Century #4: Dragon of Seas

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  Lingering in the doorway to the hall, Fernando shoots a look at the old woman. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  “Positive,” Irene replies.

  “And her?” Fernando asks, pointing in the gypsy woman’s direction.

  “We can trust her. She’s on our side.”

  “Frankly, Irene, I don’t see how you can be so sure.…”

  “The power of intuition,” the elderly woman replies, wheeling her chair up to the window. “Would you help me with these curtains?”

  Fernando walks over beside her and opens them.

  Outside, in the distance, is Tiberina Island, in the middle of the Tiber River. When she sees it, Irene grows even calmer. “Perfect,” she says.

  “The power of intuition?” Fernando starts up again. “What does intuition have to do with it?”

  In the bathroom, the gypsy woman turns off the shower and begins to open all the little packages of soap and shower caps.

  “It’s fundamental,” Irene replies. “Unless you’re willing to listen to your instinct and do what it tells you to, you aren’t willing to live life to the fullest.”

  Fernando puffs. “But that has nothing to do with …” He points toward the bathroom.

  “Ah, but it does.” Irene smiles. She clearly doesn’t want to explain further. She takes Fernando’s hand and says, “Go on, now.”

  Elettra’s father looks around, embarrassed. “I’m not sure I should leave you here alone.”

  “I’m not alone. Besides”—Irene checks her watch—“you need to get going if you want to catch the plane for Shanghai.”

  “I’m only on the waiting list,” Fernando says.

  “Then all you have to do is wait,” Irene concludes. “Go on! I’ll be safe here.”

  “How did it go?” Quilleran asks Mrs. Miller when he sees her walk out of the local police station.

  The woman is clutching a bundle of papers, official documents. “Fine, I suppose.”

  She’s just reported being threatened by Egon Nose and his thugs. “They said they’d assign a police car to patrol our house.”

  “Perfect,” the Indian replies. “But still …”

  Mrs. Miller nods, guessing what he’s about to say. “You’re right. I’ll stay somewhere else tonight anyway.”

  Quilleran touches the brim of his hat. “I’ll stop by to check, too, just to be sure.”

  Mrs. Miller distractedly shuffles through the police report.

  “Did you call your husband?” Quilleran asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Has your son arrived?”

  “Not yet,” she says. “I think his flight was delayed.”

  The Indian nods, a grim look on his face. “Everything will be just fine, you’ll see.”

  “Why are you helping us?” Mrs. Miller blurts out. “I mean, are you working for someone?”

  The giant Indian shakes his head. “Oh, no. I work for myself. And for my city.”

  “I don’t understand.…”

  “Let’s put it this way, ma’am: some people need to be forced to do things. Others just do it because they feel like it. They know it’s the right thing to do.”

  “And you’re one of them.”

  “I think so.”

  “But that doesn’t explain why you’re helping us. Why you’re doing something for the Miller family, for my son.”

  “I’ve been waiting for your son for many years,” Quilleran says. “Your son is an important person.”

  Mrs. Miller’s ears perk up.

  “And something important is about to happen. For the world.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t know, exactly. But it’s near. Very near.”

  “We don’t know? Who else is there, aside from you?”

  “I think there are people like me in every city, people who love the place they live and sense that something is about to happen.”

  “I don’t understand you, Mr. Quilleran. In fact, you’re frightening me.”

  “Don’t be frightened. I’m just trying to say that every place in the world is looked after by people who love it, who want to protect it. Here’s my point: I think all these people have been warned.”

  “Warned about what?”

  “That the world is about to change, ma’am. And that your son is one of the people who is going to change it.”

  “You’d better not get off the ship,” Paul Magareva warns Professor Miller.

  “I need to go to the embassy,” Harvey’s father replies, anxious. “My son was on the evening Air China flight and he never showed up. Something happened to him at the airport, but they won’t tell me anything over the phone!”

  Paul Magareva leans over the deck railing and points at the long, cement dock. The ship is moored to it with heavy chains. “The thing is, something strange is going on down on the dock.”

  “Like what?”

  “People asking questions. The cook told me there are men asking about you.”

  “About me? How could that be?”

  “I don’t know, but do you think it might have something to do with your son? And your wife’s phone call?”

  Professor Miller peers out at the crowded, bustling port. “Who’s asking the questions?”

  “They’re staying out of sight, in the shadows over there,” Paul Magareva says in a low voice, “and they aren’t from the police or Air China or the immigration office. I’m no expert, but I’d say they’re shady characters. It’s like they’re waiting for you to step foot in Shanghai to—”

  “Make me disappear?”

  “Or, in any case, to force you to go with them.”

  George Miller is furious. “What on earth is going on, anyway?”

  “Give me the documents for your son. I’ll take them to the embassy for you.”

  “What about Harvey?”

  “He’s a big kid. He’ll manage.”

  WARM, HEAVY, RELENTLESS RAIN FALLS FROM THE SKY.

  Ermete looks around, furious. He feels the raindrops thumping against his skull, seeping in everywhere, into his shirt, his pants cuffs, his socks.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he spots Sheng running toward Century Park. Mistral and Elettra are running in the opposite direction.

  “Where do you guys think you’re going?” the engineer hollers.

  But they don’t even turn back to look at him.

  Ermete can’t follow all of them. He needs to decide.

  He thinks it over for a split second and runs after Sheng. “Hey, yellow eyes! Wait up!”

  The boy crosses the street without even looking. Two cars glistening with rain zoom past, just inches away from him.

  Ermete dodges the puddles and races after him, trying to keep up. He crosses the street and horns blare. He calls out to Sheng again.

  But Sheng keeps running. He turns down a dark alley, where it’s impossible to see what’s underfoot. The rain forms cones of golden light around the streetlamps and below a neon sign depicting a red dragon.

  “Dammit!” the engineer exclaims, fuming. “When I get my hands on you, Sheng, I’m going to make you pay for all this running!”

  Sheng is already at the far end of the alley and is getting ready to cross four lanes of traffic separated by a grassy divider with a row of scrubby trees. On the other side, an asphalted parking lot with orange lampposts and the gate to Century Park, which is closed.

  Sheng crosses the street and reaches the tall gate, where he stops and seems to be deciding what to do next.

  Then he starts climbing.

  “Sheng!” Ermete shouts from across the street. “Are you insane?” He steps forward and is struck by a blinding white light and a blaring horn. He leaps back, frightened, and yells in Italian at the driver who almost ran him over.

  Ermete counts to three and dashes between the cars. “Sorry!” he shouts, ignoring their honks.

  He leaps onto the divider, a moment’s respite, and crosses the remaining two lanes. When he reaches the par
king lot on the other side, he feels like he’s been miraculously saved.

  “Sheng!” he calls out. “If you think I’m climbing over that gate, you can forget it!”

  He’s wet. Sopping wet from the warm rain.

  “You hear me, Sheng?”

  Sheng stops climbing and hangs there, clutching the top of the gate.

  “Get down from there right now!” the engineer continues with the best furious uncle tone he can manage.

  The gate suddenly grows dark. A multitude of insects bursts up from the park like an explosion. A dark swarm of wings, antennas and little legs seems to lunge toward the boy and engulf him. Twenty paces away, Ermete gapes and backs up. The swarm of insects surrounds both the gate and Sheng and pours into the parking lot.

  “Aaaaaah!” Ermete screams. He swallows one, two, twenty mosquitoes. He spits them out, closes his mouth and throws himself to the ground, letting the horror wash past him and fly away. He hears horns blaring. Screeching. Tires skidding over the wet asphalt.

  It lasts two, three, four seconds at most. Then the flood of insects—the invasion of grasshoppers, mosquitoes or whatever they are—drifts away from the parking lot.

  Ermete finds himself curled up in a ball. He looks around and can’t believe his eyes. Dead insects on the ground. Others wriggling in the puddles. He drags himself to his feet, staggering. Sheng has fallen to the ground.

  “Hey!” Ermete calls out. He pats himself down and, to his surprise, notices he’s unharmed. “It’s over! They’re gone! Are you all right? Sheng!”

  He runs over to him. It starts to rain harder. Thousands of needles crashing down against the asphalt.

  “Sheng?”

  Sheng opens his eyes. They’re blue again.

  Ermete sighs. “You okay?”

  “Mistral …,” Sheng whispers.

  “What’s that?”

  On the ground, Sheng points at Heremit Devil’s skyscraper. “Mistral summoned them.…”

  Suddenly, the mirrored glass and steel building lights up like a sinister Christmas tree. Like a sixty-four-story-tall warning sign.

  “Oh, man!” Ermete exclaims. “Oh man, oh man, oh man!”

  “Answer,” Jacob Mahler says in the office on the skyscraper’s second-to-top floor.

  Heremit Devil’s phone is ringing.

  “Or would you rather I do it?”

  Heremit is on the opposite side of the desk. He shakes his head. “You? Here? How can it be?”

  “Same codes as last year. The doors still open.”

  “How can you be here … alive?”

  “I’m a man of many surprises, Heremit.”

  The phone continues to ring.

  “Answer.”

  The building’s owner slowly walks up to the desk. “You’ll never get out of here alive,” he hisses.

  Mahler raises his violin. “Neither will you.”

  Heremit Devil clutches the receiver, his hand not revealing the slightest tremor. “Heremit,” he says, as always.

  As he listens, he switches on monitor number four. Black-and-white image, surveillance camera. Underground level. Corridor B. Nik Knife is in front of the monitor. He’s holding Harvey to his left, a dagger pointed at his throat.

  Mahler slowly lowers his bow.

  Heremit narrows his eyes maliciously. “Bring him here,” he finally says. “Your friend has arrived in hell’s kitchen,” he whispers to Mahler.

  Jacob doesn’t say a word. He’s quickly assessing what to do. He didn’t anticipate that Nik Knife might capture Harvey.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Something more solid than rain starts beating against the windows.

  Insects. Swarms of crazed insects hurling themselves against the windowpanes as if they could shatter them.

  Heremit Devil frowns, troubled. He switches on monitor number one. Main entrance. Two girls are walking up the street, a cloud of insects following them. Zoom in on the face of the first girl. Tall, thin, bobbed hair. She’s singing.

  “You may be right, Heremit,” Jacob whispers, rising to his feet slowly, “but it seems he didn’t come alone.”

  On the street, Elettra raises her hands.

  And a blinding burst of light shuts down all the cameras.

  SECOND STASIMON

  “Vladimir?”

  “Irene! Where have you been? I tried calling you, but—”

  “I’m at a friend’s. Did you feel that?”

  “Yes, it was like … like suddenly waking up. Who caused it?”

  “At least three of them. Together.”

  “Three?”

  “Energy, harmony, memory … Elettra, Mistral and Harvey suddenly burst out. The time has come. This is it! They’re ready!”

  “We aren’t ready! We’re still missing … hope.”

  “He’ll make it, too.”

  “It’s almost as if Sheng is refusing to do his part.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be him. He wasn’t ready.”

  “And he didn’t have the same power as the other boy!”

  “Maybe we should find a way to help him. If we felt the jolt, the others must’ve felt it, too. The ones who knew.”

  “Yes, it’s possible.”

  “We need to warn them. And unite our voices to awaken Sheng.”

  “SHENG! SHENG!” ERMETE CALLS OUT. “WOULD YOU WAKE UP?”

  Sheng moves his head on the pillow from one side to the other before opening his eyes.

  He’s in a room he doesn’t recognize. Electric light. A shuttered window with a strange glow filtering through it. Ermete is standing next to him.

  “Finally!” he grumbles.

  “Where am I?”

  “Who knows?” the engineer replies. “I brought you to the first hotel I could find. On my back!”

  “But …” Sheng sits up. “What time is it?”

  “Six-thirty in the morning.”

  Sheng shakes his head. “I was having a strange dream.… There were lots of people. The antiques dealer, Elettra’s aunt and even … the gypsy woman from Rome … and Quilleran the postman, and the guard from the Louvre museum. Then there was some kind of monk with a graying beard. They were all talking to me at the same time. But I don’t remember what they were saying.” Sheng concentrates. “Wait … now … now I remember. They were saying, ‘Be brave. Look at the things others can’t see.’ ”

  Ermete steps away from the bed, sighing. He grabs the pair of pants draped over the back of a chair and starts to dry them with a tiny whirring hair dryer.

  “The boy!” Sheng exclaims, remembering. “I was following that boy in the jersey!”

  “I have no idea what you were doing.”

  “I got to the park and then … then the insects appeared!” Sheng jumps up from the bed. “Mistral! Elettra! Where—”

  “Stop your brain right there, my friend,” Ermete says, pointing the hair dryer at him. “There’s nothing you can do about it. And you can’t go there.”

  “Go where?”

  The engineer steps over to a window and pulls back the curtain, letting in a pale light that filters through the dense clouds. Heavy, vibrant rain oozes from the sky like icing. And at the end of the leaden view is a black skyscraper.

  Heremit Devil’s skyscraper.

  Below, the police cars’ blue beacons fill the street with flashing lights. Above, two helicopters point their searchlights at the mirrored windows and circle the building like giant, crazed bees searching for the entrance to their hive.

  “What happened?”

  “It’s been like this for hours,” Ermete replies. “The police cordoned off the whole area. Nobody goes in and nobody comes out. No one’s answering their cell phones anymore. Not Harvey, not Mistral, not Elettra. In three words: I don’t know. But whatever happened, it’s big. They talked about it on TV not long ago. The only captions in English read SKYSCRAPER ATTACK. CHINESE MAFIA PAYBACK?”

  “I—I …,” Sheng stammers, wi
thout adding anything else. He stares at the building flooded with lights, trying to overcome his fear. “I should be there with them.”

  “Great idea,” Ermete grumbles. “Great idea, really.” He switches off the hair dryer and tosses it on the floor. “I don’t know what you guys are thinking of doing, but as far as I know, you aren’t superheroes yet. In any case, you aren’t there with them. You’re here with me.”

  “And what are we doing here?”

  “I should be asking you that,” Ermete shoots back. “For example, would you mind telling me why you decided to climb up that gate to the park?”

  Sheng rubs his eyes and sits on the edge of the bed.

  “My headache was driving me crazy,” he says. “I couldn’t take it anymore. And when I saw that boy staring at me from the steps, I thought I’d completely lost it. So I decided to go talk to him so I could understand.”

  “There was no boy, Sheng.”

  “Yes, there was!” he protests. “And when he saw I was heading his way, he ran off!”

  “So yesterday you wanted to talk to an imaginary boy that only you can see?”

  “Exactly.”

  Ermete shakes his head. He remembers Sheng running, but he’s absolutely certain there was no boy in front of him, running away.

  “And then”—Sheng spreads open his arms—“when I was climbing up the park gate … he disappeared … and the insects showed up.”

  “You said Mistral did that,” Ermete reminds him.

  “I figured they were there because of her. Like in Paris, when she summoned the bees.”

  Ermete clearly remembers how, not long after the insects appeared, Heremit Devil’s skyscraper lit up in a burst of blinding light. He tells Sheng.

  “Elettra was furious. She got a call from Harvey.…” Ermete can’t exactly reconstruct what they said during their call. All he knows is that right after that, the two girls headed off for the skyscraper.

  While the engineer talks, Sheng keeps thinking about what he dreamed.

  Be brave enough to see what others can’t see.