Max Quick

by Mark Jeffrey

  “We should fill you in on what we know,” Max replied. Quickly, he relayed the tale of his encounter with Johnny Siren in the museum and the conversation with Jadeth. Casey described the UFO they had seen rise from Starland Center shortly after the Pocket began.

  “Oh. My. God. What are you doing here?”

  Sasha Fwa stood in the doorway, hands on her hips. None of them knew how long she’d been standing there—or how much she’d overheard.

  The color drained from Ian’s face. “Oh. Er, well . . . ahh . . . ,” he stammered.

  “Ace is going to kill you, Ian!” Sasha said. “You’re not supposed to be here!”

  “C’mon, Sasha,” Ian said. “You of all people know Ace doesn’t listen to anybody. What if these two can tell us about the UFOs?”

  Sasha’s eyes flickered with doubt.

  “You know I’m right,” Ian persisted. “I know how you try to tell Ace things—and how he shuts you up. You’re a closet geek girl. You—”

  At that, Sasha clenched her fists with annoyance. “I am not a geek girl!”

  “You are so,” Ian protested. “You pretend not to know how computers work, but I know you do.”

  “Well,” cut in Casey, “I think the real question is, what is she doing here?”

  “I can do whatever I want,” Sasha slashed back. “Ace will—”

  “I’ll bet not,” Casey continued. “I’d guess that if Ace found you down here you’d be in just as much trouble as Ian.”

  Sasha’s eyes narrowed to slits. “At least I’m not the one in jail.”

  “At least I’m not the one with a loser boyfriend,” Casey replied, voice shaking.

  That got to Sasha. For a moment, she couldn’t think of anything to say. Then she replied, “Well, I’m going to go get him. Then we’ll see who the loser is.”

  She stamped out of the jail. Ian watched her back with a wistful look.

  “We better hurry this up,” Max said. “Ian. How can we get out of here without getting caught by Ace?”

  Ian reached into his backpack again.

  “With this,” Ian said.

  Ian produced a giant book. It was oversized, like an atlas, and bound in thick black leather. Hieroglyphs and cuneiform inscribed the cover.

  It was ancient.

  Immediately, Max was reminded of the UFO and the Whispering Stone he’d seen back in Starland. It was an eldritch tome of some kind, something not to be trifled with.

  “What, we’re going to read our way out of here?” Max asked sarcastically.

  Ian’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “Yes, as a matter of fact, we are.”

  “Where’d you get that?” Casey asked. She could feel the very atoms of the thing vibrating, drenched with unspeakable power.

  “There’s this mansion I found while I was out exploring. It’s way out in the woods, on a mountaintop in Colorado. The Book was there, in this huge study.”

  “Ian, you ever notice how—”

  “Yeah, I know,” Ian cut him off. “The Book and UFOs. They have, like, a similar look. They belong together.”

  That was it exactly, Max thought. They belong together.

  “But anyway, I have to warn you . . . ,” Ian continued. “The Book is really, really weird. It sort of messes with your mind.”

  “What do you mean?” Casey asked.

  “Well . . .” Ian struggled for the words. “You think of your brain as inside your head, and the Book as outside your head. But with the Book, that line kind of gets blurry.”

  Casey gave Max a nervous glance.

  “So what happens now?” Max asked.

  “Next, I open the Book,” Ian said. “And then, we’re at that mansion I was just talking about.”

  Max just stared at Ian for a moment. “You’re kidding me.”

  Ian shook his head.

  “So it transports us there?”

  Ian scrunched his face up. “Kind of. I mean, basically, yes, it does. See, the Book has words in it. You read the words and they sort of do something to your brain. And then . . . well, then you’re actually at the mansion. Does that make sense?”

  “No,” Casey and Max said at the same time.

  Ian sighed. “I can’t explain it any better than that.”

  “How do you know all this?” Casey asked.

  “Oh, I’ve used it,” Ian said. “Once, anyway. It took me to the study in the mansion where I found it. But I didn’t stay long. I came right back. And like I said, the words activate your brain somehow. I could feel it happening. That’s what makes it work, though I don’t really understand it.”

  “Well, what do the words say?” Casey asked.

  Ian smiled. “That’s a funny thing. You remember later that words made perfect sense at the time. But afterward, you can’t recall them. The words vanish from your mind, like cotton candy in your mouth.”

  Max looked dubious. “Sounds dangerous. You still don’t understand what the Book really is, or how it works.”

  Ian nodded. “Yes, that’s true.”

  “If you had this book, why didn’t you just leave earlier?” Casey asked. “You could have left the Serpents and Mermaids by yourself. You don’t really need us. Right?”

  Ian looked away and was quiet for a moment. Finally, he said, “Because I’m scared, okay? I am freaked out about doing this myself. But I figure if you two are in it with me, I can do it. Or at least I won’t have to do it alone. Plus,” he added, “do you really want to stay here?”

  Max turned to Casey. “I don’t think we have a choice. I think we have to go with Ian.” Casey nodded in agreement.

  Ian let out a sigh of relief. “I was hoping you’d say that. First, let me get you out of that cell . . .” He reached into his pocket, and then a look of confusion spread over his face.

  Max snorted a laugh and held up Ian’s keys. “Looking for these?”

  “Hey! How’d you do that?” Ian said.

  “Sorry. I picked them out of your pocket—just in case we didn’t like what you had to say.”

  Max unlocked the cell and he and Casey exited warily. Ian left for a moment and then returned with their backpacks. “Here. I packed one for myself as well. And some genuine Serpents and Mermaids goggles for Pocket-superpowers-running—”

  “We call that whooshing,” interrupted Max.

  Ian nodded. “Whooshing. And take these.” Ian handed them each a hunting knife in a leather sheath. “You’ve probably noticed that the Serps all carry knives. Guns don’t work in the Pocket, that’s why.”

  Max was about to ask why when he remembered how the car engine had seized up when he’d started it back in Starland. Anything designed with normal physics in mind would probably not work in Pocket physics.

  There was noise outside the building. Voices.

  Sasha’s voice rose shrilly among the rest. “. . . And Ian was with them. Yeah, Ian. Can you believe that? I don’t know what he was doing there, either.”

  “Okay,” Max said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Ian nodded. He sucked in a breath through his teeth—and opened the Book.

  Max, Casey, and Ian peered down. And there, on the first page, was an etching, executed in an ancient style. It reminded Casey of a line drawing on an Egyptian tomb.

  Even so, it was clear that it depicted three children standing around a table, looking at a Book, just like this one.

  Chapter 9

  A Most Curious Study

  The exact moment that Max, Ian, and Casey found that they were the three children in the illustration in the Book was difficult to pin down.

  There was no flash of light, no noise. Max felt a weird sensation, like something had just reached in and touched the back of his tongue. His throat tightened involuntarily.

  As this happened, it seemed to Max that they had always been in the study. They just hadn’t realized it yet. It was only their perspective that had shifted.

  But of course, that was impossible.

  Ian smiled at their
reaction. “Yeah, that’s really weird the first time, I know.” Max and Casey stared in wonderment. “Plays with your head a bit, that does.”

  “Plays with my throat a bit, that does,” Casey said with disgust.

  They were in a grand study with vaulted ceilings. Book-shelves stretched up to the sky all around.

  Immediately, Max’s old instincts kicked in. His gaze darted around nervously. “Don’t worry,” Ian said. “There’s no one else here. I’ve already checked it out, remember?”

  “Hey, look at this,” Casey said. There was an open Book on the table in front of them. The page showed a line drawing illustration of the jail cell. It was empty, except for a Book on the floor. “Isn’t that where we just were?”

  “What does that mean?” Max asked Ian.

  “It means that we’ve traveled from one Book to another,” Ian replied, closing it.

  “Huh. Do you need a Book on both sides to make it work?” Max asked.

  Ian nodded. “If you want to get back, you do,” he replied.

  But Max was already on to the next artifact.

  On a table, pressed beneath a plate of glass, was a very old parchment, brown with time. On it were written these words:

  Here is a rhyme

  Of future’s time

  When the Bondsman rules the world.

  But here in the past

  Is where he, at last

  Is vulnerable to a boy and a girl.

  “What is a ‘Bondsman’?” Max asked. “What could this mean?”

  Ian shrugged. “Sounds like something out of The Canterbury Tales, written in the fourteenth century.”

  “Weird,” Casey muttered. Max looked up. She’d wandered over to a great teak desk. Spread across it was a giant vellum map of the world. The familiar continents of America, Europe, Asia, and Australia were clearly visible. But there were also ten or so extra continents. Their unfamiliar coastlines and shapes dotted a vast sea, ringed with a forbidding icy barrier.

  “Medieval,” Ian said. “From back when they thought the world was flat.”

  “Ian. What do you think these are?” Max said. He held up a set of large photographs. They were dark and blurry with a big, grainy splotch of golden color in the middle.

  “It’s a planet,” Ian said. “See? It’s ringed, like Saturn. That’s a photograph taken with a telescope. The guy who owns this house is an amateur astronomer or something. There’s an observatory out back.”

  “Is it Saturn?” Max asked.

  “No. That’s some other planet,” Ian replied. “Saturn isn’t gold-colored like that.”

  “Then what planet is it?” Casey asked.

  Ian shrugged.

  “You guys go check out the rest of the place,” Casey said. “I’m going to keep looking around in here.” Max nodded, then he and Ian wandered into the front of the mansion.

  They entered a foyer lined with lush paintings. One in particular depicted an ancient city in the desert. It was rendered in deep crimsons, pale blues, ruddy black, bright living greens—and full of impossible detail. Max could make out tiny hairline cracks in the masonry of the towers—even insects creeping through the grass.

  “Max,” Ian said. “Look at this!”

  He pointed at another painting. This one showed men toiling in wheat fields under a fierce yellow sun. Behind them loomed a half finished pyramid on bleached white sands. And above this hovered one of the jeweled UFO-type crafts they’d all witnessed since the Pocket had begun.

  “Whose house is this, anyway?” Max whispered.

  “Well I don’t know his name. But there are pictures of the guy over there,” Ian said, pointing into a hallway. “Here, I’ll show you.”

  Ian led Max to a wall of framed photographs. The pictures showed the same man over a wide sweep of time. Some were very old: blurry, brown tintypes from the late 1800s. Others were crisp black-and-whites from the 1930s; then Polaroids from the ’50s and ’60s, right up to razor sharp digital images from the present.

  It showed this same man on archeology expeditions, in the jungle, then near an Aztec ruin, or in Egypt, digging a big hole in the ground near the Sphinx . . .

  He was proud, strong . . . and terribly, terribly scarred.

  Max gasped. He knew this man.

  Johnny Siren.

  Was this . . . his house?

  The nameplate beneath one photo confirmed it. It read:

  JONATHAN ROSEBLOOD CYRANUS

  Max heard Petunia in his mind: I’ve seen Roseblood! He’s actually here in Starland!

  “Johnny Siren” and “Jonathan Roseblood Cyranus” were the same man!

  “Oh, no,” Max said breathlessly, stepping away slowly, his mind spinning in horror. “We have to get out of here. Now!”

  “Why? What is it?” Ian asked.

  “It’s the guy from the museum. The one I told you about, the one who called that Jadeth woman right before the Pocket started. This is his house! We’re in his house!”

  Meanwhile, Casey found another Book near the vellum map. The cover read:

  SIMULACRA ELOQUIUM

  Beneath this was more of the same cuneiform writing.

  Casey opened the Book. It showed a wishing well, as though viewed from above. The nearby wild grass seemed to wave and ripple. An old, discarded bucket, half buried in the earth, lay next to the well. A strand of rotted, frayed rope twirled in the breeze.

  The tug of the page on her attention was overwhelming. She probably couldn’t have turned away from it even if the room was suddenly filled with monsters.

  “Oh!” Casey said, very taken with it suddenly, “a wishing well.” Before she realized what she was doing, Casey reached into her pocket and tossed a penny into the Book.

  Much to her surprise, the penny actually entered the page. It melted as it crossed the surface with a small ripple, then bounced around in the well for some time, and finally she heard the faint plunk! as it landed in dark waters far below.

  “Casey!” Max yelled in her ear.

  What? she mouthed. He sounded like he was a million miles away.

  “Casey!” Max yelled again. “Snap out of it!”

  Max looked questioningly at Ian. What was wrong with Casey?

  “It’s the Book,” Ian whispered. “It messes with your head, like I told you. You need to break her line of sight.” Max immediately placed a picture in Casey’s line of vision, blocking the Book. She huffed with annoyance.

  “Casey. Listen to me. This is the guy from the museum I was telling you about. This is Johnny Siren!”

  Casey stared down blankly. The snapshot Max held showed a gentleman in a suit, sometime in the 1950s. A kerchief poked out of one breast pocket tastefully. He carried a cane, iron, topped with a bloodred ruby.

  Her hands clenched with stress.

  “This is him?” she said. “This is Johnny Siren?”

  “Yes,” Max said. “And that’s why we have to get out of this house.”

  Ian nodded. “Right. We need another Book. Let me see . . . this one here, I think. Okay . . .”

  Ian opened it . . .

  . . . and promptly vanished.

  Chapter 10

  The Books of Jonathan Roseblood Cyranus

  The air popped with the vacuum of Ian’s sudden absence.

  “Ian!” Max and Casey shouted at once.

  The Book Ian had been holding dropped, faster than gravity, and hit the ground with a dull thud.

  Casey was hysterical. “What just happened? What are we going to do?”

  Max sweated. “I don’t know. Let me think.”

  “We have to help him!” Casey said.

  “I know!” Max snapped, and then after a moment he said, “We have to find out where he went. We have to open the Book.”

  “I don’t know,” Casey said doubtfully, remembering the wishing well. “The Books are sort of . . . hypnotic. They kind of lull you to sleep. And what happens if it just sucks us in like it did Ian?”

  “I don’t lik
e it, either,” Max said. “But I don’t know how else to help Ian.”

  Casey nodded.

  “I’ll do it,” Max said. His hands shook as he curled his finger deep into the pages and swung the Book open.

  Max and Casey beheld an impossibly detailed illustration.

  The page tugged at their eyes, trying to suck them in. But they stubbornly resisted.

  The Book showed a vast forest of black and green and deep brown. There were two sandstone obelisks, covered with hieroglyphs. Beyond this, a thin white path wandered between thick trees. A lone figure looked skyward and cupped his hands to his mouth, calling out.

  It was Ian, drawn in perfect detail.

  “Turn the page!” Max whispered. Casey did so.

  There was Ian again, farther up the path, looking worried now. He seemed to be hearing noises in the woods.

  “Again,” Max said. “Hurry.”

  The next page was more disturbing. Ian was running. He held his Serp dagger in one hand. The woods were noticeably darker. The path had turned into a steep, rocky incline. Ian charged up it, looking over his shoulder.

  Something was chasing him.

  The next page showed Ian in a full sprint. He ran over a stone bridge. He seemed to be in the mountains now: There were fewer trees and more scrub brush covered the ground.

  Ian looked utterly exhausted now. He was covered with sweat-smeared dirt.

  Max and Casey held their breath and turned the page again.

  Ian stood in a cluster of buildings on a mountaintop surrounded by a moonless night. He stood before a stone observatory, with a telescope poking skyward out of the domed roof. He was trying to open the locked door—without much luck.

  His normally pale face was beet red. Veins bulged from his neck. He was desperate to open the door.

  To his left, there was a garden. A rusted iron sundial adorned the center of a stone piazza. Marble busts on pedestals wore expressions of ferocious seriousness. Vine tendrils snaked across their furrowed brows.

  “Turn the page,” Casey said, barely whispering.

  On the next page, Ian stood in front of a mansion. It looked like a castle. He was trying this door, but it was apparently locked as well.

  Casey gasped and pointed to the corner of this page.