by Sean Platt
I wish I knew if everyone was really thinking the stuff I think they’re thinking, but I can’t tell where my thoughts stop and theirs get started. Hearing their thoughts seems un-possible. Even if Will thinks it isn’t.
He was wondering if sad spiders filled the entire hotel when he heard Jimmy’s voice behind him. “Hey, little man, how you doing?”
“I’m okay,” Luca said.
“No, you aren’t,” Jimmy shook his head. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I was only trying to help, but I think I might have made things worse.”
“Don’t be silly.” Jimmy threw himself into one of the oversized chairs next to Luca. “It’s just that we’re all getting used to seeing all sorts of strange shh ... stuff we’re not used to seeing. And you gotta admit, that was pretty weird back there.” Jimmy leaned toward Luca. “Any idea how that happened?”
Luca shook his head.
“Well, it’s not like it matters anyway,” Jimmy said. “Hey, wanna play a game?”
“Sure! What kind of games do you have? Does this place have a Wii?”
Jimmy laughed. “Ha, I wish! I’d love a PS3 and some Uncharted 2 right now, but I’d definitely settle for a Wii. Hell, I’d settle for a DS! I found a PSP, but the batteries went dead the first day. Least I thought it was the batteries, but all the other batteries I tried went dead, too. So I figure it had to be the PSP is busted. So, no video games. But I did find a deck of Uno cards; wanna play that?”
Luca loved Uno. “Yes, please!”
“Be right back.” Jimmy said.
Jimmy returned two minutes later with the fattest deck of Uno cards Luca had ever seen.
“Why are there so many?” Luca asked.
“I found four decks in the hotel. Guess Uno keeps the kids quiet. I put all the decks together and made a super deck. More fun that way.”
Luca agreed.
“Okay, now I haven’t played in a long time,” Jimmy said, “So, you promise to go easy on me?”
Luca laughed, “I promise.”
Jimmy laid out two piles of seven cards as he glanced around the lobby. Will, John, and Desmond were still up front, and Mary was sitting at the bar. Paola walked toward the card game.
“Hi,” she said to Luca. “I’m Paola.”
“Nice to meet you,” Luca said.
Paola shook Luca’s hand then sat in a chair across from him, next to Jimmy.
“Can I play?”
“‘Course you can play,” Jimmy nodded, flicking seven cards into a third pile.
“Why so many cards?” She pointed at the top-heavy deck.
“It’s my super deck. Way more fun.”
Jimmy and Luca traded a smile.
The first game lasted just three and a half minutes. Paola had two Draw Fours, three Draw Twos and a Skip. No one stood a chance.
“This isn’t a hand, it’s a foot!” Jimmy said, looking at his cards.
Paola laughed. “You’re right; the super deck is more fun.”
She blew raspberries at Jimmy. He gathered the played cards, shuffled, slipped them into the super deck, then counted three fresh piles from the top.
“How are you feeling?” Jimmy asked Paola.
“Good,” she nodded. “A little weird.”
“You mean beyond going missing then comatose?” Jimmy smiled, then fanned his cards in front of his face with a satisfied nod. “You start,” he said to Paola.
She put a red 4 on top of the red 1. “I don’t remember anything that happened, even though I feel like I should. I know it was something important, and it’s like the memory is at the edge of my brain but I can’t quite touch it.”
“BAM!” Jimmy said, laying down a red Draw Two.
Luca drew two cards and said, “You don’t remember anything?”
Paola dropped a green Draw Two on top of Jimmy’s red one, then stuck her tongue out and turned to Luca. “No, not really. I sort of remember waking up the other night and walking toward the kitchen. But there’s nothing else until I woke up.”
“You were moaning like crazy in your sleep.” Jimmy drew two cards.
Luca played a green 6. “Do you remember me?”
The color drained from Paola’s face, then returned a moment later in a deeper flush. She nodded. “I do,” she said. “We were swinging. But you were younger.”
Luca nodded.
“You helped me, didn’t you?”
Luca nodded again. “I think so, but I don’t know how.”
Jimmy looked from Luca to Paola, shaking his head. “It’s like Inception in 4-D,” he said.
“I think that’s why everyone’s scared of me,” Luca said.
“They’re not scared of you!” Paola said, surprised. She looked at Jimmy. “Are they?”
“Well, I don’t know that anyone’s gonna be Luca for Halloween, but yeah, you missed some crazy stuff. We got a real magic show from junior grandpa here.”
Luca wished everyone would just play and stop talking about what happened.
“Yeah, when Boy Wonder walked in a half hour ago, he looked about the same age as the Wilson kid.”
“You mean the one with all the freckles?”
“I was gonna say the one whose face looks like it caught fire and someone tried to put it out with a fork, but yeah, same difference.”
“That’s mean, Jimmy.” Paola turned to Luca, then back to Jimmy. “The Wilson kid is 7.”
“I’m 8,” Luca said.
Paola shook her head and played her green 3. “That’s not possible. You’re taller than I am.”
“I’m telling you,” Jimmy said, throwing a green Skip on top of the pile, “a half hour ago he was a munchkin.”
“Uno!” Luca said, putting the red 3 on top of the green 1. “Can we talk about something else now?”
“Man, you can’t let it get to you,” Jimmy said. “We may not understand what happened, but whatever went down, you can obviously do cooler shit than any of us can. Seriously, I’d love to have someone make me five years older.”
“Jimmy! Don’t swear.”
“Call me Jim and I won’t,” he winked at Paola, then turned to Luca. “Anyway, embarrassing stuff happens to everyone. That’s where confidence comes from. It’s how you deal with it. And given the current world population, you might just have a chance at being the most confident kid in the world. Now,” he dropped a red Draw Two, “would you like to hear about a time I was embarrassed? I’ve got about a billion.”
Luca drew two cards and said, “Okay.”
Paola played a red Skip, Luca played a red 7. Jimmy started talking.
“So this happened in eighth-grade math. I had to go to the bathroom reaaaaal bad. And it wasn’t just draining pipe; I actually had to drop the boys at the pool, which I NEVER do at school if I can help it. My teacher, Mr. Mellakar, was a real jerk, partly because I gave him attitude, but mostly because he was born that way. Sometimes, he gave me detention for breathing, but whatever; I figured if I really had to go, I really had to go. So, I raised my hand and asked, but he just shook his head and told me I could wait until lunch. But that wasn’t gonna fly because the turtle was already poking out of its shell.”
“Ewww!” Paola made a face, and Luca giggled. Everyone kept dropping cards and drawing new ones while Jimmy went on.
“So, he finished drawing a chalk cylinder on the board, then asked us to figure the area and when he went to his desk, I got up and quietly asked him again. I told him I had to release the hounds and that it wasn’t gonna wait until lunch.”
“Did you actually say you had to release the hounds?” Paola asked.
Jimmy laughed. “No, I think I probably said Number Two. Anyways, he finally said okay, but he was sort of a jerk about it and told me I’d better hurry. Like I can control how long a shi … um, poop takes. So, I ran to the bathroom, but both stalls were taken. I had to do the crap dance for another five or six minutes, which felt like an hour. Finally, the stall opens, and I run inside. I sat down and
bombed the oval office, but it was coming out so fast, it was like I was making batter. Took a whole roll of toilet paper to clean myself, too.”
“This is way, way too much information,” Paola said making an ill face. She put a green 9 on top of the red 1.
Luca couldn’t stop giggling. He liked the way Jimmy talked, super-fast and excited. Dog Vader padded his way into the room and barked. Luca wasn’t sure if Vader liked, or didn’t like, the poop story.
Jimmy thought he played a yellow 6, but Paola said it was a 9, so he put down a green 7 instead. Luca put down a green 4.
Jimmy continued. “So, I get back to class, but it’s like 20 minutes later. Soon as I walk in, Mr. Mellakar says, ‘So you’re FINALLY back!’ then asks me what took me so long. I mumbled that I had to go Number Two and he said, ‘I can’t hear you,’ then kept making me repeat it until everyone in class was laughing, including Amy Ensile, who I really, really wanted to ask to the end-of-the-year dance. But I couldn't even look her in the eye after that.”
“Why?” Paola said. “Everyone poops.” She played a blue 4.
“Yeah,” Jimmy said, “but not everyone gets laughed at in front of the entire class. I got called Lava Cake for the rest of that year and all summer. Only thing that saved me was high school, and doing some other stupid thing which earned me another nickname.” He put down a blue 2.
“What name was that?” Paola asked.
“Um, probably not a story for the kiddos.”
Luca put down a Draw Four, then said, “Uno!”
Paola grumbled from behind her smile, then drew four cards and gestured toward her mom, deep in discussion with Will, sitting at the bar. “What do you think they’re talking about?”
Jimmy looked at Luca’s face and the single card waving just below his mouth. Jimmy’s hand hovered over the deck, then returned to his own cards, where he pulled another blue 2 and set it on top.
“Not sure,” Jimmy said. “Probably how we’re going to get out of here, and where we’re gonna go next. You know, the stuff we don’t get to have an opinion about. What do you think?”
Paola studied her mom, then Will. “I think they’re talking about me. I think Will knows something, and I don’t think my mom wants to believe it.”
Luca played his final card and smiled. They couldn't see his sad spiders, and had no idea that Paola was kind of right. Luca knew what Will knew, that something bad was still gonna happen. Only difference was, Luca didn’t know what the bad thing would be. He suspected that Will did, though.
Fifty-Two
Mary Olson
Any plans they had on leaving the Drury Inn were nixed when the creatures began multiplying outside. On the advice of Will, the group decided to wait. For what, though, nobody knew. Will said they should wait until the next morning. When asked why, he couldn’t elaborate beyond a feeling. John insisted that things wouldn’t get any better and they ought to leave immediately, as planned. Desmond, however, said that since Will and Luca were driven by dreams to fly from California to there to save a girl they didn’t even know, Will was obviously tapped into something that none of the Warson Woods group understood.
John wasn’t happy about it, but since everyone else agreed, he kept his grumbling to a minimum ... so far.
Though the bleakers had let Will and Luca pass into the hotel unharmed, nobody was willing to take the chance that they’d allow them to leave with such ease. For one, the creatures sounded as if they’d grown angrier. Their shrieks grew louder, their clicking more incessant. And in some cases, when one of the group passed by a window or the front doors, the creatures hissed at them.
Since they weren’t going anywhere, Mary and the group decided to kill some time while getting to know their new guests.
Mary sat in the bar sipping a soda as she watched Paola playing cards with the boys, a smile on the girl’s face, almost as if she’d managed to temporarily shed the horror of the last few days. Laughter rolled in a circle, from Jimmy to Luca to Paola and back to Jimmy. It was impossible to tell her daughter had been at the edge of death a few hours before.
Paola hadn’t died. But something had happened.
Paola didn’t remember much, though. She remembered her father calling her out of the hotel in her sleep. But the man wasn’t really her father. She thought she’d been dreaming, but also knew she wasn’t. Something visited her. Paola knew it. And Mary sensed it. Something had invaded her child’s soul. And while Luca had somehow saved her, Mary couldn’t be certain that whatever happened wouldn’t happen again. Or that the danger was gone.
Once your child is threatened, especially by something so mysterious, Mary figured, you never really feel completely safe again.
Paola’s laughter rang through the room; beautiful music Mary had been longing to hear. She was happy to see her smiling, covering her mouth as Jimmy flaunted his loud personality. Jimmy was such a talker, but the last several days had worn on his voice. It was nice to see him stepping into his natural rhythm again. The group could certainly use the humor.
Mary wished she wasn’t so suspicious of Luca. But she felt hot, and the guilt was a parka wrapped around her. He had dropped from the heavens and rescued her daughter with barely a word. She should feel nothing but grateful.
And she was, but grateful didn’t soothe the knowing inside her. The knowing that said something was horribly off about the boy. And not just the aging. Sure, that was weirder than Koontz, but she could almost accept that. Life didn’t come with free lunches, and perhaps the price of saving Paola was paid in age. It was amazing the boy had been willing to pay it. That should have been enough for Mary.
But it wasn’t.
Her instincts said something was wrong. Really wrong.
“Mind if I sit?” Will said, taking a seat next to her.
“Of course not.”
Will smiled then sat. “Long morning?”
“You could say that.” Mary couldn’t help but smile. Something was undeniably warm about the old man. Wild, but sweet. Her instincts said shelter.
“Looking forward to leaving, I imagine,” Will said.
“Yeah, I don’t even care what happens. I just don’t want it to happen here.”
“Where’s home for you?”
“Here, Missouri. You?”
“Everywhere, anywhere where there’s interesting people. I never stay long enough to get bored, though.”
Mary changed the subject to the one she’d been wanting to ask about since he had arrived with Luca. “You said you had dreams about us. What happened in the dreams? How did you know to trust them?”
Will looked shy. “I can’t really say what happened. Long story short, whenever I tell people what happens in my dreams, it never turns out good. It’s best if I can just do what I can to try and help as much as possible.”
“But you can tell me what you saw with Paola, what already happened, right?”
“I wish I could. But in her case, the details were vague. It’s not even a matter of me not wanting to tell you, I’m really unable beyond a feeling.”
“What was the feeling?” Mary asked, leaning so far on the edge of her seat, she might fall at the slightest jolt.
“There was something bad in her.” Will said, “Something that’s bigger than all this stuff going on. But I also knew that Luca could help her.”
Mary stared at Will, then over at Luca, not sure what to say.
“He’s a good kid, Mary. The best. He gave his soul a beating for Paola, and it left him with a temporary scar. You’re not sure how to feel about this, are you?”
Mary looked down, ashamed. “I don’t know why, but I feel like something’s wrong with the whole thing, and hate that I do.” She looked up, a tear sliding to her chin. “I know what he did for her, and for me, but something feels so ugly.”
“Look at it like this.” Will leaned forward. “Whatever happened between Luca and Paola helped her, right?”
Mary nodded.
“So, if there wa
s something terrible inside Paola and now there isn’t, that means Luca took it away. So where do you think the terrible thing went?”
Mary gasped. “Into him? That’s terrible.”
“I think that’s why you’re sensing something bad in him. But he’s gonna be fine. Trust me. He’ll process it. If he weren’t able to, we wouldn’t be here right now. He’ll be good as new in no time. Then you’ll see what I see, and I’ll get to hear you tell me I was right.”
Will winked, and Mary smiled.
“It’s all just so hard to believe,” Mary said. “I mean, how do you even know any of this? How did you know to trust your dreams and come here?”
“I don’t, but I tend to see things a lot of people don’t.” Will said, “Most people see things from their own limited viewpoint. And that makes it hard to accept things like what we’ve got going on here. But when you consider possibilities, the things we don’t know, and keep an open mind, weird things like this, oddly enough, are a bit easier to grasp. Are common dreams really harder to believe than any of this?” He waved his hands toward the parking lot and its lurking monstrosities.
“No. Not at all. Much easier, actually.” She sat quietly, then asked, “Any theories on the aging?”
Will scratched his head. “Sure, I got theories. Which one you want? I got the one you won’t like, the one you’ll like even less, and the one that probably won’t bother you at all, which also happens to be the one I’d say is most likely anyhow.”
“Let’s go with that one,” Mary smiled uncomfortably then shifted in her seat.
“You ever heard of rapid aging diseases in children?”
“Not really.” Mary shook her head. “I mean, I think I saw something on Oprah, but I’m going to sound like an idiot if I try to tell you what I know.”
“There’s a disorder called Progeria. It’s a genetic mutation, hereditary but just barely. Kids who get Progeria rarely live past their mid-teens or early 20s. And most of the minutes spent between birth and death are misery. The disorder’s rare, but indiscriminate, hitting both sexes and every ethnic group. There are other accelerated aging diseases, but what makes Progeria different is that while other diseases are caused by DNA damage in the body’s cells, Progeria is caused by a gene mutation. With me so far?”
