The Only Ones

by Aaron Starmer

  Martin wasn’t sure why these children needed to keep things locked away from each other, but he decided that if he was going to be one of them, then he needed a personal page too. So he approached Felix one evening, and the two had a look at the block in the Internet that featured Martin’s brief biography:

  MARTIN MAPLE

  Martin is from an island. He came to

  Xibalba more than a year after all the

  other Forgottens arrived. He met Kelvin

  Rice near the ocean. He is quite good

  at installing solar panels. Other than that,

  he doesn’t do much. He asks a lot of

  questions.

  “Who wrote this?” Martin asked.

  “Anonymity,” Felix said. “Essential in the process. It’s all fact-checked, of course. On occasion, I reject slanderous entries. And there are some things from our past that some of us would rather forget about. For better or worse, we keep that sorta noise out of it.”

  “Can I add anything?” Martin asked.

  “Not to your biography, but you can spruce up your personal page all you like,” Felix said. “Put whatever you want in there.”

  He unlocked Martin’s block and handed it to him. “I’ve set you to private access, okay?”

  Alone in an empty closet, Martin opened the door on the back of the piece of wood. Into the hollowed-out interior, he inserted the mottled and muddy pages of the book his father had given him. Beneath them, he hid the address from George. He had yet to tell anyone about these two valuable items. Chances were they wouldn’t care.

  The block was nearly full, so Martin closed it and returned it to its spot hanging from a hook in a cluttered corner of the former living room.

  Felix was waiting there for him. “Can I have your ear for a sec?” he asked. “Security is important. Passwords and locks are great, but I can’t get that day from a couple weeks ago out of my noggin. Darla and Henry shouldn’t just barge in here and do what they want. And I have my suspicions about others and their monkeyshines. You’re good at building things, Martin. Is there some way you could offer a smidge of help on this?”

  “I could set a trap,” Martin told him.

  “We don’t need a pit of alligators or anything, but I like the idea,” Felix said. “Yes. Yes. I like the idea a lot.”

  “A snare or something,” Martin offered.

  “Exactly,” Felix said excitedly. “Snag them in the act. I had proposed something similar to Lane last year, but all she cares about these days are her contraptions. I mean, it’s topnotch entertainment and the last one I saw was a marvel, but odd, very odd.”

  “I don’t know Lane,” Martin admitted. “I mean, I’ve heard about her, of course.”

  “Really?” Felix said. “You’ve never seen one of her … thingamajigs?”

  Martin shook his head.

  “Grab your coat.”

  A chill had settled on the town. Martin and Felix hurried through the darkness, hands in pockets. They passed Henry patrolling Town Square, but didn’t bother to stop and say hello. The show could be starting at any moment. When they reached Lane’s house, an unusually large and modern construction, given its humble neighborhood, Felix rang the bell.

  Lane opened the door. She was dressed entirely in black, except for a blue-and-white-striped railroad conductor’s hat, which sat atop her head and kept her avalanche of dark hair at bay.

  “Give them all electricity and they all stay home,” she said, her silver eyes narrowing. “Starting to think no one would show tonight. Starts in two minutes. Payment?”

  “When the new Internet is up, free installation,” Felix said.

  “I work with solar panels,” Martin added.

  “I know what you do,” she said.

  “You’re next in line,” Martin said to sweeten the deal.

  “That doesn’t concern me,” she said. “What does concern me is your choice of lodging. But we can chat about that later. Tell you what. Consider this show on the house. For both of you.”

  “A freebie?” Felix said. “Well, isn’t that something? This one a dud?”

  “Hardly,” Lane said. “Sometimes, the most important art is free.” With that, she rotated on one heel and led the way inside. Stepping through the door, Martin was confronted with a sight as strange as any he had seen. Felix’s house was nothing compared to this.

  —— 10 ——

  The Rube

  Walls had been knocked down or chopped apart until the support beams were all that remained. Floors had been removed so that the ceilings reached to the heavens. They had to. With everything piled inside, ten feet of vertical space wouldn’t do. Neither would twenty.

  Glass lanterns mounted on the beams provided an eggy glow. White plastic pipes, sliced in half lengthwise, cut twisting paths through the open air. Bunches of shoes were hung by their laces like wind chimes or mobiles. A green plastic swimming pool filled with water was suspended in the air by tight metal cords. Wooden tables were stacked on top of each other to form pyramids. Bells, each a different size, descended diagonally above the tables. Ropes and pulleys. Record players. Doves in cages. A tepee of paper and wood, sitting on the floor, in the middle of it all.

  Every color and shape imaginable was vying for Martin’s attention, but he chose to watch Lane. She lumbered around and over everything in her way until she was standing at the foot of a long steel ladder that leaned against the highest of the pipes. For some reason, Martin had expected her to be more graceful, but there was still something fluid about the way she moved. As she began to climb, her hips swung from side to side and her arms and legs made large swooping movements and attacked each rung. Her awkward, swaying confidence reminded him of twisted fronds of kelp floating on the ocean.

  When she reached the top of the ladder, she stopped for a moment to catch her breath, then turned the top half of her body around and steadied herself by grabbing the pipe.

  “Gentlemen,” she called out. “Are you ready to be dazzled?”

  Felix raised his fist and called back, “You betcha!”

  “Are you ready to be shocked?” she yelled.

  “Why the heck not!” Felix was clearly swept up in the moment. Martin didn’t have a clue what any of this was about, but he nodded and smiled just the same.

  “Welcome to the world premiere of Lane Ruez’s brand-new masterpiece. I call it … The Rube!”

  With that, she thrust a hand up in the air and grabbed a thin chain that was dangling next to her ear. She gave it a violent yank.

  Ropes and pulleys let loose with whines and squeaks, which were followed by a quick smack of darkness. Somehow, all but one of the lanterns had been extinguished.

  Martin looked up at the sole lantern that remained lit. It had a small door in its glass shell that eased open. The flame inside grew larger. Then an orb of fire fell through the opening, as if it were a freshly laid egg.

  The orb plummeted through the darkness, giving off a wisp of sparks. It landed in the open curve of one of the white plastic pipes. Having been sliced in half, the pipe now served as a track. The orb rolled, slowly at first, along its twisting path. As its momentum built, so did the flames, illuminating more and more of the surroundings. Martin could see that there was a break in the track. Surely a mistake?

  When the orb reached the break, it sailed through the air until it struck one of the hanging shoes. Flames shot out from the bottom of the shoe, the sole of which must have been packed with something highly combustible. The thrust of the flames sent the shoe into motion. It kicked forward until it struck another shoe, which was dangling in front of it. That shoe struck another. And so on and so forth. Soon there were pinwheels of spinning, flaming shoes everywhere.

  Meanwhile, the orb had fallen into the pool of water and had been extinguished. But from a hole in the toe of another shoe, another flaming orb emerged. This one landed on the pyramid of tables. As it bounced its way down from table to table, it struck the series of bells.
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  Dong dong, dong dong, dong dong, ding …

  Martin recognized the melody. It was a song his father used to hum on especially clear nights.

  When the orb reached the bottom of the tables, it spiraled through a giant funnel, landed on another track, slalomed along, and struck a line of spoons in its way. The spoons were attached to the turntables of antique record players, each with an ornate amplifying horn. Records began to spin. Voices, garbled and slow, sang or spoke the following phrases in near perfect succession:

  There once was a … noble … white … savage …

  … his fate … deemed … grander … than average …

  … our box … lost its hope …

  … and was filled … with this … dope

  … with a brain … quite as … plain … as a cabbage …

  The flaming orb then shot off the track and skipped its way along the floor. Its journey ended when it struck the tepee of wood and paper in the middle of the room. A bonfire roared to life.

  The heat was intense and immediate. Martin’s eyes dried out as he watched the flames leap up and touch the bottom of the plastic swimming pool. Doves fluttered wildly in cages that hung in a circle around the pool. Wax, which was holding the doors to the cages closed, began to melt and release its grip. The doors swung open. The doves took flight.

  The sound of the flapping wings engulfed the space. Attached to the birds’ legs were tiny prisms that took the light from the fire and projected it as rainbows on the walls. The rainbows danced. The flames pummeled the air.

  Then, all at once, the bottom of the pool gave out. A mass of water dumped on the bonfire, snuffing it. Smoke and steam raced up from the smoldering wood. The rainbows disappeared and the sound of the wings retreated as the birds found their way to perches.

  The dark, smoky room was now silent except for the faint and haunting sound of a staticky record. Martin couldn’t understand the words being sung. It sounded like “Vu or nut rar seevor. Vu or nut rar seevor.” Perhaps it was another language?

  Lane stepped through the smoke, holding a record player in her arm. The horn was propped up on her right shoulder, and she was rotating the record counterclockwise with her left hand.

  “Get out,” she said plainly.

  Felix grabbed Martin by the arm.

  “Get out,” she said again.

  Martin was frozen. Staring at Lane, listening to the odd sounds from the record player, he was transfixed. Love, whatever that was, might not have felt like this, but this, this was definitely something.

  “Out,” she said once more, raising her finger but not her voice.

  Felix pulled Martin to the doorway and then out into the cold. The door to Lane’s house slammed, but the lingering smell of smoke served as a reminder of what they had witnessed.

  “Holy shmoly, was that a strange one,” Felix said. “Last time she threw canned sardines at us, but it was nowhere near as spectacular as that!”

  Martin didn’t respond. He stepped closer to the door and placed a hand on it. It was warm. He wondered if this was all part of the show.

  “Time to go,” Felix said, spinning him around. “Lane doesn’t take kindly to loitering.”

  Facing the street, Martin saw a splotch of color in the distance. An enormous pink pig with an arched back and a twitching snout was prancing directly at them.

  “Oh jeepers!” Felix exclaimed as the pig got closer. “Remington. Of course. Of course this was coming.”

  In the pig’s mouth was a small stone statue of a bear balancing on a ball. As soon as the pig reached them, it dropped the statue at Martin’s feet. Martin bent over to pick it up.

  There was a message etched onto the ball.

  YOU HAVE BEEN SUMMONED

  —— 11 ——

  The Head

  The chair used to be Kelvin Rice’s. Or so Martin assumed. After all, Kelvin’s name was scratched in the wood that framed its plush red back. It had a regal air—ornate oak arms, flecks of gold in the fabric. In any case, Martin found it comfortable.

  Felix had gone home. “He’s only ever summoned a couple people,” he had told Martin with a dismissive shake of his head. “Be careful, that’s all I can say.”

  Martin was alone in Nigel’s living room. Well, not alone exactly. There were the goats and the dogs and the sheep that huddled around him, sniffing at his feet and rubbing their necks against the chair’s legs. Nigel hadn’t appeared yet. There had simply been a note on the front door that said:

  Greetings, Martin! Come in.

  Have a seat in the living room.

  You will find the red chair to be lovely.

  Nigel’s home was actually a home. The living room had a love seat flanked by end tables. A fireplace had a stack of wood next to it. An intricate rug with swirling floral designs covered most of the wood floor. Books and magazines were spread neatly across the coffee table. There were the animals, of course, but otherwise, this place seemed like any of the homes Martin had visited on the island.

  A voice came from another room: “Would you like tea?”

  “No thank you,” Martin answered.

  “Fair enough. I’m having orange pekoe.”

  Moments later, a boy appeared in the doorway, cupping a steaming mug in both hands. This was the first time Martin had seen Nigel up close. Since the night Martin had arrived in town, Nigel had remained out of sight, which, judging from his Internet page, was not surprising.

  NIGEL MOON

  Nigel Moon arrived in Xibalba with a tiger

  and a Komodo dragon. Since his arrival,

  Nigel has been rounding up any and every

  animal he can find and they all live

  together in his house. The animals

  apparently provide Nigel with prophecies.

  Nigel summoned Kelvin Rice to his house

  regularly, to inform him of these

  prophecies. Since the Collapse, and since

  Kelvin’s departure, Nigel has summoned

  only one person: Lane Ruez. She refuses

  to reveal what he told her. Nigel has

  predicted the following things: The plague

  of swallows. The infection of Tammy Green.

  The Collapse.

  There was something familiar about Nigel that Martin couldn’t place, but he didn’t appear particularly special. His eyelids seemed thick, saggy. His hair was dense and puffy. A few large freckles lived around his slightly fat, slightly flat nose. Otherwise, a kid.

  Nigel didn’t come any closer. Rather, he stood in the doorway, sipping his tea and examining Martin. The animals shifted their attention to their master, and even though he didn’t look at them, his presence had a calming effect on them. They all lowered themselves to the ground, surrounding his feet.

  “I don’t care about solar panels,” Nigel said plainly.

  “That’s okay,” Martin said. “Not everyone does. I’m just happy to have finally met you.”

  “And I you.” Nigel smiled warmly. “Comfy?”

  “Yes, very.”

  “Good,” Nigel said as he leaned against the doorjamb. For some reason, he wasn’t entering the room. “Now, I’ve been told about you,” he went on. “I’m sure you’ve heard things about me too. And the truth, well, it’s not nearly as interesting as you might hope. But that’s why you’re here, right? To learn the truth? To ask me questions?”

  “Okay,” Martin said with a bit of hesitation. “But you summoned me.”

  “I did. And you’re here to ask me questions.” Nigel’s voice was a boy’s voice, tuneless and fresh, yet Martin felt as though it had been living inside his head forever, whispering suggestions and giving orders.

  “Okay,” Martin said. “That’s fine.”

  “I’m not a god.” Nigel chuckled. “I have a gift. The animals are the gods. And they see and hear all. Then they tell me. And then I tell you. But only if you ask.”

  “So you do talk to animals?”

  “We communi
cate, yes.”

  “That’s amazing,” Martin said. “I’ve read about things like that, but I wasn’t sure if it was real.”

  “Faith,” Nigel said. “The word gets too mixed up in religion. It’s really about trust, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You can’t hear the things that I can. If you don’t have faith in that premise, then what do you have? You can’t exactly trust my answers to your questions, can you?”

  “I suppose not,” Martin said.

  “You want a comfortable life here?” Nigel asked. “I can make sure you get that.”

  “I just want answers,” Martin told him. “Information.”

  Nigel paused. He patted the doorjamb with his hand in a slow, steady beat. “I’ve been told that you’re a hunter,” he said.

  Martin considered his response for a moment. “I … I … trap animals, but only for survival.”

  “Animals eat animals!” Nigel announced with a final, triumphant drum to the wood. “That’s nature. Animals are delicious. I eat animals. Not friends, of course.”

  Martin wasn’t sure whether to laugh. He chose to nod.

  “Wait here,” Nigel said. He ducked around the doorway for a moment.

  Leaving was an option. Martin thought of calling out that he was feeling ill, and heading for the door. It wasn’t that Nigel wasn’t acting perfectly nice. He was. Something was just weird.

  Before Martin could say a word, Nigel appeared in the doorway again. Instead of his mug of tea, he had the head of a deer in his hands. The head was not connected to a body.

  “Dismemberment bothers some,” Nigel said, finally stepping into the room. “Let the squeamish starve. Can’t kill or dress an animal? Perhaps you shouldn’t be eating it.”

  Noses took to the air as Nigel walked toward Martin. Blood dripped from the head and left a trail across the floor. Some of the dogs were quick to lick it up. Nigel presented the head to Martin, who took it because he figured he didn’t have any other choice. It was still warm.