Lightspeed Magazine - January 2017

by John Joseph Adams [Ed. ]

  “Huh,” he says. Somehow, he’s eating another candy bar. He touches the map and leaves a brown thumbprint on the page where Coyote Rise stands. A message from the Triangle, I wonder. Is it telling me, “I know where you are” now?

  “Maybe the Triangle is why you tried to crack open my head today,” he says with a chocolate grin.

  I wince. Here it comes, I think. But in a way, the hint of threat is a relief. The natural order of things will be restored.

  After a while, the nail that sticks out wants to be hammered.

  “What do you plan to do?” He waves his hand at the map, and the natural order continues unnaturally. “Did you tell the cops? Show them this?”

  “Yeah.” I tell him about Officer Dan. After the second visit from the police this year, I told Officer Dan my first theory. I drew him the Triangle on a piece of construction paper, from memory. Only four kids had vanished back then.

  Officer Dan was nice about it, but he said that he had read a book about the Bermuda Triangle that I hadn’t called The Bermuda Triangle: Mystery Solved. It explained that the Triangle didn’t exist. Didn’t exist. It was made up by a guy named Edward Van Winkle Jones to sell books, and a careful study showed that the Triangle had no more disappearances than any other random area of ocean.

  Brendan sniffed. “What a dick.”

  “Yeah! I think the Triangle controls the adults somehow. It’s the only explanation. Seven kids have disappeared, so why do we still walk to school on our own? Why do we stay at home by ourselves all afternoon?” Why is Mom still married to Bill? Why do I never see Dad anymore? I don’t say any of that. I just think it.

  “Yeah, well. Kids are disappearing, but our parents still have to go to their shitty jobs,” Brendan says. Is that the Triangle talking, or my bully? I don’t know, and there’s a third option I’m almost afraid to even think, but there it is. Brendan might actually be talking as my friend.

  “Until today, I thought that Coyote Rise kids were immune to the West Topeka Triangle. That it didn’t want us. But Kim …”

  “Kim Davidson. Damn.” Brendan blows air out of his cheeks in a lazy attempt at a whistle. “What a hottie. I can’t believe she’s gone, but you know she wasn’t going to be part of the Coyote pack anymore.”

  “No.” I blink. “What do you mean?”

  “Kim was moving to Kansas City with her mom. She got out early on parole. Didn’t you hear? I guess nobody really talks to you at school, so why would you know that?”

  I try not to wince, but I don’t do a very good job of it. His bedside phone rings, saving me his half-hearted apologies. Brendan answers and talks to someone I eventually realize is his mom. I’ve never heard Brendan mention a dad, and there’s a rumor at school that his mother was raped and Brendan doesn’t have a real dad at all. That made an evil sort of sense to me before today. Now I feel terrible for believing it.

  “Okay. I’ll microwave a Hot Pocket. Yeah—he’s still here. Okay, I will. Bye.” He hung up the phone. “Mom says to ask if you want to have dinner. She’s going to be home late.” I look at the cat-shaped wall clock and realize the time. Bill is going to be furious if I don’t get home now.

  “Thanks, but I can’t. I better go.”

  “Hey, want to walk to school together tomorrow? We can talk about what to do about the Triangle.”

  Do? Do what? I was curious what he thought we could ever do about any of it. “Sure.” I let myself out, screen door slamming behind me as I take off at a run.

  Bill gives me a mean glare when I come in, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s already watching Wheel of Fortune, so I won’t have his attention for a while. I go up to my room, which I share with my little brother. He’s under the covers sniffling. I feel bad; whenever I’m not around, Bill takes out his anger on Gnat. I drop off my bag, pat Gnat on the shoulder for a moment, then head downstairs as Mom walks in the door.

  She gives me a distracted kiss on the forehead and asks me about my day. She’s already in the kitchen before I can muster up the kind of answer she wants to hear.

  “I’m really sorry to hear about your friend Kim, honey,” she says, placing a large pot of water on the stove. She tears open a box of spaghetti noodles and stares into the water. I want to tell her it’ll never boil that way.

  “She wasn’t my friend. Not really,” I say. Mom thinks everybody in the complex is my friend, no matter how many times I correct her.

  “I think Brendan might be, though.”

  Her eyes widen, and she smiles. She looks happier than I’ve seen her in a long time.

  “That’s great, honey.”

  “We hung out after school.” I feel embarrassed for not telling her about the fight, but I know she has enough worry about with her receptionist job where the doctors are really demanding.

  “Go tell your brother and sister dinner will be ready in ten minutes,” she says. I do as I’m told. By the time we’re all seated at the table, she’s done microwaving the sauce. I pop in a couple of slices of bread to make garlic toast while she sets the table.

  Bill walks in and throws his third can of beer in the trash. He takes a seat at the head of the table where Dad used to sit. I can just barely remember what it was like before the divorce. Gnat was too young and can’t remember at all. Sissy might, but we never talk about it, so I don’t know. Anyway, Bill treats Sissy a lot better than Gnat and I. Better even than Mom.

  We get through another beer before Bill starts in. Gnat had left a toy on the stairs the night before, and Bill had almost slipped and broken his neck on his way to work in the morning. Didn’t we know how good we had it, and shouldn’t we show him some goddamned respect for working so hard to provide for us when we weren’t even his flesh and blood?

  Tonight I don’t want to be the nail that sticks up. I want keep my mouth shut and wonder at the injustice of a universe that doesn’t make people like Bill disappear and instead targets golden-haired girls like Kim Davidson.

  I hear myself talking, but I swear the words don’t come from me. “If you hurt Gnat again, I will kill you. I will stab you to death in your sleep.”

  My mother gasps. Bill roars, stumbles onto his feet, and the chair goes crashing backwards behind him to the kitchen linoleum. “What did you just say?”

  I say it again. I say it a third time, only this time my lips are moving and I feel like I’m echoing the voice of someone else.

  My mother stands his chair up, and Bill falls back into his chair at the head of the table. He’s gone pale. He doesn’t say anything. Nobody says anything, but there’s a humming in the air that I can feel in my teeth. Then I feel an electrical, snapping sensation; everyone relaxes—the scowls and frightened glances go smooth.

  The Triangle has reasserted itself. Bill takes another drink of beer. My mother dishes up another helping to Gnat. I excuse myself and go to my room.

  I read in my top bunk bed, close enough to the popcorn ceiling that I can reach out and make it snow if I want. Right now, I’m working on the Mystic Places book in the Time-Life Series of the Unknown that they’re always selling on TV. I got mine for twenty-five cents at a garage sale. I’ve read it three times already, but I’m trying to figure out if the sides of the Triangle might be ley lines, related somehow to the Pyramids or maybe even Stonehenge.

  I only read a few pages before I fall asleep. I dream about a world covered in interlocking triangles, lines of power running from mystic place to place of ancient power. Swirling vortices form within them, sucking up boats, airplanes, children, animals, everything, a world dotted with growing black holes with endless hunger. They inhale until nothing is left, until the plants and animals are gone, and the world is a barren rock, and then that goes next. The planet gone, the Triangles somehow still remaining. It looks in my mind kind of like that thing in another of my books, a Dyson sphere. And then it too is gone, a Big Bang in reverse.

  • • • •

  “We have to test the theory. What do you call it?” Brendan asks
as we walk. All I can think about is the cold morning air on my sides where there are holes in my thrift store coat.

  “What? Oh. An experiment?”

  “Exactly. We need to do an experiment.” He jumps across the dry creek bed. “You know about science and stuff, right? How do you do one?”

  “I think we have to pick a variable and change it and measure the results. And, uh, then we change the theory based on that.” I have an old textbook somewhere in my closet that explains it better. I make a note to read it after school.

  When we get to the cul-de-sac, the D&D middle school kids are standing in a driveway sharing a cigarette. Only Todd and Bend of them are wearing coats; Jerry and Wheeze are shivering in their Metallica and Iron Maiden shirts.

  “Hey, runt,” Todd the dungeon master says, pointing the cigarette at me. “You hanging out with fattie now?”

  I don’t know what to say. I don’t know anything. I shrug. I expect Brendan to say something, to defend himself. He never backs down to kids our age, but now he walks past me and continues toward school. My face burns with, what? Embarrassment? Shame. Older kids always make me flustered. They operate by rules of behavior I don’t understand any better than the ones adults do.

  “Heh, guess not,” Jerry the fighter player said. Jerry likes me best of the four of them; he lives down the street in Coyote Rise, too. “Doesn’t that kid pick on you all the time?”

  I nod. “I kind of beat him up yesterday.”

  “And now he wants to be your friend? That’s fuckin’ pathetic.” Todd laughs. “We’re gonna cut class and explore the sewers under the park. I wanna try to summon a demon again, too.” He patted his backpack. “I even remembered to steal my mom’s flashlight this time. Want to come?”

  “Technically, they’re storm drains,” Wheeze the wizard says. “Anybody got another cig?”

  “No, dude, he’s in grade school. He’ll get in deep shit if he doesn’t go to school,” Jerry says.

  “Yeah,” says Ben, the thief in real life and the game. Everybody knows he shoplifts all the time, mostly because he’s always talking about it. “With all the disappearances, they’ll have the cops after us by lunch.”

  “Go on to school,” Wheeze managed to say before breaking out in his trademark cough. “Come by the basement after. We’re going to try that new Ravenloft module.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Good luck in the sewers.” I run to catch up with Brendan, but I can’t find him anywhere along the route. I double back twice, thinking maybe I just missed him. I try not to think it. I look as long as I can, but I know I can’t be late. I can’t risk getting in trouble two days in a row. Even Mr. Howard has his limits.

  I get inside the gym just before the bell rings, and only just catch Brendan slipping out into the hall. I call his name, but he doesn’t answer me. I tell myself it’s just because it’s so loud in the gym.

  • • • •

  Today’s vocabulary words are:

  BETRAYAL

  INDIGNATION

  REMORSE

  DETERIORATE

  LOATHE

  I know them, too.

  • • • •

  “Sorry about earlier,” I tell him. Brendan is showing me where the hidden warp pipes are in Super Mario. I really like his bedroom. I wonder how many years of allowance I would need to save up to buy my own TV and Nintendo. Not that Bill would let me anyway.

  “Are those teenagers your friends?”

  “Most of them don’t like me. I think they feel sorry for me, so they let me play D&D with them,” I say. I feel a little guilty for not going over like they asked. As the party cleric, I know they need me to survive combat. They may not like me very much, but they like my healing spells in the heat of battle well enough.

  “That’s cool,” he says. “D&D seems pretty gay to me. Pretending to be wizards and shit? Video games are more fun.”

  “I guess.”

  Neither of us says anything for a while. We don’t take our eyes off the screens. The pixel plumber on the screen ducks down into a pipe and disappears. Weird symbols fill up the screen.

  “God damn it,” Brendan says. He yanks the cartridge out and blows in it, then returns it to the machine. When it turns it back on, it still doesn’t work. I stare at the symbols for a long time. Wondering what the Triangle is trying to say. Is it ancient Atlantean? Or maybe just Japanese.

  “Stupid thing always breaks at the worst time. Sorry.”

  “I should get home,” I say. “I want to plan our experiment.”

  “I’m going to call the Nintendo hotline and yell at them until they send me a new game,” Brendan says, red-faced and sweaty. I let myself out as he dials the number, apparently from memory, and begins yelling.

  • • • •

  I lay in bed that night unable to sleep. Unable to think of a variable to test in my experiment. The only idea I have is that I should become as normal as possible. Become the nail that doesn’t stick up in any way. Become, somehow, what the Triangle wants. And if it takes me, then I will know for sure that I was right all along.

  A while ago, I would have liked that. But now, I don’t; not really. I need something else.

  My bedroom curtains light up suddenly, someone shining a flashlight on them from down at ground level. The D&D kids sometimes sneak out to shoplift. They like to take me along because I’m good at distracting the clerk. I go along because I’m afraid Todd will kill off my level six cleric if I don’t. And I don’t do anything illegal myself. Not really.

  I put on some clothes, slip on my coat, and sneak downstairs. I go out the basement door, far enough below the master bedroom that I won’t wake Bill or Mom. Jerry’s waiting for me on the patio.

  “Hey, Jason,” he says. “We’re making a cigarettes and Playboy run at the Kwik Shop. Coming?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  The Kwik Shop is a couple of miles away. It’s a long walk, especially because they stop to vandalize stuff along the way. In another apartment complex, Wheeze shows how you can punch the plastic globes on the street lamps and take them off. Wheeze pretends to be a trooper from Spaceballs for a while before kicking it like a soccer ball into an empty lot.

  Halfway there, I get a funny feeling, that tension in the air again. Todd whispers, “Someone’s following us.” I look over my shoulder, and I make out the silhouette of a large car rolling down the street toward us, all their lights turned off.

  “Don’t look,” Jerry hisses. I turn back. We keep walking.

  “Why would someone follow us like that?” I ask.

  “Run for it, “ Wheeze yells. They take off in different directions into the shadows. I can’t move my legs. I can’t move at all.

  The Triangle has me now. I gasp for air. My mouth fills with the sting of salt.

  The car rolls to a stop beside the sidewalk where I’m stuck. The passenger side window cranks down. I look, and in the dark, the face seems almost familiar.

  “Hey,” a man’s voice calls out. The dash suddenly lights up as he turns on his emergency lights. I can see Mr. Howard. “What are you doing out here this late, Jason?”

  I attempt a shrug.

  “Get in the car and I’ll drive you home.” He smiles.

  I still can’t move. I can’t talk. I’m drowning in something, I think.

  Mr. Howard’s face shifts. I’ve never seen him so angry. He snarls, “I said get in the car!”

  “They told us not to,” I manage at a whisper.

  “I’m not a stranger, am I?”

  The hum is everywhere around me. I feel like I am going to break into a thousand pieces, and I cannot move. The hum builds like the crescendo at the end of “Stairway to Heaven.” I know somehow that I am about to die, and I am okay with it. I’m ready for all of the misery to be over now. I give in to it.

  For a moment, the world is silent; I imagine it sounded like this before the Big Bang, before anything. Time and space skip.

  Behind us, the siren of a police car wai
ls in two short bursts, and suddenly the street around me is painted red and blue. Mr. Howard’s face goes blank, neutral.

  I can move now, but it’s too late. The cop yells at me to stay where I am. I turn around and I hold my hands in the air so they know I’m harmless like they do on TV. The cop on the passenger side gets out and walks towards me while the driver talks on the radio inside his car. It’s Officer Dan.

  He tells me not to move, and walks over to Mr. Howard’s car. They talk in low voices for a while, pointing at me, but I can’t tell what they are saying. All I can think about is what Bill is going to do to me when they call home. I hear the phrase “Neighborhood Watch.” I guess that’s why Mr. Howard is out driving around late at night.

  Officer Dan waves at Mr. Howard, and he drives away slowly. For a moment in the light of the headlights, I see Jerry hiding in the bushes on the other side of the street. He sees me see him, and shakes his head, then crawls back out of sight.

  Officer Dan asks me a lot of questions. Why am I breaking curfew? Where are the other kids? I tell him I don’t know. I don’t know anything at all.

  “We’ve called your parents. Your dad is on his way to pick you up.”

  “My dad?” I ask. “Are you sure?” Officer Dan doesn’t answer, but instead lectures me on how dangerous it is for me to be out, that the other kids I had been with weren’t my friends. He talks until my dad arrives behind the wheel of his beat-up El Camino. He’s wearing his pink bathrobe and not much else. He gives me his sternest look, but there’s no heat in it. “Get in the car while I talk to the officer,” he says. I do what I’m told.

  “Damndest thing,” Officer Dan says. “I could have sworn we were six blocks over, but I must have gotten turned around in the dark.”

  They talk for a few more moments, but I don’t listen. I’m busy knotting myself in worry. Dad shakes Officer Dan’s hand, then gets in beside me. We sit parked on the street in the dark while Dad lights a cigarette. He doesn’t say anything until it’s gone, and lights another one.