He threw the bag into the air; it landed on the floor and spilled open, scattering white powder everywhere. Andrew’s familiar reached down towards it, resisted for a moment, then dove for the ground. It consumed the powder in a single long breath and collapsed into a catatonic lump on the welcome mat.
The man with the gun hopped down from the counter and pointed the gun at Jeremiah.
“Good to see you, partner. Come inside and close the door, or I’ll shoot you and the kid both.”
Jeremiah closed the door. The pale man took another step forward and touched Jeremiah’s face with the pointer finger of his free hand. Andrew blinked, and when he opened his eyes the blue light was gone from both Jerry’s body and his own. He looked at his own hands, the reflection in the window— they were real again, physical again.
The man struck Jeremiah in the side of the head with the handle of the gun. He fell to the ground.
“Here it is, folks. I already emptied my wallet paying off Robbie for the tip, and I’m looking to make a profit on my investment. I want you to tell me something interesting.”
Slowly, hesitantly, the fat man emerged from behind the door behind the counter. He was very nervous, but also proud, the traces of a smile on his face as though he had just accomplished something.
Jerry’s eyes narrowed. “Robert, the things I will do to you…”
He got back on his feet and stood up. The pale man struck him again, and he fell back down.
“Robbie made a business decision. I wouldn’t worry about it right now. Get up.”
Jeremiah got up, his arms stiff against his sides. The man with the gun started walking back and forth in front of him.
“All kinds of things I want to talk about, Jerry. Who’s the kid?”
He pointed the gun at Andrew idly, then turned away and continued pacing.
“Maybe I’ll make him into a music box when we’re all done here. Maybe I’ll have you do it for me.”
He laughed.
“We’ll start with your books. Where are you keeping them?”
Jeremiah glanced at the ground, then back up at the fat man.
“Tell me, Robert,” he said. “Have any bad dreams lately?”
The smile vanished from Robert’s face. The man with the gun turned his head back.
“Relax, Rob, he’s just trying to…”
That was the moment— Andrew felt it right before it happened. Jeremiah shoved the man with the gun backwards and turned towards the door. Andrew ran blindly in the opposite direction. He heard a gunshot, a window breaking.
When he stopped, he was surrounded by a maze of dark shelves. He heard police sirens, getting louder, coming from the direction of the crowd downtown. He took a step, careful not to make a sound. Suddenly, a bony hand circled his wrist and pulled him hard towards the exit. The man with the gun dragged him out of the store, out onto the street and across it, through the canopy of bushes, into the park.
On the other side, on the grass, the man with the gun leaned in close, and Andrew couldn’t see his face, could only smell his breath and hear his voice, grating like an old ventilator.
“You live here. Find me a place to hide or I’ll shoot you in the stomach and let you keep the cops busy.”
Andrew’s heart was pounding.
“The gazebo…”
The man grabbed him again and ran through the dark field, dragging Andrew behind him. They reached the gazebo and climbed to the top of it.
The dead man dropped Andrew and looked around.
“Where…”
The floor underneath him was suddenly replaced by a colorless void, and he was enveloped.
#
Andrew blinked, and when he opened his eyes his headache was gone, his body was gone.
He heard Shadow’s voice.
“Andrew, are you all right?”
Andrew was all right.
“That’s good. You have school tomorrow, you should be at home sleeping.”
The world got darker and thicker, and Andrew felt himself slip away.
#
He woke up. He was at home, in bed, covered by layers of blankets. He didn’t move at first, just looked around. His alarm clock wasn’t going to ring for fifteen minutes. He got out of bed and put on some clothes.
He went downstairs. His grandmother had made breakfast. They ate silently. He stepped outside himself for a moment to see how she was doing, and wasn’t sure what to think. She didn’t seem to be in a very good mood, but she hardly ever was. He wondered if she’d had trouble sleeping.
He left the house, walked to the bus stop, and waited. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around.
Jeremiah was standing there, in front of the stop sign. He was wearing the same suit he’d been wearing yesterday and had dark circles under his eyes.
“You’re alive,” Andrew said, and as soon as he’d said it he felt something pass through his body, shaking his bones. He remembered the skinny man’s hand grabbing the back of his neck.
Jeremiah nodded. “One more down the hatch. What class do you have first today, Andrew?”
“Math.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
Andrew shook his head no.
“Would you mind skipping it?”
Again, no.
“Wonderful. This way, please.”
He turned around and started walking. Andrew followed him. He wondered if he was making a terrible mistake. Everything from his feet to his hips was numb. He approached a small building with brown walls and neon tubes in the windows, and went inside.
The bartender hardly looked at Andrew, didn’t comment on his presence, didn’t seem to care. He served Jeremiah his drink. Jeremiah lit a cigarette. He smoked and drank for a while before he started talking.
“A music box…” Jerry said, “…is a set of human vocal cords that’s never been exposed to sunlight. You have to keep them in a black container. Black keeps out the kind of light that makes them go bad. Some people that know about all this get jobs at morgues or funeral parlors, or other places where you can get them from someone who’s already died.”
He took a sip of his drink.
“Hard to find, of course. Not very many people know the secret, and those that do, not very many devote themselves to retrieving them. You’re not always in a position to ask questions. I don’t know where Robert got his supply, for example.
“It’s such a feeling, when you finally know that something is going to work. It’s a sensation I think you’ve been robbed of, Andrew, that moment after you’ve been chasing fables and rumors for ten years, when suddenly you know that you’ve finally got it, something you can put your hands on. How long do you think it took for Paul to get that familiar? How long do you think it took him to fill those books? Years of hard work and discovery, stolen from you by your own good luck.
“I’ve been doing this for twenty-five years, and I’ve managed to pick up about seven tricks, depending on how you count them. I can walk the world like a spirit, and for two or three nights a month I can do it without worrying about standing too close to the fucking window. I can bring the dead back to life.”
He laughed.
“I just can’t make them feel grateful.”
“He called you his partner,” Andrew said.
Jerry nodded his head. “We were partners. A long time ago. He died, and I missed having him around, so I brought him back. He didn’t appreciate it, and we’ve been trading jabs ever since. Living people don’t like the idea of being dead, I don’t know why I was so sure the dead would be happy about living again.”
Andrew thought about that for a minute.
“Is it always like that?” he asked.
“No. Absolutely not. I’ve done it five times, and usually everything is fine. Sometimes they’re a little depressed, that’s all.”
“So you were sure that everything was going to be fine, when you brought Tom back.”
Jeremiah twisted the remains of his cigarette into an ashtray.
“Four out of five is wonderfully good odds, Andrew.”
“But you didn’t tell me.”
He put his mug back down.
“You’re a bold young man, to speak to me like that.”
Andrew didn’t say anything. The feeling in his legs had long since passed— he knew that he ought to be afraid, that if he had been in this position a month ago he would’ve been afraid. But he wasn’t afraid now. There was no point anymore.
Jeremiah stood up.
“Bartender, I’m done.”
He put some money down on the counter and left the bar. Andrew followed him. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of cheap sunglasses. It was very bright outside.
“If I was a good man…” Jeremiah said, “…I would leave this city right now, and take you with me. I’d find you some place to live as far away from that gazebo as I possibly could.”
Andrew’s eyes widened, and Jerry smiled.
“Yes,” he said. “I was watching. That’s what Paul came back to this town for, wasn’t it? Whatever it is. Don’t tell me, don’t ask me, I don’t know what it is, I don’t think I want to at this point.”
He threw his cigarette down onto the sidewalk and stepped on it.
“I’m not a good man, Andrew, not anywhere close to it, and so I’m leaving today.”
He reached into the lapels of his coat and removed a glass vial, filled with a yellow liquid. He threw it to Andrew, and Andrew caught it. He held it in his hands, and saw that it was glowing faintly, like a firefly on a summer night.
“That’s what you bargained for. If you decide to use it, all you have to do is pour it on the grave and walk away. You’ll find your eight books in your room back at your house. Seeing as how I wasn’t strictly honest with you, I decided to cut back on my fee. Do you need a ride back to school?”
Andrew shook his head. “I’ll walk.”
Jerry nodded his head. “Fair enough.”
He started to walk away, but turned around, one last time.
“The smart thing to do would be to burn those books and never go back to that gazebo again. That’s your best chance, I think.”
With that, he turned back around and kept walking.
When Andrew got back home he searched his room. The books were hidden under some dirty clothes in a far corner of his closet; he wrapped the glass vial in an old sweater and nestled it safely between the two piles. Then he slid two of the books into his backpack.
#
The next day at school, Andrew finally saw Josh again. He was in the cafeteria reading a book.
“Josh.”
Josh glanced up, then looked away.
“I didn’t tell them anything. They wouldn’t have believed me, so I didn’t talk about it.”
He went back to his reading. Andrew put his backpack on the table, reached inside, and pulled out one of the books. He put it down on the table next to Joshua’s tray.
“I’m sorry about what happened. I know I can’t make it up to you. I found this in the attic where I found the map. I don’t understand very much of it, and I was hoping you could help me out.”
Josh looked up at Andrew for a minute, then down at the book. He didn’t say anything. After a moment of hesitation, he started flipping through the pages.
#
Jeremiah walked to his car and drove back to the hotel. He stepped into the lobby; a row of college students walked past him, sleeping bags on their backs and smiles on their faces. This was the only big cheap hotel in town; there was another place further down the interstate, but it was more expensive, so the freaks and the tourists were gathering here. He watched them go by. He drove to the hospital, walked through the front door, stepped into the elevator, and wetted his fingers with liquid from a metal flask he kept in his jacket pocket. He brushed his fingertips across his forehead; by the time the elevator doors opened, he was invisible. He walked to Paul’s room, avoiding the windows or ducking under them to stay out of the sun. The door was closed but unguarded. Jeremiah slipped inside.
There was nobody there except Paul, lying on the bed in a blue smock with his eyes closed, his face vacant like a house left empty for too long. The curtains were shut.
Jeremiah took a step closer. He took a close look at Paul’s face to make sure that it was him. Then he turned around. He was already thinking about which road he was going to take out of town, which airport would be closest, where they would be likely to try and catch him. He tried to open the door. It wouldn’t budge.
He turned around and stared at the curtains. He could hear someone standing in the hallway outside, whistling softly.
“Think about this for a minute…” Jeremiah said.
The curtains and the door flew open at the same time, and sunlight filled the room. Jeremiah was incinerated; he died, six times within a single second, and when he was gone there was nothing left of him.
The last thing he saw was a pair of blue glass eyes.
CHAPTER 8
#
Andrew beckoned, and the pop can floated towards him, tilting gently on its axis as it traveled. He turned his hand over and closed it in a fist. The can spun in the air, flattened into a pancake with a loud popping noise, and fell, hitting the attic floor with a clatter.
“Wow…” Joshua whispered. He crawled over to the middle of floor and picked up the can.
“How did you do that? Did you figure something out?”
He pulled a folder out of his backpack and started looking through it. The left pocket was filled with photocopies from Paul’s books, each one marked with a black streak in the upper left hand corner, the signature of the school library’s copy machine. The right side was filled with pieces of white printer paper, covered with Joshua’s handwriting.
The text inside the books consisted almost entirely of rows of random-looking letters and numbers. It was Josh who first realized that it was a code, and who started figuring out how to solve it. Even with only a few pages to work with he’d been making progress. Yesterday, he’d made something work for the first time. He took a blank piece of paper and wrote a message on it in thick black marker, TODAY IS MONDAY. Then, he took a needle, pricked his thumb, and let a drop of blood fall into a glass bottle filled with grain alcohol that he’d taken from chem lab. He dipped the needle into the alcohol and traced the letters on the paper, backwards and forwards, following the lines. When he was done he showed the piece of paper to Andrew. It turned to dust the minute Andrew finished reading it.
Now Josh was working on something else. He didn’t know what it was yet. He hadn’t even figured out the code. Andrew was trying to help, but Joshua could figure things out much faster than Andrew could.
That was why Andrew was doing this. He wanted to even things.
“Now take the pill,” Andrew said. He worried for a second that Josh wouldn’t do it, that he wouldn’t trust him, a possibility that had not occurred to him previously. But it seemed like Josh hadn’t thought of that possibility either; he swallowed the pill as soon as it was given to him and blinked. His eyes opened a little wider.
“Oh my God.”
The creature was sitting on the floor, balanced on the tips of its lower tentacles like a sea urchin. Andrew pointed up at the ceiling, and it jumped up into the air, disappearing and reappearing as it passed through the light of the windows and fell back down to earth.
Joshua stood up and started laughing.
“That’s insane… you’ve had it with you all the time, haven’t you? That was what you scared Jeremy off with at the lunch table.”
Andrew nodded.
“Yeah. Sometimes I leave it at home to keep an eye on my grandmother, but mostly it’s with me.”
Joshua reached over and touched it with his fingertip. He pulled back right away.
“It doesn’t feel… it feels wrong.” He looked up at the ceiling
. “And you can’t see it when it’s in the light. Or at all, without the pills.”
The smile disappeared from his face while he was thinking.
“That’s why you knew what was going to happen in the tunnel. You could see things we couldn’t.”
Josh was quiet for a moment, and Andrew wasn’t sure if he was supposed to answer him. Josh started talking again.
“I found something about halfway through the first book. A sketch. Take a look, you’ll know when you see it.”
Andrew reached into his backpack and pulled out the book. He flipped through the pages, pretending to look, but he already knew exactly where the sketch was.
“Is this the one?”
It was a pencil drawing. The creature it depicted was roughly in the shape of a water tower, and had a half a dozen tentacles emerging from its body just above the bottom of the page, where the shape disappeared.
“That’s the one I mean,” Joshua said. He shrugged. “I don’t know what it means yet, I just wanted you to see it. I’ll let you know as soon as I figure out what it is.”
“Thanks,” Andrew said quietly.
#
Lunch was almost over, and Andrew and Joshua both knew that they had to get to class soon. They left the attic and climbed down the stairs.
There were three periods left in the day. He had biology first, then math. They were working on proofs. He’d been getting perfect scores on all his homework and failing all his tests. His teacher was starting to get suspicious.
Gym was last. When class was over, he walked back to the locker room and changed clothes. Nobody bothered him. Word had gotten around. Jeremy had been talking. He wondered what they said when he wasn’t around, how long it would take them to stop talking about him at all. If they were scared of him.
The bell rang, and he was out the door. He ran for the park— he had to run, his grandmother would be angry if he was late getting home, and he wanted to spend as much time with Shadow as he could. By the time he made it to the gazebo, he was completely out of breath. He climbed the stairs and stood on the platform. He closed his eyes and felt himself drifting down through the floor. When he opened them, he was underneath the gazebo. The chessboard was already set up.
White Rabbit Society Part One Page 7
