The Book of All Things

by David Michael Slater

  The Secret Keeper looked at the drawing for a long moment. “Where did you see this?” he asked.

  “On a man’s head,” Daphna explained. “A murdered man. It was like a birthmark, or a welt. Does the number seventeen mean anything important, like thirty-six?”

  “That’s not a number,” the Secret Keeper replied. He was rapidly losing his composure. “Or not the one you think it is.” He took the pen from Daphna and altered the figures slightly.

  “Those are Hebrew letters,” he said. “Lamed and Vav.”

  “What do they mean?” Dex demanded.

  “In this case,” the Secret Keeper explained, “the lamed represents the number 30, and the vav—”

  “Six,” Daphna finished for him.

  The Secret Keeper nodded again. “The Tzadikim Nistarim,” he said, “are also known as the Lamed Vavniks. You say this man was murdered?”

  “The figure in black,” Dex concluded. “It’s Lilit! He’s killing the thirty-six! He’s murdering them one by one, and then stealing their organs!”

  Dexter looked at Daphna. Daphna looked at Dexter. Then they grabbed each other’s heads.

  With Dexter’s spikes, flat as they were, it didn’t take long to find the letters, which were almost directly on the top of his head. It took longer to search Daphna’s fuller head of hair, but Dex found the letters with his fingers, not far above her left ear. The twins staggered back away from one another, reeling.

  “Dr. Fludd said Eveyln was the first!” Daphna gasped. “Thirty-four are dead! Dex! We’re the last ones left, and now he knows it!”

  It occurred to the twins that the Secret Keeper had not reacted to these revelations. They turned to see him leaning over his desk with his hand on a phone, breathing heavily. He looked deathly pale.

  A moment later, the door opened.

  Dead Face came in with his gun already raised.

  CHAPTER 32

  the gun went off again

  Dex and Daphna did not retreat. There was nowhere to go.

  “I’m sorry,” the Secret Keeper said, “but your arrival here is the answer to our prayers.”

  “What?” Dex shouted, thinking of Brother Joe. “Killing us and ending the world is the answer to your prayers? Are you with Lilit, too?”

  “On the contrary,” the Secret Keeper replied. “Nothing could be further from the truth. I wish I could explain completely. Here is what I can tell you: Lilit seeks to populate the world with her offspring. It sought a book, as you know, to locate their prison. We believe it learned the book was a fraud, the product of myth.

  “The Guild came to the same conclusion about its reputed ability to pinpoint entries to the Better World. The book, incredible as it is, is worthless, as worthless as those talismans—and thus perfect for your friend Virgil Durante. Yes, we furnished Azir’s kin with a talisman. It gave them courage, like any good luck charm.”

  “More lies,” Daphna sneered.

  “It seems the creature has decided,” the Secret Keeper continued, “that if it could not unleash its spawn, it would instead rid the world of people—by eliminating the Righteous Ones. Thank the Lord you have discovered this before it was too late.”

  Dead Face stood impassively listening to all of this. The gun in his hand waited patiently for its orders.

  Dexter opened his mouth to challenge the idea that the talismans were useless, but Daphna was raging.

  “Then why are you going to help him?” she screamed. “We’re the last two left!”

  “It’s complicated,” was the worthless reply. “But I assure you, we will not be abetting the creature. I assure you that your deaths will be a gift to mankind, the ultimate sacrifice. You will be in good company in that regard.”

  “They don’t know about the Aleph,” Dex said to Daphna. “Lilit saw you had it, but instead of just taking it, he checked our heads first, and then it smiled! It still wants to find its kids, but it needs the thirty-six out of the way for some reason. He’s lying,” Dex declared, pointing a finger at the Secret Keeper in his stupid slippers. “Or he’s not telling us everything. Killing the thirty-six doesn’t end the world. Something more has to be done.”

  “The organs!” Daphna cried.

  “Enough,” the Secret Keeper declared. He looked at his killer and said, “Kill them quickly and bury them in the secret cemetery.”

  “Angels!” Azir blurted, bolting upright in bed again. “Beware! They are being angels of speaking English!” But then he collapsed in a way that could only mean one thing.

  “Azir!” the Secret Keeper cried.

  Daphna was waiting for a distraction and seized the moment. She reached into her pocket for the Aleph, but Dead Face had not been distracted in the least. The gun was aimed right at her. She took her hand back out.

  Daphna looked at her brother. They’d been through this before. They’d have time to use the Aleph. They’d find a moment when he led them to wherever he was planning to kill them.

  Dead Face smiled, or he seemed to smile though his face stayed dead. It was almost as if he’d heard these thoughts. It was almost as if he meant to say her imagining that he might make such an amateur mistake was laughable to him.

  Dead Face pulled the trigger.

  Daphna went down in a heap.

  Before Dexter could react to seeing his sister shot, the gun went off again.

  CHAPTER 33

  show me

  Dexter opened his eyes. He saw red, a lot of red. It was blood, a horrifying quantity of blood, smearing in a wavy line. He was being dragged by the leg. He rolled his head and saw Daphna being dragged beside him. They were sliding down the unadorned hallway they’d come through into the library.

  Daphna’s eyes were half open, her body limp. She’d been shot in the chest, which was disgorging blood. Dex wasn’t sure, but he thought he’d been shot there too. Grimacing, he reached a functioning hand toward his sister’s back pocket. It felt like his shoulder had been impaled on a burning spike, but he pried the Aleph out.

  The effort was nearly more than he could survive, but he didn’t die just yet. The little book fell to the floor, but because Dex was being dragged so slowly, he was able to pick it up, and he even managed to flip it open. A blast of colorful light, like a searchlight beamed through a kaleidoscope, filled the hallway behind him.

  But the dragging didn’t stop. Dead Face didn’t see. Or didn’t care.

  Dex tried to call out, to get the killer’s attention, but he couldn’t speak. Desperately, he looked into the light. There he saw Dead Face again, the story of his life: stranglings, shootings, poisonings. He saw him push a woman off a balcony. And then he saw the boy he’d been again, in that yard with the piece of rope, crying. The other kids laughing. And he saw something new: the boy running through the streets with the frayed rope, crying something that sounded like a name.

  They stopped. The twins’ legs were dropped to the floor. Daphna made no noise of protest or pain. Dex heard the elevator button pressed.

  But then the Aleph was taken from his hand.

  Dexter fought his way onto his side. Dead Face was looking into the light, seeing who knew what. His expression, of course, registered nothing. No shock. No amazement. Nothing.

  “We can show you!” Dex gurgled, grasping at straws. “We can show you—your lost mother!” he tried. “Your lost friends!” But there was no reaction to this at all. Dead Face didn’t even look away from the light. His eyes were darting in all directions, as he no doubt struggled to track the onslaught of images.

  “Those kids!” Dex tried. “In the yard! The rope! We can show you—” But he didn’t know what they could show him. That was it, which was nothing. All Dex had left. He sagged to the floor on his back, choking now on blood.

  “Dog.”

  This was Daphna, on her back, with her eyes closed. She said it with perfect clarity, then didn’t say anything more.

  “Yes!” said, Dex, somehow finding the strength to sit up. “Your dog!”
>
  The killer looked away from the light, directly at him.

  “You can see where the dog went!” Dex choked. “They let it out on purpose. At your school. Because you loved it.”

  “Show me,” Dead Face said. His voice was shockingly normal.

  “The light,” Dex gasped. “Set the book down and take us into the light.”

  Dead Face seemed to think this over. The elevator doors opened and closed. Then he set the book down.

  “We won’t actually go anywhere,” Dex croaked. “We’ll be right here.”

  This seemed to decide it. The man yanked both twins off the floor by their arms. Dex cried out. Daphna made no noise at all.

  Dead Face leaned them all into the light, but didn’t know how to proceed. Dex managed to take a step into it, and his leg began to pass through.

  Dead Face did the same, pulling Daphna with him.

  “Stop!” someone called out, a man.

  But they were falling into the light.

  CHAPTER 34

  points of light

  There! Dexter tried to call. He had no voice, but there was no missing the coruscating fissure in the sky. The gate was massive, billowing like a full-fledged rainbow reflected over rolling ocean waves. It was by far the largest one they’d ever seen. It opened and a beam of spangled light washed over them. The three linked figures, one upright, two sagging, drew slowly inside.

  And then they were linked no more.

  Dexter, forgetting his pain, looked around at all the blocks of dim, pulsating light as they materialized around him. He could see now that they were books. Daphna, who found she could open her eyes again, watched him take this in.

  Cold, Dex thought.

  Dead Face screamed.

  The twins turned to look at him, and they saw, for the first time, an actual, indisputable expression on his face: horror. Something was happening to him. He looked momentarily blurry, and then as if he was somehow pixilating.

  The man was dissolving.

  But then another expression passed over his face: a triumphant grin. He lurched forward into an aisle. Daphna saw now that they were standing just outside the cold, dim section of books with keys in their covers. He’d gone into it.

  Dead Face was being atomized, but he made a desperate grab at a book and managed to pull it from its shelf. He tried to turn the key in its cover.

  No! the twins both cried.

  Dead Face’s hand was nothing but tiny points of light now, and so the book fell from it. And now his arms were nothing but points of light, and his chest as well. And now it was all of him. He was nothing but tiny points of light, which were swallowed by the amber glow.

  He was gone.

  Daphna! Dex wailed. Something was happening to him now. He clutched his chest, which was starting to pixelate as well. No! he protested, but then he smiled. The tiny points of light were knitting together.

  Moments later, there was no wound there at all.

  Dex!

  Dexter turned to see his sister. She was standing there, also good as new.

  Ecstatic, they moved to hug, but a violent flash made them both step back. The book ‘Dead Face had dropped—the key was out and it had fallen open and flames were leaping from its pages.

  And now hands, steady hands, were somehow moving them through the library. It was Sophia and Evelyn, their mothers, shepherding them away from the fire.

  When they finally stopped, Dex stared at his mothers in their flowing white robes, at their wings.

  The Aleph! Daphna cried.

  Evelyn somehow had the book. Daphna put her hand out for it, but Evelyn didn’t give it to her. Instead, she started tearing it to pieces. It came apart in her hands like segments of a rotten fruit.

  No! We need that! both twins cried.

  But Evelyn dropped the pieces, which pixilated, then vanished in the light.

  The Book of All Things was no more.

  The twins realized that other angels, hundreds or thousands of other angels, were hurtling through the rows and aisles of books around them. Their panic and fear was nothing less than terrifying.

  The twins were being pushed again.

  Wait! Daphna pled, trying to resist. What was that book? What’s happening?

  Dex tried to resist as well, but it was no use.

  Dexter and Daphna Wax were already on the way back into their world.

  CHAPTER 35

  safe

  A group of people in a boat, rowing through reeds, their heads down low. A desperate couple hiking over mountains with no supplies. Someone crawling through a dirt tunnel on his hands and knees.

  We have to go back! Dex cried. But it was impossible. Their portal was gone.

  Daphna didn’t hear this. People are getting out! she wailed, watching the world. The disease can’t be stopped!

  Dexter saw that she was right. That liar didn’t tell us everything! he railed. There’s more to the secret, more than just how to identify the thirty-six! He told us that much to make us happy ’cause we figured out who he was. No one ever tells us everything!

  I know! Daphna agreed. There’s something about our organs that Lilit mustn’t get. Something that could survive our deaths. Maybe everyone’s deaths. How could that be possible?

  What can we do? No one will ever tell us the truth! The whole truth!

  Dr. Fludd! We have to tell her everything! We have to make her believe! She’­­­s the only one who ever came close to—

  The lecture! Let’s find her Lost Lecture!

  The scene instantly changed. Dex and Daphna were now looking at an office. There was a stethoscope lying on top of a desk, next to a dictation machine. There was a computer there, too, open to a news website. Leaning against its side were two large x-ray envelopes.

  Look! Dex cried. On the wall were framed certificates and diplomas, all bearing the name Dr. Roberta Fludd. Behind the largest diploma—Harvard, it said in fancy calligraphy—was a safe. And inside the safe, the twins saw a single manila folder. Inside that folder was a stack of papers, the topmost of which appeared to be a cover page that said: Mary had a Little Boy: Stem Cells and Agamogenesis.

  Let’s go! Daphna urged.

  And so they went.

  CHAPTER 36

  after it bit her

  They were in the office. But before they’d taken one step toward the Harvard diploma, they heard footsteps outside the door. Someone put a key into the lock.

  Yet again, a desk.

  The twins dashed behind it and leapt underneath, or collapsed underneath, having used energy they didn’t really have.

  “You’ve gone too far! Way too far!” a man was bellowing when the door opened. “That was the President! The President! It’s one thing to admit complete failure, but to spout nonsense about monsters from the Garden of Eden? Have you lost your mind?”

  “I’m sorry!” Dr. Fludd said. It came out in a whine, which made her voice nearly unrecognizable. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” she repeated crazily. “It’s the stress. I haven’t slept for ten minutes in—I don’t know! They’re gone! They’re gone! I lost them. We had an accident and they got away! But they didn’t know anything. The girl said something about Lilith! That’s all I was saying! That’s all I have!”

  Daphna, here, Dex thought. Eat this. He still had a few seeds left in his pocket and had separated some out for her.

  The twins both chewed gratefully.

  She’s lying about what happened at the airport! Daphna thought. Why? Maybe she thinks they won’t believe her. Or she doesn’t trust anyone.

  No, she still wants to do it all herself, Dex thought back.

  “Then you have nothing!” the man roared. “We’re out of time! Do you understand? We’re out of time!” Footsteps approached the desk. The twins held their breaths. “Look at the news! No one is buying the lies anymore! People are fleeing again, and we can’t contain them!”

  Dr. Fludd evidently had no reply for this.

  The man seemed to calm hi
mself, but only slightly. “What about the similarities between the girl and the Idun woman?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Nothing,” Dr. Fludd moaned. “Coincidence. Unlikely, but there it is. I’ve told you that.”

  “Goddamn it! And you didn’t get a new blood sample from the girl!”

  “You know I didn’t.”

  “Then blood will run in the streets.”

  Dr. Fludd had no response to this, either. Or, if someone hanging her head made a sound, the twins heard it.

  Blood. Blood. Blood.

  “For Christ sake, there are confirmed infections in Europe!”

  There had been so much blood.

  Dex saw the smearing flood of it that he and his sister had left in Rome. He saw fake blood spurting from Durante’s false neck. He saw the monster’s blood on the glass case at Durante’s Museum. He saw his sister’s bleeding hand and Evelyn’s—

  Dexter jolted

  What, Dex? There wasn’t much light under the desk, but there was enough for Daphna to see her brother’s face.

  “There are confirmed infections in Asia!”

  We’ve been totally blind! Dex nearly cried out loud. The talismans—none of them worked! They are all phony!

  What do you mean? They worked! Two of them worked!

  “And any minute now, there will be one in the Middle East! You’ve failed!”

  Daphna, the attack on Evelyn. How did it go?

  Daphna wracked her brains. Lilit, she thought, it flew at her. You stabbed it. Then it bit Evelyn’s cheek. And it started to scream. Wait—you mean, it wasn’t the stabbing? It was the bite? Oh, my gosh! It was! It screamed after it bit her! It wasn’t the talisman! It was her blood!