAPTER 34

  fraying

  Dexter had never been in so much pain. He’d never known so much pain was possible. He couldn’t hear the animal sounds issuing from his throat. He couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t think.

  The entire universe was pain.

  His tongue, his mouth—his whole head—they felt like they were going to shred. It was a thousand times worse than being shot. Dex felt his consciousness fraying until, finally—and mercifully—it snapped.

  CHAPTER 35

  in trouble

  “It may simply be the inferior life-force of the typical human,” said Dr. Lewis while he worked dials and knobs on Quinn’s machines.

  “Then perhaps the twins,” Mr. Brown suggested.

  “If the boy does not return, I’m quite certain we’ll succeed with one of them. Wonderful that there are two.”

  Daphna wasn’t listening. She rushed over to the operating table, leaned over, and kissed Quinn on the lips. He was still disarranged under all the draping he’d tossed about, so despite her panic, she tried to make him more comfortable. When she tucked his right arm under, she found something in his hand—some kind of folded paper. As quickly as she could, she stuffed it into her pocket.

  Mr. Brown stood up and said, “Let’s do it now.”

  It took a moment for Daphna to hear this. “What?” she said when it got through. “No. I have to leave. I have to leave right now.”

  “You said you wanted to go!” Mr. Brown shouted. “Now’s your chance. We have no time! We have to send you!”

  Daphna turned to Dr. Lewis. “Take care of him,” she demanded. Then she turned to Mr. Brown and said, “I have to go. Dexter is in trouble.”

  “We’re all in trouble!”

  “I’m going to help my brother get The Book of the Living,” Daphna told him. “Together, we can do it. I promise. We’ll bring it here, and you can use it to—”

  “We have to send you!” Mr. Brown screamed. He seemed to have lost control of himself entirely. “You have to find that book!”

  He rushed at Daphna and grabbed her by the shoulders. When she tried to squirm away, he flung her to the floor like she was stuffed with straw. He stood over her, his face contorted, his fists clenched.

  Daphna knew she hadn’t a chance in the world of fighting her way out.

  “Quinn brought something back,” she said. “A note. It’s in his hand under the covers.”

  When Mr. Brown and Dr. Lewis attacked poor Quinn, Daphna scrambled to her feet and sprinted for the door.

  “Take care of him!” she cried, bursting back into the commons. She ran past the yoga studio without a glance. But after lurching outside, she pulled up short.

  The rioting had begun.

  CHAPTER 36

  men in black

  The streets were packed with people smashing widows and looting stores. Fortunately no one seemed to notice or care about Daphna’s arrival on the scene. She turned momentarily back to the wellness center. Mr. Brown was evidently not pursuing her, which was a relief. She hoped that was a good sign for Quinn and that no one out here would venture back to that little room.

  It was hotter than Daphna thought possible. The cracks in the sky were spreading, emanating crimson waves in all directions. A digital sign on a bank across the street said it was 112 degrees.

  Daphna took a deep breath in through her nose and drew it down her throat, then set off running toward the museum, taking care to avoid the looters, who remained focused on looting. No one paid her any mind.

  Just a few seconds later, she was there, standing at the museum’s front doors. All was quiet.

  All was locked, as well.

  Daphna looked around for an idea, but nothing presented itself. Then she looked up, and the moment she did, black-robed figures, a dozen or so, leapt off the roof. They flew toward the street for a few dizzy, surreal moments, but then swung back, attached to cords she hadn’t noticed, and crashed through the windows running along the upper floor.

  A slamming door made Daphna spin round to the street. A half dozen more figures in black were leaping out of one of those stretch-limo SUV’s. It was bright white. They ran up the steps right past her with a metal battering ram, which they used to crash through the museum’s front doors. Were they wearing swords?

  The whole thing lasted only a few seconds. Daphna looked back at the SUV, trying to understand how it all could have happened so quickly.

  Her heart siezed.

  The man in the passenger seat was looking right at her with sad eyes. That curtain of white hair encircling his bald head was unmistakable: It was the Secret Keeper of the Church.

  Daphna turned and rushed into the museum.

  CHAPTER 37

  what you want to know

  Someone approached Dexter’s chair and leaned over him, which brought his mind back to life, to agony. But now the clamp freed his tongue. Dex closed his mouth and cried. The rabbi’s tongue was freed as well. He let out the most awful, broken groan.

  “Now,” said Blue Mask from his throne with that god-awful voice. “I will ask you folks one more time. If you do not tell me what I need to know, you will never tell anyone anything ever again.”

  “I know nothing of this book!” the rabbi raged, though his words were almost incomprehensible. “We have never believed it to be a literal thing!”

  “I see,” Red Mask said. “What do you have to say, Mr. Wax?”

  Dexter wasn’t sure he could speak, but he didn’t get the chance.

  “I’ll tell you,” someone said. Nora. She was there, beside Dexter now. “Don’t hurt them any more. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  “Nora,” Dex managed to croak. She wasn’t strong enough for this. It was his fault. What in God’s name was he thinking bringing her here?

  “Scraped,” she said. “The names must be scraped from the pages.”

  “It will not damage the pages?”

  “No.”

  “Is a special tool required?�
�

  “I—I don’t think so.”

  “Bring me the book.”

  A Blue Mask rose from his chair, then collected it from the podium along with an ornate and gleaming red-handled dagger. Then he walked to the throne and handed them over.

  Red Mask opened the book on his lap and considered the pages before him a moment. Then he looked up. “Who shall be our test subject?” he asked. “Oh, wait. I think I know.” And then he laughed. “My brothers,” he said, holding the dagger aloft, “say a little prayer for the Holy Fath—”

  Just then the door behind Dexter crashed to the floor.

  CHAPTER 38

  across the page

  Blue Masks all around the room leapt to their feet, expertly producing swords with red and gold handles from behind their chairs. Dex couldn’t turn to see what was happening behind him, but he saw a silver streak fly past his head. It buried itself in the chest of a Blue Mask, the first to charge. He crumpled to the floor with blood pouring through a hand clutched to his heart.

  Mayhem ensued as sword-wielding men robed in black rushed past him and clashed with the Masons. More blades plunged into more chests. Men all around the room screamed and fell dead where they’d been struck. Dex saw two men kill each other at the same moment, skewering one another with their swords.

  Dex realized he could see Nora in his peripheral vision, still next to him, unmoving. He could hear her praying.

  “Let me out!” he hissed, but it was no use. He jerked in his restraints, but that was useless, too.

  A Blue Mask was struggling with a man in black just in front of him now, their swords clanging. The man in black seemed to get the upper hand, but just before he delivered a fatal blow, he vanished.

  Dex looked up to see Red Mask, still sitting on his throne, scraping furiously at a page in The Book of the Living. And now Dex saw that men in black were disappearing all around the room.