“What was that?” Cameron whispered.
Martin rushed to the door. He tossed it open and felt a cool caress of air as he took a step outside.
“Martin? What happened?” Cameron called out from the machine. A soft commotion followed.
“Let him go,” Darla demanded. “He must know what he’s doing.”
Outside, Martin found Xibalba.
It was exactly as they had left it. The buildings and houses were in the same state of ruin. Town Square was neatly plowed. Crusty, gravelly stacks of snow dotted the curbs. Kid Godzilla, scuffed and dented but alive, was parked in the distance, along the street.
A dark cube, about three feet square, was the only difference. It sat on the pavement a few feet from the machine. It hadn’t been there when Martin had arrived in the morning.
When he got closer, he realized what it was: the charred remains of the home page to Felix’s Internet. It used to tell the story of Xibalba, but all the writing had burned away. The only mark that remained was a short message gouged deep into the coaly surface. It said:
Welcome to Xibalba,
home of the last people on Earth.
Sorry, but we all killed ourselves.
Hang in there. Or don’t.
What do we care?
Martin turned around to see the confetti of disappointed faces bursting forth from the machine. At that moment, there was nothing he wanted more than to go home to his island.
—— 29 ——
The Lie
“What’d you do to us?” Tiberia asked.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Martin replied.
“We felt it,” she said. “We all felt that machine do something.”
“If we go back inside and try again …,” Martin said, but Tiberia was having none of it.
“Stand back, everyone! Get away!” she commanded.
They followed her order, scattering from the machine like water bugs from a ripple in a pond.
“But something’s changed. This block,” Martin said, “it wasn’t here last night.”
“Because I left it there this morning,” Lane said with a sigh. She was standing closer to the machine than anyone else, examining it as if to figure out what went wrong.
“Oh,” Martin said. “Well, maybe a few adjustments and we can—”
“Did you know it?” Tiberia asked. “That it would twist up our insides like that? Make us giggle like a buncha maniacs?”
Martin shook his head. He had felt the same thing, but he had no idea what it meant. His voice began to quake. “It did something good. I know it did.”
“How are we to be sure of that?” Sigrid gasped. “How do we know it was safe?”
“No. No. I never would have put us in danger,” Martin insisted.
A sideways glance at Lane in search of help was met with a look that was more patronizing than sympathetic. She paced over to him, hooked her hand around, and grabbed his upper back. Then she leaned into his ear.
“Thought it would have at least burnt us to a crisp, Captain,” she whispered. “But you didn’t have the guts, did you?”
Martin pulled away, searching her for a wink and a nod. A watercolor of sadness was painted in her eyes. How could he have been so clueless?
“Don’t say things like that,” Martin whispered back.
“Doesn’t matter what I say in this pitiful place. Your destiny is mediocrity, Martin. I never should have thought there was anything special about you.” She shoved him aside with more malice than he’d ever felt from anyone. Then she bent over, wrapped her arms around the block, and lifted it. She headed into the seams of Xibalba.
“Where are you goin’?” Tiberia asked.
“Home,” Lane called back.
“That makes two of us,” Tiberia responded.
And that also made the rest of them. The exodus was quick. As all the kids streamed past him, Martin surveyed their faces. Some looked angry, others confused. The majority simply appeared to be on autopilot, denying their disappointment and heading back to their corners of the world.
Only Darla stayed. She sat on her luggage, legs dangling out from a gray pleated skirt. She was fussing with her white frilly blouse and short-cut blazer, trying to pull them straight. Her lips were dabbed—a bit heavily, it seemed—with pink lipstick. When she smiled at Martin, he saw that some of it had found its way onto her braces.
“Hey, you tried, right?” she said. “Can’t blame you for trying. It was crazy, of course. But then, it was also crazy that the world disappeared. So there you go.”
“They’ll never forgive me,” Martin said.
“Pffff,” Darla said. “They’re grumpy ’cause they had to wake up early. They’ll get over it. You convinced them once; you can convince them again.”
“Convince them? I have no idea what I just did to them.”
“Felt good to me,” Darla said. “Jeez. If those zeros can’t enjoy a laugh, I don’t know if they deserve one.”
The most honest thing about Darla was her laugh. It skirted annoying, with its stabbing insistence. Yet it never seemed forced. When Darla laughed, there was emotion behind it.
“I haven’t been completely truthful,” Martin admitted.
Darla waved him off. “Come on, honey. Everybody tells lies to get what they want.”
It wasn’t exactly a comforting statement, especially coming from Darla, but it confirmed something Martin had begun to suspect: someone has always done worse.
“What lies have you told?” he asked her.
“Today?” Darla joked.
“Whenever.”
“Well,” Darla said, “I only tell white lies, of course. Fibs. Yes, fibs is the word for what I tell.”
“Have you ever told me a fib?”
“Besides the marble?” Darla said.
“Wait. What?”
“The marble? That it would make the machine work?” Darla said. “You didn’t suspect that was weird? Even a little?”
It was even worse than he’d thought. He curled back, pulling his hands to his chest like she was an infection. “Nigel never said the marble was for the machine?”
“Naw,” Darla said lightheartedly. “I made that part up.”
“You … but … why …” As the words came out, so too did the previous night’s dinner. A purple thrust of vomit met the pavement with a curdy smack.
“Yuck,” Darla cried, pulling her feet up. “I was gonna say because you’re cute, but I think you changed my opinion pretty quickly there.”
“I’m … I’m sorry … I’m sorry.” Martin stumbled sideways and battled dizziness. Stomach acid worked its claws into his throat.
“It’s not a big deal,” Darla said. “What Nigel did tell me was that I had to give you a push.”
“A push?” Martin whimpered as he dabbed his mouth against his sleeve.
“He was worried that ’cause of Chet, you would wimp out or something. He told me to make sure you finished what you started. And I did that.” She pointed with her thumb over her shoulder at the machine. “I got that thing here. I got the whole gang to pitch in. And as a bonus, I got a date with you. So you can’t call it a lie at all. A fib.”
“But the marble …?”
“The marble is just a marble.” Darla laughed. “C’est la vie. Forget all that junk and let’s get back in the machine. You almost had it, right? A few adjustments? Who needs this gang? Let’s leave ’em behind for good.”
She didn’t get it. The marble was everything. If the marble didn’t complete the machine, then what did?
“They’ll have a trial for me, won’t they?” Martin asked. “And they’ll treat me just like I treated Henry?”
“Henry’s fine,” Darla assured him. “A little uncomfortable maybe, but fine.”
“I should go back to the island,” he said. “I was never meant to come here.”
“Sure you were,” Darla said. “Or else you wouldn’t be here.”
“That’s not how everyone else is going
to see it.”
Darla schemed furiously. There was really no better word for it. Her eyes were the same as they always were—delightfully devious. But it was her fingers that gave her away. Draped over her thigh, they tapped her nervous energy through the fabric of her skirt and into her bones.
“Tell you what,” she said. “If you’re so worried, lay low for a while. We’ll find you somewhere to hide out while stuff blows over. Things will be back to normal in the bat of an eyelash.”
She winked.
—— 30 ——
The Hospital
The hospital on the edge of town was five rectangular stories of yellow brick and rust-edged windows that wept brown tears when it rained. Martin had never been inside, and from what Darla had told him, he knew that hardly anyone else had either. Sigrid used to train in the halls, but those days were over. It was far too spooky in there. Now when foul weather descended, she had other places to run.
Martin could be alone there, and while it wasn’t his island, it wasn’t all that different. Exploring it, he expected to find a cold, hollow, sterile building. What he actually found was room upon room decorated with photographs and posters and stuffed animals and keepsakes and reminders that, just like the houses on the island, this was a home, if only temporarily. The ravages of nature hadn’t touched it. The windows were permanently locked. The doors were heavy. And that was what must have scared Sigrid off. This hospital wasn’t a skeleton; it was a warm corpse.
Martin settled into a room on the fourth floor that was stripped bare except for a bed and a dresser. He found a stack of blankets in a closet, and rather than worry about heating the place, he decided that he would drape himself in wool and stay put.
Darla agreed to bring him food and his only other request: books. Because she refused to step inside, they established a system, one that Martin knew well. Every evening, Darla would fill a wooden crate with books, water, and food and leave it by a side door to the hospital. Martin would empty the contents and fill the crate with the books he had finished. They would also leave each other notes.
Are they looking for me? What about Lane?—Martin
Everyone’s back to their old jobs and routines, monkeying around like nothing happened. Lane’s even worse. No one’s seen her in days. Numbskull locked herself in the school. Building a masterpiece of crap, no doubt.
—Darla
How’s the machine?
Hunky-dory. Sitting where you left it. Everyone stays far away.
Did you really think it would work?
Of course I did, silly! I still do. Like I said, we don’t need them. We can try again whenever you want
But Martin didn’t want to try. All he wanted to do was read. That was the only thing he truly missed from his days alone on the island—stories, precise and contained, the type that answered your questions, the type that painted the world in simple strokes. Forget the ocean and the forest, the seaweed stink and the cold fog. Under his covers, with a stack of books by his side, he was home.
Blocking the entire world out was harder than that, though. The sound of the wind and the call of the chickadees still made it through the brick and glass. Chickadees rarely flew south in the winter. That was one of their defining characteristics, and Martin thought about that fact all too often. The chickadees were mocking him with their song, saying he was just like them—afraid to leave.
He was afraid. Too afraid even to leave the room. With the exception of his daily trip to the wooden crate, he stayed in bed. At night, he would use the dresser to barricade his door, because it locked only from the outside, and he was pretty sure he heard footsteps in the hall. They weren’t loud, but they were there, delicate and urgent and terrifying. At first he thought it might be Sigrid, but the steps weren’t those of a jogger. They shuffled too much. They were all stops and starts.
He wrote Darla a note.
Is anyone else coming to the hospital? I’ve been hearing footsteps in the hall.
Don’t go all schizoid on me now, Maple. No one’s gotten within half a mile of that kook joint. Reading too many horror books, methinks. Going to switch you over to romance.
Sometimes on the island he had wondered if he might end up going crazy. That seemed to happen to hermits in all the books he read. But during those lonesome years, he had never heard voices, or footsteps, or anything that might qualify as a hallucination.
Then again, he had never felt this much shame.
One evening, Martin found that the crate was empty. It had happened before. In the three and a half weeks that Martin spent in the hospital, Darla forgot to load the crate on two other occasions. Her excuses were convoluted and forgettable, and they didn’t matter really. Martin had stockpiled enough food and books to last.
This time was different. There was only one book left to get him through the night. The next day would be a dead zone, and he had only three choices. He could while away the hours listening to the wind and chickadees and letting his thoughts take over. He could risk going back into Xibalba, to the library, and loading up a backpack. Or he could try to locate some books right there in the hospital.
The footsteps usually only came at night. After careful consideration, he convinced himself that they were made by a raccoon or a fox that had dug its way into the hospital through the ductwork. So once morning came, he ventured out for some exploration. He started in the rooms losest to his, but the books he found were ones he had already read—fantasy yarns, the Bible, some silly little tale about a seagull.
On the fifth floor, he hoped for better luck. He tore open drawers and thrust his hand under mattresses. He found a few magazines, which he wedged under his arm, but he knew they wouldn’t last him long.
By the time he reached room 512, he was almost ready to throw in the towel. The room was a bit odder than others he had seen, but that didn’t mean much. There were framed photos of a baby on the dresser, a stack of boxes in the corner, women’s dresses in the closet, a crudely formed wooden figurine hanging by a wire from the ceiling, and what looked like a dragon made of clay on the nightstand. Yet the strangest thing was that the bed was made. He had seen tidy beds in other rooms, but none of those rooms had so many decorations. It didn’t matter really, though. There weren’t any books, and that was all he cared about.
On his way to the door, he stopped to look at a painting on the wall. It was a colorful and absurd scene of armored men storming a beach on horseback while natives in elaborate headdresses rained spears down on them from colossal pyramids rising from a bordering jungle. In the background, there was a moored sailboat. The flag it flew was unmistakable. It was the Jolly Roger.
Martin lifted the painting off the wall to get a closer look. The wood felt flimsy, and the canvas thin, but the entire thing was much heavier than he had expected. He turned it over to see why. Tucked in the frame was a journal.
He’d seen this type of journal before, with a marbled black cover and a white label for writing your name. There was nothing written on this one, but the edges of the pages were puffed up and warped and stained with sooty black fingerprints. He set the painting down and walked over to the bed. He sat on the corner, balanced the journal on his knee, and opened it. In messy black ink, the following was written:
The Life and Times of Kelvin Rice
Volume II
—— 31 ——
The Sequel
The curtains, chunky and powder blue and emblazoned with little cartoon ears of corn, defended the room from the light. Martin yanked them open and felt the early afternoon warmth cling to his face. He scooted back on the bed and got comfortable.
The journal was an absolute mess. Pages were stuck together and warped with water damage. The ink had bled everywhere, creating a gray broth with random fragments of legible text floating here and there. Throughout most of it, Martin could determine where one entry ended and another began, but it was nearly impossible to get a sense of when exactly they were written. They were just a sprinkling of t
houghts and observations, completely open to interpretation.
… starting new with a new diary and a new life and a new world! That’s right! Every! Stupid! Person! You turn on the TV and it’s static. Radio too. You scream your lungs out and no one can hear a damn thing. Swear. Scream your swears if you want. It happened. Look. Look!
… a pound of peanuts for dinner and drank a beer. Beer is gross, so I won’t be doing that again. I went to Marjorie’s room to make sure she wasn’t there. She wasn’t and that’s a good thing. It makes me mean I guess but there are so many times when I wished she was dead. This is better than dead. Wherever she is, they’re more able to handle her. I’ve never been able to. Isn’t that what loving someone is about, wanting the better thing for them? I could destroy things if I wanted. I could drive a car through the bowling alley. I’m not going to do that because I have been left here for a reason. To protect the world? Probably not. I did go to Tyler’s house. I put his clothes on his bed and I peed all over them and I smashed his computer and TV with a hammer. It felt okay to do that, but then, I can do anything I want.
… put a sign up near the highway that said “Zombies keep out, no brains here.” Funny stuff, but jokes don’t work when there’s no one to …
… going out. I didn’t think about that. The water too. I guess those things don’t run on their own. I bet I could find a generator. You put gas in those and there’s lots of gas if you know how to siphon. I’ll need heat when the winter comes but that’s …
It was stupid for me to think I was the only one. I saw someone today.
… like he’s my age. I want to follow him, but he’s up to something and I’m not sure it’s safe. He collects signs and books and other stuff. He burns them. He stacks them in Town Square and dumps gas on them. It stinks like nothing I’ve ever …
… a tiger. A tiger!
Since finding that first diary in his basement, Martin had wanted to know everything about Kelvin, but now he thought it might be best to put this book down. It had the potential to reveal things he wasn’t prepared to handle. He had operated under certain assumptions, and if those assumptions proved false, then it would be another deafening blow to the voice on his shoulder. But resistance, as they say, was futile. He dove back in.
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