“The symbol you drew,” he said. “I’ve seen it before. Not in a fantasy paperback. It was a large, ancient book inside an abandoned house, on an isle in Sleepy Lake, thirteen years ago.”
Just a few volts of excitement tautened Acker’s spine.
“You read it?” he whispered, frowning as he guessed Nate’s age and did the math in his head. “But you couldn’t possibly.” Then a flimsy, Gothic smile warped his lips. “Oh, but it leaves an impression, doesn’t it? I know, I know. It’s been only a year since I leafed over the copy at Miskatonic University while it was being transferred. I used to teach anthropology there. I can only imagine what it could do to a child’s mind.”
“We exposed everything; county police saw it and they didn’t care,” said Nate, pushing back the chance for self-pity. “They said it was a prop in a staged haunting.”
Acker nodded, understandingly. “I would have been inclined to agree once. But not today. Not in Sleepy Lake. Whoever owned that book had an agenda. And I am staggered they left it behind.”
He paused, lost in his grave thoughts. When he spoke again, he seemed to be quoting someone else.
“No book is dangerous in and of itself, you know. But historically, reading a book in the wrong way has led to terrible consequences. I can only think of one person more dangerous than a man who reads the Necronomicon and knows what he’s doing. And that is someone who reads the damned book with no idea of what he’s doing at all.”
Nate’s reaction shot was ruined by the voices of Craig and Kimrean, who were having a Pythonesque discussion over the window.
“You nutjob, penguins can’t fly!”
“But this one just flew in!” Kimrean wailed, putting the bird in question under Craig’s nose. “Look! And it brings a message! It’s a carrier penguin!”
“Hey, Kim,” called Nate. “Can I see that penguin, please?”
Kimrean capered back to him, carrying the plastic toy. Two words had been penciled on the penguin’s white breast. “Keep squeaking.”
“Put the penguin between my knees, please,” Nate requested. “And use that leash to tie my ankles together.”
“Ooh, Patty Hearst liked that too,” Kimrean commented.
Nate pressed his knees, extracting a wheeze from the plushy toy between his legs. He then tried a quick, sudden press; the penguin squeaked.
“What are we doing?” Craig grunted.
“I don’t know. But stay silent.”
He kept twitching his knees, making the penguin sing every few seconds, all while Craig and Old Acker observed him with taxing solemnity, Kimrean finished tying him up, Xira and Princess Irya ran for tactical advantage, and Adam sat hypnotized by the screen, watching out for the denouement of that episode.
It arrived, two minutes later, in the form of padded footsteps on the linoleum floor. Not from the TV.
The head nurse in her station screamed, “Hey! Who let that mutt in?”
Tim trotted by happily, already way past the counter before being noticed, glancing back cheerfully at the head nurse like he meant to tip his boater and bid her good morning. He followed the squeaks into the living room, where the circle around the armchair opened to welcome him, flabbergasted.
“Look!” Kimrean pointed, his split brain about to explode with all the unfiltered awesomeness the day was providing. “It’s a towing dog!”
The Weimaraner ignored the audience, having already caught sight of the penguin between the knees of the straitjacketed Nate, and dropped at his feet the heavy iron hook and rope he had been carrying in his mouth. The rope extended all the way down the corridor, through the inward-opening escape-proof door to the stairwell. Inches behind the hook, secured between two knots in the rope, a funnel-shaped piece of steel was supposed to play the role of a locomotive’s fender. Nate did his best to underreact once he’d fully comprehended the parameters of the escape plan.
“And you must be Tim,” he said to the Weimaraner.
Tim sat down at the sound of his name, tail wagging with delight now that he had replaced the boring hook in his mouth with the talking penguin.
Nurse Angela and the head nurse and a security guard arrived next. It was time to go.
“Kim, hook me,” ordered Nate. “Craig. Helmet. Quick!”
“What’s happening here?” asked the head nurse.
“Werewolf!” Nate shouted toward the open window.
Outside the building, and across the garden, on the other side of the wall, Andy, hanging from a low branch of the big chestnut tree, echoed, “Werewolf!” and banged the roof of the car.
Kerri stepped on the gas and gunned the Chevy forward.
In the living room, the guard pulled out his truncheon and gave the most useless command in his career as an order enforcer in a mental hospital.
“Don’t move!”
In the next heartbeat, Nate was quite literally fired off his armchair and through the human barricade of wards and nurses, scattering them like rubber bowling pins. By the time his backside touched the linoleum again he was already halfway down the corridor, zigzagging off the walls like a pinball, zooming toward the stairwell door, scurrying through the gap opened by the fender, and flying off the first landing.
He touched about six steps in three floors. With his head.
The two guards on the first floor inspecting the rope stretched across the foyer heard the loud bumping in the staircase several seconds before the screams accompanying the noise augmented suddenly in volume and the 150-pound projectile bashed through them, bolting toward the exit.
The guard in reception didn’t see it go past his booth. He only grimaced at the shouts, turned the volume up on Xira the Princess Warrior, and resumed his lunch.
Ethan, sitting on a bench in the garden reading Mad, hardly noticed the running rope under the bench and between his feet, and simply waved at Nate after he’d dashed by, peeling off the lawn and an inch-thick layer of dirt like a derailed dining car.
“Yeah, bye, Nate.”
He even saw him colliding with the outer wall and being hoisted over it, hanging upside-down from the top of the chestnut tree like a caterpillar in a pupa.
At that point Kerri, sighting the wriggling package fly over the wall in her side mirror, stopped the car and got out, prepared to untie the rope from the front bumper as soon as Andy cut Nate loose from the other end.
“You can stop yelling now, Nate,” Andy suggested, shimmying toward him along a branch and reaching out to unhook him.
“No wait bitch don’t it’s too high no no no fuck!”
The helmet and the grass of the park surrounding Arkham Asylum absorbed the best part of the fall damage.
Andy jumped to the ground and helped him up while Kerri swerved the Chevy around and rushed back to them, already flipping the right seat and stretching to open the door. She brought the car skidding to a stop two feet short of running over them and Andy shoved the guy in the straitjacket onto the backseat and jumped in.
“Go!”
Kerri pressed the clutch, shifted to second, and drove off north along the asylum wall.
By the time they turned around the corner, every single guard from the maximum-security ward was rushing out through the gate ahead. Three of them dared to step in the car’s trajectory and order it to stop.
Kerri made a point of shifting again really loud, engine revving in an unequivocal statement.
The ephemeral determination in the guards’ eyes segued to panic in the tenth of a second before they jumped aside, dodging the stampeding vehicle.
None of the other Arkham employees coughing at the dust trail noticed the Weimaraner with a penguin in his mouth running through the open gate and bolting behind the station wagon. And they didn’t even start running themselves until several patients from Nate’s ward had poured out too, chasing the dog, with Kimrean in the lead, crying, “I saw the whole thing! A dog and a penguin helped him escape!”
At the head of the chase, the Vega slowed down, with K
erri and Andy both leaning out and waving.
“Tim, hurry up! Run!”
The dog sprinted down the gravel path, ears flapping in the wind, penguin squeaking between his teeth to the frantic beat of his footsteps, catching up to the car where Kerri was forgoing all of the driver’s duties to wave him over. They were reaching the end of the park by the time Tim jumped into Kerri’s arms, Andy holding the wheel and steering them all onto the main road, out of the path of a honking eighteen-wheeler. The driver’s side door banged shut right behind the dog.
In the rearview mirror, the pointy roofs of Arkham Asylum dipped back behind the maple trees.
“Go, get in the back! I’ll drive!” ordered Andy, maneuvering to swap seats with Kerri at 70 mph.
“You dumb fuck!” Nate shouted at the dog, tied up, rolling upside down on the backseat. “Next time you go around the furniture, not under it!”
“Don’t scold him! He did great!” Kerri protested, wrestling Tim and rubbing noses with him. “Didn’t you? You did a great job! Good boy! Very good boy!”
I know, Tim panted, overjoyed. I rescued the penguin!
In his hand he held a pink safety razor, the last item in his welcome gift pack. His old bandaged fingers ached under fresh contusions. Bruises sprawled throughout his slender chest and arms like industrial developments in nineteenth-century Britain.
He caressed his chin. A semitransparent fluff under his lower lip was pretty much the total of his facial hair two weeks after he had last been allowed a Gillette in Arkham.
One of the toilets behind him flushed. Nate quickly put on a T-shirt, one of the two he had taken the precaution to wear that morning. It had been the easy workaround to the impossibility of carry-on luggage, and the extra padding had also been welcome.
A stall door flung open and Peter came to the sink, tucking his striped polo shirt.
“All right! Seems like the club’s back in action.”
Nate remained silent, watching the new guy in the mirror.
Peter Manner, theoretically 26, fixes his wavy hair with Nate’s comb, then pockets it in his jeans, a glistening smile of approval toward his reflection.
“Just like the old times,” he sighed. Right then he noticed the razor in Nate’s hand. “Why did they give you that? Is Kerri still expecting you to hit puberty or something? You never had body hair.”
“I know.” Nate chuckled.
“Look at me, though.” Peter checked his clean-shaven square jaw. “Some days I grow a full five o’clock shadow by a quarter past nine. I even grow hair after death.”
“That’s actually a myth,” Nate said. “The rest of your body shrivels and shrinks, which makes your hair look longer.”
“Oh,” said Peter, giving himself a closer inspection to make sure he showed no aging or decaying signs. “Well, I look fresh enough. And hey,” he added, nudging Nate, “the girls don’t look bad either, huh?”
“I guess.”
“Oh, come on! Kerri was already hot in high school; no surprise there. But have you seen Andy?” He did something that cowboys probably do when communicating with other cowboys across long distances. “For someone who used to hate being recognized as a girl, she’s turned into the kind of woman you can see from a mile away!”
“You wanna go out there and tell her that?” Nate challenged him, addressing the ghost beside him, not the reflection.
Peter scoffed. “Nah, you know me. I always went for Kerri. You don’t have a problem with that, right? You two are family, so it’s the logical pairing.”
A biker walked into the restrooms. Peter said hi, cheerfully. Without stopping, the newcomer registered the open bag by the sink with toothbrush, razor, and shower gel spread out, and continued into the stall, respectful of a traveler’s toilette. Or maybe he’d caught a glimpse of the yellow uniform sleeve sticking out of the trash can, Nate thought.
Peter fixed his letter jacket.
—
Kerri and Andy sat at a window booth overlooking the truck parking, a vast road map spread on the table.
KERRI: Look, I can just phone my mom and have her transfer the money; we can be in Portland tonight. She’ll love to have us.
ANDY: I know, I’d love to see her too, but I’d rather go by road.
KERRI: But why? With the amount of fuel that piece of junk must need it won’t make a difference. And it’s only six hours by plane.
ANDY: I know, I…(Tired, she leans closer, as in confidence.) Look. I can’t ride a plane.
KERRI: (Concerned.) What do you mean you can’t ride a plane?
ANDY: I mean, I can ride a plane, I just can’t go to an airport.
KERRI: Why?
ANDY: Because…(She checks the bikers by the bar and the couple with children at a faraway table.) Okay, remember the topic of what I’ve been doing for the last five years? Well, I didn’t mention everything. For a month recently I was also…doing time.
(Pause.)
KERRI: Time for what?
ANDY: (Pauses, disarmed. Sighs patiently.) Jail time, Kerri.
KERRI: You’ve been in jail?! What for?
ANDY: Nothing serious. A street fight. Collateral damage. We were…arguing at the door of a Spago, and I accidentally damaged what turned out to be a congressman’s car. (Beat.) With the congressman inside. (Beat.) By throwing the congressman’s son through the windshield.
KERRI: (Digesting that, laboriously.) Okay, so…you’re not allowed to fly for that? You served your time.
ANDY: Uh…well, let’s say after the first weeks I decided I’d learned my lesson already, so I cut my time short.
KERRI: You broke out of jail?!
ANDY: Shh! (Checks their audience again.) Look, it’s no biggie; it happened in Texas, so I’m safe here. But airport security use federal databases and my name would light up, so I can’t go to Texas and I can’t go to airports.
KERRI: So instead we have to drive through twelve fucking states?!
ANDY: Uh…thirteen. I’d better stay clear of Ohio too.
(Nate, wearing clean clothes, joins them.)
NATE: The pants fit, Kay. Thanks for those. (He sits down next to Kerri and across from Andy, and waits for dialogue to resume. It doesn’t.) What’s up?
KERRI: Andy was in jail!
NATE: (To Andy.) Wow. (To Kerri.) Well, you have that in common.
ANDY: What?!
KERRI: It’s completely different.
ANDY: You were in jail?
KERRI: I spent a couple nights in the pokey. Friends bailed me out.
ANDY: What did you do?
KERRI: Nothing. Drunk driving.
NATE: A concrete mixer truck.
KERRI: Around an abandoned mall.
NATE: Through the mall.
KERRI: It was nothing, okay? A couple nights grounded.
ANDY: Then what’s the big deal? I just did forty-three more nights!
KERRI: Only because you fucking broke out!
ANDY: Yeah, a little louder, please.
KERRI: (To Nate.) We’re gonna have to drive to Blyton Hills because Ms. T here punched a guy through a car and then broke out of prison.
NATE: Okay. (Tries a sip of coffee, then notices the others’ bafflement with his placidity. He looks at both alternately.) Was that supposed to impress me? ’Cause I broke out from a mental asylum like forty-five minutes ago.
ANDY: Okay, I think we have established we have all led intense lives so far; can we please move the fuck on?
KERRI: Whoa, I’m nothing like you two jailbirds, okay? I didn’t break out from anywhere. When I was put in jail I stayed there until they let me out, like a good girl.
ANDY: Wow. Your mom would be so proud.
NATE: I once spent five weeks digging a tunnel out of a clinic where I’d been admitted for two weeks.
ANDY: (After rereading the line above.) Why didn’t you walk out after the two weeks?
NATE: I’d started already; I hate leaving stuff unfinished. On a completely different subject,
do either of you happen to carry any anti-hallucination drugs?
(Kerri and Andy look at each other, then back at him.)
KERRI: You’re hallucinating?
NATE: Well, it’s a funny story. I’ve had a few odd episodes before Arkham, so they put me on this drug to get rid of them, and now whenever I don’t take the drug they come back.
KERRI: So you are seeing things.
NATE: Seeing, hearing…sharing combs…
ANDY: (Serious.) Is this gonna be a problem?
NATE: (Stares.) Shit, I don’t know, Andy; tell me: Are you really here right now? (Continues despite her eyeroll.) Is Kerri sitting right beside me? Is there a dog next to you lapping your coffee while you’re not looking?
(Kerri reaches over to slap Tim, drags the cup away from him.)
KERRI: Little fucker, you’ve had enough sugar for three lifetimes.
ANDY: Okay, look, it’s a forty-five-hour drive to Blyton Hills. Do you guys think we’ll have time to go through all our criminal and psychiatric records during the trip? ’Cause if you do, I suggest we grab some sandwiches and leave now.
(They consider the proposal for a second.)
NATE: (Slaps the table.) All right. Let’s do it.
ANDY: Good. (To Kerri.) Make yours a root beer; you’re driving soon.
—
Kerri took the wheel about a hundred miles later, and Andy dozed off in minutes. When she opened her eyes again, the sun ahead was sinking into a trippy pool of purple liquid clouds, and the Chevy Vega and the cast were dyed deep pink. Kerri looked like she did under the UV club lights two nights ago, only bored.
“We need a new radio,” she said, not needing a side glance to confirm Andy was awake.
“The car drives better than it looks,” Nate added, looking up from the crossword puzzle, with Tim resting his head on his lap trying to read the Peanuts strip on the same page. “Did you restore it yourself?”
“Shit yeah, Nate, I did,” Andy said. “Like a good old butch girl; I put on my overalls, grabbed my tool belt, and torqued the shit out of the engine!”
“Jesus, girl, chill out. Just asking.”
“Right, sorry.” She rubbed her face, trying to inhale some of the soothing magic purple air. “Sorry I jumped at you, Nate. No, I didn’t restore it; I just painted it and had the transmission changed. I bought it off an impound auction. And yes, we could use a radio.”
Meddling Kids Page 6
