The Dead Gentleman

by Matthew Cody

  A push and the door opened an inch, despite Jez’s efforts. A rotten hand slipped through the gap, wriggling and grasping at nothing. With a shout, Jez gave the door another shove, throwing her shoulder into it. She felt, rather than heard, the crunch as a pair of gray-fleshed fingers snapped off at the knuckle. They landed at her feet but refused to stop moving. They inched toward her like grotesque worms.

  A shudder tore into the door as a second body joined the first. Jez nearly lost her balance as the wood begin to splinter and crack. Her shoulder had gone numb from the effort, and she knew she couldn’t hold it a second time.

  When the next blow came, she was ready for it. Instead of resisting, she jumped out of the way as the door came crashing down and two rotten corpses spilled out onto the ground, their broken bodies in a tangle.

  I’m crazy, she thought. This is it, I’m officially crazy.

  Then she flipped up the goggles—she didn’t want to see what she was about to do—and ran. She ran straight at Tommy. He turned and saw her and the throng of dead Explorers spilling through the doorway. He shouted something, but she wasn’t listening. She was too busy yelling “I’m crazy!” as she tackled him into the light of the Cycloidotrope.

  PART THREE

  All paths lead to the same place.

  But it seems that Man is destined

  always to choose the rockier way.

  It is his defining trait.

  —from the Observations of the High Father

  of the Enlightened Hidden City

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  JEZEBEL

  NEW YORK, TODAY

  Jezebel awoke just as the pain hit her, a spike of agony straight down the center of her skull and a cramping nausea deep in her stomach.

  “Happy thoughts, happy thoughts,” she repeated over and over.

  Pizza for breakfast. Discovering a drive-in movie theater on a family road trip to Florida. Sitting on the car’s hood between her parents as they watched Psycho on the big screen and burying her head in her father’s arm during the scary scenes, but still peeking past his jacket at the reflection in the car window. Somehow it seemed less frightening that way, watching the mirror of the real thing.

  The sickness passed.

  “I’m home!” said Jez, sitting up. She looked around and saw that the room was just as she’d left it—the unmade bed, the scattered pencils and broken trophy. And there was the forest mural on the wall. Best of all, she was in one piece.

  Tommy lay next to her, hugging his knees to his chest, his face contorted in pain.

  Jez pulled him to her and whispered in his ear. “Happy thoughts,” she said. “You told me yourself, you have to picture happy thoughts to make the pain go away.”

  Eventually his face unclenched and he began to relax. His eyes fluttered open and he looked up at Jez. “I once discovered a barrel of pickles that had fallen off a delivery cart. I ate as many as I could stand and when I’d gotten sick from the smell, I sold the rest for a penny per. Felt like an honest businessman for a day. Even ran a special on the broken bits and pieces—handful for a half penny.”

  He sat up and squinted at the room. “Unbelievable,” he said. “We’re alive.”

  “We did it.” She smiled and hugged him close. He returned the hug with a halfhearted backslap—for a boy thrilled to be in one piece, he seemed awfully subdued. He looked around the room like he’d been tossed back into the Gentleman’s dungeon.

  “You know this place?” he asked.

  “Of course,” answered Jez. “This is my room! Why, what’s the matter?”

  Tommy shook his head and offered her an unconvincing smile. “Nothing’s wrong. Just a bit of a surprise is all.” Still, he looked troubled. Jez decided to chalk it up to future-shock and got to her feet.

  “Dad?” Jez called, ducking out into the hallway. She ran through the apartment, from room to room, but all were empty.

  Maybe he was out looking for her, or maybe … no, she wouldn’t consider the other possibility.

  “I’m sure he’s all right,” said Tommy as she returned to her bedroom. He was staring out her window at the dark city. “Keep a chin up.”

  “We still have time,” Jez said, nodding, wiping at her cheeks. She didn’t want him to see the tears. “We can still find Bernie and get Merlin back.”

  Tommy shook his head and pointed at the window. It was dark outside. “We have other problems.”

  “What? So, it’s nighttime! We might have lost a few hours, but that doesn’t mean—”

  “No, look.” Tommy pointed to the sky over the Hudson River. Just past the river were the bluffs of the New Jersey shoreline, and above that was a twisting, yawning vortex of black clouds and crackling lightning—the Gentleman’s portal. The storm raged everywhere, and the winds were blowing into Manhattan like a typhoon through the streets.

  “He’s here,” said Jez. “He’s coming for us.”

  Tommy shook his head. “We don’t matter anymore,” he said. “It’s Merlin he wants.”

  Jezebel ran to her desk and powered up her computer, the little laptop’s battery whirring to life.

  No signal.

  The light of her desk lamp flickered for a moment but then came back on. Outside, windows were going dark everywhere. Whole buildings had blacked out—across the river the lights from New Jersey still burned bright, but the growing storm was quickly eclipsing even those. And here in Manhattan the dark buildings looked like dead fingers pointing at the sky. She grabbed a watch from her desk drawer—the time read 4:36 a.m. There was still at least an hour before dawn, plenty of time for the Gentleman to recover his prize.

  “There’s no Internet, and whole blocks are losing power,” said Jez. “I bet this storm is even messing with the satellite signals. He’s completely cutting off Manhattan from the outside world.”

  Tommy scratched his head. It was obvious he didn’t understand half of what Jezebel was talking about, but he got the drift.

  “Manhattan is an island,” he said.

  Jez nodded. “It’s the perfect place to start an invasion. Thanks to the weather, there’s going to be so much chaos that people won’t even realize what’s happening until it’s too late.”

  Tommy stared out the window at the widening funnel cloud, laced with streaks of lightning. He seemed, for once, contemplative, even lost in his own thoughts. Jez, on the other hand, couldn’t calm the racing of her own heart. They needed to be doing something, to be out there trying to stop the Gentleman, not sitting here in her bedroom as the world ended.

  “So?” she asked. “What do we do next?”

  Tommy picked up a picture that had fallen over on her desk. It was a shot of her and her dad at Disney World some years ago. In it a giant mouse was tickling her while her dad pretended to cower in fear.

  “This your dad?” he asked.

  Jez swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded.

  “He looks nice. Not sure about the big mouse, though. Think I’d kick him in the shins if he tried that on me.”

  “Tommy, we’re running out of time—”

  “My mom used to take me to the theater, when we could afford it,” said Tommy, ignoring her. “We’d have to stand, but someone always hoisted me up on their shoulders so I could see.”

  He looked at her. “At least I think that happened. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the things that happened and the things I wish had happened.”

  Jez started to answer but was interrupted by the sound of the front door opening and closing. She turned and looked at the dark hallway outside her bedroom. Her own door was slightly ajar, obscuring her view, but she could hear footsteps.

  Tommy bent down and picked up the heavy marble trophy and moved in front of her. “Get back,” he whispered.

  Jezebel reached out and snatched the trophy from his hand. “That’s mine,” she said, stepping forward.

  “Dad?” she called out hopefully. For a minute there was no answer and she held up
the trophy with both hands, ready to swing.

  Then a familiar voice said, “Weather looks bad today. Showers of blood and zero percent chance of sun.”

  The bedroom door creaked inward, and standing there was Elevator Man, only changed. His skin had a sickly greenish tinge to it and his normally bright eyes were bloodshot; dark, baggy circles hung beneath them.

  “You don’t look so good,” said Jez.

  “Today is the coming of the Master,” Elevator Man said, smiling. “I have never felt better.”

  “He means the Gentleman,” said Tommy. “He’s one of them.”

  “Yeah, I figured that much.”

  “The Master wants you. He said he wanted you alive.” Elevator Man stepped into the doorway. “But surely one is enough. One alive for the Master and one … for me!”

  Jezebel screamed. But this time it wasn’t out of fear or even surprise—this time it was out of anger. She was home, but instead of a tearful reunion with her dad, she had stepped into the middle of the apocalypse. That was quite enough crazy for one day, thank you.

  Her sudden scream startled Elevator Man, and he hesitated just long enough for her to give the bedroom door a good kick—catching him in the face.

  With a snarl Elevator Man shoved the door back open, one hand going to his ruined nose. He didn’t seem to be in pain so much as surprised … and angry. Jez remembered what Tommy had said about Grave Walkers—not quite alive, not quite dead.

  Jezebel swung the trophy. In his rage Elevator Man charged forward like a bull, presenting the top of his head to her all teed up and waiting for a trophy-smack.

  She brought down the marble trophy on his skull with a thunk and he collapsed on the floor.

  “Nicely done,” said Tommy, eyes wide.

  “Thanks,” answered Jez.

  Elevator Man lifted his head up off the ground and snarled.

  “Hit him again!” Tommy said.

  Jezebel readied another swing, but Elevator Man rolled away and climbed to his feet.

  “Here!” Tommy shouted, and Jez turned just in time to see Tommy tossing her bedsheet like a net. Suddenly blinded, Elevator Man staggered forward as Jezebel swung with the trophy again. And again. She never missed, but with each hit Elevator Man only seemed to get angrier and angrier. He was blinded and confused, but he wasn’t slowing down.

  Finally he lashed out and knocked the trophy out of Jez’s hand, shoving her to the ground. With a howl of triumph he grabbed Tommy by the throat and lifted the small boy high in the air. Tommy’s face was already turning purple as he struggled to catch a breath. Elevator Man stepped toward the window.

  “Can you fly, little Explorer?” he snarled.

  Tommy kicked at him, but his blows weren’t having any effect.

  Jezebel grabbed her desk chair and pushed as hard as she could. The chair connected with the back of Elevator Man’s knees and he stumbled, dropping Tommy onto the bed. Elevator Man was off balance, and as he tumbled over, he grabbed Jezebel by the arm.

  The two of them fell over backward into the closet door.

  The thin door crushed under his weight, and Elevator Man sank into the closet.

  Only there wasn’t a closet anymore. Behind the door was a gaping black hole that spilled into an empty void. Elevator Man scrambled to keep himself from falling, but it was too late. He was sliding into the void and Jezebel was tumbling after him.

  She was halfway through when Tommy caught her feet. He’d stopped her slide, and she could hear him struggling to pull her back into the light. The dark was bitter cold, and she felt something moving there in the blackness, shifting and slithering and touching her hair.…

  She was vaguely aware of Tommy shouting something as she was pulled out of the closet and back onto the floor of her room.

  “What were you thinking?” asked Tommy, panting for breath and red-faced.

  Jez was too cold, too frightened to speak. The adrenaline was already giving her the shakes.

  At first she thought he was just flushed from the exertion of pulling her back in, but she soon realized he was red-faced with anger. He was furious.

  “You could’ve been killed! Or worse!”

  Jezebel sat up. As the warmth returned to her body so did some of her spirit. “Hey, I was saving you! If not for me you’d be out the window—”

  “I DON’T NEED SAVING! NOT FROM YOU!”

  Jez was stunned. While it was true that they’d known each other for only a short time, she’d still come to think of them as a team. They were partners in this—partners in saving the world.

  Tommy took a deep breath and stood up. He walked over to her desk and righted the picture of her family, which had fallen over a second time. Then he pointed to the yawning black portal that used to be her closet.

  “All the portals to the Gentleman’s world are opening up,” he said, not looking at Jez. “Dark closets, old graves, the spaces beneath the stairs—the Dead Gentleman’s domains. It’ll happen all over the world.”

  In the distance, they heard the rumble of thunder, followed by a louder crash—like an explosion. Just beneath the wind and the rain Jez thought she could make out the sounds of screams.

  “The bogeyman’s coming for us all,” he said.

  Plopping down on the desk chair, Tommy began tugging at his boot. “The trogs took all of my weapons away when they captured me, but they missed this.” He picked at the heel of his boot until it slid open, revealing a hidden compartment. A small, dirty compass fell out onto the floor.

  “Been meaning to give this thing a polish anyway,” he said as he rubbed the case on his shirt. Flipping open the lid, he pressed a button on the side.

  For a moment, nothing happened and Tommy’s face fell. But then Jez heard a soft ping. Then another, slightly louder. And another and another.

  “Atta girl,” Tommy said, staring at the compass’s face. “Come home, Nautilus. Come home.”

  He yanked on his shoe and popped the compass into his pocket. “She’ll be here soon,” he said. “Find Merlin, if the Gentleman hasn’t gotten to him first. Then hide. You know this building better than I do. Find someplace safe and just hide.”

  “Hide? That’s your great plan? We’ve been together in this so far and now you want me to run away and hide? You know you’d still be squishing bugs for your fire if not for me!”

  “You’re not coming with me,” he said, walking out of the bedroom. “And that’s that.”

  “Hold on! Stop!” shouted Jez. “You can’t do this on your own! And you can’t tell me what to do!”

  “Good luck, Jez,” he called back as he headed for the front door. “And keep the goggles. They suit you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  JEZEBEL

  NEW YORK, TODAY

  The front door slammed shut, and for a moment Jezebel was speechless. Part of her was furious, indignant—who did he think he was? But the other part of her was wounded and hurting. She thought he’d depended on her the way she’d depended on him, despite his crooked, cocky smile and all that swagger. They’d escaped the Gentleman’s cell together. They made a good team. Didn’t they?

  The kid didn’t think, he just … did things. It was a wonder he was still alive, and he needed her help whether he wanted to admit it or not. She may not be an Explorer, but the two of them were in this together and she was going to tell him so.

  But as she started toward the door something caught her eye. It was the mural—it was changing. Even as she watched, the colors began to swirl and darken. The green of the leaves started to bleed at the edges and mix with the browns of the tree bark. The various flower petals twisted and grew, spiraling round and round. Jezebel stood there, transfixed, watching the morphing oil paints as they started to shimmer and glow.

  Shimmer and glow.

  “It’s a portal,” Jez said. Then, louder this time, “It’s a portal! Tommy, it’s a portal!”

  She could barely tear her eyes away from the changing landscape, but she
needed to tell Tommy. Running down the hall, she felt her heart pounding with excitement. What were the odds of her bedroom having two portals? It had to mean something.

  She threw open the door and instantly froze. A large shape stood in the doorway, blocking her path out to the hall. Thick, bug-eyed glasses stared down at her beneath arched eyebrows.

  “Everything all right, little miss?” asked Bernie.

  Jezebel took a step back. She wished she’d kept ahold of her trophy-club.

  “Everything’s fine,” she answered. “Why do you ask?”

  Bernie was carrying a bulky knapsack slung over one shoulder. She could hear the elevator descending. Tommy must’ve just gotten in as Bernie was coming out of the stairwell where he’d been hiding, waiting for Jezebel.

  Jez shoved the old man as hard as she could. Startled, he let out a cry as he toppled over backward. She leapt past him, careful to avoid his flailing arms, and ran for the elevator. As she bolted away she heard the sound of jingling keys and scuffling boots. Jingling keys, scuffling boots and … birdsong.

  Jez whipped around to see Bernie, kneeling on the floor and cradling a bent and broken birdcage. A shiny metal canary fluttered around excitedly inside.

  “Merlin!” Jez shouted.

  “He’s okay, he’s okay,” said Bernie. “It’ll take more than my fat behind to hurt this little fellow, thank goodness.”

  Bernie had apparently been holding the cage behind his back when Jez pushed him—he’d literally sat on it.

  “Where’s my dad, Bernie?” Jez demanded.

  “The Gentleman doesn’t have him, if that’s what you’re worried about, at least not yet. When he woke up and you were gone, he got worried.” He gestured to the storm outside. “He’s out there somewhere, looking for you.”

  Jezebel took a breath. If Bernie was telling the truth, then that was something of a relief.

  “Hand the bird over, Bernie. I’m warning you.” Jez felt ridiculous threatening him like this. After all, she was weaponless and despite his feebleness he was still twice her size. It was only the added advantage of surprise that had allowed her to escape him the first time.