Secret of the Corpse Eater

by Ty Drago

  They both looked at her.

  She steadied herself and went on. “I’m a Schooler, or I used to be. I’ve spent a lot of my two years as an Undertaker going undercover into middle schools, looking for fresh Seers. It’s how I found Will.” Then she caught the look on Mrs. Ritter’s face. Swallowing, she regrouped and continued. “Anyway … I know how to blend in and keep my eyes open.”

  Tom studied her. Had she just volunteered to abandon the mission he’d given her only an hour ago in favor of heading out into the field?

  Yeah she had, and for just one reason: to keep Will safe.

  Helene glanced at Mrs. Ritter. Once again, poorly-concealed hope shone in the woman’s eyes.

  So … it is better me than him, huh?

  Tom asked, “It’s a good idea. But I won’t do it. Know why?”

  “’Cause the ‘angel’ in the ‘white room’ said differently?” Helene asked.

  The chief shook his head.

  “Then why?” Mrs. Ritter demanded.

  “’Cause it was Will’s vision. Mrs. Ritter, your son is”—the chief’s brows knitted—“the most amazing person I’ve ever known.”

  Neither Helene nor Mrs. Ritter responded. Helene was surprised—even shocked—but not by what Tom had said so much as by the fact that he’d said it at all. All this time she’d thought she was the only one who felt that way.

  Well, maybe her and Dave.

  The chief went on. “I think I sensed it the moment I met him. At first, I thought it was ’cause he was Karl’s kid. But it’s more than that. This blond woman who visits him, I’m pretty sure she visited your husband, too … at least once. She gave him the pocketknife and the sword that he turned around and gave to me and Sharyn for our fifteenth birthdays. He told us he’d made then, called ’em his ‘dream children.’ But now I think he held back where they really came from.”

  This was new. Will’s “angel” had visited his dad? Given him Tom’s pocketknife and Sharyn’s sword?

  “But even that ain’t the point,” Tom said. “The Corpses. The war. Micha and Cavanaugh. Will’s visions. In my mind, they all point to just one thing.”

  “And what’s that?” Susan Ritter asked, arms crossed again.

  “That all this ain’t about me or Sharyn or Helene here … or any of the other Undertakers. It’s about your son. I don’t know how or why … but he’s at the center of everything. Every arch has a keystone and he’s it.”

  Tom looked from one to the other of them with conviction in his eyes. “That’s why I’m sendin’ the two of them to DC … ’cause Will Ritter told me to.”

  And, at that exact moment, somewhere in Haven, something exploded.

  By the time I reached the Brain Factory, there were a half-dozen kids already there.

  The Brains, the crew in charge of science and gadgetry, was bossed by Steve Moscova. When I’d first met him, back on my first day in Haven, I hadn’t liked him very much; Steve had the social skills of a pocket calculator.

  But in the months since, he’d kind of grown on me.

  “Will!”

  Burt Moscova, Steve’s younger brother and a fellow Angel, waved me over. The members of Steve’s crew were gathered around him.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “The door’s jammed shut!” Burt replied. His eyes, so much like his brother’s, were glassy with worry. “Steve’s in there!”

  “With Ian …” added Gabby, one of the Brains.

  I blinked. “Ian?”

  “He showed up to return the crystal,” said Andrew, another Brain. “Said he had an idea. He and Steve spent some time whispering about it … and then Steve told us all to get out and shut the door.”

  “Ian and my brother have gotten tight,” Burt remarked. “All over that stupid hunk of glass! Jeez, I always knew he’d blow himself up one day!”

  “Take it easy,” I told him. “What’s wrong with the door?”

  The Brain Factory’s door was new, installed by the Monkeys just last month at Steve’s request. He’d practically begged Tom for it, insisting that he needed a safe place to store the Anchor Shard. Unfortunately that same door, hand-built from thick, sturdy wood, seemed to be … well, stuck.

  “The knob turns,” Andrew said. “But it won’t budge!”

  I confirmed that. Then I pounded and called Steve’s name. No answer.

  I couldn’t smell smoke and the door wasn’t hot, so I didn’t think the Brain Factory had caught fire. That was a good sign. The fact that nobody was responding from inside, however, wasn’t.

  But what really worried me was the sound leaking through the heavy wood—a high-pitched drone, like a beehive.

  “Gabby!” I said. “Go fetch Dave! Andrew, find Tom. Tell him what’s happening.” If I knew the chief, he was already en route, while the Burgermeister might well have snored right through a minor earthquake.

  Both kids took off at a run.

  I told Burt, “It’s gonna be okay.”

  Empty words. But he nodded anyway.

  Tom and my mother showed up before Dave did—no big surprise there—and the chief banged on the door. When that didn’t work, he ordered us all back and threw his shoulder against it. Once. Twice. Three times. Nothing.

  I heard him mutter something about Alex Bobson, the Monkey Boss, and his construction skills.

  Then a figure came lumbering down the corridor toward us. For the second time that morning, Dave had been awakened before his time. “What’d that freakin’ geek do now?” he grumbled.

  “Shut it, Burger!” Burt growled and, for a moment, the two boys swapped glares.

  Stupid.

  “Dave,” Tom said, “get us in there.”

  “Ain’t it got a knob?”

  “Burgermeister …” I said.

  He looked blearily at me. “Yeah. Okay.” Then he pushed Burt aside. “Gimme room.”

  We gave him room.

  He stepped as far back as the narrow hallway would allow. Then he huffed once like an angry bull and charged, hitting the door with devastating force. The wood cracked, groaned, and then surrendered—crashing inward. Dave went with it, stumbling through the open doorway, which was lit by a weird, blue light.

  I heard him exclaim, wide awake now, “What the hell?”

  We ran in after him.

  The Brain Factory, a long, narrow chamber with a low ceiling, lay in ruin. All of its lab tables had been toppled. One of them had somehow gotten jammed up against the door, which was why it’d been stuck. Broken glass and overturned equipment lay everywhere.

  The far half of the room was eerily lit, though all the overhead bulbs looked shattered. As Tom, Burt and I pushed around the Burgermeister for a closer look, we saw that the weird illumination came from the Anchor Shard, which dangled from wires attaching it to a blocky, six-volt battery. The whole assembly sat atop a wooden stool.

  “Steve!” Burt yelled, rushing toward his brother, who was sprawled, unconscious, beside the stool.

  Tom caught his arm. “Hold up! We’ll get him out of there. But we don’t know what we got here yet!”

  Ian lay on his back in another part of the room, his body shoved up against one wall. But at least he was moving. When my mother and I both ran to him, he looked up at us with stunned, frightened eyes.

  “What … happened?” he gasped.

  I said, “I was about to ask you that.”

  “Just stay still,” my mom told him.

  But he pushed her away. “No. I’m okay.” I offered him my hand and helped him to his feet while my mother looked on disapprovingly. He gaped at what was left of the room, his expression mixing horror with guilt.

  “Talk to me, Ian,” Tom said.

  The medic stammered, “I thought … if maybe we ran a little electricity through the crystal that we might get a reaction.”

  “Looks like you did,” the Burgermeister observed.

  “I’m going to Steve,” my mother said and, before anyone could object, she hurried
to the far end of the room, into the strange light. The sickly bluish glow washed over her as she knelt beside the fallen boy. He lay right below the dangling crystal, its light dancing crazily around him.

  “Oh my God.” I heard Mom whisper. Then I saw why.

  Steve’s body had been cut in half.

  But no, that wasn’t quite right. He was bent at the waist, with his upper torso splayed across the Brain Factory’s dirt floor and his lower torso—well, it looked like it had disappeared through some kind of shimmering hole in the floor!

  The boy moaned.

  “Pull him out!” Ian yelled. And we all charged forward, our shock forgotten.

  “Gently!” my mother commanded. But this didn’t feel like a “gently” situation to me. With a nod from the chief, we pulled together, and Steve came sliding out of that weird shimmering nothing in the floor. His legs were intact, no blood, no sign of injury at all.

  We dragged him clear of the light and rolled him over.

  His head lolled as his brother dropped down beside him, calling his name. Then my mom was there as well, checking his pulse and feeling his temples and forehead. It struck me that this was Ian’s job.

  Where is Ian?

  I turned back and saw him, still in the light. He was crouching beside the shimmering “hole” in the floor, but his attention was fixed on the Anchor Shard.

  Steve sat bolt upright, his eyes as wide as dinner plates. “Ian!” he screamed. “Don’t!”

  But the medic was already reaching for the wires connecting the crystal to the battery. If he’d heard Steve’s warning, if he was even aware of the rest of us at that moment, it didn’t show.

  I remember running forward. One step. Two. But I was too slow to react, too mesmerized by the weird light and by the even weirder thing that light seemed to have projected onto the floor. Maybe if I’d been faster, things would have turned out differently.

  I’ll spend my life wondering.

  Ian yanked the shard clear of the wires, a gentle tug that pulled free two short strips of black electrical tape. So simple a thing.

  And then he ceased to exist.

  An explosion of light, silent but powerful, blasted the rear of the Brain Factory, knocking me off my feet.

  For several seconds, I lay, dazed, in the dirt. Then a big hand touched my shoulder and the Burgermeister’s face appeared, his blond hair sticking up all over the place. “You okay?”

  I nodded and sat up. Burt and Steve were already standing. Tom was supporting my mother. Somewhere along the way, others had arrived. Sharyn and Helene stood in the doorway. Chuck was there too, along with the Brains. They all wore expressions of shock and horror that made me feel cold.

  Then I remembered Ian.

  Jumping to my feet, I stared at the back of the room.

  The crystal rested on the ground, its weird inner light extinguished. Lying on its side a foot away was the battery, the wires still draped around it like fallen spaghetti.

  But the stool was gone. And so was Ian.

  “What happened?” Burt asked.

  His brother was crying. I couldn’t remember ever seeing Steve cry before.

  “Where’s Ian?” my mother asked.

  I stepped forward—and down. The floor of the Brain Factory had been excavated, as if someone had dug a perfect circle around the Anchor Shard. The dirt was gone, replaced by a thin layer of sand and fine gravel. I stood in the midst of it, perplexed.

  The walls were intact. So was the ceiling. But they looked cleaner somehow, as if the dirt that covered them had been scoured away, leaving behind old but pristine bricks.

  I reached down for the crystal.

  “Will! Don’t!” my mother yelled. So I stopped, though I’d handled the Anchor Shard before.

  Tom spoke. “Steve, what were you and Ian trying to do?”

  The Brain Boss wiped his eyes. His brother stood at his shoulder, as if guarding him.

  “Ian had this idea of running an electrical current through the crystal,” Steve said. “As a precaution, we asked the crew to leave us alone for a few minutes and shut the door, in case of a … reaction. Then we pushed everything back from the far end of the room and set up the battery and the crystal on one of the work stools.”

  “You got your reaction,” Tom guessed.

  “Way beyond anything we’d expected … or planned for. A flash of light and an impact wave. Something pushed the air out from around the stool.”

  “We heard an explosion,” I said.

  Steve shook his head. “Not exactly. What you heard was the air refilling the vacuum left behind by the ‘push.’ It’s how thunder works. But the impact wave was strong enough to wreck the lab.

  “I recovered before Ian did, and ran up to disconnect the battery. The crystal was radiating light, and that light was defining a circle on the floor … about four feet wide. I didn’t notice that the floor inside that circle had … disappeared … until I fell into it. That’s when you guys came in.”

  “Whatcha talking about? How can a floor disappear?” the Burgermeister demanded.

  But Tom raised a hand for silence. “Steve, tell us what you think all of this means. Where’s Ian? Could he have fallen into the same hole you did?”

  I looked at my feet. No hole, though I was standing exactly where it had been. And this circle of cleared floor was much bigger—a dozen feet across, at least.

  Steve said, “While I was hanging in that hole, I felt … strange. Wherever the lower half of me was, it wasn’t on this planet. I can’t justify that scientifically. It just felt … alien.” Then, after several seconds, he added, “But I don’t think that’s what happened to Ian.”

  “Then tell us what you do think happened,” Tom said.

  Steve nodded and headed toward me, waving away his brother’s offer of help. Moving shakily, he joined me in the newly formed pit. There he stood, his eyes focused on the Anchor Shard.

  “Don’t!” my mother snapped.

  But Steve picked it up. “It’s dormant now. All its energy’s been released.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “An educated guess. I think it works kind of like a capacitor. That’s an electronic component designed to collect and store a charge. When Ian and I ‘plugged’ it in, we activated it. Some of its energy went to opening that hole in the floor. The rest it stored.”

  “What drained it?” Tom asked.

  Steve shuddered. “Ian disconnected it, and it released its stored energy in a final burst.”

  My mother stammered, “But what happened to him?”

  Steve looked around at the bizarre smoothness left behind by the flash of light. “I think … the discharge destroyed all organic matter within the blast radius.”

  “What’s that even mean?” the Burgermeister demanded.

  “Organic matter,” Steve repeated. “Anything made of carbon molecules. The stool was wooden. Organic. The dirt on the walls and floor was mostly organic.” Then, quietly, he added, “Ian was organic.”

  A silence, hard and terrible, fell over the room. Finally, Tom broke it, saying aloud what the rest of us already knew. “He’s dead.”

  The Brain Boss nodded.

  His crew members, who up until now hadn’t said much, gasped and cried. So did my mother. Sharyn and Burt went to Steve, putting their arms around him. Nearby, the Burgermeister stood stock-still, his face pale.

  I tried to wrap my mind around it.

  Ian was just here. He couldn’t be dead. There was no body! No blood! No sign of anything! Then I noticed something resting in the scoured gravel at my feet and picked it up.

  It was a belt buckle with a symbol embossed on it: two snakes entwined around a staff. The Hippocratic emblem. Any Undertaker would have recognized the buckle. It had been a gift from Ian’s father.

  And it was the only thing on his person that hadn’t been organic.

  Dear God.

  And then I started crying, too.

  A death in Haven, an
d not the first one, either.

  Over the next five days, a lot happened. Tom called every onsite Undertaker into the cafeteria and told them about Ian’s death. The next day, at the memorial, everyone who wanted to, got up and spoke—a grim Undertaker tradition. Tom said some things. So did Sharyn. I tried, but I suck at speeches. Then Steve got up and apologized for his part in the accident, the guilt on his face profound and terrible.

  Amy stood then and, with tears in her soft blue eyes, said, “Ian was good to me. He taught me stuff. He never talked about my past. And he made me feel like … I belonged.”

  Then, she sat back down—and my mother got up.

  Nobody expected that. After all, my mother wasn’t an Undertaker. So when she stood, the quality of the silence in the cafeteria changed—became less welcoming. And I could see she sensed it, but it didn’t stop her.

  “I know I haven’t been with you long,” she said. “But I spent enough time in the Infirmary to appreciate the young man who ran it. Ian McDonald”—she bit her lip—“was a doctor in every sense of the word. One of the finest I’ve ever known.”

  When she returned to her chair, I noticed a small, sad smile playing on Tom’s face. The rest of the Undertakers remained silent, but this time it was an approving silence.

  I was proud of my mom.

  The next day, however, the war went on.

  Sharyn and I started what we called Page Training, with Jillian as our coach. This proved—awkward, since things were seriously tense between the two girls for reasons that, so far, no one seemed willing to discuss.

  Tom, meanwhile, talked to Ramirez. Jillian had said kids who left the Senate Page Program, like her and Kevin, usually weren’t replaced. But Ramirez called in some favors and somehow managed to convince the senior senator from Pennsylvania, James Mitchum, to support the “mid-term assignment” of two new pages.

  The page program’s director hadn’t liked the idea. But she’d finally caved—if we could be in DC before Monday.

  Sharyn griped. She hated Jillian’s attempts to teach us how to fit in on Capitol Hill. She especially hated the blue suits that we’d both be wearing: “Every day! Every single friggin’ day! My skin’s gonna slide right off my bones!”