“There was something black,” he spit. “This guy saw it too.”
Dennis just sat there like a post, staring straight ahead. He didn’t shake his head or nod in any fashion.
“Listen,” the flight attendant reprimanded the agitated man, “you are making the other passengers uneasy. Any more outbursts from you, and you will be arrested at landing.”
“But . . .”
She let her eyes show him how serious she was. His hand trembling, the large man reached for what was left of his drink and finished it off in one swallow, then laid his head back on his seat, eyes wide open, and breathed heavily.
Nervously, Dennis glanced back out the window. There was nothing but the top of the wing and clouds.
ii
Sabine moved along the bottom of the wing, fighting the slipstream of air, searching for an opening to get in. He could feel that whatever had been touched by Foo was inside this plane. He hissed, the sound mingling with the rush of air under the wing. “In,” he whispered violently. “In.”
On the back edge of the wings there was a tiny seam between the wing and one of its flaps. Sabine arranged himself into a long, black thread. He pushed through the small seam and, like fishing line being reeled in, coiled up into the plane. He threaded himself through the wing. He found a pinpoint of room next to some wires leading into the fuselage of the plane and moved himself into the inner body of the 747.
“In,” he whispered. “I’m in.”
Sabine slipped in under the service quarter door and traced the lighting track that ran along the carpeted aisle of the plane. The front end of him glowed white with two small eyes. The rest of him was as black and thin as the devil’s dental floss. Sabine hated that he was no longer the person he had once been, but his ability to change shape to suit his need was a half-decent consolation prize.
He inched across the floor, letting himself feel where to go. He still didn’t know exactly who he was after, but he could sense that what he was looking for was here. Someone on the plane had been touched by Foo.
Sabine twisted around the ankles of a tall, skinny woman with short hair. She was not it. He swirled around the ankles of the man next to her. Not only was he not it, but he needed to change his socks.
One by one, Sabine made his way around the ankles of everyone there.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Something.
Sabine wrapped himself around the ankles of a pale man with ugly shoes in row seventeen. It was clear that this man had not been to Foo, but he possessed something that had.
Sabine’s whole stringlike being crackled, causing at least two passengers to glance around as if they had heard something. Sabine slithered up Dennis’s leg and along the tightly buckled seat belt. Dennis, still looking intently out the window, was unaware of what was happening right in his lap.
Sabine pulled the toggle back with his tiny mouth and slithered into the fanny pack. To anyone looking on it would appear that there was simply a very long black string hanging out of Dennis’s fanny pack. Sabine could see Ezra lying there on a big wad of money. Ezra turned.
As quickly as a snake’s tongue, Sabine shot out and around Ezra, wrapping himself tightly around the toothpick. Ezra tried to fight back, but Sabine had him sewn up. He cautiously pulled at Ezra, slipping him out of the fanny pack and pulling him down the carpeted aisle. Ezra clawed at the carpet and tried to fight back. It was no use; Sabine carefully dragged him all the way to the rear of the plane. There he pulled Ezra under the service door and into the service area. Sabine drew in his long string to create a more sinister and ghostlike shape. He hissed, staring intently at Ezra as he clenched him in his thin, shadowy hands.
“You’ve been to Foo,” Sabine moaned.
Ezra couldn’t answer due to Sabine’s grip over his mouth.
“You,” Sabine hissed. “You.” He moved his shadowy fingers away from the top of Ezra.
“You’re a real brain,” Ezra spat. “You? You who?”
“Geth,” Sabine whispered in fear.
“Geth?” Ezra whispered back. “I’m not Geth,” he growled. “We are no longer one. He betrayed me.”
“Be still,” Sabine commanded, relaxing his grip just a bit.
The purple plastic fringe on Ezra’s top rippled. He blinked his one eye and then jumped up and began to stab Sabine. Sabine reached out, trying to get hold of Ezra, but the tiny toothpick was too quick. Ezra bounced off the walls of the plane, screaming threats about what he would do to Sabine. The purple fringe on top of Ezra was flailing wildly and created a zipping noise as he whizzed around the cabin. Sabine was too slow to catch Ezra. He thinned into a string again and shot toward the vent he had slipped through earlier.
“No, you don’t!” Ezra screamed.
He grabbed the end of Sabine as he tried to slip away. Sabine pulled and wiggled out of the service area and into the innards of the plane. He pushed out into the wing again and slithered out the same seam he had entered. Ezra was still holding tightly to the end of Sabine back in the plane.
The air outside the plane was violent and tore at Sabine, whipping him around like the loose string he was. The open air expanded Sabine’s form into a thick rope. Sabine flapped up against the wing, while inside, Ezra held onto the tail end of him, refusing to let go. Ezra was as angry as any toothpick had ever been, furious over the thin string of Sabine trying to get away.
iii
Dennis looked out of the window for the hundredth time. There was nothing but white clouds.
“You did see that?” he asked the drunken man, referencing the sight they had seen earlier.
“I see a lot of things,” he replied. “I don’t trust my eyes anymore.”
Dennis turned from the man and remembered Ezra. Surprised to find the pack unzipped, he reached in, half expecting his fingers to be bitten and half disappointed when it didn’t happen. Dennis sorted through the few objects in the fanny pack, searching for a spot of purple.
There was none.
Dennis leaned forward and looked down at his feet. No purple. He glanced around the plane, wondering where Ezra could be and if he should be nervous about his absence.
As he turned to look out the window, he saw something flapping around like a long black rope, the end of it glowing white.
Dennis screamed. He couldn’t help it. He had been holding it in, and like a bad bit of air it had popped out of his throat at the most inopportune time. His scream caused Mr. Drunk to scream, and Mr. Drunk’s scream set off the rest of the passengers as one by one they looked out the windows and realized that something quite concerning and out of the ordinary was going on.
Little did they know Sabine was just getting started.
Dennis wished he had taken a train.
iv
Tim Tuttle stared at Terry Graph in awe, but not in the good kind of awe. This was not like when you are fortunate enough to witness a huge meteor racing across the sky and slamming into the ground. Nor was this the kind of awe that hits when you are driving across the country and there on the side of the road you spot a restaurant in the shape of a hot dog. This was the kind of awe you feel when you realize you have the great misfortune of standing there right in front of the ugliest, most stubborn, most cold-hearted person on earth.
“So you don’t know where he is?” Tim asked.
“He’s not even my blood.”
“But—”
“But yourself,” Terry snipped. “That boy was forced upon us. He was lucky we had the generous spirit to put up with him for so long.”
As I mentioned, Tim was in awe.
“Addy,” Terry yelled back into the apartment. “Come tell this fool what that dumb boy did.”
Addy made her way to the door while Terry receded into the interior of the apartment.
Tim had been fortunate enough to pick up on the trail of Winter. After he had left Janet Frore’s house, he had considered all the possibilities of where Winter could have gone
and had concluded that she had most likely traveled by bus. Besides hitchhiking, there was really no other way out of town.
Tim knew that if Winter had stayed around, she would have hidden out with him and his wife. They would have been happy to hide her. So, figuring that she must have fled the area, the bus seemed like the most likely mode of travel. Unfortunately, no one at the bus station was much help. One ticket lady seemed to remember selling a ticket to a minor, but she couldn’t remember where that ticket had been to. Tim had been discouraged until a couple who were getting off a bus overheard him asking questions and told him they remembered meeting a nice girl with blonde hair when they were leaving the week before. It was entirely fortuitous. The couple debated with each other for a moment before they agreed on the fact that she had been heading to Oklahoma to visit her grandmother.
“Sure it wasn’t Texas to see her grandfather?” the man said.
“Certain,” the woman answered.
Tim took the first bus he could get to Oklahoma. After asking a dozen bus station employees and four taxi drivers, Tim had been fortunate enough to find a cabdriver who remembered dropping Winter off at a school in Burnt Culvert, Oklahoma.
“Home of the Fighting Ashes,” he had said.
That same taxi driver took Tim to Sterling Thoughts Middle School. There Tim found hundreds of kids who were willing to tell him all about the strange girl who had come to their school and frozen its two biggest bullies. The children had even pointed out Brick and Glen, who now spent their lunch breaks standing against the wall, shaking like nervous Todd. The students then added a new depth to Tim’s search by informing him that Winter had run off with a strange kid with a white streak in his hair, a boy named Leven Thumps.
At the public library, Tim had not found a single Thumps in the phone book, but he did find a Thumps in the newspaper. It seemed that not too many days before, the home of one Terry and Addy Graph and their adopted son, Leven Thumps, had been frozen and destroyed, lifted into the air and dropped to the ground. It wasn’t too hard from there to find where Addy and Terry were now living.
Tim half wished he had never found them. They were awful people and reminded Tim a great deal of Janet Frore.
“Addy, tell him about that brat,” Terry demanded. They had never invited Tim in, so he just stood there on their doorstep.
Addy Graph stepped up. She was a large woman with a big forehead and messy hair. The apartment Terry and she were living in was a disaster. Tim couldn’t see the whole thing from the door, but what he could see was awful. It looked like something a trash dump might throw up if things like trash dumps were capable of having the flu. There were dishes and litter all over. Leven had always been the one to do the cleaning; in his absence, Addy and Terry did nothing.
“I’ll tell you what that selfish boy did,” Addy spat. “He picked up our house and smashed it into a million—”
“Billion!” Terry yelled from inside.
“ . . . a billion pieces,” Addy said. “My sister dies in childbirth and leaves me a burden like that? What’s this world coming to?”
“This isn’t the America my father fought for!” Terry yelled.
“So do you know where he went?” Tim asked.
“How would I know?” Addy barked. “If I knew where he was, I’d have him over my knee administering the punishment he has due.”
“I need to find him,” Tim added.
“Why’s that?” Terry asked, stepping back up to the door.
“I think he could be in trouble.”
“Trouble?” Terry snarled. “Trouble?”
Terry was beside himself. Not literally. This story would be that much more painful if there were two Terrys, able to stand next to each other and simultaneously curse Leven.
But Terry felt he had been cursed since the day Leven had been brought home from the hospital and he and his wife had been forced to take care of the kid. Leven had made Terry’s life miserable. Leven was always hanging around, eating their food, sitting on their furniture, and talking without being asked to. Life with Leven had been hard for Terry.
So imagine how surprised Terry had been to discover that with Leven gone, things were even worse.
Shortly after Leven had walked out, things had gotten weird. Addy had thrown a fit and insisted that Terry find work. She had also stolen Terry’s drinking money. And, as if a dry throat and the prospect of having to find a job weren’t bad enough, the tree outside had snuck up on Terry through the toilet.
Those now seemed like the good old days, seeing as how Terry had subsequently lost his entire house. It had been lifted up by the roots of the dead tree he had hacked down, frozen, and then dropped. The house had shattered against the earth, sounding like a million ceramic golf balls being dumped off the Empire State Building. In the end there was no chunk bigger than a stick of kindling left. That night Terry had stood there dumbfounded, confused, and scared. Sure, it wasn’t far from his normal state of dumbfounded, confused, and angry, but the fear sparked something in him. It twisted and turned until the fear was more of a burning hatred for the kid he had been forced to take in all those years before.
That trailer home had been all that Terry had. Yes, there was Addy, but Addy’s value was depreciating faster than the mobile home had been. Now Terry had nothing. The house had not even been insured.
The hatred grew.
As the hard, dark thoughts filled his head, Terry began to realize something. It was almost as if for the first time in his life he could see something he needed to accomplish. He could feel and think and spit nothing but hatred for Leven. The kid had to be somewhere. An ungrateful fourteen-year-old boy with no money can’t just disappear off the face of the earth.
That would be impossible.
“Last we heard, some church in Maine claims to have spotted the boy,” Terry spat. “I was going to call them, but I lost the number.”
“Maine?” Tim asked excitedly.
“It’s in Canada someplace,” Terry snipped.
Tim didn’t correct him. “Thanks,” he said. “If I find him, I’ll let you know.”
“Oh, goody,” Terry slurred. “Did you hear that, Addy? He’ll let us know. Well, you better. I got a score to settle with that brat.”
Terry slammed the door, ending the conversation.
Chapter Twenty
Separated at Bite
It was so silent. Leven could hear himself breathing, but nothing else. He repositioned his hold on the narrow rim inside the vat. He and Geth had been soaking in the gaze for hours, and Leven had little or no doubt that his body could now out-wrinkle any raisin around. His entire being felt like a massive bruise.
“We’ve got to get out,” Leven urged.
“Only the seed can set us free,” Geth said solemnly. “They build each gaze as an intricate puzzle. A series of blows with wood in certain spots closes the gaze. And only the growth of the seed opens it back up.”
“So this is it?” Leven asked. “We’re done for?”
“We’ll see what fate has in mind,” Geth said.
“Maybe Winter will come for us,” Leven suggested, more to himself than anyone else.
“Actually,” Geth said, “Winter has her own problems. By the time she might find us it will be too late.”
“What about Amelia?”
Geth was silent.
“She’s trapped too?” Leven asked.
Geth was still silent. “I’m afraid she was caught in the gunt,” he finally answered, knowing Leven deserved to know. “Winter tried to save her, but it was no use.”
“She’s dead?” Leven asked sadly.
His eyes burned momentarily and then cooled.
“Are you sure?” Leven added.
“I’m sorry.”
Leven had barely known his Grandmother Amelia, but she had been his only real family. He had nobody else, and the knowledge that he was the single remaining Thumps was as painful as learning of Amelia’s passing.
“She was
so kind,” Leven whispered.
“And important to Foo,” Geth added.
Leven hated the rovens. He hated everything that was happening. He hated the selfish and dark dreams of Reality that had helped give beings like Sabine power. Leven wiped water from his eyes.
Geth patted Leven on the shoulder.
“I want to get out and see where she died,” Leven insisted.
“Then we must hope that fate has us favorably in its sight.”
“Amelia wouldn’t want us to give up,” Leven said. “At least Clover is out there; he can help. That’s something.”
“That’s true,” Geth replied. “But it will take more than a single sycophant to save us from this gaze.”
“You don’t know Clover,” Leven said. “He won’t stop until we’re free.”
“We’ll see what fate has in mind,” Geth agreed with excitement, even as his tiny body was hardening further. “This is always my—”
Geth was interrupted by a terrific screech that pierced the air. Leven shook, and Geth grabbed onto a lock of Leven’s hair right below the white patch. The screech continued, and in the faint glow Leven could see rows of pointed, white objects piercing the sides of the gaze. The container began to vibrate, and Leven lost his grip and floated toward the center of the vat. The agitated water splashed into his eyes and up his nose. He sputtered and wiped his face and could see the dots growing larger and beginning to look like white wedges pushing through the wood.
“What’s happening?” Leven yelled.
“I have no idea,” Geth yelled back, water sloshing everywhere. “But I think those are teeth!”
Leven looked closely and realized Geth was right. The small white mountains were huge teeth, penetrating the gaze. From the pattern of the teeth it was obvious something gigantic was biting down.
There was a horrific wrenching noise as the gaze was lifted. It began to shake violently, rattling Leven and Geth around like beans in a child’s toy. Water sloshed up Leven’s nose. His head banged against the walls of the gaze. Then, like lightning striking, his gift kicked in.
Leven’s eyes burned gold. His mind reeled as streaks of blinding light flashed through his head, popping like the flashbulbs from a thousand cameras. Leven could see himself in the water as the powerful jaws of the beast holding them finally came together and bit off the entire top of the gaze. Leven could also see himself caught in the teeth of the beast.