Mayhem

by Jeffrey Salane

  “Madame Voleur?” M was shaken. “What are you doing here? How do you know that song?”

  “Zee song, it is an old song that I used to teach my students. Zee melody is calming, no? So ve vould use it venever ve vere anxious. I see your mother used it visely. A baby is zee most anxious-making zing on zis planet.” Her needles clicked and clacked as she spoke. Her hands moved automatically. The older woman didn’t bother looking down at her creation, which looked like a mile-long scarf. It lay in piles at her feet like a clothed snake. “Ah, you are vondering about my craft. I remember you running true zee stages of Zee School of Seven Bells back at my home in France to calm yourself. Vell, zis vorks zee same vay for me.”

  “What do you have to be anxious about?” asked Jules from under her collar. “Besides the smell in here?”

  “Zee better question, Ms. Byrd, vould be vat do ve have to be vorried about.” Voleur’s face turned sad and serious. “Zere is much danger now. Ms. Freeman, I owe you a full explanation. Now is zee time for questions. I vill answer as much as I know.”

  “Where is my mother?” M asked first.

  “Hidden, protecting the last of zee moon rocks.”

  “Are you crazy?!” gasped M. “You haven’t destroyed the moon rocks yet? What about the meteorite? Where’s the meteorite that I stole from John Doe?”

  “Now zat, ve destroyed. Zat vas an unnatural element and has been banished from zis earth. Ve are not fools, Ms. Freeman.”

  M couldn’t believe her ears. “Who are you people?”

  “Ve are zee ones who vill save zis vorld from Lawless and zee Fulbrights. Neither side can be trusted. You know zis, yes?”

  She did know this. M knew this with all of her heart. “How can I help?”

  “You are already helping, miette. Zis is vhy ve hid you away. I am sorry for the extremes of our actions, but placing you in a tiny town vas all ve could do.”

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” said Evel. “But what did you think would happen to her there? What if she never returned to herself?”

  “Ve had no choice, Mr. Zoso.” The old lady shot him a sideways smile. “Yes, I know who you are. You are an interesting fellow. Vord vas you vere deceased … but ve are lucky to have you vith us, even if you did allow zee others to find Ms. Freeman. There vas no vay of knowing vat vould happen to Freeman. We hoped zat zee serum vould vear off.”

  “And it did,” said M.

  “Ms. Freeman, your father sent you on a journey zrough two very secret schools for a reason. Vat it is, ve do not know.”

  “I can connect the two worlds of the Fulbright Academy and the Lawless School,” M started. “I have proof.”

  “Baloney,” interrupted Foley. He stayed seated on the beat-up leather sofa, but his voice was fast and a little panicked. He brushed the sandy hair out of his eyes, but his focus was solely on M. The gaze spooked her a little.

  M stared back. “I can prove it.”

  “How?” asked Foley.

  “By going back to where this all started.” M steeled herself for what was coming next. “I need to go home again.”

  Madame Voleur’s crew prepared for their mission like bees buzzing around the ramshackle house. M watched as Zara and Foley flitted around, gliding through doorways and packing gear quickly and methodically. It was as if they’d been planning this all along, but M could tell that they were nervous. For one thing, Zara was humming while she worked. Zara never, ever hummed. The effect was unsettling to M. It played like a warbled record in a horror movie. At any minute the music could stop and something unspeakable would be at their throats. And stranger than the humming, Zara kept sneaking glances at Foley as they passed each other. Foley also tried to play it cool, but his eyes kept shifting from person to person, watching them, all of them, as if they were suspects in a crime and he was the detective trying to solve everything. M even caught Foley stopping to check himself in the mirror a few times, like he wasn’t expecting to see his own face there. Nerves make people do the weirdest things.

  Even the mysterious old guy was hustling, packing up futuristic-looking gizmos that did who knew what.

  Jules was in the corner, carefully tossing a red ball of yarn from one hand to the other. She held it like it was a live bomb instead of loosely wound strings. Sweat glistened along her hairline as she strained to keep focus on catching the ball again and again.

  Madame Voleur watched her. “Keep trying, miette. Don’t give up.”

  The red ball thumped softly on the ground and unraveled as it rolled away. Jules let her head fall backward and uttered a frustrated sigh.

  “Do you think we’ll really need all this?” M asked, motioning to the collection of gear.

  The older woman clicked her knitting needles together calmly and spoke. “Vere you are going is dangerous. Especially if vat you say is true and you have proof.”

  M moved closer to the old woman. “It’s just a house.”

  “Not anymore. Zat place has changed for all who lived zere, both you and your mother. For your mother it has become a great sadness. She lost her husband vile she lived zere. She almost lost you zere, too.” Madame Voleur let the needles rest in her lap. “But for you, it is even more complicated. Vat zey are packing now, it is for zee real-world danger. Zee Fulbrights or Lawless soldiers who may be zere. But you must pack more powerful weapons for your journey.”

  “More powerful?” asked M. “Like lasers? Freeze rays? Bombs?”

  “Like patience. Understanding. Serenity,” said Madame Voleur. “Zee war waiting for you at your home vill be fought in your mind. You will feel many conflicting emotions: darkness, happiness, uneasiness, anger, fear. But vat you take vith you after you go home, zat depends on you. I vould suggest zat you try to focus on hope. Zat is vat zee vorld needs right now. Not zose other weapons. Because where zere is hope, zere vill always be life.”

  A warmth radiated through M as Madame Voleur made her point. And whether or not it was because the afternoon sun was beaming through the window and striking her on the back, it didn’t matter. She relaxed. She was going home.

  Madame Voleur reached over and patted her leg gently, reassuringly. “Now zee vorld is in your court, miette. And remember. It is the only one ve have.”

  “All packed,” declared Foley, interrupting the moment. “Let’s head out, Freeman.”

  But before M could answer, Madame Voleur flicked one of her knitting needles like a dagger, end over end, until it struck the floor by Foley’s shoe. He stepped back cautiously.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” ticked the old lady. “You, Mr. Foley, vill stay here vith me.”

  “And do what?” asked Foley. There was a challenging tone in his voice. While his words had formed a question, it came out sounding more like How dare you!

  “Plenty, plenty.” Madame Voleur cocked her head toward him and gave Foley a yellow-toothed smile. “For starters, I need a new red ball of yarn. And zere’s no reason vhy ve should send everyone to zee Freeman estate. You are zee backup, how does zat sound? Oh, and of course, you can protect little old me. Now be a lamb, and can you please fetch my needle from beside you?”

  Foley grinded his teeth and steadied himself before pulling the long needle out from the floor. He handed it back to Madame Voleur and said, “Anything you need, boss.”

  The others held still, not sure what they had just witnessed. It was M who broke the silence. “Like Foley said. Let’s head out while we still have the light.”

  * * *

  The black van navigated its way through the low mountain turns. M was sitting next to Zara while Evel and Jules sat in the far back. The older man rode shotgun in the front seat. M imagined how strange it would look if the police pulled them over right now. No one driving, but a car full of passengers.

  She watched the older man in the front seat. He was quiet and seemed content to keep to himself, but M had caught him sneaking glances at her and Jules a few times. It was like he knew them and was scared of them at the same time. M searched throug
h her memory bank, but she still couldn’t place his face.

  She leaned in to Zara and whispered, “What’s his story?”

  “You mean, you don’t know?” she asked, surprised. “I thought he was with you.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” snapped M, suddenly worried that danger was riding in the front seat. “I’ve never seen him in my life.”

  Zara shrugged casually as if M had asked her what she wanted to eat for dinner. “You must have met him. He’s the only way we found you.”

  “Found me?” echoed M. “Like, at the circus?”

  “Yeppers,” said Zara. “Dude contacts Madame V, tells her he knows where you are — or at least, where you’ll be — and then I’m sent out on yet another mission to save your hide. You sure you don’t know him? I mean, we don’t even know his name. He made that part of the agreement. No names, no questions. Said it was for your own good.”

  “And you trusted him?” M’s eyes widened at Zara’s lack of concern.

  “Madame V trusted him,” reassured Zara. “And I trust Madame V. Besides, he’s been right so far. You’re here, you’re safe, and now you’re going home. You’re a regular queen of the world thanks to him, but this guy still has you freaked. Whose house do you think we were just at? All that tech stuff? That’s not Madame V’s deal. She’s old school.”

  M couldn’t believe what she was hearing. A stranger shows up from out of nowhere and knows exactly how to find her … but not until after she’d survived a Lawless and Fulbright attack. If she looked up the word suspicious in the dictionary, there’d be a picture of this guy next to it. She was tired of all these mysteries. It was time for answers.

  “Hey, mister,” M burst out. “Old man know-it-all in the front. What’s your name?”

  “Part of the deal,” he answered while still facing forward. “No names.”

  “Okay, then,” allowed M. “Don’t tell me your name, but you need to tell me how you knew where I was after I escaped Madame Voleur’s make-believe world.”

  The old man sat for a minute, thinking. His thumb tapped against his fingers one at a time, as if he were calculating a math problem in his head. “No,” he said calmly. “If I tell you, it would change things too much. I’m not the important part of this equation. You are.”

  “People keep telling me that and I’m not buying it anymore.” M leaned forward over the center console and grabbed his wrist so that his fingers stopped their rhythmic counting. “I think everyone in this van is important. In fact, I think everyone I’ve come across in my life is important. Good people that aren’t here anymore.” She paused a moment, thinking of her missing friends and family. “Listen. I’m nobody without everyone else in my life. And now that includes you. So tell me, or Madame V will knit you a straitjacket as soon as we get back to your place.”

  The old man’s head swung low as his chin touched his chest. M could see the gray hair thinning and bald spots where his brown skin shone through. Then he let out a sigh that ended in a high-pitched wheeze. “Your tracker,” he admitted. “I told you there was a reason you needed that tracker. That it might save your life one day.”

  “No,” M said softly, almost under her breath. “No, no, no, you couldn’t be …” The finger tapping, the high-tech gear, the tracker. “Keyshawn?”

  The old man turned and, for the first time, M could see the resemblance between the Keyshawn she knew and the Keyshawn who sat before her now. His face had been washed away by time. Worn down like statues in the park over the years. But he still had the same spark of determination in his eyes. A swell of feelings consumed M. Keyshawn had been a friend, but he had also been an accomplice in the very scheme that stole Jules’s abilities and fed them to that awful monster, John Doe. Was he here to make things right, or to make things worse?

  “No way,” gasped Jules from the backseat. “Keyshawn? You were so … young. And now you’re so … old. What happened?”

  “I …” He searched for the gentlest words to discuss such a sore subject. “I’ve asked myself that same question over and over again. The most logical explanation I can come up with is that I was not part of Doe’s original plan. You see, M was half right when she said Doe wanted to use you as a secret army to do his dirty work. That was true. And it was work he didn’t want anyone else to know about, apparently. Except for those closest to him. But there was always a second half to the plan.”

  “He stole us right out from our own skin,” said Jules.

  “Yes.” Keyshawn nodded. “He stole your strength and agility, Jules.”

  “Merlyn,” murmured M. “Doe stole his computer skills, didn’t he?”

  “I would imagine, yes,” agreed Keyshawn. “But from me, maybe he didn’t need anything? So he stole what suited him most. My youth.”

  The mood in the car turned sour. They weren’t just fighting a mental case with an army anymore. They were fighting a diabolical supervillain.

  “There is,” Keyshawn continued, “a good side to all this.”

  “I’m finding it really hard to see the positives,” said Jules.

  “Doe didn’t have M or Cal.” Keyshawn let out a weak grin. “And without your skill sets, I’m not sure everything went according to plan.”

  “But wait,” said M. “What about Foley? He was there, too, in one of those chambers. What could Doe have wanted with him?”

  Keyshawn shook his head and turned back around to look out of the front windshield. “I’ve been asking myself that same question. I don’t have an answer yet.”

  “I can get it back, right, Keyshawn?” asked Jules. “My strength, my agility, I can earn it back. If I try hard enough, will it return to me?”

  “I don’t know,” he repeated softly.

  The van fell quiet again save for the sound of the tires coasting over the road below. As they moved closer to their destination, M never felt so far away. Far away from her mother, her father, even her friends in the car. She hoped there was some clue at her house that could make that feeling disappear.

  “Home again, M,” said Zara as she waved her hands like a magician’s assistant toward the turn into the Freeman estate.

  The front entrance was the first sign that a long time had passed since M had been back home. And from the looks of the once-strong wrought-iron gates hanging off their hinges, it wasn’t only time that had passed through her house, but something destructive and powerful. The gates were splayed open like wings on an ancient insect about to take flight. The rest of the fence hadn’t fared well, either. The length of metal security was now laid flat and buried into the earth instead of standing guard around the perimeter. There was nothing left to protect the Freeman residence.

  “What happened here?” asked Jules.

  “You’re asking the wrong person,” M said quietly as she surveyed the damage. “I only lived here.”

  “Looks like a twister carrying a giant came through and stomped on everything in sight,” said Zara. “I hope you can still find what you’re looking for, Freeman. John Doe did a number on this place.”

  “Yes, he did.” M looked down at her fingernails. They’d been polished, painted, and manicured just a few days before, but now they were ragged, chipped, and worn. She remembered striking John Doe’s cheek on that night and could still feel his crumbling skin beneath her nails. Suddenly, she found herself digging underneath each nail, trying to clean out whatever might be stuck.

  “Good. That means we’re on the right track.” Zara smirked and gave M a wink. “So are you having fun yet or what?”

  “Your friends need new hobbies,” said Evel as the black van drove down the driveway.

  The turrets were missing against the deep blue sky. They had always peeked over the long, hilly driveway and were usually the first thing M saw of the old Victorian house when she came home. But now there was nothing there except sparse white clouds that hung in the sky like the magician’s smoke that lingered after a sleight-of-hand disappearance. It would make a terrifi
c TA-DA! moment for an audience expecting to see a magic show, but in the van, M couldn’t believe her eyes. The house was gone, plain and simple.

  The driveway ended abruptly at the edge of a deep pit. Surrounding the hole in the ground were pieces of wood as thin as toothpicks scattered recklessly across the yard. M’s home had been smashed to smithereens.

  The van rolled to a stop and the passenger doors opened smoothly. M was the first one out. The debris of her past life crunched underfoot with every step forward.

  “Wow,” Zara said as she walked to the edge of where the home used to be. “There must have been something super important in there, Freeman.”

  “That hole must be sixty feet wide and sixteen feet deep,” reckoned Keyshawn. “It was a big mansion, huh?”

  “You were there,” Jules reminded him. “We both were. Don’t you remember?”

  “Oh yes.” Keyshawn laughed and shook his head. His eyes were clouded and distant. “I was there, wasn’t I? I can’t for the life of me remember a thing about that night. My mind’s not what it used to be.”

  “Sixteen feet? That’s deep,” said Evel. “Like two floors deep. What were they digging for? Did you have a basement or something?”

  “A basement and something else.” M scooted to the edge, sat, and threw her legs over. She surveyed the dugout area. “I don’t suppose we have a rope, do we?”

  Zara jogged back to the van and jerked a hook attached to a winch on the front bumper. The wire cable trailed her and let out a zizzing sound that echoed in the silent evening. It sounded like the world was being unzipped. “Hold on to this and I’ll lower you down.”

  The winch heaved slowly as M eased into the pit. At the bottom her shoes sank an inch into the wet mud. She slipped, but then waved to the others to let them know that she was okay. Once she steadied herself, M closed her eyes, clipped the winch hook to her belt loop, and stepped forward. She retraced her path from the maze at the Fulbright Academy, the same path from her basement that her father had mapped out to lead M to his secret safe room.