The lines in Harry’s forehead went deeper still, surrounding his intent brown eyes with folded skin. Tippicks leaned in closer. “So, Mr. Keller, tell me, is it at all possible that it is true?”
Harry moved his head a bit, struggled to swallow. He licked his dry lips and stared Tippicks in the eyes. “Yeah, it’s true. Well, I don’t know about your father, exactly, but everything Siara told you is true.”
To be sure, Tippicks repeated it as best he could remember, and Harry confirmed each detail, adding some of his own. By the end of it, Tippicks wasn’t sure how much time had passed, or how much longer he’d have before Shinn returned, so he became a bit more hurried.
“Harry, the parallels are amazing, but—”
Harry sighed. “None of it’s proof.”
“Yes. Exactly. Is there anything you can predict? Anything you can show me?”
Harry shook his head. “Not now. The drugs keep me out.”
“Siara said you took her there,” Tippicks said. “Could you do that for me? Send me to A-Time?”
Harry shrugged. “Maybe. We could try. I might be able to talk you in, but I couldn’t go with you, and it’s dangerous.”
Tippicks chuckled. “I grew up in the sixties. What could be more dangerous than that?”
“Okay. Umm…pick something to stare at.”
Tippicks focused on a potted tree a few feet away. Some of the leaves were brown and dry, ready to fall off.
“Okay, got it.”
As he stared at it, Harry spoke. His voice was slow, slurred, but there was a lilt to it, a droning, like he was reciting a poem or chanting:
“Look at the edges of the branches, the side of the pot, the color of the wall behind it. Keep staring.”
Tippicks did as asked, but his head still hurt and the potted plant still looked just like a potted plant, no different than it had a second ago. Its edges vibrated a bit, but he was sure that was because he was so tired. How much had he slept in the last few days?
“Think about how all that—tree, branch, color, wall—how they’re all just words.”
Keller’s voice droned on. It had a vague melody to it, something an awestruck girl like Siara Warner might think of as hypnotic, but it only irritated Tippicks, made him feel foolish. What was he doing encouraging this boy’s delusions? What was he doing, trying to relive such an old pain at Harry Keller’s expense?
“…just lines your brain is making, they’re all really part of one thing, part of the same thing, and you’re really just imagining that there’s any pot or tree or wall.”
He should tell him to stop. He should apologize, to Harry, to Shinn. His behavior wasn’t just unprofessional, it was inexcusable. His father had been the victim of a severe mental disorder, same as Harry Keller. He was just treading over old ground, trying to get blood from scar tissue. It was time to let go and grow up.
“Harry,” he began.
He was about to say, “Stop” as gently as he could, when the edges of the brown leaves blurred into the wall. He was certain it was his failing eyesight, his headache, so he blinked, but the distortion only grew. His eyes were focused; he could feel it. It was the plant that blurred.
He felt a twinge, a strange fear, as the leaves pulsed green with life, then one by one turned brown and fell. At the same moment, the leaves grew smaller, receding into their stems, which flushed from brown to green, then wavered and shrank back into the soil.
What’s happening?
He raised his hand to rub his head but felt his fingers still on his lap. He turned but saw his body remain behind. His head didn’t hurt anymore. He’d left the pain behind. He wasn’t in his body anymore. After knocking over two mugs of pens, scratching a BMW, and ripping his jacket, he saw himself tumble forward from the bench. Just another accident.
But there was nothing he could do about it.
The funny little fear grew. He felt himself pushed forward, as if he were being yanked up the highest hill on a roller coaster. For a moment, Tippicks paused on vertigo’s brink, then plunged. Or rather, the world plunged around him, melting into a swirl of hypersaturated colors. Everything—Harry Keller, the plant, the walls, the interns, the tables, the great steel net above them—spread out into elongated trails.
In a flash, Emeril Tippicks stood atop those trails, watching impossible one-eyed beasts root about the land, while flat mandala patterns flitted about, weightless in a rainbow-colored sky. The world he knew had vanished, and with it the ancient doubts that had pressed upon his mind.
Whatever else he was, Jeffrey Tippicks was not just insane.
A solid tone filled his ears. Was it Keller’s voice, still droning on, tethering him here? He turned about, trying to find the source, finally locating it on a small hill formed by thick trails that were intertwined like a giant’s folded fingers. There was something in the air above them, a brightness, a light.
Was it Keller? Was he entering this A-Time, too, despite the drugs? No. Whatever it was, it glowed brighter and brighter, heating his skin in a comfortable, familiar way.
He took a few hesitant steps across the strange ground, trying to get closer, to see the light more clearly. And when he did, he gasped and said, “Dad?”
8.
“Help!” Harry cried. “I think he’s having a heart attack!”
Like a sack of wet leaves, Tippicks’s body tumbled forward. He looked like he was going to hit his head on the floor, hard. Unable to move his arms, Harry stuck his legs out to catch him. Tippicks’s forehead hit Harry’s shin and his chest slumped, his full weight falling on Harry’s wobbly calves.
“Help!”
Harry knew what had happened. Tippicks had gone timeless alone. He prayed the guidance counselor would be all right. He had to be.
The two interns, cell phones in hand, raced toward them. They lifted Tippicks from Harry’s legs and settled him on his back on the ground. He looked dead, but Harry realized this might be his one chance to escape. Even if Mr. Tippicks believed him, he’d never be able to get Harry out of Windfree so he could save Siara. The best the teacher could probably manage was to get himself fired.
As the interns bent over Tippicks’s prone form, Harry bolted for the door. There were confused shouts behind him. Jesus and his friend didn’t know who to deal with first, Tippicks or Harry. While they mulled it over, Harry put as much distance between himself and them as he could.
The drugs knocked him for a loop, but he was moving pretty fast for a guy in a straitjacket. Since his encounter with the Fool, nothing seemed to change his mental state much. He even had a brief A-Time flash of Jesus being fired for losing Harry twice. As it turned out, he soon got a better job at an alternative bookstore. After all, you can’t keep Jesus down.
As he hit the door, Harry twisted sideways, praying they hadn’t locked it. It opened, spilling him into the hall. He ran down the corridor, making turns as if he knew where he was going, a left, two rights, and into a stairwell. It was as if there was a voice in his head, whispering, No, this way, not that way! Good! Faster! You’re almost there!
And there was. It was like the voice of the Quirk-shard, only louder, and decidedly more helpful. Was it the Fool? Harry hadn’t told Tippicks about the Fool, because he figured the whole giant-clown thing was just too weird. Whatever it was, it took him to the base of the stairs and through an emergency door, all without anyone spotting him.
An alarm shrieked as a blast of cold air hit him. He was facing a tall fence, eight feet at least, topped by barbed wire. Beyond that was a small forest of pines.
Go left!
He did, leaning against the chain-link for balance. The shrill alarm pierced his ears. After rounding a corner of the building, he spotted a section of fence that had been crushed by a fallen tree.
There!
He raced to the gap and nearly cut his face on the dangling coils of fallen barbed wire as he made his way to the other side. Another alarm went off closer, louder, angrier. He heard doors open. The fiel
d of tall, thin pines opened up in front of him. Maybe if he made it to the woods, he could find a place to hide.
Wait!
Wait? Wait for what?
Look!
Where?
A pink clown balloon, its string caught in the barbed wire, dangled in the air. A soft wind turned the face, the face of the Fool, toward him. Harry started, expecting the figure to speak, but instead, it graced the razor edge of the coil and popped.
Oh, he realized.
He turned and pushed the thick cloth of the straitjacket into the barbed wire, moving up and down. The thick cloth of one of the arms of the jacket caught and tore, exposing his flesh. It was the first time air had touched his arm for many, many hours, and the sensation made him shiver. He jammed the torn cloth against the barbed wire and pulled. This time, he managed to extend the rip all the way down his arm, scratching himself badly in the process.
Now, go!
Shredded cloth dangling down his side, he raced for the trees, snapping his hand out from the torn jacket as he moved. With one bare arm free he wasn’t afraid of falling anymore, so he ran even faster. It wasn’t like running in A-Time, where his breath never seemed to give out. Here the cold air hit his lungs hard, making it hard to breathe very deeply, and he hadn’t eaten since he’d been in Windfree. He pushed his weakened body as hard as he could, but after a few minutes his legs went rubbery, and he wondered how long he had before he collapsed.
Already slowing, he came to a concrete drainage ditch, some sort of runoff, which he followed to a small tunnel of corrugated metal. A stream of water flowed in it, carrying bits of silt, twigs, and leaves. Harry knelt, crawled into the tunnel, and sat in the shallow stream. A final surge of energy, its source unknown, hit him, so he twisted, writhed, and tore at what was left of the straitjacket. Ten minutes later, he was out of it completely.
Shaking but satisfied, he lay back in the cool water, letting his arms dangle freely in the air. He rubbed his palms with his thumb, wriggled his fingers, scratched his scalp, and let the little stream roll over his shoulders and down his chest.
And Harry Keller exhaled and closed his eyes.
Alarms and sirens droned in the distance. He didn’t hear any footsteps or rustling brush, no hint of danger, just the gurgling water as it flowed around him. He turned his head to look out the far side of the tunnel. Through the twisty curve of the metal’s end he caught a glimpse of the nearby town of Billingham.
The horizon was a quiet one, with a ten-story building in the center, but nothing taller. If they didn’t catch him, he could sneak into town, snag himself a shirt somewhere, and try to get on a bus back to the city.
But for right now, though the water was sharp and bracing, he had to rest. He closed his eyes, lowered his head and let the shallow coolness slosh around his ears. Then he passed into a long and dreamless sleep.
Thump! Thump!
Something hit Harry Keller’s forehead. It wasn’t hard, it wasn’t heavy.
Thump! Thump!
It was hollow, rubbery.
Thump!
Like a balloon?
He opened his eyes, uncertain whether he was awake. The clown balloon was in the tunnel with him, floating over his head, thudding against him. It looked lifeless, like a printed illustration, but these days Harry was perfectly comfortable talking to inanimate objects.
“Did you…did you get me out of there?”
The picture of the clown smiled.
“Thanks,” Harry said. He shuffled to a seated position, icy water running down his back. His pants were soaked. He was shivering. He had a dull headache, but the numbness was missing. At least the cold bath seemed to have shaken some of the effects of the drugs out of him.
Harry looked out at the town. “I’ve got to stop whatever Jeremy’s planning,” he said to the balloon.
But the clown shook its head. “There’s one thing you have to take care of first.”
“What’s that?”
The printed hand of the clown unfolded itself off the balloon. It swelled to human size and jutted a white-gloved index finger toward Harry’s abdomen.
“That,” the Fool said.
“What? You mean the Quirk-sha-ahhhhh!”
As the tip of the finger touched Harry’s skin, he felt the shard writhe inside him. Strange, it was usually only in A-time that he felt the thing as a wound. In linear time, the shard manifested as that suicide voice in his head. He sure felt it as a wound now, though, twisting and turning in his cold skin like a piece of molten metal.
The bastard is changing the rules again!
Harry stumbled back, away from the finger, into the water. As he did, a red welt rose on his skin, right where the Quirk’s claw had stabbed him. The white finger came forward again. Harry saw his skin sizzle as it touched the mark, and it didn’t stop there. It kept pressing, harder and harder, until it went beneath the skin, probing into his gut, deeper and deeper, until finally, it seem to Harry that it touched the shard itself.
As a hot pain seared through his abdomen and into his brain, Harry could think only one thing: It’s going to pull it out! It’s going to save me!
But that’s not what happened. Reaching the tip of the Quirk’s buried claw, the finger didn’t grab; it pushed.
The Fool didn’t remove the shard. It pushed it further in.
“Ungh!” Harry cried.
Propelled by the white finger, the claw dug deeper into his gut, until it touched the tip of what Harry imagined was his spine.
Everything went black for a moment, then Harry bolted into a seated position, water dripping from his hair onto his shoulders. He looked at the far-off building, saw how high the sun was in the sky. What was it, late morning now? How long would it take him to get to Billingham?
The Fool had helped him. It had helped him indeed. There would be no more ambivalence. He would walk, he would run, he would get to where he needed to be, because now, at long last, Harry Keller knew exactly who he was and what he had to do.
He was a fool, a loser. And what he had to do was walk through the woods, go into town, find the nearest tall building, get to the top…
…and jump off.
So Harry Keller sloshed to his feet, left the tunnel, and started walking. A pink clown balloon followed, all on its own, as if it were a small dog nipping at his heels.
9.
Once Siara stopped thanking Jeremy, the long drive grew quiet. She wanted to ask why he’d changed his mind, why he was doing her this ridiculously wonderful favor, but she was afraid that if she questioned it, it would vanish like a dream. So while he started playing his music, mostly house stuff, gangster rap, and a stray folk song or two, she made idle chat, only really brightening when she saw the white-and-green highway sign indicating they were three miles from Windfree/Billingham.
It was still morning. She could spend a few hours with Harry and be back in time for the demo easily. Things seemed to be going perfectly, until the sudden slowing of the car brought her attention back to Jeremy.
“Why are you stopping?”
“So I don’t ram into all the cars in the traffic jam,” he said, nodding toward his windshield.
She looked out as the car came to a halt behind a pickup truck. She could see the distant exit on the road ahead, but the cars were backed up for miles in both lanes. Sparse, bare trees lined the highway, but between them she caught a glimpse of police cars and an ambulance as they careened along the main road. A sudden whoosh made her cover her ears. Something low and loud passed directly over them, causing the entire car to vibrate.
Jeremy looked up as a shadow passed across the glass. “That’s a police helicopter. Something big’s going on.”
A sinking feeling in Siara’s heart told her that whatever it was, Harry was probably at the center of it.
“We’ll never get there,” she said.
Jeremy flicked on the radio and adjusted the tuner. “There must be a local news station….”
A male voi
ce came through the speakers. Courtesy of Jeremy’s sound system it sounded full, lush, more real than any voice that Siara had ever heard.
“…again, it is not known how he escaped, but apparently the patient has reached the roof of the Valis building and is threatening to jump off. The name is being withheld until family…”
Harry, Siara thought.
“Harry!” Siara screamed.
She knew about the Quirk-shard, but couldn’t explain it to Jeremy. “He’s tried to kill himself before!”
The town was just a few miles off. She reached for the door handle, planning to run the whole way. But Jeremy’s strong hand grabbed her wrist. His grip was cold, like a vise, and there was no crowbar handy this time.
“Jeremy, let me go! Now!”
He smiled. “No, wait. Stay.”
“I can’t. I’ve got to go find—”
His smile grew wider. “I know, I know. But this is a Humvee.”
Before she could respond, he veered the huge car off the road. Soon they were racing past the trees, along farmland, past the traffic, toward the buildings. All the jostling nearly threw her from her seat.
“Are you crazy? They’ll arrest us!” Siara shouted, but she had to admit she was excited by the ride.
“Don’t think so. They seem busy with whatever else is going on,” he answered, twisting his lips in a smug, boyish smile.
As the Humvee bounced up and down a few grassy hills and exploded onto a single-lane road, she realized it was true. The police cars and ambulances were all headed toward Billingham at top speed, straight toward the tallest thing visible, the ten-story structure she imagined must be the Valis building. Even from here she could make out the huge clock built into its center.
Hang on, Harry! she thought. We’re coming!
Harry Keller was surprised at all the attention. Shirtless and wet, feet covered in the strange little sacks that passed for shoes at Windfree, he’d attracted a small crowd as he walked through the town. A police officer, some security guards, and even several pedestrians seemed to want to stop him, to help him, but every move they made was countered by a wild—one would think impossible—series of coincidences. Oranges flew from people’s hands to trip them; cars lurched onto the sidewalk to cut them off.
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