The fake principal’s throaty laugh filled the coliseum.
“They’ve seen us … the Oscithrauds,” Milton whispered to his friends. “We’ve got to spread out or we’re toast … or whatever those gross things have for breakfast.”
The Terawatts scattered. Milton could hear the creatures springing in the dark.
Auralla, Milton thought as he tried to calm the clamor of his terrified body. Like aural … relating to hearing.
Milton felt inside his armor. There, tucked in his Arcadia belt, was van Gogh’s ear. He pulled it out and held it to his bad ear, the left one. Suddenly, he could hear in stereo again.
Eeeeeeekakaeeeeeeee!
The wavering chirp seemed to come from everywhere.
Bats use echolocation—sending out sound and reflecting it off their victims—so maybe that’s what the Oscithrauds are trying to do. We’ve got to locate them first.
Milton had an idea.
“Sunshine Sneezer,” he whispered. “Come here. Follow my voice.”
The boy joined his side.
“What is it?” he muttered.
“Which ear is your good one?”
“My left.”
“Mine is my right. I’m using van Gogh’s ear. Press your head against mine. It should give us three-dimensional hearing. The ability to triangulate the Oscithrauds’ positions.”
“Brilliant,” the Sunshine Sneezer said. “Let’s try.”
The two boys pressed their heads together. Instantly, the chirping formed a sort of picture in their heads, an aural sculpture, with Milton sensing the Oscithrauds’ hideous shapes with crisp, sonic clarity.
Eeeeeeekakaeeeeeeee!
“Hostiles at one, five, and nine o’clock,” the Sunshine Sneezer whispered. “They’re circling us—and we thought we were circling them. What should we do?”
“I guess the only thing we can do is hurl these hoops at them. Let’s try the closest one. The one at five o’clock.”
“Okay, on the count of three. One … two … three!”
The two boys hurled their spiked hoops into the dark.
Whooshle-whoosh!
Milton’s hoop grazed the Oscithraud’s side, while the Sunshine Sneezer’s weapon hit the creature squarely on the base of its spring tail. It screamed, an ultrasonic whistle that felt like barbed-wire floss through Milton’s ears. The wounded Oscithraud hopped erratically around the coliseum squealing in pain.
Screaleach!!
The noise made Milton drop van Gogh’s ear. Now the only thing Milton could hear was Sara’s terrified shriek in the sticky hot blackness.
MILTON’S ARMOR TWITCHED with the bloodlust of the gamers above on the Surface. He fought the reckless, electrical twitches spreading across his body.
Screech! Swipe!
“My leg!” Howler Monkey screamed. “Something sliced it open!”
The weapons aren’t helping, Milton thought desperately in the dark, the chaotic sounds of fear and pain ricocheting all around him. I’ve got to think of something before those things bounce us apart … something more defensive than offensive, like with the Tactagon.
Ooohlalargh!
The Oscithraud’s wail had an almost musical quality to it, a jagged warble of lament.
That’s it, Milton thought as he grabbed the Sunshine Sneezer by the hand and pressed his head against his. “C’mon, we’re going to use our voices to soothe those savage beasts.”
“What?”
“Like in Mr. Orpheus’s class,” Milton explained as he followed the whimpers of his wounded friends using van Gogh’s ear to triangulate their positions in the dark.
Milton collected Sam/Sara, Howler Monkey, and lastly, following her sobs, Caterwaul.
“Let’s start with something simple and cheery,” Milton said. “A major C chord. I’ll start with the root, C. Sam, you sing E. Sara, you’ll be the G on top. The rest of you double up, to thicken the sound. Okay?”
The team mumbled their unconvinced assent.
“It’s like singing at our own funerals, but sure, whatever,” Sam replied as he and his sister drew in a deep breath.
“We’ve got to get this right the first time,” Milton said. “With all of us singing, we’ll be pretty easy to track down, so here goes.”
Milton sang his note, with Sam/Sara joining in. Howler Monkey doubled Milton’s C, with the Sunshine Sneezer and Caterwaul filling out the upper registers of the chord. Milton, head pressed against the Sunshine Sneezer, held out van Gogh’s ear into the darkness.
Eeeeeeekakaeeeeeeee!
He could hear-see the Oscithrauds, frighteningly close around them. They stopped bouncing and swayed their great, pointed ear heads from side to side.
“I think it’s working,” the Sunshine Sneezer said in between breaths.
Sproing! Sproing! Sproing!
Suddenly, the three Oscithrauds resumed their springing with renewed vigor. As the massive creatures bounded across the coliseum, their bladelike claws spinning at their sides, Milton swallowed. It was even worse than watching his parents try to imitate the latest dance move.
“We need something less peppy,” he suggested. “A minor chord. Sam and Sunshine Sneezer, slip down a half note to D-sharp.”
The Terawatt singers drew in a deep breath as the Oscithrauds vaulted around them, violently happy, in the dark. The children’s voices weaved together into a somber harmony, a ragged gray tapestry of sound. The Oscithrauds lost their dangerous spring and wilted like a monstrous flowerbed watered with tears.
“Caterwaul, make some sparks with your Barba-Hoop thing so we can find the portal to the next level,” Milton called out. “Sam/Sara and Howler Monkey, help me with Wyatt and Ariel. And don’t stop singing!”
The group slunk past the drooping creatures and to the outline of the next portal.
“More baggage,” muttered Sam sourly as he spotted another figure sprawled out on the tarnished metal floor.
The girl’s dark hair spilled out around her head like a fatal brunette head wound.
“Libby,” Milton muttered as he leaned down by her side. “Can you hear me?”
The girl fluttered her eyelids. Glazed eye whites, like tiny hard-boiled eggs trembling in her sockets, shone through her lashes. A patch of blood oozed through the chest of her armor. Libby nodded weakly and managed to push herself up off the floor, as if she were trying to sleepwalk but was just too exhausted.
Eeeeeeekakaeeeeeeee!
The Oscithrauds lifted their cavernous ear-flap heads, training them on the Terawatts as the children’s voices faltered. Milton looked up at the glimmering sky of dull eyeballs.
“Okay, Tesla!” Milton shouted. “We beat this round. Now we want some answers! You said you were snatching human souls from the Surface! But there’s no way … I mean, how could anyone do that? Not to mention why—”
Sam/Sara dragged Wyatt to the rim of the portal as Tesla’s voice crackled through the arena’s embedded speakers.
“Though your victory is a touch premature,” Tesla relayed in his manic Eastern European stumble of a voice, “I will reward your curiosity at my masterwork … zhe Sense-o-Rama. Mass entertainment began with one dimension—zhe novel; then two dimensions—movies and television; then three dimensions—zhe three-D movie; and now, with zhe Sense-o-Rama, four-dimensional entertainment: full-sensory engagement. And in zhe cradle of zhe senses like a diamond rests zhe human soul.”
Skizzle!
The twin hoops around Caterwaul’s hips—gyrating in opposing directions to create their shower of sparks—wobbled unsteadily. In the flickering light, Milton saw the Oscithrauds jouncing uneasily on their coiled spring tails. The children’s singing voices roughened into a chorus of barely musical croaks.
“Zhe Sense-o-Rama—as you have learned from zhe inside out—engages each of zhe senses in a specific way with a specific intensity,” Tesla continued. “As zhe game progresses through each of its five levels, zhe senses are systematically overloaded, loosening zhe grip t
hat zhe human body has on zhe soul. Zhe body’s hold grows slack—zhe corporeal lock housing zhe human soul can be picked from afar—and zhe soul is thusly drained.”
“Drained?!” Milton said, horrified. “But why?”
Tesla chuckled.
“Short answer: why not? A brilliant invention is its own reason for being. Long answer … well, you must earn zhat now, mustn’t you?”
Caterwaul, exhausted, let her hoop weapon clatter to her ankles.
The Sunshine Sneezer yanked Milton onto the portal. The Terawatts, unable to sing another note, huddled together in the circle. The Oscithrauds screamed, incensed, in Milton’s overly sensitive ears.
“We’ve got to go!” the Sunshine Sneezer said as the aperture opening beneath them slowly unfolded. “Or those monsters are going to get an earful—of us!!”
Hans Jovonovic fidgeted on the Fausters’ doorstep.
“No one must be home,” he muttered nervously to Marlo’s silhouette, splayed out beneath the SOLD sign out by the stoop. “I’ll just leave the letters in the mailbox.”
This isn’t a game of doorbell ditch, Marlo thought-texted to the jittery redheaded boy’s belt buckle. You’ve got to hand them to her. It will jolt her out of her woe-is-me daze and she’ll actually pay attention. Did you text my dad? Tell him to be here nowish?
“Yeah, of course I did,” Hans murmured. “I’d do anything for—”
Three progressively louder creaks sounded from the other side of the door, followed by the unlatching of the dead bolt. Rosemary Fauster’s face pressed out from between the door and the jam. To Marlo, her mother looked like the haunted heroine of a silent film. Like someone who had been tied to train tracks by a dastardly man with an interesting mustache. Disheveled yet beautiful, even her face looked like it was black and white.
“Yes?” she asked with a shaky smile she couldn’t quite commit to.
“I,” Hans squeaked before clearing his throat. “I … Hello, Mrs. Fauster.”
“Hal?”
“Hans … How are you?”
“Fine,” she lied. “What can I do for you?”
Hans swallowed and pulled the letters from his Pee Chee folder.
“These are for you,” he said in one breath, handing her the sheaf quickly, as if he were a sheriff serving someone papers to appear in court. “I … found them in … some stuff. Stuff Milton must have … left …”
Rosemary Fauster scanned the first letter, confused.
“But why would Milton—”
A white Rambler station wagon squealed to a stop outside the house.
“Rosemary?!” Blake Fauster called frantically as he hopped out of the car. “Are you all right?”
The woman’s face scrunched with confusion.
“Blake? Yes … why wouldn’t I be okay?”
The middle-aged man scratched at his salt-and-pepper goatee and glanced down at his cell phone.
“I got a message … a text,” he replied, his urgency melting into puzzlement as he walked toward the house. “From one of Milton’s friends. Saying that you needed help …”
Both adults stared at Hans and his unaccountable presence, like a singing duo who had just been joined onstage by a vaguely familiar stranger.
“I’ve gotta go,” Hans said as he fled to his bike leaning against the garage. He whispered from the corner of his mouth to Marlo’s shadow, “See you later—at Fragopolis?”
Sure. I’m going to see how this goes down.
Hans gave a quick nod and hopped onto his bike, pedaling furiously.
“Hey, you!” Blake Fauster yelled in his deep, professorial tone. “Come back!”
Rosemary Fauster, her attention dragged deeper into the letters as if they were quicksand, seemed to crumple onto the porch. Her wet eyes quivered as they scanned the pages in darting sweeps before, unable to hold back the pressure any longer, they gushed with tears, like a levy weakened from lack of levity suddenly releasing a flood of water down into an unsuspecting valley.
“Oh, Blake,” she sobbed. “What are we doing?”
Her husband set his hand awkwardly on her shoulder before taking it away, then, after a moment’s reconsideration, set it back. Blake leaned in to his weeping wife and read the letters over her heaving shoulder.
“Where did you find …?” he said shakily. Blake sat down beside Rosemary. “I thought I threw these away.”
Rosemary held out Blake’s latest, undelivered letter.
“How come you never gave me this?” she asked, her pale cheeks slick with tears. She read from the letter: “ ‘We will always be together even if you cannot bear us being together.’ ”
Rosemary set the letter in her lap, the paper quivering in her shaky hands.
“I … I feel the same way,” she said weakly, unable to prevent her suddenly heavy head from resting on his shoulder. “I can’t bear the thought of being away from you, but it’s just too painful … too painful to have you here, like nothing has happened, when the worst thing that can ever happen has. Being with you makes me feel like a frame without a picture. Empty. But without you, I feel somehow less than empty.”
Blake squeezed her shoulder closer to him.
“It’s odd, but somehow I know that Marlo and Milton are together,” he murmured. “That should count for something.”
Marlo’s parents started to cry as one, their sobs synced together in mutual sympathy.
“Maybe we could get away for a bit,” Rosemary suggested. “To that place in Maine, near where you did your residency.”
Marlo could feel herself back in Snivel, crying. She didn’t fight it. It actually felt good, like throwing up after eating bad seafood.
Parents are like time machines, she thought as they chattered on about old times, each memory releasing another. They can send each other back to any point in their relationship.
Marlo grew dizzy. Her shadow-self felt fuzzy and loose, as if it could be snatched away by the wind.
A swooping shadow streaked along the sidewalk toward Marlo: wings like great pointy triangles at its sides, a beak as sharp and determined as a knight’s sword. Suddenly, the shadow overtook hers, and the two otherworldly smudges tangled in chaotic fury like flattened black alley cats fighting and scratching on the asphalt.
THE FOURTH SENSE-O-RAMA level was like the inside of a giant red golf ball: a geodesic sphere tinted dark scarlet and covered with dozens of hexagonal panels. A wide steel ring wrapped around the sphere’s equator, cinching the concave honeycomb of hexagons into two massive hemispheres.
“Ten … nine … eight …,” the demon announcer barked.
Droooorn!
A hum, so thick that Milton could feel it vibrating against his seminumbed skin, filled the arena. He and his friends walked unsteadily away from the rim of the entrance portal as it slid closed behind them.
Foomp!
Milton stepped onto one of the glowing red panels, each about the size of a large, six-sided trampoline. The vacant eyes of the gamers from the Surface were spread throughout the sphere, not all bunched up at the ceiling.
“Six … five … four …”
A film of backward green letters covered the eye clusters like neon contact lenses. Milton could barely make out the words as his vision—and most every sense save for his hearing—was fading fast.
Above and beyond the group of Arcadians was an open iron gate, suspended upside down, surrounding the only green panel.
“Look!” Caterwaul said, pointing to a figure struggling on the gate.
It was one of the Zetawatts, a small, wiry boy named Joey. He hung from one of the gate’s twisted spires, which had skewered his shredded armor.
“This shouldn’t be, like, too hard,” Howler Monkey said. “We just need to climb—”
“… One … Begin Olfactrix: Sense-o-Round Four,” the announcer bellowed.
“Olfactrix,” Milton repeated. “Like olfactory, relating to smell.”
He sniffed the air around him but felt stuffed
up, only without the congestion.
Milton turned to his team. “Can any of you smell?”
Howler Monkey sniffed his underarm.
“I’m sure I probably reek. But I can’t smell a thing.”
In fact, none of the Terawatts could discern any odor whatsoever.
“Oh dear,” the game version of Principal Bubb said, fluttering above them on black feathered wings, clad in a bronze bikini that set off her smooth green skin. “If none of you can smell, then I have a feeling that this level is going to stink.”
Schwaa!
Suddenly, two panels bracketing the gate slid open. From one fell five large, flat doughnut-shaped boards. Blazing red letters appeared in the air above the Terawatts.
WEAPON: SKIMMER RING
GRAVITY: 360°
Sam/Sara stooped down before the board closest to them.
“It’s like a round skateboard,” Sara said as she held the smooth, flattened ring in her hands. She examined it with her odd, heightened vision. “Only no wheels … but there’s this weird porous grid on the bottom.”
She set it down on the ground and stepped on it.
“And there’s a sort of foot switch here—”
The board purred and, with a whoosh of air, hovered inches off the ground.
“Cool!” the Sunshine Sneezer said, an elfish grin crinkling his pointy face. “An air-hockey table you can ride!”
Milton hopped onto his board and switched it on.
This is almost fun, he thought as he skimmed along the floor. He kicked at the ground through the hooped board’s center. If we ace this level and the next, we can figure out how to pull the plug on Tesla’s plot.
Droooorn!!
The low-level buzz of the arena swelled.
Zoop!
Suddenly, a gush of supersized wasps flew out from the open panel above, about a dozen to Milton’s faulty eyes. The insects were the size of small dogs, with three long, lacy wings sprouting from each of their yellow thoraxes; black pincers on what looked to be their heads; and big, flared openings at the tip of their butts from which streamed a shimmering trail of purplish vapor.
Snivel: The Fifth Circle of Heck Page 20
