by Scott Mebus
Rory didn’t know what to do. He was cracking up, obviously. That magician had broken his mind. But he refused to give in to the hallucination. He was in control here, and he knew what could be real. So without changing expression, he slowly looked away. He kept his eyes frozen on the apartment building next door, the one with the gargoyles on the roof. They stared out into nothingness, never moving, never changing. He could rely on them.
After a few moments, he couldn’t stand it. He glanced back at the base of his stoop. The sidewalk was empty. The cockroach that couldn’t be was gone.
Afraid the impossible thing would come back, Rory returned his attention to the roof of the old apartment building, trying to force the cockroach from his mind. He could make out a small pigeon hopping along the roof’s edge. It was just a normal city pigeon. There wasn’t a gerbil in a Robin Hood hat on its back or anything. It inched along the edge of the roof near one of the gargoyles, a lion’s head with its stone mouth open in a growl. The pigeon stopped just short of the gargoyle, looking away at something on the roof. Then, in a flash, the gargoyle head turned and gobbled the pigeon up in one huge bite. Feathers burst out of its mouth and floated softly down toward Rory’s astonished face. He would have thought he’d imagined this, too, if the gargoyle wasn’t still chewing. Finally, with a swallow, the gargoyle went back to stillness. If not for the falling feathers, nothing would have been different.
Rory let out a strangled cry. This was just too much. Something was happening to him. He was definitely cracking, going crazy, losing his grip. A feather floated down into his open hand. He stared at it, running his fingers over the soft down. It was real. He twirled around to see if anyone had witnessed his mental breakdown, but the street remained empty. Except…down the road, past the stadium and toward the river, where the old trees of Inwood Hill Park pushed right up to the sidewalk, he thought he saw something in the shadows. Someone staring at him from beneath the ancient branches. He took a step toward the woods, almost against his will. He could barely make the figure out. Then the wind blew, shifting the leaves and letting the sunlight fall on the dark form. Rory froze at the sight of that figure under the trees, shocked by what he was seeing. Finally, a loud horn sounded, startling him into action. Rory staggered back, tripping over his stoop in fright. He dropped the feather to the sidewalk and ran up the steps, diving back into the safety of his apartment, his room, his bed, his world—where everything was just as it was supposed to be.
He didn’t dare look out his bedroom window. Who knew what else he might see? Instead, he put his head under his pillow and stayed there the rest of the day and night. He heard his mother call him in to dinner, but he ignored it, just as he ignored the faint horn he could still hear blowing in the distance. He pretended to be asleep when she peeked in to check on him. But the thought of that figure kept him awake long into the night. He replayed the moment in his head of when the light fell and revealed the tall, bare-chested Indian warrior standing beneath the trees, watching him. He could still see the feathers bound up in the Indian’s hair, the bow slung over his shoulder, and the copper spear in his hand. But most of all, he remembered the feeling that came over him when the Indian was revealed. The warrior’s face was…familiar. It was the face from Rory’s dreams. But he couldn’t be real. That was just a dream. This all must be one big dream. It had to be.
2
INDIANS AND SQUIRRELS
At the top of one of the tallest buildings in the city there was a room. A floor higher than any staircase or elevator reached; not even the architect knew it existed, nor would he believe it if he were told. The room was dark, though the shades could be pulled aside to reveal windows everywhere, looking out over the city below. But the man sitting behind the desk liked the dark best, so the shades remained drawn. A small fire gave the room its only light, the wavering yellow barely reaching the man’s face. Only his eyes shone from shadows, black and deep. They burned into Dutch Schultz as he stood ready to make his report.
“Is it done?” the black-eyed man asked softly.
“You bet,” Dutch Schultz said, trying not to shiver. He’d been shaking almost nonstop ever since he had sunk that crazy knife into Van der Donck. The old loon hadn’t stopped whispering to himself even as he fell to the ground with a mortal wound. When Dutch had leaned in to figure out what he was saying, Van der Donck suddenly grabbed his forehead, scaring the bejesus out of him. It must have taken everything he had to commit that last hopeless act of defiance, because the old god fell dead the next moment. Dutch shivered again. Why couldn’t he stop?
“I am pleased, Mr. Schultz,” the black-eyed man said. “May I have my knife back?”
Those black eyes seemed to bore into his soul. Dutch couldn’t help himself, he shivered again. He’d been a famous gangster back in his mortal days during the Roarin’ Twenties, and he’d killed heaps of men. He prided himself on not being afraid of nobody. He’d fallen in with the black-eyed man years ago, a lesser spirit attaching himself to a god, and he’d been sittin’ pretty ever since. This filly was the right one to back, he’d tell himself. This knife, this crazy knife that could do the impossible, it proved it. Dutch would kill a thousand dried-up old gods if that’s what it took to gain power. So why couldn’t he stop shaking?
“Mr. Schultz, I’m waiting.” The black-eyed man was not pleased at the delay.
The assassin was shocked to find himself hesitating. Dutch Schultz, noted murderer and gang leader, was scared. A voice spoke up inside his head, almost as if it came from outside. I have the knife, do I not? I am the powerful one now. If I strike quickly, I could take the power for myself and stop the shivering. As the words rang in his head, an odd calm came over him. He suddenly knew exactly what he had to do. Without stopping to wonder where the voice came from, Dutch leaped toward the black-eyed man, knife aimed at his heart.
The black-eyed man did not even flinch. He reached out and grabbed Dutch by the throat, pushing him to the side. Dutch thrust wildly, sinking the knife into the other man’s shoulder. The hand around his neck tightened, and the last thought on Dutch’s mind as the blackness overtook him was, Did I just try to bump off the big guy? What was I thinking…?
Holding his bleeding shoulder, the black-eyed man calmly regarded the dead body of his assassin. He knelt down to take back the knife, wiping it off on the assassin’s jacket. He then reached into the dead man’s pockets, searching.
“You underestimated me as always, Adriaen,” he muttered to himself. “You may have turned Mr. Schultz against me, but all it cost me was an assassin. And I have more, Adriaen. I have more—Ah!”
He pulled out a small gold locket. Smiling cruelly to himself, he regarded the locket and the knife, his black eyes glinting in the firelight.
Rory awoke to a thump on the small of his back.
“Get up!”
Rory sleepily waved behind him in a useless attempt to get the intruder off of him. He was still half in his dream, something about a bright white belt. Bridget’s voice whispered in his ear:
“Get your butt out of bed, mister, or I’ll knock you silly with my great sword, Buttkicker! Your tender butt wouldn’t be able to take it! It would sting and turn red and you’d cry out, ‘It hurts! Oh, great knight Bridget, your mighty sword stings my poor butt!’ But I’d keep whacking you, because sleepyheads deserve no mercy!”
“Fine. I’ll get up. Just please stop talking!”
Rory pushed himself up onto his knees. Bridget remained attached to his back, so Rory reached around to tickle her. She squealed.
“No! I will not fall for your evil tickling! I am too great a knight to giggle!”
But that just wasn’t true as Rory reached right in with a wiggling finger and tickled her to tears.
“See, Bridget, that’s why knights wear armor. Otherwise the dragons would tickle them to death.”
“Let your sister up, Rory. Her squealing’s gonna wake up the neighbors.”
Mrs. Hennessy stood in the doorwa
y in her work clothes, a no-nonsense white blouse and brown suit pants, looking down at them with a half smile. Rory stopped as asked, feeling a little sheepish, and Bridget immediately sprang up out of reach. She raised a fist in the air.
“You just caught me off guard, that’s all. The next time you try that, Rory, I’ll be waiting to whack you!”
Rory fell back in bed. Mrs. Hennessy reached down and pulled the covers off of him.
“No you don’t. Breakfast is ready. I want to see you eating before I head out.”
Mrs. Hennessy worked down on Wall Street as a legal secretary for a large law firm. Every morning during the week (and often on the weekend) she left at seven A.M. to walk down to the A train and ride it the length of the island to Wall Street. It was the longest subway ride in Manhattan. She never came home at night before eight-thirty, and sometimes ten or even eleven. By then, she’d poke her head in to see Bridget asleep and then make her way to Rory’s room to ask how the evening went. Rory’s reports were always glowing; every night with him in charge was a successful one. She’d kiss his forehead and then wearily make her way to her room. One day he’d make lots of money, so she could stay home whenever she wanted. Then maybe she wouldn’t look so tired.
This summer was especially difficult. There wasn’t money to send Bridget to camp, so Rory had to look after her. He made a big show of hating the idea of dragging his little sister everywhere he went, but truth was he liked it. It wasn’t like he had a big crew of buddies waiting for him at the corner to go play ball. He didn’t mix well with the guys at his all-boys Catholic school; all they cared about were sports and hitting each other on the arm really hard. They never seemed to realize how tough the world could be outside of their hundred-dollar sneakers and their video games and their fathers coming home at night for dinner. He used to have one sort-of friend, Alfred, but they parted ways after Rory let slip about his dad’s disappearance in a moment of confidence and his supposed friend blabbed about it to everyone at school. Overnight, Rory became the Kid Whose Father Walked Out, which just proved to him that it was a bad idea to trust anyone who wasn’t a Hennessy. He didn’t really want friends, anyway, he told himself. He had his mother, and he had Bridget. That was all he would ever need.
This morning, as Bridget ate her Lucky Charms and Rory munched on his English muffin, Mrs. Hennessy explained her plan for the day.
“The Central Park Zoo has a brand-new exhibit on squirrels. Why don’t you take your sister?”
“Come on, Mom,” Bridget said, groaning. “Why can’t we go to the Bronx Zoo?”
“I don’t like the idea of you two wandering around the Bronx. The Central Park Zoo is a perfectly fine zoo.”
Bridget poked her cereal with her spoon, splashing milk all over her side of the table. “They have parrots and goats and donkeys and things. All their animals eat grass. The whole fun of the zoo is hoping a gate is left open and the animals break out and eat each other.”
Mrs. Hennessy reached down and stopped Bridget’s spoon. “Is that so? That happens all the time at the Bronx Zoo, does it?”
“Like every day! Just the other day, an antelope got out and mauled a giraffe. Just bit off its face like it was nothing!”
Rory snorted. “You don’t even know what an antelope is, do you?”
“It’s not a stupid grass-eating squirrel.”
Rory let out a big sigh. “I’d better take you to the zoo, or you’ll go through life thinking squirrels eat grass.”
Bridget stuck her tongue out at him and went back to splashing her cereal. Rory took a sip of orange juice and marveled at how distant the events of yesterday felt. Like he’d dreamed the whole day. He finished his glass and set it down, feeling pretty good about the world. Bridget tossed something at him.
“By the way, you left this on my present.”
It was a playing card. His Magic Marker writing was scrawled across the little black clubs, taunting him.
A large rat raced through the tunnels that crisscrossed below the streets of Manhattan, a small cockroach clinging to its back. Fritz M’Garoth held on tightly to the reins as his rat steed, Clarence, bore him south toward City Hall. His heart beat fast as he considered the implications of what had happened.
He’d become so used to watching the boy unseen, that at first he hadn’t realized something had changed. He’d waited for Rory’s eyes to defocus as they passed right over him; after all, they always did. But this time, Rory tossed the script, starting in surprise and staring openly at the cockroach atop a rat watching him from the sidewalk. Thrown, Fritz had panicked and waved. Waved. He was such an idiot. The minute Rory looked away, Fritz got out of there before he could do any more damage.
Fritz had gone to his clan’s village under the Dyckman Street Playground to warn his elders, but they’d waved him off. Ever since coming north to escape the Mayor’s wrath when they resigned from his service a hundred years before, the M’Garoth clan had pulled away from the world. Only Fritz and his wife, Liv, as the clan Rat Riders, dared lead patrols outside the village. And only Fritz seemed to care what happened out there. Sometimes he felt like he was the only one to remember what it truly meant to be a battle roach, defending the peace against those who would break it. In the old days, M’Garoths had led the charge against criminals of all stripes. But now, only Fritz carried on their legacy. He alone among his clan remembered that a battle roach was born to fight.
Since he couldn’t shake his clan from their self-protective stupor, he’d decided to ride down to Adriaen van der Donck and warn him of this new development. Adriaen had understood the importance of keeping an eye on Rory, of keeping him alive, and now that the boy had somehow woken up, Adriaen would know what to do. Rory is lucky to have such a wise benefactor, he thought. The world was dangerous for a Light. Unprotected, Rory wouldn’t last a day….
Rory tried to keep his mind off his growing insanity, letting Bridget chatter as they walked through Central Park toward the zoo.
“It’s such a pretty day. We should head down to the Statue of Liberty or something. We don’t need to see some stupid squirrels in a cage. We could go to the top of the Empire State Building. Or play basketball in the park. Or go down to Coney Island and ride the Cyclone! Why don’t we do that?”
Rory kept right on walking, not answering her. Bridget bounced around him like a tetherball. She pointed to all sorts of things as they walked along the tree-lined pathways.
“Look, a mime! Let’s go throw stuff at him! I bet you I could make him say ‘Ouch!’ Wait, let’s go over there! They paint your picture while you wait! Can I get my picture painted, Rory? I’m one of the world’s great beauties, after all.”
Rory kept walking. Bridget didn’t seem to need any response to her yammering. The park was alive that day with people and sound, for which Rory was thankful. He didn’t want to hear himself think. If he just ignored all of this, everything would go back to normal. A couple rollerbladed by, splitting him from Bridget for a second. Once they passed, she stepped in front of him.
“What’s going on, Rory?”
Rory stopped. Bridget’s face was uncharacteristically serious. She had her hands on her hips and everything. Rory forced a laugh.
“Nothing. Just enjoying the day.”
He tried to brush past her, but she wouldn’t move.
“You’ve been weird all day. You were weird all day yesterday, too. Not all day, actually. Just after that magician. You know, if you hate magicians so much, why did you help him with his trick?”
Rory avoided her eyes.
“I didn’t help him.”
Bridget hopped excitedly.
“I knew it! I could tell you were surprised. He’s a real magician, isn’t he!”
“Of course not. You know that’s all a bunch…of…”
Rory trailed off. Bridget cocked her head to the side. He was looking past her, toward a large elm by a small footbridge.
“What? What are you looking at?” she asked.
Rory didn’t answer her. He knew she couldn’t see what he was seeing. Because he was going crazy and that’s not really a team sport.
Across the path was the strangest thing he had ever seen. It beat everything up to that point, including the gargoyle. For under the elm, in broad daylight, a squirrel and a rat were fighting kung fu.
They seemed pretty evenly matched to him. The rat was smaller but more agile. Its kicks came quicker, and the squirrel had to throw its paws up with lightning speed to bat them aside. The squirrel, on the other hand, packed a stronger punch. Though it only landed one shot for every four from the rat, its punches sent the rat reeling. One particularly hard chop to the neck knocked its foe to the ground. The rat lay there while the squirrel circled, gesturing with its paw to come get some more. The rat cleared its head with a quick shake and leaped up to its feet. It performed an intricate dance, swishing its paws through the air. Then it sprang at the squirrel, beginning the fight anew.
Rory stood there watching, knowing that he was officially crazy. Bridget stood next to him staring intently at the elm. Rory felt bad for her, having to see her responsible big brother, her rock, break down right in front of her. She nudged him.
