“Tell me why you think they’re weird,” Travers said.
Kyle glared at him, rolled over, and hit the red button. The television winked back on, but instead of Jay Leno, the picture showed the movie choices the hotel had thoughtfully provided. A good fifty percent of them were labeled Adult, and required going to another screen.
Kyle was about to press the channel changer buttons when Travers caught his hand.
“We don’t need to watch any more,” Travers said.
“I think they can hear us,” Kyle said. “But if the TV’s on…”
He didn’t have to say any more. Travers hit the button for the NBC affiliate, and left the volume up.
“So you’ll tell me?” Travers asked, feeling a bit like a supplicant. He had felt out of control with his son since Kyle started school. The outside influences severed a bond between them, one that had seemed so tight that it almost felt as if they knew what each other was thinking. At times, Travers wanted that bond back. At others, he simply wanted to know how come he no longer understood his own son.
“Weird,” Kyle said, sitting up and crossing his legs, “is one of those cool words that people don’t use right.”
Travers bit his lower lip. He didn’t want to say anything, but at the same time, he didn’t want a lecture. And Kyle was good at lectures.
“It means ‘mysterious’ or, you know like ‘ghostly’ or something. It comes from the Old English word ‘wyrd’ with a ‘y’ which means, literally, fate.”
Kyle put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, his hands expressing his thoughts as if he couldn’t speak without them.
“In Norse mythology, there’s these three women. They’re called the Wyrd Sisters—with a ‘y’—and they control fate, literally. Their real name is the Norn, and one of the sisters—I think the one who controls the past—is called Wyrd, which is kinda confusing, I know, but kinda cool, too—“
“Kyle,” Travers said. He already had too much information.
Kyle nodded, as if he realized he was telling his father too much. “Okay, so when I asked you if you thought they were weird, I meant strange, but not in the way that people mean when they call me weird. When they call me weird, they don’t mean weird, they mean dork. When I called them weird, I meant it in the coolest possible way. Like they were bound by tree limbs, you know?”
“Bound by tree limbs?” Travers couldn’t help but ask.
“Like the Wyrd sisters. They guard the root of this tree, Yggdrasill, which is in the middle of the world. The Wyrd sisters guard the root that extends into earth, which the Norse called Midgard. There are two other roots. One goes to the underworld, and the third goes to the home of the frost giants. Which isn’t important, but is cool.”
“Yeah,” Travers said. “Cool.”
“But all day, as we’ve been riding with these women, I kept thinking of the Wyrd Sisters. I wrote a comic book for Vivian called Defender of the Fates, and it dealt with the Fates, remember, Dad?”
Travers nodded, although he didn’t. All of Kyle’s comic book plots and drawings seemed the same to Travers which, his sister Vivian said, had a lot more to do with Travers than with Kyle.
“Well, if you look at the pictures, you see all three women. They look just like those ladies next door. And they talk like them, too, all jumbled up, and interrupty, and everything.” Kyle’s cheeks were flushed. He was excited to be talking about this. “And if you look at the Defender, she looks kinda like Aunt Viv, and she falls in love with this guy who looks like Uncle Dex, only I wrote it before I met him. And when we were coming up to the wedding, I started a new comic book called Fates’ Clues, and in it, there’s these same three women—only I was going to look up the Wyrd sisters, and kinda use them as the basis, and then there’s this other woman who’s a detective and she looks like that movie actress, that chocolate one?”
It took Travers a minute to follow that. “You mean Juliette Binoche.”
“Yeah, her. Only tall, with a dancer’s legs, and a longer face, but just as pretty—maybe prettier—”
“I get it,” Travers said.
“And I keep thinking that maybe I’m not making this stuff up. Maybe I’m, like, channeling it from the future, you know? Like Aunt Viv.”
“Your Aunt Vivian can’t see the future.” Travers knew that for certain. Sometimes she knew—in a very uncanny way—what someone else was thinking. And she could figure out all sorts of odd things, like who was going to call the moment before the phone rang, but she almost never saw the future.
Although every once in a while, she would pass out—which used to scare the whole family when Vivian started the practice in high school—and she would come to with the most amazing stories of things she’d seen. She called them visions. Their mother called them dreams, and Aunt Eugenia, who, before her death, used to pamper Viv, called them normal.
There was nothing normal about those visions, and watching Viv go through them was the only time in Travers life that he was glad he and his siblings weren’t related by blood. They were all adopted, which anyone could tell by looking at them—Viv with her dark skin, dark eyes, and dark hair; him, all tall and blond and Nordic; and round, chubby little red-haired Megan, who wasn’t quite so little anymore.
“Sometimes she can see the future,” Kyle said, and he sounded defensive.
Travers had mentally moved so far away from the original remark that it took him a moment to realize that Kyle was referring to Vivian, not Megan.
“But mostly, she kinda sees the present—especially if it’s happening somewhere else.” Kyle had an expression on his face that Travers hadn’t seen before. The expression was a combination of defiance and hope. Kyle truly believed this. “She saw Aunt Eugenia’s murder when it happened.”
“Kyle!”
“It’s true.”
“Vivian told you that?” Travers asked, thinking honeymoon or no honeymoon, he’d have a talk with his sister about the stories she told his son.
“Nope.” Kyle’s voice was soft. “I saw it, too.”
Travers folded his hands together, looking at them and counting to ten, just like Megan told him to do when his son said something he didn’t believe.
“You’re psychic,” Travers said as calmly as he could.
“I think so.” Kyle’s voice was barely above a whisper.
“You hear people’s thoughts,” Travers said.
“Sometimes,” Kyle said.
“And you see the future,” Travers said.
“Yeah,” Kyle said. “I draw it. If you look at my comic books, you’ll see a lot of stuff that I knew before it happened. Like I knew all about Uncle Dex and Aunt Viv when they met and stuff. I didn’t know I knew it, but I made a comic book out of it and gave it to Aunt Viv before we left Portland that first time.”
Travers raised his head. Behind Kyle, some rock group was playing in the middle of the Tonight Show soundstage. “You believe that?”
Kyle’s look of anticipation faded. His entire face closed down. “No, of course not,” he said in a perfectly normal tone of voice. “Why would I?”
“But you told me about the comic book,” Travers said.
“And it’s a good story, isn’t it?” Kyle uncrossed his legs. His socks looked even greener in the light from the TV.
“I thought you said this has something to do with those women.” Travers was confused. He wasn’t quite sure what Kyle had been trying to tell him.
“It does,” Kyle said. “They make me think of the Wyrd Sisters, which is what made me think of the comic book, and Aunt Viv, and stuff. I’m sorry, Dad. You know me. I just get carried away.”
He did, too. He got caught in his own imagination. Travers nodded. His stomach twisted, and he felt, once again, as if he had lost control of the conversation.
“I shouldn’t have agreed to bring those women along with us,” Travers said. “I should have told them to take the train or something.”
Kyle snorted. “Like they wou
ld’ve done good on the train. They’d’ve been arguing in the station and missed it.”
Travers nodded, in spite of himself. The only reason the five of them were in this seedy hotel was because the Wyrd Sisters, as his son called them, had argued about the best place to stay for so long all the other hotels from Medford to Ashland were full.
Travers had been tempted to drive all night, but everyone, including Kyle, managed to talk him out of that.
Kyle lay back down and tucked his hands under his head. He watched Leno for a moment, then as a Lexus commercial came on, he said, “You know, Dad, there’s just one thing.”
Travers stood. He headed back to his own bed. He was tired, more tired than he cared to admit. And this conversation, like the day, had taken something out of him.
“What’s that?”
“I have this feeling that the Wyrd Sisters—they’re not supposed to go to L.A.”
“Yes, they are,” Travers said. “They told me. Vivian told me. And they even offered me a free kitten if I took them there.”
Kyle giggled. He’d seen the kitten exchange, as had everyone else at the wedding. The Wyrd Sisters had given a group of kittens—well-trained kittens, or so they claimed—to anyone whom they trusted.
They claimed they trusted Travers.
“Seriously, Dad, I don’t think they’re supposed to go to L.A.,” Kyle said as his giggles faded.
“Where are they supposed to go?” Travers asked, knowing he would regret the question later.
“Las Vegas.” Kyle sounded very serious. “I keep seeing them escorting me through the Star Trek Experience.”
Travers grabbed his paper-thin pillow and pummeled Kyle with it. Kyle laughed again, grabbed his pillow, and whapped Travers with it. They had a good, old-fashioned pillow-fight as the Tonight Show theme song faded into the jazzy opener for Conan O’Brien.
Then he and Kyle collapsed on their respective beds, sweaty and laughing, and very tired.
They agreed to go to sleep, and Kyle went through his routine first, using the bathroom, brushing his teeth, and putting on his pajamas. Travers shut off the television and lay on his bed, thinking about the conversation.
It left him unsettled, although he couldn’t say why. Perhaps it was the belief in Kyle’s voice as he discussed his own psychic ability. Perhaps it was the long day with the three chattering, oblivious women. Or perhaps it was the mention of Las Vegas.
Travers had been avoiding Las Vegas his entire life. He had no logical reason for doing so. It was a numbers-man’s Mecca, a place where a CPA could meet a game theorist could meet a statistician, and all of them would have enough math to keep them happy for the rest of their lives. He could watch the average person in a controlled gambling environment and see his pet theories proven again and again.
Normally, most accountants and mathematics fiends loved places like Vegas, where odds were a way of life.
But Travers didn’t trust odds. They never worked quite right for him. And he hadn’t discussed that with anyone—especially not his superstitious family.
Fortunately, they had never asked him how he paid for college after Kyle was born. He didn’t want to tell them that he had done so with his lottery winnings. Not that he had won the big Powerball Jackpots or anything that spectacular. No. It was quite simple. He would stand in front of the scratch-off counter in a convenience store and know, somehow know, that the third ticket from the bottom was worth fifty dollars. That was the only time he would then do the math. If he made a profit after buying all the tickets to that one, he’d buy them. If not, he’d tell the clerk that the third ticket from the bottom was worth the fifty dollars. Later, the clerk would always tell him he was right.
The weirder ones were Powerball. He never hit the automatic number-choosing button. He always closed his eyes and imagined the little Ping-Pong balls in their little blower. He would see them come up—not the way they did on TV—but with big red numbers above the rotating Ping-Pong balls, as if someone, somewhere were trying to tell him which numbers would win.
He never put in all of the numbers. He just couldn’t. It wasn’t fair. So he’d see how low the pay-out was, and put in three or four, and take home his $20,000 or his $150,000. He never told anyone, and his name was never printed in the paper. Only the people who ordered the names of the weekly winners ever saw his. And they apparently never made the connection.
Not even Kyle knew. Travers kept that strange ability to himself, and lived as comfortably as he dared without calling attention to his wealth. CPAs made good money. They just didn’t make great money. So he made sure he looked like he was worth good money and nothing more.
But Travers knew that as tempting as Powerball was for him—and he had trouble walking past one of the kiosks without seeing the damn red numbers—Vegas would be worse. He always imagined himself watching the numbers come up correctly on the roulette table or in craps or even at the blackjack table, where math and luck lived together in an uneasy alliance.
It was—in Kyle’s word—Fate, and Travers didn’t want to tempt it.
If Kyle was right, and those women needed to go on to Las Vegas, Travers would help them find the right public transportation to get there. He was never going into that city.
His life would change once he did.
It was an irrational fear, he knew. But everyone, even the most normal person on the planet, was entitled to one irrational fear.
Entering Las Vegas was his.
And he clung to it, just like Kyle clung to the illusion that he was psychic. Because it made him feel safe.
Because it made him feel like he was in control.
Even when he wasn’t.
Three
It took nearly an hour for Kyle’s dad to go to sleep.
Kyle lay in his bed closest to the window, listening to the traffic zoom by on I-5. Headlights constantly illuminated the flowered wallpaper, and the occasional horn would startle him, even though he wasn’t asleep.
His dad had this big block about magic. Aunt Viv had warned Kyle about that. Even as she told him about her magic, and her discoveries in Portland this last year. His new Uncle Dex, who was a dead-ringer for the 1940s comic book Superman (which kinda fit, considering Aunt Viv used to say that the original Superman was the handsomest guy on the planet), could do all sorts of magical things. He just wasn’t willing to.
Only Dad would never believe it. Dad hated all this mystical talk. Somewhere along the way, Dad had convinced himself that he was really practical and a non-believer in anything that he couldn’t see—from God to magic to psychic abilities.
But Dad had to have seen the weird stuff at Aunt Viv’s wedding. Like the way all those people popped into the hotel. Most of them arrived without luggage (it had popped in, too) and without obvious transportation.
After a day of suspicious arrivals, Kyle had actually planted himself in the lobby, and watched person after person appear on the front sidewalk out of nowhere. Not that anyone else seemed to notice or even care.
Then the Wyrd Sisters had shown up. That wasn’t their name, of course. Their names were strange enough, though. Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. They were model-pretty and they did carry kittens with them everywhere, and they glowed like they had magic, even though they didn’t.
Aunt Viv and Uncle Dex had the first argument of their marriage over those women. Aunt Viv said they still needed protection, and Uncle Dex agreed, but said it wasn’t his responsibility anymore, and then the Wyrd Sisters got involved and said that they would get their protection from Zanthia in Los Angeles, because she walked the mean streets.
The Wyrd Sisters were going to fly to Los Angeles until they realized that meant on an airplane (what else could it have meant? That had really intrigued Kyle), and then they saw Dad, and said that he was perfect; they’d travel with him.
Aunt Viv tried to talk them out of it, saying that Dad was pretty straightforward and not real imaginative, but they didn’t care, and then Aunt Viv told
Uncle Dex, who laughed and said he wasn’t responsible for the women anymore, and that their instincts seemed to be good. Which was when Aunt Viv started disagreeing with him, and Uncle Dex held up his hands, not wanting to fight at the reception, and Kyle snuck off to talk to Dad, who at that point didn’t know he was going to be stuck in an SUV for two days with three of the strangest people he’d ever met.
Kyle counted his dad’s soft snores. When the count reached fifty, Kyle slid his covers back and eased out of bed. Then he tiptoed across the floor until he reached the door.
Kyle slowly brought his arm up to the chain lock. Sound—or the lack of it—was really critical to sneaking out of the room. He slid the chain across its little track, then out of the track, catching the chain as it fell away. He set it against the door, very gently, so that there was no sound at all.
Then he turned the knob, and felt it click rather than heard it. He pulled the door open slowly, and the hinges creaked. Kyle bit his lower lip and looked at his dad. His dad didn’t wake up.
Kyle slipped out of the door. He pulled it closed, and stood for a moment on the concrete balcony that overlooked the parking lot and, beyond it, the interstate.
Lots of trucks went by. The parking lot was full of cars and trucks and a few trailers. Kyle’s bare feet were cold. In fact, his whole body was cold. He shivered, rubbing his hands over his arms. His pajamas were a lot thinner than his regular clothes. And it had gotten a lot colder out here than it had been a little while before.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe he should’ve waited until morning to talk to the Wyrd Sisters. But he wanted to give them the heads-up that their advice hadn’t worked and that magic—or at least psychic abilities—weren’t something they should even try to talk to his dad about.
No sense in having Dad mad all the way to L.A.
The concrete was scratchy. Kyle hopped across it, using the iron railing as a brace.
He got to the next room, only to discover a handwritten sign on the door.
Absolutely Captivated Page 3
