"You might want to sit down, Alex", Mason Henry mentioned, and Alex did take a seat, as Charlie did, around the old aluminum table. Mason Henry puttered about as Charlie attempted to explain.
"Mason tells me it's been two years", he started. "That doesn't seem right to me. It seems like only yesterday I was sitting right here with him and Henrietta, talking about it."
"Everybody thinks you're dead", Alex blurted out, and Charlie stared at him.
"What do they think happened to me?" he asked, after a moment.
"They think you were offed by gamblers", Alex replied, and Charlie burst out laughing.
"Gamblers? What gamblers?"
"Because of your betting on the Sea Dragons", Alex explained. Charlie shook his head.
"That was just a pool among drivers and mechanics", he chuckled. "Five, ten dollars here and there. Where'd they ever get such an idiotic notion? No, don't tell me", he held up a hand, "that darn brother of mine and his stupid wife - no offense, Alex. Forget I even said that." Charlie turned to Mason and said,
"My brother never could see past the end of a paycheck. If a man didn't make more money every year, according to my brother that man wasn't even fit to live. And the boy's mom", he continued, gesturing at Alex, "is just a walking disapproval machine as well. The two of them suit each other quite nicely", he smiled.
"But never mind that", he said, turning back to Alex. "Never mind all that. No, son, I am not dead yet, but I understand there's some confusion. Mason's been trying to explain to me about the time differential. Two years. I can hardly believe it. But now that I look at you, yes, I can see he's telling the truth. How old are you now, Alex?"
"Ten".
"You look more like twelve to me. I don't remember you looking so serious before. How's little Argus?"
"He looks more serious than me", Alex laughed, "and he's almost five now"
"Almost five, wow", Charlie whistled, "he's still a baby to me. Still in diapers. I can see it clearly as yesterday. In fact, I feel like I changed his diapers only yesterday. I was over at your house babysitting, wasn't I? We were watching a monster movie and you kept telling me how your mom and dad would be so mad if they came home early and caught us at it."
"Jompah the Wastelayer", Alex told him.
"That's the one. Jompah!" he laughed. "He was eating the villagers whole, I remember, and complaining about a lack of hot sauce."
"It was two years ago we watched that", Alex quietly said. "That was the last time we saw you."
"So it's true", Charlie nodded. "Thing is, Alex, like I was just telling Mason, it seems that in there," and he pointed towards the vacant lot across the street, "in there, there ain't no time at all"
Chapter Fifteen - Side View Mirror
Suddenly Charlie jumped up and rushed to the front of the house, where he just as suddenly stopped in front of the big picture window in the living room. Both of his hands were rapidly clenching and unclenching as he paced in place and said, to no one in particular,
"I've got to get back in there. I've got to get back."
Alex and Mason Henry followed him into the room and stood, side by side, staring at him. Alex was very confused. There was something definitely very changed in Uncle Charlie, who used to always be relaxed, easy-going, good-natured, or so Alex had always thought. This Charlie was intense, burning with a sense of urgency, and tumbling through his words rather than the old way he had of kind of gargling over them. It was difficult to explain.
"Did you figure it out?" Mason spoke up, and after a brief silence, Charlie turned around and faced them, shaking his head.
"First time that I went in", he said, "I thought I was just crossing the street. Boom, all of a sudden, there I was, somewhere else. Somewhere that hadn't even been there a moment before. Felt like I was only in it for a minute before it spit me out. Turned out I'd been gone a few days, missed a couple of shifts. Guys were wondering where I was. I couldn't really tell them anything."
"I thought it was the mirror", Charlie continued after a lengthy pause. "I mean the side view mirror in my car, because that was where I saw it first. Just a glimpse. I'd just parked my car and was heading over there to take a leak, tell you the truth. Just an old abandoned empty lot. No one around," he laughed.
"For some reason I glanced back at the car and there in the side view mirror was the place and not the lot. And when I turned back again, there it really was, all glass, plants and trees, and somehow I just walked right in. But the mirror thing never worked again after it pushed me out. I thought about maybe some other ways of seeing might do the trick. Colored glass. Prisms. Binoculars. Telescopes. Nothing worked. Time went by."
"And you met me and Henrietta out there", added Mason Henry.
"Yes, I did", Charlie agreed. "Henrietta thought she'd seen it too. Had a feeling, she did. So we got to talking about it. Between the two of us, we must have tried about every crazy thing just to try and catch a glimpse of something that nobody else would think was even real. It was real, all right. Still is."
"But what is it?" Alex blurted out. "What's in there? What are you talking about? I really don't understand."
Charlie looked over at him and smiled. Then he frowned. And smiled again. He didn't know how to begin, or whether he even should. Maybe he'd already said too much, he thought. This was not something for a child to know about.
"Alex", he began. "My boy. I don't know if we should even be telling you anything about this."
"But I already know something about it", Alex insisted, "You've got to tell me. I know it was on the map, and then it wasn't. I know that you saw something there, and you got stuck."
"Not stuck", Charlie interrupted, "not stuck at all. I'd give anything to get back."
"But why?" Alex repeated.
"What can I tell you?", Charlie said, "it won't make any sense."
"Just tell me anything", said Alex. "I'll believe you. I promise."
"It's everything", said Charlie, "in there, every thing is alive."
Alex was really lost now. Of course everything is alive. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be a thing. Or something. He had a feeling that Charlie was going to get even more confusing.
"Even the things you wouldn't think", Charlie continued, "like the bricks on the sidewalk. They make a pattern. They're sending signals. They have a meaning. The flowers, the pebbles, the walls on the sides of the buildings. The colors. You'd never know, but every little thing is really alive and communicating and feeling and knowing and full of purpose and direction. Everything fits together too. It's all one big living creature, all of this, the whole world, the universe, all of it. Nothing is outside, everything is within and connected. And moving. Everything is moving, in motion, all the pieces, all the particles, your skin, the air, the dust and shadows and specks of light. All of it is pieces, putting together, building, creating, making the world every moment, every minute, every day."
Alex was right. He had absolutely no idea what Charlie was talking about. Charlie might as well have been saying "phaw phaw phee phaw phoo". Everything is alive. Moving. Whatever.
Mason Henry was also lost, but he smiled and kept nodding his head as if he understood perfectly. Alex had the feeling that Mason would say anything to keep Charlie happy. After all, he was a lonely old man, and Charlie had been a good friend to Henrietta. He'd stayed by her side when she was sick, and never once complained or hesitated to do any favor that she might ask of him. Now that Charlie was back, Mason secretly hoped he would stay. He was in no hurry for Charlie for discover a way back in to Snapdragon Alley.
"But what am I saying?" Charlie asked himself out loud. He glanced over at Alex and chuckled.
"I had a feeling that would be a bit much for a kid. And anyway, aren't you supposed to be at home? How did you get here, anyway? It's a long way from your neighborhood."
"I took the 63 Venezia, of course", Alex said, and Charlie laughed.
"My old route", he said fondly. "Glad to know they haven't canceled it
yet."
"It's usually pretty crowded", said Alex.
"Good, good", said Charlie, for no reason in particular. Just to say something normal for a change.
"We should be getting you home", he said. "It must be about dinner time already."
"I can get back by myself", Alex assured him, and Charlie seemed to be content with that. He didn't want to leave the area, not even for a second, just in case.
"Then you'd best be off", he told Alex, "and I'd rather you didn't tell anyone about all this."
"But my dad", Alex nearly shouted, "your own brother. He'd want to know you're still alive. They all think you died."
"I don't expect to be around very long", said Charlie. "Not if I'm lucky. Let 'em think what they already think. Won't do any good to tell them otherwise."
"Gee", said Alex. He wasn't sure he could keep such a gigantic secret. Charlie seemed to realized what he was asking, and added,
"Oh, don't worry. Go ahead and tell them if you want. I won't be angry if you do. If they want to see me. I'll be here, with Mason, at least for now."
"For as long as you want", said Mason.
"But when will I see you again?" asked Alex.
"I'll be right here", said Charlie, and then muttered to himself, "probably".
"Okay", said Alex, and he really didn't want to leave, and yet he really did too. Uncle Charlie was scaring him a little, the look in his eyes, and the weird things he was saying. Also, why did he want to keep his return a secret? Was there something else he wasn't telling him? Was he hiding from someone? Was he even telling the truth? Maybe he hadn't been in some mysterious place after all. Maybe he'd been in prison. Maybe he'd been in a loony bin. How could Alex know for sure? He really wanted to talk to someone else about it all. Really wanted to talk to Sapphire. She could help him sort it out.
And so he left. He got back on the 63 Venezia and made the connections back home and even made it there in time for dinner. His mom and dad had no idea he'd gone all the way across town after school. And he didn't tell them anything about Uncle Charlie either.
Chapter Sixteen - The 99 Forever
It was going to be a long evening, Alex thought, as he sat there silent across the table from Argus, while their mother and father had a long, intricate and deathly boring conversation about the real estate market in Spring Hill Lake in the recent decade. Argus had a way of picking at his food that usually caused his mother to scold him periodically, and the brothers played a timing game where they would try to guess when her next chastisement would arrive, flashing subtle hand signals as countdown mechanisms, but Alex kept forgetting to play and Argus finally just settled down and ate his food.
Later he tried to get his older brother to tell him what was on his mind because he could tell there was something, but Alex wasn't willing. He was even on the verge of snapping at Argus at one point, while pretending to be playing a game on the computer. He wasn't really playing, though, just watching the fish swim by without even killing or buying any, and he knew he couldn't blame Argus for trying. He just waved him off, saying "not now, okay?" and Argus let it go at that.
Alex felt like time weighed a thousand pounds and wouldn't get off his head. He carried that burden through a couple of pages of homework, and a half dozen pages of the book he was trying to read, and the light in the bedroom seemed incredibly bright and the quiet his brother was making seemed incredibly silent, and he felt like he was going to explode if he didn't do something quick. All he could think of was going outside for a walk, which is what he decided to do right when the telephone rang and he knew it was going to be Sapphire. He ran down the stairs, avoiding the call and rushed out the door right when his mother was yelling for him to get it.
Can't tell mom. Can't tell dad. Can't tell Argus. Can't tell Sapphire. But if I do tell, it would be okay. But I can't. Because I promised that I wouldn't. But he's alive!
The neighborhood was also too quiet and too dark, and there was nothing in it anyway. Just a typical urban residential sidewalk and single family dwellings of the kind whose value was apparently declining steadily. Maybe because they were boring. Maybe because they were ugly. Maybe because it sucked to live in this stupid little city with its stupid little shops and its typical array of parks and schools and offices and stoplights and cars and telephone wires and clouds and the sun that rises in the east every single stupid day.
He could only walk around the block two times before he was disgusted enough to go back home, where he snuck into the bedroom by climbing up the trellis and tapping on the window so that Argus would come and lift it. Argus did and after a glance realized that Alex was still in no condition to talk, so the little boy went back under the covers where he had a flashlight and a Spiderman cartoon book.
Alex just went up to the upper bunk and lay flat on his back, staring at the ceiling for the longest time, wishing that sleep could solve his problem but knowing that it couldn't. Tomorrow would present the exact same problem as today.
He finally did get to sleep, after what seemed like forever. And sleep was not a help at all. It gave him dreams, and in his dreams he sat there on a bus, and the bus was marked the 99 Forever, and there was only a handful of passengers scattered throughout the seats. The bus was making no stops, and outside the windows there was only blackness. Inside the only sound was the wheezing of the carriage and the rumbling of the wheels. Alex pressed his nose up to the glass so he wouldn't just see the reflection of his mournful face, but as he felt the cold glass touching him he also heard it, heard the glass say
"Hey, whatcha think you're doing? Get that smelly thing off me"
He pulled his face back and thought he could see another face in the window. Of course it was only his face, but it was talking. It was squinting at him, and he knew that the face only looked like his but wasn't him. The window face scared him, so he looked away, but now he saw his face looking right back at him from every little portion of the bus, from the seat covers, from the other windows, from the ceiling, from the advertisements pasted alongside the wall, from the handles on the doors, from the ridges on the rubber floor, all looking right in his direction, and suddenly talking, each of them all at once. The floors were complaining about people stepping on them. The railings were complaining about sweaty palms clutching them. The doors were whining about people pushing too hard against them, making it hard for them to stay closed, which after all was their job unless it was time to open, and then they would open, no need to shove. From beneath the floor he even felt the wheels grinding and their coating wearing away. He felt the bus itself growing old and being repaired, and oiled, and hammered at, and started and stopped and started and stopped until it was weak in the joints and its rivets were jostling loose.
Alex jumped out of his seat, just in time to hear it gripe about his jeans, which were scratching its nice shiny surface, and he ran up to the front of the bus, barely noticing that the other passengers sitting there calmly were nothing more than wax statues, mere images of people. He thought he would get some help from the driver but the driver was Uncle Charlie, and not Uncle Charlie but a kind of a painted wooden dummy version of Uncle Charlie which merely opened and closed its wide jaws, saying nothing but swiveling its head around like a ventriloquist's dummy.
"Everything is alive", the dummy head repeated. "Everything is alive".
Alex noticed that the bus was starting to go faster and faster, and that they were not on any street in any city, but nowhere whatsoever. Through the front window he saw nothing, not a street, not a building, not a light, not a road, not even a star in the sky. It was blankness and nothingness but even out there he sensed his own face, impossibly huge and looming, staring down at him, and telling him that if there were ever a good time to scream, that would be now.
The next thing he knew, Argus was beside him, shaking his shoulders as hard as he could, and Alex's eyes slowly opened and in the darkness of the night he was so happy to see his little brother's anxious face, he almost crie
d.
That was when he told Argus about seeing Uncle Charlie, and he told him everything that Charlie and Mason had said, and then he asked him what to do, the ten year old asking the five year old for advice. And in his calmest voice, Argus reassured his brother that everything was going to be okay.
Chapter Seventeen - The Witchcraft of Positive Thinking
Like every school day morning, Sapphire showed up before Alex and Argus were even out of bed. This tradition had been going on for years. It started as a favor to Sapphire's dad, that Alex's mom would walk the kids to school together in the morning so that Sapphire's dad could get to work on time, but by now it was more a force of habit than anything else. If it was a school day, she was there, entering the front door like it was her own home, bounding up the stairs and bursting into the boys' bedroom with a shout or a song or something new every day. This day was no exception.
"You are not going to believe this!" she yelled, and in two leaps was up on the top bunk shaking Alex and waving a piece of paper in his face. Before he even had a chance to say a word, she was off and running at the mouth.
"I found out about the artist of the artist map and I even got her email so I figured I would write her and get her story and oh my god you will not believe what she wrote back. I mean, almost immediately, before I even logged off last night. So I printed it out. Here. You have to read this!"
Alex was not quick enough for Sapphire. He had barely even opened his eyes and twitched a finger before she proclaimed,
"Okay, okay, I'll read it out loud, then. This is unbelievable. Hey, Argus, you too. Are you awake yet?"
"Mm hmm" the little one mumbled from the lower bunk. There was no way he could not be awake at the volume Sapphire was going.
"I mean, really", Sapphire said, "and when I talk louder it's because half the time she wrote in all caps, okay? I mean, when you hear me talking louder it's the caps. Now listen. No, wait. What I wrote was this. Dear Ms. Pak, because her name is Cyrilla Pak, so dear Ms. Pak, I have heard from a source that you were the artist responsible for the Spring Hill Lake public transit map of three years ago. In that map there was represented a street by the name of Snapdragon Alley which in fact does not exist. Can you please tell us the history of this addition to the map and its removal in subsequent years? And this is what she wrote: