by Russell Moon
“It’s a conditional hmm. I still don’t understand everything I think I should, Marcus. I still don’t understand all the details of the accident and that night and all.”
“I know,” I say. “I haven’t done a real good job of straightening you out. I think maybe the whole thing has me confused. Just let me work it out, let me think for a few days and piece things together, and I’ll be able to make more sense.”
“Hmm,” she says.
“Please, Eleanor,” I say. “Don’t you trust me?”
When I say this, I give her hand a gentle tug. Against her nature she stops there, still in the scary woods, tugs me back, then examines my face.
“I trust you. I have always trusted you,” she says. “But something is amiss. Something is making my hair stand on end. Now you tell me, Marcus Aurelius, that I have nothing to worry about. You tell me that there are no dark secrets to this story that you are not telling me about. You tell me that I can completely trust you. Tell me that, Marcus. Can you tell me that?” I have just been told, by someone who supposedly knows what he is talking about, that I cannot even trust myself. And even though he may be the most untrustworthy factor of all, my insides tell me he is damn right about that. I killed a snake with my bare hands not twenty-four hours ago. I attempted to do the same to my lifelong friend—my dog, my familiar, my guardian angel.
And though I do not remember my hands ever being on that one’s jugular, there is another far more serious death out there with my name on it.
Can I be trusted?
This is Eleanor, though. This is Eleanor.
“You can trust me, Eleanor,” I say.
And I say it with all my might.
She squeezes my hand, gives me a strange, questioning look, and agrees to trust me.
But it is not as automatic as it once was.
“It’s canceled,” Eleanor says, hanging up the phone.
“Thanks,” I say, mounting the stairs to my bedroom, to lose myself in a blissfully natural game of Brainwave.
The phone rings ten seconds after she has hung up.
“Yes, I did cancel. Well, Marcus and I just felt that that was a little bit premature. We decided”—here she whirls up toward where I remain frozen and eavesdropping on the staircase and gives me a brave but not too convincing thumbs-up—“that the better course was just a few days rest and care and feeding from his mother. Then, when he’s feeling more himself, we’ll see where we go from there.”
Now a clammy feeling runs up and down and all over my skin while she listens attentively to the voice at the other end.
Whatever it is, say no, I’m thinking, please, please, just say no.
“No, I don’t think so,” she says.
Yes. Go, Eleanor.
“I just think it’s a little bit soon. Well, I suppose …” She looks at me a little harder, in an analytical kind of way. “Tomorrow evening might be possible. Sure. Actually, it would probably do him a lot of good to get out and see some people, especially with him staying out of school for a bit.”
Oh, Eleanor, I think. Oh, this is going to be the worst. I stomp my way up the stairs, like a little kid who just doesn’t want to go to somebody’s house for dinner. Although the stakes are a great deal higher than that.
I hear her finish up the details, her voice getting more singsongy as she gets more into the idea.
“Marcus,” she calls up the stairs, as though she’s about to deliver the best possible news. I power up my game system and pack Chuck in around my feet.
I am never leaving the familiar comfort of Chuck’s company again if I can help it.
“Yeah,” I say.
“We’re going to dinner tomorrow night.”
She sounds happier and more unburdened than she has in a while.
“We’re invited to Dr. Spence’s. You’re going to see Eartha.”
Right. Well. No rest for the wicked.
I resist the urge to resist. Because Eleanor is pushed to her limit right now, and maybe because it’s time to suss the coven out once and for all. If I am watchful enough while I’m there, maybe I’ll be able to separate the fact from the fiction. Work things out for myself, like my father and I talked about.
But for now, please take me down to nowhere, Brainwave. Take me quick, and take me deep.
CHAPTER
4
I have not felt quite so normal since I was.
Normal.
Which, I must say, was a long, long time ago indeed.
Last evening was spent in my room, in my world, playing holy hell out of Brainwave, as if I had never left it. It was a pleasure being back in a world where everybody has some kind of magic and where every step you take is into a completely unknown level of an unknown universe, where you have no friends and no shortage of enemies and every move of the joystick is another foray into the realm of life and death and whatever it is beyond death.
It was all so warm and comforting. So familiar—like returning to a gang of trusted old friends.
I even felt so rejuvenated that I took charge of fixing dinner afterward. Since, on the other side of the wall and the other side of the reality equation, Eleanor was busy getting caught up on some dry and incomprehensible anthropology research distillation to impress Dr. Spence with. She was, like me, in some quarter of safe geek heaven.
That was last night.
This morning we got up and started the same thing, doing our own things, all over again.
I’ve been existing in a state of weird, antisocial bliss. School is in but I am out, and that is perfectly all right with everyone who matters. Chuck is being a dog, following his master everywhere and lovingly eating his scraps; Eleanor is being a mother, expressing just enough mammalian concern to be comforting but not enough to be a bother; and I am being a lazy-ass teenager, moping around doing nothing but eating, sleeping, watching TV, playing video games, eating, watching TV, and playing video games.
I am completely sated and sedated by the time we are supposed to go out for our relaxing dinner.
“Maybe we can skip it,” I say to Eleanor as we walk down the dirty little road in the direction of the Spences’ house. It hasn’t rained in who knows how long, and we kick up dust that clings to our legs as we walk.
“We cannot skip it,” she says. “But he can.”
She is pointing at Chuck, who is being perfectly well mannered as he tags along behind.
“Oh, you can’t send him home,” I say. “Please.”
“Mar-cus,” she moans. “You don’t bring a dog to dinner at someone’s house.”
“You do if the dog belongs to the mentally imbalanced teenage dinner guest who needs his dog. You don’t want me to go all imbalanced again, do you, Eleanor? You don’t want me to relapse in front of our hosts and everything, do you?”
She sighs, grips the bottle of red wine she’s carrying by the neck, and wields it like a club.
“He stays outside,” she says to me. Then she wheels on him with even more menace. “You stay outside. And don’t think I don’t know that you know exactly what I’m saying. Spare me the dog eyes.”
Eleanor quickens her step, and I look at Chuck and he looks at me like, is she onto us, or what?
She is not. What she is is anxious. She really wants this dinner now, wants to mix, wants to have some kind of a life. I would love for her to have a life and am ready to do all to give it to her. But what life will this be? Is she—great vicious irony after the life she has already endured—about to cast her lot with yet another band of witches? Maybe they’re the good guys, or maybe they’re the bad guys. But she wouldn’t care which witch, if witch they be, since her hatred of the whole scene is pretty thorough.
Still, she’s clueless where Dr. Spence is concerned. So it’s down to me to suss out who he really is. Who they really are. And to figure out whether to believe only part of my father’s story—the part about my dark side, which is undeniable—or all of it. What other choice do I have?
We ar
e standing at the door. Eleanor has just pressed the bell and, though only the screen door is closed, we hear nothing. Nevertheless, Eartha is there before us like a wisp of smoke.
Like a fairly fantastic-looking wisp of smoke in a billowy, sunset-orange gauze dress and thin-strap sandals made of, I think …
“Snakeskin,” she says, looking down at them as she holds the door open for us. “Do you like them?”
“They’re gorgeous,” Eleanor says.
“I made them myself,” Eartha says.
“Did you?” Eleanor says with genuine awe.
“Grrr,” Chuck says to her and her sandals, insuring, if there lingered any doubt, that he will not be coming inside.
I am required to give him a token slap on the snout, which I do, with apologies to the hostess.
“Oh, that’s all right,” Eartha says. “It’s probably that the skin is so fresh.” She waves us in past her and lets the door smack in Chuck’s face. “Actually, I made them out of my own snake. Don’t know if you ever met my snake, but … anyway, she seems to have met with some foul play and, well, you know what they say.”
She stops. As if we all really do know what they say. She realizes we don’t and helps us out.
“When life gives you lemons … make yourself a nice pair of snakeskin sandals.”
She gives me half a smile. It gives me a chill. As if she were the killer of pets, not me.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Eleanor says. “But you are quite talented, just the same.”
“Thank you for saying so,” Eartha says.
“She gets it from her father,” says Dr. Spence, who sweeps into the room looking like a safari tourist. He too has sandals on, with beige socks and a khakicolored outfit of shorts and a shirt with pockets all over the place. His fleshy, hairless arms and some of his chest are visible, and I think he may be as white as nature allows. His round spectacles are half steamed from the heat, and his helmet of thick white hair adds to the overall blanched effect.
He’s an example of what Eleanor has described as academia geekus sheikus, which is supposed to be a look so superhumanly beyond the reaches of fashion that it attains a certain kind of cool. Were he not a college professor, I would think his appearance meant he wanted us to leave.
I make an effort to stop staring at him. I look over at his daughter, who is smiling at me in an unsettling, unreadable way. I look to Eleanor, who unsettles me even further by seeming to be taking in Spence approvingly.
“Come sit down,” he says, leading us straight in to his brightly lit dining room. We pass two ceiling fans and numerous open windows along the way and finally seat ourselves beneath one more whirring, wavering fan with blades so big it could be an inverted helicopter. The house is nothing like Arj’s—nothing like what I’d expect a witch house to be, from past experience. Not fancy, not even air-conditioned, and thus not immune to the oppressive heat.
“You were missed at school today,” Eartha says, edging her chair a couple inches closer to mine.
“Was I?” I ask with real surprise.
“Sure, all the guys are anxious to get you back.”
Chuck begins barking like a mad thing out on the porch.
“Stop it, Chuck,” I call. He does not stop it. He gets worse. Eleanor is mortified and points silently toward the front door.
He does not stop until I get there, at which point he becomes like a statue again. He is sitting up, loyal and obedient, right at the screen door, staring at me, beseeching me.
“What are you beseeching?” I ask. “What exactly are you getting at?” Though I know full well his mistrust of these people matches mine. Only he doesn’t know I am on top of it.
He just continues to stare.
I leave him and return to find the trio digging into corn on the cob, lobster, steamers, and corn bread, none of which was here when I left a minute ago. Not even the scent.
I look at Eleanor, who seems delighted. So I join in.
Despite what I had anticipated, the dinner has a fairly relaxed feel to it. Conversation between Dr. Spence and Eleanor flows pretty freely between the activities of opening clams, dipping them in clam water, dipping them in butter, eating them, wiping hands on paper towels, and going back for more. There are two big bowls of steamers for sharing, and one huge lobster and one huge cob on each plate. Corn bread is cut in brick-sized chunks and stacked in the center of the table in a basket covered over with a checkerboard cloth.
It is a potentially messy meal. But we each have our own large finger bowl full of hot water. They are crystal, I now notice. All the bowls are crystal: the ones with butter, steamers, dipping water. Even the bowls for our discarded shells are crystal, and the water glasses, and the wine glasses, crystal—the fine stuff, like somebody’s uncle uses to make music with at wedding receptions.
“Waterford,” Eartha says, noticing my noticing.
“Oh,” I say. “Lovely stuff. Very nice.”
The table, it seems, is covered with the stuff. With hundreds of little crystal-rimmed pools.
There are banks of chunky, yellow, round tower candles with extra-dancey flames. Some arranged on the wall opposite us, some behind the adults, some on the sideboard, and a bunch more on the rough oak mantle over the stone fireplace behind Eartha and me. There are flame-shaped lightbulbs as well, weaving above us in the light fixture of the giant, swaying ceiling fan.
The light is caught everywhere. It is picked up by the various waters on the table in front of us, picked up more so by each perfect cut in each piece of crystal, picked up and sparkled and tossed back to be picked up again and shot in still another direction for everlasting, everdashing light. Small gold laser lights everywhere.
Dr. Spence’s glasses are completely fogged now, as if he’s got no eyes at all. He is unbothered. Eleanor is unaware.
And he’s doing it. The haunted music thing, playing gently on the edges of the glass bowls and glasses, barely touching them, sometimes not even touching them, creating these amazing mad, crystal melodies almost too soft, too high, too sweet for the human ear.
Chuck goes absolutely nuts again, and I jump up and run out to the porch.
“What, what, what?” I demand.
He sits there, just like before, staring at me.
“Chuck, buddy,” I say, “I don’t know if you’re trying to help me here, going off like a broken smoke alarm every five minutes, but you’re not helping me here.”
I step quickly back to the dining room.
“Don’t you like lobster?” Eartha asks, looking at my plate and gesturing at the various shellfish graveyards at other places around the table.
The crystal music still plays, little lights zig everywhere like a firefly ballet, and Eleanor looks absolutely entranced. She hangs on every word Dr. Spence is saying about anthropology, music, Blackwater, the L.A. Lakers, and everything else he is an expert on, which appears to be … everything else.
“I love lobster,” I say distractedly.
“So when are you coming back?” Eartha asks.
“I am back,” I say.
“I mean, when are you coming back to school. We really miss you. I really miss you.”
This is a cold drink of water. I snap back, from falling into the music and light. I turn and face her.
“I don’t know,” I say firmly. Then I lean a little closer, look her more coldly in the eyes. “I don’t know when. I don’t know if.”
It is difficult to get these people off balance, but I appear to have done it.
“What are you saying?” she asks. “You are back. You are here. You went to do what you needed to do, and now you are back, Marcus. Time to join us again.”
“I didn’t join you before. Like I said, I’m not really a team guy.”
“Please, Marcus,” she says, exasperated, but careful at the same time. “Time does matter, you know. And I do wish you would stop toying with me.”
“Jesus,” I say, shaking my head. “Toying with you? I’m the jack-in-the-
box here, getting cranked by everybody.”
“Really,” she says, businesslike. “Okay, so, did you find him?”
“Excuse me?” I let my mouth hang open to emphasize my shock at the boldness of her.
“Come on, Marcus. Did you locate him? Or did he locate you?”
“I thought you all knew everything.”
“Well we do,” she hisses. “And we don’t. What happened, Marcus, when you went back there? What did you find out?”
“Why are you so nervous?” I ask. “Why don’t you act so certain of everything like you were before I found … before I went home?”
“You’ve been with him. You have been with him, we know this. What did he—?”
“I wasn’t aware I needed to file a report,” I say.
“You’re … of course not, you are merely—”
I suddenly worry that Eleanor might be hearing this. But I look, and I see she’s not. It is as if she is isolated in a glass bubble. I could throw a pebble across the table at her and it would bounce back to me.
“And what’s wrong with my mother?” I ask her.
“Nothing,” she says, straight-faced, “I think she’s a wonderful woman.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Calm down,” Eartha says, putting a hand on my hand. “I’d say she’s just got a little crush on my dad. He is very charming, you know.”
Chuck practically starts spitting up organs, the way he’s barking. I get right up to go to him.
Eartha says, “Somebody really ought to shut that thing up once and for all,” in such a pointed way and with such intent it freezes me.
I stop, spin on her, and feel myself quake so intensely it makes my vision all but useless. The entire room is strobing on me as I try to focus in on her.
I am going to kill her, or we are. I can feel the me that would resist being folded and folded and tucked far away from the controls. For the most part, I do not mind. Or at least, I mind less than I ever have. Whoever we are, our hands are raised, ready to do whatever it is we can do, and it feels good.
Eartha jumps up at the sight of my transformed expression and scurries like a terrified animal behind her father who, for once, is shaken out of his mystic mumbo jumbo and jumps to his feet. He holds his hands out in a calming gesture.
