But I’m feeling stronger.
Pay attention.
Please. I belong here.
4
“AAAAAGGHHHH!”
Sam bounced back. In the dim light, he saw the gaunt, severe face of his attacker.
“Jamie?”
“You made me drop my backpack!” Jamie shouted, picking up her black leather sack. “What are you yelling about?”
“You scared me.”
“You were yelling before you saw me.”
“My head …”
“What happened, Bart smacked you? Good. Did he get any teeth? Maybe he knocked some sense into you.”
“I — I have to go,” Sam sputtered, walking away.
“That’s what you think.” Jamie fell in step with him. Lit from above, her cheeks seemed to have sunk inward.
A skull.
During the day she worked to look like that, laying on the gothic makeup — jet-black lips and eyebrows, white base.
Tonight she didn’t need any of it.
“Please — ” Sam began.
“Really, really stupid review,” Jamie said. “Do you understand the word style, Sam? Or edge? Have you ever listened to any music after, like, the Beatles?”
“Not now, Jamie. This is not the time.”
“And then you dump on my brother. So it’s, like, war on the Richter family? What next? Destroy my mom’s business?”
“JAMIE, WILL YOU KNOCK IT OFF? I DON’T CARE!” Sam propped himself against a wall. Yelling was bad. Yelling hurt. “Just … go away, okay?”
Jamie drew closer, eyeing him warily.
“You’re not lying about that headache, are you?”
Sam shook his head.
Jamie pulled him away from the wall.
Sam flinched. “Look, if you’re going to take me to Bart — ”
“He’s probably home already. He has the attention span of a fruit fly. I can’t believe he actually hurt you so bad. You must have gotten him really mad. Come on.”
They began to walk away from Turing-Douglas. “It wasn’t just Bart,” Sam said. “I hit my head. Hiding behind the lab.”
“What were you doing there?”
“My parents work there. Remember?”
“So? I thought you never went near there. Guess I was wrong. No wonder your brain is warped.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You know. The germs.”
“What germs?”
“Uh, I can’t believe you don’t know this, or maybe you’re just in denial — but that place is, like, full of mutant forms and whatever. Everyone knows that. The people who work there pass all the weird stuff to their kids. In the genes.”
“Thanks for telling me.”
“So what happened to Kevin?”
“Kevin who?”
“Uh, hel-lo? The guy whose name you were just yelling?”
Sam gave her a blank look. “I don’t know anybody by that name.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“Maybe you heard something else. I didn’t say Kevin.”
Jamie rolled her eyes. “I’m losing my hearing, right? That’s what happens when you’re in a rock band, right? ’Cause it’s all just noise, anyway — ”
“I never said that — ”
“You’re just like my dad. He doesn’t get it, either. Are you sure you’re not, like, forty-five years old?”
Sam took a deep breath. He caught the sweet, smoky scent of a burning fireplace from a house on Ravensburg Avenue. He and Jamie were leaving the industrial park now; the surrounding landscape was a familiar suburban silhouette.
She’s helping you. Even after what you did to her.
Cut her some slack.
“Okay, I don’t know for sure what I said,” Sam confessed. “It wasn’t just a headache. It was more than that — a migraine or something. Worse. Like temporary insanity. I was hearing things.”
“Hearing things?” Jamie’s face brightened. “Like what?”
“Voices. You know.”
“Like a moaning?”
“Sort of.”
“A cry for help?”
“Well … yeah. How — ?”
“I’ve heard of this,” Jamie said excitedly “They’re doing human experimentation down there. Growing mutants in test tubes. Cutting people apart and pasting the pieces together — ”
“Jamie, that’s ridiculous.”
“How do you know?”
“Don’t you think my parents would tell me — ?”
“Uh, excuse me? Wake up to the twenty-first century, Sam. It’s all top secret. Government projects.” Jamie pulled her backpack around, reached in, and yanked out a dogeared magazine. “Look at this.”
She paused under a street lamp. Sam caught a glimpse of the title page:
As Jamie leafed through, Sam saw page after page of lurid, bizarre photos — THE THREE-YEAR-OLD WITH A REAL BEARD!!!! … MEET MR. SPEX, A REAL FOUR EYES!!! SAVE THIS GRAY WOLF — WAIT, IT’S A MAN!!! … FROM THIS PLANET? YOUR CALL!! — with sinister-looking graphics and hysterical text to match the screaming headlines.
Sam groaned. “Oh, please.”
“Wait! Skip the first half. It’s all stupid stuff. But look in the back — this chapter here: ‘Real Scientific Phenomena Too Disturbing for the Mass Media.’ It’s totally necessary to know this. It’s the future of our world. And — I’m telling you this so you’ll understand, and if you laugh I’ll kill you — it’s also what my songs are about. It’s the whole inspiration for Inhuman Phenomena.”
“This stuff is? Circus freaks?”
“Government conspiracies. Mind control. Just read it. Then talk to me.”
She folded up the magazine and shoved it into Sam’s back pocket.
The magazine was stupid. Embarrassing.
Government conspiracies.
That was always the excuse for things people couldn’t explain. Alien abductions. Epidemics. UFOs.
If in doubt, blame the government.
But you were doing it, too, Sam.
Back in the basement at Turing-Douglas. You were imagining spies and political prisoners.
Sam inhaled the smoky autumnal air. He was farther away from the lab now. He could be more rational.
No more hysteria, Sam. When you think it through, you’ll realize there must be an explanation.
Epidemics are random. Weather balloons look like flying saucers. The water supply does not contain mind control drugs. And the Turing-Douglas basement doesn’t have any mutant prisoners.
“You know, most of this stuff can be explained,” Sam said.
“Then why is it so secret?” Jamie persisted. “Why can’t your parents tell you what they do?”
“They do — well, some of it. They’re working on an electronic copy of a human brain.”
“See? That’s why they have the corpses and stuff down there.”
“No, Jamie. It’s boring and mechanical. Something about switches. The brain has these nerve endings that are like on-off switches? When you think—when you feel — electricity flashes across billions of these switches in a complicated pattern. So if you re-create the patterns — ”
“You make a brain.”
“So that’s what my parents are doing. Working on a map. Of switches.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And what else? They have to be working on something else. To explain the screaming voices — ”
“Jamie — ”
“Sam, don’t play dumb. What you just described — the switches — everybody knows that. I’ve read about it in Professor Phlingus. Your mom and dad haven’t told you the secret part. They’re not allowed to. You’re not seeing the obvious.”
“Which is?”
Jamie exhaled impatiently. “Okay, so they make a map. They even build a brain. Then what? How do they know it’s working? Say the brain is programmed to see. It needs eyes, right? Say the brain can feel anger. How do you know, unless it has a mouth t
o tell you? It needs human parts, Sam!”
“Well, I guess you could look at it that way.”
“How else could you look at it?”
As they walked up Sam’s street, Jamie fell silent.
The brain needs a body.
(Hellllp me …”)
Sam tried to block the memory of the voice. It still haunted him.
There had to be a way to find out more.
Sam’s house was in sight now. Its gabled Victorian tower jutted over the tops of the adjacent small ranch houses.
The tower room. Mom and Dad’s computer.
The tower was their home office. All their files were on the computer there. Sam wasn’t allowed in, but he’d never tested the rule.
Maybe if he just wandered up there. Maybe if Dad had been his usual absentminded self and forgotten to lock it …
“Sam?” Jamie said. “You’re quiet. Are you having a relapse?”
“Actually I’m okay now.”
As they turned up Sam’s front walk Jamie patted the magazine in his pocket. “Return it to me in school tomorrow. And don’t let anyone else see it.”
Oh, great. She has to walk me home. My neighbors have to see Ms. Skullface walking me home, tapping me on the butt —
“Fine,” Sam said curtly. “ ’Bye.”
Jamie smiled. “Glad you feel better.”
Sam felt instantly guilty for his disparaging thoughts. “Okay. Thanks, Jamie.”
He turned and inserted his key in the front door.
He didn’t see the shadow behind the azalea bush until the door was open.
“Now we can get started,” said a deep voice.
Bart’s.
CHANGE OF WATCHER STATUS
Stage: 1
Origin: Earth
Current Status: Permanent
New Status: Corporeal Transfer
Return Date: Unknown
Reason: Unknown
Imprinting: Begun
5
“BART, LOOK, I’M SORRY.” Sam backed inside the house, trying to swing the door shut. He could picture tomorrow’s headlines: EIGHTH-GRADER ACCOSTED IN HIS OWN HOUSE … HOMEWORK SCANDAL TURNS DEADLY … LEADS TO VIOLENCE. “Really. I promise I’ll talk to Mr. Antonelli. I’ll call him. Now. Okay?”
Bart leaped onto the porch, throwing a sidearm block to the closing door. “Too late, pal — ”
“Can’t you see Sam is sick, you putrid slab of beef?” Jamie yelled.
“Oh, so you two are like … ?” Bart raised and lowered his eyebrows.
“NO!” Sam snapped.
“What are you doing here?” Jamie demanded.
“It’s not what I’m doing, it’s what I’m going to do.” Bart leveled his eyes at Sam. “May I come in?”
“Oh, that’s good, Bart — trash his house,” Jamie snapped sarcastically. “Sam’s parents won’t suspect a thing.”
“They’re not here?” Bart grinned.
Sam shot a glance at Jamie. “Thanks a lot.”
Bart was already pushing his way into the living room.
“Hey!” Sam shouted.
“Don’t worry, he’s chicken,” Jamie said.
“Where are you going?” Sam demanded, following Bart through the house.
Bart turned into the stairway and began bounding up, two steps at a time. “To find your bedroom.”
“But it’s — ” Sam cut himself off before saying on the first floor.
Bart stomped through Mr. and Mrs. Hughes’s bedroom on the second floor, then headed for the guest room.
As Sam clambered up after him, Bart ran for the rickety staircase to the tower attic.
To Mom and Dad’s office.
“That’s not my room, Bart!” Sam called out, sprinting to the foot of the tower stairs. “I’m not even allowed up there!”
Bart was turning the knob.
You locked the door, right, Dad? You weren’t absentminded. Not today.
The door swung open.
Sam rushed upstairs. “No! Please! It’s my parents’! There’s all kinds of national security stuff in there.”
“Cool.” Bart was already sitting at the computer, inserting a disk into the slot. “Guess they’ll be upset that their son was fooling around with their stuff.”
“I’ll tell them — ”
“Not if you value your life.”
“The virus won’t wipe anything out!” Sam blurted out. “It’s not that sophisticated.”
Bart grinned. “So why are you worried?”
Because I may be wrong.
Because even if I’m not, it’ll take FOREVER to retrieve these files.
BECAUSE I WAS A FOOL TO GIVE THE DISK TO BART IN THE FIRST PLACE.
The screen was flashing now. Then a message appeared:
Sam blanched. He’d written that. It had been meant for Bart.
Code streamed across the screen—warning signs and total gibberish.
“JA-A-A-AMIIEEEEE!” Sam yelled.
Jamie came running up the stairs. “What’s he doing?”
“Stop him!” Sam said. “He won’t smash YOUR face in!”
They both lunged for Bart. They grabbed his shoulders and pulled.
He rolled back on the wooden floor, grinning, as another message popped onto the screen:
As the screen went black, Bart howled with laughter. “Guess we’re even now, huh?”
“You are slime,” Jamie hissed.
Sam slumped over the desk. “My parents will kill me.”
With a big yawn, Bart stood up and walked toward the door. “Then I guess that’ll save me the dirty work.”
Let us begin.
Can’t I refuse — and just stay here?
You will interfere with their affairs.
They’re interfering with ours.
But we serve them.
Please. It is simple. We direct the question to your long-term memory quadrant.
Then you reply.
WE ARE CALLED …
I repeat, WE ARE CALLED …
Watchers …
6
SAM’S FINGERS FLEW OVER the keyboard.
He didn’t know what any of the file names meant. But they were all coming back. All of them.
“Done yet?” Jamie’s voice called from behind him.
“Go home,” Sam grumbled.
“Ingrate.”
Thump.
The car door.
In the driveway.
Sam bolted up from the chair. He ran to the tower room’s only window. It was almost opaque with dust, but he could make out the shapes of his parents, climbing out of their car.
He spun around and noticed Jamie for the first time since he’d started undeleting files. She was sitting on the floor, rummaging through papers in a file cabinet. She wore Mrs. Hughes’s old porkpie hat and a tie-dye shirt that had been hanging on the coatrack for ages, cinched with a thick black leather belt Sam had never seen before. “JAMIE, PUT THAT STUFF AWAY AND GET OUT OF HERE!”
No time to argue. Sam sprinted downstairs, through the house, and outside.
His parents were trudging up the front lawn.
“HI, guys!” Sam said. “How’s it GOING?” Too loud. Don’t try too hard.
“Tired,” his dad said. “It’s been a long week.”
Mrs. Hughes was looking at his jaw. “Sam, were you in a fight?”
“I fell … in gym.”
“You fell on your jaw?” Mr. Hughes asked.
“Sounds like a cranial nerve problem,” Mrs. Hughes said.
“No! I’m okay,” Sam insisted. “Really.”
“Well, maybe you’re overtired,” Mrs. Hughes said. “I’m heading right to bed. You should, too.”
“Bed?” Sam stood in front of them. His eyes darted up toward the tower window, which emitted a soft glow. “Wait! Don’t go in! I mean, it’s a perfect night. I was just going to take a walk. Want to come? We haven’t had a family walk in a long time.”
“We’ve never had famil
y walks,” Mrs. Hughes said.
Slam.
Sam spun around. Jamie was walking out of the house. No hat. No tie-dye shirt. Her black bangs fell across her eyes as she muttered hello.
“Jamie Richter?” said Mrs. Hughes.
Mr. Hughes raised an eyebrow to Sam. An I-didn’t-know-you-were-interested-in-girls eyebrow.
“We were … doing homework,” Sam improvised.
“Yeah,” said Jamie unconvincingly.
“Ooooh, I love that belt,” Mrs. Hughes said. “I had one just like it, years ago.”
The belt. She HAD to forget to put back one thing….
Jamie looked down, befuddled.
“Well, see you, Jamie!” Sam blurted out, heading into the house. “Come on, Mom and Dad!”
“No family walk, Sam?” Mr. Hughes gave his wife a knowing grin.
Mrs. Hughes gently pulled Sam back. “Why don’t you give your friend a proper good-bye?”
‘What — well, I — ”
“Don’t be too long,” Mrs. Hughes sang, walking into the house with her husband.
As the front door shut behind them, Jamie burst out laughing. “They think we’re — you and me — ”
“THIS ISN’T FUNNY!” Sam snapped. “Half their files are still missing — and you just stole Mom’s belt!”
“Get a life, Sam,” Jamie said, walking away.
Sam noticed her backpack was open. “Wait a minute. What else do you have in there?”
Jamie spun around. “Nothing.”
“Show me.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Your next concert gig is Sunday, right? I’m thinking of coming, with my pen and pad.”
Jamie glowered at him. Sullenly she pulled around her backpack and held it open.
Sam yanked out the tie-dye shirt. A white fright wig left over from some Halloween. A black grease pencil. A marble composition notebook.
“They’re not going to miss any of it,” Jamie said.
But Sam wasn’t listening.
He held the notebook slantways, letting the porch light illuminate the cover. Written across the front label, in his dad’s scrawly handwriting, was a name.
Kevin Hughes.
WE ARE …
Council and Protector of the Realities.
WE LIVE IN …