McCoy yelled to a group of four other agents, "Apprehend her!" The agents hesitated a moment, then threw themselves on top of Cornelia, pinning her to the ground and slapping four sets of handcuffs on her wrists and ankles. One agent managed to pull her robe back down as she cackled, over and over, "Jack and Jill went up the hill!"
In the midst of this chaos, Dr. Austin circled the squirming pile formed by his wife and the Secret Service agents. He carefully removed Perrault's Mother Goose from its envelope. Then he slid it under the pile, directly under his wife's face, and waited.
Almost immediately, her old voice returned. She started bellowing in outrage. "Get off of me! All of you! Get off of me!"
The agents managed to get enough of a grip on Cornelia to raise her three feet off the ground.
Dr. Austin, pretending to help them, yanked the book away and slid it back into its envelope. Then the agents started to carry Cornelia toward the service elevator, like a rescued whale. But Agent Pflaum, in scrambling to do his duty, tripped one of them, and the whole pile went crashing down again.
Kate and George ran to the stairwell. They saw Dr. Austin hand the envelope to Ashley-Nicole with the breathless words, "We got him. He's in here."
Ashley-Nicole replied, "Okeydokey. I'll take this down to the target area. You and Daddy bring the cart when you're ready." She took the envelope and walked quickly to the exit.
Dr. Austin spun around, panting wildly, and beheld the scene on the roof: Four Secret Service agents were struggling to hoist his wife up again and drag her away; Agent Pflaum and Rosetta Turner were forming a human shield around the First Lady; the Lincoln Band members, the Juku Warriors, and the guest families were staring, transfixed, at the epic struggle to subdue Cornelia.
Dr. Austin ran to a spot in front of the First Lady's group. He shouted at the top of his lungs, "I can explain this. All of this has a simple explanation. Here is the simple explanation." Dr. Austin froze in the position of a man about to speak, but no words came from his mouth.
Rosetta Turner brushed past him and marched across the roof on a mission. She announced, to everyone, "I am going to find out what is going on here!" She grasped the lid of the cooler and threw it open. Then she leaned back and gasped, "Oh lordy."
Agent McCoy ran to her side. He took one look and made a command decision. "That does it!" He spun around. "Agent Pflaum, listen to me. Take the First Lady, find a vacant room, and hide her in it! We're getting her out of here."
Rosetta slammed the lid of the cooler. She hurried over to the edge of the rooftop and looked down at the throng of reporters and TV crews. She called out, "Wait a minute. What are you doing?"
Agent McCoy punched at a cell phone. "I'm canceling the rest of this visit. I want the helicopter. Now."
"Hold on. Please. There are fifty reporters down there. We can't give them a big panicky scene to broadcast on the six o'clock news."
Agent McCoy pointed at the First Lady, retreating down the stairwell on the arm of Agent Pflaum. "We're not staying on this roof."
Rosetta whispered to him, "I don't know what, in god's name, is going on here. And neither do you. So let's just take a few more minutes to find out. We can't leave here without some answers."
McCoy walked over and glanced down at the swarming press corps. He looked back at Rosetta and tacitly agreed.
Dr. Austin and Bud approached, both smiling. But before either could utter a word, Agent McCoy demanded to know, "Tell me, Doctor, why do you have dead people in a cooler over there?"
"What?" Dr. Austin sputtered. "Oh, that! Why, that is just a mistake. A ghastly mistake. You see, Dr. Cavendar is the county coroner. He keeps bodies here sometimes, as evidence. This is a county building, you know. Those are his bodies."
McCoy pushed past them without another word, followed by Rosetta Turner. They entered the waiting service elevator, closed the doors, and started down.
Dr. Austin spoke through clenched teeth. "Now's our chance, Bud. Let's get downstairs. Ashley-Nicole is waiting." They ran toward the stairwell, toward Kate and George. Dr. Austin yelled, "You two! Quick! Hold that door open!"
Kate and George jumped to the task. The two men picked up either side of the black book cart and carried it carefully down the stairs between them.
While all this was going on, the rest of the people on the roof hadn't moved an inch. June and Mrs. Brennan remained in the seats they had occupied throughout the entire bizarre proceedings. Molly had joined them right after her band performance. William Anderson, to Molly's chagrin, had joined them after Susan Singer-Wright sent him upstairs.
Kate now sprinted over to them, followed by her uncle. She announced with great excitement and with great import, "Let's go! Something big's about to happen! Follow us!"
June, William, Molly, and Mrs. Brennan hopped to their feet, not at all sure of what Kate had said, but sure that they wanted to follow her. The six of them hurried across the black cinders toward an aluminum mushroom cap.
42. The Death of the Demon
Kate bent back the top of the mushroom cap. She, George, Molly, and William dived quickly onto the ladder rungs, like rabbits down a hole. Mrs. Brennan hesitated. Kate called from the bottom, "Hurry, before they get here!"
Mrs. Brennan looked fearfully at June. June said, "I'll go ahead of you, Mrs. Brennan. You stay one rung behind me. That way I can steady you all the way."
Mrs. Brennan nodded to June and struggled onto the ladder after her. They descended the eight rungs in tandem and stepped off into Kate's welcoming grasp.
The three then entered through the rotating door and joined George, William, and Molly, crouching behind the low bookcase.
The first thing Kate noticed was the new plastic shield. It curved from their bookcase to the other side of the room, a see-through semicircle eight feet high and four inches thick. "Uncle George," she whispered. "What is that thing?"
"That's the protective shield they were talking about. It's some space-age NASA plastic. Sorry, that's redundant."
Kate's eyes then fell on the opened trunk and the long blond hair piled around it. "Look! Over there!"
They all craned forward to see the piles of hair, but then froze in place at a sharp sound. The door to Cornell Whittaker Number Two's office had just opened. Kate hissed, "Everybody down."
The six intruders crouched behind the bookcase. Only Kate dared to lean to her left and peer out.
The door to the secret room opened shortly after, held by Dr. Austin, and Ashley-Nicole wheeled the black cart inside. The manila envelope sat on the top of the cart. She was followed by Bud Wright, who panted after her in a voice filled with fear, "You be careful there, honeybun."
Ashley-Nicole answered without a care. "Oh, Daddy!" She steered the cart around the shield and parked it in front of the antique desk.
Then she cinched a piece of white twine to the base of the cart and backed away slowly, unrolling the twine as she went. She backed all the way around the shield and halted at its far end, directly in front of the Laser Cannon.
Ashley-Nicole turned a handle on the Laser Cannon. The weapon rose up, like a submarine periscope, until the muzzle of the cannon cleared the top of the shield. Then she flipped a switch and the silver-and-black weapon hummed to life.
She told her father and Dr. Austin, "It only takes thirty seconds to warm up. But remember, it takes a full ten minutes to cool down."
Dr. Austin repeated her words, as if trying to memorize them. "Ten minutes to cool down."
Ashley-Nicole smiled. "Okay, Dr. Austin, let's activate your son's tracking device."
Dr. Austin seemed genuinely puzzled. "What?"
"Didn't your son, Whit, install the tracker in the Laser Cannon?"
"No. Not at all. His mother got the Technon people to install it and put his name on it."
Now it was Ashley-Nicole's turn to look puzzled.
Dr. Austin explained simply, "He's no you, Ashley-Nicole. He's not even a me."
Kate stole an
angry glance at George.
Dr. Austin said, "All I care about now is that this weapon works. Do you think it works?"
"If Technon invented it, it should work."
"But it didn't work at the science fair."
"Oh, I know why. I recalibrated the tracking mechanism. They weren't off by much." Ashley-Nicole flipped open the protective metal box that housed the red button. She asked her father, "Would you like to push it, Daddy?"
Bud stammered, "No. No, let's get this crazy thing over with. This is plumb loco."
Dr. Austin agreed. "Yes, please, Ashley-Nicole. If you can make this work, we may have time to save the day. The First Lady's still in the building. She's scheduled to be here for another hour. Please, hit that button."
Ashley-Nicole smiled her brightest smile, said, "Okeydokey," and pressed it.
The Laser Cannon's tracker rotated slowly toward the antique desk. Ashley-Nicole picked up the white twine, waited for the right moment, and tugged it, causing a sudden movement of the black book cart.
The Laser Cannon whined softly and emitted a thin red light. The light landed on the manila envelope. It vaporized the thick paper immediately, in a puff of black smoke, leaving the book laid bare on the cart.
Dr. Austin leaned forward, breathless, and stared at the book: Perrault's Mother Goose, first London edition, estimated value $50,000.
Three seconds later, the book ignited, too. It seemed about to disintegrate, just like the envelope, but before it could, something within it stirred. Something within it was alive and was trying desperately to get out.
The book emitted an unearthly glow; then it started to stretch and bulge. A bubble rose from it like a rising red sun. The energy pulsing inside the sun seemed uncontainable. Even Ashley-Nicole recoiled. She ducked down behind the shield, followed closely by her two companions. Kate stood her ground for a few seconds longer, transfixed. But then, just when an explosion seemed imminent, she dived for shelter, too.
The room suddenly felt superheated and sucked dry of oxygen. The air itself turned a hellish red, and then cooled, startlingly fast, into the thickness of a gray London fog. Kate and her group lay flat on their backs, stuffed into the small space, breathing only fitfully in gulps.
Then above them the heavy air started to swirl like a great soup. It turned slowly at first, but it quickly accelerated to a dizzying speed. White wisps of light appeared in the grayness. They grew in brightness and in speed and began to carom off the ceiling and the walls, bouncing everywhere in swift, sharp vectors.
Kate stared open eyed, lost in the spectacle above her, totally beguiled and mesmerized by the white wisps.
And then the faces started to appear.
Kate saw the ghostly faces of children whirling around her, disappearing and reappearing, like images in a kinescope. She saw hundreds of children's faces, some from her own lifetime, some from two centuries before.
Kate did not recognize the faces of her Toddler Time friends from ten years before, but June did. Kate did, however, recognize the last sequence of faces. It began with Pogo, both as a young girl and as an adult; then the wide-eyed Walter Barnes; then the oompah-pahing Bud Wright; then the bloody Heidi the Milkmaid; then the screaming-monkey Whit; then the high-flying Mrs. Hodges. The last face was one familiar to them all. It was Cornelia Whittaker-Austin dressed as old Cornell Whittaker Number Two.
Then, just as quickly as they had emerged, the ghosts disappeared. They sucked back into the red sun like a rewinding video. After a moment of calm, the sun began to bulge once more. But this time, its energy could not be contained. Hie red bubble stretched for ten more seconds until it reached critical mass. Then it exploded in a blinding flash of light and a red wave of ectoplasm.
Everyone in the room lay low for several minutes. The people behind the bookcase struggled to control their heavy breathing, but they need not have bothered, as the terrified pantings of Bud Wright and Dr. Austin filled the room.
Ashley-Nicole stood up first. She studied the target sight and announced, "Okeydokey. That should do it." She took hold of the thick, curving shield and slid it toward the corner, commenting, "This is a remarkably light material, but superstrong."
Dr. Austin and Bud struggled to their feet, grimacing and sweating.
Ashley-Nicole reminded them. "Just let the Laser Cannon cycle down on its own before you cut the power. Okay?"
Dr. Austin and Bud could only stare at her and blabber.
Ashley-Nicole waited a moment, smiling patiently, until Dr. Austin finally managed to articulate, "Ghosts. They were ghosts. It was a ghost."
Ashley-Nicole laughed with delight. "Didn't you know about the library ghost, Dr. Austin? All the kids did."
"They knew?" Dr. Austin sputtered. "They knew about this? Why didn't they ever say anything?"
She laughed again. "Dr. Austin! You know they were never allowed to say anything!"
Ashley-Nicole kissed Bud on the cheek and added, "Anyway, who would have listened to them?" With a last wave to Dr. Austin, she headed through the rotating door and back to her homecoming mixer.
Dr. Austin and Bud struggled mightily to compose themselves. Finally, Bud looked at the empty book cart and said, "Well, that's it. Whatever it was, it's dead. It's finished." The two men exchanged a tense look Bud asked, "Is it too late, Doc?"
Dr. Austin was adamant. "No, it's not too late." He held up one hand and ticked off his reasons: "The First Lady is still in the building. She knows nothing about any of this. The ghost is dead. Everything is fine. It's not too late. Come on, Bud!" Dr. Austin ran out through the rotating door with Bud at his heels.
Kate popped her head up right away, followed by the others.
June spoke first. "I saw it, Kate. Did you see it?"
Kate assured her, "Yes!"
George added, "We all saw it, June."
Kate asked, "But what did we see, Uncle George?"
He answered in a measured, awed voice. "We saw a supernatural being, a demon, if you like."
June asked Kate, "Did you see the faces? Did you see the children?"
"Yes! Yes! Who were those children?"
George answered for her. "Every kid Jack ever possessed, I guess. All stored within him, within his memory, like on a holographic tape."
Kate, George, and June went on like that for several minutes:
"Did you see Mrs. Hodges?"
"Yes. And Pogo?"
"Two different Pogos, at two different ages."
"Did you see Walter Barnes?"
Finally, Molly couldn't take any more. She held up her hands in a giant Y until they stopped speaking. She asked, on the verge of hysteria, "Would someone please explain to me what the hell just happened here!"
Kate gestured toward George, indicating that he should reply. He tried to encapsulate the story for them. "You just witnessed the destruction of Jack. He was a supernatural being, the ghost that has haunted this library. After hundreds of years and countless possessions, he finally ran into a being more powerful than himself—Ashley-Nicole."
Molly and Mrs. Brennan looked at George long and hard—first trying to understand him, and then trying to believe him.
William shook his head admiringly. "Wow. So that was the ghost."
Everyone started to talk at once until, suddenly, the approaching sound of clinking metal sent them scrambling back into their hiding place.
Susan Singer-Wright entered the secret room.
Kate, George, and June peeked around one side of the bookcase; Molly, Mrs. Brennan, and William peeked around the other. They watched, breathlessly, as Susan stepped around the Laser Cannon and sat down behind the desk. Then Susan pulled out a cigarette and stuck it between her lips.
The Laser Cannon's tracker whirred into action. As Susan watched curiously, it ignited the tip of her cigarette, like a gallant gentleman. Then her hair stood straight up. Before she could even scream, the Laser Cannon superheated her body from within, causing it to implode in a burst of deadly black smok
e.
Susan Singer-Wright, alive just one second before, was now a smoking, charred skeleton draped in silver necklaces. Her left hand, still wearing its wedding rings, held out the cylindrical remains of a cigarette, like a macabre antismoking poster.
Kate and the others followed the entire horrific sequence of events, wide eyed, mesmerized by the grisly sight.
But they had to rouse themselves a few seconds later. A quick scuffling sound in the outer office was followed by the commotion of Dr. Austin and Bud running back in.
"She's gotta be somewhere!" Bud panted.
Dr. Austin told him, "She is. That Agent Pflaum is hiding her. But we know this building better than he does. Come on!"
Dr. Austin started to run back out. But he stopped when he noticed that Bud was not following.
Bud was gazing across the room. He asked, "Say, Doc, what's that thing in the chair over there? Looks like some kind of science experiment." Bud's curiosity drew him slowly toward the desk.
Dr. Austin looked hard at the contents of the chair. He realized that it was not a science experiment. His mouth fell open; then he started screaming.
Bud turned back, panicked, and started to scream, too.
Their screaming voices drowned out the soft whir of the Laser Cannon's tracker as it clicked back into action.
Dr. Austin saw the glow of the laser just in time. He hit the red button and killed the light a second before it reached Bud.
Bud did not even notice. He moved closer to the desk to get a better look. "This might sound crazy, Doc, but it looks a little like Susan."
Dr. Austin was way ahead of him. "It is Susan! Look at her cigarette. Look at her jewelry."
"It is?"
"Yes! Obviously!"
"It's my Susan? My wife, Susan?"
Dr. Austin grasped Bud by the shoulders. "Yes! My sincere condolences. But please, Bud, let us think here. Let us think about what your Susan would want us to do under these tragic circumstances."
Bud stared at him, confounded. "I don't know. What would she want us to do?"