The Book of All Things

by David Michael Slater

  But even the ghost-town feel of the street wasn’t really it. The air felt different, dryer maybe.

  Something caught Daphna’s attention, a flutter. It was a piece of newspaper drifting along the sidewalk. She jumped down off the porch and gave chase.

  “Careful!” Dex called out, though he didn’t know exactly why.

  Daphna snatched it up: part of the front section of The Oregonian. The headline was in alarmingly large type, but she didn’t examine it closely after her first glance. With jaw unhinged, Daphna was already running back to her brother.

  “What?” Dex asked, wondering what news could possibly upset her. After all, there was no one in the world to look after them now. They barely had a home and probably no money since their inheritance was tied up in red tape.

  But it was okay, really. Why exactly it was okay, Dex didn’t know. It just was.

  “Dex!” Daphna cried. “Look at this!” She was holding the paper out and pointing frantically to something at the top edge, though of course she didn’t expect his afflicted eyes to make out what she was showing him. “It’s August first!” she explained. “August first, Dex! We’ve been gone for a month!”

  Dexter’s mouth fell open too, but not because of the unbelievable news his sister had just told him. Not even being able to hear her thoughts had surprised him so much. No—he was speechless because he could plainly make out the date for himself.

  It seemed the boy with the broken eyes could read.

  CHAPTER 2

  news

  “Dex—what?” Daphna knew that look on her brother’s face meant something significant.

  Dexter took the paper and opened it up. “I can read this,” he said, though he certainly did not enjoy what he read. The headline, in gigantic letters, read, “Oregon Quarantined!” But even so, he repeated, in a low voice, mostly to himself, “I can read this.”

  “Without an overlay?” Daphna asked, looking into her brother’s goggling eyes.

  “Daphna,” Dex said, “I can read.”

  “You—you mean your SSS? It’s gone?”

  Dexter nodded. A lifetime of shame, shame hardly tempered by the diagnosis he’d finally gotten at school. The fancy name, Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome, didn’t undo the fact that he was born defective or change the fact that he still had to hide the problem from most people most of the time. Naming a failure doesn’t make it go away. But now it had gone away. He could read. Like a normal human being.

  “That’s—that’s incredible!” Daphna exclaimed. She could see some of what Dex was feeling. Not being able to read always struck her as just about the worst possible fate a person could suffer. It certainly would be for her. “But—how?” she asked. “Was it the Aleph? What did it do to us?”

  Dex didn’t hear this because he was reading. He held the paper out for Daphna to see.

  “Oh, no,” she said, finally taking in the headline. “Come on.” She took Dexter’s arm and led him back into the house. The twins went to the kitchen where they sat at the table, which happened to be standing. Dex laid the paper down and smoothed it out. Then his hungry eyes—his starved eyes—began devouring words every bit as desperately as he’d devoured all that canned food:

  OREGON QUARANTINED!

  Despite the recent advent of the “Stopgap” vaccine developed by world-renowned stem cell researcher and infectious disease expert, Dr. Roberta Fludd of OHSU, the federal government has declared Oregon a “Catastrophic Biological Disaster Zone” and ordered an unprecedented quarantine of the entire state.

  Anyone currently in Oregon is forbidden to cross state lines until a permanent vaccine can be created and administered. National guard troops from around the Northwest have been sent to seal the borders and to prevent a recurrence of the riots that likely precipitated the disease’s spread from Multnomah Village into greater Portland and beyond last month.

  The latest estimates put the number of infected persons at approximately 30,000. The number of deaths seems to have been frozen at 360, though there are reports that the first Stopgap shots are already showing signs of diminishing efficacy.

  Dr. Fludd first gained notoriety thirty years ago, when, as both the leading medical and divinity student at Harvard University, she was scheduled to give a groundbreaking lecture based on the new field of stem cell research, a lecture that promised to change both disciplines forever. Only the lecture was never…

  The article was continued, but the twins didn’t have the corresponding page. All they had was the first and last page of the front section.

  “Dr. Fludd,” Daphna said. “I met her. She’s the one they took me to at the hospital. Really shiny black hair. Really tired looking. I got the impression she’s trying to cure the disease all by herself.”

  “Must be the lady I bargained with to get you out,” Dex said.

  “How did you do it, anyway? There wasn’t time to ask.”

  “I promised to give them the Book of Maps,” Dex explained. He was so thrilled to be able to read that he scarcely cared that everything he read was so dire.

  “Durante tossed it aside at the lodge, so I took it,” he added. “But he was using me, of course. He wanted me to offer to trade it for you to see if the guy who took you to the hospital was a double agent. Once he found out he was, he wouldn’t let me keep it—even though he knew Lilit tore that coded page out and didn’t want it any more.”

  “Look,” Daphna said. She’d been listening, but also scanning the paper. She’d spotted their names:

  No Sign of Wanted Twins

  The now nationwide search for Dexter and Daphna Wax, teen residents of Portland believed to have been among the very first exposed to the so-called “Superplague,” and persons of interest in a case involving the death of two local religious leaders, continues to turn up no leads.

  “Oh, give me a break,” Daphna sneered. It took Dex a few seconds to get to the bit about his having become a murderer. His reading was slow, but he was reading.

  “Great,” he said. “Why not?” But he eyed his sister curiously. Why this didn’t send her over the edge, he couldn’t imagine. Something wasn’t right with her. Why was he taking everything so well, come to think of it?

  “I’m fine,” Daphna said. “There’s more.”

  The twins read on:

  Authorities believe the pair is afraid and on the run. It is thought that they possess information about the origin of the disease, which could prove invaluable to Dr. Fludd and her team as they work around the clock to develop a permanent cure. Citizens are requested to…

  The rest was on another page.

  “Dex,” Daphna said, looking at him directly. “We need to turn ourselves in. We need to tell Dr. Fludd the truth, the whole—”

  “Yeah, let’s tell a famous scientist the disease came from the bite of a monster from the Garden of Eden. That should go over well.”

  “It says she studied divinity—that’s religion.”

  “I know what divinity is. Doesn’t seem like she stuck with it though, does it?”

  “She did say something about religious fanatics,” Daphna recalled. “And not in an appreciative tone,” she admitted. “But we should at least tell her to stop wasting time searching for us or for the Book of Maps. They probably still think it’s infested, or infected, or whatever.”

  Dexter scoffed, or he meant to scoff. Instead he found himself actually considering the idea. Something was wrong with him, too, he thought, shaking it off.

  “Daphna,” he said, “when has telling the truth ever gotten us anywhere? They’ll trace our call. They’ll find us, and they’ll arrest us.”

  “But—“

  “Here’s some news for you,” Dex added. “If there’s one thing we can count on in this messed-up world, it’s that we are on our own.”

  CHAPTER 3

  nothing but horrors

  Daphna couldn’t argue with the painful truth of this simple fact.

  “We told Evelyn the truth,” she muttered
anyway.

  “And look how that—”

  “Never mind,” Daphna said, getting up. “Hold on. I need to change. I feel disgusting.” She stepped into the laundry room where there were some jeans in the dryer. And there was a stack of Paradise Books T-shirts in a box, all decorated with trees bearing books instead of fruit—shirts they’d never sell since the store hadn’t opened even for one day. Happiness was the fruit she and Dex were forbidden to taste, Daphna decided, swapping a fresh shirt for the juice, blood, and puke-stained one she had on.

  Daphna took another shirt out for her brother, who, she finally noticed, seemed to be wearing someone else’s clothes. He put the shirt on while she shrugged this off and sat down to catch up with what he’d been reading.

  There were several more articles, all related to the quarantine. One outlined steps to maximize the effectiveness of the Stopgap vaccine or to minimize the chances of being exposed to the disease in the first place, which mostly amounted to staying inside and wearing allergy masks.

  Another article listed locations and times citizens could purchase emergency supplies, which had apparently been cleaned out of every store in every town. Shipments were being flown in daily, so the population was counseled to stay calm and orderly. There was also a list of locations to report to if you came down with symptoms.

  “It doesn’t mention the Arts Center,” said Daphna. “It’s the local infirmary, I guess. I think I saw Teal Taylor’s brother inside. I thought it was him because he looked like a bigger you.”

  “Teal’s the Pop you used to wish you looked even more like,” Dex said, sitting down again.

  “How did you—?” Daphna started to say, but that foolishness, fantasizing she actually was that rich and popular girl who resembled her quite a bit—that was ancient history. Right now, it looked like everything might be ancient history soon enough. It was awful that the whole state was now drawn into this disaster, but it was an incredible relief to learn that people weren’t dying all over the place, at least not yet. Of course, Evelyn was already dead, and nothing could change that.

  Daphna thought about the day they were filling out the adoption papers. Evelyn had joked that it was only a formality since, as Eve, she was actually, literally, everyone’s mother. But she hadn’t needed to smooth the transition. The love and protection she’d spread over her and Dex when they’d returned from the remnants of Eden made her their second mother for life. Daphna would never forget her.

  “Look,” Dex said. He’d turned over the newspaper page. When Daphna finally focused on what he was pointing to, she gasped. The large photo was somewhat grainy, but it was obviously Lilit in its male form, robed in white, looking down intently at a book. His wild white hair fell around the pages, revealing just a glimpse of the sickening jagged teeth that unleashed the epidemic.

  It would have been better, Dex thought, staring down at the awful figure, had he never stabbed it with that talisman shard. Killing its female aspect wasn’t worth it. Evelyn would surely have simply vanished had the bite been clean. She wouldn’t have had to waste away with the plague.

  The headline over the photo read, ‘Dracula Walks Among Us.’ Underneath it said, ‘Video footage at www.durantemuseums.com.’

  “That’s at the lodge,” Dex explained. “Just before Lilit attacked Durante. He must have had cameras running.” A shudder passed through Dex as he recalled being attacked himself, only to be dropped like a sack of potatoes with the thing’s teeth inches from his neck. He didn’t know what had prompted Lilit to discard him like that, but he was surely only alive right now because of it.

  Daphna shuddered, too. She’d never seen the thing as a man. But wait, no—

  “I saw him!” she realized. “In the Aleph! Looking at a scroll that way!” He was every bit as beautiful and every bit as ghoulish as the female incarnation that showed up at their bookshop and put an end to their reconstituted lives.

  Dex nodded. He’d seen it too.

  “This is an ad,” Daphna said, just noticing the words, ‘Paid Advertisement’ above the headline. There was no article, but there was a caption underneath. It read, ‘Physical proof at the Durante Museum in Seattle.’

  “Why?” Daphna cried, amazed, and only now getting really upset with what was going on.

  “With everything happening right now,” she snapped, “this is what he’s doing? Advertising? Dracula? Why doesn’t he help find a cure? Who’s going to go to his stupid museums if everyone’s dead! He’s the richest person in the world! He doesn’t need any more money!”

  “He’s not after money,” Dex said, thinking back to his conversations with the cinderblock of a man. “Not really. He just wants people to believe Lilit’s real. Why he’s calling it Dracula, I have no idea, but he’ll be setting a trap there,” Dex added, “to catch it for his collection. That’s what he was trying to do at the lodge.”

  “His wife and son were killed,” Daphna said. “Or died, anyway.”

  “What?”

  “That undercover agent—he told me on the way to OHSU. It was some completely freak accident in the hospital when she was giving birth—Oh, my gosh! I think I saw that, too!”

  Dex thought a moment, then agreed—the man with the dead baby in his bulging arms. It was a younger Durante.

  “He used to run some kind of big atheist organization,” Daphna said, “but when his wife and baby died he closed it and spent millions of dollars suing everyone. Except he lost. Then he started collecting fairy dust and voodoo dolls and opened all of his museums.”

  “Wow,” said Dex. “You’d think he’d have started the atheist stuff after losing his family.” The truth was Dex already had mixed feelings about Durante. The man had obviously snapped, but for what sounded like a perfectly good reason. And there was something not entirely unlikable about the guy. “Jeez, look at this,” Dex said, having turned his attention to the facing page. Daphna looked at the article he was pointing to:

  33rd Victim of Organ Harvesting Ring Found in Argentina

  Dr. Marcel Yarmolinski, a resident of Buenos Aires, Argentina, is the latest victim of the vicious and prolific international organ harvesting ring that has baffled authorities around the world over the past two weeks. Dr. Yarmolinski was found murdered in his hotel room, his kidney, heart, and lungs having been removed.

  Despite recent speculation, there is no evidence that this activity is related to fears about the so-called ‘American Superplague.’

  “Extremely unlikely,” was the assessment of one expert contacted for this story. “Organs have to be matched perfectly to the recipient and the process is time-sensitive, to say the very least.”

  Others are blaming the murders on a single globetrotting psychopath being referred to as ‘Jack the Tripper’ who—

  There was no more of the article on that page, but Daphna was too disturbed to read more anyway.

  “That can’t be real,” Dexter said. “It’s an urban legend, right? People don’t really steal organs. Do they?”

  “Why not?” Daphna said. She’d never heard of any such thing, but why not? “Wait!” she cried, “I think I saw that, too! I think I saw it about to happen! Oh, my gosh.” Daphna paled at the thought of having witnessed something so horrific, even if only just before the fact. She’d seen so many awful things in the Aleph. Dex was right—it was a messed-up world, a messed-up world with nothing but horrors in it. Did she see someone as evil as Jack the Ripper?

  Dex thought back again to what he’d seen. “Yes,” he agreed. “A man, with a beard, on a bed. I—I think I saw some tools. Someone all covered up in black.”

  This was too much. It was the last straw. Whatever dam had been erected in Daphna’s emotional core sprouted a web of cracks, then burst apart. “Dex,” she suddenly sobbed, “why is the world so awful? What did we do to deserve a place like this? And it never ends! Maybe this disease is a good thing. Maybe it’s like Noah’s Ark. Maybe we need to start over completely. And my pictures! What?”

&nb
sp; Dexter’s eyes were screwing up, but he wasn’t looking at Daphna. In fact, he hadn’t even heard her. For a moment, the letters he was looking at in the paper seemed to have jumped, and hot dread was breaking over his skin, threatening to ignite him. There was one more article on the back of the second page, so he shifted to it. He sighed when the letters stayed in their places.

  Dex tried to calm himself, to ignore the knowledge that there seemed to be no end to wickedness in the world.

  “Look,” he said, seeing even more news related to their troubles, “the Cartographer’s Guild.”

  Daphna halfheartedly looked as she struggled against the flood of despair she felt certain was about to drown her. The page was filled with photographs of towering skeletal structures being constructed in various places around the globe. “What do you mean?” she asked. Her confusion helped her hold back the torrent of tears.

  “Strange Towers Erected by Religious Groups,” Dex read. The last word shimmied for a second, but then steadied. He continued, a bit haltingly:

  An investigation into what was presumed to be the largest art installation in history turns out to be unconnected projects financed by various religious groups around the world. All claim to be working independently. None will reveal their intentions in constructing the many hastily erected, skyscraping structures.

  Land purchases and other legal documents reveal that the towers in Rome and Rio de Janeiro were financed by the Vatican, the tower in Salt Lake City by the Mormon Church, the tower in India by Hindus, and the tower in Mecca by Muslims. The Israeli government is financing the project being started today in Jerusalem.

  No group will admit the towers are a response to the growing worry worldwide about the ‘American Superplague’ and talk of vampires walking the earth extracting human organs for food.