Mr. Fahrenheit

by T. Michael Martin

  DEDICATION

  For my grandparents

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Mr. Fahrenheit is a work of fiction containing some nonfiction elements that have been altered slightly to fit the story. For instance, Captain Thomas Mantell really did die tragically in pursuit of a UFO in 1948, but the conversation between him and the control tower in Mr. Fahrenheit is my invention. Similarly, some details about the “Roswell Incident” have been rearranged and may not match the real-life accounts of the events . . . though whether those accounts are “fiction” themselves is a matter of opinion, I guess.

  The bands and lyrics featured in Mr. Fahrenheit are also made up. If you’re interested in learning more about the history of early rock ’n’ roll, particularly doo-wop, I highly recommend Doo Wop: The Music, the Times, the Era by Bruce Morrow and Rich Maloof.

  EPIGRAPH

  The world is nearly all parceled out, and

  what there is left of it is being divided up, conquered, and

  colonized. To think of these stars that you see overhead at

  night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would

  annex the planets if I could; I often think of that.

  It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far.

  —Cecil Rhodes, The Last Will and Testament

  of Cecil John Rhodes

  But the true voyagers are those who leave

  For the sake of leaving; hearts light, like balloons,

  They never swerve from their destinies,

  And without knowing why, they say always,“We must go!”

  —Charles Baudelaire, “The Voyage”

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One: Watch the Skies

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part Two: It Came from Outer Space

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Three: The Day Bedford Falls Stood Still

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part Four: The Sky Is a Time Machine

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by T. Michael Martin

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  FIRELIGHT OF THE VANISHING SUMMER

  Without something to wonder at

  we should find life scarcely worth living.

  —Harry Houdini

  He is just a boy, that’s all, just a child walking through the firelight of the vanishing summer’s last sunset. He walks with his nerve endings ignited like constellations. The air tastes dark and electric on the back of his mouth; sweat molds his hair into sharp broomstraw points on his brow; a wind slips by and the witchgrass hisses, and dead leaves grasp his naked calves, like hands begging him to go back. No, he tells himself. But it doesn’t quite steel him, so he adds: Ellie. And when the boy feels his hands still shaking, he slips them into his deep hip pockets, where he carries magic in the same fashion a gunslinger hauls his iron firepower. The boy won’t be held back. Not tonight, and never again.

  He steps into the shadow of the haunted home.

  His name is Benji Lightman. He is eleven years old. He lives in Bedford Falls, Indiana. And he is walking toward this ancient front door so he can perform his ultimate trick:

  On the night before middle school begins, Benji will make himself disappear.

  The house—which is “the House,” capital H, like Hell—has loomed on this hill forever. Benji cranes his neck to take it in, dwarfed by the ghost fortress, which shoots skyward like a jagged arrow fired into the brighter heavens. Benji knows the legends: A crazy hook-handed doctor lives inside the House; Satanic warlocks meet here every full moon to sacrifice stray dogs. The stories aren’t true, though. (They almost definitely aren’t true.) He asked Papaw (who has loomed above Benji forever, too), and Papaw said the stories were “comprised of the same material that falls out of a bull’s ass.” Which sounded more convincing this morning, at home. In the sunlight. With Froot Loops.

  Now Benji pauses before the porch step, steals a last glance over his shoulder, and sees his friends a world away across the wild yard. Zeeko, the shorter of them, scrunches his dark face toward the sky, glasses flashing, shoulders hitching with each breath, lips moving with prayer. He is nervous and does not want to throw up (which he will, in fact, soon do). A few eighth-grade giants stand beside him, long-shadowed and stubbled like cacti, and epic in every way Benji is not.

  But that is not what Benji will remember most.

  What he will remember is this: Christopher Robin Noland, looking back at him in that blazing August light . . . and bursting into applause.

  Christopher Robin Noland, the new kid next door; Christopher Robin, rail skinny and homeschooled; Christopher, who always looks like an unmade bed but is the only real friend Benji has ever made since meeting Zeeko in preschool.

  “YEAH, BENJI! AW-RIGHT! LET’S DOOO THIS, BAY-BUH!” he crows. “WAHOO, BANJO! WAHOOOO!”

  The eighth graders, who brought them here, stare at Christopher as if he’s an alien.

  But there is something in that admittedly awkward shout that Benji loves with his whole heart: an unembarrassed joy. It is the sound of someone who is certain something astonishing is coming.

  Ellie, Benji thinks. He’d hoped she would be here, and maybe she’ll still show up.

  Shaun Spinney, most gigantic of the older kids, shouts, “What, Lightman, you forget your tampon?” Benji has no clue what that is. He doesn’t let on. “Don’t you wanna join our frat? Hey, if you don’t, we can go back!”

  Benji steps onto the porch, feeling the old wood shudder and cry out through the sole of his sneaker.

  But he won’t be held back.

  Because he knows that behind this red and rotting door, destiny is waiting. From his pocket Benji draws out his black wand, the great one with the glowing LED tip, and he wants to say “Lumos,” the way Harry Potter does when he ignites his own wand. Those stories are comprised of the same material that falls out of a bull’s ass.

  “Lumos,” Benji whispers.

  The wand lights the brass doorknob with a hundred star points, and when Benji’s palm meets the metal, the door opens a shrieking inch, almost all by itself. The smell of the House is like darkness and decay and bad memories, but it does not frighten him. He’s dreamed every night this summer—almost every night of his life—of something coming for him, something from beyond the rusting silos and gas-mining equipment and cornfields on Bedford Falls’s horizon, some flawless moment in this perfect summer that will make him disappear (presto!), undergo a metamorphosis, and vanish any memory of the “weird kid” he’s always been.

  In this dusk light, at the nexus of his life, Benji is about to do it.

  He really believes that. With his whole heart.

  Benji Lightman opens the door.

  And the ghosts begin to scream.

  SIX YEARS LATER

  PART ONE

  WATCH THE SKIES

  Many years ago, the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to c
limb it. He said, “Because it is there.” Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it.

  —President John F. Kennedy (1962)

  Magic reminds us that the universe is a huge, capital-M Mystery.

  —from the documentary Make Believe

  1

  Benji opened the door and strode with the Bedford Falls High School football team into the locker room.

  He put on his uniform piece by piece: the gloves he always wore on cold game nights, the shoes with special spikes. The cinder-block walls glowed white in the fluorescent lights as the room filled with the electric anticipation of pregame.

  After the team dressed in their blue-and-gold uniforms, they gathered in a semicircle around Coach Nicewarner, who began to tattoo a dry-erase board with X’s and O’s. Coach looked a lot older than his fortyish years right now, which made sense given everyone’s stratospheric expectations for the team this year: Led by the greatest athlete in the school’s history, Bedford Falls was on their way to their first undefeated season in decades.

  “Make no mistake, fellas,” Nicewarner shouted in a nasal, farm-boy accent, “we’re going to have to fight tonight. Nobody rest for a single play. Not one single play!”

  The team responded, “YES, SIR.”

  “Don’t you dare think of this game as a ‘warm-up’ for next week. This is their field. You match ’em on it hit for hit, gut for gut. You will not let them take down your team—or your town.”

  “NO, SIR.”

  “We will win or lose as a damn team. No single player can do it all, y’understand?” Coach said, though this wasn’t entirely true.

  “YES, SIR.”

  Coach Nicewarner capped his dry-erase marker, tossed it to an assistant, and addressed the team, now in a much more sincere voice.

  “It’s a cold night out there, gentlemen, so you do what you always do: You give your hometown the sun. Show the other team what Magic football means. It means one good, unforgettable ass-bustin’! Okay, let us pray!” Coach looked Benji’s way. “Captain, you want to lead us?”

  The team’s captain, the brilliant Bedford Falls quarterback—who was standing beside Benji—nodded and stepped forward. The team collectively took a knee and bowed their heads.

  And as the Our Father filled the room, Benji finished buttoning his tuxedo, put on his top hat, and left.

  This field house’s hallway was decorated in the style of every field house hallway in the charted galaxies. Teams from years past stared down somberly from photos on the walls. Stenciled between them were words of generic manly wisdom (You 4GET your PAIN, You REMEMBER your GLORY!). Benji wove through the parents hovering outside the locker rooms, and he could hear the home team’s own pregame pep talk, which was identical to Coach Nicewarner’s in its God-praisin’ and ass-bustin’ themes. It was just a game night, that was all, and Benji had attended almost every game night for four years. They’d lost their novelty for him a long time ago.

  But as he opened the door at the end of the hall and stepped toward the familiarly chaotic night, his insides backflipped with nervous excitement. Time and experience might dampen most miracles, but the sight of genuine beauty was not among them.

  She was standing at the end of the tunnel.

  The concrete tunnel ran beneath the bleachers before shooting onto the field. Benji could feel the stomping game-night mania of countless fans inches above his head; on the field, the Bedford Falls band blistered the air with their brassy rendition of the school fight song, which would momentarily summon Benji into the lights.

  But it was the sight of the familiar silhouette at the other end of the tunnel, and nothing else, that made his heart skip a beat.

  “Hey!” he called.

  Ellie Holmes turned. “Benji Lightman! When did you become so dapper? Does James Bond know you raided his wardrobe?”

  Huh? Benji thought, then remembered: The school had just bought him a new “Magic Mascot” tux. “Also, Batman’s wardrobe,” he said. He pulled a string on his shoulder; a black cape unfurled all the way to his ankles.

  “Holy fashion icon.” Ellie grinned.

  By the time Benji reached her, she’d turned away, aiming the Media Department’s expensive video camera toward the Bedford Falls fans in the bleachers across the field. She looked miserable, for some reason.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Okay, well, not that it’s a gigantic deal, Benji Lightman, but the apocalypse is upon us.” She thumbed the camera’s Zoom button; the lens whirred as the Bedford Falls crowd grew larger on the LCD screen. “And lo, the skies were opened,” she said, speaking loudly as the band crescendoed, “and the seven plagues burst forth, and the first among those plagues was this: a swarm of innumerable FIGs returning to torment us even though homecoming isn’t until next week, damn you!”

  Benji burst out laughing. FIG was code: “Forgot I Graduated,” a term applied to people who had technically completed high school but didn’t quite seem finished with it. There were a ton of Bedford Falls–based FIGs, of course—depressing fixtures of the local high school party scene. Bedford Falls’s FIG population always exploded during Homecoming Week, but it did seem like this year’s migration had begun earlier than usual. Maybe this was partly because tonight’s game had been delayed by a snowstorm and was taking place a day late, on a Saturday. But it was probably mostly because everyone wanted to get an extra look at the Magic quarterback.

  Still staring at the camera, Ellie shook her head and sighed, a never-ending stream of her breath (which smelled like cinnamon) rising in front of her green eyes. If she was trying to look like the world’s cutest dragon, well, she did. Benji made an effort to look away.

  When she finished and glanced up, her forehead was creased a little in something approaching fear. “Promise me you’ll never let me do that after I leave next year,” she said.

  “Not for all the gold in Gotham.”

  Ellie chuckled. “Wait, promise on camera. Pics or it didn’t happen!”

  “On my honor as a double-oh agent,” he said when she raised the camera to him, “I swear I won’t let you do that after we leave next year.”

  “Fabulous. Now say Something Profoundly Profound to your future self.”

  “Ummm.”

  “Slightly more profound, please.”

  “Congrats on becoming the greatest magician since ever.”

  “And in spite of all your successes, Mr. Lightman, have you ever forgotten where you came from?”

  “Oh, yeah. I purposely forgot, like, pretty much immediately.”

  Ellie laughed. “Good man. Oh! That reminds me: How’s the application to the Magic Lantern coming?”

  Benji’s smile faltered, just a bit. Then the marching band blasted its final note, which was his cue.

  “How do I look?” he asked.

  Ellie gave him a once-over, then reached up and tilted his top hat a little to the left, her soft wrist touching his cheek for an infinitesimal moment. “Poifect,” she said, and Benji didn’t know what Coach Nicewarner had been talking about: The night didn’t feel cold at all.

  The moment when he emerged onto the field was, as always, vaguely fantastic.

  The field lights, which climbed high and silver on spindly poles, tossed a white illuminative bubble above the stadium. Under the dome of light, the chalked yardlines appeared ignited. The bleachers on both sides of the field were packed to capacity, eight thousand-ish people. As the final note of the fight song (“A Mighty Magic!”) hung on the air, a deep voice resounded over the speakers.

  “Bedford Falls fans, please welcome yourrrrr Bedford Falls Magic mascot: Bennnnnjiii BUH-LAZES!”

  Half the crowd roared as Benji wove between members of the marching band now standing at attention. He knew this was just an Indiana high school football game, and that people weren’t applauding for him so much as for the idea of the football team, the only positive and pure thing to come from Bedford Falls in years. But wow, did he love performing.


  He stopped in the perfect center of the field, facing his crowd in the away bleachers. A microphone was clipped to his lapel. He cleared his throat, reached into his tuxedo pocket, and thumbed the mic on.

  He said, “Who are we?”

  His voice boomed from the arena speakers, amplified a thousand times (and always sounding slightly higher than he imagined it). The Bedford Falls crowd’s roar, led by the cheerleaders, vocalized around one word:

  “MAAAAGIC!”

  Benji clapped his hands, which burst into instantaneous flame, courtesy of the pyrotechnic flash paper on the palms of his gloves. At the same moment, two cheerleaders fired T-shirt cannons: Cotton comets arced into the crowd, which said, “Oooooo!” (Their “Oooo” came in a more subdued volume than you’d probably expect from spontaneous combustion and free shirts, but they’d been seeing this trick all season.)

  At the perfect instant, with smoke obscuring his hands, Benji twitched his wrist: A magic wand, loaded on a spring, ejected from his sleeve and flew into his hand.

  “What do we do?” Benji asked. (Somewhere behind him, in the home crowd, a fan shouted, “SUCK!”)

  The Bedford Falls side disagreed: “MAAAGIC!” Now a volley of blue and gold sparks jetted forth from the wand’s tip. Benji whirled on his heels, aiming his spell in the direction of the home stands, grinning like a perfectly friendly wizard nemesis.

  He hurled the wand to the turf. It detonated between his feet, raising a great column of smoke. A few people in the home stands booed, but a couple of little kids, who hadn’t yet learned to hate on command, shouted in delight.

  Benji raised his hands with a flourish; playing cards, propelled by springs, flew from both sleeves like doves. He grabbed a card from each deck, displaying them to the audience: One card read 8, the other 0. His team’s undefeated record.

  Benji reeled back like Bedford Falls’s famed quarterback, preparing to slam both explosive cards to the ground. He shouted his final line: “Let’s make it nine and—”