Leapholes (2006)

by James Grippando

  "Mom, what are you doing?"

  She waved him off and spoke into the telephone. "Yes, Detective Spessard? This is Doctor Sharon Coolidge. I've heard enough. I think it's time for you to come inside."

  Almost immediately after she hung up, there was a tremendous pounding on the office door. "Open up! Police!"

  Ryan looked at his mother in disbelief. "You told them to follow us here, didn't you?"

  "Ryan, this is giving me the creeps. It seems like some kind of cult."

  "You had this planned all along. You think Hezekiah abducted me."

  "I'm doing this for your own safety, Ryan."

  Jarvis's eyes filled with rage. "You double crossed me! Now we'll never find Hezekiah."

  The pounding at the door grew louder. "Open up, or we'll bust the door down!"

  Ryan said to Jarvis, "Give me the VLE helmet."

  "You don't need the helmet."

  "Yes, I wore it when I was with Hezekiah."

  "The helmet is worthless. It doesn't do anything. It's all in the leapholes, Ryan. When are you going to believe?"

  "Ryan!" his mother shouted. "Stop talking to that man!"

  The door crashed open. A SWAT team burst into the office. In a matter of seconds, a half dozen men dressed in black combat fatigues, weapons drawn, were approaching the library at full speed. In the stampede, they smashed into a row of bookshelves and knocked it over. The toppling of the first row of shelves created a domino effect. One bookshelf fell onto the next one, and so on. It was like an earthquake in Hezekiah's law library. Thousands of books came smashing to the floor. The advancing SWAT team members were buried in the avalanche of falling books.

  Jarvis grabbed a leaphole from Hezekiah's jar. "Let's go now, Ryan!"

  Dr. Coolidge snatched it from his hand. "You're not going anywhere."

  "Mom, don't touch that!"

  Another row of bookshelves toppled, and the domino effect suddenly reached Ryan and his mother. The bookcase crashed onto the table where Hezekiah's research book lay open. The book fell to the floor--and it opened to a different page.

  Ryan's mother backed away. Another falling book knocked the leaphole from her grasp. It rolled on its edge and landed on Hezekiah's book.

  Ryan dove for the leaphole and grabbed it. He noticed immediately that the old book was open to a different page than the one Hezekiah had been studying. But it was too late. His entire hand was glowing bright orange. The leaphole inside his tightly clenched fist was already doing its work.

  "Oh boy," Ryan said nervously. He could feel the pull of the leaphole. For the first time, he realized that maybe Jarvis and Hezekiah had been telling the truth. Maybe he really didn't need the VLE helmet.

  The suction was tremendous. It was more power than Ryan had ever felt. He tried with all his strength to release the leaphole, but his fist was locked shut. He tried to turn the pages back to Hezekiah's exact destination--back to 1857. There seemed to be no way to change the leaphole's course once the journey began.

  The noise was deafening, a swirling, swooshing sound like a hurricane. "Mom!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, "I'll be back as soon as I can."

  "Where do you think you're going?" she asked in a panic.

  "I don't know. I think it's someplace close to where the brood follows the dam."

  Suddenly, it was as if a rocket had fired. Jarvis grabbed Ryan by the ankles. In a final orange flash, they were sucked into the pages, zooming down the leaphole.

  Ryan had no idea where they might end up.

  Chapter 21

  Ryan hit the ground so hard that he nearly bit his tongue. It was the roughest landing yet, by far. He chalked it up to the fact that he wasn't traveling with Hezekiah. Or perhaps it was because Jarvis was still holding onto Ryan's ankles. He was like a baby chimp clinging to its mother.

  "Uh, you can let go now," said Ryan.

  Ryan's new surroundings were completely foreign to him. There were no cars and no traffic lights. He didn't even see bicycles. Telephone wires and electric-power lines were nonexistent. Ryan could have stared up into the bright blue sky all day long and never seen an airplane. He heard no music blaring from boom boxes. Skateboarding down the bumpy cobblestone streets would have been impossible.

  "Outta the way!" a man shouted.

  Ryan quickly rolled to one side. A horse-drawn carriage rolled past him, nearly flattening him in the street. "Did you see that?" Ryan said.

  "You were expecting a Hummer?" said Jarvis.

  Ryan picked himself up off the ground and brushed the dirt off his clothes. He was wearing what he usually wore: Blue jeans, sneakers, and a baggy sweatshirt with an NBA jersey underneath. Earlier that morning, he had decided to switch out of the white "home" jersey for the black "away" jersey. It turned out to be the right call. He was nowhere near "home," and there was no telling how long this road trip would last.

  Ryan and Jarvis walked for several blocks, just taking it all in. The sidewalk was made of bricks, not concrete. Most of the buildings were also made of red brick, though some had iron or stone facades. The tallest buildings were perhaps seven-stories high, but four or five stories were much more common. Old-fashioned gaslights were spaced at even intervals along the sidewalk. The smell of burning coal lingered in the air. A horse-drawn trolley bumped along the street. It rode on wagon wheels, not rails, and the passengers seemed quite uncomfortable. People on the sidewalks were dressed very differently from Ryan. Many wore fashionable hats and capes, but Ryan hardly noticed. He was too busy reading the hand-painted signs on storefronts and the stone-chiseled markers on buildings, trying to figure out where he was. He saw the Barnum Hotel, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, and the William Barr Dry Goods Company. He spotted several more churches, a public park, a library, and a bank. He found a barbershop and a blacksmith, and many other places of interest. As they passed a dentist's office with a big wooden tooth hanging in the window, a shrill scream startled Ryan. Inside, some poor guy was probably getting a molar yanked out by the roots with a pair of pliers and no anesthetic. Ryan prayed that he wasn't going to be in town long enough to get a toothache.

  After several minutes of exploring, Ryan and Jarvis stopped outside a bakery. The smell of fresh bread made them both very hungry.

  "Let's buy something to eat," said Ryan. "You got any money?"

  "Even if I did, I don't think they take bills from the twenty-first century."

  "Oh, right," said Ryan. "Any idea where we are?"

  "Not yet."

  "Why don't we just ask someone?"

  "Because they'll think we're two crazy people who should be locked up."

  "I guess you're right: We must look totally weird to them as it is."

  Jarvis looked away, as if his feelings were hurt.

  "Sorry, I wasn't talking about your face," said Ryan. "I meant the way we're dressed. We look so different."

  "Like a couple of clueless clowns," said Jarvis. "We don't even know what day, month, or year it is."

  As best Ryan could figure, it was early spring. He had no coat, but it was warm enough that he didn't need one. Some of the windows along the street had flower boxes, and the lilacs looked ready to bloom. Even the stray dogs seemed to have spring fever. A couple of yelping mutts were chasing chickens down an alley. It was the first time Ryan had watched hens try to fly. They weren't very good at it. Ryan could have soared higher and longer on his BMX bicycle.

  They passed a theater on Third Street. At Fourth Street they found another large hotel called Planters House. They were on Olive Street, Ryan discovered, and there they spotted the most impressive building yet. It was made of red brick with a big dome on top. The stone marker above the entrance told Ryan exactly where he was. It read: CIRCUIT COURT, ST. LOUIS MISSOURI. An American flag was flying in front. It looked slightly different from the one Ryan saluted at school every morning. He counted the white stars against the blue background.

  There were only thirty-eight.

  "Holy smokes. We're in
St. Louis, Missouri in the middle of the nineteenth century. How can that be?"

  "The leaphole, of course. The case in Hezekiah's law book was from 1857."

  "But I wasn't wearing the Virtual Legal Environment helmet. All we had was a leaphole."

  "That's all we needed. That's all you ever needed. It's like Hezekiah told you. You are Legal Eagle material. Nice driving, kid."

  Ryan looked around. The town was like a movie set, only real. He still wasn't sure about the power of the leapholes, whether it was magic or computers or something in between. "I just thought of something," said Ryan. "If I'm not a Legal Eagle yet, why do you suppose that leaphole worked for me?"

  "Because you have what it takes to become one. You'll only get better with experience."

  "I'm not so sure about that. But answer me this: Once a leaphole is used, can you use it again?"

  "It has to be re-energized first."

  "How does that work?"

  "You have to charge it up with another leaphole."

  "Do you have another leaphole?"

  "Nope. I'm not a Legal Eagle, so I don't have any."

  "Yeah, and like I just said. I'm not one either. Not yet."

  Jarvis stopped cold. The significance of Ryan's words seemed to hit him like a mule kick. "We have no return leaphole," said Jarvis.

  "We sure don't," said Ryan.

  "What do we do about that?"

  Ryan tucked his spent leaphole into his pants pocket. He looked off to the distance, toward the endless stretch of prairie that marked the edge of town. "Looks like finding Hezekiah is even more important than I thought."

  Chapter 22

  Dr. Sharon Coolidge sat in silence at her kitchen table, her fist clenched tightly around a moist tissue. Ryan's dog Sam lay at her feet, seeming to sense her sadness. Two detectives from the local police station were seated across from her. The older one was heavy-set with a large, fleshy nose. Whenever he furrowed his brow, the skin folded into little steps that led up to his salt-and-pepper hair. The younger man was more handsome, more athletic looking. His clean-shaven head glistened like a polished bowling ball beneath the kitchen chandelier. They were waiting for Ryan's mother to dab away the tears and regain her composure.

  "I'm sorry, gentlemen," she said in a voice that quaked.

  "Take your time, ma'am."

  Just three hours had passed since Ryan and Jarvis disappeared down the leaphole. Dr. Coolidge was not holding up well. She was still recovering from Ryan's first disappearance. Those three days he had gone missing could only be described as a mother's worst nightmare. The only information the police could give her was that a high-school boy had seen Ryan's bicycle collide with a white car. He wasn't in any of the hospitals. No one called to say he was okay. Worst of all, her last words with her son had been an argument over their weekly visit to his father. Three sleepless nights later, the hospital called to say that Ryan had turned up in the emergency room. She vowed never to let him out of her sight again. Then, just a few hours after leaving the hospital, he was gone again.

  It was the worst day of her life--even worse than when her husband had gone to prison. At least she knew where her husband was.

  The lead detective blew his nose into his handkerchief, then checked his notes. His name was Jorge Gonzalez, and he had a heavy New York accent. A toothpick dangled from the corner of his mouth, and it wagged like the tail of a dog when he spoke. "So let me get this straight, Dr. Coolidge. You're saying that one minute your son and this flat-faced character were standing in the library. The next--poof!--they disappeared into a book."

  "Yes."

  The detectives exchanged glances. Dr. Coolidge could almost read their minds. "You don't believe me," she said.

  "People don't just vanish, ma'am."

  "I can't explain it. I'm telling you what I saw. The SWAT team raced into the library like a stampede of elephants. They knocked over all the bookshelves. Next thing I knew, I was struggling with Ryan and this flat-faced man for a metal bracelet that they called a leaphole. And then they were gone."

  Detective Gonzalez worked his pencil between his fingers like a miniature baton. "Let me ask you this, ma'am. Other than yourself, is there anyone who can say for certain that your son and this other man were actually in this building?"

  "The SWAT team, I'm sure."

  He shook his head. "I'm afraid not. No one from SWAT saw anyone inside the office but you."

  "That's not surprising. With all the bookshelves falling down, they probably couldn't see all of us. Ryan and that man disappeared just a few seconds before the SWAT team reached the study area."

  The younger detective spoke up, the one with no hair. "Let's back up a second. How did you find this building in the first place?"

  "My son took me to it. He said it was the office of a lawyer named Hezekiah."

  "That's very interesting," said Detective Gonzalez. "We checked this out. No one named Hezekiah has ever been a tenant at this address. It was last rented to a law firm called Dewey Cheatam and Howe. They vacated the space about three weeks ago."

  "So, the law books belonged to them?" she said.

  "Yes," said Gonzalez. "And according to their office manager, no one has ever disappeared into any of their books before."

  "I don't understand this," she said.

  Detective Gonzalez leaned into the table and looked her straight in the eye. "I've seen this a hundred times, ma'am. I know how difficult it can be for a mother to admit that her child has run away from home."

  "Ryan didn't run away."

  "Has he ever run away before?"

  "No."

  "What about last week? You told the police that you and your son had an argument. He was supposed to visit his father., You came into the kitchen and he was gone."

  "Well, I wouldn't call that running away."

  "Ma'am, he took off on his bicycle and didn't come home for three days."

  "He was in an accident. The doctor thinks he could have had temporary amnesia."

  Gonzalez looked at her skeptically. "You're a doctor. How many cases of temporary amnesia have you seen in your entire career?"

  "Very few," she admitted. "Maybe a couple."

  "A couple. Now, I'm a cop. I probably see a dozen kids a year who claim to have temporary amnesia. Funny thing is, they're all faking it. These kids are just afraid that their parents will punish them for running away from home. So they make up a story."

  "Ryan knows he can't fool me. He's not a faker."

  "Lady, he disappears for three days. He comes back telling you that he and some magic lawyer traveled back in time to a sinking ship from another century. He may get points for imagination, but he's still a faker."

  "You don't believe anything I've told you, do you?"

  The detective rubbed his big nose again. "Look, I'm not calling you a liar. You seem like a nice person. I'm sure Ryan isn't running away from you. But kids do this kind of thing when their dad ends up in prison."

  "Are you suggesting that this is somehow my husband's fault?"

  "All I'm saying is talk to your son. Maybe he's getting teased at school. Kids can be cruel. Ryan's a pretty easy target with his dad in jail."

  She folded her arms tightly, a purely defensive gesture. "Ryan knows he has nothing to be ashamed of. His father is innocent."

  "I'm sure you and his father tell him that. But innocent men don't plead guilty. Ryan is old enough and smart enough to know that. Believe me, for a boy his age, there's plenty to be ashamed of."

  The anger was boiling up inside her, and she feared that she might say something unwise. She rose and said, "Get out of my house."

  The men pushed away from the tabfe without a word. Dr. Coolidge showed them the way out.

  Standing in the open doorway, the old detective glanced back over his shoulder and said, "Just so you know, we'll be treating this case as a runaway. I'm sure your son will turn up. Probably as soon as he gets hungry."

  She watched as they climbed down
the front steps. Detective Gonzalez turned and looked back at her one last time before getting into his car. He was shaking his head.

  How dare he, she thought as she closed the door. How dare that old detective say that about my son. She felt another surge of anger, but her feelings were more complicated now. As much as she hated to admit it, the detective had managed to plant a tiny seed of doubt in the back of her mind.

  Maybe Ryan had run away.

  Chapter 23

  Never before had Ryan seen a river so big. He now understood why they called it the Mighty Mississippi. In the mid-nineteenth century, a levee extended along the Mississippi's right bank for nearly six miles. At old St. Louis, it rose to a limestone bluff almost forty feet high. Wharves, warehouses, and other structures stretched all along the bank, serving a city of over 150,000 people. Ryan and Jarvis watched from a high point on the bluff, looking down on the river. This was the golden era of river boats. Still, the sheer amount of traffic on the waterway surprised Ryan. He stopped counting at 170 vessels, but he saw still more. There were paddle boats, sailboats, steamboats, and fishing boats. Ferries operated between Illinois and Missouri, as there was no bridge. Coursing between the larger boats were rafts, canoes, and rowboats. Some were purely pleasure craft. Others were commercial. They ranged from the old and barely seaworthy to floating palaces with fine Victorian carpentry. They headed up river and down river. At the levee, dozens more unloaded cargo and passengers, making St. Louis one of the busiest ports in the country, second only to New York in tonnage.

  Ryan and Jarvis were seated on the grass, eating little green crab apples that they'd picked straight from a tree alongside the road. The sour juices made Ryan wince as he chewed. They weren't exactly tasty. Funny how the mind works, but Ryan seemed to recall from his summer reading that even Huck Finn swore off stealing them. In fact, it was right when Huck and Jim's raft floated past St. Louis that Huck said "crab apples ain't ever good." Huck was probably right. But Ryan was starving, and his belly was grateful for anything that would fill it.

  Ryan nibbled his eighth apple down to the seeds. He pitched the core into the river. He was still thinking about Huck and his friend Jim, who was a slave. "Hey, Jarvis. Was Missouri a slave state or a free state back in 1857?"