Lizard People

by Charlie Price

  Mom padded into the kitchen in her pajamas. She looked all wooly, like she had been hibernating.

  “You want some yogurt?” I asked.

  She stood in front of the refrigerator, not opening it.

  “I could make you a sandwich, if you want peanut butter and honey,” I said.

  She shook her head and walked back down the hall toward the bathroom.

  When I heard a door close, I went across the driveway to Mr. Bellarmine’s. Why couldn’t my dad be more like him?

  He opened his door in a blue plaid robe over a white dress shirt, already sort of duded up. “What’s happened?” he asked, concern in his voice. “Are you two all right?”

  I realized that he knew Dad was gone, though I am sure no one had ever told him. I also realized the recycling truck came around before daylight, and that it must be close to six A.M.

  “Yes,” I said. “Sure. Don’t worry. I, uh, I’m sorry I’m bugging you so early, but I just needed to ask you a favor before I went off to school.”

  “Do you always make social calls by dawn’s early light?” he asked, his eyes quickly making the trip from my hair to my wrinkled clothes.

  “No. No, I’m sorry. I just woke up too. I’m going to change clothes,” I said, “but I need some help with something later today.”

  He looked stern but not angry, if that’s possible. He nodded.

  “That guy you saw … the guy who visits?” I tried to keep my voice even, like this was the most normal request in the world. “If you get a chance, would you copy down his license-plate number?”

  He cocked her head and squinted at me. Curious.

  “Uh, I just want to make sure he’s on the up and up. Uh, like with my mom and all.”

  “You think he’s a drug dealer?” he asked.

  Sheesh! I hadn’t expected him to be so savvy. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. The thing is, I don’t like him here with my mom.”

  “I agree with your assessment,” he said. “Get on to school and I’ll set up an observation post.”

  Walking back to my house, I was trying to remember what work Mr. Bellarmine had retired from. Lawyer? Insurance claims? Whatever it was, it was no-nonsense.

  School on Friday was useless. My brain was a cement mixer, Marco-Mom-Dad-Vinnie spinning around in there. I hope I got through the surprise English test fifth period.

  First thing after school, I drove by home and checked with Mr. Bellarmine. No license number yet. He had gone grocery shopping and didn’t know if Vinnie had come by.

  Next, I went by Marco’s to make him answer my questions about his story. Nobody home.

  Nobody.

  What a Party!

  When I got back home, I checked on Mom. She was asleep in her bed. The room smelled liked farts and cigarette smoke. I doubted if she’d gotten up or eaten or taken her meds.

  I thought about fishing but didn’t have the energy and fell asleep in the living room within minutes of turning on some college game on ESPN. I had a dream that I was walking down a school hall, a long school hall, and then the doors and lockers and bulletin boards faded and the hall became darker and smaller, more like a tunnel. Finally I was crawling forward, and it was pitch-black and then it just ended. There I was on my hands and knees in a black tunnel that stopped, and I didn’t know if I even had room to turn around.

  I awoke feeling churned up, funky, like I had been dragged through dirt back to the surface of the earth. I don’t know if it was the dream or what, but I decided I’d get high. Friday night. I wouldn’t do that if I was wrestling on the team, but I’d quit, so who cares? Time for the Mander boy to party! By myself. What a party! I stuck Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue in my stereo and dug out my personal pharmacy: a jay, a mystery pill, and an unopened pint of Jim Beam.

  Mom and Vinnie could go screw themselves. Not that they hadn’t already. I was pretty sure I knew what he was doing, hanging around her. She was whacked, but she was still pretty. I figured meth and sex. She needed to feel good about herself and, even psychotic, she could get a rush off the powder. Feel high for a while. And he got free sex and a drinking buddy.

  I took a long pull off the bottle and it burned. I nearly spit it back up. I wanted to break things! Shoot somebody. Shoot Vinnie. We didn’t have a gun in the house. Where could I get a gun?

  I decided to pass on the mystery pill. A kid at school had said it was a downer when he gave it to me, but who knew? I fired up the jay and got to work on the Beam. Plenty of benzos in the medicine cabinet if I wanted to get totally subterranean later. Now I was going to slow down a little. Make a careful plan. How’d it go? Revenge is best eaten slow? Something like that. I turned up my tunes, put on my headphones, and got back to the Beam. And my eyes were wet. What the hell was that about?

  I woke up Saturday morning thirsty and stinking. The Beam had spilled and I had thrown up sometime during the night. There were flecks of some brown stuff I don’t remember eating all over my pillow, on the side of my face, and in my hair.

  I tore off the bedding, washed my pillow and mattress with a wet towel, and leaned my mattress against the wall to dry. I scrubbed down my face and hair with a warm washcloth. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror.

  There was an inch or so left of the Beam that hadn’t spilled out. What do they call that when the sun is already up? A daycap? It was a good start. I didn’t want to think what Hubie would say if he saw me right now.

  Next time I woke up, I was on my floor with the empty Beam and a battalion of beer bottles. I remembered raiding the fridge before Mom was up. As far as I could tell, she hadn’t looked in on me. Good old Ben. Good old stable Ben. Out there taking care of business. Well, adios muchachos, I’m done.

  You can’t save somebody else.

  My room was warm. It felt like early afternoon. I was ready to start a new plan. Okay. Drop school. Stay loaded on summer-job money for a couple of weeks. Then find a studio apartment. Blackmail Dad into rent money or I tell the company that his new office is a bar and he’s drinking and drugging his sales into the dust. Then I get a part-time job, I pass the GED, and I start going to junior college. Mom goes down the drain. Nothing I can do about it.

  I finish junior college and then … then hit the road and never look back. Simple enough. I could do it. I resisted an impulse to pick up an empty beer bottle and throw it at the wall.

  Time to get started. No sense overthinking these things. First I would check the fridge and see if I’d left any beer behind. Out in the hall, walking toward the kitchen, I heard voices.

  “Put this away,” Mom was saying. “Ben’ll be home.”

  “Let him see it.” Vinnie’s voice. “He knows anyway. You’re the adult. You rule.”

  “No, no,” Mom was saying when I walked in the living room. Straws, opened paper bindles, white stuff on a hand mirror. Half-empty six-pack beside them on the coffee table.

  “Oh, oooohh.” Mom couldn’t think what to say to me.

  Vinnie stood. “Let’s you and me go to the kitchen and talk for a sec,” he said, moving past me.

  I followed him. When I walked through the kitchen door, he punched me hard in the solar plexus. When I bent over, he kneed me in the head. I went down and skidded on my butt.

  I couldn’t get any air. I thought maybe he had ruptured something. In a minute I felt something cold dripping on my cheek. When I looked up, Vinnie was holding a wet towel above my head. He let it drop.

  “Get yourself together,” he said.

  While I was mopping blood off my chin and upper lip, he was talking. “Now let’s you and me get one thing clear,” he said in a strong whisper. “This is your mother’s house. She pays the rent and she says what goes. Right now she’s saying I’m staying. Got that?”

  He toed me with his boot.

  “Got that?” he repeated.

  I nodded.

  “When I’m here, which is once in a while, you’re gone.” He looked at me real steady to make sure I was paying attent
ion. “Now get out of here. Don’t let me see you no more. Clear?”

  I nodded.

  “And one more thing,” he said, burning a hole in me with his eyes. “You keep your mouth shut and maybe I can find a way to keep your mother from getting hurt. Know what I mean, amigo?”

  I was starting to space out. Or overload or something. I couldn’t seem to track what he wanted me to do.

  He toed me again. “Know-what-I-mean?”

  “Yeah,” I said. My voice was gravelly.

  “Clean up the floor and get out of here.”

  Marco was in his bedroom, asleep in the bag. I shook his shoulder until he sat up. It took a minute for him to come around.

  “What happened to you?”

  I didn’t want to tell him. “Got drunk. Fell,” I said. “I want to know about this story you’ve been telling. How did my mom get in it?”

  He raised his eyebrows. Used his fingers to clean out the corners of his eyes. “Look,” he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just telling you what happened to me. I told you it was strange. Take it or leave it.”

  I was watching his face as he spoke. A crime show I saw said liars look away when they’re telling a lie. Sometimes just for an instant. But he was calm. Placid even. Was he on some kind of drug? He didn’t seem to be lying, didn’t shift his eyes, didn’t nod or smile more than usual, didn’t get more rigid or more careful.

  “Your story has too many coincidences that fit, uh…” Suddenly I didn’t want to tell him any more. Didn’t trust him. Didn’t want to give him anything to work with. “Where’s your family?” I asked, like maybe if I could keep him off balance, I could get closer to the truth.

  He unzipped the sleeping bag and sat on the edge of his bed. “Get a chair,” he said.

  I didn’t move.

  “Okay, Dad is traveling, Mom’s in the hospital.”

  “How come you don’t have any furniture?”

  “I told you, we just moved here. Haven’t settled in yet.”

  “Where did you hear this story?”

  He stood. “Look,” he said. “You don’t want to hear it, don’t ask. You want to leave, leave. I’m not coming to your house every day.”

  How did he know I’d been here every day? He hadn’t been home some of the times I’d come by. Was he just guessing? Had he been watching? Oops. I was getting paranoid. Was I going crazy? Was I already there?

  I backed off. “Yeah,” I said, “you’re right. I, uh, I just wanted to know you better because I had never met another kid with a mentally ill parent. And then you seemed weirded out by what you said had happened to you, and when you told it to me, I guess I got a little upset myself.”

  “It goes on,” he said. “It keeps happening … the story.”

  He left the room and I could hear him in the bathroom. When he came back, he was carrying the chair. “Want to hear more?” he asked.

  4000

  Dr. Gila held his shoulder so Marco couldn’t walk out from the oak tree. She gave a soft whistle.

  Marco didn’t understand.

  She rolled her eyes, held up a single finger.

  “One?” Marco whispered. Then it dawned on him. “You mean stop,” he said, “wait a minute.”

  She let go of him and turned to look out through the branches, listening.

  Marco bolted, but a blinding pain drove him to his knees before he had taken two steps. The stabilizer! He could feel his shoulder burning. He crawled back to Dr. Gila and the pain receded.

  “You and I will search together,” she said. “You will guide, and I will think. Are we clear?”

  Marco nodded.

  “We are in your backyard?” Gila affirmed.

  Marco nodded.

  “Do not attract attention,” Gila warned. “If we encounter someone, you will speak and get them to leave us alone. If you run again, or try to raise an alarm, I will stabilize you back to our time.” She paused to see if he understood. “Now, let’s go.”

  Marco’s mind was working at hyperspeed on getting away, but for now, he would do as she said.

  They left the shelter of the oak tree and surveyed the yard and nearby houses.

  “Monitor is a scientist,” Gila whispered. “He would be curious and explore, but he would be very careful.”

  “Would he carry a cloaking device?” Marco asked.

  “No. No devices. Too risky. Like Anole and I agreed, only the stabilizer, so we would not lose you, and the translators so we can talk and I can understand the people here. That was unavoidable, but nothing else that would alter history. And I’m sure he would be similarly responsible.”

  Marco felt his shoulder. It was in there somewhere. Implant.

  They went to the back fence and looked over. Nothing. Side fences, nothing. They edged around the house to the shrubbery at the border of the front yard.

  “How long has he been here?” Marco wondered.

  “A few hours at the most,” Gila said.

  “Would he have gone inside one of these houses?” Marco asked.

  “Doubtful.” Gila was holding her fingers to her temples. “He would have been extremely cautious,” Gila said. “He was very aware of the risks.”

  “Marco! Watch out! Another one’s behind you!” His neighbor, Mr. Bellarmine, was yelling at him. “Run! Run! I’ve got 911!”

  My neighbor’s name is Mr. Bellarmine! I blinked my eyes against a growing headache.

  Marco grabbed Gila and pulled her toward his front door. He could feel scales forming on her hand as he reached the steps. Throwing the door open and running inside, he almost ran down his mother, who was standing in the front hallway, facing the door. His mother’s face was painted red, and she was holding an odd-shaped cross in front of her. She began screaming. Marco turned to Gila, who was again transforming, her nose blunting, her skin changing texture. He dropped her hand and ran to his mother. The pain dropped him to his knees again. Gila pulled him to his feet and the two of them were outside, running down the block, away from his home and the neighbor with the phone. Marco could feel the scales receding on her hand.

  In the middle of the next block, Marco ducked into a yard, pulling Gila toward the back.

  “Garvins’ garage,” he explained, not slowing down. “I do their lawn.”

  I mow the Garvins’ lawn! I swallowed, tasted acid in my mouth.

  “They’re vacationing,” Marco said, letting go of Gila’s hand at the garage’s side door and pushing hard on the window next to it. A sound froze him. Sirens! He put his weight behind the pushing, and the window opened a crack, then more, then enough for him to squeeze through. The sound was getting louder! Noooo! Not now. He couldn’t even imagine what would happen if they were caught. Would the world as he knew it just … what? Disappear?

  He opened the door from the inside and Gila rushed in. With the slam of the door closing, he bent over, hands on knees, breathing hard. The sirens had gotten very loud and then stopped. What did that mean?

  Monitor’s voice startled him.

  “I don’t know how to explain it simply,” Monitor said, holding up his hand to ward off their questions. “A sort of time warp, possibly. Inexactitude. Space is not as linear as you might think.”

  As Gila had earlier, Monitor had taken off his blue smock and was dressed in his swimsuit thing. He was lean and muscular, like an Olympic freestyler, but at the moment, he looked silly standing in a dark garage in his bathing suit.

  What was happening with the sirens? Could they have been fire trucks? Marco looked out the side window he had entered but saw nothing except sunlight, trees, and shadows.

  Gila had her hands on her hips and looked steamed. She probably would have said something, but she was still breathing too hard.

  “When I came out under the oak tree,” Monitor continued, “I knew you had arrived before … well, that’s not quite true. When your neighbor caught me looking around and began yelling, I ran back to the portal. When I came out on the other side
, Anole was standing there with her command tube and I didn’t want to get stuck answering to her and lose this opportunity, so I decided to come back here while I still could, and finish what I started.”

  “What do you mean?” Marco had his breath back. “I started it! I’m the one who told you about it. I want to know how to cure Mom, and you guys are just making it worse!”

  Monitor began to get that greenish-bronze hue. Oh jeez!

  “Ulrich!” Gila had recovered her breath. “Calm down. Now!”

  His coloring receded and his skin resumed its fleshlike texture. What was it? Whenever these guys got excited or upset or … or when did she do it the first time? When she made some kind of mind link with what she called the University. Marco wanted to form a theory but clearly didn’t have enough information.

  “Is this real?” Gila asked Monitor, gesturing to the outdoors.

  “That’s what I thought at first, too,” he said. “That these were all dense holograms, but no, these are actual trees and flowers. Even the buildings in this area are made from genuine natural materials. Must have cost a fortune, yet the people dress very plainly and the tech systems are antediluvian.”

  The emotion in Marco’s voice rose and fell with the events in the tale like it was a book on tape. How could he know this stuff?

  “I told you it’s 2007!” Marco said, exasperated at how little respect they seemed to have for his words or his intelligence.

  Gila and Monitor looked at each other.

  “We have underestimated the boy,” Gila said. “He’s not nearly as crazy as we thought.” Once again she brought her fingers to her temples as if she had a migraine. Or perhaps that helped her think better.

  “The garage is surrounded!” A loud megaphone voice coming from the driveway startled the three of them. “Put any weapons down, raise your hands, and walk slowly out the door. Immediately!”

  Gila screamed and started to change again.

  “Novikov’s Paradox!” Monitor swore. “This cannot happen!”

  “Come out immediately, hands in the air.” The voice was hard, unyielding, an anvil. “We will not negotiate.”