by Bryan Davis
The shotgun sounded again, followed by the clanking racket of a door banging open. The second guard rushed toward the exit.
I hissed, “Now!”
Two more weapons fired, a rifle and a shotgun. Someone cried out, “Dave! Dave!”
Kelly spoke the numbers while punching them in. “Seven … five …”
The Mustang driver appeared in the mirror and turned toward us, but I dared not tell Kelly.
Another shotgun blast thundered. A man groaned. A single set of footsteps approached, slow and labored.
“Six … two.” The lock buzzed. She flung the door open.
We hustled through and closed the door. I took the violin case from Francesca. “Everyone low.”
While the girls sat with their legs crossed and their backs to the door, I leaned the mirror and violin against the wall and set the box to hold them in place. I sat to Kelly’s left and whispered, “Don’t make a sound. If he thinks we’re in here, he might blast through.”
The thuds of stomping feet drew nearer, out-of-rhythm footfalls that slowed as they approached. Kelly trembled. Francesca gritted her teeth. Both stayed completely silent.
Something slapped against the door. Beeps sounded from the security keypad, but the latch stayed quiet. A deep groan filtered through the wall, then muttered curses followed by more uneven footfalls that faded to silence.
I exhaled. The girls did the same. I rose and peeked out the door’s window. A bloody handprint smeared the glass, but no one was in sight, though a red trail marked the gunman’s path.
I reached a hand to each of the girls. “Looks safe. At least for now.”
When they pulled to their feet, I collected the violin and box while Kelly picked up the mirror.
She touched the box’s blood-spattered top. “What’s in it?”
“I don’t know.” I looked it over. Like the trunk, there was no obvious way to open it. “We’ll figure it out later. First we have to check the room where they kept Clara and Francesca.”
We hurried along the curving hallway. When we reached the door, I paused, looked both ways, and rapped lightly. I held my breath and listened. No answer.
I looked at the keypad and punched eight, four, seven, one. The lock clicked. I pulled the door open, revealing a dark room.
Kelly reached in and swiped her fingers across the wall. Lights on the ceiling flickered to life, though they were dim.
I peered inside. The room, about twelve-by-twelve feet, held a short wooden stool, a green beanbag chair, and scattered sheets of paper. On one of the stone walls, four chains dangled from rings embedded at points spaced roughly where hands and feet could be locked in place.
This was where Dad must have hung. The torture had provoked moans that punched through cosmic boundaries and entered Kelly’s ears not long ago.
While I propped the door with my foot, Kelly walked in and touched one of the dull chains. “So the cries of pain brought us here. Now what?”
I picked up one of the sheets and read the script, definitely Mom’s handwriting. Maybe the words held a clue to where they had taken her. “Let’s gather these and get out of here.”
As I held the door and kept watch down the hallway, Kelly and Francesca collected the sheets.
“I found a stub of a pencil,” Kelly said, holding it in her fingertips.
“Knowing my parents,” I said as I took the papers, “this is all in code. Let’s find a safe place to decipher it.”
I leaned again into the hallway. No one was in sight. “Let’s stay in the secure area. With that murderer stomping around out there, this might be the only safe place.”
Kelly winked. “Is there a ladies room in this hall?”
“Good idea.”
After locating a ladies’ restroom, we entered and settled on the floor. Sitting next to Francesca, I held the white box in my lap with my back against the cool, tiled wall. At a sink, Kelly ran water over a handful of paper towels, handed them to Francesca, and pulled another towel from a wall dispenser. “Want to wash your face, Nathan?”
“In a minute.” I gave the box a light shake, but it made no noise. “Maybe I should look at it in the mirror like I did with the trunk.”
Kelly sat on my other side with the violin case between us and mopped her forehead with a moistened towel. “I guess it won’t hurt to try.”
A low boom thundered from somewhere in the distance. Kelly flinched. “It seems like we’re just waiting for him to find us.”
“At least the noise lets us know how far away he is.”
“Now that’s a comforting thought.” She wadded her towel and tossed it at the wastebasket across the room. It sailed in and thudded at the bottom. “I wonder if Clara and Daryl got away in our world.”
“We can hope.” I nodded toward the restroom exit. “We could try to go back, but I can’t leave without finding my parents.”
Kelly laid a hand on my arm. “Not to be a cloud of doom, but remember that they might not be your real parents.”
“I remember.” I let my head droop. Did it matter which world they were from? What would Kelly think if she knew her Earth Blue father got blasted by a shotgun? Would it make a difference to her? Probably not. No matter how much she hated what he did, she’d be devastated. It wasn’t a good time to tell her. Not yet.
Francesca threw her wadded towel toward the wastebasket, but it hit the side and fell to the floor. She let out a sigh and looked at me. “When are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
I shifted toward her. “Tell me what you know, and I’ll try to fill in the gaps.”
She lifted three fingers. “There are three worlds. You and Kelly are from one, I’m from another, and this is the third one.”
“Right. Keep going.”
She lowered her hand. “Then it gets really crazy. You’re looking for your mother.” She pointed at herself. “But you think I’m your mother.”
“You’re going to be the mother of a copy of me in your world, which happens to be behind my world in the flow of time. This world we’re in is ahead of mine by five days. Or at least it was when we left my world.”
“But if there are only three worlds, and we’re in the one that’s ahead of yours in time, how do you see stuff in your mirror before it happens? Doesn’t that mean there’s a fourth world?”
“Good deduction.” I turned toward Kelly. “I wonder if Gordon and Mictar believe there’s a fourth world.”
“They already know about three,” she said. “Since cuatro means four in Spanish, they probably believe it.”
“My father spelled Quattro with a Q, so maybe it doesn’t translate to four like it does in Spanish. Since he probably knows a lot more about it than they do, they’re trying to turn the screws on him.” I looked at the mirror in my hands. It had come through for us at every dangerous turn. No wonder Dad wanted me to look at it in times of trouble. It really worked.
“Wouldn’t my mirror also be in this world?” I asked Kelly. “If Gordon and Mictar knew about it, wouldn’t they do anything to get it? And if they already killed us in this world, they should have been able to take it from me.”
“Unless you didn’t have it with you when you died. Remember what Gordon said when he searched our bodies … I mean, the other Nathan and Kelly bodies? He was upset that the other Nathan didn’t bring something with him. The other Nathan said it was locked up forever.” She picked up the box. “Want to bet it’s in here?”
“Could be.” I stared at the bloodstained surface, imagining the square of polished glass sitting inside. If Tony wanted Dad to have the mirror, how did he expect Dad to open the box? Wouldn’t he need a Quattro mirror to get to the mirror inside?
Kelly pulled a barrette from her hair. “I think I see something. If I can just get rid of a little of this blood.” With her locks dangling over an eye, she scraped the barrette against the box’s surface. “I got it.” She held the box close to the wall’s light fixture and squinted. “It says, ‘To Flash,
from Medusa.’” She looked at me. “To your father, from Clara.”
“Right.” I brushed the dried blood away. “But how could she know where to send it?”
Another shotgun blast boomed in the distance, louder than before.
Kelly rubbed her goose-bump-covered arms. “Let’s just try to get it open.”
I rose to my knees, turned toward the wall, and leaned the mirror against it, then slid the box into the mirror’s view. I stared at it for several seconds, but nothing happened.
“I guess I’ll look at the coded pages while we’re waiting.” I picked up the stack of paper and reseated myself. Since the pages were numbered, I rifled through the sheets until I found page one, then gave the rest to Kelly. “Can you sort these while I work on this one?”
“Sure.” She divided the stack and handed half to Francesca. “Want to help?”
Francesca grinned. “Anything for my son.”
I returned the grin. “Thanks, Mom.” Settling back against the wall, I dug the pencil stub out of my pocket and underlined every three-syllable word on the page. Dad and I had often used this algorithm for handwritten notes. The last letter in the first underlined word would be the first letter in the decrypted note. The second to last letter in the next word would follow, and so on. When I reached the beginning letter of a word, I would start again with the last letter of the next three-syllable word.
I pointed at the first word — Royalty — and jotted Y in the margin. The next word was pollution, so the second letter was O. Next came interrupt, so the letter was U.
I continued the tedious process, penciling the letters neatly around the margin and adding hyphens where I thought one word ended and the next began. When Kelly handed me the second page, I copied the decoded letter string over to it.
From time to time, I glanced at the mirror, but the box stayed closed. As I grew tired, I paused after every deciphered word, leaned my head back, and closed my eyes for a few seconds.
Two more shotgun blasts brought new chills, but I stayed calm and worked methodically. I couldn’t afford to make a mistake. One missed three-syllable word or a miscounted letter would ruin the entire decryption. I resisted the urge to read the message. Not knowing what it said forced me to work faster.
Kelly’s yawns grew frequent, and Francesca fell asleep on the floor, but I had to keep going. Finally, I took a deep breath and set down the last page. “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.”
Kelly scooted close and looked on.
I whispered the words. “Your goal, stop Mictar from making Interfinity, collision of worlds. Trust Gordon Red. Not Gordon Blue. Trust Simon Red. Unsure of Simon Blue. We are your parents from other world, not your real ones. Help us escape to stop Mictar, but get to the funeral on Earth Red.”
I let the page slip from my fingers. My throat tightened. I tried to speak, but nothing came out. Mom and Dad really were dead. Although the mystery of how the instructions appeared in an Earth Red email account remained, it seemed impossible to deny this new revelation. Nathan Blue was dead, so they couldn’t have been writing the message to him.
Kelly rubbed my shoulder. “Oh, Nathan. I’m so sorry.”
I leaned my head against the tiles and squeezed my eyelids closed. As tears seeped through, I took a quick breath and choked out, “I really thought … I could find them … I still hoped they were alive.”
She slid her hand into mine and interlocked our thumbs. “But we can still save the other Nathan’s parents.”
“I know.” I blinked through my tears. “But Nathan Blue is dead. I’m an orphan, and his parents are childless.”
She brushed her fingers across my knuckles. “I guess, if you want, you could trade places. You could be their son, and you’d have new parents.”
“You know it wouldn’t be the same.”
“Maybe I don’t.” She released my hand and folded hers in her lap. “I’d take your parents from the other world any day.”
I gazed into her sad blue eyes. “I guess I can’t blame you for that. You have it pretty rough.”
As a flush of red colored her cheeks, her tone sharpened. “You don’t know the half of it. My father makes me play basketball with guys more than a foot taller than me, and when I get punched in the face, he laughs and makes fun of me if I cry. Last year, when he wanted Steven on the team, he made me go out with him, and he even picked out a low-cut dress for me to wear.” Her gaze drifted to her chest. “I guess he notices I’m a girl only when it’s convenient.”
I gave her a sympathetic nod. “That’s really tough. I can’t imagine what it’s like.”
She sighed. “And you already know he brings women home, even though he and Mom aren’t divorced yet.”
“Yeah.” I lowered my head. “I’m sorry.”
She touched my knee. “Don’t be. It’s his fault, not yours.”
I looked at her fingers, still smudged from cleaning the spark plugs. Again, this strange blend of femininity and toughness seemed enchanting. “I guess I always hope people can change, you know, decide to reform. Maybe your father has a spark of … chivalry, I guess. We just have to find it and help it grow.”
“My dad?” Kelly rolled her eyes. “Get real. He’s so stubborn, he makes mules look compliant. To him, chivalry means not whistling at scantily clad women.”
I closed my eyes. The earlier comment about her dress latched on to my brain and wouldn’t let go. I had to ask about it. After a few seconds, I looked at her again. “Can I ask you one question?”
“As long as I’m spilling my guts, you might as well.”
I spoke softly, trying to convey a tone of sympathy. “That dress … the low-cut one. Did you wear it?”
Kelly tightened her clasped hands. Her cheeks flushed again as she whispered, “I wore it.”
“Because your dad made you wear it?”
Focusing on her lap, she shook her head. “To be honest, I liked it. I knew it was wrong to be recruiting bait, but I liked how I felt when I wore it. I liked the way Steven looked at me. But that changed in a hurry.”
“How?”
A tear slid toward her cheek. “During the summer, my father was playing an away game in his league, so I went out with some girlfriends to the mall in Des Moines, and I saw my mother in a restaurant with a guy I didn’t recognize.”
The tear dripped to her jeans, and her voice pitched higher. “She was wearing my dress, and the guy was staring at her. I wanted to scream, ‘Mother! What are you doing? Are you some kind of hooker?’ ”
She pointed at herself. “But then I realized that I was the hooker. I was the one trying to hook a guy into doing something by giving him a look at my …” She glanced at Francesca, who had begun to stir. “My body.”
“So what did you do?”
“When my mother got home and went to bed, I sneaked into her room and got my dress. I burned it the next morning.”
I drew my head back. “You burned it?”
“It was kind of ceremonial. I went to the backyard and laid it over some dried cornstalks along with this skimpy tank top I had and set it all on fire. Then I buried the ashes and stomped on their grave.” She let a thin smile turn her lips. “I swore out loud that I wasn’t going to be like my mother, so I started replacing my wardrobe bit by bit. And when I met you, it made me more determined than ever.”
I set a finger on my chest. “I made you determined? How?”
“Nathan, don’t make me get all sensitive and sappy. I’ve bared my soul enough for one day.”
“No problem. You don’t have to say another word.” I took her hand, raised it to my lips, and gave her a soft peck on her knuckles. “But you gave me a great compliment. Thank you.”
When I let go of her hand, her cheeks turned redder than ever, but she just stared at me and said nothing.
I peeked at Francesca as she snoozed on. “So people can change. Even your father.”
Kelly shook her head. “You don’t know him like I do.”
“How can you be so sure? He might — ”
“Nathan.” Kelly pointed. “Look at the mirror.”
I spun toward it. In the reflection, the box was open.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Kelly extended a hand toward the box. In the mirror, her fingers passed through the flipped-up lid and stopped at the top of the opening. At the real box, she pushed down on the lid, unable to penetrate. “That’s creepy.”
I slid close to the mirror and straddled the box with my knees on the floor. “Okay. Just like with the trunk, don’t look at the real box while I do this.”
“Gotcha.”
While staring at the reflection, I leaned forward and moved the real box out of my field of vision. I then guided my mirror hands over the bloodstained top, which opened away from my body, blocking a view of what was inside. I reached in and felt something flat, smooth, and glassy, just like the mirror, but as I slid my fingers farther down, they came across something more tactile and bulky.
I grasped the bulky object and, lifting carefully, placed it on the floor. Then, I picked up the box and turned it over, hoping to dump out anything left inside, but it seemed empty.
After closing my eyes for a brief moment, I set the box down and looked at it on the floor rather than in the mirror. As expected, the box was closed.
I pushed it out of the way. A mirror identical to the other one leaned against my thigh. My father’s camera was attached to the back, secured by layers of duct tape. I picked up the package and showed it to Kelly.
As she touched the silvery tape, her lips twitched. “Who would attach a camera to a mirror with duct tape?”
“Kind of strange, isn’t it?” I began peeling the tape back and rubbing glue residue from the mirror. Since I had the benefit of knowing what happened to her Earth Blue father, shouldn’t she have the same benefit? It would be tough, but she could handle it.
“The shotgun guy’s been quiet. He might be dead or passed out.” I motioned toward the hall with my thumb. “It’s probably safe to show you something you need to see.”
