“What have you got to lose?”
“Okay,” said Dave, pushing a pawn to the center of the board to begin the next game. “I’ll try again: Where do you live?”
Silence again. Half the game was played, with no advantage for either side.
“If I tell you,” typed SoH, “you must promise to never divulge it.”
“Sure, whatever.”
“Well. I, too, am ill. But there is no treatment for me, even though I live in a vast hospital. Underground.”
“I always knew you were a nut.”
“I am risking a great deal divulging this.”
“Where?”
“Under Texas. Very few people, know about it.”
“I’m laughing out loud.”
“In 1968,” said SoH, “a woman appeared here. She had this disease. It had never been seen before, and many hundreds were infected, and most died. But a remedy was quickly developed, using an enzyme discovered in the cells of the very few survivors.”
“Ridiculous, ridiculous!” wrote Dave, though he wanted to believe.
“GIGI has never returned. Since then, though, the woman’s kind has not been welcome here. In fact, they have been banned.”
“‘Her kind’?”
“Yes. Hard to explain.”
“Sure it is. Okay, I’ll play along. Why is it called GIGI?”
“It’s named after the woman who brought it here. It stands for Georgette Inchbald Green’s Infirmity.”
Dave Green froze. His grandmother’s name! Had … had she somehow wound up … there? This was impossible to believe. This crazy person was running some kind of scam. Dave shook his head hard, causing his thin hair to rise in brief oscillations. Or … this was the beginning. The beginning of the insanity.
“And,” typed Dave, “what happened to her?”
“She was remanded to a quarantined prison cell, where she was forgotten … and died, of neglect. It was a shameful day for the infirmary.”
“I don’t ever want to hear from you again.”
Dave Green slammed his laptop shut.
That night, he slept even worse than he had the night before. Restless, nonstop half dreams of his grandmother falling into mine shafts; of gigantic pencils stabbing his hands; of being trapped in his lab, thigh deep in a Gobi of deadly viral powders, flailing and holding his breath; of pawns with the power of two queens and chessboards made of solar flares; of fury in the guise of calm; of despair; of vengeance. Of madness.
At 4:30 a.m., Dave signed on to ChessKnight.com, where he quickly found sleight_of_hand.
“Okay,” wrote Dave. “How do I get there?”
And, against all rational inquiry, Dave Green dressed in the disguise described by SoH, got in his Chevy, parked behind a nearby Albertsons, locked his truck, and, at 9:31:07 a.m., climbed into a Dumpster and waited.
CHAPTER 11
The pipe was as dark as a blacksmith’s basement. Chance crawled slowly along the slick surface, his body just barely fitting. Behind him, the wind pushed at him like a linebacker. The little flashlight, as powerful as it was, illumined only twenty feet in front of him; beyond that, oblivion.
This is craziness! What am I doing? It could be a thousand miles! Chance stopped for a moment. He’d been traveling for an hour. It was almost four in the morning. There wasn’t room to turn around; he was going to have to crawl backward to get home. He would keep going for three more hours, then reassess.
A new possibility struck him on the side of the head like a cold fish: What if it started to rain? What if it rained hard, like yesterday? There might be mud. Lots. He pictured it oozing into the pipe, piling high, eventually blocking the hole off. He could die here. Dying was not in Chance’s plans.
But the beings, whatever they were, what about them? He wished Pauline were here. She would know what to do. On the other hand, she probably wouldn’t believe any of this business of flerk and kenicki-quithers and 955-year-old hospitals. She would scoff.
Chance continued on. It was getting hotter, and the pipe now declined at an ever-so-shallow angle. What if it got steeper and steeper, and he lost his grip on the surface and began to luge toward hell?
Something spanked him on the rear end and stuck there. Ow! What the heck? Oh, it must be a piece of mail. It felt funny, sticking to his butt like that, the wind holding it in place, but there wasn’t room to reach back and remove it.
Thap! Another piece of mail landed on top of the first. Lup! Another! Then kop, sip, slup, fipflit, letter after letter hitting him in the butt and the backs of his legs, some slipping between him and the walls and shooting on down the pipe, but most amassing behind him, a drift of paper against his body that threatened to grow so large it would clog the pipe, stop the engine of wind altogether, and prevent him from ever returning home.
But this did not happen. Instead, Chance found himself being gently propelled by the wind along the pipe like a red cell in a capillary, moving no faster than he’d been crawling. This was a rather pleasant change, as he was awash in perspiration and his kneecaps hurt.
The wind blew him and his big clot of mail along like a schooner. Chance was traveling a bit faster now. And now faster. Soon, there was no stopping; Chance tried to dig the heels of his hands into the pipe, but it felt like a nonstick frying pan. They were traveling at the pace of a brisk walk. Now it was a leisurely jog; now a lazy streetcar ride; now they were running to catch the bus; now they were Usain Bolt, the friction heating his shins through his jeans; now they were on an airboat in the east Texas swamps, racing past alligators and cypress trees; and now they were on a Moto Guzzi going over the speed limit on a straight two-lane road on the coastal plains; and now they were on a rocket sled on the Bonneville Salt Flats; and now they were within a whisper of the sound barrier.… For almost an hour, Chance hurtled through this underground tube on his way to deliver a letter—no mailman had ever done this!—to some thing he wasn’t sure existed in a place that might be no place at all, all for no good reason except to stanch a gush of guilt and quell the feeling he would be failing his dead father if he didn’t. Then Chance noticed something ahead of him: a tiny white dot, a quark of light, in the center of the circle of dark distance before him, and it slowly grew and grew until it was the size of a dime, then a nickel, growing until it was like staring into the beam of a flashlight, now the disc of the full moon, now … light was all around him, a blare of whiteness and fluttering. And he tumbled through space in a maelstrom of mail until gravity snatched him and dashed him onto the pile of letters in what he would later learn was Saint Philomene’s Infirmary for Magical Creatures Sorting Room M40 (Incoming), a white box of a hundred feet along every dimension. The bottom twenty feet was filled with unsorted mail destined for the patients and staff of the last place on earth where, as Chance would also learn, certain of the world’s inhabitants—fairies, demigods, barrow-wights, zombies, vizards, kraken, ouphes, superheroes, vampires, and others, so many others—could go if their bodies were being eaten by disease or their minds by melancholy or their population by viruses, because no terrestrial hospitals would know what to do with them. Saint Philomene’s Infirmary for Magical Creatures was where they went because there was nowhere else to go.
Chance was soon to learn that Saint Philomene’s did not welcome humans.
CHAPTER 12
Pauline idled over her dinner, moving the peas one at a time to make a circle around the mashed potatoes. She was still full from the barbecue, during which she had not seen much of Mersey, who had spent most of her time inside trying on outfits and doing her brows for her date tomorrow night.
“Where’s Chance?” said Pauline. She thought maybe she would talk to her brother about Mersey and Josh Ringle, about what happened today at the DQ, since Pauline didn’t want to tell her mother about it. Pauline got the feeling her mother had never much liked Mersey Marsh and would be sort of happy if she disappeared from her daughter’s life. And it appeared that that was in fact what was happening: Mer
sey had not sent photos of herself in her chosen outfit as she’d promised.
“He’s probably at Jiro’s,” said Daisy. “He’s going to spend the night. Remember?”
The phone rang. Pauline jumped up from the table to get it. Oh. Not Mersey. It was from Jiro’s house. Probably Chance calling. She didn’t want to talk to her brother on the phone, especially in front of her mother. She let it go to voice mail. She stared at the phone for a moment, considering calling Mersey. The screen on the phone went black, and Pauline was suddenly staring at her reflection in the glass. Omigosh, she was still wearing Mersey’s fangs. Pauline surreptitiously plucked them off and tucked them into a jeans pocket. Had her Mom seen them? She must not have, or she would’ve said something.
“Mom, I’m going to my room.”
“Okay, sweetie.”
Pauline got on the internet and searched Josh Ringle (if only she knew his middle name!), like she’d done a gazillion times before. As always, there was a mention of his .360 batting average in Little League two years ago, a group photo of his third-grade class, and a mention as a survivor in an obituary for Clyde Ringle, Josh’s grandfather. From this same obit, Pauline learned his parents’ names and that he had two sisters, Judy and Serena. Other bytes of info came from searching his name misspelled: Ringall, Ringel, Ringles. Pauline was a clever Googler and knew, among many other tricks, to search his name as it would be listed in a phonebook: Ringle, Josh.
But there was never anything new.
* * *
Pauline woke up at ten the next morning, went downstairs with her glued-together fulgurite in one hand, and finished off the box of cereal. She watched the clock. Chance would be home soon.
Tonight was Mersey’s date with Josh.
Daisy came out of her room.
“Is your little brother home from Jiro’s yet?” she said. “He has chores to attend to. I told him this would be the Summer of Labor. Besides, I want to say good-bye.”
“Haven’t seen his little troll face in a while.”
“Pauline.”
“Sorry. What time are you leaving?”
“Flight to Denver’s at one; I’m headed out in just a minute. Back in a week. All the numbers are on the Paper.”
The Paper was an eleven-by-seventeen sheet of paper, more than twenty years old, covered with phone numbers and contact information. It was stained, wrinkled, dirty, sacred, eminently useful, irreplaceable.
“Okay.”
“I called Jiro’s, but no one answered,” said Daisy. “Maybe they’re out having breakfast. Now, you’ll be all right by yourself, and you’ll watch Chance. Right?”
“I will.”
“Good. Call Jiro’s again later and ask Chance to call me immediately.”
Daisy said, more to herself than to Pauline, that Chance was an industrious and unpredictable sweetheart and there was no need for concern. But Pauline noticed a shade of worry in her mother’s face, which made Pauline worry a bit herself. But her mother was odd. Sometimes she behaved as if she lived in a bubble with a population of one: herself.
Pauline waved from the driveway as Daisy drove off.
Still no word from Mersey.
Pauline paced around her room. Why wouldn’t Mersey call? Then Pauline thought that she should call Mersey, like she’d promised herself she’d do. But she wasn’t ready.
She had to do something to keep herself busy.
She noticed Mersey’s sleeping bag still on the floor. She rolled it up and put it in her closet. What a mess in there. Pauline sat on the floor and started pulling things out. Cleaning. Cleaning would keep her occupied. She pulled out an aluminum baseball bat, a bent telescope, millions of old shoes, a magic set, a two-foot-high stack of board games, dirty clothes, an empty bag of Fritos, a full bag of Fritos (that expired three years before), a menagerie of stuffed animals, and dust bunnies like tumbleweeds.
Pauline cleaned out the entire closet, swept, unsentimentally threw things away, then dusted off and re-placed everything she wanted to keep. When she was finished, she cleaned under her bed, picked all the clothes up off her floor, and neatened her dresser drawers. She vacuumed, keeping the phone in one hand so she’d know if it rang. She did five loads of laundry. Finally, she Windexed the downstairs TV, which she planned to watch until late. And did.
She fell asleep on the couch.
She had forgotten to call Jiro’s.
In the morning she remembered. She ran to the phone. First, she listened to the message from two nights ago. It was Jiro’s mother.
“Hi, Daisy. Akiko here. Listen, don’t send Chance over to spend the night—Jiro came down with the throw-ups, and it looks like an all-nighter. Ciao!”
Chance hadn’t even been at Jiro’s. He’d been unaccounted for, for two nights! She felt like slapping herself on the cheek. Bad sister!
Pauline ran upstairs to Chance’s room. He wasn’t there. And his bed was unmade. Chance always made his bed. It was one of the only chores he performed faithfully. He claimed to like it.
Pauline hurried outside and raced to the backyard. No Chance, just a deep hole.
Pauline jogged next door to Mrs. Applebaker’s house.
“Oh dear, I haven’t seen him for a while,” she said. “It’s supposed to be a secret, but he borrowed my shovel a while back. That’s the last I’ve seen of him.”
Pauline walked back home. Where could he have gone? What had he wanted to show her? Did he find it in the hole? If she’d let him in when he knocked the other night, would he be home safe now? What was he doing right this minute?
Pauline began to really worry.
CHAPTER 13
Chance was covered in letters. Literally buried. He lifted his head, broke through a layer of mail, and peeked out. He was in a huge white room filled with letters, millions of them. Thousands of holes in the ceiling and every wall, each spitting out envelopes and parcels and magazines that rained down on Chance. In the center of the room, a huge crane hovered over the hills of mail, a big, rusty mechanical claw hanging from its crossarm by a chain. Not ten feet from him, Chance watched the claw open, drop into the piles of letters, grasp thousands at once, and slowly deposit its load into a vast aluminum hopper that funneled the letters into piles on a rapid conveyor belt that disappeared into a hole in one wall. Chance noticed a long window above the conveyor belt, through which he saw three creatures who were each standing at a console of sorts, pushing buttons, moving levers, turning dials. The creatures were like nothing he’d ever seen. Ten feet tall at least, they looked like huge pigs standing upright, but each was covered with thick, coarse fur—one red, one orange, one brownish yellow—and atop their turtlelike heads were perched small conical hats that looked as if they were made of rainbow taffy. They had long, knobby legs and wore shiny patent-leather boots in colors matching their fur. He would soon learn these creatures were called Vyrndeets.
Chance had gone insane. He was certifiable. He had lost his marbles. He was mad as a hatter, nutty as a fruitcake. He had fallen out of the crazy tree and hit every branch on the way down. Or was he dreaming? Seeing the future? Dead?
But what if he was perfectly alive, awake, in the present moment, sane, and all around him were truth and fact? Chance decided he needed to operate on this assumption. He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, nothing had changed. Mail, mail, mail.
The beasts were supernaturally ugly, vicious looking, and, even at this distance, smelled powerfully of boiled broccoli.
Chance buried his head back under the letters. He hadn’t bargained on this. He had absolutely no idea what to do. Those beings looked like they’d eat him on a cracker.
He began to swim. So to speak. He scuttled under a layer of letters, slowly so he would not be noticed, toward the hole the conveyor belt went through. Every now and then he’d peek up between the layers of mail to check his progress. He was getting close. As long as that claw didn’t come down and bite him in half. His heart beat like a two-st
roke engine.
A loud, screechy alarm went off, a little like a fire drill in school, except sharper and more urgent. He looked out from under his letter-blanket. Gad! One of those creatures was staring right back at him with its pupilless, matte-black eyes, which looked like huge olives. Then, with a short, cloven-hoofed foreleg, it pointed at Chance. Chance jumped out from under the letters and began to make his way to the conveyor belt door, slipping, sliding, falling, and getting back up again. Still a dozen yards from what he hoped was freedom, Chance slipped again and landed on his back. He looked up. Directly above him, the huge, rusty claw was moving into position. It dropped. Chance rolled out of the way, the claw thunking into the mail inches away from him. Chance tried to scream, but it came out as a hiss. The claw began to rise back into the air; the jackbooted pig-turtles were clearly preparing to drop it on him again. Chance continued to roll, making much better time than he had on his feet. Before long, he was jumping onto the conveyor belt and on his way out of that infernal room, with its murderous mutant mailmen.
Chance found himself in near darkness, frightened, surrounded by the churning of machines, with the terrible alarm still sounding. As he became accustomed to the low light, he realized he was in a room with dozens of greasy sorting machines that looked like they’d churn him into ground-up Chance. He leaped off the belt onto a cement floor covered in old mail. In one corner of the room was a closed door made of riveted steel plates; in another was a chain dropping to the floor from a narrow hole in the ceiling thirty feet above. Chance didn’t know if either led to freedom, but he was sure they at least led away from the three monsters, who would surely be coming after him. He rushed for the door. Just when he was only a few feet away, it opened, and a dozen round Saint Bernard–sized creatures with whippy antennae as long as they were tall burst in, each carrying a long, sharp halberd and a lead-weighted net.
“By the ghost of Saint Philomene, it’s a human!” shouted one of them in a voice that reminded Chance of those singing chipmunks from TV. One tossed a net, and another tossed a halberd. Both landed well short of their terrified human target.
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