The door to Albert Stein’s was just clicking closed, his voice trailing off behind it (“Thank you again…”), when it happened: first Randy fell to the ground heavily, a moment later, Jerry, and then Long John crumpled next to him. There hadn’t been a sound—no gun shots, no one running up. I looked around, astounded that I was still standing; too shocked to scream. I bent over as soon as I got my bearings about me, and of course, began to flip out.
“Randy? Randy! Are you okay?” I was shaking him. He didn’t stir. I moved on to Long John, then Jerry, shaking them and checking their pulses. Their hearts were beating slowly, slowly.
“Darts,” she said from behind me. I knew it was her without turning around. The voice of my Destiny. “I have one pointed at your back, Peter. I suggest you get up slowly and don’t try anything funny.”
I hardly thought now was the time for funny, but I didn’t say so. I just stood up, hands behind my head, like I petty Fictional criminal.
“I assume you’ve told Albert all about little miss Jenny, then, have you?” she asked. She was tying my hands behind my back roughly with some sort of rope.
“What’d you do to them?” I asked, ignoring her. She laughed; her face was just behind mine and I could feel her breath on my neck. I shuddered.
“Them? They’ll be fine, Peter. They’re just going to be a little more Real from now on.”
“What?!” She was trying to spin me around, but I jerked my shoulders roughly the other way and stumbled to the ground, knocking my chin on the pavement. “Randy! Randy!” I was close enough to his face to see that, of course he wasn’t dead; he’d never looked more Real.
I must have screamed, because the next thing I knew, I was being pulled up again and being told to be quiet. I vaguely heard banging coming from the inside of the house—Albert, presumably, locked in his own home. Destiny was pulling on my bound hands, the skin underneath worn raw, and outside of my panic I was aware of two thoughts: what are all these people doing here? And where is she taking me?
The first thought was answered more immediately, and the second never at all, because she only made it as far as the curb where a silver sedan was parked before one of the many people surrounding rushed at her and knocked her to the ground. Then another sprang forward and helped hold her there, and then another, just for good measure. It took me a moment to realize that some of the people had rushed toward me—a blur of Real Worlder faces—pulling me to a seat on the curb, instructing me to take deep breaths, to calm down. Someone had untied my hands, and was working on using the same rope to bind Destiny’s. Someone else, a woman, was asking me in soothing tones what had happened. What was wrong with my friends? Were they okay? Did I need help?
That’s when it clicked—my friends: Randy, Long John, and Jerry. They were Real. She had turned them Real, and as far as I knew, there was no going back.
“Stop!” I shouted, surprising myself. The people holding the wriggling Destiny to the ground, Albert, who had apparently been let out of his house, even the people pulling Randy, Long John, and Jerry up from the ground—their limp bodies likely in some sort of slumber while the change from Fictional to Real took them over—they all stopped. They looked at me, waiting for instruction. Even the police rushing to the scene, their black uniforms so different than the blue ones in Fiction, slowed their pace when they saw everyone’s attention on me. And in that moment, I felt just a hint of what I believed was Real World magic: love. The unshakeable power of my love for my friends.
“I need to question this woman before you arrest her. If anyone knows how to help my friends, it’s her.”
“Very well,” a police officer said to me. He was short, fat, and smelled slightly of cigarettes. He reached out a hand and shook mine, hard. “Peter Able. It’s an honor to meet you. We’ll escort you to the station with Mrs. Stein—”
“Actually, her name is Anna Albrecht,” Albert said. I wondered if he’d been behind me the whole time or if he’d just walked up. “And I have some questions for her, too.”
Four hours later I left the police station, exhausted, hopeless, and feeling more Real by the minute. Even with the help of the LAPD’s lead interrogators, Anna still firmly insisted that she did not know how to reverse the serum. And I believed her. After all, why would she have ever needed a way to reverse it? She hated Fiction; she wanted it dead.
Is this what Jenny had meant? That she’d worse than kill me? In that moment, it felt like she had. Albert would re-write the Jenny the Girl Wizard books. I would have Jenny back. But at the cost of my best friends and her father.
Could she ever forgive me? Would she even want to come back to this reality?
I walked absently from the police station, just feeling the chilly night air on my face and in my lungs, reveling in the stinging sensation; any sensation. I was numb. Nothing, nothing mattered then.
Which is probably why twenty minutes later, I found myself at 907 North Bedford, home of one G.E. Wells. My old author.
“Open the door!” I screamed into the intercom. I was not at a door, but at a gate, which surrounded a very large estate. The neighborhood around me was dark and only a few lights on the massive houses along the street were lit. It must have been late.
“Who is this? If you don’t go away, I’ll call the police.”
“You’ll call the police? I should call the police on you for starting this whole stupid mess!”
There was silence on the other end. I thought the person, a man’s voice, gruff, and older by the sounds of it, had walked away, and I almost did too, but then, quietly—
“Is this Peter Able?”
“Yes.” I looked squarely into the little security camera then, exhausted and not sure why I was there at all. But I felt my eyes pleading to come in. A moment later, the gate moved forward and I was walking down a long driveway. On either side of me were what seemed fields, not lawns, of green grass. On my right, there was a fish pond with a waterfall, palm trees here and there, a little bodega covered in vines. It would have been nice, beautiful even, if I could feel.
The house itself was a sprawling and Spanish in style: a red roof, stucco walls, balconies and porches here and there, windows open outward drinking in the night air. Before I could knock on the door, it swung open. And there he was.
“Hello, Peter.” He was shorter than I’d expected; smaller than his voice had suggested. He was wearing flannel, plaid pajama pants, a white t-shirt, and a pilled gray sweater. The remaining hair on his head was mostly gray, and where it wasn’t, it reminded me of the color of a squirrel. Not a Fictional squirrel, but a Real World squirrel. He himself looked so Real. And here he was. Here he was.
The bit of description calmed me down, just a little, but then when I was done, it hit me all over again: Randy, Long John, Jerry, Beth, Jenny. Everyone I’d lost and everyone I’d hurt, and would continue to hurt, because seven years before, this guy had written me into existence. And as suddenly as this red, hot, rage welled up in my chest, I seemed to choke on it, and it was gone, and I was crouched on the ground crying.
“There, there. It’s okay. It’s okay.” The old man was kneeled down next to me on his front landing. In the distance the waterfall tinkled melodically, and I tried to catch my breath.
“Do you want to come in?”
I rubbed my eyes and nodded. I let him guide me in through the heavy wooden door, through the tiled and open foyer (where there was, I vaguely noticed, a fountain) and into what in a normal home would probably have been called the living room—but here was mostly open space with a few pieces of ornate furniture. Along the far wall was a mounted flat screen television. On it, I saw the scene I’d left hours before: police rushing toward Albert Stein’s home, a woman pinned to the ground, and there on the curb, me.
“It sounds like your friends are being watched in the hospital,” my old author said, watching me watch the television. “They’re not treating them as Real Worlders, of course, because they’re not sure that that won’t just
make their condition worse. But they’re watching them.”
When I still didn’t say anything, he kept talking.
“They say the other Fictional characters that came out here with you have all spoken to the authors they needed to; after all the news that’s been on, it wasn’t so hard to convince them, I guess. They’re all heading back to that cabinet, or whatever it is, to go back to where you all came from.”
Wardrobe, I thought, but still, didn’t say anything. I wondered briefly why I was there. He probably did, too, but he just kept talking; trying to make me feel better it seemed.
“And Destiny—or, Doctor Albrecht, I guess—she’s been charged with multiple accounts of homicide. Though, of course, the characters are not dead, per se, but it’s just—”
“No. They’re worse than dead.”
That’s when I realized why I was here. To scream, not out loud into the night air; not at Destiny for doing this to my friends; not even at my current author, who I was growing more and more suspicious about living in a certain home in a certain English town—but at this man. The one who started it all. The one who put me through a Hell in my first series of books I was still reeling from.
“You did this to me.” I said it quietly; a hiss more than a scream. He just looked at me. He looked old and sad and kind, and that only made me angrier.
“YOU DID THIS TO ME!” I was on my feet, stepping toward him fast to—hit him? Push him? I did neither, but stood a foot away from him, hands clinched at my sides. “You are the reason behind all of this! If it hadn’t been for your stupid books, none of this would have happened! You put me through hell in school! You killed my parents! And my sister! And because of those books, I had to exist in Fiction, and go and ruin all my friends’ lives! This” at this, I did push him. He fell to the ground effortlessly, “is all your fault!”
Silence but for my breath. And then—
“You’re right.”
“Sorry, what?”
“I said you’re right. Peter, I had no idea that when I wrote those books about you as a child I was writing you into another world. I had no idea; none of us knew! As soon as I saw it on the news and realized the truth of it all, I felt terrible. All the things I’ve written about characters, really happening? The people I’ve hurt, the lives I’ve destroyed?” I then remembered that G.E. Wells had also recently published a new murder mystery series. “And then when I saw that you were in Los Angeles, I knew.”
“You knew… what’s that?”
“That you’d come to avenge your sister.”
I stared at him blankly, all my rage forgotten.
“To kill me,” he supplied, a little apologetically.
“What? No! I don’t want to kill you. Jesus.” I sat down heavily on the ornate little couch; it hurt. “I just wanted to… I don’t know. To talk to you. You’re kind of like,” I wouldn’t say dad, because if anyone had been like a dad to me, it had been Randy. “You’re like the person who made me.”
“And then ruined your life?” he said with a half-smile. I nodded. “Sounds like my parents.” He stood up and sat down on the couch too.
“I don’t know how you stand it out here,” I said after a moment. I was holding my arm out marveling at how much more Real it had become. Freckles here and there, a dark mole, dark arm hair, creased skin around my elbow. And I was tired. More worn out than I’d imagined possible in Fiction.
“It’s not so bad. My wife, she has two kids. Well, I guess we both do, now. They make it worth it, those kids.”
I nodded. The silence was more comfortable after I’d yelled at him. A moment passed, then another, then suddenly I felt ready to leave. I’d come, I’d seen him, it was time to go back to Fiction. There were just a few things left to do.
“Peter, it’s been… surreal. But nice to meet you.”
“It’s been nice to meet you, too, uh…”
“It’s Gerry. Gerry Anderson Wells.”
“Nice to meet you, Gerry.” And with that, I left the giant estate where my old author lived, I left that crazy city called Los Angeles, and eighteen hours later, I left the Real World and went back to Fiction.*
*Note: Before I left, I, of course, went to the hospital where Randy, Long John, and Jerry were being monitored. They weren’t awake, as the hospital staff thought it best to keep them in an unconscious state, so as not to somehow further the transformation. Of course, this was all theoretical to them as they’d never seen anything like it before, but I agreed, it somehow seemed best.
With that, two doctors, two nurses, and myself accompanied Long John, Randy, and Jerry to the Los Angeles airport. The three of them were lying flat and still on gurneys and were hooked up to I.V.s of whatever was keeping them dormant. When we arrived, it seemed hundreds, if not thousands of people, were awaiting us. Getting our tickets, there was a mob of people holding signs, screaming their support, trying to touch me; even on the other side of security, I found phones and cameras pointed in my direction, none to sneakily. I was mostly numb to it. All that mattered were the three people on gurneys.
We boarded the plane to stares and calls; in London, more people greeted us with signs and shouts of Good luck! and Godspeed! The doctors and nurses accompanied me all the way to Ashby de la Zouch where they helped cart my three friends through the house. As we shuffled our way down the narrow hallway, I glanced into a room and saw a woman’s bare feet propped up on a colorful, woven foot rest; a shaggy dog at her side. I heard typing. I didn’t stop to say anything; I wanted to get back, and I knew it would only slow things down. Besides, one author meeting was about as much as I could handle.
But as we made our way slowly down the steps to the basement where the wardrobe still sat waiting, I could have sworn I heard her voice. It sounded like, “It will all be okay.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Where have you been?” Those were the first words I heard when I finally made it through the other side of the wardrobe in the bathroom stall in the Black Market. It was, of course, Mattie. I quickly moved out of the way, as behind me Phil, Willy, and Nilly were pushing through the three gurneys. Before Nilly emerged on this side, I heard her call “Bye Mr. Beaver!”
“I’ve been a little occupied,” I said grumpily. After meeting Kiki, the triplets, the Lost Boys, Geppetto, Merlin, Mattie, and Princess Badroulbadour at our designated meeting point in Narnia (Mr. Beaver’s house), our group had been separated. Phil, Willy, Nilly, our three dormant friends and I were arriving about a day late.
“Where’s Princess Badroulbadour, then?” Mattie asked, looking behind us as though she might be hiding. The wardrobe’s stall was large, but not nearly large enough for three gurneys and five people, so we were filtering, somewhat uncoordinatedly, through the door and into the larger bathroom. Out there, there were several officers from Detective waiting. When they saw Randy, they stopped short.
“Princess Badroulbadour met a certain Prince in Narnia and will be staying there for a bit,” I said through gritted teeth. I was attempting to push Randy’s gurney through the bathroom door, but it was slightly too wide. This, plus my Real World fatigue, plus my growing hopelessness, and I really wasn’t in the mood to be questioned by Mattie.
“You do it,” I said gruffly, and stepped back from the cart. I realized then that the three previously unnamed Detectives were Rogers, Johnson, and Davies, and immediately when I did, they became slightly more realistic and shiny. Despite it all, it was good to be back in Fiction. Rogers took the handle, and with Mattie’s help (a bit of good old fashioned wand magic—another good thing about Fiction), we left the bathroom and made our way out of the old, school cafeteria.
The Black Market books were all still set up on their tables, emanating that Real World oddness, but this time, there were no people. It was empty; as though they’d all just vanished in the middle of shopping. Books were even left open on tables.
“We had everyone clear out when the first group arrived and said you’d be along after them,�
� Johnson said quietly. It was eerie—the whole scene. Mattie, me, Phil, Willy, and Nilly walking, zombie-like through the empty space. Rogers, Johnson, and Davies pushing the three prone bodies before them; so Real and detailed and out of place.
“Where will they go?” Mattie finally asked once we’d put on our night vision goggles and were walking down the dark alleyway of the Black Market. “Randy, Long John, and Jerry?”
“I expect to one of the hospitals until we can figure out what to do. We got some things from Destiny’s house that might help. They’re in Randy’s bag.” I added, pointing to the backpack draped over the railing of his gurney. “I’m planning to bring them to Sci Fi to have Doctor Banner take a look at them; see what he can do. First, though, we need some Fictional Frappes or something to sort ourselves out.”
“In the car, Sir,” Davies said, nodding in the general direction of the dirt road that led to Nonfiction. We were out of the Black Market now and walking through the regular market village. Here, too, there was no one. They must have cleared the whole town in order to walk us through safely and undisturbed. “Randy had mentioned before how hard it was on you Out There, so we had a few dozen Frappes bottled to help you readjust as soon as possible. The other group, except for Mattie here, already headed back to Fiction,” she added.
“Thanks for waiting,” I said to Mattie. A moment later, we found ourselves at the beginning and end of the dirt road, where it faded imperceptibly into the desert sand. There were two ambulances, four large Police SUVs, and three police cars waiting for us, lights off. As soon as we came into view, several Fictional EMTs rushed forward and took Randy, Long John, and Jerry, wheeling them away without a word and into the ambulances: Long John and Jerry in one, Randy in the other.
Finally, achily, I crawled into the back of one of the SUVs, without so much as looking to see who was in the car already, though vaguely through the window I’d seen someone’s head. I plunked myself into the window seat, and from the back of the driver’s seat plucked two bottles of Fictional Frappe. I drank the first down in three gulps, and was on the second one when I glanced, for the first time, at the person in the passenger seat.
The Actual Account of Peter Able Page 17
